In the Treatise On the Heavens II, 1 [ 40 ], Plotinus rejects the explanation of Aristotle who, in De caelo I, 2-3, considers the “fifth body”, ether, the incorruptible matter of celestial bodies and heavens and, hence, different from the sub-lunar world’s four elementary bodies (fire, air, water and earth). Plotinus’ argument at tempts to found the kind of perpetuity which numerical identity implies -the identity which is proper of heavens and celestial bodies- on the harmony that reigns between their body and soul. This way, the Plotinian exeges is of the Aristotelian Treatise integrates the themes already raised in the Platonic Phaedrus and Timaeus. In this article I attempt to expound: 1 ) the concepts of perfection and the cosmological dualism in Aristotle, 2) the problem of the cosmos’ perpetuity, 3) the Plotinian search of a more satisfactory explanation, and 4) the theme of the two regions: sub-lunar and supra-lunar.

The aim of this paper is to show the connection between the desire and the experience of the One, in Plotinus. Our main conclusion is that, in spite of the language of the solitary evasion towards the One and Only, we can indeed find in Plotinus works the search and the living experience of the most universal and intimate principle and origin of all and every being, which appears everywhere. This is not a separated transcendent but the transcend of all existential, vital and intellectual duality in an experience of eternal union. Beyond all thought and expression, there’s the source of all philosophical truth, meaning and eloquence.

In this paper, making use of the constitutional comparison method introduced by Aristotle, I aim to argue on the similarities and differences that can be established between, on the one hand, the process that led to the approval of the American Federal Constitution and its consequences and, on the other hand, the process of approval and respective consequences of the Treaty that establishes a Constitution for Europe. To accomplish the aforementioned aim I have used criteria such as the relation ship between federated States and the federal central power, the acquisition of citizenship, the possibility of secession, the checks and balances’ system, the relationship between the Constitution and other laws and the extent of federal integration. The most recent European Union political process is looked into, in the light of issues related to philosophy, law and political science. The standpoint is that Europeans could learn from the complex and contradictory process that occurred more than two centuries ago, as well as from the thought contained in the vast literature produced at the time. Many of the questions and issues that confront Europe nowadays have already been raised and discussed and we should be looking at the different answers they provided, thus enriching our current choices, and improving our decision making process.

Ce texte expose le concept de citoyenneté dans son double aspect - descriptif et prescriptif. Aux dimensions civiles, politiques et sociales de la citoyenneté il faut ajouter deux autres: l’économique et la culturelle. Ce qui fait tenir en compte le problème du multiculturalisme et de la citoyenneté multiculturelle. Il faut trouver des réponses qui permettent aux différentes éthnies une façon de vivre ensemble. Dans ce but, l’article analyse critiquement trois possibilités: le libéralisme multiculturel de Klymcka; le libéralis me intolérant de Sartori et le libéralisme radical interculturel. Ce dernier est la position choisie et soutenue dans le texte qui vise souligner le caractère dynamique des différentes cultures, bien que l’influence bénéfique qu’elles provoquent les unes sur les autres.

Pour éviter que le destin de l’humanité soit «la prison ou l’hospice d’aliénés» il faut faire attention aux mutations théoriques et pratiques qui puissent développer l’interculturalité. Celle-ci est es sentielle pour la survie du planète. La thèse soutenue dans cet article est que l’alternative à la multiculturalité est la barbarie. Il faut modifier le travail d’investigation et les pratiques habituelles développées sur ce thème. On doit proposer d’autres orientations philosophiques et d’autres pratiques, qui ne s’inscrivent pas sur des vérités absolues et sur des lois universelles, des orientations qui rejettent les implications d’uniformité de la globalization néo-libérale. Le recours à la théologie de la libération et à l’antropologie philosophique critique est importante.

This paper examines the philosophical conflict arisen by theodicy in western culture. After the exposition of Simon Blackburn and Richard Swinbume’s contentions views, we sustain that the only credible solution to the problem entails a new philosophical concept of God based on a non-anthropocentric vision of reality.

Since it can reasonably be taken for granted that the Gods of pagan mythology have been products of human cognitive activities, there is an obvious relation between our most general concepts of consciousness and the possibility of an understanding of mythology. In order to hint at the insuffiency of the modern idea of an autonomous subject, which is devoid of any content that cannot be construed as a moment of self-conscious reflection, it is necessary to go back to both ancient greek metaphysics and mythology. Ancient metaphysics does not yet fully articulate the idea of an autonomous subjectivity (even though the latter would not have been possible without the former). Therefore, it is better understood in terms of ontonomy, i.e. metaphysical thought of what there ultimately is. In the paper it is argued that metaphysical ontonomy has its origin in mythological theonomy. The very idea of an emancipation of logos from myth is itself mythological. Hence, self-consciousness may be interpreted as a self-explication of mythology. In the very act of reflecting itself in human consciousness, the “Being” hides its mythological, artistic nature. However, this could not be made intelligible without the help of mythology itself because it is impossible to talk about Ontonomy let alone Theonomy in theoretical propositions.

The colors are one of the most expressive examples of social and personal construction of meanings (if not of the reality itself). The diverse cultures have seen different colors in the rainbow, they have organized differently their sequence in it, but, overall, they have loaded them with different symbolic contents. Frequently, colors are markers of the social and political hierarchies and, therefore, “matter of law”. In the second half of the 18th Century, a disciple of Christian Thomasius summarizes, in a university dissertation, the common legal prescriptions on the use of the colors. Old literal genealogies still stand, entangled with scientific opinions of the time. On the basis of this intertext, legal doctrine fixes and multiplies meanings over space and time, as a huge space of industrial symbolic production. In such a way that, in spite of the changes brought by romantic imagery and by the emergent industrial revolution in the techniques of coloring, we can still recognize some glimpses of the shattered world of colors of traditional Europe.

Marcel Proust is not known as a philosopher. Nevertheless, his monumental masterpiece, In Search for Lost Time, must be understood as a System - not a «philosophical System», but a System sustained and moved by a philosophy of existence: «System of existence itself»; «System of time» in its mere occurrence. Memory becomes here, in face of time, an almost sacred way of revealing sense: and sense - the sense that one can see and understand by this work of memory - somehow emerges like a perfect, platonical form, that brings happiness and is wisdom, not as if we have already seen it in a previous life of the soul, but in the process of making its own rememberance and comprehension.

This paper analyses (1) the power of metaphor which is central to Bonaventure’s literary expression, his spirituality, his philosophical and theological speculation; (2) Considers which human language is ultimately a participation in divine expressionism; (3) Analyses the notion of metaphor in Bonaventure’s treatment of human language; (4) Expose his contribution for the «linguistic turn». All of this will support the thesis of this paper: that language as expression is the most fundamental metaphysical/ontological/poetic notion in Bonaventure’s vision.

As in other domains of art, the assessment of performances or interpretations of musical works is largely considered as a matter of personal taste. In Evaluating Musical Performance, Jerrold Levinson argues that relativism, in this matter, depends on the many interests with which a performance can be faced, and, consequently, evaluated and assessed. My thesis in this article is that not all interests have the same importance and that there is a “purely musical” perspective that must prevail over the other interests. This way I try to diminish the so called relativism.

This article is about the influence of Georg Simmel on Siegfried Kracauer’s thought and analysis method, and also on the difference between the two. Kracauer was Simmel’s pupil at Berlin in 1907, and exposed his thought and method in an essay (Georg Simmel) published for the first time in 1963, forty-two years after being written, in a collection of papers intituled Das Ornament der Masse. Starting from a heuristic principle - which could be put like this: all expressions of spiritual/intellectual life are interrelated in countless ways; no single one can be extricated from this web of relations, since each is enmeshed in the web with all other such expressions - , Kracauer distinguished, in Simmel’s method, two different ways of linking the different phenomena: discovering its essential congruence [Wesenszusammengehörigkeit] or by analogy [Analogie]. The first method shows how disparate phenomena could have the same source. The second tries to demonstrate similitudes between phenomena, and it is, in a certain degree, an abstract construction. This double approach of reality synchronizes Kracauer’s worries on the culture fragmentation and his attempt to overcome it. This is most clear when he criticizes Simmel, in a forward step, of being in default of metaphor [Gleichnis]. Metaphor is, in Kracauer’s point of view, not only a relation between objects, like Simmel tries, but a relation between subject and object, and the representation by a particular image of individual things as much as of the entire world. Metaphor carries in it itself the philosophical intuition that is lacking in Simmel’s oeuvre.

Dans la plus grande oeuvre de Benedictus de Espinosa, son Éthique, la délimitation de l’univers ontologique, outre le fait de discerner les éléments constitutifs de sa Philosophia en général, résulte entre autre d’un cadre conceptuel pour le principal sujet de son éthique: la liberté. Ayant l’intention d’expliciter les relations entre l’ontologie spinoziste et le concept de liberté, en so ulignant l’importance de ce concept au sein du système de Espinosa en général et sa spécificité à l’intérieur de l'Éthique en particulier, nous expliciterons le concept de liberté dans cette oeuvre: la Définition 7 de la Partie 1. Dans cette définition composée de deux parties distinctes, Espinosa ira opposer “chose libre” (res libera) et “contrainte” (coacta), la première consistant à celle qui “existe exclusivement par nécessité de sa nature et est par soi-même déterminé à agir”, et la seconde à “ce qui est déterminé par autre chose à exister et à opérer de certaine manière déterminée”. Ensuite, nous procéderons à l’analyse critique du concept traditionnel de liberté mise en relation avec la volonté et la contingence, que ce soit comme un pouvoir de choisir ou comme un pouvoir de décision ou d’être régia par un modèle, vis-à-vis des causes qui détermineraient la liberté de la volonté ou absoluto beneplacito, ou encore, de ce qui la régit, en visant la caractérisation de la liberté comme autonomie nécessaire à l’existence et à l’action, ou comme nécessité intrinsèque attachée à l’essence et à ce dont elle découle. En outre, nous analyserons aussi les dédoublements de cette définition initiale suivant leurs relations avec la volonté (finie ou infinie) comme faculté et avec l’accord (fini ou infini), en tant qu’absents de l’e ssence divine, et, finalement, avec la nécessité même.

La dimension culturelle de l’humain ne s’épuise jamais dans les étud es culturelles. Elle demande une réflexion radicale sur le phénomène culturel total dont la tâche appartient à la philosophie de la culture. L’oeuvre de Manuel Antunes (1918-1985) esquisse une approche stimulante et réussie de cette discipline nettement inscrite sous l’horizon de l’ontologie.