This article aims at investigating how one of Martha Nussbaum's central claims in Love's Knowledg... more This article aims at investigating how one of Martha Nussbaum's central claims in Love's Knowledge fits one specific work of contemporary literature. Nussbaum's main claim is that style or form of writing are not redundant in conveying meaning in general and ethical thought specifically, both in philosophical and in literary texts. Through a deep analysis of John Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, which itself embodies a peculiar style of writing by dividing the page into three sections, each one corresponding to a different narrative voice with different sorts of ethical approaches to given issues, the present article ends up showing how the formal construction of Coetzee's (literary) text performs two interrelated tasks. On the one hand the article displays the question of whether it is possible for a work of literature to convey ethical thought without slipping into some form of Ersatz ethical thought; on the other hand it defends the idea that it is through that very questioning-in the work under analysis allowed for by the dividing of the page-that Coetzee found an unusual way of conveying genuine ethical thought, thus confirming Nussbaum's claim that the form of writing is by no means redundant in conveying ethical content.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2024
Review of my 2023 book:
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary P... more Review of my 2023 book: The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, Jul 30, 2021
This essay addresses Kant's discussion of the role of shame in the evolution of the relationship ... more This essay addresses Kant's discussion of the role of shame in the evolution of the relationship between the sexes. Particular attention is given to the historical and genetic development of a complex line of reasoning Kant first presented in his courses on ethics, in the beginning of the 1760s. Faced with certain perplexities that we can assume were roused in him by the reading of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Kant confronted his students with a metaphysical hypothesis accounting for a way out of the state of nature and which involves exploring the most primitive dynamics of the shame instinct. I analyze this problem in Kant's early texts and draw a comparative approach to the structural expansion of it, as applied to a justification of the ultimate purpose of the relationship between the sexes, ending with a note on the paradoxical conclusions it ultimately leads to.
A experiência do sentimento de vergonha é extraordinariamente primária na psicologia humana. Para... more A experiência do sentimento de vergonha é extraordinariamente primária na psicologia humana. Para efeitos explicativos, concebamos uma experiência de vergonha intuitivamente identificada como tal como uma impressão, mais breve, ou uma vivência persistente de desconforto ou desvalorização pessoais em que o reduto egóico é consistentemente atacado, na medida em que a percepção subjectiva sofre um tipo de acosso exterior que a depriva sistematicamente de neutralidade ou de bem-est ar. A imediatez dessa impressão de desvantagem pessoal face ao olhar crítico do outro tem uma presença tão marcante logo naquele que é o mais imediato reduto de socialização do ser humano-a família-que a ubiquidade do fenómeno pode tornar uma teori-RESUMO Este ensaio, dividido em três partes, elabora uma genealogia conceptual da atitude primária da vergonha enquanto episódio psicológico com importantes ressonâncias morais sobre as pessoas, e isola analiticamente duas interpretações sublimadas do fenómeno básico: no sistema moral Kantiano e na proposta literária de J.M. Coetzee.
This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce ... more This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce the poets into the philosophical republic. In particular, I develop an ethical reading of Coetzee's novelistic project that is grounded in an understanding of the literary work as an event. The idea was first applied to Coetzee's oeuvre by Derek Attridge and supports the singularity of the encounter with the literary piece as a transformative, self-questioning moment. I apply this model to a reading of Diary of a Bad Year, and, after addressing issues of conventional taxonomy proposed by philosophers, I give the final word to Coetzee himself qua commentator of his own work. Finally, I suggest that we view Coetzee's use of irony as a vehicle for both convention disruption and ethical responsibility. The presentation scene itself we skip. It is not a good idea to interrupt the narrative too often, since storytelling works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in which the time and space of the real world fade away, superseded by the time and space of the fiction. Breaking into the dream draws attention to the constructedness of the story, and plays havoc with the realist illusion. However, unless certain scenes are skipped over, we will be here all afternoon. The skips are not part of the text, they are part of the performance
Bernard Williams’s contributions to philosophy are rich and manifold – including metaphysics, mor... more Bernard Williams’s contributions to philosophy are rich and manifold – including metaphysics, moral or political philosophy – and his interests in the history of philosophy range from classical antiquity to the more technical subtleties of contemporary analytic philosophy. Therefore, it is not easy to fit him into a single philosophical tradition, for he never looked at philosophical problems from the entrenched viewpoint of a narrow perspective. He devoted himself to the study of the most diverse problems and authors – including Descartes, Nietzsche, Homer, or the Greek tragedians – always from unusual and original angles. This is, first and foremost, the signature of his thought; and now, almost twenty years after his death, it is still this originality and relentless ability to produce fresh insights that we are intent on paying homage to.
This paper discusses the relevance and the conceptual role, within Sartre's Being and Nothingness... more This paper discusses the relevance and the conceptual role, within Sartre's Being and Nothingness, of a fleeting impression of shame that reverts the threat of solipsism looming over any project of transcendental philosophy. In reading Sartre's masterpiece, I underscore two methodological points that tend to be bypassed in standard interpretations and lengthy discussions of the book. On the one hand, I safeguard the strictly descriptive core of Sartre's presentation of the impression of shame and what it reveals about the formal structures of the (pre-reflective) cogito, as Sartre understands it. On the other hand, my analysis explores the different phases of the (conceptual) narrative of the For-Itself, which Sartre inherits from the Idealist tradition in modern philosophy and applies to the concreteness of a phenomenological description of the main stages of one's experience of the outside world.
Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clássicas d... more Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clássicas da filosofia prática de Kant, sobre a imunidade do seu conhecido rigorismo moral e decisional à influência de emoções ou precipitados emocionais subjectivos. Um exame cuidadoso dos textos de Antropologia, construída em sentido estrito, e de algumas reflexões fundamentais do chamado período ‘pré-crítico’, ajudar-nos-á a perceber que e como Kant dá uma importância determinante mesmo a uma emoção negativa ou disposição afectiva primária como a vergonha. Recebido / Received: 8.7.2019.Aprovado / Approved: 22.9.2019.
ABSTRACT
In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the ... more ABSTRACT In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the most impressive manifestations of the irrational in Greek thought and myth. This chapter draws on structural features of his account to offer a conception of guilt as a primary emotion that can influence a cultural framework as a whole. It seeks to provide a structural account of both irrational guilt-mechanisms and their genetic development, which can speculatively be traced either to a historic-religious evolution (as Dodds does) or, more prosaically, to psychogenetic roots. Building on the main insights of Dodds’s masterpiece regarding this specific emotional pattern, the chapter situates them in a twenty-first century global context, in an attempt to explain what can be not only irrational but maddening about guilt and guilt-mechanisms. To this end, the chapter presents a model of the constitution of the guilt-mechanism in the emotionally susceptible mind – as laid out by Dodds himself – and then compares that model with the genetic account defended by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity (1993). This comparison of the two models reveals the shortcomings of both and confirms Dodds’s structural insight concerning guilt and guilt-mechanisms: the idea that guilt as a cultural phenomenon may either overwhelm the subject and lead to self-destruction or rescue her from a moral abyss.
In the debate between literalism and contextualism in semantics, Kent Bach’s project is often tak... more In the debate between literalism and contextualism in semantics, Kent Bach’s project is often taken to stand on the latter side of the divide. In this paper I argue this is a misleading assumption and justify it by contrasting Bach’s assessment of the theoretical eliminability of minimal propositions arguably expressed by well-formed sentences with standard minimalist views, and by further contrasting his account of the division of interpretative processes ascribable to the semantics and pragmatics of a language with a parallel analysis carried out by the most radical opponent to semantic minimalism, i.e., by occasionalism. If my analysis proves right, the sum of its conclusions amounts to a refusal of Bach’s main dichotomies .
As emoções podem ser estranhos episódios subjectivos, e é hoje genericamente afastado um
tipo de ... more As emoções podem ser estranhos episódios subjectivos, e é hoje genericamente afastado um tipo de interpretação das mesmas, de veio tipicamente empirista, que reduziria os seus principais impactos a um conjunto de distúrbios ou alterações quási-mecânicas da sensibilidade. Contra tal reducionismo, e em articulação com novos temas de elaboração e uma estratégia metodológica radical, através da qual alguns dos seus mais exímios praticantes exerceram notáveis esforços de leitura e análise, a fenomenologia instituiu no pensamento contemporâneo esse dom de “torcer reflexivamente” os seus objetos de interpretação, subtraindo-lhe os laivos de paridade imediata com a experiência para melhor penetrar a sua complexa tessitura interna. O presente dossier temático reúne propostas de interpretação de várias emoções – cuja “travessia” íntima implica uma experiência ou conversão de teor moral –, desde uma persp ectiva fenomenológica e com referência explícita a autores da tradição sob análise.
Abstract: In section 41 of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger specifies what he takes to be the fu... more Abstract: In section 41 of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger specifies what he takes to be the fundamental mode of being that the entity we ourselves are (Dasein or Being-There) has as its own most: care [Sorge]. Heidegger defines ‘care’ in relation to anxiety and its capacity to disclose one’s ultimate worldly trajectory as a meaningful whole, always already anticipated and ahead of which we place ourselves and behave (cf. Heidegger, 1962, §41). Contrary to belief, it is not thereby argued (or meant) that care is (or should be) a mode of behaving or reaching out to our fellow men or of specifically fulfilling a social, humanist or cross-generational duty. In spite of his professed wish to keep the Analytic of Dasein separate from any contemporary project of a philosophy of the subject, Heidegger’s core notion of ‘care’ is self-referring and deeply egotistical. In this paper, I defend an altogether different framework for thinking about care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world in which they are anchored – a world which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents and other members of their generation), helped to form the type of being we now are. The formative bond we share with those who once cared for us, who have in the meantime become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is anything but burdensome or rooted in a concern for my future or anticipated lifespan. This paper thus seeks to rebut the specific treatment Heidegger gave to one of the core notions in his thought.
Abstract: This essay builds upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s tidy and systematic approach to the construc... more Abstract: This essay builds upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s tidy and systematic approach to the construction of mental images in novel reading, i.e., those reflective conscious experiences which Sartre interprets as analogons to a perceptive intake of the world when one is reading fiction. It shall be argued that there are some strong objections to the main tenets of the classic Sartrean approach, easy to apperceive as long as we move away from the realistic genre of the novel. To make those objections stronger and more perceptive, some disturbing passages from both the early and late novels of J.M. Coetzee will be analysed and ostensibly quoted. The excerpts elaborated upon in this essay have the purported merit of being maximally suggestive, qua image-inducing prose, at the same time they divert and question the imagery they unquestionably invoke.
This article aims at investigating how one of Martha Nussbaum's central claims in Love's Knowledg... more This article aims at investigating how one of Martha Nussbaum's central claims in Love's Knowledge fits one specific work of contemporary literature. Nussbaum's main claim is that style or form of writing are not redundant in conveying meaning in general and ethical thought specifically, both in philosophical and in literary texts. Through a deep analysis of John Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, which itself embodies a peculiar style of writing by dividing the page into three sections, each one corresponding to a different narrative voice with different sorts of ethical approaches to given issues, the present article ends up showing how the formal construction of Coetzee's (literary) text performs two interrelated tasks. On the one hand the article displays the question of whether it is possible for a work of literature to convey ethical thought without slipping into some form of Ersatz ethical thought; on the other hand it defends the idea that it is through that very questioning-in the work under analysis allowed for by the dividing of the page-that Coetzee found an unusual way of conveying genuine ethical thought, thus confirming Nussbaum's claim that the form of writing is by no means redundant in conveying ethical content.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2024
Review of my 2023 book:
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary P... more Review of my 2023 book: The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy, Jul 30, 2021
This essay addresses Kant's discussion of the role of shame in the evolution of the relationship ... more This essay addresses Kant's discussion of the role of shame in the evolution of the relationship between the sexes. Particular attention is given to the historical and genetic development of a complex line of reasoning Kant first presented in his courses on ethics, in the beginning of the 1760s. Faced with certain perplexities that we can assume were roused in him by the reading of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Kant confronted his students with a metaphysical hypothesis accounting for a way out of the state of nature and which involves exploring the most primitive dynamics of the shame instinct. I analyze this problem in Kant's early texts and draw a comparative approach to the structural expansion of it, as applied to a justification of the ultimate purpose of the relationship between the sexes, ending with a note on the paradoxical conclusions it ultimately leads to.
A experiência do sentimento de vergonha é extraordinariamente primária na psicologia humana. Para... more A experiência do sentimento de vergonha é extraordinariamente primária na psicologia humana. Para efeitos explicativos, concebamos uma experiência de vergonha intuitivamente identificada como tal como uma impressão, mais breve, ou uma vivência persistente de desconforto ou desvalorização pessoais em que o reduto egóico é consistentemente atacado, na medida em que a percepção subjectiva sofre um tipo de acosso exterior que a depriva sistematicamente de neutralidade ou de bem-est ar. A imediatez dessa impressão de desvantagem pessoal face ao olhar crítico do outro tem uma presença tão marcante logo naquele que é o mais imediato reduto de socialização do ser humano-a família-que a ubiquidade do fenómeno pode tornar uma teori-RESUMO Este ensaio, dividido em três partes, elabora uma genealogia conceptual da atitude primária da vergonha enquanto episódio psicológico com importantes ressonâncias morais sobre as pessoas, e isola analiticamente duas interpretações sublimadas do fenómeno básico: no sistema moral Kantiano e na proposta literária de J.M. Coetzee.
This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce ... more This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce the poets into the philosophical republic. In particular, I develop an ethical reading of Coetzee's novelistic project that is grounded in an understanding of the literary work as an event. The idea was first applied to Coetzee's oeuvre by Derek Attridge and supports the singularity of the encounter with the literary piece as a transformative, self-questioning moment. I apply this model to a reading of Diary of a Bad Year, and, after addressing issues of conventional taxonomy proposed by philosophers, I give the final word to Coetzee himself qua commentator of his own work. Finally, I suggest that we view Coetzee's use of irony as a vehicle for both convention disruption and ethical responsibility. The presentation scene itself we skip. It is not a good idea to interrupt the narrative too often, since storytelling works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in which the time and space of the real world fade away, superseded by the time and space of the fiction. Breaking into the dream draws attention to the constructedness of the story, and plays havoc with the realist illusion. However, unless certain scenes are skipped over, we will be here all afternoon. The skips are not part of the text, they are part of the performance
Bernard Williams’s contributions to philosophy are rich and manifold – including metaphysics, mor... more Bernard Williams’s contributions to philosophy are rich and manifold – including metaphysics, moral or political philosophy – and his interests in the history of philosophy range from classical antiquity to the more technical subtleties of contemporary analytic philosophy. Therefore, it is not easy to fit him into a single philosophical tradition, for he never looked at philosophical problems from the entrenched viewpoint of a narrow perspective. He devoted himself to the study of the most diverse problems and authors – including Descartes, Nietzsche, Homer, or the Greek tragedians – always from unusual and original angles. This is, first and foremost, the signature of his thought; and now, almost twenty years after his death, it is still this originality and relentless ability to produce fresh insights that we are intent on paying homage to.
This paper discusses the relevance and the conceptual role, within Sartre's Being and Nothingness... more This paper discusses the relevance and the conceptual role, within Sartre's Being and Nothingness, of a fleeting impression of shame that reverts the threat of solipsism looming over any project of transcendental philosophy. In reading Sartre's masterpiece, I underscore two methodological points that tend to be bypassed in standard interpretations and lengthy discussions of the book. On the one hand, I safeguard the strictly descriptive core of Sartre's presentation of the impression of shame and what it reveals about the formal structures of the (pre-reflective) cogito, as Sartre understands it. On the other hand, my analysis explores the different phases of the (conceptual) narrative of the For-Itself, which Sartre inherits from the Idealist tradition in modern philosophy and applies to the concreteness of a phenomenological description of the main stages of one's experience of the outside world.
Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clássicas d... more Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clássicas da filosofia prática de Kant, sobre a imunidade do seu conhecido rigorismo moral e decisional à influência de emoções ou precipitados emocionais subjectivos. Um exame cuidadoso dos textos de Antropologia, construída em sentido estrito, e de algumas reflexões fundamentais do chamado período ‘pré-crítico’, ajudar-nos-á a perceber que e como Kant dá uma importância determinante mesmo a uma emoção negativa ou disposição afectiva primária como a vergonha. Recebido / Received: 8.7.2019.Aprovado / Approved: 22.9.2019.
ABSTRACT
In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the ... more ABSTRACT In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the most impressive manifestations of the irrational in Greek thought and myth. This chapter draws on structural features of his account to offer a conception of guilt as a primary emotion that can influence a cultural framework as a whole. It seeks to provide a structural account of both irrational guilt-mechanisms and their genetic development, which can speculatively be traced either to a historic-religious evolution (as Dodds does) or, more prosaically, to psychogenetic roots. Building on the main insights of Dodds’s masterpiece regarding this specific emotional pattern, the chapter situates them in a twenty-first century global context, in an attempt to explain what can be not only irrational but maddening about guilt and guilt-mechanisms. To this end, the chapter presents a model of the constitution of the guilt-mechanism in the emotionally susceptible mind – as laid out by Dodds himself – and then compares that model with the genetic account defended by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity (1993). This comparison of the two models reveals the shortcomings of both and confirms Dodds’s structural insight concerning guilt and guilt-mechanisms: the idea that guilt as a cultural phenomenon may either overwhelm the subject and lead to self-destruction or rescue her from a moral abyss.
In the debate between literalism and contextualism in semantics, Kent Bach’s project is often tak... more In the debate between literalism and contextualism in semantics, Kent Bach’s project is often taken to stand on the latter side of the divide. In this paper I argue this is a misleading assumption and justify it by contrasting Bach’s assessment of the theoretical eliminability of minimal propositions arguably expressed by well-formed sentences with standard minimalist views, and by further contrasting his account of the division of interpretative processes ascribable to the semantics and pragmatics of a language with a parallel analysis carried out by the most radical opponent to semantic minimalism, i.e., by occasionalism. If my analysis proves right, the sum of its conclusions amounts to a refusal of Bach’s main dichotomies .
As emoções podem ser estranhos episódios subjectivos, e é hoje genericamente afastado um
tipo de ... more As emoções podem ser estranhos episódios subjectivos, e é hoje genericamente afastado um tipo de interpretação das mesmas, de veio tipicamente empirista, que reduziria os seus principais impactos a um conjunto de distúrbios ou alterações quási-mecânicas da sensibilidade. Contra tal reducionismo, e em articulação com novos temas de elaboração e uma estratégia metodológica radical, através da qual alguns dos seus mais exímios praticantes exerceram notáveis esforços de leitura e análise, a fenomenologia instituiu no pensamento contemporâneo esse dom de “torcer reflexivamente” os seus objetos de interpretação, subtraindo-lhe os laivos de paridade imediata com a experiência para melhor penetrar a sua complexa tessitura interna. O presente dossier temático reúne propostas de interpretação de várias emoções – cuja “travessia” íntima implica uma experiência ou conversão de teor moral –, desde uma persp ectiva fenomenológica e com referência explícita a autores da tradição sob análise.
Abstract: In section 41 of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger specifies what he takes to be the fu... more Abstract: In section 41 of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger specifies what he takes to be the fundamental mode of being that the entity we ourselves are (Dasein or Being-There) has as its own most: care [Sorge]. Heidegger defines ‘care’ in relation to anxiety and its capacity to disclose one’s ultimate worldly trajectory as a meaningful whole, always already anticipated and ahead of which we place ourselves and behave (cf. Heidegger, 1962, §41). Contrary to belief, it is not thereby argued (or meant) that care is (or should be) a mode of behaving or reaching out to our fellow men or of specifically fulfilling a social, humanist or cross-generational duty. In spite of his professed wish to keep the Analytic of Dasein separate from any contemporary project of a philosophy of the subject, Heidegger’s core notion of ‘care’ is self-referring and deeply egotistical. In this paper, I defend an altogether different framework for thinking about care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world in which they are anchored – a world which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents and other members of their generation), helped to form the type of being we now are. The formative bond we share with those who once cared for us, who have in the meantime become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is anything but burdensome or rooted in a concern for my future or anticipated lifespan. This paper thus seeks to rebut the specific treatment Heidegger gave to one of the core notions in his thought.
Abstract: This essay builds upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s tidy and systematic approach to the construc... more Abstract: This essay builds upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s tidy and systematic approach to the construction of mental images in novel reading, i.e., those reflective conscious experiences which Sartre interprets as analogons to a perceptive intake of the world when one is reading fiction. It shall be argued that there are some strong objections to the main tenets of the classic Sartrean approach, easy to apperceive as long as we move away from the realistic genre of the novel. To make those objections stronger and more perceptive, some disturbing passages from both the early and late novels of J.M. Coetzee will be analysed and ostensibly quoted. The excerpts elaborated upon in this essay have the purported merit of being maximally suggestive, qua image-inducing prose, at the same time they divert and question the imagery they unquestionably invoke.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 2023
In The Greeks and the Irrational, Eric Dodds (Dodds: 1951) systematically explores some of the mo... more In The Greeks and the Irrational, Eric Dodds (Dodds: 1951) systematically explores some of the most impressive manifestations of the irrational in Greek thought and myth. In this paper, I draw on structural features of his account to offer a conception of guilt as a primary emotion that can influence a cultural framework as a whole. What interests me most is isolating the structural account of both irrational guiltmechanisms and their genetic development, which can speculatively be traced either to a historic-religious evolution (as Dodds does) or, more prosaically, to psychogenetic roots. Building on the main insights of Dodds's masterpiece regarding this specific emotional pattern, I wish to situate them in a cultural setting more akin to our own-i.e. a twenty-first century global context-and to try to explain what can indeed be not only irrational but maddening about the guilt and guilt-mechanisms that lie within us. To accomplish this, I shall first present a model of the constitution of the guiltmechanism in the emotionally susceptible mind-as laid out by Dodds himself-and then compare that model with the genetic account defended by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity (see Williams, 1993). This comparison of the two models reveals the shortcomings of both and confirms Dodds's structural insight concerning guilt and guilt-mechanisms: the idea that guilt as a cultural phenomenon may either overwhelm the subject and lead to self-destruction or rescue her from a moral abyss.
Sumário: Neste trabalho, dividido em três partes, traço uma genealogia conceptual da atitude prim... more Sumário: Neste trabalho, dividido em três partes, traço uma genealogia conceptual da atitude primária da vergonha enquanto episódio psicológico, e analiso duas interpretações sublimadas do fenómeno básico: no sistema moral Kantiano e na proposta literária de J.M. Coetzee. A abordagem genealógica está hoje muito marcada pela leitura de Bernard Williams em Shame and Necessity. A vergonha é tratada aí como fenómeno psicológico primitivo de relevância substancial na vida ética de um agente. Quando analisarmos o tratamento que Kantindirectamente-dispensa ao sentimento de vergonha como instrumental no incentivo à razão pura prática pela lei moral, na Crítica da Razão Prática, o desajuste da sua abordagem em relação ao percurso genealógico de Williams vai permitir-nos entender melhor o traçado fundamental do sentimento primário, porquanto as reacções são transmutadas numa humilhação do eu-sensível pelo eu-moral-ou a entidade a que Kant chama 'pessoa'. A experiência ética da vergonha, em Coetzee, corresponde a um abandono desta última ideia moral de si e a um confronto não acautelado com a experiência corporal enquanto locus de dor.
This paper deals with a still poorly understood text written by Immanuel Kant in the beginning of... more This paper deals with a still poorly understood text written by Immanuel Kant in the beginning of his academic career: the Essay on the Maladies of the Head. In it, Kant approaches the development of mental illnesses as a nest of consequences produced by the subtleties of Humanity's civilizational process, on the one hand, and as twistings and overlaps in the proper functioning of our mental faculties, on the other. Upon careful analysis of the text, I conclude that Kant believed mental diseases to be but an outcome of the tightening constraints imposed upon men living in civilized societies, and that the very existence of mentally handicapped people in our shared social life is a hint as to the origin and formation of the kind of Civilization we inherited from past generations. The specificities of mental derangements in contemporary stages of human development constitute evidence about previous phases in human history, being a valuable testimony of social genesis and transformation.
Há mais de vinte anos atrás, no verão de 1999, um grande Escritor Sul-Africano-por razões várias,... more Há mais de vinte anos atrás, no verão de 1999, um grande Escritor Sul-Africano-por razões várias, então pouco conhecido na Europa-, John Maxwell Coetzee, escreveu um romance que viria a abalar vários meios e fóruns de discussão, dentro e fora da academia e, a título remoto e ulterior, valer-lhe o Prémio Nobel da Literatura do ano 2003. O romance chamava-se Disgrace e lidava, de forma inusitada, com um drama nacional muito pouco conveniente para um público liberal e humanista, que ainda venerava (e veneraria) a figura de Nelson Mandela como um mito do século XX: uma espécie de linchamento étnico do antigo grupo (ou cor) social privilegiado. Disgrace é um livro sobre a África do Sul do imediato pós-Apartheid, certamente, e há nele muitas referências, até de teor geográfico, cuja pertinência ultrapassa o leitor leigo-o mesmo é dizer, insuficientemente viajado. Algumas subtilezas de uma prosa nua, alusiva e, muito pertinentemente apelidada por alguns críticos literários de renome como 'sinóptica', são pouco acessíveis, não só a quem não conheça a África do Sul (um país com uma superfície de quase 1 300 000 km², 11 línguas oficiais e um dos índices de criminalidade mais elevados do mundo), mas mesmo a quem não conheça a Cidade do Cabo e a zona do Cabo Oriental. (A este propósito, alguns comentadores alegariam, com pertinência, que tal dimensão de exclusividade, a ter cabimento, excluiria da mera compreensão textual um público que se autoproclama especialista na obra de John Coetzee…). Mas Disgrace é bem mais do que um livro sobre a África do Sul ou sobre um país recentemente emancipado de um jugo racista mundialmente proclamado e condenado-excluem-se disto, como é bem sabido, algumas figuras políticas cimeiras das últimas décadas do século XX, incluindo um ex-Chefe de Estado Português. E isto porque há, ao longo de toda a história narrada, e bem alojados nos seus mais recônditos momentos descritivos, indícios estremecedores de uma mudança de paradigma de comunicação-política, interpessoal, intercultural, mesmo auto-referente-que levariam alguns anos a consolidar-se a uma escala global e infiltrar a democracia e a vida comum, como a vida íntima, dos seus cidadãos. Em alguns momentos-chave da história, e sempre com o famigerado tom de 'sussurro' ou desabafo pessoal, feito através da voz indirecta do narrador, Coetzee atribui a David Lurie (o protagonista da história) incompreensões sobre os novos veículos de comunicação da geração com a qual já não é capaz de comunicar (é a geração dos seus alunos, da sua filha e dos amigos da sua filha e é também a minha geração). Uma dessas notas de incompreensão, que poderia servir como um aviso a um leitor meticuloso do romance diz o seguinte: 'He buys a small television set to replace the one that was stolen. In the evenings, after supper, he and Lucy sit side by side on the sofa watching the news and then, if they can bear it, the entertainment.' (Coetzee, 1999: 141)
Quadrante: Revista da Associação Académica da Faculdade de Direito de Lisboa , 2021
Há mais de vinte anos atrás, no verão de 1999, um grande Escritor Sul-Africano-por razões várias,... more Há mais de vinte anos atrás, no verão de 1999, um grande Escritor Sul-Africano-por razões várias, então pouco conhecido na Europa-, John Maxwell Coetzee, escreveu um romance que viria a abalar vários meios e fóruns de discussão, dentro e fora da academia e, a título remoto e ulterior, valer-lhe o Prémio Nobel da Literatura do ano 2003. O romance chamava-se Disgrace e lidava, de forma inusitada, com um drama nacional muito pouco conveniente para um público liberal e humanista, que ainda venerava (e veneraria) a figura de Nelson Mandela como um mito do século XX: uma espécie de linchamento étnico do antigo grupo (ou cor) social privilegiado. Disgrace é um livro sobre a África do Sul do imediato pós-Apartheid, certamente, e há nele muitas referências, até de teor geográfico, cuja pertinência ultrapassa o leitor leigo-o mesmo é dizer, insuficientemente viajado. Algumas subtilezas de uma prosa nua, alusiva e, muito pertinentemente apelidada por alguns críticos literários de renome como 'sinóptica', são pouco acessíveis, não só a quem não conheça a África do Sul (um país com uma superfície de quase 1 300 000 km², 11 línguas oficiais e um dos índices de criminalidade mais elevados do mundo), mas mesmo a quem não conheça a Cidade do Cabo e a zona do Cabo Oriental. (A este propósito, alguns comentadores alegariam, com pertinência, que tal dimensão de exclusividade, a ter cabimento, excluiria da mera compreensão textual um público que se autoproclama especialista na obra de John Coetzee…). Mas Disgrace é bem mais do que um livro sobre a África do Sul ou sobre um país recentemente emancipado de um jugo racista mundialmente proclamado e condenado-excluem-se disto, como é bem sabido, algumas figuras políticas cimeiras das últimas décadas do século XX, incluindo um ex-Chefe de Estado Português. E isto porque há, ao longo de toda a história narrada, e bem alojados nos seus mais recônditos momentos descritivos, indícios estremecedores de uma mudança de paradigma de comunicação-política, interpessoal, intercultural, mesmo auto-referente-que levariam alguns anos a consolidar-se a uma escala global e infiltrar a democracia e a vida comum, como a vida íntima, dos seus cidadãos. Em alguns momentos-chave da história, e sempre com o famigerado tom de 'sussurro' ou desabafo pessoal, feito através da voz indirecta do narrador, Coetzee atribui a David Lurie (o protagonista da história) incompreensões sobre os novos veículos de comunicação da geração com a qual já não é capaz de comunicar (é a geração dos seus alunos, da sua filha e dos amigos da sua filha e é também a minha geração). Uma dessas notas de incompreensão, que poderia servir como um aviso a um leitor meticuloso do romance diz o seguinte:
This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time n... more This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time now. Mostly on good grounds, Kantian ethics has been accused of neglecting the role played by the emotions in moral deliberation and in morally informed action. However, the contemporary moral philosophers who have put forth such a claim tend to bypass textual sources, on the one hand, and to downplay the role played by the anthropological writings on Kant’s practical philosophy as a whole, on the other. Relying on highly relevant pre-critical texts in which Kant sketches future argumentative patterns and discusses the role of a negative emotion like shame on the improvement of the human species, I address a mistaken conclusion about Kantian ethics as a whole that is common in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Finally, I raise some paradoxical conclusions that follow from Kant’s argument, once its implicit premises have been brought to light.
Dicionário de Filosofia Moral e Política (2a Série), 2018
A vergonha é uma impressão extraordinariamente primitiva e impactante no interior da experiência ... more A vergonha é uma impressão extraordinariamente primitiva e impactante no interior da experiência psicológica dos seres humanos. O imediatismo e a intimidade de uma impressão de desvantagem ante o olhar do Outro tem um papel de tal forma crítico logo naquele que é o primeiro reduto de socialização de cada um de nós-a família-, que qualquer esforço de elaboração teórica que se proponha compactar descritivamente os seus principais traços, exteriorizando verbalmente essa impressão fugaz, corre o risco do fracasso-dada essa mesma desproporção entre experiência vivida e respectiva conceptualização. Neste pequeno ensaio examina-se estruturalmente uma história filosófica deste conceito com ressonâncias morais indissociáveis, notando muito especialmente discrepâncias estruturais na definição da ideia (ou caracterização da experiência) e respectivas implicações práticas. i. História e variações epistemológicas de uma noção moral Na Ética a Nicómaco, Aristóteles refere amiúde a qualidade da vergonha (αίσχυνή) e a daquele que não tem vergonha-ou do comportamento desprovido de vergonha (αναισχυντία) (cf.: 1107 a11; 1128b31). No interior da sua teoria da virtude, que encontra uma genuína qualidade de carácter como um meio entre dois vícios, Aristóteles prescreve a vergonha como um teste ao desempenho virtuoso do agente moral, adscrevendo-lhe algo assim como um sentido profilático relativamente ao comportamento virtuoso e respectivas falhas ou rupturas momentâneas. A língua grega distingue ainda duas raízes terminológicas relevantes para o núcleo problemático ora tratado: (αίσχ-) e (αιδ-), e esta mesma bipartição indicia um hiato semântico que não passa despercebido nem no interior das complexas observações que Aristóteles faz ao longo do texto, nem em ressonâncias sobre um paradigma cultural muito comentado e disputado por antropólogos, filólogos clássicos e filósofos do passado século. Trata-se No prelo em Dicionário de Filosofia Moral e Política (2018), 2.ª série, coord. António Marques e André Santos Campos. Lisboa: Instituto de Filosofia da Nova.
This essay, structured in three parts, traces a conceptual genealogy of the reaction of shame as ... more This essay, structured in three parts, traces a conceptual genealogy of the reaction of shame as a primary psychological phenomenon with deep moral impact upon subjects, and further analyses two sublimated renderings of the basic emotion: in Kantian ethics and in J.M. Coetzee’s novelistic project.
Resumo: Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clá... more Resumo: Este pequeno ensaio contraria a assunção precipitada, patente mesmo em interpretações clássicas da filosofia prática de Kant, sobre a imunidade do seu conhecido rigorismo moral e decisional à influência de emoções ou precipitados emocionais subjectivos. Um exame cuidadoso dos textos de Antropologia, construída em sentido estrito, e de algumas reflexões fundamentais do chamado período ‘pré-crítico’, ajudar-nos-á a perceber que e como Kant dá uma importância determinante mesmo a uma emoção negativa ou disposição afectiva primária como a vergonha. Palavras-chave: vergonha; sentido de vergonha; Beobachtungen.
Abstract: This essay contradicts a wide-spread tendency, even in classic interpretations of his practical philosophy, to isolate Kant’s famous moral and decisional rigorism against the influence of emotions or sensible, subjective, impressions. A careful examination of Kant’s work on Antropology, strictly construed, as well as of some fundamental notes from the so-called pre-critical period allows us to grasp that and how Kant actually ascribed a fundamental role in moral matters even to a negative emotion (or affective disposition) like shame. Key-words: shame; sense of shame; Beobachtungen.
Kant on Emotions: Critical and Historical Essays, 2019
Abstract: Shame is usually taken to be an emotion far removed from Kant's practical philosophy br... more Abstract: Shame is usually taken to be an emotion far removed from Kant's practical philosophy broadly understood. Mostly for good reasons, Kantianism has been charged with neglect of the role the emotions play in practical deliberation and action. But whenever such claim is explicitly endorsed by contemporary moral philosophers, textual sources are for the most part ignored, and a stricture between pre-critical and critical writings is pretty much taken for granted. In this essay I rely on some highly relevant remarks Kant wrote in the 1760s, all of which anticipate future developments in Critical Philosophy whilst speculating about the role played by the so-called shame-instinct on the improvement of the human species over time. I thus address a misjudgment of Kantian ethics as a whole by Anglo-American philosophy, at the same time I broach some seemingly unsolvable paradoxes in Kant's reasoning about the topic, which only become apparent once all of its premises are made explicit.
No terceiro livro das suas Confissões, Santo Agostinho narra a história de como, quando jovem, e ... more No terceiro livro das suas Confissões, Santo Agostinho narra a história de como, quando jovem, e com um grupo de amigos, roubou uma enorme carga de peras do jardim de um vizinho, e o fez não porque quisessem comê-las (de facto, atiraram-nas aos porcos), mas pelo simples prazer de cometer um acto proibido. Estavam a ser 'maus sem motivo, e a causa da maldade não [era] senão a maldade, . . . não desejando alguma coisa por indecência, mas a própria indecência . . . [tendo] pudor de não ser impudente[s].' 1 No tempo que antecede o tempo de que as Confissões nos falam, o roubo traz vergonha ao coração do jovem Agostinho. Mas o desejo do coração do jovem rapaz (recorda o homem maduro) era esse mesmo sentimento de vergonha. E o seu coração não é envergonhado (castigado) pelo reconhecimento de que procura conhecer a vergonha: pelo contrário, o conhecimento do seu próprio desejo como vergonhoso simultaneamente satisfaz o desejo da experiência de vergonha e estimula um sentido de vergonha. E este sentido de vergonha é experienciado com satisfação e reconhecido -se for reconhecido -através de uma busca autoconsciente, como uma nova fonte de vergonha; e assim por diante, infinitamente.
No terceiro livro das suas Confissões, Santo Agostinho narra a história de como, quando jovem, e ... more No terceiro livro das suas Confissões, Santo Agostinho narra a história de como, quando jovem, e com um grupo de amigos, roubou uma enorme carga de peras do jardim de um vizinho, e o fez não porque quisessem comê-las (de facto, atiraram-nas aos porcos), mas pelo simples prazer de cometer um acto proibido. Estavam a ser 'maus sem motivo, e a causa da maldade não [era] senão a maldade, . . . não desejando alguma coisa por indecência, mas a própria indecência . . . [tendo] pudor de não ser impudente[s].' 1 No tempo que antecede o tempo de que as Confissões as confissões nos falam, o roubo traz vergonha ao coração do jovem Agostinho. Mas o desejo do coração do jovem rapaz (recorda o homem maduro) era esse mesmo sentimento de vergonha. E o seu coração não é envergonhado (castigado) pelo reconhecimento de que procura conhecer a vergonha: pelo contrário, o conhecimento do seu próprio desejo como vergonhoso simultaneamente satisfaz o desejo da experiência de vergonha e estimula um sentido de vergonha. E este sentido de vergonha é experienciado com satisfação e reconhecido, se for reconhecido, através de uma busca autoconsciente, como uma nova fonte de vergonha; e assim por diante, infinitamente.
Shame is an extraordinarily primitive element of human psychology. As a critical part of our earl... more Shame is an extraordinarily primitive element of human psychology. As a critical part of our earliest socialization -above all in the context of the family -its deeply intimate resonances might make it difficult to arrive at an "exteriorized", systematic, or self-standing theory of its inner workings.
In a long essay, written between 1982 and 1983, titled "Confession and Double Thoughts", first pu... more In a long essay, written between 1982 and 1983, titled "Confession and Double Thoughts", first published in Contemporary Literature in 1985 and republished in Doubling the Point, J.M. Coetzee explores a problem for confession that I will address here in the form of a paradox. One can term it the paradox of the confessing conscience. Even though Coetzee opens the essay with a thorough analysis of the episode of the stealing of the pears in Book II of Augustine's Confessions, the argument proceeds by discussing several remarkable attempts on the part of fictional and non-fictional characters to tell the truth about themselves in secular confessions. The heroes of this highly complex piece of literary criticism are Tolstoy, Rousseau and Dostoevsky and the radically sceptic conclusion Coetzee draws about a supposed transparency of the confessing conscience to itself aims to undermine the main premise, summarily enunciated in the opening sentence of Rousseau's Confessions, and upon which the Rousseauian confessing model is built. The Confessions opens with the megalomaniac statement "I am forming an undertaking which has no precedent, and the execution of which will have no imitator whatsoever. I wish to show my fellows a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be myself" 1 , a premise voicing an enterprise overambitious in scope, in itself left unfinished, but on which design Rousseau never gave up, proceeding his firm intention to leave to posterity a full and faithful portrait of himself through the different forms of self-examination carried out in Rousseau Juge de Jean-Jacques and the Rêveries.
This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce ... more This essay situates J. M. Coetzee's fiction within a recent philosophical attempt to reintroduce the poets into the philosophical republic. In particular, I develop an ethical reading of Coetzee's novelistic project that is grounded in an understanding of the literary work as an event. The idea was first applied to Coetzee's oeuvre by Derek Attridge and supports the singularity of the encounter with the literary piece as a transformative, self-questioning moment. I apply this model to a reading of Diary of a Bad Year, and, after addressing issues of conventional taxonomy proposed by philosophers, I give the final word to Coetzee himself qua commentator of his own work. Finally, I suggest that we view Coetzee's use of irony as a vehicle for both convention disruption and ethical responsibility.
This volume of essays will discuss what we might today call critical philosophy in the condition ... more This volume of essays will discuss what we might today call critical philosophy in the condition of modernism. It will reflect, in part, on the weariness with tradition expressed by Pound and its connection to the simultaneous historical emergence and grounding of a new set of philosophical conventions, which would introduce a split in philosophy that continues to the present day: the advent of the analytic tradition in the anglophone world, to a large extent exported to America with the significant increase in European emigration that marked the 1930’s and the 1940’s.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 2023
This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavio... more This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavior. It explores a cluster of related topics at the intersection of philosophy of mind and psychiatry, while also charting the historical development of work on delusions.
Within psychiatry, there are several disputes about the nature and origin of delusions. Whereas some authors see only an abnormal phenomenon that needs to be treated by psychological or pharmacological means, others hold that delusions can be psychologically adaptive and even have epistemic benefits. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to build consensus around what delusions are and how they impact the human mind. Part 1 provides readers with an informed historical discussion of delusions and carefully examines the contemporary impact of these historical perspectives. Part 2 analyzes the impact of contemporary views of delusions on the mental and emotional life of human agents. Finally, Part 3 explores the normative frameworks of delusions and analyzes the impact of some of their behavioral consequences on the daily life of subjects and their caregivers.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions is essential reading for researchers and graduate students working at the intersection of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology.
This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavio... more This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavior. It explores a cluster of related topics at the intersection of philosophy of mind and psychiatry, while also charting the historical development of work on delusions.
Hardcover 99,99 € | £89.99 | $119.99 106,99 € (D) | 109,99 € (A) | CHF [1] 118,00 eBook 85,59 € |... more Hardcover 99,99 € | £89.99 | $119.99 106,99 € (D) | 109,99 € (A) | CHF [1] 118,00 eBook 85,59 € | £71.50 | $89.00 85,59 € (D) | 85,59 € (A) | CHF [2] 94,00 Available from your library or springer.com/shop MyCopy [3] Comprises a collection of especially written essays by specialists in philosophy, literary theory, the visual arts and architecture Provides a much-needed and original take on the relationship between emotions and morality Offers perspectives on critical questions facing a globalised society on the verge of political, financial and emotional collapse This interdisciplinary volume brings together specialists from different backgrounds to deliver expert views on the relationship between morality and emotion, putting a special emphasis on issues related to emotional shocks. One of the distinctive aspects of social existence today is our subjection to traumatic events on a global scale, and our subsequent embodiment of the emotional responses these events provoke. Covering various methodological angles, the contributors ensure careful and heterogeneous reflection on this delicate topic. With eleven original essays, the collection spans a wide variety of fields from philosophy and literary theory, to the visual arts, history, and psychology. The authors cover diverse themes, including philosophical approaches to political polarization; the impact of negative emotions such as anger on inter-relational balance; humour and politics; media and the idea of progress; photography and trauma discourse; democratic morality in modern Indian society; emotional olfactory experiences; phenomenological readings of spatial disorientation, and the significance of moral shocks. This timely volume offers crucial perspectives on contemporary questions relating to ethical behaviours, and the challenges of a globalized society on the verge of political, financial and emotional collapse.
Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity and Values, 2019
Phenomenology’s remarkable insights are still largely overlooked when it comes to contemporary de... more Phenomenology’s remarkable insights are still largely overlooked when it comes to contemporary debate concerning values in general. This volume addresses this gap, bringing together papers on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. What makes it special and distinct from similar texts, however, is its reliance on the axiological—that is, the ethical and existential—dimension of phenomenology’s account of intersubjectivity. All the great phenomenologists (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas) are covered here, as are lesser-known thinkers in the Anglo-American world, such as Max Scheler and Gabriel Marcel. As such, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in phenomenology, existential philosophy, continental philosophy, sociality, and values.
In the most consistent and ontologically justified modern defense of Care (Sorge) as the fundamen... more In the most consistent and ontologically justified modern defense of Care (Sorge) as the fundamental mode of being that the entity we ourselves are (Dasein or Being-There) has as its own most, Martin Heidegger specifies what he means by ‘care’ in relation with anxiety and its capacity to disclose one’s ultimate worldly trajectory as a meaningful whole, always already anticipated and ahead of which we place ourselves and behave (cf. Heidegger, 1962, §41). Contrary to belief, it is not thereby argued (or meant) that care is (or should be) a mode of behaving or reaching out to our fellow men or – even less – of specifically exerting a social, humanist or cross-generational duty. In spite of his professed wish to keep the Analytic of Dasein separated from any contemporary project of a philosophy of the Subject, Heidegger’s core notion of ‘care’ is deeply egotistical. In this presentation, I defend an altogether different experience of care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world to which they are anchored and which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents or a generation with more leisure time and availability to nurture a child’s hopes and daily needs), helped form the human being we now are. The strong appeal of a formative bond with caring people that have, in the meantime, become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is all but burdensome, rooted in my concern for my future, or anticipated life-spam. In fact, the need to care for our elders now is yet another common enterprise – just as our first shared experiences were joint ventures – and the daily routine of help and assistance, sheltered by a common emotional background, is one of joy and shared purpose, notwithstanding our different stations and critical needs in life.
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Papers by Ana Falcato
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the most impressive manifestations of the irrational in Greek thought and myth. This chapter draws on structural features of his account to offer a conception of guilt as a primary emotion that can influence a cultural framework as a whole. It seeks to provide a structural account of both irrational guilt-mechanisms and their genetic development, which can speculatively be traced either to a historic-religious evolution (as Dodds does) or, more prosaically, to psychogenetic roots. Building on the main insights of Dodds’s masterpiece regarding this specific emotional pattern, the chapter situates them in a twenty-first century global context, in an attempt to explain what can be not only irrational but maddening about guilt and guilt-mechanisms. To this end, the chapter presents a model of the constitution of the guilt-mechanism in the emotionally susceptible mind – as laid out by Dodds himself – and then compares that model with the genetic account defended by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity (1993). This comparison of the two models reveals the shortcomings of both and confirms Dodds’s structural insight concerning guilt and guilt-mechanisms: the idea that guilt as a cultural phenomenon may either overwhelm the subject and lead to self-destruction or rescue her from a moral abyss.
tipo de interpretação das mesmas, de veio tipicamente empirista, que reduziria os seus principais
impactos a um conjunto de distúrbios ou alterações quási-mecânicas da sensibilidade. Contra tal
reducionismo, e em articulação com novos temas de elaboração e uma estratégia metodológica
radical, através da qual alguns dos seus mais exímios praticantes exerceram notáveis esforços de
leitura e análise, a fenomenologia instituiu no pensamento contemporâneo esse dom de “torcer
reflexivamente” os seus objetos de interpretação, subtraindo-lhe os laivos de paridade imediata
com a experiência para melhor penetrar a sua complexa tessitura interna.
O presente dossier temático reúne propostas de interpretação de várias emoções – cuja “travessia”
íntima implica uma experiência ou conversão de teor moral –, desde uma persp ectiva
fenomenológica e com referência explícita a autores da tradição sob análise.
Contrary to belief, it is not thereby argued (or meant) that care is (or should be) a mode of behaving or reaching out to our fellow men or of specifically fulfilling a social, humanist or cross-generational duty. In spite of his professed wish to keep the Analytic of Dasein separate from any contemporary project of a philosophy of the subject, Heidegger’s core notion of ‘care’ is self-referring and deeply egotistical.
In this paper, I defend an altogether different framework for thinking about care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world in which they are anchored – a world which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents and other members of their generation), helped to form the type of being we now are. The formative bond we share with those who once cared for us, who have in the meantime become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is anything but burdensome or rooted in a concern for my future or anticipated lifespan. This paper thus seeks to rebut the specific treatment Heidegger gave to one of the core notions in his thought.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
In The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), Eric Dodds systematically explores some of the most impressive manifestations of the irrational in Greek thought and myth. This chapter draws on structural features of his account to offer a conception of guilt as a primary emotion that can influence a cultural framework as a whole. It seeks to provide a structural account of both irrational guilt-mechanisms and their genetic development, which can speculatively be traced either to a historic-religious evolution (as Dodds does) or, more prosaically, to psychogenetic roots. Building on the main insights of Dodds’s masterpiece regarding this specific emotional pattern, the chapter situates them in a twenty-first century global context, in an attempt to explain what can be not only irrational but maddening about guilt and guilt-mechanisms. To this end, the chapter presents a model of the constitution of the guilt-mechanism in the emotionally susceptible mind – as laid out by Dodds himself – and then compares that model with the genetic account defended by Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity (1993). This comparison of the two models reveals the shortcomings of both and confirms Dodds’s structural insight concerning guilt and guilt-mechanisms: the idea that guilt as a cultural phenomenon may either overwhelm the subject and lead to self-destruction or rescue her from a moral abyss.
tipo de interpretação das mesmas, de veio tipicamente empirista, que reduziria os seus principais
impactos a um conjunto de distúrbios ou alterações quási-mecânicas da sensibilidade. Contra tal
reducionismo, e em articulação com novos temas de elaboração e uma estratégia metodológica
radical, através da qual alguns dos seus mais exímios praticantes exerceram notáveis esforços de
leitura e análise, a fenomenologia instituiu no pensamento contemporâneo esse dom de “torcer
reflexivamente” os seus objetos de interpretação, subtraindo-lhe os laivos de paridade imediata
com a experiência para melhor penetrar a sua complexa tessitura interna.
O presente dossier temático reúne propostas de interpretação de várias emoções – cuja “travessia”
íntima implica uma experiência ou conversão de teor moral –, desde uma persp ectiva
fenomenológica e com referência explícita a autores da tradição sob análise.
Contrary to belief, it is not thereby argued (or meant) that care is (or should be) a mode of behaving or reaching out to our fellow men or of specifically fulfilling a social, humanist or cross-generational duty. In spite of his professed wish to keep the Analytic of Dasein separate from any contemporary project of a philosophy of the subject, Heidegger’s core notion of ‘care’ is self-referring and deeply egotistical.
In this paper, I defend an altogether different framework for thinking about care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world in which they are anchored – a world which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents and other members of their generation), helped to form the type of being we now are. The formative bond we share with those who once cared for us, who have in the meantime become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is anything but burdensome or rooted in a concern for my future or anticipated lifespan. This paper thus seeks to rebut the specific treatment Heidegger gave to one of the core notions in his thought.
Palavras-chave: vergonha; sentido de vergonha; Beobachtungen.
Abstract: This essay contradicts a wide-spread tendency, even in classic interpretations of his practical philosophy, to isolate Kant’s famous moral and decisional rigorism against the influence of emotions or sensible, subjective, impressions. A careful examination of Kant’s work on Antropology, strictly construed, as well as of some fundamental notes from the so-called pre-critical period allows us to grasp that and how Kant actually ascribed a fundamental role in moral matters even to a negative emotion (or affective disposition) like shame.
Key-words: shame; sense of shame; Beobachtungen.
Within psychiatry, there are several disputes about the nature and origin of delusions. Whereas some authors see only an abnormal phenomenon that needs to be treated by psychological or pharmacological means, others hold that delusions can be psychologically adaptive and even have epistemic benefits. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to build consensus around what delusions are and how they impact the human mind. Part 1 provides readers with an informed historical discussion of delusions and carefully examines the contemporary impact of these historical perspectives. Part 2 analyzes the impact of contemporary views of delusions on the mental and emotional life of human agents. Finally, Part 3 explores the normative frameworks of delusions and analyzes the impact of some of their behavioral consequences on the daily life of subjects and their caregivers.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Delusions is essential reading for researchers and graduate students working at the intersection of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology.
In this presentation, I defend an altogether different experience of care, grounded in a deep appeal to one’s earliest memories and the intimate world to which they are anchored and which, under the care of our elders (mostly our grandparents or a generation with more leisure time and availability to nurture a child’s hopes and daily needs), helped form the human being we now are. The strong appeal of a formative bond with caring people that have, in the meantime, become fragile and dependent, imposes a duty of care that is all but burdensome, rooted in my concern for my future, or anticipated life-spam. In fact, the need to care for our elders now is yet another common enterprise – just as our first shared experiences were joint ventures – and the daily routine of help and assistance, sheltered by a common emotional background, is one of joy and shared purpose, notwithstanding our different stations and critical needs in life.