In this paper, I sketch out Merleau-Ponty’s theory of subjectivity as it is presented in the Phenomenology of Perception. I will start by showing that Merleau-Ponty’s theory presupposes Sartre’s notion of consciousness as anonymous and pre-reflective. Merleau-Ponty takes up these features and embeds them in the lived body. The result is Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the tacit cogito as pre-reflective subjectivity, always presupposed in our everyday embodied engagement with the world and in every explicit reflexive grasp of ourselves as such. Further, (...) I show that the outcome of reflection, the spoken cogito, presupposes linguistic ability and thus the expressive power of the body. In the end I argue that, contrary to Sartre, who viewed pre-reflective consciousness as a nothing, for Merleau-Ponty the lived body or tacit cogito is always something in and of the world. (shrink)

The review is devoted to a joint monograph of Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values published in 2019. The peculiarity and novelty of this monograph is that it is devoted not so much to the cognitive and epistemological aspects of phenomenology of intersubjectivity as to ethical, existential and value problems of relations with the Others, presented in various phenomenological concepts. One of the advantages of the work is the pluralistic approach, which allows the reader to get acquainted with the solutions (...) to the problem of intersubjectivity posed by a number of the most prominent phenomenologists, i. e. Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel, Levinas and others. The book traces the idea that emerging of the topic of intersubjectivity in phenomenology caused a socio-ethical and axiological shift in the phenomenological movement. Considering moving of modern philosophy towards “the intersubjective paradigm”, the aim of the authors of the monograph to show the relevance and innovation of phenomenology in discussing the problems of the Other, communication and ethics can be assessed as a promising theoretical project. Whereas critics of the phenomenological movement reproached “methodological solipsism” of phenomenology, which develops Cartesian-Kantian subjectivism, a serious analysis of the works of the most prominent representatives of the phenomenological tradition leads the authors of the monograph to the conclusion that a phenomenological subject is social in its essence. The review draws a conclusion that the joint monograph brings into sharp focus that phenomenology is in possession of deep and diverse ways of studying the common being of people and collectively shared values. (shrink)

Análise da relação entre lei natural e natureza humana em Tomás de Aquino, a partir da Summa theologiae (STh. Ia-IIae, q. 94, a. 2 ad 2). O texto pretende destacar alguns problemas relacionados à noção clássica de natureza humana e como ela pode ser vinculada à lei moral natural. A noção de bem transcendental é vista como fundamento dos primeiros princípios da razão prática. Essa perspectiva transcendental deve nos conduzir a uma visão normativa sobre o papel das inclinações naturais na (...) concepção de lei natural. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo do texto consiste em propor uma perspectiva hermenêutica acerca da relação entre as noções de beatitudo e religio na Summa theologiae de Tomás de Aquino. A religião não é considerada por Tomás como virtude teologal, mas sim como virtude moral. Por outro lado, argumenta-se que as contribuições neoplatônicas de Dionísio e Agostinho são fundamentais no sentido de articular a busca da perfecta beatitudo do ser humano na visão da essência de Deus.

A presente discussão pretende relacionar a temática da literatura de Lourenço Mutarelli, a filosofia de Deleuze e Guattari com o princípio pluralista. A proposta consiste em sinalizar os elementos convergentes nas obras de Mutarelli com a proposta teológica pluralista. Para tanto analisará as obras: O Natimorto; Nada me faltará e O cheiro do ralo visando evidenciar as tônicas teológicas que nela existem e apresenta-las numa proposta de libertação comprometida com a vida e com a emancipação humana.

In this paper I explain the impact of phenomenological philosophy in the conceptions of Luís Cabral de Mancada about law and juridical experience. Stressing that Moncada was the first scholar in Portugal who made an extensive use of phenomenological doctrines within his own field of research, I show that Husserl, Hartmann, and Scheler were the most influential thinkers for him. As a matter of fact, they had a positive impact on Moncada’s conceptions about Law, the axiological realm, the State, (...) and jusnaturalism. (shrink)

À quoi bon la pensée? Pour de nombreux chercheurs, inspirés par les théories évolutionnistes, la pensée réfléchie est utile à notre espèce. Elle lui confère des avantages importants et contribue à son succès reproductif. Pourtant ses avantages ne sont pas si évidents. La pensée ne figure ni dans les mécanismes de l'évolution qui ont façonné la vie, ni parmi les procédés dont se servent la plupart des organismes pour s'y maintenir. Dans Évolution et rationalité, Ronald de Sousa montre que, (...) pour comprendre les avantages de la pensée réfléchie, il faut changer nos présupposés relatifs à la rationalité et reconnaître la multiplicité de ses dimensions. La rationalité ne nous sert pas seulement à avoir des croyances vraies et à agir de manière efficace dans un environnement changeant. Elle nous aide à gérer nos plaisirs et nos peines dans le temps et nous permet d'envisager des situations qui n'existent pas. En général, le statut de la rationalité comme ensemble de capacités ayant évolué dans le cours de l'histoire naturelle de notre espèce, passant des tropismes aux désirs et de la détection à la représentation, n'a pas été pris suffisamment au sérieux. Suivre ce processus d'évolution de la rationalité permet de comprendre comment elle est devenue une norme, mais aussi pourquoi il lui arrive aussi souvent d'échouer. Ronald de Sousa a profondément modifié nos façons de concevoir les émotions. Avec Évolution et rationalité, il pourrait avoir une influence aussi décisive sur nos façons de concevoir la rationalité. (shrink)

Book review: Habermas, J. (2023). Uma nova mudança estrutural da esfera pública e a política deliberativa. Tradução de Denilson Luís Werle. São Paulo: Editora Unesp.

A short introduction to the medievalist Armindo de Sousa, in which the author analyses the most relevant aspects of this scholar's professional and academic life and illustrates the most significant lines of study and features of his work.

Neste artigo analisaremos como a filosofia de Charles Sanders Peirce influencia o pensamento de Karl-Otto Apel na elaboração da sua ética do discurso. Pretendemos mostrar que Apel compreende que Peirce elabora uma transformação da filosofia transcendental kantiana, substituindo o “eu penso” por um “eu argumento”, neste viés Peirce demonstrou a existência de um acordo mútuo intersubjetivo dentro da comunidade científica. Sendo que, este acordo é mediado pela linguagem, e se dá em função da garantia da verdade das proposições. Conclui-se que (...) Apel ver em Peirce a introdução de uma ética mínima que supera o solipsismo metódico, e se baseia na intersubjetividade, tornando possível um acordo mútuo, que mais tarde será a base para a fundamentação pragmático-transcendental da ética do discurso. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar o projeto arquitetônico de fundamentação da ética do discurso desenvolvido por Karl-Otto Apel, a partir da década de 70. Pretendemos mostrar que Apel, a partir da linguagem, buscará desenvolver uma ética da responsabilidade para a sociedade global. Neste sentido, a linguagem enquanto médium intransponível de toda reflexão teórica e prática fundamenta uma intersubjetividade, que torna possível uma ética do acordo mútuo. Esta ética buscará dar conta, não apenas do plano normativo, mas, levará em consideração, (...) também, o âmbito prático de fundamentação. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 43 Heft: 1 Seiten: 298-305.

This paper proposes to reconstruct Boaventura de Sousa Santos' conception of "epistemologies of the south" both (a) as a critical theory aiming at denouncing the impoverishment of the epistemic field entailed by the normative imposition of a certain model of knowledge (what we call "the monoculture of reason"), and (b) as a long-term political project of a harmonic coexistence of different epistemologies ("an ecology of knowledges").

Esta Nota pretende pensar limites da atualização de Tomás de Aquino por Luís Carlos Silva de Sousa em seu artigo “Conhecimento e participação nas razões eternas em Tomás de Aquino: duas leituras” (Síntese, v. 48, n. 151, 2021), com a hipótese de que uma metafísica tomista sem lastro na física aristotélica torna-se inconsistente e uma mitologia. Palavras-chave: Tomismo. Transcendental. Hermenêutica. Ontologia. Metafísica.

Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, (...) are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Do we love someone for their virtue, their beauty, or their moral or other qualities? Are love's characteristic desires altruistic or selfish? Are there duties of love? What do the sciences tell us about love? In this Very Short Introduction, Ronald de Sousa explores the different kinds of love, from affections to romantic love.

This study aims to examine the ethical decision-making model proposed by Schwartz, where we consider the factors of non-rationality and aspects that affect ethical judgments of auditors to make the decision to blow the whistle. In this paper, we argue that the intention of whistleblowing depends on ethical awareness and ethical judgment as well as there is a mediation–moderation due to emotion and perceived moral intensity of auditors. Data were collected using an online survey with 162 external auditors who worked (...) on audit firms in Indonesia as well as 173 internal auditors working in the manufacturing and financial services. The result of multigroup analysis shows that emotion can mediate the relationship between EAW and EJW. The nature of this relationship is more complex and then tested by adding moderating variables using consistent partial least squares approach. We found that EMT and PMI can improve the relationship between ethical judgments and whistleblowing intentions. These findings indicate that internal auditors are more likely to blow the whistle than external auditors; and reporting wrongdoing internally and anonymously are the preferred way of professional accountants to blow the whistle in Indonesia. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, despite the progress made in recent years, virtue argumentation theory still lacks a more systematic acknowledgment of other-regarding virtues. A fuller recognition of such virtues not only enriches the field of research of virtue argumentation theory in significant ways, but also allows for a richer and more intuitive view of the virtuous arguer. A fully virtuous arguer, it is argued, should care to develop both self-regarding and other-regarding virtues. He should be concerned both with (...) his own development as an arguer and with helping other arguers in that regard. (shrink)

In this essay, I will focus on the two main objections that have been adduced against the moral acceptability of contempt: the fact that it embraces a whole person and not merely some deed or aspect of a person’s character, and the way that when addressed to a person in this way, it amounts to a denial of the very personhood of its target.

In this urbane and witty book, Ronald de Sousa disputes the widespread notion that reason and emotion are natural antagonists.

A neurociência visa entender o funcionamento do cérebro e sua influência no comportamento consciente. Achados neurocientíficos recentes sugerem que processos decisórios são causados por eventos neurobiológicos. A partir destes achados, alguns neurocientistas “decidiram” defender a hipótese de que o cérebro seria o real causador das ações. O determinismo neural implícito sugere que “racionalidade” e “consciência” seriam ilusórias. Esta visão vai contra uma concepção clássica de racionalidade. Contudo, aceitar ou não esta nova ideia requer um tipo de racionalidade mínima capaz de (...) estabelecer a verdade ou a falsidade das proposições, e que permite emitir juízos acerca das coisas. Além disso, o alegado novo conhecimento neurocientífico não parece robusto o suficiente para apoiar um argumento em favor da substituição da concepção clássica de racionalidade. Este texto visa discutir a plausibilidade desta argumentação através da análise de três casos paradigmáticos da literaturaneurocientífica e da proposição de um modelo de racionalidade restrita exclusiva do Homo Sapiens. (shrink)

The word "truth" retains, in common use, traces of origins that link it to trust, truth, and truce, connoting ideas of fidelity, loyalty, and authenticity. The word has become, in contemporary philosophy, encased in a web of technicalities, but we know that a true image is a faithful portrait; a true friend a loyal one. In a novel or a poem, too, we have a feel for what is emotionally true, though we are not concerned with the actuality of events (...) and characters depicted. To have emotions is to care about certain things: we can wonder whether those things are really worth caring about. We can wonder whether our passions reflect who we are, and whether they constitute fitting responses to the vicissitudes of life. So there are two aspects to emotional truth: how well an emotion reflects the threats and promises of the world, and how well it reflects our own individual nature. That is the starting point of this book, which looks first at the analogies and disanalogies between strict propositional truth and a looser, "generic" sense of truth. As applied to emotions, generic truth is closer to those original meanings: as in a portrait's fidelity or friend's loyalty. Taken in this sense, the notion of emotional truth opens up large vistas on areas of life essential to our existence as social beings, and to our concerns with beauty, morality, love, death, sex, knowledge, desire, coherence, and happiness. Each of those topics illustrates some facet of the dominant theme of the book: the crucial but often ambivalent role of our emotions in grounding and yet also sometimes undermining our values. Emotions act, in holistic perspective, as ultimate arbiters of values where different and independently justified standards of value compete. (shrink)

Femininity and whiteness dominate Western nursing, silencing ontologies and epistemologies that do not align with these dominant norms while perpetuating systemic racism and discrimination in nursing practice, education, research, nursing activism, and sociopolitical structures. We propose Black feminist thought as a praxis to decenter, deconstruct, and unseat these ideologies and systems of power. Drawing from the work of past and present Black feminist scholars, we examine the ontological and epistemological perspectives of Black feminist thought. These include (i) the uniqueness and (...) particular experiences of people, (ii) the acceptance of ontological and epistemological pluralism of truths and ways of knowing, and (iii) the mandate for equity in the health, social, political, and environmental structures of society. By focusing our attention on lived experiences and voices of those systematically excluded in nursing practice, education, research, and society, Black feminist thought offers an anticolonial, antiracist, and antidiscriminatory foundation for more effectively upholding nursing's disciplinary mandate for social justice and equity. (shrink)

Emotions can be the subject of moral judgments; they can also constitute the basis for moral judgments. The apparent circularity which arises if we accept both of these claims is the central topic of this paper: how can emotions be both judge and party in the moral court? The answer I offer regards all emotions as potentially relevant to ethics, rather than singling out a privileged set of moral emotions. It relies on taking a moderate position both on the question (...) of the naturalness of emotions and on that of their objectivity as revealers of value: emotions are neither simply natural nor socially constructed, and they apprehend objective values, but those values are multidimensional and relative to human realities. The axiological position I defend jettisons the usual foundations for ethical judgments, and grounds these judgments instead on a rationally informed reflective equilibrium of comprehensive emotional attitudes, tempered with a dose of irony. (shrink)

Este artigo parte da análise do Impressionismo, do abstracionismo de Kazimir Malevich e dos penetráveis de Hélio Oiticica para pensar o processo de eliminação das bordas do quadro-pintura. A tese de Oiticica é a de que, no momento em que viveu e atuou, o quadro-pintura passa a prescindir das bordas, derramando-se para fora dele e se constituindo como modus vivendi, eliminando, assim, a noção de um fora e um dentro. Com isso, defende a substituição do espectador pela do participador. Perguntamo-nos (...) se o cinema, com suas bordas móveis, também é tocado por essas mudanças. Para tanto, tomaremos O Cinema Novo e o Cinema Marginal. Por fim, pensamos se a instituição escolar, como herdeira dessas questões, tem se inserido nesse debate e qual tem ou seria seu papel. Nesse sentido, fica a pergunta sobre o que se deve esperar dessa instituição depois da diluição do quadro e das vanguardas históricas. (shrink)

How should we understand the emotional rationality? This first part will explore two models of cognition and analogy strategies, test their intuition about the emotional desire. I distinguish between subjective and objective desire, then presents with a feeling from the "paradigm of drama" export semantics, here our emotional repertoire is acquired all the learned, and our emotions in the form of an object is fixed. It is pretty well in line with the general principles of rationality, especially the lowest reasonable (...) principles. Turned to the second part of this side of reasonable. I will inquire how emotional beliefs, desires, and behaviors contribute to the rationality. I will present a very general biological hypothesis: emotions by controlling highlights the characteristics of perception and reasoning, so that we remove the difficulties due in particular to lead to paralysis; they are being simulated by a simplified perception of information, thus limiting our practice and cognitive choice. How are we to understand emotional or axiological rationality? I pursue analogies with both the cognitive and the strategic models, testing them against intuitions about emotional desires. We distinguish two different classes of desires, the subjective and the objective, and propose that emotions have a semantics that derives from "paradigmatic scenarios", in terms of which our emotional repertoire is learned and the formal objects of our emotions fixed. This fits in well with emerging facts about how our emotional capacities develop, and it can also be squared with the general principles of rationality, particularly minimal rationality. In the second part, I return to the perspective of rationality. I ask how emotions contribute to the rationality of beliefs, desires, and behavior. I proffer a very general biological hypothesis: Emotions spare us the paralysis potentially induced by a particular predicament by controlling the salience of features of perception and reasoning; they temporarily mimic the informational encapsulation of perception and so circumscribe our practical and cognitive options. (shrink)

O domínio persistente das elites políticas no âmbito de diferentes governos representativos contemporâneos, aliado à descaracterização da natureza programática dos partidos políticos têm levado a uma intensa reflexão, nos últimos anos, acerca dos limites e capacidades da democracia como sistema de governo. Problemas como a persistência de profundas desigualdades sociais e a incapacidade de inclusão das minorias – e até mesmo de maiorias, como no caso brasileiro – apontam para um processo de “oligarquização” das democracias, marcado por uma tentativa de (...) “neutralização política do povo”, em todo incompatível com os valores republicanos e democráticos. Em um caso de tamanha sub-representação, no qual setores majoritários da sociedade são governados sistematicamente por setores minoritários, como garantir que o ideal de não-dominação seja assegurado? Partindo da constatação dos limites práticos dos governos representativos contemporâneos em geral, e do caso brasileiro, em particular, o propósito deste artigo é debater em que medida a proposta de “democracia aberta” de Hélène Landemore, que propõe a recuperação da prática do sorteio como expressão do elemento democrático, é compatível com o pensamento republicano. (shrink)