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Based on a discussion of Pierpaolo Cesaroni’s latest book, La vita dei concetti, this article aims to clarify the conditions for an adequate understanding of the singularity of the social, by reflecting on the relation between political philosophy and social sciences. After briefly presenting the main contributions of the book, particularly with regard to the reconstruction of the distinctive perspective of historical epistemology, it underlines the internal tension with conceptual history, with the aim of highlighting the two paths opened to any attempt aimed at supplanting modern political science, the source of the mechanical paradigm that prevents us from understanding what holds men together in a social totality. The difference between ancient political philosophy and modern social science is finally appreciated through a comparison concerning the meaning that both give to the two main categories that elucidate the very idea of political society, that is, government and justice.

The paper discusses the philosophical perspective developed by Giuseppe Duso in his latest book, Libertà e costituzione in Hegel. Taking distance from some recent interpretations of Hegel that see in his Philosophy of Law a prefiguration of social theory and sociology, Duso shows the internal need for a dialectical reading of Hegelian thought, as the only condition enabling us to grasp its critical dimension, in particular with regard to the cen-tral concepts and main institutions of modernity, as well as its irreducible nature both to normative political philosophy and to socio-historical empirical sciences. In this framework, the essay focuses on the analysis of the two principal issues in which the Hegelian challenge launched by Duso comes to light: the epistemological primacy of philosophy for an understanding of the reality of human relations and the ontological privilege of a differently conceived State as the level in which the socio-political totality constituted by such relations actually emerges and from which the full achievement of modern autonomy becomes properly thinkable. Addressing the question of democracy, understood as a form of political socie-ty taken in a historical process of self-transformation, the essay then tries to measure the strength and the limits of Hegel's political philosophy, which finally appears as an alternative to the social sciences.

Two years have passed since the last Italian parliamentary elections, the results of which were so close that no pre-election poll could have reliably predicted the winner. In preceding work by the two authors, a measure of predictive accuracy - Martin et al.'s A - was applied to the 2006 and 2001 Italian general elections and showed that in both instances published polls performed badly and overestimated voters' support for the winning coalition. In this new article, the authors monitor the performance of published polls conducted during the 2008 election campaign. The polls' predictive accuracy could have been further impaired, with respect to the past, by several factors: the relative brevity of the campaign; a comprehensive re-structuring of electoral alliances; the ensuing need for voters to adapt to the new scenario; the renewed relevance of smaller parties excluded from the major electoral alliances, thereby weakening the election's "bipolar" structure; an increasing telephoneinterviewing coverage error due to the high incidence of households having only mobile phones or no phone; decreasing voter turnout. Despite these potential problems and published surveys' several methodological shortcomings, predictive accuracy improved with respect to 2001 and 2006. The authors also use A in an innovative way, i.e., to assess polls performance regarding the allocation of votes within the centre-left and the centre-right coalitions.

I risultati delle elezioni parlamentari italiane del 2006 erano così incerti che nessun sondaggio pre-elettorale avrebbe potuto prevderli con precisione. In un lavoro precedente degli stessi autori, l'uso di un indice di capacità predittività - l'A di Martin e collaboratori - in relazione ai sondaggi pre-elettorali del 2001 e del 2006 aveva mostrato che questi avevano avuto prestazioni deludenti e sovrastimato i consensi per le coalizioni vincenti. In questo nuovo lavoro gli stessi autori prendono in esame i sondaggi pre-elettorali riferiti alle elezioni politiche del 2008. Nonostante diversi fattori che avrebbero potuto inficiare la capacità predittiva dei sondaggi - fra cui labrevità della campagna elettorale, una significativa ristrutturazione delle coalizioni elettorali, una diversa rilevanza dei partiti minori esclusi dalle maggiori coalizioni, l'ulteriore crescita della quota di famiglie non dodtate di utenze telefoniche di rete fissa e l'accresciuto astensionismo -- e a dispetto dell'aggravamento di alcuni problemi metodologici attinenti ai sondaggi medesimi, la capacità predittiva è migliorata rispetto al 2001 e al 2006, Inoltre, gli autori propongono un uso innovativo di A, per valutare le prestazioni dei sondaggi in merito all'allocazione dei voti *entro* le coalizioni di centro-destra e di centro-sinistra. Two years have passed since the last Italian parliamentary elections, the results of which were so close that no pre-election poll could have reliably predicted the winner. In preceding work by the two authors, a measure of predictive accuracy - Martin et al.'s A - was applied to the 2006 and 2001 Italian general elections and showed that in both instances published polls performed badly and overestimated voters' support for the winning coalition. In this new article, the authors monitor the performance of published polls conducted during the 2008 election campaign. The polls' predictive accuracy could have been further impaired, with respect to the past, by several factors: the relative brevity of the campaign; a comprehensive re-structuring of electoral alliances; the ensuing need for voters to adapt to the new scenario; the renewed relevance of smaller parties excluded from the major electoral alliances, thereby weakening the election's "bipolar" structure; an increasing telephoneinterviewing coverage error due to the high incidence of households having only mobile phones or no phone; decreasing voter turnout. Despite these potential problems and published surveys' several methodological shortcomings, predictive accuracy improved with respect to 2001 and 2006. The authors also use A in an innovative way, i.e., to assess polls performance regarding the allocation of votes within the centre-left and the centre-right coalitions.

l’efficacia previsiva dei sondaggi preelettorali costituisce un oggetto di studio di grande interesse, e ciò da ormai da molti decenni. Sorprende dunque il fatto che siano stati relativamente limitati i tentativi di sviluppare procedure articolate e affidabili per rilevare e valutare la capacità predittiva dei sondaggi. In questo articolo, dopo aver passato brevemente in rassegna i fattori che impediscono ai sondaggi sulle intenzioni di voto di realizzare compiutamente i loro fini, si prendono in esame alcuni indici di capacità predittiva comunemente usati e, in particolare, una misura sviluppata di recente (A di Martin et al.) e finora applicata solo nel contesto statunitense. Questo nuovo indice viene poi applicato ai sondaggi preelettorali pubblicati in occasione delle elezioni per la Camera dei deputati in Italia del 2001 e del 2006. Infine, si sviluppano alcune possibili spiegazioni per dare conto del fatto che la maggior parte dei sondaggi presi in esame ha sovrastimato il margine di vittoria, qualunque fosse la coalizione vincente.

In this paper I discuss the theoretical core of R. Fanciullacci’s extremely ambitious book, L’esperienza etica. Per una filosofia delle cose umane, whose central aim is to reestablish moral philosophy as a discourse capable of answering to the practical questions of human beings. After a presentation of Fanciullacci’s highly original reading of Aristotle’s Ethics, I focus on his attempt to define the relation between theory and practice, through the formulation of a three level scheme, systematically developed throughout the book. If the book offers us a self-reflective, coherent perspective on moral philosophy, couched in a new language, which will be of a great use for contemporary thinking, it faces, however, a major difficulty: the ambiguous nature of the question of meaning, on which rests the very meaning of moral philosophy, especially with regards to its political implications.