Restoring our biological cycles to heal ourselves, our culture, and our planet Shows how, just like the tides and the moon phases, both women and men have biological cycles of growth and renewal necessary for healthy bodies and minds. Explains how the seclusion of women during menstruation and of men during vision quests offers a cleansing process for body and mind to awaken innate creativity and sensitivity, re-attune us with the deeper rhythms of the body and nature, and restore harmony (...) between the divine feminine and divine masculine. Reveals how the need for sacred retreat was forgotten when the divine feminine was suppressed by patriarchal culture. All of life is interwoven into a living system of cycles, from Earth's seasons to the enzymatic pathways that provide energy to a cell. Waxing and waning from times of growth to times of rest, renewal, and healing, cycles map the most auspicious time for everything in life. Both women and men have biological cycles of active growth and quiet renewal, led by our hormones. By understanding how everything in life moves in cycles, you can become more aware of and comfortable with your own cyclic nature, something that has been forgotten by the modern world's linear views of time. Drawing on the wisdom of ancient cultures, the natural cycles of life, and her own groundbreaking research, Pia Orleane, Ph.D., offers a template for how we can restore balance to our emotions and health, ease tensions between the sexes, and heal our fractured culture by honoring divine feminine consciousness and re-embracing natural cycles, including our innate need for rest and retreat. She explains the biology of how our bodies operate by hormones released in cycles and shows how balanced hormones help eliminate anger, depression, insomnia, anxiety, and fatigue. Exploring ancient traditions and rituals surrounding blood and sacred retreat, she explains how the seclusion of women during menstruation and of men during vision quests offered a cleansing process for body and mind, alone time to clear suppressed emotions, awaken our innate creativity and sensitivity, re-attune us with the deeper rhythms of the body and nature, and restore harmony between the genders and balance between the divine feminine and masculine. Outlining the sacred retreat process, the author explores dream cycles, divine sexuality, and practices for reconnecting to nature, increasing creativity and intuition, and clearing suppressed emotions. She also looks at the benefits for women and men of separate sleeping during menstruation. Through this wisdom, we can restore our natural cycles, allow the divine feminine to once again blossom alongside the divine masculine, and, with the return of balance, heal our world and our hearts. (shrink)

Salvador Piá Tarazona’s book, El hombre como ser dual is an important methodical-thematic advance in the research of transcendental anthropology as much as it does not detain its focus on human nature nor its development , but rather on th readicality of personal intimacy and its openness to transcendence.

How many questions do we ask each day? Why do we ask them in the first place? Do we always ask because we're trying to learn something? Or are there some questions we don't expect to have answered - and some questions that simply can't be answered at all? What do our questions tell us about ourselves? Do they define who we are? Who asked the world's first question? Can anyone answer all these questions? Is that a stupid question, or (...) is it a really good one? And what does Pia Lauritzen, Aarhus University's questioner-in-chief, think of all of this? (shrink)

According to André Orléan, the characteristics of the economical sciences dead ends in the analysis of Jacques Sapir, is the desire expressed by the orthodox movement to radically split up from the social sciences in order to establish the economical science as autonomous. André Orléan also points out Jacques Sapir-,s criticism to his book The monetary violence, according to which it induces a form of monergol essentialism that would render the currency an essential and contradictory social relation.

Two studies investigated the interaction between utterance and scene processing by monitoring eye movements in agent–action–patient events, while participants listened to related utterances. The aim of Experiment 1 was to determine if and when depicted events are used for thematic role assignment and structural disambiguation of temporarily ambiguous English sentences. Shortly after the verb identified relevant depicted actions, eye movements in the event scenes revealed disambiguation. Experiment 2 investigated the relative importance of linguistic/world knowledge and scene information. When the verb (...) identified either only the stereotypical agent of a (nondepicted) action, or the (nonstereotypical) agent of a depicted action as relevant, verb‐based thematic knowledge and depicted action each rapidly influenced comprehension. In contrast, when the verb identified both of these agents as relevant, the gaze pattern suggested a preferred reliance of comprehension on depicted events over stereotypical thematic knowledge for thematic interpretation. We relate our findings to language comprehension and acquisition theories. (shrink)

This paper sets out to conduct an embodied and situated aural analysis of what silence in Northern Norway is about, with the aim of bringing forward the background noise. The paper brings together theories on construction of the rural, time-space relations, soundscape ecology, and on affect and power, and it merges academic traditions about how to communicate findings from non-visual biased studies. This interdisciplinary framework provides a novel structure for both analysing material and communicating findings from embodied studies of listening (...) out. The study found that silence in Northern Norway is about not listening to the economy of scale, to the commodification of the natural conditions and the suppression of lifestyles and territory. The paper illustrates how power is an inherent part of listening and how listening is a practice that is enacted to create emotions that are associated with a specific time-space relation. (shrink)

Pia Becker entwirft eine Konzeption von Patientenautonomie, die sich im Gegensatz zu in der Medizinethik bisher dominierenden Konzeptionen an der grundsätzlichen Fähigkeit des Patienten zur Autonomie orientiert. Ausgangspunkt bildet die Notwendigkeit der informierten Einwilligung, die neben der Patientenautonomie vor allem auch die körperliche Integrität des Patienten schützt. Als Adäquatheitsbedingungen dienen die beiden normativen Funktionen der Patientenautonomie als Barriere und Schlüssel einer medizinischen Behandlung. Diese Konzeption von Patientenautonomie hat den Vorteil, Patienten besser vor Überforderungen zu bewahren und deren Bedarf an Unterstützungsangeboten (...) zur Förderung der Patientenautonomie deutlicher hervorzuheben. (shrink)

Questions: Between Identity and Difference is in many ways a curious book. It is a scholarly book, but tests the boundaries of traditional academic methods. It is a philosophical book, but bases its arguments on observational studies in classrooms where Danish, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese schoolchildren are taught in their native languages. It is a demanding book, one that assumes its readers think for themselves. Yes it is also a generous book, which draws on the author's own experience in researching (...) and exploring what it means to be human across a variety of thoughts and behavioural patterns. (shrink)

This essay belongs to a more extended work focused on the idea of what is needed to begin globalizing justice. It is an essay that focuses on the normative conditions needed for a global public sphere. It is a historical reconstruction of how certain forms of communication in global times have ..

The place of emotions in aesthetic response has long been a topic in contemporary philosophical theorizing. One aspect of the debate in particular seems to have become a recalcitrant problem: when experiencing fiction, we experience emotional reactions towards what we know not to exist. Is this rational? In fact, is it even possible? This article deals with the so‐called “paradox of fiction” from the viewpoint of ancient poetics. In the first section, I survey some of the main arguments proposed to (...) (dis)solve the paradox in analytic philosophy. In the second and the third sections, I address what I consider two problematic assumptions of existing analytic approaches: their prescriptive, “essentialist” attitude and their exclusive focus on matters of content. By offering a brief sketch of the ancient principles of “likelihood” and “vividness”, I argue that they provide a direct and cognitively realistic answer to the paradox insofar as they account for the neutralization of doxastic features in imaginative acts and ground affective responses to fiction in the phenomenon of “aesthetic immersion”, explained in experiential, rather than representational, terms. (shrink)

In this article I deal with Kant's concept of reflective judgment, and recover it through its links to the aesthetic dimension as its fundamental scenario. Then I go on to explain why Hannah Arendt understood this important Kantian connection, and why she thought it would allow her to develop it through a political dimension. Last, having reviewed both Kant and Arendt's contributions to the concept of reflective judgment, I recover my own input to the concept by showing its linguistic dimension (...) based on the Heideggerian notion of world-disclosure. With this in mind, I show how the concept of reflective judgment is the most suitable to analyze evil actions. (shrink)

It is often suggested that during development the brain barriers are immature. This argument stems from teleological interpretations and experimental observations of the high protein concentrations in fetal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and decreases in apparent permeability of passive markers during development. We argue that the developmental blood–CSF barrier restricts the passage of lipid‐insoluble molecules by the same mechanism as in the adult (tight junctions) rendering the paracellular pathway an unlikely route of entry. Instead, we suggest that both protein and passive (...) markers are transferred across the epithelium through a transcellular route. We propose that changes in volume of distribution can largely explain the decrease in apparent permeability for passive markers and that developmentally regulated cellular transfer explains changes in CSF protein concentrations. The blood–CSF tight junctions are functionally mature from very early in development, and it appears that transfer from blood into embryonic brain occurs predominately via CSF rather than the vasculature. BioEssays 30:237–248, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The boundary work approach has been established as one of the main ways to study controversies in science. However, it has been proposed that it does not meet the power dynamics of the scientific field sufficiently. This article concentrates on the intertwining of boundary work and power. It combines the boundary work approach developed by Thomas Gieryn and the analysis of power in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Based on a literature review and an analysis of a controversy over therapeutic (...) touch, it finds four forms of boundary work: intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary, between science and society, and between science and other knowledge systems. The article shows how the different forms of boundary work reveal multiple power struggles, hierarchisations and tensions. The controversy appeared in Finnish nursing science when the Finnish Association of Sceptics gave its annual Humbug Award to a book on therapeutic touch. The book was based on a master’s thesis at the University of Tampere department of nursing science. The nursing scholars in the department reacted abruptly and banned certain books, which astonished the students, and a lively public debate followed. In the debate, nursing science was both defended and challenged. The framework of the study shows that the boundary work approach can be used to study different aspects of power. The article proposes that the framework could be used in other controversies as well to study the layers of power in boundary work. (shrink)

"Der Aufsatz plädiert dafür, die Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Computersimulation auf eine spezifisch medienhistorische Weise zu untersuchen. Nach einigen Vorschlägen zur Charakterisierung der Besonderheiten von Computersimulationen werden zwei Beispiele interpretiert (Management-Simulationen der 1960er und verkehrstechnische bzw. epidemiologische Simulationen der 1990er). Daraus leiten sich Fragen nach dem veränderten Status wissenschaftlichen Wissens, nach der Genese wissenschaftstheoretischer Konzepte und nach wissenschaftskritischen Optionen ab. The paper suggests to analyze the history of scientific computer simulations with respect to the history of media. After presenting some ideas (...) concerning the peculiarities of computer simulation, two examples (management simulations of the 1960s; traffic-related and epistemological simulations of the 1990s) are interpreted. From them, further questions concerning the status of scientific knowledge, the genesis of epistemological concepts and their critique are derived. ". (shrink)

Resumen: Spinoza afirma que las decisiones, elecciones y acciones de un agente son necesarias porque están determinadas causalmente. ¿Acaso los seres humanos no son agentes morales? ¿son sólo eslabones de una cadena de causas cuyo curso no pueden controlar y que los exime de las consecuencias de sus actos, así como de premios y castigos? ¿ser un individuo libre significa aceptar pasivamente lo que ocurre y abandonar la pretensión de modificarlo? Este artículo responde a estas preguntas mediante la distinción en (...) la obra spinoziana de dos conceptos de libertad, la verdadera libertad y el libre albedrío, así como con la distinción entre la responsabilidad civil fundada en el concepto de potestas humana -y no en la verdadera libertad, aunque la posibilita-.: Spinoza sustains that the agents' decisions are necessary because they are causally determined. But then, are humans really moral agents? Is it possible that they are only passengers in a train of causes, whose course they cannot control and exempts them from the consequences of their acts, of reward or punishment? Is accepting whatever happens and quitting the aspiration of changing things the hallmark of the free man? This paper answers these questions by distinguishing two concepts of freedom, real freedom and free will, as well as two concepts of responsibility. Civil responsibility is grounded in free will, whereas moral responsibility is not grounded in true freedom, but in human power. (shrink)

Exposition of the philosophy of syncriticism.

This innovative volume will be welcomed by moral and political philosophers, social scientists, and anyone who reflects seriously on the twentieth century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another. María Pía Lara brings together a provocative set of essays that reexamine evil in the context of a "postmetaphysical" world, a world that no longer equates natural and human evil and no longer believes in an omnipotent God. The question of how (...) and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform radically evil acts. (shrink)

Der Beitrag von Claus Pias geht von zwei Beobachtungen aus: einem Zurücktreten des Medienbegriffs innerhalb medienwissenschaftlicher Forschung und eines Desinteresses sogenannter ›Digitalisierung‹ ihr gegenüber. Er untersucht, inwiefern Medientheorie (von McLuhan und Kittler bis zu den sogenannten Digital Humanities) durch einen starken Medienbegriff an der Herausbildung von Zeitsemantiken und Narrativen von ›Digitalisierung‹ beteiligt war und von ihnen profitiert hat. Als Konsequenz fordert Pias zu medienwissenschaftlicher Grundlagenforschung auf, die mit einer strategischen Revision und Aktualisierung von ›Medien‹ als Begriff und Gegenstand einhergeht. Der (...) Beitrag von Kathrin Peters stimmt mit dieser Lagebeschreibung nur teilweise überein. Die Skepsis gegenüber den Zukunfts- und Dringlichkeitsrhetoriken gegenwärtiger Digitalisierungsoffensiven wird von ihr geteilt, dass allerdings vor allem eine Medienwissenschaft des ›medientechnischen a priori‹ eine Antwort auf den gegenwarts- und an- wendungsfixierten Digitalisierungsdiskurs liefern könnte, erscheint Peters als zu kurz gegriffen. Andere medienwissenschaftliche Ausrichtungen sind dazu ebenso in der Lage: medienwissenschaftliche Analysen zu Kolonialität und Postkolonialität, feministische, gen- der- und queertheoretische Fragestellungen, eine medienwissenschaftlich informiert Wissenschaftsforschung und Affekttheorie – um nur einige zu nennen. Es geht um Konzepte von Medienwissenschaft als Fragestellung, die ihre Gegenstände in den verschiedensten Bereichen hervorbringen, dabei aber zugleich als Mittel und Mittler immer wieder unsichtbar werden. Debate: Media Studies without Media Claus Pias’ article starts out from two points of observation: a recession of the term media within the field of media studies and a dis- interest of the so-called digitalization in this particular term. Pias examines the impact media theory (ranging from McLuhan and Kittler to the so-called Digital Humanities) had on the development of time semantics and the narratives of ›digitalization‹ due to the use of a strong media term, and how media theory profited from it. mAs a result, Pias calls for establishing basis research in media studies, going hand in hand with a strategic revision and update of media, as a term as well as a subject. In her article, Kathrin Peters only partially agrees with this evaluation. She shares the scepticism concerning future-rhetoric as well as priority-rhetoric, both featuring heavily in current digital offensives; however, in her opinion it is not enough to hope for answers on today’s digitalization-discourse from media studies hailing the media-technical a priori. There are other approaches in media studies which are able to offer these answers: analysis of colonialism and post-colonialism, feministic, gender- and queer-theoretical questions, a media-informed science of knowledge and affect theory, just to name a few of them. It is all about concepts of media science being perceived as problems which bring forth their own subjects in various areas of research, yet as a tool as well as an intermediary, they are frequently overlooked. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 277-281, October 2021.

Within the caring science paradigm, variations of a method of interpretation inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation are used. This method consists of several levels of interpretation: a naïve reading, a structural analysis, and a critical analysis and discussion. Within this paradigm, the aim of this article is to present and discuss a means of creating distance in the interpretation and the text structure by using narration in a poetic language linked to the meaning of the (...) text. Ricoeur's ‘Hermeneutical function of distanciation’ will be introduced, and this concept of distanciation will be illustrated with reference to narrations from a study of patient's life experiences living with chronic illness and home mechanical ventilation in Denmark. Distanciation in the interpretation objectifies the text, and narration in a poetic language creates a particular kind of mediation in the interpretation. That narration represents an interpreted understanding of the whole, which facilitates an appropriate and evocative presentation of the interpreted data. This way of objectifying the text through narration can contribute yet another perspective to Ricoeur's rich and varied theory of interpretation. (shrink)

Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie im Kontext der mittelalterlichen Rezeption der Texte des Aristoteles an Hof und Universitäten, und dabei insbesondere der für die Epistemologie einschlägigen Passagen in De anima und in den Zweiten Analytiken sowie ihre spätantike und arabische Vermittlung. In diesem komplexen Rezeptions- und vor allem Transformationsprozeß werden zugleich die wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlich-institutionellen Grundlagen für den okzidentalen Prozeß der Rationalisierung und der Aufklärung gelegt, deren "Dialektik" nicht nur die Geschichte (...) Europas bis zum heutigen Tag bestimmt. Die Beiträge des Bandes vermitteln damit nicht nur einen umfassenden und bisher in der Forschung in dieser Form nicht geleisteten Überblick über Reichweite und Grenzen der epistemologischen Debatten im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert sowie ihren jeweiligen historischen Ort in der Wissenskultur des Mittelalters, sondern stellen darüber hinaus in ihrer Gesamtheit auch einen Beitrag dar zu Fragen der Epistemologie der Gegenwart, etwa zum Problem der Axiomatik der Wissenschaften. Die Publikation schließt damit nicht nur ein Desiderat in der Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, sondern bildet zugleich einen genuinen Beitrag zu gegenwärtigen Fragestellungen der Epistemologie. (shrink)

The power of fathers over their children – especially over their daughters – is a central theme of Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’. Novella V,7 situates the ‘patria potestas’ in a tension-filled position between honour and law, vigilante justice and public prosecution. The legitimation of cruelty and violence by invoking the ‘patria potestas’ is questioned through the confrontation with poetic justice.

Academic bioethics does not appear to be interested in communication and its ethical concerns unless communication is to do with issues such as capacity, consent, truth telling and confidentiality. In contrast practitioners are interested in actually communicating with their patients and they are often particularly perplexed when it comes to people with profound disabilities where communication appears disrupted. Although some new and not so new communication strategies, and especially intensive interaction, are available, little has been written on either the ethical (...) concerns these may present or the deeper concepts that underpin them. This article explores the practical applications of some of these communication strategies. By engaging these strategies with theology, and specifically Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body, this article identifies and addresses some significant ethical issues that may arise, notably the risk of dualism and of objectifying the human person. Moreover it provides communication strategies with a rationale that goes beyond practicalities to one based on respect for human dignity, justice and solidarity. (shrink)

This article presents a review of the literature on science and religion in Nordic countries. Seventy-seven articles, books, and chapters on the topic were collected from five major scholarly databases between 1997 and 2018. We scrutinized how research in this data set was engaged with social scientific research. Most of the research was not social scientific. It was primarily philosophical, theological, and historical research; very little presented empirical and theoretical social scientific research. The studies reflected societal discussions, bringing out some (...) cultural dimensions and social issues, but not specifically in the Nordic context. Some societal aspects were highlighted, such as ethics and climate change, but these were not necessarily tied to the Nordic societies. We propose that in the Nordic context there seems to be a need for social scientific research on science and religion. This research could use theoretical perspectives from, for instance, sociology, science and technology studies, higher education studies, and anthropological research. (shrink)

Democracy is increasingly being challenged, by disengagement and by anti-pluralist movements (Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, Viking, New York, 2018; Wikforss in _Därför demokrati. Om kunskapen och folkstyret_ [Because of this, democracy. On knowledge and people’s rule] Fri Tanke, 2021; Svolik et al. in J Democr 34(1):5–20, 2023). This article draws upon a theoretical discussion about democracy, pluralism, and threats to democracy. Departing from Dewey, Laclau, Mouffe, Young and Allen, we address democracy (...) as an ideology that centers around pluralism, or an ever-increasing inclusion of voices from the margins as its goal. We argue that perceiving democracy pedagogically as a pluralistic ideology would support students’ democratic citizenship and equip them for a world where threats to democracy are being reported. Employing a case study on Finnish social studies textbooks, we analyze how democracy as well as threats to democracy are discursively portrayed. Our study shows that the textbooks present democracy as predominantly institutional and static. We also find that while disengagement is portrayed as a problem for democracy, anti-pluralist movements are generally not referred to as a threat. Additionally, we examine a discourse in the textbooks that connects freedom of speech with democracy in a way that favors a multitude of opinions, even antidemocratic ones, over creating space for marginalized voices. Drawing on the theoretical discussion and the results of the analysis, we argue that a focus on pluralism as the core of democracy makes the opposition between restricting hate speech and advocating for democracy redundant. (shrink)

Traditional interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of perception mainly focus on uncovering the underlying mechanisms that are at stake when perceivers are affected by sensible qualities. Investigating the nature of sense perception is one of Aristotle’s main worries and one that he explicitly relates to the question of its causes (e. g.Sens. 436a16–17, 436b9) and its ends (e. g.de An. 434a30 ff.). Therefore I suggest that, in order to fully explain Aristotle’s view of perceptual phenomena, the possibilities, the constraints, and the (...) goals defined by the embodied and situated engagement of perceivers with the external world must be taken into account. Accordingly, in this paper, I provide an affective reading of Aristotle’s theory of perception. I shall ask what, in addition to functioning sense organs and appropriate response mechanisms, the perceiver contributes to perceptual content. Specifically, I propose to shed light on the significance of perceptual experience for the perceiver and I aim to show that, according to Aristotle, one’s biological and personal qualities are perceptually relevant, meaning that they underpin perception, rather than coming into play after perception has occurred and its objects have been discerned. The paper is divided into two parts, respectively dealing with sensory affections and more complex affective phenomena. As regards the domain of primal sense perception, I will focus on smell as a representative example: since Aristotle identifies it as the least developed of human sensory faculties, it will serve as a revealing illustration of how sense perception is informed and qualified by what, drawing on contemporary philosophical terminology, I will call ‘perceptual interests’, viz. the affective sense of what is at stake in the living being’s interaction with the environment. I will then proceed to consider the way more complex affective phenomena underpin perception by examining the case of emotions and that of virtues of character. By showing how perception is affectively inflected and how emotion is rooted in perception’s bodily nature, I aim to sketch out the general lines along which I believe that the Aristotelian theory of perception should be approached. (shrink)

In the prehistoric time, there was an inclination of human beings to protect their existence by living in societies. They confine themselves in the society because of having their qualities of mutual love and amity. The general tendencies of human beings are to develop bonds. These bonds happen in various ways. Society cannot survive without bonds. Bonds have significance in philosophical discussion. In the history of contemporary philosophy, applied philosophy is one of the several other aspects. Applied philosophy deals with (...) Human rights, Euthanasia, Feminism, Abortion, Animal rights, Bonds etc. Brenda Almond, a leading figure in applied philosophy, has offered arguments in favor of her viewpoint regarding the importance of human bonds. In this paper, Almond‟s view on the nature and significance of bond has been analyzed. However, bond has also been studied from ethical perspective in this paper. And finally, it is claimed that marriage and cosmopolitanism make bonds stronger. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 147-164. (shrink)

This article contributes to the current discussion on interdisciplinarity in the health research field. It focuses on the relationship between nursing research and gender research. Nursing research is a ‘health sciences’ field which draws from the social sciences, the humanities, and biomedicine. Previous research shows the difficulties that social scientists face in their efforts to integrate with biomedical scientists. The aim of this article is to analyse nursing researchers’ views about one potential collaboration partner in the social sciences and humanities: (...) gender research. The study draws its theoretical insights from research within the sociology of science. It uses ideas about the intertwining of power and knowledge, which is especially emphasised in the works of Pierre Bourdieu. The research material consists of 180 abstracts of nursing research articles that argue in some way about the relationship between nursing research and gender research. The Scopus database was selected because it covers nursing research in a broad sense. The scope of the study is long. The close reading of abstracts is inspired by rhetorical discourse analysis. We found three clearly different but also overlapping discourses that justified gender perspectives in nursing research: Gender research helps to highlight the socio-political context in nursing research; Gender research develops or reforms the nursing research tradition; and Gender research exists as a form of critique within nursing research. Most of the nursing research abstracts regard gender research positively for both external and internal reasons. The abstracts also demonstrate the tensions in the relationship and discuss the views and reasons that generate scepticism towards gender research in nursing research. (shrink)

In his De philosophia, Varro lists 288 philosophical schools on the highest good before presenting Antiochus’s doctrine as the only true one. One of the particularities of his moral doxography consists in including cynicism which has never been mentioned in the previous moral sources. This paper therefore aims to show that the De philosophia represents a major turning point for the Roman reflection on cynicism. First, Varro defines cynicism as a simple way of life (habitus) and not a doctrine (ratio) (...) so that it could be adopted by all other philosophies. In fact, by ‘reducing’ cynicism to a way of life Varro makes it compatible with his conception of the highest good based on social duties. In that respect, his position on cynicism is opposite to Cicero’s who, in his De officiis, considers cynicism as a dangerous philosophy for Roman values. Finally, Varro uses cynicism as a conceptual tool for thinking, in philosophical terms, one of the most important issues that run through all his work: the relationship between happiness and Ancient Roman simplicity, especially in the context of Roman decadency. For instance, in Varro’s Menippean Satires, Cynics’s destitution partly reminds of the Ancient Romans’ austerity. Therefore, by mentioning cynicism in his moral doxography, Varro gives an original and Roman treatment of the Antiochian inquiry into the concept highest good. (shrink)