As a still quite young professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, Nietzsche taught a rather traditional, almost antiquarian, course on ancient rhetoric. The title of his 1872–73 lecture notes—"Presentation of Ancient Rhetoric" —clearly indicates that this time Nietzsche did not spoil for a fight or set out to uncover the hidden hybridity of origins as he did in his controversial book of the same year in which the origin of Greek tragedy is revealed as miscegenation between the (...) Dionysian and Apollonian principles. Rather his lecture notes exhibit an apparent commitment to following the traditional rhetorical... (shrink)

Ao editar seu terceiro número, Aoristo – International Journal of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Metaphysics reafirma seu compromisso de contribuir com a divulgação científica e com o incremento dos estudos de filosofia fenomenológica, de filosofia hermenêutica e de metafísica na Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná – Unioeste, bem como, modestamente, na cena filosófica brasileira e estrangeira. Como afirmado já em seu projeto editorial, Aoristo reforça seu escopo de realizar-se como espaço de acolhida de parceiros nacionais e internacionais. O propósito é (...) reunir instituições e pesquisadores que promoveriam não apenas o estreitamento mútuo de laços acadêmicos, mas também o fomento e a consolidação de ambiente de pesquisa propício à internacionalização e à qualificação da produção intelectual junto aos campos temáticos aqui circunscritos.Conjugando esses princípios, o presente número traz, antes dos artigos acolhidos em fluxo contínuo, um dossiê dedicado ao filósofo alemão contemporâneo Wilhelm Dilthey (1883-1911). (shrink)

The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here, we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network set of macromolecules, cells, organisms and ecosystems. Listing the costs and benefits of cooperation as a necessary behaviour to build this network hierarchy, we outline the major hypothesis of the paper: the emergence of hierarchical complexity needs cooperation leading to the ageing (i.e. gradual deterioration) of the constituent networks. A stable environment develops cooperation leading (...) to over‐optimization, and forming an ‘always‐old’ network, which accumulates damage, and dies in an apoptosis‐like process. A rapidly changing environment develops competition forming a ‘forever‐young’ network, which may suffer an occasional over‐perturbation exhausting system resources, and causing death in a necrosis‐like process. Giving a number of examples we demonstrate how cooperation evokes the gradual accumulation of damage typical to ageing. Finally, we show how various forms of cooperation and consequent ageing emerge as key elements in all major steps of evolution from the formation of protocells to the establishment of the globalized, modern human society. (shrink)

Bei der umfassenden Thematik der Relation zwischen Philosophie und Pädagogik liefert die Philosophie von Kant ein ganz besonders reiches und vielschichtiges Beispiel für die Reflexion. Kants Philosophie steht in einer dreifachen Beziehung zur im wahren und ursprünglichen Sinne genommenen Schulphilosophie. Erstens gilt der Gesamtkorpus der Kant’schen Philosophie als bewusste und kritische Überwindung der Leibniz-Wolff’schen Metaphysik . Zweitens gilt die Kant‘sche Philosophie, auch wenn sie in diesem wahren Sinne des Begriffs selber keineswegs als Schulphilosophie aufgefasst werden kann, in ihrer spezifisch ausgearbeiteten (...) Ausführung als Überwindung des Leibniz-Wolff’schen Systems auch als Schulphilosophie. Und drittens kann die Kant’sche Philosophie, auf ihre Art, versteht sich, auch als neue positive schulphilosophische Alternative gelten, für welche sie etwa durch ihre systematische, vollständige Ausführung der Problemkreise, der konsequent zur Geltung gebrachten hermeneutischen und didaktischen Aspekte oder durch die vollständige sprachliche Kohärenz wie prädestiniert ist. Unter diesem Aspekt unterscheidet sich die Relation Kants zum Leibniz-Wolff’schen System von derselben bei Schelling oder eben Hegel. Hegel geht auch regelrecht auf die vielfache historische Bedeutung dieser gewaltigen Schulphilosophie ein, auf einer ähnlichen Linie hebt Schelling sogar hervor, dass selbst noch die Fehler dieser Schule von unvergleichlichem Nutzen für die Philosophie waren, weil es ohne sie zu keiner späteren Blütezeit der Philosophie hätte kommen können. Für Kant bedeutet diese umfassende Schulphilosophie weder die Vergangenheit noch den Gegenpol, aber auch nicht die niedrige Stufe der hohen Philosophie, für ihn bedeutet diese große Schulphilosophie einen denkerischen Rahmen, der einerseits in jeder seiner Einzelheit transformiert werden muss, während die neue hohe Philosophie andererseits den Rahmen der Schulphilosophie bei ihrer Konstitution in Anspruch nehmen muss. Dies ist nur möglich, weil das Bedürfnis nach Philosophie zwar nicht identisch mit dem nach Schulphilosophie ist, es in breiten Flächen aber tatsächlich abdeckt. (shrink)

Nietzsche's vision of modern democracy includes an aspect which many tend to neglect given the historical experience with totalitarian systems of the twentieth century. Precisely on account of its triumphant progress, 'irresistible' democracy, according to Nietzsche, tends to instrumentalize the activities of its enemies. This is a claim made by a philosopher whose work Alfred Baeumler and Georg Lukács considered an extreme political archaism. For a long time no serious objection was raised against this absurd verdict. The present article attempts (...) to show how Nietzsche's universalistic approach assigns a definite place to democratic systems and specifies why these systems are of special relevance for the universal-emancipatory development of humankind It argues that by stating the prophylactic character of the democratic system Nietzsche reaches the very core of his philosophy whereby he differs markedly and positively from other political philosophers. The difference lies precisely in the fact that for Nietzsche a given political system is not an ultimate value or objective, but simply an occasion to realize universal human ambitions. Nietzsche's political philosophy, therefore, establishes a distinction between various political systems evaluating them in terms of their prophylactic potential for the purposes of universal-emancipatory development. /// A visão nietzschiana da democracia moderna inclui um aspecto que muitos intérpretes tendem a esquecer devido à experiência histórica do século XX com sistemas totalitários. Para Nietzsche, é devido ao seu triunfante progresso que a democracia 'irresístivel' tende a instrumentalizar as actividades dos seus próprios inimigos. Curiosamente, esta é a pretensão de um filósofo cuja obra Alfred Baeumler e Georg Lukács consideravam como sendo uma forma extrema de arcaísmo politico, veredicto este contra o qual durante muito tempo nenhuma objecção se levantou. Objectivo dopresente artigo, porém, é precisamente mostrar até que ponto a abordagem universalista de Nietzsche atribui aos sistemas democráticos um lugar determinado e ao mesmo tempo especifica a razão pela qual estes sistemas ocupam um lugar privilegiado no que se refere ao desenvolvimento universal-emancipatório da humanidade. A tese do autor, com efeito, é a de que é precisamente ao afirmar o carácter profíláctico do sistema democrático que Nietzsche alcança o verdadeiro núcleo central da sua filosofia, facto esse mediante o qual ele claramente se distingue de outros pensadores polítcos. A diferença está precisamente no facto de para Nietzsche um determinado sistema político nunca constituir em si um valor último ou objectivo, antes encontra o seu valor na ocasião que porporciona para a realização de ambições humanas universais. A filosofia politica de Nietzsche, portanto, estabelece uma distinção entre uma diversidade de sistemas políticos propondo uma avaliação dos mesmos de acordo com o seu potential profiláctico no que se refere aos objectivos de um desenvolvimento universal e emancipatório. (shrink)

Nietzsche saisit l'une des nouvelles fonctions de l'art d'une manieére divinatoire. Lorsqu'on "facilite" la vie de cette facçon, cela n'est pas me é me apparement identique aux arts de distractions provoqueés par les formes anteérieures des connaissances. Faciliter la vie, ce n'est plus un acte naif ou naturel, mais le reésultat d'une deécision: par la creéation de cette distance, l'art a pu remplir de nouvelles fonctions, tout en sauvegardant ses propres qualiteés speécifiques. Nous pourrions formuler par des termes plus modernes: (...) satisfaire aux nouveaux besoins. L'art facilitant la vie en ce sens-laéapparait sous une forme plus geéneéraliseée en tant qu'un "e|acircum|tre faisant volte-face". Ceux qui connaissent la formulation de Walter Benjamin qui aboutit aécette ideée, pourront reéveéler l'importance de cette geéneéralisation. (shrink)

Bei seiner -- wie vorausgeschickt -- strategischen Bestimmung des ganzheitlichen Standortes der Philosophie in ihrem Entfaltungsprozeß verfährt Hegel in der Differenzschrift zweigleisig. Auf der einen, mehr sichtbaren und auch in der philosophischen Tradition gründlicher und tiefer rezipierten Ebene liefert er die berühmte und bei jeder Bestimmung der Philosophie und des »philosophischen Bedürfnisses« bis heute überhaupt viel zitierte Definition, wonach in dem neuen welthistorischen Weltalter der Entzweiung ein qualitativ neues Bedürfnis nach der Vereinigung der Gegensätze, d.h. nach »Philosophie« artikuliert wird. Weil (...) es nicht zum direkten Gegenstand unseres Versuchs gehört, deuten wir nur in unausgeführter Form an, wie und warum wir einen spezifischen Verdacht gegenüber dieser allseits ohne jegliche Kritik akzeptierten Definition hegen. Dieser Verdacht gründet sich einerseits auf der Tatsache, daß diese Definition ein starkes Zugeständnis an die aufkommenden romantischen Evidenzvorstellungen enthält. Im Anbetracht von Hegels stets artikulierter antiromantischer Einstellung dürfte es direkt auffallen, warum er gerade bei einer so unmittelbaren Kategorisierung des allerneuesten Weltalters eine in ihrer Struktur und in ihren Wertvorstellungen »romantische« Ansicht vertritt. Versucht man ferner den Gehalt dieser Einschätzung interpretativ noch weiter zu rekonstruieren, so läßt sich dieser Gehalt bald geradezu antihegelianisch auslegen. Denn eine »Vereinigung«, deren »Macht« unterging und eine »Einheit«, deren Macht und Geltung deshalb wiederhergestellt werden muß, klingt nicht nur als romantische »Grundbefindlichkeit«, sondern läßt sich auch als eine Auffassung verstehen, die den Grundintentionen der Geschichtsbetrachtung auch des jungen Hegel diametral widerspricht, denn wo ließe sich bei ihm eine mögliche Periode, oder zumindest eine Antizipation der möglichen »Einheit« in seinen Gedanken nachweisen? (shrink)

Bei seiner -- wie vorausgeschickt -- strategischen Bestimmung des ganzheitlichen Standortes der Philosophie in ihrem Entfaltungsprozeß verfährt Hegel in der Differenzschrift zweigleisig. Auf der einen, mehr sichtbaren und auch in der philosophischen Tradition gründlicher und tiefer rezipierten Ebene liefert er die berühmte und bei jeder Bestimmung der Philosophie und des »philosophischen Bedürfnisses« bis heute überhaupt viel zitierte Definition, wonach in dem neuen welthistorischen Weltalter der Entzweiung ein qualitativ neues Bedürfnis nach der Vereinigung der Gegensätze, d.h. nach »Philosophie« artikuliert wird. Weil (...) es nicht zum direkten Gegenstand unseres Versuchs gehört, deuten wir nur in unausgeführter Form an, wie und warum wir einen spezifischen Verdacht gegenüber dieser allseits ohne jegliche Kritik akzeptierten Definition hegen. Dieser Verdacht gründet sich einerseits auf der Tatsache, daß diese Definition ein starkes Zugeständnis an die aufkommenden romantischen Evidenzvorstellungen enthält. Im Anbetracht von Hegels stets artikulierter antiromantischer Einstellung dürfte es direkt auffallen, warum er gerade bei einer so unmittelbaren Kategorisierung des allerneuesten Weltalters eine in ihrer Struktur und in ihren Wertvorstellungen »romantische« Ansicht vertritt. Versucht man ferner den Gehalt dieser Einschätzung interpretativ noch weiter zu rekonstruieren, so läßt sich dieser Gehalt bald geradezu antihegelianisch auslegen. Denn eine »Vereinigung«, deren »Macht« unterging und eine »Einheit«, deren Macht und Geltung deshalb wiederhergestellt werden muß, klingt nicht nur als romantische »Grundbefindlichkeit«, sondern läßt sich auch als eine Auffassung verstehen, die den Grundintentionen der Geschichtsbetrachtung auch des jungen Hegel diametral widerspricht, denn wo ließe sich bei ihm eine mögliche Periode, oder zumindest eine Antizipation der möglichen »Einheit« in seinen Gedanken nachweisen? (shrink)

Thinking about thought -- Everything's an inference -- Out of context or the situation -- The rational unconscious -- The formerly dismal science -- Should you think like an economist? -- Spilt milk and free lunch -- Foiling foibles -- Coding, counting, correlation, and causality -- Odds and Ns -- Linked up -- Experiments -- Ignore the hippo -- Experiments natural and experiments proper -- Eekonomics -- Don't ask, can't tell -- Thinking, straight and curved -- Logic -- Dialecticism -- (...) Knowing the world -- Kiss and tell -- Keeping it real -- Whom to believe. (shrink)

In Born to Wonder, Alister McGrath, a prolific Oxford scholar, scientist, and theologian, explores the deepest mystery at the heart of life itself. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. Yet here we are, living in this strange world of space and time, trying to work out what it's all about before the darkness closes in and extinguishes us. We are adrift on a misty, grey sea of ignorance, seeking a sun-kissed island of certainty, on which we (...) might hope to find clear answers to our deepest and most poignant questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? And what is it about us that makes us want to ask these questions? As far as we know, we're the only species on earth that asks these questions, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. From time to time, all of us find ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of awe or mystery, often when confronted with the beauty of nature, whether it is a mountain stream or the vast expanse of ocean waters. That is when we see a flicker of a grander vision of reality, perhaps lying beyond the horizons of our experience. It is as if, for only a moment, a veil is removed, and we catch a half-glimpsed sight of a promised land, waiting to be mapped and explored. This sense of wonder fuels much of humanity's creativity and its search for understanding. (shrink)

Together with its kissing cousins ‘authority’ and ‘obligation’, legitimacy is a notion that should arouse apprehension. Governments that are legitimate have the ‘right to rule’, to demand obedience from their citizens or subjects. It is at least partly correct to say that this authority is independent of the content of the laws or commands issued by those invested with it, that the authority of a law or command is a reason for obeying it regardless of its contents or their merits. (...) As widely construed, reasons of this kind are conclusive in that they leave those subject to authority with but two choices: either obey the command or disassociate from the political association of which authority is a constitutive feature. Theories of ‘passive’ and ‘civil’ disobedience add the third option of disobedience to commands judged to be unjust but on condition of peaceful submission to the penalty assigned. (shrink)

Hormonal changes associated with the human menstrual cycle have been previously found to affect female mate preference, whereby women in the late follicular phase of their cycle (i.e., at higher risk of conception) prefer males displaying putative signals of underlying genetic fitness. Past research also suggests that romantic kissing is utilized in human mating contexts to assess potential mating partners. The current study examined whether women in their late follicular cycle phase place greater value on kissing at times when it (...) might help serve mate assessment functions. Using an international online questionnaire, results showed that women in the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle felt that kissing was more important at initial stages of a relationship than women in the luteal phase of their cycle. Furthermore, it was found that estimated progesterone levels were a significant negative predictor for these ratings. (shrink)

Contemporary Complex Cinema. Complex conditions: the resurgence of narrative complexity ; Complex cinema as brain-candy for the empowered viewer ; Narrative taxonomies: simple, complex, puzzle plots -- Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Why an (embodied-)cognitive approach? ; Various forms of complexity and their effects on sense making ; Problematizing narrative linearity ; Complicating narrative structures and ontologies ; Under-stimulation and cognitive overload ; Contradictions and unreliabilities ; A cognitive approach to classifying complexity ; Deceptive unreliability and the twist film (...) ; Disorienting but solvable puzzle films ; Impossible puzzle films -- Narrative Complexity and Dissonant Cognitions. The concept of cognitive dissonance ; Cognitions in dissonance: from social psychology to narrative engagement ; Types of dissonance in narrative comprehension ; Narrative incongruities ; Narrative impossibilities ; Cognitive access to impossible storyworlds: immersed and reflected operations ; 'Impossibilities' and embodied cognition ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by perceptual impossibility ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by formal impossibility -- Taming Dissonance: Cognitive Operations and Interpretive Strategies. Cognitive dissonance versus narrative coherence ; Reducing dissonance: interpretation and naturalization ; Foregrounding ; Narrating agency and authorship ; Artefact emotions and metareflexive appreciation ; Interpretation as dissonance reduction ; Coping with dissonance: frame-switches and poetic and aesthetic readings ; Frame-switching as hermeneutic play in impossible puzzle films ; Switching between narrative and symbolical readings: Enemy and Mulholland Drive ; Cognitive hesitation and the fantastic -- Impossible Puzzle Films: Between Art-Cinema and (Post-) Classical Narration. From art-cinema to puzzle films ; Art-cinema as a narrative mode ; Dissonance in modernist art-cinema ; Art-cinema as a cognitive reception frame ; Narrative complexity and meaning-making in art-cinema ; Impossible puzzle films and (post-)classical narration ; High degree of tellability ; Identification with goal-oriented characters ; Strong reliance on classical genre elements ; Adherence to classical narrative cohesion devices ; Inclusion of quasi-rational frames of naturalization -- Wallowing in Dissonance: The Attractiveness of Impossible Puzzles. Hermeneutic play and interpretive multiplicity ; Orientation, navigation, mapping ; Game logic and the fascination in failure ; Effort justification ; Diegetization of decoupling ; Fascination in infinity ; Destabilized ontological certainty ; Eudaimonic motivations and intrinsic needs. (shrink)

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

The regulatory NodD proteins of Rhizobium bacteria mediate the activation of a gene set responsible for symbiotic nodule formation by plant signal molecules. Here we discuss the signal recognition and gene activation properties of NodD and present a model summarizing the current knowledge on NodD action.

This article offers a philosophic understanding of dissidence. We present a conceptual analysis of dissidence as connected to a net of other philosophic concepts such as ‘virtue’ and ‘truth’. ‘Dissidence’, like ‘right’ and ‘liberty’, is used both in precise philosophic discourse and with greater variations of meaning in ordinary language. Our discussion springs from a philosophic discourse of dissidence that flourished in Czechoslovakia in the seventies and eighties, during the ‘normalization’ period between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet (...) Revolution of 1989. During that period, a small section of Czechoslovak society found itself in a situation that was commonly referred to by the word ‘dissidence’. Since some dissidents were philosophers by inclination, education, or approach, they understood their situation by drawing on their philosophic background. The towering figure of dissident philosophy was Jan Patocka, one of the first spokespersons of Charter 77 on human rights and a student of Husserl. Of his students, Václav Havel and Petr Rezek made significant contributions to the philosophical discourse of the meaning of dissidence. Though emerging out of a particular historical context, post-Stalinist Communism, the discourse itself attempted to understand dissidence in universal philosophical terms. (shrink)

We consider a real-valued function f defined on the set of infinite branches X of a countably branching pruned tree T. The function f is said to be a limsup function if there is a function $u \colon T \to \mathbb {R}$ such that $f(x) = \limsup _{t \to \infty } u(x_{0},\dots,x_{t})$ for each $x \in X$. We study a game characterization of limsup functions, as well as a novel game characterization of functions of Baire class 1.

After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion (...) debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. _Debating Moral Education_ is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university. _Contributors_. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman. (shrink)

Some people, we may call them realists, endorse the priority thesis. This thesis says political reasons have normative priority whenever we assess political situations. Any putative political reasons, I argue, must satisfy an autonomy condition and an identity condition. I argue that no realist account of political reasons shows such reasons are distinct and autonomous as of yet. One account, the practice-based account, may have the wherewithal to show political reasons are distinct. I also say some things about the relations (...) between identity, autonomy, and priority. (shrink)

Duparc introduced a two-player game for a function f between zero-dimensional Polish spaces in which Player II has a winning strategy iff f is of Baire class 1. We generalize this result by defining a game for an arbitrary function f : X → Y between arbitrary Polish spaces such that Player II has a winning strategy in this game iff f is of Baire class 1. Using the strategy of Player II, we reprove a result concerning first return recoverable (...) functions. (shrink)

The authors of the article are trying to identify the signs of a crisis of our time as a consequence of the refusal from the philosophical justification of the goals and objectives of scientific pedagogy, which as a chain reaction entail ignoring the results of sciences related to pedagogy: neurobiology and psychology. The reproductive approach in education selectively takes into account the results of the empirical sciences, as they serve to justify it. The result is a shift in emphasis: being (...) driven by the hypothetical imperatives of competitiveness in the labor market, teachers and other adults feel the need for the achievements of the pupils, for their effectiveness. As a consequence, the child's psyche does not develop properly which manifests itself in the inability to see the subjects of interaction in the vis-a-vis, in an effort to objectify what is not subject to objectification - a person. The authors of the article see the solution to the problem in the appeal in the philosophical and pedagogical system of I. Kant, that may be reconstructed from his works. The authors of the article conclude that I. Kant may rightfully be considered the founder of a productive approach to education. (shrink)