Reviews for Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano

The average rating for Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-09 00:00:00 Gene Fogerty Maybe you'll be amazed when I say that I procured this little volume at one of the then many bookstores in New York City almost 40 years ago. I say amazed because most of them shutdown long ago to be replaced by chic shops and boutiques favored by wealthy Sybarites who have swarmed over the city in recent years. They are definitely not the New Yorkers of what Kenneth Clarke called Heroic Capitalism nor are they the richly ethnic Eastern European, Italian and Irish immigrants of the last century whom one could see leaning out of their brownstone windows on hot summer days. They ran fragrant and modestly priced delis, restaurants and bakeries. There were sidewalk vendors. They had large numbers of kids playing Double Dutch jump rope and stickball on the streets. (And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. Zechariah 8:5.) The opulent establishments that have replaced them are banal by comparison and one no longer has the sense of inclusion conferred by common experience and means. Their patrons do not read, they gaze at screens, take selfies and strike a pose, as we used to say. Most of all they simply consume. But I have digressed! In the 1980s I was drifting away from the Left, not sure where I would come to shore. (Partly because it was destroying the Old New York I just described.) I tried to read the various contemporary philosophers: Adorno, Foucault, Heidegger, phenomenologists generally, the analytic school, the Frankfurt School, etc. Each wrote as if they had the answer but it was muddled and such truth as was to be found was a kind of elephantiasis of a limb--bloated beyond usefulness and hideous, if not outright evil. These and like readings were not the result of natural inquisitiveness on my part; though they were partly motivated by a seemingly fruitless struggle to find meaning. I was part of the academic community, so I read them out of conformity to what was then the fashion of the time, sometimes called the canon (it has since been altered further in directions Lewis feared). In my day all knowledge was swaddled in positivism, materialism and, ultimately, subjectivism. Even works of the past were viewed and when necessary, perverted by its influence. One could not look even at a work of art without being informed by the modern critique. It affected the sciences, as Lewis points out when he says: There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results. So I thought I'd take a look and see what these erstwhile conservative fellows were about. I figured their scribbles would be so much priggish humbug, full of superstition, laced with nostalgia. To my surprise many rang out with clarity, that I later would come to call common sense. One stood out as an Arkenstone among the rest: C. S. Lewis The Poison of Subjectivism. The book contains many other worthy contributions but this one resonated with me the most and so I will take it the flagship writing for the whole book. In this essay, Lewis argues that subjectivism is not only at the root of all the dangerous ideologies making totalitarianism but undermines a free society's ability to oppose them. It is the byproduct that results when reason turns on reason. The opening paragraph is as follows, One cause of misery and vice is always present with us in the greed and pride of men, but at certain periods in history this is greatly increased by the temporary prevalence of some false philosophy. Correct thinking will not make good men of bad ones; but a purely theoretical error may remove ordinary checks to evil and deprive good intentions of their natural support. An error of this sort is abroad at present. I am not referring to the Power philosophies of the Totalitarian states, but to something that goes deeper and spreads wider and which, indeed, has given these Power philosophies their golden opportunity. I am referring to Subjectivism. I found this to be the general case when I was studying the natural sciences and mathematics. Lewis felt that while this is a bad sign the scientists would find this an "unwelcome yokefellow" that would be continually counteracted. Yet, what are we to make of the recent appearance of the concepts of diversity and identity politics entering fields once thought to be impervious by their very nature--to possess strong counteracting forces? For example this from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) where the author states, In 2017, and education professor Rochelle Gutiérrez wrote that “mathematics operates as whiteness.” Perhaps one can say that such as expressed in this quote is what mathematics will increasingly look like if mathematicians no longer retain truth and reality in their vocabulary--which appears to be the case? Until just recently it would have been unthinkable that the AMS would have allowed something like this in their publications or, if it had existed, on their website. Nor would this have been due to the inherent white supremacy or patriarchal character of mathematicians. As a group they have always tended towards liberalism and the Left; the fact that this sorry state of affairs has actually been attained being proof of my contention. What if instead of understanding the Pythagorean Theorem and how it fits into the great edifice of geometry, more and more effort and investment will be expended to determine its "true source" in some hitherto neglected woman or person of color? Now I am starting to digress. This essay was where I first learned the relationship between the indicative and the imperative. Lewis said this, All idea of "new" or "scientific" or "modern" moralities must therefore be dismissed as mere confusion of thought. We have only two alternatives. Either the maxims of traditional morality must be accepted as axioms of practical reason which neither admit nor require argument to support them and not to "see" which is to have lost human status; or else there are no values at all, what we mistook for values being "projections" of irrational emotions. It is perfectly futile, after having dismissed traditional morality with the question, 'Why should we obey it?' then to attempt the reintroduction of value at some later stage in our philosophy. Any value we reintroduce can be countered in just the same way. Every argument used to support it will be an attempt to derive from premises in the indicative mood a conclusion in the imperative. And this is impossible. In our own time it is widely believed that such a scientific morality can be based on genetics, or DNA. Hence the discovery of a gay gene is supposed to have established the new, scientific, moral principle that homosexuality is not the perversion it was once thought to be; but instead one of the many modes of human behavior that deserves to be as freely expressed as the others. On going efforts are attempting to justify applying a non binary spectrum of gender to human beings. Per Lewis, such efforts are bound to be as fruitless as weighing the soul. I am running up against a character limit so I will close were with the essay's startling and absolutely timely conclusion. At the closing Lewis says this, Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. If we do, we may live, and such a return might have one minor advantage. If we believed in the absolute reality of elementary moral platitudes, we should value those who solicit our votes by other standards than have recently been in fashion. While we believe that good is something to be invented, we demand of our rulers such qualities as "vision," "dynamism," "creativity," and the like. If we returned to the objective view we should demand qualities much rarer, and much more beneficial - virtue, knowledge, diligence and skill. 'Vision' is for sale, or claims to be for sale, everywhere. But give me a man who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job. Lewis gives us two columns of qualities. I call the first affective and the second effective: Affective <========================> Effective >> Vision <=========================> Virtue >> Dynamism <======================> Diligence >> Creativity <=======================> Knowledge ********* =========================> Skill The first column contains those qualities that are affective. They basically excite the emotions, and can be faked. They can even be the opposite of what they claim. Vision in leadership can be dissipation and depravity even brutality. And it claims to be "for sale" everywhere. Dynamism can be indolence. As for creativity the whole modern movement has been dogged by suspicions that it is an imposture. The effective qualities are objective, they are self-revealing. They are known by their fruits. Diligence is measured by one's posture and position. Knowledge, again speaks for itself--I know this as a former math teacher. And most recently as a watchmaker, I can immediately see skill--there is not way it can be put on. Nor does my emotional predisposition affect my assessment. But give me a man who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job. Are not the very opposites of these the hallmarks of our time? Politicians taking bribes is now so common we hardly notice. Indeed we consider it impertinence to call it what it is and the ranks close against any man who does. And who hasn't observed young people in various capacities lolling about, eyes fixed on their smartphones; who don't know their business, stock or trade; who think the only reason for their presence is to get paid? Need we say much about making up facts? Incompetence is legion what with the introduction of spurious criteria, unrelated to knowledge and skill as qualifications for being hired. Indeed, EQ has, as a bland matter of fact, replaced IQ as the most desirable quality of all. Being an a**hole is damning, no matter how much skill, ability and honesty one might have. So that is the closing line of the essay that pushed me into a new territory; one that eventually, though not immediately, led to my becoming a Christian.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-08 00:00:00 Jan Astrom A great overview of some remarkable writers.