João Dias

This article aims to investigate the meaning that the concept of “natural institution” acquires in Cartesian and Arnauldian thought, giving special attention to the presuppositions upon which each author relies in order to ground it, as well as to its inevitable consequences for the under-standing of human nature. The analysis begins with the representative char-acter attributed to sensible ideas in Part VI of the _Dioptrique_, where the concept is structured and founded, and continues through to Chapter XVI of _Des vraies et fausses idées_, a text in which Arnauld adopts and reformu-lates it. We intend to argue that the structure of the concept, in its Cartesian formulation, implies a conception of human nature as susceptible to error; whereas Arnauld’s version, grounded in a theological notion of nature and in central Cartesian concepts, understands it as naturally positive, despite its fallen state.

From the_ Rules for the Direction of the Mind_ to the _Principles of Philosophy_, Descartes substantially reworked his concept of “common notion,” particularly through his exchanges with Herbert of Cherbury, Jan Amos Komenský, and Marin Mersenne: this may be taken as our first thesis. Through these exchanges, Descartes came to hold that, for a common notion to be genuinely shared, it must continually be reformulated and refined in response to the passage of time, the development of the sciences, and the diversity of minds: this forms our second thesis. The ideal community of minds — given from the outset insofar as all share the same nature — must therefore be distinguished from a real community whose contours are constantly being redrawn, with the prospect of universal agreement on the horizon.

Resumo: O artigo aborda a interpretação da poesia tardia de Hölderlin feita por Theodor W. Adorno. Seu objetivo principal é demonstrar os passos da análise estética do discurso proferido em 1963 à Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, pontuando a presença da ideia de parataxis. Assim, o artigo divide o procedimento de Adorno em três camadas interpretativas: os conceitos de teor de coisa, lei imanente da configuração e teor de verdade. Primeiro, Adorno busca as referências filológicas e de sociologia da arte para insistir na proximidade de Hölderlin com o idealismo alemão, estratégia empregada para refutar a leitura de Heidegger, então corrente na Alemanha. A seguir, Adorno analisa a configuração poética para demonstrar como Hölderlin tomava parte nos debates filosóficos do período, marcando sua posição e afastando-se da teoria do conhecimento e filosofia da história de Hegel. Por fim, o teor de verdade resgatado da análise estética sugere conceitos já empregados por Adorno em sua filosofia de juventude, como história natural, mas também prepara noções que aparecerão somente na Dialética negativa, obra que responde à crítica da razão formulada pelo próprio autor na Dialética do esclarecimento. A tese central do artigo consiste na transversalidade da ideia de parataxis. Palavras-chave: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; teor de coisa; teor de verdade; parataxis. Verankerung in den Namen, Verharren in den Ideen. Adorno spielt Hölderlin auf. Zusammenfassung: Der Aufsatz geht um Theodor W. Adornos Interpretation von Hölderlins Spätlyrik. Das Hauptziel hier ist es, die Schritte der ästhetischen Analyse der im Jahr 1963 Rede an die Hölderlin-Gesellschaft zu demonstrieren und dabei die Präsenz der Idee von Parataxe zu betonen. So gliedert der Aufsatz Adornos Vorgehen in drei interpretative Schichten: die Begriffe Sachgehalt, immanentes Gesetz der Gestaltung und Wahrheitsgehalt. Erstens sucht Adorno nach philologischen und kunstsoziologischen Bezügen, um an die Nähe Hölderlins zum deutschen Idealismus zu erinnern. Das war eine Strategie, mit der er die damals in Deutschland gängige Heidegger-Interpretation widerlegen ward. Im Folgenden analysiert Adorno die poetische Gestaltung, um zu zeigen, wie Hölderlin an den philosophischen Debatten seinerzeit teilnahm, seine Position markierte und sich von Hegels Erkenntnistheorie und Geschichtsphilosophie entfernte. Der aus der ästhetischen Analyse gerettete Wahrheitsgehalt schlägt zuletzt Begriffe vor, die Adorno in seiner Jugendphilosophie schon verwendet hat, wie etwa den Begriff der Naturgeschichte, bereitet aber auch Begriffe vor, die erst in Negativer Dialektik erscheinen werden, einem Werk, das auf die vom Autor selbst in Dialektik der Aufklärung formulierte Vernunftkritik antwortet. Die zentrale These des Aufsatzes besteht in der Transversalität der Idee von Parataxe. Stichwörter: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; Sachgehalt; Wahrheitsgehalt; Parataxe. Anchor in Names, Persistence in Ideas. Adorno plays Hölderlin. Abstract: This paper deals with Theodor W. Adorno’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s late poetry. It aims to demonstrate each step of the aesthetic analysis of his well-known speech delivered in 1963 to the Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, and punctuates the presence of parataxis’ idea through the essay. Thus, the paper divides Adorno’s procedure into three main concepts: thing content, immanent law of configuration and truth content. First, Adorno asks philology and sociology of art for help to insist on Hölderlin’s closeness to German Idealism, a strategy employed to rebut Heidegger’s version, then current in Germany. Next, Adorno analyses the poetic configuration as to demonstrate how Hölderlin took part in philosophical debates of his time, marking his position out and moving away from Hegel’s theory of knowledge and philosophy of history. Finally, the truth content rescued from the aesthetic analysis suggests concepts already mobilized by Adorno in his youthful philosophy, such as natural history, but also prepares some notions that will appear only in Negative Dialectics, a work known as a reply to the critique of reason formulated by the author himself in Dialectics of Enlightenment. The central thesis of this paper consists in the transversality of parataxis’ idea. Keywords: Theodor W. Adorno; Friedrich Hölderlin; thing content; truth content; parataxis. Data de registro: 01/08/2023 Data de aceite: 24/01/2024.

Na obra Eichmann em Jerusalém – um relato sobre a banalidade do mal, Hannah Arendt descreve em determinada passagem que o réu Otto Adolf Eichmann invoca o imperativo categórico de Immanuel Kant, na busca de justificar sua conduta criminosa no massacre ocorrido na Alemanha nazista. Inertes numa sociedade desfigurada e que apresentava novas leis, tanto o réu quanto os demais criminosos viviam sob um véu de cegueira, que não poderia, porém, ser fundamento para a barbaridade cometida. Pretende-se com esse artigo elucidar o imperativo categórico de Kant empregado na ótica das leis da razão e, analisar o mau uso da autoridade de Kant por Eichmann.

A contemporary serious lack of scientific knowledge by the general public and many decision-makers is now quite perceptible, both globally and in Portugal. Living in a science-driven technological world filled with scientific illiteracy is dangerous and a path toward disaster. Recent years brought a fairly strong global movement promoting the so-called “alternative therapy” that also affected Portugal. I propose an evidence-based ethics reflection and argumentation, both encompassing the global and the specific Portuguese reality. I debate the specific arguments used in favour of alternative therapies, demonstrating the inherent fallacies of thought, deliberate manipulation of words and concepts, and the dire consequences for global and local health politics by following this line of biased reasoning.

MARCUSE, Herbert. De l’ontologie à la technologie. Les tendances de la société industrielle. Arguments, Paris, vol.4, nº 18, p. 54-59, 1960. Tradução publicada com permissão de Peter Marcuse, executor testamentário da Propriedade Intelectual de Herbert Marcuse, cujo consentimento é necessário para qualquer publicação futura. O material suplementar e anteriormente não publicado da obra de Herbert Marcuse se encontra majoritariamente nos arquivos da Goethe Universität. Esse material está sendo publicado pela Routledge Publishers, da Inglaterra, em uma série de seis volumes editada por Douglas Kellner, bem como pela zu Klampen Verlag, em uma série alemã editada por Peter-Erwin Jansen. A Propriedade Intelectual de Herbert Marcuse detêm todos os direitos de publicação. Este texto foi traduzido por João Paulo Andrade Dias, Mestre em Filosofia pela Universidade Federal de Uberlândia.

American Trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas disease, was discovered in 1909 under peculiar circumstances: its discoverer, Carlos Chagas, was sent to a small village of Central Brazil to carry out an anti-malaria campaign when he came across a blood sucking insect—the vector for the parasite infection. He had been alerted to the coincidence of peculiar symptoms and the presence of this insect in the wood and earth dwellings of the region. He was deeply involved in theoretical controversies in international protozoology; he was engaged in the consolidation of a scientific role and corresponding institutional conditions in Brazil, and equally immersed in the nationalist sanitary struggles of his days. In these contexts, Chagas assembled a remarkable discovery discourse, regarding the biology of the parasite, its life cycle and mode of transmission. Furthermore, he provided the clinical description of a new disease. Despite immediate international recognition, however, the unstable institutional arrangements surrounding his work damaged its local legitimacy for decades. His authority was widely recognized abroad, but rejected at home.

O presente artigo pretende analisar a ideia de pessoa entre os yorùbás da África Ocidental, a partir da conceção de orí, i. e., a cabeça, entendida entre eles como portadora de personalidade e destino, ideia amplamente difundida pela literatura sobre a matéria da personalidade humana e sentidos de destino. A partir do orí, adentrar-se-á pela problemática da predestinação entre os yorùbás e o sentido do ritual de alimento à cabeça, o b ọ rí, entre os yorùbás, com referência aos afro-brasileiros do Candomblé. A problematização conduzir-nos-á à constatação da pluralidade interpretativa do objeto, ao mesmo tempo que nos deixará diante da questão linguística da tradução dos conceitos, facto que influi na própria construção teológica. Ao mesmo tempo estaremos diante da construção histórica da religião yorùbá, notoriamente uma religião dinâmica e mutável que se fabrica nos diálogos com o cristianismo e islamismo. Processos de transformação que, aliás, são transponíveis para o Brasil, onde a celebração do orí se apresenta de modo diferenciado face à realidade autóctone africana. Palavras-chave : Yorùbás. Concepção de pessoa. Orí. Predestinação. Bọrí.The present paper aims to analyze the idea of person among the Yorùbá people of Western Africa, taking into account the conception of orí, i.e., the head, which is understood by them as the bowl of human personality and destiny. Those ideas are clearly present in the plural literature concerning the human personality and its destination among the Yorùbá people. Taking the orí as starting point, I shall problematize the predestination idea among the Yorùbá and the meaning of the b ọ rí, the ritual presented as ‘feeding-the-head’. Such process will be extended to Afro-Brazilian religious system named Candomblé. The problematization will guide my observation to the dramatic plurality of interpretations concerning destiny, while it will spell out the linguistic dilemmas around the translation of concepts. Those dilemmas influence, clearly, the theological construction of the object. At the same time, the paper will deliver us to the evidence of the historical construction of Yorùbá religion, which is a mutable and dynamic religious expression, highly crossed with Christianity and Islam (in African contexts). Those processes of transformation are also clear in Brazil, where the celebration of orí has different religious attitudes comparing to African native ones. Keywords: Yorùbá. Idea of person. Orí. Predestination. Bọrí.