Este estudio se ocupa del control social del cuerpo y de la reconfiguración de la memoria popular en películas de horror a través de la perspectiva genealógica de Foucault, presentada en su libro Vigilar y Castigar, publicado hace 40 años. Por lo tanto, tomaremos, À l’interieur e Frontière (s), dos producciones de horror cinematográfico hechas por directores franceses, ambos publicados en 2007. La hipótesis principal es que las películas de terror se muestran como una nueva forma de vigilancia y control (...) social del cuerpo. Por otro lado, también puede recodificar la memoria popular apropiándose de acontecimientos polítcos y/o revolucionarios como en las películas comentadas por Foucault en la revista Cahiers de Cinéma en 1974 políticas, aunque no sean las películas de terror. (shrink)

Nesta edição especial, O Corpo é discurso apresenta os resultados do Curso A construção do sujeito em Kant - As luzes de Foucault, organizado pelo professor Nílton Milanez e por Jamille Silva Santos, integrante do Labedisco e mestranda do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística, pela Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia.

Autor de mais de uma vintena de livros, entre eles o bestseller A alma imoral, o rabino Nilton Bonder reflete, no inédito Alma & política, sobre o lugar da política na evolução humana e o sectarismo presente no cenário político atual, no Brasil e no mundo, a partir da sabedoria judaica. Traçando um paralelo entre dois antigos conceitos da tradição judaica – Mekil, mais brando e flexível, e Machmir, mais intransigente – e as duas linhas preponderantes de pensamento político (...) – Democrata e Republicano –, Bonder afirma que cada indivíduo possui uma “Alma” predominantemente Democrata ou Republicana. O objetivo do livro é justamente examinar as maneiras como essa Alma se inclina para um ou outro lado e buscar os caminhos para que essas inclinações que dividem a humanidade entre conservadores e liberais, direita e esquerda não se radicalizem a ponto de impedir o respeito e a convivência harmoniosa entre pessoas que pensam de formas diferentes. (shrink)

Nosso artigo tem como objetivo apresentar as posições do Papa Francisco em relação a temática da Ecologia em seus discursos, homilias, audiências entre outros pronunciamentos antes da publicação da encíclica Laudato Si’. Percorreremos esses pronunciamentos desde a primeira manifestação pública do Papa após sua eleição até a data da publicação da Encíclica. Na encíclica Laudato Si’ há um forte apelo à conversão ecológica a partir do entendimento do encontro com Jesus feitos nas relações com o mundo em sua totalidade: humano, (...) material e imaterial. O próprio papa, em um dos pronunciamentos que iremos apresentar, trata de seu percurso ecológico de cardeal Jorge Mario Bergoglio até tornar-se Papa, um caminho que o sumo pontífice convida a todas e todos realizarem. Nosso objetivo é demonstrar como essas posições assumidas na Laudato Si’ foram se construindo ao longo dos anos. Nossa conclusão é a de que essa conversão ecológica, inicialmente apresentada pelo Papa e por nós mapeada em seus pronunciamentos, deve ser, respeitando as individualidades, a conversão ecológica de toda Igreja Católica. (shrink)

Este artigo busca voltar-se ao corpus do saber do século XVI, época compreendida como a Era das similitudes, segundo leitura de Michel Foucault. Interessa-nos a aproximação da ordem prática do período - rica em sinais e grafias - a fim de determo-nos em sua devida concepção de mundo - rica em simbologia. Nesta análise, o mundo renascentista estará envolto a uma intensificação do exercício de ordenamento, regido por formas segundo as quais as semelhanças se dão a conhecer: as chamadas figuras (...) das similitudes - signatura, convenientia, aemulatio, analogia e simpatia. Além disso, aderente a um fundo de configuração geral, será enfatizado a noção de círculo como referencial figurativo cabível ao entendimento do espaço geral do saber renascentista. Da noção de círculo remeteremos à prática de circulação das similitudes, e através disso, indicaremos um mundo renascentista decifrado ou interpretado segundo uma rede esgotável, no limite das próprias órbitas circulares emanadas do ajustamento de semelhanças. Na prática, o uso de uma marcação simbólica - inclusive, extensa à dimensão cósmica – possibilita-nos a visualizar um arranjo do como, mediante ordenamento do saber, são promovidas certas disposições “entre” e “para” as coisas e pessoas no mundo. (shrink)

Este artigo tem o propósito de destacar uma configuração simbólica do período renascentista e suas correspondentes práticas históricas. Investigaremos a marcas do mundo e o uso de símbolos no estabelecimento de vínculos humanos. A abordagem se conduzirá pela ordem das Similitudes, mediada pela leitura de Michel Foucault, trazendo ainda contribuições de Ernst H. Kantorowicz, com o estudo de Os Dois Corpos do Rei. Apresentaremos, em um contexto territorial, o cenário de um sistema político denominado macrofísica da soberania. Além de uma (...) exposição compenetrada na figura do rei soberano, daremos atenção à presença do modelo familiar patriarcal, ambos conectados, nesta análise, por um exercício de poder fortalecido pela propagação e circulação de marcas simbólicas no mundo. (shrink)

_____This book challenges us to take a broad and ethical view of economic behavior, which includes all forms of exchange and human interaction, from how we spend our money to how we fulfill our role as responsible human beings in a global ecological framework. Drawing on Jewish ethical teachings, mystical lore, and tales of the Hasidic masters, the author examines a wide range of subjects, including competition, partnerships, and contracts, loans and interest, the laws of fair exchange, and tips and (...) presents. _____ The Kabbalistic teachings in this book not only impart wisdom about the world of money, but also lead us to self-understanding and the magic of knowing who we are, what we really want, and how to receive it. _____. (shrink)

Neste artigo analisamos uma experiência, no campo da assistência social, desenvolvida na última década em Porto Alegre, a partir da contribuição da categoria formação. Enfatizamos a importância das atividades geradoras de renda por mulheres papeleiras junto aos galpões de reciclagem. A compreensão dessa prática social também envolve um processo formativo que incide também nos agentes de mediação bem como no conjunto da população.

Este artigo apresenta a relação existente entre a proposta de quatro escolas noturnas, criadas para crianças que trabalhavam nos serviços de capina nas ruas de Porto Alegre, e o processo mais amplo, de construção de futuros cidadãos, a partir da perspectiva positivista. A categoria analítica 'formação' permite explicar esse processo numa perspectiva relacionada à urbanização e industrialização, que estavam transformando a 'vida urbana' da cidade de Porto Alegre no primeiro quarto deste século. Dados retirados dos Relatórios da Intendência Municipal serviram (...) de base para a explicitação de como efetivamente este processo de formação se desenvolveu. (shrink)

RESUMO: Em grande medida, os estudos sobre a constituição do arcabouço teórico do lacanismo têm ocorrido ao largo do exame de sua historicidade. Essa negligência reforça o ocultamento do processo social que levou a produção lacaniana a uma profunda integração entre a formalização e a etificação da teoria. Esse processo não pode ser compreendido sem a contextualização crítica da conjuntura política que cercou a proposta e a existência da École Freudienne de Paris, fundada por Lacan, em 1964. A estreita convivência (...) com os jovens militantes dos grupos da esquerda extraparlamentar da época, notadamente os maoístas, e a assimilação de suas problematizações fizeram do pensamento lacaniano e da EFP o espaço de objetivação de um discurso movido pela paráfrase política e seus efeitos de engajamento. Este artigo pretende expor as linhas de estruturação político-social dos conceitos forjados por Lacan, em meio à instituição e à consolidação de sua Escola. ABSTRACT: To a great extent the studies of the constitution of the Lacanism theoretical framework have occurred off the examination of its historicity. This neglect strengthens the concealment of the social process that led the Lacanian production to a deep integration between the theory formalization and the theory ethification. This process can not be understood without grasping the context of the political environment that surrounded the proposal and the existence of École Freudienne de Paris, founded by Lacan in 1964. The close contact with the young militants of the extra-parliamentary left groups of the time, notably the Maoists, and the assimilation of the problems they rose made the Lacanian thought and EFP the place of objectification of a speech moved by the political paraphrase and their engagement effects. This article aims to expose the lines of political and social structure of concepts forged by Lacan through the establishment and consolidation of his School. (shrink)

This article intends to run through the appropriation made by Judith Butler about the theme of mourning, and how this concept is modified and mixed in her work, when she works it initially in a debate as an inceptive political category and more radically in its clinical meaning in Psychic Life of Power, until her transition work and the theoretical construction of her ethics and/or political philosophy in Precarious Life, a book in which she will explicitly develop mourning as an (...) ethical-political category and one of the fundamental vectors of her theory. Furthermore, the text intends to present an attempt, still latent, to understand or hypothesize the way Butler makes a dialogue between Psychoanalysis and Politics, in a much less simple way than may appear in the externality of her texts. (shrink)

Entre os meses de outubro e novembro de 1983, Michel Foucault proferiu, em Berkeley, seisconferências, problematizando as relações do sujeito com a verdade, a partir do conceito grego deparresía (παρρησία). Essas conferências, como tantas outras que compunham uma série de cursosoferecidos pelo filósofo francês, foram gravadas, posteriormente, transcritas e organizadas em livrosque colaboram de modo singular com pesquisas até os dias atuais. As conferências foram editadas pelaUniversidade de Berkeley em 1985 e foram traduzidas no Brasil, ganhando formato de artigos, no (...) anode 2013, organizadas e publicadas pela equipe da Revista Prometeus, sob a coordenação do prof. Dr.Aldo Dinucci da Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS). (shrink)

Este artigo trata de dois eixos epistêmicos, a saber, a questão da parresía em Foucault e a questão da relação mestre-discípulo no estoicismo. Para tanto, propomos a problematização das dimensões históricofilosóficas que circundam a relação entre mestre e discípulo sustentada pelos conceitos gregos: conhecimento de si (gnôthhi seauton) e cuidado de si (epimeleisthai seauton). Mostramos como a coragem da verdade emerge dessa injunção, atravessando o governo do outro. Essa articulação nos lança a uma hermenêutica de si, o que nos permite (...) refletir sobre modos parresiásticos de nosso tempo. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Parresía; Mestre-Discípulo; Conhecimento de Si; Cuidado de Si; Governo do Outro; Hermenêutica de Si, Verdade. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo é sobre o papel da Idade Média nos currículos escolares. Foram consideradas duas versões da BNCC: a publicada em 2015 e a publicada em 2016. A partir da concepção que a aprendizagem histórica se dá também pela via do estranhamento, e considerando a “medievalística”, “medievalidade” e “reminiscências medievais”, problematiza-se o ensino de História da Idade Média no Brasil, a partir de algumas entradas. Entradas são oportunidades de inserções temáticas do medievo no contexto escolar: discursos midiáticos sobre o (...) islã, diferenças entre Ocidente e Oriente e residualidades. Conclui-se que pode haver espaço para a Idade Média na Base desde que ampliada a compreensão do ensino de História para além dos “usos do passado”. Considera-se o ensino de Idade Média uma etapa importante na escolarização básica que pode favorecer a crítica e a compreensão das apropriações feitas do medievo. (shrink)

Este estudo tem como objetivo principal discutir qual o lugar da memória nas pesquisas históricas empreendidas pelo filósofo francês Michel Foucault, o qual foi responsável pelo desenvolvimento de duas frentes metodológicas de trabalho: a arqueologia do saber e a genealogia do poder, conhecidas hoje como arqueogenealogia foucaultiana. Ao longo de mais de 30 anos dedicados a estas pesquisas, Michel Foucault ganhou projeção nacional e internacional pela sua inquietante forma de aliar a militância política com o trabalho acadêmico, demonstrando, com isso, (...) qual era o papel do intelectual frente aos desafios e demandas no mundo do pós-guerra. Recebeu a maior honraria no mundo da intelectualidade francesa ao ser eleito professor do célebre Collège de France, assumindo, por mais de uma década, a cátedra história dos sistemas de pensamentos. Em uma de suas últimas entrevistas, declarou que todos os seus gestos tinham como principal objetivo: criar a história como os seres humanos se tornam sujeitos em nossa cultura. Esta declaração deixa evidente qual o lugar que a história ocupa em sua obra, mas qual seria o lugar da memória nesses seus empreendimentos? Por que a história aparece em seu trabalho como lugar privilegiado enquanto a memória tem um lugar de coadjuvante? São estas as reflexões iniciais que buscamos realizar neste nosso trabalho. (shrink)

Este trabalho busca refletir sobre os efeitos materiais do acontecimento e da biopolítica, ou seja, buscamos entrar na ordem do acontecimento e da biolítica pela via da arqueogenealogia de Foucault. Para isso, vamos retomar a questão “como pode um acontecimento ser escrito?”, lançada por Barthes no mesmo ano em que ocorreu o acontecimento do Maio de 1968, para refletir sobre outro acontecimento: o Outubro de 2005, também ocorrido na França, quando vamos demonstrar que os filmes de horror também podem fazer (...) parte da escritura do acontecimento e enunciar discursos da biopolítica, como nós demonstraremos na análise de "Frontières" e "À l’interieur". (shrink)

In this article, we seek to demonstrate how horror movies can be part of writing a political and historical event. Our reflection takes up the question that appears in Barthes in a text called The Writing of the Event, which contains an analysis of May 1968 in France. We looked at two horror movies that contain memories of October 2005 and reflected on "who are we and what we do today?”. Our goal is to contribute to the diagnosis of the (...) present. (shrink)

A semelhança entre o padrão de interação dos neurônios do cérebro humano e a colônia de formigas torna esta última objeto da hipótese de ser uma estrutura apta a ter uma consciência. Assim, neste artigo, a definição de Thomas Nagel da consciência como algo que é ser para um organismo se torna basilar para o exame dela como um possível sujeito experiencial. A colônia de formigas, se considerada um organismo, poderia ser um sujeito apto a ter experiências internas. Por isso, (...) neste artigo, eu desenvolvo com base no Pampsiquismo, critérios de análise da colônia, apresentando quais características ela deve atender para ser qualificada como consciente. Dessa maneira, ela se torna um modelo apropriado para o exame da relação corpo-mente. Não defendo que a colônia de formigas é um organismo genuíno, mas que, caso seja, terá algum tipo de experiência consciente. No tratamento dessa questão, eu examino se a colônia é um indivíduo biológico, e, em seguida, se é possível que as mentes das formigas embasem a mente da colônia. Concluo que, a partir do modo de interação das partes com o todo, pode haver mais de uma resolução para o problema, i.e., a consciência da colônia depende do modo como seus componentes estão física e fenomenalmente integrados. (shrink)

O presente artigo apresenta um recorte de uma pesquisa de trabalho de conclusão de curso, cujo objetivo foi analisar as especificidades de como ocorre a Educação de Jovens e Adultos – EJA – de mulheres que vivem em situação carcerária, bem como as contribuições e limitações do processo educacional para a ressignificação e reinserção na sociedade. Especificamente a pesquisa se propõe a compreender como ocorre a Educação de Jovens e Adultos no sistema penitenciário feminino; apontar as contribuições da EJA no (...) processo de escolarização e reinserção de mulheres que vivem em situação de cárcere; e identificar as dificuldades e limitações encontradas na promoção da aprendizagem escolar no sistema prisional feminino no Conjunto Penal Nilton Gonçalves em Vitória da Conquista–BA. Optamos por uma pesquisa exploratória, de caráter qualitativo na perspectiva de desenvolvermos um estudo de caso. A pesquisa aponta a necessidade de ser estabelecido um processo educacional que contribua para ressignificação e ressocialização da pessoa encarcerada, bem como programas com práticas sócio-educativas que são garantidos por lei, mas que na prática pouco acontecem. (shrink)

Seria um abuso sexual o príncipe roubar um beijo da Bela Adormecida? Quem brinca de polícia e ladrão pode virar bandido? Games violentos criam assassinos? Mas quem nunca matou uma formiga? E quem nunca "roubou pão na casa do João"? O filósofo Luiz Felipe Pondé se une aqui a Ilan Brenman, psicólogo e premiado autor de livros infantis, para fazer um panorama do politicamente correto e discutir suas influências na formação das crianças e, consequentemente, dos adultos que elas se (...) tornarão. Os autores mostram que essa verdadeira patrulha do pensamento tem nos feito perder a capacidade de interpretar a vida, com seus símbolos e suas ironias. Com isso, vemos um número cada vez maior de pessoas com dificuldades em lidar com as emoções que sentem, deprimidas e inseguras. A obra provoca a refletir: talvez o lobo mau não viva apenas nos contos de fadas, mas esteja a nos espreitar na escola, na família, na política, na sociedade, enfim. Para enfrentá-lo, ser livre para pensar e se expressar é fundamental. (shrink)

Resenha do livro: NASCIMENTO, Camila do; A ciência como legitimadora do racismo. Formiga (MG): MultiAtual, 2021. 50 p.

The fifth volume of Richard Rorty's "Philosophical papers" published by Cambridge University Press, consists of the works which American philosopher wrote at the very dawn of his career in 1960s and early 1970s. In these essays Rorty addresses issues of transcendental argumentation, the internalism/externalism controversy, mind-body dualism and psychophysical monism, semantic truth, reference and justification. Supplemented by Daniel Dennett's Foreword, the book gives an excellent idea of Rorty's «analytical» writings and his evolution from eliminative materialism to pragmatism.

The author discusses B.G. Yudin's image technoscience as having two contours, the external one dealing with science, business and society, and the internal one represented by laboratories. Together these two contours present a multidimensional net of relations between science and technology in conducting experiments, development of instruments (e.g. visualization tools), etc. The author argues that, in such a system, coordinated activity of the internal and the external contours is provided by a synergy of regulatory principles of truth, good and usefulness. (...) He discusses a case of synthetic biology which, as he argues, demonstrates that the internal and external contours of technoscience undergo a process of technologization. Technologization is understood as a transition from research techniques to systematic use of technologies. Biotechnologies are claimed to have a double socio-biological helix network structure. Each network is formed as a kind of ad hoc "factory" and is aimed at solving specific research problems. (shrink)

The article focuses on the formation of Kant's table of judgments. The author proves the dependence of Kant's table of judgments on the doctrine of judgment in German 17th century logic. The author proves the influence of George Meier’s «Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre » on formation of the Kantian doctrine of judgment and the table of judgments. This effect consists in the fact that the starting point for Kant's search of the concept of judgment was Meier's definition of judgment in (...) § 292 of «Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre », Kant's table of judgments in «Critique of Pure Reason» appeared as a follow-up of twenty-five critical reflection at §§ 292-352 of Meier's treatise. However, Kant's table of judgments depends also on transcendental logic. The original forms of judgment in Kant's table of judgments contain functional unities, which create the subject of a judgment. Kant's table of judgments depends on both German tradition of 17th century logic and the theory of subject as a part of Kant's transcendental logic. (shrink)

The study of Kant’s anthropology, proposed by Viktor Kozlovskyi in its original and thorough monograph, is an entirely new interpretation of Kant’s answer to the fundamental question “What is man?”. On the basis of the philosopher’s heritage and taking into account the large body of research lit-erature, Kozlovskyi reconstructs five conceptual “human models” in Kant’s anthropological discourse. However, this study contains a number of problematic statements and conclusions. I argue first, that there is some inconsistency between Kant’s understanding of the (...) concept of “anthropology” and Ko-zlovskyi’s explanation. Second, the model of man as intelligible being, made explicit through the con-cepts of “freedom” and “spontaneity”, is a justified construction within the limits of criticism, but not quite correct with regard to the place and function of “anthropology” in it. Third, we can see a disso-nance between Kozlovskyi’s explanation of the constellations as “chronotopes-events” and interpreta-tion of this concept by Dieter Henrich’s school, where the methodology of “research constellations” was used to elucidate the early phase of German idealism. However, this leads to the cardinal question of how far this methodology is applicable for the analysis of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

The author presents the Ukrainian translation of Kazimierz Twardowski’s Lecture “Why Knowledge is Power?” which was held at the opening of the General University Lectures in L’viv on the 10th of November, 1912. In this lecture the founder of L’viv-Warsaw Philosophi-cal School considered the essence of knowledge, its types and characteristics, and emphasized the importance of philosophical knowledge, be-cause it frees a human being from false judgments and illusions.

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and the practical, moral importance (...) of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue. (shrink)

Jusqu’à présent, les discussions au sein de la communauté universitaire et dans la littérature scientifique sur la conduite responsable en recherche (CRR), incluant l’intégrité scientifique et l’éthique de la recherche, ont principalement été menées par les chercheurs en sciences de la santé et en sciences fondamentales. Préoccupés, à juste titre, par des problèmes d’inconduite, leurs effets négatifs sur la rigueur scientifique et la confiance du public dans l’entreprise de la recherche, ces débats ont conduit à l’élaboration et à la mise (...) en œuvre de lignes directrices nationales et de politiques institutionnelles. Ces lignes directrices visent entre autres à promouvoir la CRR, notamment dans le but de prévenir ces inconduites. Cependant, pour garantir la pertinence et une application appropriée de ces normes à tous les domaines universitaires, il est nécessaire que les sciences humaines et sociales (SHS) contribuent plus directement à ces discussions. Un tel engagement devrait permettre d’exprimer les particularités disciplinaires et méthodologiques des SHS, dont certaines peuvent être très différentes des sciences appliquées et fondamentales. Cela permettrait également de s’assurer que la littérature sur la CRR ainsi que les politiques et les directives qui en découlent soient à la fois fondées sur des principes universellement généralisables, mais aussi appliquées avec nuance afin de refléter la diversité des pratiques disciplinaires. Dans ce chapitre, nous explorons trois grands domaines dans lesquels les SHS pourraient contribuer à façonner les discussions dans la littérature sur la CRR, tout en informant les chercheurs en SHS des meilleures pratiques en matière de CRR : l’autorat/paternité, la collaboration et l’autorégulation. (shrink)

Any comprehensive interpretation of the "Theaetetus" has to provide answers to, among others, two very general questions concerning that dialogue: "What is Plato's relation to the problems faced in the "Theaetetus"?" and "What is the significance of the absence of the Forms from the discussion of the "Theaetetus", given their undoubted relevance to the topic of the dialogue, i.e. knowledge?" Predominantly, the answer given to the first question in the literature has been that the problems are those that Plato is (...) trying to tackle and the one to the second question, when it has been addressed at all, that the Forms are left out of the discussion because Plato no longer thought them relevant, either for having abandoned or seriously revised them, by the time of writing the "Theaetetus". In this study of the Wax Block and the Aviary models of judgment that occur in the second part of the "Theaetetus" as part of its discussion of the problem of false judgment, I argue that the problems faced there actually arise because of the neglect of Forms. The discussion of the second part is, I contend, carried out on a materialist ontology, an ontology assumed because it suits the definition of knowledge as true judgment which inaugurates that part of the dialogue, an ontology in no way subscribed to by Plato. The Wax Block is, I explain, a materialist model and fails in the case of judgments about numbers for treating them on a par with material subjects, ignoring their intelligible status. In particular, it fails to distinguish judging 5 and 7 to be 11 from judging 12 to be 11 because of its neglect of Forms; Plato would distinguish those judgments by distinguishing 5 and 7 from 12 with help from his part-whole analysis, to which the Forms are essential. (shrink)

In his well-known essay “Who Thinksly?” Hegel argues that abstraction is in fact the sign of nonphilosophical thought.1 Despite the common misconception, only philosophical thought is truly concrete. In fact, thought itself, according to Hegel, is the movement from the abstract to the concrete. For philosophers this is an intuitively appealing idea insofar as it rescues philosophy from a charge leveled against it since Thales, namely, that philosophy is more concerned about abstract ideas than concrete reality. Within this context it (...) is difficult to know what to do with Deleuze’s championing of concepts such as “abstract machine” and his criticisms of some ideas as “not abstract enough.” The crucial... (shrink)

Philosophy's “linguistic turn” was destined to find its way into derivative disciplines such as political theory. In the last two decades, this turn has led to an absurd reductionism extrapolating the essence of existing democracies from their mode of communication. Flattening political theory, followers of this fashion rarely relinquish their fixation with the communicative component of modern democracies to the level of a multifaceted analysis. The central notion here is “deliberative democracy.” But is this a distinct model of democracy? For (...) Seyla Benhabib, it means “elucidating the already implicit principles and logic of existing democratic practices” (p. 84) There are…. (shrink)

The first volume of Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini appeared in 1965. Now, after 30 years, the eighth and last volume finally appears, unfinished because of the author's death. The narrative stops in mid-1944, but the first four chapters, which had been completed with an appendix by De Felice himself and have been published by his friends and colaborators, Emilio Gentile, Giorgio Goglia and Mario Missori, constitute the first non-partisan history of the beginning of the resistence movement and the (...) Social Republic, as well as the the first comprehensive study of the populations' attitude in a country devided between…. (shrink)

The Boolean many-valued approach to vagueness is similar to the infinite-valued approach embraced by fuzzy logic in the respect in which both approaches seek to solve the problems of vagueness by assigning to the relevant sentences many values between falsity and truth, but while the fuzzy-logic approach postulates linearly-ordered values between 0 and 1, the Boolean approach assigns to sentences values in a many-element complete Boolean algebra. On the modal-precisificational approach represented by Kit Fine, if a sentence is indeterminate in (...) truth value in some world, it is taken to be true in one precisified world accessible from that world and false in another. This paper points to a way to unify these two approaches to vagueness by showing that Fine’s version of the modal-precisificational approach can be combined with the Boolean many-valued approach instead of supervaluationism, one of the most popular approaches to vagueness. (shrink)

At first, despairing of justifying the Court's new-found rights as the products of interpreting the Constitution, many of the Court's supporters bit the bullet and proclaimed the legitimacy of "noninterpretivism." As an approach to justifying purportedly constitutional decisions, however, noninterpretivism's oxymoronic quality made it an easy target for the Court's detractors, who asserted that noninterpretivism was nothing more than rule by a federal judiciary unrestrained by any positive law.

Rodion Raskolnikov, the central figure in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, is one of the best-known characters in the world of the novel but one who continues to pose major interpretive problems. Why exactly does he murder the old pawnbroker and her sister? Why, throughout the novel, does he continue to believe that he has committed no crime? And why, despite this belief, does he suffer a form of psychological breakdown and eventually give himself up to the police? This article, which (...) traces Raskolnikov’s literary ancestry to Les Liaisons dangereuses and Le Père Goriot, argues that Raskolnikov, a prototype of the modern “virtuous assassin” described by Albert Camus in L’Homme révolté, commits murder to implement a “magnificent” idea that will establish his worth as a human being. His ultimate collapse results not, as sometimes suggested, from guilt or remorse, or a belief that he has deluded himself about his motives, but from the state of irremediable solitude into which his act plunges him. -/- _PLEASE NOTE:_ This journal is moving from Oxford to Johns Hopkins. The move is still under way (4/2/25) so my Crime and Punishment article may not be accessible at the moment at either. In the meantime I've uploaded a copy to "archive" on this site. Derek Allan. (shrink)

It is a widespread opinion that toleration, as a political practice, has merely instrumental value. The aim of this paper is to defend, on the contrary, that toleration has political value in itself. In more specific terms, I will claim that it is valuable in itself in virtue of its intrinsic relationship with democracy. Toleration is a constituent of democracy inasmuch as it is necessary for the existence of a democratic administration of political power. I will show that that relation (...) of constitution holds because toleration, through the protection of spaces of contestation to the political power, contributes to solving democracy’s inner tension resulting from its practical implementation. -/- Es una opinión extendida que la tolerancia, en cuanto práctica política, tiene valor meramente instrumental. El objetivo de este artículo es defender, por el contrario, que ella tiene valor político en sí. Específicamente, defenderé que es valiosa en sí misma a causa de su relación intrínseca con la democracia. La tolerancia es un constituyente de la democracia en cuanto es necesaria para que pueda existir una administración democrática del poder político. Mostraré que esa relación de constitución existe porque la tolerancia, mediante la protección de espacios de contestación al poder político, contribuye a la resolución de una tensión interna de la democracia en su implementación práctica. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 697-716 [Access article in PDF] "La Mère Humanité":Femininity in the Romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbé A.-L. Constant Naomi J. Andrews Humanity, my mother, since you have led me, by so many paths, to conceive this design, support me, inspire me, affirm me. —Pierre Leroux, "Invocation to my Muse." 1It was during the July Monarchy in France, in the (...) era immediately preceding the Revolution of 1848, that the ideology we call socialism became more than an abstraction held by isolated intellectuals and conspirators. 2 A series of individuals, loose-knit associations, and more formal écoles were active during the 1830s and 1840s, developing a varied agenda of social reform, economic cooperation, or association, mystical Christianity, and women's liberation. Roughly lumped under the pejorative rubric of utopian socialism, and perhaps more accurately called romantic socialism, this movement was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its diverse goals, but contributed significantly to the political discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 3Socialism at this stage of its development overlapped in many ways with republicanism, both being, to quote one historian of the latter, "an amalgam of responses to the Enlightenment, the 1789 Revoluation and above all economic [End Page 697] change." 4 Many early socialists were also republicans, and socialist ideas influenced the ideology articulated by republicans such as Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Auguste Blanqui. Louis Blanc, perhaps the best-known socialist of the decade surrounding the 1848 revolution, was and is known as a Jacobin socialist. 5From a certain perspective republicanism and socialism shared common origins and assumptions during the July Monarchy. Most socialists had come out of the political milieu of republicanism, whether through the carbonarist movement, opposition political clubs such as Droits de l'Homme and Les Amis du Peuple, or through the influential journalism trade of the Bourbon Restoration and early July Monarchy. Pierre Leroux, for one, had been a co-founder of the widely read journal le Globe, a bastion of liberalism, which he later turned over to the Saint-Simonians upon his conversion to their "church." 6 Although diverse in many ways, the left of this era did share certain core tenets, chief among them opposition to the Orleanist monarchy and, to varying degrees the belief in more democratic rule of the French nation.To say this, however, might erroneously imply a unity that was certainly not a feature of socialism during this period. In fact socialism, despite its near mystical devotion to ideas of unity, was anything but singular during its pre-Marxian phase. The spectrum of socialist thinkers and groups ranged widely. Standing closest to the republicans in their beliefs about politics and the revolutionary tradition were Jacobin socialists, most usually associated with Louis Blanc. Blanc and others articulated a social philosophy that sought "to unite two distinct ideologies: Jacobin democracy and co-operative socialism." 7 Thus Jacobin socialism combined republican political priorities and commitment to national political processes in general and to a centralized state in particular with attention to economic change, to reforming the distribution process along more equitable lines and to putting the situation of working people at the center of political change. In this goal Jacobin socialism reflected, as did other strains of socialism, the economic instability of the era and the emergence of an organized working class movement which followed the aborted revolution of 1830. 8At the other end of the spectrum one might put the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierist École Sociétaire. 9 Vehemently anti-republican, these groups shared [End Page 698] very little with the Jacobin socialists, other than a certain concern with the emerging working class, one of the few consistent features of early socialism. Unlike Jacobin socialists, these groups focused their theories of community at a very low level, having a strongly utopian component to their thinking. As a result, they tended to see national politics as irrelevant to the situation of ordinary people and even as a... (shrink)

This collection of essays displays Charles Larmore’s exceptional ability to combine the best of analytic and Hegelian traditions of moral and political theory. This cross-pollination has produced a book that, as a whole, advances several important new proposals, especially regarding political liberalism and moral epistemology.

There are three steps in my description of the ground-problem of value: First, Husserl’s analysis of the crisis of reason is based on the systematic loss and phenomenological recovery of the intuitive evidence of the lifeworld. But if letter symbols are essential to formalizing abstraction, as Klein’s de-sedimentation of Vieta’s institution of modern algebra shows, then the ultimate substrates upon which formalization rests cannot be “individuals” in Husserl’s sense. The consequence of the essentiality of the letter symbols to formalization is (...) that no direct reference to intuitive evidence of individuals is possible from formal structures. Second, the crisis of reason in Marx’s Capital on commodities contains a parallel analysis of the contradictory relation between formalism and evidence. The value-structure of capitalist society expels qualitative value to subjective use and imposes a homogeneous standard on social representation of value such that quantitative values are not grounded in the experience of use which entails that the system of general value becomes a mere aggregate. Third, the problem of value, or formal axiology, is the core of a teleological convergence between phenomenology and Marxism. A short phenomenological description of the experience of value shows that practical activities generate valuations that are experienced with an intensity through which they aim toward social representation. The conclusion is that the social representation of value in capitalist society intervenes into the constitution of the community by the intensity of individuals’ value-experience to reduce its system of value to an unthematized simple aggregate of value-quantities. (shrink)

The discussion of Kuukkanen’s bookPostnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography is presented here in the form of a dialogue. The dialogue addresses the following five issues: 1) the kind of claims typically made in- and by the historical text, 2) narrativism and historical representation, 3) representational holism, 4) representationalism and non-representationalism and 5) the role of argument in historical writing. While agreement is within reach for the two participants in the dialogue in case of the two first issues, opinions begin to diverge (...) with the third one. Disagreement boils down to the hierarchy between representation and argument: is representation the master that argument has to serve, or has representation nothing to add to what argument can and will give us? (shrink)