This research brought approaches regarding habermasian democratic thought, taking into account the social critical theory aligned with the post-positivist current of interpretation and application of Law. Thus, from a dialectical perspective, the essay made brief digressions on language and communication present in the discourse of communicative action. A debate had been held on the impact of the discourse principle and its evaluative dimension in the busy and dynamic public sphere of communicative action. From the passage of the discourse principle to (...) the democratic one, comments were made on the axiological burden of society, in its plural exegesis and detached from the normative construct of law as a unitary source to subsidize it. Theoretical distinctions were also made between legal positivism and post-positivism, especially regarding the autonomy of the latter. Afterwards, a correlation was made between the democratic principle, as a necessary discursive theory, and legal post-positivism and its implications for the construction and application of Law in accordance with the diversity and social expectations of communicative subjects. (shrink)

En 1994, ouvre, à Melfi, petite ville de 6 000 habitants de la Basilicate, dans le sud de l’Italie, un établissement SATA, filiale du groupe automobile Fiat. C’est aux ouvrières de cette usine que Fulvia D’Aloisio consacre ce livre, fruit d’une enquête ethnographique. Son propos est de croiser les transformations de l’organisation productive dans une usine « à la japonaise », et celles qui affectent ces femmes, tant dans leur travail que dans leur vie quotidienne. L’implantation de ce vaste (...) é... (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por objetivo apontar a relação entre a III Conferência Geral do Episcopado Latino Americano celebrada no final de janeiro e início de fevereiro de 1979 em Puebla de Los Angeles e os Bispos do Brasil. Apontando quem foram os Bispos do Brasil que de Puebla tomaram parte e em quais aspectos eles contribuíram. Tal colaboração será externada em duas vertentes. De um lado, a contribuição dos Bispos do Brasil enquanto Conferência Episcopal Nacional; De outro, a colaboração (...) pessoal de prelados especialmente Aloísio Lorscheider e Luciano Mendes de Almeida que ou por sua liderança natural no episcopado Latino Americano ou por suas opções e testemunhos eclesiológicas, influíram profundamente em posições assumidas no Documento Final. (shrink)

In a short article called “Mid-Term Examination: Compare and Contrast” that epitomizes and concludes his book The Intentional Stance, D. C. Dennett (1987) provides a sketch of what he views as an emerging Interpretivist consensus in the philosophy of mind. The gist is that Brentano’s thesis is true (the intentional is irreducible to the physical) and that it follows from the truth of Brentano’s thesis that: strictly speaking, ontologically speaking, there are no such things as beliefs, desires, or other intentional (...) phenomena. But the intentional idioms are “practically indispensable,” and we should see what we can do to make sense of their employment in what Quine called an “essentially dramatic” idiom…. Not just brute facts , then but an element of interpretation…must be recognized in any use of the intentional vocabulary. (Dennett, 1987, p. 342)12 In this context, “making sense of” the prevalence of the intentional idiom is not explaining why it should be indispensable if there are no beliefs or desires for it to refer to. Nor is it specifying the truth conditions of intentional attribution inevitably involves “an element of interpretation.” The discussion that follows treats these two papers together. (shrink)

What recourse do democrats have if a present generation uses democratic legal procedures to abrogate constitutional essentials, dissolving past commitments and denying future generations the fundamental freedoms and equalities it currently enjoys? In Sovereignty across Generations, Alessandro Ferrara responds to this issue by re-examining key concepts related to democracy, including sovereignty, constituent power, liberalism and constitutionalism. This review analyses Ferrara’s theory of ‘sequential sovereignty’, which reconceives ‘the people’ as a body spanning generations and grounds it in the ideal of vertical (...) reciprocity. Ferrara provides a sound normative framework for understanding transgenerational obligations and the unamendability of constitutional essentials. However, this review also identifies some limits to Ferrara’s approach: his focus on implied unamendability risks creating a dissonance between legality and legitimacy, and his reluctance to fully engage with ‘containment’ creates a blind spot in democracy’s self-defence. The review concludes that explicit unamendability and containment are consistent with Ferrara’s theory of sequential sovereignty and provide a better safeguard for democracy across generations. (shrink)

Serving as a healthcare worker in a conflict zone is an experience that is characterized by peculiar and unimaginable challenges. This commentary is an exposition on twelve collated stories of healthcare providers currently serving or who have previously served in war. The stories bring to bear the heaviness of emotions such as fear and guilt that the authors grappled with, while concurrently showing that they embody virtues such as altruism, self-sacrifice, courage, and solidarity. In these stories, we see highlighted recurrent (...) ethical themes including the tension between the duty to others and the duty to self, prioritization and allocation of scarce health resources, ethics of research in war, ethics of virtue and the lasting effects of war. This commentary thus explores and heightens our awareness of the interplay between personal morals and the translation of these into ethics of healthcare provision in war. In so doing, the commentary urges us to reflect on ways by which we can engage the discourse pertaining to war and healthcare ethics. (shrink)

After the events of 11 September 2001 and the anthrax letters, terrorism and bioterrorism have become the number one issue and motivation for all sorts of discussions and actions within the USA and in the rest of the world. Therefore, it is no wonder that bioterrorism and the threat of chemical weapons are prevalent issues in bioethical debates throughout the world and especially in the USA.In the Wake of Terror tries to give an American perspective on the most important bioethical (...) issues connected with terrorism and bioterrorism. The book is from the series Basic Bioethics published by the MIT press. The series editors …. (shrink)