Francesco Testini
Biographic Data
| ID | 4378078 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francesco Testini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francesco |
| FAMILY NAME | Testini |
| SIGNATURE | TESTINI F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Milan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0795-8591 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 5 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
“When in Rome…”: On the Authority of Social Norms
The debate on moral norms and standards is as old as philosophy itself. But social norms and conventions have finally started attracting their fair share of attention too. Their authority is the topic of two sophisticated books published in the last few years, namely David Owens’ Bound by Convention (2022) and Laura Valentini’s Morality and Socially Constructed Norms (2023). In this essay, I present the theoretical outlooks of these two books and…
How far can genealogies affect the space of reasons? Vindication, justification and excuses
Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final…
Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios
In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reco…
Appeals to Authority in Political Rhetoric: Machiavelli in the Italian Parliament 1945–1994
Scholarship in rhetorical political analysis and parliamentary studies devoted little attention to study how politicians employ intellectuals’ authority and theories in their discourses. We offer methodological directions to navigate this territory, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the employment of Machiavelli’s figure in the Italian Parliament. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and that …
Testing pragmatic genealogy in political theory: The curious case of John Rawls
Starting from the ‘Dewey Lectures’, Rawls presents his conception of justice within a contextualist framework, as an elaboration of the basic ideas embedded in the political culture of liberal-democratic societies. But how are these basic ideas to be justified? In this article, I reconstruct and criticize Rawls’s strategy to answer this question. I explore an alternative strategy, consisting of a genealogical argument of a pragmatic kind – the ki…
Appeals to Authority in Political Rhetoric: Machiavelli in the Italian Parliament 1945–1994
Scholarship in rhetorical political analysis and parliamentary studies devoted little attention to study how politicians employ intellectuals’ authority and theories in their discourses. We offer methodological directions to navigate this territory, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the employment of Machiavelli’s figure in the Italian Parliament. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and that …
Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios
In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reco…
Testing pragmatic genealogy in political theory: The curious case of John Rawls
Starting from the ‘Dewey Lectures’, Rawls presents his conception of justice within a contextualist framework, as an elaboration of the basic ideas embedded in the political culture of liberal-democratic societies. But how are these basic ideas to be justified? In this article, I reconstruct and criticize Rawls’s strategy to answer this question. I explore an alternative strategy, consisting of a genealogical argument of a pragmatic kind – the ki…
Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios
In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reco…
Appeals to Authority in Political Rhetoric: Machiavelli in the Italian Parliament 1945–1994
Scholarship in rhetorical political analysis and parliamentary studies devoted little attention to study how politicians employ intellectuals’ authority and theories in their discourses. We offer methodological directions to navigate this territory, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the employment of Machiavelli’s figure in the Italian Parliament. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and that …
How far can genealogies affect the space of reasons? Vindication, justification and excuses
Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final…
“When in Rome…”: On the Authority of Social Norms
The debate on moral norms and standards is as old as philosophy itself. But social norms and conventions have finally started attracting their fair share of attention too. Their authority is the topic of two sophisticated books published in the last few years, namely David Owens’ Bound by Convention (2022) and Laura Valentini’s Morality and Socially Constructed Norms (2023). In this essay, I present the theoretical outlooks of these two books and…
Philosophy (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (3 works)