Two recent crises have raised the question as to the legitimate use of coercive force: the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the first case the coercive force mainly took the form of legal restrictions on various human activities such as work and travel; in the second case, coercive force is being exercised primarily in the form of sanctions and financial support for Ukraine (which makes possible the other kind of coercive force Ukraine is using to expel the invader). In both cases there has been much debate about the ethics of such measures. The purpose of this post is to consider briefly the ethics of the use of coercive force in responding to the ecological and social crisis depicted in Laudato sì. In Chapter 5 of that document there are various discrete but firm references to the need for such force (for example, §§ 167,175,181). This need arises out of the simple fact that when some parties attempt to respond to the crisis by introducing change other parties tend to obstruct this process. It is not realistic to imagine that all parties will freely cooperate in effecting the necessary change. But is it ethically legitimate to…

Last year, dott. Giorgio Del Signore, Bursar of the Alphonsian Academy, prof. Leonardo Salutati and myself launched a research project in the Academy entitled “The Governance of Change – at a time of ecological transition”. We had hoped to organize a summer school on this theme last July, but maybe we should have been more active in seeking participants – some very suitable applications did arrive but they were insufficient in number. Still convinced of the importance of on-going reflection on this matter, with their agreement, I am writing this post to present a new proposal to all interested parties. The idea is to create a kind of sub-blog within the blog of the Alphonsian Academy. The broad theme of the sub-blog remains the governance of change, meaning by this the way in which an appropriate response to the social and ecological crisis depicted in Laudato sì can be effectively organized and managed. This encyclical can be understood as a sort of manifesto regarding this response. The narrower focus of the sub-blog will be on the open ethical questions raised by Laudato sì. These questions need on-going reflection and a constant effort at deeper understanding. While welcoming contributions from all…

Two of the most important words in the Phenomenology of Perception of Merleau-Ponty are “world” (monde) and “meaning” (sens).  This post will not focus on the long analyses that this author offers on each term but rather on the way he understands the relationship between these two terms. In his thought world and meaning are co-relative, almost synonymous: there is no world without meaning and no meaning without the world.             In common usage the term “world” is employed to talk about quite a range of different realities: the planet Earth, the ensemble of all that is, a sector of culture (the world of cinema) and so on. In general, the term has a spatial connotation, that is to say the world is a space in which something is located or in which something happens.  Merleau-Ponty speaks of the naïve conception of the world as being like a big box in which are to be found objects, people, villages, clouds… Understood in this way the world is thought of as something objective, concrete and real. It is a ready-made world, a fait accompli.             From the beginning, phenomenology strongly contested this way of thinking about the world. The main problem…

            In a central public square in Louvain, Belgium, there is an unusual work of art which consists of an enormous needle, on the point of which is impaled an insect. This figure was produced by Jan Fabre in 2004 to mark 575 years of the KU Leuven University Libraries. Our guide explained that the artist wished to bring out the limitations of modern science. By pinning down an insect, a scientist has the possibility of analysing it in all kinds of ways, some of which may indeed be of service to modern science and culture in general. Through investigation the scientist acquires forms of knowledge about the insect which can then be applied in different spheres of life. What the artist wished to dramatically denounce are the many forms of knowledge that are lost when we take this approach to insects, to any given reality or indeed to reality as a whole. What is lost? The life of the insect! Not primarily in the sense that the insect is killed but in the sense that the scientist using this method loses all access to the flashing, buzzing, flying insect and to the human experience of observing such a living…

«…language , in one who talks, does not translate a mature thought but rather accomplishes it». Maurice Merleau-Ponty             It is well known that for a good part of the 20th century language was a key theme in what is often called “analytical philosophy”, as perhaps best symbolized in the figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Less well known is the fact that language is often a key theme in what is known as “continental philosophy”, particularly in existentialism and phenomenology. This division has by now been somewhat overcome: a contemporary philosopher such as Claude Romano is extremely attentive to both these traditions (see particularly, Au cœur de la raison, la phénoménologie).             The purpose of this brief contribution is to comment on just one aspect of the theme of language in the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The aspect in question concerns the relationship between thinking and talking/writing. In everyday spontaneous conversation and discussion we tend to speak of thinking and talking as two separate, consecutive activities. While preparing a lecture, for instance, I may understand myself as first walking around the garden thinking and then going to my office and writing down what I have been thinking. Merleau-Ponty strongly denounces this…