RESUMO Este artigo objetiva ser uma breve introdução à práxis soteriológica budista, enfatizando, num primeiro momento, as quatro nobres verdades, aquele conjunto de intuições fundamentais formuladas pelo Buda desde o seu primeiro sermão; depois se descreve o nobre óctuplo caminho, o conjunto de práticas ensinadas pelo Buda para a consecução da experiência do despertar; finalmente, descrevem-se os estágios do caminho tanto no ambiente theravādin quanto na tradição mahāyāna. ABSTRACT This article aims at being a brief introduction to the soteriological praxis (...) of Buddhism, underscoring, firstly, the four noble truths, that set of cornerstone intuitions propounded by the Buddha since his first sermon; then, the noble eightfold path, the set of practices that aims at the experience of awakening taught by the Buddha is described; finally, the stages of the way are described, both in the theravādin tradition as well as in mahāyāna's. (shrink)

This book is a poetic and philosophic meditation on Thoreau’s work, highlighting his “pedagogy of awakening”, that is, a path towards a non-dual and enlightening experience with nature.

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

Bottom of the Pyramid organizations are the ones that develop a set of capabilities that contribute to create short- and long-term sustainability values inside and outside the boundaries of BoP ecosystems. Capabilities have an important role in BoP organizations’ strategies that aim to solve BoP issues. Notwithstanding its developments, BoP research still lacks theoretical contributions for the analysis of organizations. We suggest special attention to the need of advancing knowledge on capabilities of BoP organizations because this field is scattered and (...) fragmented, misinterpreted, and still underdeveloped in the literature. We oriented our research formulating and seeking answers to our main question on what are the capabilities needed to enable organizations to create sustainability values in BoP ecosystems? We conducted an integrative review of BoP research for the period from 1998 to 2019, and we found 22 key capabilities of BoP organizations. We organized the capabilities into four major categories including BoP Responsible Consumption, BoP Responsible Business Model, BoP Responsible Management, and BoP Responsible Innovation. We advanced propositions and discussions regarding the capabilities and major categories’ popularity, interdependence and combination, short- and long-term temporal functions, sustainability roles, and effectiveness to address BoP issues. Our article organizes the field of capabilities of BoP organizations; advances contributions and implications for management, organizations, and policymaking; and opens fruitful avenues for future research. (shrink)

Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual’s semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals have a small-world structure with short distances between words and high clustering. The distribution of links follows a power law truncated by an exponential cutoff, meaning that most words (...) are poorly connected and a minority of words has a high, although bounded, number of connections. Existing aggregate networks mirror the individual link distributions, and so they are not scale-free, as has been previously assumed; still, there are properties of individual structure that the aggregate networks do not reflect. A simulation of the new sampling process suggests that it can uncover the true structure of an individual’s semantic memory. (shrink)

O objetivo geral desse artigo consiste em analisar a obra “O nascimento da tragédia”, escrita por Friedrich Nietzsche em 1872, destacando sua compreensão sobre a cultura. Nela, foram tecidas análises iniciais sobre a cultura grega conceituando-se o papel do apolíneo e do dionisíaco como impulsos estéticos e cósmicos que originavam a tragédia; de Eurípedes e Sócrates como causadores de sua destruição devido à racionalidade intrínseca a um novo juízo artístico. Assim, as criações modernas emergiam constituídas por valores socráticos que buscavam (...) a verdade e não mais a experiência trágica. Como consequência, tem-se a decadência da cultura do homem grego e também do alemão do século XIX. Sua salvação dependeria da construção de uma nova cultura autêntica capaz de retornar a arte trágica grega, pois o filósofo a compreendida como justificação estética da existência, ilustrando a vida e elaborando-a a partir de diferentes máscaras. Dentre as soluções propostas, Nietzsche cita obra de Wagner como possibilidade de reavivamento dos impulsos apolíneo e dionisíaco por meio da música que daria novos sentidos a cultura ao assumir seu papel de renovação. Observa-se que o ponto essencial tratado nesta obra é que a única justificativa para a existência é a estética. (shrink)

Com o objetivo de ressaltar a importancia da fabulaç áo , como meio de expressáo do exercicio filosofico, em Plat áo , reconstituem-se inicialmente, neste artigo, os principais passos do Teeteto, cujo final aporético decorreria da n áo exploraç áo pelos interlocutores das hipoteses da Reminiscencia e das Ideias, as quais n áo se restringem ao logos mais estrito nem se dissociam do relato mitico. Em seguida, evidencia-se que, sobretudo a partir dos dialogos da maturidade, a recriaç áo poetica da (...) tradiç áo constitui um suporte doutrindrio indispensável.  . (shrink)

Este artigo é o resultado de uma atividade do PET-Filosofia denominada Cine-PET. Nesta atividade são exibidos alguns filmes e depois há uma discussão filosófica sobre o conteúdo dos mesmos. Neste filme – La vita é bella –, foram analisadas as idéias de otimismo, ilusão e representação para o querer-viver perpassadas pelo filme à luz da idéia de Schopenhauer sobre a Vontade como a verdadeira essência do mundo. A Vontade, para Schopenhauer, é caracterizada por ser um impulso cego, desejante e insaciável, (...) que por isso, constitui o sofrimento e as dores de todos os seres do mundo. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to understand the transition from a constitutionalism of the common – already proposed previously – to the field of cosmotechnical struggles, in the sense that it would no longer be possible to think and constitute a cosmopolitical project except from them. To this end, what is proposed, based on the limits and crises of State and the constitutionalism that accompanies it, seek the construction of cosmopolitical projects through the resizing of constitutionalism, proposing this in (...) the work from the perspective of the common and human rights, it is essential constitute the common beyond the limits of constitutionalism – state-based or not – since the constitution of the common today takes place in a field in dispute over techno-political practices through cosmotechnical struggles and processes of insurrection, against the backdrop of the impacts of globalization neoliberalism and the disruption of the digital age. (shrink)

Freud propôs uma teoria da personalidade a partir do estabelecimento da psicanálise. Nosso objetivo é percorrer alguns de seus primeiros textos, os quais foram escritos em conjunto com Breuer, buscando delimitar o que Freud compreendeu a respeito de alterações da personalidade, tal como a múltipla personalidade. Este fenômeno ganhou um importante destaque no século XIX, gerando discussões no campo da psicologia e da filosofia, uma vez que implicava ruptura da unidade da personalidade. Freud, por sua vez, ofereceu uma interpretação original (...) de tais alterações à luz de suas investigações sobre a histeria. Para explicar os desdobramentos da personalidade, Freud focou numa teoria da defesa, colocando o recalque (_Verdrängung_) como um mecanismo modelo para compreender a personalidade e suas patologias. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a caracterização que Hannah Arendt e Hans Jonas fazem da técnica moderna em suas visões da dimensão do homo faber, bem como suas críticas ao mundo da técnica no horizonte da modernidade, mostrando suas convergências e diferenças quanto a isso. A partir dessas críticas arendtianas e jonasianas, procuramos mostrar como ambos podem contribuir para uma ética e uma política baseada na ideia de responsabilidade pelas futuras gerações.

We argue that cognitive penetration in non-early vision extends beyond the special situations considered by Pylyshyn. Many situations which do not involve difficult stimuli or require expert skills nevertheless load on high-level cognitive processes. School learning effects illustrate this point: they provide a way to observe task dissociations which support the discontinuity hypothesis, but they show that the scope of visual cognition in our visual experience is often underestimated.

O presente artigo visa discutir a função introdutória do capítulo I do _Tratado Político _de Espinosa. Para tanto, ressaltaremos alguns aspectos fundamentais presentes no movimento argumentativo do texto, como a centralidade dos afetos para o raciocínio político e a necessidade de um método investigativo que articule experiência e razão.

O presente texto tem por intuito analisar e compreender o sentido da noção de necessidade elaborada por Espinosa ao longo da _Ética I_, pois ainda que não seja explicitamente definida em momento algum, ela permeia todo o percurso argumentativo do _De Deo_ e, portanto, sua compreensão é essencial para o bom entendimento não apenas da primeira parte, mas da _Ética_ como um todo. Para tanto, buscamos demonstrar através da distinção entre Natureza naturante e Natureza naturada a univocidade de sentido do (...) substantivo ‘necessidade’, bem como a equivocidade do adjetivo ‘necessária’. (shrink)

O objetivo é analisar algumas interpretações conexas que giram em torno da tensão entre duas concepções da díke em Édipo Rei. Como as tragédias ocupavam um papel privilegiado na pólis ateniense, pode-se dizer que as exibições e festividades trágicas eram uma verdadeira instituição política. Não por acaso se pode afirmar que as peças apontavam para um conflito entre os valores aristocráticos tradicionais e a nova ordem democrática. Tal tensão pode ser evidenciada na investigação promovida por Édipo que se manifesta em (...) duas formas de justiça, uma de origem divina e outra, humana. Para tanto, este texto, em um primeiro momento, descreve a relação entre tragédia e pólis; após essa introdução, assinala o conflito que se desenhava na democracia e que se reflete nas tragédias; por fim, examina a possível articulação racional entre a díke tradicional e sua contrapartida humana. (shrink)

Much more than their machinic reality, current iterations of AI rely on imagined divisions of human and non-human properties and skills that have genealogical ties to colonization. For this reason, research efforts have recently been made to historicize these imaginaries, connecting them to colonial ideals that delegate black and brown colonized people into the realm of the non-human. Atanasoski and Vora (Surrogate humanity. Race, robots and the politics of technological futures, Duke, Durham and London, 2019) have called this a “surrogate (...) humanity”, where narratives of autonomous technologies function to disappear precisely the formerly colonized peoples that are enveloped in its production process. At the same time, the gendered and racialized roots of this maternal figure represents an opportunity to uncover and critique the invisibilization of embodied resources necessary to produce AI, precarious bodies labouring to produce algorithmic infrastructures in a manner that can be considered in a genealogy of carework and reproduction. These genealogies complicate the detachment suggested by the surrogate figure and go beyond it to proclaim a more generative function of the relationship between the black maternal figure and AI. The article analyses Tabita Rezaire’s multi-media artwork Sugar Walls Teardom to think through decolonial and queer renderings of the black female bodies upon which technological imaginaries rest, to extend beyond AI surrogacy and towards notions of kinship, care and world-making by producing an AI aesthetics that is relational, embodied, and celebratory of other ways of liveness. (shrink)

How can a work of art give us clues about scientific aspects? How can chemistry help a painter enhance his creativity and, above all, preserve the original characteristics of his work? Does an artist require scientific knowledge to innovate or, at least, not to be faked? Other symbiotic fields between art and science are: tattoos, as body art with physical and chemical consequences; pigments, as basic materials with interesting historiographical preparations; spectroscopy diagnosis, as very broad and thorough method of analysis (...) ; biosensors, as one of the applications of new pigments. Note also the interconnection between the several possible paths of science and art, which reflect new challenges with enormous potential investigated through a literature review and the application as a case study in an educational inquiry module. (shrink)

Este texto procura analisar as noções de espaço e tempo kantianos na epistemologia schopenhaueriana com o objetivo de compreender o conceito de representação em Schopenhauer a partir da noção de fenômeno em Kant.

Com o objetivo de ressaltar a importancia da fabulaç áo , como meio de expressáo do exercicio filosofico, em Plat áo , reconstituem-se inicialmente, neste artigo, os principais passos do Teeteto, cujo final aporético decorreria da n áo exploraç áo pelos interlocutores das hipoteses da Reminiscencia e das Ideias, as quais n áo se restringem ao logos mais estrito nem se dissociam do relato mitico. Em seguida, evidencia-se que, sobretudo a partir dos dialogos da maturidade, a recriaç áo poetica da (...) tradiç áo constitui um suporte doutrindrio indispensável.  . (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar o conceito de Vontade a partir do estudo detalhado do livro II de O mundo como vontade e representação , no qual Schopenhauer explicita sua Metafísica da Natureza. Para este fim, nós analisaremos a relação entre Vontade e Representação como dois lados constitutivos e inseparáveis do mundo, bem como a ideia de finalismo da Vontade.

Este artigo se propõe tratar de algumas características religiosas da atualidade, escolhidas pela relevância que tem na sociedade atual. Começa com a definição controversa da atualidade que é chamada pelos especialistas de modernidade tardia, hipermodernidade ou pós-modernidade. Depois da análise de várias posições a respeito convencionou-se aceitar o termo pós-modernidade. É apontado o emergir do sagrado dentro da pós-modernidade e nessa nova expressão do sagrado comportam algumas características peculiares e até excludentes, como: fideísmo, fundamentalismo e diálogo inter-religioso. Mesmo numa sociedade (...) com forte presença da secularização, essas posturas religiosas ainda disputam o lugar delas. (shrink)

This article presents at first a reflection on fundamentalism and threats in Jesus’ followers’ lives, especially in a society where the immediacy and the "globalization of indifference" has raged. Then identifies and analyzes some features of the acting of Jesus that reveal in their own attitudes the true values of life, true "blessedness" of man, from the encounter with the other, a dialogic movement that generates mutual understanding space, welcoming and listening. Applying this analysis, it shows there are great risks (...) among Christians, Jesus followers, to live their faith, creating a fundamentalist building, sustained not by a solid hermeneutic of human realities, but by a rigid doctrinal system that opposes the message conveyed by Jesus: mercy, which generates dialogue and welcoming space. (shrink)

We may legitimately say that nature -- in the multiplicity of its objects -- has been considered in his history of aesthetics, as a central ground of aesthetical experience, and also as object of theoretical investigation on the modalities of that experience. On the other hand, a process is at present observed in which, that theme has been slowly considered of secondary importance, mainly after Hegel's aesthetics -- or rather philosophy of art. In this paper we try to show how (...) nature is being rediscovered both as the subject and as the background of aesthetical experience of art itself, mainly in the work of one of the greatest authors in contemporary aesthetical thought -- Mikel Dufrenne. It is also claimed that that rediscovery renews the metaphysical dimension of the aesthetical discourse. (shrink)