Platón y Kant plantean un modelo “constitucional” del alma, en el que la razón y el apetito o la pasión tienen diferentes roles estructurales y funcionales en la generación de la motivación, en contraposición al común “modelo combativo,” en el que son mostrados como fuentes de motivación independientes que luchan por el control. Desde el punto de vista del modelo constitucional, podemos explicar qué hace que una acción sea diferente de un evento. Lo que hace que una acción sea atribuible (...) a una persona y, por lo tanto, lo que la hace una acción, es que surge desde la constitución de la persona y, por lo tanto, desde la persona como un todo, y no desde una fuerza que actúa sobre o en ella. Esto, a su vez, implica una explicación de lo que hace buena a una acción: lo que hace que una acción sea buena es que se delibere sobre ella y se la elija de una manera que unifique a la persona en un sistema constitucional. A través de la acción deliberativa nos constituimos como agentes unificados. La justicia platónica y el imperativo categórico de Kant se muestran como estándares normativos para la acción porque son principios de autoconstitución. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos establecer las diversas conexiones que podemos encontrar entre Memoria, especialmente desde la perspectiva del recordar, y la Libertad en el pensamiento de Agustín. Para dar cuenta de esto, comenzaremos por tratar ambas nociones de forma independiente para, posteriormente, establecer y analizar un posible vínculo entre ellas. Con el fin de lograr este objetivo, hemos tomado en consideración, principalmente, el análisis del libro X de las _Confesiones_, además de ciertos pasajes de _De Trinitate_ y algunos textos (...) tempranos del pensamiento agustiniano, entre otros escritos. _Palabras clave:_ Agustín - Confesiones - Memoria - Libertad - Libre albedrío. (shrink)

La noción de sustancia es sin duda una de las más importantes, más estudiadas y, a la vez, más difíciles de abordar, dentro del pensamiento de Aristóteles. Dicha noción está, a su vez, estrechamente ligada a otra, el acto, ambas tratadas, entre otros lugares, en los libros Θ y Λ de Metafísica en donde se puede apreciar una cierta similitud respecto sus tratamientos, similitud que podría llevar a considerar un cierto vínculo entre la doctrina de la prioridad del acto y (...) la existencia de una sustancia divina. El propósito de este trabajo es tratar de establecer que, efectivamente, existe tal conexión, aclarando de paso, la naturaleza de esta y demostrando, además, que el entendimiento de una es de gran importancia para la comprensión de la otra. (shrink)

Working with Jorge Luis Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings, this essay shows how creaturely beings, or transfigurations, dramatize the afterlife of racial slavery, coloniality, the temporality of HIV/AIDS, and how their im/possibility disturbs and breaks with the “order of things.” While transitive and transversal in their potentiality for insurgency, Imaginary Beings and Fantastic Zoology also always carry a colonial logic, a conquest paradigm, while also un-resting the enjoyment of, what Borges calls, “terrible grounds.” Taking up fantastical and imaginary figures, (...) this essay aims to add to Borges’s compendium of beings; this is a tracing of fugitive forces, of pessimistic and potent provocations that break from “the Human,” “the Man,” and their enumerable agents – from the Fanonian invocation of the bestiary, to the +* value form and its racialized and erotico-, bio-, and necropolitical calculus of HIV/AIDS risk, the authors explore transfigurations at the edge of existence. (shrink)

In 1948 Ludwik Fleck published a paper in Polish discussing the use of humans in medical experiments, thereby addressing his peers. Though the paper has so far not been translated or studied, it has been taken to indicate Fleck’s deep commitment to ethical questions, notably the question of informed consent. In being written by a former victim of the Nazi policy and a survivor of the Holocaust also acting as an expert witness in the trial of the IG Farben in (...) Nuremberg, the paper is of interest. A scrutiny of Fleck’s text and related sources discloses, however, not only the complexity of the issue at the centre of the Nuremberg trial, but also Fleck’s unexpected stance in seemingly adducing his arguments from both the German defendants and the prosecution, heavily informed by US scientists. Further, the contentious discussion of the past in Fleck’s paper reveals its links to modern bioethical discussion. Though sometimes oblivious of that past, it still faces the same questions. (shrink)

6 and 14 recently proposed taxonomies that distinguish between four processing states, based on bottom-up stimulus strength and top-down attentional amplification. The aim of the present study was to empirically test these processing states using the priming paradigm. Our results showed that attention and stimulus strength significantly modulated priming effects: either receiving top-down attention or possessing sufficient bottom-up strength was a prerequisite for a stimulus to elicit priming. When both top-down attention and sufficient bottom-up strength were present, the priming effect (...) was boosted. The origins of the observed priming effects also varied between different processing states. We can conclude that our empirical study using the priming paradigm confirmed the presence of four processing states, which displayed a differential pattern of response priming effects and differential origins of the response priming effects. (shrink)

6 and 14 recently proposed taxonomies that distinguish between four processing states, based on bottom-up stimulus strength and top-down attentional amplification. The aim of the present study was to empirically test these processing states using the priming paradigm. Our results showed that attention and stimulus strength significantly modulated priming effects: either receiving top-down attention or possessing sufficient bottom-up strength was a prerequisite for a stimulus to elicit priming. When both top-down attention and sufficient bottom-up strength were present, the priming effect (...) was boosted. The origins of the observed priming effects also varied between different processing states. We can conclude that our empirical study using the priming paradigm confirmed the presence of four processing states, which displayed a differential pattern of response priming effects and differential origins of the response priming effects. (shrink)

The paper deals with the position of a scholar in the society, as articulated in the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. It also offers a brief outline of the philosophies of education of the 18th and 19th centuries and their differences. It shows different interpretations of the concept of Bildung in German philosophy, which in that time became almost a “fashion”. The spirit of that time is reflected also in the idealist views of J. G. Fichte, especially those concerning education, (...) upbringing and personality development. (shrink)

The paper tries to explain the nature and meaning of education, as well as its role in human life. Education appears to be taken for granted. Nevertheless, we need to understand its nature and ontological background. Thus the paper aims at giving at least a partial answer to the question: What is education?

The word 'bisexuality', unknown to the ancients, is used here in two senses to indicate an individual with male and female sex organs or who copulates with people of both sexes. The phenomenon of bisexuality is then analysed with reference to the Greek myth of Hermaphrodite, a 'bisexual' being, born of a nymph's love for a young man of divine descent: in the guise of a fable, the myth recounts the birth of a 'monster', who raises a question-mark over the (...) fundamental rule of the division between the sexes. As regards behaviour, the paper then shows that in both Greece and Rome bisexual behaviour was the rule for men. The concept of 'homosexuality', in contrast to heterosexuality, was not introduced till the Christian era, and then not without difficulty. Condemnation of the practice as 'against nature' began with the emperor Justinian in the 6th century. (shrink)

In parallel to their monumental installations, which were built in the Western and South- western deserts of the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of representatives of American Land Art have also produced works on film. Researchers have held divergent views about the importance of these films for the understanding of the installations and about their character as either independent works or mere documentations. This article takes a different approach and analyses an element common to both (...) installations and films: the critique of conventional constructions of illusionistic space. The repudiation of conventional spatial structures and of the representation of perspective is discussed on the basis of works by Walter De Maria and Robert Smithson. A formal analysis demonstrates that the films go beyond merely showing the conception of space in Land Art installations. Instead, they perform a similar critique of conventional ideas of space with decidedly cinematic techniques. (shrink)

This title is playful, of course. It is designed merely to attract curiosity and attention … It dates back to a childhood game of which I have forgotten both rules and stakes. An imaginary sovereign was roused from his indifference and responded with an approximate repetition of Marie-Antoinette's suggestion that if the people were hungry, food should be thrown to them. I took such caricatures of kings as anti-models, replacing bread with symbols. Now we are all too disturbed, individually and (...) collectively, by the economic discomfort which is a generalized hunger and, in too many parts of the world and - not only in the third world - by actual famines, not to be aware, on a daily basis, of the responsibility it is to cultivate and transmit to others substance which is purely symbolic. Certain statistics, which now form part of our daily life, are capable of discrediting definitively the ivory tower which our universities are accused of representing, or of having represented in the past. In my own country, Canada, one child in five lives in poverty. The economic worth of the poorest forty-eight countries in the world is equal to the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals. There were twenty million refugees in 1997. One billion two hundred million human beings are short of fresh water this year, etc. This type of figure is, sadly, all too familiar. And it is a case of preaching to the converted to assert the extent to which culture, education and all their constituent disciplines are nourishment of a different order to physical food, because intellectual work is genuine work, providing a living for those who work at it professionally, and above all also those who benefit from its immediate and continuing fruits - i.e. ideally, the whole of society, and in all countries. In this respect - and this is implicit, but through depending habitually on what is implicit nothing is ever sufficiently explicit - it is generally acknowledged (thanks to UNESCO in particular) to what extent the development of economic resources is linked with the advancement and communication of knowledge, on a scale which is regional as well as national, within cities, rural communities, families. (shrink)

Background:Less sedated and more awake patients in the intensive care unit may cause ethical challenges.Research objectives:The purpose of this study is to describe ethical challenges registered nurses experience when patients refuse care and treatment.Research design:Narrative individual open interviews were conducted, and data were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic method developed for researching life experiences.Participants and research context:Three intensive care registered nurses from an intensive care unit at a university hospital in Norway were included.Ethical considerations:Norwegian Social Science Data Services approved the (...) study. Permission was obtained from the intensive care unit leader. The participants’ informed and voluntary consent was obtained in writing.Findings:Registered nurses experienced ethical challenges in the balance between situations of deciding on behalf of the patient, persuading the patient and letting the patient decide. Ethical challenges were related to patients being harmful to themselves, not keeping up personal hygiene and care or hindering critical treatment.Discussion:It is made apparent how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic arguments. In recent years, registered nurses are faced with increasing ethical challenges to do no harm and maintain dignity.Conclusion:Ethically challenging situations are emerging, due to new targets including conscious and aware critical care patients, leaving an altered responsibility on the registered nurses. Reflection is required to adjust the course when personal and professional ideals no longer are in harmony with the reality in the clinical practice. RNs must maintain a strong integrity as authentic human beings to provide holistic nursing care. (shrink)

To no one will it be news that Socrates is a philosophos, a philosophical man, in the preprofessional sense, when the word was still fully felt as a modifying adjective and was not yet a noun denoting a member of an occupational category, such that philosophia, the love of wisdom, could pass into a dead metaphor. “Dead” metaphors are figures of speech whose figurativeness has been sedimented, covered over by the sands of time, so that their metaphorical force is no (...) longer visualized or felt in passing speech. Their desedimentation and revitalization can be a source of wicked fun; here’s an example: “A truck rear-ended him,” a case of usage-worn metonymy, a part-for-whole figure in which the passenger is said to be .. (shrink)

Alloparenting, wherein people provide care to children who are not their biological offspring, is a key aspect of human child-rearing. In the Pacific, many children are adopted or fostered by custodial alloparents even when both biological parents are still alive. From a behavioral ecology perspective, such behaviors are puzzling: why parent someone else’s child at your expense? Furthermore, little is known about how these arrangements are made in Pacific Islander societies today, who provides care, and what kinds of outcomes fostered (...) children experience. A better understanding of these proximate factors may help reveal the ultimate drivers behind custodial alloparenting. Here, we report findings from a survey carried out with the caregivers of 282 children in rural areas of Vanuatu, an island nation in Melanesia. Most fostered and adopted children lived with relatives such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents (87.5%) rather than unrelated caregivers, with a strong preference for maternal kin. The most common reasons for these arrangements were that the parents had separated (16.7%), were engaging in labor migration (27.1%), or a combination of both (27.1%). Results for investment in children’s education and their educational outcomes were mixed, although children removed from crisis situations did more poorly than children removed for aspirational reasons. Our findings suggest that custodial alloparenting helps families adapt to socioeconomic transitions and changing marriage practices. Outcomes may depend on a range of factors, such as the reason children were transferred out of the natal home to begin with. (shrink)

I present two of Jacob Klein’s chief discoveries from a perspective of peculiar fascination to me: the enchanting (to me) contemporaneous significance, the astounding prescience, and hence longevity, of his insights. The first insight takes off from an understanding of the lowest segment of the so-called DividedLine in Plato’s Republic. In this lowest segment are located the deficient beings called reflections, shadows, and images, and a type of apprehension associatedwith them called by Klein “image-recognition” (εἰκασία). The second discovery involves a (...) great complex of notions from which I will extract one main element:the analysis of what it means to be a number and what makes possible this kind of being, and, it turns out, all Being. (shrink)

I present two of Jacob Klein’s chief discoveries from a perspective of peculiar fascination to me: the enchanting (to me) contemporaneous significance, the astounding prescience, and hence longevity, of his insights. The first insight takes off from an understanding of the lowest segment of the so-called DividedLine in Plato’s Republic. In this lowest segment are located the deficient beings called reflections, shadows, and images, and a type of apprehension associatedwith them called by Klein “image-recognition” (εἰκασία). The second discovery involves a (...) great complex of notions from which I will extract one main element:the analysis of what it means to be a number and what makes possible this kind of being, and, it turns out, all Being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mere ReadingEva T. H. BrannI recall reading in college, some half a century ago, that the first Queen Elizabeth once represented herself to her people as “mere English.” She meant that she was English pure and simple, nothing but English. I want to set out a way with books, primarily but not only those ranged under “literature,” that I think of as mere reading. Neither the phrase “mere reading” (...) or “mere close reading” is new with me, nor is the mode, and I do not imagine myself on a lonely quest for some lost hermeneutic Eden. Children and the literate public merely read all the time. So do scholars liberated from the professional impositions of graduate school; they have achieved what Thomas Mann calls “the second ingenuousness.” They have read the articles claiming that all books and all approaches to books are of necessity theoretically or ideologically skewed and that a job of rectification, thorough enough perhaps even to postpone the actual reading indefinitely, is a precondition of liberation from the author’s subtle or unconscious agenda. Yet they have liberated themselves from the liberators, well knowing that if it’s a gift to be simple, it is also an achievement.I am, therefore, far from thinking that facing a book simply—facing it without “confronting” it—is an obsolescent activity or that either the straight and trustful reading of books or the making of books that present themselves to be so read is in real danger. I no more fear an impending cultural Armageddon than I long for a past interpretational paradise. For one thing, this is a golden age for the English novel, the premier genre of the present. All the assimilated immigrants and quondam colonials, with their delight in the elegancies of mere high English and their loving mastery of its local varieties, are writing their way into the center of English novelistic literature. They seem quite [End Page 383] aware of all those “readings”—Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, etc. Nevertheless they write merrily on for an ingenuous yet discerning public.Consequently, the following baker’s dozen of preconditions and precepts are presented not with a sense of fending off impending doom, but for the pleasure of recognition they might give to those who have come to similar conclusions. In these pages I am apt to be preaching to the choir and, truth to tell, I feel no vocation to convert the unbelievers, the more so since I am convinced that it takes all kinds.1. The First-Person PluralThe coopting “we” is more insidiously imperial than ever was the regal first-person plural. Recall all the sentences in public intellectual speech that tell us what “we” all are thinking or are no longer permitted to think or are now required to think (or do) in matters intellectual in general and in matters interpretational in particular, by reason of our historical situation.When I read one of these dicta pushing and pulling me into my place in time or society, every aversive fiber tenses and signals “who ‘we’?—not me!” For the very thing said in our name to be needful may well be the thing most harmful and the impermissible move the one really required. It seems to me worth considering that in an analysis of “our historical situation” it might be the “our” that is the vitiating flaw.Precept: Don’t say “we” unless you have obtained consent. Try “I” or “some of us.” In particular, always qualify announcements of apocalypse so as to leave room for non-participants. This frame of mind is good for turning from sophisticated to mere reading.2. Critical SuperiorityJudges on their benches sit over the sinners arraigned before them, but that the critics in their studies should be above the writers who are their “subject” is plain comical. For one thing, judging is a social necessity, while criticizing is a discretionary activity; some of us could live without it. Some professors make students believe that criticism is work while writing is a self-indulgence that needs to be curbed. In truth, it is the other way around: the critic is parasitic on the writer; if nothing... (shrink)

This collection of aphorisms and thoughts gathers 30 years of observations about the external world and on the nature of our internal selves. Compiled from scraps of paper dating from the early 1970s, these bits of wisdom include notes about the world around us that are often thought, but not often said; sightings of internal vistas and omens; and observations on music, the passage of time, America, the body, domesticity, and intimacy.

This is an English translation of one of Plato’s great dialogues of Socrates talking about death, dying, and the soul due to his impending execution. Included is an introduction and glossary of key terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato’s immediate audience.

This is the second of a projected trilogy of dialogues, in which an unnamed stranger sets out to satisfy Socrates' desire for an account of sophist, statesman, and philosopher. Focus Philosohpical Library’s _Statesman _includes a faithful, clear, and consistent translation to English, with notes. It also includes an exploratory essay, glossary of crucial Greek terms, supplemental diagrams illustrating diairesis, and an appendix on the paradigm of weaving.

It is important to understand the processes behind how and why individuals emerge as leaders, so that the best and most capable individuals may occupy leadership positions. So far, most literature in this area has focused on individual characteristics, such as personality or cognitive ability. While interactions between individuals and context do get research attention, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how the social context at work may help individuals to emerge as leaders. Such knowledge could make an important (...) contribution toward getting the most capable, rather than the most dominant or narcissistic individuals, into leadership positions. In the present work, we contribute toward closing this gap by testing a mediation chain linking a leader's leader self-awareness to a follower's leadership emergence with two time-lagged studies (nstudy1 = 449, nstudy2 = 355). We found that the leader's leader self-awareness was positively related to (a) the follower's leadership emergence and (b) the follower's nomination for promotion and that both relationships were serially mediated by the follower's self-leadership and the follower's leader self-efficacy. We critically discuss our findings and provide ideas for future research. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to investigate how patterns of collaboration and scholarly independence are related to early stage researchers’ development in two multidisciplinary learning environments at a Swedish university. Based on interviews with leaders, supervisors, doctoral students, and post docs, results show how early stage researchers’ development is conditioned by their relative positions in time and space. Through the theoretical notions of ‘epistemic living space’ and ‘developmental networks’, four ways of experiencing the multidisciplinary learning environment were distinguished. Overall, (...) the environments provided a world of opportunities, where the epistemic living space entailed many possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and development of scholarly independence among peers. However, depending on the members’ relative positions in time and space, this world became an alien world for the post docs who had been forced to become “over-independent” and find collaborators elsewhere. Moreover, it became an avoided world for absent mono-disciplinary supervisors and students who embodied “non-collective independence”, away from the environments’ community. By contrast, a joint world emerged for doctoral students located in the environment, which promoted their “independent positioning” and collaborative ambitions. Thus, early stage researchers’ collaboration and development of scholarly independence were optimised in a converged learning space, where the temporal and spatial conditions were integrated and equally conducive for learning. Based on these results, the authors provide suggestions for how to improve the integration of scholars who tend to develop away from the community because of their temporal and spatial positions. (shrink)

This paper outlines Lévinas’ conception of responsibility as non-intentional relatedness to the Other, a conception he regards as constitutive of human subjectivity. In doing so, it uncovers parallels between Lévinas’ interpretation of Judaism and his philosophical works. In the latter, he develops his account of ethics as a critique of the philosophical tradition which risks, according to Lévinas, missing the fundamental ethical dimension of the human’s being. Finally, the paper explores the question of whether it is possible to draw on (...) Lévinas in order to develop an alternative approach to political philosophy. (shrink)

Ableist microaggressions are common experiences in the daily lives of people with disabilities. Research in this area enables us to deepen our understanding of ableism as a system of oppression towards those whose embodied differences do not follow corporeal standards and productivity demands. Previous inquiries into these phenomena have categorized the most frequently experienced microaggressions: “minimization” being the most common. This article shows the results obtained in the Survey on Ableist Microaggressions involving the minimization of specific needs, disability, or the (...) severity of discrimination. It confirms minimization as the most reported microaggression and suggests that the frequency with which they are experienced entails variables such as having more than one disability, the visibility of the disability, and the degree of disability. (shrink)

There are two central distinctions upon which the present argument is predicated. First is the distinction between two correlative aspects of what is involved in a value-judgment or in an “experiencing” of value: actualized-value and value-ideal. This we find to be a distinction without which all attempt at clear talk about “value” is so hopelessly ambiguous as to be unintelligible. Second is the distinction between property-platonism and platonism-proper. After these two sets of distinctions have been explicated, our thesis will be (...) pursued: Moore is not a value-platonist-proper at all, because his famous “non-natural” property, goodness, is not a value-ideal. Moore is merely a value-property-platonist. (shrink)

This brings us not only to the conclusion of my list of eight features proposed as being common to all or most value experience, but also to a reminder of its purpose. First, I hope that, in the spirit of Husserl's dictum, “to the things themselves,” this proposal will initiate a discussion of a “basic research” type of question, namely: What are the main features of value experience? Second, I hope that the fruits of such a discussion might eventually contribute (...) to the working out of a metatheory for value inquiry: a theory about criteria of adequacy for any general theory of value.In a paper of this scope it is obvious that one cannot even begin to discuss all the points and subpoints made in the manner in which they deserve. Much less can one defend all, or even any, of its claims with the kind of logical rigor and linguistic fastidiousness which have come to be the norm in most Anglo-American philosophy today. As a counterbalance to a tendency in some professional circles to making adherence to this norm the end of, rather than merely a means for, philosophic understanding, I have offered this paper after the spirit of Socrates and Plato, who certainly appreciated appropriate logical rigor and linguistic tidiness. Philosophy was nevertheless always for them first and foremost a mutual adventure of exploration into value through significant dialogue. Thus, rather than submitting one more piece of logic or language to the microscope, it has been my purpose to go exploring this time with a telescope. I cordially invite other seekers to join me and to challenge my findings. (shrink)