Bien que vivant au quotidien dans l'existence, nous n'avons que tres rarement le sentiment de l'existence: nous faisons quelque chose, nous allons et venons, et par la faisons partie de ce tout qu'est l'existence sans toutefois y penser veritablement. A de rares moments cependant, contemplant un paysage du haut d'une montagne, regardant le ciel etoile, nous realisons non sans frissonner qu'une chose comme l'existence existe. Nous nous extirpons alors de l'affairement pour nous plonger dans l'integralite de cette vaste existence: nous (...) existons avec l'existence, non parce que le champ de notre vision se trouverait etre considerablement elargi, mais parce que c'est le fait meme d'embrasser l'espace qui nous libere et nous permet d' entendre ce passage de l'existence, son ecoulement. (shrink)

This book contains twelve engaging philosophical lectures given by Alexandru Dragomir, most of them given during Romania’s Communist regime. The lectures deal with a diverse range of topics, such as the function of the question, self-deception, banalities with a metaphysical dimension, and how the world we live in has been shaped by the intellect. Among the thinkers discussed in these lectures are Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Nietzsche. Alexandru Dragomir was a Romanian philosopher born in 1916. After (...) studying law and philosophy at the University of Bucharest, he left Romania to study for a doctorate in philosophy in Freiburg, Germany, under Martin Heidegger. He stayed in Freiburg for two years, but before defending his dissertation he was called back to Romania for military service and sent to the front. After 1948, historical circumstances forced him to become a clandestine philosopher: he was known only within a very limited circle. He died in 2002 without ever publishing anything. It was only after his death that Dragomir's notebooks came to light. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas, Bucharest; the present volume is the first to appear in English translation. In 2009, the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy was founded in Bucharest as an independent research institute under the auspices of the Romanian Society for Phenomenology. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important (...) Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

Ancien élève de Heidegger, Alexandru Dragomir (1916-2002) est une figure atypique de la philosophie. Abandonnant l'idée d'une carrière universitaire après la Seconde guerre mondiale, il navigua d'un métier à un autre, refusant catégoriquement d'être publié de son vivant. Il laisse aujourd'hui à nos curiosités ses Banalités métaphysiques, extraites des cahiers dans lesquels il griffonait des notes à sa propre intention. Banalités métaphysiques est la première publication de ce philosophe hors norme, tiré malgré lui de son retrait volontaire.

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character traits in justifying (...) beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

What grounds the truth of modal statements? And how do we get to know about what is possible or necessary? One of the most prominent anti-realist perspectives on the nature of modality, due to Peter Menzies, is the response-dependent account of modal concepts. Typically, offering a response-dependent account of a concept means defining it in terms of dispositions to elicit certain mental states from suitable agents under suitable circumstances. Menzies grounded possibility and necessity in the conceivability-response of ideal conceivers: P (...) is possible iff an ideal conceiver could conceive that P. I will draw attention to three major objections that can be identified in the modal metaphysics and epistemology literature: Chalmers’ Incoherency Objection, Sherratt’s Transparency Objection and Geirsson’s Irrelevancy Objection. Each of these objections raises a different worry regarding Menzies’ account: that the notion of an ideal conceiver is incoherent, that the account implies a controversial thesis, and that it fails to offer an explanation of our knowledge of modality. The aim of this paper is to defend the response-dependent account of modality against these three objections. (shrink)

1) We will begin by offering a short introduction to Epistemic Logic and presenting Fitch’s paradox in an epistemic‑modal logic. (2) Then, we will proceed to presenting three Epistemic Temporal logical frameworks creat‑ ed by Hoshi (2009) : TPAL (Temporal Public Announcement Logic), TAPAL (Temporal Arbitrary Public Announcement Logic) and TPAL+P ! (Temporal Public Announcement Logic with Labeled Past Operators). We will show how Hoshi stated the Verificationist Thesis in the language of TAPAL and analyze his argument on why this (...) version of it is immune from paradox. (3) Edgington (1985) offered an interpretation of the Verificationist Thesis that blocks Fitch’s paradox and we will propose a way to formulate it in a TAPAL‑based lan‑ guage. The language we will use is a combination of TAPAL and TPAL+P ! with an Indefinite (Unlabeled) Past Operator (TAPAL+P !+P). Using indexed satisfi‑ ability relations (as introduced in (Wang 2010 ; 2011)) we will offer a prospec ‑ tive semantics for this language. We will investigate whether the tentative re‑ formulation of Edgington’s Verificationist Thesis in TAPAL+P !+P is free from paradox and adequate to Edgington’s ideas on how „all truths are knowable“ should be interpreted. (shrink)

The prospect of cognitive enhancement well beyond current human capacities raises worries that the fundamental equality in moral status of human beings could be undermined. Cognitive enhancement might create beings with moral status higher than persons. Yet, there is an expressibility problem of spelling out what the higher threshold in cognitive capacity would be like. Nicholas Agar has put forward the bold claim that we can show by means of inductive reasoning that indefinite cognitive enhancement will probably mark a difference (...) in moral status. The hope is that induction can determine the plausibility of post‐personhood existence in the absence of an account of what the higher status would be like. In this article, we argue that Agar's argument fails and, more generally, that inductive reasoning has little bearing on assessing the likelihood of post‐personhood in the absence of an account of higher status. We conclude that induction cannot bypass the expressibility problem about post‐persons. (shrink)

McCall (1984) offered a semantics of counterfactual conditionals based on “real possible worlds” that avoids using the vague notion of similarity between possible worlds. I will propose an interpretation of McCall’s counterfactuals in a formal framework based on Baltag-Moss-Solecki events and protocols. Moreover, I will argue that using this interpretation one can avoid an objection raised by Otte (1987).

Gettier cases are used to show that having a justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge. They are cases in which an epistemic agent has a belief that is both justified and true, but intuitively cannot be taken to count as knowledge. Modal epistemology is the field of philosophy that tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (possibility and necessity) and what offers justification for beliefs about what is possible or necessary. Part of the tradition in (...) modal epistemology is to consider conceivability as a guide to metaphysical possibility. As such, if an agent can conceive that P, then the agent is justified to believe that P is metaphysically possible. In this paper I will discuss the possibility of constructing Gettier cases for a tripartite, conceivability-based, definition of modal knowledge. (shrink)

In the Dune universe, humans relied on computers for thousands of years. Their immense capacity for mathematical calculations made space travel possible, until the Butlerian Jihad ended that era. Humans found the means to cognitively and physically enhance themselves to replace and outmatch intelligent machines by using nootropic drugs, revolutionary training methods, artificial selection, and genetic engineering. There are also moral and social problems that come along with human enhancement technologies. In a society where enhancement is popular, the poor would (...) have fewer chances to succeed in social and economic competitions. Many moral philosophers argue that our freedoms and basic rights are guaranteed by a special moral status, personhood. Nicholas Agar has proposed that post‐personhood could be seen as the end of a continuum of intelligence and reasoning abilities. The Bene Gesserit education and selective breeding program claims to be all about producing human beings who maximize the well‐being of all humankind. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

We give a description of the effect of the gravitational field by using the geodesic equation of motion with respect to a first order Finslerian approximation of the Minkowski metric. This motivates linking the physical force of gravity to the non flat nature of space in the Finslerian setting and leads to an anisotropic version of the red shift formula. We solve the linearized Finslerian field equations proposed by S.F. Rutz (Gen. Relativ. Gravit. 25(11):1139–1158, 1993).

Communication about diagnosis and medical treatment for children suffering from life-threatening illnesses is complex. It is a primary step in involving underage patients and families in care and lays the foundation for obtaining parental permission and patient assent for treatment. In practice child participation in care is often difficult to obtain due to patients' different and sometimes fluctuating preferences, but also parents' protective strategies. Physicians may be susceptible to parental wishes to limit information and feel uncomfortable discussing issues related to (...) uncertainty of cure with patients. A qualitative study in Romanian paediatric oncology units was conducted to explore children's involvement from the perspectives of parents and oncologists. Interviews with participants discussed 18 patient cases. Data were transcribed and thematic analysis was used to interpret and mine patients' involvement during treatment. Different facets of patient participation were identified: restricting, widening and enhancing involvement. A fourth category, unintentional involvement, occurred for all patients due to children's observations during long-term hospitalisations and access to Internet. Uncertainty overarched parental attitudes regarding the extent to which children should be included. Physicians usually complied with parental wishes to limit involvement, but together with parents involved patients at least in a practical way. Adults' protective attitude may backfire, as adolescents' online searches often expose patients to worse-case scenarios. Further research should acknowledge the hazards of restricted diagnosis disclosure and develop clinician tools to support families in communicating with patients. This should be paralleled by physician efforts to elicit patients' needs regarding participation. (shrink)

The extremely rapid evolution of portable technologies and children's receptiveness to constantly accessing the latest information creates the conditions for a number of new developments in most areas of activity. Moreover, their attraction to real-time visualisation of various events and competitions projects a certain level of perception and imitation of certain behaviours. Therefore, special attention should be paid to them from the earliest stages, i.e., from the time they are selected to play various sports. Also, the complementarity of some sports (...) must be taken into account when it is desired to obtain positive results. Age group adaptation and the investigation of some of the parameters relevant to different age groups have generated values that can support positive outcomes in the long term and thus increase motivation to participate in sport at a competitive level. (shrink)

Review of Sorin Şipoş, Silviu Dragomir – istoric, (Oradea: Editura Universităţii din Oradea and Chişinău: Editura Cartdidact, 2009), 547 p.

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

Après des études de droit et de philosophie à l'Université de Bucarest, Alexandru Dragomir part à Fribourg-en-Brisgau comme doctorant de Martin Heidegger. Il y reste deux ans; en 1943 il est rappelé en Roumanie et envoyé au front. Après la guerre, sous le nouveau régime, il ne peut pas poursuivre une carrière universitaire. Il meurt en 2002 à Bucarest sans avoir rien publié. Ce n'est qu'après sa mort que ses cahiers sont découverts et publiés. L'œuvre de Dragomir comprend (...) cinq volumes, parus à Bucarest, aux Éditions Humanitas. Deux sont parus en traduction française chez Vrin : Banalités métaphysiques et Cahiers du temps. Cet article présente sa personnalité et son œuvre, notamment les Cahiers du temps, qui renferment la recherche de toute sa vie. Dragomir y développe sa propre théorie sur la nature du temps, tout en faisant des commentaires des textes classiques de la philosophie qui portent sur ce sujet. Des traductions en allemand et en anglais des Cahiers du temps paraîtront bientôt. Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandru Dragomir studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest. In 1941 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship, which allowed him to enroll as a doctoral student at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, under the supervision of Martin Heidegger. In 1943 he was drafted into the Romanian armed forces and left Freiburg without a degree. In Romania, under the communist regime, he could not pursue an academic career. He died in 2002 without publishing anything. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas Press. Two of the volumes have been published in French translation by Jean Vrin Press : Banalités métaphysiques [Metaphysical Banalities] and Cahiers du temps [Notebooks on Time]. This article offers an overview of Dragomir's personality and work, with an emphasis on his Notebooks on Time — his lifelong research on the nature of time. In these notebooks he develops his own views on time and comments on the classical philosophical texts that deal with the subject. (shrink)

The World We Live In contains private lectures given by Alexandru Dragomir spanning a period from 1985 to 1998. Some lectures are graceful examples of ‘live’ philosophical thinking, where phenomenological investigation and philological skill are combined to probe issues concerning time, space, and technology. Other lectures are less polished and should perhaps not have been published. Almost all the lectures engage with classic philosophical texts, primarily by Plato and Aristotle, and, to a lesser degree, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. (...) Dragomir’s mentor Heidegger is more often than not present in the background, through the method of analysis. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important (...) Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

This short autobiographical text evokes the atmosphere of the years which marked the beginning of my friendship with Alexandru Dragomir: i.e. our student years in Bucharest, the circle of Romanian students studying in the 40s in Freiburg i. Br. and the intellectual intensity of Martin Heidegger’s seminars and courses, which influenced both of us for the rest of our lives. From the 15 members of Heidegger’s Oberseminar (dedicated in this period to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit), three were from Romania: (...) Alexandru Dragomir, Octavian Vuia and the author of these lines. The relationship between Dragomir and I became closer as we translated “Was ist Metaphysik?” into Romanian. Alexandru Dragomir was highly appreciated by Heidegger and beloved by other students for his penetrating spirit, for his spontaneity, but also for his sense of humor. After more than 30 years in which the history thrown us in parallel worlds, we had the joy to meet again in Bucharest. His texts, now published, present him as a brilliant and original thinker. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

In 1962, after insisting upon the Vienna moment and comparing the points in the second Leopold Diploma, the author believed that the union was fulfilled in Vienna where the imperial authorities played an essential role. The Jesuits, who were considered the artisans of the union up to that moment, were reduced to the role of negotiators and forgers of the documents of 1697, 1698 and 1700. Because of the resentments against the “traitors” of the nation, S. Dragomir could not (...) or did not want to understand the great change brought about in the history of Transylvanian Romanians by the political programme initiated by Inochentie. When we take into account the fact that Dragomir was one of the nationalists at the beginning of the 20th century in Transylvania, it is hard to understand his refusal to identify the birth of nationalism in Transylvania with the political action caused by the Greek- Catholic bishop. His historical writings were also influenced by the new political realities in Romania after 1944. The author hesitated to establish the causes of the religious movements led by Visarion Sarai and Sofronie of Cioara because he was influenced by the Marxist philosophy. In his interwar studies he thought the movements led by Visarion Sarai and Sofronie of Cioara had religious determinations and aimed at reestablishing the Orthodox faith. After 1955 the historian changed his conclusions, considering them social and national movements against the Hapsburgs. (shrink)

Alexandru Dragomir became widely known in Romania as a philosopher 2 years after his death, in 2004. He had no prior publications and only a few of his close acquaintances were even aware of his work as a thinker. The editors of the five volumes of his posthumous papers have from the onset tried to present Dragomir, a former doctoral student of Heidegger, as a phenomenologist, while this interpretation is today well-established. The following paper tries to submit this (...) interpretation to a closer scrutiny, on the one hand, by addressing the history of Dragomir’s publication and reception in Romania and abroad, and on the other hand, by analyzing several aspects of his oeuvre which do indeed hold close resemblance to aspects of the phenomenological method, even though they actually have quite different motivations. (shrink)

The postmodern human lives in a quest condition. Poetry and philosophy, as forms that integrate, shape, and deposit the sacred, are part of the instruments used by postmoderns to fulfill their need for communication and personal accomplishment. Although they use different means to construe reality, poetry and philosophy may serve a common end goal – to disclose philosophy as the art of living. As communication practice, philosophy and poetry are based on an expanded rationality involving the rational extended to the (...) sphere of the significance and hidden sense of existence. In other words, expanded rationality presupposes cultivating a symbolic consciousness that is adequate to the daily reality of human needs. To showcase the intimate relationship between philosophical reflection and poetic creation, I provide a short presentation of the poetry belonging to a Romanian poet, Rodica Dragomir. Her poems are an example of the quest for authenticity by means of the metaphysical stirring of existence. (shrink)

Abstract This paper describes the early history of magnetochemistry: the search for chemical effects of magnetism in the nineteenth century. Some early researchers, such as Johann Wilhelm Ritter, attempted to reproduce with magnets the effects that had been produced by electricity and Volta’s battery. For several decades, researchers successively reported positive results and denied claims concerning the effect of magnetism in oxidation, electrolysis, reduction of metals from saline solutions, crystallisation, change of colour of vegetable tinctures and other chemical reactions. In (...) the two last decades of the nineteenth century some effects were accepted as real, and a thermodynamic theory of the influence of magnetic fields upon chemical reactions was developed. Finally, Dragomir Hurmuzescu was able to create reproducible experiments and measured the electromotive force between two electrodes, with or without the presence of magnetic fields, confirming the existence of the phenomenon and obtaining results compatible with the theoretical predictions. Afterwards, this magnetochemical effect was accepted as real, but the effect was weak and its practical importance was negligible. The subject was gradually forgotten. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10698-011-9127-8 Authors Roberto de Andrade Martins, Department of Physics, State University of Paraiba, Campina Grande, PB, Brazil Journal Foundations of Chemistry Online ISSN 1572-8463 Print ISSN 1386-4238. (shrink)

Dragomir was not interested in writing philosophy, although his archive amounts to almost 100 notebooks, containing fragments, notes, essays and studies. This essay addresses Dragomir’s disregard for written philosophy and argues that his main message will lose its force in his posthumously published archive. His message, as it emerges from the way he lived his life, is, I argue, this: if we are to restore the lost harmony of our lives, philosophy, as essential as it may be, isn’t (...) everything. (shrink)