The interaction between rhetoric and preaching is evident in St. Augustine in his sermons ad populum or sermons to his congregation. He expresses himself with care with the aim of achieving true spiritual progress in his hearers. Their reactions encourage him to make an attentive use of the rhetoric resources his authoritative experience has given him, and to exploit any possible means of raise his level of discourse. Signs of agreement from his congregation indicate an ongoing relationship with them. At (...) any rate Augustine, in his preaching, is happy to make the best possible use of his rhetorical powers and leave the rest to God. The formation of a long-standing congregation requires him to go beyond customary limits so as to become a notable model of a Christian orator. (shrink)

Ministers of the Church, whose characters were well defined in the second half of the fourth century, were more and more identified as the perfect believers. In the texts of John Chrysostom several models of “spiritual man” emerge on the basis of his personal experience and the evolution of his works: the monk, the presbyter, and the bishop. One notes that the relation of the Church to secular institutions is of greater importance in the works of Chrysostom, paying as he (...) does particular attention to the autonomy of the Church. In an original way he refrains from criticizing political institutions, preferring to express a balanced view. He holds that a coexistence with political authorities is possible, and he urges a moral conver-gence with them. Ecclesial ministries find a more solid basis in the Chrysostom’s complex and sometimes pained statements, both in their ideal expressions and in their concrete effects on the society of the fourth century. (shrink)

In the mystagogical catecheses of the fourth century, the term “faith” defines significantly the condition both of the catechumens and of the initiates at the end of their itinerary. The believer reaches the condition of “faithful” thanks to the support of the community, through an experience involving several ascetical aspects. For both eastern and western preachers, contact with the mystery during the liturgy leads to a particular expression of faith: through an existential break in the catechumen’s experience, baptism determines the (...) full adhesion of every believer to the profession of the faith of the community. (shrink)

The interpretations of the Pauline expression spiritual body can be indicative to verify the relations between Origen and the Antiochene tradition. After shortly examining such a definition in works of both the contexts, this article summarizes the exterior characteristics of the spiritual body. Are respectively dealt with: its link to the earthly body, the transformation process that led to it. Noticeable analogies have emerged in the importance given to the physical sphere; Antiochene writers, particularly John Chrysostom, gibe however more importance (...) to moral differences between individual bodies, partly negating theories about a material replacement of particles and collocating the spiritual body in a more detached view, that the seed metaphor doesn't express yet completely. The culture after Origen is oriented to a generalized condemnation of chair, in a more static and not gradual view of the body conditions; but the basic role of Origenian thought about body consistence and transformations is evident. (shrink)

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be of one and the same kind? This (...) paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

My overarching purpose is to illustrate the philosophical fruitfulness of expanding epistemology not only laterally across the social space of other epistemic subjects, but at the same time vertically in the temporal dimension. I set about this by first presenting central strands of Michael Williams' diagnostic engagement with scepticism, in which he crucially employs a Default and Challenge model of justification. I then develop three key aspects of Edward Craig's ‘practical explication' of the concept of knowledge so that they may (...) be seen to resonate positively with Williams's epistemological picture: the admixture of internalist and externalist features; the proto-contextualism; and, finally, the distinctively genealogical antisceptical impetus. In this way I aim to support and augment the socialized anti-sceptical case mounted by Williams, and so to show that expanding epistemology in the temporal dimension can be a productive move in central debates in epistemology. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

La seule façon pour le Je de devenir singulier, c'est-à-dire de déployer la synthèse active des multiplicités qui le traversent, c'est la volonté de faire exister ce qui n'existe pas. Etre à la fois la terre et la mer et le navigateur, voilà le salut de l'âme qui s'étend, nous dit Deleuze. C'est cela la ligne de fêlure ascendante.

Filozofia pamięci jest gorącym tematem w kognitywistyce i filozofii umysłu. Niniejsza praca analizuje spór między symulacjami a przyczynową teorią pamięci poprzez badanie poczucia swojskości i jego związku ze śladami pamięciowymi, a dokładniej w jaki sposób zwiększają one płynność rekonstrukcji przeszłych epizodów. Zrozumienie relacji między śladami swojskości i pamięci, a ponadto relacji między pełnoprawną fenomenologią pamięci a poczuciem subiektywnej pewności epizodu, jaki miał miejsce w przeszłości, prowadzi do odmiennej interpretacji rywalizacji między tym, co przyczynowe, a tym, co symulacyjne.

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

RESUMO O uso de linguagem codificada e esópica nos trabalhos dos semioticistas que integraram a Escola Semiótica de Tártu-Mosou foi motivado pelo desejo de serem compreendidos pelo círculo e não compreendidos por possíveis intrusos indesejáveis dos órgãos de controle soviéticos. Um dos termos centrais utilizados pela Escola - os “sistemas modelizantes secundários” - foi sugerido por Vladímir Uspiénski com o objetivo de substituir a palavra "semiótica", associada à semiótica ocidental. Ao cotejar o artigo de Iúri Lotman Sobre o problema da (...) tipologia da cultura, de 1967, com a tradução para o português do Brasil de Lucy Seki, que integrou a coletânea Semiótica Russa, organizada por Boris Schnaiderman, objetivo verificar se as peculiaridades do texto original, que surgiram devido às condições histórico-políticos da sua criação, foram preservadas na tradução. ABSTRACT The use of codified and Aesopian language in the works of the semioticians who were members of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School was motivated by the desire to be understood by the School members and notunderstood by possible unwanted intruders from Soviet control organizations. One of the key terms they used was secondary modeling systems, which Vladimir Uspensky suggested to replace the word semiotics, associated with Western semiotics. By comparing Yuri Lotman’s essay Problems in the Typology of Culture to Lucy Seki’s translation of the essay into Brazilian Portuguese, which is part of the book Semiótica Russa [Russian Semiotics], edited by Boris Schnaiderman, I intend to verify if particularities of the original text, which resulted from the historical and political context in which the essay was produced, were maintained in the translation. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

Background We investigated the personal philosophies of eight persons with a tetraplegic condition (four male, four female), all living in Sweden with a chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and all reporting a good life. Our purpose was to discover if there is a philosophical mindset that may play a role in living a good life with a traumatic SCI. Methods Two rounds of in-depth qualitative interviews were performed by the same interviewer, a philosophical practitioner by training (de Miranda). The (...) second round systematically covered the following elements: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose and philosophical sense. This six-step method developed by de Miranda is called SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Results All the interviewees, as a consequence of their trauma, reported having gone through a reinvention of themselves which implied questioning the meaning and purpose of their life in particular and life in general. A philosophical rather than realistic sense of the possible was abstracted toward teleological growth. All interviewees developed a sense of purpose based on self-interested altruism and solidarity with disabled peers. Conclusions To reinvent a good life with SCI, in addition to physical training and willpower, one needs to consider philosophical questions about the self and life, what Kant called the cosmic interests of reason: What may I hope? What must I do? What can I know? Our results indicate that we should, in the future, explore what the philosophical health approach may bring to rehabilitation processes in the months or years that follow the trauma. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

Na produção filosófica de Michel Foucault é possível encontrar, no terceiro eixo de suas pesquisas, conceitos voltados para as práticas subjetivas segundo a relação que o sujeito pode manter consigo mesmo, a ponto de se constituir como obra de arte. Neste tipo de abordagem, a moral – este conjunto de regras coercitivas, que consistem em julgar ações e intenções referindo-se a valores transcendentes – sofre um “golpe” em favor da ética. Para o professor uma possibilidade se abre nesta distinção entre (...) moral e ética, permitindo um deslocamento dos valores constituídos para a invenção de novos valores, em que a potencialização política no seu campo de trabalho pode significar uma estilização ética da sua própria existência. Dans la production philosophique de Michel Foucault c'est possible retrouve, dans la troisième phase de ses recherches, concepts crées sur les pratiques subjectives, c'est-à-dire, sur la relation que le sujet instaure avec lui-même, de manière à se constituer comme oeuvre de l'art. Dans ce type d'abordage, la morale - d'ensemble de règles coercitif, que consistent en juger les actions et les intentions en référence aux valeurs transcendantes, souffre un "coup" en faveur de l'éthique. Pour le professeur, ouvre une possibilité cette distinction entre morale et éthique, qui le permettre un déplacement des valeurs fixées pour l'invention de nouvelles valeurs, dont la puissance politique dans son domaine de travail passe par une stylisation éthique de l'existence elle-même. (shrink)

Este artigo tem a intenção indicar um uso propositivo da noção de imagem de pensamento presente na obra Diferença e repetição de Gilles Deleuze, pois de acordo com esta referência, é típico da repetição afirmar-se, permitindo a emergência do que difere. De outro modo, a noção de imagem do pensamento ocorre na filosofia de Deleuze em três ocasiões, nas obras Nietzsche e a filosofia, Proust e os signos e em Diferença e repetição e nestas obras, nem sempre esta perspectiva coincide, (...) deslocando-se de um uso mais crítico para um uso mais positivo. Em termos estratégicos e metodológicos, é justamente sobre este último enfoque, de caráter construtivo, em que nos apoiaremos. A discussão gira em torno de uma imagem afirmativa do pensamento em filosofia face à diferença no ato da repetição, o que significa que a diferença em filosofia traria consigo, em seu movimento, um processo interno de diferenciação, cuja potência a repete, mas não da mesma forma, senão transmutando-a em outra possibilidade do que significa pensar. (shrink)

The present article is a primary introduction to the semi-structured interviewing method SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Beyond grounding this new methodology theoretically (a work that is started here but will in the future necessitate several developments), the main motivation here is pragmatic: to provide the recent philosophical health movement with a testable method and show that philosophically-oriented interviews are possible in a manner that can be reproduced, compared, tested and used systematically with (...) a population that has received no training in philosophy. The SMILE_PH approach was conceived by the author during an ethically approved pilot study focused on the philosophy of life of persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI), with the intention of rectifying the epistemic obstacles generated by rationalist, Socratic or unstructured ways of in-depth interviewing. The six-step structure of the method is also inspired by hundreds of individual dialogue sessions with philosophical counselees, led by the author between 2018 and 2022: the SMILE_PH method progressively gathers phenomenological data about 1 – our bodily sense, 2 – our sense of self, 3 – our sense of belonging, 4 – our sense of the possible, 5 – our sense of purpose and 6 – our philosophical sense. (shrink)

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

Grounded in ideas about sense-making and whole-person care with a long intellectual heritage, the movement for Philosophical Health—with its specific conceptions of philosophical care and counselling—is a relatively recent addition to the ongoing debate about understanding better the perspectives of patients to improve health practice. This article locates the development of this movement within the context of broader discussions of person-centred care (PCC), arguing that the approach advocated by defenders of philosophical health can provide a straightforward method for implementing PCC (...) in actual cases. This claim is explained and defended with reference to the SMILE_PH method created by Luis de Miranda (Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health), an approach recently trialled convincingly with people living with traumatic spinal cord injury. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Moral intensity theory is used to explain how characteristics of moral issues affect ethical decision-making. According to moral intensity theory, individuals and firms will make more ethical decisions when moral intensity is present, such as greater negative consequences, including harm to customers. However, evidence suggests this does not always happen in crisis situations. For example, Fisher Price waited until 30 babies died before recalling its Rock’n Play Sleeper in 2019. In this article, the concept of immoral entrenchment is introduced to (...) address how crises affect the expected firm responses to morally intense ethical issues. Immoral entrenchment suggests that firms experience threat-rigidity responses to crises that lead to collective moral disengagement. Immoral entrenchment results in firms’ denial of responsibility and unethical behavior, instead of ethical behavior, in the face of highly negative consequences. The study in this article tests immoral entrenchment in the context of the speed to recall 843 consumer products. Supplemental qualitative evidence illustrates the collective moral disengagement dimension of immoral entrenchment. Contributing to the literature on ethics and crisis, the findings demonstrate that crises can generate immoral entrenchment in firms, which reverses the expected ethical response of those firms to issues with high moral intensity. (shrink)

Through several historical case studies from the last 300 years, Luis de Miranda shows how the phrase 'esprit de corps' acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is.

Antropologicamente, toda a experiência humana é apenas e só uma experiência de vida. Nesta nossa dimensão humana comum, nenhum ser humano pode saber o que a morte é, por experiência, que necessariamente tem de ser uma experiência própria. E não há outra experiência qualquer que possa ser considerada «nossa». Não há, pois, uma «experiência de morte». Há uma experiência do «morrer», que pode ser relatada. Relato de uma «experiência de morte», na nossa consciência.

Para Aristóteles, a amizade é o acto de necessário mútuo amor que constitui, com seus três níveis, o cimento da «polis», a comunidade política, a «cidade». Pode ser estudada de acordo com as próprias categorias aristotélicas e a teoria da matéria e forma, potência e acto. Este trabalho, depois de analisar o que a amizade é como acto de amor, aplica tais teorias aristotélicas à compreensão da amizade.

Neste ensaio, reflecte-se sobre o significado de «eutanásia» como conceito e como acto. Da etimologia, à exploração do sentido paradigmático de actos presentes na história do pensamento que ajudam a enquadrar o que está em causa quando a questão da eutanásia surge. A morte. Que se entende por «boa morte»? O sofrimento. O suicídio. Matar um ser humano: de que falamos? As origens contemporâneas da eutanásia. Que alternativa?

Neste estudo, procuramos redefinir o conceito de guerra, passando de uma definição política concernente às relações entre cidades, para uma definição ético-política que diz respeito à acção pessoal de cada ser humano em relação com os seus semelhantes. A guerra surge como o acto em que um ser humano, qualquer, procura eliminar a possibilidade de um outro ser humano, qualquer, ou de outros seres humanos, quaisquer.

A experiência é apenas um estado instantâneo de impressão sensível nisso que tem a experiência. Esta expressão resume a substância epistemológica do que constitui a posição empiricista polarizada na forma de pensamento paradigmatizada por David Hume e acriticamente aceite por Immanuel Kant. Tal posição, ao invés da tese aristotélica, impede qualquer modo trans-sensível, logo, trans-material de pensamento. A metafísica torna-se impossível. Kant procura ultrapassar esta impossibilidade através da criação de uma construção lógico-epistemológica que designa como arquitectónica transcendental. O mundo em (...) que o transcendentalismo kantiano pôs a intelectualidade a viver é um mundo reduzido a um jogo lógico, insubstante para além de si próprio, num solipsismo que condena o ser humano a viver definitivamente alienado de uma realidade que não seja a de seu próprio pensamento. A sua proposta de superação deste novo impasse através de uma teoria da acção cai na contradição de postular teoricamente algo que a razão nunca pode postular, pois não há ou pode haver qualquer referência empírica. A verdade da razão teórica impede a verdade quer da razão prática quer da razão estética. (shrink)

The Roman Empire, as a form of government, set up from 31 BC, with the victory of Caio Otávio on Marco Antonio at the Battle of Actium. During this period, deployed in that period the work of the government of Emperor Adrianus Publilius Aelius characterized as part of Roman imperial policy. The concepts of image, imagination and power that are the main trainers theoretical characterization of the Hadrian as Roman Emperor. Even the images left by structural characters as Adriano also (...) helps us to compose their representation as Princeps, as well as the writings of Roman History and History of Augusta. (shrink)

Taking on topics from pornography and prostitution to female genital mutilation, from womens magazines and marriage to sexual violence, contributors in this collection argue that the kind of liberal feminism currently rising to prominence does little to challenge the status quo.