The humanist theory of the nude is one of the places where what can be called a ‘poor metaphysics’ developed during the Renaissance. To construct the concept of the nude as a representation of man in his own right, art theorists used common scholastic categories such as substance and accident, form and matter, potentiality and actuality, quantity and quality, whole and part, soul and body. Resolutely poor in its object – the human body, the work of art – and in its form – technical treatise, fictional dialogue, or simple working notes – this reflection is nonetheless rich and original because of what constitutes its very weakness: the contamination of the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition with Neoplatonism, Vitruvianism, elements of natural philosophy, musical theory, and even Kabbalah. It testifies less to the permanence of scholastic metaphysics during the Renaissance than to the ingenious adaptation of its tools to new, humbler, and more rebellious objects of thought.

In the Roman time, Azania and its capital Rhapta had cultural and economic connections with diverse civilizations of the world, including those in the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, India, the Far East, and the deep interior of Africa. Information about Azania was first provided by the Romans – Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, and sources such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Apart from the Romans, other people of the Middle East, including the Homerites or Himyarites, were found to have lived and traded in Azania. Pliny the Elder reported that Azanian received spices from the Far East and sent them to the Great Lakes’ region where they were ferried via the Nile to the Mediterranean basin. The Periplus also reported other exported and imported trade goods. Indian and Chinese records provided evidence of connections with Azania. The most recent evidence of these connections is archeological. Materials recovered include beads and ceramics from Rome, the Middle East, and India. Archeology of submerged Rhapta also uncovered architectural remains of Roman technology. Material remains from the deep interior of Africa have been found on the coast of Azania. Roman connections with the deep interior of Africa are believed to have created caravan routes that facilitated cultural and technological exchanges.

This article aims to explore a theme of the metaphysica paupera from the reflections of the Friar Minor Luca Pacioli, highlighting their roots in the Neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition, but also in some aspects of the Franciscan one. I will show, firstly, how in the early Franciscan environment the idea of minor beauty was progressively developed in relation to the form of life that places poverty at its centre. Secondly, I will outline how, in Bonaventure’s reflections, this idea, initially associated with a practical and moral dimension, is reframed in a theological sense, in terms of evangelical perfection, and in a metaphysical sense, finding its full foundation in the idea of a proportional beauty that establishes a metaphysics of relationship. Finally, I will highlight how both ideas – that of a metaphysics of relationship and a Franciscan matrix – persist in Pacioli, in his mathematization of knowledge, capable of including minor beauty as the metaphysical principle of the world, as well as of all human activities and forms of knowledge.

This is the full and official text of the Presidential address delivered at the Opening ceremony of the 25th World Congress of Philosophy in Rome, Italy, on August 1st 2025.

At first glance, in Valla’s thinking, his ‘poor’ conception of metaphysics seems to contrast with his appreciation of the ‘richness’ of rhetoric, as opposed to the indigence of dialectic. However, poverty can be understood in two senses: on the one hand, it designates a lack, even an insufficiency; on the other, it expresses the search for something simple, even essential. So, poverty, like nakedness (Séris 2021)1, is a concept with an opposite polarity. What is elementary can therefore be fundamental. Consequently, how can we understand, in Valla’s thought, the link between the ontological reduction of all transcendentals to the res and the opulence of rhetoric? To try to answer this question, this paper seeks to analyze the ambivalent nature of the opposition between poverty and wealth in order to reinterpret it in the opposition between simplicity and complexity. It is not certain that gain will be found on the side that we would expect to find it.

This paper develops two perspectives. On the one hand, it analyzes and reconstructs the relationship between wealth and poverty as addressed by Giordano Bruno in the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, both against the backdrop of the new geographical discoveries and mercantilist theories and in relation to Bruno’s project of ethical, political, and religious renewal. On the other hand, it recovers Bruno’s passages on the ‘minuzzarie’ as a key concept to redress ‘ontological poverty’ by locating in every aspect of reality, even insignificant ones, a center of vital energy. At the beginning and at the end of the paper, mention is made of some Heideggerian writings that reveal some common assumption with Bruno’s ideas.

The Khmer Rouge period had a hugely negative impact on the knowledge and practices of Khmer divination. At present, Khmer divination and astrology has been revitalized with many forms of it being embedded in people’s everyday lives in both rural and urban settings, such as in the capital Phnom Penh. With the re-emergence of numerological fortune-telling, Khmer practitioners are now turning to Thai numerological books, such as ‘Patithin Neung Roi Pee (100-year calendar)’, ‘Tamra Phromachati’, and ‘Tamra Plu Luang’ to supplement the diminished body of traditional Khmer knowledge that survived the war. This paper aims to explore how Cambodia divinatory and astrologicalauthority have been revitalized and reinvented through that of their Thai counterparts within the flows of globalization and modernity.

The unprecedented power of China and its cultural expansion are increasing the need to examine its hegemonic impact in the field of literature. The new concept of ‘sinophone’, inspired by postcolonial criticism, reveals vigorous protests against Mainland’s centrality by advocating Chinese Diaspora literature, which has been too long relegated to a peripheral status. This study seeks to reconsider such debates through investigations of historical reasons, ideological issues, and perspectives they have widened. The sinophone literature is thus set up as a creative space, denationalized as well as transnationalized. Denying both the weight of the matrix and the chimerical archipelago, it follows the poetics of relation, the intermixture, and the Open.