This essay aims to analyze the conception of a work of art in the thought of Susanne K. Langer. The author offers us a definition of art, grounded on the idea that art is the “creation of symbolic forms of human feeling”. This thesis is, in turn, constructed from a robust theory of the symbolic function of the human mind.

This essay aims to examine how Thomas Mann reinterprets, in the novel “The Magic Mountain”, Nietzsche’s view of the world expressed in “The Birth of Tragedy”. The Olympic world becomes in the novel of Mann, a sanatorium where the death drive controls everything. Several interpretations for this ironic reading of the magic mountain symbol are offered, in particular the idea that death must not hypnotise us, a major theme of “Snow scene” of the novel.

The goal of this paper is to distinguish between two main concepts in Philosophy of Religion: the religious human experience and the notion of God. It argues that religion must be understood as a symbolic and cultural construction while the concept of the divine means the experience of the limits of human thought. Sometimes, throughout human history, these two experience meet but they are not conceptually the same.

O presente artigo tem como objectivo fundamental propor uma interpretação do poema de T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, no qual a experiência do mal constitui ponto de referência central. Esta experiência, traduzida metaforicamente por "terra desolada", pode ser perspectivada tanto em termos pessoais como civilizacionais. O poema, depois de realizar o diagnóstico de uma situação de crise profunda, realiza o que poderíamos designar como um ritual catártico que permite a purificação das dimensões negativas, sedimentadas em nós, constrangedoras da nossa liberdade. (...) /// This paper proposes an interpretation of T. S. Elliot 's poem The Waste Land whose core is the experience of evil. Such experience, expressed by the metaphor of the "waste land", can be viewed either in personal or in civilizational terms. After diagnosing a profound crisis, the poem goes on to what could be called a cathartic ritual, which enables the purification of negative elements of life that constrain our freedom. (shrink)

This paper analyses which are the great cultural cosmogonic models of creation in mythology; so it will be an essay of comparative mythology about the origin of the world, a study marked by the concern to detect philosophical principles that guide this area of thought.

This paper has the purpose of showing the way the concept of narrative identity, suggested by Ricoeur, enables us to re-evaluate the paradoxes resulting from the two classic criteria used to solve the problem of personal identity.

This essay examines the conflict of interpretations arisen by Kafka’s work, specially by his narrative «The Metamorphosis». It analyses the range and limits of the psychological, sociological, theological and existentialist interpretation of Kafka.

This paper aims to analyse how literary fiction deals with two real cases of philistine violence on cultural objects, one artistic and the other scientific. In this way, we will analyse Mishima's novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which narrates the destruction of one of the “jewels of Kyoto,” as well as Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which novelised the attack against the meridian of Greenwich. In both cases, we are confronted with the same attitude, namely, the insane resentment (...) against the reality principle. (shrink)

Namera ovog teksta jeste da pokaze da je problem licnog identiteta temeljno pitanje klasicne indijske misli. Uobicajeno, skloni smo misljenju da je licni identitet tema zapadne filozofije, te tako skloni smo da zaboravimo znacaj sopstva u hinduizmu, pa cak i u budizmu. Autor pokazuje kako je indijska filozofija pristupala pitanju licnog identiteta i koje je konkretno resenje izlozeno u delima koja se obicno pripisuju Gotami Budi.

This paper examines the philosophical conflict arisen by theodicy in western culture. After the exposition of Simon Blackburn and Richard Swinbume’s contentions views, we sustain that the only credible solution to the problem entails a new philosophical concept of God based on a non-anthropocentric vision of reality.

In this paper, we sustain the thesis that there is a violent aspect in the religious attitude. However, it is also true – as paradoxical as it might sound – that religion has been the privileged field to limit all kinds of violence in human societies. Keywords: Religion. Violence. Sacrifice. Frazer. Girard. Eliade.

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What Animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

In this article, we analyse the symbolic meaning of the Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain. We try to see the scope of the interpretations that consider the metaphors of death, time and culture as the main subject of the novel. Finally, we sustain the idea that Thomas Mann wants to tell us that beauty and perfection are the reverse of death and suffering.