Romantic Philosophy characterizes the way of being Catalan with two main words: seny, common sense, and rauxa, or rapture. Looking for the roots of this characterization, we find two Franciscan thinkers, blessed Ramon Llull and Brother Francesc Eiximenis, representing these tendencies. Through his life and writings, we try to collect what can be said about it.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beginning in the 20s of the last century, historical research into Eiximenis's life and writings has thrown into relief his contribution to the language and political ideas of the kingdoms and towns of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. Of fundamental importance has been the work of medievalists from North America, and in particular that of Canadian scholars during the last decades of the twentieth century.More recently, a number of studies (...) have underlined the decisive contribution of Eiximenis – a representative of a European textual tradition among friars of the Minor Observance that extended from Oxford to Florence – to the establishment of a system of ethical values for the economic sphere and for trading practices that continued to be developed by members of the Franciscan Order throughout the high middle ages and early modern period.As a follow-up to these studies, I believe that a program of textual analysis and systematic investigation of Eximenis's work could provide further information about the range and significance of his political thinking, based as it was on applying, in typically Franciscan fashion, experimental observation to gain an understanding of the nature both of the societas and of the market, the latter being thought of as a defining expression of civic institutions in Western Europe. This same experimental approach can be found in Franciscan thinking from the catalan-aragonese realm not only in the work of Arnau de Vilanova and Ramon Llull, but also in that of Pere Tomas and Anselm Turmeda, two figures fundamental to the preparation and political engagement of the Friar of Girona.1. The concept of contractIn Eiximenian texts, the communitarian dimension is defined as one that is of necessity based on contract. It is expounded in the long opening section of the Dotzè del Crestià, where Eiximenis outlines the political value of the civitas, as well as setting out the elements that constitute civic life.Borrowing from Aristotle's discussion in the First Book of the Politics , the Franciscan friar strongly affirms that one of the principal reasons behind the civitas is the "necessitat de contractes," the need for contracts. Going far beyond the highly qualified analysis of money and coinage set out by the Greek philosopher, Eiximenis here maintains that the aims of the community is the profit that the citizenry realises by means of different forms of exchange, through buying and selling, through contracts, and through trading. Moreover, that the binding nature of trading-contracts is a matter of concern not of the city in the narrow sense, but of each and every kind of human social organization.Even before contract-law, or, better said, conventional or foral procedure, Eiximenis views the idea of the contract as an essential part of the ethical and organizational principles of living as a community, the essence of the civitas. And it is of great significance that when he is discussing the value and function of money, Eiximenis chooses to call the sorts of exchange that to-day we term economic or financial les civils conmutacions, or exchanges between citizens.These lexical hints allow us to capture the strength of meaning and value, the ethical perspective by which the Gerundense defines the inextricable union of the market and civic society. But it is not only an analytical perspective, significant as that is, that unites market and civic ethics; we are presented with a value judgment of contract and economic exchange as elements that determine the very idea of civilitas.The "bona civilitas," an expression that can be roughly translated as "good civic culture," is in fact founded on a concept of economic ethics that has as its distinguishing feature the logic of profitable exchange, of the distribution of that profit, of contractualization, and of the circulation of goods and money. It is characterised by redefining the anti-value of avaritia as a real.. (shrink)

In this paper we intend to present some medieval foundations, especially Franciscan, of the revitalized civic republicanism of the 20th century. There is an unjustified leap from Rome to the Renaissance that has its origin in the forgetfulness and simplistic view that Hanna Arendt has of medieval thought and Aristotelianism, caused by the historiographic criteria of her time. For this we will show some characteristics of the thought of this new republicanism in order to present the central ideas of four (...) Franciscan authors: Francesc Eiximenis, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Alfonso de Castro. First we will try to show the continuity that exists between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. With this historical approach we intend to analyze that the legitimate aspiration of this new republicanism is distorted and limited if it leaves aside medieval contributions that help to understand more fully the republican pretension the republican pretension that, without rejecting the autonomy of the individual or the sense of community, highlights the interactive nature of social life and instigates him to persevere in the pursuit of the common good. (shrink)

The monoidal t-norm based logic MTL is obtained from Hájek's Basic Fuzzy logic BL by dropping the divisibility condition for the strong (or monoidal) conjunction. Recently, Jenei and Montgana have shown MTL to be standard complete, i.e. complete with respect to the class of residuated lattices in the real unit interval [0,1] defined by left-continuous t-norms and their residua. Its corresponding algebraic semantics is given by pre-linear residuated lattices. In this paper we address the issue of standard and rational completeness (...) (rational completeness meaning completeness with respect to a class of algebras in the rational unit interval [0,1]) of some important axiomatic extensions of MTL corresponding to well-known parallel extensions of BL. Moreover, we investigate varieties of MTL algebras whose linearly ordered countable algebras embed into algebras whose lattice reduct is the real and/or the rational interval [0,1]. These embedding properties are used to investigate finite strong standard and/or rational completeness of the corresponding logics. (shrink)

What are financial institutions' social responsibilities in developing countries? On the one hand, these institutions share the generic responsibilities of all human organizations and business enterprises. However, their specific social responsibility is the performance of the social function of financial intermediaries, which, in the case of emerging countries, consists mainly of contributing to economic growth and solving the problem of poverty. This paper describes a number of technical‐economic and moral problems that take us to a consideration of the performance of (...) banking operations in microfinancing, with special reference to Latin America. The paper also provides a series of recommendations that, in addition to contributing to solving the development and poverty problems in emerging countries, help define financial institutions' social responsibility in such countries. (shrink)

This conceptual paper explores and compares the ethical dimension of Islamic and so-called ethical banks. The investigation is made in two succeeding steps. First, an individual analysis as regards the respective level of correspondence between ethical principles and business practice. For the latter, a time-based perspective is adopted. Second, a side-by-side comparison of their overall “ethical coherence gap”. The results show that this gap is wider in the case of Islamic banks. The final part of the paper draws up three (...) different scenarios for future development of these financial institutions where their ethical coherence is enhanced. (shrink)

Jean Paul Sarte, Franz Kafka i Milan Kundera: tres mirades diferents sobre la realitat, tres percepcions del món que participen d'un mateix rerafons filosòfic, d'una mateixa sensibilitat: l'absurd. Tres obres que neixen, creixen i maduren sota l'eclipsi de Déu, en l'atmosfera de la buidor més penetrant i la negació radical del sentit. L'ésser és estantís, feble, pura representació, i la vida humana una comèdia tragicòmica que comença per casualitat i s'acaba també per pura casualitat. Però l'home ha de viure, i (...) si el món no té sentit, caldrà forjar-lo amb les pròpies mans, caldrà projectar una idea per la qual valgui la pena viure i morir (Kierkegaard). Tres iniciatives, tres expectatives, que es configuren sota l'escola de l'absurd i la mort de Déu (Nietzsche). Davant d'aquesta concepció del món marcada pel desencís i l'angoixa hi ha la metafísica de la plenitud de l'ésser (sant Tomàs d'Aquino), que descriu l'univers com un dinamisme perfectiu que té una direccionalitat pròpia, una causa primera i un fi darrer. La lògica del sentit versus la lògica de la buidor. (shrink)

The biblical source mentions on three occasions the nautical journeys of Solomon, king of Judah and Israel, and Hiram of Tyre to Ophir in search of riches. Throughout the study, we point out that the mention of the journeys constitutes a theological construction, composed between the twilight of the 6th century BC and the first half of the 5th century BC, to magnify, in contrast with the nautical failure of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, the figure of Solomon as the prototype (...) of the ideal monarch to whom pagan nations, represented by the Phoenicians, render servitude,. The later biblical tradition, manifested by the Greek, Latin and Arabic translation, will continue to magnify the figure of the monarch, placing the location of Ophir on an increasingly more distant horizon. (shrink)

What are financial institutions' social responsibilities in developing countries? On the one hand, these institutions share the generic responsibilities of all human organizations and business enterprises. However, their specific social responsibility is the performance of the social function of financial intermediaries, which, in the case of emerging countries, consists mainly of contributing to economic growth and solving the problem of poverty. This paper describes a number of technical-economic and moral problems that take us to a consideration of the performance of (...) banking operations in microfinancing, with special reference to Latin America. The paper also provides a series of recommendations that, in addition to contributing to solving the development and poverty problems in emerging countries, help define financial institutions' social responsibility in such countries. (shrink)

The framework presented by Bayefsky and Berkman is based on having clear and accurate genetic information to offer parents, for them to either decide to prepare for birth or to terminate the...

The purpose of this article is to present and discuss some of the best practices of financial industry, in three emerging economies: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The main thesis is that, notwithstanding the importance of certain specific deficiencies, such as an inadequate regulatory context or the lack of financial education among the population, the main factor that explains the low banking levels in emerging and developing economies, affecting mostly lower-income segments, is the use of inefficient financial service distribution models. In (...) connection with this thesis, we will try to show that traditional financial institutions, both in developing countries and in the advanced economies have a special social responsibility to help create an efficient financial system that makes saving and borrowing instruments available to the greatest possible number of citizens. (shrink)

Residuated fuzzy logic calculi are related to continuous t-norms, which are used as truth functions for conjunction, and their residua as truth functions for implication. In these logics, a negation is also definable from the implication and the truth constant $\overline{0}$ , namely $\neg \varphi$ is $\varphi \to \overline{0}$. However, this negation behaves quite differently depending on the t-norm. For a nilpotent t-norm (a t-norm which is isomorphic to Łukasiewicz t-norm), it turns out that $\neg$ is an involutive negation. However, (...) for t-norms without non-trivial zero divisors, $\neg$ is Gödel negation. In this paper we investigate the residuated fuzzy logics arising from continuous t-norms without non-trivial zero divisors and extended with an involutive negation. (shrink)

Globalisation has given rise to a new field of debate due to the growing mobility of the workers and the consequent cultural diversity inside companies. In this sense, a complex world like ours demands a review of the professional profile which should include the so called intercultural competences as a structuring element of companies’ policy and strategic plan. Subsequently it is suggested that, as the intercultural competences affect the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, they actually imply a transformation of the (...) person’s identity. (shrink)

The ontological theory about the two aristotelical intellects, created in the 13th century, finishes finally its itinerary with Ockham's epistemological theory. The realistic-propositionalist Ockham's epistemological theory reduces the intellect to a connotation: intellect denotes the soul, or better, the thinking subject whole and one; but connotes the man's cognitival function. The man is essentially free and directs his knowledge to its object, it is life and activity; but the denoted acognitival function is passive.

The monoidal t-norm based logic MTL is obtained from Hájek''s Basic Fuzzy logic BL by dropping the divisibility condition for the strong (or monoidal) conjunction. Recently, Jenei and Montgana have shown MTL to be standard complete, i.e. complete with respect to the class of residuated lattices in the real unit interval [0,1] defined by left-continuous t-norms and their residua. Its corresponding algebraic semantics is given by pre-linear residuated lattices. In this paper we address the issue of standard and rational completeness (...) (rational completeness meaning completeness with respect to a class of algebras in the rational unit interval [0,1]) of some important axiomatic extensions of MTL corresponding to well-known parallel extensions of BL. Moreover, we investigate varieties of MTL algebras whose linearly ordered countable algebras embed into algebras whose lattice reduct is the real and/or the rational interval [0,1]. These embedding properties are used to investigate finite strong standard and/or rational completeness of the corresponding logics. (shrink)