This essay aims to examine how Thomas Mann reinterprets, in the novel “The Magic Mountain”, Nietzsche’s view of the world expressed in “The Birth of Tragedy”. The Olympic world becomes in the novel of Mann, a sanatorium where the death drive controls everything. Several interpretations for this ironic reading of the magic mountain symbol are offered, in particular the idea that death must not hypnotise us, a major theme of “Snow scene” of the novel.

This essay examines the conflict of interpretations arisen by Kafka’s work, specially by his narrative «The Metamorphosis». It analyses the range and limits of the psychological, sociological, theological and existentialist interpretation of Kafka.

This paper examines the philosophical conflict arisen by theodicy in western culture. After the exposition of Simon Blackburn and Richard Swinbume’s contentions views, we sustain that the only credible solution to the problem entails a new philosophical concept of God based on a non-anthropocentric vision of reality.

In this paper, we sustain the thesis that there is a violent aspect in the religious attitude. However, it is also true – as paradoxical as it might sound – that religion has been the privileged field to limit all kinds of violence in human societies. Keywords: Religion. Violence. Sacrifice. Frazer. Girard. Eliade.

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What Animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

In this article, we analyse the symbolic meaning of the Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain. We try to see the scope of the interpretations that consider the metaphors of death, time and culture as the main subject of the novel. Finally, we sustain the idea that Thomas Mann wants to tell us that beauty and perfection are the reverse of death and suffering.

O presente artigo tem como objectivo fundamental propor uma interpretação do poema de T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, no qual a experiência do mal constitui ponto de referência central. Esta experiência, traduzida metaforicamente por "terra desolada", pode ser perspectivada tanto em termos pessoais como civilizacionais. O poema, depois de realizar o diagnóstico de uma situação de crise profunda, realiza o que poderíamos designar como um ritual catártico que permite a purificação das dimensões negativas, sedimentadas em nós, constrangedoras da nossa liberdade. (...) /// This paper proposes an interpretation of T. S. Elliot 's poem The Waste Land whose core is the experience of evil. Such experience, expressed by the metaphor of the "waste land", can be viewed either in personal or in civilizational terms. After diagnosing a profound crisis, the poem goes on to what could be called a cathartic ritual, which enables the purification of negative elements of life that constrain our freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

This paper has the purpose of showing the way the concept of narrative identity, suggested by Ricoeur, enables us to re-evaluate the paradoxes resulting from the two classic criteria used to solve the problem of personal identity.

This essay aims to analyze the conception of a work of art in the thought of Susanne K. Langer. The author offers us a definition of art, grounded on the idea that art is the “creation of symbolic forms of human feeling”. This thesis is, in turn, constructed from a robust theory of the symbolic function of the human mind.

The goal of this paper is to distinguish between two main concepts in Philosophy of Religion: the religious human experience and the notion of God. It argues that religion must be understood as a symbolic and cultural construction while the concept of the divine means the experience of the limits of human thought. Sometimes, throughout human history, these two experience meet but they are not conceptually the same.

This paper analyses which are the great cultural cosmogonic models of creation in mythology; so it will be an essay of comparative mythology about the origin of the world, a study marked by the concern to detect philosophical principles that guide this area of thought.

This paper aims to analyse how literary fiction deals with two real cases of philistine violence on cultural objects, one artistic and the other scientific. In this way, we will analyse Mishima's novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which narrates the destruction of one of the “jewels of Kyoto,” as well as Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which novelised the attack against the meridian of Greenwich. In both cases, we are confronted with the same attitude, namely, the insane resentment (...) against the reality principle. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

O tema deste artigo é sobre o modus operandi de Jesus, a maneira como ele proclama a chegada o Reino de Deus, que consiste na restauração da saúde das pessoas em suas diversas enfermidades. Qual a sua fonte de energia para a missão? Onde ele foi buscar o poder para curar e até salvar pessoas da morte, restaurando-lhes a saúde? Em suma, onde ele encontrou forças para essa missão salvífica? O objetivo desta breve pesquisa consiste em demonstrar a íntima relação (...) entre espiritualidade e saúde na prática messiânica de Jesus. A metodologia utilizada é a da exegese bíblica, a partir de Mc 1,32-39, na perspectiva de uma hermenêutica teológica atualizada, que leve a conclusões sobre a ação missionária salvífica de Jesus, pertinentes para a ação evangelizadora no tempo presente. Os resultados apontam para o fato de que a atividade messiânica de Jesus contém uma soteriologia que leva em conta a restauração da saúde física e mental. Não se trata de uma espiritualidade desencarnada das reais necessidades humanas, em suas fragilidades físicas e mentais. É, sem dúvida, uma prática comprometida com a instauração do Reino de Deus, que deve ser continuada pelos atuais discípulos e discípulas de Jesus. (shrink)

The cry of the poor, the theme of this work, challenges the humanitarian consciousness of the people and is a strong questioning of the religious conscience and the Christian faith. Nevertheless, the preferential option for the poor, consecrated in the Final Document of the Episcopal Conference held in Puebla of Los Angeles, is still the cause of much controversy inside and outside the Church. Bearing in mind this context, this article aims to present the resonance of the cry of the (...) poor in the context of the Puebla Conference; demonstrate that this cry is not recent: it has been present since antiquity, and was contemplated in the earliest sacred texts, including the religious culture of Israel and the Christian religion; to reflect on this cry of impoverished crowds in contemporary times. The research is bibliographic, based on the Official Document of the conclusions of the Puebla Conference; from critical analysis by Latin American theologians, as well as from articles and books by authors from the epistemological field of the Sciences of Religion. The results achieved point to the timeliness of the issue, as there is a growing wave of impoverishment everywhere and, at the same time, a growing lack of commitment and intolerance towards the outcry of the great excluded masses. (shrink)

The Polish logician Roman Suszko has extensively pleaded in the 1970s for a restatement of the notion of many-valuedness. According to him, as he would often repeat, “there are but two logical values, true and false.” As a matter of fact, a result by W´ojcicki-Lindenbaum shows that any tarskian logic has a many-valued semantics, and results by Suszko-da Costa-Scott show that any many-valued semantics can be reduced to a two-valued one. So, why should one even consider using logics with more (...) than two values? Because, we argue, one has to decide how to deal with bivalence and settle down the tradeoff between logical 2-valuedness and truth-functionality, from a pragmatical standpoint. -/- This paper will illustrate the ups and downs of a two-valued reduction of logic. Suszko’s reductive result is quite non-constructive.We will exhibit here a way of effectively constructing the two-valued semantics of any logic that has a truth-functional finite-valued semantics and a sufficiently expressive language. From there, as we will indicate, one can easily go on to provide those logics with adequate canonical systems of sequents or tableaux. The algorithmic methods developed here can be generalized so as to apply to many non-finitely valued logics as well —or at least to those that admit of computable quasi tabular two-valued semantics, the so-called dyadic semantics. (shrink)

The perception involves a lot of enigmas, the unity between its content and form not always looking to be assured. Such enigmas are exemplified by the optical illusions, by Molyneux’s famous problem and also, as it interests us here, by the problem of the expression of colors in chromatic models, which express logical incompatibilities, but which refer to the territory of experience itself with colors and pigments. In this paper, we will distinguish two uses of Farbenoktaeder by Wittgenstein by registering (...) the difference, which we consider relevant, between ample incompatibility and restrict incompatibility among colors. (shrink)

A lista de dez categorias apresentada por Aristóteles no capítulo 4 das Categorias gerou, desde cedo, sérios problemas aos intérpretes. Em primeiro lugar, não é claro qual o objetivo e o âmbito desta lista. Trata-se de uma tentativa de estabelecer os gêneros mais gerais de palavras, de coisas, de conceitos, de todos eles? Em segundo lugar, Aristóteles enumera as categorias, mas não apresenta qualquer justificação para o seu número e completude. Esta lacuna conduziu os intérpretes a forjar diversas tentativas de (...) resolver estes dois problemas. Na escolástica medieval de língua latina, quer por razões didáticas, quer por razões teóricas, a receção destes problemas tomou a forma de uma discussão acerca de uma via divisiva ou sufficientia que demonstrasse a completude da lista aristotélica. Evidentemente, para que essa via divisiva seja consequente, é necessário antes estabelecer qual o âmbito da lista. É intenção do presente artigo apresentar um dos primeiros textos do século XIII no qual estes problemas são discutidos: Rationes super Praedicamenta Aristotelis de Nicolau de Paris (m. 1263), importante magister artium da Universidade de Paris no segundo quartel do século XIII, autor de uma das primeiras sufficientiae neste contexto escolástico, fonte imprescindível para compreender a origem e a evolução deste tipo de resposta ao problema da completude da lista de categorias. (shrink)

In this paper I will briefly discuss flourishing and freedom, relating them to health and disease; discuss the tensions between flourishing and freedom; and exemplify how those discussions are relevant to chronic disease suffering. The concept of freedom has significant connections with the concepts of health, disability and disease. Understanding disease and disability in terms of the loss of aspects of freedom may help our understanding of the suffering that arises from chronic disease. On the other hand, flourishing may require (...) a degree of adversity. Therefore disability and disease may be conducive to flourishing. Flourishing may be understood as subordinated to freedom, as a path to freedom, or as transcending freedom. It is suggested that freedom and flourishing are expressed as mutually enhancing cycles, actualized according to the personal circumstances that will ground their expression. In a distant horizon of innocent spontaneous self-expression, flourishing and freedom may become coincident. Regarding chronic disease as a constraint on ‘species-typical’ abilities to fulfill one’s significant life interests, as well as an unwanted intrusion into the patient’s life, presents chronic disease suffering as a loss of both positive and negative freedom. The conceptual relation between flourishing and freedom will thus organise the possibilities the sufferer sees as open to their self. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the current discussions about regulating certain activities concerning the pharmaceutical industry do miss a crucial point. The Pharmaceutical Industry is a story of success, providing a wealth of new discoveries and applied technologies, which have greatly enhanced our lives. The current call for strict regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry makes the unwarranted assumption that such regulation will not disturb the mechanisms of the Industry’s success. I will claim that a centralised regulation profoundly transforms (...) the direction of travel. I will also claim that the role of the executive in bypassing regulations creates a parallel industry of subsidiary regulations to counter such bypassing. The predictable consequence is the increasing role of central regulatory control and the progressive slowing down of the success of the Pharmaceutical Industry leading towards an undesirable mediocrity. The conclusion I wish to advance is that our choices are not limited to ‘a wild open market’ and ‘a regulated open market’ scenarios, and the strategy to avoid a robustly regulated but mediocre Pharmaceutical Industry may involve ‘non-open market scenarios’ which have so far been absent from the alternatives discussed. (shrink)

O presente trabalho busca evidenciar a concepção moral do Direito na doutrina do Direito de Kant, distinguindo as ideias que conceituam a diferença entre leis jurídicas e leis éticas, a partir das leis morais para tratar da concepção e o reconhecimento dos direitos de equidade e o de necessidade, por um lado, e a não realização desses direitos, por outro. O intuito do presente trabalho é mostrar a efetivação e validade do direito, tendo a base em Kant. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Direito. Moral. (...) Kant. Validade do Direito. (shrink)

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one of the most controversial intellectual disputes was the question of method in natural philosophy, or physics. The tensions between observational experience and geometrization, demonstration from the effects and from the causes, and between Aristotle’s authority and new philosophical tendencies made some philosophers search for new solutions. Others criticized these new solutions and tried to show the validity of several medieval scholastic readings of Aristotle. With this article, I intend to present the role of (...) experience in the dispute between Nicoletto Vernia’s approach to the subject-matter of physics and Gomes of Lisbon’s response to it. While Vernia holds that the subject-matter of physics is mobile body, Gomes argues it is natural substance. What is at stake is how to combine experience, definition, and demonstration to obtain a consistent scientific method. Only through the study of this kind of text and discussion can we gather a solid background to elucidate what has changed and what has been inherited from the past in the scientific shift of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

Gómez de Lisboa fue uno de los más importantes representantes del escotismo del renacimiento italiano. En su Scriptum super Questiones Metaphisice Antonii Andree, a veces está en desacuerdo con las soluciones de Antoni Andreu y con sus interpretaciones de Escoto. Con este artículo, trato de presentar esos puntos de desacuerdo. Al hacerlo, espero contribuir a la comprensión del escotismo del renacimiento y proporcionar un buen ejemplo de la duradera influencia de Antoni Andreu.

Una de las características de la transmisión manuscrita de los _Tractatus _ _de Pedro Hispano es el hecho de que el tratado sobre las _Categorías _no siempre ocupa el mismo lugar al interior de la obra. En algunos manuscritos se encuentra en tercer lugar, después del tratado acerca de la _Isagoge _de Porfirio, siguiendo el orden tradicional de la _logica vetus. _Pero en algunos otros, se encuentra en quinto lugar, después del tratado sobre los _Tópicos _y antes del tratado sobre (...) la suposición. En los dos casos, el lugar de las _Categorías _de Aristóteles en la lógica es definido por la noción de “término”. El propósito de este artículo es entender por qué ocurre esta variación, ya que no es teóricamente neutral. Por tanto, para atender al problema del orden de aparición del tratado sobre las _Categorías _dentro de la lógica, se presentarán tres de los más destacados comentaristas de los _Tractatus_: Juan Buridan, Juan Versor y Pedro Tartaret. Este ejercicio proporcionará algunas conclusiones sobre la relación entre las categorías y la teoría de la suposición, y también sobre la _vexata quaestio _acerca del sujeto de las categorías. (shrink)

RESUMO A partir de dois romances de Moacyr Scliar, Cenas da vida minúscula e A Majestade do Xingu, podemos propor um percurso de risco e reconhecimento da palavra alheia em permanente trânsito, para uma suposta afirmação do imaginário judaico tendo a região amazônica como cenário do percurso de enredos altamente inventivos do autor gaúcho. Em ambos os romances, há vozes orquestradoras e poderosas capazes de produzir linhas sinuosas de escavações dialógicas e que se remetem a produzir várias possibilidades de afirmação (...) da voz do outro assimilada, por meio da evocação da própria força projetiva do processo de devoração do veio literário proposto. A compreensão da assimilação da palavra alheia torna-se instrumento essencial para entrar em contato com a complexidade de formação e fundação de tantas etnias que se cruzaram em terras brasileiras. (shrink)

Especificidades e usos da noção de signo em A Arqueologia do Saber Resumo: O reconhecimento da noção do signo em diferentes domínios do saber com significados, sentidos e usos diversos sinaliza sua relevância estruturante e operante nos processos de produção do conhecimento, da comunicação e da sociabilidade humana. Considerando esse fato, o presente ensaio objetivou identificar e localizar as formas de aparecimento da noção de signo em A Arqueologia do Saber (2008), a fim de analisar e sistematizar seu status na (...) Análise Arqueológica do Discurso – AAD – e de refletir sobre ele. Recorrendo à própria AAD para escandir o referido livro, verificamos que Foucault tocou, inúmeras vezes e de modos diferenciados, na questão do signo, sempre em conexão com a problemática do discurso, seja como uma estratégia de sua elisão, seja como limiar de sua constituição. O ensaio concluiu que Foucault operou, em A Arqueologia do Saber (2008), um deslocamento do sentido e do uso corrente da noção de signo para a de discurso-enunciado, como uma formação discursiva fundamental para os estudos e as pesquisas analítico-arqueológicas. Palavras-chave: Signo; Discurso; Foucault; Análise Arqueológica do Discurso. Specificities and uses of the notion of sign in The Knowledge Archeology Abstract: The recognition of sign notion in different domains of knowledge with meanings, senses and many uses, signalize its structuring relevance and operant in the knowledge production processes, communication and human sociability. Considering this fact, this essay had as objective identify and localize the ways of appearance of sign notion in the Knowledge Archeology (2008), in order to reflect, analyze and systematize its status in Archaeological Discourse Analysis — ADA. Using ADA itself to scan the referred book, it was verified that Foucault touched in different ways in the sign question, Always in conexion with the discourse problematic, such as an elision strategy or as threshold of its constitution. The essay concluded that Foucault operated in Knowledge Archeology (2008) a displacement of meaning and current use of sign notion to the speech-utterance, as a fundamental discursive formation to the studies and analytical archaeological researches. Key-words: Achaeological Discourse Analysis; Foucault; Sign; Speech. Especificidades y usos de la noción de signo en La Arqueología del conocimiento Resumen: El reconocimiento de la noción de signo en diferentes dominios del conocimiento con significados, sentidos y muchos usos, señala su relevancia estructurante y operante en los procesos de producción de conocimiento, comunicación y sociabilidad humana. Teniendo en cuenta este hecho, este ensayo tuvo como objetivo identificar y localizar las formas de aparición de la noción de signo en la Knowledge Archaeology (2008), para reflejar, analizar y sistematizar su estado en el Análisis del Discurso Arqueológico - ADA. Utilizando la propia ADA para escanear el referido libro, se verificó que Foucault tocó de diferentes maneras la pregunta del signo, siempre en relación con la problemática del discurso, como una estrategia de elisión o como umbral de su constitución. El ensayo concluyó que Foucault operaba en Knowledge Archaeology (2008) un desplazamiento del significado y el uso actual de la noción de signos a la expresión oral, como una formación discursiva fundamental para los estudios y las investigaciones arqueológicas analíticas. Palabras-clave: Análisis del discurso arqueológico; Foucault Firmar; Habla. Data de registro: 17/05/2020 Data de aceite: 22/09/2021. (shrink)

RESUMO A partir de dois romances de Moacyr Scliar, Cenas da vida minúscula e A Majestade do Xingu, podemos propor um percurso de risco e reconhecimento da palavra alheia em permanente trânsito, para uma suposta afirmação do imaginário judaico tendo a região amazônica como cenário do percurso de enredos altamente inventivos do autor gaúcho. Em ambos os romances, há vozes orquestradoras e poderosas capazes de produzir linhas sinuosas de escavações dialógicas e que se remetem a produzir várias possibilidades de afirmação (...) da voz do outro assimilada, por meio da evocação da própria força projetiva do processo de devoração do veio literário proposto. A compreensão da assimilação da palavra alheia torna-se instrumento essencial para entrar em contato com a complexidade de formação e fundação de tantas etnias que se cruzaram em terras brasileiras. (shrink)