https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/1926 2026-07-23T03:38:06Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148167 Title: Prisca philosophia, prophecy and politics in Tommaso Campanella Authors: De Lucca, Jean-Paul Abstract: The article examines the role of prisca philosophia, particularly the Hermetic and Sibylline sources, in Tommaso Campanella’s political thought. It analyses how Campanella employs ancient wisdom in two of his works, Articuli prophetales and Atheismus triumphatus, to buttress his eschatological views and his vision of universal religious and political reformation. The article argues that Campanella sees sources like the Sibylline Oracles and the Hermetic corpus as corroborating natural religion and natural law, which he considers foundational to proper politics. Since Campanella explicitly frames the Atheismus as simultaneously a theological and a political project, the prisca sapientia that underpins it must be understood as doing political work that the prisca theologia framework alone cannot adequately describe. By integrating these ancient sources with biblical prophecies and contemporary observations, Campanella constructs a narrative of history connecting past wisdom, present urgency, and utopian aspirations. Prisca sapientia offers traces of uncorrupted ancient knowledge that align with his conception of a purified Christianity and ideal universal monarchy. The study reveals how this engagement is integral to his broader project of universal reform, and argues that his appropriation of ancient wisdom constitutes not only a prisca theologia but also a prisca politica, that is, a recovery of a natural and universally valid order of governance, grounded in the natural unity of moral, spiritual and political authority and prior to any confessional or sectarian division. Description: URL: https://socpol.uvvg.ro/prisca-philosophia-prophecy-and-politics-in-tommaso-campanella/ 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/147434 Title: Introduction : deconstruction and twenty-first century thought, part 1 : the new realisms Authors: Lynes, Philippe; Young, Niki Abstract: In his 2018 article ‘État present: Post-Deconstructive Thought and Criticism’, Ian James identified four thinkers whose reception had produced what he called a ‘post-deconstructive naturalism’ in contemporary scholarship–François Laruelle, Jean-Luc Nancy, Catherine Malabou, and Bernard Stiegler–each of whom had ‘taken up and developed deconstruction in ways which echo Derrida’s thought but which, at the same time, emerge as distinctly un-Derridean’ (James 2018, 85). For James, the ontological, materialist, and realist concerns shared by these four had served to further open the humanities onto engagements with the natural sciences. Questions of physical materiality, energy, organic life, ecology, and artificial intelligence now dominate scholarship in animal studies, ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, and speculative realism. Since 2018, however, three of these thinkers have passed away: Stiegler in 2020, Nancy in 2021, and Laruelle in 2024. [extract] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146467 Title: Bodies in motion Abstract: What might it mean to be a body, or to feel at home in one’s own body? One might begin by drawing a border or limit between oneself and another, or by tracing a perimeter that would, at once, demarcate the manner in which a given body would take up space. Might not the act of drawing a border permit the possibility of its own undoing? Through movement, a body undoes itself as soon as it is asked to be held in place. [excerpt] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146261 Title: Passionate encounters : Alphonso Lingis on community, alterity, and politics Authors: Young, Niki Abstract: This article explores the underexamined political dimensions of Alphonso Lingis’ philosophy, with a focus on his understanding of community, alterity, and passion as a possibility for political action. I show how Lingis’ work departs from liberal individualism in order to emphasize “community” as a condition for political engagement rooted in the ethical imperative evoked by the singularity and suffering of others. I then present a speculative account of Lingisian politics which builds on the possible reasons for his admiration of revolutionary figures such as Gandhi and Ché Guevara as exemplars of a passionate, compassionate, and dynamic political praxis. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z