Serlio achieved fame as an architect and the author of seven books on architecture, but his activities as a painter are hardly known. The recently discovered autograph manuscript reveals his thinking about this 'most noble art': collectively its pages form the introduction to an unfinished treatise on painting. As with his architectural discourse, Serlio's approach to writing about painting is entirely practical. In no sense a humanist reflection on the subject of art, the work was planned as an illustrated manual (...) and pedagogical tool for the novice painter. The discussion opens with a first section on disegno where the rudiments of drawing are outlined. Very quickly Serlio turns to foreshortening and perspectives on the human figure, emphasising the infinite nuances possible as the body to be represented moves. Such concerns disclose the influence of his mentor Baldassare Peruzzi and association with other members of Raphael's studio. As presented in this manuscript, the manual may have graphically resembled Dürer's Vier Bücher in its printed form, but the rules of disegno respect the Italian workshop tradition as we know it from Carlo Urbino's Le regole del disegno and the Leonardesque heritage. Serlio's projected volume of painting instruction may be regarded as a first literary experiment—a precursor to his later illustrated books on architecture. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: LE LIEU SÉMIOTIQUE JULIA KRISTEVA Les stoïciens furent probablement les premiers à developper une théorie détaillée du SIGNE - du ...

Discussions about the morality of slavery are a central part of the history of early modern philosophy. This book explores the philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that occur in eighteenth-century debates about slavery, with a particular focus on the role that race plays in these debates. This exploration reveals how closely Blackness and slavery had come to be associated and how common it was to believe that Black people are natural slaves, or naturally destined for slavery. The book examines not (...) just well-known authors like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but also less widely studied philosophers like Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Lemuel Haynes, and Olympe de Gouges. By presenting philosophically important aspects of debates about slavery in eighteenth-century North America and Europe, the book aims to be a valuable resource for scholars, instructors, and students who are curious about a topic that historians of philosophy have so far neglected. (shrink)

The paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the self-portrait. It is argued that Nancy builds on Derrida’s approach but introduces two decisive modifications. Firstly, he develops the emergence of the painter on the canvas as constitution of the self – an aspect Derrida does not consider. Secondly, Nancy understands portraying – and thus images – on the basis of touching. In contrast, Derrida conceives portraying as coming from the invisible and two forms of blindness. In doing (...) so, he remains ex negativo in a tradition which links images to vision, whereas Nancy tries to overcome it. Nancy’s alterations not only lead to a modified theory of the self-portrait but also refine Derrida’s influential concept of différance by highlighting its corporeal and ontological dimension. (shrink)

The paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the self-portrait. It is argued that Nancy builds on Derrida’s approach but introduces two decisive modifications. Firstly, he develops the emergence of the painter on the canvas as constitution of the self – an aspect Derrida does not consider. Secondly, Nancy understands portraying – and thus images – on the basis of touching. In contrast, Derrida conceives portraying as coming from the invisible and two forms of blindness. In doing (...) so, he remains ex negativo in a tradition which links images to vision, whereas Nancy tries to overcome it. Nancy’s alterations not only lead to a modified theory of the self-portrait but also refine Derrida’s influential concept of différance by highlighting its corporeal and ontological dimension. (shrink)

Rousseau and Dignity is a volume that combines a photography exhibit, lectures, commentary, and audience reactions by people ages seven to ninety-two, all for Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tercentennial.

Ausgehend von Lucian Freuds Bild »Painter Working, Reflection« (1993) entwirft Julia Regina Meer eine korporale Philosophie der Bilder. Das Bild avanciert dabei zum Ausgangspunkt des Denkens, was eine methodische Abgrenzung zu den Bildwissenschaften wie auch zur Bildtheorie ermöglicht. In Anlehnung an die Philosophie von Jean-Luc Nancy schlägt sie ein affirmatives Konzept von Körperlichkeit vor, das auf dem Grenzbegriff der Expeausition - der körperlichen Ausgesetztheit entlang der Haut - beruht. Wie der Selbstakt von Freud zeigt, potenzieren Bilder dieses Ausgesetztsein, (...) da sie nicht nur einen Bildinhalt ausstellen, sondern immer auch den Bildkörper mitaussetzen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Singing Democracy:Music and Politics in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ThoughtJulia SimonComment? Tous les intervalles de mon Clavecin sont altérés?... Fi, le vilain instrument; ne m'en parlez plus.... Je veux chanter.—Anton Bemetzrieder, Leçons de ClavecinDemocratic theory of the eighteenth century, and particularly Rousseau's, is suffused with the idealism and lack of pragmatism that make it both immensely compelling and extraordinarily frustrating. Conceived under the decaying edifice of the absolute monarchy, it (...) strives toward perfection, offering theoretical formulations that often defy practical application. Yet this theory continues to inspire democratic practice and political debates even more than 200 years after its writing. In one passage of Du contrat social Rousseau asserts, "If there were a people of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. Such a perfect government is not suited to men."1 And yet the thrust of the work and the critical force of Rousseau's corpus encourage and challenge us to strive toward democracy, as impossible a goal as it may be for mere mortals.Alongside Rousseau's works in social and political theory lies another vast body of theoretical work in music. Rarely, if ever, are they read in tandem. Music in the eighteenth century suffers from many of the same difficulties that political theory does, especially the tendency toward a level of abstraction that defies practical application. Like the problem of democracy in the eighteenth century, music also presents the temptation of retreat into a world of abstract perfection based on mathematical certainty with little relation to practical reality. [End Page 433] Perhaps nowhere is the tension so acute between the ideal and the real in music as in the domain of tuning specifically, in keyboard tuning, and the question of tempering. So as in the political domain, there is a potentially wide gulf between music theory and music practice.If there is any hope of realizing democracy in the way that Rousseau understood it, an exploration of his music theory may provide the crucial bridge between theory and practice. Rousseau's theoretical work in music, and singing in particular, covers a number of distinct subject areas. First, his proposal for a new system of musical notation links directly to democratic impulses in his political and social theory. Second, the kinds of emotions that music stirs are related in Rousseau's thought to forms of expression that remain closer to their natural origins. Finally, Rousseau's preference for melody, as opposed to harmony, relates directly to his conception of the political sphere and specifically to the relationship between the general will and the workings of the body politic in a democracy. Unexpectedly, reading Rousseau's musical theory alongside his democratic theory produces a nuanced and moderate view of the social contract that deepens our understanding of the relationship between relative and absolute values in politics as well as in music and offers a model for practice.Musical Notation and DemocracyA distinctly democratic impulse motivates the Projet concernant de nouveaux signes pour la musique for Rousseau's revision of the musical notation system is designed to increase accessibility to music. With characteristic rhetoric Rousseau introduces his project for "simplifying" musical notation with a short, to-the-point paragraph: "This project tends to make music easier to write down, easier to learn and much less diffuse."2 Following this statement of purpose, Rousseau relates, in a contrasting rhetorical style—replete with specialized vocabulary—the current state of affairs in musical notation:This quantity of lines, keys, transpositions, of sharps, flats, naturals, of simple and complex measures, of whole-notes, half-notes, quarter-notes, eighth-notes, sixteenth-notes, thirty-second notes, of rests, half-rests, quarter-rests, eighth-rests, sixteenth-rests, etc. gives a quantity of signs and combinations from which result two principle inconveniences: the first, to occupy too great a volume, and the second to overload the memory of schoolchildren in such a way that the ear being formed and the organs having acquired all the necessary facility long before one is [End Page 434] capable of singing from a book, it follows that the difficulty is more in the observation of rules than in the execution of... (shrink)

CONTENIDO: La fenomenología de Husserl como monadología - El concepto husserliano de mónada - La antigua y difícil propuesta de amor - Para una fenomenología de la violencia - La fenomenología de Husserl: ¿ecología o monadología? - Descripción fenomenológica del dolor de la experiencia intropática del dolor - Memoria y olvido en relación con la identidad personal - De fenomenología, violencia y víctimas - En torno a la esperanza - Libertad como problema: comentario de las Moscas de Jean Paul (...) Sastre - Eco filosófico de muertes literarias en torno a la obra de Jorge Luis Borges. (shrink)

Renowned for his influence as a political philosopher, a writer, and an autobiographer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is known also for his lifelong interest in music. He composed operas and other musical pieces, invented a system of numbered musical notation, engaged in public debates about music, and wrote at length about musical theory. Critical analysis of Rousseau’s work in music has been principally the domain of musicologists, rarely involving the work of scholars of political theory or literary studies. In _Rousseau Among (...) the Moderns_, Julia Simon puts forth fresh interpretations of _The Social Contract_, _The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality_, and _The Confessions_, as well as other texts. She links Rousseau’s understanding of key concepts in music, such as tuning, harmony, melody, and form, to the crucial problem of the individual’s relationship to the social order. The choice of music as the privileged aesthetic object enables Rousseau to gain insight into the role of the aesthetic realm in relation to the social and political body in ways often associated with later thinkers. Simon argues that much of Rousseau’s “modernism” resides in the unique role that he assigns to music in forging communal relations. (shrink)

Using the writings of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School as a framework, this book uncovers the tensions and contradictions associated with the rise of capitalism as manifested in the writings of Rousseau and Diderot.

It stands to reason that ekphrasis cannot be limited to the detailed but plain description of the artifact, for it often concerns what is not there in the painting as well. Authors of the ekphrases sometimes “animate” or “revive” a work of art, which manifests itself in narrativization of painted scenes. The process is also frequently supplemented by its continuation or backstory and fictitious utterances of figures depicted in the painting. The paper discusses a specific literary form of that kind (...) of “animation”, that is texts in which characters that can be seen in a painting receive the voice through the prosopopoeia and expose their selfawareness of “artificiality”. The precise subject of this study is P. Assouline’s novel Le Portrait which is narrated by baroness Betty de Rothschild, the figure from the J.A.D. Ingres’ painting. In this article, I am focusing on the mode and meaning of prosopopoeia in Assouline’s novel. I am also trying to examine whether every text that is based on the concept of a “speaking” work of art can be described as ekphrasis. (shrink)

Où est le temps, existe-t-il encore? Je vous propose d'ouvrir la question du TEMPS. Jamais le temps n'a été aussi compact, uniformisé, fermé comme il l'est désormais à la surface globalisée de l'hyperconnexion. Mais jamais non plus il n'a été aussi ouvert et multiple : incessant battement d'avènements, amorces, émergences, éclosions perpétuelles. Je retrouve ici des expériences singulières : dans l'érotisme maternel et dans celui de la foi religieuse, j'ose parier sur la culture européenne et sur l'humanisme à refonder, je (...) découvre un destin de la psychanalyse en terre d'Islam et en Chine. Je n'ai pas de réponses toutes faites et n'en donne pas une fois pour toutes. Je déplie des vérités hic et nunc telles que je les vis et les pense. Je vous présente mes compagnons de route : Antigone et Philippe Sollers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Jacques Lacan, Jackson Pollock et Emile Benveniste ; Simone de Beauvoir et Thérèse d'Avila. Un livre sur la Vérité découverte par le Temps? Plutôt une expérience du temps scandée par des événements, des étonnements, rebonds de surprises et de renaissances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading The Second Sex Sixty Years LaterJulia KristevaTranslated by Timothy HackettPublished in 1949, today The Second Sex is a youthful sixty-year-old woman who has created a scandal, but also a school of thought: She marks a decisive stage in women's liberation and continues to accelerate it.Let's try to place ourselves in that year, 1949: The world has barely dressed its wounds from World War II and onto the scene (...) steps a young French woman—from an aristocratic and Catholic background, enjoying a liberal lifestyle and endowed with philosophical tenacity, pedagogical talents, and contagious style without precedent—who announces to her dumbfounded readers that the second sex is free. To be sure, she immediately issues the following qualification, "the free woman is just being born" (Beauvoir 2010, 751), and this remains the case today. It is, however, already a global phenomenon, one that has not yet finished leaving its effects, since what is at stake is a veritable anthropological revolution: I say "anthropological revolution" for, beyond the freedom of choice with respect to maternity and the right to social, economic, and political equality, what is at stake is a new form of assuring the continuity of the human species along with the bold definition of transcendence as freedom. What becomes of humanity if birth, freedom, and the spectacle are put in the hands of women? Obscurantists, fundamentalists, and puritans of all stripes become alarmed and decry the scandal. If the future is hereby opened up—with all the risks that this entails—does it welcome and offer new possibilities?This anthropological revolution has been in preparation since the beginning of time. The British suffragettes inscribed it in their political agenda and feminist movements after May '68 intended to deepen it. But this revolution [End Page 137] [elle] only became conscious of its magnitude and took the world by storm, thanks to the experience and the pen of Simone de Beauvoir.Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is already a well-known philosopher and writer by 1949, when she begins to create something of a scandal: she has already published She Came to Stay, Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Blood of Others, Who Shall Die?, All Men Are Mortal, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and America Day By Day. Along with Jean-Paul Sartre and in the wake of the burgeoning (naissant) existentialist movement (whose genesis she would intimately describe in Les Mandarins, 1954), Simone de Beauvoir pursues an experience that is at once personal and political, as well as a philosophical project whose central theme and absolute objective is freedom, which she understands as a form of revolt and non-consent. It remains important to emphasize this today as we begin the third millennium, a time in which freedom, revolt, and non-consent tend to disappear in favor of other concerns that reflect a globalized world: fear, security, adaptation, and integration."Freedom" lies at the heart of the life and the work of the one whom the hostile press disparagingly calls "Sartrean." The freedom of Madame Roland, who acknowledged, "Oh what crimes are committed in thy name," is the same freedom whose risks Simone de Beauvoir downplays in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a work that denounces the ambivalent fascination with communism found in other existentialists.Freedom nevertheless; above all and at all costs: For Simone de Beauvoir, freedom (elle) remains and will remain the inextinguishable star that has incessantly guided philosophical inquiry since Socrates; inspired the noble heights of Christian thought, particularly in Pascal (who deemed man more noble than the universe that crushes him, for he knows that he dies while the universe doesn't). It is the same freedom that fueled the rebellious bodies and spirits of the Enlightenment; that forged the style of great European literature; it is the same freedom that animates Hegel's dialectic and even modern phenomenology, which existentialism takes as its support. So many references and experiences resonate in the work of this forty-year-old author as she sets out to write The Second Sex.Her first novels recount the relentless struggles that women undergo (jealousy, abandonment, solitude, violence, various injustices) in order to extricate themselves from their... (shrink)

This paper traces back on a personal tone a provocative evocation of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The author considers existentialism as a laboratory of existence that influenced a generation's manner of living and writing and made one's existential desires into historical and political acts. Its most representative mode of expression, literature, was as an indicator of the presence of the private throughout the public world and time. In this view, de Beauvoir's presence is approached both from the (...) perspective of her understanding of the female, and from the particular kind of couple she formed with Sartre. (shrink)

This paper traces back on a personal tone a provocative evocation of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The author considers existentialism as a laboratory of existence that influenced a generation's manner of living and writing and made one's existential desires into historical and political acts. Its most representative mode of expression, literature, was as an indicator of the presence of the private throughout the public world and time. In this view, de Beauvoir's presence is approached both from the (...) perspective of her understanding of the female, and from the particular kind of couple she formed with Sartre. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage restitue l'apport considérable du refondateur de la rhétorique Chaïm Perelman sur le point précis des valeurs en prenant la mesure exacte de son entreprise théorique et de la réception qui lui a été réservée dans les études contemporaines d'argumentation et de rhétorique.

Nietzsche and Heidegger were both lovers of language, and author Jean Graybeal argues that their writing styles demonstrate a relationship with the feminine dimension of language. Using as a framework the theories of Julia Kristeva concerning the "symbolic" and "semiotic" dispositions in language, Graybeal reads Nietzsche and Heidegger as writers and thinkers whose experimentation with language is directly relevant both to their quests for nonmetaphysical ways of thinking and to the feminist project of moving beyond male dominance. The (...) chapters on Nietzsche discuss portions of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Ecce Homo with the question of woman in the forefront of the analysis. The chapters on Heidegger deal, first, with Being and Time, describing the ways in which Heidegger evokes the feminine and semioitic dimensions in language. Finally, eight of Heidegger's later essays are read with attention to feminie, maternal, and erotic imagery. (shrink)

volume 1. Justice et rhétorique selon Chaïm Perelman, ou, comment dire le juste? -- volume 2. Éthique et rhétorique (d')après Chaïm Perelman, ou, la raison hospitalière -- 3. Logique et rhétorique selon Chaïm Perelman, ou, Le jugement partagé.

O presente artigo toma como objeto de análise cadernos produzidos por Romana Bragatti, entre os anos de 1934 a 1936, estudante do Curso Complementar do Colégio São José, localizado em Caxias do Sul/RS. O estudo investiga esses suportes de escrita, suas materialidades e enunciados, na tentativa de compreender os usos dos artefatos e os discursos constitutivos da formação docente. Como respaldo teórico, são referenciados António Viñao Frago, Castillo Gómez e Jean Hébrard, autores que trabalham com a história da cultura (...) escrita, exploram aspectos gráficos, apontam para caminhos metodológicos e sinalizam possibilidades de produção historiográfica em torno desses dispositivos. Por meio desses aportes, a pesquisa busca contribuir com a análise desses artefatos da cultura escolar e expressar caminhos de investigação para quem se arrisca a desenvolver pesquisas inscritas nessas perspectivas. Como escrituras disciplinadas, cadernos escolares, em tese, não permitem a expressão da espontaneidade dos escreventes, entretanto, alguns registros produzidos pela aluna, aparentemente sutis, realçam transgressões sobre esse material e sobre o processo de escolarização que vivenciava, possibilitando perceber marcas da autora. Os assuntos que comparecem nesses cadernos versam sobre temas de “História Universal” e de “Pedagogia”, saberes considerados importantes para a formação das estudantes, apresentados descritivamente. Especialmente o Caderno de Pedagogia, para além da descrição, manifesta também um caráter explicativo/prescritivo, constituindo-se, supostamente, em referência de leitura, notadamente de orientação teórica e metodológica. Ao examiná-los, observa-se uma espécie de mimetização dos manuais escolares vigentes. Infere-se que as alunas copiavam textos desses manuais, que eram ditados ou exibidos no quadro-negro pelo professor, considerando o pouco acesso aos livros naquela temporalidade. Em relação ao Caderno de Pedagogia, o que mais se destaca são, por um lado, indicativos de códigos de conduta moral considerados adequados à professora, em conformidade ao processo de feminilização da docência naquele contexto. Por outro, percebem-se indícios de que a futura professora esteve em contato com o escolanovismo, que instituía a Pedagogia em bases científicas, enfatizando a importância da Psicologia Experimental. Palavras-chave : Cadernos escolares. Cultura escrita. Escola Nova. (shrink)

O presente artigo toma como objeto de análise cadernos produzidos por Romana Bragatti, entre os anos de 1934 a 1936, estudante do Curso Complementar do Colégio São José, localizado em Caxias do Sul/RS. O estudo investiga esses suportes de escrita, suas materialidades e enunciados, na tentativa de compreender os usos dos artefatos e os discursos constitutivos da formação docente. Como respaldo teórico, são referenciados António Viñao Frago, Castillo Gómez e Jean Hébrard, autores que trabalham com a história da cultura (...) escrita, exploram aspectos gráficos, apontam para caminhos metodológicos e sinalizam possibilidades de produção historiográfica em torno desses dispositivos. Por meio desses aportes, a pesquisa busca contribuir com a análise desses artefatos da cultura escolar e expressar caminhos de investigação para quem se arrisca a desenvolver pesquisas inscritas nessas perspectivas. Como escrituras disciplinadas, cadernos escolares, em tese, não permitem a expressão da espontaneidade dos escreventes, entretanto, alguns registros produzidos pela aluna, aparentemente sutis, realçam transgressões sobre esse material e sobre o processo de escolarização que vivenciava, possibilitando perceber marcas da autora. Os assuntos que comparecem nesses cadernos versam sobre temas de “História Universal” e de “Pedagogia”, saberes considerados importantes para a formação das estudantes, apresentados descritivamente. Especialmente o Caderno de Pedagogia, para além da descrição, manifesta também um caráter explicativo/prescritivo, constituindo-se, supostamente, em referência de leitura, notadamente de orientação teórica e metodológica. Ao examiná-los, observa-se uma espécie de mimetização dos manuais escolares vigentes. Infere-se que as alunas copiavam textos desses manuais, que eram ditados ou exibidos no quadro-negro pelo professor, considerando o pouco acesso aos livros naquela temporalidade. Em relação ao Caderno de Pedagogia, o que mais se destaca são, por um lado, indicativos de códigos de conduta moral considerados adequados à professora, em conformidade ao processo de feminilização da docência naquele contexto. Por outro, percebem-se indícios de que a futura professora esteve em contato com o escolanovismo, que instituía a Pedagogia em bases científicas, enfatizando a importância da Psicologia Experimental. Palavras-chave : Cadernos escolares. Cultura escrita. Escola Nova. (shrink)

Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based (...) terrors since? Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love. (shrink)

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to (...) be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

The New Rhetoric is founded on the idea that since "argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced," says Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, and they rely, in particular, for their theory of argumentation on the twin concepts of universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed to a specific individual or group, the orator decides what information and what approaches will achieve (...) the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience. This ideal, Perelman explains, can be embodied, for example, in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man deliberating or in an elite." Like particular audiences, then, the universal audience is never fixed or absolute but depends on the orator, the content and goals of the argument, and the particular audience to whom the argument is addressed. These considerations determine what information constitutes facts and reasonableness and thus help to determine the universal audience that, in turn, shapes the orator's approach. The adherence of an audience is also determined by the orator's use of values, a further key concept of the New Rhetoric. Perelman's treatment of value and his view of epideictic rhetoric sets his approach apart from that of the ancients and of Aristotle in particular. Aristotle's division of rhetoric into three genres-forensic, deliberative, and epideictic-is largely motivated by the judgments required for each: forensic or legal arguments require verdicts on past action, deliberative or political rhetoric seeks judgment on future action, and epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric concerns values associated with praise or blame and seeks no specific decisions. For Aristotle, the epideictic genre was of limited importance in the civic realm since it did not concern facts or policies. Perelman, in contrast, believes not only that epideictic rhetoric warrants more attention, but that the values normally limited to that genre are in fact central to all argumentation. Epideictic oratory, Perelman argues, has significant and important argumentation for strengthening the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds." These values are central to the persuasiveness of arguments in all rhetorical genres since the orator always attempts to establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience.". (shrink)

Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior. This attentional and executive control is intimately linked to learning processes, as intrinsically limited attentional capacities are better focused on relevant information. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps retrieval of information efficiently. However, the effects of emotion on learning and (...) memory are not always univalent, as studies have reported that emotion either enhances or impairs learning and long-term memory retention, depending on a range of factors. Recent neuroimaging findings have indicated that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex cooperate with the medial temporal lobe in an integrated manner that affords (i) the amygdala modulating memory consolidation; (ii) the prefrontal cortex mediating memory encoding and formation; and (iii) the hippocampus for successful learning and long-term memory retention. We also review the nested hierarchies of circular emotional control and cognitive regulation (bottom-up and top-down influences) within the brain to achieve optimal integration of emotional and cognitive processing. This review highlights a basic evolutionary approach to emotion to understand the effects of emotion on learning and memory and the functional roles played by various brain regions and their mutual interactions in relation to emotional processing. We also summarize the current state of knowledge on the impact of emotion on memory and map implications for educational settings. In addition to elucidating the memory-enhancing effects of emotion, neuroimaging findings extend our understanding of emotional influences on learning and memory processes; this knowledge may be useful for the design of effective educational curricula to provide a conducive learning environment for both traditional “live” learning in classrooms and “virtual” learning through online-based educational technologies. (shrink)

Este artículo plantea la posibilidad de entender la melancolía como un paradigma hermenéutico. En concreto, se enfatiza su idoneidad como tal para interpretar aquellos textos construidos desde la voz de un Yo. Los diversos trabajos que Jean Starobinski ha dedicado a dicho concepto y, sobre todo, su texto capital L’encre de la mélancolie (2012), serán el eje en torno al cual gire esta propuesta –esta tentativa crítica–; desde esta obra, remitiremos a otros autores esenciales, como Aristóteles, Sigmund Freud, (...) class='Hi'>Julia Kristeva o Roger Bartra. Nuestra argumentación se divide en tres etapas: primero indagamos en el juego de contrarios que ha lastrado la historia conceptual de la melancolía, después ahondamos en el desplazamiento, el desdoblamiento y el exceso como núcleos de sentido del paradigma hermenéutico propuesto, y culminamos con una aplicación analítica, que nos conducirá a unas conclusiones en torno a la crítica. (shrink)

Offers a fundamental reexamination of Plato's ethical thought, highlighting the differences between ancient & modern assumptions & stressing the need to be ...

L'espere humaine est conflictuelle et gregaire, menacee de toutes parts par la montee aux extremes de la violence. Aussi se trouve-t-elle confrontee a ce probleme urgent: comment vivre ensemble sans s'entre-tuer? Le politique est l'ordre humain en charge de ce probleme, et son objectif est la paix par la justice. Dans ce bref precis didactique, Jean Baechler prouve que le seul moyen d'eviter la guerre et de resoudre des problemes communs dans un monde dangereux et imprevisible est de s'efforcer (...) a l'union politique, meme si celle-ci est bien evidemment extremement difficile a realiser. (shrink)

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse.".

Wei-Jin period is characterized by neo-Daoism ( xuanxue 玄學), and J I Kang lived in the midst of this philosophical exploration. Adopting the naturalism of the Zhuangzi , J i Kang expressed his socio-political concerns through the medium of music, which was previously regarded as having moral bearing and rectitude. Denying such rectitude became central for J i Kang, who claimed that music was incapable of possessing human emotion, releasing it from the chains of Confucian ritualism. His investigation into the (...) name and reality of musical expression gave music an “aesthetic turn” lacking in Qin and early Han thought, and by making use of concepts such as natural harmony and spontaneity, J i Kang was able to turn away from the negative aesthetics of earlier thinkers such as H e Yan and W ang Bi to one cherishing the naturalism espoused by Zhuangzi. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an increased turning to the “wisdom of the East” when addressing issues on the environment. The risk of misappropriating its tenets in order to make them conform to the Western system is extremely high however. This paper will lay bare the early texts of Daoism so as to disprove claims that Nature is mystical, antithetical to technology, and subservient to human consciousness. It shall argue that Nature not only arises from a non-anthropocentric source in Dao but (...) that this arising takes place across three levels of reality: Dao’s mystery, the cosmogony of the One-and-Many, and the fourfold comprised of Dao, Heaven, Earth, and man. The result is a vision of Nature no longer bound to a singular actuality but one whose presence is felt across an endless range of possibilities as the substantive realization of Dao. (shrink)

Ancient ethical theories, based on the notions of virtue and happiness, have struck many as an attractive alternative to modern theories. But we cannot find out whether this is true until we understand ancient ethics--and to do this we need to examine the basic structure of ancient ethical theory, not just the details of one or two theories. In this book, Annas brings together the results of a wide-ranging study of ancient ethical philosophy and presents it in a way that (...) is easily accessible to anyone with an interest in ancient or modern ethics. She examines the fundamental notions of happiness and virtue, the role of nature in ethical justification and the relation between concern for self and concern for others. Her careful examination of the ancient debates and arguments shows that many widespread assumptions about ancient ethics are quite mistaken. Ancient ethical theories are not egoistic, and do not depend for their acceptance on metaphysical theories of a teleological kind. Most centrally, they are recognizably theories of morality, and the ancient disputes about the place of virtue in happiness can be seen as akin to modern disputes about the demands of morality. (shrink)

There are many cases in which people collectively cause some morally significant outcome (such as a harmful or beneficial outcome) but no individual act seems to make a difference. The problem in such cases is that it seems each person can argue, ‘it makes no difference whether or not I do X, so I have no reason to do it.’ The challenge is to say where this argument goes wrong. My approach begins from the observation that underlying the problem and (...) motivating the typical responses to it is a standard, intuitive assumption. The assumption is that if an act will not make a difference with respect to an outcome, then it cannot play a sig- nificant, non-superfluous role in bringing that outcome about. In other words, helping to bring about an outcome requires making a difference. I argue that the key to solving the problem is to reject this assumption. I develop an account of what it is to help to bring about an outcome, where this does not require making a difference, and I use this explain our reasons for action in the problem cases. This account also yields an error theory that explains why the standard assumption is so tempting, even though it is mistaken. (shrink)

Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) are two of the most commonly used health measures to determine resource prioritization and the population burden of disease, respectively. There are different types of problems with the use of QALYs and DALYs for measuring health benefits. Some of these problems have to do with measurement, for example, the weights they ascribe to health states might fail to reflect with exact accuracy the actual well-being or health levels of individuals. But even (...) if these weights represent accurately the well-being levels of individuals, there is room for questioning whether these measures capture everything that we care about in these cases, or whether there are important issues that they leave out, including considerations of fairness or equality. In this regard, the measures have been criticized for treating the aggregation of small benefits as greater than the aggregation of fewer but bigger benefits,1for disregarding fair chances in favor of utility maximization,2and for raising problems when applied in the context of variable population size.3Perhaps one of the most pervasive ethical issues that has been associated with the use of these measures is the fact that they seem to discriminate against disabled people.4Since the measures assume that disabled people have lower well-being and a shorter life span, treating a disabled person’s medical condition contributes less to the maximization of years of life with good health than treating a non-disabled patient’s medical condition. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the notion of the "stranger" -the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own- as well as the notion of strangeness within the self -a person's deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self. Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle (...) Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. She discusses the legal status of foreigners throughout history, gaining perspective on our own civilization. Her insights into the problems of nationality, particularly in France are more timely and relevant in an increasingly integrated and fractious world. (shrink)

How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.