The interaction between rhetoric and preaching is evident in St. Augustine in his sermons ad populum or sermons to his congregation. He expresses himself with care with the aim of achieving true spiritual progress in his hearers. Their reactions encourage him to make an attentive use of the rhetoric resources his authoritative experience has given him, and to exploit any possible means of raise his level of discourse. Signs of agreement from his congregation indicate an ongoing relationship with them. At (...) any rate Augustine, in his preaching, is happy to make the best possible use of his rhetorical powers and leave the rest to God. The formation of a long-standing congregation requires him to go beyond customary limits so as to become a notable model of a Christian orator. (shrink)

Ministers of the Church, whose characters were well defined in the second half of the fourth century, were more and more identified as the perfect believers. In the texts of John Chrysostom several models of “spiritual man” emerge on the basis of his personal experience and the evolution of his works: the monk, the presbyter, and the bishop. One notes that the relation of the Church to secular institutions is of greater importance in the works of Chrysostom, paying as he (...) does particular attention to the autonomy of the Church. In an original way he refrains from criticizing political institutions, preferring to express a balanced view. He holds that a coexistence with political authorities is possible, and he urges a moral conver-gence with them. Ecclesial ministries find a more solid basis in the Chrysostom’s complex and sometimes pained statements, both in their ideal expressions and in their concrete effects on the society of the fourth century. (shrink)

In the mystagogical catecheses of the fourth century, the term “faith” defines significantly the condition both of the catechumens and of the initiates at the end of their itinerary. The believer reaches the condition of “faithful” thanks to the support of the community, through an experience involving several ascetical aspects. For both eastern and western preachers, contact with the mystery during the liturgy leads to a particular expression of faith: through an existential break in the catechumen’s experience, baptism determines the (...) full adhesion of every believer to the profession of the faith of the community. (shrink)

The interpretations of the Pauline expression spiritual body can be indicative to verify the relations between Origen and the Antiochene tradition. After shortly examining such a definition in works of both the contexts, this article summarizes the exterior characteristics of the spiritual body. Are respectively dealt with: its link to the earthly body, the transformation process that led to it. Noticeable analogies have emerged in the importance given to the physical sphere; Antiochene writers, particularly John Chrysostom, gibe however more importance (...) to moral differences between individual bodies, partly negating theories about a material replacement of particles and collocating the spiritual body in a more detached view, that the seed metaphor doesn't express yet completely. The culture after Origen is oriented to a generalized condemnation of chair, in a more static and not gradual view of the body conditions; but the basic role of Origenian thought about body consistence and transformations is evident. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be of one and the same kind? This (...) paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

Este artigo tem a intenção indicar um uso propositivo da noção de imagem de pensamento presente na obra Diferença e repetição de Gilles Deleuze, pois de acordo com esta referência, é típico da repetição afirmar-se, permitindo a emergência do que difere. De outro modo, a noção de imagem do pensamento ocorre na filosofia de Deleuze em três ocasiões, nas obras Nietzsche e a filosofia, Proust e os signos e em Diferença e repetição e nestas obras, nem sempre esta perspectiva coincide, (...) deslocando-se de um uso mais crítico para um uso mais positivo. Em termos estratégicos e metodológicos, é justamente sobre este último enfoque, de caráter construtivo, em que nos apoiaremos. A discussão gira em torno de uma imagem afirmativa do pensamento em filosofia face à diferença no ato da repetição, o que significa que a diferença em filosofia traria consigo, em seu movimento, um processo interno de diferenciação, cuja potência a repete, mas não da mesma forma, senão transmutando-a em outra possibilidade do que significa pensar. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Na produção filosófica de Michel Foucault é possível encontrar, no terceiro eixo de suas pesquisas, conceitos voltados para as práticas subjetivas segundo a relação que o sujeito pode manter consigo mesmo, a ponto de se constituir como obra de arte. Neste tipo de abordagem, a moral – este conjunto de regras coercitivas, que consistem em julgar ações e intenções referindo-se a valores transcendentes – sofre um “golpe” em favor da ética. Para o professor uma possibilidade se abre nesta distinção entre (...) moral e ética, permitindo um deslocamento dos valores constituídos para a invenção de novos valores, em que a potencialização política no seu campo de trabalho pode significar uma estilização ética da sua própria existência. Dans la production philosophique de Michel Foucault c'est possible retrouve, dans la troisième phase de ses recherches, concepts crées sur les pratiques subjectives, c'est-à-dire, sur la relation que le sujet instaure avec lui-même, de manière à se constituer comme oeuvre de l'art. Dans ce type d'abordage, la morale - d'ensemble de règles coercitif, que consistent en juger les actions et les intentions en référence aux valeurs transcendantes, souffre un "coup" en faveur de l'éthique. Pour le professeur, ouvre une possibilité cette distinction entre morale et éthique, qui le permettre un déplacement des valeurs fixées pour l'invention de nouvelles valeurs, dont la puissance politique dans son domaine de travail passe par une stylisation éthique de l'existence elle-même. (shrink)

Interpreting Bernard Williams’s ethical philosophy is not easy. His style is deceptively conversational; apparently direct, yet argumentatively inexplicit and allusive. He is moreover committed to evading ready-made philosophical “-isms.” All this reinforces the already distinct impression that the structure of his philosophy is a web of interrelated commitments where none has unique priority. Against this impression, however, I will venture that the contours of his philosophy become clearest if one considers that there is a single, unchanging root conviction from which (...) his ethical philosophy grows. Despite the perpetual motion of his philosophical thought—its erudition, originality, range, and unceasing forward momentum—still, I contend, there is something unchanging at the heart of it. I will show this by reference to three signature theses: internal reasons, the relativism of distance, and the porous borders of philosophy and history. I will argue that the root conviction of which these are the fruits is the conviction that the constraints of universal rationality seriously underdetermine how one should live. This, I believe, is the vision of the human ethical condition that constitutes the largely inexplicit yet utterly fundamental presupposition beneath Williams’s ethical philosophy taken as a whole. I label the object of this root conviction ethical freedom, and thus portray Williams as a philosopher of ethical freedom. (shrink)

RESUMO O uso de linguagem codificada e esópica nos trabalhos dos semioticistas que integraram a Escola Semiótica de Tártu-Mosou foi motivado pelo desejo de serem compreendidos pelo círculo e não compreendidos por possíveis intrusos indesejáveis dos órgãos de controle soviéticos. Um dos termos centrais utilizados pela Escola - os “sistemas modelizantes secundários” - foi sugerido por Vladímir Uspiénski com o objetivo de substituir a palavra "semiótica", associada à semiótica ocidental. Ao cotejar o artigo de Iúri Lotman Sobre o problema da (...) tipologia da cultura, de 1967, com a tradução para o português do Brasil de Lucy Seki, que integrou a coletânea Semiótica Russa, organizada por Boris Schnaiderman, objetivo verificar se as peculiaridades do texto original, que surgiram devido às condições histórico-políticos da sua criação, foram preservadas na tradução. ABSTRACT The use of codified and Aesopian language in the works of the semioticians who were members of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School was motivated by the desire to be understood by the School members and notunderstood by possible unwanted intruders from Soviet control organizations. One of the key terms they used was secondary modeling systems, which Vladimir Uspensky suggested to replace the word semiotics, associated with Western semiotics. By comparing Yuri Lotman’s essay Problems in the Typology of Culture to Lucy Seki’s translation of the essay into Brazilian Portuguese, which is part of the book Semiótica Russa [Russian Semiotics], edited by Boris Schnaiderman, I intend to verify if particularities of the original text, which resulted from the historical and political context in which the essay was produced, were maintained in the translation. (shrink)

We gain information from collective, often institutional bodies all the time—from the publications of committees, news teams, or research groups, from web sites such as Wikipedia, and so on—but do these bodies ever function as genuine group testifiers as opposed to mere group sources of information? In putting the question this way I invoke a distinction made, if briefly, by Edward Craig, which I believe to be of deep significance in thinking about the distinctiveness of the speech act of testimony. (...) The distinction is that between somebody’s functioning as a ‘good informant’ and their functioning merely as a ‘source of information’. The difference between these has, as he remarks, a crucial ethical aspect: What I have in mind is the special flavour of situations in which human beings treat each other as subjects with a common purpose, rather than as objects from which services, in this case true belief, can be extracted. In this paper I shall try to bring out the distinctive nature of the role of good informant in a way that helps to clarify what is at stake in asking whether there can be group testimony in the sense of genuinely collective testimony—that is to say, where the group testifier is a collective and not merely a sum of individuals testifying in one or another form of aggregated chorus. (shrink)

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the (...) powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed. (shrink)

Antropologicamente, toda a experiência humana é apenas e só uma experiência de vida. Nesta nossa dimensão humana comum, nenhum ser humano pode saber o que a morte é, por experiência, que necessariamente tem de ser uma experiência própria. E não há outra experiência qualquer que possa ser considerada «nossa». Não há, pois, uma «experiência de morte». Há uma experiência do «morrer», que pode ser relatada. Relato de uma «experiência de morte», na nossa consciência.

Para Aristóteles, a amizade é o acto de necessário mútuo amor que constitui, com seus três níveis, o cimento da «polis», a comunidade política, a «cidade». Pode ser estudada de acordo com as próprias categorias aristotélicas e a teoria da matéria e forma, potência e acto. Este trabalho, depois de analisar o que a amizade é como acto de amor, aplica tais teorias aristotélicas à compreensão da amizade.

Neste ensaio, reflecte-se sobre o significado de «eutanásia» como conceito e como acto. Da etimologia, à exploração do sentido paradigmático de actos presentes na história do pensamento que ajudam a enquadrar o que está em causa quando a questão da eutanásia surge. A morte. Que se entende por «boa morte»? O sofrimento. O suicídio. Matar um ser humano: de que falamos? As origens contemporâneas da eutanásia. Que alternativa?

Neste estudo, procuramos redefinir o conceito de guerra, passando de uma definição política concernente às relações entre cidades, para uma definição ético-política que diz respeito à acção pessoal de cada ser humano em relação com os seus semelhantes. A guerra surge como o acto em que um ser humano, qualquer, procura eliminar a possibilidade de um outro ser humano, qualquer, ou de outros seres humanos, quaisquer.

A experiência é apenas um estado instantâneo de impressão sensível nisso que tem a experiência. Esta expressão resume a substância epistemológica do que constitui a posição empiricista polarizada na forma de pensamento paradigmatizada por David Hume e acriticamente aceite por Immanuel Kant. Tal posição, ao invés da tese aristotélica, impede qualquer modo trans-sensível, logo, trans-material de pensamento. A metafísica torna-se impossível. Kant procura ultrapassar esta impossibilidade através da criação de uma construção lógico-epistemológica que designa como arquitectónica transcendental. O mundo em (...) que o transcendentalismo kantiano pôs a intelectualidade a viver é um mundo reduzido a um jogo lógico, insubstante para além de si próprio, num solipsismo que condena o ser humano a viver definitivamente alienado de uma realidade que não seja a de seu próprio pensamento. A sua proposta de superação deste novo impasse através de uma teoria da acção cai na contradição de postular teoricamente algo que a razão nunca pode postular, pois não há ou pode haver qualquer referência empírica. A verdade da razão teórica impede a verdade quer da razão prática quer da razão estética. (shrink)

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify (...) to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject. (shrink)

I consider Katherine Hawley's commitment account of interpersonal trustworthiness alongside her sceptical challenge regarding the value of philosophically modelling institutional trustworthiness as distinct from reliability. I argue, pace Hawley's challenge, that there would be significant diagnostic and explanatory loss if we were to content ourselves with ideas of institutional (un)reliability alone; and I offer an illustrative case where institutional unreliability is only the half of it, indicating that when it comes to certain kinds of institutional dysfunction, we do need philosophical (...) models of institutional ‘distrustworthiness’ if we are to achieve a proper diagnosis. (shrink)

She was to a degree the tool of her husband. However, despite the fact she was under his influence to a degree she cannot escape if the Bank took all reasonable steps to ensure that she had appreciated and understood what she was signing. It may be that Mrs Wright-Bailey did not have an adequate comprehension of the nature of the charge... [E]ven if she did not, the Bank did take all reasonable steps.

Our understanding of social experiences is central to our social understanding more generally. But this sphere of epistemic practice can be structurally prejudiced by unequal relations of power, so that some groups suffer a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice—hermeneutical injustice. I aim to achieve a clear conception of this epistemicethical phenomenon, so that we have a workable definition and a proper understanding of the wrong that it inflicts.

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may (...) be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 27-50. (shrink)

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk intelligibly—while (...) staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

Our ideas about forgiveness seem to oscillate between idealization and scepticism. How should we make sense of this apparent conflict? This paper argues that we should learn something from each, seeing these views as representing opposing moments in a perennial and well-grounded moral ambivalence towards forgiveness. Once we are correctly positioned, we shall see an aspect of forgiveness that recommends precisely this ambivalence. For what will come into view will be certain key psychological mechanisms of moral-epistemic influence – other-addressed and (...) self-addressed mechanisms of moral social construction – that enable forgiveness to function well when it is well-functioning, but which are also intrinsically prone to deterioration into one or another form of bad faith. Thus forgiveness is revealed as necessarily containing seeds of its own corruption, showing ambivalence to be a generically appropriate attitude. Moreover, it is emphasized that where forgiver and forgiven are relating to one another in the context of asymmetries of social power, the practice of forgiveness is likely to be further compromised, notably increasing the risk of negative influence on the moral-epistemic states of either the forgiver or the forgiven, or both. (shrink)

In both social science and medicine, research on reproduction generally focuses on women. In this article, we examine how men’s reproductive contributions are understood. We develop an analytic framework that brings together Cynthia Daniels’ conceptualization of reproductive masculinity with a staged view of reproduction, where the stages include the period before conception, conception, gestation, and birth. Drawing on data from two medical sites that are oriented to the period before pregnancy, we examine how gendered knowledge about reproduction produces different reproductive (...) equations in different stages of the reproductive process. We conclude with a new research agenda that emerges from rethinking the role of men and masculinity in reproduction. (shrink)

Taking on topics from pornography and prostitution to female genital mutilation, from womens magazines and marriage to sexual violence, contributors in this collection argue that the kind of liberal feminism currently rising to prominence does little to challenge the status quo.

Insight into animal biology and development provided by classical genetic analysis of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster was an incentive to develop advanced genetic tools for this insect. But genetic systems for the over one million other known insect species are largely undeveloped. With increasing information about insect genomes resulting from next generation sequencing, RNA interference is now the method of choice for reverse genetics, although it is constrained by the means of delivery of interfering RNA. A recent advance to (...) ensure sustained delivery with minimal experimental intervention or trauma to the insect is to exploit commensal bacteria for symbiont‐mediated RNA interference. This technology not only offers an efficient means for RNA interference in insects in laboratory conditions, but also has potential for use in the control of human disease vectors, agricultural pests and pathogens of beneficial insects. (shrink)