Defende-se que a felicidade, no sentido de realização pessoal e de bem-estar coletivo, pode – e deve – ser alcançada por meio da ação política, na medida em que ela nos desafia enquanto sujeitos construtores de nossa própria vida e de nossa própria sociedade, aproximando-nos dos demais cidadãos. Na práxis política, os indivíduos encontram-se ligados por laço de solidariedade, de cooperação, de respeito mútuo e de recíproca consideração dos interesses, laço que adquire importância fundamental no que diz respeito a solidificar (...) a sociabilidade enquanto ethos moral, superando-se uma visão instrumental tanto das relações sociais quanto dos próprios seres humanos, na qual cada indivíduo alcança sua felicidade correlatamente à promoção do bem-estar dos demais. Essa necessidade de reconsideração da política enquanto ethos que nos permite ser felizes e alcançar a realização cidadã é extremamente importante num momento em que a corrupção política, o autoritarismo e o paternalismo das instituições tendem a desacreditar a política, a distanciar as instituições políticas frente ao cidadão médio e a fomentar o privatismo civil, emperrando o processo democrático e solapando sua efetividade, que somente pode ser conquistada por meio da constante fiscalização e da participação de todos os cidadãos. Palavras-Chave : Democracia; Política, Felicidade; Corrupção; Autoritarismo.This article proposes that happiness, as personal fulfillment and collective welfare, can – and must – be achieved through political action, to the extent that it challenges us as subjects and builders of our own lives and of our own society. In political praxis, individuals are connected by a bond of solidarity, cooperation, mutual respect and equal consideration of interests of all and among all. Such connection acquires fundamental importance because it fosters solidification of sociability as a moral ethos in that each individual achieves their happiness correlatively in the promotion of the welfare of others. A reconsideration of the policy as an ethos that allows us to be happy and achieve the accomplishment as citizens is extremely important in today`s society in which political corruption, authoritarianism and paternalism discredit politics and tend to depart the political institutions of the average citizen, thus fomenting civil privatism and undermining the democratic process and its effectiveness. Key-Words : Democracy; Politics; Happiness; Corruption; Authoritarianism. (shrink)

In the period 1875-1920, a debate about the generality and applicability of evolutionary theory to all organisms was motivated by work on unicellular ciliates like Paramecium because of their peculiar nuclear dualism and life cycles. The French cytologist Emile Maupas and the German zoologist August Weismann argued in the 1880s about the evolutionary origins and functions of sex (which in the ciliates is not linked to reproduction), and death (which appeared to be the inevitable fate of lineages denied sexual conjugation), (...) an argument rooted in the question of whether the ciliates and their processes where homologous to other cellular organisms. In the beginning of the twentieth century, this question of homology came to be less important as the ciliates were used by the British protozoologist Clifford Dobell and the American zoologist Herbert Spencer Jennings to study evolutionary processes in general rather than problems of development and cytology. For them, homology mattered less than analogy. This story illustrates two partially distinct problems in evolutionary biology: first, the question of whether all living things have common features and origins; and second, whether their history and current nature can be described by identical mechanisms. Where Maupas (contra Weismann) made the ciliates qualitatively the same as all other organisms in order to create a cohesive evolutionary theory for biology, Jennings and Dobell made them qualitatively different in order to achieve the same end. (shrink)