This study casts light on how the issue of childlessness is portrayed in the Bible. The discussion begins with a commentary on Michal’s story, which provides the foundation for further reflection on how childlessness was dealt with in the biblical world, especially in the situations where no miraculous divine solutions were provided. Several humanly devised solutions, acceptable and practiced in the ancient world are presented. The last part of the paper focuses on the more eschatological view of human existence provided (...) in the New Testament, showing that childlessness is a form of suffering included in the promise of redemption brought about by the inauguration of God’s kingdom. As such the response of the redeemed community is to be characterized by love and compassion. (shrink)

El 24 de marzo de 2016, por medio de la Resolución del Consejo de Ministros n. 21/2016, el Gobierno de Portugal, a través del Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Educación Superior, anunció el compromiso de la ciencia con los principios y prácticas de Ciencia abierta. La misma resolución obligó al MCTES a crear un Grupo de Trabajo Interministerial con la misión de presentar una propuesta de Plan Estratégico para la implementación de una Política Nacional de Ciencia Abierta. El grupo de (...) trabajo incluyó cuatro subgrupos: acceso abierto y datos abiertos, infraestructura y preservación digital, evaluación científica y responsabilidad social. En este artículo se presenta el conjunto de recomendaciones que el subgrupo de evaluación científica, en articulación con los demás, considera fundamentales para la implementación de prácticas de ciencia abierta, dirigidas a los agentes políticos, así como a las entidades productoras, evaluadoras y financiadoras de la ciencia. [pt] Em 24 de março de 2016, através da Resolução do Conselho de Ministros nº 21/2016, o Governo de Portugal, através do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, anunciou o compromisso da ciência com os princípios e práticas da ciência aberta. A mesma resolução mandata o MCTES a criar um grupo de trabalhointerministerial com a missão de apresentar uma proposta de Plano Estratégico para a implementação de uma Política Nacional de Ciência Aberta. O grupo de trabalho incluiu quatro subgrupos - acesso aberto e dados abertos, infraestruturas e preservação digital, avaliação científica e responsabilidade social científica. Neste artigo apresenta-se o conjunto de recomendações que o subgrupo de avaliação científica, em articulação com os restantes, entende serem fundamentais para a implementação de práticas de ciência aberta dirigindo-se a agentes políticos, bem como a entidades produtoras, avaliadoras e financiadoras de ciência. (shrink)

This article presents a study that identifies the gender dynamics prevailing in a specific context of tokenism – elementary school teaching – in which the members of an otherwise socially dominant group are proportionally scarce – men. The results contradict Kanter’s theory by showing that male elementary school teachers do not experience the tokenism dynamics. In line with Williams’ gender perspective and Amâncio’s gender symbolic asymmetry, the article finds that although men constitute a small minority in elementary education, they do (...) not lose the social advantages they generally have: on the contrary, they seem rather to gain several privileges. Indeed, the results show strong links between the tokenism dynamics and gender asymmetry, putting the token men at an advantage. Thus, tokenism seems to be limited to maintaining the gender social order. (shrink)

This text suggests that imagination is a powerful tool that can be used creatively or destructively, and argues that by becoming more conscious of how we use fantasy and are affected by it, we can learn to apply imagination more constructively.

Resenha de: OLIVEIRA, Paula Ramos. Filosofia Para a Formação da Criança. São Paulo: Pioneira Thomson Learning, 2004.

Com'è possibile pensare oggi l'esperienza religiosa? Come la si è concepita nel passato? E soprattutto quale utilità può avere questa riflessione per evitare le conseguenze, spesso difficili da gestire, sia degli atteggiamenti fondamentalistici, sia dell'indifferenza verso un possibile interesse religioso? La filosofia delle religioni risponde a tali domande in maniera rigorosa e non ideologicamente prevenuta: come accade in questo libro. Dopo una presentazione dell'attuale, complessa situazione, vengono qui esaminati i modi in cui il pensiero filosofico, nel corso della sua storia, (...) si è confrontato con i mondi religiosi, nonché i diversi modelli di filosofia delle religioni e le forme che questa disciplina assume oggi, tanto in ambito continentale quanto nel contesto analitico. Ne risulta un testo completo, che approfondisce la filosofia delle religioni nei suoi vari aspetti e mostra in che modo essa interagisca, di volta in volta, con le tendenze culturali della propria epoca. (shrink)

Arithmetical cognition is the result of enculturation. On a personal level of analysis, enculturation is a process of structured cultural learning that leads to the acquisition of evolutionarily recent, socio-culturally shaped arithmetical practices. On a sub-personal level, enculturation is realized by learning driven plasticity and learning driven bodily adaptability, which leads to the emergence of new neural circuitry and bodily action patterns. While learning driven plasticity in the case of arithmetical practices is not consistent with modularist theories of mental architecture, (...) it can be enriched by the theory of neural reuse. According to neural reuse, cerebral regions are reused to contribute to multiple neural circuits in functionally constrained ways throughout ontogeny. By hypothesis, learning driven plasticity is complemented by learning driven bodily adaptability, which suggests that there is an interesting functional relationship between finger gnosis, finger counting, and arithmetical practices. The emerging perspective on enculturated arithmetical cognition will be complemented by considerations on associated developmental and acquired disorders, namely developmental dyscalculia and acquired acalculia. The upshot is that we need to take the cerebral, extra-cerebral bodily, and socio-cultural dimensions of enculturation into account in order to arrive at a better understanding of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic conditions of arithmetical cognition. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Research in evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology and cognition strongly suggests that human organisms modify their environment through active processes of niche construction. Recently, proponents of the free-energy principle and variational active inference have argued that their approach can deepen our understanding of the reciprocal causal relationship between organisms and their niche on various scales. This paper examines the feasibility and scope of variational formalisations and conceptualisations of the organism-niche nexus with a particular focus on the extended active inference (...) account. I will draw a conceptual distinction between selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics and argue that these notions capture different causal patterns, each of which with a distinct scope. Against this background, I will analyse and discuss the extended active inference account and its strategy to integrate variational active inference with work on extended cognition. The proponents of extended active inference assume that their account can provide an explanation of selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics. However, my key claim will be that this account has the potential to elucidate the workings of organism-niche coordination dynamics, but does not adequately capture the causal patterns of selective niche construction and developmental niche construction. (shrink)

Marr’s seminal distinction between computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels of analysis has inspired research in cognitive science for more than 30 years. According to a widely-used paradigm, the modelling of cognitive processes should mainly operate on the computational level and be targeted at the idealised competence, rather than the actual performance of cognisers in a specific domain. In this paper, we explore how this paradigm can be adopted and revised to understand mathematical problem solving. The computational-level approach applies methods from (...) computational complexity theory and focuses on optimal strategies for completing cognitive tasks. However, human cognitive capacities in mathematical problem solving are essentially characterised by processes that are computationally sub-optimal, because they initially add to the computational complexity of the solutions. Yet, these solutions can be optimal for human cognisers given the acquisition and enactment of mathematical practices. Here we present diagrams and the spatial manipulation of symbols as two examples of problem solving strategies that can be computationally sub-optimal but humanly optimal. These aspects need to be taken into account when analysing competence in mathematical problem solving. Empirically informed considerations on enculturation can help identify, explore, and model the cognitive processes involved in problem solving tasks. The enculturation account of mathematical problem solving strongly suggests that computational-level analyses need to be complemented by considerations on the algorithmic and implementational levels. The emerging research strategy can help develop algorithms that model what we call enculturated cognitive optimality in an empirically plausible and ecologically valid way. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to (...) make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems. (shrink)

This book presents and discusses some of the problems that are increasingly emerging today in our relationship with food as well as in our style of eating and drinking. The first three chapters focuses on issues concerning eating, and on our relationship with what we can eat. The fourth chapter deals with the act of drinking, with our relationship with water, and discusses justice aspects in the use of water. The main idea is that the acts of eating and drinking (...) are to be understood as relationships, i.e. as a way human beings relate to other beings. As such, they can be performed ethically well or badly. Therefore, an ethics of eating and of drinking should be developed. Not only the book highlights some key ethical problems associated with the act of eating and drinking, yet it also describes some ethically sustainable solutions to them. It ends with a list of reflections, which are intended to guide our choices in the relations with food and drinks with a normative approach. Mainly written for university students and researchers in the field of applied ethics, this book will also offer an inspiring reading to a wider audience of academics and professionals. (shrink)

Richard Heersmink argues that self‐narratives are distributed across embodied organisms and their environment, given that their building blocks, autobiographical memories, are distributed. This argument faces two problems. First, it commits a fallacy of composition. Second, it relies on Marya Schechtman's narrative self‐constitution view, which is incompatible with the distributed cognition framework. To solve these problems, this article develops an alternative account of self‐narratives. On this account, we actively connect distributed autobiographical memories through distributed conversational and textual self‐narrative practices. This account (...) enhances our understanding of the memory–narrative nexus and has implications for philosophical conceptions of self. (shrink)

From modest beginnings, the conglomerate Odebrecht became one of the most relevant actors of development for Brazil and Latin America. By 2010, the conglomerate was elected the best family business in the world. Annual revenues rose from US$ 24 billion in 2008 to US$ 41.8 billion in 2014. However, by 2015 Odebrecht was in a very different situation, embroiled in a multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal. To illegally secure more than 100 projects, Odebrecht had paid approximately US$ 788 million in bribes across (...) 12 countries. Corruption was not new in Latin America, but so many powerful people facing jail time in the region certainly was. In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay a record breaking fine of US$ 2.6 billion for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. This case describes Odebrecht’s corruption scandal, touching on possible causes, the company’s handling of the criminal allegations, and probable defenses to protect against future setbacks. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the spiritual and kinship alliances between heads of an urban Santo Daime church from Rio de Janeiro and some leaders of the Yawanawá people from the Amazonian region. We suggest that these alliances involve exchanges and dialogical relationships that hold different meanings for the diverse social actors that take part in them. Further, we argue that equivocation and functional misunderstandings have an important role in these multidirectional dialogues. Based on this case study, we approach the (...) Yawanawá strategies for capturing otherness, and the insertion of the daimistas in the indigenous sociality networks. We focus especially on the Yawanawá mode of producing kin by capturing non‐indigenous people and their participation in exchange networks that encompass multiple regimes of value. From the daimista point of view, we describe these relationships using the native category of “eclecticism.” We suggest that the daimistas attempt to translate the Yawanawá shamanic knowledge and the consumption of the “forest medicines,” experiencing the performance of “becoming indigenous.”. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the spiritual and kinship alliances between heads of an urban Santo Daime church from Rio de Janeiro and some leaders of the Yawanawá people from the Amazonian region. We suggest that these alliances involve exchanges and dialogical relationships that hold different meanings for the diverse social actors that take part in them. Further, we argue that equivocation and functional misunderstandings have an important role in these multidirectional dialogues. Based on this case study, we approach the (...) Yawanawá strategies for capturing otherness, and the insertion of the daimistas in the indigenous sociality networks. We focus especially on the Yawanawá mode of producing kin by capturing non-indigenous people and their participation in exchange networks that encompass multiple regimes of value. From the daimista point of view, we describe these relationships using the native category of “eclecticism.” We suggest that the daimistas attempt to translate the Yawanawá shamanic knowledge and the consumption of the “forest medicines,” experiencing the performance of “becoming indigenous.”. (shrink)

Die Schutzgottheit der Stadt Mesambria war Apollon, dessen Epiklesen hier jedoch unbekannt sind. Ich bringe hier eine Argumentation zur Identifizierung einer solchen Epiklese. Apollon Agyeus, der Torhüter und Übelabwehrer, gilt als dorischer Gott der Einwanderung, Eroberung und Inbesitznahme. Der Agyeus wird auch mittels Steinsymbolen desselben Namens dargestellt . In Mesambria fehlt die unmittelbare Bezeugung des Agyeuskultes, es kommen aber Funde aus der Stadt Anchialos zur Hilfe. Diese, ursprünglich ein phrurion der ionischen Nachbarstadt Apollonia, wurde von Mesambria erobert und blieb in (...) der hellenistischen Zeit unter deren Herrschaft oder zumindest Einfluß. Die Kulte in Anchialos wiederspiegeln jene von Mesambria, wie angesichts des Kultes der Demeter Malophoros und jenem der ägyptischen Gottheiten gezeigt werden kann. Aus Anchialos sind Münzen mit der Darstellung des agyeus-Pfeilers bekannt. Das Vorkommen von Symbolen eines ausgesprochen dorischen Kultes läßt sich durch den Einfluß Mesambrias erklären, woraus hervorgeht, daß es den Kult des Apollon Agyeus auch dort gab.The main god of Mesambria was Apollo, whose cult epithets are however unknown here. I bring here arguments for the identification of one such epithet. Apollo Agyeus, the guardian of gates and repeller of evil, was also the Dorian god of immigration, conquest and occupation. The Agyeus was also represented by means of stone symbols of the same name . At Mesambria, the direct attestation of the Agyeus cult is lacking, but we can use discoveries from the city of Anchialos. This was initially a phrurion of the Ionian neighbour city of Apollonia; it was conquered by Mesambria and during the Hellenistic epoch it remained under Mesambrian rule or at least influence. The cults of Anchialos mirror those of Mesambria, as can be shown based on the cults of Demeter Malophoros and on the cult of the Egyptian gods. From Anchialos come coins with the image of the agyeus-pillar. The appearence of symbols of an explicitly Dorian cult can only be explained by the influence of Mesambria, which means that the cult of Apollo Agyeus was also present there. (shrink)

In a recent article, Ratcliffe and Byrne (2022) propose a multifactorial phenomenological account of the influence of narrative on grief. Specifically, they argue that certain kinds of narrative can help navigate and negotiate the phenomenological disturbance of practical identity associated with bereavement. In this critical note, I identify and discuss two problems of their account. First, Ratcliffe and Byrne’s (2022) considerations rest on conceptually ambiguous distinctions between different narrative categories (the conceptual ambiguity problem). Second, their account appears to neglect the (...) variability of both grief experiences and different kinds of narrative engagement (the variability problem). These problems need to be resolved to make progress in understanding the influence (if any) of narrative engagements on the phenomenology of grief. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers of mind have explored the relationship between lived embodied experiences and self-narratives in bringing about a sense of self. This relationship has been vividly debated, with no consensus in the field. While some have argued that lived embodied experiences influence, but are not influenced by, self-narratives, others have maintained that lived embodied experiences and self-narratives influence each other across time. However, the very concept of ‘self-narrative’ and its scope of application has remained underspecified. The debate, I (...) will argue, can only be resolved if we arrive at a better theoretical understanding of self-narrative. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual account of the notion of ‘self-narrative’ and a descriptive account of its scope of application. It will then be shown how these accounts can pave the way towards resolving the debate on the experience-narrative nexus. (shrink)

Sendo a fenomenologia um modo não-especulativo de pensar, o artigo põe a questão sobre a possibilidade de descrever a metafísica em regime de redução fenomenológica, ou seja, a partir de uma atitude que não pretende discursar sobre o ser enquanto ser, mas sim a partir dos diferentes “modos de aparecer” dos principais “objetos” da metafísica: alma, mundo e Deus. Neste caso, que sentido deverá possuir, para o modo fenomenológico de pensar, o metá, presente na palavra metafísica?

Quelle est la part exacte, dans l'Histoire, du déterminisme? Comment ce déterminisme historique, s'il existe, s'articule-t-il avec le libre arbitre, exercé de manière individuelle ou collective? La démarche de Philippe Fabry vise à y répondre par une pratique ample, raisonnée et novatrice du comparatisme historique. Décelant une trajectoire commune, s'étalant sur sept siècles, dans l'histoire de tous les grands pays d'Europe Angleterre, France, Allemagne, Espagne, Russie, Danemark, Suède mais aussi certains pays du Moyen-Orient Turquie, Iran, Égypte et des cités-États de (...) jadis comme l'Athènes antique ou la Florence médiévale, il élabore le modèle de la construction des États-nations. Cette mécanique, allant de l'éclatement féodal primordial à l'émergence du parlementarisme démocratique, en passant par un "mouvement de révolution" partout similaire et fondateur de la modernité, apparaît universelle. L'auteur en explore les ressorts profonds et montre comment l'Histoire européenne et orientale est le produit de l'enchevêtrement de ces trajectoires locales, parcourues en exécution d'un petit nombre de "lois de l'Histoire". Ces lois seront finalement formulées, et donneront la clef de ce questionnement fondamental relatif à la mesure du déterminisme et du hasard historiques, permettant peut-être de dessiner l'Histoire de demain. Présentant le livre avec talent et érudition, Jean-Louis Harouel lance le débat sur cette thèse novatrice."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

"Research directions on interaction. This article proposes to consider interaction as a concept and an object of study based on pragmatics and textual linguistics, according to three approaches: discursive genres (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1990, 1992), place relationships (Vion, 1992), dialogism and polyphony (Bakhtine, 1970, 1984 and Ducrot, 1980, 1984). These approaches are illustrated by the analysis of several interaction situations: a political debate organised on Romanian television during the 2004 election campaign, two extracts from literary works Les Parents terribles by Jean Cocteau (...) and La chute by Albert Camus, and a forum in the newspaper Le Figaro (09/2009). Keywords: interaction, communicational trope, place relationships, dialogism, polyphony. ". (shrink)

Smartphone use plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Philosophical research that has used first wave or second wave theories of extended cognition in order to understand our engagement with digital technologies has focused on the contribution of these technologies to the completion of specific cognitive tasks (e.g., remembering, reasoning, problem-solving, navigation).However, in a considerable number of cases, everyday smartphone use is task-unrelated. In psychological research, these cases have been captured by notions such as absent-minded smart-phone use (Marty-Dugas (...) et al., 2018) or smartphone-related inattentiveness (Liebherr et al., 2020).Given the prevalence of these cases, we develop a conceptual framework that can accommodate the functional and phenomenological characteristics of task-unrelated smartphone use. To this end, we will integrate research on second wave extended cognition with mind-wandering research and introduce the concept of ‘extended mind-wandering’. Elaborating the family resemblances approach to mind-wandering (Seli, Kane, Smallwood, et al., 2018), we will argue that task-unrelated smartphone use shares many characteristics with mind-wandering. We will suggest that an empirically informed conceptual analysis of cases of extended mind-wandering can enrich current work on digitally extended cognition by specifying the influence of the attention economy on our cognitive dynamics. (shrink)

On many occasions, irony is used to communicate emotions, to criticise or to tease other people. Irony comprehension consists in identifying an utterance as ironical and detecting its implied meaning. Existing research has investigated irony comprehension as a pragma-linguistic phenomenon, which has led to several theoretical accounts and interesting empirical results. However, given that irony comprehension is situated in a social context and has the purpose to communicate the mental states of the speaker/writer indirectly, it is reasonable to assume that (...) social cognition and emotional processes play an important role. Until very recently, this has been largely overlooked by research in the field. Furthermore, an overarching framework that can integrate theoretical insights and empirical data on the component processes of irony comprehension is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to help close this gap. The positive proposal is that the predictive processing framework provides the theoretical resources and conceptual tools to describe relevant aspects of irony comprehension. According to predictive processing, perception, action, cognition, and emotion can be described as a continuous attempt to minimise prediction error. Irony comprehension, I will show, can be depicted as a special case of prediction error minimisation. The neuro-functional mechanism postulated by predictive processing is apt to account for the realisation of the pragma-linguistic, social, and emotional processes that jointly give rise to irony comprehension. The emerging perspective can elucidate why and how people comprehend ironical utterances. (shrink)

Em sua obra República, Platão define a cidade ideal e, portanto, justa, como aquela construída de acordo com as diferentes características naturais de seus cidadãos. Na Callipolis, os seres humanos estariam divididos em categorias de acordo com suas características naturais e deveriam ocupar na polis diferentes postos, de acordo com tais categorias. A desigualdade natural é o paradigma da análise política, desde a Grécia clássica, permanecendo durante toda a Idade Média, até a modernidade, que introduz, sobretudo no pensamento contratualista/iluminista dos (...) séculos XVII e XVIII, a premissa de que todos os seres humanos devem ser, por natureza, considerados livres e iguais. Analisaremos a questão da justiça no pensamento político moderno, tendo em vista, sobretudo, os fundamentos dos princípios da igualdade e da liberdade. (shrink)

A questão da origem do poder político, na visão do filósofo contratualista inglês Thomas Hobbes, estabelece que o mesmo não está fundado nem vontade divina, nem na natureza, mas criado por um ato deliberado da vontade humana. Sendo criado por meio de um contrato, ou seja, uma transferência do direito natural à liberdade e à igualdade a um representante comum, o Estado, também chamado de Leviatã, é definido pelo autor como um Deus mortal. O objetivo do presente artigo é analisar (...) de que maneira a concepção moderna do Estado, caracterizado a partir do século XVII, está fundada tanto em seu caráter laico, quanto artificial. (shrink)

RESUMO:O presente artigo pretende abordar a forma original com a qual Rousseau focaliza a questão da origem do poder político, tema que é central na teoria política moderna. Em sua obra Do Contrato Social, o autor examina as razões, aparentemente paradoxais, pelas quais alguém, nascido livre, se escravizaria voluntariamente, obedecendo a outro e não a si próprio. Distanciando-se da influência de Hobbes e Locke, o autor apresenta a tese do contrato social, fundado no conceito de vontade geral, como o único (...) meio pelo qual o indivíduo se realizaria enquanto ser humano. Ao assumir sua condição de cidadão, unindo-se a todos em vista do bem comum e não obedecendo a ninguém a não ser a si próprio, o mesmo adquire tanto a igualdade quanto a liberdade civil, condições sem as quais deixaria de existir. Somente dessa forma, cada cidadão, exercendo seus direitos e deveres, seria detentor de parcela da soberania, enquanto membro da vontade geral, no direito de legislar. ABSTRACTThe article aims at discussing the new approach proposed by Rousseau regarding the question of the origin of political power, which is a central aspect of modern political theory. In his masterpiece The Social Contract, the author analyzes the apparently paradoxical reasons why someone born free could become a slave by his own free will, and, as such, subject to the authority of one other than himself. Going beyond the influence of Hobbes and Locke, the author presents the thesis of the social contract, based on the concept of the general will and considered the only way through which man can realize the human condition. By achieving the condition of citizen, each one as his own master and uniting with all others and looking toward the common good, man can reach the necessary conditions for his own existence: the conditions of equality and liberty. (shrink)