This research article was championed as a way of providing discourses pertaining to the concept of "Critical Realism (CR)" approach, which is amongst many othe forms of competing postmodern philosophical concepts for the engagement of dialogical discourses in the area of established econonetric methodologies for effective policy prescription in the economic science discipline. On the the whole, there is no doubt surrounding the value of empirical endeavours in econometrics to address real world economic problems, but equally so, the heavy weighted (...) use and reliance on mathematical contents as a way of justifying its scientific base seemed to be loosing traction of the intended focus of economics when it comes to confronting real world problems in the domain of social interaction. In this vein, the construction of mixed methods discourse(s), which favour that of CR philosophy is hereby suggested in this article as a way forward in confronting with issues raised by critics of mainstream economics and other professionals in the postmodern era. (shrink)

This research explores the incorporation of narrative perspectives in economics as a social science and its implications for rethinking epistemology. By examining the role of narratives in economic analysis, the study highlights the advantages of narratives in providing contextualized accounts of human experiences, connecting economic concepts to real-world phenomena, and exploring diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, economists, and social scientists to gain a comprehensive understanding of narratives' influence on economic decision-making, market dynamics, and consumer (...) behaviour. The research suggests that narratives offer a means to challenge the notion of a single, objective truth and contribute to a more inclusive and robust framework for analyzing economic phenomena. The implications extend beyond economics, urging a broader perspective on epistemology by embracing narrative perspectives and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines. Overall, this research calls for a rethinking of epistemology, recognising the significance of narratives and their role in knowledge production. (shrink)

This article has provided some philosophical thoughts concerning the journey of research undertakings involving human participants, with consideration given to both natural / physical and human / social science fields, and with a focus on the situation in Sierra Leone. In the process of professional engagement, researchers must seek to give serious reflective thoughts on how their engagement may affect participants and communities - this study has unravelled some thoughts on evolving perspectives. Ethical code of practice has been highlighted as (...) an important instrument in helping researchers manifest serious thoughts in their epistemic quest for pursuing knowledge, through engagement with human participants. The ethical requirement of a researcher to demonstrate intellectual virtue / prudence is a key aspect of the discourse in this article - that which enable trust to be established, and more so, the researcher's ability to exercise practical wisdom in their engagement with research communities. Keywords : Phronesis; Epistemology; Ethics; Praxis; Human Participants; Sierra Leone. (shrink)

The thought about this book has been developed with the view of adding value to the teaching of Research Methodology for undergraduate and graduate students in developing economies like Sierra Leone. At the same time, it is a very useful tool for professionals engaged in research as part of their work life and for which their understanding of the dichotomy between Research Methods and Research Methodology needs to be addressed. It is divided into distinct sections, which makes it very easy (...) for the beginner researcher to understand the difference in concepts used, while at the same time enhancing their basic understanding of scientific tool(s) needed to pursue ontological research, with the aim of adding new value in the body of knowledge. The main motivation for producing the first edition is based on the following: ● To write a book that focused on using and applying the techniques of research methodology in a research setting. ● To write a book that is accessible to students and practicing researchers in developing country like Sierra Leone, where the subject matter is not so well taught, but critical in developing knowledge capacity for graduates entering the profession of research. ● To pursue critical research, particularly in the social science field pertaining to Econometrics, Sociology, Development Economics and many more. (shrink)

This article has provided a critical review of sampling procedures in the context of Sierra Leone. The basics of the two major types of sampling procedures (probability and non-probability) have been explained, with a view of shedding light on their usage to assist researchers in their pursuance of addressing proposed hypothetical statements. Problems associated with low literacy rate in Sierra Leone have been highlighted as a major concern, more so in the process of ensuring ethical code of conducts are adhered (...) to during the execution of sampling research. Research practices in the country needs a complete overhaul, particularly with its very low investment in ‘Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ to help support the backbone of research, and backed by investment in technology to assist with the enhancement of exploring sampling data in pursuit of addressing hypothetical postulates / research questions during research. (shrink)

his article has adopted an open discourse in addressing pertinent concerns about the scientific existence of economics as a discipline. In doing so, some (critical) Filosofia arguments have been provided in ensuring that a well balanced approach is taken on the subject. Obviously, the approach of Popperian falsification used by economic science to address scientific justification through its varied scientific platform of technology applications like EVIEWS, STATA, MatLab and many more, have been applauded. Albeit such advances, the views of modern (...) and postmodern critics have also come out saliently in a bid to ensuring open discourses are laid on the way forward in adding scientific credence to the subject matter. In concluding, it was acknowledged that more is needed in ensuring that economic science as practiced by economists takes an open approach to critical discourse, reflecting reality about its pursed scientific ventures, given the persistence of economic volatility manifested across the global community. (shrink)

The article addresses critical discourses pertaining to triangulation methodology as a step forward in dealing with policy formulation, particularly at the Bank of Sierra Leone. Alternative prescriptive measure like critical discourse analysis have been proposed as a means to the cutting head development in bridging the gap between orthodox and heterodox views of economic sciences investigations.

This article addressed historical aspects of the political economy involving sustained forest ecology in Sierra Leone as a whole, with emphasis on the Freetown Peninsula and its surrounding communities. Attention is paid to cultural, social and economic aspects involving forest livelihoods of residents on the Freetown Peninsula and far afield. The term 'Political Economy' is used in this situation to denote the relationship between the economics of people's livelihoods and public policy (in relation to the management of legislative procedures) in (...) ensuring that resources in the forest environment is sustainably managed to cater for the livelihood needs of people in Sierra Leone, while at the same time maintaining a balance in protecting the forest ecosystems. The paper has provided a critical review of the political economy of forest ecology in the country on the basis of scholarly discourses, and its applicability in adapting to the fragile political administrative management Sierra Leone have (and is continuing to) experienced. (shrink)

This article was championed in view of the notion of (perceived) economic rationalisation which seem to be the foremost of patients' care in the NHS as opposed to addressing distress to their existing well-being, while in a state of being tormented with agonising news of prolonged ill health. Serious consideration is given to addressing the need to rationalise resources in ensuring the long standing history of the NHS' free health care is critically addressed, but not in a way that destroys (...) confidence on the ability of professionals to manifest ethical prudence in their acts of judgments about whether patients' care is to be imminent or prolonged on a waiting list. There is certainly serious impacts to be comprehended with in situations of economic rationality through services provided by the NHS, but it is believed that tangible outcomes about definitive care for patients should be addressed collaboratively. (shrink)

This article has provided some philosophical thoughts concerning the journey of research undertakings involving human participants, with consideration given to both natural / physical and human / social science fields, and with a focus on the situation in Sierra Leone. In the process of professional engagement, researchers must seek to give serious reflective thoughts on how their engagement may affect participants and communities - this study has unravelled some thoughts on evolving perspectives.Ethical code of practice has been highlighted as an (...) important instrument in helping researchers manifest serious thoughts in their epistemic quest for pursuing knowledge, through engagement with human participants. The ethical requirement of a researcher to demonstrate intellectual virtue / prudence is a key aspect of the discourse in this article - that which enable trust to be established, and more so, the researcher's ability to exercise practical wisdom in their engagement with research communities. (shrink)

The emergence of COVID-19 has made it ever more onerous for the world economy to rethink the way things are done and to be done. The need and almost compulsory way of services being catered for will never have been made so practically obvious without the influence of a pandemic like COVID-19. The world at some point in time was almost brought to a standstill, with services pertaining to supply-chain deliverables, education / professional development and many more almost brought to (...) a halt. This paper has the platform for critically assessing the pathway SSA economies (SSA) should follow, notably creativity in new technologies, while adopting a stance on ISI approach in order to reduce its reliance on the importation of essential commodities, which seem to have been a worrying concern throughout the crisis of COVID-19. Suggestions for SSA economies to embrace the notion of creative destruction is the focal point in this paper for the realization of growth and development, while at the same time harnessing the power of human integrity to champion competitive innovation. (shrink)

This article has provided a philosophical discourse approach in deconstructing Ceteris Paribus (CP) as applied in contemporary Africa. The concept of CP, which affirm the notion of ‘all things are equal’ does not always hold true in the real world. The author has gone beyond the normal interpretation of the word shock, which is making it impossible for the CP concept to hold true in reality. The paper has unraveled critical discourses spanning corruption element as a key factor in the (...) current state of Africa’s economic malaise. It is therefore incumbent on African scholars and professionals to continue their strides in promoting critical hermeneutic space, pursued through empirical endeavours or otherwise in support of developing a philosophy that is based on pragmatism for the enhancement of economic methodology, focused on the continent’s pathway of (sustained) economic development. (shrink)

This article explains the foundation of knowledge acquisition through discourses involving research methodology and research methods; differences between the two concepts is exemplified, with the former (research methodology) addressing philosophical underpinnings around the process of research, and through which human epistemic quest for knowledge is addressed, while the latter (research methods) addresses problems involving the application of qualitative or quantitative techniques (in some cases mixed-methods) in answering the researchers' underpinning research questions / hypothetical postulations. Challenges surrounding research ethics is relevantly (...) addressed with a view of explaining issues needed in ensuring research processes are successfully accomplished through ‘detailed eye for issues’, for example, the application of skills needed to access research participants without inflicting harm unethically. (shrink)

Ce manuel a été préparé en tenant compte du parcours de l'auteur en tant que chercheur en enseignement à distance, et aussi pour aider les étudiants dans leur quête de connaissances sur les concepts/idées de recherche. Le livre aborde les concepts de base de la recherche et convient donc parfaitement aux étudiants de premier cycle et aux chercheurs diplômés dans la poursuite de leur processus épistémologique d'acquisition de connaissances. Le livre comprend six chapitres, chacun d'entre eux contenant des informations indépendantes (...) qui permettent au lecteur d'explorer son intérêt en tant que chercheur. (shrink)

The book is very well structured to support practical skills development in understanding DSGE modelling through exercises to graduate a user knowledge on macroeconomic application relevant for policy decisions through use of scientific programs like DYNARE /IRIS, appropriate for use with MatLab/Octave. The author also provided useful references for the more inquisitive reader or practitioner to develop his / her ontological quest for further knowledge in the macroeconomic management of a state (Jackson, 2016). On the basis of relevance of (...) its contents pertaining to theoretical application of macroeconomic policy and management of an economy, I strongly recommend this book to anyone preparing for graduate courses in Economics and related areas like Econometrics, Economic Policy Management and also, to the practitioner-researcher engaged in macroeconomic model construction and policy formulation. (shrink)

This is a review of an important textbook that provide the basics of research methods skills to an absolute beginner. It sets the basics of what a beginner researcher or students needs to know in pursuit of their journey of epistemological venture, both in the use of qualitative and quantitative research.

As multilevel selection theory has gained greater acceptance over the past quarter-century, scientists and scholars have shown an increased interest in the theory's historical antecedents. Despite this interest, however, the early twentieth century remains largely unexplored. It is generally assumed that biologists thought "naively" about evolutionary dynamics during this era, and that their attempts to explain biological phenomena often lacked sophistication. Now that several recent works have called attention to the complex relationship between biological individuality and the levels of selection, (...) we believe it will prove instructive to revisit these early-twentieth-century biologists and reassess their criteria for biological individuality. Doing so reveals that they constructed a multilevel explanation of evolution that anticipated modern interpretations in several important ways. Though it is certainly true that most of these early biologists failed to recognize natural selection's pervasive agency, it is no less true that one of them, termite expert Alfred Emerson, artfully united the multilevel theory of "emergent evolution" with natural selection in a way that differs but little from the theory of multilevel selection that many scientists and scholars now promote. After reviewing the historical record, we place these early-twentieth-century biologists in their proper historical context, and we compare their interpretation of evolution with modern interpretations. (shrink)

In his latest book, entitled “Sweet dreams”, Daniel Dennett confirms and expands on his argument for a natural science of human consciousness. He dubs his view heterophenomenology: a third-person, scientific form of phenomenological description that can account for the most private and ineffable subjective experiences. A central part of his book consists of a reinvention of Jackson's thought experiment about color blind scientist, Mary, who tries to figure out what color experience is like. I explore another variation of this (...) thought experiment asking whether an informed but inexperienced Mary can really know what it is like to have sex. My contention is that while Dennett's third-person approach to consciousness is valid on an epistemic level, it fails ontologically. Mary does miss something if she knows all about but does not have experience of the real thing. The opposite goes for Merleau-Ponty whose first-person ontology does not account for third-person epistemology. The question is ultimately how far a science of consciousness is really possible. This paper enquires about the possibility of an approach that allows a scientific account of consciousness, specifically qualia, without dissolving the ontology of subjective experience. I suggest a possible direction that new work on the hard problem of consciousness might take. (shrink)

Like all people, atheists contemplate issues of love, death, and morality, and in times of stress we long for solace and inspiration. A collection of uplifting quotations from some of mankind’s most important philosophers, scientists, writers, and even comedians, THE INSPIRATIONAL ATHEIST will be a treasured daily companion for the growing demographic of humanists who believe that life has meaning when we live it meaningfully, independent of the existence of a higher power. With words from Carl Sagan, D. H. Lawrence, (...) Julia Child, Douglas Adams, Charlotte Bronte, Bertrand Russell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Carlin, Joan Didion, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Jefferson and dozens of others on topics ranging from Love and Nature to Wisdom and Beauty, this book is a celebration of the sublime without the divine. (shrink)

In this study I provide a thematic comparison of Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to suggest that the representation of the ethical in Fear and Trembling is transparently Kantian. At times I draw on Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Conflict of the Faculties, and The Metaphysics of Morals to offer a comprehensive account of Kant’s ethical theory. Both philosophers hold profoundly important positions within the milieu of ethics, however (...) they have always shared a tenuous and at times negative relationship. In this study, I challenge such commentators by showing that when the figure of Abraham is taken typologically and excluded from the text, what emerges from Fear and Trembling is a Kantian based ethics. I argue that a comparative reading of Kant’s Groundwork and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling reveals that Kierkegaard’s thought gravitates towards three central principles of Kant’s categorical imperative, as well sharing some similarities with Kant’s understanding of duty. (shrink)

I consider in this essay three possible interpretations of the infinitely rich story of Abraham and Isaac found in Genesis 22. Against the background of what I call "the traditional reading," I compare the views of William Blake, Johannes de Silentio, and Søren Kierkegaard. Blake's poetry and painting suggest a striking alternative to our usual understanding of the story, but they finally require too radical a departure from the Biblical text. The pseudonym de Silentio's views on obedience to God, (...) presented in Fear and Trembling, are even more problematic, however. They are at odds with Kierkegaard's powerful account of love of neighbor, related under his own name in Works of Love, for instance. The God who is Love would not literally require murderous intent toward a neighbor, I conclude, but that same God might issue an "ironic" command designed to lift us out of an abominable ritual. (shrink)

The opening essay of Emerson’s 1860 book, The Conduct of Life, posed, in that fateful year of threatening Civil War and disunion, the philosophical problem of human freedom and fate. The essay “Fate” is followed in the present book by a series of essays on related themes, including: “Power,” “Wealth,” “Culture,” “Worship,” “Beauty” and “Illusions.” The central question of the volume is, “How shall I live?” Appreciating both our freedom and its limits, we understand the vitality of power to (...) acquire what wealth is needed to scale the corrections and heights of culture and worship, find beauty in life and human society, wary still of the illusions. Overall, the book is a call for creative solutions. Yet the nation, in the year of Abraham Lincoln’s election, seemed fated to war or disunion in spite of all its dedication to freedom. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent (...) are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational person, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think. (shrink)

This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare's finesse to Oscar Wilde's wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim's Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of (...) the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to the (...) empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

One way to challenge the substantiveness of a particular philosophical issue is to argue that those who debate the issue are engaged in a merely verbal dispute. For example, it has been maintained that the apparent disagreement over the mind/brain identity thesis is a merely verbal dispute, and thus that there is no substantive question of whether or not mental properties are identical to neurological properties. The goal of this paper is to help clarify the relationship between mere verbalness and (...) substantiveness. I first argue that we should see mere verbalness as a certain kind of discourse defect that arises when the parties differ as to what each takes to be the immediate question under discussion. I then argue that mere verbalness, so understood, does not imply that the question either party is attempting to address is a non-substantive one. Even if it turns out that the parties to the mind/brain dispute are addressing subtly different questions, these might both be substantive questions to which their respective metaphysical views provide substantive answers. One reason it is tempting to reach deflationary conclusions from the charge of mere verbalness is that we fail to distinguish it from the claim that a sentence under dispute is, in a certain sense, indisputable. Another reason is that we fail to distinguish mere verbalness from a certain sort of indeterminacy. While indisputability and indeterminacy plausibly capture forms of nonsubstantiveness, I argue that mere verbalness is insufficient to establish either indisputability or indeterminacy. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

This is an electronic text of the second edition of Emerson's Nature, published as originally in 1849 with a collection of addresses and lectures.

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue (...) that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

This book is Emerson's portrait of the England and the English.

This work is Emerson's set of essays published in 1860 just before the start of the Civil War: 'Fate,' 'Power,' 'Wealth,' 'Culture,' 'Behavior,' 'Worship,' 'Considerations by the Way,' 'Beauty,' 'Illusions.'.

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief—belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, bringing in (...) faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. (shrink)

Mental state reasoning or theory-of-mind has been the subject of a rich body of imaging research. Although such investigations routinely tap a common set of regions, the precise function of each area remains a contentious matter. With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we sought to determine which areas are involved when processing mental state or intentional metarepresentations by focusing on the relational aspect of such representations. Using non-intentional relational representations such as spatial relations between persons and between (...) objects as a contrast, the results ascertained the involvement of the precuneus, the temporal poles, and the medial prefrontal cortex in the processing of intentional representations. In contrast, the anterior superior temporal sulcus and the left temporo-parietal junction were implicated when processing representations that refer to the presence of persons in relational contexts in general. The right temporo-parietal junction, however, was specifically activated for persons entering spatial relations. The level of representational complexity, a previously unexplored factor, was also found to modulate the neural response in some brain regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction. These findings highlight the need to take into account the critical roles played by an extensive network of neural regions during mental state reasoning. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

In this book, Abraham argues that a theological imagination can expand the contours of postcolonial theory through a reexamination of notions of subjectivity, gender, and violence in a dialogical model with Karl Rahner. She raises the question of whether postcolonial theory, with its disavowal of religious agency, can provide an invigorating occasion for Catholic theology.

Tomas Abraham inicia una pesquisa filosofica y no se detiene ante las impugnaciones que dictan el buen gusto y la conveniencia (la que esconde las contradicciones para simular seriedad y rigor intelectual). Nada lo detiene. Observa, analiza, compulsa. Sus preguntas no interrogan esas zonas del discurso para las cuales se han inventado ya benevolas excusas, sino las otras, las peligrosas.Desde 1989, reflexiona Abraham, el factor economico es la clave que permite descifrar los anhelos y las frustraciones de la (...) sociedad. Por que? Porque el factor economico no se reduce a la economia, no se limita a la produccion y a la distribucion de riquezas sino que acusa la visible emergencia de nuevas formas de vida. El factor economico revela el diagrama de las mutaciones culturales. En este ensayo filosofico en el que coexisten una cantidad asombrosa de estilos y tonos, el autor analiza y discute la empresa como nuevo monumento cultural, la demonizacion del estado, las batallas etico-politicas entre intelectuales y economistas culturales, la tarea de los expertos en calidad de vida y su funcion en una nueva sociedad terapeutica. De las historias de vida de los archimillonarios al encuadre historico de la ideologia empresarial, de la puesta en sorna (con el mayor respeto) de la literatura de autoayuda a la meditacion sobre la moral y el dolor en los campos de exterminio, La empresa de vivir, como los libros anteriores del autor, traza una linea osada y firme e incorpora al pensamiento argentino una nueva manera de hacer las cosas. Una nueva manera capaz de abrir discusiones aparentemente concluidas o censuradas, de expandir los efectos de un conflicto intelectual hacia areas desprestigiadas oignoradas, de inaugurar una pasion para abolir la ironia autoindulgente y los entredichos ufan. (shrink)