In the present interview, Jürgen Habermas answers questions about his wide-ranging work in philosophy and social theory, as well as concerning current social and political developments to whose understanding he has made important theoretical contributions. Among the aspects of his work addressed are his conception of communicative rationality as a countervailing force to the colonization of the lifeworld by capitalism and his understanding of philosophy after Hegel as postmetaphysical thinking, for which he has recently provided a comprehensive historical grounding. The (...) scope and relevance of his ideas can be seen from his reflections on current issues, ranging from the prospects of translational democracy at a time of resurgent nationalism and populism, to political developments in Germany since reunification, to the role of religion in the public sphere and the impact of the new social media on democratic discourse. (shrink)

With a novel approach to Aristotle's zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals' bodies empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle's conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as (...) a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the animal as such, which lay at the core of Aristotle's agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of history of science, ancient biology and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human/animal relation. (shrink)

The central question of this article is what hope contributes to a good life. The starting point is the assumption that living a good life involves having a good relation to the past, present and future. Hope is a central attitude towards the future that contributes, I argue, to having an own future. I distinguish three ways in which there is reference to an "own future" and thus different ways in which hope contributes to the good life. Finally, I discuss (...) the objection that hope is detrimental to a good life precisely because of its reference to the future, insofar as a good life essentially takes place "in the present". (shrink)

In political philosophy, trust, legality and violence are interdependent, with different weights, connecting and excluding. Trust structures suffer most from an anticipation of violence or violence itself. Violence systematically takes place in three stages, according to the german sociologist Jan-Philipp Reemtsma: expulsive, abusive, and homicidal violence, all of which have their distinctive and recurring verbal and nonverbal equivalents. The hyperviolence phenomenon goes beyond this, however, and even mutilates the dead body, whether actually physically, or through massive propaganda that declares the (...) enemy a killable non-human. The goal of hyperviolence is a demonstration of absolute power over victim and bystander by means of a traumatizing violation of trust, reason, and individuality. At the same time, hyperviolence is an atavism in modernity (a historical regression); therefore the practitioner of hyperviolence is the anti-modern type par excellence. The french philosopher Georges Bataille introduces here the concept of "sovereignty" and the "sovereign" as the perpetrator also of hyperviolence. The sovereign's sovereignty is the immediate experience of the moment, free of any responsibility, with a rhetoric of mock justification of each of the three types of violence including hyperviolence. With the ahistorical view of escalating violence and the denial of any rational legitimation by the sovereign as the actor of hyperviolence, the structure of trust and the contract system of democracy itself is also endangered. So the question is, how does one unmask the "sovereign" on his way to undermine legal relations already in his linguistic patterns, in his non-linguistic codes, and how can escalation be prevented by early detection? Keywords: violence, hyperviolence, criminal linguistics, Georges Bataille, sovereign. (shrink)

Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic has put on medical personnel worldwide, identifying means to alleviate stress on healthcare professionals and to boost their subjective and psychological wellbeing is more relevant than ever. This study investigates the extent to which the relationships between the status of working in healthcare and the subjective and psychological wellbeing are serially mediated by work recovery experiences and the need for recovery. Data were collected from 217 Romanian (...) employees using a cross-sectional design with self-report instruments, during the first stage of the nationwide lockdown. The results of the serial mediation analyses revealed that working in the medical field is indirectly related to subjective and psychological wellbeing through the following: mastery experiences and mastery experiences as an antecedent of the need for recovery. As such, our findings indicate that working in the medical field is, in fact, linked to healthcare professionals’ subjective and psychological wellbeing, and they provide some input on how recovery experiences and the need for recovery intervene in these relationships. Based on these findings, theoretical, methodological, and practical implications were suggested, and future research directions were proposed to maximize healthcare professionals’ wellbeing. (shrink)

It has been argued that Kants actions. However, it would be uncompromising to allow for only two possibilities: either full responsibility or none. Moreover, in the Metaphysics of Morals Kant himself claims that there can be degrees of responsibility, depending on the magnitude of the obstacles that have to be overcome when acting. I will show that this claim is consistent with Kant’s theory as a whole and thereby make transparent how degrees of responsibility are possible for Kant. The solution (...) is based on the distinction between two senses of responsibility: taking oneself to be an accountable person is an all-or-nothing affair, whereas praise- or blameworthiness for a particular action can still be a matter of degree. (shrink)

Research on migrant care and domestic workers has focused on their multiple dislocations and exclusions in the diaspora, analysing a highly gendered global economy of care and domestic work. This article investigates the role of ritual performance and spirituality in female care workers’ projects of migration and in the emergence of their feminized and racialized subjectivities. On the basis of anthropological research in Israel and the Philippines, it analyses Filipina care workers’ narratives of migration to Israel as a form of (...) spiritual transformation, investigating their spiritual practices and emphasis on Christian morals like ‘compassion’ and ‘patience’ for their work. Israel, a country that has recruited Filipinos as carers for the elderly since the 1990s, is a destination country highly valued among Filipino Christians as the ‘Holy Land’. Focusing on evangelical Christians, the article portrays four women for whom migration to Israel signifies an ethical career: turning into ‘Holy Land’ pilgrims, Christ-like activists and missionaries, they are engaged in a deeply self-transforming journey. Rooting themselves in Christian spiritualities and morals, these women negotiate and ‘inhabit’ rather than openly challenge existing gender norms. Engaged in corporeal disciplining of their selves during affectively demanding care work, and in migration more generally, their moves are analysed as a form of ethical formation. (shrink)

Contextualism in philosophy of language and in epistemology are two distinct but closely entangled projects. The epistemological thesis is grounded in a semantic claim concerning the context-sensitivity of the predicate “know”: we gain insight into epistemological problems by investigating our linguistic intuitions concerning knowledge attribution sentences. Our aim here is to evaluate the plausibility of a project that takes the opposite starting point: the general idea is to establish the semantic contextualist thesis on the epistemological one. According to semantic contextualism, (...) virtually no sentences of a natural language express complete propositions – meaning underdetermines truth conditions. In our paper, instead of assuming the traditional view of meaning in terms of truth conditions, we suggest that a theory of meaning as justification may shed new light on the contextualist approach. We thus show how the notion of justification can be contextualized, arguing that our attempt provides an interesting and quite straightforward way of contextualizing meaning. (shrink)

The relationship between fear and courage has been discussed in terms of opposite though mutually involving notions. However, their link has not been inquired extensively. Recently, new light has been shed on the topic thanks to recent empirical evidence within emotion theories that stress the role played by perception and/or cognition in the experience of fear, as well as the role played by the “emotional virtue” of courage in fear regulation. Questions arise whether fear has a fundamentally perceptual structure or (...) is a biologically-grounded natural kind, and whether such an emotion-related virtue as courage is intrinsically or extrinsically related to fear. This paper considers the last problem first, then enlarges the picture to fear modeling, finally drives some conclusions which aim at deepening the relationship between fear and courage. As a result, it emerges that the emotion of fear has a conceptual, emotional, situational and subjective dimension. Assuming fear as a possible emotional center within the subject’s cognitive experience, the virtue of courage appears to balance the excess and lack of fear, and is consequently related to rational thoughts and consistent behavior, laying the foundations for a new Aristotelian-Thomistic account for it. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of emerging medical technologies that promise transgression of temporal limits, this paper aims to show the importance that an individual lifetime’s finitude and fugacity have for the question of the good life. The paper’s first section examines how the passing of an individual’s finite lifetime can be experienced negatively, and thus cause “suffering from the passing of time.” The second section is based on a sociological analysis within the conceptual framework of individualization and capitalism, which characterizes many (...) modern individualized and consumerist societies and explains how the described problem of time’s passage is particularly relevant today. The paper then proceeds to show and discuss how individuals employ various, primarily medical, enhancement-technologies like social egg freezing, anti-aging-medicine and physical- and neuro-enhancement in an attempt to overcome time’s passing. Finally, the paper seeks to explain why such attempts fail and, moreover, why it is exactly the awareness of time’s passing that can constitute a prerequisite for a good life. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for (...) the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies. (shrink)

Defeasibility, most generally speaking, means that given some set of conditions A, something else B will hold, unless or until defeating conditions C apply. While the term was introduced into philosophy by legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart in 1949, today, the concept of defeasibility is employed in many different areas of philosophy. This volume for the first time brings together contributions on defeasibility from epistemology , legal philosophy and ethics and the philosophy of action . The volume ends with an extensive (...) bibliography. (shrink)

The paper describes tableaux based proof methods for temporal logics of knowledge allowing non-trivial interaction axioms between the modal and temporal components, namely those of synchrony and no learning and synchrony and perfect recall. The interaction axioms allow the description of how knowledge evolves over time and makes reasoning in such logics theoretically more complex. Such logics can be used to specify systems that involve the knowledge of processes or agents and which change over time, for example agent based systems, (...) knowledge games or security protocols. Soundness, completeness and termination results for the tableaux are proved. (shrink)

The work of Paulo Freire, while remaining important to many educators, has been challenged by some postmodernist arguments. In particular, the pursuit of justice becomes difficult, or at least more complicated, when the concept of difference is taken seriously. This paper reconsiders the Freirean commitment to justice in the light of ideas from Young (1990, Justice and the politics of difference, New Jersey: Princeton University Press) and Pavlich and Ratner (1996 Justice and the Postmodern, In M. Peters, W. Hope, J. (...) Marshall, & S. Webster (Eds.), Critical theory, poststructuralism and the social context, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press). How might the work of Paulo Freire accommodate these ideas and what demands do they place on his philosophy? In addressing this question, I focus on three key themes in contemporary debates over pedagogy and justice: (i) the notion that the individual is produced; (ii) the significance of difference; and (iii) the idea that justice is context dependent and multiple. I argue that given Freire’s emphasis in later publications on the produced and unfinished self and his recognition of the multilayered nature of oppression, Freirean theory continues to have much to offer to these debates. (shrink)

The paper discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thought in relation to the German Bildung tradition. For many, Bildung still signifies a valuable achievement of modern educational thought as well as a critical, emancipatory ideal which, frequently in a rather nostalgic manner, is appealed to in order to delineate problematic tendencies of current educational trends. Others, in an at times rather cynical manner, claim that Bildung through its successful institutionalization has shaped vital features of our present educational system and has thus served (...) its time and lost its critical potential. When thinking through Emerson’s variations on Bildung I argue against the nostalgic appeals to Bildung that the criticism against it has to be taken seriously. Against the cynical assessment of Bildung having run its course, I will hold that with Emerson we can develop the idea of an ‘aversive education’ as a call for Bildung to be turned upon itself, allowing to revive it as a conceptual tool for transformation, drawing particular attention to its political dimension. (shrink)

La question que nous souhaitons soulever et qui motive les analyses proposées dans cet article est stratifiée, car elle recoupe de fait plusieurs interrogations connexes. La première est celle de savoir si, lorsqu’elle parle de l’événement dans une acception tellement généralisée qu’elle va jusqu’à l’identifier à la notion même de phénomène, la phénoménologie contemporaine conserve encore une référence fondamentale à l’événement historique. L’événement historique détient-il une fonction pro...

En este artículo muestro la compatibilidad de las explicaciones de la causalidad de Polo con los paradigmas actuales de la biología teórica. Indica cómo el análisis de la actividad vital conduce a una distinction entre las funciones de la vida vegetativa, las facultades orgánicas de la vida sensitiva y los hábitos de la persona humana. A diferencia de los otros seres vivos, la perfección del hombre se encuentra en los hábitos, que son un crecimiento de su naturaleza posibilitado por la (...) libertad, mediante el cual la naturaleza se convierte en potencial respecto a su destinación espiritual. (shrink)

Aristotle is one of the most crucial figures in the history of Western thought, and his name and ideas continue to be invoked in a wide range of contemporary philosophical discussions. The Bloomsbury Companion to Aristotle brings together leading scholars from across the world and from a variety of philosophical traditions to survey the recent research on Aristotle's thought and its contributions to the full spectrum of philosophical enquiry, from logic to the natural sciences and psychology, from metaphysics to ethics, (...) politics, and aesthetics. Further essays address aspects of the transmission, preservation, and elaboration of Aristotle's thought in subsequent phases of the history of philosophy (from the Judeo-Arabic reception to debates in Europe and North America), and look forward to potential future directions for the study of his thought. In addition, The Bloomsbury Companion to Aristotle includes an extensive range of essential pedagogic tools offering assistance to researchers working in the field, including a chronology of recent research, a glossary of key Aristotelian terms with Latin concordances and textual references, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Festzelte are the beer halls (actually tents) of German Oktoberfest style celebrations—generally called Volksfest. Being transient buildings, the tents can be massive and intimidating. 5,000 or more visitors may find a place to drink, eat, sing, dance and celebrate wildly. Chants proclaim the “Gemütlichkeit” [coziness/snugness] despite an atmosphere supercharged with wild behaviors and heavy drunkenness. Norm breaking, liminal behavior is not only tolerated but even expected and intended (up to a certain point).Victor Turner’s concept of cultural performance helps explain the (...) revelry in a beer tent. The tents with their specific rural and folkloristic decorations, spatial structure, and furnishings facilitate the joyous actions. Their staging, as well as the celebratory actions themselves, provide a sacred play-space for anti-structure and communitas, flow and performative reflexivity. The active celebratory participation creates a place where alterity reigns and enables a sense of belonging. (shrink)

Logic and Pragmatism features a number of the key writings of Giovanni Vailati (1863–1909), the Italian mathematician and philosopher renowned for his work in history of mechanics, geometry, logic, and epistemology. The selections in this book—many of which are available here for the first time in English—focus on Vailati’s significant contributions to the field of pragmatism. Two introductory essays by the volume’s editors outline the traits of Vailati’s pragmatism and provide insights into the scholar’s life.

Le questionnement phénoménologique portant sur la sexuation, la différence sexuelle et la relation érotique est assurément ancien : au § 55 de la Krisis, à un moment où il s’interroge sur « le domaine des problèmes transcendantaux, Husserl soulève « le problème des sexes (das Problem der Geschlechter) » (Hua VI, p. 192, trad. p. 214) », et ses manuscrits de recherche montrent qu’il avait commencé à s’attaquer à ce problème – par exemple lorsque, dans les années vingt déjà, il (...) souligne combien... (shrink)

_Logic and Pragmatism_ features a number of the key writings of Giovanni Vailati, the Italian mathematician and philosopher renowned for his work in mechanics, geometry, logic, and epistemology. The selections in this book—many of which are available here for the first time in English—focus on Vailati’s significant contributions to the field of pragmatism. Accompanying these pieces are introductory essays by the volume’s editors that outline the traits of Vailati’s pragmatism and provide insights into the scholar’s life.

The ancient Greek philosophical discourse harbors an anthropology radically discontinuous with the framework of modernity. Rather than emphasizing the tension between the individual and community, and far from understanding the political on the ground of instinctual sacrifice, Greek thought illuminates the interdependence of ethics and politics, and situates the human being in a cosmos in which the human is neither central nor prominent. In particular the reflection of philia, most notably in Plato and Aristotle, calls for the exploration of human (...) potentiality with outstanding vigor and visionary audacity. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze the concept of desire in the ethical project of Spinoza. On the first part, the pathway to the concept of desire is recovered, leading to the preposition nine of the third part of Ethics, in which the concept of desire is defined as the essence of human being. On the second part, taking into consideration the partial results of a research developed in the field of mental health that aims to understand the motives of internment (...) of children and adolescents in a psychiatric institution with the characteristics of an asylum, it will be developed an analysis of two distinct dimensions of this study considering the concepts of Spinoza’s Ethic. (shrink)

"ÂAdventures in Lesbian Philosophy contains many illuminating discussions (of S/M sex, lesbian ethics, lesbian desire, bisexuality), and includes a useful bibliography of lesbian criticism." —Passion "This new collection edited by ...

This article intends to analyse crossings between words and the Word. To this purpose, we will present linguistic and spiritual connotations of the terms belonging to the semantic field of the verb “to communicate” and of the idea of communication. We will also deepen the pneumatologic curative issue of the Word. The final section of the article will draw on the description of the extensive references in the relation between words and the Word.

In this chapter, I draw on Michel Foucault to explain the mechanisms of marginalization of women from working-class origins in academic institutions in the context of the U.S.A. Next, I explain how the discursive construction of the working classes as “the Other” in academic knowledge production is part of a disciplinary power that functions to keep women from working-class origins either out or at the margins of academic institutions. In academic institutions, disciplinary power aims to discipline the bodies and minds (...) of working-class women into the norm of bourgeois and male subjectivity. Finally, I suggest strategies that counter gender and class disciplining in academia. (shrink)

This chapter provides a general introduction to the theoretical frameworks the contributors to the volume Feminists Contest Politics and Philosophy draw on to address wide-ranging topics and critical questions in feminist politics, theory, and philosophy. In particular, this chapter outlines the four major topics – aesthetics and female representation, love and psychoanalysis, care and ethics, and the different understandings of ‘women,’ which are core in the volume.

Livro: DAWSON, Christopher. A divisão da cristandade : Da reforma protestante à era do iluminismo. São Paulo: É Realizações Editora, 2014.

A renewed interest in the old problem of the relationship between science and metaphysics has been fuelled by the ongoing debate between naturalistic metaphysicians and non-naturalistic metaphysicians. However, I maintain that this debate is missing the mark because it is focused on the problem of the credibility of a metaphysics that is not ‘scientific’, instead of focusing on the presence of metaphysics in science. In order to show that metaphysics pervades all stages of scientific inquiry, and after analysing the distinction (...) between presuppositions and assumptions, I address the complex problem of the relation of metaphysics to truth and to experience. I advocate that there is an indirect relation of metaphysics to experience and that it is possible to choose between rival metaphysical theories. But metaphysics, according to my view, is not present in science merely as a background of presuppositions and assumptions. It is present at every step of the scientific inquiry and also in a later moment: the interpretation of the findings of science and the elaboration of unifying theories. Keywords: science, metaphysics, presuppositions, truth, experience, unification. (shrink)

Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.

Although motherhood is the female destiny par excellence in the biblical narrative, it is an experience only accessible through a male point of view. In order to reflect on the problems of representation of the maternal body in the Hebrew Bible, I propose an analysis of different maternal characters present in the books of Samuel and Kings. My reading aims, on the one hand, to identify the features that define the maternal in the biblical text and, on the other hand, (...) to offer an approach that allows to point to the implications that the crisis context the texts reflect have on the picture of the actions and the destinies of these female characters. (shrink)

I argue that there are good reasons to deny both type-type and token-token mind-brain identity theories. Yet on the other hand there are compelling reasons for thinking that there is a causal basis for the mind. I argue that a path out of this impasse involves not only showing that criteria of individuation do not determine identity, but also that there are sound methodological reasons for thinking that the cause of intelligent behavior is a real natural kind. Finally, a commitment (...) to this methodology suggests both that these familiar anti-reductionist arguments fail to establish that identity is impossible and at the same time suggest that the preferred alternative will be some version of neutral monism. (shrink)