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Imperato,
Italian corruption and
the Vatican
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Corrupt Italian
synonymy
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Berlusconi no
politician
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When
the wrong man says the right things
(Front-page quote)
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Truth,
saying and being in Aristotle
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The non-lynching of
Bush
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Weeping your way
to tenure
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Why life is
not a waste of time
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No truth without
rectitude
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Truth
and counterfactual conditionals
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Capitalising on God and the Church of England
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Female inequality in Italy
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Imperato,
Italian corruption and
the
Vatican
- White
House contender for the 2008 US presidential elections Daniel Imperato has
reportedly described Italy as “very corrupt” – an understatement. The Vatican,
he suggests, could play a key role in helping Italy rid itself of corruption –
a pipedream, rather like recruiting Adolf Hitler to eradicate anti-semitism in Nazi Germany. (January
2006)
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Corrupt Italian synonymy
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adjective ‘Italian’ already contains within itself the concept of corruption
in a unique way that ‘American’, ‘French’, ‘German’ or ‘English’ do not.
Could
‘Italian’ perhaps be a synonym for ‘corrupt’? Certainly not, as is demonstrated by
attempting to apply the principle of substitutability salva veritate of
co-extensional
predicates.
We could hardly talk of a corrupt salami transferring public cash to offshore
private bank accounts, at least not in any literal sense.
(January 2006)
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Berlusconi
no politician
- When
Silvio Berlusconi won the 2001 Italian political elections, it was as though
he had campaigned with a permanent placard saying ‘I am not a politician’.
And that
is why he was voted in. What does this tell you about Italian politics?
(January 2006)
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When the wrong man says
the right things
- Roman
Catholic pontiff Joseph Ratzinger
once
again calls
for truth, justice and freedom. Yet this man represents a Church which has
for two millennia
used
priestly power to
transubstantiate
truth into falsehood, justice into
injustice
and freedom into
subordination.
In matters of religious faith, at best, the believer or speaker may have
rectitude but not his words.
Here,
ironically, the words have rectitude but not the speaker.
(January 2006)
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Truth, saying and being in
Aristotle
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Aristotle
defined truth as follows:
"To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that
what is is, and what is not is not, is true."
(τὸ
μἒν γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἢ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι ψεῦδος, τὸ δὲ τὸ ὂν εἶναι καὶ
τὸ μὴ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἀληθές.
Metaphysics, 1011b). Now, almost 2,400 years later, what most needs
stressing is the "saying" part of his definition and its rightness, or
rectitude, i.e. not just the supposed fact of the way things stand, but our
rectitude in asserting so. (January 2006)
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The non-lynching of Bush
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Either a very large number
of Americans are
cowards and hypocrites or else they do not authentically believe that George
W. Bush is a warmonger who has needlessly caused the deaths of many innocent
people. It
is scarcely credible that
deep
democratic conviction
is responsible for their
continuing failure to lynch Mr Bush or remove him forcibly from office. (January
2006)
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Weeping your way to tenure
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An English
linguistics professoressa, whose name I had better not mention but who
bears a striking resemblance to the
Quaker
depicted on a well-known brand of porridge oats, once
informed
me that she decided to award an associate professorship to a poor
young lady because she
had
wept
profusely before the examining commission. Next time you apply for a tenured
teaching post at an Italian university be sure to take your weeping tablets
with you. (January
2006)
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Why life is
not a waste of time
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To those of us whose vision of
life is unimpaired by religious belief or similar superstition the thought may
sometimes occur that all human existence is a sheer waste of time. Yet this
cannot be so, for it implies the possibility of being able to spend our time
more profitably otherwise than in human existence. (February 2006)
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No truth without
rectitude
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When it happens
to be raining: a random configuration of debris on a seashore seems to spell 'pluit';
a worm traces out 'llueve' in the wet sand; a parrot screeches 'piove';
or
a Chinese friend has you blindly repeat 'xia yu'. Or, in different circumstances, a
tape-recorder switches itself back on automatically after a power cut and
emits the words 'There's no one in this room' when this happens to be the
case. At a dissertation viva a student recites statements correctly and
in context without understanding exactly what they mean. As we move up the
scale from inanimate to human, each case could, qua grammatical
sentence, constitute a formal truth and grist for the logician's mill. But
rightness of assertion, or rectitude, is to varying degrees crucially lacking
in all six. Here truth is conferred or manufactured a posteriori by the
competent observer. There can therefore be no truth where this rightness or
rectitude is missing. Now since there can be degrees of rectitude, there must
also be degrees of truth. Truth should therefore be viewed as both scalar and
dependent on rectitude.
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––He was one of those academic
philosophers who would hang his coat and heart on a cloakroom hook before
entering the lecture hall.
(February 2006)
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Truth and counterfactual
conditionals
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'If he had had enough money,
he would have bought the car.' Both antecedent and consequent are false and
the claim is objectively unverifiable. Yet it may still possess truth in
proportion to rightness of assertion. That truth in such cases is more
dependent on rectitude than correspondence may be seen even more clearly from
the following seemingly absurd statement by a reliable witness who knew Jack
well: 'Jack would have been happy that you attended his funeral' where I am
attending Jack's funeral.
(February 2006)
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Capitalising on
God and the Church of England
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The
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Church of England’s general
synod have finally seen the light.
They
vow
they will now withdraw their three-and-a-half million euro investment in
Caterpillar earth-moving equipment and
so
refrain from supporting
the ongoing
illegal
Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory. Meanwhile the Church will leave its remaining
one-billion euro share investment intact,
thus
providing
a fair guide as to just how much money is required
these days
to satisfy God’s needs. (February 2006)
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Female inequality in Italy
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Regrettably Italy still offers
women
no real
recognition of
equality. In separation and divorce cases a working wife can drive a horse and
cart through the law with impunity whereas the husband is treated as an
economic carthorse and keenly pursued for the slightest suspected
irregularity. Equality
evenly
applied to women in Italy would
inevitably
result in mass
candidacy for
incarceration. (February 2006)
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Note: You are invited to send your
questions and comments, marked "Pacitti - Notes & Comments", to: letters@justresponse.net.
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Domenico Pacitti is JR Editor.
He has written
several hundred
articles against corruption in Italy. He has taught philosophy, linguistics
and Chinese at universities in the
UK and Italy and currently teaches English language and American literature
at the University of Pisa. |
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Also in JUST Response
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Full list of JR articles by
Domenico Pacitti
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