CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...

Positive Psychology has recently attempted at “enlarging the paradigm,” explaining the understanding of the human experience of the world. By contrast, for Critical Psychology, “enlarging the paradigm” means moving away from an individualist conceptualization of the psychological. The present article aims at “redistributing the Psychological” toward directions already marked by cultural and discursive conceptions of human experience. Within a transdisciplinary frame, labeled as Psycho-semiotics, Diatextual Analysis has been adopted to investigate the rhetorical modes used by socially excluded enunciators (drug users, (...) immigrants, atypical workers, elderly people, and some categories of churchgoer) to elaborate their own experience of well-being through affective labor and self care. (shrink)

Cet article vise à évaluer la portée des politiques sociales réellement existantes dans le Brésil de la période Lula, du point de vue du débat général sur le revenu d’existence. Soit deux questions : ces politiques sociales – notamment les transferts monétaires – ont-elles été pensées dans la perspective d’un revenu d’existence? Le revenu d’existence pourrait-il fonctionner comme angle privilégié de réorganisation et d’intégration de ces politiques sociales? L’histoire de Bolsa Família, instauré dans le Brésil de Lula, montre qu’il est (...) d’origine néolibérale et que le véritable enjeu est d’appréhender les lignes de conflit qui séparent sa précaire existence empirique actuelle de sa constitution comme base d’une nouvelle démocratie. (shrink)

L’essai explore la place et la fonction d’Aristote dans la réflexion philosophique de Ricœur à partir de deux questions : pourquoi les Grecs et pourquoi, parmi les Grecs, Aristote? En ce qui concerne le cours de Montréal, la réponse à cette question réside en premier lieu dans le pouvoir de récapitulation que Ricœur attribue à la pensée aristotélicienne, en soulignant sa dimension constitutivement dialectique. Cette accentuation de la dimension dialectique de la philosophie d’Aristote n’amène pas Ricœur à découper sa pensée (...) en une série de problèmes autonomes : tout au contraire un aspect décisif du cours de 1967 sur la volonté est précisément l’insertion de l’éthique d’Aristote dans le cadre plus général de sa métaphysique, qu’on retrouve aussi dans les ouvrages postérieurs. En développant ces considérations, l’essai relève l’originalité de la position de Ricœur par rapport à la « réhabilitation de la philosophie pratique » aristotélicienne, qui a eu lieu en Allemagne suite à la publication de Vérité et méthode de Gadamer. (shrink)

In Brasil, a real mixing of populations is prevented by the proclamation of a « grey People », artificially invented and imposed by force in order to stabilize the Nation-State. Black and indigenous movements today have to reclaim « race » in their struggle for real equality, in order to impose policies of affirmative action, in the university as well as elsewhere.

Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Nel pensiero politico di Ralf Dahrendorf un tema ricorre costantemente, sia che si tratti di liberalismo sia della democrazia rappresentativa: le costituzioni politiche sono radicate nelle strutture sociali, stato politico e stato sociale sono mutualmente interdipendenti. In assenza di specifiche strutture sociali, la democrazia rappresentativa non può divenire effettiva, e quindi corrispondere a una realtà evidente perfettamente valutabile. Ancora. Le strutture sociali pongono limiti molto ristretti all’effettività delle forme politiche. Esistono, in altri termini, precisi elementi strutturali che permettono l’oggettivazione della (...) democrazia liberale, e non altri. Si tratta certo di una concezione che deve molto a Tocqueville, la sua immagine illumina il pensiero dahrendorfiano sulla democrazia. Pur tuttavia non è l’unico elemento ricorrente. Ideale e reale qui si confrontano. L’idea di democrazia, infatti, si misura con la realtà sul terreno della prassi politica. Non a caso Ralf Dahrendorf è presente in quattro diversi parlamenti in cui ha visto all’opera il cambiamento senza violenza, l’argomentazione razionale, l’espressione della maggioranza e il controllo del governo. Non si tratta solo dei princìpi fondamentali della teoria politica democratica, ma anche della sua formula politica, con la quale interpreta i cambiamenti negli spazi politici globali. Si tratta di spazi nei quali il potere è libero da vincoli, si misura sulla base di rapporti di forza, non conosce regole e procedure se non quelle dell’economicismo, della tecnica, della finanziarizzazione. Tuttavia lo Stato nazionale e la democrazia parlamentare sono ancora decisivi. Proprio perché pensa questo, egli crede che nello spazio globale i principi della democrazia rappresentativa devono essere tradotti in realtà. Certo, Dahrendorf non è in grado di indicare nuove soluzioni, ma si limita a mostrare delle semplici proposte per gestire il dibattito pubblico nel passaggio da una democrazia classica ad una «nuova democrazia». (shrink)

No paradox exists in the fact that, in the Special Relativity, for the mass of a material body, considered in motion at constant speed, whose measure is u, the formula: m = m0/√ can be written, while for a photon the same formula holds, when between its source and the observer a state of relative motion at constant speed, whose measure is u, exists and it is observed along the direction perpendicular to the direction of his speed.