Since Bentley's attack upon the Greek letters of Euripides and Phalaris, scholarship has been inclined to look with suspicion upon other similar compositions, which have for the most part lain under a cloud of doubt. This attitude of doubt was certainly to be found in the scholarship of last century, though there has been a tendency of late years to attempt to restore certain of these groups of letters to their original position as genuine productions of the writers whom they (...) claim as their authors. Such has been the case with Plato's letters; such also is the case with those of M. Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide. Condemned last century by both Westermann and Marcks, they found in Rühl a clever and successful advocate, who stoutly refuted these attacks. His task was rendered less difficult, in that Marcks, who alone adduced arguments to support his thesis, had not gone deeply into his subject, and his reasoning, therefore, was superficial. But the subversion of Marcks' arguments did not of itself establish the authenticity of the letters, and the positive reasoning of Rühl was hardly less deficient than Marcks'. A fresh examination of these letters, therefore, may be pardoned, if the conclusions differ from those of Rühl. (shrink)

The last phase of Greek philosophy has until recently been less intelligently studied than any other, and in our understanding of its development there are still lamentable lacunae. Three errors in particular have in the past prevented a proper appreciation of Plotinus' place in the history of philosophy. The first was the failure to distinguish Neoplatonism from Platonism: this vitiates the work of many early exponents from Ficinus down to Kirchner. The second was the belief that the Neoplatonists, being ‘mystics,’ (...) were necessarily incomprehensible to the plain man or even to the plain philosopher. To have encouraged the persistence of this superstition in the nineteenth century is the least pardonable of Creuzer's many sins. The third was the chronological confusion involved in the ascription to Saint Paul's contemporary of the works of the pretended Dionysius Areopagita, which contain a fully-developed Neoplatonic theology. Though the fraud had been exposed by Scaliger, these writings continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth century to be used as evidence that the ‘Nsoplatonic trinity’ was an inferior imitation of the Christian one. When this false trail was at length abandoned the fashion for orientalizing explanations persisted in another guise: to the earliest historians of Neoplatonism, Simon and Vacherot, the school of Plotinus was ‘the school of Alexandria,’ and its inspiration was mainly Egyptian. Vacherot says of Neoplatonism that it is ‘essentially and radically oriental, having nothing of Greek thought but its language and procedure.’ Few would be found to-day to subscribe to so sweeping a pronouncement; but the existence of an important oriental element in Plotinus' thought is still affirmed by many French and German writers. (shrink)

The text is almost exclusively that of the Leonine edition. This volume will have direct relevance for the theologian rather than the philosopher, but the reader, or editor, who ignores the psychological and sociological underpinnings of St. Thomas' ostensible devotional and ecclesiastical discussion of the sacrament of penance does so at his own peril. In this respect, the three appendices in this volume are perilously conservative. No editor is to be envied the task of showing in a few paragraphs the (...) place of the last seven questions in an organic work made up of no less than five hundred and twelve questions; but this is all the more reason to cast aside the immediate framework of the discussion. The actual questions included are "The Sacrament of Penance", "The Virtue of Penance", "The Effect of Penance", "Pardon for Venial Sins", "The Return of Sins once Forgiven", "Virtue Regained Through Penance", and "The Parts of Penance in General".—E. A. R. (shrink)

Towards the unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit -- Arendt and the time of the pardon -- Kant, evil, and the unconditioned -- Judgment after Derrida.

Complicity consists in one person contributing to someone else's wrongdoing. But there is a diverse cluster ways of being involved in another’s wrongdoing. For a ‘diagnosis by exclusion’, we first fix the meaning of complicity in contrast to that with which it is often wrongly conflated. Literally cooperating in wrongdoing with others, for instance, is more than complicity. Each and every cooperator is actually a co-principal in the wrong jointly committed; and each bears the full responsibility, shared with all co-principals, (...) for the outcomes of that wrongdoing. Other sorts of involvement with wrongs committed by others amount to less than complicity because the involvement there is causally inert and hence does not actually contribute to the other’s wrongdoing at all. Pardoning wrongs wholly in the past may be like that. So too may be some cases of wilfully overlooking wrongs that others commit under one's very nose. Complicity is a very precise way of being involved in wrongdoing. Complicity consists in a secondary contribution of a causal (or potentially causal) sort to a wrong committed by someone else. That ‘contribution factor’ can be graded on many axes, in terms of how proximate, reversible or frequent the contribution was. Other things being equal, one is more complicit the …. (shrink)

Since Bentley's attack upon the Greek letters of Euripides and Phalaris, scholarship has been inclined to look with suspicion upon other similar compositions, which have for the most part lain under a cloud of doubt. This attitude of doubt was certainly to be found in the scholarship of last century, though there has been a tendency of late years to attempt to restore certain of these groups of letters to their original position as genuine productions of the writers whom they (...) claim as their authors. Such has been the case with Plato's letters; such also is the case with those of M. Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide. Condemned last century by both Westermann and Marcks, they found in Rühl a clever and successful advocate, who stoutly refuted these attacks. His task was rendered less difficult, in that Marcks, who alone adduced arguments to support his thesis, had not gone deeply into his subject, and his reasoning, therefore, was superficial. But the subversion of Marcks' arguments did not of itself establish the authenticity of the letters, and the positive reasoning of Rühl was hardly less deficient than Marcks'. A fresh examination of these letters, therefore, may be pardoned, if the conclusions differ from those of Rühl. (shrink)

[Omslag] La question du mal résonne à travers toute l'œuvre de Paul Ricoeur comme une énigme et un scandale : très présente dès les premières œuvres, dans Finitude et culpabilité ou dans Le conflit des interprétations, elle est également au centre de l'inédit Logique, éthique et tragique du mal chez saint Augustin et elle resurgit avec force dans l'essai, Le mal. Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie. Il n'en est pas de même de la thématique du (...) class='Hi'>pardon, qui n'est vraiment développée que dans les dernières œuvres, en particulier dans l'épilogue de La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli. Et pourtant, si, comme le dit Ricoeur, « la compassion vient briser le cercle vicieux de la culpabilité », n'est-ce pas à la lumière du pardon qu'il importe de revisiter la question de la faute et même l'excès du mal? C'est l'hypothèse que suggère cet ouvrage consacré à l'œuvre de Paul Ricoeur. Fruit d'une journée d'étude organisée conjointement par le Centre Sèvres - Facultés jésuites de Paris et le Fonds Ricoeur, à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Paul Ricoeur, ce volume offre en outre un long inédit de Paul Ricoeur, qui éclaire la manière dont il a travaillé Augustin, mais aussi la genèse et l'évolution de sa pensée sur la question du mal. (shrink)

Why does someone, S, deserve blame or reproach for an action or event? One part of a standard answer since Aristotle: the event was caused, at least in part, by S’s bad will. But recently there’s been some insightful discussion of cases where the event’s causes do not include any bad will from S and yet it seems that S is not off the hook for the event. Cheshire Calhoun, Miranda Fricker, Elinor Mason, David Enoch, Randolph Clarke, and others include (...) in this category some cases of glitches, forgetfulness, inattentiveness, the actions of one’s children or one’s country, and certain instances of explicit bias and implicit bias. Enoch and Mason argue that in these cases S should extend the realm of S’s responsibility. Drawing on Aristotle’s emphases on retrospective attitudes and the non-voluntary, this paper attempts to clarify the relation between quality of will and blameworthiness. I analyze cases where (1) S is clearly not morally responsible for an action or event, E, yet (2) S deserves reproach for E unless S has the appropriate retrospective attitudes (such as regret) or the absence of inappropriate attitudes toward E. (shrink)

When E. M. Forster published the novel Howards End in 1910, it was at the height of ‘the inheritance society’, and the gulf between rich and poor was great and problematic; a fact that Forster was very well aware of. Yet in spite of this, the main character in Howards End, Margaret Schlegel, is a financially independent rentier living off of the wealth of her ancestors, and her wealth increases when she is named the ‘spiritual heir’ of Ruth Wilcox and (...) thus inherits the house of Howards End. In this study, I argue that Forster shifts the focus from inherited money to inherited values in order to pardon a society of great inequality. Drawing on an aristocratic principle, Forster thus deals with inheritance as an inalienable and spiritual subject rather than as a legal and economic one. (shrink)

Les conflits de leadership déchirent l'Église en Afrique. Et l'Église protestante méthodiste du Bénin (EPMB) en à subi les affres. Comment est née la crise à la tête de l'EPMB? Comment s'est-elle manifestée? Quelles stratégies ont été mises en œuvre pour la juguler? Cet ouvrage apporte des eœclairages à ces questions et montre coment le dialogue, le pardon et surtout l'eœthique, au-delà de l'expression des egos et de l'intervention de la justice des hommes, ont pu tracer les sillons d'une (...) paix qu'on souhaite éternelle. (shrink)

Jesus and Socrates shared a remarkable gift; a channel of inner spiritual communication, to afford them truthful guidance in their respective religious discourse. Jesus is part of the Trinity; he is the Son, the Son of God. In mortal life he is the son of a carpenter. He called on all peoples to repent of their sins but fell foul of the authorities and was crucified. Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher and the son of an artisan. His mission is (...) to drive the Athenians to investigate truth, but he too incurs the displeasure of fellow citizens, to the extent of execution. The accusations made against them centre around, in Jesus’ case, proclaiming himself the Son of God, with the means to pardon, and in Socrates’, that a daimonion, an inner voice, speaks to him in his heart. Jesus talks with God directly through prayer, as the pneuma of God, i.e. to pneuma to hagion, or Holy Spirit, is with him. Socrates seems to enter what we would now think of as a trance-like condition, wherein he communicates with his inner daimonion, who directs him to take courage on the righteous path. (shrink)

Recent work in social psychology suggests that people harbor “implicit race biases,” biases which can be unconscious or uncontrollable. Because awareness and control have traditionally been deemed necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility, implicit biases present a unique challenge: do we pardon discrimination based on implicit biases because of its unintentional nature, or do we punish discrimination regardless of how it comes about? The present experiments investigated the impact such theories have upon moral judgments about racial discrimination. The (...) results show that different theories differ in their impact on moral judgments: when implicit biases are defined as unconscious, people hold the biased agent less morally responsible than when these biases are defined as automatic (i.e., difficult to control), or when no theory of implicit bias is provided. (shrink)

The overpopulation of the earth and the increasing consumption of its life ressources implies new risks and damages for mankind. The awareness of this facts has turned Ethics, formerly conceived of primarily as one among other philosophical disciplines, into a fundamental one. Ethics has become, in some sense, a “first philosophy”.This has opened new object fields for it. In the past Ethics was mainly concerned with the “good” life and the “good” behavior of the single subject. Now it aims to (...) support behavior kinds making possible the survival of mankind under globalized life conditions. “Good” life presupposes surviving.Ethical reflections aimed formerly to guarantee that human beings keep able to live together even if they don’t share the same “values”. Now they have to face the problem of the living together of human beings belonging to different cultures and social forms. The main question is no more what ethical fundamentals would best enable human beings to live together, but what are the conditions for a coexistence of values which enables a good living together of human beings with diverse ethical orientations.Often it is said that Hegel did not develop an Ethics of his own. This paper would like to show that Hegel’s philosophy is, on the contrary, an excellent tool for facing such kinds of questions. His main ethical concept is “recognition”. But he is not concerned with the recognition or rejection of concrete ethical principles. His concept of recognition focuses on the individual in its absolute singularity, in his being absolutely unique in and through himself. His consciousness as self-consciousness gets thus particular in the sense of being definitely individual. Hegel calls the reciprocal recognition of individually conscious subjects the “absolute spirit”.This unusual terminology has made an adequate reception of Hegel’s thinking quite difficult. But there can be no doubt that his very rich and deep elaboration of the phenomenology of such recognition among factual subjects provides extremely productive tools to face eco-ethical reflections in our days. This paper tries to show in presently understandable terms Hegel’s reflections on the very nature of language as the place in which the subjects experience both their absolute individuality and their community, i. e. their singularity and the generality of their institutions, in a simultaneously paradox and coherent way. Recognition becomes in Hegel the inner structure of pardon and reconciliation. Its dependence on languages both diverse and shared makes this concept particularly productive for shaping the living together of human beings belonging to diverse cultures and following diverse ethical orientations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Alcaics In Exile: W. H. Auden’s “In Memory Of Sigmund Freud”Rosanna WarrenOn September 23, 1939, Sigmund Freud died in exile in London, a refugee from Nazi Austria. Within a month, Auden, who had been living in the United States since January of that year, wrote a friend in England that he was working on an elegy for Freud. 1 The poem appeared in The Kenyon Review early in 1940. (...) A stately public ode, the poem mourns not only the death of a publicly significant individual, but the collapse of a world. Hitler had overrun Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland; assaults on Jews had intensified; England and France had just declared war on Germany. There would be, indeed, many who would have to be mourned:When there are so many we shall have to mourn, when grief has been made so public, and exposed to the critique of whole epoch the frailty of our conscience and anguish,of whom shall we speak?...Someone encountering this poem for the first time, on the page or in the ear, might be pardoned for puzzling over its form. It sounds prosy. It seems to have some recognizable English cadences, pentameters (“[inline-graphic 01]”), tetrameters (“ ”), and even trimeters (“ ”). But the pattern seems unruly, with some [End Page 111] lines stretching out beyond five traditional beats, and ignoring any iambic order: “turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he.” Groping for a more satisfactory principle of organization, a reader with some knowledge of versification may be moved to count syllables. Such a reader will discover that the poem is indeed organized syllabically in lines of 11, 11, 9, and 10 syllables. “Aha,” says the reader, alert to Auden’s intimacy with Classical civilization: “A Horatian ode. Not inappropriate for a formal elegy.” Reflecting further, and leafing through the pages of Horace, that reader will find, or remember, that two thirds of Horace’s odes are in these quatrains, the alcaic stanza. Auden, it appears, has composed his elegy in some version of the meter of Alcaeus, the 7th century b.c.e. Greek poet whose stanza became second nature to Horace. And we cannot enter the world of Auden’s poem without asking, why alcaics? And how do they work here?“In Memory of Sigmund Freud” is sometimes said to be Auden’s first syllabic poem. 2 Others demur, proposing both earlier and later examples. 3 Whatever the spats about dating Auden’s early syllabic practice, scholars conventionally agree that his turn toward syllabic composition reflects his evolving interest in a discursive poetry; in the poet as a private intelligence with a public voice; and in the work, respectively, of Horace and Marianne Moore. Having identified the poem as syllabic, many critics move on to heftier topics like psychoanalysis versus Marxism, Auden more than most poets having laid himself open to an overridingly thematic criticism of Big Ideas. But if, having acknowledged the influence of Horace and Moore in Auden’s refusal of English iambic lyricism here, we stay with the question of meter, we are led back to the older progenitor, Alcaeus, a great poet of exile, whose stanza Auden adopts and adapts. I shall ask how it affects our reading to observe that the stanza itself has a genealogy, and brings its expressive burden to bear on Auden’s poem.“In Memory of Sigmund Freud” relies on a counterpoint of two metrical systems, the largely iambic accentual/syllabic system, traditional in English since Wyatt, and a flattened version of Greek quantitative meter, which was a musical notation of syllable length. For Auden, whose great prosodic facility was almost a handicap, the problem was, “not how to write in iambics but how not to write in them from automatic habit.” 4 Throughout his poetic life, he reached for cadences to interrupt the “natural” iambics, sometimes recalling the Old English alliterative beat, and often turning to ballads and popular tunes for rhythmical variation. By the late thirties, he was not only disillusioned [End Page 112] with the Spanish Civil War and his role as quasi-Socialist bard, but was seeking new compositional principles as well. Free verse was not an alternative: his ear required an evident... (shrink)

Vie, conatus, vertu.--Philosophie et théologie chez Spinoza.--Spinoza et le langage.--Spinoza et la théorie des attributs de Dieu de Maïmonide.--Allégorie et prophétie.--Société et communion chez Spinoza.--État et nature chez Spinoza.--Spinoza et l'État des Hébreux.--Durée et histoire chez Spinoza.--L'idée de loi.--Le chapitre XVI du Traité théologico-politique.--Le péché et le pardon d'après Spinoza.--Le Spinoza de Martial Guéroult I.--Le Spinoza de Martial Guéroult.

This paper explores the meaning of the word “felony” in thirteenth and fourteenth century England, i.e., during the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. To compile a working definition of felony, the paper presents examples of the language of felony drawn from literary and religious sources, in addition to considering the word’s more formulaic appearance in legal records. The paper then analyzes cases ending in acquittal or pardon, highlighting the factors that might take a criminal case (...) out of the realm of felony. It suggests that the very definition of felony and felonious behavior—and thus the essence of criminal responsibility—may be bound up with the idea of mens rea during this period. The paper aims to uncover broader societal understandings of the nature of guilt and innocence, and to highlight connections and disconnections between the formal criminal law of felony, with its heavy emphasis on capital punishment, and popular and ecclesiastical understandings of culpability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 467-489 [Access article in PDF] "By the Things Themselves":Eudaimonism, Direct Acquaintance, and Illumination in Augustine's De Magistro 1 Michael Mendelson 1. The Eudaimonistic Interlude It comes as a surprise. Two-thirds of the way through De Magistro, amid a torturous and at times obscure discussion of the nature of language, Augustine pauses to provide Adeodatus, his son and interlocutor, with what seems (...) a rather odd digression:...with so many detours, it's difficult to say at this point where you and I are trying to get to! Maybe you think we're playing around and diverting the mind from serious matters by some little puzzles that seem childish, or that we're pursuing some result that is only small or modest....Though we do perhaps play around, this should itself not be regarded as childish. Nor are we thinking about small and modest goods. Yet if I were to say that there is a happy and everlasting life, and I want us to be led there under the guidance of God (namely by Truth Himself) by stages that are suitable to our weak steps, I'm afraid I might seem laughable for having set out on such a long journey by considering signs rather than the things themselves that are signified. So then, you'll pardon me if I play around with you at first—not for the sake of playing around, but to exercise the mind's strength and sharpness, with which we're [End Page 467] able not only to withstand but also to love the heat and light of that region where the happy life is. 2One is left wondering—if one pauses long enough to wonder at all—what exactly the preceding tightly woven and technical discussion of signification has to do with the "heat" (calor) and the "light" (lux) of the "region" (regio) where the "happy life" (beata vita) is to be found. Indeed, even the passage itself acknowledges the ostensible obliqueness of the connection without doing very much to highlight its nature.It is not surprising that readers of De Magistro often overlook this eudaimonistic interlude in favor of the more prominent and arresting difficulties with which the text confronts us. There is, after all, the somewhat awkward view of language which underlies the entire discussion, and there is also what seems to be the abrupt and jarring reversal of positions that occurs near the very end of the text. Perhaps most notorious of all, there is the famous theory of "divine illumination" with which the dialogue concludes. It is worth noting, however, that as odd and as digressive as this eudaimonistic interlude may strike the present-day reader, it does not seem to strike Adeodatus as at all odd, nor does it seem out of keeping with the eudaimonistic emphasis that is such a prominent feature of Augustine's other works from roughly the same period. 3 Indeed, our passage, although easily swept aside and passed over, can do much to provide a unifying strand which ties our difficulties together; it is, indeed, a helpful prism through which we can view those difficulties in a new light. [End Page 468] 2. Some Initial Darkness And the difficulties are indeed quite real. To begin with, there is the awkward view of language that underlies the entire discussion. "Words" (verba) are "signs" (signa) (DM 2.3), and there is a fundamental distinction between a "sign" and "signifiables" (significabilia) which are signified by signs (DM 4.8). Language, on this account, is fundamentally instrumental (see, e.g., DM 9.25), for each word is a means by which one attempts to draw attention to that which the word, qua sign, somehow signifies. As Wittgenstein says in his famous gloss on Confessions I.8, In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea, E.g. Every word has a meaning. The meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands... (shrink)

Context: The idea for this article sprang from a desire to revive a conversation with the late Ernst von Glasersfeld on the heuristic function - and epistemological status - of forms of ideations that resist linguistic or empirical scrutiny. A close look into the uses of humor seemed a thread worth pursuing, albeit tenuous, to further explore some of the controversies surrounding the evocative power of the imaginal and other oblique forms of knowing characteristic of creative individuals. Problem: People generally (...) respond to humor, i.e., they are inclined to smile at things they find funny. People like to crack jokes, make puns, and, starting at age two, human infants engage in pretense or fantasy play. Research on creativity, on the other hand, has mostly scorned the trickster within. Cognitivists in particular are quick to relegate wit, whimsy, and even playfulness to the ranks of artful or poetic frivolities. Method: We use the emblems of the craftsman, the trickster, and the poet to highlight some of the oblique ways of knowing by which creative thinkers bring forth new insights. Each epitomizes dimensions intrinsic to the art of “possibilizing.” Taken together, they help us better understand what it means to be playful beyond curious, rigorous beyond reasonable, and why this should matter, even to constructivists! Results: The musings characteristic of creative individuals speak to intelligent beings’ ability to use glitches intentionally or serendipitously as a means to open up possibilities; to hold on to a thought before spelling it out; and to resist treating words or images as conventional and arbitrary signs regardless of their evocative power. To fall into nominalism, Bachelard insisted, is a poet’s nightmare! Implications: Psyche is image, said Jung, and when we feel alive we rely on the imaginal to guide our reason. Note that image is not here to be understood as a picture in the head or a photographic snapshot of the world. The imaginal does not represent, it brings forth what we understand beyond words. It does not lock us into a single mode. Instead, it is a call to be mindful, in Ellen Langer’s sense: in the present, mentally alert, and on the outlook for our psyche’s own surprising wisdom (sagacity. Constructivist content: Debates on the heuristic function and epistemological status of oblique ways of knowing have long occupied constructivist scholars. I can only guess whether my uses of Jung’s imaginal or Bachelard’s anti-nominalism would have amused or exasperated Ernst! I do know that, on occasion, Ernst the connoisseur, bricoleur, and translator allowed the rationalist-within to include the poet’s power to evoke as a legitimate form of rationality. He himself has written about oblique knowing as legit! (shrink)

EN_This paper‘s goal is to investigate secularized society by retracing its structure. What is hidden behind the notion of secularization? Our intention here is to analyse the social phenomenon of secularisation through the study of its ontology. The research will be on the identity issue, in the first place the living identity to see its resonance in social, cultural, religious and political areas. We will then arrive at the end of this paper, at the thesis – starting from the consciousness (...) of self and the world – of a return to the authentic form of living together in reciprocal welcome as reason of personal enrichment. In such dynamics the forgiveness issue – taking into account Occidental history – will have a central, and, at the same time, redeeming role. FR_Cette étude se propose d’étudier la société sécularisée, en retraçant sa structure. Qu’est-ce qui se cache derrière la notion de sécularisation? Ici nous entendons analyser le phénomène de la sécularisation sociale par l’intermédiaire de l’étude de son ontologie. La recherche portera sur la question de l’identité, en premier lieu sur l’identité vivante, pour voir ses résonances dans les domaines social, culturel, religieux et politique. Ainsi, nous arriverons à la thèse - à partir de la conscience du soi et du monde - pour un retour à une forme authentique du vivre ensemble dans un accueil réciproque en tant que raison d’enrichissement personnel. Dans cette dynamique la question du pardon – en tenant compte de l’histoire Occidental – aura un rôle centrale, et, en même temps, rédempteur. IT_Il presente saggio si propone di investigare il tema della società secolarizzata ripercorrendone la struttura. Attorno alla nozione di secolarizzazione che cosa si nasconde? Si intende qui analizzare il fenomeno sociale della secolarizzazione studiandone l'ontologia. La riflessione muoverà perciò attorno al tema dell'identità, in prima istanza l'identità vivente per vederne quindi i riflessi in ambito sociale, culturale, religioso e politico. Si giungerà, a percorso della trattazione concluso, all'ipotesi – a partire della coscienza di sé e dunque del mondo – di un ritorno alla forma autentica del vivere insieme in un'accoglienza reciproca quale motivo di arricchimento personale. In tale dinamica la figura del perdono – stante la storia dell'Occidente – avrà il suo ruolo centrale nonché salvifico. (shrink)

Introductory essay, translation, updating and bibliography.

O presente texto procura acompanhar alguns aspectos da reconstrução sartreana das relações entre indivíduo e história, tentando mostrar que a fenomenologia e o materialismo dialético comparecem nessa proposta de conhecimento e que é a convergência das duas perspectivas que permite, contemplando adequadamente a universalidade e a singularidade, descrever e compreender dialeticamente o modo histórico de produção da identidade individual.