Neste artigo, abordarei, por meio da Teoria Crítica, o processo de construção do trabalho do professor de Educação Infantil no Brasil, fazendo um breve histórico da educação infantil, que tem seu início marcado pelo assistencialismo. Também será abordada a enorme feminilização dessa categoria profissional, que permanece muito forte, por meio do mito da “mãe cuidadora”. Por todo esse histórico, a desvalorização do professor de Educação Infantil é maior do que de professores de outros segmentos. A recente profissionalização e a rotina (...) de trabalho automatizada contribuem para que tal prática pouco tenha sido alterada. O objetivo desta pesquisa é estudar como esses fenômenos e principalmente a profissionalização dos professores de educação infantil contribuem para tornar mais alienado o trabalho em creches e pré-escolas – que às vezes, como veremos, sequer é visto como trabalho. (shrink)

In the middle of 2020, Buddhism in Thailand looked quite different than it had just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monasteries had closed their doors to the public, and monastic ordinations ceased. The institution of Thai Buddhism stayed relevant, however, largely by promoting a quite unusual practice. In addition to the typical religious activity of lay followers offering food to monks, and receiving merit from the monks in return, the path that food traveled during the pandemic also turned the other (...) way around. In a curious series of events, monks at monasteries throughout the country began to hand out food to lay Buddhist followers. In a religious landscape with a very codified system of exchange, this was spiritually precarious: if monks give out food, where does the merit lie, and what are the karmic results? To answer this, I examine attitudes about monks’ activities, drawing on interviews conducted in Chiang Mai in 2021, and relationships to textual accounts of nutrients and healing across Buddhist history. Rather than signifying a break from spiritual relationships, I argue that this a-typical movement during the pandemic helps to highlight the continuing importance of monastic hope within interpersonal affective economies of Thai Buddhist practice. (shrink)

La danse bénéficie indirectement de l’insistance de Danto sur la dimension cognitive de l’art. Ce qu’elle gagne d’un côté risque toutefois d’être perdu de l’autre. Certes, l’art chorégraphique ne se limite pas au plaisir des yeux. Mais le rôle de l’intellect dans son appréciation et sa compréhension ne doit pas évincer celui, primordial, des sensations visuelles, kinesthésiques et auditives. Saisir la signification de la danse requiert un ancrage dans l’expérience sensible ; une attention soutenue, à la fois empirique et intellectuelle, (...) ne devant pas être conçue comme l’enquête dualiste d’un esprit allant débusquer un contenu caché sous d’anecdotiques et trompeuses surfaces visibles 1. (shrink)

Résumé Depuis près de deux siècles, une même question rebondit avec une endurance tenace : l’art peut-il tout montrer sans devenir n’importe quoi, non seulement les réalités les plus triviales mais également celles qui nous répugnent, ces déchets dégradés et dégradants que nous nous efforçons en permanence d’éviter? Si le xix e siècle a introduit la laideur et l’immondice dans le champ de la représentation artistique, le xx e a poussé l’esthétique critique jusqu’à exposer l’immonde dans sa crudité abrupte, dénervant (...) sans pitié les ressorts du visible et du supportable, détraquant les ressorts du regard pour donner à voir ses stratégies obscurantistes. (shrink)

A CasaDuna – Centro de arte, pesquisa e memória de Atafona é uma residência de arte sediada na praia de Atafona localizada no município de São João da Barra, litoral norte do estado do Rio de Janeiro. A região, próxima ao delta do rio Paraíba do Sul, sofre há mais de cinquenta anos um intenso processo de erosão costeira. Pretendemos expor relatos de uma experiência interdisciplinar a partir de uma metodologia de pesquisa-ação, em produções de arte contemporânea que operem com (...) o agenciamento contextual. Defendemos que existe uma dimensão ética, estética e política ao se propor a trabalhar com o ambiente, principalmente no que concerne à possibilidade de desenvolver ações que afetem imaginários e epistemologias na relação com o território. Esses serão apontamentos sobre o desenvolvimento de um trabalho de mediação pedagógica e curadoria em uma residência artística com arte ambiental em um contexto erosivo. (shrink)

resumo: A crítica de Hannah Arendt a Karl Marx perpassa a questão da técnica. Arendt sugerira que Marx contribuíra para a elevação do animal laborans à condição humana moderna quando indicou que a emancipação humana estaria na vitória dos trabalhadores. Empreenderemos uma refutação à crítica de Arendt, indicando que Marx recusa a tradicional cisão entre vida ativa e vida contemplativa, para se opor à alienação do homem no labor, e não o contrário. Indicaremos, assim, que Marx estava mais próximo de (...) Arendt do que ela imaginava, dado ter criticado justamente a redução do homem a uma atividade que acaba por dar a todas as demais atividades uma forma meramente utilitária. Para ambos é preciso evitar empreender uma inversão hierárquica do pensar sobre o agir. abstract: Hannah Arendt’s critique to Karl Marx permeates the question of technique. Arendt suggested that Marx had contributed to elevate the animal laborans to the modern human condition when he indicated that human emancipation would lie in the workers’ victory. This text affords a rebuttal to this criticism of Arendt, indicating that Marx refuses the traditional split between vita activa and vita contemplativa in order to oppose the alienation of man to labor. We will indicate that Marx was closer to Arendt than she imagined, since he rightly criticized the reduction of man to an activity that ends up giving to all other activities a purely utilitarian form. To both of them it is necessary to avoid undertaking a hierarchical reversal of thinking over acting. (shrink)

O engajamento de Marx na filosofia tem desde o início a tentativa de um desenvolvimento mais objetivo do humanismo, na medida em que só adentra em tal disciplina em busca de uma racionalidade cujo desenvolvimento não é seccionado da transformação concreta do mundo. Tal é a sua impressão da filosofia sob a dialética hegeliana: apenas a razão filosófica se perceberia como forma não destacada da realidade, podendo realizar o humanismo que no Direito está dado como um puro idealismo. Nos Cadernos (...) Preparatórios de sua tese de doutorado intitulada Diferença entre as filosofias de Demócrito e Epicuro Marx desenvolveu uma filosofia da história alternativa à de Hegel, indicando que a democracia não sofreu ocaso na Grécia por conta do desenvolvimento da razão filosófica, mas sim por conta da vitória de uma razão filosófica que sofrera viragem para a teologia. (shrink)

L’école Millet, fondée en 1900 à Tunis, fut le premier établissement, non missionnaire et moderne dans le sens pédagogique, pour les filles indigènes dans l’Afrique du Nord française. Dans cet article, nous proposons quatre hypothèses. La première est d’ordre méthodologique : un modeste établissement pour jeunes filles peut servir à explorer des problématiques plus vastes sur les femmes et le genre de l’Etat-nation et de l’empire. Ensuite, la question de l’instruction des filles tunisiennes est traitée comme un enjeu dans des (...) conflits au niveau de l’État, ou plutôt de plusieurs États concurrents. Ces conflits ont provoqué des débats non seulement sur le rôle des femmes dans des sociétés arabo-musulmanes soumises à la France, mais aussi sur les « devoirs » des Françaises venues de métropole. Aussi est proposée l’idée que certaines colonies françaises étaient utilisées comme laboratoires expérimentant des programmes de réforme sociale. (shrink)

Telle que l’a définie Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, la polis religion est intimement liée à la formation des identités religieuse, civique et culturelle, et elle est davantage concernée par le groupe dominant que par l’individu. Cet article pose la question de savoir si le système religieux laisse de la place à des conceptions qui ne relèvent pas du groupe dominant et dans quelle mesure un tel système peut s’accomoder de la variété. En partant du culte des Tyrannoctones à Athènes, il s’agit de (...) montrer que ce culte offre une version spécifique de la mise à terre du tyran et de l’établissement de la démocratie qui rencontre les besoins de la cité. Cette version n’a pas empêché d’autres de circuler, mais ces traditions alternatives ne pouvaient pas entrer indéfiniment en compétition avec la cité et elles se sont dès lors éteintes. Au total, la polis religion peut inclure des voix multiples, mais les groupes qui les portent doivent sans cesse lutter contre les influences de la version dominante, qui est celle de la cité. (shrink)

Où est le temps, existe-t-il encore? Je vous propose d'ouvrir la question du TEMPS. Jamais le temps n'a été aussi compact, uniformisé, fermé comme il l'est désormais à la surface globalisée de l'hyperconnexion. Mais jamais non plus il n'a été aussi ouvert et multiple : incessant battement d'avènements, amorces, émergences, éclosions perpétuelles. Je retrouve ici des expériences singulières : dans l'érotisme maternel et dans celui de la foi religieuse, j'ose parier sur la culture européenne et sur l'humanisme à refonder, je (...) découvre un destin de la psychanalyse en terre d'Islam et en Chine. Je n'ai pas de réponses toutes faites et n'en donne pas une fois pour toutes. Je déplie des vérités hic et nunc telles que je les vis et les pense. Je vous présente mes compagnons de route : Antigone et Philippe Sollers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Jacques Lacan, Jackson Pollock et Emile Benveniste ; Simone de Beauvoir et Thérèse d'Avila. Un livre sur la Vérité découverte par le Temps? Plutôt une expérience du temps scandée par des événements, des étonnements, rebonds de surprises et de renaissances. (shrink)

O teórico Michael Löwy afirmou que o campo científico é social e politicamente condicionado, não sendo viável estabelecer um distanciamento entre ciência e ideologia. No atual momento, é possível visualizar a clareza dessa afirmação, na medida em que o campo científico se demonstra obstruído diante do cenário político vivenciado. O pensamento crítico e problematizador é tido como um perigo eminente perante a conjuntura conservadora e antidemocrática que se acentua. Com isso, a produção de pensamento crítico e o posicionamento de resistência, (...) diante da formação conservadora, assume a denominação de doutrinação, e o debate gerador de reflexão tende a ser calado, sobretudo se não confirmar a lógica dominante. Ao compreendermos a necessidade de reafirmar o teor questionador da produção de conhecimento, como elemento central na formação social, entende-se sua relevância na construção de um caminho democrático do pensamento social. Neste trabalho, buscamos levantar reflexões a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica, procurando entender produção de conhecimento em um período de anti-intelectualismo. Em contraposição ao conceito positivista de neutralidade do conhecimento, pretende-se investigar a relação dialética entre representação política e formação intelectual. Nossa concepção de pesquisa científica situa-se em um campo que não é neutro, mas permeado de diferentes concepções de mundo, de ser humano e de conhecimento, bem como engendrada por relações que ocorrem entre sujeitos, que propendem a produzir conhecimentos científicos a partir do seu lugar social, um lugar suficientemente privilegiado. Este trabalho se propõe examinar essas questões, ao referenciar a formação social como aspecto determinante na produção de conhecimento. Aponta-se à figura do intelectual orgânico como elemento essencial para pensar essa questão, ao salientar a contraposição ao retrocesso científico imposto no último período e a valorização do pensamento crítico, mais do que nunca como pensamento que resiste no campo da pesquisa e diante do sistema produtivista que o concebe. (shrink)

O presente artigo toma como objeto de análise cadernos produzidos por Romana Bragatti, entre os anos de 1934 a 1936, estudante do Curso Complementar do Colégio São José, localizado em Caxias do Sul/RS. O estudo investiga esses suportes de escrita, suas materialidades e enunciados, na tentativa de compreender os usos dos artefatos e os discursos constitutivos da formação docente. Como respaldo teórico, são referenciados António Viñao Frago, Castillo Gómez e Jean Hébrard, autores que trabalham com a história da cultura escrita, (...) exploram aspectos gráficos, apontam para caminhos metodológicos e sinalizam possibilidades de produção historiográfica em torno desses dispositivos. Por meio desses aportes, a pesquisa busca contribuir com a análise desses artefatos da cultura escolar e expressar caminhos de investigação para quem se arrisca a desenvolver pesquisas inscritas nessas perspectivas. Como escrituras disciplinadas, cadernos escolares, em tese, não permitem a expressão da espontaneidade dos escreventes, entretanto, alguns registros produzidos pela aluna, aparentemente sutis, realçam transgressões sobre esse material e sobre o processo de escolarização que vivenciava, possibilitando perceber marcas da autora. Os assuntos que comparecem nesses cadernos versam sobre temas de “História Universal” e de “Pedagogia”, saberes considerados importantes para a formação das estudantes, apresentados descritivamente. Especialmente o Caderno de Pedagogia, para além da descrição, manifesta também um caráter explicativo/prescritivo, constituindo-se, supostamente, em referência de leitura, notadamente de orientação teórica e metodológica. Ao examiná-los, observa-se uma espécie de mimetização dos manuais escolares vigentes. Infere-se que as alunas copiavam textos desses manuais, que eram ditados ou exibidos no quadro-negro pelo professor, considerando o pouco acesso aos livros naquela temporalidade. Em relação ao Caderno de Pedagogia, o que mais se destaca são, por um lado, indicativos de códigos de conduta moral considerados adequados à professora, em conformidade ao processo de feminilização da docência naquele contexto. Por outro, percebem-se indícios de que a futura professora esteve em contato com o escolanovismo, que instituía a Pedagogia em bases científicas, enfatizando a importância da Psicologia Experimental. Palavras-chave : Cadernos escolares. Cultura escrita. Escola Nova. (shrink)

O presente artigo toma como objeto de análise cadernos produzidos por Romana Bragatti, entre os anos de 1934 a 1936, estudante do Curso Complementar do Colégio São José, localizado em Caxias do Sul/RS. O estudo investiga esses suportes de escrita, suas materialidades e enunciados, na tentativa de compreender os usos dos artefatos e os discursos constitutivos da formação docente. Como respaldo teórico, são referenciados António Viñao Frago, Castillo Gómez e Jean Hébrard, autores que trabalham com a história da cultura escrita, (...) exploram aspectos gráficos, apontam para caminhos metodológicos e sinalizam possibilidades de produção historiográfica em torno desses dispositivos. Por meio desses aportes, a pesquisa busca contribuir com a análise desses artefatos da cultura escolar e expressar caminhos de investigação para quem se arrisca a desenvolver pesquisas inscritas nessas perspectivas. Como escrituras disciplinadas, cadernos escolares, em tese, não permitem a expressão da espontaneidade dos escreventes, entretanto, alguns registros produzidos pela aluna, aparentemente sutis, realçam transgressões sobre esse material e sobre o processo de escolarização que vivenciava, possibilitando perceber marcas da autora. Os assuntos que comparecem nesses cadernos versam sobre temas de “História Universal” e de “Pedagogia”, saberes considerados importantes para a formação das estudantes, apresentados descritivamente. Especialmente o Caderno de Pedagogia, para além da descrição, manifesta também um caráter explicativo/prescritivo, constituindo-se, supostamente, em referência de leitura, notadamente de orientação teórica e metodológica. Ao examiná-los, observa-se uma espécie de mimetização dos manuais escolares vigentes. Infere-se que as alunas copiavam textos desses manuais, que eram ditados ou exibidos no quadro-negro pelo professor, considerando o pouco acesso aos livros naquela temporalidade. Em relação ao Caderno de Pedagogia, o que mais se destaca são, por um lado, indicativos de códigos de conduta moral considerados adequados à professora, em conformidade ao processo de feminilização da docência naquele contexto. Por outro, percebem-se indícios de que a futura professora esteve em contato com o escolanovismo, que instituía a Pedagogia em bases científicas, enfatizando a importância da Psicologia Experimental. Palavras-chave : Cadernos escolares. Cultura escrita. Escola Nova. (shrink)

Há meses a população mundial enfrenta a pandemia causada pelo COVID-19, uma situação ímpar e talvez a mais desafiadora que rememoramos. Para a maioria dos sujeitos, esta crise junta-se às demais emergências e reforça injustiças, violências, discriminações e sofrimento, uma vez que são considerados _invisíveis_ e sobrevivem em espaços desprovidos de higiene, saúde, educação e segurança e repletos de outras manifestações de _renúncia_ e _impossibilidade_. Considerando que a própria estrutura social é a responsável por chegarmos onde estamos, precisamos nos contrapor (...) à inconsciência de uma realidade que se mostra normativa e imutável, apreendendo-a em perspectivas críticas e transformadoras. Dessa forma, este texto parte da seguinte problematização: quais alternativas poderemos vislumbrar no pós-pandemia, visto que as desigualdades e as injustiças aumentam? Delineamos prognósticos do tempo presente a partir do diálogo entre Adorno e Horkheimer (2006) e Santos (2007), utilizando como categorias de análise: racionalidade instrumental, pensamento abissal, pensamento pós-abissal e educação emancipatória. A racionalidade tornou-se o cânon da sociedade esclarecida, fundamentando as estruturas e relações sociais em uma percepção universal, totalitária e homogênea, que despreza e invisibiliza as diferenças. Defendemos uma educação para a contestação, a inquietude e a resistência, que desvele e problematize as linhas abissais a fim de pensarmos e agirmos para além delas, vislumbrando alternativas, novas práticas e perspectivas solidárias e sustentáveis, pois quaisquer ideais de progresso e desenvolvimento serão ilusórios enquanto persistirem a invisibilidade “do outro lado da linha”. A reflexão da realidade, em suas estruturas históricas e sociais, se efetiva como possibilidade de novos caminhos para a compreensão dos obstáculos e potencialidades emancipatórias. (shrink)

Este artigo faz um traçado temporal/metodológico na obra de Michel Foucault, a partir dos eixos teórico-metodológicos da arqueologia e da genealogia e busca demonstrar que a passagem de um eixo para outro significa, igualmente, uma alteração de método e de objeto de pesquisa. Todavia a dimensão arqueológica não é posta de lado, trata-se, antes, de uma expansão da crítica, pois essa se mantém de forma contundente, apesar de o tipo de questão metodológica mudar, e a análise passar a centrar-se, então, (...) na correlação entre poder e saber. A metodologia utilizada para a escolha das obras referenciadas no presente artigo deu-se a partir da seleção de passagens, no conjunto dos textos, que tratam dos temas abordados e que corroboram os argumentos propostos. Visa, ainda, a detalhar os elementos metodológicos da genealogia, apresentando o seu potencial crítico, a partir do entendimento de que a crítica genealógica é local, contingente, provisória; é um empreendimento para libertar os saberes históricos; é preciso ultrapassar/criticar uma tradição que defende que só há saber onde/quando se suspendem as relações de poder. Por fim, quando se define o exercício de poder, como um modo de ação sobre a ação dos outros, quando o caracteriza pelo governo dos homens, por uns ou outros, no sentido mais lato dessa palavra, inclui-se um elemento fundamental: a liberdade. O poder só se exerce sobre sujeitos livres e enquanto são livres – a relação de poder e a insubmissão da liberdade não podem ser separadas. A genealogia instaura uma ontologia histórica, e o que se propõe é um êthos, uma vida filosófica em que a crítica do que somos é a análise histórica dos limites que nos são colocadas e a experiência da sua transgressão possível. Vida que procura promover e dar forma à impaciência da liberdade, segundo o princípio da autonomia. Palavras-chave: Genealogia. Poder. Crítica. Liberdade. Michel Foucault. (shrink)

À travers le cas de Júlia Rajk (1914-1981), veuve du puissant ministre de l’Intérieur Laslo Rajk exécuté en 1949 à l’issue du premier grand procès en Hongrie, l’article explore la complexité de la construction des subjectivités politiques des femmes sous le communisme. Il soutient l’idée que ce n’est pas la participation à l’organisation officielle des femmes mais l’opposition à cette dernière qui conduit à des formes genrées de résistance.

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to (...) be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

Offers a fundamental reexamination of Plato's ethical thought, highlighting the differences between ancient & modern assumptions & stressing the need to be ...

How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.

Julia Annas offers a new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. She argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of the kind we find in someone exercising an everyday practical skill, such as farming, building, or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing.

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse.".

Theories of reasons and other normativia can seem to lead ineluctably to a tragic dilemma. They can be personal but parochial if they locate reasons in features of the point of view of actual people. Or they can be objective but alien if they take reasons to be mind-independent fixtures of the universe. Kantian constructivism tries to offer the best of both worlds: an account of normative authority anchored in the evaluative perspectives of actual agents but refined by a procedure (...) that guarantees certain principles, like the moral law, will have universal and unconditional authority. This chapter considers motivations for such a view and chronicles the intrepid efforts of its adherents to make good on this guarantee - to show that the structure of practical reason commits reasoners to morality. -/- . (shrink)

ABSTRACT I propose a division of the literature on natural kinds into metaphysical worries, semantic worries, and methodological worries. I argue that the latter set of worries, which concern how classification influences scientific practices, should occupy centre stage in philosophy of science discussions about natural kinds. I apply this methodological framework to the problems of classifying chemical species and nanomaterials. I show that classification in nanoscience differs from classification in chemistry because the latter relies heavily on compositional identity, whereas the (...) former must consider additional properties, namely, size, shape, and surface chemistry. I use this difference to argue for a scale-dependent theory of scientific classification. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Methodological Problem of Kinds _3_ Chemical Kindhood: Reactivity, Microstructure, and the Structure–Property Paradigm _4_ Scale-Dependence and Nanoscale Kinds _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

There are many cases in which people collectively cause some morally significant outcome (such as a harmful or beneficial outcome) but no individual act seems to make a difference. The problem in such cases is that it seems each person can argue, ‘it makes no difference whether or not I do X, so I have no reason to do it.’ The challenge is to say where this argument goes wrong. My approach begins from the observation that underlying the problem and (...) motivating the typical responses to it is a standard, intuitive assumption. The assumption is that if an act will not make a difference with respect to an outcome, then it cannot play a sig- nificant, non-superfluous role in bringing that outcome about. In other words, helping to bring about an outcome requires making a difference. I argue that the key to solving the problem is to reject this assumption. I develop an account of what it is to help to bring about an outcome, where this does not require making a difference, and I use this explain our reasons for action in the problem cases. This account also yields an error theory that explains why the standard assumption is so tempting, even though it is mistaken. (shrink)

This interpretive introduction provides unique insight into Plato's Republic. Stressing Plato's desire to stimulate philosophical thinking in his readers, Julia Annas here demonstrates the coherence of his main moral argument on the nature of justice, and expounds related concepts of education, human motivation, knowledge and understanding. In a clear systematic fashion, this book shows that modern moral philosophy still has much to learn from Plato's attempt to move the focus from questions of what acts the just person ought to (...) perform to the more profound questions of what sort of person the just person ought to be. (shrink)

Ancient ethical theories, based on the notions of virtue and happiness, have struck many as an attractive alternative to modern theories. But we cannot find out whether this is true until we understand ancient ethics--and to do this we need to examine the basic structure of ancient ethical theory, not just the details of one or two theories. In this book, Annas brings together the results of a wide-ranging study of ancient ethical philosophy and presents it in a way that (...) is easily accessible to anyone with an interest in ancient or modern ethics. She examines the fundamental notions of happiness and virtue, the role of nature in ethical justification and the relation between concern for self and concern for others. Her careful examination of the ancient debates and arguments shows that many widespread assumptions about ancient ethics are quite mistaken. Ancient ethical theories are not egoistic, and do not depend for their acceptance on metaphysical theories of a teleological kind. Most centrally, they are recognizably theories of morality, and the ancient disputes about the place of virtue in happiness can be seen as akin to modern disputes about the demands of morality. (shrink)

Edited by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader is a unique and accessible introduction to the richness of ancient philosophy. Featuring a topical--as opposed to chronological--organization, this text introduces students to the wide range of approaches and traditions in ancient philosophy. In each section Annas presents the ancient debates on a particular philosophical topic, drawing on a greater diversity of ancient sources than a chronological approach allows. The book is divided (...) into six sections: Fate and Freedom; Reason and Emotion; Knowledge, Belief, and Skepticism; Metaphysical Questions; How Should You Live?; and Society and the State. Annas includes a generous selection of the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. She also includes selections from less familiar philosophers and from authors in whose works philosophical issues arise, such as poets, medical writers, historians, and Jewish and Christian writers. The volume features biographical sketches of the philosophers, a timeline, and short discussions of the major movements in ancient philosophy. An excellent text for courses in ancient philosophy and history of philosophy, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader will also be of interest to scholars and general readers. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the notion of the "stranger" -the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own- as well as the notion of strangeness within the self -a person's deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self. Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle (...) Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. She discusses the legal status of foreigners throughout history, gaining perspective on our own civilization. Her insights into the problems of nationality, particularly in France are more timely and relevant in an increasingly integrated and fractious world. (shrink)

Beyond Contractual Morality looks at current debates over the meaning of liberalism by reexamining their roots in eighteenth-century texts, which demonstrate ...

Her analysis deals with the role of narcissism and idealization in the formation of a love object. She accounts for the role of the death drive by coining the term "love/hate.".

Early philosophical accounts of explanation mistook the function of boundary conditions for that of contingent facts. I diagnose where this misunderstanding arose and establish that it persists. I...

Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical insight. Centering on the theme of female genius, _Hannah Arendt_ emphasizes three features of the philosopher's work. First, by exploring Arendt's critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt's commitment to recounting (...) lives and narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt's perspective on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the "banality of evil." Finally, the biography assesses Arendt's intellectual journey, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life. Drawing on fragments of Arendt's most intimate correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother's "Unser Kind" (a diary tracking Hannah's formative years), and passages from Arendt's philosophical writings, Kristeva presents a luminous story. With a thorough thematic index and bibliographical references, _Hannah Arendt_ is a major breakthrough in the understanding of an essential thinker. (shrink)

In _Black Sun_, Julia Kristeva addresses the subject of melancholia, examining this phenomenon in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart. In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting (...) "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. _Black Sun_ takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated. (shrink)

Wie lassen sich Banalität, Trivialität und Kitsch voneinander unterscheiden und welche Rolle spielen sie für Kunst und Literatur? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen betrachtet Julia Genz Banalität, Trivialität und Kitsch als Bestandteile von Diskursen, in denen Zugänglichkeit bewertet wird. Zugänglichkeit ist dabei nicht von vornherein gegeben, sondern muss diskursiv erst hergestellt werden. Durch die Ausdifferenzierung in soziale, kognitive und emotionale Zugänglichkeit lassen sich die drei bislang nicht überzeugend getrennten Bereiche voneinander abgrenzen und mit ihren Gegenpolen Exklusivität, Komplexität und Kunst in (...) ein umfassendes Ästhetikmodell integrieren. (shrink)

It seems to be a humdrum fact of human agency that we act on intentions or decisions that we have made at an earlier time. At breakfast, you look at the Taco Hut menu online and decide that later today you’ll have one of their avocado burritos for lunch. You’re at your desk and you hear the church bells ring the noon hour. You get up, walk to Taco Hut, and order the burrito as planned. As mundane as this sort (...) of scenario might seem to be, philosophers have raised a problem in understanding it. If you are simply abiding by this morning’s decision, how are you acting autonomously? Your earlier self seems to be calling the shots; if you are just acting accordingly, without thinking through it or in some other way trying to ensure that the past decision conforms to your present standpoint, it is not clear how this amounts to an exercise of your present autonomous agency. It seems, rather, that your earlier self has succeeded in slaving you to her own purposes. She was the one who wanted (intended, judged it to be good, etc.) to have an avocado burrito. In simply following through, your current self seems to be just an automaton performing the commands left behind by your former self. Of course, you might not allow yourself to be shackled by your earlier self. You might refuse to follow anything but your own present judgments: you will only go to Taco Hut if this is what you judge you should do right now, and once at Taco Hut you will only eat the avocado burrito if that is what you want to eat once there. But if this is the way you generally operate, this seems to block your ability to make effective future-directed decisions. The puzzle, then, is one of explaining how the future self can do the bidding of her past self without losing her autonomy. We call this “the Problem of Diachronic Autonomy.” Philosophers raising this problem take it to show that there must be reasons or rational requirements to follow-through with our past decisions. According to these philosophers, we can only make sense of our diachronic autonomy if our past decisions put rational pressure on us to follow through. We argue that there is no Problem of Diachronic Autonomy. There is, in other words, no puzzling situation that needs explaining. Consequently, there is no need coming from this purported puzzle to think that our future-directed decisions generate reasons or rational requirements to follow through. The correct view of our diachronic autonomy is the “naïve” one: the “future self” can do the bidding of the “past self” without giving up its autonomy because, very simply, the past self is the same agent as the future self. I am acting autonomously when I get the avocado burrito, because I was the one who decided to get the burrito. I am acting on my own freely-formed decision. (shrink)

This paper discusses the inefficacy problem that arises in contexts of “collective harm.‘ These are contexts in which by acting in a certain sort of way, people collectively cause harm, or fail to prevent it, but no individual act of the relevant sort seems to itself make a difference. The inefficacy problem is that if acting in the relevant way won’t make a difference, it’s unclear why it would be wrong. Each individual can argue, “things will be just as bad (...) whether or not I act in this way, so there’s no point in doing otherwise.‘ The goal of this paper is to give an overview of some of the main responses available to the problem and to highlight central issues that arise for each type of response. In the final section, I explain what I take to be the most promising strategy and discuss the form that this strategy should take. (shrink)

The book provides a commentary on Plato's Republic which encourages the reader to be stimulated to philosophical thinking by Plato's wide-ranging discussions.

In this book, Julia Ching offers a survey of over 4,000 years of Chinese civilization through an examination of the relationship between kingship and mysticism. She investigates the sage-king myth and ideal, arguing that institutions of kingship were bound up with cultivation of trance states and communication with spirits. Over time, the sage-king myth became a model for the actual ruler. As a paradigm, it was also appropriated by private individuals who strove for wisdom without becoming kings. As the (...) Confucian tradition interacted with the Taoist and the Buddhist, the religious character of spiritual and mystical cultivation became more pronounced. But the sage-king idea continued, promoting expectations of benevolent despotism rather than democratization in Chinese civilization. (shrink)

Julia Markovits develops a desire-based, internalist account of what normative reasons are--an account which is compatible with the idea that moral reasons can apply to all of us, regardless of our desires. She builds on Kant's formula of humanity to defend universal moral reasons, and addresses the age-old question of why we should be moral.

This paper investigates the norm of presupposition, as one pervasive type of indirect speech act. It argues against the view that sees presuppositions as an indirect counterpart of the direct speech act of assertion and proposes instead that they are much more similar to the direct speech act of assumption. More concretely, it suggests that the norm that governs presuppositions is not an epistemic or doxastic attitude such as knowledge, justified belief, or mere belief; it's a practical attitude, most plausibly (...) the attitude of rational acceptance. This view has important ramifications well beyond debates in philosophy of language and linguistics. It affects not only our view of which speech act sequences are fine and which are off; it bears on whether presuppositions can function as testimony, whether they can be lies, and whether they are ontologically committal, thus addressing central topics in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Many people follow Grice in thinking that all conversational implicatures are cancellable. And often enough, they use this insight as a test for conversational implicatures. If you want to find out whether something is a conversational implicature, the test has it, you should ask yourself whether the thing in question is cancellable; if you find that it is not cancellable, you can infer that it is not a conversational implicature. If you find that it is cancellable, you can infer that (...) it might well be a conversational implicature and that you should now do further testing. Various philosophers and linguists have questioned the test however. Some have held that Grice's cancellability claim is subject to counterexamples and that the test is not reliable. Others have argued that even though Grice's claim can be defended against the examples in question, the test is not as informative as people have hoped. This article provides an overview of the recent discussion on the cancellability test and suggests a way forward. (shrink)

Sentences containing predicates of personal taste exhibit two striking features: whether they are true seems to lie in the eye of the beholder and whether they are true can be—and often is—subject to disagreement. In the last decade, there has been a lively debate about how to account for these two features. In this paper, I shall argue for two claims: first, I shall show that even the most promising approaches so far offered by proponents of so-called indexical contextualism fail (...) to account for the disagreement feature. They might be able to account for some disagreement data, but they have trouble accounting for two kinds of disagreement data that caused the estrangement from indexical contextualism and the migration to relativism in the first place: the denial and the retraction data. Second, I shall show that we still do not have to abandon indexical contextualism, because what I shall call the superiority approach—a new pragmatically extended version of indexical contextualism—can very well account for the data. (shrink)

This volume launches a new series of contemporary conversations about scientific classification. Most philosophical conversations about kinds have focused centrally or solely on natural kinds, that is, kinds whose existence is not dependent on the scientific process of synthesis. This volume refocuses conversations about classification on unnatural, or synthetic, kinds via extensive study of three paradigm cases of unnatural kinds: nanomaterials, stem cells, and synthetic biology.

Recently, macroscopic accounts of chemical kind individuation have been proposed as alternatives to the microstructural essentialist account advocated by Kripke, Putnam, and others. These accounts argue that individuation of chemical kinds is based on macroscopic criteria such as reactivity or thermodynamics, and they challenge the essentialism that grounds the Kripke-Putnam view. Using a variety of chemical examples, I argue that microstructure grounds these macroscopic accounts, but that this grounding need not imply essentialism. Instead, kinds are individuated on the basis of (...) similarity of reactivity between substances, and microstructure explains similarity of reactivity. (shrink)

Linguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of our time. Her writings have broken new ground in the study of the self, the mind, and the ways in which we communicate through language. Her work is unique in that it skillfully brings together psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, literature, linguistics, and philosophy. In her latest book on the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, Kristeva focuses on an intriguing new dilemma. Freud (...) and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in our contemporary "entertainment" culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom--and against what--and under what forms? Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist John Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. For Kristeva the rebellions championed by these figures--especially the political and seemingly dogmatic political commitments of Aragon and Sartre--strike the post-Cold War reader with a mixture of fascination and rejection. These theorists, according to Kristeva, are involved in a revolution against accepted notions of identity--of one's relation to others. Kristeva places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics. The book also offers an illuminating discussion of Freud's groundbreaking work on rebellion, focusing on the symbolic function of patricide in his _Totem and Taboo_ and discussing his often neglected vision of language, and underscoring its complex connection to the revolutionary drive. (shrink)

Trust and corporation (extracts) / by F.W. Maitland -- Respublica Christiana -- by J.N. Figgis -- Society and state / by R.M. MacIver -- The discredited state / by E. Barker -- Conflicting social obligations / by G.D.H. Cole -- Community is a process / by M.P. Follett -- The eruption of the group / by E. Barker -- The masses in a representative democracy / by M. Oakeshott -- The atavism of social justice / by F.A. von Hayek -- (...) Collective entities and moral rights / by V. van Dyke -- Capitalism, citizenship and community / by S. Macedo -- Liberalism and the politicization of ethnicity / by W. Kymlicka -- Are there any cultural rights? / by C. Kukathas -- The civil society argument / by M. Walzer. (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to engineer novel biological entities. The envisioned future bio-based economy builds largely on “cell factories”: organisms that have been metabolically engineered to sustainably produce substances for human ends. In this paper, we argue that synthetic biology’s goal of creating efficient production vessels for industrial applications implies a set of ontological assumptions according to which living organisms are machines. Traditionally, a machine is understood as a technological, isolated and controllable production unit consisting of parts. (...) But modified organisms, or hybrids, require us to think beyond the machine paradigm and its associated dichotomies between artificial and natural, organisms and artefacts. We ask: How may we conceptualise hybrids beyond limiting ontological categories? Our main claim is that the hybrids created by synthetic biology should be considered not as machines but as metabolic systems. We shall show how the philosophical account of metabolism can inform an ontology of hybrids that moves beyond what we call the “machine ontology”, considering that metabolism enables thinking beyond the dominant dichotomies and allows us to understand and design lifeforms in a bio-based economy. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to develop the philosophical ontology of hybrids, and second, to move synthetic biology beyond the problematically limiting view of hybrids. (shrink)