ObjectiveThis study aims to analyze sociohistorically how the normative patterns of hegemonic masculinity produced impacts on men’s health/mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA qualitative study from a socio-historical perspective was conducted with 50 men based on an online survey. A semistructured form was applied. The data were analyzed by the Collective Subject Discourse method, interpreted in the light of the context of epidemic disease and hegemonic masculinity.ResultsThe experience of the pandemic exposed the normative patterns of masculinities from (...) the consummation of acts representative of the pandemic context, which incited men to deny the existence of COVID-19 disease and to delay the understanding and adoption of measures to protect and control COVID-19. As a repercussion, men presented conflicts in the regulation of emotions; presented emotional suppression; were more reactive; felt threatened regarding the loss of the role of family provider, virility; and revealed a sense of invulnerability, added to the weakening of self-care.ConclusionThe discourse revealed that the men’s behaviors are consistent with the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, but express signs of recognition that this behavior causes harm to themselves and their health. (shrink)

This edited collection includes contributions from expert philosophers of law and considers the work of one of the most important legal philosophers of our time, Professor Gerald J Postema. The chapters dig deep into important camps of Postema's rich theoretical project including: - the value of the rule of law; - the ideal of integrity in adjudication; - his works on analogical reasoning; - the methodology of jurisprudence; - dialogues with Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Frederick Schauer and HLA Hart. It (...) includes an original article by Professor Postema, in which he develops his conception of the rule of law and replies to some objections to previous works, and an interview in which he provides a fascinating and unique insight into his philosophy of law. (shrink)

Book reviews: VAUCHEZ, André. Francisco de Assis, Entre História e Memória. Tradução de José David Antunes e Noémia Lopes. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, 2013. 431 p.

Once I’ve heard a joke about legal academia, and given that this was a very good joke, it was also very close to reality. This is how it went: ‘well, if you want to be successful in the Anglo-Ameri...

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

There is not one but many ways to picture the world--Australian "x-ray" pictures, cubish collages, Amerindian split-style figures, and pictures in two-point perspective each draw attention to different features of what they represent. Understanding Pictures argues that this diversity is the central fact with which a theory of figurative pictures must reckon. Lopes advances the theory that identifying pictures' subjects is akin to recognizing objects whose appearances have changed over time. He develops a schema for categorizing the different ways (...) pictures represent--the different kinds of meaning they have--and argues that that depiction's epistemic value lies in its representational diversity. He also offers a novel account of the phenomenology of pictorial experience, comparing pictures to visual prostheses like mirrors and binoculars. (shrink)

This book offers a bold new approach to the philosophy of art. General theories of art don't work: they can't deal with problem cases. Instead of trying to define art, we should accept that a work of art is nothing but a work in one of the arts. Lopes's buck passing theory works well for the avant garde, illuminating its radical provocations.

This paper deals with the transnationalism of racial anthropological frameworks and its role in the understanding of human difference during India’s decolonization and nation-building. With attention to the circulation of scientific objects, I focus on the practices and articulations of Irawati Karve, an Indian anthropologist with a transnational scientific trajectory and nationalistic political engagements. I argue that Karve’s adaptation of an internationally validated German racial approach to study caste, ethnic and religious groups contributed to the further racialization of these categories (...) as well as to the racialization of nationalistic projects in Maharashtra and India. I conclude with a reflection on the transnationalization of the coloniality of racialization. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta duas teses sobre as vantagens do uso de obras de arte para o ensino de Filosofia no Ensino Médio: a primeira é a de que obras de arte podem servir de introdução ao filosofar na escola - indo além das questões estéticas e chegando a interrogações da filosofia política, metafísica, moral e epistemológica. Num primeiro momento, apresenta-se exemplos de obras e casos ricos para esse intuito. Num segundo momento, parte desses particulares para uma compreensão mais ampla, explicando, (...) a partir das teses de Arthur Danto, Ronald Moore e Ronai Rocha, o valor didático e filosófico daquelas no Ensino Médio. Ainda quanto à primeira tese, sustenta-se que a arte também serve ao exercício de uma das principais competências filosóficas: a argumentação. A segunda tese é a de que as artes podem servir de ponto de partida para uma proposta curricular interdisciplinar: no presente caso, entre a Filosofia e as demais disciplinas escolares. Apresenta-se possíveis cruzamentos conceituais e temáticos entre as disciplinas em questão, fornecidos por obras de arte e outros fenômenos estéticos. Nossa conclusão é a de que abordar a arte no Ensino Médio, sob o ponto de vista filosófico, é uma oportunidade didática e cognitiva que não deve ser menosprezada. (shrink)

Em trabalhos anteriores, analisamos as formas pelas quais a sociologia vem sendo cobrada nos vestibulares de algumas universidades em diferentes regiões brasileiras e no ENEM. Além do entendimento de que formas são essas, uma das conclusões a que chegamos foi a de que, no ENEM, dificilmente há o acionamento de conhecimento sociológico prévio para a resolução da prova. Entendemos que, por mais que a cobrança na redação e de modo interdisciplinar traga algum reconhecimento ao saber sociológico, a construção de questões (...) que possam ir além da interpretação de texto é fundamental para a consolidação da sociologia no exame. Sendo assim, como continuidade de nossa reflexão, objetivamos, no presente trabalho, discutir, afinal, o que é esse conhecimento prévio, que pode ser entendido como conceitos, temas e teorias sociológicos. Mas quais são eles e como são cobrados na prática? Como sabemos, não há uma definição nacional dos conteúdos da sociologia, mas algumas propostas estaduais. Analisaremos quais são, segundo os editais das universidades, as matérias de sociologia presentes em alguns vestibulares, se é possível chegar a um mapa comum e se esse mapa é compatível ou não com os currículos mínimos estaduais. Para isso, analisaremos editais dos vestibulares em que a sociologia está presente e do ENEM. (shrink)

In recent years, online “involuntary celibate” or “incel” communities have been linked to various deadly attacks targeting women. Why do these men react to romantic rejection with not just disappointment, but murderous rage? Feminists have claimed this is because incels desire women as objects or, alternatively, because they feel entitled to women’s attention. I argue that both of these explanatory models are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence toward women—for their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent hatred. (...) I propose instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian “Other.” For Beauvoir, when men conceive of women as Others, they represent them as simultaneously human subjects and embodiments of the natural world. Women function then as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, regardless of the quality of their actions. I go on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, “My Twisted World.” I show how this Beauvoirian model sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence toward women. It therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

Art works realize many values. According to tradition, not all of these values are characteristic of art: art works characteristically bear aesthetic value. Breaking with tradition, some now say that art works bear artistic value, as distinct from aesthetic value. I argue that there is no characteristic artistic value distinct from aesthetic value. The argument for this thesis suggests a new way to think about aesthetic value as it is characteristically realized by works of art.

Starting from the hunting treatise Cynegeticus, assigned to Xenophon, this article seeks to reflect on the way in which the construction of the ideal hunter of the polis described by the Attic author. This aim will aboard both practical terms - equipment, prey, methods of hunting conducting etc - and moral terms, taking in account the numerous attacks made against the sophists throughout the booklet. To accomplish this aim, the present text includes a brief recapitulation of Xenophon's life, the most (...) important historiographical interpretations on the Cynegeticus and its dating, and, finally, the way in which the Attic author describes his ideal Greek hunter. (shrink)

Many people think that the capacity for criticism and reflection, as well as the attitude of welcoming contingency, the other, and debate, is some internal and well-intentioned energy of open-minded people, as advocated by liberals, whether from the right or the left. What they don’t realize is how much the capacity for reflection and dialogue is an external phenomenon, present in the world itself, produced only thanks to a space of resistances, encounters, and even frustrations, as in the academic and (...) scientific sphere. It prevents my cogito and my precious epistemic schemes from getting out of control, in a dangerous transcendentalist delirium, and taking over the world and the circumstances themselves. The aim of this essay is precisely to understand this aesthetic dimension of science, this ontological feature that crosses its contours, taking as a starting point the concepts of “importance” in Whitehead and “matters of concern” in Bruno Latour. (shrink)

One of the key insights of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is the idea that gender-based subordination is not just something done to women, but also something women do to themselves. This raises a question about ethical responsibility: if women are complicit, or actively implicated in their own oppression, are they at fault? Recent Beauvoir scholarship remains divided on this point. Here, I argue that Beauvoir did, in fact, ethically criticize many women for their complicity, as a sign of (...) what she called “bad faith”. I challenge recent accounts by Nancy Bauer and Manon Garcia, who both read Beauvoir as exonerating complicit women. According to this reading, women emerge as human “freedoms” within a social world where a “destiny” of inferiority is already prepared for them. Their self-subordination is then an inevitable product of acting in a patriarchal world. I argue, however, that this interpretation generates a crucial tension, leading Bauer and Garcia to call on women to stop being complicit, while also claiming they cannot avoid complicity. I propose instead a different interpretation, on which feminine complicity is often fueled by criticizable ethical attitudes that are far from inevitable. By revisiting Beauvoir’s notion of “bad faith”, I show that this account is compatible with recognizing the limitations imposed on women’s agency and I show that this feminist ethical criticism is itself an important part of a collective project of social transformation. (shrink)

Besides the better-known Nelson logic and paraconsistent Nelson logic, in 1959 David Nelson introduced, with motivations of realizability and constructibility, a logic called $\mathcal{S}$. The logic $\mathcal{S}$ was originally presented by means of a calculus with infinitely many rule schemata and no semantics. We look here at the propositional fragment of $\mathcal{S}$, showing that it is algebraizable, in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi, with respect to a variety of three-potent involutive residuated lattices. We thus introduce the first known algebraic (...) semantics for $\mathcal{S}$ as well as a finite Hilbert-style calculus equivalent to Nelson’s presentation; this also allows us to clarify the relation between $\mathcal{S}$ and the other two Nelson logics $\mathcal{N}3$ and $\mathcal{N}4$. (shrink)

Este artigo tem o objetivo de tratar do tema da “justiça” na obra de Karl Marx, a partir das ocorrências deste conceito – e de suas variações – no própria obra do autor. A ideia desta análise é contextualizar e sintetizar o sentido dado por Marx à “justiça” no quadro teórico de sua crítica ao capitalismo. O debate contemporâneo sobre “justiça em Marx” emerge em especial após a década de 1970, com a intensificação da discussão normativa na filosofia política, por (...) ocasião da revitalização da teoria da justiça liberal igualitária. Com isso, diversos autores buscaram compreender os critérios normativos por trás da crítica de Marx ao capitalismo e se questionaram se tal padrão de crítica poderia ser entendido como um ideal de justiça para ele. Sendo assim, o próprio sentido de justiça em Marx teve que ser negligenciado, em prol de uma definição mais ampla e mais atual de justiça – com fronteiras menos claras com conceitos como “moral” e “ética”. A intenção deste artigo vai no sentido oposto, de restringir os termos da discussão, tentando inicialmente identificar quais os elementos, os contornos e o contexto do emprego do conceito de “justiça” na obra de Marx. (shrink)

Neste artigo nos propomos a analisar algumas questões em torno da noção de utilidade e serventia das ditas humanidades. O pensar não vinculado a um pronto utilitarismo é sinônimo de inutilidade? Para responder a esta questão levantamos certos aspectos históricos que fundamentam o automático vínculo entre a utilidade e as ciências e a desvalorização dos saberes que não produzem um produto imediato. Não se trata de um manifesto contra as ditas ciências duras nem de um panegírico às humanidades. São reflexões (...) que recolocam a questão dos estudos humanísticos como parte integrante dos saberes contemporâneos. (shrink)

Não é anódino que Adam Smith, em célebre carta para a Edinburgh Review, tenha ressaltado passagens relativas a problemas de filosofia moral do Discurso sobre a desigualdade. Chegando a aproximar Rousseau de Mandeville, distancia-os, contudo, por meio de um conceito fundamental: a piedade. Nesse artigo, examinaremos as consequências dessa leitura, analisando-a, no entanto, sob a luz de Emílio. Mais precisamente, pretendemos desenvolver a seguinte hipótese: enquanto o Segundo Discurso apresenta-se como um diagnóstico crítico da moral do “sistema dos políticos modernos”, (...) no Emílio encontramos uma solução possível, através da educação do homem no percurso da formação do juízo, para os problemas morais impostos aos indivíduos da sociedade comercial. Examinaremos detidamente esse segundo momento, ou seja, verificaremos se as noções desenvolvidas de amor de si, identificação e piedade, podem indicar a posição do pensamento rousseauniano em relação ao debate filosófico-moral ligado à economia política de seu tempo. (shrink)

A partir de um exame de textos escritos por Du Pont de Nemours, Le Mercier de la Rivière, Victor Riquetti de Mirabeau e François Quesnay, e tendo em vista a unidade da teoria política formada e desenvolvida pela fisiocracia, buscaremos examinar como a análise econômica dessa doutrina encontra suas condições de emergência a partir de uma elaboração política que lhe é precedente: o jusnaturalismo. Assim, destacaremos a importância desse retorno filosófico para a compreensão de conceitos como produto líquido ou mesmo (...) para a ênfase dada à agricultura. Essa abordagem nos permitirá melhor avaliarmos de que forma o estudo das riquezas não se emancipa de uma teoria social e política que viceja, no final das contas, no tradicional terreno do direito natural. (shrink)

The objective with this study is highlight the thesis of organic and dynamic continuity of the intellectual production of Jean-Paul Sartre from the conception of history and the ethical implications that flow from it. This work will look on the fictional production of philosopher, particularly his novels, for the purpose of evidencing such thesis.

Resumo: Este trabalho coloca em foco o Tribunal do Júri sob um prisma analítico, seu surgimento e atual utilização, apresentando as ideias propostas por Foucault ao longo de sua obra a respeito das instituições jurídicas historicamente estabelecidas pelos governos para relacionar em especial aquela instituição com os conceitos da biopolítica apresentados pelo autor e colocar em pauta a inadequação de seu modelo ao momento histórico atual das sociedades ocidentais.: This work focus the jury Trial under an analitic prism, its origin (...) and current use, presenting the ideas proposed by Foucault in his work towards the justice institutions established by governments to relate specially that institute to the biopolitics concepts presented by the author and put in the subject the inadequacy of its model to the current historical moment of occidental societies. Keywords : Justice; Foucault; Jury; Legitimation; State Reason; Biopolitics. (shrink)

Este trabalho procura apresentar uma visão geral da perspectiva do Filósofo Richard Rorty acerca do Pensamento Foucaultiano, principalmente seu posicionamento em relação à autonomia privada e a posição dos seres humanos em relação às determinações imperativas da sociedades nas quais se incluem.: This paper tries to present a general view of the perspective of the philosopher Richard Rorty towards Michel Foucault’s thoughts, most of all his positioning about the private autonomy and the human position in front of the imperative determinations (...) of the societies in whose they are included. Keywords : Autonomy. Power. Foucault. Society. (shrink)

This brief essay unpretentiously seeks to highlight the relevance of some of the central questions in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, thus aiming to contribute to broadening the scope of the French philosopher's ideas. Without fearing controversy, it presents the correlation between the concept of freedom and the responsibility necessarily implied. Such concepts remind us that this work is current, for it demands to assume its political and ethical unfoldings as unavoidable demands. The debate is built, then, through Sartre's encounters (...) with his peers, highlighting the interlocutions and controversial divergences that mark his itinerary. Finally, the timeliness of the work seems to reside in the historical failure of the humanist project, that is, Being and Nothingness continues to be current, because we are still incapable of promoting a historical situation in which the human being is free. (shrink)

When we look at photographs we literally see the objects that they are of. But seeing photographs as photographs engages aesthetic interests that are not engaged by seeing the objects that they are of. These claims appear incompatible. Sceptics about photography as an art form have endorsed the first claim in order to show that there is no photographic aesthetic. Proponents of photography as an art form have insisted that seeing things in photographs is quite unlike seeing things face-to-face. This (...) paper argues that the claims are compatible. While seeing things in photographs is quite unlike seeing things face-to-face, nevertheless seeing things in photographs is one way of seeing things. The differences between seeing things by means of photographs and by means of the naked eye provide the elements of an account of the aesthetic interests photographs engage. (shrink)

Parte das concepções pseudocientíficas propagadas pela comunidade científica em seus principais periódicos, especialmente no início do século XX, tomaram alcance com os conceitos de Eugenia e Darwinismo Social, em que o cerne das discussões considerava as distinções de raça enquanto fenômeno biológico. O presente ensaio expõe a contribuição nefasta promovida pela renomada revista Nature, que, há até pouco tempo, indiretamente acabou por reforçar crenças e culturas racistas, como o apartheid, a colonização, o trabalho forçado e a escravidão, deixando uma marca (...) indelével em sua trajetória histórica. As discussões sobre a inferioridade de raças, povos e indivíduos não somente fomentaram o negacionismo, uma vez que careciam de evidências, de consenso e de ceticismo científico adequados, como foram utilizadas como uma camada de verniz científico para legitimar projetos colonialistas e expandir os interesses do grande capital à época. Esse texto assinala ainda que as estratégias adotadas pelo capitalismo para alcançar seu patamar atual de forma hegemônica de sociabilidade somente tiveram êxito devido à apropriação do conhecimento científico que forneceu os aperfeiçoamentos tecnológicos para a conquista de novas terras e povos e, por fim, o acúmulo de capitais. Em conclusão, destacam-se autores que defendem uma perspectiva do negacionismo atual enquanto fenômeno social, o qual mais se liga às consequências da negação do fato do que propriamente ao fato em si. Essa perspectiva amplia o debate em torno do negacionismo para além das ideias difundidas nas mídias sociais, situando-o numa dimensão em que é necessário discutir o impacto das mudanças propostas pela ciência na hegemonia de determinados setores e de países dominantes da economia global. (shrink)

Several recent books indicate that the philosophy of art has embarked upon a new alliance with cognitive science. One impetus for this is the move, beginning in the 70s and 80s, away from general aesthetics to a greater concern with the philosophies of the individual arts. Questions about the nature of art, expression, aesthetic experience and aesthetic properties as generic phenomena are still with us but many philosophers now approach them by means of specialized studies of music, literature, film, the (...) visual arts or the performing arts. Some claim that these questions can only be answered, or can best be answered, by studying the individual art forms. This has brought aesthetics into alignment with empirical research, which has always been concerned with individual art forms, for reasons having to do both with experimental design and with views of the mind as functionally differentiated. There is no psychological work on the perception of beauty, for example, but only on the perception of visual beauty, beauty in music and the like. Now that aesthetics is equally specialized, empirical research on the individual arts can be brought to bear upon familiar problems in aesthetics. (shrink)

What you see can shape how you feel, and the route from seeing to feeling sometimes involves empathy – as you might empathize with a woman you see grieving the death of her child. But empathy also comes from what you see in pictures. Bellini's Pieta? is one among many paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs that evoke empathy – and are designed to do so. Going further, it seems that episodes of empathy triggered by pictures can help build up a (...) person's capacity for empathic response. Indeed, they do so by fortifying the link between seeing and empathy in a distinctive way. To establish this thesis, we need a broad conception of empathic response and also the right conception of what we see in pictures. (shrink)

Resenhas de Paul Sagar. Adam Smith Reconsidered. History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics. Princeton University Press, 2022, por Thiago Vargas (USP-FAPESP) e de Antoine Lilti. L’héritage des Lumières. Ambivalences de la modernité. Seuil ; Gallimard, 2019, por Ciro Lourenço (USP-Paris 1).

At the end of 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s short story, Cat Person, went viral. Published at the height of the #MeToo movement, it depicted a ‘toxic date’ and a disturbing sexual encounter between Margot, a college student, and Robert, an older man she meets at work. The story was widely viewed as a relatable denunciation of women’s powerlessness and routine victimization. In this paper, I push against this common reading. I propose an alternative feminist interpretation through the lens of Simone de (...) Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism: a form of alienation that consists in making oneself both the subject and the ultimate project of one’s life. Framing Margot as a narcissist casts her as engaging, not in subtly coerced, undesired sex, but rather in sex that is desired in a tragically alienated way. I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today – well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como temática central o conceito de movimento, visando a examinar a pertinência do alargamento da sua aplicação na descrição fenomenológica da existência humana. Pretendo oferecer uma interpretação possível para a afirmação feita por Heidegger, em Ser e Tempo, de que o fenômeno existencial da decadência [Verfallen] é um conceito ontológico de mobilidade existencial. This article discusses the philosophical concept of movement in an attempt to demonstrate how broadening its scope is relevant for a phenomenological understanding of human (...) existence. I intend to offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s idea, presented on Being and Time, that the phenomena of existential fallenness is an ontological concept of existential mobility. (shrink)

This article presents a reading of aphorism 6.36111 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein, from its localization in the critical, wide-reaching, debate on the project of transcendental philosophy. The intention of the article consists of clarifying the historical background suggested by the mention of the?Kantian problem”. This shows that Wittgenstein found in the context of the dispute about spacial representation, that which is not explicity in the aphorism, some arguments to reject the key concept of Kant’s theoretic philosophy: the ideality of (...) space as a pure form of intuition. (shrink)

The intention of this article is to reconstruct the debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas which occurred between the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. In order to observe this period the later developments of these thinkers won’t be taken into account. The article plans to examine the central problematic of the debate related to the difficult relationship between historic tradition and critical reflection. The tension between these two terms will be used as a reference (...) for discussing the relationships between hermeneutics and critical theory. (shrink)

The article is a summary of the paper presented at the VI Congress of Theology in St. Paul with the theme "Times urban: the challenges of ministry in the big city." The text deals with the relationship between modernity and postmodernity, revealing the challenges which are imposed on faith and reason in contemporary urban space. The ideological challenges based on the fundamental characteristics of this moment in history touching human relationships and pastoral practice because they relate primarily to the truth, (...) values, ethics and life. This complexity also reverberates in the recent speeches of the Magisterial of the Church showing the concern and attention to the whole man who is facing these provocations. (shrink)

Resenha do Livro "O ofício do filósofo estóico", de Rachel Gazolla.

Neste artigo pretendemos discutir a noção de construção da mente consciente a partir da perspectiva de Antonio Damásio. Para isso, centraremos nossa análise em Self comes to Mind. Em um primeiro momento é necessário delimitarmos o conceito de consciência na visão de Damásio, visando, com isso, a evitarmos equivocidades, na medida em que há várias definições de consciência. Acreditamos que, para uma melhor compreensão acerca do surgimento da mente consciente, é necessário levarmos em consideração os processos evolutivos aos quais o (...) homem está sujeito. A consciência é, pois, fruto de um desenvolvimento evolutivo já bem estabelecido pela ciência. Compreender o desenvolvimento evolutivo do self se torna tarefa de suma importância, na medida em que Damásio estrutura sua compreensão de mente consciente a partir do papel desempenhado pelo self na tarefa de agregar conteúdos mentais. Para Damásio, a origem da mente está associada ao momento em que um processo do self é adicionado a um processo mental básico. Quando não ocorre um self na mente, esta mente não é propriamente consciente, o que significa dizer que é o self que garante consciência a uma mente. Isso quer dizer que precisaremos discutir de forma clara e distinta o conceito de self e seus estágios, para que finalmente possamos entender os passos delimitados por Damásio para discutir a construção da mente consciente. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that the art media can be individuated with reference to the sense modalities. Different art media are perceived by means of different sense modalities, and this tells us what properties of each medium are aesthetically relevant. The case of pictures appears to fit this principle well, for pictures are deemed purely and paradigmatically visual representations. However, recent psychological studies show that congenitally and early blind people have the ability to interpret and make raised‐line drawings through touch. (...) This shows that pictures are not essentially visual representations. The view that pictures are essentially visual follows from influential views of the nature of depiction and of the nature of vision that are mistaken. By rooting out the mistake, we learn something about pictures, something about vision, and something about the doctrine that art media are individuated by the sense modalities. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore the impact of Object-Oriented Ontology (O.O.O) within the realm of pedagogy, critically examining its departure from humanistic and traditional paradigms. Simultaneously, it presents an alternative perspective on education that decenters the human as an inevitable ground. In a contrasting move, attention is directed towards Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, elucidating key facets of their ideas. This shift also signifies a departure from the conventional realm of “critical pedagogy”, as championed by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire. However, (...) it is crucial to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and significance of Freire’s work. This essay adopts a left-wing stance, with no intention of launching moral attacks on Paulo Freire, as is sometimes witnessed when reactionaries and conservatives enter the academic arena. Criticisms within these pages focus on the content of Freire’s writings, tracing the trajectory from his seminal work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, published in 1968, to his final piece, “Pedagogy of Autonomy” written in 1996. The aim is not to exhaust all arguments put forth by Freire but to engage with select ideas, since his oeuvre is extremely complex and full of different layers. It is essential to clarify that the critique presented here does not target the character of Paulo Freire but rather delves into some of the theoretical references behind the scenes, particularly the anthropocentrism associated with his ideas. Consequently, this essay emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, a conjunction between philosophy and social theory. What doors will this discussion open? What new field of possibilities awaits us? I invite you to dive into this debate, exploring the potential for an Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P) on the horizon. (shrink)