This paper examined the persistence of individuals’ power in teams and the individual- and team-level factors influencing power maintenance and loss in the long-term. Specifically, and in line with the functional theory of power, we showed that individuals’ state of power in the past exerted a significant behavioral impact on their later state of power, hence, confirming the “power persistence” hypothesis. Furthermore, and in accordance with the conflict theory of power, we found that individuals’ competence positively influenced power above and (...) beyond its persistence. We also showed that individuals’ uncooperative behavior and team performance had a negative and significant effect on individuals’ power above and beyond its persistence. Finally, we discussed the importance of individuals’ power dynamics for effectively managing power struggles in teams. (shrink)

Studies of categorical induction typically examine how belief in a premise (e.g., Falcons have an ulnar artery) projects on to a conclusion (e.g., Robins have an ulnar artery). We study induction in cases in which the premise is uncertain (e.g., There is an 80% chance that falcons have an ulnar artery). Jeffrey's rule is a normative model for updating beliefs in the face of uncertain evidence. In three studies we tested the descriptive validity of Jeffrey's rule and a related probability (...) theorem, the rule of total probability. Although these rules provided good approximations to mean judgments in some cases, the results from regression and correlation analyses suggest that participants focus on the parts of these rules that are associated with the highest overall probability. We relate our findings to rational models of judgment. (shrink)

In what follows, I examine the views of Metropolitan Amfilohije’s views on St Gregory Palamas and Orthodoxy, primarily focusing on his PhD thesis, which was defended at the University of Athens, Faculty of Theology in 1973, and published in Thessaloniki in the same year. I claim that his views there not only show him defending Palamas, but also highlight the need for a strengthening of Palamism in Greece and abroad. Some of the problems, which he identified in 1973, exist in (...) Orthodoxy today and his suggestion that all contemporary Orthodox intellectuals should persist in the Philosophy and Theology of Palamism seems to be the only way to solve these problems, even today. (shrink)

For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought.

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) begin in the halfway Bayesian house of assuming that minor premises in conditional inferences are certain. We demonstrate that this assumption is a serious limitation. They additionally suggest that appealing to Jeffrey's rule could make their approach more general. We present evidence that this rule is not limited enough to account for actual probability judgements.

Under Preston & de Waal's proposed model, empathy might be regarded as everything that determines the quality of a social relationship. Although the authors provide a useful heuristic for understanding relationships, clinical research efforts with a somewhat narrower focus have provided some additional insights into this topic, which might lead to testable hypotheses regarding the neurobiology of empathy.

Unlike many dominant images of thought that are centered on searching for foundations whose coherence is found in binary logics or biunivocal relations, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophy constitutes a way of thinking through machines that produce pure multiplicities by virtue of intensive differences. What is important with regards to machines is to refrain from any attempt at defining or understanding them—they cannot be delimited and are a-signifying—and to try to make them work, such that various flows of thought (...) may circulate through them, intermingling with and interrupting each other. Even though any machine groups together many heterogeneous elements, literary machines are interesting insofar as they can reach a level of the fragmentary whereby the determinant potency of intensive differences can be expressed. This article experiments with Maurice Blanchot’s literary machine—especially with his idea of the neuter—to discover operations that could help to dismantle the foundations of dominant images of thought. (shrink)

Definida como beleza lógica e forma do paradoxo, a ironia romântica de Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) assimila a antiga ironia socrática e a reinterpreta, inserindo-a como elemento central de sua teorização crítico-literária. O presente artigo analisa a ironia romântica, buscando situar sua alteração e abrangência no final do século XVIII, quando o conceito passa a significar metacrítica, reflexão filosófica, ruptura ficcional, distância estética e forma de exposição da arte literária. Defined as logical beauty and form of paradox, Friedrich Schlegel's (1772-1829) romantic (...) irony incorporates ancient Socratic irony and reinterprets it, inserting it as a nuclear element of his theorization on literary criticism. The current paper analyses the concept of romantic irony seeking to situate its alterations at the end of 18th century, when it changed its meaning for metacritics, philosophical reflexion, fictional rupture, aesthetical distance and form of art exposition. (shrink)

A feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features depend on it. Four studies tested the hypothesis that people will project a feature from a base concept to a target concept to the extent that they believe the feature is central to the two concepts. This centrality hypothesis implies that feature projection is guided by a principle that aims to maximize the structural commonality between base and target concepts. Participants were told that a category has two (...) or three novel features. One feature was the most central in that more properties depended on it. The extent to which the target shared the feature's dependencies was manipulated by varying the similarity of category pairs. Participants' ratings of the likelihood that each feature would hold in the target category support the centrality hypothesis with both natural kind and artifact categories and with both well-specified and vague dependency structures. (shrink)

In 2008 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act amendments made deliberately choosing to bring disability into the world, using assisted reproduction, a criminal offence. This paper considers whether the legal prohibition above, should influence other policy areas concerning the welfare of future children such as new possibilities presented by foetal surgery and in utero gene therapy. If we have legal duties to avoid disability in one context should this influence our avoidance of disability in this other context? This paper investigates (...) whether the State might have a stake in wider promotion of practices to reduce the degree of disability in foetuses that will come to exist. Not selecting for disability does not affect the welfare of any future individual, whereas treating in utero abnormalities can optimize the eventual child’s welfare; antenatal interventions stand to improve clinical outcomes and welfare should that specific child be born. I explore why the State may want to intervene in the antenatal setting and to what extent, if at all; the State should implement these technologies. I argue that if the State is justified in intervening to outlaw the choosing to create disabled lives using assisted reproductive techniques, it is also justified in putting pressure on prospective parents to accept therapies in utero to help their child be born less disabled. However, I qualify this with the argument that the State is not justified in using force or the criminal law in this situation during pregnancy. (shrink)

Le fragment 129 d'Empédocle fait état du savoir prodigieux et du pouvoir des prapides d'un Super-Sage du passé en qui les sources citatrices et les interprètes modernes reconnaissent trop facilement Pythagore de Samos. Le but de la présente étude est de reprendre à nouveaux frais l'examen de ces six vers afin d'ouvrir le débat autour de la sagesse et des pouvoirs attribués à la figure anonyme du Super-Sage. Interprétant « Empédocle à partir d'Empédocle », mais aussi à l'aide des références (...) culturelles majeures de son temps, on essaie d'examiner quel type de sagesse était attribué à cette figure par le poète philosophe, de quelles conditions, physiologiques ou autres, relève l'acquisition de cette dernière et en quoi consiste son caractère exceptionnel. Empedocle's fragment 129 praises the exceptional knowledge and the power of the prapides of a Super-Sage of the past. In this sage both ancient testimonies and modern interpreters all too easily recognize Pythagoras of Samos. The aim of the present paper is to re-examine these six verses in order to open up the discussion on the wisdom and powers attributed to this unnamed figure. Interpreting « Empedocles by Empedocles », and also taking into account the major cultural references of his time, we try to define what kind of wisdom was attributed to this distinguished sage, under which conditions, physiological or otherwise, he was able to acquire it, and what constitutes the exceptional character of his knowledge. (shrink)

The problem of human language is studied in the context of the definition “civilization” on the basis of Darwin’s theory. The author defines civilization as “survival of the unfit”. The author supposes that language was invented by the men to describe their heroic deeds for the women in order to be selected by them for reproduction. In other words, language became a selection criterion together with beauty and presents.

This paper concerns Jacques Derrida's reading of S0ren Kierkegaard's interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice. Abraham's decision to listen to God's command and sacrifice to Him his beloved son is based on his personal faith which conflicts with general morality. On the basis of this story, Derrida argues that we often witness similar conflicts between religion and morality, demonstrating that responsibility is ultimately based on something irresponsible, i.e. something secret. The paper finally discusses Derrida's logic of ultimates.

In this paper I plan to draw on Reiner Schürmann’s book Broken Hegemonies posthumously published, in 1996, after his death. I shall examine the role that Schürmann attributes to tragic denial of the law for the generation of law in general. Schürmann’s model for tragic denial is the Greek tragedy. In many instances, besides the study under consideration, Schürmann finds recourse to Agamemnon, Oedipus, Antigone and other tragic heroes in order to delineate the hero’s mortal dilemma in front of two (...) intersecting and conflicting laws. In front of the tragic scission the hero is obliged to select without avoid­ing committing hubris and to a certain extent blindly and not after rational or moral deliberation. Agamemnon’s destitution of paternal duty makes him a sovereign leader of the Hellenic fleet. The story is used by Schürmann in order to model the function of all laws. Combining the late Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean Francois Lyotard, Schürmann defines the situation of conflicting laws as a contradiction or a differend out of which the law emerges as such. Schürmann employs the same model to phenomenologically explain the emergence of all ultimate foundations of experience: he apparently uses his own precept to read Heidegger from the end towards the beginning and thus employs Heidegger’s term Ereignis, appropriation, as the original strategy of being, controlling its appearance and withdrawal in terms of ultimate foundations. Schürmann refers to hegemonic phantasms in order to describe the transmutations by which a referent is declared sovereign by philosophers. Such transmutations depend upon but also describe our tragic condition, namely that always one but in contrast to itself being which we confusedly summon and fantasize upon. Drawing from a close reading of some of Schurmann’s seminal texts, I shall characterize Schürmann’s thinking as immanent and will inquire in the role of singulars therein. (shrink)

This paper concerns Jacques Derrida's reading of S0ren Kierkegaard's interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice. Abraham's decision to listen to God's command and sacrifice to Him his beloved son is based on his personal faith which conflicts with general morality. On the basis of this story, Derrida argues that we often witness similar conflicts between religion and morality, demonstrating that responsibility is ultimately based on something irresponsible, i.e. something secret. The paper finally discusses Derrida's logic of ultimates.

Studies of testosterone's effect on dominance are confounded by the effects of dominance experiences on testosterone. Furthermore, antisocial behavior tends to originate prepubertally, when testosterone levels are the same for aggressive males, nonaggressive males, and females. It seems more parsimonious to view variation in testosterone as an effect of dominance-related mood states than to invoke a reciprocal model.

Addressing many social challenges requires both structural and behavioral change. The binary of an i- and s-frame obscures how behavioral science can help foster bottom-up collective action. Adopting a community-frame perspective moves toward a more integrative view of how social change emerges, and how it might be promoted by policymakers and publics in service of addressing challenges like climate change.

This paper intends to recover the “phenomenological” basis of Sartre’s trajectory since his very first reception of Edmund Husserl’s and Martin Heidegger’s philosophies until the moment in which the main synthesis of his existentialism is published, entitled Being and Nothingness (1943). In this sense, the paper situates the status of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies for Sartrean thought, as well as the originality of Being and Nothingness, which is also influenced by a very particular interpretation of Hegelian negation.

El presente texto analiza la reflexión ontológica de Gilles Deleuze a partir de la noción de “univocidad del Ser”, con el objetivo de exponer su importancia para el pensamiento de la Diferencia que el filósofo francés propone. En su primer movimiento el trabajo expone, resumidamente y de modo cartográfico, la configuración general de la ontología deleuziana y sus principales ejes de reflexión. Enseguida acompaña el itinerario que Deleuze elabora para la determinación de la historia conceptual del pensamiento de la univocidad. (...) Finalmente, el texto aborda el concepto de univocidad según lo piensa y expone el propio Deleuze, verificando, por esta vía, su centralidad para la ontología de nuestra contemporaneidad que el pensador Francés moviliza. Palabras clave : deleuze; ontología; univocidad; diferencia; equivocidad. Centrality of the Notion of ‘Univocity’ in Gilles Deleuze’s OntologyThis paper analyzes Gilles Deleuze’s ontological reflection from the notion of “univocity of Being”, in order to expose its importance for the philosophy of Difference proposed by the French thinker. In its first movement the work briefly exposes the configuration of Deleuze’s ontology and its main axes of reflection. There immediately follows the itinerary set up by Deleuze to determine the conceptual history of the philosophy of univocity. Finally, the paper addresses the concept of univocity as Deleuze thinks of and exposes it, thus verifying its centrality to the ontology of our contemporary times which the French thinker has set in motion. Keywords : Deleuze;Ontology; Univocity; Difference; Equivocity. (shrink)

Abstract:Throughout the Zhanguo period, wei 偽 referred to "inauthenticity" or "falseness." However, such interpretations are difficult to apply to Xunzi's use of the term, in which wei becomes a key component of ethical cultivation. Since the Tang, Xunzi's use of wei has served as a focal point of debates regarding how to evaluate his teachings. These debates largely concluded during the Qing, when exegetes argued that the graphs for wei 偽 (inauthenticity) and wei 為 (efforts) were interchangeable in pre-Han texts, (...) and that Xunzi intended the latter meaning. Guiding their arguments is the assumption that Xunzi would not endorse a term that was commonly pejorative in his time. This assumption neglects the possibility that wei's rhetorical value for Xunzi derived from his conscious revaluation and redefinition of this pejorative term, through which he challenged authenticity's ethical import and thereby defended ritual practices that were commonly criticized as inauthentic displays. (shrink)

Previous studies have offered indications that the way pre-adolescents structure their perceptions of their teacher’s interaction in terms of Agency and Communion differs from adolescents. The purpose of this study was to delineate previous findings by thoroughly examining the structure of pre-adolescents’ perceptions of their teacher’s interpersonal behaviour, and by investigating the extent to which this structure relates to pre-adolescents’ learning outcomes. A mixed methods research design was implemented including a qualitative instrument adaptation procedure followed by a quantitative large-scale administration. (...) Participants for the latter were a random sample of 504 pre-adolescents and 36 teachers. Results showed that participants placed significantly more emphasis on their teachers’ Communion behavioural dimension and this emphasis was illustrated on the association of perceived teacher interaction and students’ learning outcomes. Implications for theory, research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Under the lig ht of Being and Nothingness’s the o re t ical body – Sartre’s master piece –, it is intended to discuss the essential source of human reality as “n i h i l a t i o n” and ontological lack, as well as manifestations and cons e q u e nces from this primordial human passion to be transformed to coagulated transcendence, to be transformed in Being In-itself-For-itself: to be consciousness and, at the same t i (...) me, to be a complete and finished Being, with infinite de nsity and witho u t fissures. (shrink)

Individual actions designed to address issues of public concern is a common theme in the discourse on how to mobilize resources and target efforts toward sustainable practices. We contribute to this area by developing and empirically validating a multidimensional scale for civic engagement; synthesizing and testing the adequacy of the theory of planned behavior and the value–belief–norm theory in explaining civic engagement; and considering how an individual’s orientation, identity, and beliefs motivate moral thinking and action. The focus is on the (...) important social issues of global warming and climate change, income inequality, and world poverty, and hunger. We follow both correlational and configurational approaches to examine symmetric and asymmetric causal relationships, respectively. The findings from a sample of 819 US citizens reveal that the TPB and VBN theory can adequately explain civic engagement, after we control for the influence of past experience. In addition, while belief in a just world inhibits the occurrence of adverse consequences and the formation of positive attitudes, social value orientation, and moral identity facilitate them. Notably, at least two causal conditions need to be present for adverse confsequences to emerge, while moral identity is almost a necessary condition for the development of positive attitudes. We conclude with a discussion of important implications for researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

Resumen: El propósito de este artículo es describir -con fundamento en teorías de la comunicación y en estudios de semiótica- las relaciones interculturales que generan los protagonistas de la novela de Patricio Manns El corazón a contraluz: un colono rumano y su joven cautiva selk’nam; y los protagonistas de la novela de Isabelle Autissier El amante de la Patagonia: una joven criada de procedencia escocesa enamorada de un pescador yámana. Esas relaciones, y en primer lugar las lingüísticas, son favorecidas, o (...) frenadas, por factores personales, y también por factores influyentes del contexto histórico -desde fines del siglo XIX hasta comienzos del XX-, caracterizado por la situación de conflicto entre colonos europeos y pueblos nativos de Tierra del Fuego.: The purpose of this paper is to describe -with basis in communication theories and semiotic studies- the intercultural relations that are generated by the protagonists of the Patricio Manns’s novel El corazón a contraluz: a rumano colonist and their young selk´nam captive; and by the protagonists of the Isabelle Autissier’s novel El amante de la Patagonia: a young servant coming from Scotland in love of a yámana fisher. Those relations, the linguistics in the first place, are favoured or obstructed by personal factors, as well as by influential factors of the historical context -from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century-, distinguished by the conflict’s situation between the European colonists and native peoples of Tierra del Fuego. (shrink)

The purpose of the conference "On Pythagoreanism", held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli's paper opens the volume by charting (...) the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life. (shrink)

A way to make people save energy is by informing them that “comparable others” save more. We investigated whether one can further improve this nudge by manipulating Who the “comparable others” are. We asked participants to imagine receiving feedback stating that their energy consumption exceeded that of “comparable others” by 10%. We varied Who the “comparable others” were in a 2 × 2 design: they were a household that was located either in the same neighborhood as themselves or in a (...) different neighborhood, and its members were either identified (by names and a photograph) or unidentified. We also included two control conditions: one where no feedback was provided, and one where only statistical feedback was provided (feedback about an average household). We found that it matters Who the “comparable others” are. The most effective feedback was when the referent household was from the same neighborhood as the individual’s and its members were not identified. (shrink)

Neurophenomenology maintains that the intelligent behavior we recognize in living beings is based on the fact that they are intentionally directed toward and are embodied and embedded in a world, which they actively constitute. This is the way in which it understands the intentionality of the mind and its meaning-making essence. Meaning-making, however, presupposes organization and synthesis of sensed reality elements within a horizon of temporality. But whence is the opening-up of this horizon given to the living? Attempts have been (...) made to “transplant” Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis of temporality (“internal timeconsciousness”) into the neural infrastructure of living organisms. We critique the main available relevant views and proposals put forward, focusing on the problematic way in which they assimilate Husserl’s analysis of intentionality and temporality. After distinguishing the desiderative (ephetic) phenomena on different levels of organization of the living being, we develop the argument that temporality, in the sense of the temporal horizon of lived time, is rooted in the deepest desiderative phenomenon, that of primordial orexis. Primordial orexis is directed not toward concrete or specific objects or sensory contents, but toward evolutionarily/survivally significant values. Then, we interpret Panksepp’s psychological and behavioral neuro-ethological findings regarding a SEEKING system in dopaminergic circuits in the subcortical frontal brain as an orectic value-seeking neural system and show that Panksepp’s results underpin our idea that such a system makes possible the opening-up of the primordial temporal horizon. As an application of the idea, we claim that primordial orexis (also) relates to truth or evidence as value and, in perception, conditions the meaning-giving process leading to the evident appearing of the perceptual object as a constitution that unfolds in the context of the orectically opened-up temporal horizon. (shrink)

Constantine’s adherence to Christianity was a long process conditioned by personal motivations, as well as cultural and political factors. He observed the heathen cults and he did not recognize himself as a christian until the year 314, in his letter to the bishops met in Arelate. Since 324, after the defeat of Licinius, he declared his faith in the One and Only True God in different official texts. He resolved to receive the baptism a few days before his death, in (...) 337, perhaps in the hope of healing fromhis illness. His concept of Christianity was the one of an utilitarian religion, that offered him protection in war and guaranteed his authority in peace with the support of the Church. (shrink)

This article focuses on the career of the Jesuit priest, Constantino Bayle, as a historian of Spanish Catholic missions and promoter of state-sponsored arrangements that institutionalized nationalist religious historiography. He encoded religious nationalism and racist categories in academic discourse and terminology, elevating in this way racist assumptions and renewed imperialist aspirations to the level of official historiography. The article traces Bayle’s early career as an Americanista at the Spanish Catholic periodical, Razón y Fe. Bayle was an ardent supporter of Francisco (...) Franco’s military uprising of 1936. He was an apologist for Falange Española who defended its Catholic character. Alongside other Jesuits, he was responsible for forging a Spanish school of missiology that was predicated upon the tenets of Spanish national Catholicism and that was meant to rival analogous Protestant and Roman Catholic historiographic projects. Central to this culturalist endeavor were the notions of Hispanidad and Raza Hispanica. (shrink)

This paper revisits the main thoughts of the Filipino historian and social critic Renato Constantino on the role of education in the formation of a neocolonial and postcolonial consciousness. It suggests that Constantino’s critical stance towards education embodies a type of philosophizing about education that centers on the problematization of the language of instruction, on the rendering of voice to those in the margins of Philippine society, and on taking a critical stance about education itself. It suggests further that this (...) form of philosophizing about education and its instrumentalities is prospective of a Freirean liberating pedagogy that is inherently nonneutral, critical, dialogical, praxical, and transformative. (shrink)

How were the concepts of the observer and user in architecture and urban planning transformed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries? Marianna Charitonidou explores how the mutations of the means of representation in architecture and urban planning relate to the significance of city's inhabitants. She investigates Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's fascination with perspective, Team Ten's interest in the humanisation of architecture and urbanism, Constantinos Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti's role in reshaping the relationship between politics and (...) urban planning during the postwar years, Giancarlo De Carlo's architecture of participation, Aldo Rossi's design methods, Denise Scott Brown's active socioplactics and Bernard Tschumi's conception praxis. (shrink)

En la actualidad, aún se desconoce el verdadero alcance de la vasta cultura de Lope de Vega, pues, aunque se sabe que fue un gran lector, que legó más de 1500 libros, sus títulos se han perdido a lo largo de la historia. No obstante, en sus obras trasciende una serie de textos que contribuyeron a su formación. En el presente trabajo se analiza La Arcadia, considerada la novela pastoril más erudita del Siglo de Oro, desde la perspectiva de los (...) agentes terapéuticos. En esta obra se mencionan remedios de procedencia herbal, de procedencia mineral y también de procedencia animal. Los resultados confirman que Lope de Vega pudo utilizar una serie de textos científicos en sus citas sobre la materia terapéutica. Entre ellos cabe destacar a Andrés Laguna y su Dioscórides y Plinio el Viejo, cuya Historia Natural pudo haber consultado como fuente primaria, a través de alguna traducción comentada, como la de Gerónimo de Huerta o a través de alguna otra obra basada en ella, como el opúsculo de Constantino Castriota, pues, en este último caso, se encuentran párrafos muy similares y, en algunos casos, casi literales. Nowadays, the true extent of the vast culture of Lope de Vega is still largely unknown. Although it is known that he was a great reader, who bequeathed more than 1500 books, his titles have been lost throughout history. However, a series of texts that contributed to his education become known in his works. In the present paper, La Arcadia, considered the most erudite pastoral romance of Spanish Golden Age, is analyzed from the therapeutic perspective. Remedies of herbal origin, of mineral origin and also of animal origin are mentioned in this novel. The results achieved confirm that Lope de Vega was able to use a series of scientific texts in his quotations on the therapeutic subject. Among them, it is worth mentioning Andres Laguna, and Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History could have been consulted as a primary source, through some commented translation, such as that of Geronimo de Huerta, or through some other work based on it, like Constantino Castriota's opuscule. In the latter case, there are very similar and, in some cases, almost literal paragraphs. (shrink)

Interpretation of Hetvābhāsasāmānyanirukti of Gaṅgeśa, 13th cent., treatise on Nyaya philosophy; based on other classical commentaries.

The white garment churches’ (Vapositori) involvement in party politics, particularly in favour of ZANU-PF, continued to flourish in Zimbabwe even after the demise of Mugabe. Robert Gabriel Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe from 1980 until he was deposed by the Zimbabwean Army on 21 November 2017. Unlike other Christian boards in Zimbabwe, the Vapositori churches played a significant role in authenticating and validating the continuation of ZANU-PF holding onto power from 1980 till the present even after the removal of Mugabe. This article (...) describes the relationship between ZANU-PF and Vapositori analogically as a marriage. This article posited that this marriage between Vapositori and the ruling ZANU-PF political party did not end with Mugabe. President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa and his vice president, Constantino Kuvheya Chiwenga, are seen masquerading Vapositori by attending and addressing Vapositori church gatherings. Thus, this article interrogates whether the marriage between Vapositori and ZANU-PF was borne out of real love or is just a marriage of convenience. Moreover, if it’s a marriage of convenience then who controls whom and why? These and other related questions require a critical investigation to deepen our understanding of the ‘Church and politics’ in Zimbabwe during and after the Mugabe era. (shrink)

ch. 1. Istorii︠a︡ sot︠s︡iologicheskikh ucheniĭ -- ch. 2. Nauchnai︠a︡ teorii︠a︡ obshchestva.

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech-act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech-act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech-acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking (...) responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them. (shrink)

Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)