Este artículo se orienta en sentido inverso al sugerido por Cristina Rivera Garza y refrendado por la mayoría de los textos especializados en su obra: en vez de priorizar la ruptura y la innovación, atiende la trabazón que ata _Autobiografía del algodón_ con una fecunda tradición narrativa en América Latina: aquella empecinada en representar la alteridad sociocultural. Mi hipótesis es que, sin menoscabo de los ademanes vanguardistas de esta novela, es dable hallar en ella tensiones que, en distintos niveles, remiten (...) a la dificultad de asir la imagen de los algodoneros a los que se pretende reivindicar. Así, pese a que _Autobiografía del algodón_ se ofrece como un tránsito de lo personal y familiar a lo comunitario/nacional (en tanto que extiende temporal y territorialmente los efectos de la siembra de algodón), lo cierto es que Rivera Garza se enfrenta a la dificultad de encarar literariamente un referente cuya filiación sociocultural es disímil a la suya. La fluctuación entre los atributos de la narración homodiegética y la heterodiegética, la exteriorización de las capas que componen el texto y el asomo a una temporalidad diferente son los recursos puestos en juego para tratar de menguar la ajenidad sustantiva frente al mundo aludido. (shrink)

Leonardo Polo's trascendental Anthropology is based on the absolute distinction between the Man's act of being and the Universe's act of being; according to it, therefore, we can talk about a new aproach dealing with an Anthropological theory about learning able to solve the typical paradoxes about the relationship between free learning and human development, inherent in psychological theories, and at the same time able to show the ethical dimension always present in learning.

Asumiendo el marco teórico decolonial, en lo que a las cuestiones de género se refiere, abordaremos una cuestión importante: los imaginarios sexuales que, desde las culturas occidentales, han sido proyectados sobre las alteridades no-occidentales. En ese sentido, hablaremos de “alteridades fantaseadas” y de “colonialidad del deseo” para connotar ciertos procesos de dominación que tienen que ver con la racialización de la sexualidad y con la sexualización de la raza. Pero abordaremos, al mismo tiempo, las críticas que desde los “feminismos (...) otros” han sido lanzadas contra el feminismo hegemónico de cuño occidentalocéntrico, pues éste ha sido en demasiadas ocasiones un discurso cómplice con la subalternización secular de todas las mujeres “no-blancas”, esto es, racializadas. Y esa complicidad ha radicado, precisamente, en la ignorancia y en la incomprensión de la interseccionalidad de género, sexo, raza y clase. (shrink)

Resumen El artículo es un estudio de tres concepciones asiáticas de las virtudes, como son las virtudes taoístas, confucianas y budistas. De cada una se presenta el marco general de dicha tradición, la forma de entender las virtudes y el término medio. Así, se destacan en el taoísmo las virtudes de la compasión, la moderación y la humildad. En el confucianismo se estudian las virtudes de la humanidad, la justicia, los ritos, la sabiduría y la honestidad. En el budismo (...) se presentan las virtudes de la bondad amorosa, la compasión, la alegría altruista y la ecuanimidad. En cada una de estas tradiciones hay referencias al justo medio o camino medio. Esta comprensión de las virtudes asiáticas puede permitir una idea más amplia de las virtudes.This paper is a study of three Asian conceptions of virtues, such as the Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist virtues. Each one presents the general framework of every tradition, the way of understanding the virtues and the middle ground. Thus, the virtues of compassion, moderation and humility stand out in Taoism. In Confucianism the virtues of humanity, justice, rites, wisdom and honesty are studied. In Buddhism the virtues of loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity are presented. In each one of these traditions there are references to the middle right or middle path. This understanding of the Asian virtues may allow a wider idea of virtues. (shrink)

Leonardo Polo's trascendental Anthropology is based on the absolute distinction between the Man's act of being and the Universe's act of being; according to it, therefore, we can talk about a new aproach dealing with an Anthropological theory about learning able to solve the typical paradoxes about the relationship between free learning and human development, inherent in psychological theories, and at the same time able to show the ethical dimension always present in learning.

El reconocimiento constitucional de ciertos derechos colectivos de los pueblos originarios, efectuado en algunas Repúblicas hispanoamericanas que han avanzado en procesos constituyentes hacia un Estado de carácter plurinacional, multiétnico e intercultural, ha conseguido quebrar hasta cierto punto aquella cultura jurídica hegemónica que dominó con su carácter monista durante décadas o, mejor dicho, durante siglos. La legitimación de un derecho consuetudinario indígena, poseedor de una jurisdicción especial y autónoma, esto es, la construcción de un marco dentro del cual estas comunidades (...) tengan «derecho al propio derecho», constituye sin duda un principio importante para romper la persistencia secular de aquella colonialidad jurídica que, primero desde una matriz criolla y después desde una matriz mestiza, negaba toda autonomía judicial a las distintas nacionalidades indígenas. Pero este nuevo horizonte, si bien representa un proyecto eminentemente decolonial en muchos aspectos, no está exento de problemáticas contradicciones. Porque un escenario de radical pluralismo jurídico quebrantaría la posibilidad de establecer un marco común de ciudadanía, y es éste un nudo de conflicto importantísimo. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo queremos abordar un problema que tiene que ver con la creciente obsolescencia de los seres humanos en el contexto de sociedades que son, al mismo tiempo, ultratecnológicas, hiperconsumistas y de mercado. Pretendemos ahondar críticamente en las condiciones psicosociales y antropológicas de un mundo donde las mujeres y los hombres van quedando _rebasados _por una combinación a veces explosiva de velocidad mercantil y capitalismo mundializado. La tecnofilia, verdadero fetichismo de nuestro tiempo, opera a pleno rendimiento como uno (...) de los discursos ideológicos legitimadores de ese proceso histórico por medio del cual los hombres empequeñecen ante su propia creación; hombres _desbordados _por la potencia apabullante de un conjunto de desarrollos tecnocientíficos que, y esto es crucial, se despliegan con relativa e inquietante autonomía y siguiendo dinámicas que en muchas ocasiones no responden a necesidades humanas reales. La tecnología, que nunca es políticamente inocente, adquiere proporciones y alcances inusitados cuando, además, su despliegue responde a una lógica acumulativa capitalista de carácter ilimitado. Es esta problemática, por lo tanto, la que pretende ser dilucidada desde un marco antropológico y filosófico. (shrink)

A la luz de algunas críticas recientes, en el marco de este texto se busca impulsar un debate que tiene lugar en dos frentes: por una parte, la lógica del origen de la lógica y, por otra parte, la relación entre psicoanálisis y marxismo. Para ello se recuperan algunos textos publicados por Alain Badiou hacia finales de la década de 1960, en los que polemiza con Jacques-Alain Miller alrededor de los concepto de "sutura" y "sujeto" (Zizek), para situar tanto (...) las diversas posiciones como las coherentes reconsideraciones a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual. En efecto, desde "El concepto de modelo" hasta su más reciente trilogía (Teoría del sujeto, El ser y el acontecimiento y Lógica de los Mundos), se propone una perspectiva que lejos de establecer jerarquías y subordinaciones busca promover conexiones a partir de las especificidades y las diferencias a través de esa vía particular que es la filosofía. De este modo resulta posible apreciar que, pese a su crítica respecto de la primacía de la lógica del significante, los conceptos propuestos por Jacques Lacan funcionaron como una notoria fuente de inspiración para Badiou, especialmente en relación con el sujeto del inconsciente. (shrink)

Muito se tem falado acerca de avaliação unitária do que é publicado, mas pouco se tem discutido acerca dos veículos que asseguram todo o processo de avaliação. Trata-se de um interesse ingente da época – e interesse parece uma roupa bem mais leve para encobrir a palavra moda – que recai sobre a cientometria, que é o Cíclope que domina e percorre o grande domínio da produção científica atual. Sua ingente tarefa é metrificar essa produção científica pelo número de citações. (...) Mas esse Cíclope não poderia estar a fazer seus trabalhos de modo tão incansável nas oficinas do norte do globo terrestre, forjando incansavelmente números sobre números, coletando citações de citações, erigindo estatísticas e mais estatísticas, sem que os resultados de seus esforços não desabassem pesadamente sobre a pós-graduação brasileira. Não se precisa ir longe para entender fenomenologicamente esse processo, nem se precisa vasculhar a bibliografia especializada em busca de alguma explicação complicada e abstrata. Basta olharmos as lives recentes do período da pandemia, de 2020, e se perguntar por que brotaram em tão grande número, e por que tantas pessoas com perfil especializado acorreram às suas discussões. No final das contas, em um processo de avaliação sem coparticipação, elas foram o único modo de expressão e organização espontânea de grupos de pesquisa muito bem enraizados e que têm levado à frente a produção científica do país há décadas. Foram esses grupos que se organizaram, espontaneamente, para dar vazão à própria voz, e para dizer que passarão a ser avaliados por critérios que nunca nortearam a própria produção. É claro que se pode argumentar que os critérios de avaliação da produção científica sempre podem e devem ser alterados, e que sempre o foram historicamente. De qualquer modo, haveria de se discutir seriamente se o critério aplicável a um quadriênio poderia ser definido no final desse quadriênio, quando todas as opções editoriais, por parte dos periódicos, e de escolha de veiculação, por parte dos pesquisadores, já foram feitas, e se encontram cimentadas e encerradas. Também seria importante discutir se deve haver um mínimo de continuidade na passagem de um sistema de avaliação a outro, e qual seria o tempo adequado de adaptação aos futuros novos critérios que viessem a ser adotados. Fatores simples e imediatos da produção científica, bem assentados há tempos, parecem escapar à CAPES: que o impacto de trabalhos na área básica das ciências é bem diferente do impacto de artigos nas áreas que delas se ramificam; que algumas pesquisas tem interesse específico ou fortemente regional, justamente porque resolvem problemas acentuadamente aderidos a um contexto; que a língua em que se publicam trabalhos deve atender à integração e à formação de uma grande comunidade de pesquisadores; que a forte presença de artigos internacionais em um periódico pode expressar a força desse veículo, mas também pode indicar que ele atende principalmente interesses de pesquisa alheios à comunidade nacional, deixando de parte a missão de fortalecer o seu núcleo de pesquisadores, etc. E isso é apenas uma parte da história. Ainda caberia perguntar, no tocante à avidez de cientometria, qual o conúbio de interesses que ela atende: quem recolhe esses dados; com que interesses o faz; como seleciona e padroniza os dados que divulga; como os disponibiliza; como vende o seu acesso; como determina políticas de produção do conhecimento científico ao assim proceder, etc. Uma coisa é certa, todo esse conjunto de questões passa ao largo de nossos gestores, preocupados em avaliar os PPG’s a partir da produção atomizada de seus pesquisadores. Os periódicos, que são o veículo da produção, nunca entraram em questão. Altamente penalizados com todas as políticas que visam avaliá-los, nunca foram convidados a participar desse debate. Na visão de cima para baixo, são o polo passivo, lábil, sempre pronto a se adequar aos supostos objetivos maiores que os ultrapassam. É notável como os periódicos, que sobrevivem em sua maior parte por si próprios, são tratados como algo de pouca monta, como se fosse indiferente a sua contribuição na divulgação do conhecimento científico. Eles são vistos como um produto da evolução em sua concepção mais crua: estabeleçamos os critérios e que sobrevivam os melhores. Muito deveria e deve ser falado sobre uma política para os periódicos, mas, para não ficarmos em lamentações nesse fechamento de quadriênio, vamos entrar no terreno dos avaliadores, para averiguar a consistência da proposta de quem nos avalia. Sob muitos ângulos que se analise, sempre será direto argumentar que o fator de impacto – principal critério erigido para o encerrado quadriênio – é uma métrica importante para a avaliação. Concedamos superficialmente que isso é pertinente para avaliar a produção unitária de cada pesquisador. Muita gente imposta a voz para nos advertir sobre o quão responsável é proceder de tal modo. Ainda assim caberia a pertinente pergunta: Em que o fator de impacto seria útil não para se avaliar a importância de um periódico, mas para uma agência estimular e aprimorar a veiculação da produção do conhecimento científico? Pode um periódico que não veicula a produção em área básica ser avaliado em nível de igualdade com outro que tem esse perfil? Se um periódico centra seus esforços em uma subárea restrita de conhecimento, pode ele ser subavaliado por ter esse recorte editorial? Para entramos no terreno prescritivo, sempre perigoso para a vida da ciência, também podemos indagar: “Deve” um periódico publicar maiormente (nota bene, essa é uma questão para o avaliador, e só ele, responder) os assuntos que reconhecidamente têm tendência a ter um maior fator de impacto? “Deve” um periódico ter como sua missão editorial prioritária publicar artigos com alto fator de impacto, e se organizar para tanto, uma vez que isso passa a medir sua excelência? E indo mais além, e penetrando no fulcro do processo de avaliação, também é pertinente perguntar: Se o fator de impacto é o do artigo citado, pode um pesquisador, que tenha publicado em um periódico de alto fator de impacto, ser bem avaliado justamente pelos outros artigos que ali se encontram e que erigiram aquele fator de impacto? Um artigo de pequeno fator de impacto, publicado junto com outro de elevado fator de impacto, pode receber a métrica que seria atribuída ao periódico? Pode, por fim, o periódico ser responsabilizado por uma métrica geral que será atribuída a cada pesquisador? Fundamentalmente é preciso se perguntar: Em que essa medida aprimora e melhora o processo de avaliação? De que modo ela ajusta os critérios de justiça, para ter um processo mais equitativo para todos os envolvidos? Em que parte das decisões tomadas para o encerrado quadriênio alguém deixou um mínimo expediente concreto voltado para valorizar e aprimorar a contribuição dos veículos que asseguram a mediação de todo o processo, a saber, os periódicos? Para evitar fazer um Qualis dos Artigos, decidiu-se fazer um Qualis dos Periódicos, e agora nos encontramos em um momento em que essa proposta exibe toda a sua inconsistência para os mediadores, porque ela descentra o editor com questões alheias à veiculação do conhecimento científico. E de maneira irracional, sem direito à instância de apelação, sem um necessário norte estabelecido antes dos crivos orientadores do processo, nos entregaremos agora a um processo de avaliação decidido ao final do decurso do quadriênio, e que, para salvar mais um herói internacional, a ciclópica cientometria, desconsidera todo o esforço histórico dos periódicos para veicular e publicizar a produção científica no país. Isso posto, passemos então à apresentação do septuagésimo segundo número, que sobreviveu a esse quadriênio, e viçou em terreno impróprio, contra todas as regras, antieuclidianamente. [...]. (shrink)

Tenemos la sensación de que la tecnología nos resulta tan útil como peligrosa. Esta doble cara nos produce inquietud y desazón. De ahí derivan algunas prácticas que implican la renuncia total o parcial a ciertos modos tecnológicos. Dichas prácticas no siempre están dotadas de sentido y fundamentación suficientes. Constituyen, más bien, reacciones dispersas guiadas por sensaciones e intuiciones. En el otro polo, tenemos la obra de algunos pensadores que han reflexionado sobre la técnica. A partir de ahí, han enunciado (...) valiosas recomendaciones que permanecen, no obstante, en un plano abstracto. Nuestra hipótesis es que la noción de silencio tecnológico puede funcionar como un puente entre la especulación filosófica y la praxis efectiva, dando a la primera concreción y a la segunda lucidez. Para probarlo presentaremos, en primer lugar, la propia noción de silencio tecnológico (sección 1), para, a continuación, relatar algunas prácticas contemporáneas orientadas a la reducción de lo tecnológico (sección 2). En un tercer a paso expondremos las recomendaciones de Heidegger y Kierkegaard sobre lo técnico (sección 3). Veremos, acto seguido, en qué sentido el silencio tecnológico puede ejercer aquí de puente entre filosofía y praxis (sección 4). Recogeremos, por último, lo obtenido en un resumen conclusivo (sección 5). (shrink)

En este trabajo se señalan dos aportaciones antropológicas elaboradas por Leonardo Polo en escritos dirigidos a iluminar la acción humana, social, económica y empresarial, en particular su trabajo Ricos y pobres. Igualdad y desigualdad. Allí se ve una importante crítica a la visión antropológica que hay tras la concepción del homo oeconomicus con la que se apoyó el nacimiento y desarrollo de la economía como ciencia y que se caracteriza por la pobreza ontológica de un ser que es un (...) maximizador pleno de recursos. Ésta, homo oeconomicus, es una noción que desde distintas disciplinas se está criticando reiteradamente, por la limitación de este modelo al entender la acción humana, que resultan insuficientes sin un marco antropológico radical. (shrink)

La Educación Sensible es ayuda para que el “yo” habite en su “hogar interior” y crezca hacia su “apoteosis original” en el “nosotros”, donde se hace cocreador de belleza con libertad, sabiduría y amor. La educación sensible es pedagogía no invasiva pero radicalmente exigente para que la persona acepte desplegar su versión original y vivir con gozo en un “nosotros-maduro”. No es una pedagogía que protege a los sensibles; es una educación que atiende a todas las personas, independientemente de su (...) grado de sensibilidad: alta, media o baja (como intervalos comunes que se manejan en las ciencias de la sensibilidad). La sensibilidad personal es capaz de captar la propia originalidad y disponerse para interpretarla en los dos sentidos: comprenderla y actuarla. La sensibilidad humana necesita la educación sensible para que sea punto de partida de un desarrollo personal auténtico y pleno de la propia originalidad que es alterada y altera la de los “yoes” con quien habita la existencia formando “nosotros”, que a su vez, se impactan con interdependencia. Además de al “yo”, la educación sensible se orienta al “nosotros”, que será tanto más “sensible” en la medida que altera la intimidad de la persona con “amor-maduro” que es fuente de gozo, a pesar de los pesares. Sin educación sensible la vida daña y cuanta mayor es la sensibilidad de la persona, mayor es el daño, pero también es mayor la capacidad para detectarlo cicatrizarlo y ayudar a otros con educación sensible. Así, la educación sensible se manifiesta de tres maneras: como acción sanadora de la persona, destrucción creadora para evolucionar en el tiempo, como la crisálida se transforma en mariposa, y acción desarrollante del propio potencial con originalidad. (shrink)

Gareth Evans adduces a case in which a proper name apparently undergoes a change in referent. ‘Madagascar’ was originally the name of a part of Africa. Marco Polo, erroneously thinking he was following native usage, applied the name to an island off the African coast. Today ‘Madagascar’ is the name of that island. Evans argues that this kind of case threatens Kripke ’s picture of naming as developed in Naming and Necessity. According to this picture, the name, as (...) used by Marco Polo, referred to a part of the African mainland, since he was connected to the latter by a historical chain of communication. Since we are historically connected to Marco Polo, the name, as it is used today, still refers to the African mainland. But it doesn’t. The aim of the present paper is to give a conclusive account of the phenomenon adduced by Evans, which is compatible with Kripke ’s picture. (shrink)

Serendipities is a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, a brilliant exposition of how unanticipated truths often spring from false ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Umberto Eco offers a dazzling tour of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange to make sense of the world. Uncovering layers of mistakes that have shaped human (...) history, Eco offers with wit and clarity such instances as Columbus's voyage to the New World, the fictions that grew around the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar, and the linguistic endeavors to recreate the language of Babel, to show how serendipities can evolve out of mistakes. With erudition, anecdotes, and scholarly rigor, this new collection of essays is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue:Moving ForwardThomas Cattoi (bio) and Carol S. Anderson (bio)The San Francisco Bay Area is an interesting location in which to ponder Buddhist-Christian relations. The website UrbanDharma.org lists more than a hundred institutions affiliated with Buddhist organizations—a density higher than in the Beijing metropolitan area. Some of these centers have a clearly ethnic and denominational character, serving a predominantly immigrant population. Some, like many of the Tibetan organizations, function (...) as cultural centers but also attract a considerable Western clientele. Others, like the San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock in Marin County, belong to the first wave of historical Buddhist centers established in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. A few more are trying to establish new forms of enculturated Buddhist practice that are more suited to Western sensitivities and are only loosely affiliated with the cultures of traditional Buddhist societies. At the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, alongside schools training Jesuit priests, Dominican friars, and Protestant ministers of various denominations, the Institute of Buddhist Studies prepares students from different walks of life to work as Buddhist chaplains in hospitals and educational institutions. Buddhism, in its various forms and manifestations, is no longer an exotic import from a little known “elsewhere,” but is part and parcel of the local spiritual landscape.For students and scholars practicing in such a diverse environment, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that for the greatest part of its history, most of Christendom was largely unaware of the very existence of the Buddhist tradition. While Clement of Alexandria and Jerome do mention Buddhism, and references to its practice can be found in the writings of medieval travelers such as Marco Polo, most European Christians lived in a world where the role of the religious “other” was played by Judaism and Islam. It was only in the early modern era, with the beginning of the European colonization of Asia, that non-Abrahamic religious traditions gradually entered the intellectual horizon of Western intellectuals and scholars. Around the year 1740, a French Jesuit named Jean-François Pons (1688–1752), otherwise remembered as a pioneer of Sanskrit studies in the West, came to the startling realization that many of the religious practices that missionaries and travelers had come across in regions as far apart as China, Japan, Nepal, and Mongolia were actually all parts of the same religious tradition. In his correspondence with his fellow Jesuits in France, he coined the [End Page vii] term Bauddhamatham—teaching of the Buddha—to refer to what would eventually be known as Buddhism. In the early years of the nineteenth century, many Sanskrit and Tibetan texts started to be catalogued and translated into the major European languages, bringing about the first encounter between Europe’s intellectual elites and this utterly foreign religious tradition.The nineteenth century also saw the beginning of a more existential engagement with the Buddhism tradition, albeit one that was limited to intellectual elites who were highly critical of institutional Christianity. In his work The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer found in Buddhism many echoes of his own philosophical insights. Many of the members of the Pāli Text Society, established in London in 1871, had rejected Christianity and thought they would find in Buddhism a moral framework in a society where the normativity of the Christian tradition had already started to be questioned. At the same time, we also see the beginning of the first comparative studies, where Buddhism and Christianity are compared from a speculative and doctrinal perspective. In 1880, Ernest de Bunsen claimed that if one made an exception for the crucifixion, many of the fundamental moral teachings of Buddhism and Christianity were virtually identical. This was just the beginning of a slew of similar studies.While the Christian churches were initially uninterested or outright skeptical about engaging in dialogue with non-Christian religious traditions, this attitude started to shift in the decades following the Second World War. The Second Vatican Council, for instance, marked an important shift in the Catholic Church’s attitude toward other religions. Before the 1960s, Catholic theology departments did not offer courses on other religious traditions or on interreligious dialogue... (shrink)

‘From now on, I'll describe the cities to you’, the Khan had said, ‘in your journeys you will see if they exist.’ But the cities visited by Marco Polo were always different from those thought of by...

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities presents a wide array of possible cities—cities whose composition turns on a productive ambiguity of their being described or invented by Marco Polo in his conversations with Kublai Khan. Implicit in this book is also a theory about how all possible cities are composed. The method turns on decomposing a city down to its basic elements and recomposing it in different ways through the imagination. I argue that there is a close affinity between Calvino’s (...) theory of fictional cities and Leibniz’s theory of possible worlds. The main similarity is that both theo­ries are combinatorial—they suppose that possibilities are produced by combination and variation of basic elements. The paper presents Leibniz’s theory of possibility in its metaphysical context and explores the similarity with Calvino’s cities in their literary context. I suggest that there is a rather strong relation between the theory of literary fiction implicit in Invisible Cities and Leibniz’s theory of possibility, in that both define the possible in terms of the conceivable. Indeed, Leibniz often refers to literary examples to substantiate his position, and I argue that this reveals an essential feature of his theory. (shrink)

The promise of language in the depths of hell: Primo Levi's Canto of Ulysses and Inferno -- The difference between difference and otherness: Il milione of Marco Polo and Calvino's Le città invisibili -- Traces of the Confucian/Mencian other: ethical moments in Sima Qian's Records of the historian -- War and the Hellenic splendor of knowing: Euripides, Hölderlin, Celan -- The saying, the said, and the betrayal of mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- Nom de dieu, quelle (...) race: the saying, the said, and the betrayal of charity in Mongo Beti's Le pauvre Christ de Bomba -- Transcendent divinity and human responsibility in Mahfouz: "zaabalawi" and children of our alley -- That you might have my witness in your poem: Valéry, the symbolist tradition, and Edgar Bowers' later blank verse. (shrink)

This illustrated series exhibits biographical accounts of the great people of all time. 'People of Importance' includes a variety of figures, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Mother Teresa, Archimedes, Confucius, Dalai Lama, and Marco Polo.

Este ensaio tem como objetivo afirmar a leitura e a escrita enquanto processo ativo tradutório, por meio da reimaginação do Texto de Partida As cidades invisíveis, redigido em 1972 pelo autor italiano Ítalo Calvino. O ensaio é tecido mediante a noção de fragmentos, tal como entendido por Tavares, em que a escrita se constitui como uma experimentação do pensamento. Toma como ponto de partida as pistas deixadas pelo viajante Marco Polo, na obra de Calvino, a qual foi lida (...) e reinventada pelos acadêmicos do Curso de Pedagogia de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior localizada no interior do Rio Grande do Sul. Um Roteiro de Procedimentos Escrileitores – escritura e leitura – das Cidades de Calvino foi disponibilizado aos estudantes, tendo como proposição mostrar nove regras, cujo objetivo consistiu em servir à operação tradutório-inventiva. A partir delas, os estudantes arriscaram uma leitura ativa e uma escritura viva, ou seja, uma escritura tradutória, que não visa à recuperação literal do texto, mas privilegia uma escrileitura inventiva e traduções-reinvenções. Como aporte teórico, o texto aproxima-se do pensamento da diferença, de Roland Barthes, de Gilles Deleuze, além das teorizações da tradução literária propostas por Haroldo de Campos. Trata-se de experimentar a prática da leitura e o ensaio da escrita gerando novas interpretações ao Texto de Partida. Nesse sentido, ler-e-escrever configuram-se como uma prática aberta, jamais definitiva e tampouco estática. Em síntese, o texto propõe defender que os Textos de Partida são sempre fisgados pelos processos tradutórios e, por isso, novamente reinventados via leitura e escrita em Textos de Chegada. Palavras-chave: Tradução. Recriação. Pedagogia. Educação. (shrink)

Gareth Evans adduces a case in which a proper name apparently undergoes a change in referent. ‘Madagascar’ was originally the name of a part of Africa. Marco Polo, erroneously thinking he was following native usage, applied the name to an island off the African coast. Today ‘Madagascar’ is the name of that island. Evans argues that this kind of case threatens Kripke’s picture of naming as developed in Naming and Necessity. According to this picture, the name, as used (...) by Marco Polo, referred to a part of the African mainland, since he was connected to the latter by a historical chain of communication. Since we are historically connected to Marco Polo, the name, as it is used today, still refers to the African mainland. But it doesn’t. The aim of the present paper is to give a conclusive account of the phenomenon adduced by Evans, which is compatible with Kripke’s picture. (shrink)

Christopher Columbus did not know, on October 12, 1492, that he had reached a new world. Rather he believed, along with his crew, that he had crossed the ocean separating western Europe from east Asia; or, at the very least, that they were nearing the rich lands described by Marco Polo, which the Genoan had read about and his crew knew of, at least by reputation. In short, Columbus's ideas about the land he had just reached were considerably (...) more inexact than those that Fernão d'Ulmo - that is to say, the Flemish explorer Ferdinand Van Olmen, Commander-Grantee in the service of João II, who presided at Terceira des Açores - had flaunted before the King. Indeed d'Ulmo was to play a more important role in the history of Portuguese discoveries than did Prince Henry the Navigator himself. In 1487, the year in which the great Portuguese sovereign was deciding between three possible routes to the Indies, d'Ulmo (as he is named in a royal diploma, dated July 24, 1486), or de Olmos as he is called in Las Casas's Historia de Indias, had proposed to the King that he “dar achada huûa grande ylha ou ylhas o terra firme per costa que se presume ser a ylha das Sete Cidades.” His proposal was thus to undertake a voyage to the Antilles, where the cartographers of that time placed the Isle of the Seven Cities, and where d'Ulmo conjectured that a neighboring continent (terra firme) might be located. Columbus himself returned from his voyage five years later. In the meantime, d'Ulmo had perished, perhaps having reached this continent whose existence he - but not Columbus - had foreseen. As to the history of the discovery of America: even if we don't know whether d'Ulmo reached it, we do know that Columbus was unaware that he himself had. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence and Birthday PartiesA Girardian Analysis of the PiñataDominic Pigneri (bio)The piñata is a tradition most commonly associated with Latin America, but this party game has a mysterious origin. Some suppose that the origin of the practice was brought to the Americas by the Spanish, who received the custom from the Italians.1 Some say that the Italians, through Marco Polo, appropriated the ritual from the Chinese.2 (...) Others see the Mexican piñata as originating locally in an Aztec religious ritual.3 But looking at this festival activity through a Girardian lens we can see that wherever a custom came into being, it seems that its origins lie in the lethal practice of collective violence. The following description may serve as an exemplar of the tradition:In Mexico, a plain, round clay cooking pot called an olla is decorated and finally almost entirely concealed by ruffles and streamer coverings shaped into animals, stars, etc. It is filled with nuts, sugar cane, fruits and small toys and is hung overhead from a rope. One participant in the game is blindfolded and given a long stick with which he or she tries to hit the pot. Several people (usually children) take turns at being blindfolded and swinging the stick, and finally when someone hits the pot [End Page 209] hard enough to break it, the other players scramble on the ground for the scattered prizes. It is a kind of noisy and happy version of a grab-bag, and the game goes on for quite a few minutes, since a controlling cord is used to swing the pot out of reach of the batters. There are several sing-song chants which the children say as the game goes on with each new target.4While the clay pot is the most traditional, piñatas are also made from other materials, including papier-mâché and cane plants.5 Furthermore, the piñata has a place in many different festivals; it is especially associated with Christmas, Easter, and birthday parties all over the Americas where there is a Latin influence.While the ritual of the piñata contains no explicit violence, the ritual itself contains many of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism René Girard describes in Violence and the Sacred. What Girard describes here is the banding together of society as they focus their internal animosity onto an arbitrary third-party victim. The peace that arrives after this violence is so profound that it is instinctually associated with the divine. This peace inspires a reenactment of this violence as a religious ritual. Therefore, religion functions as the force that keeps internal violence from turning all members of a society against one another. This controlled violence is the safety valve that releases the violence that would otherwise rend the social fabric of a community.6 Religion also veils the violence, which grants peace. It is important that the violence be expressed, but also hidden. Girard says, "Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of understanding."7 This is the significance of the ritualism of cultic sacrifice.This relates to our current question of the piñata in the sense that the practice is reminiscent of a sacrificial ritual, especially when the piñata takes the shape of a being like an animal or human person. First, destruction is the initial aim of the activity. The piñata, like the oblation, must be destroyed in some way. This is what grants the ritual its efficacy. Second, there is a need for rubrics, a carefully followed procedure for the desired effect to come about. In cultic sacrifice, this can take place in a variety of ways, from ritualistic washing of the priest and the victim to the exact procedure and order for dissecting the victim. Similarly, as we saw in the description of the piñata above, there is a procedure. The piñata is... (shrink)

This is a well-written analysis of the interpreters and interpretations of the Buddhist nirvana from the West. The first chapter treats the West's encounters with Buddhism before 1800, Marco Polo, etc. The remainder of the book deals with the interpretations of nirvana by Eugène Burnouf, Friedrich Max Müller, James D'Alwis, Robert Caesar Childres, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche, Hermann Oldenberg, the Rhys Davidses, La Vallée Poussin, and Stcherbatsky. The author's own opinion is given in a few pages at the end (...) of the book; however, his opinion is not so much an exposition of nirvana but a short essay on the methodology of a study of nirvana. He quotes Richard Robinson to bring home his point that this long array of scholars could not forsake their cultural bias and that one needs therefore to approach non-Western ideas from the inside of a non-Western culture. Welbon's intention is to present an outline of the history of Western discussions on the meaning of the Buddhist nirvana. His research is thorough; his presentation is clear; this is a chronicle of heroic but club-footed attempts to learn about a non-Western idea. The book should be read by all aspiring Buddhologists, for it will convince them of the absolute necessity of learning the language of a Buddhist culture and of searching out qualified native informants. Its value for non-Buddhologists is not to learn more about nirvana but to learn the history of this burgeoning study. Welbon has admirably succeeded in his aim; he has concisely presented Western opinion on nirvana up to World War II.--P. J. H. (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning happiness and the possibility of (...) a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more (...) susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

The notion of schema has been given a major role by Recanati within his conception of primary pragmatic processes, conceived as a type of associative process. I intend to show that Recanati’s considerations on schemata may challenge the relevance theorist’s argument against associative explanations in pragmatics, and support an argument in favor of associative (versus inferential) explanations. More generally, associative relations can be shown to be schematic, that is, they have enough structure to license inferential effects without any appeal to (...) genuine inferential processes. Associative processes are thus able to explain a number of pragmatic and linguistic phenomena which have instead been thought to require specialized inferential processes. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. (...) My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)