Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2023) XXV/3

The Greek tragedy Antigone (by Sophocles) has been, in the history of literature, a seminal work whose thematic focus, anchored as it is, in the continued struggle of women claiming dignity has earned it an interesting array of recasting (and rewritings) in literature-drama, opera, cinema, ballet, etc. The confrontation between Creon and Antigone has had political, moral, legal and sociological ramifications, which makes Antigone an essential code for multiple referentiality. In particular, the actions and reasons of Antigone are a projection of the intellect and the sensitivity of a woman, whose plight has become canonical in the circuit of Western civilization. This article analyzes three works that rewrite and establish intertextual relationships with this important tragedy. The issue in question, which transcends both time and culture, is based on the belief that denying burial to a loved one brings about an impossibility for the soul of the departed to make the necessary transition towards the kingdom of the dead. Among the rewritings of Antigone, this article focuses on ‘La tumba de Antígona’, by María Zambrano; ‘Los escogidos’, by the Colombian journalist Patricia Nieto and Antígona González, by the Mexican writer Sara Uribe.

This paper brings together the tale “Canciones para el incendio” of the colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, with the hermeneutic thinking of Ricoeur supported, in some traits, by Husserl’s phenomenology. From a hermeneutic standpoint, the three-fold mimesis model enables the methodology developed in this paper, which unfolds into three approaches to the tale. The mimesis proposes three steps that include prefiguration, configuration and refiguration; issues that respond to the relationships between time lived and narrative. Its unfolding nestles in a sort of time relaxation, that brings closer the before and after of the narrative. The key questions are: what mimics the tale? mimesis I, how is it set up? mimesis II and, lastly, what does the refiguration of the tell means, when the reader inhabits in it? mimesis III. Vásquez’s work is impressive not only for its literary quality, but also for putting in the spotlight the most pitiful aspects of the historical reality of violence and exclusion that Colombia has endured, witnessing the poor democracy experience and secularization; values and truths that are scarcely instituted in this nation.

This article is part of a study dedicated to the many senses in which Iris Murdoch appeals to reality and realism within her philosophical reflection. In particular, the epistemological significance of her thesis that a good ethical theory must seek to be realist, in the sense of being faithful to the complexities of the reality of moral life, is explored here.

The point of this paper is to indicate that liberal secularist frameworks are not very useful to address the de-democratising phenomena that neoconservatism and religious right-wing actors are causing today. Taking the Argentinian context as object of philosophical analysis, I defend two intertwined theses that have bearing on the way left-wing politics and activism deal with the revitalisation of the political participation of right-wing and neoconservative churches and religious actors. The first one is that although the secularisation thesis cannot explain today’s religious political revitalisation, at the same time the reconfiguration of the way Christian churches participate in politics is confined to the political ideology of secularism. The second thesis is an explanation as to why this is so: secularism is enacted within an agonistic-deliberative political field in which fully legitimised and polarised agents shape each other’s agency, and that at the same time delegitimises those subjectivities and collectives that do not adjust to its homogenising polarisations. In sum, debating about secularism and religion is still needed, but today the focus of the discussions should be put in the way the liberal state and the hegemonic church authorities collaborate to marginalise several collectives from political participation.

In Une Femme (c. 1987), an autobiographical story by French writer Annie Ernaux, the challenge of writing is to gather from memory what has been scattered over time until it manages to raise the ethical profile of the narrator’s mother being and person. Using the flow of everyday life as a resource, the narrator braids for the reader the thread of two lives (mother and daughter), closely interweaving these two lives within the social context. Even though the flow of feelings between two people is as variable as its projection in memory, these are precisely the two sources from which Ernaux extracts the necessary signals to shape her story. A meaning not often considered for the verb "collect" illustrates a different conveyance of "to infer or deduce", which are the focus of its meaning, expressed in transitive uses. Said sense, which may well correspond to the material order as well as to the immaterial one, indicates that when colligating, something that has been disintegrated, or scattered, is recomposed. This idea is inherent to the type of operations carried out by memory, which does not operate chaotically, but in a staggered way, by linking loose pieces. In Une Femme one can appreciate, in a fundamentally ethical register, the process of deducing that the narrator's memory carries out in order not to disfigure, or misinterpret, the role of form and function, of the mother. For critical discourse, it is not easy to judge whether the elements considered carry out the transcription of a woman's life, as offered in this work by Ernaux, are adjusted to reality or are the object of self- fiction, but Ella's profile as a person allows us to ask: Is that kind of reconfiguration that is consigned there an ethical motivation or merely fictional? The exposition in Une Femme is subtly ambiguous: objective and subjective; prosaic and poetic; ethical and social. This article intends to enter this disquisition seeking to identify the motives of the correspondence between "a woman" (the mother of the narrator), who is the subject of the experience, in front of the character built in the narrative under the name "Elle".

The purpose of this article is to outline the possible relationships between three central approaches of Nietzsche's philosophy: the death of God, reactive nihilism and the will to power; which in turn correspond, in our opinion, with the three transformations of the spirit that the author presents in his Zarathustra (1995, p. 49): The camel, the lion and the child. The above in order to take a look, based on said conceptual constellation, at some aspects of Albert Camus's novel, The Stranger (1966); in particular, to some acts of its protagonist, Meursault, which could be considered ethically questionable. We propose an analysis that, from the mediation between philosophy and literature, allows some reflections on the ethical position of this disturbing character and the way in which Camus's novel is related to a hopeless historical context in which nihilism as indifference takes over. of the spirit and can link it with evil.

‘Animal Question’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ constitute two parallel paths of a radical conceptual review of legal subjectivity. The essay aims to investigate the reasons and limits of the arguments in support of the recognition of legal personality to animals and automatons. The analysis is divided into three distinct phases: a reconstruction of the evolutionary course of the subject of law between the modern and contemporary age; the determination of ontological assumptions for the extension of subjectivity to other entities; the definition of the teleological dimension for the use of new forms of personality.

This paper will critically discuss George Orwell’s book, 1984, as a dystopian text that highlights the function of a particular language: propaganda. Used in a horizon of perpetual war, propaganda alters the narrative of reality, but it is functional to achieve certain specific ethical-normative purposes, such as social control, the reduction of all forms of freedom, the elimination of people’s rights. Instead, it favours the homologation of the behaviour of each member of society and proposes war itself as a positive value. The novel 1984 will therefore serve as a literary starting point for an ethical-philosophical analysis of war and its typical language of manipulation. These elements, in fact, as in the novel, are everyday realities present in many contemporary contexts.

This paper explores the complex relationship between ethics and literature by applying the perspective of everyday aesthetics, a branch of philosophy. Focusing on Francesco Piccolo's fiction work, Moments of Unnoticed Happiness (2012), we argue that the protagonist adopts an Aristotelian-based ethical stance, viewing happiness as a path to well-being and finding significance in life. Additionally, the character embraces an aesthetic attitude toward the nuances of daily existence, aligning with the theoretical framework of everyday aesthetics. This framework expands the scope of aesthetic experiences beyond traditional art domains, emphasizing a transformative shift in perception. We use these concepts to illustrate how engaging with the ordinary enhances personal well-being.

Contemporary problems such as post-politics, post-capitalism, digitization, among others, have entered the themes of literature, sparking debates around the current state of affairs, investigating its causes, anticipating its possible consequences. This trend resonates in the suggestive "Ethical Turn" (Baker, 1995), according to which reflection on experience, both individual and collective, would be inherent in literature, through what Levinas (Levinas, 1961) called, an ethics of language. This issue of Ethics and Politics, dedicated to the relationship between ethics and literature, proposes some paths in this field of research and creation.

Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics is an open access philosophical journal, being published only in an electronic format. The journal aims at promoting research and reflection, both historically and theoretically, in the field of moral and political philosophy, with no cultural preclusion or adhesion to any cultural current. Contributions should be submitted in one of these languages: Italian, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish. All essays should include an English abstract of max. 200 words. The editorial staff especially welcomes interdisciplinary contributions with special attention to the main trends of the world of practice. The journal has an anonymous double peer review referee system. Three issues per year are expected. The copyright of the published articles remain to the authors. We ask that in any future use of them Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics be quoted as a source. All products on this site are released with a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 IT)

In this article we discuss Franzen's latest novel, Crossroads, by addressing its philosophical depth and investigating its value within the author's literary path. First, we intend to reconstruct the genealogical operation proposed by Franzen, highlighting the most relevant theoretical elements through a comparison with the categories of Macintyre’s After Virtue. In the second section we focus on the various characteristics that define choice and decision-making in the novel, while outlining a model of analysis through which we can frame the question of choice within contemporary American literature. Finally, we outline the main forms of critical resistance identified by the author through an examination of recurring thematic choices in the writings as well as the recognition of specific stylistic approaches. By following this route, we hope to draw attention to the limits and contradictions that characterize the interaction between the individual and society and shed light on the challenges associated with conceptualizing the modern individual within authentic social contexts.

In this article I argue that including relaxed epistemic values in the justification of democracy through a pragmatist and non-monist approach is compatible with the democratic values of selfrule and pluralism (which are often seen as incompatible with “political truth”). First, I contend that pragmatist epistemology offers a more suitable approach to politics instead of the correspondence theory of finding “the one truth”. Secondly, I argue that instead of choosing between monist (purely epistemic or procedural) accounts of justification of democracy we should see epistemic values as part of a hybrid interpretation. Thirdly, I argue that epistemic values in democracy should be interpreted in a non-demanding way. Fourth and corresponding to previous points, I claim weak political cognitivism is phenomenologically most plausible for the democratic participant. I then continue to show that both the values of autonomy and pluralism, which are often considered antithetical to truth-claims, can be accommodated and even enhanced by epistemic values in the justification of democracy.

Joseph Conrad's novel The Shadow Line narrates a fundamental event in life, whereby a young sailor who has just left his position as second mate on the pretext of returning to his homeland is appointed, in a singular twist of fortune, captain of a ship that is stranded in Bangkok waiting to be taken to Sydney. Particular circumstances of that voyage will make the young captain have to resign the initial destination and manage to bring the ship and crew safely to the port of Singapore. The purpose of our reflection is to show that this work gives access to a human experience that has the form of an existential event, that is to say, that has the character of the singular and determining for a human life, and that is not reduced to what we could consider merely episodic, since it has the power to alter its course, leading it towards its own form of realization, through an alteration, change or transformation that I will call "crossing of existential thresholds". I’m interested in showing in what way these thresholds are constituted, or in what way they can be recognized in orders such as time, space and language.

Concerning the ethical effects of literature, the work coming from literary studies, both in its traditional theoretical bent as well as in its attempt at empirical validation, has privileged the processes of reception on the readers side, making it a focal point of its interest, and has concentrated less on the consequences that the act of writing itself has on its actors. It is worth stating that the pole of production has been an object of inquiry of special interest to the subgenre of poetics, autobiographical writings and authorial roles and has been overlooked as a space of individual ethical transformation. This space has instead been the object of interest of disciplines such as psychology, pedagogy and memory studies. The present methodological article aims to offer elements of theoretical rumination and information compiled with qualitative research tools that allows a deepening in the comprehension of the nexus between creative writing and the increase of empathy. Strictly speaking, it corroborates the thesis that creative writing can in fact contribute to the development of empathy of its actors, at least in what pertains to (with its limitation, of course) their self-perception; and it postulates that in the vast catalog of writing tools that stimulate its practice, there are a kind of exercises that are more effective than others. This article also ventures in a model of critical implementation of the aforementioned writing exercises that may be used as a didactic sequence in formative spaces.

Anarchy is the most radical form of critique of power. This article compares Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s conceptions of anarchy, with the aim of tracing the different political ontologies that underpin them. I will argue that Foucauldian political ontology is similar to institutionalism, while Agamben’s is avowedly destituent. Finally, I will show the aporias inherent in Agamben’s proposal.

The analysis of narrative elaborations like fables provides elements for the valuation of the way we have represented animals, intelligence and, also, the way we propose behavioral models through didactic literary genres. However, the change in paradigm in the way we conceive the human-animal relationship offers an interpretative horizon that this article seeks to explore through the reading of a series of fables with the same protagonist and similar motifs. The protagonist owes, in great measure, its condition of archetypal beast to these stories: donkey has become a synonym of brute or lacking civility. Thus, the interest for this figure in three fables from different temporary and social coordinates, that employ this character – the donkey – and its encounter with a musical instrument to formulate a deontic precept: the value of knowledge, education and effort as opposed to casual accomplishment or one due to chance. “The Ass and the Lyre” (Phaedrus), “The flutist Donkey” (T. de Iriarte), and “The Donkey and the Flute” (A. Monterroso) are three texts with similar structures and form that will allow an exploration of genre, form, compositional elements and meaning to project sense onto aspects that compromise the symbolic value of animal representation and allow for ethical and ontological considerations in the evolution of this tale, in the face of the actual conception of the identity of its nature, in its sphere and in some correlative problems.

In this article, I examine the problem of the ordering of preferences and the neutrality we should have with respect to their temporal location if we are to maintain a largely impartial position in ethical deliberation. I show how some difficulties may arise if we understand the ethical stance not only as a propensity towards impartiality, but also as a way of constructing our own personal ethical narrative

Concepts, such as ecology and environment, central to contemporary ethical reflection applied to the ecosystem, were unknown to the ancient Greeks, but they demonstrated, through literature and legislation, a marked sensitivity to such questions. It may be interesting to focus on the myth of Erysichthon, transmitted by Callimachus and Ovid, but also by Dante in The Divine Commedy. The egoism of Erysichthon appears extremely current, especially with regard to human responsibility in the destiny of the planet. The awareness demonstrated in classical Greece for the negative consequences of human action on the environment has significant repercussions in the institutional and regulatory contexts of the ancient city-states. Aristotle (Politics 6, 1321b 30), for example, recalls the presence in some Greek states of foresters, called ὑλωροι􀊆. Similarly, particular attention was paid to the regulation of certain economic activities (IG I3 257). This article intends to investigate the most recent issues related to environmental ethics with the aim of overcoming modern subjectivism: the main causes of the environmental emergency can be neutralized taking into consideration the consequences of our actions on the environment, the non-human entities that populate the earth and the life of future generation.

The article analyzes aspects of Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot’s literary criticism on Frankfurt School’s historical materialism and his contribution to the understanding of this philosophical current in Latin America. In the Reading of this theoretical trend, artistic and philological keys emerge, put into practice by some German Authors in the face of the Marxist method, questioning the degree of correspondence between revolutionary theory and praxis, as well as their consistency over time. In the interpretative project undertaken by the Colombian philosopher, however, the possibility of a methodical historical epistemology that surpasses linear modernity, as well as the conception of a new critical theory in which philosophy and poetry converge, can be glimpsed.