Athena – Critical Inquiries in Law, Philosophy and Globalization

Athena is a scholarly journal aiming at setting out the analysis of globalisation problems and global concerns from a legal, philosophical, historical, political and social perspective, proposing to provide these problems with theoretical answers.

Since the mid-twentieth century, we have been living in an age of deep transformation, with globalisation processes that have heightened the crisis of the nation-state; amplified the clash and meeting of civilisations; and triggered huge migration flows.

In several disciplines, these epoch-making transformations have prompted an effort to understand their nature by wrestling with new themes and ideas: human rights, international constitutionalism, global justice, multiculturalism, new identities, accelerated technological changes, and the emergence of new forms of power and regulation.

The incremental process toward a meeting of civilisations and cultures poses an inevitable challenge to Western knowledge and its presumed centrality, making it necessary to recognise the particularity of the Western tradition, its connection and relation to non-Western traditions, and the importance of engaging with other approaches and cultures without claiming a position of superiority. For an apt visual rendering of this predicament of Western reason, we can turn to the unsettling and enigmatic image of Klimt’s Pallas Athene, and the beheaded Medusa on her armour can be interpreted as signalling the end of a fossilised thought, while embracing the prospect of new horizons.

As global pressures mount and crises of globalization come to a head, several legal, philosophical, political and social questions come into focus that need to be addressed through different lenses, making it possible to break out of the traditional dogmatism to gain deeper insights into the issues with which we are confronted, leading to a wider perspective on how best to deal with those issues and find globally accepted formulations of the problem they pose.

These transformations that we are facing compel the analysis of phenomena in a critical perspective and with a multidisciplinary approach. This encompasses a fostered relationship among different disciplines: philosophy of law, political thought, history of political doctrines, cultural anthropology, international law, international relations, political philosophy, ethics and applied ethics, moral philosophy, theoretical philosophy, philosophy of technology and science, historical studies, history of law, philosophy of international law.

Even if the starting analytical point will be that of the single discipline, this Review aims to set out a laboratory in which to test out different ideas through a discussion on global issues and globalization that can bring into play a whole range of perspectives reflective of the complexity of the changing reality we are currently experiencing.

Editor-in-Chief: Gustavo Gozzi; Directors' Board: Alberto Artosi, Giorgio Bongiovanni, Susanna Maria Cafaro, Orsetta Giolo, Geminello Preterossi.

This Journal is currently included in the scientific journals' lists (Area 11a/ Historical, Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences; Area 12/ Legal Studies; Area 14/ Political and Social Sciences) by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR).