The present text aims at mapping out a synopsis of the main political parties from Romania after 1989 on the one hand, and at pointing out the way in which their activity interferes with religion, on the other hand. To this point we have endeavored to place emphasis on the role played by the church within the Romanian society, as well as the main paths of influence the clerical representatives may exert upon the political life, occasionally voluntarily, yet involuntarily for (...) the most part. (shrink)

Politics and religion are two concepts that have constantly intertwined throughout history and continue to do so at the start of the third millennium. Previous studies show that religion plays an important part in the political life and the concepts of state and church are connected. Although there are also certain discursive manners in which the Church adapts to political and socio-economical contexts, it is much more often that the connection between the two spheres of communication (political and religious) comes (...) from the part of politicians. The article deals with notions such as pseudo-events, media spectacle, political marketing and using religion as a tool for political positioning. The current research is based on an analytical descriptive method: the media content analysis. The focus of the analysis is on the highest rated daily print media and it covers the period from 2007 to 2010. It checks the prevalence of politicians in the media coverage of religious events on the most important religious holidays of the year: Easter, St Mary and Christmas. The most relevant results of the study show that the intertwining of politics and religion is often negatively reflected by the media. The results are a necessary addition to previous studies (Iancu and Balaban) that had only focused on a quantitative analysis of politicians' media coverage during religious festivities. (shrink)

This article's main goal is to highlight the conflicts but also the similarities between religion and politics that exists in different subjects, views or situations. This study will have a theoretical part but also an empirical part. The empirical part will be supported by the theoretical part of the study in which we will try to demonstrate the assumptions written above. The empirical part will analyze concrete case being the church's reaction to the legislative proposal of legalizing prostitution. Choosing this (...) topic for discussion, in the context of the relations between the Romanian Orthodox Church and politics, is a scientific approach that aims to highlight and underline the reactions that the Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR) has to the controversial legislative proposals in Romania and elsewhere, such as the legalization of prostitution. Through our research we aim to achieve a brief overview of this topic, analyzing the reactions that BOR has, in the written press in Romania, on the issue of legalizing prostitution. Also, the theme may be considered a good source of knowledge on the Romanian society and how it accepts or not such a legislative proposal. (shrink)

Rodolphe Calin | : Comment rendre compte de l’articulation entre l’image et le langage, plus précisément, de la double dimension, langagière et figurative, que présente le langage dans les figures de rhétorique? L’article essaie de montrer que, pour répondre à cette question, Ricoeur n’aura pas seulement eu besoin, dans la sixième étude de La métaphore vive, de développer une sémantique de l’image consistant à penser l’image comme une dimension du procès de la prédication métaphorique, mais également, comme en témoigne son (...) article « Image et langage dans la psychanalyse », une sémiotique de l’image, une sémiotique non linguistique permettant de faire droit à la dimension « pictoriale » qu’acquiert le langage en devenant figuré. Et dans la mesure où la sémantique et la sémiotique de l’image mettent en jeu deux modèles distincts, l’un prédicatif, l’autre substitutif, qui tour à tour permettent de décrire le schématisme de l’imagination, ce sont ici deux approches de l’imagination créatrice qui sont requises pour rendre compte du langage figuré. | : How to explain the connection between images and language? More precisely, how to give an account of the double dimension, both linguistic and figurative, that language presents in rhetorical figures? The present article attempts to show that in order to answer this question, Ricoeur had to develop not only a semantics of the image in La métaphore vive, where the image is conceived as a part of the process of metaphorical predication, but also, as evidenced by his article “Image and language in psychoanalysis,” a semiotics of the image — i.e., a non-linguistic semiotics making it possible to grant the “pictorial” dimension that language acquires in becoming figurative. And to the extent that the semantics and semiotics of the image deploy two distinct models — one predicative, the other substitutive — which alternately describe the schematism of the imagination, it becomes clear that two approaches of the creative imagination are required to account for figurative language. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to emphasize the notion of accomplishment in Levinas, partly building on the unpublished works of the author, where it appears as a keyword of his philosophy. It is a matter of highlighting the double filiation of this term, as an extension of the Husserlian notion of intuitive fullfilment to the entire existence and as a resumption of the hermeneutical and theological notion of figural interpretation. By showing how Levinas applies the structure symbol-accomplishment to the (...) existence, envisaged in its double dynamism of position and participation, this article intends to emphazise the importance—but also the difficulties—of the notion of history in his philosophy. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain the theory of the body as seen by I.P. Culianu. Thus, starting from the idea that the soul is full of body – which is motivated by theories in the domain of fashion – through which the body is that which assumes the defining symbolic charge of the spirit which inhabits it. Reversing the order of things, if one looks in the latter portions of the vast work of I.P. Culianu the perspective may be found (...) according to which the body, even if not full of the soul, may at least be defined as a prolongation of the mind, that is, as the real engine of history and culture. (shrink)

Levinas n'est pas le premier ni le seul penseur à avoir eu le souci de décrire la subjectivité pour elle-même et à partir d'elle-même. Cette subjectivation, toujours à reprendre, Levinas l'aura envisager lui-même doublement, en deux lieux distincts, l'ontologie et l'éthique. L'ontologie dans la mesure où elle se propose de déduire la signification de l'étant subjectif dans l'être, l'éthique dans la mesure où elle pense l'unicité du moi à partir de la responsabilité pour autrui. L'ontologie et l'éthique sont, pour Levinas, (...) deux figures de l'egologie, elles décrivent deux manières d'être soi. Pour le comprendre l'auteur rétablit les rapports souvent oubliés entre Levinas et Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty et Henry. (shrink)

Une critique de la métaphysique du sujet, prise entre une théorisation substantialiste de l'individu ou au contraire une approche dynamique de la subjectivité. ©Electre 2017.

Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military (...) elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenţia and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project. (shrink)

The study of an electric charge in hyperbolic motion is an important aspect of Minkowski’s geometrical formulation of electrodynamics. In “Space and Time”, his last publication before his premature death, Minkowski gives a brief geometrical recipe for calculating the four-force with which an electric charge acts on another electric charge. The subsequent work of Born, Sommerfeld, Laue, and Pauli filled in the missing derivation details. Here, we bring together these early contributions, in an effort to provide a more modern, accessible, (...) and unified exposition of the early history of the electric charge in hyperbolic motion. (shrink)

"Novels, movies, and lies - these are all fictions that provoke with their as ifs and what ifs. In response to the idea that fiction has somehow become an unfashionable topic in contemporary criticism, this volume argues that the question of fiction needs to be updated in the absence of a widely accepted theory of truth. This collection, dedicated to the noted scholar and literary critic Lubomir Dolezel, covers an extensive number of theoretical and historical issues relevant to our understanding (...) of the status of fictions - literary or not." "Fiction Updated offers approaches to fiction and poetics that, in an imaginary topography of contemporary humanities, dwell at a distance from both the mimetic theory of literature and deconstruction. The contributors introduce new perspectives to the problem of fictionality, or broaden the scope of its applications, by examining the works of such authors as Homer, Casanova, Aristotle, Woolf, Vaihinger, Borges, Kundera, Coetzee, and Bakhtin."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Exista o asemanare izbitoare intre experienta erotica si experienta estetica, deoarece amandoua se raporteaza la dorinta, la placere, la frumusete, etc. In cultura actuala se vehiculeaza ideea ca eroticul este o arta. Daca etica interogheaza relatia erotica in dimensiunea ei intersubiectiva, in raportul cu celalalt, estetica se autorizeaza de un alt tip de cunoastere a relatiei erotice, diferita de cea etica, care se raporteaza la sensibilitate, poezia gesturilor, senzatii, etc. pe care le reveleaza in subiect. Articolul urmareste sa discearna aceasta (...) specificitate a esteticii si relatia ei cu etica in cadrul experientei erotice. (shrink)

One hundred eighty trauma-focused dissertations published in the United States were examined to determine the variation in risk language used in the informed consents. Level of risk proposed in the informed consents was poorly related to ratings of risk by graduate coders and virtually unrelated to vulnerability factors such as the age of participants and clinical or nonclinical status. Risk language in the informed consents was markedly elevated over that rated by the coders, with more than one third of the (...) dissertations presenting the risk of participation as severe (i.e., associated with substantial risk of reactivity and lasting discomfort). These statements are not in keeping with the literature and raise ethical concerns in relation to (a) nocebo effects, (b) distortion of correlational findings, and (c) discouragement of participants from disclosing trauma in other settings. (shrink)

Contemplation and Mythosophy: the Amphiboly of Landscapes in the Works of Ernst Jünger. Ernst Jünger’s immanent mythology of vitalism hasn’t as yet found its place in Modernity, being regarded as suspect or unworthy of any serious post-metaphysical approach. Nevertheless, its original significance is manifest in the spatial descriptions that deploy a genuine polymorphism of human nature and an archetypal Aesthetics. Jünger’s landscapes thus express at least two different levels of amophiboly that encompass his status as a specific literary figure, apart (...) from both Metaphysics and Deconstruction. His solutions, varying throughout the evolution of his work, aim the enigmatic and unthinkable articulation of Myth and History, the topological frontiers between creative decision and the vertical advent of an injunction, open like a wound towards the Faustian destiny. (shrink)

The Demon Women and Their Masquerades – a Few Symptoms of Japanese Cinema. The demon woman is a frequent theme in Japanese cinema, pertaining to more than an imaginary hypostasis of femininity. Jacques Lacan, in his brief and rare references to Japanese Cinema and particularly to Nagisa Oshima’s Realm of the Senses, points out the specific power of feminine eroticism which goes beyond the masquerade. This unanalysible power of japanese women is stated by Lacan within the context of what he (...) calls the sinthome in his analysis of James Joyce’s oeuvre. This paper is a psychoanalytical approach of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari based on the aforementioned concepts and elaborations. Wakasa, the main feminine character, is thus connected to Lacan’s views on Woman (femme), on the relation between the Phallus and the feminine masquerade and, ultimately, to the Real dimension of the phantom. (shrink)

The connections between “the Humboldtian tradition” and very important cultural layers of the European anti-Enlightenment movement can provide a powerful alternative to the mainstream in today’s social sciences. This tradition should be seen, though, in its concrete historicity and the political and theoretical blind spots which are part of this tradition ought to be carefully reconsidered. This anthropological tradition can be “unpacked” by bringing it closer to other theoretical trends which try to address modernity’s inconsistencies and lack of unity - (...) in order to deconstruct its national closure and its administrative and state oriented background. One of the geographical, historical and social areas where alternative modernities , and Humboldtian traditions seem to intersect each other is the East European peasantry. (shrink)

Computational models have an increasing impact in social and historical sciences. In this paper, I will focus on a specific type of modelling developed in computational social sciences, an agent-based model. My inquiry will aim to identify the sort of explanatory virtues that such a model could have. I will discuss the suggested possibility of causal explanations but also the recent proposal advanced by Grüne-Yanoff that sees them as potential functional explanations. In the last part I shall make some suggestions (...) on how to advance our inquiry. These will point to the need of a more consistent explanatory context drawing on the way social scientists make use of such models. The other will point to the need of considering a cognitive process that is closely related to the explanatory one - understanding. (shrink)

Secularization is a polysemantic word quite difficult to explain. If it is viewed as being characterized by two processes related to the religious changes of society and the social changes of religion, then there can be little pertinent utilization of this term in theology. This is what I’ll try to explain in this articleKey words: secularization, state and church, theology, evanghelization.

The popular media has repeatedly pointed to pride as one of the key factors motivating leaders to behave unethically. However, given the devastating consequences that leader unethical behavior may have, a more scientific account of the role of pride is warranted. The present study differentiates between authentic and hubristic pride and assesses its impact on leader ethical behavior, while taking into consideration the extent to which leaders find it important to their self-concept to be a moral person. In two experiments (...) we found that with higher levels of moral identity, authentically proud leaders are more likely to engage in ethical behavior than hubristically proud leaders, and that this effect is mediated by leaders’ motivation to act selflessly. A field survey among organizational leaders corroborated that moral identity may bring the positive effect of authentic pride and the negative effect of hubristic pride on leader ethical behavior to the forefront. (shrink)

This attempt to reveal several aspects of language power begins with the integralism promoted by Eugen Coseriu, who presents in his work the creative force of language. The author constructs a parallel between the structure of the communist society and the parithetic order of language. Thus, the force of an idiom is going to be exposed, and the preferred example is going to be the recent and painful history of the political life of Southeastern Europe, especially that of the former (...) Yugoslav republic. The author intends to demonstrate that linguistic idioms may eventually become extremely powerful, especially in certain historical circumstances. This conclusion in itself is judged to be interesting enough to move readers to be more attentive toward the power of language, from the perspective of finding the particular tradition that claims the existence, at the beginning of human language, of one unique (original) language. (shrink)

L'éducation est dans ce livre envisagée comme un geste anthropologique intégral par lequel chaque personne s'achemine vers la plénitude de son être, dans le respect de sa destination naturelle et surnaturelle. À la lumière de cette mystique éducative qui nous fait entrer au coeur de la réalité humaine, l'existence se trouve intensifiée, parce que vécue avec un maximum de profondeur. Encore trop méconnu, l'apport d'Edith Stein en matière d'éducation méritait d'être enfin présenté sous une forme synthétique et accessible. La question (...) éducative occupe une place centrale dans la pensée d'Edith Stein, sans toutefois faire l'objet d'une mise en forme systématique. Cela justifie amplement le projet d'une reconstitution de son architecture d'ensemble. (shrink)

One of the common domains in health care in which the concept of vulnerability is used is end-of-life care, including euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS). Since different uses and implications of the notion have been recognised in the literature on EAS, this paper aims to analyse them and reflect on who is the most vulnerable in the context of EAS. A prior exploratory review of the literature has served as a starting point for the discussion. We concluded that vulnerability is (...) a complex, multi-perspective and multi-layered concept, which implies the vulnerability of different stakeholders involved in EAS practices and vulnerability in different aspects of being human (i.e., physical, mental, moral, social and spiritual). A comprehensive understanding of the notion of vulnerability, which balances as well as complements the concept of autonomy, seems to be an indispensable element of the discourse on EAS. (shrink)

Once a central topic of philosophy of science, scientific explanation attracted less attention in the last two decades. My aim in this paper is to argue for a newsort of approach towards scientific explanation. In a first step I propose a classification of different approaches through a set of dichotomic characteristics. Taken into account the tendencies in actual philosophy of science I see a local, dynamic and non-theory driven approach as a plausible one. Considering models as bearers of explanations will (...) provide a proper frame for such an approach. In the second part I make some suggestions for a working agenda that will further articulate a sketchy account of explanation through models proposed by Hartmann and Frigg. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that it is more plausible to approach understanding from a special type of model—the ABS/IBMs models—as a non-explanatory form following some suggestions advanced by Lipton. I will first look to the type of explanation that some authors claimed is disclosed by these models: Weisberg’s analysis of IBMs in ecology and Grüne-Yanoff’s analysis of the Anasazi model. I argue that their analyses fail to show that these models qualify as explanatory understandings. This brings (...) us to Strevens’ “simple view,” which claims the existence of a correct explanation behind any understanding, and his strategy of dismissing the challenges posed by non-explanatory forms. I argue that this strategy incurs damaging costs on his view. In the last part we turn to Khalifa’s critique on Lipton’s proposals and argue that it is based on an unjustified construal of Lipton’s framework. I show how Khalifa’s “argumentative strategy” fails to establish the superiority of actual understanding over possible explanation. (shrink)

Scientific understanding was a rather neglected topic in philosophy of science, despite its association with the well-known explanation subject. The classical position on explanation considered an approach on understanding to be redundant on one on explanation. Besides, the dominant view promoted by the unificationist approach on explanation conceived understanding as a “global affair”, as Friedman called it, of scientific knowledge. The recent developments in philosophy of science redirected the research to more local aspects of science and scientific inquiry. This new (...) context calls for a reconsideration of the possibility of approaching understanding under different perspectives than the old one. I will try to identify some points of this reconsideration using as reference the frame of an influential tendency in today’s philosophy of science - the modelistic view. (shrink)