This article discusses women's positions in higher education in Europe and compares these with a case study analysis of senior women at one `new' UK university. The study comprises interview data from 22 senior women in both academic schools and departments and in functional departments. The main findings include substantial differences between younger and older women in their career progression. While for both groups having children was a major in uence, the older women, especially the academics, had to weave their (...) career developments around those of their husbands and caring for their children. Nevertheless, they displayed strong entrepreneurial tendencies, becoming highly skilled at spotting and seizing opportunities. The younger women were more selfconfident in a `postfeminist' period where young women often assume equality has been achieved and material support systems such as childcare is well established. In contrast with the older women, they fitted their family lives around their careers. Balancing their gender had become central to both their private and their work lives. The older women were sensitive to the subtle homosocial culture, attitudes and norms in the university, while the younger women relied more on a meritocratic approach to their careers, and were seemingly less aware of the institutional gendered power relations. Neither group showed signs of collective working or networking in the interests of themselves or women generally in the university. These characteristics imply that while the proportion of senior women may continue to increase, the strongly gendered culture is less likely to be challenged. (shrink)

If psychology requires a taxonomy that categorizes mental states according to their causal powers, the common sense method of individuating mental states (a taxonomy by intentional content) is unacceptable because mental states can have different intentional content, but identical causal powers. This difference threatens both the vindication of belief/desire psychology and the viability of scientific theories whose posits include intentional states. To resolve this conflict, Fodor has proposed that for scientific purposes mental states should be classified by their narrow content. (...) Such a classification is supposed to correspond to a classification by causal powers. Yet a state's narrow content is also supposed to determine its (broad) intentional content whenever that state is 'anchored' to a context. I examine the two most plausible accounts of narrow content implicit in Fodor's work, arguing that neither account can accomplish both goals. (shrink)

In his article on « Vampires », in the Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire both evokes the phenomenon of the so-called « vampire plague » which hit Central Europe during the 1730s and recalls the controversial interpretations of this phenomenon in France and abroad. He takes advantage of the occasion to renew his anti-religious polemic, with a caustic irony that doesn’t spare even a sincere Voltairian like Jean Baptiste Boyer d’Argens, who had offered a penetrating analysis of this phenomenon in his Lettres (...) Juives. In his text, Voltaire chooses satire rather than an inquiry into causes of the phenomenon, revealing a superficial anthropological approach as well as the limits of an argument conceived as pure ideology. (shrink)

The genealogy of the Postumii Albini from the second half of the second century bce onwards is uncertain and debated. This article attempts a new discussion of the evidence. Its main contention is that A. Postumius Albinus, cos. 99, should be distinguished from the homonymous legate, brother of Sp. Postumius Albinus, cos. 110; that the two moneyers A. Postumii Albini were, in all likelihood, not directly related to each other and were probably sons of the last two consuls of the (...) family; and, as a consequence, that at least two lines of descent between the second and the first century bce can be discerned. On the basis of these results, a new stemma of the ancient patrician family of the Albini is put forward. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the political facets and purposes of Caracalla's imitatio Alexandri and esteem for Sulla. Both emulations represented the result of a well-pondered political way of thinking and acting. On the one hand, Caracalla reclaimed the exemplum Sullanum displayed by his father, and sought to lead fruitfully the edgy relationships with the Roman political class also through the political role-model embodied by Sulla; on the other hand, by activating the cultural and historical heritage of Alexander in the hellenophone and (...) Near Eastern provinces, the Emperor aimed to interact effectively with the local communities, elites, and populations. (shrink)

Unlike in the phrase “Virtual Reality,” in the phrase “Augmented Reality” the stress is put on the word “reality.” It seems, though, that we still lack a concept of reality which can fit the world of both humans and computers. In connection with this philosophical issue, this paper aims to provide the background for a better insight into the meaning of Augmented Reality and its impact on human behavior. My thesis is that an ecological version of direct perception’s realism constitutes (...) the most natural framework from which to start. The ecological approach to perception – namely, the Gibsonian theory of affordances – together with a non-dualistic, pragmatist and evolutionist notion of reality, perfectly fits this purpose. Thus, after a brief survey of the present state of AR technologies, it should become natural to interpret AR digital contents as implementations of affordances. (shrink)

Macpherson and Steinhorn 165–209) introduce some variants of the notion of o-minimality. One of the most interesting is C-minimality, which provides a natural setting to study algebraically closed-valued fields and some valued groups. In this paper we go further in the study of the structure of C-minimal valued groups, giving a partial characterization in the abelian case. We obtain the following principle: for abelian valued groups G for which the valuation satisfies some kind of compatibility with the multiplication by any (...) prime number p, being C-minimal is equivalent to the o-minimality of the expansion of the chain of valuations by the maps induced by the multiplication by each prime number in G, and by some unary predicates controlling the cardinality of the residual structures. This result is quite nice, because the class considered contains all the natural examples of abelian C-minimal valued groups of 165–209), and allows us to find many more examples. (shrink)

This paper develops two perspectives. On the one hand, it analyzes and reconstructs the relationship between wealth and poverty as addressed by Giordano Bruno in the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, both against the backdrop of the new geographical discoveries and mercantilist theories and in relation to Bruno’s project of ethical, political, and religious renewal. On the other hand, it recovers Bruno’s passages on the ‘minuzzarie’ as a key concept to redress ‘ontological poverty’ by locating in every aspect of reality, (...) even insignificant ones, a center of vital energy. At the beginning and at the end of the paper, mention is made of some Heideggerian writings that reveal some common assumption with Bruno’s ideas. (shrink)

La presse italienne a suivi de très près l'agonie et la mort du pape Jean-Paul II. Il s'agit certainement de l'événement le plus médiatisé depuis les attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001. Les quatre titres italiens, malgré leur positionnement politique différent, analysent l'événement avec le même degré de dramatisation et d'intensité. Ils proposent un récit fortement sentimental à travers le recours à un langage émotionnel, à des images touchantes ou, encore, à une mise en page spécifique. Les thèmes qui reviennent (...) le plus souvent font appel au caractère et au charisme de Jean-Paul II, à son recours aux médias dans le but de véhiculer le message chrétien. Son rapport avec les jeunes est également un des sujets privilégiés par la presse italienne, pour cela son Pontificat est qualifié de révolutionnaire. Si les quatre quotidiens italiens étudiés proposent une analyse similaire, à travers leur récit d'un « événement d'émotion planétaire », des différences persistent. S'adressant à un public spécifique, chaque titre emploie son propre langage, il renvoie à des références précises et touche des sensibilités diverses. Malgré une uniformisation substantielle, le clivage droite-gauche semble persister.The Italian press has closely followed the agony and death of Pope John Paul II. It is certainly the most publicized event since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The four Italian titles, despite their different political positions, analyze the event with the same degree of intensity and drama. They offer a highly sentimental story through the use of emotional language, images or touching, even to a specific layout. The themes that recur most often involve the character and charisma of John Paul II, in his use of the media in order to convey the Christian message. His relationship with young people is also one of the subjects favored by the Italian press for his pontificate that is called revolutionary. If the four studied Italian newspapers offer a similar analysis, through their narrative of a "global event emotion", differences persist. Addressing a specific audience, each title uses its own language, it refers to specific references and touches different sensibilities. Despite a substantial uniformity, the left-right divide seems to persist. (shrink)

Benjamin does not see or does not want to see the new “aura” that makes the art of cinema “art” which stays as the central feature of the totally renewed statute of artistic activity in the age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay of 1936, Benjamin acquires the arguments of all those authors who, between the first and second decades of the Twentieth century, had described this art and his new aura: Paul Valéry, George Duhamel, Léon Pierre-Quint, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt (...) Brecht, Rudolph Arnheim. It is an art for the mass that has a positive but also negative side in individual perception. Benjamin considers the new man – be it mass-man (the audience) or man-tool – recruitable for a coming revolution, but at the end of the essay he raises a question concerning the whole of contemporary art from the Dada movement to the present time: how could this completely renovated art possibly escape exploitation by those who produce it and drive it since then? (shrink)

Psychology doesn’t seem to be really interested in the theme of gift; in the last decades it focus on the central role of recognition in the psyche building up. The authors underline Chiara Lubich’s original intuition linking profoundly the them of gift and recognition.

The present work aims to underline the role played by cultural variables on the development of social processes, both at micro and macro-social level. Specifically, I want to focus on the role played by the philosophical current of Confucianism in the process of medernization of Japan, which shows how the cultural aspects, both in terms of intenalized values, both in the form of cultural norms and models approved by the group have influence on the development of social processes. Japanese society (...) has succeeded in renconciling the fundamental elements of the confucian tradition with the modernization, elements that represent a variable that has turned out to be of significant importance in the process of development of Japan. (shrink)

Nous présenterons ici l’œuvre d’Arthur Lovejoy et expliquerons, en suivant son parcours, pourquoi et comment il en est venu à inventer cette discipline qu’il nomme « history of ideas ». Nous montrerons tout d’abord en quoi cette nouvelle discipline procède chez lui d’une ambition rationnelle très forte, c’est-à-dire d’un désir de faire de la philosophie une science, et de lui apporter un cadre académique idoine ; puis nous montrerons en quoi la pratique même de l’histoire des idées a conduit Lovejoy (...) à préciser mais aussi à amender l’exigence de rationalité qu’on est en droit d’attendre de la philosophie. (shrink)