https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8371 2026-10-11T04:13:40Z 2026-10-11T04:13:40Z De Lucca, Jean-Paul https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149623 2026-10-02T09:33:09Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: When is astrology «Too much»? Tommaso Campanella on judicial astrology and free will Authors: De Lucca, Jean-Paul Abstract: This article examines Tommaso Campanella’s defence of astrology against accusations of undermining free will, focusing primarily on his little-known Disputatio contra murmurantes (1636), composed in response to Urban VIII’s bull Inscrutabilis condemning judicial astrology. Campanella navigates a delicate equilibrium: astrology, properly practised, is an expression of human liberty and intellectual freedom, affording the capacity to understand celestial influences; yet when deployed excessively or dogmatically, it becomes restrictive rather than liberating. Through careful distinctions between permitted natural astrology and forbidden divinatory superstition, and by establishing different grades of astrological knowledge, Campanella carves out substantial space for legitimate astrological practice – including the medical and dispositional astrology he himself employed – whilst at the same time defending papal authority, political stability, and human freedom. The article also shows that the astrological dialogue added to the definitive edition of The City of the Sun (1637), where the Hospitaller accuses the Solarians of relying «too much» on the stars, draws directly upon arguments developed in the Disputatio.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Young, Niki https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149109 2026-09-15T08:18:25Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Alphonso Lingis and the question of environmental responsibility Authors: Young, Niki Abstract: In this paper, I situate Alphonso Lingis’s work within eco-phenom enology by showing how his ontological realism locates ethical demands directly within sensibility through a critical expansion of Levinas’s ethic of the “face” to non-human entities. Through the concepts of the elemental, the sensory levels it gives rise to, as well as the imperative, I demonstrate how Lingis views moral responsibility as scalable from an individual bird to an entire ecosystem.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Young, Niki https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148470 2026-08-25T06:22:45Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Against thanatocentrism : Alphonso Lingis and the excess of life Authors: Young, Niki Abstract: This paper focuses on the work of Alphonso Lingis’s critique of thanatocentric thinking, namely the pervasive notion that a proper understanding of life must be framed in relation to death. I argue that Lingis constructs an alternative philosophy of life centered around a threefold system based on the notions of experience, embodiment, and reality. Through an analysis of Lingis’s major works, this article aims to contribute to the evolving field of “Lingisian studies” by highlighting his novel understanding of what it means to be an embodied being in a more-than-human world.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Schirò, Enrico Young, Niki https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148250 2026-07-27T10:57:20Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: How things exceed their relations : toward an object-oriented symbiosis Authors: Schirò, Enrico; Young, Niki Abstract: This article rereads the “symbiotic turn” in the Humanities, showing how the widespread adoption of symbiosis as an ontological paradigm tends to slide into relationism, where entities are entirely constituted by their relations. Through a discussion of Lynn Margulis (1991), Donna J. Haraway (2008, 2016), Scott F. Gilbert (2012), Anna Tsing (2015), and Timothy Morton (2018), this article argues that this otherwise productive framework risks dissolving the autonomy and alterity of organisms. To overcome this limit, the paper proposes a model of Object-Oriented Symbiosis grounded in the philosophy of Graham Harman. On this view, symbiosis is relational but not relationist: interactions are selective, punctuated, and capable of generating emergent unities with retroactive effects, without exhausting their relata. Through the concepts of vicarious causation and allure, symbiosis becomes the mechanism explaining how autonomous entities can form real and irreversible alliances without collapsing into an immanent relational totality.

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