The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”.However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their (...) propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”.We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked to a psychological ‘baseline’: human beings have a predisposition for social cognition as the default mode of cognizing which is implemented in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity known as the “default system”. (shrink)

The human body is a multifaceted reality. As such, it has become a reference pole for a new positivity. Among the various areas of corporeal expression and recuperation, sport has become the most absorbing and efficient. Sport as a system shapes the human body in all its aspects, and confers on it a new status: the "corps sportif" which is a new paradigm of our civilization.

Le corps humain est une réalité plurielle. En tant que tel, il est devenu un pôle de référence pour une nouvelle positivité. De tous les lieux d'expression et de récupération du corps, le sport est devenu le plus accaparant et le plus efficace. Le système sportif façonne le corps humain dans tous ses aspects et lui confère un statut nouveau, celui de corps sportif, ce nouveau paradigme des temps actuels.The human body is a multifaceted reality. As such, it has become (...) a reference pole for a new positivity. Among the various areas of corporeal expression and recuperation, sport has become the most absorbing and efficient. Sport as a system shapes the human body in all its aspects, and confers on it a new status: the "corps sportif" which is a new paradigm of our civilization. (shrink)

A persistent criticism of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is that it begs the question of its own possibiIity as science. In this essay I propose a reading of Husserl which addresses this question and attempts to show that the phenomenological ideal of freedom from all presuppositions, that is, the ideal of radical methodological autonomy, is not dogmatically assumed as valid but rests on a conception of philosophy which, although not explicitly formulated by Husserl, nevertheless informs his thinking on questions of (...) method and, ultimately, the nature of science. According to this conception, phiIosophy, phenomenological or otherwise, is not sui generis the ground of is own possibiIity but is derived from the logic of experience itself and so is immanent to conscious, intentional life in all of its manifold occupations and interests. That is, experience ultimately fulfills itself not in the accumulation of objective facts but in its continued faithfulness to the idea of a more perfect knowledge. Thus, in the end, I hope to show that the question of the status and possibiIity of phenomenological philosophy is not of interest to phenomenologists alone but addresses the enterprise of philosophy itself. (shrink)

My original enthusiasm for the invitation of the city of Frankfurt to deliver the commemorative address on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Goethe's death soon gave way to a state of depression. I thought of Walter Benjamin who, exactly fifty years ago, on the 100th anniversary of Goethe's death, wrote: “Every word about Goethe spared this year is a blessing.” I then came across Thomas Mann's caustic remark made on the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth in 1949, in (...) his address “Goethe and Democracy”: “I have nothing new to say to you.” And as if this were not enough, Leo Kreutzer only recently told us that “there is no longer any idea connected with Goethe which might still be capable of playing any significant role.”. (shrink)

I soon discovered that I was quite isolated in my attempts to pursue the sociology of literature. In any case, one searched almost in vain for allies if one wanted to approach a literary text from the perspective of a critical theory of society. To be sure, there were Franz Mehring’s articles which I read with interest and profit; but despite the admirable decency and the uncompromising political radicalism of the author, his writings hardly went beyond the limits of a (...) socialist journalist who wrote in essentially the same style about literature as about political and the economy. George Lukács had not yet published his impressive series of essays on Marxist aesthetics and interpretation of literature. Of course, I was deeply touched and influenced by his fine little book, The Theory of the Novel , which I practically learned by heart. Besides Levin Schücking’s small volume on the sociology of literary taste, the only other major influence I can recall was George Brandes’ monumental work on the literary currents of the nineteenth century.Nonetheless, I had the courage, not to say hubris, to plan an ambitious, socially critical series on French, English, Spanish, and German literature, the beginning of which was to be formed by the above-mentioned studies. My attention was especially focused on the writes and literary schools which the German literary establishment either punished by total silence or raised up into the clouds of idealistic babble or relegated to quasi-folkloric anthropology .In these studies, I limited myself to the narrative forms of literature; for reasons which I hold to be sociologically and artistically valid, I believe that novels and stories represent the most significant aspect of German literature in the nineteenth century. While I in no way feel ashamed of these documents of my youth, I am conscious of their weaknesses. If I were to write them over again, I would certainly be less sure of some of the direct connections I drew between literature and writers on the one hand, and the social infrastructure on the other. In later publications I attempted to analyze with greater circumspection the mediation between substructure and superstructure, between social currents and ideologies; but my views on the social world and the necessity to combine social theory and literary analysis have not changed in any essential way. In the last decades the sociology of literature has become progressively more fashionable. The writings of my contemporaries have often amazed me because some—frequently in unnecessarily complicated and esoteric language—are so concerned with “mediation” that the connections between social being and social consciousness became almost obscured. Leo Lowenthal is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. His collected works have been published in five volumes in German and in a parallel English edition. Lowenthal’s autobiographical writings, edited by Martin jay, will appear in the fall of 1987 under the title An Unmastered Past. Lowenthal’s present studies deal with German postmodernism. Ted. R. Weeks is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in imperial Russian history. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the paradoxical definition of art as the silence of the world, as presented in Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature. The definition is analysed phenomenologically, by treating the world as the universal horizon of all experiences. The paper presents two possible interpretations of Blanchot’s statement. First, a possibility is considered that, according to Blanchot, in genuine artistic experience the mundane everyday life falls silent, and an autonomous fictional world opens up. The paper argues that (...) while Blanchot does oppose art to everyday life, this interpretation is insufficient. Firstly, because on the basis of the phenomenological premise, all possible worlds fall within the universal world-horizon, and secondly, the function Blanchot attributes to art is considerably more radical, as when he speaks about the directedness of art outside of all possible worlds. While such an aim may seem impossible from the viewpoint of the phenomenological premise, the second part of the paper demonstrates that it can indeed be meaningfully interpreted on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s transcendent approach to the world. According to this interpretation, while the phenomenological premise prevents all discussion of places and experiences outside the world, a liminal experience can nevertheless be discussed. If this is true, it is not an entity within the world which opens up, but rather the world-horizon itself in the form of an anxious silence. (shrink)

León-Portilla, M. El pensamiento prehispánico.--O'Gorman, E. América.--Gallegos Rocafull, J. M. La filosofía moderna en la Nueva España.--Villoro, L. Las corrientes ideológicas en la época de la Independencia.--Zea, L. El positivismo.--Salmerón, F. Los de filósofos mexicanos del siglo XX.--Villegas, A. El liberalismo mexicano.

Helvetius -- Die Sozietätsphilosophie Franz von Baaders -- Gewalt und Recht in der Staats- und Rechtsphilosophie Rousseaus und der deutschen idealistischen Philosophie -- Das Dämonische.

Artiklis käsitletakse nihilistliku kirjandusloome võimalusi eesti luule näitel. Nihilismi ei mõisteta artiklis väärtusprobleemina, vaid ontoloogilise probleemina. Nihilistlikku kirjandusloomet käsitletakse taotlusena tuua sõnasse teine, eimiski. Artikli teoreetiline raamistik toetub põhiliselt Gianni Vattimo languse ontoloogia kontseptsioonile, aga ka Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heideggeri ja Maurice Blanchot' töödele. Samuti analüüsitakse artikli teoreetilises osas eimiski väljendamise võimalusi eesti keeles, tuginedes Uku Masingu ning Jaan Kaplinski mõttekäikudele. Luuletajatest käsitletakse artiklis enim Jaan Oksa ja Juhan Liivi. Analüüsi käigus tuuakse esile järgmised eimiskiga seotud poeetilised figuurid: ootus ja (...) luhtumus, langus ja loojak, hullus, surm. Analüüsi tulemusena selgub, et nihilistlik loome on eesti luules tugevalt esindatud, kuid ei filosoofias ega luules pole võimalik saavutada otsest juurdepääsu eimiskile, tuleb piirduda aimamisega, vihjamisega. The paper discusses the possibilities for creating nihilistic literary works, using Estonian poetry as an example. The paper regards nihilism as an ontological problem, and not as a problem of values. Nihilistic literary creativity will be treated as an attempt to introduce nothingness. The theoretical framework is provided by Gianni Vattimo's ontology of decline, as well as by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Blanchot. The paper also analyzes, relying on the ideas put forward by Uku Masing and Jaan Kaplinski, the possibilities of expressing nothingness in the Estonian language. As to Estonian poets, the paper will focus on the works of Juhan Liiv and Jaan Oks. The analysis of their works highlights the following poetic figures related to nothingness: anticipation and failure, decay and decline, madness, death. The analysis will demonstrate that nihilism is strongly present in Estonian poetry. However, since neither philosophy nor poetry has direct access to nothingness, one must remain content with presentiments and allusions. (shrink)