A tendência de uma sociologia do catolicismo contemporâneo no país nestes últimos anos foi de reduzi-lo a uma instituição política e social movida por interesses de poder no campo religioso e no espaço público, dispensando a mediação de sua cosmologia como pano de fundo de sua atuação. A partir do livro pioneiro de Roberto Romano (1976) que resgata o papel da cosmologia católica na sua intervenção pública, e seguindo os estudos de Sanchis (1994) e Steil (1996) que chamam a atenção (...) para o seu perfil de “estrutura de longa duração” que se (re)combina com os estilos das épocas que atravessa, a intenção deste texto é detectar numa hermenêutica de aspectos cruciais da Teologia católica e em dimensões estruturais de sua configuração, condutas e comportamentos pelo qual o catolicismo se faz presente na modernidade. Neste particular, a cosmologia não vai engendrar um comportamento holista-tradicional mas vai expressar-se traduzida para os códigos contemporâneos seja do individualismo, da subjetividade, da cultura psi, da auto-ajuda e da expresividade emocional e corporal. Palavras chave : Catolicismo. Cosmologia. Modernidade.: The trend in contemporary sociology of Catholicism in Brazil has been to reduce Catholicism to a political and social institution moved by the interests of power in religious as well as public spheres, ignoring the intervening role of its cosmology as a background for its actions and postures. The article takes as a starting point Roberto Romano’s (1976) pioneer work in the field, where the author reinstates the role of catholic cosmology in processes of institutional public intervention. It has equally drawn inspiration from Sanchis (1994) and Steil’s (1996) studies stressing on Catholicism’s institutional profile as a ‘structure of long duration’ that interacts with the various ways of living of different times and spaces. Accordingly, the main goal of the article is to identify in a hermeneutics of crucial aspects of Catholic theology and in structural dimensions of its configuration, the attitudes and behaviors that inform Catholicism’s presence in modernity. In this way, cosmology doesn’t underpins any traditional holistic behavior but finds expression in translations of contemporary codes like those of individualism, subjectivity, psy culture, self-help and emotional and bodily expressions. Key-words : Catholicism. Cosmology. Modernity. (shrink)

Richard Taylor was born in Charlotte, Michigan on 5 November 1919. He received his A. B. from the University of illinois in 1941, his M. A. from Oberlin College in 1947, and his Ph. D. from Brown University in 1951. He has been William H. P. Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, Professor of Philosophy (Graduate Faculties) at Columbia University, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. He is the author of about fifty articles and of five (...) philosophical books. This volume consists of essays presented to Richard Taylor on the occa sion of his sixtieth birthday. Some of the contributors have been Taylor'S students; some have been his colleagues; and all have been, and continue to be, his admirers. I have made several attempts to articulate what it is I (I would not presume to speak for anyone else) admire about Richard Taylor: (1) There is a particular 'flavor' to Taylor's philosophical writing and con versation that is wholly delightful. Like any other flavor, it can be tasted and enjoyed and remembered but never adequately described. (If there should be someone who has picked up this book who does not know what I mean, I recommend that he read the chapter on 'God' in Taylor's Metaphysics. ) (2) Taylor is a masterful dialectician. (shrink)

The desire to see a sign phenomenon in different ways always has a reason to interpret it in an unbiased, panoramic way, and in some places - even allowing for contradictions in its understanding by different participants in the interpretative process. For modern humanities, this disposition is quite understandable, since it follows from its very postmodern nature, thereby defining the semantic semantic fields of the leading humanities. True, it is not so wide-spread, but instead, it is evident that Ukrainian religious (...) thinkers of the Middle Ages and Baroque have interpreted the iconic phenomena more deeply. In the story of Petro Mohyla "On the Wonderful Elder Grigory Mezhyhirsky" the metropolitan Mohyla clearly expresses the need to build before the thinking gaze of the reader his own, immanently religious-philosophical conception of the Divine, which every time would present him not just as an act of manifestation, otherwise he appears before the person, while remaining alone. The contemporary study of this issue in order to integrate its leading concepts in the religious-philosophical and general cultural discourse of the postmodern era has largely determined the relevance of the proposed article. The study of the phenomenon of "leaving" by itself in changing forms of the phenomenon of the Divine is also one of the key ones in the proposed studio, because it expresses the very meaning of the Divine as a religious, and therefore a cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

On his very first page Feldman ascribes to me a claim about the relation expressed by 'is identical with'. Feldman's way of speaking is, as Ryle might say, systematically misleading: for of course I deny that any one relation, even a relative relation, is the relation expressed by 'is identical with'. My whole thesis was that 'is identical with' expressed now one, now another, relation, according to the context of utterance.

Given a physical system, one knows that there is a logical duality between its properties and its states. In this paper, we choose its states as the undefined notions of our axiomatic construction. In fact, by means of well-motivated assumptions expressed in terms of a transition probability function defined on the set of all pure states of the system, we construct a system of elementary propositions, i.e., a complete orthomodular atomic lattice satisfying the covering law. We also study in this (...) framework the important notion of compatibility of propositions, and we define the superpositions and the mixtures of the states of the physical system. (shrink)

The book pays close attention to Wittgenstein's own remarks on religious belief, arranging them against the background of his broader philosophical methodology, ...

This essay engages Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus as a salient intervention into modern political theory. I analyze the work as a cipher for the tensions inhabiting Euro-modernity’s stitched together fictions of racial determinism and racial dynamism legible in slavery, assimilationist projects and White fears reverberating throughout. Adapting the mythical ancient Prometheus as one who steals fire from the gods to create humans and civilization, Frankenstein dramatizes the risks and monstrous results of White imperial masculinity as a Euro-colonial (...) Promethean project of subject formation and race-making. Viewed through the prism of the Modern Prometheus, modernity in general and liberal humanism in particular are recast as monster-making projects. The European “discovery” of Indigenous peoples amplified Promethean aspirations to create subjects through civilizational processes of religious conversion, the infusion of Enlightenment rationality, and assimilation into whiteness. Politically, the Promethean capacity to engineer humans and proto-humans using Native peoples as raw material allowed progressives to argue against outright extermination in favor of cultural genocide. Seeking to create a subserviant species, Victor Frankenstein confronts a revolting insurrection of his own making—a Creature who refuses slavery, claims mastery over his creator and demands a female companion. Yet Frankenstein’s fear of creating “a race of devils” betrays a terror of what Whites know, but refuse to acknowledge, about themselves and racial others. (shrink)