Resumo: Este artigo tem como objeto a centralidade da riqueza no mundo moderno, como fato dominante e como norma, ou seja, como o que orienta e regula as atividades social e individual. Iniciaremos com a consideração de que a criação de riqueza material como meta da vida humana a envolver toda a sociedade – esse modo de viver centrado na economia – é condição que pertence apenas às sociedades modernas e à sua forma econômica, o capitalismo, tendo-se expandido por todas (...) as regiões do planeta. Para abordarmos este tema, tomaremos como apoio e ponto de partida as instigantes reflexões de Eric Weil, desenvolvidas especialmente em sua obra Filosofia Política, o que não significará adotá-las in- condicionalmente. Em seguida, examinaremos a relação entre o desenvolvimento dessa forma de existência social e o surgimento de uma ciência da economia, que figurará como dimensão decisiva de seu universo simbólico. À guisa de conclusão, buscaremos levantar algumas questões: pôde sustentar-se, por séculos, essa exaltação da riqueza apenas pela coerção? Ou será esta uma forma de vida que, em alguma medida, adotamos, por com ela nos identificarmos? Mas se a vida humana não é apenas realidade econômica, e se as suas questões fundamentais, necessariamente, vão muito além da economia, tomá-la como a sua dimensão principal, fazendo da riqueza a finalidade última da atividade coletiva, não será um enorme equívoco histórico? E se a bem-aventurança econômica prometida não se puder concretizar, não estaremos também diante de um impasse essencial? A resposta positiva a estas questões nos levará à conclusão de que, embora ainda não saibamos como, faz-se imperativo restabelecermos a economia da riqueza como meio, e não como fim da vida humana. Palavras-chave: Riqueza. Economia. Vida Humana. Ética. Sociedade Moderna. Eric Weil. (shrink)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, labor activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints," and by Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still (...) survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing a unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality. (shrink)

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament.

My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since the dead provide (...) no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them. (shrink)

"What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with (...) the essential and the profound." -- Time Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic which has, as well as singular terms and quantifiers, their plural counterparts. Analogously, Higher-Level Plural Logic is an extension of Plural Logic which has, as well as plural terms and quantifiers, higher-level plural ones. Roughly speaking, higher-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars; they are pluralised plurals. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of a simple type theory while committing us to nothing more than the austere ontology (...) of First-Order Logic. Were this true, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a useful tool, with various applications in philosophy and linguistics. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with a lot of scepticism. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of Higher-Level Plural Logic by providing evidence to the effect that natural languages contain higher-level plural expressions and showing that it is likely that they do so in an indispensable manner. Since the arguments I put forward are of the same sort advocates of Plural Logic have employed to defend their position, I conclude that the commonly held view that Plural Logic is legitimate, but not so its higher-level plural extensions is untenable. (shrink)

Conscious experiences in infants remain poorly understood. In this NeuroView, Passos-Ferreira discusses recent evidence for and against consciousness in newborn babies. She argues that the weight of evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies supports the thesis that newborn infants are conscious.

Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love, a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbor, has often been condemned by critics. Here, Ferreira seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. He shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics, including impartiality, duty, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Ferreira also argues that Works of Love bears on issues peculiar to a religious ethic, (...) such as the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation. (shrink)

Introspection, or metacognition, is the capacity to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviours. Here, we investigated how one specific metacognitive ability develops in adolescence, a period of life associated with the emergence of self-concept and enhanced self-awareness. We employed a task that dissociates objective performance on a visual task from metacognitive ability in a group of 56 participants aged between 11 and 41 years. Metacognitive ability improved significantly with age during adolescence, was highest in late adolescence and plateaued going (...) into adulthood. Our results suggest that awareness of one’s own perceptual decisions shows a prolonged developmental trajectory during adolescence. (shrink)

In Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks , Simone Weil discusses precursors to Christian religious ideas which can be found in ancient Greek mythology, literature and philosophy. She looks at evidence of "Christian" feelings in Greek literature, notably in Electra, Orestes, and Antigone , and in the Iliad , going on to examine God in Plato, and divine love in creation, as seen by the ancient Greeks.

Introduction Simone Weil experienced the uprootedness of the twentieth century early and continuously. She was born in Paris in 1909, the second child of ...

The increasing use of digital technologies in judicial and arbitration proceedings increases the usage of digital evidence by the parties, which brings the necessity of creating patterns for adjudicators to admit and assess this new type of evidence. This paper generally addresses digital evidence focusing on the second moment in international arbitration proceedings. It also narrows the topic to hacked and leaked evidence and its admissibility in international arbitration. The literature review showed a significant amount of research devoted to the (...) evidence in arbitration. Some considered electronic evidence within one jurisdiction; others focused on certain forms of digital evidence such as electronic signatures. Papers on digital evidence in international arbitration approach arbitration rules for digital evidence but skip admissibility issues. No systemic and complex works research digital evidence in arbitration, explicitly focusing on the admissibility of hacked and leaked digital evidence from a comparative perspective. Also, no research deals with enforcing international arbitration awards relying on illegally obtained digital evidence. In these cases, there could be a possible violation of domestic public policy under the New York Convention terms (art. V, 2, b). That is why the paper aims to offer the concept of digital evidence in international arbitration, including hacked and leaked evidence, criteria of its admissibility and relevance, and design the arbitration guidelines for assessing hacked and leaked evidence. Comparative legal analysis of the international arbitration rules and national procedure law allowed us to compare the regulatory approaches to the definition of digital evidence and its admissibility worldwide. The method of legal modeling allowed designing model guidelines for arbitral tribunals to evaluate the admissibility and relevance of digital evidence, including hacked and leaked evidence. Moreover, the case study method allowed us to analyze jurisprudence and define criteria for admission of hacked and leaked evidence. We conclude that the admissibility of hacked and leaked evidence depends solely on the arbitrator’s broad discretion to assess the evidence. Nevertheless, thorough evidence analysis and a well-reasoned award are always mandatory. (shrink)

The introduction of and the commitment to evidence-based nursing in all care settings have led to a rapid increase of intervention and outcome-based research programs. Yet, the topics of nursing research are not only affected by interventions and outcomes but also affected by the concept of caring derived from humanistic philosophy. Considering this twofold orientation of nursing science, nuanced ethical regulations for nursing research programs are called for. In addition to the different research approaches, further arguments for ethical regulations are (...) as follows: first, the different degrees of contextualization and the variety of participation models regarding the target groups; second, the capacities and opportunities of participants; and third, the caring relationship between nurses and research subjects. To capture these special features of nursing science, four approaches to fill the gaps in existing ethical regulations for nursing research are proposed: (a) process orientation, (b) community orientation, (c) context orientation, and (d) relation orientation. (shrink)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

Cada vez más, la medida de los estándares educativos está arrojando luz a las Reformas emprendidas en los distintos países. En el caso español, y concretamente en lo relativo a la enseñanza de las Ciencias, el paso a dar está en la transferencia de los aprendizajes hacia situaciones de vida.

Este escrito pretende examinar el papel de la estética en el pensamiento de Schiller y Schelling en 1795 para rastrear el modo en que el pensamiento estético comienza a constituirse como un camino desde el que afrontar la problemática de la libertad planteada por la modernidad y, en especial, por la filosofía práctica de Kant. En el primer apartado se tratará de aclarar el sentido en el que la reflexión estética de ambos autores en 1795 no se puede disociar de (...) la problemática servida por la filosofía kantiana. En primer lugar intentaré mostrar las razones por las que las premisas mismas del sistema crítico hacen necesaria la Crítica del Juicio, cuya primera parte, como es sabido, constituye precisamente una ¿crítica del juicio estético¿ y, desde aquí, defenderé que la obra se hace cargo de cierta ambivalencia inherente al kantismo y que, precisamente por ello, expresa del modo más perspicuo el problema que plantea el concepto kantiano, formal, de libertad. Con ello se insiste evidentemente en la relevancia de esta obra para la primera recepción de Kant en general, esto es, para el primer Idealismo postkantiano en tanto que preocupado por elevarse a la verdad del espíritu kantiano, pero, sobre todo, se comenzarán a iluminar las razones por las que la orientación estética del pensamiento, orientación que en 1795 exploran tanto Schiller como Schelling, podrá considerarse un camino privilegiado de cara tanto a la ¿recuperación¿ de la consistencia del kantismo como a la elaboración de un concepto satisfactorio de libertad. Es decir, se intentará fundamentar así, aun cuando sólo sea indirectamente, que la conexión de la ética, de la filosofía práctica, con la estética resulta prometedora aun desde una óptica estrictamente kantiana. Pero el núcleo de este trabajo se desarrollará en los apartados segundo y tercero donde, partiendo de este suelo común compartido por Schiller y Schelling, se examinarán las diferencias entre los modos en que la reflexión estética de cada uno responde a la problemática planteada por el kantismo. En relación a esto último será fundamental determinar si sus respuestas, en tanto que soluciones, realmente se mantienen fieles a la complejidad que nace de la ambivalencia del espíritu kantiano o si, antes bien, pagan el precio de optar por uno sólo de los hilos que tejen el sistema crítico. (shrink)

Taking the Critique of Judgement for an answer to the problem raised by the kantian dualisms, I offer a reading of this work according to which in the part devoted to the teleological judgement Kant practices a Hegelian way of resolution, whereas, in the “critique of the aesthetic judgement”, he thinks the relation between the opposites of such dualisms in a new way that opens up the possibility of a dialectical thought rid of the absolutness of the Hegelian reason.

What is the difference between the discriminations made by a home appliance able to distinguish salt from sugar, and my sensations of salty and sweet? It is never taken into consideration that, in contrast to the appliance, I can have offline sensations, i.e., phenomenal experiences in the absence of direct environmental stimuli, mainly evoked by words occurring into thought, conversation, reading, etc. If we put this detachment stimuli/sensations in relation with the correlative detachment signs/referents inaugurated by the cognitive revolution of (...) symbolic language , we might rethink the role played by language in our phenomenal experience as a whole. Qualia can be defined as forms of relationship between organisms and environment, given that human environment is extended to the linguistic dimension, and that the latter has ignited a coevolutionary process with human cognition. The very same properties we attribute to qualia, even when conceiving of them as pre-linguistic phenomenal traits, rely on the cognitive resources that language has made available. The substantialist notion of qualia, I argue, is formed by an online sensation on which the focus shifts from the perceived object to the sensory quality by virtue of linguistic modes of thinking, which are systematically neglected. (shrink)

During the last decades the special literature has paid relatively much attention to the problematic of speech acts. However, in Slovakia it still remains underdeve-loped. Therefore the author decided to examine it from the points of view of its establishment, gradual development and interactional communication. The paper offers a survey of all philosophical-linguistic views on this problematic. Further, it gives a more detailed analysis of the theory of the founders of the speech acts theory , comparing their main ideas with (...) those of other philosophers and linguists. (shrink)

Arguments analogous to those found in the late medieval theory of the king’s two bodies, popularized by Ernst Kantorowicz, were resurrected in early nineteenth-century constitutional theories of the moderating powers of monarchy. Post-revolutionary French liberal thought, echoed by its Portuguese counterpart, rediscovered the virtues of the institution of royalty, notably the immaterial and immortal body of the king. This rediscovery was prompted by the uncertainties of different national political contexts which made many contemporaries believe it desirable to integrate restored monarchies (...) within modern constitutional models for state stability. This first occurred with the Bourbons’ return to post-Napoleonic France and the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, and then with the Braganza royal family’s return to Portugal in 1821 after thirteen years of rule from Brazil. Using arguments similar to those previously made in late medieval European political and legal thought, French and Portuguese liberals developed a theory of the king’s two powers, according to which the monarch at once exercised a moderating power, defined by the abstract institutional nature of the king’s person, and an executive power, embodied within his physical person. This conceptualization of royal duality was intended to make it possible to delegate executive power to ministers, leaving the king only the attributes of a largely symbolic power. Liberals thereby hoped to confine the monarch to his purely institutional body in a de-politicized constitutional role. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer, al hilo de un análisis del texto de la Fenomenologíadel Espíritu que comenta la Antígona de Sófocles, una interpretación del concepto hegeliano de acciónque pone en cuestión la tesis, defendida habitualmente, según la cual Hegel habría pretendido que elconflicto trágico resulta superado por la acción moderna.Ese texto revela que la acción, que comparece ahí como principio absoluto, posee sin embargo unaestructura quebrada y paradójica: necesariamente presupone y niega una instancia en sí, inmediata ysustantiva (...) que, finalmente, oculta la negatividad de la muerte. En la medida en que esa vinculación ala sustancia se demuestra así consustancial a la acción, el trabajo concluye, frente a otras lecturas, que,aun cuando la historia del espíritu haya dejado atrás la “sustancia ética” antigua, la acción nopuede liberarse para Hegel del carácter trágico. Por último, defiende el sentido en el que precisamenteesta condición trágica la determina a la vez como destructiva y productiva, capaz de abrir la historia. (shrink)

Our goal is to investigate the notion of self-agency in William James and Donald Winnicott. With James, we examine the descriptive element of what constitutes a self. With Winnicott, we explore his explanatory theory on self-emergence. Winnicott's perspective is presented here as the prehistory of the Jamesian self. James's conception of self is similar to the Winnicottian notion of an "integrated self", an embodied position that emerges from the organism's actions in the experiential field. The combination of the two approaches (...) leads to the idea that the self is a flux of identities emerging in interaction with others in the "transitional space" (an intermediate area of experience). (shrink)

Social animals need to share space and resources, whether sexual partners, parents, or food. Sharing is indeed at the core of social life. Humans, however, of all social animals, have distinct ways of sharing. They evolved to become Homo Negotiatus; a species that is prone to bargain and to dispute the value of things until some agreement is reached.