The second day of the International Conference "Soul within the art" (from 14 to 16 December, in the beautiful setting of the Abbazia di San Nilo in Grottaferrata, Rome), organized by the Cultural Association Art Promotion in collaboration with the Ente dello Spettacolo as part of the fifteenth season of the Tertio Millennio Film Fest.

The morning session dealt with deep and extremely topical issues, from the difficulties caused by global democracy in the age of the internet to the relationship between democracy and ethics, globalization, the possible behavioral risks which young people can develop in the digital age. The talk by Professor Massimo Melica, expert in Law applied to new technologies and managing partner of the Law firm Melica Scandelin & Partners, focused on the future of democracy in the digital age, with both positive and negative experiences: a thorough talk on the responsibility of using the internet, limiting the incidental risk of the loss of contact between the author of possible crimes and possible victims, in a situation where one can lose control of the use of information once it has been published on the net.Dangers which do not only concern privacy, but what the experts call 'Internet addiction disorder'.

A historical-political portrait on the relationship between democracy and power was depicted in the speech by Professor Giacomo Marramao, Lecturer of Theoretical Philosophy and Political Philosophy at the University Roma 3. A clear analysis on the progressive loss of independency of national States caused by the arrival of globalization in their lives. Everything that happens in the world effects our private lives, in an open world which strikes us at a great speed and with continuing changes. This can create serious problems for democratic politics conceived within the narrow limits of national states, in a global market which came about after the disappearance of a world divided in two parts and from the falling of the Berlin wall. All the history is a story of the globalization which followed but the financial capital , today moves and the States cannot do anything about it. Movements concerning the more and more intense migratory flows with western companies hit by enormous cultural differences. Democracy must redefine itself from a transnational and cosmopolitan point of view, like Kant theorized about the end of the eighteenth century, and a democracy which can defend itself in part by going back to its historical origins and in part by subjecting it to criticism.

The second part of the conference saw Professor Giovanni Vettorato as a speaker, lecturer of Sociology of marginalization and deviance at the Pontifical Salesian University, who was particularly careful when defining the risks, above all for teenagers, associated with the use of new technologies. Behavioral risks which are more and more frequent even among the very young, with the age range at risk continually lowering and with a contextual increase of the solipsism and unreal dimension. Risks which also rise with the increase of the richness and innovation technology, according to Giddens' and Beck's theory.

The lecturer of Philosophy of Language Cristiana Freni, also Professor at the Pontifical Salesian University, dealt with the problem of identity in the present age, in light of the anthropological concept of the 'legend', this word which can be virtuous and dissolute at the same time. The legend, in history has gone from having a pedagogic function, to an idolatrous one, reaching the modern torment which was foreseen by writers such as Dostoevskij: to lose the real essentiality and make what is caducous essential. From here, the theory of the 'fourth man', the consumer, the show off and the man-legend who want to appear. Today on the web, there is a serious misunderstanding concerning the body and femininity, just like the danger of gregariousness and the prevailing of the functional on the essential, and this functional cult can only lead us to the so called 'mechanism'.