Os princípios e objetivos fundamentais da Constituição Federal de 1988 serviram de bases para que os Direitos Humanos ocupassem grande relevância na sociedade Brasileira. Assim, esses direitos se alargaram internacionalmente através da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos e demais documentos positivados para resguardar essa evolução histórica. Atualmente ocupam grande espaço na sociedade e são de responsabilidade do Estado, que deve propagá-los através de Políticas Publicas eficientes. A máxima kantiana sobre a liberdade trás estreita relação com os direitos fundamentais abrangidos em (...) nossa constituição federal, servindo como base para a criação do nosso ordenamento jurídico no que diz respeito aos direitos humanos, mais precisamente quanto aos princípios da dignidade da pessoa humana e cidadania. (shrink)

Reification, fetishism, alienation, mastery, and control – these are some of the key concepts of modernity that have been battered and beaten by postmoderns and nonmoderns alike, with Bruno Latour, a nonmodern, discarding them most recently. Critical of this approach, which creates a rift between moderns and nonmoderns, the author engages in dialogue with modern thinkers – particularly Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann and Stanley Pullberg – with a view to recycling and redefining the concept of reification from a nonmodern perspective. (...) Marxian scholars associate reification with an attitude of detachment and passivity. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Luvale-speaking region of northwest Zambia, Africa, the author seeks to convert the negative and asymmetrical Marxian reading of reification, which places subjects above objects, to a positive symmetry. Marx explained the capitalist economy through the lens of religion. Reversing the direction of symmetrical comparison, the author considers the northwestern Zambian universe of ancestors and their different mahamba manifestations in the form of spiritual beings, diseased bodies and material objects through the lens of Marxian concepts, mainly reification and fetishism. Three aspects of reification understood as a human universal come to light: first, reification and animation entail each other both in the realms of materiality (human bodies and material objects) and immateriality (concepts and spirits), being best perceived as a form of fetishism. Reifacts are fetishes and fetishes are reifacts. Second, because fetishes are animated and do things, reification is a form of engagement with the world, a means to action and a tool for transformation. Third and last, and without contradiction, reification entails engagement and detachment, action and withdrawal, control and surrender. There is much to gain from recycling the old concept of reification. In a non-partisan symmetrical perspective, the redefinition of reification as fetishism yields a new, positive understanding of the place of material and immaterial things in social life and the ways in which we humans apprehend the world and implicate those things in our projects and struggles. Reification is not an impediment to action but a condition for action. (shrink)

John Carvalho’s Thinking with Images, an Enactivist Aesthetics argues that puzzling artworks can draw us into a special activity – thinking when we don’t know what to think – which is valuable because it takes us beyond our skills and understanding. Enactivism is the theory of mind that best explains such thinking. The book illustrates this proposal with four chapters that detail Carvalho’s highly personal or individual encounters with enigmatic works of art. I raise two concerns. First, the four illustrative (...) chapters say that they are enactivist, but they do not show this. The illustrative chapters detail considerations about the works that are not distinguished by a particular theory of mind and might fit with any number of approaches to works of art. The suggestion that the thinking presented in each chapter is skillful is not explained. Second, the book does not just focus on thinking when we don’t know what to think, it also claims that such thinking frees us from mere looking. But enactivism does not require us to deny that our engagement with particular works in their ‘concrete singularity,’ to use Carvalho’s term, is perceptual. If perception is richly integrated or even continuous with what we understand skillfully or cognitively – and enacted in one’s circumstances – this does not erase differences between perception and thought or between their functions. When we ‘think with’ an individual so that we are engaged with it in its concrete singularity, perception is involved either in the present or the past. There is no need to shunt perception or looking aside as life activities that are just rule-bound, just part of knowing what to think rather than part of our response when we don’t know what to think. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs the neo‐Wittgensteinian proposals, and re‐examines the “family resemblances” passages from the Philosophical Investigations. Arthur Danto chooses to explain the historically contextual nature of art in some of the same terms as Wittgenstein sketches for language. The neo‐Wittgenstein view is typically reconstructed as a conjunction of two claims about the concept of art: the concept is not definable and it needs to be understood along the lines of Wittgenstein's discussion of “family resemblances.” The concept of art evolves historically (...) with different uses and conditions of application in different historical contexts. Wittgenstein briefly invokes resemblances among family members to characterize such networks of overlapping similarities and immediately proceeds to apply the idea to numbers. Danto's considered view is that the diversity of art is a matter of the historicity of both meaning and embodiment. (shrink)

Kendall Walton explains pictures in terms of games of perceptual make-believe. Pictures or depictions are props that draw us to participate in games of make-believe where we imagine seeing what a picture depicts. Walton proposes that one imagines of one’s perceptual experience of the coloured canvas that it is a different perceptual experience. The issue is whether perception and imagination can combine the way Walton suggests. Can one imagine a perception to be different? To get a clearer understanding of the (...) unified perceptual-imaginative experience Walton posits, the paper turns to competing theories that explain perceptual experience in terms of contents, relations to objects, or both contents and relations. Walton appeals to theories of perceptual content and cognitive penetration. But it is also important to examine whether his view fits with recent theories that explain perception only in terms of relations or in terms of both contents and relations. The paper argues that Walton’s view is compatible with content theories of perception and can be defended from some objection once we look at the detail these theories offer. Walton’s view is not compatible with pure relational theories of perception but it can be explained by hybrid content-relational theories of perception that posit de re senses. (shrink)

The Introduction provides an overview of Kendall Walton’s make-believe framework for a variety of representations and his arguments that such representations are dependent on their social or historical context. Walton argues that diverse representations involve our capacities for imagination and make-believe with props; they overlap with the fictional. Focusing on make-believe with props explains paradigmatic representational arts such as paintings and novels, theater and film. But this perspective reaches beyond the arts: it explains pictures and photographs in general not only (...) artistic ones; stories in general as well as literary and performing arts; music; metaphors, and even the claims we make about fictional entities and existence. The first section explains the main points of the make-believe framework in Mimesis as Make-Believe, and it reconstructs Walton’s argument in “Categories of Art” that some aesthetic properties depend on the perceptible and historical categories of art to which a work belongs. The second section outlines Walton’s specific proposals about literary fiction, fictional characters, poetry, pictures, photographs, music and negative existential claims. These explanations are integrated with summaries of the papers. The third section examines Walton’s implicit view of two much-discussed issues: the ontology of art and definitions of art. This discussion clears away some misunderstandings of Walton’s contextualism or historicism and relates Walton’s work to Arthur Danto’s and Frank Sibley’s. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Avec l'accélération de la mondialisation, une opinion qui aurait, jusqu'il y a peu, été taxée d'incongruité, semble avoir gagné le statut d'évidence : le système étatique mondial serait menacé et appellerait à une profonde redéfinition des attributs, des structures et du rôle traditionnellement dévolus aux Etats. Malgré un échiquier géopolitique modifié, où les frontières s'évanouissent et où les cultures et les traditions nationales s'amalgament jusqu'à l'extinction, il faut cependant reconnaître que la mondialisation n'est pas (...) venue à bout des Etats, des sociétés qui les composent et des divers problèmes que crée la cohabitation au sein de leurs institutions traditionnelles. Bien au contraire, la mondialisation a souvent contribué à enclencher en série des situations qui se répercutent sur les plans social et étatique. Dans toutes ces situations, c'est aux Etats, à leur gouvernement et à la société entière qu'il appartient de restaurer, voire de réinventer, la trame des communautés politiques. Non pas en érigeant des barrages à la mondialisation, mais en contribuant à la création des institutions d'une gouvernance globale juste et efficace. Rassemblant des collaborateurs de l'Europe, du Québec, du Canada anglais et des Etats-Unis, ce livre questionne, sous des angles différents, la pertinence théorique de la notion de communauté politique lorsqu'il s'agit de penser le pluralisme résultant de l'immigration internationale. II pose aussi un regard critique sur le rôle que cette notion joue dans les approches courantes des phénomènes liés à la diversité. Car plusieurs questions se posent maintenant, dont celle, au premier chef, de la capacité des appareils d'Etats contemporains de cimenter des communautés politiques dans un contexte de mobilité spatiale accrue et de transnationalisme croissant.". (shrink)

Dans l’opinion publique, la mondialisation a ouvert les vannes de l’immigration internationale, les migrants circulant désormais aussi facilement que les capitaux et les marchandises. En phase avec cette représentation relevant du sens commun, le domaine de la migration internationale tend à subir l’influence des théories de la mobilité qui jouissent d’un véritable effet de mode. Cette pensée emprunte à des courants d’idées privilégiant l’effacement des frontières. Le concept de « mobilité » repose sur deux visions contradictoires. La première suppose que (...) les populations se déplacent à travers les frontières pour vendre et négocier leurs « capital social », là où les avantages économiques et sociaux sont les plus grands. La seconde considère que les obstacles à la mobilité sont la cause de nouvelles inégalités et de nouvelles hiérarchies dans le système mondial. Critiques de ces visions, certains spécialistes de l’immigration internationale estiment que les facteurs historico-structurels à l’œuvre dans les pays d’émigration et d’immigration ont une plus grande pertinence explicative que le recours à la question de la circulation. (shrink)

This article argues that conceptual realism – the view that conceptual capacities secure the perceiver’s relation to what she sees – strengthens the appeal of a disjunctive approach to perception. The paper argues for a ‘fresh start’ that takes an explanatory approach to perception – asking for the best explanation of the perceptual capacities of mobile organisms – in place of the first person perspective of the argument from illusion. An explanatory perspective indicates that perception is a form of engagement. (...) The paper addresses two explanatory hurdles for disjunctive approaches. First, it argues that the relational nature of perceptual experience is indicated phenomenologically by the fact that one cannot retain the determinate character or content of a perceptual experience. Second, the paper sketches a realist approach to ‘what’ we perceive. (shrink)

La couverture allemande dans le Welt plutôt conservateur, dans le Süddeutsche Zeitung libéral et dans le quotidien économique Handelsblatt du référendum français sur la Constitution européenne est analysée entre le 25 mai et le 4 juin 2005. Dans la couverture de ces trois quotidiens, dominent les ténors de la politique tandis que la voix du peuple n'apparaît qu'à travers la publication des sondages. Les articles se fondent sur des dépêches d'agences de presse et des médias français. Des rapports de correspondants (...) sont l'exception. Cette base d'informations conduit à une perte de réalité du contenu dans la couverture allemande parce que le point de vue de l'élite politique y est repris et que les peurs des citoyens en ce qui concerne les conséquences de l'intégration européenne y sont négligées.Coverage in the German Welt rather conservative in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung and Handelsblatt business daily in the French referendum on the European Constitution is analyzed between May 25 and June 4, 2005. Coverage in three newspapers, dominate the political tenor while the people's voice appears only through the publication of opinion polls. The articles are based on dispatches of news agencies and the French media. Corresponding reports are the exception. This information base leads to a loss of reality contained in the German coverage because the point of view of the political elite is over and that the fears of citizens regarding the implications of European integration are neglected. (shrink)

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene‐focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into accountbiological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in (...) their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs. (shrink)

Dans le tome 5 de L'Histoire des femmes, le chapitre 18 intitulé « Du féminin au féminisme : l'exemple québécois », par l'historienne Yolande Cohen, présente une interprétation étonnante. Un public international vient de découvrir qu'au Québec, contrairement à ce qui s'est passé dans tous les pays de l'Occident, un mouvement rural, exaltant la complémentarité des sexes, est à l'origine d'« un des mouvements féministes les plus dynamiques du monde occidental ». La thèse de ce chapitre n...

Dans le tome 5 de L'Histoire des femmes, le chapitre 18 intitulé « Du féminin au féminisme : l'exemple québécois », par l'historienne Yolande Cohen, présente une interprétation étonnante. Un public international vient de découvrir qu'au Québec, contrairement à ce qui s'est passé dans tous les pays de l'Occident, un mouvement rural, exaltant la complémentarité des sexes, est à l'origine d'« un des mouvements féministes les plus dynamiques du monde occidental ». La thèse de ce chapitre n...

Aesthetic properties figure prominently in our daily lives, our conversations and many actions we take. Yet theoretical disagreement prevails over their nature, their variety, their epistemic and metaphysical status. This overview highlights the heterogeneity of aesthetic properties and examines repercussions for explanation. Aesthetic properties belong to natural objects or scenes, to artworks in any medium, to artefacts and built environments across historical eras; and they draw a wide variety of responses such as our perceptions, emotions or imaginative thought. Historicism about (...) artworks carries over to at least some aesthetic properties that depend on facts of their broader historical context just as works do. One issue is whether aesthetic properties can be demarcated solely in terms of non-aesthetic properties. If not, explanations of aesthetic properties need to draw on other aesthetic notions such as aesthetic experience, attention, judgement or value. The paper examines several accounts of aesthetic value to show how they extend to aesthetic properties. The paper concludes with an overview of the current metaphysical debate between realists and non-realists about aesthetic properties. (shrink)

With the shift toward online environments due to COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for educational sector, employees’ performance has been affected by an array of different factors. Personal aspects as well as organizational focus on individuals’ wellbeing are the main focus of this study through inclusion of job autonomy and work-life conflict alongside other factors, such as informational support that can aid academic staff regarding their wellbeing during times of crisis. In response to the effects of COVID-19 on employees, this study aims (...) to provide tangible data to protect university teachers during crises and establish key points that can improve their wellbeing. For this purpose, we used interviews to provide in-depth understanding of the subject. A total of 16 teachers as interviewees have provided qualitative data that was analyzed with MAXQDA. This study highlights the importance of work-life conflict and vitality of job autonomy on academic staffs’ performance and overall wellbeing through a conceptual analysis. We emphasize the role of organizations in maintaining a work environment where university teachers’ wellbeing is prioritized and various elements such as training and support are used to help stabilizing work-life balance. The current findings can be beneficial for both scholars and decision-makers in schools and universities to enhance elements of remote work for their staff. (shrink)

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears to (...) be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

Next SectionObjectives A statute enacted in 2005 modified the legislative framework of the rights of terminally ill persons in France. Ten years after the EURONIC study, which described the self-reported practices of neonatal caregivers towards ethical decision-making, a new study was conducted to assess the impact of the new law in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) and compare the results reported by EURONIC with current practices. Setting and design The study was carried out in the same two NICU as in (...) the EURONIC qualitative study. A third centre was added to increase the sample size. From February to October 2007, 19 physicians and 17 nurses participated in semistructured interviews very similar to those for EURONIC. Content analysis identified the recurring themes emerging from the interviews. Results Compared with the EURONIC results, the caregivers reported that they pay greater attention to the views of parents and provided respectful support to the neonates when life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn. Active termination of life has become exceptional. The possibility of withdrawal of treatment, the administration of sedatives to control pain even at the risk of hastening death, the emphasis on sparing parents the burden of decision, and the relative ignorance of the law were very similar to the EURONIC findings. Conclusion Both the medical and the legal regulation of practices has allowed more dialogue with the parents and more humane care for dying newborns. A new European study is necessary to investigate the possible changes in practices and attitudes also in other countries. (shrink)

This article explores gender inequities and sexual double standards in teens’ digital image exchange, drawing on a UK qualitative research project on youth ‘sexting’. We develop a critique of ‘postfeminist’ media cultures, suggesting teen ‘sexting’ presents specific age and gender related contradictions: teen girls are called upon to produce particular forms of ‘sexy’ self display, yet face legal repercussions, moral condemnation and ‘slut shaming’ when they do so. We examine the production/circulation of gendered value and sexual morality via teens’ discussions (...) of activities on Facebook and Blackberry. For instance, some boys accumulated ‘ratings’ by possessing and exchanging images of girls’ breasts, which operated as a form of currency and value. Girls, in contrast, largely discussed the taking, sharing or posting of such images as risky, potentially inciting blame and shame around sexual reputation (e.g. being called ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘sket’). The daily negotiations of these new digitally mediated, heterosexualised, classed and raced norms of performing teen feminine and masculine desirability are considered. (shrink)

The idea of nonconceptual contents proposes that there are mental contents at the level of the experiencing person that are individuated independently of ‘anything to do with the mind.’ Such contents are posited to meet a variety of theoretical and explanatory needs concerning concepts and conceptual mental contents which are individuated in terms having to do with the mind. So to examine the idea of nonconceptual content we need to examine whether we really need to posit such content and whether (...) there is a coherent, viable way of doing so. I will examine the idea of nonconceptual contents by considering Christopher Peacocke's attempt, in his Study of Concepts, to posit such contents.Three principal kinds of considerations motivate positing non-conceptual content: epistemological, phenomenological, and explanatory-psychological. A theory of knowledge might posit nonconceptual content in order to show that our experience contains the justificatory base for empirical thought as its own proper part. Non-conceptual content might also be posited in order to account for the finely detailed or determinate phenomenological character of perceptual experience. (shrink)

This article defends three basic premises. First, the same conditions and forces favorable to revolution may serve to impede efforts at post-revolutionary consolidation. Second, one can assess prospects for consolidation based on the capacity of prospective hegemonic parties to achieve several interrelated objectives: developing a shared worldview among disparate segments of the population, delivering social and economic goods, and establishing order. Third, while democratization is a home-grown process, it may require particular forms of limited intervention to offset anti-democratic forces. The (...) goal of this article is to provide an analytical framework that informs the ongoing debates over democratic transitions while suggesting where and how external engagement may influence the transition process. (shrink)

In 2019, protests in the streets of Algeria and Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq brought back the fragrance of the Jasmine revolution. Can the pendulum swing back towards democracy and human rights in the M...

The argument that sectarian conflicts in the Arab Middle East have been persistent since time immemorial is erroneous. While these views may seem compelling with the rise of ISIL, they are in fact very dangerous: they downgrade Islamic societies to primordial, selective and static features. I will argue for a different set of propositions. First, violence is not unique to Islamic societies. Extreme illiberal ideologies prevailed in Christian Europe both during the Thirty Years War and during the fascist interwar period. (...) Second, Islamist belligerence was partly a response to the ill-effects of globalization, just as European fascist movements were exacerbated by the advance of industrial capitalism in Europe. Third, post-Second World War human rights efforts may inform new paths beyond the tragedies that continue to plague the Middle East. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

In three experiments involving 104 children and 86 adults we investigated the extent to which harm brought about by physical contact is judged to be worse than harm caused by impersonal, no-contact actions. In Experiment 1, Italian monolingual children aged 4 to 6 were asked to indicate whether they would prioritize saving five persons through contact over saving three persons without contact with both courses of action involving harm to a single victim. A preference for saving more persons did not (...) emerge until the age of 6 years. By contrast, in Experiment 2, children with a Slovenian-Italian linguistic and cultural background judged that to save five with contact was preferable even at the age of 4 and 5 years. In Experiment 3, Slovenian-Italian adults were also significantly more likely than Italian-only speakers to advocate using contact, although in a direct comparison, both groups prioritized saving five over three persons, regardless of the means. Moral diversity is discussed in terms of cultural and linguistic constraints that may serve to mediate the use of considerations of contact in an intuitive moral psychology. (shrink)

In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging (...) issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders. (shrink)

Résumé Les textes auxquels on se réfère ici émanent tous de sociétés qui, en dépit des différences culturelles, ont en commun la croyance que la mort n’est jamais sans lendemain (exemples pris de contes d’Europe, de la Méditerranée et du Maghreb). Le héros/l’héroïne agissent en vertu d’une loi ancestrale : le devoir de respect à l’égard du corps du défunt. Les contes semblent vouloir établir une continuité et suggérer la relation d’interdépendance entre les vivants et les morts.

The article aims to contribute to a wider knowledge of the Hilâl epic, a masterwork of popular Arabic literature that tells the story of a nomadic pastoral people from the Arabian deserts. The focus is on the ‘Taghrîba’ cycle, which relates the migration in the 11th century of these Sons of Hilâl to Ifrîqiyya, present-day Tunisia. In this context reference is made to the political act of the Fatimid power that launched the Hilalians on the conquest of Ifrîqiyya, as well (...) as to historians’ and linguists’ perception of it. But interest is centred more on the texts, which are copiously quoted, their poetic quality and their message – the expression of a tribal humanism, composed of grandeur and human dignity, particular to those desert people. (shrink)

In Malta and Southern Italy, legends centred on the prestigious figure of the Sibyl are still known by the older people. In Majorca, the prophetic song attributed to the Greek Sibyl, Erythrea, is still sung on Christmas eve in the monastery-sanctuary of Lluc. This paper focuses on the history of this prophetic song since its adoption by the medieval Church and on its surviving tradition in certain areas of Catalan culture – a fabulous example of cultural continuity.

The standards for translating texts in specialized fields have become particularly rigorous with the increasing complexity of material and growing demand for its translation. While translations simply aimed at communication and produced by machine translation are proliferating, the need for reliable and high-quality translations is also increasing. The demand for expert-dependable legal translation is higher than ever, requiring competence-based training in the field of legal translation. This paper describes a guided-task framework for developing subject area competence at the earliest stage (...) of an English–Arabic legal translation course. It presents the three most problematic phases of concept processing in legal translation in terms of: legal systems; branches of law; and genre-based phraseology. The approach presented below is part of a more general study that aims to describe the first course in a series of three graduate courses on legal translation, each of them motivated by a guided-task framework that has the aim of developing three specific competences in legal translation: legal concept processing => subject area competence; documentary research => instrumental competence; and legal rhetorics => communicative and textual competence. In this paper we intend to focus on the first course of legal concept processing as a key prerequisite for legal knowledge development. We illustrate the relevance of addressing specific variables when analysing legal concepts in the text that is to be translated, before proceeding to the information search and communication, according to established formulae and conventions. (shrink)

If artworks and their aesthetic properties stand in constitutive relationships to historical context and circumstances, so that some understanding of relevant facts is involved in responding to a work, what becomes of the intuitive view that we see artworks and at least some of their aesthetic properties? This question is raised by arguments in both aesthetics and art history for the historical nature of works of art. The paper argues that the answer needs to take philosophy of perception into account. (...) The principal development that has shaped philosophy of perception in the last thirty years—explaining perceptual experience in terms of contents that represent that such-and-such is the case—is directly relevant to key arguments for the historical nature of art because contents can represent complex kinds and properties. Conceptual realism is especially well-suited for explaining perception of artworks and aesthetic properties because it emphasizes that forms of understanding—in the sense of capacities, abilities and techniques—are involved in perceptual engagement with individual objects and instances of properties. To make this case, the paper examines influential arguments for the historical nature of art and aesthetic properties by Arthur C. Danto and Kendall L. Walton; and examines art-historical discussions by Michael Baxandall, Linda Nochlin and T. J. Clark. The paper argues that the aesthetic properties of an artwork depend on human intentional uses of properties, colours and contours among them, and such uses may themselves be aesthetic. The Wittgensteinian notion of use is contextual and historical, and uses are perceptible. (shrink)