Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the last fifteen years. Next, it traces the creation of (...) self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes's Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. It continues to explore the concept of embodiment, showing its relevance to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. It then centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. The last section focuses on the affective dimension of audience-performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas's work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity. (shrink)

The attention to ethics has gradually become a concurrent topic of modern companies’ management. In the last years Social Responsibility has become a key issue in the strategic agenda of competitive agriculture cooperatives. However, reputation management has not been a visible strength in the cooperative enterprises. First of all, this work theoretically analyzes the relationship between Social Responsibility and reputation in cooperatives. Later, from a practical point of view, we carry on an empirical analysis focused on the olive oil cooperatives (...) in the south of Spain, in the province of Jaén. With respect to the previous studies on the topic, this work reveals a main reason of interest reinforcing the role of research in addressing real problems of cooperatives. The article points out the characteristics of this kind of agribusiness and shows the importance of the adoption of a responsible orientation in fostering reputation for creating sustainable competitive advantages. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Reading (...) the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive presentation of the Pratyabhij philosophy (elaborated in the 10th and 11th centuries by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta) by showing how its main concepts arose from the confrontation of aiva religious dogmas ...

Does responsible leadership matter when assembling an inclusive supply chain at the Base-of-the-Pyramid? Current literature implicitly assumes that it does not. BOP scholars initially focused on the importance of shaping innovative and disruptive offerings, with radically improved price–performance ratios. Subsequent studies tended to focus on barriers to implementation of large-scale ventures at the BOP. Their common characteristic was the fact that the attributes and roles of the individuals involved were deemed unimportant. If the opportunity was there, provided barriers were removed (...) and the right value proposition was offered, the inclusive venture should take off. We evaluate three cases of leaders who succeeded in building inclusive ventures at the BOP, in contexts marked by institutional voids—where formal markets were weakly structured or nonexistent. Building a viable business under those circumstances entailed two tasks: imagining what is possible and then turning that vision into a reality. We found that, in carrying out those tasks, individuals do matter. Sampled cases show that working with nontraditional partners in inclusive supply chains requires more than aligning material incentives. Our analysis suggests that responsible leadership with a strong ethical foundation can provide powerful leverage to ensure buy-in and commitment from the various actors involved. We show how RL can impact organizations and external stakeholders through positive upward spirals. Our analysis contributes to the literature on BOP and RL by confirming, extending, and challenging existing knowledge. We propose two novel attributes and argue that context matters, influencing how RL is operationalized and defined. Understanding the critical role of RL in the construction of inclusive supply chains adds a critical missing link that sheds light into the micro level of new business creation, development, and consolidation at the BOP. (shrink)

After years of the welfare state, the rise of technology, combined with neoliberal governmental apparatuses, has established a new society of the precarious. In this new way of the world, productivity is not just connected to labor in the traditional sense of work hours, but more totally, to the formation of the self: work becomes performative and affective, and personal identities seep more and more into working ones. This new mode of being has another side, however: it can lead to (...) new forms of self-organization, resistance and exodus. In it we see the emergence of a new and disobedient self-government of the precarious. (shrink)

Background: The Marathon runners must have the proper technical preparation to reach excellence and to achieve adequate psychological preparation for the race. Against this background, the current study aims to describe the implementation results of a cognitive-behavioral intervention based on psychological skills training for marathon runners.Methods: Fourteen amateur male marathoners with an average age of 30 were trained with various emotional and cognitive control techniques to enhance their performance in competition. Various psychological variables, related to the subjects level of perceived (...) stress, and to qualitative characteristics of their thoughts were measured before and after the target marathon race. Results were analyzed through non-parametric tests for two related samples. The Cohen's d effect size for single-group pretest-posttest repeated measures were also performed.Results: Statistical analysis reveals that, controlling for age and running experience, the intervention decreased significantly the level of perceived stress and the occurrence of negative thoughts before the race, during, and after the race.Conclusion: Training in cognitive control and relaxation techniques, as part of the psychological skills training could determine the quality of performance of marathon runners. (shrink)

Prenatal and preimplantation testing technologies have offered unprecedented access to information about the genetic and congenital makeup of our prospective progeny. Future developments such as preconception testing, non-intrusive prenatal testing and more extensive preimplantation testing promise to increase that access further still. The result may be greater reproductive choice, but it also increases the burden on women and men to avail themselves of these technologies in order to avoid having a child with a disability. The overwhelming question for legislators has (...) been whether and, if so, how to regulate the use of these technologies in the face of compelling but seemingly contradictory claims about the advancement of reproductive choice and the dangers of eugenic or discriminatory effects. This book examines the evolution of this legislative oversight across a number of jurisdictions and explores the tensions and ambiguities that inform these laws. (shrink)

Dans cet essai qui privilégie la joie d'une pensée insoumise plutôt que la dénonciation, Isabelle Stengers prend le relais d'Alfred North Whitehead lorsque, diagnostiquant le "déclin de la civilisation moderne", celui-ci assigna à la philosophie la tâche de "souder le sens commun avec l'imagination". Face aux prétentions à déterminer ce que nous avons le droit de savoir, elle cherche à donner force à ce que nous savons. Face aux oppositions doctrinales prédatrices qui démembrent le sens commun, elle affirme la philosophie (...) comme puissance de problématisation. Prolongeant et renouvelant les ressources proposées par Whitehead, elle fait exister tant la possibilité d'une science "civilisée" que celle, politique, de dispositifs susceptibles d'habiliter les "gens du commun" à faire valoir les questions qui les concernent. Au déclin de la civilisation a aujourd'hui succédé la débâcle : "Nous entendons déjà les grincements et les craquements sourds marquant la rupture des plaques de glace, démantibulant le sol que nous avions défini comme assuré." II s'agit désormais d'apprendre à vivre dans un monde devenu lui-même intrinsèquement problématique. D'autres voix, et notamment celles, contemporaines, de Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, David Abram ou Anna Tsing, viendront dès lors s'associer à celle de Whitehead dans l'exploration des manières de "faire commun" que demande notre époque. (shrink)

Un spectre hante l'Université française : celui de la déconstruction. Créé par Jacques Derrida à la fin des années 1960, ce concept est devenu, dans l'esprit des réactionnaires de tout poil, le mot-valise désignant tout ce qu'ils haïssent dans la pensée, lorsque celle-ci cherche à émanciper davantage qu'à ordonner. Dégénérescence de la culture, mépris pour les grandes œuvres, délire interprétatif, amphigouri linguistique, danger politique, confusion sexuelle, licence morale : à en croire les ennemis de la déconstruction, tout ce qui va' (...) mal dans le monde lui est imputable. Que signifie la fixation frénétique d'une frange d'intellectuels sur tout ce qui peut ressembler à une pensée différente, inventive et fondamentalement démocratique? Que cela signifie-t-il, si ce n'est la volonté de policer la pensée et ses institutions, pour mieux, ensuite, policer les corps? Telle est l'interrogation qui a présidé au colloque "Qui a peur de la déconstruction?", qui s'est tenu à l'École normale supérieure et à la Sorbonne en janvier 2023. En voici les actes."--Cover page 4. (shrink)

Running marathons is an increasingly popular activity with an ever-increasing number of events and participants. Many participants declare that they pursue a variety of goals by running, namely, the maintenance of good health, the development of strength and improvement of fitness, the management of emotions, and the achievement of resilience and psychological wellbeing. The research has examined marathon running, like many other sports, and has studied various factors that reduce athletic performance, such as the experience of anxiety, and that enhance (...) such performance, such as an increase in general wellbeing. This article reports the results of a study on the experience of competitive anxiety among 238 male marathon runners who participated in Seville’s 26th Marathon race on February 23, 2020, and investigates the relationship between anxiety and key dimensions of wellbeing as measured by the Spanish-adapted 20-item PWB Scale. We hypothesized that participating athletes who rated high on the dimensions of PWB would experience lower levels of competitive anxiety with respect to this race. We also proposed that PWB would function as a mediating factor with respect to the experience of anxiety. The results show, as hypothesized, that marathon running enhances wellbeing and reduces anxiety. The data showed significant negative correlations between four of five wellbeing dimensions and the three types of anxiety measured, namely, somatic anxiety, worry, and concentration-impairing anxiety. Other findings supported our hypothesis that wellbeing, as measured, functions as a mediating factor for the moderation of competitive anxiety. Generalization of these findings is limited by the fact that the low number of female participants recruited did not permit valid statistical analyses in this respect. It is known that both anxiety and wellbeing are subjects to variation by gender. The future inclusion of male and female subjects in equivalent studies will undoubtedly add valuable information concerning the dynamics of anxiety and wellbeing. The implications of these findings and the limitations of the study will be discussed. (shrink)

The Coronavirus Covid 19 pandemic has produced terrible effects in the world economy and is shaking social and political stability around the world. The world of sport has obviously been severely affected by the pandemic, as authorities progressively canceled all level of competitions, including the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. In Spain, the initial government-lockdown closed the Sports High-performance Centers, and many other sports facilities. In order to support athlete's health and performance at crises like these, an online questionnaire named (...) RECOVID-19, was designed to assess how athletes were living their lives during such periods of home confinement. The main purpose of the questionnaire was to assess the impact of prolongued confinement on athlete's psychological, emotional, and behavioral performance. One thousand, two hundred forty-eight athletes participated in the survey. They had the fllowing characteristics:, who compete at National and International level. Results showed that during the confinement period, those athletes who lacked motivation reported a higher level of stressful thoughts, more behavioral problems, and greater emotional upheaval. However, those athletes who accepted confinement measures as necessary, and were in favor of respecting the rules of social isolation, fostered positive emotional states such as feelings of friendship. In addition, the availability of some sport equipment together with the ability to continue some training, were protective factors against emotional stress, lack of motivation and behavioral problems; and they were associated with greater respect for, and adherence to, confinement rules. Gender differences, tested by multigroup analysis, revealed that coping activities were more often associated to negative emotional states among women, whereas the ongoing availability of training information and future conditions were equally protective factors for both genders. This study also showed that receiving coaching, support and completing frequent training routines seem to be valuable tools to prevent or reduce some of the harmful effects of isolation on athlete's emotional well-being. The conclusions derived from this research would possibly help sport authorities to design supporting policies and plans to support athletes and trainers in future disruptive health crises. (shrink)

Comment penser l'effort aujourd'hui? Le thème peut sembler à la fois banal et faussement suranné. Banal, d'une part, parce que l'effort est, pour paraphraser Descartes, "la chose du monde la mieux partagée". Depuis toujours, nous sommes enjoints à "faire des efforts", dans des domaines très variés de l'existence, pour apprendre à marcher ou faire du vélo, à l'école, dans nos relations avec autrui puis, plus tard, pour mener à bien des études et une vie professionnelle, trouver le bonheur dans notre (...) vie privée et surmonter les "coups durs" qui sont le lot de chacun. Banal aussi, parce que, tel un marronnier des propos de comptoir, le thème est dans l'actualité, lorsqu'il s'agit de déplorer le "manque d'efforts" des "jeunes générations" ou la perte du "goût de l'effort", à l'école notamment. Ainsi, l'effort serait requis partout, et pourtant perdu, omniprésent dans les discours et si difficile à définir, si difficile à saisir aussi dans les actes. De quoi parle-t-on, de l'effort physique, démonstratif, ou de l'effort intellectuel, intériorisé, impalpable, mais dont les neurosciences visent à montrer la teneur somatique? (shrink)

Stengers recovers the idea of 'common sense' as a meeting place-a commons-where opposed ideas of science and humanistic inquiry can engage one another and help to move society forward. Her reconciliation of science and philosophy is especially urgent today-when climate disaster looms all around us, when the values of what we thought of as civilization and modernity are discredited, and when expertise of any kind is under attack.

In den Mittelpunkt der Schrift stellt Nicolaus Cusanus die Figur eines Laien (idiota), der – als Gegenpol zum universitär ausgebildeten Philosophen – den einfachen Ungebildeten und damit die wahre Weisheit repräsentiert, die dem Geist des Menschen und seinen Potentialen entspricht. Statt auf Bücherwissen und Autoritäten setzt er auf das eigene Philosophieren, das immer neu nach der Wahrheit fragt. Der Laie verkörpert die cusanische Philosophie in besonderem Maße: Fundamentale anthropologische, erkenntnistheoretische und metaphysische Bestimmungen des Cusanus finden sich hier in einer Gestalt (...) vereint. Aus dem Wissen heraus, dass menschliches Erkennen immer nur mutmaßend sein kann, geht es um das rechte kritische Verhältnis zu den eigenen Erkenntnismöglichkeiten. An der Figur des Laien macht Cusanus deutlich, dass dies keineswegs in einen erkenntnistheoretischen Skeptizismus führt, der die Möglichkeit sicheren Wissens von vornherein für nicht erreichbar und infolgedessen alle Erkenntnisbemühungen für überflüssig hält, sondern dass darin das unendliche und dynamische Potential des Menschen zum Ausdruck kommt, sich unermüdlich an die Wahrheit anzunähern. In der Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie vor Kant spielt "Der Laie über den Geist" somit eine fundamentale Rolle. (shrink)

Ce livre présente les contributions aux "Journées Alain Badiou" qui se sont déroulées à Paris les 22, 23 et 24 octobre 2010. L'événement a permis la rencontre des paroles et des types de discours les plus divers autour d'Alain Badiou et de son oeuvre. Celle-ci fut analysée et discutée du point de vue de ses dimensions philosophique, logique, mathématique, politique, romanesque, théâtrale, poétique, linguistique, biographique... Le philosophe y prononça sa belle conférence : "La relation énigmatique entre philosophie et politique".

Alfred North Whitehead called Isabel Scribner Stearns the most talented female philosopher in America. Drawing on Whitehead and her other teachers, Paul Weiss, C.I. Lewis, H.H. Price, and Grace de Laguna, as well as the traditions of ancient Greek philosophy, Continental Rationalism, German Idealism, and American Pragmatism, Stearns has created an epistemologically and logically sound systematic account of the ontology of individuation and the relational genesis and endurance of individual beings.

Providing a compelling scholarly statement about the interrelation and pliability of values in the life sciences, medicine and health care, this volume aims to aid our understanding of the roles of power, knowledge production and economic action in the heavily scientised and economised areas of life science and medicine.

This book details how quantification can serve both as evidence and as an instrument of government, whether when dealing with statistics on employment, occupational health and economic governance, or when developing public management or target-driven policies. In the process, it presents a thought-provoking homage to Alain Desrosières, who pioneered ways to study large numbers and the politics underlying them. It opens with a summary of Desrosières's contributions to the field in which several generations of researchers detail how this statistician and (...) historian profoundly influenced them. This tribute, based on personal testimonies, bears witness to the vitality of the school of thought and analytical framework Desrosières initiated. Next, a collection of essays explores the statistical argument in the neoliberal era, examining issues such as counting the homeless in Europe, measuring the performance of public services, and quantifying the effects of public action on the unemployed in France. The third part details the uses of quantification. It reveals that although statistics are frequently used to the advantage of those in power, they can also play a vital role in challenging and resisting both the conventions underlying the measurements as well as the measurements themselves.Featuring the work of economists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and statisticians, this title provides readers with a thoughtful look at an influential figure in the history of statistics. It also shows how statistics are used to direct public policy, the degree of conflict that is possible in their production, and the disputes that can develop around their uses. (shrink)

La critique s'est longuement intéressée à l'hétérogénéité comme une caractéristique de certaines formes d'expression littéraires ou artistiques, plus particulièrement dans une modernité vouée au composite. Privilégiant par le titre proposé le concept d'"hétérogène", les articles réunis dans cet ouvrage interrogent sa pertinence pour l'étude des littératures de langue française, en prenant en compte son articulation avec ce qui est supposé ou donné comme homogène. Le mot "hétérogène" est ainsi moins entendu en ce qu'il qualifie les différents éléments d'un ensemble aptes (...) à produire des formes hybrides qu'en ce qu'il donne à voir une relation dynamique avec ce que la langue et la société instituent comme homogène. Ainsi, les approches proposées dans cet ouvrage permettent de rendre compte de la façon dont le texte littéraire participe d'une pensée critique qui met en question les discours dominants, tant au niveau des représentations sociales que des formes esthétiques, et qui interroge de ce fait nos propres outils d'analyse. (shrink)

Les derniers travaux de Michel Foucault peuvent être appréhendés comme une nouvelle grille de lecture pour l'analyse des pratiques d'écriture personnelle dont peut se saisir la théorie littéraire. Dans ses cours au Collège de France sur les pratiques de soi antiques, Michel Foucault ébauche une généalogie de l'écriture de soi : celle-ci ne vise pas à découvrir ce qui est "intus et in cute" comme l'annonçait Rousseau en exergue des Confessions, mais à élaborer un sujet éthique par l'ascèse, par l'exercice (...) de l'écriture. La pratique de l'écriture personnelle, dès lors qu'elle renonce au psychologique, à une "histoire de la personnalité" (Philippe Lejeune) et s'ouvre à une altérité, devient une "pratique de liberté" (Michel Foucault). Face à une épreuve existentielle (le deuil, la maladie), face aux agressions de l'histoire, face à un contexte sociopolitique répressif, le récit de soi en tant que pratique éthique de subjectivation offre un cheminement vers une émancipation que la littérature peut aussi aider à interpréter. Le récit de soi requiert dès lors une lecture éthique et convoque, nécessairement, pour son analyse, la littérature et la philosophie. (shrink)

Should emotions play a role in our decisions, even if they are "just feelings" and not necessarily "imbued with reason" or cognitively penetrated? The author shows that such basic feelings as aversion and attraction can be important normative guides by disrupting engrained habits and beliefs, enabling us to reconsider our ways, which is important due to the ever-changing nature of ethical demands on us. Therefore, these feelings should guide our decisions, even if they are not cognitive. This book fi lls (...) a gap in the philosophy of emotions, ethics, and virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Habermas est un des philosophes contemporains vivants les plus célèbres. Cet héritier de l'Ecole de Francfort a participé aux grandes controverses du XXe siècle, celle opposant Adorno à Popper, mais aussi à la querelle des historiens allemands. L'oeuvre abondante d'Habermas croise morale, sociologie, politique et épistémologie. Isabelle Aubert en découvre la profonde unité dans l'intersubjectivité, cette notion que l'on trouve chez Fichte et Husserl mais qu'Habermas s'est efforcé de détourner. Il ne s'agit pas d'éliminer toute forme de subjectivité mais de (...) déplacer la perspective sur le social en mettant au centre une notion qui appréhende la réalité de sujets situés et en relation. Ce modèle alternatif d'intelligibilité s'effectue sur le mode de la participation au dialogue, de l'échange de paroles et non selon le mode de l'observation entre un pôle de représentation et un environnement extérieur. Ainsi naît une nouvelle anthropologie sociale fonctionnelle, à l'écart du mouvement post-moderne. (shrink)

In Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, first published in French in 2006 and appearing here in English for the first time, Isabelle Stengers experiments with the possibility of addressing modern practices not as a block but through the way they diverge from each other. Drawing on thinkers ranging from Dewey to Deleuze, she develops what she calls an "ecology of practices" into a capacious and heterogeneous perspective that is inclusive of cultural and political forces but not reducible to them. Stengers (...) first advocates for an approach to sciences that would emphasize the way each should be situated by the kind of relationship demanded by what it attempts to address. This approach turns away from the disabling scientific/nonscientific binary-like the opposition between the neutrino and Virgin Mary. An ecology of practices stimulates instead an appetite for thinking reality not as an arbiter but as what we can relate with through the generation of diverging concerns and obligations. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

This study explores how in science fiction’s novels myths are intimately linked to their ideological dimension and criticism. It begins with a mythocritical analysis that leads to a mythoanalysis in order to understand how those myths and the big issues of the accelerating technoscientific progress in the 20th and 21th centuries are linked. My approach is based on the restricted example of Dan Simmons’ science fiction novels: by studying the myths he rewrites, I will show that those myths are representing (...) how technoscience can have an influence on history, on the development of humanity and on the issue of ethics. (shrink)