The present paper proposes a definition for the complex polysemic concepts of consciousness and awareness (in humans as well as in other species), and puts forward the idea of a progressive ontological development of consciousness from a state of ‘childhood’ awareness, in order to explain that humans are not only able to manipulate objects, but also their mental representations. The paper builds on the idea of qualia intended as entities posing regular invariant requests to neural processes, trough the permanence of (...) different properties. The concept of semantic differential introduces the properties of metaphorical qualia as an exclusively human ability. Furthermore this paper proposes a classification of qualia, according to the models–with different levels of abstraction–they are implied in, in a taxonomic perspective. This, in turn, becomes a source of categorization of divergent representations, sign systems, and forms of intentionality, relying always on biological criteria. New emerging image-of-the-world-devices are proposed, whose qualia are likely to be only accessible to humans: emotional qualia, where emotion accounts for the invariant and dominant property; and the qualic self where continuity, combined with the oneness of the self, accounts for the invariant and dominant property. The concept of congruence between different domains in a metaphor introduces the possibility of a general evaluation of truth and falsity of all kinds of metaphorical constructs, while the work of Matte Blanco enables us to classify conscious versus unconscious metaphors, both in individuals and in social organizations. (shrink)

La notion de temps occupe une place determinante dans l'oeuvre de Lucrece, alors que cet aspect a ete jusqu'alors peu explore. L'ambition de cet ouvrage est de demontrer que le temps unifie dans une vision complexe et ambivalente la physique, l'histoire, la morale et la poetique lucretiennes. Le present livre est fonde sur une etude de la fonction du temps au sein de ces differents domaines et montre comment la duree infinie qui caracterise les mouvements atomiques chez Epicure se traduit (...) pour son disciple latin par la permanence et l'invariance. Cette synthese d'ordre philosophique est soutenue par le genie poetique de Lucrece, qui parvient a reveler l'equilibre eternel, dissimule derriere le regne apparent du hasard et du desordre. L'auteur invite ainsi le lecteur de Lucrece a un parcours a la fois philosophique et poetique a travers le De rerum natura afin de decouvrir le lieu d'ou l'on contemple la permanence immobile du mouvement et l'eternite du temps. L'image de l'eclair immobile dans la plaine s'offre des lors comme un symbole fulgurant de la conception lucretienne du temps, qui concilie mouvement et repos dans la poesie. Sabine Luciani, nee en 1967, est maitre de conferences en langue et litterature latines a l'universite Paul Valery - Montpellier III. Elle est specialiste de philosophie epicurienne, a publie plusieurs articles concernant Lucrece et, plus generalement, l'influence de la philosophie hellenistique sur l'oeuvre des poetes latins. Elle poursuit actuellement des recherches sur les sources de Lucrece. (shrink)

La actual etapa en la recepción del Concilio Vaticano II se caracteriza por recuperar la primacía hermenéutica del capítulo II de Lumen Gentium. De este modo se reconoce el carácter vinculante y permanente del sensus fidei fidelium en la construcción del consensus omnium fidelium. El presente artículo ofrece una profundización de esta eclesiología del Pueblo de Dios a la luz de una reconfiguración sinodal. Esto implicará una renovación de la identidad y la vocación de los sujetos eclesiales, y una reforma (...) de la organización y el funcionamiento de las estructuras. En esta nueva etapa se reconoce a la sinodalidad como dimensión constitutiva de la Iglesia. Sin embargo, esto supone diseñar un nuevo modo de proceder eclesial. En este sentido, proponemos que el reto actual debe enfocarse en la construcción de una eclesialidad sinodal que genere un proceso de sinodalización de toda la Iglesia. Se trata de crear la circularidad entre la escucha, el discernimiento, la elaboración y la toma de decisiones en la Iglesia, ya que la eclesiología del Pueblo de Dios nos enseña que en los procesos sinodales se expresa el sensus ecclesiae totius populi y no solo el sensus ecclesiae de la jerarquía. El presente artículo pretende ofrecer el marco hermenéutico para construir una eclesialidad sinodal, lo cual supone, una relectura y profundización de la Eclesiología del Pueblo de Dios, como la presentaremos en este artículo. (shrink)

L’intérêt récent de la recherche exégétique, à la fois pour la forme finale du texte et pour la constitution des grands ensembles littéraires, a eu entre autres effets de relancer la question de la structure du Pentateuque et celle, corrélative, de son thème ou de sa cohérence conceptuelle. Après avoir passé en revue un certain nombre de propositions , cet article n’a d’autre prétention que de recenser les éléments connus qui plaident pour la construction chiastique de Exode-Nombres et la centralité (...) du Lévitique, d’ajouter quelques indices littéraires négligés qui confortent cette hypothèse, et d’en tirer les conséquences théologiques. (shrink)

Au cours de la période moderne, les fonds provençaux du « for privé » (livres de raison, journaux, mémoires), sont marqués par une faiblesse quantitative des écrits féminins. Pour l’essentiel, ceux-ci relaient l’écriture d’un mari, parfois d’un père ou d’un frère absents ou disparus, dans la tenue des comptes et dans l’enregistrement de la mémoire familiale. Néanmoins, chez la trentaine de femmes retrouvées ici au fil des archives, l’écriture quotidienne, quand bien même elle répond à l’application d’une norme et à (...) l’assignation d’un rôle social, n’en fournit pas moins la possibilité d’une construction de soi, depuis la conquête de sa matérialité graphique la plus élémentaire jusqu’à l’émergence d’une réflexivité individuelle née de la familiarité croissante du commerce avec soi et de l’essor d’une expression personnelle. On devra néanmoins se demander si cette posture suffit, au creux de registres familiaux dont la vocation est d’abord collective, à construire un individu féminin. (shrink)

D’un point de vue rédactionnel, le Lévitique peut être considéré comme un coin artificiellement inséré entre Exode et Nombres. Pendant 27 chapitres, l’action est interrompue par une longue série de prêches divins dont on perçoit mal l’intérêt et encore moins la beauté. Si l’on montre que cet intermède n’a rien d’un bric-à-brac incohérent, mais est au contraire placé à cet endroit pour devenir le cœur de la Torah tout entière, l’importance du message s’en trouve singulièrement accrue. Au plan narratif, tout (...) concourt dans ce livre à focaliser l’attention sur le seul contenu des instructions divines pour en favoriser la méditation et ainsi persuader le lecteur d’y obéir. (shrink)

Medellínsupuso una recepción única del Concilio Vaticano II que llevó a la Iglesia latinoamericana a posicionarse como una Iglesia fuente, una Iglesia que no solo había creado una forma colegial de interactuar a nivel continental con la creación del Celam, sino que inauguró un espíritu de ser y trabajar y un modo de interacción que dieron paso a una forma de proceder que caracterizaría a su identidad. En este sentido, nos proponemos leer a Medellín como acontecimiento que no puede ser (...) reducido a un texto. La forma en la que se procedió, más ambiental que tematizada, dio pié a un espíritu de convergencia profética que tomó cuerpo en el método de trabajo, el modo de relación entre los participantes, la liturgia diaria, la disposición para la escucha y la discusión abierta de todos en los temas. En fin, en este artículo explicamos como todo esto inauguró una eclesialidad única, cuya práctica colegial fue fecundada y completada por un espíritu sinodal que logró profundizar y dar concretes al modelo de Iglesia Pueblo de Dios del Concilio Vaticano II. (shrink)

In the Roman world, slavery played a crucial role. Besides private slaves, owned by individual masters, and—from the beginning of the Principate—imperial slaves, who were the property of the emperors, there were also the so-called public slaves: non-free individuals who were owned by a community, such as the Roman people as a whole in Rome (serui publici populi Romani), or the citizen body of a colony or a municipium in Italy or in the provinces (serui ciuitatum). Public slaves in Rome (...) were employed for numerous public services and acted under the authority of the Senate as assistants to public magistrates, officers or priests. Similarly, in Italian and in provincial cities, they juridically depended on the decisions of local councils and performed various activities within the civic administration, beholden to the magistrates. (shrink)

Background:Personal values influence nursing students’ development of professional values, which affect professional outcomes, and how nursing students react to different situations. Personal values can be shaped by different factors, including culture, gender, and age.Aims:To explore personal values held by nursing students, and to verify if and how gender and year of study affect nursing students’ personal values.Research design:A multicenter, cross-sectional study was used.Participants and research context:The whole population of nursing undergraduate students available at the time was recruited from eight centers (...) of two Universities, composing a sample of 947 students. Demographic data were collected and it was administered the Portrait Values Questionnaire.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of the University of the participating centers.Findings:The study sample was mainly composed of young (92.6%, n = 877), female (77.3%, n = 732), Italian (95.8%, n = 907), and unmarried (98.6%, n = 934) nursing students. The most important value for nursing students, consistently through the years of nursing school, was Self-transcendence, which has the motivational emphasis on helping others and selflessness. Then, we found that male students had higher levels of Power (p < 0.001) and Achievement (p = 0.031), while female students outscored male students in Benevolence (p = 0.005) and Security (p = 0.006). Year of study showed no statistically significant difference.Discussion:Nursing students express high levels in hetero-directed values. Male nursing students, although they choose a stereotypically feminine profession, outscored females in stereotypical masculine values such as dominance and success. This is the first study that describes the personal value profile of undergraduate nursing students, according to the Theory of Basic Human Values, and it is a starting point for future research.Conclusion:Nursing educators might want to consider the findings from this study while guiding students in developing awareness for their personal values. (shrink)

Markets can often be harsh in compelling people to make unpalatable economic choices any reasonable person would not take under normal conditions. Thus, workers laid off in mid-career accept lower-paid jobs that are beneath their professional experience for want of better alternatives. Economic migrants leave their families and cross borders in search of a livelihood. These are examples of economic compulsion. These economic ripple effects have been virtually ignored in ethical discourse because they are generally accepted to be the very (...) mechanisms that generate the market's much-touted allocative efficiency. Albino Barrera argues that Christian thought on economic security offers an effective framework within which to address the consequences of economic compulsion. (shrink)

The marketplace is a remarkable social institution that has greatly extended our reach so shoppers in the West can now buy fresh-cut flowers, vegetables, and tropical fruits grown halfway across the globe even in the depths of winter. However, these expanded choices have also come with considerable moral responsibilities as our economic decisions can have far-reaching effects by either ennobling or debasing human lives. Albino Barrera examines our own moral responsibilities for the distant harms of our market transactions from (...) a Christian viewpoint, identifying how the market's division of labour makes us unwitting collaborators in others' wrongdoing and in collective ills. His important account covers a range of different subjects, including law, economics, philosophy, and theology, in order to identify the injurious ripple effects of our market activities. (shrink)

In the development of Roman Catholic social thought from the teachings of the scholastics to the modern social encyclicals, changes in normative economics reflect the transformation of an economic terrain from its feudal roots to the modern industrial economy. The preeminence accorded by the modern market to the allocative over the distributive function of price broke the convenient convergence of commutative and distributive justice in scholastic just price theory. Furthermore, the loss of custom, law, and usage in defining the boundaries (...) of economic behavior led to a depersonalization of economic relationships that had previously provided effective informal means of protecting individual well-being. Hence, recent economic ethics has had to look for nonprice, nonmarket mechanisms for distributive justice. This is reflected, for example, in the shift in attitude from the medieval antipathy toward unions to the contemporary defense of organized labor on moral grounds. (shrink)

Rooted in a reasoned understanding of what it is to be a human being in community, Catholic social principles are accessible to a pluralistic, even secular, audience. Instead of being used separately in an ad hoc manner, these principles can be applied as a single analytical framework in examining ethical questions. Doing so allows the manifold dimensions of social problems to surface. The paper applies this framework on the issue of whether currency markets ought to be taxed in order to (...) deter speculation. (shrink)

Conflicting demands of love and justice are among the most vexing problems of social philosophy, moral theology, and public policy. They often have life-and-death consequences for millions. This book examines how and why love-justice conflicts arise to begin with and what we can do to reconcile their competing claims.

The United States, Europe and Japan provide farm subsidies at a rate of one billion USD per day. The bulk of this is captured by large corporate entities. Damage to less developed countries is extensive and deep. Besides the farmers who are harmed because of the resulting lower agricultural prices, these negative effects ripple through the rest of the economy, due to the central importance of the agricultural sector for developing nations. Besides being direct beneficiaries of these subsidies, farming corporations, (...) including their ancillary support industries, have lobbied heavily to resist the growing international clamor to remove or at least substantially alter thesesubsidies. This paper examines the economics and ethics of international corporate responsibility on the issue of farm subsidies. (shrink)