God — as we well know since Nietzsche — is dead. However, it is necessary to correct this sentence that was a sacrilege yesterday and has become common place today. We should be talking of the death of the “gods,” rather than of God; for what has been disappearing from the social space of modernity (I do not speak of the inner conscience of the faithful here), is not just the God who sits enthroned atop altar and dogma. What has (...) disappeared are the “gods” more generally; by this we understand the link with the world that, certainly rooted in religion but transcending it, surrounds things and beings with an aura of wonderful significances; that places them outside of those structures that modern man understands to be the utilitarian, the rational and the functional. (shrink)

Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary status in the history of capitalist development (which we term the ‘origins-subsistence’ approach). This paper offers an alternative account (...) of the relationship between capitalism and the transhistorical status of ‘patriarchy’. In aid of a ‘unitary theory’ of Marxist Feminism, we argue that the transhistorical status of patriarchy is better understood through an application of Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption. A modified version of these concepts can illuminate not only capitalist appropriation of antecedent social and economic forms, but also its capacity to produce new forms of gendered exploitation and oppression. (shrink)

In the light of partial understanding, we examine the thesis that concepts are individuated in terms of possession conditions and show that adherents face a fatal dilemma: Either concept-individuating possession conditions include cases of partially understood concepts or not. If yes, possession conditions do not individuate concepts. If no, the thesis is too restricted and lacks a minimally satisfactory level of generalization.

Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno never spoke to one another. Both thinkers were of Jewish ancestry, though their lives would be impacted in distinct ways by the rise of Nazism. With these historical parallels in mind, this paper seeks to place these thinkers in a productive juxtaposition with regard to the status of ethics and politics in either’s work. In particular, I examine the ramifications of philosophical reflection on Auschwitz as a mediating event in post-war European philosophy, reading Levinas’s and (...) Adorno’s theoretical differences as alternate philosophical responses to this momentous event. I argue that Levinas’s thought is ailed by the problem of immediacy, exemplified by his positing ethics as first philosophy and his rejection of the category of totality which, as Adorno highlights, is an important critical tool for an analysis of the form of society which produces Nazism. (shrink)

Is ‘knowledge society’ yet another empty slogan? More than ever, ‘knowledge is power’. But we can hardly affirm that the society we live in is based on the vigour of knowledge. The market price placed on knowledge fails to provide it with the needed qualitative impetus. Inequities remain the blind spot of technological systems. To be sure, we are living in an information society at higher scales of exchange, with ‘a great deal of information, but little knowledge’. We may indeed (...) be restoring a sort of enlightened despotism of a technologically neo-positivistic type, a realm of experts whose ‘know-how’ is but another term for ‘doing without knowing’. In a truly democratic sense, the knowledge society is a basic human right. Knowledge is nourished in society. Conversely, societies find in knowledge a compass for their peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

To the extent that our future depends on our ability to change and ‘live together’, we cannot do without utopian thought. We know utopia goes astray when it puts off indefinitely confronting the present, trying to prolong the temptation to go back to complete, stable models. It goes astray when its totality merges into totalitarianism. But if utopia was shattered, broken into pieces, divided into lots, would it still be utopia? Turned into a listed heritage, a legacy that is both (...) fertile and too weighty, utopia demands an approach at the same time critical and self-critical. (shrink)

Este é um comentário crítico do livro A metáfora do Deus encarnado (2000), de John Hick. Hick busca rever axiomas cristológicos, tentando reinterpretá-los no intuito de fazê-los significativos para o diálogo inter-religioso. Propõe uma cristologia pluralista, desconstruindo tradicionais premissas e dando novos significados ao evento Jesus. A partir de uma nova cristologia, oferece uma soteriologia que transcende o evento crístico. Palavras-chave: Cristologia; Soteriologia; Diálogo interreligioso; Teologia contemporânea. ABSTRACT This is a critical review of John Hick’s book The metaphor of red (...) God (2000). Hick reviews Christological axioms, attempting to reinterpret them so as to render them significant to the dialogue between religions. He proposes a pluralist Christology, deconstructing traditional premises and investing Jesus’ event with new meanings. With basis on a new Christology, he offers a soteriology that transcends Christ’s event. Key words: Christology; Soteriology; Dialogue between religions; Contemporary theology. (shrink)

“Philosophers,” Dewey writes, “are parts of history, caught in its movement; creators perhaps in some measure of its future, but also assuredly creatures of its past”. The question of the philosopher’s embeddedness in either her own or some earlier historical moment constitutes an important theme in Dewey’s account of pragmatism, in particular his account of politics. In lieu of a formal treatise on history, this paper focuses on Dewey’s claims about history as they are enacted in his political analyses. Drawing (...) on texts such as Liberalism and Social Action and Freedom and Culture as well “The Role of Philosophy in the History of Civilization”, I hope to elucidate in greater depth the function and meaning of the term “historic relativity” as a central concept in Dewey’s philosophy of history. Further, I evaluate Dewey’s criticisms of both classical liberalism and Marxism on historical grounds, where he employs what I call political obsolescence claims. From these texts I reconstruct and critically assess what I refer to as Dewey’s implicit philosophy of history. I conclude that the presuppositions of Dewey’s political reconstruction represent the very mode of uncritical historical reproduction which his philosophy ostensibly cautions against. To suggest one possibility for addressing these tensions, I gesture toward non-coincidence as a critical historical category through which we might articulate the historic present with the hope of transforming it. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno never spoke to one another. Both thinkers were of Jewish ancestry, though their lives would be impacted in distinct ways by the rise of Nazism. With these historical parallels in mind, this paper seeks to place these thinkers in a productive juxtaposition with regard to the status of ethics and politics in either’s work. In particular, I examine the ramifications of philosophical reflection on Auschwitz as a mediating event in post-war European philosophy, reading Levinas’s and (...) Adorno’s theoretical differences as alternate philosophical responses to this momentous event. I argue that Levinas’s thought is ailed by the problem of immediacy, exemplified by his positing ethics as first philosophy and his rejection of the category of totality which, as Adorno highlights, is an important critical tool for an analysis of the form of society which produces Nazism. (shrink)

O artigo visa analisar como as representações simbólicas da teologia pentecostal clássica, e a vivência comunitária no pentecostalismo clássico, ajudam as pessoas excluídas, cultural, econômica e socialmente a encontrarem um espaço onde lhes é oferecido autonomia. A análise refere-se ao pentecostalismo clássico, ou seja, se busca na tipologia clássica da Assembléia de Deus as representações simbólicas para a construção das argumentações do texto. Referencia-se, o artigo, em autores consagrados que estudaram o pentecostalismo de matriz clássica.

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in healthcare. While the literature to date has focused primarily on individual healthcare practitioners who object to participation in morally controversial procedures, in this article we consider a different albeit related issue, namely, whether publicly funded healthcare institutions should be required to provide morally controversial services such as abortions, emergency contraception, voluntary sterilizations, and voluntary euthanasia. Substantive debates about institutional responsibility have remained largely at the level of (...) first-order ethical debate over medical practices which institutions have refused to offer; in this article, we argue that more fundamental questions about the metaphysics of institutions provide a neglected avenue for understanding the basis of institutional conscientious objection. To do so, we articulate a metaphysical model of institutional conscience, and consider three well-known arguments for undermining institutional conscientious objection in light of this model. We show how our metaphysical analysis of institutions creates difficulties for justifying sanctions on institutions that conscientiously object. Thus, we argue, questions about the metaphysics of institutions are deserving of serious attention from both critics and defenders of institutional conscientious objection. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in health care. Specifically, several commentators have discussed the implications that conscientious objection has for the delivery of timely, efficient, and nondiscriminatory medical care. In this paper, I discuss the main argument put forward by the most prominent critics of conscientious objection—what I call the Professional Duty Argument or PDA. According to proponents of PDA, doctors should place patients’ well-being and rights at the center of their professional (...) practice. Doctors should be prepared to set their personal moral or religious beliefs aside where these beliefs conflict with what is legal and considered good medical practice by relevant professional associations. Conscientious objection, on this account, should be heavily restricted, if even allowed at all. I discuss two powerful objections against PDA. The first objection, which I call the fallibility objection, notes that law and professional codes of conduct are fallible guides for ethical conduct and that conscientious objection has in the past and continues today to provide a check on aberrations in law and professional convention. The second, which I call the professional discretion objection, states that restrictions on conscientious objection undermine one of the cornerstones of good medical practice, namely, a practitioner’s right to independent professional judgment. I argue that these two objections give us reason to retain conscience clauses in professional codes of conduct. (shrink)

In this article, the author argues that anti-colonial Marxism has been obscured and distorted by the contemporary post-Cold War imaginary. The author analyzes the historical-political context in which the narrative of Marxism and decolonization develop during and after the Cold War. Focusing on the writings of Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the author reconstructs the “principles” of anti-colonial Marxism, attempting to ameliorate the scholarly deficit of theoretical literature on the anti-colonial Marxist tradition. In conclusion, the (...) author argues that the “revolutionary theory” of these thinkers remains relevant to persistent, present-day conditions of neocolonialism and capitalist imperialism, becoming increasingly relevant with the progression of catastrophic climate change. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a prenex form theorem for a version of Independence Friendly logic, a logic with imperfect information. Lifting classical results to such logics turns out not to be straightforward, because independence conditions make the formulas sensitive to signalling phenomena. In particular, nested quantification over the same variable is shown to cause problems. For instance, renaming of bound variables may change the interpretations of a formula, there are only restricted quantifier extraction theorems, and slashed connectives cannot be (...) so easily removed. Thus we correct some claims from Hintikka [8], Caicedo & Krynicki [3] and Hodges [11]. We refine definitions, in particular the notion of equivalence, and sharpen preconditions, allowing us to restore those claims, including the prenex form theorem of Caicedo & Krynicki [3], and, as a side result, we obtain an application to Skolem forms of classical formulas. It is a known fact that a complete calculus for IF-logic is impossible, but with our results we establish several quantifier rules that form a partial calculus of equivalence for a general version of IF-logic reflecting general properties of information flow in games. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar algumas teorias de base sociológica que possam explicar o surgimento, em nossa época, de movimentos eclesiais católicos de cunho tradicional, que resgatam estilos de vida religiosa identificados com o passado, ou melhor, com características de uma igreja anterior ao Concílio Vaticano II. A tese central, ainda que como conclusão provisória, é que, num mundo fragmentado e secularizado, pessoas, especialmente jovens, buscam orientação de vida e fé em formas religiosas identificadas com o passado, pois estas (...) ofereceriam segurança e proteção diante de uma sociedade e igreja cada vez mais secularizadas e sem um dossel sagrado determiná-las. Assim, analisamos a tendência pósmoderna de se voltar a costumes, liturgias e doutrinas mais rígidas ou conservadoras, justa e paradoxalmente no intuito de resistir à pós-modernidade ou à racionalidade moderna. Nosso estudo tem como pano de fundo o movimento da Toca de Assis e, até certo ponto, as teorias sociológicas de Peter Berger. Assim, a metodologia deste estudo é a sociológica. Palavras-chave: Igreja Católica; Jovens; Movimentos eclesiais. ABSTRACT This article aims to present some sociological theories that can explain the present emergence of Catholic ecclesiastical movements of a “traditional” nature, which rescue religious life styles identified with the past, that is, with the Church before Vatican Council II. The central thesis, though inconclusive, is that, in a fragmented and secularized world, people, especially the young, would search for life guidance and faith in religious forms identified with the past, as they would offer security and protection in a society and in a church rendered more and more secular, and deprived of a sacred canopy to define them. Thus, it analyzes the post-modern trend to return to more rigid or conservative habits, liturgies and doctrines, precisely – and paradoxically – as a form of resistance to post-modernity or modern rationality. The article is based on the movement of Toca de Assis (St. Francis of Assisi’s Burrow Fraternity) and, up to certain point, on Peter Berger’s sociological theories. Thus, the study methodology is sociological. Key words: Catholic Church; The young; Ecclesiastical movements. (shrink)

Résumé Dans la mesure où notre avenir dépend de nos aptitudes à la transformation et au « vivre ensemble », nous ne pouvons pas nous passer de la pensée utopique. Nous savons que l’utopie s’égare lorsqu’elle reporte indéfiniment l’affrontement du présent, cherchant à faire durer la tentation du retour aux modèles complets et stables. Elle s’égare quand sa totalité se confond avec totalitarisme. Mais si l’utopie était brisée, rompue en morceaux, divisée en lots, serait-elle encore utopie? Devenue un patrimoine classé, (...) un héritage à la fois fécond et trop lourd, l’utopie demande une approche à la fois critique et autocritique. (shrink)

O artigo visa analisar como as representações simbólicas da teologia pentecostal clássica, e a vivência comunitária no pentecostalismo clássico, ajudam as pessoas excluídas, cultural, econômica e socialmente a encontrarem um espaço onde lhes é oferecido autonomia. A análise refere-se ao pentecostalismo clássico, ou seja, se busca na tipologia clássica da Assembléia de Deus as representações simbólicas para a construção das argumentações do texto. Referencia-se, o artigo, em autores consagrados que estudaram o pentecostalismo de matriz clássica.

There has been significant debate about whether the moral norms of medical practice arise from some feature or set of features internal to the discipline of medicine. In this article, I analyze Edmund Pellegrino’s conception of the internal morality of medicine, and situate it in the context of Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential account of “practice.” Building upon MacIntyre, Pellegrino argued that medicine is a social practice with its own unique goals—namely, the medical, human, and spiritual good of the patient—and that the (...) moral norms that govern medical practice are derived from these goals. After providing an overview of Pellegrino’s work, I discuss some forceful objections to his theory—specifically, that it is too rigid and incapable of entering into dialogue with contemporary values systems; that it is dependent on an external conception of human flourishing; and that it is incompatible with the rapidly changing nature of modern medicine. In the final section of this article, I consider how theorists working in the Hippocratic tradition might respond to these objections against ethical essentialism by drawing upon MacIntyre’s historico-cultural method as well as what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology.”. (shrink)

It is shown that axiomatic extensions of intuitionistic propositional calculus defining univocally new connectives, including those proposed by Gabbay, are strongly complete with respect to valuations in Heyting algebras with additional operations. In all cases, the double negation of such a connective is equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. Thus, under the excluded third law it collapses to a classical formula, showing that this condition in Gabbay's definition is redundant. Moreover, such connectives can not be interpreted in all Heyting (...) algebras, unless they are already equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. These facts relativize to connectives over intermediate logics. In particular, the intermediate logic with values in the chain of length n may be "completed" conservatively by adding a single unary connective, so that the expanded system does not allow further axiomatic extensions by new connectives. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem por objetivo examinar possíveis contribuições de Lyotard e Jameson para pensar um dos obstáculos ao ensino de filosofia que, por falta de melhor denominação chamaremos "regime de atenção dos adolescentes contemporâneos".

De façon très allusive dans quelques textes de Signes et dans une note de travail du Visible et l’invisible, Merleau-Ponty a indiqué qu’élucider la question d’une « chair du social » exigeait un approfondissement préalable des notions de Gestalt, d’institution et de symbolisme. L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment Simondon a repris la question au point où Merleau-Ponty l’a laissée, en décrivant l’activité ou l’invention technique comme l’inscription matérielle d’un collectif en genèse, non partagé par la dualité du (...) psychique et du social . La pensée technique, loin d’être anecdotique ou spécialisée, apparaît donc comme un moment essentiel dans l’élaboration d’une théorie générale du lien social et de la socialisation des individus. (shrink)

Several ethicists have defended the use of responsibility-based criteria in healthcare rationing. Yet in this article we outline two challenges to the implementation of responsibility-based healthcare rationing policies. These two challenges are, namely, that responsibility for past behavior can diminish as an agent changes, and that blame can come apart from responsibility. These challenges suggest that it is more difficult to hold someone responsible for health related actions than proponents of responsibility-sensitive healthcare policies suggest. We close by discussing public health (...) policies that could function as an alternative to contentious, responsibility-sensitive rationing policies. (shrink)

O presente estudo busca compreender a aderência de jovens a um instituto católico – Toca de Assis – que se caracteriza por adotar um estilo de vida configurado por radical pobreza, renúncia a bens e estudos formais, e dependência exclusiva da providência divina, além de desenvolvimento de trabalho com pessoas em situação de rua. Busca entender a opção juvenil por um estilo de vida religiosa rigoroso a partir de propostas de vida contrastivas com a sociedade contemporânea e, de certo modo, (...) com a própria Igreja, visando identidades alternativas e fortes. Assim, o artigo desenvolve o tema Juventude; Toca de Assis, renúncia, pobreza; tem como objetivo verificar as relações entre juventude, comportamento e adesão a estilos de vida radicais; usa, principalmente, da metodologia das ciências sociais; tem por conclusão provisória a compreensão de que os jovens que aderem à Toca de Assis, ao renunciar a bens materiais, estudo, e ao assumirem uma vida de pobreza e solidariedade com os pobres, estão em um movimento de contrastividade e contestação social motivadas por uma identificação com o Cristo sofredor. Palavras-chave : Toca de Assis. Renúncia. Pobreza. Jovens.: The present study aims to understand the adherence of youth people to a Catholic institute called Toca de Assis. This group adopts a lifestyle of radical poverty, wich calls for renunciation of material goods and also to formal studies. Participants in this group also claim rely solely on state of divine providence for their material survival. Young people in this group perform a work of assistance to people marginalized by society and to those who live at risk on the streets. The article seeks to understand the reasons for the choice of young people for a religious lifestyle so strict that contrasts with the lifestyle of contemporary society and in a sense, the Church itself, aiming at the formation of alternate identities. Thus, the article develops the theme “youth”, “Toca de Assis”, “resignation”, and “poverty”. The study aims, in short, to examine relationships between youth behavior and adherence to radical lifestyles; For this purpose, a methodology of social science is used. As in interim conclusion, this discussion indicates the following: youth people who adhere to Toca de Assis, renouncing material possessions, study, and assuming a life of poverty and solidarity with the poor, are in a movement of social protest and are motivated by an identification with the suffering Christ. Keywords : Toca de Assis. Renunciation. Poverty. Youth. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to strengthen the point made by Horty about the relationship between reason holism and moral particularism. In the literature prima facie obligations have been considered as the only source of reason holism. I strengthen Horty’s point in two ways. First, I show that contrary-to-duties provide another independent support for reason holism. Next I outline a formal theory that is able to capture these two sources of holism. While in simple settings the proposed account coincides (...) with Horty’s one, this is not true in more complicated or “realistic” settings in which more than two norms collide. My chosen formalism is so-called input/output logic. A bottom-line example is introduced. It raises the issue of whether the conventional wisdom is right in assuming that normative reasons run parallel to epistemic ones. (shrink)

An extensions by new axioms and rules of an algebraizable logic in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi is not necessarily algebraizable if it involves new connective symbols, or it may be algebraizable in an essentially different way than the original logic. However, extension whose axioms and rules define implicitly the new connectives are algebraizable, via the same equivalence formulas and defining equations of the original logic, by enriched algebras of its equivalente quasivariety semantics. For certain strongly algebraizable logics, all (...) connectives defined implicitly by axiomatic extensions of the logic are explicitly definable. (shrink)

Cuerpo físico y cuerpo vivido no deben interpretarse como dos realidades separadas, sino que representan dos aspectos distintos de la misma experiencia corporal descrita en términos fenomenológicos. La experiencia de la corporalidad puede seguir dos direcciones: a) la primera es una dirección ascendente, que implica el desarrollo de las posibilidades de movimiento, acción y expresión del cuerpo en toda su plenitud; b) el otro camino o dirección, en contraste con el anterior, toma una senda descendente, y se halla estrechamente relacionado (...) con la experiencia del dolor, de la limitación, de la resistencia corporal que es experimentada como oposición a la propia voluntad: es el cuerpo vulnerable. Aquí reaparece un nuevo dualismo: el cuerpo poético de la expresión frente al cuerpo vulnerable de la enfermedad y el dolor. Mi contribución trata de cuestionar la idea de que el cuerpo poético de la expresión artística y el cuerpo vulnerable de la vejez, de la discapacidad o de la enfermedad, pertenezcan a esferas completamente separadas. Con este propósito, se intenta poner de relieve los múltiples puntos de intersección entre ambas perspectivas, al tiempo que se sostiene que tales intersecciones pueden llegar a ser interesantes puntos de partida de la investigación interdisciplinar. (shrink)

Before his death in 1989, Gilbert Simondon wrote two major books consisting of his principal and complementary theses, both defended in 1958. The complementary thesis on the mode of existence of technical objects was published in 1958, while it was only in 1964 that sections of his principal thesis on individuation were made available to the public (and even then only the chapters dedicated to the regimes of physical and vital individuation, excluding those dealing with psychic and collective individuation.) Over (...) the course of his career, Simondon produced other major texts, but only in the form of unpublished courses or conference presentations published in poorly distributed journals. Some of these texts have .. (shrink)

F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854), le plus precoce de philosophes puis l'un des plus ages, a pati, de son vivant comme apres sa mort, de la proximite de Fichte et surtout de Hegel qui l'a supplante dans le jugement de la posterite. Mais il est en passe de combler son retard grace en particulier a l'impulsion donnee depuis un demi-siecle aux recherches sur l'idealisme allemand. Le premier volume de cet ouvrage se propose de presenter le devenir de Schelling sous le signe du (...) systeme vivant. La derniere philosophie de Schelling est analysee dans le second tome. Elle est presque tout entiere posthume, a l'exception de la Preface a Cousin (1834) et de quelques autres textes brefs. La dualite philosophique, enseignee a Berlin, est l'ultime avatar de ce qui etait de facon latente une philosophie en deux. L'auteur s'attache ici a expliquer en detail les motifs et les problemes de cette dichotomie tardive, mais fondee. (shrink)

This paper examines the logic of conditional obligation, which originates from the works of Hansson, Lewis, and others. Some weakened forms of transitivity of the betterness relation are studied. These are quasi-transitivity, Suzumura consistency, acyclicity and the interval order condition. The first three do not change the logic. The axiomatic system is the same whether or not they are introduced. This holds true under a rule of interpretation in terms of maximality and strong maximality. The interval order condition gives rise (...) to a new axiom. Depending on the rule of interpretation, this one changes. With the rule of maximality, one obtains the principle known as disjunctive rationality. With the rule of strong maximality, one obtains the Spohn axiom (also known as the principle of rational monotony, or Lewis’ axiom CV). A completeness theorem further substantiates these observations. For interval order, this yields the finite model property and decidability of the calculus. (shrink)