Piotr Nowak

It is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man.Having taken the Romagna in 1502, Cesare Borgia, the Italian nobleman and model for Machiavelli's political treatise The Prince, soon learned how unruly the newly acquired province was. Armed robbery, theft, impudent nepotism, imprecise law, and the racket made by the rebellious common people—all of this demanded the introduction of some kind of order. Messer Ramiro d'Orco, a thirtysomething, dynamic, decisive, resolute, and morally incorruptible man, seemed to be the ideal candidate for the position of governor of the disobedient province. With the protection and consent of the prince, he introduced a strong rule of law that...

The author analyses “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare, to highlight the transformation of the Christian body and the Jewish soul during the early stages of capitalism. He reveals that the Venice described by Shakespeare is a world without measure, in which money is the only value. People are objects of financial speculation and all of humanity is treated as a commodity, an exchange value. When Bassanio praises the advantages of Portia, he first mentions her ducats, and only after that does he allude to her beauty and virtues of mind. The capitalism that is being formed in the eyes of the viewers mocks significant cultural, ethnic and religious differences. It buries them in heaps of money and then blurs them, forcing a new concept of man, whose existence differs little from plants and animals growing freely. In such a world, a game is the only strategy that allows for survival. In Venice, everyone pretends, wears a mask and lives in hypocrisy. This behaviour is typical of the “carnival” atmosphere. Masks separate people from themselves, covering up their tracks and blurring identities. By wearing them, they can hide behind “someone else”.

In The Ancients and Shakespeare on Time Piotr Nowak depicts a world where tradition – devoid of gravity, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” – attempts to curb the young and new, while youth resists with all its power, vitality and characteristic insolence. The wars of generations, which Nowak explores in the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, pertain to the essence and meaning of time. They make up the dramatic tensions in the transgenerational dialogue between the old and the young

This paper introduces the special issue of Diametros devoted to discussing “Expertise, Disagreement, and Trust in Vaccine Science and Policy. The Importance of Transparency in a World of Experts” by Alberto Giubilini, Rachel Gur-Arie, and Euzebiusz Jamrozik. In their article, Giubilini et al. argue that expert transparency—particularly regarding disagreements among experts—is ethically crucial for securing public trust in vaccine policy. Several contributors to this issue expand upon that claim. For example, Maciej Macuga proposes that transparency is necessary to make coercive vaccination policies morally legitimate, and Lucie White interprets the core disagreement surrounding vaccine recommendations as a divergence in underlying values. Other authors challenge aspects of Giubilini et al.’s position: Udo Schüklenk and Ben Almassi caution that greater transparency may not bolster trust or improve vaccine uptake, while Ezio Di Nucci presents an analytical argument showing that a purely epistemic notion of expertise leads to paradoxical conclusions—namely, that experts should care neither about trustworthiness, nor trust. Jamie Watson emphasizes that it is the reliable process of producing scientific knowledge that grounds expert trustworthiness. Finally, Elena Popa and Richard Matthews argue that redistributions of power, both in society at large and within expert communities, are necessary to foster genuine trust.