Heredity and reproduction have always been matters of concern. Eugenics is a story that began well before the Holocaust, but the Holocaust completely changed the way eugenics was perceived at that time. What began with Galton as a scientific movement aimed at the improvement of the human race based on the theories and principles of heredity and statistics became by the beginning of the 20th century an international movement that sought to engineer human supremacy. Eugenic ideas, however, trace back to (...) ancient Greek aristocratic ideas exemplified in Plato’s Republic, which played an important role in shaping modern eugenic social practices and government policies. Both positive and negative eugenics focused on the encouragement of healthy and discouragement of unhealthy reproduction. All these practices were often based on existing prejudices about race and disability. In this article, we will focus on the rise of eugenics, starting with the publication of Origin of Species to the Holocaust. This examination will be multidisciplinary, utilizing genetics, legal history and bioethical aspects. Through this examination, we will discuss how provisional understandings of genetics influenced eugenics-based legislation. We will also discuss the rise of biopolitics, the change of medical ethos and stance towards negative eugenics policies, and the possible power of bioethical principles to prevent such phenomena. (shrink)

Previous research indicates positive effects of a person’s attractiveness on evaluations of opposite-sex persons, but less positive or even negative effects of attractiveness on same-sex evaluations. These biases are consistent with social motives linked to mate search and intrasexual rivalry. In line with the hypothesis that such motives should not become operative until after puberty, 6- to 12-year-old participants (i.e., children) displayed no evidence for biased social evaluations based on other people’s attractiveness. In contrast, 13- to 19-year-old participants (i.e., adolescents) (...) displayed positive and negative attractiveness biases toward opposite- and same-sex targets, respectively. Moreover, these biases increased with the age—and thus the reproductive relevance—of the targets being evaluated. Findings corroborate the relevance of mating-related motives for social judgment and illustrate how such biases can grow during human development. At a broader conceptual level, this research demonstrates the utility of investigating proximate social judgment processes through the lens of adaptationist thinking. (shrink)

In this beautifully illustrated book Maria Antonella Pelizzari traces the history of photography in Italy from its beginnings to the present as she guides us through the history of Italy and its ancient sites and Renaissance landmarks. Pelizzari specifically considers the role of photography in the formation of Italian national identity during times of political struggle, such as the lead up to Unification in 1860, and later in the nationalist wars of Mussolini’s regime. While many Italians and foreigners— such (...) as Fratelli Alinari or Carlo Ponti, John Ruskin or Kit Talbot—focused their lenses on architectural masterpieces, others documented the changing times and political heroes, creating icons of figures such as Garibaldi and the brigands. Pelizzari’s exploration of Italian visual traditions also includes the photographic collages of Bruno Munari, the neorealist work of photographers such as Franco Pinna, the bold stylized compositions of Mario Giacomelli, and the controversial images created by Oliviero Toscani for Benetton advertising in the 1980s. Featuring unpublished works and a rare selection of over one hundred images, this book will appeal to art collectors and students of art history and Italian culture. (shrink)

While dreaming amputees often experience a normal body image and the phantom limb may not be present. However, dreaming experiences in amputees have mainly been collected by questionnaires. We analysed the dream reports of amputated patients with phantom limb collected after awakening from REM sleep during overnight videopolysomnography . Six amputated patients underwent overnight VPSG study. Patients were awakened during REM sleep and asked to report their dreams. Three patients were able to deliver an account of a dream. In all (...) dreaming recalls, patients reported that the amputated limbs were intact and completely functional and they no longer experienced phantom limb sensations. Phantom limb experiences, that during wake result from a conflict between a pre-existing body scheme and the sensory information on the missing limb, were suppressed during sleep in our patients in favour of the image of an intact body accessed during dream. (shrink)

Echeverría, Alberdi y Bilbao pueden ser considerados tres de los pensadores más representativos de las lecturas que el siglo XIX hiciera sobre la Revolución independentista en América. Sus construcciones teóricas fueron elaboradas a la luz de las consecuencias políticas de la Revolución, pero también a partir de la lectura de una serie de teóricos políticos franceses que, de manera contemporánea, pensaban el proceso revolucionario francés. Situar a estos autores en el contexto de los debates intelectuales del momento es un modo (...) de ampliar la lectura y de descubrir las principales particularidades de un pensamiento que se define ante las nuevas condiciones de la política moderna.Echeverría, Alberdi and Bilbao may be considered to be three of the finest 19th Century's interpreters of the Latin American Revolution of the Independence. Their theories were developed in light of the political consequences of the Revolution, but also based on an assessment of a series of French political philosophers that, at the same time, were thinking the French revolutionary process. Placing these authors in the context of the theoretical discussions of their time is a way to extend the understanding and to identify the singularities of a view defined on the horizon of the new conditions of the modern politics. (shrink)

In current debates about coming to terms with individual and collective wrongdoing, the concept of forgiveness has played an important but controversial role. For a long time, the idea was widespread that a forgiving attitude — overcoming feelings of resentment and the desire for revenge — was always virtuous. Recently, however, this idea has been questioned. The contributors to this volume do not take sides for or against forgiveness but rather examine its meaning and function against the backdrop of a (...) more complex understanding of moral repair in a variety of social, circumstantial, and cultural contexts. The book aims to gain a differentiated understanding of the European traditions regarding forgiveness, revenge, and moral repair that have shaped our moral intuitions today whilst also examining examples from other cultural contexts (Asia and Africa, in particular) to explore how different cultural traditions deal with the need for moral repair after wrongdoing. -/- . (shrink)

Most scholars of emotions concede that although cognitive evaluations are essential for emotion, they are not sufficient for it, and that other elements, such as bodily feelings, physiological sensations and behavioral expressions are also required. However, only a few discuss how these diverse aspects of emotion are related in order to form the unity of emotion. In this essay I examine the co-presence and the causal views, and I argue that neither view can account for the unity of emotions. In (...) particular, both views face the problem of fortuitous connection, and, as a result, they fail to identify and distinguish an emotion from other mental states. Consequently, they fail to account for our first person authority over our emotions. I finally argue that only an internal, conceptual relation between the cognitive/evaluative and affective/physiological aspects of emotion can avoid such problems, and suggest that the Aristotelian distinction of form and matter can provide such internal relation. (shrink)

Riassunto: Neuroeconomia e neuroetica sono settori delle neuroscienze cognitive che studiano i correlati neurali di aspetti distinti, sebbene strettamente interconnessi, del processo decisionale. Mentre la neuroeconomia studia i meccanismi cerebrali che guidano verso la massimizzazione dell’utilità economica personale, la neuroetica integra tali conoscenze con quelle fornite dalle neuroscienze sociali per affrontare domande tipiche dell'etica e della filosofia morale. Gli studi oggi disponibili in questo ambito vengono qui discussi al fine di mettere a confronto l’ipotesi secondo cui le scelte economiche individuali (...) e socio-morali sono supportate da un unico circuito cerebrale con differenti input specifici per dominio rispetto a quella che prevede basi cerebrali specifiche per la scelta in ambito socio-morale. In linea con il primo dei due modelli, i dati presenti in letteratura sembrano confermare l’esistenza di un singolo sistema cerebrale associato ai diversi tipi di scelta, indipendentemente dal contesto decisionale individuale vs. socio-morale. Parole chiave: Decision-making; Neuroeconomia; Neuroetica; Extended Common Currency Schema; Social Valutation Specific Schema From Neuroeconomy to Neuroethics: Towards a Neuroscience of Individual and Socio-Moral Decisions: Neuroeconomics and neuroethics are subfields of cognitive neuroscience that address the neural correlates of distinct, although strongly intertwined, facets of decision-making. While neuroeconomics investigates the neural mechanisms underlying the maximization of personal economic utility, neuroethics integrates such knowledge with that provided by social neurosciences, in order to address typical questions in ethics and moral philosophy. We review the available research to contrast the hypothesis that both individual economic and socio-moral choices rely on a common brain network receiving domain-specific inputs and the claim that a specific brain network underpins choices in a socio-moral context. In line with the former model, currently available evidence supports the existence of a single brain network associated with both choice types, regardless of the economic individual vs. socio-moral decisional context. Keywords : Decision-making; Neuroeconomics; Neuroethics; Extended Common Currency Schema; Social Valutation Specific Schema. (shrink)

This book’s main claim is that political art should not disregard questions of aesthetic reception and value. It argues that some neglected aspects of traditional aesthetics actually enhance the relationship between art and politics more than contemporary art theorists are keen to admit.

The reflection proposed in this article aims to briefly consider philosophy and literature on the saga of Genoveva Pia in the early morning cadence of the drums of São Luís (1975), a novel by the great poet from Maranhão, Josué Montello (1917-2006), in which a narrative is made between fiction and the reality of the Brazilian colonial slave period on the historical soil of São Luís, Ma. To this end, the text is divided into two parts: firstly, it looks at (...) the dialectic between history as representative and memory as an actualizable, individual and collective phenomenon that takes shape between spaces, events, memories and forgetfulness and, secondly, it highlights the importance of the saga of the black woman Genoveva Pia, from persistence to resistance in welcoming, protecting and freeing the black men and women, recalling the ancestry of the freed black man Damião, the novel’s central character and narrator. (shrink)

This paper considers Cicero’s political and legal philosophy, focussing on the ciceronian concepts of republic, law and virtue, on which Cicero’s systematic construction of the State and the Right rests.

A large part of the Latin–American literature of the 19th and 20th century tried to deal with the national question intertwining different dimensions: the weight of colonial legacy, the cultural peculiarity of the nation and the inner relations between social classes and ethnic groups. Thinking the nation implied, in any case, to think the difference and the conflict with others, as well as the inner conflict and the logic of local colonialism. Analyzing some of these essays that played a central (...) role in such process of recasting the origin of the nation, the author moves around three main axes: the formulation of dualist writings (colonial/national; white /indigenous; civilization/wilderness), the issue of language (the language inherited from the colonial experience versus the multilingual nature of indigenous Latin American societies), and the hypothesis about the birth of the nation – appointed to different groups – and its normal functioning as legitimization of the order sprung from independences. (shrink)

Nomadism as a spatial concept denoting uncharted movements has opened up non-static ways of theorizing the subject in feminist theory and beyond. But it seems that the nomads of the real world and their torturing wanderings today have irrevocably challenged the romance of unregulated movement and force us to radically rethink the very concept of nomadism itself. In this paper I address the aporias that women's entanglement in current mobility assemblages has raised in the ways we understand and imagine the (...) subject of feminism. In doing so, I experiment with the concept of the non-nomad as an emergent figuration that retains the radicalism of nomadic theories, while pointing to their margins, shadows and exclusions. (shrink)

ResumenLeo Strauss, en un ambiente filosófico adverso, tuvo la osadía de interrogarse acerca de la mejor forma de vida. Sin embargo, no parece haber alcanzado acabadamente su meta. El carácter zetético de su gnoseología, el abandono de conceptos metafísicos indispensables para alcanzar la unidad de ser, su énfasis en la «negatividad» del método socrático que limita la «positividad» propia de la mayéutica: el amor a la verdad, etc. le han conducido a la aporía consistente en la imposibilidad de alcanzar una (...) síntesis entre razón y revelación, consideradas como «totalidades» incompatibles entre sí. Por ello, no llega a dar respuesta a su interrogante más profundo.Palabras claveLeo Strauss, razón-revelación, escepticismo moderado, mayéutica.AbstractIn philosophical adverse times, Leo Strauss dared question about the best way of life. However, he does not seem to have achieved his objective completely. His zetetic epistemology; the abandonment of key metaphysical concepts necessary to comprehend the unity of being; his stress on the negativity stage of the Socratic method, limiting the conclusive positive stage of the maieutic (love of wisdom) have led him to an aporia. This is the impossibility of reaching a synthesis between reason and revelation, considered as «wholes» incompatible with each other. Hence he doesn’t find a convincing answer to his deepest inquiry about the best way of life.KeywordsLeo Strauss, reason-revelation, moderate scepticism, mai. (shrink)

Las imágenes de san Francisco de Asís se multiplican en Europa con la función de servir de modelo a los frailes menores y despertar la veneración de los fieles mediante el conocimiento de los episodios más significativos de su hagiografía. Para comprender el significado último de estas representaciones es necesario recordar dónde fueron realizadas, aunando aspectos formales y fuentes literarias que sir­vieron de inspiración a los pintores de la Baja Edad Media. En las siguientes líneas veremos el importante papel de (...) los franciscanos como comitentes, la difusión de las biografías de Tomás de Celano y san Buenaventura y su recepción en las imágenes, especialmente, a partir de los frescos de Giotto di Bondone en Asís. Estos constituyen un punto de inflexión en la evolución de los repertorios franciscanos, por su renovación e incidencia en la consoli­dación de símbolos parlantes y fórmulas de representación de carácter narrativo en la iconografía franciscana. No es objeto de este trabajo la catalogación de imágenes, sino reseñar las principales variables de la imagen de san Francisco desde el siglo xiii al xv a partir de piezas muy elocuentes respecto a su origen y evolución posterior. (shrink)

The Meeting, as a theological category from Paul Ricoeur’s book causes a reflection on the Being. The identity that is built on otherness in relation to the other which meets another deeper himself and the understanding of himself requires acceptance of himself as hopelessly another. The meeting is a key experience that enables the growth of the being through the other, it is dialogue experience, donation and constitutive reception of the history of being, which refers to the search for the (...) transcendent. In this dynamic there is the appropriation of different realities that allow the reformulation of something new. Hardly someone goes out a meeting in the same way. Another important aspect is the fertility of otherness that prints an ethical-theological reflection, a call for acceptance of diversity and respect for others, which allows the realization of justice. (shrink)

Sob este título, publica-se, neste número da Cultura, um conjunto de textos que respondem ao projecto de aprofundar, tanto no plano teórico como no analítico, e de forma articulada, a operatividade destes três conceitos no conhecimento das diversas especificidades culturais desenvolvidas em territórios ibero-americanos e ibéricos: Fronteira, cosmopolitismo e nação. Tivemos os nossos primeiros debates há quase uma década e, no Grupo de Investigação «Cultura, história e pensamento ibéricos e ib...

The discussion of the soul as a principle of life in ancient Greek philosophy was not limited to the soul’s relation to the body, the capacities of the soul, and the functions of the living organism. The debates about the soul and life also concerned issues of embryogenesis, such as the generation, formation, and animation of an organic body in the womb. The fragments of these debates can be traced in the writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias, particularly in his treatise (...) On the Soul. In this paper, I examine Alexander’s views on animal reproduction, especially considering the problematic question of the life and animation of the embryo. Analyzing generation among the other capacities of the nutritive soul in On the Soul, Alexander considers the causes of embryogenesis. As the first cause, he indicates the nutritive capacity, which is transmitted from the parent through the seed and acts in the embryo. In addition, as Simplicius states in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Alexander claims that the soul of the parent acts as a paradeigma that specifies the order and the goal of the embryo’s development. Thus, I explain Alexander’s understanding of the causes of the embryo’s development and animation in the context of his idea of the soul as a capacity (δύναμις) and state (ἕξις). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper intends to analyze Walter Benjamin’s critique of Heidegger’s habilitation thesis Duns Scotus’s Doctrine of Categories and Meaning. This objective will be carried out from a contrast between Heidegger’s thesis and the essay that Benjamin writes at the same time entitled On Language as Such and on the Language of Man. Likewise, the reasons that lead Benjamin to critically comment on Heidegger’s thesis will be studied from two perspectives: the problem of translation and the Heideggerian recovery of Neo-Kantianism. (...) Considering the rehabilitation of scholasticism and phenomenology at the beginning of the 20th century, an attempt will be made to reconstruct an implicit debate between the authors around 1916 to account for the distance between Heidegger’s logical conception of language and Benjamin’s theological conception of language. (shrink)

El artículo intenta situar el momento del nacimiento de la Archivística como disciplina científica y su desarrollo posterior para perfilar el entorno en el que se desarrollará la investigación en los archivos por parte de los profesionales cuya formación, objetivos y actividades son muy diferentes en cada etapa. Analiza los momentos de los grandes cambios de la Archivística que son los que van a determinar el planteamiento y contenido de la investigación.

Resumen Este trabajo analiza los anuncios de televisión y prensa de la compañía española de telefonía móvil Yoigo para explorar cómo la publicidad usa la apelación emocional para persuadir al consumidor a adquirir un servicio. El marco teórico se basa, por una parte, en el concepto de efecto social del acto comunicativo : 577–603) y el de actividad de imagen : 175–198), entendiendo la imagen social desde las categorías básicas de autonomía y afiliación con sus manifestaciones grupal e individual, Actos (...) de habla y cortesía en el español. Munich: Lincom Europa). Por otro lado, se parte de las propuestas de identidad de Spencer-Oatey, Face, Communication and Social Interaction ) y los tipos de valores centrales e individuales de los que se nutren tanto la imagen social como la identidad, 268-290). Los resultados de los análisis demuestran que en los anuncios de Yoigo los valores de honestidad y originalidad están presentes en las estrategias comunicativas elegidas, lo que supone una serie de actividades de imagen donde la afiliación y la autonomía – tanto de grupo como individual – se ponen de manifiesto. Así, las estrategias realizadas por los anuncios utilizan atributos conocidos de la identidad del consumidor español y de su imagen social para lograr su propósito persuasivo: convencerle para contratar el servicio ofrecido. (shrink)