Giovanni Cucci, SJ

The term “fortitude” may appear to some to convey a negative message of strong power and physical prowess, or even violence and oppression. But in reality it is an indispensable virtue for living together. When it is lacking, evils of all kinds flourish, because those who could prevent them fail to take a stand. Think… Read the full article

A mirror to our complex society Among the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance), the only one currently under philosophical investigation is justice, thanks mainly to its being proposed by a new contractualism. This is an attempt to present it without using a metaphysical and religious perspective, but identifying evaluation criteria that allow each person… Read the full article

The historical background The ancients were well aware of the many aspects of justice. Reading their texts, one is struck by the great richness and complexity of their perspectives. The very root of the Greek word dikaiosynē (justice), dikē, refers to a multiplicity of operational meanings that concern, first of all, the relationship with God… Read the full article

A forgotten heritage In today’s imagination prudence is mainly associated with careful, considered behavior (for example, driving a car slowly) or with a tendency to be indecisive so as to avoid risks, or worse, with a form of cowardice that prevents someone from taking a stand.[1] These views are largely associated with modern thought. In… Read the full article

One of the effects of the current pandemic has been the calling into question of a general silence on the “ultimate questions.” The nihilistic vision of life, which was made famous by Nietzsche’s philosophy and has frequently returned in updated versions, considers such questions definitively outdated and meaningless. According to this philosophical approach, the truth… Read the full article

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / are of imagination all compact.” This famous claim from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a sort of self-diagnosis of the possible relationship between madness and artistic creativity. It is a relationship that also evidences the structural ambiguity of imagination, poised between these two often coexisting conditions…. Read the full article

Father Timothy Radcliffe, who was Master General of the Dominicans, has presented the relationship between faith and culture in these terms: “I grew up in a Catholic subculture that interpreted existence and the world in terms of gratitude and blessing. We believed in a God who heard our prayers, who loved us, and who at… Read the full article

Imagination, the engine of history Imagination is a theme that, in the course of recent decades, has become more and more the object of discussion, not only in literary and artistic terms, but also in historiographic, scientific and interpretative ones, since it is considered as the true driving force of the journey of humanity. This… Read the full article