Society is the ensemble/the whole of the relations with the others, it is their form based on the natural needs : the perpetuation of the species, the playful expression, the language, the thinking, the communication, the inter-subjectivity report. In the evolution of psychology of human development, sport contributes to the improvement of the body in relation to the environment; of the cognitive, moral development of language, that of complex skills, sensory integrations, games with body schematics, which mobilize self-awareness and structure (...) through learning and experience. Thus, social and communication behaviours generate a mutually advantageous social repertoire. (shrink)

Recent developments in the Arab world reopen one of the most fertile debate topics in international relations theory: the universal nature of the concept “fundamental human rights” and their content. The perspectives are different, being influenced by an ideological background, especially theological, apparently contradictory, affecting the positions of major international actors, stimulating the revival of controversies on major differences between Western world and the developing societies. Through a balanced analysis, specific to critical postmodernism, of the way each civilization (according to (...) Samuel Huntington) relates to the human being and to its place within its own legal architecture, one can notice that, beyond any differences, joint elements can be identified for further integration into a common fundamental text conferring the consensual universality indispensable to such an important principle. (shrink)

Agroecology has been criticized for being more labor-intensive than other more industrialized forms of agriculture. We challenge the assertion that labor input in agriculture has to be generally minimized and argue that besides quantity of work one should also consider the quality of work involved in farming. Early assessments on work quality condemned the deskilling of the rural workforce, whereas later criticisms have concentrated around issues related to fair trade and food sovereignty. We bring into the discussion the concept of (...) contributive justice to welcome the added labor-intensity of agroecological farming. Contributive justice demands a work environment where people are stimulated to develop skills and learn to be productive. It also suggests a fairer distribution of meaningful work and tedious tasks. Building on the notion of contributive justice we explore which capabilities and types of social relationships are sustainably promoted and reinforced by agroecological farming practices. We argue that agroecological principles encourage a reconceptualization of farm work. Farmers are continuously stimulated to develop skills and acquire valuable experiential knowledge on local ecosystems and agricultural techniques. Further, generalized ecological studies recognize the significance of the farmer’s observations on natural resources management. This contributes to the development of a number of capabilities and leads to more bargaining power, facilitating self-determination. Hereby farm work is made more attractive to a younger generation, which is an essential factor for safeguarding the continuity of family farms. (shrink)

This work is the first Levinas Concordance. The particularity of this index is that it covers on all the 28 books published by Levinas in French. The Levinas Concordance comprises the complete list of meaningful words of Levinas’ oeuvre and their corresponding occurrences, indicated by book, page and line. The Levinas Concordance contains eight specific indexes: General Index of French Terms; General Index of Proper Names; Index of Hebrew, Biblical and Talmudic Proper Names; Index of Hebrew Terms; Index of Greek (...) Terms; Index of Latin Terms; Index of German Terms; Index of Works. (shrink)

The concept of food sovereignty is becoming an element of everyday parlance in development politics and food justice advocacy. Yet to successfully achieve food sovereignty, the demands within this movement have to be compatible with the way people are pursuing consumer sovereignty, and vice versa. The aim of this article is to examine the different sets of demands that the two ideals of sovereignty bring about, analyze in how far these different demands can stand in constructive relations with each other (...) and explain why consumers have to adjust their food choices to seasonal production variability to promote food sovereignty and so secure future autonomy. (shrink)

As populations grow and arable land becomes increasingly scarce, large-scale long- term land leases are signed at a growing rate. Countries and investors with large amounts of financial resources and a strong agricultural industry seek long-term land leases for agricultural exploitation or investment purposes. Leaders of financially poorer countries often advertise such deals as a fast way to attract foreign capital. Much has been said about the short-term social costs these types of leases involve, however, less has been said about (...) the normative dimension of their long-term environmental impact. We therefore will focus on the likely impact such deals have for soil conservation, by (1) briefly introducing the basics of long-term leasing arrangements by comparing land leases to the renting of buildings, (2) explaining from a soil sciences perspective the difficulties in assessing the current value of an estate and in calculating the damages of soil erosion and degradation, and (3) show how difficult it is to incentivize the conservation of soil quality when one cannot sufficiently and cost-effectively valorize existing environmental capital and eventual future damages. Attempting to oblige tenants through contracts to invest in sustainable stewardship has limited potential when liability payments do not reflect true costs and are hard to enforce. (shrink)

On why agricultural innovation from the Global South can and should be used to adapt food production to climate change. Discussed on hand of three cases studies.

Farmers’ organizations all over the world are very well aware that in order to build and retain a critical mass with sufficient bargaining power to democratically influence local governments and international organizations they will have to unite by identifying common goals and setting aside their differences. After decades of local movements and struggles, farmers’ organizations around the globe found in the concept of “food sovereignty” the normative framework they were long searching for. The broadness of the concept has had a (...) remarkable success in embracing the interests of food producers and consumers from all geographic locations and development levels. (shrink)

This text attempts to trace the evolution of the political and philosophical thought of Georg Lukács, after his magnum opus History and class consciousness, as well as the influence that historical events had on this evolution. Against the dominant consensus that dismisses Lukács’s late work as an effect of his alleged “reconciliation with reality”, I argue that the line of continuity in his thought was the idea of peaceful coexistence, derived from the objective conditions – the isolation of the Soviet (...) Union and the stabilization of Western capitalism. So, rather than explaining his choice to defend coexistence, or “socialism in one country” as a consequence of his reconciliation with, or surrender to Stalinism, one should see his compromise with Stalinism as a consequence of this choice. His commitment to the coexistence thesis shaped his final version of Marxism in a number of ways. From a political perspective, a readjustment of the temporal scale of the transition to socialism in post-revolutionary society constrained him to advocate a more realist strategy that combined revolutionary movements with evolutionary processes – this was reflected in his option for the Popular Front strategy and later in his support for the Western pacifist movements. His late philosophical work also bears the marks of this enduring political choice. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2001) nunca escribió una ética, sin embargo, su aportación a la filosofía a partir de la exploración de los límites de la hermenéutica estuvo marcada en todo momento por un sustrato ético que a día de hoy nos sirve para orientarnos en un presente caótico y desordenado como el que vivimos. La hermenéutica como arte de la comprensión nos ofrece las herramientas necesarias para navegar los procelosos mares del pensamiento relativista e instrumental, ya que nos recuerda el horizonte (...) compartido del que todos participamos para vivir en comunidad. Este artículo toma como punto de partida la obra tardía de Gadamer, aquella que en algunos casos ni siquiera llegó a incluirse dentro de su obra completa, y expone a partir de sus análisis sobre la salud, las condiciones de la razón social, la educación y la idea de solidaridad como es posible interpretar la realidad social y humana de manera hermenéutica y cuales son sus implicaciones éticas. (shrink)

Inflammatory bowel disease is chronic and incurable. Imperious diarrhea, rectal bleeding, fatigue, and weight loss, the main manifestations, cause a decrease in the quality of the patient’s personal and professional life. The objectives of this study were to identify a possible relationship between early maladaptive schemas and disease activity status using logistic regression, to identify the prevalence of early maladaptive schemes in patients and to propose a psychotherapeutic intervention plan. The following were found in a sample of 46 patients aged (...) 16–76 years. An increase in the domain overvigilance and inhibition score had a significant effect, with an increase of 1.137 CI95% [1.031, 1.254] of the risk of the disease being diagnosed as active. High and very high scores were observed for the emotional deprivation scheme and dependence/incompetence, vulnerability to harm and illness and subjugation schemas. The results show that the proposed model could predict and reconfirm the diagnosis; patients have specific psychotherapeutic needs. The therapeutic goal would be to offer care, empathy and protection, to strengthen self-confidence, to make patients realize that they have the ability to cope, to provide permission, encourage the patient to experiment, and guide the patient to express their anger healthily. The therapy scheme’s intervention could lead to increased long-term disease management capacity and, consequently, reduce costs directly and indirectly caused by this condition. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo tiene por objetivo mostrar la mutua correspondencia entre experiencia e historicidad en la obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer. La experiencia es entendida como el movimiento fundamental de la existencia histórica, la que articula las diversas esferas de la acción humana. La experiencia hermenéutica pone de manifiesto que el comprender no puede fundarse en un procedimiento metódico, sino en la forma del existir situado en el mundo. El acto hermenéutico es entendido como un continuo proceso de apropiación, que se (...) realiza mediante el lenguaje, y donde se van actualizando nuevos significados que develan el carácter aconteciente y móvil de la interpretación. Por ello, la historicidad de la comprensión será el principio hermenéutico fundamental que excluye la posibilidad de una conciencia histórica absoluta, a favor de una “conciencia de la repercusión histórica” (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins). The following article aims at showing the mutual correspondence between experience and historicity in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Experience is understood as the fundamental movement of the historical existence, whichvarious spheres ofhuman action. The hermeneutic experience shows thatnot lie in methodical procedure, but in the way of existence in the world. The hermeneuticis understood as a continuing process that is carried out through language and where new meanings are updated, that reveal mobile characteristics of the interpretation. Therefore, the understanding the hermeneutical principle which excludes possibility ofabsolute consciousness, in favor of a historically-effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins). (shrink)

Hans-Georg GADAMER, Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze ; Pascal MICHON, Poétique d’une anti-anthropologie: l’herméneutique deGadamer ; Robert J. DOSTAL, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ; Denis SERON, Le problème de la métaphysique. Recherches sur l’interprétation heideggerienne de Platon et d’Aristote ; Henry MALDINEY, Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu ; Dominique JANICAUD, Heidegger en France, I. Récit; II. Entretiens ; Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Fenomenologia percepţiei ; Trish GLAZEBROOK, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science ; Richard WOLIN, Heidegger’s Children. Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas (...) and Herbert Marcuse ; Ivo DEGENNARO, Logos – Heidegger liest Heraklit ; O. K. WIEGAND, R. J. DOSTAL, L. EMBREE, J. KOCKELMANS and J. N. MOHANTY, Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic ; James FAULCONER and Mark WRATHALL, Appropriating Heidegger. (shrink)

El presente artículo desarrolla el tema de la formación del tacto. Este tema, que desde las ciencias del espíritu llamaron bildung o formación, pone como una cuestión principal, la estética en la formación para la vida. Respecto a ello, es pertinente analizar las variables ver aquellas acciones o reflexiones que ayudan a sensibilizar y construir espacios de humanización entre los hombres. En el contexto pedagógico, se requieren, de las mismas exigencias del tacto, tanto para la educación superior en la formación (...) docente y, para estudiantes secundarios. Se trata de pensar los procesos pedagógicos desde la estética. Para desarrollar el tema hemos abordado la lectura desde dos autores base: Hans-Georg Gadamer y John Dewey, que desde una lectura hermenéutico pragmática, situamos como un elemento central de la formación estética a la conversación. De este modo, la importancia del tacto nos pone en estrecha relación con la importancia de la estética en la formación profesional docente, como en el propio ejercicio de quienes ejercen el oficio de ser maestros, pues construir el sensus communis es el desafío de un maestro de saber y conocer; que, desde el tacto, abre la oportunidad de encontrar en la conversación, una experiencia que forma y proyecta. (shrink)

Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT are known to induce powerful alterations in phenomenology. Perhaps of most philosophical and scientific interest is their capacity to disrupt and even “dissolve” one of the most primary features of normal experience: that of being a self. Such “peak” or “mystical” experiences are of increasing interest for their potentially transformative therapeutic value. While empirical research is underway, a theoretical conception of the mechanisms underpinning these experiences remains elusive. In the following paper, psychedelic-induced (...) ego-dissolution is accounted for within an active inference framework, as a collapse in the “temporal thickness” of an agent’s deep temporal model, as a result of lowered precision on high-level priors. The argument here is composed of three moves: first, a view of the self-model is proposed as arising within a temporally deep generative model of an embodied organism navigating an affordance landscape in the service of allostasis. Next, a view of the action of psychedelics as lowering the precision of high-level priors within the generative model is unpacked in terms of a high Bayesian learning rate. Finally, the relaxation of high-level priors is argued to cause a “collapse” in the temporal thickness of the generative model, resulting in a collapse in the self-model and a loss of the ordinary sense of being a self. This account has implications for our understanding of ordinary self-consciousness and disruptions in self-consciousness present in psychosis, autism, depression, and dissociative disorders. The philosophical, theoretical and therapeutic implications of this account are touched upon. (shrink)

Reproduction of the original: Mental Evolution in Man by George John Romanes.

Drawing on the art, literature, and social sciences involved, Santayana discusses the nature of beauty, form, and expression.

RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL ATTENTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF DISEASE HAS FOCUSED PRIMARILY ON THE QUESTION OF ITS VALUE-NEUTRALITY OR NON-NEUTRALITY. PROPONENTS OF THE VALUE-NEUTRALITY THESIS SYMBOLICALLY COMBINE POLITICAL AND OTHER CRITICISMS OF MEDICINE IN AN ATTACK ON WHAT THEY SEE AS VALUE-INFECTED USES OF DISEASE LANGUAGE. THE PRESENT ESSAY ARGUES AGAINST TWO THESES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS VIEW: A METHODOLOGICAL THESIS WHICH TENDS TO DIVORCE THE ANALYSIS OF DISEASE LANGUAGE FROM THE CONTEXT OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND A SUBSTANTIVE THESIS WHICH (...) HOLDS THAT DISEASE LANGUAGE IS EVALUATIVELY NEUTRAL. IN PARTICULAR, THE ESSAY CRITICALLY FOCUSES ON THE VALUE NEUTRAL POSITION ADOPTED BY CHRISTOPHER BOORSE, WHICH HE TERMS A FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF DISEASE. THE ARGUMENT CONCERNS WHETHER OR NOT ONE CAN HAVE VALUE NEUTRAL DESCRIPTION OF DISEASE STATES OR WHETHER DISEASE LANGUAGE ESSENTIALLY INVOLVES VALUES. (shrink)

A number of commentators on the work of berkeley have maintained that berkeleyan minds are related to ideas by the relation of inherence. Thus, Ideas are taken to inhere in minds in something like the way that accidents were supposed to inhere in substances for the aristotelian. This inherence account, As I call it, Is spelled out in detail and critically evaluated. Ultimately it is rejected despite its considerable initial plausibility.

Challenges current claims that humans ought to be vegetarians because animals have moral standing.

This study by George Kimball Plochmann, a former student of McKeon's, is the first book-length treatment of the ideas of this legendary teacher, scholar, and diplomat who outlined a profound and creative vision for the reorganization of all ...

This paper deals with the recently published work by Hannah Arendt, "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy", which is her most extensive discussion of moral issues. What emerges from this work is a fuller account of what genuine morality is. Writings that she published had prepared her readers for the idea that genuine morality is Socratic morality, which holds that it is better for the person to suffer wrong than to do wrong. That means, in the contexts of resistance to totalitarianism (...) and to tyranny and despotism, that it is better to suffer wrong than to be an accomplice or passive bystander of wrong done to others when one could be safe if one did not resist. On the other hand, Arendt makes it clear that spurious morality in the form of what she calls "the morality of mores" makes people accomplices or passive bystanders. For them, morality is merely conformity to the prevailing norms, and their conformity is underlain by self-love. Thus, morality in one conventional sense sustains political evil, while morality in the real sense impels the individual's effort to resist evil. But this paper also tries to indicate that for Arendt the evil of totalitarianism is not simply the infliction of atrocious suffering and premature death on millions of people. Rather, the worst part of the evil is that atrocious suffering dehumanizes its victims. The loss of humanity is an existential loss: a deprivation of the human status. Correspondingly, the most noteworthy aspect of resistance to evil is to give testimony to the human stature: the unique human capacity to engage in free audacious activity. Status and stature constitute human dignity; and for Arendt human dignity is essentially existential in importance and only secondarily moral. (shrink)

American healthcare -- Bioterror and bioart -- State of emergency -- Licensed to torture -- Hunger strikes -- War -- Cancer -- Drug dealing -- Toxic tinkering -- Abortion -- Culture of death -- Patient safety -- Global health -- Statue of security -- Pandemic fear -- Bioidentifiers -- Genetic genocide.

So far as his critical employment of the concept is concerned, the thing in itself is not a second object. The thing in itself is given in its appearances; it is the object which appears. In other words, the object is taken in a twofold sense. There is no contradiction, Kant maintained, in supposing that one and the same will is, as an appearance, determined by the laws of nature and yet, as a thing in itself, is free. He never (...) meant to hold that the self of the theoretical reason and the self of the practical reason are two separate and distinct entities. It is one and the same object considered from two perspectives. In this sense the thing in itself is purely a limiting concept. So far as the critical method is concerned, objects are always considered from a particular and limited perspective, e.g. science, morality, art, et cetera. This is the central meaning of his theory of appearances. In this employment of the concept it is completely meaningless to speak of the thing in itself as a cause of appearances. The critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves is not intended to be a distinction between subjective sense data and public objects, but between public objects as given according to two or more modes. This involves no extension of the category of causality beyond appearances. Moreover, it is not open to the charge that an unknown object is given the attribute of existence. The thing in itself is known as an appearance. By definition that is the only way that it could be known. To say that we know only appearances and not things in themselves is to state an obvious tautology, namely that objects are known only as they are known. (shrink)

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings (...) of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy. (shrink)