The idea of presenting the correspondence between Ioan Petru Culianu and Ugo Bianchi involves reviewing the topics specific to Bianchi’s school of History of Religion for a period of more than a decade and the manner in which the Romanian-born historian of religions builds his academic career. The academic relation between Bianchi and Culianu has a major common point: an acute preoccupation with the epistemological construction of the HR discipline. What is it that separates Culianu (...) from Bianchi and even from a large majority of the academic community in his ultimate view on religion and the religious phenomena? From a historical and religious point of view, the answer is very simple: Culianu developed a holistic theory about religion whose conceptual directions led to what Bianchi called reductio ad unum. This article focuses on presenting the biographical data correlated to the most solid scholarly education that Culianu ever had in Italy. I will also reiterate the idea that the centre of gravity of Culianu’s ultimate concerns does not necessarily fall on the methodological disputes of HR, but especially on a new understanding of cognitive sciences in general. (shrink)

In the first part of this text, the author includes a synthesis of Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu’s thoughts regarding the actuality of ancient mythologies and their camouflaged presence within the cultural, political, social, and entertainment practices of the contemporary human being. The main idea of this text is that the Eliade-Culianu paradigm of the myths’ interpretations is of actuality because, in the first place, does not deceive the specific of mythology and explains myths through (...) myths. The text then presents the author’s ideas regarding the camouflaged presence of certain mythological phantasms within the games of the quotidian. Basically, these phantasms refer to the social mythologies reactivated in the world after September, 11, 2001, to mythological content of the neighborhood subcultures’ practices, as well as to the need of reinventing the “black sheep”. The author also mentions the mythological sequences disguised in a successful book - The Da Vinci Code - or in the extravagant car promotions in the contemporary Occident. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Ioan Petru Culianu has written a book about the emergence of modern science and religious behavior starting from the Aristotelian concept of phantasia. An essential premise for discussing problems of modern cultural and religious importance is the proper understanding of memory and philosophical grounds for such concepts (...) as memory and recollection. Aristotelianism has been repeatedly mentioned as a main source of memory concepts, along with Plato, later Roman tradition and then mediaeval reconsiderations of Aristotelian texts. In my study I am following in parallel both Aristotle’s theory of memory and imagination and modern theories concerning Aristotelian epistemology and build arguments for the thesis that modern theories concerning the importance of induction in Aristotle’s epistemology miss an important link, namely, the key function of memory techniques for understanding the whole of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Memory is the domain of technique or art ( techne ) but not the grounding site for science. Truth and false are not an issue for Aristotle’s theory of knowledge because sensibility and theoretical intellect cannot be false. Memory, imagination and recollection as functions of an intermediary link are the most fluid and uncontrollable parts of the cognitive psyche, as they function as necessary bridges from corporeal sensitive knowledge to intellectual formal understanding. Memory is still corporeal as a function but delivers images for the intellectual activity. The whole process of knowledge depends on such a fluid and non rigorous function. Aristotle suggests natural memory can be pointed as the very cause for imperfection of knowledge. Human being is thus an insolvable epistemic duality since science needs memory but memory itself is rather the object of custom, art and technique. Science and religion have, according to such Aristotelian premise, a necessary common imaginary. (shrink)

This pioneering study interprets the mythology of dualism from Gnosticism to the medieval Cathars to modern nihilism. Couliano shows that, far from being "historically" transmitted, the underlying connection between all dualistic worldviews is a perennial and immensely appealing mindset.

Ioan-Vasile Leb (coord.), Bisericã si multiculturalitate în Europa sfîrsitului de mileniu Editura Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, Cluj-Napoca, 2001, 461p.

Ioan Vasile Leb, Biserica în actiune, Ed. Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2001.

Editura Polirom, Iasi, 2000, prefata de Moshe Idel, pp. 188.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.4 (2003) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming Gnosticism:Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World Benjamin Lazier University of Chicago In 1984, about a decade before his own murder, the Romanian scholar of religion Ioan Culianu complained of a more widespread, if decidedly less grisly form of assault. 1 The gnostics, he declared in a moment of (...) high jocularity, had "taken hold of the whole world, and we were not aware of it. It is a mixed feeling of anxiety and admiration, since I cannot refrain myself from thinking that these alien body-snatchers have done a remarkable job indeed." 2Though offered in jest, Culianu's designation "alien body-snatchers" quite accurately sums up what has remained since 1934 the leading view of gnosticism as a delimited, identifiable phenomenon. In that year appeared the first monumental volume of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and the Spirit of Late Antiquity) composed by the young Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Over the next sixty years Jonas returned again and again to the movement as he defined it. Above all, gnosticism had as its guiding principle the notion of das Fremde. The term includes in its linguistic domain not only "the alien," by which it is most usually translated, but its cognates as well: the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown, the uncanny, and the like. This sense of alienation is wildly overdetermined in gnostic theology: man is alienated from himself, from a fully transcendent God, and most powerfully from the material, [End Page 619] sensuous universe in which he lives, created as it was by an evil, malicious demiurge. Such anti-cosmism could license both ascetic retreat from the world as well as an antinomian descent into the worldly abyss, with the intent to defeat it from within. The locution "body-snatcher" now acquires relevance, for gnostic theology made impossible any positive appraisal of the physical body, or of the physical world at all for that matter. As the political philosopher Leo Strauss put it in a letter to Jonas, gnosticism may well have been the most radical rebellion in Western history against the Greek notion of physis.In stylized terms Jonas's philosophical career represents what I would like to call gnosticism's "third overcoming." Such terms signal an allegiance to the work of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. But they signal a departure as well. In Legitimität der Neuzeit (Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 1966), Blumenberg undertook what must count among the most ambitious revisions of Western intellectual history ever ventured. Against a rash of attacks on the modern age as an ill-concealed, secularized derivative of an earlier Christian era, he stepped up in its defense. He linked the emergence of the modern age—defined preeminently by man's need for self-assertion, to act in the world—to a "second overcoming" of gnosticism at the end of the Middle Ages. The gnostic spirit he found revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late-medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god. Whereas gnosticism's first overcoming was Augustine's work and but a partial success, its second, and for Blumenberg "final" overcoming was the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon.To argue for its third overcoming in the late 1920s and '30s is therefore to take leave of Blumenberg's account, if also to extend it. The condition for the possibility of this argument, of course, is that gnosticism had in fact returned. Gnosticism, or at the very least a host of phenomena going by the name and generally understood as such, did indeed return, and with a vengeance—on the occult scene, in philosophy, in theology of all persuasions, even in natural-scientific discourse. This period also witnessed the return of the... (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the theories of time travel in a perspective close to theories of time. In the last section we discuss the special ontology of the objects that exist on closed timelike curves. We simply assert that CTC need a new ontology and these objects are not simply impossible or unconcevaible.

In this paper I discuss Tim Maudlin’s attempt to reject the theory of universals based on the interpretation of gauge theories in the fiber bundle framework. The project is novel and assuring, but, I argue, it is vulnerable to several objections stemming from both metaphysics and physics. I complement his project by emphasizing two missing elements: first, a commitment to realism; second, the fundamentality or non-fundamentality of gauge theories.

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

This article explores the development of the theme of the Life-giving Spring in Byzantine iconography. The path towards its establishment was initiated at the moment when a representation rule, an original convention was set. Thereafter, because of its diffusion in time and space, the theme became enriched by particular mentalities and sensibilities of the epochs and the communities that adopted it as a form of devotion for the Virgin Theotokos. As a result, the representations we have known so far are (...) extremely varied. CONTRIBUTION: The final purpose of this approach, as well as its contribution, is to highlight the diverse unity of the iconographic tradition and illustrate both the evolution of the theme in the painting of Romanian church artists and its gradual refinement through the incorporation of diverse nuances and new perspectives. (shrink)

We almost can’t find among the countries of the East one not to praise or to display as own virtues – particular or specific – hospitality and tolerance. In fact, to project such qualities in a privileged register of categories is a part of a quasi-generalized imagologic strategy meant to valorize the positive character of some traits – ethnic, national or belonging to a group. Each country needs a favorable mythology, luxuriant in fairytales, heroes, acts of bravery, one in which (...) to be able to project its obsessions and nostalgias, composing a self image as good as possible. Is the fervor of idealization a sin? Certainly not, if the purposes are reasonable, and not subjected to some insidious ideological or propagandistic finalities. (shrink)

L'intention du texte ci-dessous est de suivre la manière dont la métaphore assume une condition "nomade". Je ne poursuis pas, ce faisant, une appropriation des occurrences sémantiques d'un vocable revendiqué par le discours postmoderne, encore moins lui attacher abusivement des significations étrangères ou inactuelles. Le meilleur exemple de prise en charge du "nomadisme" dans le champ métaphorique est précisément la figure classique, dans l'acception de Deleuze, du "nomade" - preuve éloquente de ce que la "chasse" à la métaphore dans le (...) discours philosophique peut être une entreprise à la fois agréable et profitable. Quel est le sens que Deleuze attribue à son "nomade"? Ce terme en lui-même, a-t-il une charge intensionnelle différente de celle des étymologiesconventionnelles? Est-il métaphore ou plutôt "personnage conceptuel"? Les "figures", dans le discours deleuzien, ont-elles un statut comparable à celui des concepts? Quelle place occupent-elles vraiment dans la configuration de la philosophie de Deleuze? Quelles sont les affinités entre Deleuze et Foucault dans laperspective du motif en discussion? (shrink)

The present study starts from the question if there can be any logic of religion. The answer is affirmative for logic in a wide sense. The attempts from the logic of beliefs account for this. However, the study focuses on the specific of the logic of religious terms, a less approached domain by logicians and philosophers. In this line issues like those of the logic of analogy, of the distinctions between the specific, general and total content of terms, between logical (...) distributive and collective conjunctions, etc are brought into discussion. In the end, dogmatic concepts are analyzed, as the core of religious concepts. (shrink)

It is customary for institutions that organize sporting competitions and events to exercise a considerable degree of authority over the participants. That authority is often manifested in the enforcement of penalties for infringements of fair play. This paper focuses on one concrete case from soccer, although I take the discussion to extend to other sports as well. I argue that not all fair play rules should be enforced by the respective organizing institutions, and that enforcing all of them indiscriminately is (...) a cause of injustice, rather than promoting fairness in sports. I propose a principled way of making the necessary distinction between those fair play rules that are enforceable and those that are not. (shrink)

William D’Alessandro has recently argued that there are no implicit truths in fiction. According to the view defended by D’Alessandro, which he terms explicitism, the only truths in fiction are the ones explicitly expressed therein. In this essay, I argue that explicitism is incorrect on multiple counts. Not only is the argument D’Alessandro gives for it invalid, but explicitism as a theory of truth in fiction fails drastically to account for a number of phenomena that are crucial to our understanding (...) and interpretation of fiction, such as pragmatic implicatures and speech acts occurring in fiction, psychological profiles of fictional characters, and fictional truths determined by literary conventions. (shrink)

In the Christian imaginary, the ternary representation of the universe is reiterated by appealing either to the Platonic texts, or to the Stoic ones. The triadic scheme of the worlds certifies an ambiguous status of man, of an individual placed neither here nor there, by the force of some circumstances which he cannot resist. Situated at equal distance from sidereal heights - credited as having the monopoly on perfection - and from the terrifying shadows, managed in a totalitarian manner by (...) the instances of evil, in “the world between the worlds”, he thinks of the interval as of a space of communication, filled with signs, shapes and characters, by means of which distances can be “neared, compressed and “humanised”. Each step, stage, climb or descent is perceived as a “rupture of level”, as overcoming of the human condition by assuming a trans-mundane axiological repertoire. (shrink)

If we want to define today's society in one word, trying to capture its meaning, it would be polarization. The interdependence between all social segments, articulated by globalization, has a double function: unpacking the identitary elements that enter in the structure of society and framing them in a relational dynamic. In this situation are Theology and Science, which, of course, maintain a number of components under their general names. Can we talk about a congruence between these two dimensions of human (...) knowledge? Or they are developing completely separately and antagonistic in social progress? According to Ian G. Barbour there are four types of relation between Science and Religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, integration. This article intends to highlight the congruence between Theology and Science in the paradigm of neo-patristic synthesis, which explores in a phenomenological, theological and philosophical way the relationship between these two. Neo-patristic synthesis is a theological movement from the 20th century, generated by the initiative of the orthodox theologian G. Florovsky. (shrink)

In order to study the intelligent collection system of moving object trajectory data under cloud computing, information useful to passengers and taxi drivers is collected from massive trajectory data. This paper uses cloud computing technology, through clustering algorithm and density-based DBSCAN algorithm combined with Map Reduce programming model and design trajectory clustering algorithm. The results show that based on the 8-day data of 15,000 taxis in Shenzhen, the characteristic time period is determined. The passenger hot spot area is obtained by (...) clustering the passenger load points in each time period, which verifies the feasibility of the passenger load point recommendation application based on trajectory clustering. Therefore, in the absence of holidays, the number of passenger hotspots tends to be stable. It is reliable to perform cluster analysis. The recommended application has been demonstrated through experiments, and the implementation results show the rationality of the recommended application design and the feasibility of practice. (shrink)

The paper is one of the first empirical attempts that builds on the moral dilemmas and group rationality literature to explore the way in which group composition with respect to group members’ individual choices in moral dilemmas and social influence processes impact on group moral choices. First individually and then, in small groups, 221 participants were asked to decide on 10 moral dilemmas. Our results show that emergent group level utilitarianism is higher than the average individual utilitarianism, yet, lower than (...) the highest individual utilitarianism within groups. We also show that average individual utilitarianism positively predicts group utilitarianism while group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism has a negative effect on group utilitarianism. Next to group composition, minority influence processes explain additional variance in group utilitarianism, cognitive dissent having a positive influence, while normative deviance a negative influence on group utilitarianism. Majority influence has no significant influence on group utilitarianism. Finally, our results show that the relationship between group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism and emergent group utilitarianism is mediated by the two forms of minority influence. (shrink)