The article analyses the psychological aspects of “phantasy presentation” in Brentano’s lecture Ausgewählte Fragen aus Psychologie und Ästhetik dated 1885/1886. It focuses primarily on two major aspects of Brentano’s work: (1) the traditional understanding of phantasy presentation as intuitive presentation, and as fundamentally related to the perceptual presentation; (2) Brentano’s conception according to which phantasy presentations are “concepts with intuitive nucleus”. In this context, the text focuses on the following topics: the relation between the inauthentic presentations of the phantasy and (...) perceptual presentations; the relation between presentations with attributive unity and surrogate presentations in logic; and the relation between the intuitive and conceptual element in the constitution of phantasy presentations. The study argues that, despite the title of the lecture—Ausgewählte Fragen aus Psychologie und Ästhetik—Brentano’s analysis of phantasy presentation does not refer to the aesthetic function, but to the psychological function of this presentation. Furthermore, it argues that the psychological aspect of phantasy presentation represents one of the main aspects of Brentano’s work, subsequently used by Husserl in his studies to underline the differences between the perceptual and phantasy presentation. (shrink)

In the well-known intentionality quote of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano characterises the mental phenomena through the following features: the intentional inexistence of an object, the relation to a content, and the direction toward an object. The text argues that this characterisation is not general because the direction toward an object does not apply to the mental phenomena of sensation. The second part of the paper analyses the consequences that ensue from here for the Brentanian classification of mental (...) phenomena: in Brentano’s psychology one can distinguish two concepts of mental phenomena—the mental phenomenon in a broad sense and the mental phenomenon in a narrow sense; the former concept allows the separation of the mental from the physical, while the narrow concept allows the distinguishing of the main classes of mental phenomena. The third part of the paper shows that, with respect to sensation, the absence of a direction toward an object is compatible with both Brentano’s early taxonomies of philosophical sciences, and his early program for the establishment of a new, empirical and non-speculative philosophy. For this reason, I hold that intentionality is important for the foundation of both psychology, and empirical philosophy. (shrink)

Before now, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the multiple relations between A. Comte’s and J.S. Mill’s positive philosophy and Franz Brentano’s work. The present volume aims to fill this gap and to identify Brentano’s position in the context of the positive philosophy of the 19th century by analyzing the following themes: the concept of positive knowledge; philosophy and empirical, genetic and descriptive psychology as sciences in Brentano, Comte and Mill; the strategies for the rebirth of philosophy in these (...) three authors; the theory of the ascending stages of thought, of their decline, of the intentionality in Comte and Brentano; the reception of Comte’s positivism in Whewell and Mill; induction and phenomenalism in Brentano, Mill and Bain; the problem of the "I" in Hume and Brentano; mathematics as a foundational science in Brentano, Kant and Mill; Brentano’s critique of Mach’s positivism; the concept of positive science in Brentano’s metaphysics and in Husserl’s early phenomenology; the reception of Brentano’s psychology in Twardowski; The Brentano Institute at Oxford. The volume also contains the translation of the most significant writings of Brentano regarding philosophy as science. I. Tănăsescu, Romanian Academy; A. Bejinariu, Romanian Society of Phenomenology; S. Krantz Gabriel, Saint Anselm College; C. Stoenescu, University of Bucharest. (shrink)

The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: The method of psychology is identical with the method of natural science; The method of psychology is inspired by the method of natural science. The thesis of this study is that (...) an important part of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them. (shrink)

Das Buch betrachtet Brentanos Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt als eine methodologische Schrift, die einen wichtigen Beitrag zur positiven Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts leistet und gegenüber seiner Deskriptiven Psychologie ein selbstständiges Projekt ausmacht. Es untersucht auch Themen Brentanos, die für die Phänomenologie Heideggers und Husserls relevant sind: das veritative Seiende, die Phantasievorstellung und die Intentionalität.

In this paper, we present two proofs of the reciprocal butterfly theorem. The statement of the butterfly theorem is: Let us consider a chord PQ of midpoint M in the circle Ω(O). Through M, two other chords AB and CD are drawn, such that A and C are on the same side of PQ. We denote by X and U the intersection of AD respectively CB with PQ. Consequently, XM = YM. For the proof of this theorem, see [1]. The (...) reciprocal of the butterfly theorem has the following statement: In the circle Ω(O), let us consider the chords PQ, AB and CD which are concurrent in the point M≠O, such as the points A and C are on the same side of the line PQ. Let X and Y respectively be the intersections of the chord PQ with AD and BC respectively. If XM = YM, then M is the middle of the chord PQ. (shrink)

The Dignity of the Children according to the New Testament teaching should be a landmark for modern era. New Testament raised the dignity of the unborn child, from a simple mass of cells to a child who has the right to be born and live. The child born has the value of a person that to enjoy family and society not only for economic potential but for the soul value as they bear the image of God. Children of different ages (...) have the right to be baptized, have access to the grace of the Sacraments and become saints. In fact the true dignity of man is his power to become a saint. And the child is the image of the saint, heir of the Heaven. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of rewilding by looking at its uses so far and its implementation by Rewilding Europe, one of the leading rewilding organizations today. Juxtaposing theory with...

MĂDĂLINA DIACONU, Tasten, Riechen, Schmecken. Eine Ästhetik der anästhesierten Sinne, 2005 ; SILVIA STOLLER, VERONICA VASTERLING,LINDA FISHER, Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik, 2005 ; KARL SCHUHMANN, Karl Schuhmann: Selected Papers on Phenomenology. Edited by CEES LEIJENHORST and PIET STEENBAKKERS, 2004 ; HIROSHI GOTO, Der Begriff der Person in der PhänomenologieHusserls. Ein Interpretationsversuch der Husserlschen Phänomenologie als Ethik im Hinblick auf den Begriff der Habitualität, 2004 ; GÜNTER FIGAL, Lebensverstricktheit und Abstandsnahme. „Verhalten zu sich“ im Anschluss an Heidegger, Kierkegaard und Hegel, 2001 (...) ; JACQUES DERRIDA, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, 2000. (shrink)

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in history to grant constitutional rights to nature. What is termed the indigenous symbol played a significant role in this event. The rights of nature are used as an occasion to interrogate the indigenous symbol in order to reveal what it does, as opposed to what it says. The account of the rights of nature originating in indigenous sensibilities is presented, and subsequently critiqued. The argument makes use of the notion of representative claim (...) to show the strategic construction of indigeneity as ecologically harmonious. An alternative genesis of the rights of nature is presented. It is further showed that the indigenous symbol is employed as a veneer of moral authority hiding the strategic machinations of representative politics. (shrink)

This paper analyses the ways in which human knowledge of the golden jackal (Canis aureus) is formed in the case of a rural community of the Romanian Danube Delta. We focus on the territory where humans and jackals overlap and, by using wildlife monitoring alongside interviews and participant observation with humans, we detail how villagers come to have a particularly negative view of this resident canid. Foregrounding the jackal's highly symbolic nature, we trace the development of the community's knowledge of (...) this animal via historical, ecological and geographical factors. Finally, we recommend ways in which our findings could be used in future management plans and draw out the implications for future rewilding practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of responsibility can and should ground an ethics of ecological restoration. It starts with William Jordan’s concept of restoration, namely the creation of mutually beneficial human-nature relationships. It builds a concept of responsibility using the works of Hans Jonas and Martin Drenthen, understood as a correlate of our technological capacity, as well as a relationship to the possibility of meaningfulness today and in the indefinite future. It is argued that we are responsible in a (...) deep sense for engaging in projects of restoration in order to ensure the survival of embodied meaningfulness in the world. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of responsibility can and should ground an ethics of ecological restoration. It starts with William Jordan’s concept of restoration, namely the creation of mutually beneficial human-nature relationships. It builds a concept of responsibility using the works of Hans Jonas and Martin Drenthen, understood as a correlate of our technological capacity, as well as a relationship to the possibility of meaningfulness today and in the indefinite future. It is argued that we are responsible in a (...) deep sense for engaging in projects of restoration in order to ensure the survival of embodied meaningfulness in the world. (shrink)

In this commentary, I will argue that the componential and emergent views of cognitive control as defined by Cooper (2010) do not necessarily oppose each other, and I will try to make a case for their interdependence. First, I will use the construct of cognitive inhibition—one of the main componential control functions mentioned in the target articles—to illustrate my line of reasoning. Then, I will comment on how some of the target articles, each from a different perspective, bring arguments in (...) favor of this integrative view. (shrink)

Violence is signaled by a mark of discontinuity, interruption, rupture. The tripartite temporality of violence, with its strong focus on the present, points to the originary violence. Moreover, the violent event is structuring the order of the action sequences in an actual violent (embodied) interaction. The interactional dynamics in violent encounters between co-present actors shapes the specific forms of the experiencing in (and of) the violent interaction. Based on how violence is experienced in an interactive situation, the phenomenon of violence (...) articulates itself according to three coordinates: directedness, co-performativity and de-capabilisation. The outlining of the structure of the lived experience of violence is revealing something irreducible in it. To understand the experience of violence as such, I propose that we accept the idea of violence per se and depart from the idea that the acts of violence are essentially moral actions. The core of the ethical-moral discussion concerning violence should be grounded instead on the moment of conversion identifiable when we take into account the reaction to violence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although natural philosophy underwent dramatic transformations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, studying its evolution as a whole remains problematic. In this paper, we present a method that integrates traditional reading and computational tools in order to distil from different resources (the four existing Dictionaries of early modern philosophers and WorldCat) a representative corpus (consisting of 2,535 titles published in Latin, French, English, and German) for mapping the evolution of natural philosophy. In particular, we focus on gathering authors and (...) works that were (directly or indirectly) engaged with the teaching of natural philosophy in the early modern academic milieu. We offer a preliminary assessment of the relevance of our corpus by investigating one aspect of this evolution, namely the trends in the acknowledgments of authorities linked with different and competing approaches to natural philosophy (scholastic, Cartesian, and Newtonian). The results not only corroborate existing knowledge, but they also show distinctive features and differences within these trends that were not observed previously, thus illustrating the heuristic potential of our computational method for corpus collection. (shrink)

Reseña de Nys, T., Denier, Y., Vandevelde, T. (eds.): 2007, Autonomy and Paternalism. Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Health Care. Lovaina: Peeters.

The present study aims to carry out an analysis of the relation between the Bibles of Samuil Micu and Andrei Șaguna from an isagogic perspective, with a particular focus on the canon and canonicity of the books of the Holy Scripture. We believe that, through such an analysis, we can observe what they have in common, but also what differentiates the two Transylvanian editions of the Holy Scripture so that we can help those interested in understanding the reasons behind the (...) current controversies as to the relation between them. Although these controversies refer to the biblical text of the two Scriptural editions, the fact that the attitude towards it was caused by denominational factors, whose doctrinal background is represented by two different traditions of understanding the biblical canon, has been overlooked. This is why we find that the evaluation of how the two Romanian editions of the Holy Scripture (the Bible of Samuil Micu, 1795, and the Bible of Andrei Șaguna, 1856-1858) relate to the canonical tradition of each Church and cultivate their isagogics is fundamental for the establishment and understanding of the relation between them. (shrink)

There are many ways of interpreting the behaviours related to substance misuse and addiction, which can be sort out as three basic models: biomedical, legal, and social. They are corresponding to approaches built in different epistemic and professional frameworks, such as medicine, law, and social work. Confronted with the experience of addiction, these models appear as pre-determined by a specific scientific or professional ideology; they presuppose a pre-understanding of the phenomena. I directed, therefore, my investigation on those phenomenological paths that (...) might lead to, and circumscribe the experience of addiction and I propose an analytical framework based on three major phenomenological perspectives: descriptive, genetic, and inter-relational. This paper argues in favour of defining addiction without making reference to a form of failure, psycho-somatic or existential. On the contrary, it concludes that there is a need to adopt a definition of addiction which holds at its core the idea of empowering addicted persons, of re-constructing their capacity to take decisions about their own lives. (shrink)

This study was conducted with the purpose of analyzing the combined and mediating effect of actor’s withdrawal–partner’s demand conflict resolution strategies between avoidance attachment dimension and relationship satisfaction. We conducted a dyadic study with 175 heterosexual couples who filled in the questionnaires. Six hypotheses were tested using the actor–partner interdependence model with mediation analysis. Results showed that the avoidance dimension of attachment was more strongly associated with actor’s withdrawal strategy than with demand/aggression strategy. Furthermore, avoidance attachment was negatively associated with (...) both actor’s and partner’s relationship satisfaction, the actor effect being higher. Withdrawal strategy was a mediator between actor’s avoidance and actor’s relationship satisfaction, but it was not a mediator for partner’s relationship satisfaction. The interactive pattern of actor’s withdrawal–partner’s demand/aggression was associated with low levels of both actor’s and partner’s relationship satisfaction. These results point out to the need of discerning the interactive pattern of conflict-solving strategies as well as their intertwined effect on relationship satisfaction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue in favor of the idea that it is possible not only to give a special place to reason in our life and in society, but also to offer an integrative rational framework, in in which human ends and goals find their rational expression. The text has three parts. The first describes Alfred Schutz's practical-hermeneutical approach to law and normativity, while making room for a subjective practice of reason. The second proposes to reveal, (...) through the description of knowledge in the world of ordinary life, a form of rationality which offers us practical but consistent ways of making a decision. Ultimately, the third aims at the practical-hermeneutical reconstruction of the law, in order to integrate into the core of legal reasoning references to ends and purposes without prejudicing the objectivity of the reasoning itself. The study aims to make a contribution to the problem of dedifferentiation and positivism of practice in the modern world. Le but de ce papier est d’argumenter en la faveur de l’idée qu’il est possible non seulement de donner une place particulière à la raison dans notre vie et dans la société, mais aussi d’offrir un cadre rationnel intégratif, dans lequel les fins et buts humains trouvent leur expression rationnelle. Le texte comporte trois parties. La première décrit l’approche pratique-herméneutique d’Alfred Schutz à l’égard de la loi et de la normativité, tout en faisant place à une pratique subjective de la raison. La deuxième se propose de dévoiler, à travers la description de la connaissance dans le monde de la vie ordinaire, une forme de rationalité qui nous offre des voies pratiques mais consistantes de prendre une décision. En fin de compte, la troisième vise la reconstruction pratique-herméneutique de la loi, afin d’intégrer dans le noyau du raisonnement légal des références à des fins et buts sans porter préjudice à l’objectivité du raisonnement lui-même. L’étude veut apporter une contribution au problème de la dédifférenciation et du positivisme pratique dans le monde moderne. (shrink)

This paper tries to show that the naturalistic view of addiction is mired in contradictions that stem from reducing the addict to a weak-willed subject who loses control over his or her body. From a phenomenological perspective, addiction reveals itself to be a habit which eventually becomes harmful, but has its primary sources in the embodied needs of a worldly subject. The aim of this paper is to uncover the dimensions of the lived addiction that are neglected in the contemporary (...) naturalistic discourse: the lived-body and the worldly context of the addict. Firstly, we try to do justice to the variety of addictions by underlying that their new and surprising forms are determined by the intersubjective tissue wherein the subject operates. Secondly, the loss of control in addiction, how the subject deals with the tendency to satisfy a need, is experienced as powerlessness, as expressed in the accounts of ecstasy addicts regarding altered states of mind. The last section of this paper will argue that this sense of powerlessness cannot be equated with a weakness of the will because a strong, forceful will engenders the same vertigo of being prey to strange powers. The embodied aspect of addiction and the spontaneous, bodily need it saturates will clarify further this claim. (shrink)

(Introduction) The question of heterogeneity does not appear at first glance to be a genuinely phenomenological problem and not even a problem in general. It seems to go without saying that there is “coupling” (Paarung), association, fusion, synthesis or in general any form connection between different data of consciousness, all as it seems obvious (at least from Husserl) that there must be objectities so that we can talk about knowledge and truth. After Kant we got so used to synthetic formations (...) that we hardly think of their possibilities in principle and the problems that these are called upon to resolve. Phenomenology does nothing else but describing the synthetic process, starting with its most elementary (pre-reflective) levels, aiming thus to completely elucidate the constitution of the objectity and, by that, the functioning and the rights of reason. Now, such elucidation does not only involve an approach aimed at the how, but also, the why of this process. In other words, our attention and our theoretical interest must be directed not only towards the course of the constitutive synthesis, but also on what motivates her intrinsically. Questions like "why should he be there in general an objectity? " or "is it principally possible to associate in one form or another data belonging to to the same class or to different classes? ”, questions which are de jure and which therefore refer rather to the legality of the constitution than its more or less contingent functioning, cannot in any way be excluded from the scope of the phenomenological questioning. As much as the epistemological ideal of phenomenological description required above all that it avoid any form of abstraction and idealization, this class of questions is, if not excluded, at least left in shadow. (shrink)

The identification of two Mycenaean terracotta centaurs from the excavations at Ras Shamra-Ugarit suggests a Bronze Age origin for the centaurs known from the historic periods of Greece. The Mycenaean centaurs from Ras Shamra-Ugarit are compared to the later examples from the Greek mainland. No continuous artistic tradition can be identified among the preserved examples. Since writing ceased to be used in Greece in the Iron Age and no artistic trend connecting the different representations of centaurs can be seen, it (...) is suggested here that the concept of centaurs was transmitted by way of the oral tradition. (shrink)