La cuestión funeraria puede entenderse como un hecho social total que implica cuestiones de orden histórico, social, político, simbólico, jurídico o económico. Este estudio realiza un análisis comparado de las demandas y necesidades en materia funeraria de las comunidades judía y musulmana en el territorio de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid como caso de estudio. Ambas religiones comparten una historia de desarraigo y persecución en la sociedad española, configurada durante siglos como esencialmente católica, así como un proceso de recuperación y (...) relegitimación en época contemporánea. Las leyes reconocen a ambas comunidades el derecho a practicar sus respectivos ritos funerarios, que tienen elementos disonantes con la práctica social mayoritaria, y a disponer de cementerios propios o habilitados por las administraciones públicas. Sin embargo, judíos y musulmanes experimentan un acceso diferencial a ese derecho en la Comunidad de Madrid. El objetivo de este trabajo es abordar las razones de esa diferencia, que tienen que ver con la historia reciente de ambas comunidades, con sus procesos de institucionalización, con sus características sociodemográficas y con los problemas simbólicos que suscita su presencia. (shrink)

Many philosophers reject the view that well-being over a lifetime is simply an aggregation of well-being at every moment of one's life, and thus they reject theories of well-being like hedonism and concurrentist desire satisfactionism. They raise concerns that such a view misses the importance of the relationships between moments in a person's life or the role narratives play in a person's well-being. In this article, we develop an atomist meta-theory of well-being, according to which the prudential value of a (...) life depends solely on the prudential value of each moment of that life. This is a general account of momentary well-being that can capture different features of well-being that standard atomistic accounts fail to capture, thus allowing for the possibility of an atomism that is compatible with a variety of well-being theories. Contrary to many criticisms leveled against momentary well-being, this well-being atomism captures all of the important features of well-being. (shrink)

Many believe that an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life because of its shape. This is a common way of formulating the shape of a life hypothesis. We argue that the hypothesis is mistaken. We need not assume that there is something intrinsically valuable in the shape of one’s life to justify the tendency to judge an upward-sloping life as better than a downward sloping one. Instead, we can appeal to more fundamental and less controversial claims to justify (...) such a judgment. What one might justifiably judge to be better are features of lives which are often (though not necessarily) correlated with, rather than constituted by, an upward slope. (shrink)

Many believe that an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life because of its shape. This is a common way of formulating the shape of a life hypothesis. We argue that the hypothesis is mistaken. We need not assume that there is something intrinsically valuable in the shape of one’s life to justify the tendency to judge an upward-sloping life as better than a downward sloping one. Instead, we can appeal to more fundamental and less controversial claims to justify (...) such a judgment. What one might justifiably judge to be better are features of lives which are often (though not necessarily) correlated with, rather than constituted by, an upward slope. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss James Buchanan’s contribution in the narrow domain of understanding committee voting under majority rule. We then go on to discuss Charles Plott’s seminal experimental work on the topic that sparked a wave of public choice experimental work. However, given Plott’s claims that Buchanan influenced him significantly, it is puzzling that his work with Morris Fiorina explores a question outside of those which Buchanan and Tullock found interesting. We suggest several ways to resolve this tension. Our (...) chapter concludes by discussing a lacuna in the experimental public choice literature in which Buchanan was particularly interested—logrolling, or vote trading. (shrink)

Buchanan’s work, and in particular The Calculus of Consent, which he wrote with Gordon Tullock, has been foundational in the field of public choicePublic choice. One of his students, Charles Plott, became a pioneer with multiple seminal contributions in the field of experimental public choice. In this chapter we focus on Buchanan’s work on decision making under majority rule, and any influence it may have had on Plott. While Buchanan and Tullock address environments with single decisions, they focus much more (...) on decision making under repeated votes, a topic they found of great interest. Plott’s seminal 1978 paper with Morris Fiorina, however, focuses on single decisions. It may seem puzzling, then, that Plott has often suggested Buchanan’s influence on his work. We offer a resolution to this puzzle. (shrink)

This review article provides a new perspective on the ethics of green nudging. We advance a new model for assessing the ethical permissibility of green nudges (GNs). On this model, which provides normative guidance for policymakers, a GN is ethically permissible when the intervention is (1) efficacious, (2) cost-effective, and (3) the advantages of the GN (i.e. reducing the environmental harm) are not outweighed by countervailing costs/harms (i.e. for nudgees). While traditional ethical objections to nudges (paternalism, etc.) remain potential normative (...) costs associated with GNs, any such costs must be weighed against the injunction to reduce environmental harm to third parties. (shrink)

The Politics of Belonging represents an innovative collaboration between political theorists and political scientists for the purposes of investigating the liberal and pluralistic traditions of nationalism. Alain Dieckhoff introduces an indispensable collection of work for anyone dealing with questions of identity, ethnicity, and nationalism.

Policy-makers sometimes aim to improve well-being as a policy goal, but to do this they need some way to measure well-being. Instead of relying on potentially problematic theories of well-being to justify their choice of well-being measure, Daniel Hausman proposes that policy-makers can sometimes rely on preference-based measures as evidence for well-being. I claim that Hausman’s evidential account does not justify the use of any one measure more than it justifies the use of any other measure. This leaves us (...) at a loss as to which policy should be chosen in the non-trivial cases for which there is substantial disagreement between the different measures in their assessment of policy. (shrink)

A collection of essays in French or English on the reception of Cartesian philosphy.

ABSTRACT In this paper, the aim is to demonstrate the ethical-semantic impact of great time in the reaccentuation of two reformulations of the expression “let this cup pass from me.” Theoretically, we describe great time as semantic sectors of existence which frame the possibilities of meaning actualized in speech genres and concrete utterances. Methodologically, the song Cálice by Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil and the RAP Cálice by Criolo are dialogically disposed in relation to their context of production, to one (...) another and to the biblical narratives Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and The Last Supper, which simultaneously convey status of utterance to the expression of which cup configures a metonym and fix the expression as an item of a cultural memory that we can now name Roman Catholic memory.1 The discussion shows that the transposition of this utterance from one semantic sector of existence to another alters the reflection and refraction processes of ideological signs through a game of memories. (shrink)

Perhaps the most remarkable feature about this book is the effort made by its author in order to shed light on the most intriguing question that surrounds disgust: how is it possible for disgust to be so flexible with its objects? This book is highly recommended for those readers interested in the latest and most exciting aspects of current scholarship on the study of the emotions. Readers too who are interested on evolutionary psychology, moral psychology or neuroethics will find this (...) book stimulating. However, it should be noted that perhaps it may not be liked for readers allergic to evolutionary approaches and the vocabulary of cognitive science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Confessions of an American PsychoJames Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’s Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to ViolenceDaniel Cojocaru (bio)My vitals have all been torn, and every faculty and feeling of my soul racked, and tormented into callous insensibility.... I could perceive no bottom, and then—not till then, did I repeat the tremendous prayer!—I was instantly at liberty; and what I now am, the Almighty knows! Amen.—James Hogg, The Private Memoirs (...) and Confessions of a Justified Sinner1My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist.... My pain is constant and sharp.... But even after admitting this... and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself.... This confession has meant nothing.—Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho2A hundred and sixty-seven years lie between the publication of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) (henceforth referred to as Confessions) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991). Yet one cannot but be amazed at the striking similarities of the main [End Page 185] protagonists’s insights at the end of these two novels. Although connections between works of Gothic Romanticism and postmodern narratives have been duly noted, the possible reasons for the analogies remain largely unexplored.3It will be argued here that both novels are representations of worlds immersed in what René Girard, in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (henceforth referred to as Deceit), has termed “deviated transcendency,” resulting in similar stages of narrative progression, which in turn can be analyzed in terms of Girard’s mimetic cycle of violence.At a first glance, the two pieces seem to be concerned with themes that to a secularized age must appear most disparate. But as Girard has noted: “The very idea of mediation encourages literary comparisons at a level which is no longer that of genre criticism or thematic criticism.... It may illuminate the works through each other.”4 Hogg’s narrative deals with the problem of antinomianism and the resulting spiritual pride. The anti-hero of the narrative, Robert Wringhim, relies on his belief that he is one of the elect and cannot fall from grace and consequently is convinced by his elusive friend Gil-Martin to become a murderer without having to fear punishment. American Psycho on the other hand is concerned with the consequences of the crass materialism of the U.S. yuppie generation, culminating at the end of the 1980s, as experienced by the serial-killing first-person narrator Patrick Bateman. However, one could argue that in its very first pages, American Psycho presents the reader with a secularized version of antinomianism. Michael Steig has fleetingly noted that the egocentric doctrines of antinomianism psychologically resemble the “I’m alright tenets” of yuppie pseudo-psychology.5 Timothy Price, one of Bateman’s colleagues on Wall Street, expresses this in the following words: “In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset.”6 Translated into antinomian terms, one could say that he is one of the elect, one of the privileged enjoying a capitalist heaven on earth; and by saying that society cannot afford to lose him, he, like Robert Wringhim, is showing that he believes he cannot fall from grace—or at least he tries to believe it.“I was well aware that the devilish powers of his mother would finally prevail; and either the dread of this, or the inward consciousness of having wronged him, certainly unnerved my arm.”7 If, in this reference to a quarrel with a fellow pupil at school, Robert gives away the fact that he doubts his own words, through the rhetorical device of correctio, so does Timothy Price by his choice of words. In fact, it is exactly because he is an asset that society can afford to lose him. As he is literally transformed into a commodity, society can discard him and in the novel indeed does so. It is one of the many ironies of the narrative that Price disappears soon after the above... (shrink)

Autour de la grande conference de Jacques Derrida, intitulee Justices, prononcee en 2003 et demeuree inedite en francais a ce jour, cet ouvrage collectif convoque certains des meilleurs specialistes de son oeuvre. Il s'agit moins ici de commemorer ou de dresser un etat des lieux que de penser, a partir de Derrida et avec lui, ce qui vient et de repondre a l'appel, aux appels pluriels qui resonnent dans son travail philosophique. Sont ainsi examines les principaux legs de sa pensee (...) dans les differents domaines (philosophie, politique, science des religions, esthetique, litterature) qu'elle a profondement transformes. Autant de reponses et de responsabilites, autant de provocations a lire et a relire l'oeuvre de Jacques Derrida a sa hauteur, comme elle nous y engage toujours. Avec les textes de: Gil Anidjar, Philip Armstrong, Fernanda Bernardo, Mireille Calle-Gruber, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Gianfranco Dalmasso, Francoise Dastur, Jacques Derrida, Silvano Facioni, Edoardo Ferrario, Jerome Lebre, Georges Leroux, Michel Lisse, Rene Major, Marie-Louise Mallet, Serge Margel, Joana Maso, Ginette Michaud, J. Hillis Miller, Raoul Moati, Jean-Luc Nancy, Evando Nascimento, Francois Nault, Laura Odello, Jean-Michel Rabate, Marta Segarra, Peter Szendy, Chantal Talagrand, Francesco Vitale et Hent de Vries. (shrink)

Metaphysics has undergone two major innovations in recent decades. First, naturalistic metaphysicians have argued that our best science provides an important source of evidence for metaphysical theories. Second, social metaphysicians have begun to explore the nature of social entities such as groups, institutions, and social categories. Surprisingly, these projects have largely kept their distance from one another. Katherine Hawley has recently argued that, unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences are not sufficiently successful to provide evidence about the metaphysical nature (...) of social entities. By contrast, I defend an optimistic view of naturalistic social metaphysics. Drawing on a case study of research into contextual effects in social epidemiology, I show that social science can provide a valuable evidence for social metaphysicians. (shrink)

The process of constructing a social reality where “difference” becomes a social asset rather than a monster that threatens peace and progress must commence with a phenomenological understanding of social interactions within and among human societies. In my opinion, Hegel, more than any other thinker, has constructed a phenomenological framework that adequately captures and represents the nature of group interactions within human societies. This paper explores the Hegelian phenomenon of social identity, and, especially, characterizes the interactions between and among various (...) social identities. It is a modest effort to contribute theoretically to the available discourse on the management of “difference” in multi-ethnic societies. (shrink)

In this dissertation I advance a Jaspersian account of the formation and possession of irrational attitudes. This account stands in opposition to two competing views – externalism and internalism with respect to rational and irrational attitudes. According to externalism, a subject’s attitudes are irrational when they fail to satisfy standards or criteria independent of the subject, such as laws of logic, methods for evidence acquisition, and rules of decision theory. According to internalism, a subject’s attitudes are irrational when they are (...) not supported by reasons selected by the subject. In this dissertation, I take Donald Davidson’s theory of rational and irrational attitudes to be a case of externalism and John Searle’s theory of rational and irrational attitudes to be a case of internalism. While articulating and identifying the merits of externalism and internalism with respect to rational or irrational attitudes, I argue that each account ends up in difficulties: Davidson’s externalism cannot account for the experience of freedom, an individual’s subjectivity, and is unable to avoid an infinite regress of rules; Searle’s internalism struggles to avoid solipsism and an infinite regress of reasons. Karl Jaspers’ account of rational and irrational attitude formation, I argue, avoids the pitfalls of Davidson’s and Searle’s views while preserving the merits of each. On Jaspers’ account, a subject possesses rational attitudes insofar as that subject holds those attitudes to be always open to revision while, at the same time, using those attitudes to bring unity to all manner of phenomena and other attitudes. Irrationality, by contrast, occurs, on the Jaspersian view, when a subject holds onto attitudes with complete and absolute resolution and interprets all else according to these attitudes. Having defined a Jaspersian account of rational and irrational attitudes, I show how it accounts for the irrationality of delusional beliefs and the irrationality of certain worldviews. On Jaspers’ view, I argue, delusions and worldviews are irrational insofar as they are held with absolute conviction, are unamenable to modification, and are used to understand all available evidence, views, and opinions. (shrink)

In Karl Jaspers' Theory of Irrationality, Daniel Adsett explains how a Jaspersian view of irrationality makes better sense of the irrationality of delusions and worldviews than competing views, offering a novel contribution to contemporary debates about the character of reason.

Against the background of intellectual and political debates in France during the 1950s and 1960s, Daniel Just examines literary narratives and works of literary criticism arguing that these texts are more politically engaged than they may initially appear. As writings by Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Camus, and Marguerite Duras show, seemingly disengaged literary principles - such as blankness, minimalism, silence, and indeterminateness - can be deployed to a number of potent political and ethical ends. At the time the (...) main focus of this activism was the escalation of violence in colonial Algeria. The poetics formulated by these writers suggests that blankness, weakness, and withdrawal from action are not symptoms of impotence and political escapism in the face of historical events, but deliberate literary strategies aimed to neutralize the drive to dominate others that characterized the colonial project. (shrink)

Daniel, Michael E Review of: Words from the wound: selected addresses, letters and homilies of archbishop mark coleridge, by Mark Coleridge, edited by Anthony Ekpo and David Pascoe, pp. 342, $24.95.

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar los diferentes conceptos del Cosmismo ruso como una alternativa al vacío existencial que permea todo el Transhumanismo. Si tenemos en cuenta que el fenómeno original del Cosmismo ruso es una síntesis de enfoques científicos generales, científico-naturales y culturales para el estudio de la dimensión cosmoplanetaria del hombre, es posible ver en el movimiento del Transhumanismo, por el contrario, supone una amenaza para la humanidad que podría culminar en la realización de sus ideales y (...) sobrepasar todas las zonas de riesgo existentes: la utilización de la innovación tecnológica para el reemplazo gradual del cuerpo humano natural en un cyborg puede llegar a destruir la humanidad tal y como la conocemos. El artículo muestra que el Cosmismo ruso es fundamentalmente diferente del Transhumanismo por la presencia de una enseñanza ética según la cual las nuevas habilidades evolutivas deben tener como base la mejora espiritual y moral de la persona. Al reducir la conciencia humana a un medio electrónico, el Transhumanismo devalúa los valores de la cultura europea. Junto a los sueños audaces sobre las posibilidades evolutivas del hombre, el Cosmismo ruso contiene programas de investigación en los que demuestra que la materia viva de nuestro planeta ha sido generada por diversas radiaciones cósmicas. De ahí que su filosofía anteponga, ante la magnitud que puede llegar a alcanzar la búsqueda de la inmortalidad defendida por el Transhumanismo, el concepto de la naturaleza cósmica de la vida y el "corazón" como un centro psicofisiológico especial de una persona, y que son estos dos conceptos los que podrán contribuir a resolver el problema del estrecho contacto con las tecnologías de última generación. (shrink)

Innovation and sustainability are postulated as key variables for the future of large commercial distribution. In addition, the development of Information and Communication Technologies solutions, and especially those related to Artificial Intelligence and digitization, are particularly relevant factors in the current pandemic scenario in which retail companies operate. These tools are essential to face the derived changes in commercial relations, especially between companies and consumers. For all these reasons, this work aims to examine the effect of ICT, as a driving (...) factor for innovation and its direct and indirect impact on sustainability in retailing. Furthermore, this study takes into account the eventual differences in these relationships according to the types of store formats. To achieve the aforementioned objective, a theoretical model is proposed that is tested through an empirical study carried out on a sample of 510 consumers of three store formats of grocery retail formats in Spain. For the analysis of the data obtained, the partial least squares regression technique and the Multigroup Analysis were used. The results obtained confirm the direct and indirect effect of ICT on innovation and sustainability in grocery retailing. In addition, the results indicate that consumers unequally perceive the technological progress of companies. These differences are greater between discount stores versus hypermarkets and supermarkets. The larger the size of the store format, the higher the incidence of ICT in relation to innovation. Therefore, it is vital to take ICT into consideration, where Artificial Intelligence is imperative for the growth and development of sustainable competitive advantages in retail companies. (shrink)

Ensaio visual produzido a partir de uma série de fotografias através de um inventário catalográfico amoroso da caixa de ferramentas do meu pai e das relações afetivas que estabeleci com ele através destas peças.

Laçaço foi uma ação colaborativa e "tática" coletiva que surgiu do questionamento da relação entre arte, corpo, cidade e do afrouxamento dos laços de afeto aí implicados. Trata-se de uma documentação fotográfica e expansão visual da intervenção performática de apropriação simbólica do Forte dos Reis Magos, marco inicial da cidade de Natal.