A complex world like ours demands for the teachers and professors to command intercultural competences in order to avoid the instrumentalization of the alterities. It is precisely the professionals of education who, given their social function, have the responsibility of forming the citizens of the future in attitudes and behaviours adjusted to plural communities. This article presents the first part of a research project carried out by researchers from Barcelona, Marseille, Rabat and Beirut on the complex world of the respect (...) necessary to face prejudices and stereotypes. (shrink)

M. Bonnefond-Coudry has performed a great service by compiling a list of senators who are known to have spoken in the senate in the first century b.c. Yet her list for the year 50 invites a thoroughgoing revision. Beside the rubric ‘supplicatio à Cicéron’ she gives the following list: Cato, Hirrus, Balbus, Lentulus , Domitius , Scipio, Favonius. She also notes that Pompey spoke at a session late in the year , and maintains that Scipio spoke on 1 December.

The praetorship of L. Rupilius is of great importance only to the biography of L. Rupilius. His consular candidacy has a wider significance, since his repulsa represents a reverse for his most prominent supporter, Scipio Aemilianus. As the praetorship is not explicitly mentioned in the sources, its terminus non post quem is fixed by the consular candidacy. Scholarly treatment of the question is hard to come by. The terminus post quem for the candidacy of Lucius is his brother's candidacy ; (...) the terminus ante quem, Scipio's death : Cicero tells us that Scipio brought about the election of P. Rupilius, but failed to make his brother Lucius consul. Broughton classified L. Rupilius as ‘Pr. by 133 ’, and in this seems to have followed Münzer, who indeed considered L. Rupilius ‘Praetor gegen 620 = 134’, but added that he was a candidate ‘urn das Consulat für 623 =131 oder noch eher für 624 = 130’. Of course, if L. Rupilius was a candidate in 131 for a consulship of 130, then he was praetor by 133. A candidacy in 1294 can be safely ruled out: Scipio died in the first half of the year, in spring or early summer. But we cannot rule out candidacy in 130 for 129: Scipio might have preferred L. Rupilius to either consul of that year. The latest possible date for the praetorship of L. Rupilius is therefore 132. (shrink)

Background: Previous studies have investigated the effects of dance interventions on Parkinson’s motor and non-motor symptoms in an effort to develop an integrated view of dance as a therapeutic intervention. This within-subject study questions whether dance can be simply considered a form of exercise by comparing a Dance for Parkinson’s class with a matched-intensity exercise session lacking dance elements like music, metaphorical language, and social reality of art-partaking.Methods: In this repeated-measure design, 7 adults with Parkinson’s were tested four times; before (...) and after a Dance for Parkinson’s class, as well as before and after a matched-intensity exercise session. Physiological measures included heart rate and electrodermal activity. Self-reported affect and body self-efficacy were collected. Gait symmetry and dual task cost were analyzed using the 6 min walking test and Timed-Up-and-Go test, respectively.Results: Average heart rate was the same for both conditions, while electrodermal activity was higher during Dance for Parkinson’s. Significant differences were found in body self-efficacy, beauty subscale, symmetry of gait, and dual task performance.Conclusion: Dance, compared to an exercise intervention of matched intensity, yields different outcomes through the means of intrinsic artistic elements, which may influence affective responses, the experience of beauty, self-efficacy, and gait performance. (shrink)

Our study focuses on the correlation of concept map (CMap) structures and learning success tested with short answer tests, taking into particular account the complexity of the subject matter. Novice sixth grade students created CMaps about two subject matters of varying difficulty. The correlation of the complexity of CMaps with the post-test was small but highly significant in both subject matters. The complexity of the CMaps correlated with the long-term knowledge in the difficult subject matter but not in the context (...) of the easy one. Furthermore, the high number of technical errors makes it close to impossible to estimate students? knowledge. In summary, CMaps do not provide an adequate alternative to conventional short answer knowledge tests, but together with them they may offer a better comprehension of a student?s knowledge structure and aid in the preparation of further instruction tailored to individual needs. (shrink)

My article critically evaluates five key claims in Kerr’s interpretation of Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia, ch. 4, proof for God. The claims are: the absolutely considered essence is a second intention, or cognitional being; à la John Wippel, the real distinction between essence and existence is known before the proof; contra David Twetten, Aristotelian form is not self-actuating and so requires actus essendi; the De Ente proof for God uses the Principle of Sufficient Reason; an infinite regress must be (...) eliminated before concluding to God. This author wonders if these questionable claims are traceable to the mindset of analytic philosophy which values precision and discreteness and so can fail to appreciate crucial paradoxes in Aquinas’s metaphysics. (shrink)

By providing a phenomenological presentation of Aquinas’s duplex operatio intellectus, the author argues that a reader is better equipped to understand where and when Aquinas arrives at the real distinction between essence and existence in the much disputed De Ente et Essentia, chapter four. “Phenomenological presentation” means an honest description of one’s own mental life as it conducts the duplex operatio. From phenomenological observations in the Thomistic texts, the author argues that a penetrative and rebounding movement of attention upon some (...) initially presented multiplicity characterizes the duplex operatio. When this dynamic is conducted upon the multiplicity of a real thing juxtaposed to itself cognitionally existing in sensation, the rebound of the secunda operatio presents the real existence in a sui generis relation of priority to the individual thing understood as existence neutral. Unfortunately, the rebound of attention is too quick to discern accurately the nature of the borderline between the attribute of existence and its subject, the individual thing. The attribute of existence may actuate the thing by shading into it or by remaining distinct from it. Fortunately, the phenomenological situation is sufficient to leave phenomenology and to initiate the third intellectual operation of reasoning. Reasoning concludes to a first cause of phenomenologically observable attributive existence. In this first cause existence is the thing itself. In order for this first cause to have its proper effect corresponding to what it is, the author argues that the second of the above two alternatives for phenomenologically observable attributive existence must be the true one. After linking these reflections to stages of De Ente, chapter 4, the author critically relates them to other interpretations of the text. These interpretations include those of Cahalan, McDonald, Wippel, Dewan, Patt, Kenny, and Owens. (shrink)

Inspired by a discussion about whether John Paul II grounded human dignity in a Kantian way, viz., emphasizing the person as an end unto itself, the author considers: (1) the relations between Kant and Aquinas on the topic of the philosophical basis of human dignity, and (2) John Paul II’s remarks on Kant’s ethics. He concludes that: (1) both Kant and Aquinas ground human dignity upon human freedom, but both understand the human freedom differently; (2) for Kant, human freedom is (...) self-legislating and so exercised without rational direction; (3) the Thomistic notion of freedom is compatible with rational direction which consists, e.g., in the human understood as an intellector of being or as a willer of the good, though neither seem to be exploited by Wojtyla. (shrink)

In this powerfully argued book, Knasas engages a debate at the heart of the revival of Thomistic thought in the twentieth century. Richly detailed and illuminating, his book calls on the tradition established by Gilson, Maritain, and Owen, to build a case for Existential Thomism as a valid metaphysics. Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists is a comprehensive discussion of the major issues and controversies in neo-Thomism, including issues of mind, knowledge, the human subject, free will, nature, grace, and the act (...) of being. Knasas also discusses the Transcendental Thomism of Maréchal, Rahner, Lonergan, and others as he builds a carefully articulated case for completing the Thomist revival. (shrink)

In this incisive study, John F. X. Knasas grounds the ideal of tolerance in Aquinas’s natural law ethics and connects the virtue of civic tolerance to the concept of being. If God is the source of being, argues Knasas, then we are the articulation of being, and it is in this capacity that we recognize our bond with other people and thus acknowledge our duty to be tolerant of one another. An important contribution to practical metaphysics and the philosophical foundations (...) of political theory, _Thomism and Tolerance_ will appeal to philosophy scholars and students at the undergraduate and graduate level. (shrink)