Coronavirus disease is having an unprecedented and unpredictable impact on the world's economy. The pandemic has driven the world toward adapting to the current circumstances regardless of the business, sector, or industry. The coronavirus epidemic has affected the global economy and service sector. The purpose of the current study is to assess the effect of COVID-19 on service sector growth and sustainability. Global sectors and industries are trying to anchor themselves amidst the pandemic. The study focuses on the sectors that (...) are badly hit by the outbreak and discussed the strategies and responses different countries are taking to sustain their economies. This study concludes that the vital role of Information Technology and digitization supports the economies in their fight against the pandemic and helps them sustain themselves amid crises. This study also contributes to the body of literature by suggesting IT-based solutions for various industries to elevate effective responsiveness and avoid significant losses. (shrink)

The life we considered normal was disrupted due to measures taken to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Quarantine, isolation, social distancing, and community containment have influenced consumer behavior and contributed to the rapid development of e-commerce. In pandemic times, even those unfamiliar with the online environment have had to adapt and make acquisitions in this new manner. Hence, we focused our research on measuring the perception of consumers on how the restrictive measures imposed to limit the spread of (...) the COVID-19 virus had influenced their decision to buy a product or service from the online environment, given that purchases are highly subjective and influenced by cumulative effects of economic, social, psychological and behavioral factors. Our paper comes with additional insights from the literature. It adds empirical evidence that reveals that the number of transactions and the value per transaction increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights that online purchases will continue as such even after the pandemic. (shrink)

The higher education sector was affected by this pandemic, managing enduring challenges since early 2020. Institutions of higher learning are prepared to address unsurmountable challenges to ensure that students are not deceived and are being given the proper nurture, coupled with adherence to syllabuses. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unscrupulous pressure on students of these institutions. The psychological waves are creating mammoth consequences, affecting the beneficiaries of the higher education system and their families. In recent years, with limited studies (...) on psychological impact among tertiary students on a cross-country basis, general self-efficacy, and the degree of coping strategies, we were motivated to investigate the degree of depression, anxiety, and stress, among this cohort of students encompassing the pre-university/Diploma, 1st–4th-year undergraduate, and postgraduate students from private universities in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Southern Africa, and China, representing the emerging economies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted, followed by quantitative analysis. The objective of this study was to recognize whether there is a relationship between the psychological impact of DAS and the coping strategies adopted by the undergraduate students responding during the lockdown. The findings of this study revealed that with a sample size of 397, DAS lacked any severe impact on students across gender, country, household income, and level of education. DAS was established to be well managed with a coping strategy and self-efficacy established. This study resulted in a deeper understanding of DAS among undergraduates in emerging economies and their degree of coping behavior, providing a glimpse of the approach of millennials to handle DAS during the pandemic. (shrink)

Desde o início da teorização freudiana, inibição, defesa e censura são processos que devem incidir sobre as pulsões. O primitivo pulsional precisa ser reprimido ou transformado. Este artigo problematiza a relação entre as pulsões sexuais e a defesa psíquica, ao longo do período pré-psicanalítico e da primeira tópica freudiana. Situamos o conflito entre sexualidade e repressão, apontado por Freud como característico das psiconeuroses, enquanto que nas neuroses atuais a angústia está relacionada a um registro quantitativo e não exatamente a um (...) conflito psíquico. Nesse caso, revela-se desencontros entre um sexual corpóreo e sua representação psíquica. Pretende-se, neste trabalho, evidenciar o caráter negativo das pulsões e pôr em relevo a natureza do antagonismo que se opõe às pulsões sexuais. A formulação das pulsões de autoconservação como aquilo que deve se contrapor às pulsões sexuais não esclarece completamente porque é imperativo que algo aconteça face às vivências pulsionais fundantes do aparelho. A satisfação em estado bruto acarreta prejuízos, tanto do ponto de vista psíquico quanto social; logo, a repressão das pulsões sexuais é condição necessária para a existência individual e coletiva. Evidencia-se assim algo específico do humano, afinal, se toda a natureza funciona afirmando o instinto, a espécie humana somente se desenvolve a partir de sua negação. A partir de tais construções teóricas, questiona-se se a psicanálise ainda permanece demasiadamente tributária de uma concepção de natureza revestida de pressupostos morais, sustentando a noção de que tenha que ser continuamente negada, afastada, coagida e domesticada, em prol de construções sociais bastante questionáveis, porém acatadas como necessárias. (shrink)

ObjectivesQuality of Life depends on the discrepancy between desired and current experiences, thus in chronic illness, adjustment of expectations and interpretation of the current situation are crucial. Depression is known to influence this gap, and the present study aims to further assess the role of resilience and health locus of control.MethodsA total of 94 patients with neurological disorders were screened via telephone regarding depression, resilience and HLC. Current and desired state of several life domains were assessed, such as Fitness, General (...) Health, Pain, Daily Activities, Finances, Leisure, and Family. Elastic net regularization and analyses of variance were used to disentangle the impact of depression, resilience, HLC, and sociodemographic factors on the perception of current and desired state, and the gap between both.ResultsA gap was present for all domains but largest for pain. Interpretation of the current state was linked to desired state, HLC, and age. All gaps were related to depression; certain domains were in addition influenced by resilience, HLC and sociodemographic factors. Of note, for most domains, patients did not select the highest possible desired state.ConclusionOlder patients with neurological disorders report a gap between current and desired state for many aspects of life. Adjusting expectations is beneficial in the face of declining health, but a reasonably increased desired state may positively influence the perception of the current situation. Depression negatively influences the interpretation of the Calman gap. (shrink)

This book offers a conceptual history of compromise that demonstrates the connection between different understandings of compromise and corresponding differences in understandings of political representation.

Interest in proportionalism as an important trend in Catholic moral theology seems to have faded in the recent decade. This has led some to view it as a movement that was somehow defeated. I suggest that proportionalism's influence can still be seen in contemporary Catholic ethics, most noticeably in the current interest in virtue ethics, casuistry, and feminist ethics. I argue that proportionalism encouraged a reappraisal of the methodology for evaluating moral action in a direction that was more hospitable to (...) concerns about the particularity and context of the agent. (shrink)

This paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming the polemic (...) in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind. (shrink)

At workplaces where nanomaterials are produced or used, risk assessment and risk management are extremely difficult tasks since there is still limited evidence about the risks of nanomaterials. Measurement methods for nanoparticles are contested and safety standards have not yet been developed properly. To support compliance with the legal obligation of the employer to care for safe workplaces a large number of ‘soft’ regulatory tools have been proposed (e.g. codes of conduct, benchmarks, standards). However, it is not clear whether and (...) under which conditions soft regulation is complied with. This article discusses the potential advantages and drawbacks of soft regulation. It explores compliance issues when exposure measurement devices and other technology-related factors are involved. The exploration of three examples of soft regulation on occupational health and safety (a ministerial recommendation on preliminary exposure benchmarks, a nano-specific guidance of a chemical company and a public–private OHS guideline) shows that the capacity of the regulated parties to comply depends on the availability of appropriate technological devices and methods, technical expertise and other resources. When technological prerequisites are met, compliance is likely to increase. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders semiotic modelling in light of recent scholarship on Charles Peirce, particularly regarding his concept of proposition. Conceived in the vein of Peirce’s phenomenological categories as well as of his taxonomy of signs, semiotic modelling has mostly been thought of as ascending from simple, basic sign types to complex ones. This constitutes the backbone of most currently accepted semiotic modelling theories and entails the further acceptance of an unexamined a priori coherence between complexity of cognition and complexity of (...) signification. Following recent readings of Peirce’s post-1900 semiotic, we engage in a discussion as to what are the limits of this approach. From Stjernfelt’s conception of the dicisign in nature, we derive a perspective that affords understanding the practice of modelling as a reciprocal interplay between decomposition of complexity and recombination into further complexity. This discussion is facilitated by the recent extrapolation of the constructivist concept of scaffolding in biosemiotics research. Cognition, we argue, begins with a fundamental irritation of trying to make sense of a structure that is more complex than what can directly be derived from experience and, in so doing, urges meaning-seeking processes. The yet unknown object is decomposed into more tangible objects and is subsequently reassembled from these more manageable conceptions of the object. In support of our argument, we discuss the notions of semiotic competences and resources in light of such a naturalized account of meaning-making. (shrink)

In order to understand how Deleuze's method of dramatization is ‘not privileging mankind in any way’, this article turns to the figure of the marionette as it is discreetly, but consistently, developed thorough Deleuze's books. Inspired by Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre, this marionette figure claims for a rhizomatic approach to the subject, defined by the lines it draws into space and exercising its freedom in the present of Aion through spatio-temporal dynamisms similar to those of Leibniz's monads. The strange (...) freedom developed by marionettes also leads to an examination of Nietzsche's ‘eternal return’, which is at the core of Deleuze's elaboration of the method of dramatization. Combining Nietzsche's eternal return with the characteristics of Deleuzian marionettes then requires us to revisit the famous concept of ‘becoming’: becomings are selective, both methodologically and ontologically. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the concept of learning stemming from Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg’s theory of the emergence of consciousness. Jablonka and Ginsburg find strong support in biosemiotics for their argument that learning offers an evolutionary transition marker for the emergence of consciousness. Indeed, biosemiotics embraces a view on evolution that integrates both phylogeny and ontogeny. It does not polarize learning and evolving. At the same time, Jablonka and Ginsburg’s argument gives both biosemiotics and learning theory a shake, forcing scholarship (...) in these fields to tackle difficult questions on agency, selfhood, consciousness and anthropological difference. I explore some of the main questions that arise from this theoretical development, particularly in reference to Andrew Stables’ semiotic learning theory, which has been easily nested in a biosemiotic framework. (shrink)

Two types of truth table task are used to examine people's mental representation of conditionals. In two within-participants experiments, participants either receive the same task-type twice (Experiment 1) or are presented successively with both a possibilities task and a truth task (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examines how people interpret the three-option possibilities task and whether they have a clear understanding of it. The present study aims to examine, for both task-types, how participants' cognitive ability relates to the classification of the (...) truth table cases as irrelevant, and their consistency in doing so. Looking at the answer patterns, participants' cognitive ability influences their classification of the truth table cases: A positive correlation exists between cognitive ability and the number of false-antecedent cases classified as ?irrelevant?, both in the possibilities task and the truth task. This favours a suppositional representation of conditionals. (shrink)

The choice to pursue fertility treatments is a complex one. In this paper I explore the issues of choice, agency, and gender as they relate to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). I argue that narrative approaches to bioethics such as those by Arthur Frank and Hilde Lindemann Nelson clarify judgments about autonomy and fertility medicine. More specifically, I propose two broad narrative categories that help capture the experience of encounters with fertility medicine: narratives of hope and narratives of resistance. This narrative (...) typology captures the inevitable conflict that women feel when they become subjects of fertility medicine. On the one hand, they must remain hopeful; on the other, they must not surrender themselves completely. Nelson's account of counterstories as narratives of resistance helps us see how women can reconcile the experience of a strong desire to have children with the desire to remain authentic and whole. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain how semiotics and constructivism can collaborate in an educational epistemology by developing a joint approach to prescientific conceptions. Empirical data and findings of constructivist research are interpreted in the light of Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics is an anti-psychologistic logic and relational logic. Constructivism was traditionally developed within psychology and sociology and, therefore, some incompatibilities can be expected between these two schools. While acknowledging the differences, we explain that constructivism and semiotics share the assumption of realism (...) that knowledge can only be developed upon knowledge and, therefore, an epistemological collaboration is possible. The semiotic analysis performed confirms the constructivist results and provides a further insight into the teacher-student relation. Like the constructivist approach, Peirce’s doctrine of agapism infers that the personal dimension of teaching must not be ignored. Thus, we argue for the importance of genuine sympathy in teaching attitudes. More broadly, the article also contributes to the development of postmodern humanities. At the end of the modern age, the humanities are passing through a critical period of transformation. There is a growing interest in semiotics and semiotic philosophy in many areas of the humanities. Such a case, on which we draw, is the development of a theoretical semiotic approach to education, namely edusemiotics. (shrink)

The principle of energy conservation is widely taken to be a se- rious difficulty for interactionist dualism (whether property or sub- stance). Interactionists often have therefore tried to make it satisfy energy conservation. This paper examines several such attempts, especially including E. J. Lowe’s varying constants proposal, show- ing how they all miss their goal due to lack of engagement with the physico-mathematical roots of energy conservation physics: the first Noether theorem (that symmetries imply conservation laws), its converse (that conservation (...) laws imply symmetries), and the locality of continuum/field physics. Thus the “conditionality re- sponse”, which sees conservation as (bi)conditional upon symme- tries and simply accepts energy non-conservation as an aspect of interactionist dualism, is seen to be, perhaps surprisingly, the one most in accord with contemporary physics (apart from quantum mechanics) by not conflicting with mathematical theorems basic to physics. A decent objection to interactionism should be a posteri- ori, based on empirically studying the brain. (shrink)

As case management is under development in France for elderly people, this study sets out to identify and analyse key situations responsible for ethical dilemmas for French case managers. We based our study on the analyses of individual interviews made with case managers and focus-group discussions, bringing together all case managers working in local organisations running for at least a year. We identified three situations giving rise to ethical dilemmas: in the order of importance, the refusals of care, the practicalities (...) of collecting and sharing personal data and the allocation of resources. These three situations can lead to conflict between the principle of beneficence and those of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence and justice. We describe here how French case managers practically deal with these situations. (shrink)

American political thought was shaped by a unique combination of theoretical influences: republicanism, liberalism, and covenant theology. This reader shows how these influences came together. Organized chronologically from the Puritans' arrival in the New World to the Civil War, each chapter includes carefully selected primary sources and substantial commentary to explain the historical context and significance of the excerpts. A coherent interpretative framework is offered by focusing the analysis on the different assumptions of the people - the republican understanding as (...) a corporate whole and the liberal understanding as a multitude of individuals - that were intertwined during the founding. The book features, for the first time, two chapters on non-American authors, who capture the main tenets of republicanism and liberalism and were widely quoted in the era, as well as excerpts from lesser-known sources, including Puritan covenants, the first state constitutions, and Native American speeches. (shrink)

The article argues that by the 17th century, despite the increased intellectual exchanges of the time, two different kind of individualism were developing across the Channel — one labeled here as ‘centripetal’, the other one as ‘centrifugal’. On the French side, one witnesses a focus on forum internum, as the only site of uniqueness and authenticity. On the British side, the emphasis switched to forum externum and the equality of wills. The article explores the consequences of these different self-apprehensions of (...) the individual in terms of different understandings of political representation. I claim that, despite today’s general consensus, representing ‘the people’ was not naturally assimilated with an ascending theory of representation. ‘The people’, understood as a whole, was apprehended in France as still higher than its representatives — kings, Estates, or Parlements. The idea of individuals willingly delegating their rights and/or authority to a representative remained for more than a century a peculiar British development. The consequences of this ascending understanding of representation are to be seriously reevaluated. (shrink)

Le présent article se propose d'examiner les défis que devra relever la Francophonie panaméricaine pour assurer son intégration dans la ZLÉA. La rencontre entre les deux Amériques, l'une francophone et centrée sur le Québec, l'autre créole et centrée sur la Caraïbe, n'est pas le moindre de ces défis puisqu'elle implique que la Francophonie panaméricaine fasse fi de la contradiction apparente qu'il existe à revendiquer l'exception culturelle pour se « protéger » tout en acceptant le métissage, la créolisation, de ses manifestations (...) linguistiques et culturelles. La Francophonie panaméricaine est-elle à la hauteur de cette épreuve? Il serait prétentieux de prétendre apporter une réponse ferme et définitive à ces vastes questions, mais la réflexion qui suit propose quelques pistes d'analyse, disons, prospective...This article explores the challenges faced by Panamerican Francophony in order to ensure its integration within the FTAA. The meeting of two Americas, one Francophone and centred on the Province of Québec, the other Creole and centered on the Caribbean, is not the least of the challenges. It also essential that Panamerican Francophony transcends the apparent contradiction which exists between, on the one hand, the need for its cultural distinctiveness to be recognised in order to be better protected and, on the other, the acceptation of the process of creolisation and métissage of language and culture. Is the Panamerican Francophony capable of rising to the challenge? It would be pretentious to say one can provide an unequivocal answer to these broad-ranging questions, but the following discussion suggests a few lines of thought and, perhaps, possible outcomes.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss the potential of digital games to create meaningful educational experiences that contribute to the learning of ethics in higher education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics degrees. We describe the design of a new digital ethics game with a focus on the challenges we encountered when applying existing theoretical frameworks for educational games and propose ways to address these challenges. We contend that existing design frameworks fail to account for the ‘wickedness’ of ethical problems – (...) i.e. their inconclusive, complex, and sometimes inherently contradictory nature – as they are centred around consequentiality and consistent game-system feedback to players’ actions. Drawing from a Deweyan account of the ‘educative experience’ we seek to contribute to a domain-adequate theory of transformational experience and transformational play in the context of educational ethics game design. (shrink)

A leitura pode ser analisada sob vários ângulos: social, pedagógico, cultural, cognitivo, dentre outros. Contudo, abordar os aspectos mencionados, em conjunto ou sequencialmente, demanda uma verticalização prodigiosa da pesquisa; por isso este artigo busca apenas apresentar e discutir alguns aspectos cognitivos relevantes para a prática leitora, dando ênfase à memória e, por isso mesmo, ao conhecimento prévio. Acreditamos que, conhecendo melhor os tipos de memória e não ignorando o vínculo necessário entre memória e conhecimento prévio, se torne mais viável para (...) o professor mobilizar meios eficazes para propor atividades de leitura compreensiva e, também, mais importante ainda, para mostrar e explicar aos alunos como fazer uma leitura desse tipo. A concepção subjacente à presente escolha decorre do entendimento de que a leitura é um processo sociocognitivo complexo não redutível a seu resultado imediato, obtido em testes padronizados e avaliado em termos positivos ou negativos, de modo negáabsoluto. Na verdade, não nos interessa exclusivamente conferir ao leitor a condição de leitor proficiente ou não, desconhecendo as práticas leitoras com as quais o sujeito testado tem ou teve contato até o momento. O que nos instiga e motiva, de fato, é o ensino-aprendizagem da compreensão do texto escrito. Assim, abordaremos ao longo deste artigo questões atinentes ao processamento cognitivo de textos, com a finalidade de elucidar a sua importância decisiva para o ensino-aprendizagem da habilidade de compreensão leitora, no contexto escolar. (shrink)

This article examines the particular way Souriau’s concepts of instauration and modes of existence have been inherited by Bruno Latour in his Inquiry into Modes of Existence. It suggests that Bruno Latour has hacked some key-aspects of Souriau’s general ontology in order to regionalize it and, by doing so, to give the Moderns an accurate depiction of the plurality of beings they hold dear. It then shows how Souriau’s concept of instauration is crucial to Latour’s project of rethinking and repopulating (...) modern institutions, in a gesture aimed at making metaphysics a vital practice that has the power to make the world worth of worrying and caring for. (shrink)

Purpose As Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) proliferate, calls have emerged for ethical reflection. Ethics guidelines have played a central role in this respect. While quantitative research on the ethics guidelines of AI/Big Data has been undertaken, there has been a dearth of systematic qualitative analyses of these documents. Design/methodology/approach Aiming to address this research gap, this paper analyses 70 international ethics guidelines documents from academia, NGOs and the corporate realm, published between 2017 and 2020. Findings The article presents (...) four key findings: existing ethics guidelines (1) promote a broad spectrum of values; (2) focus principally on AI, followed by (Big) Data and algorithms; (3) do not adequately define the term “ethics” and related terms; and (4) have most frequent recourse to the values of “transparency,” “privacy,” and “security.” Based on these findings, the article argues that the guidelines corpus exhibits discernible utilitarian tendencies; guidelines would benefit from greater reflexivity with respect to their ethical framework; and virtue ethical approaches have a valuable contribution to make to the process of guidelines development. Originality/value The paper provides qualitative insights into the ethical discourse surrounding AI guidelines, as well as a concise overview of different types of operative translations of theoretical ethical concepts vis-à-vis the sphere of AI. These may prove beneficial for (applied) ethicists, developers and regulators who understand these guidelines as policy. (shrink)

Background: Little is known about case managers’ ethical issues and professional values. Objectives: This article presents an overview of ethical issues in case managers’ current practice. Findings are examined in the light of nursing ethics, social work ethics and principle-based biomedical ethics. Research design: A systematic literature review was performed to identify and analyse empirical studies concerning ethical issues in case management programmes. It was completed by systematic content analysis of case managers’ national codes of ethics. Findings: Only nine empirical (...) studies were identified, eight of them from North America. The main dilemmas were how to balance system goals against the client’s interest and client protection against autonomy. Professional codes of ethics shared important similarities, but offered different responses to these two dilemmas. Discussion: We discuss the respective roles of professional and organizational ethics. Further lines of research are suggested. (shrink)

Existing literature on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure has paid little attention to private firms, despite the fact that this type of firm is responsible for significant GHG emissions. This study empirically analyzes the GHG disclosure of German private firms. The results suggest that more pronounced information asymmetries due to a more dispersed ownership structure and/or multiple bank relationships are associated with more extensive GHG disclosure. This aligns with arguments from agency and stakeholder theory. While this result is not new (...) for public firms, it is for private firms. Given the specific characteristics of this type of firms (no separation of ownership and control, private communication channels, close bank–borrower relationships), it is not a straightforward assumption that observations from public firms can be transferred to private firms one-to-one. Moreover, higher levels of actual GHG emissions are also associated with more GHG disclosure, indicating that legitimacy theory arguments hold for private firms as well. (shrink)

Resenha: Acidentes ambientais e planos de contingência.

The authors of the three essays featured in this focus challenge assumptions that are central to the official Catholic teachings on sexual ethics. Elizabeth Antus and Megan McCabe do so by taking on topics that have not received much attention from the magisterium. Cristina Traina urges us to think differently about the way we usually frame the moral issue of abortion. Although they address different moral problems, I argue in this introduction that they highlight common themes—social sin, interruption, and solidarity—share (...) methodological commitments to using empirical data and to valuing human experiences, and push us to imagine a sexual ethic grounded in a just vision of human sexual flourishing. (shrink)

A Short Modern History of Studying Sacrobosco’s De sphaera. The treatise generally known as De sphaera offered at the beginning of the 13th century a general image of the structure of the Cosmos. In this paper I’m first trying to present a triple stake with which this treaty of Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 - c. 1256). This effort is intended to draw a context upon the treaty on which I will present in the second part of this paper namely, (...) a short modern history of studying this treaty starting from the beginning of the 20th century up to this day. The first stake consists in the well-known episode of translation of the XI-XII centuries in the Latin milieu of the Greek and Arabic treaties. The treatise De sphaera taking over, assimilating and comparing some of the new translations of the texts dedicated to astronomy. The second consists in the fact that Sacrobosco`s work can be considered a response to a need of renewal of the curriculum dedicated to astronomy at the University of Paris. And the third consists in the novelty and the need to use the De sphaera treatise in the Parisian University’s curriculum of the 13th century. (shrink)

Prior to having its authenticity and transparency examined the openness of human existence may be said to need preservation as is, regardless of its receptivity and responsiveness to the truth of Being. Paradoxically, in self-sacrifice the fulfilment of Dasein’s ownmost potentiality-for-being is dependent upon a most radical disowning of itself. This investigation approaches self-sacrifice on the basis of its analogy with the creation of the work of art – as the peculiar fixation of the existing, already disclosed world of everydayness (...) within Dasein’s final absence. Finally, the suggestion is made that the incommensurable greatness of the heroic self-sacrifice needs to be itself preserved from the degradation brought about by massive and compulsive reproduction. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Digital literature presents new ways of constructing aesthetic and emotional experience for child readers. This article reflects on emotion and affect in digital literature through the analysis of three literary apps for children. To deal with the complex phenomenon of the affective and emotional experience in digital reading, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed, relating Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to Kress and van Leeuwen’s multimodal social semiotics. The corpus includes the apps Little Red Riding Hood, by producer Nosy Crow, The Monster (...) at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin, and Hat Monkey, by Chris Haughton. It discusses how different semiotic resources are used in the representation of emotions and in suggesting emotional tension to the child reader, with embodiment and the intrinsic relationship between reader’s bodies and their emotional experience as a central part of apps’ textual construction. (shrink)