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Can the concept of European identity together with that of national identity – as provided for in current EU law - satisfy the needs of present-day multicultural society, which implies that cultural and linguistic pluralism are safeguarded, promoted and/or protected? This is the basic question to which this work tries to answer. After having deepened the concept of collective identity from the general theory of law point of view, we tried to apply the results to the EU law. The coexistence in the latter of both of the European and of the national identities was interpreted by the doctrine in two senses: a) in a de iure condito approach, the double concept would be founded on past cultural legacies; b) in a de iure condendo approach, the same double concept should only be seen in a future perspective. From a positive law standpoint, then following the first approach, one asked if the European Union is a legal system aimed exclusively at the past culture, or if, after all, it offers ideas aimed at opening up to today’s multicultural society. From the analysis of the primary EU law, one could check that both of art. 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (Charter of Nice) and of art. 167, par. 1, of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union-TFEU do not refer to the concept of cultural pluralism, that would imply cultural choices coming from below, from spontaneous communities, but to the concept of cultural diversity, that instead meant going towards cultural choices determined from above, from the State or from other public authorities. Therefore, the EU law approach to cultural diversity was (is) top-down. Indeed, if we refer to “the cooperation [of the EU] with third countries and the competent international organizations in the sphere of culture”, as stated in par. 3 of the same art. 167 TFEU, it allows us to give a different interpretation to the concept of cultural diversity. This was possible by observing the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Pr

Il tema interpella settori di studio diversi che si fondano su concetti diversi, con rilevanza giuridica diversa. In termini descrittivi, i due settori sono, rispettivamente, il «pluralismo culturale» ed il «pluralismo linguistico»; mentre l’«identità europea» appare come principio/obiettivo dell’UE. Infatti, dal titolo si ipotizza che la realizzazione tanto del primo settore, quanto del secondo contribuirebbe a costruire l’identità europea, da intendersi sia dell’istituzione, sia del popolo dotato di cittadinanza appunto europea. Sempre dal titolo emerge infine che l’attività pubblica di «salvaguardia» sembra essere lo strumento istituzionale chiamato a sostenere tanto il «pluralismo culturale», quanto il «pluralismo linguistico» in funzione identitaria europea, nel duplice significato ricordato. Partendo dal presupposto che l’identità europea è effettivamente la bussola verso la quale tanto il «pluralismo culturale», quanto il «pluralismo linguistico» debbono tendere, nel tentativo di poter sistematizzare l’eterogeneo scenario concettuale, da un punto di vista pubblicistico multilevel, occorre separare l’analisi dei due settori, anche perché, in realtà, l’attività pubblica ad essi riconnessa non sempre, o meglio non solo, si riassume nella salvaguardia. Nella letteratura scientifica è oramai consolidata l’idea secondo cui il «pluralismo culturale» si abbini all’attività pubblica di «promozione», in cui includere anche la «salvaguardia», mentre al «pluralismo linguistico» si ricolleghi piuttosto l’attività di «tutela», sia negativa, sia positiva. Tutto ciò perché, mentre il «pluralismo culturale» sembra ricondursi alla categoria delle libertà culturali collettive, il «pluralismo linguistico» (entro i confini dell’UE) pare maggiormente ascrivibile alla categoria dei diritti fondamentali dell’uomo, con le conseguenti diverse azioni accennate. Nella relazione si affronteranno tutti questi concetti avendo come punto di riferimento il diritto dell’UE (prim

In 2012 an unpublished book by the Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, Secular Religion, has been posthumously published. This book, written by Kelsen between 1952 and 1964 in the United States, severely criticizes those theories of politics and culture that misinterpret modern social philosophy, science and politics as new religions, mainly adopting the controversial concept of “secular religión.” In the first part of the paper, we reconstruct the genesis of the book and the complex events that led to its final version, and we underline the motives that led Kelsen to write this vehement polemic in defense of the spirit of modernity, and eventually to withdraw it. In the second part of the paper, we investigate some of the main methodological and theoretical contributions that this work, albeit its critical tenor, is able to give to an anthropology of modernity.

The purpose of this paper is to show how linear filter theory, usually applied to time-frequency problems, can be used to describe the properties of circular and cylindrical arrays of hydrophones when followed by a linear multi-beam processor. Examples of this approach are presented for a circular array; both for the monochromatic and for the broad-band cases. A first attempt is also shown of the extension of this method to a cylindrical configuration. (Author), Presented at the NATO - Marina Italiana Advanced Study Institute on 'Stochastic Problems in Underwater Sound Propagation' held in Lerici, Italy in Sep 67.