Alessandra Fussi

On Tyranny, by Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojeve, is now available in Italian. The article examines the debate between the two philosophers, focussing primarily on their respective views of political philosophy and the opposition between ancients and moderns concerning such issues as the role of luck, the gap between theory and practice, and whether or not history is meaningful, teleologically oriented, able to prove (or disprove) political theory or, on the contrary, itself subject to theoretical judgment. The author explains how the debate centres around two fundamentally different views of the relationship between philosophy and love of recognition. While for Kojeve subjective certainty becomes knowledge only when widely recognized (and hence proved correct by history), Strauss, whose starting points are Xenophon’s and Plato’s views on the relationship between love of honour and philosophy, maintains that recognition is no guarantee of truth, and philosophy, in its most authentic form, is sceptical or zetetic.

Section 1 examines four reasons most commonly adduced to support the claim that guilt is superior to shame, both psychologically and morally: a) While guilt expresses a concern for others shame is a self-centered and selfish emotion. b) While guilt appeals to autonomy shame is linked to heteronomy. c) Shame is not a reactive attitude, like guilt, indignation, blame, resentment, but an objective attitude, like disdain or disgust. d) While guilt invites us to second-person responses, shame inhibits them. The second part of the paper (sections 2 and 3) addresses Williams’s analysis of the role of shame in ancient Greek literature and philosophy. Section 2 is dedicated to Williams’s response to the objections concerning selfishness and shallowness and to discussing his reply to the charge that since shame belongs to the objective attitudes it tends to inhibit second-person responses. Section 3 concentrates on Williams’s reflections on heteronomy by focusing on the attitude of others in ...

A proposit del llibre d'Alessandra Fussi La citta nell'anima es presenta en l'article una discussio sobre la interpretacio que Leo Strauss va fer de les obres de Plato i de Xenofont. Es posen en questio la ironia, l'escepticisme i la naturalesa dels dialegs com a obra filosofica.

The paper critically discusses the thesis, originally put forth by Taylor (2006), that there is a (mostly benign) form of envy whose target is the good possessed by someone else. Section 2 analyzes the distinction between object-envy and state-envy, discusses the connection between object-envy and benign envy, and develops the ethical consequences that follow from the thesis that envy is never benign. Section 3 presents a thought experiment with five variations developed from the basic elements of object-envy: an agent, a good the agent desires but lacks, and a person who possesses the good. The variations generate emotions like longing, sadness, happiness for, admiration, covetousness, self-disappointment, but they do not generate envy. Section 4 concentrates on envious self-reproach and shows that its nature and genesis are different from the self-disappointment one may experience in other forms of self-assessment. Section 5 argues that the so-called sour-grape syndrome serves dif...

espanolEste trabajo tiene por objeto la discusion de los conceptos de repugnancia y miedo en la obra de Kolnai. La repugnancia plantea problemas cognitivos distintos al miedo, a pesar de que algunos pensadores los hayan considerado esencialmente iguales. Me centrare primero en el contraste entre el miedo y la repugnancia desde el punto de vista de sus objetos emocionales y explicare por que Kolnai piensa que los objetos intencionales del miedo son dos, mientras que la repugnancia tiene solo un objeto intencional. En segundo lugar, examinare la nocion de proximidad, la cual define el objeto de la repugnancia frente al objeto del miedo segun Kolnai. En tercer lugar, analizare la apropiacion critica de Kolnai del analisis freudiano de la repugnancia. En la parte final del trabajo examinare la hipotesis de que la categoria de la excesiva proximidad, que expresa la relacion sujeto-objeto, podria aplicarse tambien a la constitucion material del objeto. EnglishThis paper aims to discuss th...

In this paper I discuss some moral implications of Ferraris’ theory of documents. I address, firstly, his theory of knowledge and its relationship with the concepts of freedom and responsibility; secondly, the notion of “leaving trace” in its connection with memory, identity, and the desire for honour and recognition. Finally, I surmise that the anthropological basis of “leaving trace” is the desire to gain control over the environment (as in animals marking their territory) as well as over the memory, the ethical attitudes, and the behaviours of others (through inscriptions).

Diotima criticizes, but does not refute, Aristophanes' thesis that love is desire for completeness. Her argument incorporates that thesis within a more complex theory: eros is desire for the permanent possession of the good, and hence also desire for immortality. Aristophanes cannot account for the aspirations entailed in the desire for fame or in the desire for knowledge. Such aspirations can be understood only with reference to the good. However, the paper shows how time plays a fundamental role in the original pursuit of wholeness at the center of Aristophanes' myth of the two halves. Diotima appropriates his thesis when she describes the urge to leave behind something similar to what one has been. The desire for immortality is nothing but a desire for completeness pursued by mortal nature against the never-ending destruction of time.

The Phaedrus's Palinode ascribes to the wing the double function of lifting the soul towards truth while itself being nourished by truth. The paper concentrates on the role Socrates ascribes to the wing in the structure and 'physiology' of the soul-mortal and divine-as well as on the role it plays in Socrates' subsequent phenomenological description of falling in love. The experience of love described in Socrates e' first speech-an experience dominated by envy-is examined in light of Socrates' Palinode, by reference to Socrates' account of the different ways souls can relate to truth before incarnation.

I AT THE END OF A VERY LONG DISCUSSION with interlocutors who grow angrier and angrier with him, Socrates tells a story about the judgment of souls in the afterlife. He addresses the myth to Callicles, his final interlocutor, in the explicitly stated belief that the young man will not take it any more seriously than he would take a bunch of old wives' tales. (1) Socrates' prophecy about Callicles' response is likely to be correct. What is surprising, however, is that it also turns out to describe well the reaction of many readers of the dialogue. Plato scholars pay no attention whatsoever to the myth, at most devoting a few pages to Plato's sources. Does he rely on Orphic sources, or is he closer to the Pythagoreans? Once such problems are addressed, the myth is summarily dismissed. I find this myth very interesting. In it, Socrates describes a transformation of the human condition with respect to death. We learn that foreknowledge of death, which the mortals possessed in the age of Kronos, had been transformed by Zeus into the awareness of an unpredictable death. Correlatively, what is to count as a proper judgment of the soul receives a new definition. I want to discuss how issues such as awareness of death, truth and appearance, and surface and depth are subtly interwoven in the myth and raise fundamental questions about what it is to know the soul. Socrates' myth begins at 523a4 and ends at 524a8. At 524a9 Socrates says that this is what he heard and believes to be true. He adds: "and from these stories, on my reckoning, we must draw some such moral as this." Socrates' considerations on the myth are much longer than the myth itself. While the myth describes the passage from the time of Kronos to that of Zeus, Socrates' considerations concern the judgment of the soul after the event in the time of Zeus. The myth tells a stow and is mainly concerned with events. Socrates' considerations illustrate the consequences of these events for mankind. I will first analyze the myth and then turn to Socrates' discussion. II The myth concerns the final judgment of the dead in the afterlife, which determines who is to be sent to Tartarus and who to the Isles of the Blessed. According to Socrates, when Zeus took over his reign from his father, Kronos, he decided to put an end to the injustice that had characterized judgments in that age. Fairly often those who had wicked souls and had lived an unjust life ended up being sent to the Isles of the Blessed, while those who had lived a just and holy life were sent to Tartarus. According to Zeus, there were two reasons for these mistakes. First, human beings knew in advance when their last day would come. Second, the judges who decided the fate of the living were themselves still alive. The first reason given by Zeus, foreknowledge of death, made it possible for mortals to prepare for their last trial well in advance. The second, the fact of being judged while still living and by living judges, made it especially easy for those who had wicked souls to rely on appearance as the best means of self-defense: "many who have wicked souls are clad in fair bodies and ancestry and wealth, and at their judgment appear many witnesses to testify that theft lives have been just." (2) In response Zeus takes three measures. First, Prometheus is ordered to deprive the mortals of any foreknowledge of theft last day. Second, the last judgment must occur when the mortals are stripped bare of all things, thus not on theft last day of life, but after they are dead. Third, the judges are supposed to be dead as well. The ornament provided by the body of the mortals, which in the age of Kronos prevented a direct look into their souls, is taken away from them. Correlatively, the eyes and ears of the judges, liable to be charmed by the impressive theater of wealth, ancestry, and witnesses brought about by the wicked, are eliminated. A human soul, divested of all impediments and bereft of its body, is put in absolute proximity to the naked soul of the judge, itself stripped of the clothing provided by the living body. …

This paper identifies major inconsistencies in the threefold argument that Glaucon presents in defence of Thrasymachus in the second book of Plato’s Republic. Specifically, the paper argues for three claims. Firstly, it argues that in his account of the origin of justice Glaucon treats the consequences of justice as necessary, while in the test case he merely emphasizes incidental consequences. Secondly, the paper argues that in setting up the test case of the perfectly unjust man and the perfectly just man Glaucon—despite claiming to be restating Thrasymachus’ claims, and also to be presenting the ordinary view of justice — uses some Socratic assumptions about the nature of justice. That is, although Gyges’ example follows directly from the first part of the argument and, in particular, from the claim that justice is grounded in convention, the unshakably just man of the test example is supposed to be motivated by justice itself. Finally, it is argued that the test case and Gyges&#...

Mentre fra gli animali nessuno viene forzosamente impiegato per lavori che non svolgerebbe naturalmente, gli uomini sono in grado di obbligare altri uomini a vivere come meri mezzi. Nell’antica Grecia lo schiavo è trattato come uno strumento. Può essere di proprietà pubblica o privata e viene impiegato in diverse attività economiche. Non c’è una precisa caratterizzazione degli impieghi servili, ma le attività svolte sono per lo più nell’agricoltura, nelle miniere o nei lavori domestici. Il pa..

I analyse the dramatic setting of the Gorgias by contrasting it with that of the Protagoras. The two dialogues are closely related. In the Gorgias Socrates states that the rhetorician and the sophist are basically indistinguishable in everyday life. In both the Protagoras and the Gorgias, his confrontation with his interlocutors is metaphorically related to a descent to Hades. However, while the events in the Protagoras are narrated by Socrates himself, the Gorgias has readers face the unfolding events without mediation. The temporal and spatial framing of the Gorgias is indeterminate, while both aspects are described in detail in the Protagoras. I maintain that the magical passage from an indeterminate "outside" to an indeterminate "inside" in the Gorgias is significantly related to the characters' attitude towards the boundaries of each other's souls, which are constantly ignored or attacked. As a matter of fact, the dialogue presents a very impressive ...

The paper critically discusses the thesis, originally put forth by Taylor (2006), that there is a (mostly benign) form of envy whose target is the good possessed by someone else. Section 2 analyzes the distinction between object-envy and state-envy, discusses the connection between object-envy and benign envy, and develops the ethical consequences that follow from the thesis that envy is never benign. Section 3 presents a thought experiment with five variations developed from the basic elements of object-envy: an agent, a good the agent desires but lacks, and a person who possesses the good. The variations generate emotions like longing, sadness, happiness for, admiration, covetousness, self-disappointment, but they do not generate envy. Section 4 concentrates on envious self-reproach and shows that its nature and genesis are different from the self-disappointment one may experience in other forms of self-assessment. Section 5 argues that the so-called sour-grape syndrome serves different goals when it is connected to a good one lacks and when it is connected to envious comparisons. Section 6 maintains that what looks like benign envy can be better understood as emulous admiration. In conclusion, the paper argues that object-envy is not a useful concept. The desired goods are not valued in themselves when a person feels envy. Rather, they are taken to signal the superior recognition enjoyed by someone else within the reference group that is currently deemed important by the agent.

Il saggio si occupa dell'invidia (phthonos) nella concezione di Aristotele e di Plutarco, e della sua collocazione da un lato rispetto all'odio, e dall'altro rispetto alle altre emozioni che riguardano i beni di fortuna altrui, come l'emulazione, l'indignazione, la pietà. Nella prima parte del saggio si analizza la differenza fra odio e invidia in Plutarco, e si studia il rapporto fra indignazione, invidia e pietà in Plutarco e in Aristotele. Nella seconda parte, a partire dalla distinzione di Gabriele Taylor fra invidia oggettuale e invidia di stato, si analizza il rapporto fra avidità e invidia in Platone e in Aristotele. Nell'ultima parte si mostra il ruolo della speranza nella differenziazione aristotelica fra emozioni competitive, analizzando i capitoli che Aristotele dedica ai vecchi e ai giovani nella Retorica, ed evidenziando la contrapposizione fra emozioni che sono alimentate dalla speranza ed emozioni, come l'invidia, in cui la speranza è assente.

This paper concerns the conflict between loving and envious feelings in the Philebus and the Phaedrus. The Greek word phthonos, used by Plato in different contexts, characterizes emotions that contemporary theories classify as envy, Schadenfreude and jealousy. My claim is that in the Philebus Plato characterizes phthonos mainly qua Schaden-freude (an emotion which plays an important role in comedies). In this case the rivalry towards friends and neighbors neither stops at emulation, nor is explicitly experienced as malicious envy, and laughter offers the opportunity to feel pleasure at the other's misfortune without experiencing guilt or shame. In the Phaedrus, phthonos initially refers to the jealousy felt by the older lover towards his beloved. As the dialogue progresses, however, Socrates highlights the important role played by malicious envy when the love described is blind to transcendent beauty. Reference is made to Aristotle's account of emotions in the Rhetoric, and to Plutarch's treatise On Envy and Hate for valuable insights towards differentiating envy from other negative emotions.

It has been maintained that disgust is a special form of fear (fear of contamination). In this paper I focus on Kolnai's claim that fear and disgust are two different emotions. My specific concern is the difference between fear and disgust with respect to the conditions of temporal and spatial proximity. In the two emotions the condition of proximity  has a different meaning, as I show also by reference to Aristotle's analysis of fear in the Rhetoric.

Section 1 examines four reasons most commonly adduced to support the claim that guilt is superior to shame, both psychologically and morally: a) While guilt expresses a concern for others shame is a self-centered and selfish emotion. b) While guilt appeals to autonomy shame is linked to heteronomy. c) Shame is not a reactive attitude, like guilt, indignation, blame, resentment, but an objective attitude, like disdain or disgust. d) While guilt invites us to second-person responses, shame inhibits them. The second part of the paper (sections 2 and 3) addresses Williams’s analysis of the role of shame in ancient Greek literature and philosophy. Section 2 is dedicated to Williams’s response to the objections concerning selfishness and shallowness and to discussing his reply to the charge that since shame belongs to the objective attitudes it tends to inhibit second-person responses. Section 3 concentrates on Williams’s reflections on heteronomy by focusing on the attitude of others in shame and on the role played by the internalized other.

In this article I discuss the main reasons why, 22 years after Bernard Williams's Shame and Necessity was published, this book still represents a fundamental source concerning: 1) The nature and history of the concept of shame. 2) A comparative discussion of guilt and shame. 3) A critical reflection on progressive history. 4) A reflection on the relationship between emotions and virtues. 5) A reflection concerning the relationship between philosophy and the ethical life. I argue that Williams, who has often been accused of being a destroyer of theories, had a fundamental insight, which can be expressed negatively, though it was meant to have positive consequences: philosophy ought not to aim at total awareness. I then proceed to present the conceptual structure of the volume of which I am the editor, and to explain the relationship between the different contributions and their respective view of Williams's conception of shame.

The main goal of this paper is to show how Aristotle’s analysis allows us to understand shame  as a response to the agent’s responsibility for actions that are conceived as wrong, as well as a response to situations or behaviors of others which the agents finds potentially degrading.
Before confronting Aristotle’s overall argument, a terminological problem must first be addressed.  Aristotle speaks of shame not only in the Rhetoric (when he addresses the emotions), but also in the Nicomachean Ethics (where his focus is on virtue and vice), and he employs two different terms with slightly different meanings: in the Rhetoric he speaks of aischyne, while in the Nicomachean Ethics his focus is on aidos. Aidos and aischyne do not seem to refer to the same emotion. While aidos roughly corresponds to a prospective and inhibitory sense of shame for future actions, aischyne corresponds to the shame one feels for past actions.
I  address both the distinction between aidos and aischyne in Aristotle’s work and the moral relevance of shame in Aristotle’s ethical theory. With respect to the Nicomachean Ethics, I concentrate on the reasons why Aristotle maintains that aidos can be helpful in the education to virtue but cannot itself be considered a virtue. With respect to the Rhetoric, I  first address the terminological distinction between aidos and aischyne, and then, focusing on aischyne, I  examine the relevance of temporality, and the role that witnesses are supposed to play with respect to shame.
Having shown that Aristotle attributes to shame certain functions that we would commonly attribute to guilt, I claim that for Aristotle shame covers a wider range of phenomena than we might be inclined to expect: not only actions for which an agent can be responsible, but also situations in which the agent plays no active role, or even events in which the subject suffers passively evil done by others. The person who feels shame is faced with a gap between her beliefs and expectations about herself and a perspective from which she is seen as defective or degraded.
When the feeling of degradation is a response to the apparent culpable behavior of others, shame paves the way to anger. The last part of the paper will be devoted to exploring the relationship between shame and anger. I will discuss why shame can induce someone to anger and why, by contrast, someone feeling angry may remain insensitive to shame.

Strauss’s invitation to understand Greek authors as they understood themselves was attacked by influential scholars as anti-historical. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the charge is due to a misunderstanding of Strauss’s position on the respective role of interpretation and criticism in historicism. In the second part, I highlight Strauss’s view of the tension between scientific history as the manifestation of a certain age, and scientific history as the culmination of historical progress. In the third part, I discuss Strauss’s thesis that the belief in progress prevented Collingwood from taking past thinkers seriously. Collingwood claimed that the Greeks failed to appreciate that age-long traditions shaped their thought. Strauss held the opposite: the beginning of Greek philosophy coincides with questioning the identity between the ancestral and the good, and philosophy in Plato’s Republic is shown to be a form of critical reflection on the reasons why certain traditions and myths can exercise political, religious, and psychological power.