Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar, a partir de uma leitura de Paul Ricoeur, a experiência do sofrimento como enigma para a razão e desafio para a fé. Os males éticos e religiosos, compreendidos como transgressão e pecado, estão relacionados a uma atitude ativa, a um fazer. O sofrimento inocente, ao contrário, deve ser pensado a partir da perspectiva da vítima. Como justificar a dor de inocentes vítimas de catástrofes, de doenças incuráveis, de violência? É possível, por exemplo, conferir sentido (...) à experiência do sofrimento de famílias que perdem a luta contra o COVID-19? Se Deus é justo por que ele permite que os inocentes sofram? Com o objetivo de pensar a respeito destas questões dividirei este texto em duas partes. Na primeira, apresentarei como Paul Ricoeur compreende o problema do mal a partir de três dimensões: a ética da transgressão, a religiosa do pecado e a dimensão do sofrimento inocente. Na segunda, mostrarei de que modo Ricoeur pensa o sofrimento como desafio. Para Ricoeur, como veremos, a dialética tradicional não é capaz de conferir significado ao sofrimento inocente. O problema do mal exige a convergência entre pensamento e ação, e a transformação espiritual dos sentimentos. Esta transformação deve conduzir a amar a Deus de modo desinteressado. Ela pressupõe compreensão específica da relação entre amor e justiça. (shrink)

To overcome “digital reductionism,” a new kind of mechanical view on human beings, fundamental informatics provides some critical viewpoints. It regards information as “meaning” generated in living things which do not exist alone but are parts of ecological system. On the other hand, V. E. Frankl proposed two dimensions of humans: homo sapiens and homo patiens. The latter is the essential aspect of humans whose essence is “compassion,” while the former is the nature like a mechanical machine. (...) As features of living things, unrestricted ability of interpretation as well as inseparable relationships between others underlies both in Frankl’s thought and fundamental informatics. This viewpoint can be applied to the concept of “information literacy.”. (shrink)

The experience of illness raises profound issues concerning the sense or non-sense of human existence as a whole: does life have meaning when it is marked by suffering? And what meaning would it bear, in this case? These questions are asked by both caregivers and recipients of care when they come into contact with limits, pain, and death. In this regard, the existential condition of homo patiens is ambiguous: it can lead either to nihilism and despair or to (...) a higher level of awareness and responsibility. Studies on resilience, post-traumatic growth, and meaning-making processes seem to suggest that in difficult situations the search for meaning comes most clearly to the fore, so that the possibility of finding meaning in life can be a protective factor and a key therapeutic resource, while meaninglessness increases weakness and vulnerability. But what is meant by “meaning” in the illness experience and how may it be integrated into one’s personal life story? This question is answered here in terms of narrative methods that can enhance healthcare practitioners’ capacity to approach their patients with sensitivity and deep understanding and guide them to find meaning in their lives, despite all. (shrink)

Werner Schüßler Cet article aborde la question du lien entre la santé et la maladie, ainsi qu’entre la totalité et la guérison. En s’appuyant sur Paul Tillich, l’auteur montre que l’être humain est une unité dynamique et que la maladie et la santé doivent être comprises comme des processus dynamiques. En se basant sur le concept de l’« homo patiens » de Viktor E. Frankl, il explique ensuite que l’être humain peut toujours trouver un sens malgré la maladie. (...) Enfin, la notion de « Dieu handicapé » de Nancy L. Eiesland lui permet de montrer que le christianisme possède un symbole qui illustre que la « totalité » et donc le salut ne sont pas nécessairement liés à l’intégrité physique. (shrink)

As a science and practice of intervention and control, medicine is concerned with cure and care, the promotion and protection of health, and the prevention of maladies and human suffering. This wide-ranging task is accomplished through medical practice and medical research, though no sharp boundary between them can be drawn. A widespread misconception about medicine has it that medicine is concerned with illness and disease. However, the subject of medicine is the patient, i.e., Homo patiens, but not illness (...) or disease, with the ends being directed toward the relief, prevention of human suffering, and saving human life. Accordingly, medicine needs a theory of the patient first of all. Nosology and pathology as studies of illness and disease may be viewed as elements of such a theory of the Homo patiens. Seen from this perspective, clinical research and practice are to be based on the question: What is a patient? That is, what characteristics distinguish a patient from a non-patient? The present chapter is concerned with this question. The inquiry into what a patient, i.e., Homo patiens, is, intersects with anthropology that is concerned with the question of what is a human being? This is the fundamental philosophical question of medicine because, as an experimental and diagnostic-therapeutic discipline, it undertakes momentous interventions in human life. It therefore needs an image of the human being so as to ascertain whether medical interventions are in accord with, or contravene, that image. For example, it is a legitimate question to ask whether the transplantation of animal cells, tissues, and organs into humans, i.e., xenotransplantation, or whether the designing of offspring by genetic engineering, is morally permissible. Since anthropology is basically a philosophical endeavor, medicine at its foundations turns out to intersect with philosophy. We shall consider the patient as a bio-psycho-social agent who is suffering or whose life is threatened by some occurrences inside or outside of her body, usually called diseases, pathogenic environments, etc. Our aim is to understand what these occurrences may look like and how they may be conceptualized, systematized, recognized, causally analyzed, and controlled. Thus, our discussion consists of the following five sections: 7.1 The Suffering Individual; 7.2 The Bio-Psycho-Social Agent; 7.3 Health, Illness, and Disease; 7.4 Systems of Disease; 7.5 Etiology (= Science of Clinical Causation). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:[Quaestio prima: quomodo est anima omnia]“Anima quodammodo est omnia.”2Verbum Philosophi est et abbreviatum; non autem omnibus satis manifestum. Quid me, Vir Dei,3 iam sollicitas in isto? Scis enim quod imperitussum scientia, et iste sermo profunda forte indiget exquisitione. Quaeris ergo specificari tibi illud quod dico ‘quodammodo’; quomodo enim erit anima omnia? Istum modum velles tibi specificari: autin summa dictione una, aut secundum singula entia singulos modos explicare.Videtur ergo ipse (...) Philosophus declarare istam propositionem inductive sic:‘sensus est quodammodo sensibilia, intellectus est quodammodo intelligibilia’,4igitur etc.[Obiectiones]Hic statim duo obicis:Primum quod cum anima tres partes habeat – vegetativam, sensitivam,intellectivam – in hac ostensione Philosophi ipsum vegetativum nulli entium attribuitur per quodammodo essendi idem, ergo videtur quod non debeatdicere: anima simpliciter quodammodo est omnia, sed secundum aliquas parteseius solum.Item, videtur quod debeat dici quod solum intellectivum sit quodammmodo omnia; nam omnia omnino sunt intelligibilia: universalia, singularia. Omnes naturae vere et simpliciter intelligibiles sunt quantum in ipsis est, licet prima et remotissima principia a nobis non intelligantur. Defectus enim in nobis est sicut in oculis vespertilionis, quibus non videt solem.[2] Item, quomodo est sensus ipsa sensibilia et intellectus ipsa intelligibilia?Aeque enim ignotae sunt hae assumptiones sicut et conclusio. Nam sensitivum res vivens est et substantia; sensibilia, res non-viventes et accidentia, qualitates de tertia specie qualitatis.5 Quomodo ergo est haec illa? Iam enim patet quod non conveniunt nisi in esse et ente tantum; in nullo enim genereomnino. Igitur videtur quod nihil sit dictu ‘sensus est quodammodo sensibilia’.Nam multo magis proprie et vere dictum videretur si diceret quis ‘homoquodammodo est asinus’, nam haec conveniunt in genere et generibus.Similiter, quaeris ex parte intellectus et intelligibilium. Intelligibilia enimsunt et substantiae et accidentia, et res viventes et non-viventes; ipsum autem intellectivum, solum substantia et res vivens.[Prima responsio Philosophi ad obiectionem secundam: Sensus est in potentia tale quale sensibile in actu]6Vir Dei, dices mihi, colligendo ex ipso eodem auctore, et respondebis |A 281vb| mihi cum quaero: sensus quomodo est ipsum sensibile? Respondebis cum Philosopho, quia hoc modo, scilicet quod ‘sensus est in potentia tale quale est ipsum sensibile in actu’,7 et illud pertractabis ad singulos sensus et sensibilia. Sic visus est in potentia tale quale est ipsum visibile in actu, et ita de aliis.Sed ego contra: Vir Dei, si ‘sensus est in potentia tale etc.’, ergo aliquando erit in actu tale, etc.Ad idem: sentire quoddam pati est et quaedam alteratio. Est enim sensus de genere virtutum passivarum secundum eundem Philosophum.8 Agens autem et patiens in principio sunt dissimilia; in fine vero, cum passum est, sunt similia.Igitur sensitivum ex quo sentiendo quodammodo patitur et passivum est. Infine cum passum est, simile erit ipsi activo, scilicet sensibili. Tunc igitur erit‘sensus tale in actu quale est etiam ipsum sensibile in actu’.Sed nunc quaero quid hoc sit dictu, scilicet quod aliquando ipsum sensitivum in actu sit tale quale ipsum sensibile. Quid dicis ‘tale quale’? Numquid si actu video colorem, est virtus visiva oculi mei actu color? Aut non dicis talis estcolor? Quaero, si in qualitate assimilabitur illa virtus visiva actu colori, nihil videtur huiusmodi expositio. |E 107vb| Sicut enim superius dictum est, non videntur convenire nisi in solo ente et esse.9Confiteor, Vir Dei, quia haec ultimo obiecta tentativa sunt, sed necessaria tamen ad propositum si recte dissolvantur, per gratiam ergo Dei et per orationes tuas, Vir Dei, spero ad haec quandoque redire.[Secunda responsio Philosophi ad obiectionem secundam: homo ut mundus minor]Sed nec illud quod legimus videtur sufficere ad propositum problema, Vir Dei: ‘homo est quodammodo omnis creatura et mundus’, minor scilicet,10 et communicans cum omnibus creaturis, hoc modo: “esse cum lapidibus, vivere cum plantis, sentire cum brutis, intelligere cum angelis,” et tandem cum Deo.11Si secundum hunc modum velim praedictum sermonem exponere, non erit.. (shrink)

The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem (...) of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty, a notion of sovereignty as power over "life" is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective "naked life" of all individuals. (shrink)

У статті представлено концептуалізацію дихотомії категорій «дух/розум-тіло», в основі якої необхідність формування креативного класу, який несе в собі зміни для держави і сприяє розвитку і самоствердженню особистості. Дихотомія категорій «дух/розум-тіло» пов’язана з формуванням креативної особистості в умовах нових технологій, які сприяють формуванню креативного світогляду, в основі якого інформаційна творчість та інновації. Постановка завдання. Зроблено акцент на те, що філософія економіки направлена на формування креативного класу, який повинен розвивати іманентні сили, які розширяють горизонти дихотомії «дух/розум-тіло», раніше обмежені як людиною, так і (...) суспільством. Аналіз останніх досліджень і публікацій. Філософія економіки використовує різноманітні економічні моделі науково-технічного прогресу Є. Бріньолфссона, Е. Макафі, Ю. Трінкса, М. Фюрст, Р. Флориди та інших, в основі яких вирішення проблем людини. Виділення недосліджених частин загальної проблеми – концептуалізація дихотомії «дух/розум-тіло» та вплив її складових на формування «homo creativus» у філософії економіки та їх значення для сучасності. В основі дослідження - концептуалізація базових понять дух, тіло, розум, креативність та їх вплив на формування креативного класу. Методологія – застосування методів економічної антропології та синергетики для вирішення складних проблем дихотомії «дух/розум-тіло» та їх вплив на формування «homo creativus» у філософії економіки. Виклад основного матеріалу. Розглянуто предмет вивчення філософії економіки, в основі якої глибинна внутрішня сутність дихотомії «дух/розум-тіло» і представлено її основні характеристики. Розкрито сутність економічної антропології та синергетики, які допомагають проникнути в глибину феномена дихотомії «дух/розум-тіло». Досліджено умови формування Homo creativus як визначального чинника нового типу особистості з відповідною поведінкою, здібностями, ціннісними орієнтаціями. Висновки. Виявлено умови, які відкривають нові можливості для творчості, креативності, інтелекту, що сприяють формуванню сталого буття завдяки сучасним технологіям, представленим «другою епохою машин». (shrink)

Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Nietzsche passes under review all his previous books and reaches a final reckoning with his many enemies. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career.

In Homo Aestheticus, Luc Ferry argues that this central problem of aesthetic theory is fundamentally related to the political problem of democratic individualism.

The motif of reading is placed at the center of Ecce Homo as both a vital problem and a practice in action. Nietzsche undertakes to reread every one of his "so good books" except the one he is currently writing, placing his reader in a position identical to his own. Faced with this ultimate Nietzschean "Library of Babel," the reader will have to re-experience for himself what it means to read his works, and assess his own reading biases in (...) light of the ascending or declining values associated with the text. Rarely noticed by its best commentators, Ecce Homo's "abysmal" mirrored reading device is also that of a labyrinth, haunted by the figures of Ariane and Dionysus, and its singular composition combines the doctrine of eternal return with the selective experiment of reading. (shrink)

Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a (...) commitment to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

Originally published in 1951, Homo Faberis an examination of the scientific outlook on human mental evolution through the lens of parapsychology. The book aims to undermine what its terms, the 'scientific outlook' examining the human interpretation of the world, and the preconceived scientific concepts that reality does not extend beyond the realm that our senses reveal. The book expands upon this and moves to examine the broader human understanding of the entire cosmos, challenging the scientific conception that this can (...) be grasped in principal by human intellect, arising from the chance combination of material particles. The book argues that the scientific outlook prevents humans from discovering in the Universe the meaning and purpose which are everywhere to be found if sought in the appropriate contemplative states of mind. This book provides a unique take on the examination of human psychology and the evolution of the brain from an alternative scientific stance. It will be of interest to anthropologists, historians and psychologists alike. will be of interest to anthropologists, historians and psychologists alike. (shrink)

This article discusses Islam and homo deus as a new agenda for humanity’s future. This article tries to explain the reading of homo deus and the problems of humanity in the future. Likewise, regarding the issue of immortality and human happiness in the future from an Islamic perspective. This article tries to analyze the problem using the library research model in carrying out an analysis of the main problem. Humans to fight death and the problems that humans expect (...) in the future to maintain eternity feel like a god who will live eternally in the world. It is not only immortality in the world that modern humans will achieve, but how humans live in the world and gain happiness. True happiness is difficult for humans to obtain, even though humans use the discoveries of modern science. Humans will truly find happiness if they believe in and draw closer to God. The happiness that modern humans feel is only temporary pseudo-happiness. The immortality that modern humans desire is not directly proportional to happiness. This can be seen from the large number of people dying by suicide in various countries, the majority of which are advanced, and technology is developing rapidly, but it still cannot help their spiritual problems. Modern humans think that everything can be solved with the modern science they have discovered, even though there is God’s intervention in life in this world. (shrink)

Este trabalho examina a evolução da condição humana à luz das teorias de reconhecimento social de Axel Honneth e da ética da responsabilidade de Hans Jonas. Honneth explora como a identidade e a autonomia do indivíduo são moldadas pelo reconhecimento social e pelas relações interativas na sociedade moderna. Jonas, por sua vez, destaca a necessidade de uma ética da responsabilidade diante dos avanços tecnológicos, que devem levar em consideração as consequências futuras das ações humanas. A transição do Homo Sapiens (...) para o Homo Faber simboliza a transformação do ser humano de um ser predominantemente racional e social para um agente produtivo e tecnológico. O diálogo entre Honneth e Jonas revela como a capacidade de transformar o mundo exige não apenas um reconhecimento social contínuo, mas também uma consideração ética profunda sobre o impacto dessas transformações no futuro. O texto argumenta que a intersecção das teorias de ambos oferece uma visão abrangente da nova condição humana, ressaltando a necessidade de integrar a responsabilidade ética e o reconhecimento social na era da tecnologia e da produção. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is a presentation of the H. Elzenberg's philosophical theory of the ethical ideal. I pay special attention to the most interesting, from the ethical point of view, parts of his concept. Elzen-berg proposed the ethical ideal, the so called ‘homo ethicus’. I present two ways of its realisation: melioristic and soteristic. My aim is also to prove that Elzenberg’s theory demonstrates that some features of ethical activity distinguish a human being from the background (...) of the natural world and make them exceptional. These attributes include: the realisation of the perfect values such as the good and the beauty, having an ethical will, self-sacrifice, aspiring to perfection and moral salvation. (shrink)

이 글은 오늘날 한국사회의 생명정치적 담론으로 볼 수 있는 ‘위험의 외주화’를 조르조 아감벤이 제시한 ‘호모 사케르’(Homo Sacer)의 정치철학을 경유하여 분석‧검토하는 내용으로 구성되어 있다. 이를 통해 아감벤의 사유가 과연 우리의 노동현실에 적실성을 가진 이론인지를 평가하고, 위험의 외주화 담론에 내재한 생명정치성을 보다 면밀하게 고찰할 수 있을 것으로 기대한다. 이러한 기획에 따라 본고의 2장에서는 연구 분석의 준거를 마련하기 위한 차원에서 아감벤이 제시한 호모 사케르의 정치철학을 개략적인 수준에서 검토하고, 3장에서는 한국사회의 생명정치적 담론으로 설정한 위험의 외주화에 관한 내용을 다루어본다. 논문의 핵심부분을 차지하는 4장은 아감벤이 (...) 제시한 호모 사케르의 이론적 틀을 경유하여 한국사회의 위험의 외주화 담론을 분석하는 내용으로 구성되어 있다. 연구결과, 호모 사케르의 정치철학에 관한 테마들인 주권의 역설(포함된 배제)‧추방령‧비식별역‧예외상태‧수용소 등은 ‘위험의 외주화’ 담론에 대한 해석적 고찰에 있어 유의미한 프리즘으로 기능하고 있음을 확인할 수 있었다. (shrink)

The phenomenon of war occupies one of the leading places in socio-philosophical and cultural studies. War also has an ambiguous position in human life. On the historical map we see the ongoing waves of armed conflicts, which inevitably lead to fatal consequences for countries, peoples and human beings. War mainly appears in the form of horrors and tragedies. However, in philosophical studies, war is considered from different angles. Philosophers often emphasize the ambiguity and multidimensionality of war. In this work, the (...) authors analyze the phenomenon of war, given a certain “attractiveness” and even the “necessity” of this phenomenon for humans. The authors also summarize the available range of answers to the question of where the desire for violence comes from, that is, the so-called “thirst for war”. It is this desire that gives rise to a constant stay of people in a state of war. The results of this study show that war is indeed an important phenomenon, which can also be considered one of the fundamental attributes of human nature. Analyzing various approaches that explain the causes of war the authors note that the source of any armed conflict is precisely the “militancy” in the very essence of homo sapiens. Human beings must constantly fight for their existence. And such a struggle often takes various forms, which can be considered as concrete variants of the same phenomenon. This phenomenon at the theoretical and philosophical level is fixed in the concept of war. Despite the natural sense of horror that the word “war” evokes at the level of everyday consciousness, pain and hope, death and freedom, faith in human and the justice of the universe, as well as a willingness to fight for this justice, are simultaneously hidden under this “ language shell”. All these internally contradictory meanings are united within the framework of the philosophically processed concept of war, and are also embodied in many different “wars” that a person constantly wages due to his / her specific “being structure”. Human, therefore, is a “warring creature,” or, as the authors propose to denote this feature, “homo militaris”. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that healing stories in the Jesus tradition should be understood as exorcisms, even if the concept of demonisation does not occur in the narrative. In the theistic and mythological context of the 1st-century Graeco-Roman religious and political world, external forces responsible for social imbalances pertain to the demonisation of body and spirit. Medical cure was also embedded in the same biopolitical setting. The article describes aspects of this biopolitics and the role of (...) ancient physicians. However, Jesus’ revolutionary acts were not deeds of a medical doctor, but ought to be understood as the healing activity of a faith healer who empowered traumatised people by creating safe space for them within a quasi-fictive kinship network. The article concludes with an application of the dialectic notion ‘Christus medicus – Christus patiens’ in the life of the present-day network of Jesus-followers. (shrink)

This article aims to present a conceptual proposition based on the writings of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. One of the central notions in his political philosophy is that of Homo Sacer, used as a paradigmatic figure to criticise the violence of law. From this, in this article, I propose a game with this notion, through the syntagma Homo Profanum. This game refers to the role that the concept of profanation plays in Agambenian ethical thought. Through this conceptual (...) proposition, I show how Agamben criticises tradition and the way it conceives the notion of subject. In addition, I also show how, through the concepts of potency and use, the Italian philosopher offers notes to open the ethical horizon of modernity. Thus, I characterise the figure I call Homo Profanum from the way the Italian philosopher conceives the notions of ungovernable, use and life-form, which, orbiting around the concept of potentiality, form a conceptual constellation from which Agamben makes notes to think his ethics of profanation. (shrink)

Ogni tentativo di ripensare le nostre categorie politiche deve muovere dalla consapevolezza che della distinzione classica fra zoé e bios, tra vita naturale ed esistenza politica (o tra l'uomo come semplice vivente e l'uomo come soggetto politico), non ne sappiamo piú nulla. Nel diritto romano arcaico homo sacer era un uomo che chiunque poteva uccidere senza commettere omicidio e che non doveva però essere messo a morte nelle forme prescritte dal rito. È la vita uccidibile e insacrificabile dell' 'uomo (...) sacro' a fornire qui la chiave per una rilettura critica della nostra tradizione politica. Quando la vita diventa la posta in gioco della politica e questa si trasforma in biopolitica, tutte le categorie fondamentali della nostra riflessione, dai diritti dell'uomo alla democrazia alla cittadinanza, entrano in un processo di svuotamento e di dislocazione il cui risultato sta oggi davanti ai nostri occhi. Seguendo il filo del rapporto costitutivo fra nuda vita e potere sovrano, da Aristotele ad Auschwitz, dall'Habeas corpus alle Dichiarazioni dei diritti, il libro di Agamben cerca di decifrare gli enigmi - prima di tutti il fascismo e il nazismo - che il nostro secolo ha proposto alla ragione storica. Fino a vedere, nel campo di concentramento, il paradigma biopolitico nascosto della modernità in cui città e casa sono diventate indiscernibili e la possibilità di distinguere tra il nostro corpo biologico e il nostro corpo politico ci è stata tolta una volta per tutte. (shrink)

Heuristics are efficient cognitive processes that ignore information. In contrast to the widely held view that less processing reduces accuracy, the study of heuristics shows that less information, computation, and time can in fact improve accuracy. We review the major progress made so far: the discovery of less-is-more effects; the study of the ecological rationality of heuristics, which examines in which environments a given strategy succeeds or fails, and why; an advancement from vague labels to computational models of heuristics; the (...) development of a systematic theory of heuristics that identifies their building blocks and the evolved capacities they exploit, and views the cognitive system as relying on an “adaptive toolbox;” and the development of an empirical methodology that accounts for individual differences, conducts competitive tests, and has provided evidence for people’s adaptive use of heuristics. Homo heuristicus has a biased mind and ignores part of the available information, yet a biased mind can handle uncertainty more efficiently and robustly than an unbiased mind relying on more resource-intensive and general-purpose processing strategies. (shrink)

Homo Mysticus presents three renowned lectures delivered by Wolfgang Struve from 1974 to 1984, translated into English in this volume. Philosophical and mystical experiences are finally given expression in this remarkable collection.

Nietzsche coins the enigmatic term homo natura to capture his understanding of the human being as a creature of nature and tasks philosophy with the renaturalisation of humanity. Following Foucault's critique of the human sciences, Vanessa Lemm discusses the reception of Nietzsche's naturalism in philosophical anthropology, psychoanalysis and gender studies. She offers an original reading of homo natura that brings back the ancient Greek idea of nature and sexuality as creative chaos and of the philosophical life as outspoken (...) and embodied truth, perhaps best exemplified by the Cynics' embrace of social and cultural transformation. (shrink)

Although many of the pioneers of present-day bioethics came from religious and theological backgrounds, the recent controversy about the role of religion in bioethics has elicited much attention. Timothy Murphy would ban religion from bioethics altogether. Much of the ado hinges on conflicting understandings of just what bioethics is and just what religion is. This paper attempts to make more explicit how the fields of bioethics and religion have been understood in this context, and how they should not be understood. (...) We begin by looking at bioethics as a field: its origins, purpose, scope, and its methods. We then examine the notion of religion, looking especially at its importance for bioethics. Humanity is not just Homo sapiens but also Homo religiosus. Religion is more than a code of ethics; it gives insight into many of the foundational matters of bioethics. (shrink)

Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the book sub-titled 'How To Become What You Are' passes under review all Nietzsche's previous works so that we, his 'posthumous' readers, can finally understand him aright, on his own terms. He reaches (...) final reckonings with his many enemies-Richard Wagner, German nationalism, 'modern men' in general-and above all Christianity, proclaiming himself the Antichrist. Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament to Nietzsche's will. Book jacket. (shrink)

This book is a timely intervention in the areas of philosophy, history, and literature. As an exploration of the modern political order and its racial genealogy, it emerges at a moment when scholars and activists alike are wrestling with how to understand subject formation from the perspective of the subordinated rather than from dominant social and philosophical modes of thought. For Sawyer, studying the formation of racialized subjects requires a new imagining of marginalized subjects. Black subjectivity is not viewed from (...) the static imaginings of social death, alienation, ongoing abjection, or as a confrontation with the treat of oblivion. Sawyer innovates the term "fractured temporality," conceptualizing Black subjects as moving within and across temporalities in transition, incorporated, yet excluded, marked with the social death of Atlantic slavery and the emergent political orders it etched, and still capable of exerting revolutionary force that acts upon, against, and through racial oppression. (shrink)

The concept of Homo economicus, one of the major foundations of neoclassical economics and a subset of the ideology of laisser-faire capitalism. was recently charged and tried in the island high court. Using the island’s virtual jury system for the first time, the accused was tried before a jury of three — Plato, Schopenhauer and feminist economists — chosen by him while under a veil of ignorance of the charge. All three returned guilty verdicts. Plato’s was prescriptive: ‘One ought (...) not to be like Homo economicus’. Schopenhauer’s verdict was descriptive: ‘Human nature is not Homo economicus’. The feminist verdict was both. Following the trial — described as a thought experiment — the island’s resident philosopher put forward two claims: (a) Neoclassical economists base their theories on a deficient depiction of humankind (descriptive misconception) a claim supported by a witness expert in experimental economics; (b) The depiction holds a dominant but unjustified position in various discourses such as welfare state debates because it is promoted by a small but highly influential group of economically privileged, universityeducated whites, namely graduates of economics, a claim supported by the sociology expert witness. (shrink)

Can subjective, individual taste be reconciled with an objective, universal standard? In _Homo Aestheticus,_ Luc Ferry argues that this central problem of aesthetic theory is fundamentally related to the political problem of democratic individualism. Ferry's treatise begins in the mid-1600s with the simultaneous invention of the notions of taste and modern democracy. He explores the differences between subjectivity and individuality by examining aesthetic theory as developed first by Kant's predecessors and then by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and proponents of the avant-garde. (...) Ferry discerns two "moments" of the avant-garde aesthetic: the hyperindividualistic iconoclasm of creating something entirely new, and the hyperrealistic striving to achieve an extraordinary truth. The tension between these two, Ferry argues, preserves an essential element of the Enlightenment concern for reconciling the subjective and the objective—a problem that is at once aesthetic, ethical, and political. Rejecting postmodern proposals for either a radical break with or return to tradition, Ferry embraces a postmodernism that recasts Enlightenment notions of value as a new intersubjectivity. His original analysis of the growth and decline of the twentieth-century avant-garde movement sheds new light on the connections between aesthetics, ethics, and political theory. (shrink)

Homo Juridicus focuses on the normative foundations underlying all socio-cultural formations. The book uses the concept of ''normativity'' in an inclusive sense. It includes law, but it is not limited to it. As such, it explores the various social and cultural forces that persuade, incite, seduce, influence, direct, restrain, repress or control behavior. It is a major interdisciplinary study cutting across several disciplines of social science, such as law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics and philosophy. Its primary audience is law (...) students, as well as the scholarly community across law and the social sciences. ''Isaak Dore is one of the very few scholars who straddles a broad range of legal and nonlegal disciplines. This important book deconstructs the idea of normativity in culture and illuminates it through various strains of thought in anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics and philosophy. Its grasp of these disciplines is impressive in terms of nuance, breadth, particularity and lucidity. It is a unique work, brilliantly executed, providing a rich background against which the promotion of social order through legal and nonlegal norms can be evaluated. It both provokes and compels one to think outside of the conventional structures and assumptions of law and social order. I know of no other work that offers the broad intellectual reach that this ambitious book presents.'' - Laura S. Underkuffler, J. DuPratt White Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. (shrink)

For quite a while homo religiosus has been marginalized and trivialized by homo techno-economicus, which gives more emphasis to the corporal and material dimensions of humanity. The negative effects of the techno-economicus paradigm engender the reemergence of homo ecologicus, which offers wisdom of life. Homo ecologicus has also been quite marginalized from the life of humanity. The reemergence of homo ecologicus, in turn, would give a new hope for the reemergence of the face of the (...) homo religiosus, because of its interrelated characteristics with the homo ecologicus. In fact, humans can be called homo eco-religiosus. The close tie between the two needs to be investigated more deeply with the help of philosophy. But, the philosophy we need is not just a Cartesian analytical philosophy, which means a merely intellectual exercise in the public domain. What we need is a philosophy as a philo sophia, love for wisdom, which will lead to an exercise of both feelings and soul in the private domain. Keywords: Homo techno-economicus (techno-economic humans), homo ecologicus (ecological humans), homo religiosus (religious humans), homo eco-religiosus (eco-religious humans), modernitas (modernitiy), religiositas (reli- giosity), filsafat (philosophy), cinta kebijaksanaan (love for wisdom), Henryk Skolimowski. (shrink)

The philosopher is a fundamental mode of existence of the human being, yet it is experienced only by a minority, an elite. Those constitute, among themselves, a subspecies of Homo sapiens that is sometimes dubbed Homo philosophicus. Our goal here is to investigate, in depth, the philosophical foundations of this ontological-anthropological concept. We analyze the concept of the philosopher into three basic components: the thinker, the artist, and the mathematician, arguing that the three fundamentally participate in maintaining the (...) operation of the philosopher machine. The following text can be considered a contribution to metaphilosophy, written as a structured opinion piece, encompassing a series of reflections drawn from the writer’s own experience as a philosopher. The mode of the presentation is a mixture of personal and experimental writing styles, intentionally avoiding the rigid form of overtly analytical and argumentative discussions. Although numerous philosophers will be discussed below, four key figures, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, and Guattari, occupy a special position in our overall opinionated view on the nature of philosophy. (shrink)

Resenha do livro WULF, Christoph. Homo pictor : imaginação, ritual e aprendizado mimético no mundo globalizado: São Paulo: Hedra, 2013. ISBN: 978-85-7715-304-6. A resenha explora a contribuição dessa obra da área dos estudos antropológicos para o estudo das linguagens da religião, pela sua exploração das relações entre o ver e a imaginação, a imaginação e a memesis , e a imaginação os ritos e os gestos. Conclui-se que as perspectivas propostas pode ser aplicadas nos estudos da religião não somente (...) no estudos de fenômenos ou formas arcaicas da religião, mas, também de formas contemporâneas, tanto do âmbito. (shrink)

The semiosphere is arguably the most influential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. This paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and (...) multimodal communication as specifically human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution. (shrink)

In Homos, he studies the historical, political, and philosophical grounds for the current distrust, within the gay community, of self-identifying moves, for the ...

L’article présente et analyse deux représentations de l’agent économique : celle de l’ homo œconomicus chez John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) puis celle de l’ animal laborans, expression que l’on trouve chez Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Chacun des deux auteurs se situe en opposition à une conception de Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) qui identifie l’être humain à un agent économique, être rationnel, apte au calcul et au raisonnement logique pour son cas personnel mais qui n’est cependant pas un être raisonnable, c’est-à-dire susceptible (...) de vivre en harmonie avec les autres sans le couperet d’une législation qui borne sa liberté. Mill, en désaccord avec la conception du bonheur de Bentham, attribue à l’être économique des aspirations plus élevées, lesquelles seraient à même de se réaliser dans le futur, pourvu qu’une égalité politique authentique, notamment entre hommes et femmes, soit enfin établie. Arendt, née un siècle plus tard, s’inquiète, pour sa part, de la dégradation de l’image que l’être humain a de lui-même en s’identifiant à un animal laborans. Archétype de l’individu dont toutes les occupations se pensent sur le modèle d’une activité nécessaire à sa satisfaction personnelle, enfermé dans le privé de son corps, l’ animal laborans qui n’éprouve que des sensations, de la peine ou du plaisir, s’apparente tout à fait aux êtres insuffisants, non raisonnables, que Bentham avait en tête pour concevoir la législation comme un moyen de les faire vivre ensemble. Si l’on suit Arendt, il n’est pas exclu que la conception benthamienne de l’homme, contre laquelle Mill s’était élevé, puisse devenir la réalité de demain, autrement dit que le règne de l’ animal laborans, être esseulé, ayant perdu jusqu’au besoin de guider lui-même sa propre conduite à l’égard des autres puisse finir par s’imposer. (shrink)

The martyr is a potent symbol of sacrifice in Western cultural discourse. Understanding martyrdom as sacrifice, however, blunts the potency of the martyr's action. It obscures the violence by which the martyr's death becomes, paradoxically, a means to define institutional life. In this article, I propose an analogous relationship between the early Christian martyr and Giorgio Agamben's enigmatic homo sacer. Like homo sacer, the Christian martyr provides an “other” against which to organize institutional life. Read as a sacrifice, (...) the martyr also exemplifies the threat of biopolitics that Agamben describes, where mere existence can be isolated from political life and made subject to sovereign violence. Distinguishing the martyr from their institutional appropriation is a step toward exposing the modes of violence inherent in sovereign power. It provides the possibility of reconceptualizing the martyr as an autonomous figure of resistance, not as homo sacer but as homo profanus. (shrink)