Reflete-se sobre o papel das biografias na escrita das memórias da cidade com um paralelo entre Primavera em pleno outono: a jovem Olívia faz 80 anos!, de Wilson Gelbcke, e Eu, Wittich Freitag, de Raquel S. Thiago, para averiguar como memória, narrativas e paisagem cultural de Joinville aparecem nos discursos. Questiona-se a construção do contar biográfico, ressaltando as interferências dessas narrativas nas discussões de memória e patrimônio cultural, reforçando/negando os discursos oficiais da cidade. Como discurso oficial, tomamos como narrativa História (...) de Joinville: crônicas da Colônia Dona Francisca, de Carlos Ficker, importante influenciador do discurso que envolve Joinville. (shrink)

Este artigo objetiva analisar discursos produzidos sobre práticas do cultivo do arroz na paisagem de Joinville. Paisagens do arroz podem ser consideradas como expressão do trabalho dos homens sobre a terra; elas modificam a natureza e representam identidades culturais de diferentes grupos ao longo do tempo. Em Joinville, discursos sobre os arrozais têm sido relacionados à memória italiana e repercutido pelos processos migratórios de rizicultores no século XX, no bairro Vila Nova. Contudo, em diálogo com fontes históricas, podem ser reconhecidas (...) práticas e paisagens de cultivo do arroz em Joinville desde o século XIX. (shrink)

Márcia Elena Botelho Soares é psicóloga, graduada pela Universidade Federal do Pará, mestra em psicologia clínica e social e doutora em psicologia pela mesma instituição. Também possui especialização em saúde pública pela Universidade do Estado do Pará. Foi professora da Universidade da Amazônia e atualmente é professora titular da Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade Federal do Pará. Contribuiu na formação de psicólogos humanistas em Belém do Pará e estuda sobre as convergências entre a Abordagem Centrada na Pessoa e a Fenomenologia, (...) tema que permanece atual na práxis e na formação dos psicólogos dessa perspectiva. (shrink)

Márcia Elena Botelho Soares é psicóloga, graduada pela Universidade Federal do Pará, mestra em psicologia clínica e social e doutora em psicologia pela mesma instituição. Também possui especialização em saúde pública pela Universidade do Estado do Pará. Foi professora da Universidade da Amazônia e atualmente é professora titular da Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade Federal do Pará. Contribuiu na formação de psicólogos humanistas em Belém do Pará e estuda sobre as convergências entre a Abordagem Centrada na Pessoa e a Fenomenologia, (...) tema que permanece atual na práxis e na formação dos psicólogos dessa perspectiva. (shrink)

dolce, the first top-level ontology to be axiomatized, has remained stable for twenty years and today is broadly used in a variety of domains. dolce is inspired by cognitive and linguistic considerations and aims to model a commonsense view of reality, like the one human beings exploit in everyday life in areas as diverse as socio-technical systems, manufacturing, financial transactions and cultural heritage. dolce clearly lists the ontological choices it is based upon, relies on philosophical principles, is richly formalized, and (...) is built according to well-established ontological methodologies, e.g. OntoClean. Because of these features, it has inspired most of the existing top-level ontologies and has been used to develop or improve standards and public domain resources. Being a foundational ontology, dolce is not directly concerned with domain knowledge. Its purpose is to provide the general categories and relations needed to give a coherent view of reality, to integrate domain knowledge, and to mediate across domains. In these 20 years dolce has shown that applied ontologies can be stable and that interoperability across reference and domain ontologies is a reality. This paper briefly introduces the ontology and shows how to use it on a few modeling cases. (shrink)

This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values. By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of (...) practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

How can organisations survive not only the substitution of members, but also other dramatic changes, like that of the norms regulating their activities, the goals they plan to achieve, or the system of roles that compose them? This paper is as first step towards a well-founded ontological analysis of the persistence of organisations through changes. Our analysis leverages Kit Fine’s notions of rigid and variable embodiment and proposes to view the (history of the) decisions made by the members of the (...) organisation as the criterion to re-identify the organisation through change. (shrink)

Is it true that all conversational implicatures are cancellable? In some recent works (Weiner Analysis 66(2):127–130, 2004, followed by Blome-Tillmann Analysis 68(2):156–160, 2008 and, most recently, by Hazlett 2012), the property of cancellability that, according to Grice (1989), conversational implicatures must possess has been called into question. The aim of this article is to show that the cases on which Weiner builds his argument—the Train Case and the Sex Pistols Case— do not really suffice to endanger Grice’s Cancellability Hypothesis. What (...) Weiner has shown with his examples is that a conversational implicature cannot be cancelled if the speaker, whose utterance gives rise to the implicature, does not intend to cancel it. To implicate is an intentional speech act and, therefore, cancelling an implicature must also be intentional and must be performed by the same speaker whose utterance gives rise to the putative implicature. (shrink)

Many Public Administrations structure their services around the notion of users’ need. However, there is a gap between private, subjectively perceived needs (self-attributed) and needs that are attributed by PA to citizens (heteroattributed). Because of the gap, citizens’ needs are often only partially satisfied by PAs services. This gap is in part due to the fact that the meaning of the word “need” is ambiguous and full of antinomic nuances. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a definition of (...) “need” suitable for citizens’ needs management with respect to PA’s services offering, and to provide an accurate ontological analysis of the notion of “need” and the network of concepts that relate to it. (shrink)

In knowledge representation, socio-technical systems can be modeled as multiagent systems in which the local knowledge of each individual agent can be seen as a context. In this paper we propose formal ontologies as a means to describe the assumptions driving the construction of contexts as local theories and to enable interoperability among them. In particular, we present two alternative conceptualizations of the notion of sociomateriality (and entanglement), which is central in the recent debates on socio-technical systems in the social (...) sciences, namely critical and agential realism. We thus start by providing a model of entanglement according to the critical realist view, representing it as a property of objects that are essentially dependent on different modules of an already given ontology. We refine then our treatment by proposing a taxonomy of sociomaterial entanglements that distinguishes between ontological and epistemological entanglement. In the final section, we discuss the second perspective, which is more challenging form the point of view of knowledge representation, and we show that the very distinction of information into modules can be at least in principle built out of the assumption of an entangled reality. (shrink)

A thorough understanding of what needs are is fundamental for design- ing well-behaved information systems for many social applications and in partic- ular for public services. Talking about needs pervades indeed the jargon of Public Administrations when motivating their service offering. In this paper, we propose an ontological analysis of needs, aiming at a principled disentangling of the differ- ent uses of the term. We leverage philosophical tradition on intentionality, for its rich understanding of mental entities, we compare it with (...) the well-established BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) tradition in knowledge representation, and we propose a formalisation of needs within the foundational ontology DOLCE. Throughout the paper, we motivate our analysis focusing on needs in public services. (shrink)

This book is written in homage to Nicola Guarino. It is a tribute to his many scientific contributions to the new discipline, applied ontology, he struggled to establish. Nicola Guarino is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in formal and applied ontology. Renow – and sometimes even criticized – for his deep interest for the subtlest details of theoretical analysis, all throughout his career he has held the conviction that all science has to be for the benefit of society (...) at large, hence his motto that ontologies are not just for making information systems interoperable, but also – and more importantly – for making people (users of the systems) understand each other. He was among the first to realize that, to capture the intended meaning of the terms used by an information system, applied ontology has necessarily to be an interdisciplinary enterprise. Nicola’s early career developed in the areas of data systems and expert systems in physics and biomedical engineering. The lack of methodologies in expert systems led him to turn to philosophical logic as a source of inspiration, prompting him to attend the meetings of the analytic philosophy group at the University of Padua, and to discover a whole new world. It was the end of the 1980s and in that period the term ‘ontology’ started to be used to indicate a shared vocabulary across a community. Recognizing the potentials of this idea, Nicola began studying philosophical work. Knowing that language remains one of the pivotal elements in knowledge acquisition and representation, he paired it with the study of linguistic analysis. The combination of the two fields proved to be fundamental to shape his research vision, which could be summarized as: ontological analysis is hard, yet unavoidable to address the pervasive need for explicit, meaningful and transparent information systems. In other words, ontology makes sense. (shrink)

No presente trabalho analisamos a importância da formação continuada promovida na universidade, através do curso de especialização “Política de Igualdade Racial no Ambiente Escolar”, para a configuração da prática pedagógica dos cursistas. Aplicamos questionários eletrônicos com 38 professores concluintes do curso de especialização ofertado pela RENAFORM/UFRPE. Observamos, que o referido curso vem contribuindo para a reflexão acerca da prática dos professores. Na visão dos cursistas, existe uma estreita relação entre a formação que o professor vivencia na universidade e o planejamento (...) que ele constrói para a sua prática de sala de aula. Contudo, alguns destacam que a questão racial na formação inicial ainda é pouco contemplada, por isso, ressaltam a importância da abordagem da educação das relações étnico-racial na formação continuada de professores, e da efetivação de práticas educacionais antirracistas, tanto na escola, como na sociedade. Assim, apesar dos desafios, encontramos possibilidades de vivenciar através desta política, um espaço de formação e reflexão que favoreça a configuração da profissionalidade do professor da educação básica. Palavras-chave: educação das relações étnico-raciais; formação continuada de professores. (shrink)

In October 2018, Slavoj Žižek published a two-part contribution titled ‘Should the Left’s answer to rightist populism be really a ‘‘me too’’?’. In this text, Žižek reproduced his diachronic skepticism on populism as a fruitful strategy for the Left. In a critical vein, we believe that Žižek’s latest interventions join - unconsciously or not - an avalanche of anti-populist discourses that usually emanate from elitist politicians and journalists, and reproduce a moralist, alarmist stance against populism. As a consequence, anti-populist elitism (...) blurs the concept of populism even more thereby hampering our possibilities to capture the changing politico-historic reality in the age of collapsing neoliberalism. (shrink)

Does the law act for or against «the people»? Who are «the people»? This collection of essays by philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and others examines these questions in historical perspective; in law and literature; in contemporary, advanced, and developing societies; and with respect to gender and economics. What «the law» does and ought to represent is viewed semiotically as a problem admitting of no definitive answer.

According to Grice’s analysis, conversational implicatures are carried by the saying of what is said. In this paper, it is argued that, whenever a speaker implicates a content by flouting one or several maxims, her implicature is not only carried by the act of saying what is said and the way of saying it, but also by the act of non-saying what should have been said according to what would have been normal to say in that particular context. Implicatures that (...) arise without maxim violation are only built on the saying of what is said, while those that arise in violative contexts are carried by the saying of what is said in combination with the non-saying of what should have been said. This observation seems to justify two claims: that conversational implicatures have different epistemic requirements depending on whether they arise in violative or non-violative contexts; that implicatures arising in non-violative contexts are more strongly tied to their generating assertion than those arising with maxim violation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe main question addressed in this paper is whether conflict is constitutive of the nature of value commitment, and hence necessarily implied by value pluralism. If this is the case, no resolution of value disagreements, whether on the global level or within modern multicultural societies, is possible via practical reasons, and the only solutions to inner or outer conflicts will be “political”, in the sense of a Realpolitik. Positive and negative answers to the main question are shown to express two (...) intellectual and moral attitudes opposing each other as Gorgias and Socrates, or Rhetoric and Philosophy did in the Ancient World. In post-Nietzschean Modernity, however, most philosophers seem to take sides with Gorgias, against Socrates, as is shown on the basis of Ronald Dworkin’s solitary campaign against the many faces of value scepticism. Drawing on phenomenological axiology, this paper takes sides with Socrates by reconciling value pluralism and universalism. (shrink)

The notion of de re truth (Conte, 2016) is put to work in this paper (§ 1). It introduces us to a confrontation between a metaphysics of desertic landscapes, as presented in a stunning poem by Achille Varzi and Claudio Calosi, The Tribulations of Philosophye (§ 2), and an ontology of the lifeworld, as a long-term project based on the key concept of bonds (De Monticelli, 2018). The rich and structured objects of the everyday world are infinite sources of information (...) and cognitive adventure (§§ 3, 3.1., 3.2). Or so I will claim against Varzi’s skepticism about ordinary language, common sense, and ontological realism (§ 4). Far from encouraging our minds to stick to concrete individual things, Ockham’s Razor has been the murder weapon in the dismission of concreteness and the sensible world from the intellectual horizon of Modernity (§§ 5, 6). The “Unitarian Tradition” is a half-playful denomination of a quite real, albeit ignored, alternative theory of individuality (and hence concreteness), brilliantly represented by Boethius, Duns Scotus, and Leibniz. Classic phenomenology quite independently revived it and brought it up to modern analytic standards of rigor and formality (§ 7). (shrink)

This article describes well quasi orders as a category, focusing on limits and colimits. In particular, while quasi orders with monotone maps form a category which is finitely complete, finitely cocomplete, and with exponentiation, the full subcategory of well quasi orders is finitely complete and cocomplete, but with no exponentiation. It is interesting to notice how finite antichains and finite proper descending chains interact to induce this structure in the category: in fact, the full subcategory of quasi orders with finite (...) antichains has finite colimits but no products, while the full subcategory of well founded quasi orders has finite limits but no coequalisers. Moreover, the article characterises when exponential objects exist in the category of well quasi orders and well founded quasi orders. This completes the systematic description of the fundamental constructions in the categories of quasi orders, well founded quasi orders, quasi orders with finite antichains, and well quasi orders. (shrink)

The papers collected in this issue address different topics at play in the contemporary debate on positive feeling and emotion by virtue of both their primary function in everyday life and their embedded structure. Within this issue, specific attention has been given to the intertwining of positive feeling and ethical issues according to different approaches whose goals consist in providing a description and clarification of the phenomena in question. The contributions gathered here give us a clear idea of the variety (...) and possible nuances that define positive feelings and, with them, of the complexity of our lives and reality. Specifically, they concretely show the degree to which the quality of an experience depends on the agent-environment relationship, the benefits we can derive from certain positive experiences, and the extent to which the valence of an emotion can affect our moral life. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze how the so-called ‘pedagogy of work’ attempts to answer the challenges of unemployment and job insecurity characterizing the labor market in contemporary society. The authors reflect on the concepts of nihilist pedagogies and the ‘end of work’ by distinguishing two approaches: an active and a passive nihilist pedagogy. The passive approach, based on resignation, is opposed to an active attitude in which labor pedagogy offers tools to address current challenges. The authors support the idea that (...) pedagogy as a human-improving science cannot adopt the position of passive nihilism in interpreting work in contemporary society. To better understand the dynamics related to job insecurity and corrective solutions by pedagogy, the authors analyzed the thoughts of three contemporary philosophers: Zygmunt Bauman, Jeremy Rifkin, and Dominique Méda. These authors redefined the concept of work in connection with the transformations because of globalization, the advent of new communication technologies, and digital work. These changes have redefined not only the concept of work but also the models of work pedagogy in the Western world: capitalism and Marxism. Considering the current challenges, the pedagogy of work needs to be rethought, starting from the problem of employability and focusing on the new occupations in demand in the Internet age. By integrating ideas on interpreting work from the theories of Bauman, Rifkin, and Méda, it is possible to propose a pedagogy of work in the age of change and to outline possible values of education inspired by it. (shrink)

The circumstances present themselves as definitive when trying to run any human action, especially those that relate to the achievement and maintenance of power. Assuming that the higher the power of fortune less freedom to commit actions that can lead to successful political actor in the world of contingency, it becomes essential to know how it exercises power over the actions of men. But is it possible to do it precisely? We start from the historical context in which the works (...) of Machiavelli are written to understand the relationship the author establishes with tradition, sometimes taking it, now opposing it. We recovered Machiavelli’s texts and established dialogue with some commentators the author’s work to investigate the question of fortune itself. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate ways to comply with justice in a liberal democracy. In order to do that, we sketch Rawls’s account of moral-consensus stability and discuss the alternative idea of stability reached through a modus vivendi. We defend modus vivendi as a way to achieve stability backed by a variety of reasons and even by ‘non-reasons’. By ‘non-reasons’ we mean alternative sources of motivation for compliance as a precondition of a stable coexistence. We focus on such sources, which (...) differ from reasons and beliefs, that are practices, shared values, and value experiences, in light of both a theoretical-political and a qualitative social-ontological perspective. We argue that individuals who experience the same values become collectives and even stable ones: the sharing of values creates social unity and makes collectives solid and resistant to individualistically centrifugal tendencies. (shrink)

Each person is perceived by others and by herself as an individual in a very strong sense, namely as a unique individual. Moreover, this supposed uniqueness is commonly thought of as linked with another character that we tend to attribute to persons (as opposed to stones or chairs and even non-human animals): a kind of depth, hidden to sensory perception, yet in some measure accessible to other means of knowledge. I propose a theory of strong or essential individuality. This theory (...) is introduced by way of a critical discussion of Van Inwagen’s and Baker’s ontologies of persons. Composition Theory and Constitution Theory are shown to be complementary, in their opposite strong and weak points. I argue that both theories have unsatisfactory consequences concerning personal identity, a problem which the proposed theory seems to solve more faithfully both to folk intuitions and the phenomenology of personal life. (shrink)

(Spanish) RESUMEN: La libertad absoluta postulada por Viktor Emil Frankl y Jean-Paul Sartre, la Shoah y la creencia en un dios omnipotente, bueno y justo parecen contradecirse. La pregunta por el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas del Holocausto (la verdadera catástrofe, el mayor crimen contra la humanidad), simbolizado por Auschwitz, y como punto de inflexión en la historia, es terriblemente dolorosa y parece no tener una respuesta filosófica ni teológica. A mi juicio, es importantísimo distinguir entre las víctimas inocentes (...) de la Shoah que perecieron y las víctimas inocentes que sufrieron un verdadero infierno y perdieron a sus seres queridos, pero que lograron sobrevivir. Ambas son víctimas, por supuesto, pero así como encontrarle un posible sentido al sufrimiento de las víctimas masacradas y gaseadas podría suponer un insulto a su sufrimiento y agonía –en especial, al horror que sufrieron los niños–, el horrible sufrimiento de los supervivientes pudo dar, tal vez, de alguna manera, un sentido a sus vidas después de la liberación de los campos de concentración y exterminio, ya fuera como voz, como protesta o como simple supervivencia. Frankl apuesta por un sentido último (que abraza el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas), y Sartre, aunque parezca no apostar por sentido alguno, volcó su vida al compromiso político después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y ello parece vislumbrar una minúscula pizca de sentido después de la barbarie. La filosofía de Frankl es un sí a la vida incluso en las situaciones más extremas, un grito casi nietzscheano que exalta el valor de la vida más allá de cualquier sufrimiento. Frankl, padre de la logoterapia y superviviente del Holocausto, abre una puerta a Dios al hablar de un dios inconsciente, una dimensión suprahumana y una fe incondicional, y define la religión como espiritualidad y como la búsqueda del hombre por el sentido último. Según Frankl, la libertad no se contradice con Dios, y la religión existe no a raíz de la barbarie, sino a pesar de la barbarie. El existencialismo sartreano es una filosofía de la libertad radical y de la responsabilidad. El hombre está condenado a ser libre. El ser humano es un ser en el que la existencia precede a la esencia. Somos totalmente responsables de lo que somos. Sartre afirma que la libertad humana es incompatible con Dios. En un mundo sin Dios, la moral la construyen los hombres, con sus propias decisiones y sus acciones, y la existencia y el sufrimiento de las víctimas no tienen sentido alguno. Sartre define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, angustia y contingencia. Frankl define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, espiritualidad y búsqueda de sentido. Con esta tesis me propongo entrar en la resbaladiza dimensión del dolor, la desesperación, el sentido y sinsentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas (teniendo presente los horrores de Auschwitz, que en teología y filosofía ha simbolizado desde la liberación de los campos la muerte de Dios y la muerte de la moral). Es verdad que no solo los hombres, mujeres y niños judíos fueron víctimas de la barbarie alemana, pero, como reza el mensaje de Elie Wiesel en la exposición permanente del Block 27 del Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". La Shoah no es un episodio dentro de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sino un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad, y es una catástrofe que nos concierne a todos, hombres y mujeres judíos y no judíos, religiosos e irreligiosos, creyentes e increyentes, como seres libres, responsables y morales que somos –o que deberíamos ser. Muchas de las víctimas del Holocausto, en medio de la desesperación, entraron en las cámaras de gas orando, aferrándose a la esperanza de que ese final espeluznante no era un punto final. Con esta tesis no me propongo de ninguna manera responder a la eterna pregunta de si Dios existe o no, sino que propongo interpretar ese grito hacia Dios como un desesperado anhelo de esperanza. También me propongo encontrar una coherencia en las posturas de estos dos grandes pensadores para quienes la libertad y la responsabilidad definen al hombre: Frankl (quien apuesta por una dimensión suprahumana donde existe un sentido último en el que el sufrimiento de las víctimas tiene que tener algún sentido, aunque ese sentido sea completamente incomprensible en la dimensión humana) y Sartre (el existencialista ateo por excelencia, para quien el mundo, la existencia y el sufrimiento son absolutamente contingentes). En el primer capítulo expongo la logoterapia y el existencialismo sartreano: describo las tres dimensiones del hombre y las tres búsquedas de sentido propuestas por Frankl, y expongo las cinco consecuencias de "l'existence précède l'essence", centrándome en la libertad y la responsabilidad, y hablo del suicidio. El segundo capítulo está dedicado al dios inconsciente frankleano, la dimensión suprahumana, la búsqueda por el sentido último y la fe incondicional. En el tercer capítulo ilustro la libertad sin Dios sartreana, la ontología sartreana, el ateísmo sartreano y el humanismo sartreano, y hablo sobre la responsabilidad, la mauvaise foi, la contingencia, la situation y la angustia. El cuarto capítulo es necesariamente histórico (sin dejar de ser filosófico): me pregunto por la muerte de Dios después de Auschwitz, argumento y defiendo la unicidad del Holocausto (la Shoah es un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad), describo las masacres antes de los campos de exterminio (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), el gigantesco complejo de Auschwitz (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), reflexiono sobre Dios y el mal (centrándome en los niños de Auschwitz), describo los días de Frankl en Auschwitz, hablo de Dios como esperanza, de la inmortalidad y la escatología, de la crueldad de Dios, de la relación entre el cristianismo y el antisemitismo, del islam y el antisemitismo, critico el silencio de Dios, hablo de la muerte de Dios y del juicio contra Dios. En el quinto capítulo expongo la moral frankleana (una moral que atañe al hombre y no a Dios), basándome en su teoría del amor y en su única obra de teatro (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), y la moral sartreana (una moral que atañe a una humanidad sin Dios), recordando a Dostoyevsky, analizando la famosa cita de Garcin en Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", criticando el marxismo de Sartre y cuestionando (con la mirada de Frankl y Sartre) el verso de Brecht "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; al final del capítulo incluyo una reflexión propia y las críticas frankleana y sartreana sobre la impunidad de los verdugos y colaboradores después del Holocausto (con el permiso de Dios). Después de la Conclusión, añado un Apéndice sobre las vidas de Frankl y Sartre, para poder entender mejor su obra. PALABRAS CLAVE: logoterapia, existencialismo sartreano, búsqueda de sentido, libertad, responsabilidad, moral, angustia, sufrimiento, supervivientes, víctimas, contingencia, espiritualidad, religión, Dios, esperanza, antisemitismo, culpa, Auschwitz, Holocausto, Shoah. /// (English) ABSTRACT: The absolute freedom defended by Viktor Emil Frankl and Jean-Paul Sartre, the Shoah and the belief in an omnipotent, benevolent and just God seem to contradict each other. The question of the meaning of the victims' suffering of the Holocaust (the true catastrophe, the biggest crime against humanity), simbolised by Auschwitz and as a turning point in History, is terribly painful and doesn't seem to have an answer. In my opinion, it's crucial to distinguish between the innocent victims of the Shoah who perished and the innocent victims who sufferend a real hell and lost their loved ones, but managed to survive. Both are victims, of course, but just as finding a possible meaning to the suffering of the massacred and gassed victims could result in an insult to their suffering and agony –especially to the horror that the children suffered– the gigantic suffering of the survivors could, maybe, somehow, give a meaning to their lives after the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps, either as a voice, as a protest, or as a simple survival. Frankl believes in an ultimate meaning (that embraces the meaning of the victims' suffering), and Sartre, even if it appears not to embrace any meaning, turned his life to political engagement after War World II, and that attitude seems to give a tiny glimpse of meaning after the barbarity. Frankl's philosophy says yes to life even in the most extreme situations, and it's a Nietzschean-like scream that exalts the value of life beyond any monstrous suffering. Frankl, the father of logotherapy and a Holocaust survivor, opens a door to God when he talks about an unconscious God, a supra-human dimension and an unconditional faith; he defines religion as spirituality and as man's search for ultimate meaning. According to Frankl, freedom is not contradictory with God, and religion exists not because of the barbarity but in spite of the barbarity. Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of radical freedom and responsibility. Men are condemned to be free. We are beings where the existence precedes the essence. We are completely responsible of what we are. Sartre argues that human freedom is incompatible with God. In a godless world, morality is constructed by people, with their own choices and actions, and human existence and the suffering of the victims don't have any meaning. Sartre defines man as freedom, responsibility, Angst and contingency. Frankl defines man as freedom, responsibility, spirituality and search for meaning. With this dissertation I attempt to enter in the slippery dimension of the pain, despair, meaning and meaninglessness of the victims' suffering (having in mind the horrors of Auschwitz, that in theology and in philosophy have simbolised, since the liberation of the camps, the death of God and the death of morality). It's true that not only Jewish men, women and children were victims of the German barbarity, but, as Elie Wiesel's message from the permanent exhibition from Block 27 of the Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum reads: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". The Shoah is not an episode inside War World II, but a turning point in the history of humankind, and a catastrophe that embraces us all, Jewish and not not Jewish men and women, religious and not religious, believers and not believers, as the free, responsible and moral beings that we all are –or that we should be. A lot of the victims, in the midst of their desperation, entered into the gas chambers praying, holding to the hope that their horrifying end was not the ultimate end. With this dissertation I do not attempt to answer the eternal question of the existence of God, rather, I will try to interpret that scream to God as a longing for hope. I also intend to find a coherence between the thought of these two great thinkers for whom freedom and responsibilty define man: Frankl (who argues that there is a suprahuman dimension where an ultimate meaning exists and where the victims' suffering has to have a meaning, even if this meaning is completely incomprehensible in the human dimension) and Sartre (the atheist existentialist par excellence, for whom the world, human existence and suffering are absolutely contingent). In the first chapter I expose logotherapy and Sartrean existentialism: I describe the three dimensions of man, the three searches for meaning, the five consequences of "l'existence précède l'essence" and I speak about suicide. The second chapter delves into the unconscious God, the supra-human dimension, the ultimate meaning and the unconditional faith. In the third chapter I expose the freedom without God defended by Sartre, Sartre's ontology, Sartre's atheism, Sartre's humanism, and his ideas about responsibility, mauvaise foi, contingency, situation, and Angst. The fourth chapter is necessarily historical (while being philosophical too): I wonder about the death of God after Auschwitz, I argue and defend the uniqueness of the Holocaust (the Shoah is a turning point in the history of humankind), I describe the massacres before the extermination camps (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), the gigantic Auschwitz camp complex (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), I reflect on God and evil (focusing on the children of Auschwitz), I describe Frankl's days in Auschwitz, I talk about God as hope, about immortality and escathology, I discuss God's cruelty, the relationship between Christianity and antisemitism and Islam and antisemitism, I question the silence of God, and I talk about the death of God and about the trial against God. In the fifth chapter I talk about the Franklean morality (a morality that concerns man and not God), on the basis of his love theory and his only work of theater (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), and the Sartrean morality (a morality that concerns a humanity without God), remembering Dostoyevsky, analysing Garcin's famous quote in Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", crticizing Sartre's marxism and questioning (with Frankl's and Sartre's eyes) Brecht's verse "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; at the end of the chapter I include my own reflection (and Frankl and Sartre's critique) about the impunity of the executioners and collaborators after the Holocaust (with God's permission). After the Conclusion, I add an Appendix about the lives of Frankl and Sartre, which helps understanding better their work. KEYWORDS: logotherapy, existentialism, search for meaning, freedom, responsibility, morality, Angst, suffering, survivors, victims, contingency, spirituality, religion, God, hope, antisemitism, guilt, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Shoah. (shrink)

Patients with advanced dementia are less likely than those with other terminal illnesses to receive palliative care. Due to the nature and course of dementia, there may be a failure to recognize the terminal stage of the disease. A possible and under-investigated explanation for this healthcare disparity is the healthcare practitioner who plays a primary role in end-of-life decision-making. Two potential areas that might impact provider decision-making are cognitive biases and moral considerations. In this analysis, we demonstrate how the cognitive (...) biases and moral considerations of practitioners related to clinical decision-making are inherent in clinical practice and may impact on providers’ accuracy related to diagnostic and treatment related decision-making associated with patients with advanced dementia. Anchoring, default, availability, representativeness and framing biases are cognitive biases based on the "Two System Model" that relate to decision-making in end-of-life care. In patients with advanced dementia, those biases may result in a tendency to adhere to traditional mandatory care, involving an aggressive approach to care, which values saving lives at all costs, without taking into account the possible suffering and long-term consequences. Aspects such as moral sensitivity and moral courage play an important role in ethical decision-making related to advanced dementia. Investigations of clinical decision-making that include the cognitive biases and ethical considerations of practitioners might advance the comprehensive understanding of the clinical decision-making process related to care of patients with advanced dementia and promote the quality of care given to this population. (shrink)

Apocalyptic thinking permeates Paul’s ideas about the gospel, God, the present age, and what is to come. Paul in his letters not only writes about the revelations that he himself has received, but also how the gospel reveals God’s ultimate justice. Apocalypticism as an ideology is fundamentally concerned with justice and the expectation of a future intervention that will conclusively reconcile the injustices of the world with the justice of God. Though of course Paul never sat down and wrote an (...) “Apocalypse” or even an apocalyptic letter, his letters reveal glimpses of the apocalyptic ways Paul thought about the world and humanity’s place in it. This article reviews the history and main tenets of apocalypticism and then examines three fundamental areas of apocalyptic thinking as expressed in Paul’s letters: the idea of apocalypse as full disclosure, the apocalyptic promise of full justice, and Paul’s use of apocalyptic ideas to reorient his readers to thinking about true-but-hidden identity, both of the “present evil age” and of one’s current place in it. Paul draws upon and employs apocalyptic imagery to solve practical problems in his communities, equipping them to face the world with a full cosmic perspective. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses two contributions by Lélia Gonzales to the consolidation of an Afro-Latin-American feminism truly commited to breaking colonial oppression mechanisms and interested in the liberation of all human beings subjugated by the European colonization process. The first contribution pertains to the importance of understanding the formation of Brazilian society from a decolonial perspective. The second one concerns the need for feminist movements to include racial issues on their agendas in order to engage in the antiracist struggle.

After its establishment in 1948 many Jews emmigrated to Israel from Arab countries, Yemen included. In 1995, a governmental committee was established to investigate the alleged disappearance of about 1000 Yemenite children from hospitals within transit camps where the new immigrants were kept in the 1950s. Interviews with Yemenites present how the bodies of new immigrants were medicalized and commodified in the transit camps during the mass-immigration period of the 1950s, and how people have come to resist it. I conclude (...) with the role of the Israeli medical profession and biomedical technologies in promoting national goals and as mediators of collective, group and individual identities. (shrink)