As it has been written, “Holidays are an invariant that has never stopped changing”. History, sociology, and anthropology have a legitimate predilection for variants; philosophy prefers the unchangeable ground. By this I do not mean that the former stop at the phenomena of holidays and the latter limits itself to an allegedly invariable essence. Leggi tutto »
The essay retraces some moments of Petrarch’s reflection on Fortune as it can be found in the collection of his family letters (the Familiares). In them, we observe a substantial change of perspective at the time of the events that struck the poet, and with him Italy and Europe, in the years 1348-49 (namely, the end of the dream of a restoration of Rome by Cola di Rienzo and the plague). Leggi tutto »
Concepts such as rationality, usefulness, preference, happiness, (neo)liberalism, capital, profit, currency, money, credit, financial products, and derivatives seem to belong to the same field, whereas on the contrary the economic crises that succeed one another are prompting us to reflect on the kind of anthropology and cultural horizon within which such concepts have emerged and solidified.
Today, answering the questions “What is economy?” and “What is finance?” seems inescapable. Whereas economy is a set of social relations that unfolds in the three fields of production, circulation, and distribution of goods, the definition of finance and the nature and typology of financial products are less clear.