Studi di estetica

On the duality of reasons and time-relativity of obligations

Satomi Abe — 2025-10-01

This paper challenges the puzzle of how decisions and promises create additional reasons for action. I argue their binding force isn’t reducible to reasons’ normativity by examining their time-relativity. J. Raz’s view that decisions generate new reasons breaks the connection between reasons and value. Alternatives focusing on intrinsic value miss time-relativity. I argue promises are grounded in relationships, not normative forces. When making promises, we introduce biases toward certain values that shape our lives as we fulfill them.

“Hope is a decision”. Decision as the primary cause of individual and global transformation

Germana Alberti — 2025-10-01

This article examines how, in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy − and particularly in its 20th-century reinterpretation by Japanese philosopher Daisaku Ikeda − the concept of decision, understood in a multi-perspective and holistic manner, holds fundamental importance. Decision plays a crucial role in the process of awakening or spiritual enlightenment, and it does not involve only passive, mystical, or uncon-scious elements; it is also, and above all, an active and rational action. Since, from Ikeda’s perspective, what we should choose is hope, this article will demonstrate how such an assumption can have revolutionary implications both on an individual level and social plane.

Collective deliberation as epistemic cooperation

Matteo Bianchin — 2025-10-01

I suggest that collective deliberation processes should be seen as cooperative epistemic activities. After considering a well-known argument for why they cannot result from a majoritarian aggregating procedure, I focus on the limitations of a functionalist approach to collective agency and suggest that Tomasello’s approach to cooperation can shed light on how collective deliberation works. I then argue that understanding collective deliberation in terms of epistemic cooperation sheds light on both the structure and the normative implications of collective deliberative processes.

Deciding experience. Democratic normativism to the test of deliberative democracy

Massimo Caon — 2025-10-01

This essay aims at pointing out how recent developments inside deliberative theory are relevant to the debate between normative and realist approaches to democratic theory. More specifically, I argue that a substantive understanding of the epistemic functions of a deliberative system offers a decisive argument against current tendencies that confine normative approaches to democratic theory into the realm of utopianism.

Judgment reconsidered. Political decision in Hannah Arendt, between politics and aesthetics

Dario Cecchi — 2025-10-01

Taking a political decision: what does this mean? And why has political decision, if it has, an aesthetic dimension? These questions will be tackled in the thought of one of the most influential political thinkers of the 20th century: Hannah Arendt. I will develop the aforementioned issues according to a short reconsideration of some pivotal issues of her political thought. Firstly, I will consider what kind of experience politics is for Arendt. Secondly, I will consider what kind of activity political action is for her. Thirdly, and lastly, I will consider why political actions claim for a form of judging that corresponds to aesthetic judgment, in the Kantian acceptation of this concept. I believe an idea of political decision can emerge through the reconsideration of these issues in Arendt’s thought.

Il discorso della decisione. Effetti di senso e processi di significazione

Riccardo Finocchi — 2025-10-01

In this article, we analyze the decision from a semiotic point of view. The decision can be analyzed semiotically as an effect of the discourse. For this reason, we will explain what is meant by the effect of the discourse. We will examine the semantics of the term decision and then clarify the way in which discourses on decision are constituted. The semiotic point of view of the decision will be useful to analyze the technical decision that is used in digital technological devices.

Decision-making in a self-evident atmosphere. Reconsidering the Japanese word kūki (空気)

Yuho Hisayama — 2025-10-01

This paper examines the Japanese word kūki (air or atmosphere) that can influence the decisions of human subjects within it. Drawing on two examples from Natsume Sōseki’s novel Kokoro, it explores the fundamental characteristics of kūki that, as a self-evident atmosphere, latently affects the subjects. Then, revisiting Shichihei Yamamoto’s critique of the misuse of atmospheric power, this paper proposes a new typology of kūki and points to key cross-cultural tasks for the future of Atmospheric Studies.

The Decision and the earth. Heidegger’s post-foundational aesthetics

Nicola Ramazzotto — 2025-10-01

This paper explores the relationship between “earth” and “decision” in Heidegger’s philosophy and their role in the development of a post-foundational aesthetics. It begins with an analysis of resoluteness and situatedness in Being and Time, traces the reinterpretation of decision after the Kehre, and finally turns to Heidegger’s aesthetics, arguing that earth acts as a force of resistance, ensuring that every decision and grounding of meaning remains finite, situated, and revisable.

When AI decides. Ethical challenges in life-and-death scenarios

Ermelinda Rodilosso — 2025-10-01

This paper aims to shed light on the often-overlooked ethical tensions between Artifi-cial Intelligence (AI) and human decision-making in life-and-death scenarios, where outcomes directly affect human life, survival, and well-being. Focusing on the issues of autonomy and control, I argue that while AI systems can exhibit computational autonomy, they lack the deliberative and moral capacities required for full ethical agency. Through case studies in military and healthcare contexts, I argue for the necessity of consistent human control in ethically sensitive decisions.

Le decisioni “difficili”. Esempi dall’emergenza pandemica

Stefano Semplici — 2025-10-01

The decision on the right thing to do in the concrete circumstances of life, the “deliberate choice” of which Aristotle spoke, can become “difficult” for different reasons, which often overlap: the inadequacy of the information base, which is the cause of a specific form of vulnerability; the conflict between duties and principles; problems of incommensurability and incomparability; conditioning or real forms of constraint that reduce the space of options actually available to individuals or push them to do what they would never have chosen if they had truly been “free” to choose. The Covid-19 pandemic has offered illustrative examples of how these difficulties arise both for decisions that individuals make for themselves and for those that affect an entire community.

The king’s speeches. Decisions during the 1772 revolution in Sweden

Erik Wallrup — 2025-10-01

This article investigates the mood and the atmospheres of the so-called Swedish Revolution in 1772, when King Gustav III carried through a coup d’état. Martin Heidegger’s elaborations of boredom in lectures held 1929-30 – a mood that to a certain extent is a parallel to the hesitation of both the Swedish king and the country during the crises which led to the revolution – and Tonino Griffero’s studies on atmosphere enable an affective elucidation of historical documents and eyewitness testimonies. The political decision taken in 1772 emerged from the mood of hesitation.