No natal de 1872, Cosima Wagner, filha de Franz Liszt e esposa de Richard Wagner, é presenteada com um conjunto de cinco ensaios que abordavam temas diversos, relativos a um projeto de renovação da cultura alemã em que ela se engajara.

This article critically examines the 1992 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on pornography (Butler v. the Queen). The decision, like the LEAF (Legal Education Action Fund), argues that the dehumanizing and degrading images of women in pornography undermine the achievement of gender equality and reinforce existing inequality. Section 15 of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms takes precedence over Section 2(b) freedom of expression. More immediately, Section 163(8) of the Criminal Code of Canada remains the primary instrument for (...) dealing with pornography. These arguments fail to distinguish between degradation and devaluation; they offer no evidence of a connection between pornography and its effects on gender stratification, nor do they feel obliged to offer such evidence despite the extensive literature on inequality by the social science community. Citing the Sears-Roebuck case on gender discrimination, the author demonstrates that the enemy of gender equality is the stereotype of the idealized traditional woman, not the one-dimensional lust-driven nymphomaniac of pornography. Her opposite is not the "stud" of pornography who is in a constant state of tumescence but "economic man" who sublimates his sexual passion in sports, cars, politics, and money. Censorship, it is suggested, infantilizes women and contributes to their dependency. The article comments on the doctrine of "balancing" rights and on the meaning of "equality" within a feminist context. The larger questions of a trend toward the legalization of cultural issues and the role of the judiciary (weak in European democracies but strong in the American tradition) are raised. (shrink)

This volume illuminates the achievements of present-day social science insights. It merits a close reading by those for whom the history of ideas is a living entity.

In this chapter, Thelma Zeno Lavine argues that the sociology of knowledge should subject the norms of knowledge to socio-historical analysis.

Habermas' social philosophy can now be perceived in its oppositional structures and their symbolic meaning. His repetition of structural opposition finds its expression in the symbolism which pervades The Philosophic Discourse of Modernity in the opposition between the dreaded myth of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and the redemptive fantasy of the path yet to be taken. More significant for the intellectual culture of modernity is the neglect, by erasure on the part of this esteemed philosopher, of the great drama of (...) philosophy in our time. This is the drama occasioned by the dialectical struggle, rushing to climax in the 20th Century, between Enlightenment reason and its Counterenlightenment opponent. The struggle between these philosophical constellations is refracted in the great wars of this century. Thus the drama of the philosophical thought of the century and its historical development is lost. The philosophic discourse of modernity has yet to be written. Its text, once it has been freed from the tenacity of ideological hostilities and their erasures and concealing circumlocutions, will at the same time provide the sought-for foundation for social philosophy and a just society: it is the philosophic framework of Modernity itself which is the foundation of all modern philosophies, in the dialectic of Enlightenment and its Counterenlightenment other. (shrink)

O texto que se segue busca apresentar algumas facetas da discussão sobre a origem da linguagem em Rousseau, Fichte e Nietzsche com vistas a destacar elementos comuns aos três autores, sobretudo ao tomarem o ponto de vista histórico como estratégia de recusa de toda fundamentação metafísica da palavra. The following text presents some features of the discussion about the origin of language by Rousseau, Fichte and Nietzsche trying to enhance common elements between the three authors, especially by taking the historical (...) point of view as a strategy of refusal of any metaphysical origin of the word. (shrink)

Este texto busca mostrar que a crítica à linguagem empreendida por Nietzsche, já em seus primeiros escritos sobre o tema, não pode ser tomada em um sentido meramente epistemológico, uma vez que enfoca a discussão sobre o conhecimento a partir de uma perspectiva moral.

This book is an important challenge to the extensive literature--philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic--concerning the much abused concept of alienation. Lachs boldly proposes scrapping the concept of alienation: "It is unlikely that we shall make much headway in understanding the source and nature of our social ailments without abandoning the idea of alienation." He regards alienation as flawed by vagueness; by lack of rules for its application; by indiscriminate reference to objective conditions and subjective discomfort; and by the confusion of description (...) and evaluation. Lachs undertakes to replace alienation with the concepts of mediation and psychic distance: these are clear and applicable; their reference is to "describable conditions"; moreover, these concepts are value-neutral, separating description from evaluation. Most significantly, "while alienation seems an unmitigated evil, more realistically, mediation has both costs and benefits.". (shrink)

O texto que se segue busca apresentar algumas facetas da discussão sobre a origem da linguagem em Rousseau, Fichte e Nietzsche com vistas a destacar elementos comuns aos três autores, sobretudo ao tomarem o ponto de vista histórico como estratégia de recusa de toda fundamentação metafísica da palavra. The following text presents some features of the discussion about the origin of language by Rousseau, Fichte and Nietzsche trying to enhance common elements between the three authors, especially by taking the historical (...) point of view as a strategy of refusal of any metaphysical origin of the word. (shrink)

One of the most successful physicians I have ever known, has assured me, that he used more bread pills, drops of colored water, and powders of hickory ashes, than of all other medicines put together. It was certainly a pious fraud.Clinicians and other health-care practitioners have known for hundreds of years that different procedures with unclear mechanisms of action or efficaciousness can still result in subjective improvement of clinical symptoms. Many scholars have attempted to define the placebo effect. This has (...) resulted in the development of multiple frameworks and models that help explain and further explore placebo effects and responses. After providing some definitions and clarifications of terminology... (shrink)