Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

A comunicação tem como propósito uma análise comparativa sobre o problema filosófico da arte como expressão de verdade, tendo em vista o idealismo platônico e o idealismo estético moderno de G.W.Hegel. Parte-se da hipótese que a presente análise sustenta uma relação paradoxal entre ambas propostas idealistas, na medida em que se em Platão é afirmada a tese da arte como distanciamento da verdade, considerando o seu caráter essencialmente mimético, em Hegel, a arte ao constituir-se como momento de realização efetiva do (...) Espírito só pode ser assim compreendida a partir do paradigma da ideia, de inspiração platônica. Ressalta-se a compreensão da arte oriunda da teoria metafísica platônica e de sua concepção idealista de aisthesis, bem como o caráter científico da estética, segundo Hegel, cuja fundamentação filosófica reivindica a compreensão da ideia, enquanto razão absoluta que se autodesdobra historicamente e se efetiva nos limites da finitude sensível. Pretende-se mostrar que a pretensa superação hegeliana da concepção idealista platônica acerca da arte não pode prescindir do fundamento do platonismo - a idéia universal, o infinito.: The Communication aims a comparative analysis on the philosophical problem of the art as an expression of truth, considering the Platonic idealism and the modern esthetic idealism from Hegel. The starting point is the assumption that this analysis holds a paradoxical relationship between both idealistic proposals, Insofar as Plato affirms the art thesis as detachment from the truth, considering his character essentially mimetic, Hegel says that the art to establish itself as a moment of effective realization from the Spirit can only be understood from the paradigm of the idea, of Platonic inspiration. We emphasize the art understanding coming from the Platonic metaphysics theory and his idealistic conception of aisthesis, as well as the scientific character of aesthetics, according to Hegel, whose philosophical foundation claims the understanding of the idea, as absolute reason that self unfolds historically carries up within the limits of finitude sensitive. It is intended to show that the Hegelian overcoming supposed from Platonic idealist conception about the art can not prescind from foundation of Platonism - the universal idea, the infinity. Keywords: Plato, Hegel, Idea, art, truth,idealism. (shrink)

A comunicação tem como propósito uma análise comparativa sobre o problema filosófico da arte como expressão de verdade, tendo em vista o idealismo platônico e o idealismo estético moderno de G.W.Hegel. Parte-se da hipótese que a presente análise sustenta uma relação paradoxal entre ambas propostas idealistas, na medida em que se em Platão é afirmada a tese da arte como distanciamento da verdade, considerando o seu caráter essencialmente mimético, em Hegel, a arte ao constituir-se como momento de realização efetiva do (...) Espírito só pode ser assim compreendida a partir do paradigma da ideia, de inspiração platônica. Ressalta-se a compreensão da arte oriunda da teoria metafísica platônica e de sua concepção idealista de aisthesis, bem como o caráter científico da estética, segundo Hegel, cuja fundamentação filosófica reivindica a compreensão da ideia, enquanto razão absoluta que se autodesdobra historicamente e se efetiva nos limites da finitude sensível. Pretende-se mostrar que a pretensa superação hegeliana da concepção idealista platônica acerca da arte não pode prescindir do fundamento do platonismo - a idéia universal, o infinito. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a health crisis of a scale unprecedented in post-war Europe. In response, a large amount of healthcare resources have been redirected to Covid-19 preventive measures, for instance population-wide vaccination campaigns, large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the large-scale distribution of protective equipment to high-risk groups and hospitals and nursing homes. Despite the importance of these measures in epidemiological and economic terms, health economists and medical ethicists have been relatively silent about the ethical rationales underlying the large-scale (...) allocation of healthcare resources to these measures. The present paper seeks to encourage this debate by demonstrating how the resource allocation to Covid-19 preventive measures can be understood through the paradigm of the Rule of Rescue, without claiming that the Rule of Rescue is the sole rationale of resource allocation in the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Chauncey Wright (1830–1874) was one of the first American philosophers to explore the implications of Charles Darwin's work in evolutionary biology. Wright became a strong supporter of the idea of natural selection and a strong critic of the anti-selectionist and teleological arguments of St. George Jackson Mivart and Herbert Spencer, and he laid the groundwork for the field that is today called evolutionary epistemology. As the mentor of the original Cambridge "Metaphysical Club" (William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Oliver Wendell (...) Holmes, Jr.), Wright was also instrumental in the development of the American school of Pragmatism. Although his analytical brilliance was widely acknowledged, he never became professionally successful, and he died in 1874 in his 45th year. (shrink)

Lüders and Pauli proved the $\mathcal{CPT}$ theorem based on Lagrangian quantum field theory almost half a century ago. Jost gave a more general proof based on “axiomatic” field theory nearly as long ago. The axiomatic point of view has two advantages over the Lagrangian one. First, the axiomatic point of view makes clear why $\mathcal{CPT}$ is fundamental—because it is intimately related to Lorentz invariance. Secondly, the axiomatic proof gives a simple way to calculate the $\mathcal{CPT}$ transform of any relativistic field (...) without calculating $\mathcal{C}$ , $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{T}$ separately and then multiplying them. The purpose of this pedagogical paper is to “deaxiomatize” the $\mathcal{CPT}$ theorem by explaining it in a few simple steps. We use theorems of distribution theory and of several complex variables without proof to make the exposition elementary. (shrink)

This paper studies the model of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) of a single nonrelativistic electron due to W. Pauli and M. Fierz and studied further by P. Blanchard. This model exhibits infrared divergence in a very simple context. The infrared divergence is associated with the inequivalence of the Hilbert spaces associated with the free Hamiltonian and with the complete Hamiltonian. Infrared divergences that are visible in the perturbative description disappear in the space of the clothed electrons. In this model when (...) the Hamiltonian is expressed in terms of the “physical” fields that create the electron together with its cloud of soft photons, the variational principle suggested earlier can be applied. At finite time the Heisenberg field of the model acts in the space of the perturbative electron together with a finite number of perturbative photons, while the “physical” field can be chosen to act in the space of the exact (“physical”) electron eigenstates together with a finite number of physical photons. The space of the physical (or clothed) electron states can be chosen to be a Fock space. (shrink)

Quons are particles characterized by the parameter q, which permits smooth interpolation between Bose and Fermi statistics; q = 1 gives bosons, q = -1 gives fermions. In this paper we give a heuristic argument for an extension of conservation of statistics to quons with trilinear couplings of the form ffb, where f is fermion-like and b is boson-like. We show that q f 2 = qb. In particular, we relate the bound on qγ for photons to the bound on (...) qe for electrons, allowing the very precise bound for electrons to be carried over to photons. An extension of this argument suggests that all particles are fermions or bosons to a high precision. (shrink)

We have compared two different laser-induced optical light traps for their utility in moving organelles within living animal cells and walled fungal cells. The first trap employed a continuous wave neodymium-yttrium aluminum garnet laser at a wavelength of 1.06 micron. A second trap was constructed using a titanium-sapphire laser tunable from 700 to 1000 nm. With the latter trap we were able to achieve much stronger traps with less laser power and without damage to either mitochondria or spindles. Chromosomes and (...) nuclei were easily displaced, nucleoli were separated and moved far away from interphase nuclei, and Woronin bodies were removed from septa. In comparison, these manipulations were not possible with the Nd-YAG laser-induced trap. The optical force trap induced by the tunable titanium-sapphire laser should find wide application in experimental cell biology because the wavelength can be selected for maximization of force production and minimization of energy absorption which leads to unwanted cell damage. (shrink)