Social death, central to the evil of genocide, distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

By reference to the Aristotelian meditation, this essay undertakes to articulate an understanding of phronesis and sophia, praxis and theoria, in their belonging together. In so doing, it strives to overcome the traditional opposition of these terms, an opposition preserved even by those thinkers, such as Gadamer and Arendt, who have emphasized the practical over against the theoretical simply by inverting the order of the hierarchy.What is at stake, ultimately, is thinking ethics as first philosophy, i.e., seeing the philosophical articulation (...) of scientific knowledge, even of ontology, as resting on (belonging in) living-in-action, as phenomenologically, phenomenally, sensibly grounded. Of course, “ethics as first philosophy” here can mean neither a normative-prescriptive compilation nor a self-founding, autonomous discourse. Rather, the phrase names the comprehensiveness of ethics vis-à-vis all mannerof human endeavor and the openness of ethics vis-à-vis that which exceeds it, that which is irreducible to discourse and in which the ethical discourse belongs. (shrink)

Rawls saw need for non-ideal theory also within society but never developed that project. In this chapter, Card suggests that the non-ideal part of Rawls’ Law of Peoples can be a resource for thinking about responding to evils when the subject is not state-centered. It is plausible that defense against great evils other than those of aggressive states should be governed by analogues of scruples that Rawlsian well-ordered societies observe in defending themselves against outlaw states. This essay explores those hypotheses (...) in relation to women’s self-defense and mutual defense against evils of misogyny, the term feminists apply to the most deeply hostile environments of and attitudes toward women and girls and to the cruelest wrongs to them/us, regardless whether perpetrators harbor feelings of hatred. It extrapolates and adapts to this case values, concepts, and methods from Rawls’s life’s work, especially his writing on war. (shrink)

In this article, I bring Marx and Adorno into conversation with affect theory to establish three points: First, an affective reading of the concepts of alienation and exploitation via Marx’s metaphor of the “vampire capital” explains how capitalism depletes raced, gendered, and sexed working class of their bodily and mental powers. Second, discussing these thinkers’ ideas in the context of the larger mind and body opposition revives attention to the body in contemporary political theory and exposes how the mind and (...) body opposition covers the suffering caused by capitalism. Third, it shows that we must theorize the mind and body, feeling and thinking, as a mediated relation to grasping how particularly negative feelings can generate critical thinking, necessary to rebel against the vampire capital. (shrink)

This work is devoted to the relations between Lambek’s Syntactic Calculus and noncommutative variants of Girard’s Linear Logic; in particular the paper will consider: the geometrical representation of the laws of LC by means of proof-nets; the discovery - due to such a geometrical representation - of some laws of LC not yet considered; the discussion of possible linguistic uses of these new laws.

The world population aged significantly over the twentieth century, leading to an increase in the number of individuals presenting progressive, incapacitating, incurable chronic-degenerative diseases. Advances in medicine to prolong life prompted the establishment of instruments to ensure their self-determination, namely the living will, which allows for an informed person to refuse a type of treatment considered unacceptable according to their set of values. From the knowledge on the progression of Alzheimer disease, it is possible to plan the medical care, even (...) though there is still no treatment available. Irreversible cognitive incapacity underlines the unrelenting loss of autonomy of the demented individual. Such a loss requires the provision of specific and permanent care. Major ethical issues are at stake in the physician–patient–family relationship, even when dementia is still at an early stage. The authors suggest that for an adequate health care planning in Alzheimer disease the living will can be presented to the patient in the early days of their geriatric care, as soon as the clinical, metabolic or even genetic diagnosis is accomplished. They also suggest that the appointment of a health care proxy should be done when the person is still in full enjoyment of his cognitive ability, and that the existence and scope of advance directives should be conveyed to any patient in the early stages of the disease. It follows that ethical guidelines should exist so that neurologists as well as other physicians that deal with these patients should discuss these issues as soon as possible after a diagnosis is reached. (shrink)

En la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar, Kant atribuye al principio mecanicista un carácter meramente regulativo. Esto podría dar lugar a pensar que, en esta obra, se opera una transformación del modo en que el autor concibe la causalidad general, ya que, en las primeras dos Críticas, existe una tendencia a identificar el principio mecanicista con el principio de la segunda analogía de la experiencia. En este trabajo, intentaré mostrar que la presentación del principio que Kant hace en la (...) tercera Crítica es totalmente coherente con las tesis que desarrolla en sus otras obras, y que no supone otra modificación de su teoría más que aquella que surge de dirigir la atención sobre el operar de la facultad de juzgar reflexionante y sobre los problemas con los que este operar se relaciona. (shrink)

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Oxford, 2007.

How can we, in our times, understand the biblical concept that human beings have been created in the image of an invisible God? This is a perennial but increasingly pressing question that lies at the heart of theological anthropology. Humanity in God's Image: An Interdisciplinary Exploration clarifies the meaning of this concept, traces different Jewish and Christian interpretations of 'humanity in God's image', and re-considers the significance of the imago Dei in a post-Holocaust context.

This chapter shows that taboos erected around crimes inhibit individuals and nations' work of mourning for the victims of crimes. The work of mourning is the precondition that individuals and nations take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims and their descendants, and make sure that such crimes are not repeated. I bring Theodor W. Adorno and Sigmund Freud in conversation to explain the connection between taboos and the failure to mourn. I further detail this connection with Antigone (...) as an example of taboo and denied mourning. I also explain that the taboos erected around the National Socialist genocide on Roma and Sinti ("gypsies") do not allow Austrians to mourn the loss of this population. As a result, their taking responsibility for this crime remains stifled, and they fail to show solidarity with the Roma and Sinti genocide victims. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on Adorno's concept of the non-identical in conjunction with Lacan's concept of the Real to propose a "theoretical outline of the subject" as central for feminist political theorizing. A theoretical outline of the subject recognizes the limits of theorizing, the moment where meaning fails, and we are confronted with the impossibility of grasping the subject entirely. At the same time, it insists on the importance of a coherent subject to effect transformations in the sociopolitical sphere. (...) Since the non-identical is more grounded in the material world than the Real, and the Real allows us more than the non-identical to grasp the anxieties and desires that lead to totalizing theories, a complementary Adornian-Lacanian theoretical framework holds a central promise for feminist political theorizing. (shrink)

Most of us spend much of our time trying to get other people to act as we would like them to act, trying to influence them in some way to further our purposes or advance our ends. In this enterprise, we make use of a wide array of motivational levers; we take advantage of various sources of others’ susceptibility to influence. Much of this, I submit, is morally unproblematic. There is no moral reason why we should eschew all attempts at (...) influence and pursue our projects unassisted or why we should in turn resent others’ efforts to shape our own beliefs, desires, and ends. To maintain otherwise is to insist on a peculiar kind of individualistic isolationism. Nonetheless, the details of exactly how we influence others matter morally— what motivational levers we pull and the ways in which we pull them. I maintain—although I cannot defend this claim here—that it is difficult to offer general guidelines for assessing various motivational strategies, beyond saying, of course, that one should try to motivate others toward good ends and in ways that are not proscribed by our other moral rules. For the rest, we shall need to look at each kind of motivational strategy individually, with close attention to the details of its own particularity, to appraise whether it can survive moral scrutiny. (shrink)

The article explores the demands that the conflictual dimension of globalization poses for a cosmopolitan education. Such an emphasis seems necessary in times where the populations who undertake inter- and intra-national border crossings are increasingly those who are forced to: those trying to escape unbearable poverty, atrocious wars, the disenfranchised and victims of racist, sexist or religious persecution. Reflecting on the experiences articulated in the two graphic novels, Persepolis and American Born Chinese, the dimension of the globalizing world and its (...) impact and demands on its future world citizens which comes to the fore is one that highlights the necessity for learning how to take a critical and political stance rather than the search for how education can facilitate a smooth adaptation to a new mobile order. Stanley Cavell’s examination of the relationship between autobiography, philosophy, and the founding of a self-reliant voice will be reconsidered in light of its contribution to re-thinking the meaning of a cosmopolitan education between critical self-appropriation and developing a transformative political vision of a new societal order. (shrink)

This article presents some culture and social influences in the construction of Brazilian identity in the hypermodern society of big cities. For that I’ll analyze the advertising world that represents this contemporanea society. I’ll describe some results of my doctorate thesis defended in May of 2007 with I pointed out the thematic and strategies of publicity persuasions more appeared in the more consumed magazines in Brazil in 2005, mainly the emotional strategies of publicity that are frequently used in this country (...) which I related them to the hypermodern values. Now I point out some reflexions to understand possible social relationships caused from those identities that appear in advertisings. The social media influence the ways of living, so they represent important material to study and comprehend the problems of contemporaneous social relationships. (shrink)

Este estudo pretende discutir as relações existentes entre mídia e educação, analisando as políticas públicas que influenciaram a criação da TV Pendrive, identificando a percepção dos professores acerca da mesma. Justifica-se pelo fato de que no ano de 2007 o governo federal criou o Programa Nacional de Tecnologia Educacional (ProInfo), com o objetivo de informatizar o ensino, buscando promover uma educação com maior qualidade. Nesse contexto, a Secretaria de Estado da Educação do Paraná, com vistas à inclusão e ao acesso (...) de alunos e professores da rede pública estadual às novas tecnologias, criou o projeto TV Pendrive. Para a concretização desse estudo, foram realizadas pesquisas e análises bibliográficas, bem como um levantamento com professores da educação básica pública estadual da cidade de Londrina/PR, visando a identificar a percepção dos mesmos em relação à TV Pendrive. Como resultado, constatou-se que as políticas públicas, especialmente as voltadas à educação, parecem ser implantadas pelo governo sem a anuência dos educadores. (shrink)

This paper relates Arendt's critique of a labor society to her thoughts on the “good life.” I begin with the claim that in the post-mass production era, Western societies, traditionally centered around gainful employment, encounter a decrease in the relevance of labor and can thus no longer rely on it as a resource for individual or social meaning. From Arendt's perspective, however, the current situation allows for the possibility of a transition from a society based on labor to a society (...) centered around activities. I explore Arendt's different types of activities—labor, work, action—with respect to the question of justice between the genders. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss three personal examples of contemporary Austrians' defensive reactions when confronted with the book The Political of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (Leeb, 2018). The defensive reactions underline that Austrians evaded confronting themselves with their repressed guilt about their violent National Socialist past and failed at working through their past. It also explains the centrality of "embodied reflective spaces" and the idea of the "subject-in-outline" to counter the continuation of the cycle of violence engendered (...) through repressed guilt and to assist a nation's successful working through its past. (shrink)

Extractos del libro BARRETTA, C., MIRAMONTES, L., & ZORRILLA, A.. Ritmando Danzas. Buenos Aires : Autores de Argentina. Definiciones del concepto de ritmo : Platón, Benveniste, ritmo fisiológico, otras. “Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quærat, scio ; si quærenti explicare uelim, nescio.” San Agustín de Hipona. Cfr. Confesiones. Xl, 14, 17. Un sentimiento - Danse, théâtre et spectacle vivant – GALERIE – Nouvel article.

(1) In Plato’s Phaedrus divine inspiration comes literally to mean “environmental inspiration.” Intimated thereby is the insufficiency of all reflection on the divine and the natural which would fail to interrogate these categories precisely in their convergence, indeed, in their being (at) one. (2) The theme of inspiration, in its divine or elemental character, necessarily raises further questions concerning the status of inspired utterance—that is, in this case, of philosophical discourse itself. (3) These themes finally point to the problem of (...) the provenance of speaking and writing, if not from a purely active and free subject. (shrink)

This article intends to analyse crossings between words and the Word. To this purpose, we will present linguistic and spiritual connotations of the terms belonging to the semantic field of the verb “to communicate” and of the idea of communication. We will also deepen the pneumatologic curative issue of the Word. The final section of the article will draw on the description of the extensive references in the relation between words and the Word.

Modern capitalist societies are plagued by a series of oppositions, such as the subject/object, theory/practice, and the mind/body opposition. The problem with these oppositions is that they appear in an absolute opposition and hierarchical relation, making the negative pole (the object, practice, and the body) appear inferior to the positive pole (the subject, theory, and the mind). Furthermore, the “inferior” pole is often unconsciously linked to women, racial minorities, and working-class people, reinforcing injustices towards them. In this chapter, I read (...) Theodor W. Adorno with Jacques Lacan to explain how these oppositions are connected and different from one another, and what we can do to challenge them, and the injustices they engender. (shrink)

This chapter shows that Fraser's redistribution-recognition justice model fails to provide us with a radical political imaginary to transform neoliberal capitalism into a better society. First, her principle of 'parity of participation' aims to include oppressed social groups into capitalism rather than transforming capitalism itself. Second, her idea of a 'constantly shifting identity' is implicated in the spirit of neoliberal capitalism. Third, her account of socialism implies a reformative socialist imaginary that merely attenuates the ills of neoliberal capitalism. Fourth, her (...) attempt to do away with the proletariat as a political subject does not allow us to theorize an agent of transformative change. To envision transformative change, feminists need a clear break with the language of recognition and the idea of the 'constantly shifting identity.' Furthermore, we need to bring back the radical imaginary of Rosa Luxemburg, who opted for a proletarian revolution instead of reforms within capitalism. Finally, I offer my idea of the proletariat as a subject-in-outline to further theorize the agent who incites a revolution. (shrink)

For the past decade and a half, social and political thinkers have appropriated the Hegelian trope of a "struggle for recognition" to generate theories that lead to a democratic politics of inclusion. The different strands within the "politics of recognition" debate share the conviction that "recognition" is a central human good and the precondition for justice in pluralist societies. However, in this article, I show that recognition theorists, instead of creating a democratic politics of inclusion, have perpetuated exclusions. I share (...) Jacques Lacan's suspicion of democratic politics based on recognition or its counterpart—misrecognition. What parades as a pluralist society where subjects supposedly "equally recognize each other in their diversity" often leads to excluding women, sexual and racial minorities, and the poor. Although the influence of the politics of recognition is fading, perhaps because other thinkers have also realized its inherent problems, it remains a dominant strand in contemporary political theorizing. (shrink)

In this original book, I use a poststructuralist perspective to chart explicit and tacit assumptions about the working class in general and the working-class woman, specifically in the classical texts of prominent political philosophers and social critics, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu. Drawing on Michel Foucault, I argue that philosophical discourses that construct these categories as the Other function as disciplinary practices that aim at keeping working-class women either out of or at the margins of academic (...) institutions. I analyze interviews with women from various ethnic origins in New York City’s elite academic institutions, who identified their backgrounds as working class. My analysis foregrounds how these women resist gender, class, and ethnic disciplinary practices in academia. The book contributes to political-theory literature on social injustice and marginalization in academia and challenges and reconfigures the meanings of women and the working class. (shrink)

Este texto visa apresentar uma análise, de inspiração genealógica, do movimento de criação do Fórum Sul de Coordenadores dos Cursos de Filosofia, das produções oriundas do Simpósio Sul-Brasileiro sobre Ensino da Filosofia e de suas contribuições para o delineamento epistemológico e político da área. Procura identificar as condições de emergência dos discursos sobre ensino de filosofia, produzidos neste processo.

How can a feminist subject that emerges in the moment of subjection to power discourses be in a position to generate transformative politics? How can we theorize a feminist political subject without such subject becoming exclusionary? This chapter draws on the combinatory theoretical framework of Jacques Derrida and Theodor W. Adorno to propose an alternative theoretical framework that finds answers to these divisive questions in feminist political theory. First, it shows that the feminist political subject emerges within the limit of (...) power when power fails to fully determine subjectivity. Second, it further theorizes the concept of a feminist political subject-in-outline, which defines the feminist political subject without becoming exclusionary. (shrink)

O funk é hoje considerado uma das maiores manifestações culturais de massa do Brasil e está diretamente relacionado aos estilos de vida e experiências da juventude oriunda de favelas, portanto ele reflete a vida cotidiana em comunidades do Rio de Janeiro. Este artigo consiste em uma análise crítica construída em torno das mulheres Mc’s do Movimento Funk Carioca e, tem como objetivo analisar por meio do cotidiano da mulher trabalhadora as contradições da cultura popular expressas nas músicas que alimentam uma (...) consciência da condição de dominação e suas limitadas possibilidades de superação. (shrink)

In this article, I expose the psychologically oriented techniques a core leader of the right extremist Identitarian Movement in the German-speaking context, Martin Sellner, uses to capture new followers. I show that such techniques offer the prospective followers irrational gratifications and release their feelings of failure and frustration of not living up to capitalist and patriarchal values, thereby distracting them from the Identitarian Movement's destructive aims. I also engage with Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytically inspired writings on fascist agitators and their (...) followers in my analyses. (shrink)