This essay explores the educational significance of two cinematic narratives: Il Postino and Take the Lead. Given that these two movies are about the moral power of art as such, the main focus will be on how the different arts with which these movies deal provide their own distinctive insights into significant areas of human moral experience; more specifically, these films aim to explore the distinctive artistic contribution of poetry and dance to the human moral condition. This essay aims not (...) only to draw attention to the two films discussed but also to suggest a new approach to teaching about these and other artworks in schools and other educational contexts."Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it; it.. (shrink)

Massimo Campanini offers a new translation of Averroes's Fasl Al Maqal from the Arabic original, preceded by a substantial introduction to the text. The introduction, a kind of interpretative essay, attempts to clarify Ibn Rushd's position on the relation between philosophy and religion, the genre to which the Fasl belongs and the format it utilizes, while also offering a fully blown and intriguing outline of the political, theological, cultural, and ideological debates in Andalusia during the Almohadic period. A large part (...) of the 55 pages of this informative essay is dedicated to what Campanini considers to be Ibn Rushd's view of language as a pluralistic means of expressing the same truth in multiple ways.... (shrink)

Translated and original texts have been claimed to differ with respect to their linguistic make-up. Parallel versions of texts seem to reflect aspects of the identities represented by the respective languages. The study exploits this potential, in the EU context, with a view to raising awareness of linguistic and cultural differences between English and Greek. A descriptive approach to parallel English and Greek EU material reveals aspects of linguistic preference across languages, with reference to the five dimensions of cultural values (...) in Hofstede and Hofstede’s model of cultural relativism. Translation practice can provide evidence of the linguistic manifestation of socially preferred patterns of behavior which determine linguistic action. Aspects of linguistic preference traced in the EU English-Greek translation context are shown against a background of linguistic preference manifested in other genres.Raising awareness of identities across languages is expected to ultimately provide recommendations for quality improvement in the EU translation practice, or how to achieve near-native command in language acquisition, while foregrounding the significance of the experienced socio-cultural realities in the study of meaning making. (shrink)

The paper discusses Ibn Tufayl’s Hay ibn Yaqzan, a philosophical novel written in Andalusia in the 12th century. The novel’s eponymous character is a solitary individual growing up in a deserted island, who only meets another human being and gets initiated into language at an advanced age. As Ibn Tufayl presents it, in solitude Hay has developed elaborate ways of thinking, discovered God as the ultimate cause of the world and worships him in a direct, personal way. Given the context (...) of Ibn Tufay’s story, the paper focuses on the relation between language and thinking. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations it criticizes the idea that language and community are inessential to human identity and ways of thinking. It argues that Ibn Tufayl should not be interpreted as putting forward a dualist picture of the self like Descartes’, but rather, as influenced by the Sufi ideals of genuine faith and personal experience of God. (shrink)