The purpose of this essay is to elucidate the philosophical tools developed in George Steiner’s marvelous body of work. In his writings, he carries on a lucid observation and description of human spirit’s linguistic creation and formulation. His observations do not deviate from the way of a strict ethics inherited from ilustrated spiritual Judaism. His legacy about thought on language and his role as a contemporary culture’s critic leads us to a reflection on our continent and history. As an anthropological (...) work, it aims at a practical comprehension of gregariousness and to a psychic and physiological elucidation of the human phenomena. (shrink)

C’est essentiellement dans les articles dits de “grammaire” que Diderot, dans l’Encyclopédie, a énoncé clairement les grands points de sa philosophie et de sa morale et il faut lire ces articles en les reliant les uns aux autres pour faire apparaître leur importance dans l’élaboration de la morale diderotienne.

Based on a case study this article analyzes the (re)building of (neo) Pentecostal religious symbols and a (neo)Pentecostal religious grammar in a context of violence. Therefore, we presented a brief background of the Church of God of the Last Days (Igreja Assembleia de Deus dos Últimos Dias – ADUD) and its charismatic leader, pastor Marcos Pereira, as well as his performance and relations in a territory of extreme violence, with the purpose to contextualize his trajectory. The pastor’s narrative about himself (...) – in terms of “testimony” – shows a symbolic grammar which represents the experiences between religion and violence. The argument is that the building of a religious grammar, although it seems to be always against the grammar of violence, keeps relations in a symbolic arena (sometimes arriving at praxis). Therefore, they are not distinct spheres, as the ambiguous trajectory of the pastor Marcos Pereira shows, but spheres whose borders are movable. (shrink)