Resumen: Este artículo contiene una reflexión, en primer lugar, acerca de la vinculación que se establece entre la lengua de la madre -en su variedad experiencial cualitativa y determinaciones históricas- y el fenómeno de la locura y el dolor existenciales. En particular, se aborda el vínculo entre la mencionada lengua y el equívoco encauzamiento de una emocionalidad “no sabida”, esquivada o negada, hacia actos y acciones del habla. En segundo lugar, se observa la relación entre la lengua materna y formas (...) de locura existencial, en experiencias de fragmentación comunitario-familiar y de secuelas de exilios y diásporas del siglo XX. En tercer lugar, examina la experiencia, autobiográfica y crítica, de la escritura etnográfica y testimonial de la lengua. En cuarto lugar, ensaya una mirada fenomenológica de una “locura oral”, condicionada por secuelas de exterminios históricos. No es fácil notar, a primera vista, el ambiguo nexo de los sujetos plurales con la lengua materna, su reflejo en la psique colectiva como forma solapada de locura, monomanía, alienación y subjetividad fragmentada. Así como tampoco se advierte el impacto de esta particularidad en la acción comunicativa y convivencia lingüística gregaria.: This article contains, in the first place, a reflection on the link established between the mother's tongue -in its qualitative experiential variety and historical determinations- and the phenomenon of existential madness and grief, particularly with the distorted guiding of an “unidentified” emotionality, eluded or denied, towards speech acts. In the second place, the relationship between the mother’s tongue and different types of existential madness, in the context of community-family fragmentation experiences and sequels of exiles and diasporas of the twentieth century, is observed. In the third place, the autobiographical and critical experience of ethnographic and testimonial writing of the language is examined. Finally, this article aims to establish a phenomenological view of an ‘oral madness’, conditioned by sequels of historical extermination. It is not easy to notice, at first glance, the ambiguous nexus of plural subjects with the mother’s tongue, its reflection in the collective psyche as a concealed form of madness, monomania, alienation and fragmented subjectivity. Likewise, the impact of this particularity on communicative action and gregarious linguistic coexistence is neither easily noticed. (shrink)

Este artículo contiene una reflexión, en primer lugar, sobre la vinculación que se establece entre la lengua de la madre –en su variedad experiencial cualitativa y determinaciones históricas– y el fenómeno de la locura y el dolor existenciales. En particular, se aborda el vínculo entre la mencionada lengua y el equívoco encauzamiento de una emocionalidad “no sabida”, esquivada o negada, hacia actos y acciones del habla. En segundo lugar, se observa la relación entre la lengua materna y formas de locura (...) existencial, en experiencias de fragmentación comunitario-familiar y de secuelas de exilios y diásporas del siglo XX. En tercer lugar, examina la experiencia, autobiográfica y crítica, de la escritura etnográfica y testimonial de la lengua. En cuarto lugar, ensaya una mirada fenomenológica de una ‘locura oral’, condicionada por secuelas de exterminios históricos. No es fácil notar, a primera vista, el ambiguo nexo de los sujetos plurales con la lengua materna, su reflejo en la psique colectiva como forma solapada de locura, monomanía, alienación y subjetividad fragmentada. Así como tampoco se advierte el impacto de esta particularidad en la acción comunicativa y convivencia lingüística gregaria. (shrink)

We believe we know our bodies intimately—that their material reality is certain and that this certainty leads to an epistemological truth about sex, gender, and identity. By exploring and giving equal weight to transgendered subjectivities, however, Gayle Salamon upends these certainties. Considering questions of transgendered embodiment via phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud and Paul Ferdinand Schilder), and queer theory, Salamon advances an alternative theory of normative and non-normative gender, proving the value and vitality of trans experience for (...) thinking about embodiment. Salamon suggests that the difference between transgendered and normatively gendered bodies is not, in the end, material. Rather, she argues that the production of gender itself relies on a disjunction between the "felt sense" of the body and an understanding of the body's corporeal contours, and that this process need not be viewed as pathological in nature. Examining the relationship between material and phantasmatic accounts of bodily being, Salamon emphasizes the productive tensions that make the body both present and absent in our consciousness and work to confirm and unsettle gendered certainties. She questions traditional theories that explain how the body comes to be—and comes to be made one's own—and she offers a new framework for thinking about what "counts" as a body. The result is a groundbreaking investigation into the phenomenological life of gender. (shrink)

This paper charts the concepts of grip and the bodily auxiliary in Maurice Merleau-Ponty to consider how they find expression in disability narratives. Arguing against the notion of “maximal grip” that some commentators have used to explicate intentionality in Merleau-Ponty, I argue that grip in his texts functions instead as a compensatory effort to stave off uncertainty, lack of mastery, and ambiguity. Nearly without exception in Phenomenology of Perception, the mobilization of “grip” is a signal of impending loss, and is (...) offered as a strategy for managing failure rather than as an example of sure-footed mastery. I read Merleau-Ponty alongside Mary Felstiner's Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis to explore these other, attenuated dimensions of grip. Finally, the paper turns to Harriet McBryde Johnson's memoir Too Late to Die Young as an example of a way of thinking disabled embodiment otherwise. (shrink)

Severe acute respiratory syndrome‐coronavirus (SARS‐CoV)‐2′s origin is still controversial. Genomic analyses show SARS‐CoV‐2 likely to be chimeric, most of its sequence closest to bat CoV RaTG13, whereas its receptor binding domain (RBD) is almost identical to that of a pangolin CoV. Chimeric viruses can arise via natural recombination or human intervention. The furin cleavage site in the spike protein of SARS‐CoV‐2 confers to the virus the ability to cross species and tissue barriers, but was previously unseen in other SARS‐like CoVs. (...) Might genetic manipulations have been performed in order to evaluate pangolins as possible intermediate hosts for bat‐derived CoVs that were originally unable to bind to human receptors? Both cleavage site and specific RBD could result from site‐directed mutagenesis, a procedure that does not leave a trace. Considering the devastating impact of SARS‐CoV‐2 and importance of preventing future pandemics, researchers have a responsibility to carry out a thorough analysis of all possible SARS‐CoV‐2 origins. (shrink)

Beaucoup de « géomètres » du XIXe siècle - Bernhard Riemann, Hermann von Helmholtz, Felix Klein, Riccardo De Paolis, Mario Pieri, Henri Poincaré, Federigo Enriques, et autres - ont joué un rôle important dans la discussion sur les fondements des mathématiques. Mais, contrairement aux idées d'Euclide, ils n'ont pas identifié «l'espace physique» avec« l'espace de nos sens». Partant de notre expérience dans l'espace, ils ont cherché à identifier les propriétés les plus importantes de l'espace et les ont posées à la (...) base de la géométrie. C'est sur la connaissance active de l'espace que les axiomes de la géométrie ont été élaborés ; ils ne pouvaient donc pas être a priori comme ils le sont dans la philosophie kantienne. En outre, pendant la dernière décade du siècle, certains mathématiciens italiens - De Paolis, Gino Fano, Pieri, et autres - ont fondé le concept de nombre sur la géométrie, en employant des résultats de la géométrie projective. Ainsi, on fondait l'arithmétique sur la géométrie et non l'inverse, comme David Hilbert a cherché à faire quelques années après, sans succès. (shrink)

: Para que se possa abordar a sociabilidade em Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), é importante mencionar a importância que a autora confere, em suas obras, à necessidade de organização dos grupos humanos por meio de regras, assim como de que essas regras sejam seguidas para a preservação da vida em conjunto. Segundo a autora, a política é a maneira humana de convívio entre os homens e mulheres por meio do gerenciamento de questões emergentes, sem o uso de qualquer coação. Ainda, para (...) ela, a igualdade não se origina da linhagem, do status social, mas da igualdade no sentido de poder agir em conjunto. Assim o indivíduo tem um importante papel a ser exercido na esfera política, enquanto cidadão. Nesse contexto, é preciso que haja um “espaço público”, bem como, que os cidadãos tenham a liberdade para expressar-se, podendo contestar, discutir as ideias e ideais, sem utilizar-se de qualquer tipo de violência, buscando, por meio dessa elaboração conjunta, adquirir outros direitos, por exemplo, à saúde, à educação, à moradia, ao emprego. A existência da possibilidade de ver e ser visto, discordar e poder expor isso, para Arendt, apenas ocorre em uma convivência política, na pluralidade, buscando a elaboração de regras para a organização do grupo em que vivem e pelo qual se sentirão partícipes e responsáveis. Ou seja, é uma atitude que ocorre em um espaço público de encontro de iguais, enquanto cidadãos, diferentes, enquanto seres únicos por nascimento, a fim de conseguir, mesmo que momentaneamente, a garantia de paz no convívio das singularidades. O presente texto visa a destacar a importância da necessidade dos laços de sociabilidade em um Estado Democrático de Direito, a partir da obra Origens do Totalitarismo, no qual Arendt descreve o Regime Totalitário vivenciado por ela, bem como, a ruptura dos laços de sociabilidade, fatos passíveis de discussão para pensar a situação política, não somente do Brasil como também de outros estados considerados democráticos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Arendt; Política; Sociabilidade; Ordenamento Jurídico; Totalitarismo. (shrink)

The article considers three episcopal assemblies held in Gaul, which the manuscript tradition has not preserved, all involved in doctrinal debates on grace and free will. The first two, the council of Arles and the synod of Lyon, took place in the second half of the fifth century and concerned the affair of the presbyter Lucidus. The third is the Council of Valence that met just before the Second Council of Orange (529), that is, the council that marks the “resolution” (...) of the conflict and also the only documented. With the idea that the history of the councils occupies important points in the reconstruction of the debate on grace and free will, even in the case of councils whose acts have not been transmitted, the article seeks to enhance these three events by reconsidering indirect sources. The episcopal meetings of Arles, Lyon, and Valence are, indeed, an integral part of the doctrinal work on grace and free will, which for about a century interested monastic and ecclesiastical circles in Gaul. Moreover, the recovery of their history restores well the complexity of the cultural, religious and political climate in which they took place. (shrink)

This article examines the story of Jesus’ birth as it is presented in some of the so-called Apocryphal Infancy Gospels that have always aroused great interest in popular culture and in the arts. These texts describe the birth of Jesus by means of an important ‘narrative expansion’: the childbirth of Mary takes place in a cave, one or more midwives as well as two animals, the ox and the donkey, are added to the scene. These narratives do not relate the (...) preaching of Jesus, his death on the cross and his resurrection, but they present the event of his birth as a new beginning for all mankind. In doing so they reflect early Christian questions concerning Jesus’ nature. Examining some characteristic elements of this narrative development of the birth of Jesus, this article tries to show how this nativity may correspond to the construction of a myth. (shrink)

L’agiografia fa parte dei generi letterari nei quali si esprimono con più libertà concezioni teologiche e morali non convenzionali, che ci svelano un Medioevo meno uniforme di come lo si immagina. L’articolo presenta alcuni esempi tratti da testi originari di diverse aree, dal Mediterraneo greco all’Irlanda, dall’epoca tardoantica al basso Medioevo. Di santi come il bretone Macuto, Epifanio di Salamina, i martiri edesseni e svariati abati irlandesi si narrano azioni mosse da permalosità, vendicatività, gelosia, competizione. Ancora nelle storie di santi (...) irlandesi, tra cui Brigida, compare il miracolo dell’eliminazione di un feto indesiderato dal grembo della madre. Il bolognese Procolo è celebrato per aver assassinato a sangue freddo il suo persecutore. La greca Irene è assunta fisicamente in cielo. Nella Navigatio Brendani, infine, la figura di Giuda è oggetto di una pietà del tutto eccezionale. Tutte queste anomalie generano alcune reazioni di censura e mitigazione nella ricezione e trasmissione dei testi, ma fondamentalmente sono accettate e conservate, testimoniando l’apertura e varietà dottrinale ancora possibile in epoca medievale. Hagiography is one of the literary genres in which unconventional theological and moral conceptions are most freely expressed, revealing a less uniform Middle Ages than we imagine. The article presents some examples from texts originating in different areas, from the Greek Mediterranean to Ireland, from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. Saints such as the Breton Macutus, Epiphanius of Salamis, the Edessenian martyrs and several Irish abbots are described as acting out of touchiness, vindictiveness, jealousy and competition. In the stories of other Irish saints, including Bridget, we read the miracle of the elimination of an unwanted foetus from his mother’s womb. The Bolognese Proculus is celebrated for having cold-bloodedly murdered his persecutor. The Greek Irene is physically assumed into heaven. Finally, in the Navigatio Brendani, the figure of Judas is granted a quite exceptional piety. All these anomalies arouse some reactions of censorship and mitigation in the reception and transmission of these texts, but fundamentally they are accepted and preserved, testifying to the doctrinal openness and variety still possible in medieval times. (shrink)

La autora realiza una aproximación crítica a la cultura jurídica de la izquierda, principalmente comunista, tomando como eje de su examen la posición interna o externa respecto del Estado adoptada por dicha cultura. El análisis se centra de manera especial en el problema de la "legislación de emergencia" y en sus consecuencias tanto en el tejido social como a efectos del problema de la legitimidad política.

The essay presents some gnoseological themes with reference to the intellect of the separated soul according to John Duns Scotus. Four questions of the Ordinatio IV, d. 45 deal with these themes. In this concret cognitive situation is possible, according to Doctor Subtilis, to get to know the new quiddities of things, in spite of a lack of the empiric cognition. It means leaving behind the conception of generic empiricism and moving to the recognition of more cognitive abilities, as in (...) Aristoteles’s conception. In a post death state intellect continues to have the memory of the quiddities of things known while still connected with the body and can remember concret things and events known by the senses during earthly life. Such a gnoseological notion evidences the cognitive continuity of the human intellect after death, its incorruptibility and cognitive ability at least as such as one had during earthly life. We can see here the connection of philosophic and theological questions, which mutually condition and penetrate each other. According to Scotus it is possible for the intellect of the separated soul to remember the past and to acquire new cognition. Moreover, it is also possible for such an intellect to know the prayers we refer to the blessed in heaven. Such an intellectual approach evidences a strong Augustinian influence on John Duns Scotus’ epistemic conception. (shrink)

Contributors to this collection examine the Turners’ most important theoretical contributions to anthropology, from their work on pilgrimages, liminality, and communitas to insights from their fieldwork. They illustrate the Turners’ enduring theoretical contributions and their profound effects on the anthropological perspective.

The paper is a response to recent criticisms of agatheism, a new pluralistic interpretation of religious belief put forward by Janusz Salamon with the aim of accommodating the epistemological challenge of religious diversity. Agatheism is an axiologically grounded religious belief which identifies God, the Absolute or the ultimate reality religiously conceived with the ultimate good as the ultimate end of all human agency and thus an explanation of its irreducibly teleological character and a source of its meaning. Janusz (...) class='Hi'>Salamon argues that this grounding of religious belief in the human axiological consciousness makes it immune to falsification by any future science. Replying to the concerns of the critics about about irrationality of doxastic commitment to a particular religious tradition, Janusz Salamon argues that to the extent the fundamental agatheistic religious belief is presupposed in such tradition as its doxastic core, its belief system - if internally coherent and aligned with a worldview that is consistent with undisputed scientific findings - may be considered rational, despite there being a plurality of such belief systems. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the ontology of drama called Drammar. Pervasive in old and new media, and relevant from a multi-disciplinary perspective that ranges from literary criticism and semiotics...

This paper charts the concepts of grip and the bodily auxiliary in Maurice Merleau-Ponty to consider how they find expression in disability narratives. Arguing against the notion of “maximal grip” that some commentators have used to explicate intentionality in Merleau-Ponty, I argue that grip in his texts functions instead as a compensatory effort to stave off uncertainty, lack of mastery, and ambiguity. Nearly without exception in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, the mobilisation of “grip” is a signal of impending loss and (...) is offered as a strategy for managing failure rather than as an example of sure-footed mastery. I read Merleau-Ponty alongside Mary Felstiner’s Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis to explore these other, attenuated dimensions of grip as an example of a way of thinking disabled embodiment otherwise. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate the philosophical tools developed in George Steiner’s marvelous body of work. In his writings, he carries on a lucid observation and description of human spirit’s linguistic creation and formulation. His observations do not deviate from the way of a strict ethics inherited from ilustrated spiritual Judaism. His legacy about thought on language and his role as a contemporary culture’s critic leads us to a reflection on our continent and history. As an anthropological (...) work, it aims at a practical comprehension of gregariousness and to a psychic and physiological elucidation of the human phenomena. (shrink)

The book offers insights on whether international law can shape the politics of the Security Council and, conversely, the extent to which the latter contribute to the development of international law. By providing a systematic analysis of the quantity and quality of international legal instruments referred to in the text of resolutions, the book reconstructs patterns of the Security Council's behavioural regularities and assesses them against the provisions of the United Nations Charter, which establishes its mandate. The analysis is divided (...) into three periods - the origins and Cold War period, post-Cold War period and the twenty-first century - and assesses the resolutions passed in each period by thematic category. The book argues that while international law plays an important role in shaping the politics of the Security Council, the Council's resolutions do not contribute significantly to the development of international law. (shrink)

Mummatmg Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film. Geoffrey Hill. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1992. 319 p. $17 (paper).

Peter Millican and Branden Thornhill-Miller have recently argued that contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with the host of defeaters based on empirical research concerning alleged sources of evidence for ‘perceived supernatural agency’, render all ‘first-order’, that is actual, religious traditions positively irrational, and a source of discord on a global scale. However, since the authors recognise that the ‘secularisation thesis’ appears to be incorrect, and that empirical research provides evidence that religious belief also has beneficial individual and (...) social effects, they put forward a hypothesis of a ‘second-order religious belief ’, with Universalist overtones and thus free of intergroup conflict, and free of irrationality, since supported (solely) by the Fine-Tuning Argument. While granting most of their arguments based on empirical research and embracing the new paradigm of the atheism/religion debate implicit in their paper, I contend that Millican’s and Thornhill-Miller’s proposal is unlikely to appeal to religious believers, because it misconstrues the nature and grounds of religious belief. I suggest that their hypothesis may be refined by taking into account a view of axiologically grounded religious belief that I refer to as ‘agatheism’, since it identifies God or the Ultimate Reality with the ultimate good (to agathon). (shrink)

This article argues that the existence of horrendous evil calls into question not just the plausibility of the most popular theodicies on offer, notably sceptical theism, but the coherence of any agatheology–that is, any theology which identifies God or the ultimate reality with the ultimate good or with a maximally good being. The article contends that the only way an agatheologian can ‘save the face of God’ after Auschwitz and Kolyma is by endorsing a non-interventionist interpretation of the Divine providence (...) which will amount to naturalisation of the discourse on evil by localising entirely in nature the causes of evil and the possible ways of its prevention. ‘Theodicy of justice as fairness’ is then presented as consistent with such naturalistic account of evils and yet compatible with a religious worldview. It justifies the Divine non-intervention by suggesting that it would not be just or fair for God to intervene on only some occasions to avert evil, if God is apparently prevented from intervening in all such cases. Since for Agatheos it is metaphysically impossible to do what is unjust or unfair, God never intervenes to avert evil. (shrink)

This essay considers what is critical in critical phenomenology, and asks what features critical and phenomenological methods share. I suggest three fundamentally significant resonances between the critical and phenomenological enterprises. First is the suggestion that critique, like phenomenology, is an attempt to move beyond a dualism of inside and outside in order to extend into outer regions of what is known. Second is the insistence that what at first appears to be a purely negative endeavor, a finding of limit, is (...) incomplete if, upon finding that limit, it comes to a stop. Just as the reduction is not a means to banish or negate the world, but rather the condition through which it can more fully emerge, critique cannot be merely a cataloguing of the limitations of the present situation. Third is the openness to the possibilities of the world, a wonder or curiosity, that is revealed through the work of description in phenomenology, or Foucault’s characterization of philosophy not as an unmasking, but a making visible of what is visible. Finally I consider critical phenomenology’s futures: How is a newly enlivened kind of scholarship emerging from these two forms of thinking, both of which have been dismissed as outmoded or irrelevant? The new work currently emerging in phenomenology, with its emphasis on its own reflexive self-consideration and decolonization, offers hope that it might yet be capacious enough to simultaneously encompass the revelation of its limitations as well as the expansion of its reach. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that from the point of view of a theist, inclusivism with respect to the issue whether adherents of different religious traditions can have veridical experience of God (or Ultimate Reality) now, is more plausible than the Alstonian exclusivism. I suggest that mystical inclusivism of the kind I imply in this paper may contribute to the development of cross-cultural philosophy of religion, as well as to the theoretical framework for inter-religious dialogue, because (1) it allows for (...) the possibility of veridical experience of God in a variety of religious traditions, but (2) it avoids the radical revisionist postulates of Hickian pluralism and (3) it leaves open the question whether the creed of any specific tradition is a better approximation to the truth about God than the creeds of other traditions. (edited). (shrink)

Although it became customary to warn against confusing postmodernism with deconstructionism, it seems plausible to suggest that their central agendas are not dissimilar. Moreover, from the philosophical point of view, it is the idea of the 'deconstruction of meaning' that can be said to constitute the foundation of postmodernism understood here as an intellectual movement. It is true that grounded in the poststructuralist language analysis, deconstructionism seeks primarily to challenge the attempts inherent in the Western philosophical tradition to establish ultimate (...) meaning in a text. However, as one might have anticipated, the deconstruction of meaning of texts provided a basis for a large scale project leading to deconstruction of all 'truths', as conceived in the mainstream philosophical tradition. And it did it by questioning the coherence of the very concept of 'truth'. Eclectic as postmodernism is, it can be recognized by the fundamental assumption that there is no common denominator that guarantees the one-ness of the world, or the possibility of objective or neutral thought. This assumption would suffice to make one expect that postmodernism will challenge the very foundations of any metaphysical or religious system of beliefs. And so it does. In this paper I would like to ellucidate just one way this challange may be construed, poiting to the example of Don Cupitt, the leading exponent of the 'antirealist' critique of the discourse of theism. (shrink)

The philosophical challenge that religious diversity poses for religious belief has become in recent years the focal point of a very engaging theological and philosophical debate. The debate began in the Christian context and it would be fair to say that its main issue remains the relationship of Christianity to other major religions. Traditionally Christian thinkers faced with the fact of religious plurality have assumed that Christianity is the only way to salvation, and the truth-claims of other religions can be (...) refuted by way of argument. This position is described today as 'exclusivist'. John Hick's name has become synonymous with a radically different approach to the whole issue. Hick argues that all religious traditions make contact with the same Ultimate Reality, each encountering it through a variety of culturally shaped forms of thought and experience, but all offering equally effective paths to 'salvation/liberation'. Hick's pluralistic hypothesis, although very popular in some quarters, appears to many Christian and non-Christian thinkers as highly controversial. (shrink)