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The paper presents a reconstruction of the metaphysical core of Dante’s political thought as expressed in the Monarchy, following on the footsteps of Guido Vernani’s critique of Dante’s political ideas in his De reprobatione Monarchie composite a Dante (Bologna, 1327-1334). The paper focuses on the link between Dante’s alleged Averroism, an accusation formulated for the first time by the Dominican friar, but latter repeated by philosophical historiography, and the interpretation of the Monarchy as a sign of the beginning of modern philosophy.

This paper considers the graphic work of the Chilean artist Claudio Romo from a post-human perspective. Romo's work realizes an opening of imaginaries, above all, new configurations of human being, in order to reconsider the boundaries of human nature and propose a new humanism in relation to a new understanding of modernity. After a theoretical tour of post-humanism, especially of Rosi Braidotti's philosophical nomadism, the paper will approach the post-human bestiary that elaborates Romo, on the one hand, as a questioning of access to empirical realities and, on the other hand, as a presentation of potential life forms. The paper will conclude on the presence, in Romo’s work, of a new affirmative humanism, that is, the experimentation of new modes of subjectivization, as well as the approach of new modes of knowledge.

Space plays an important part in all of Virginia Woolf’s writings, whether we are speaking about her novelistic output or her essays. Space becomes an interstitial realm between modernity and tradition. Solitude, privacy, become the key ingredients of successful artistic creation, with creativity being described as a privilege of the solitary, of those capable, and allowed, to function outside the pressure of larger social groups or even outside the close family circle. Space is never just space in Woolf’s novels – instead it becomes an engine that drives creativity, identity, and one could almost argue that space becomes a deeply political reality in all of her writings. Nowhere is this more evident than in her urban novels, where the cityscape takes on various roles and functions. Space in her fiction is both external and internal, with the two being in constant interaction. Whether we are speaking about the distinction between male and female spaces, spaces meant for creation and spaces meant for work, shared or individual spaces, real or imaginary borders, movement across such borders, mental and internal spaces, space always fulfils important narrative and metaphorical functions in Woolf’s texts. In the present paper we will try to relate Virginia Woolf’s creation of urban landscapes to several theories regarding the creation of space identity from the field of architecture, urban design and renewal, and political studies. Thereby we will attempt to prove that the creation of space equals the creation of identity across the wide spectrum of meaning of the term. Public and private spaces become antithetic, with the public realm mirroring the established cultural and social stereotypes, whereas private spaces are associated with artistic creativity and individual freedom. Public spaces, being the spaces of established social norms, are usually “male” spaces, whereas private ones are perceived as predominantly “female”. Because of this “male”, “traditional” component, urban public spaces are described in distinctive ways which will be analyzed in the novels “Jacob’s Room”, “Mrs. Dalloway”, and “The Years”.

At least two recent collections of essays – Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (2001) and What’s Left of Enlightenment?: A Postmodern Question (2001) – have responded to postmodern critiques of Enlightenment by arguing that Enlightenment philosophes themselves embraced a number of post-modern themes. This essay situates Kant’s essay Was ist Aufklärung (1784) in the context of this recent literature about the appropriate characterization of modernity and the Enlightenment. Adopting an internalist reading of Kant’s Aufklärung essay, this paper observes that Kant is surprisingly ambivalent about who might be Enlightened and unspecific about when Enlightenment might be achieved. The paper argues that this is because Kant is concerned less with elucidating his concept of Enlightenment and more with characterizing a political condition that might provide the conditions for the possibility of Enlightenment. This paper calls this political condition modernity and it is achieved when civil order can be maintained alongside fractious and possibly insoluble public disagreement about matters of conscience, including the nature and possibility of Enlightenment. Thus, the audience for the Aufklärung essay is not the tax collector, soldier or clergyman, but rather the sovereign. Kant enjoins and advises the prince that discord and debate about matters of conscience need not entail any political unrest or upheaval. It is in this restricted (Pocockian) sense that the Enlightenment essay is Kant’s Machiavellian moment.

In his answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?”, Kant argues that we must have the courage to use our own reason and imputes failure to do so on laziness and cowardice. Why exactly does the call for emancipation require resolve? This paper follows Foucault in defining Enlightenment as a modern ethos that adopts the ephemeral as a way of being. Contrary to the French philosopher, however, we argue that this permanent critique of oneself and of the world creates a void that leaves us trembling before nothingness. If Enlightenment requires courage, then, it is precisely to urge us to remain steadfast in the practice of freedom and to not shy away from the dangers it imposes. Courage, in short, is resolve before the abyss of freedom. Too long have we confined Kant to an ossified, rationalistic framework, thankfully impervious to human anguish for some, regretfully incapable of it for others. If anything, this paper wants to uncover the deep, existential tones of his conclusions on modernity, and it will do so through an examination of his account of courage.

The present paper explains why Kierkegaard affirms that the modern thinkers are wrong when they understand their own philosophy as a christian philosophy. The main problem of modern thought is that it lacks of a correct concept of sin. Because of that, the philosophy of the Modern age can only develop an ethic theory but not an ethic for the actual life. Only Christianity has a proper concept of sin that´s why the only true ethic is the christian one. First, the paper exposes and criticizes two objections (Aristotle and Descartes) against the intellectual ethic from Kierkegaard´s point of view. Second, the paper reconstructs the notion of human will wich is developed in Either Or. Third, the paper analyzes the main argument of Sickness unto Death: without the christian idea of the will, as Kierkegaard interprets it in Sickness unto Death, the socratic and intellectual conception of the sin can not be overcome.

This paper proposes an investigation into the language of the satiric poem "Atta Troll - ein Sommernachtstraum" (Atta Troll - sonho de uma noite de verão), composed by Heinrich Heine in 1841. Two deeply woven aspects stand out in the poem and motivate this literary research: first the poet’s requirement, which runs throughout the lengthy poem as a Leitmotiv, asking for an art without moral, religious or political influences, based on its own laws, emerging from the notion of beauty, and whose reasons are inherent in themselves. The second perspective that the poem reveals is the metaphoric relationship of poetry and dance, the art form in its various manifestations both formal and informal, which are observed with strict scrutiny throughout the poem. From both aspects, taken from translated parts in Portuguese, the paper indicates important affinities of this literature that lean towards both romanticism and the transition to modernity, and whose transformations it points at, with respect to aesthetics and the role of the poet

This paper reflects on the nature of the English revolution of 1688, examining the way in which the revolution has tended to be presented as a temporal marker. While the notion of the revolution as the founding moment in the establishment of a liberal political order has largely been abandoned, the idea of 1688 as a historical watershed has proved persistent. Recent historical interpretations oscillate between seeing the revolution as representing the end of earlier historical processes (the reformation, the mid-century revolution) and seeing it as the beginning of modernity. The 1696 Association to William III has been identified by scholars such as Steven Pincus and Mark Knights as revealing the modernizing effect of the revolution. This article examines the same moment, employing Reinhart Kosseleck’s notion of Sattelzeit to instead argue for 1688 as a transitionary period in which multiple senses of time and historical change co-existed.

ne consequence of Chile’s socalled “estallido social” (social outburst) of October 2019 was the erosion of the hegemonic ideological canon, in other words, of neoliberalism as a paradigm of modernity. That several currents of opinion have since (re)emerged within conservative Chilean intellectual thought reflects not only this loss of ideological hegemony, but also shows an ability to react and adapt to a setting in which this belief system is under threat. This paper analyses some of these currents, taking four authors as paradigmatic examples: Axel Kaiser (liberalism), Pablo Ortúzar (corporatism), Hugo Herrera (social Christianity) and Alexis López Tapia (nationalism). Of particular interest are their readings of the nature of the outburst, the political displacements provoked, the ideological and conceptual tensions that emerged, as well as the continuities and departures in terms of social imaginaries, traditions, practices and ideas.

In this paper we present a proposal for a classification guide of historical lithic artifacts. It arose as a necessity for the study of this kind of material in modern history contexts due to, generally archaeological lithic analysis had focus on prehistoric contextsleaving practically aside the study of modern ones.Our interest in this subject started with the recovery of a huge amount of granitic rocks in an urban excavation and we had to develop a particular methodology to its analysis. At that time we recognize that although our academic formation in prehistoricallithic artifacts analysis turned out to be efficient in the study of other historical contexts,it was not appropriated for the analysis of 12 tn of rocks recovered from inside a merchantship found in Puerto Madero, Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Therefore, we decided to amplify, correct and (most of all) clarify the analysis guide for historical lithic artifacts in order to other scholars could do such a task.In sum, in this paper we propose a methodological guide for the analysis of historical lithic instruments. We focus on the artifact, ecofact and material bulk, as relevant units of analysis in the local, regional and interregional level.

This paper presents an analysis of the city’s image constructed in the work of brazilian poet Augusto de Campos, beginning with a poem from 1963, “cidade / city / cité”, and through works from the year 2000 as “sem saída”. Using concepts as “modern city”, “babelic city” and “phalanstery city”, this paper will approach the author’s conception of the relationship between poetry, city and politics, and the way it mutes. Finally, the article will raise critical views of Brazil’s modern image, emerged in the late sixties, and it will be revised De Campos’s intervention in this context.

Este artigo discute a produtividade de pensar a modernidade pedagógica, a partir da filosofia de Michel Foucault. Compreendendo a pedagogia como um conjunto de saberes e correlatas práticas educacionais, o artigo mostra o caráter contingente das raízes epistêmicas e epistemológicas que sustentam os discursos pedagógicos. A proveniência de tais raízes é localizada no platonismo renascentista e nas tradições judaico-cristãs. A partir dos conceitos de crítica e hipercrítica, o “pensar de outros modos” proposto por Michel Foucault é apontado como uma prática difícil, mas muito importante para a militância política. AbstractThis paper discusses the productivity of thinking the pedagogical modernity, from the point of view of the foucauldian philosophy. Understanding the pedagogy as a set of knowledges and correlate educational practices, the paper shows the contingent character of the epistemical and epistemological roots that sustain the pedagogical discourses. The provenience of these roots is placed in the platonic Renaissance and in the judaic-christian traditions. From the concepts of critique and hypercritique, the “another way of thinking” proposed by Michel Foucault is indicated as a difficult practice but very important for the political militancy.

A group of songs called salidummay, popular in Northern Philippine highlands, is characterized by musical features of Anglo-American folk songs epitomized by meter and anhemitonic pentatonic pitch system (against domination of two to four tone tunes of older chants), as well as vernacular lyrics that often carry the formulaic expressions of older chants of the locale. The paper asks why salidummay songs that present hybrid features than other local forms have become a symbol of collective identity of the peoples of Northern Luzon highlands as that of the “Cordillera.” Analysis of three salidummay renditions performed in two privately hosted communal feasts (palanos) of the Banaos at western Kalinga reveals the categorical inconsistency of salidummay songs that carry both features of premodernity (spontaneity, orality, intimacy of communal reception) and modernity that is ultimately attributed to “congregational singing.” The paper then argues that the simultaneity of congregational singing of hymn singing , that is applied today to the singing of anthems, martial songs and protest songs, is the praxis of modernity; that it has already become the habitus of Filipinos in the twentieth century; and that, thus, salidummay singing is believed to be “tradition” in the narrative of projecting ethnicity. The paper concludes that tempo-spatial strata of premodernity and modernity is the key to understanding the sociocultural complex of contemporary Philippines.

According to the philosopher Stephen Toulmin there is a standard account of modernity which gives primacy to the written over the oral, the universal over the particular, the general over the local and the timeless over the timely. This paper draws from Toulmin to argue that accounts of modernity in Africa are based on the assumptions of the standard account of modernity to deny modernity to Africa even though these assumptions inhere in actual practices as the analysis of the work of a non-governmental organization operating in Mozambique seeks to document. The paper will therefore argue that modernity is real and that it shows its reality in the way in which particular social conditions and categories are done, i.e. through meanings, methods, motives and the management of the social relationship which they bring forth.

The aim of this paper is to analyze information based on a survey of young urban people in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, looking at the way in which their position is clearly articulated in urban social dynamics. The hypothesis defended is that the emergence and evolution of the youth group stresses a movement which is at the heart of the reproduction and transformation of the entire society. To better understand the historical function of youths, the sketch of this sociology of generations will revisit the theoretical notions and make a critical comparison of this polysemic conceptualisation of a practical process in the roots of evolution. This dynamics is only visible in the observation of individual and collective strategies, but simultaneously represents the ratio of youths in the ancient order of things. It is the collective social position, the youthful social ideal and the forms of generational stabilization in the general course of history. The paper ends with a presentation of a theoretical attempt to formulate a strictly sociological design of the concept of “youths”, which will enable practical usage of a category hitherto marked a priori by common sense.

La propuesta de este texto es seguir la línea de pensamiento del filósofo francés Jacques Rancière al abordar el trabajo teórico freudiano como dislocado de su tiempo histórico, es decir de las formulaciones teóricas absortas en el positivismo que hacían de las humanidades una práctica científica. Rancière observa que el trabajo interpretativo y teórico de Freud se ubica en una lógica estética que rompe con la definición clásica de ésta e inaugura un pensamiento más allá de la lógica moderna. Consecuentemente este trabajo abordará una conceptualización de modernidad, la desarrollada por Michel Foucault en el texto The Politics of Truth (1997), para pasar luego a los Cínicos griegos como vía hacia la propuesta de Jacques Rancière en El inconsciente estético (2005) donde plantea a Freud como pensador estético. This paper proposes to follow the french philosopher Jacques Rancière’s thougth when tackling Freud’s theoretical work as dislocated from its historical time, that is from the theoretical formulations captivated in the positivism that would make humanities a scientific practice. In others words this work understands Freudian’s texts beyond the very extended positivism in the humanities at those times. Jacques Rancière points out that Freudian’s interpretative and theoretical work breaks a classic aesthetic logic creating a new way of thinking beyond modern logic. Consequently, this paper will focus on the conceptualization of modernity developed by Michel Foucault in his work The Politics of Truth (1997). Later on, it will approach the Greek Cynics as a path towards understanding Jacques Rancière’s proposal in El inconsciente estético (2005), in which Freud is presented as an aesthetic thinker.

This paper aims at investigating the positions of the Balkans in ourcontemporary world in its continuous change – for instance the rapidEuropeanization for the protection of a common inheritance of Balkancountries. Moreover, this historical heritage is sometimes presented as a simple burden that should be overcome: the name Balkan has negative connotations, being associated with violence or primitivism. The criticism of this type of derogatory discourse called « Balkanism » is built on the deconstruction of Orientalism as initiated in the 70’s by Edward Said. In this paper, we will analyze the various types of possible objections to this Balkan approach (the absence of a colonial past, the non-existence of a « Balkan » academic tradition, the Balkan preciseness as opposed to the Oriental vagueness, as well as their not purely « oriental », yet undetermined character). Furthermore I will present the arguments in favour of another way of interpreting the Balkans which consists in the understanding of thenarrower relation between European modernity and history.

O artigo examina a abordagem feita por Walter Benjamin da concepção de modernidade apresentada pelo poeta e crítico de arte Charles Baudelaire. Após o exame da ideia de beleza moderna nos textos de crítica de Baudelaire, são abordados os motivos da preferência de Benjamin pela apresentação da modernidade na poesia de Baudelaire, particularmente no poema alegórico "Le cygne". Por fim, o texto enfoca a relação entre a poesia moderna de Baudelaire e a concepção de experiência de Benjamin.The paper investigates the approach made by Walter Benjamin of Charles Baudelaire's conception of modernity. After examining the idea of modern beauty in Baudelaire's critical texts, the reasons of Benjamin's preference for the presentation of modernity in Baudelaire's poetry are analized, particularly, in the allegorical poem "Le cygne". At last, the paper focuses on the relation between Baudelaire's modern poetry and Benjamin's concept of experience.

This paper approaches one of the issues that Charles Taylor proposes as he describes and figures out the genesis of modern identity; the one that explores the relationship between collective and individual identities. The modern idea of being or having a self leads to the notion of inner nature. However, it comes to a self that cannot be fully articulated and that only from a web of interlocution with others can be defined. Thus Taylor examines omnipresent ideals of which we are not aware about right and freedom; this search leads him to the issue of background languages. Without refusing the idea of individuality, he looks for which remains as a fundamental value for the human condition, which ultimately makes our perspective one among other perspectives. Finally, combining Taylor, the Freudian concept of culture, and the thin line between individual and collective psychology, the paper analyzes the concepts of perplexity, horror, and break-in, invoking authors like the ethno-psychoanalyst T. Nathan and A. Sampson

The sustainability of the redevelopment, recovery and conservation of the historical heritage built before 1945 is guar- anteed by voluntary certification protocols that consider the entire life cycle of the building. The analysis showed that the certification has, to date, extended to a limited number of residential buildings built before the Second World War, while those built after the war have been neglected. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to highlight the criticalities of the current certification systems, with reference to some thematic areas of the GBC Historic Building protocol, and to identify appropriate corrective measures for energy redevelopment with reference to Mario Ridolfi's “INCIS Houses”, an example of Messina modernism, that need to be preserved. The goal is to attract the interest of the scientific community, experts and public opinion to the enhancement and conscious care of the post-1945 residential heritage of the author through eco-sustainable interventions that respect cultural and architectural identity.

The most important knowledge that people have is knowledge borne from long experience and passed from one generation to another in their languages about their local environment and surroundings. Local proverbs are one of the ways in which local knowledge is embodied and transmitted in a community. Mieder (1980.119) defines a proverb as “a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorable form which is handed down from generation to generation.” Jang (1999.83) sees proverbs as statements which represent traditional wisdom within shared cultural experience in a way that summarizes issues of importance to local communities. Jang’s definition underscores “shared cultural experience” suggesting that the meaning of a proverb could be obscure and irrelevant unless one shares in the knowledge, experience, wisdom and understands the language and culture underlying it. The question is; does the modern day speaker of Setswana share and understand the imageries, philosophies and language used in these statements? This paper questions the position and relevance of proverbs to the 21st century speaker of Setswana who does not share the same cultural experience as the creator of the proverbs. Specifically, the paper interrogates some of the commonly held views of the proverb such as its old and fixed structure and its ability to cut across generations and ages. These questions basically compel us to interrogate the relationship between indigenous and contemporary knowledge.

The term cosmopolitanism both expresses an attitude towards our present time and provides certain keys to analyse it. This article aims to better understand the revival of cosmopolitanism since the end of the twentieth century by confronting conceptual developments in the social and political theory of modernity with the historical experiences of interpreting and institutionalizing modernity. At the heart of the matter are views about the prevailing social bonds between human beings and their implication for building and maintaining political institutions. The common view of modernity as marked by trends towards individualization and instrumental rationalization is redefined as one interpretation of modernity among others; and the current situation is regarded as a struggle over world-interpretations rather the imposition of linear trends towards globalization and individualization, a view that was dominant at the same time as cosmopolitan thinking revived.

Resumen: El presente estudio propone una definición de “vanguardia” a partir de su intento de secularizar el arte del ideal y sublimidad román-ticos. Para ello, se parte de una noción amplia de “secularización” vincu-lada al proceso de la modernidad, un proceso de desacralización que la vanguardia intentó aplicar al arte. Nuestra sugerencia es que ese intento fue fallido y que la vanguardia derivó en una resistencia a lo moderno, en clara contradicción a su discurso de ruptura y novedad. El trabajo se divide en tres partes: la primera se centra en delimitar las nociones de “secularización”, “modernidad” y “antimodernidad”; la segunda, en definir la vanguardia en relación con su intento de secularizar el arte; finalmente, la tercera expone el fracaso de dicho intento y lo ejemplifica en el terreno literario mediante la antítesis entre poesía y novela. // Abstract: The following paper proposes a definition of “avant-garde” ba-sed on its attempt to secularize the art from the romantic ideal and subli-mity. To do this, it starts from a broad notion of “secularization” linked to the process of modernity, a process of desecration that avant-garde tried to apply to art. We suggest that this attempt was unsuccessful and that avant-garde resulted in a resistance to the modern, in clear contra-diction to its discourse of rupture and novelty. The study is divided into three parts: the first one focuses on delimiting the notions of “seculariza-tion”, “modernity” and “anti-modernity”; the second on, in defining the avant-garde in relation to its attempt to secularize art; finally, the third one exposes the failure of this attempt and exemplifies it in the literary field through the antithesis between poetry and novel genre. Keywords: Avant-garde, Modernity, Secularization, Poetry, Novel genre.

The aim of this paper is to address the recent process of globalization from the point of view of the relation between regulation and emancipation. The main thesis is that the process of globalization changes the relation between these two categories and requires the introduction of a third element which the author calls non-regulation. The argument is not that non-regulation constitutes a completely new feature of modernity, but rather that the way in which hegemony occurs in the globalized public space of the early 21st century consists in a combination of super-regulation and non-regulation which gives it completely new characteristics. The second issue addressed in this paper concerns the extent to which the new global public spaces that are emerging in late modernity can confront those unregulated global spaces.

This paper offers an interpretation of Rūdolfs Blaumanis’ novella Andriksons (1898) that is based on three intellectual positions. (1) The insight gained by postcolonial criticism that the political and economic division of the world as created by colonial relationships and secured by a consciously shaped system of ideological models has left a lasting impression on the psychology of both the representatives of the superpowers and the local inhabitants of the colonized territories. The main thread of analysis is to research how the opinions of two characters and the differences in their worldviews meet in Blaumanis’ text, and to reveal how the colonial and anti-colonial viewpoints are expressed in such confrontations. (2) Since Blaumanis’ novella was written at the end of the 19th century, which was one of the most intensive periods of Latvian nation-building, the anti-colonial discourse is closely related to the manifestation of nationalism in art. Nationalism, or any ideology, is most powerful in a work of art when it is outwardly unnoticeable, but inwardly capacious and expressed as a potentiality; therefore, the poetics of the text are important in this paper. (3) The framework of my argument is provided by current debates on the so-called “decolonial turn” which also involves concepts of modernity, coloniality and decoloniality. Therefore, the strategic aim of this research can be described as an effort to trace colonial contexts and decolonial options of modern Baltic cultures in global perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct Foucault’s reflections on the birth of modernity, paying particular attention to the role of capitalism and discipline within it. The thesis we will defend is that in Foucault’s work in the first half of the 1970s—especially between 1973 and 1975—both dimensions appear as two aspects of the same continuum, thus establishing a necessary link between them. This approach, which contests certain Marxist positions, attempts to reveal that the research on disciplinary power can be conceived as a complement, and not a correction, of the analyses deployed by Marx in Das Kapital.

The paper attempts to delineate the contours of Indian modernity by showing that it is primarily colonial modernity which is a factor in the modern Indian nation taking shape. India is distinguised from Bharat which is the old name for the geographical space which is India. Bharat is traditional and India is modern. The paper shows that these categories need not be irreconcilable opposites, that the Indian way has been to effect a dynamic partnership of the past and the present, tradition and modernity, that if India does not do so now her future is at stake. The paper examines the growth of modernity in India through the nineteenth century and argues that to a large extent even this modernity and the stirrings of nationhood are informed by a spiritual attitude to life. The paper in short argues for a usable past which will preserve the best from tradition, select from it that which is useful and reject the dross so as to forge a future which is intimately linked with the past. Evolution, rather than revolution is the paper’s burden. That is the Indian way.

This paper is a review of Pierre Vesperini’s book: La philosophie antique. Essai d’histoire (Paris: Fayard, 2019). According to the author, Vesperini attempts to make the reader more aware and critical of our current interpretation of the ancients. He does it by showing that modernity, influenced by ancient Christianity, misinterpreted ancient philosophy, and that the latter did not slough off the “irrational,” “mystique,” or “mythique” over the centuries in favor of rationalism, but retained these elements throughout its pre-Christian history.

This paper reflects, first, on the Eurocentric condition of the theories of secularization and their disregard of the incidence of the conquest, colonialism and slavery on the rise of Modernity. By looking at some key definitions of the Caribbean anti-colonialist essay (C. L. R. James, Depestre, Fanon) which point at the “whiteness” inherent in the modern philosophy of history that justified the coexistence of slavery with the emancipation of man, we then posit the “racialization” of Progress as one of the most evident modulations of the paradoxical dynamics secularization/sacralization which characterizes Modernity. Lastly, we observe that while the Afro-Caribbean anti-colonialist essay has recourse to a Marxist body of thought which enables it to deconstruct Western myths (Progress, Race, the “universal” ideals of the French Revolution), beliefs return, however, in literary form through Negritude’s imaginary of emancipation and the political (secularized, resacralized) experience of the African diaspora as revolutionary subject.

This paper is a review of the book: Rémi Brague, Des vérités devenues folles (Paris: Salvator, 2019). The book is a collection of Brague’s lectures that cover virtue and values, anthropology, nature and creation, and the family and culture. The author highlights that Brague (1) calls his readers back to the profound insights of the medieval mind, and (2) helps them see that their noble and urgent task consists in handing on a living tradition to the next generation and beyond.

Este artículo realiza un estudio del panorama museístico en Francia tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en concreto de Le Havre. El objetivo es demostrar los avances que se producen en esta ciudad desde el ámbito de la museología, en medio del proceso de reconstrucción urbanística debido a la devastación producida por el conflicto bélico. En los años cincuenta se recupera el museo provincial, el cual surge con una perspectiva americana y con claves de modernidad, lo que le convierte en un museo-tipo y en el referente de la museología francesa. Además, anticipa una serie de valores sociales y democráticos que comulgan con las Maisons de la Culture de André Malraux, razón por la cual fue sede de esta institución y se consideró el modelo a seguir. A su vez, el museo mantiene un continuo diálogo con el entorno urbanístico y el arte contemporáneo instalado en el espacio público. / This paper carries out a study of the museum scene in France after the Second World War, in particular Le Havre. The aim is to demonstrate the advances that take place in this city from the field of museology, in the middle of the process of urban reconstruction due to the devastation produced by the war. In the fifties the provincial museum was recovered, which emerged with an American perspective and with keys to modernity, making it a model museum and the benchmark for French museology. In addition, it anticipates a series of social and democratic values that commune with André Malraux’s Maisons de la Culture, which is why it was the headquarters of this institution and was considered a model to follow. At the same time, the museum maintains a continuous dialogue with the urban environment and contemporary art installed in the public space.

This paper reflects upon a decisive issue, namely, the relation between modernity and coloniality in the Latin American context. What remains to be settled is whether European modernity is inherently colonial, or, in other words, whether all modern European thought is indistinguishably and inseparably interwoven with grammars of coloniality that, even today, are reproduced in the arenas of knowledge and power. The guiding thread of this inquiry will be the theoretical proposals of Walter Mignolo, a thinker who argues precisely for the consubstantiality of modernity and coloniality.

This paper emphasises, through the notion of generic intertextuality, the Homeric inheritance in the literary modernity. Specific techniques of transtextual communication are employed to analyse how the myth of Odyssey was valued in modern literature, i.e. the novels of two emblematic writers, Joyce and Faulkner. In Ulysses, desacralisation is visible at all levels, but it does not eliminate the identity of the protagonists who are saved by their humanity. Soldiers’ Pay, a rewriting based on allusions to the myth of Odysseus, denies the perspective of recovery. Ulysses’ counterpart is an alienated being suffocated by the superficial world he lives in, an example of de-heroisation that modernity uses without restraint.

The fact that we live in an interconnected plural world makes it necessary for common problems such as environmental crisis to be solved in common. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through dialogue, the more extensive the better. Plurality, which has plenty of virtues, can also lead to difficulties when defining the conditions of possibility of said dialogue. The present paper wishes to analyze whether the Catholic Church, through the encyclical Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis, could be a valid interlocutor in the environmental crisis, specifically in the context of modernity. Can a text written by the highest authority in Catholicism be of interest to others than the believers of this religion and the scholars studying religious phenomena? Do LS’s critiques of technoscience imply a rejection of modernity, given that technoscience is an unequivocal part of modern rationality?

The paper offers a comparative study of Turgenev’s novel Smoke (1867) and Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915). Eliot's poem has been thoroughly studied in this context for the first time; the research aims to state some important analogies between two texts and reveal new semantic contents and conceptual substances. The parallel analysis of the novel and the poem also helps to clarify their historical-literary significance and to understand why these works continue to attract attention of readers and critics. The choice of the two works for the research has been determined by the literary texts themselves and a number of typological parallels. Eliot highly appreciated Turgenev's literary genius, and expressed his admiration for Turgenev’s works in his letters and literary criticism (“Turgenev”, “In Memory of Henry James”). Particular attention is paid to the Europeanism of Turgenev and Eliot, whose aesthetic positions can be defined as “an incarnation of European culture” (T.S. Eliot). One of the central characters of both texts is a femme fatale considered in mythological (Gorgon Medusa, Helen of Troy) and culturalhistorical (“the epoch of Salome”) aspects. Such figurative concepts as “crab”, “dead head”, “smoke”, etc. were examined through comparative perspective. The study suggests that Smoke and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock largely correspond to the aesthetics and style of the modernity being marginal works in Turgenev’s and Eliot’s heritage thus reflecting the borderline character of the turn of the centuries – and of the cultural eras.

This paper examines the issue of ethics in Lord of the Flies (1954) by the English Postmodern writer, William Golding (1911-1993). The study is grounded on some ethical principles drawn from the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). It concludes that ethics is absent in the environment where Golding’s characters evolve. This absence of ethical references mainly results from western modernity that called into question all former references that provided moral ideals. As such, Lord of Flies enacts, with much irony, the ethical void in which western modernity introduced humanity.

This paper intends to discuss the case of Latvia in comparison with other European postcolonial situations and to trace the problems which determine the complexity of self-consciousness of the inhabitants of the country from postcolonial and post-Soviet perspective. The focus of this investigation is on the series of novels which deal with twentieth-century history and memory in Latvia. Due to the fact that the chosen texts attempt an evaluation of the Soviet past, an attention is paid to those aspects of representation of the everyday which considerably distinguish contemporary fiction from literary works created during the period of socialist realist dominance. The importance of history and of different everyday practices in forming specific features of national identity is also seen in the context of the attempts of contemporary authors to discover and define themselves as part of today’s global community as they try to position themselves within world literature. In this perspective, the contemporary as well as the historical experience of the Baltic nations testifies to the common roots of European society helping to build bridges between different ethnic and social groups and their members.

The essay was written in commemoration of Jaroslav Průšek (1906–1980) by his former student Leo Ou-fan Lee. The author offers a rereading of Průšek’s groundbreaking research on modern Chinese literature assessing his theoretical insights which have made profound impact on the discipline and have remained a constant source of inspiration for Chinese literature studies. It discusses the implications of Průšek’s two famous papers – one on individualism and subjectivism, the other on a “confrontation” between traditional Chinese literature and modern European literature – and re-examines their relevance to the study of modern Chinese literature today as cultural history.

This paper presents and analyses shifts in the signifier ‘technology’ over time. It focuses on two historical periods: Classical Greece and Modernity. After verifying general patterns present for twenty centuries, this work considers the changes in the meaning of the signifier ‘technology’ that are due to the emergence of capitalist production. Thus, modernity is described as a crucial moment when the new meanings of such signifier are formed, but also when contingency appears as an essential phenomenon that is verified in the various nuances of the term in different languages. Finally, the multiple meanings of this signifier do not constitute the impossibility of conceptual apprehension. Specifically, the meanings that were found range from an association with rhetoric and grammar started by Aristotle, including the discourse, description, and terminology of arts and techniques, to the point at which the signifier designates the object made by using technical, scientific, and industrial knowledge. We observe an increasing shift towards the latter meaning that is reinforced in the present.

The paper explores definitions of modernity, with a particular focus on the relationship between Baudelaire’s modern poetry and the Portuguese poetry of Decadentismo.

El presente trabajo pretende analizar el riesgo de inundación que ha implicado el río Reventado para la ciudad de Cartago, entre 1891 y 2017 a partir de los cuatro factores subyacentes del riesgo, con el fin de demostrar que este históricamente el riesgo ha estado ligado al desarrollo de la Ciudad de Cartago, entendiendo a su vez el riesgo como un componente siempre presente en las relaciones sociedad-naturaleza. En la primera parte se explica teóricamente la conexión entre Modernidad y riesgo; mientras que posteriormente en los dos siguientes apartados se expone el desarrollo histórico de la Ciudad de Cartago paralelo a amenaza, así como los intentos modernistas de control sobre río Reventado. Mientras que en su última parte el artículo presente un análisis a partir de los factores subyacentes del riego del caso de estudio. The development as container and generator of risk: the city of Cartago (Costa Rica) and the floods caused by the Reventado River (1891-2017) This paper analyzes the risk of flooding involving the River Reventado for the city of Cartago between 1891 and 2017 from the four underlying risk factors, in order to demonstrate that this risk has historically been linked to the development of City of Cartago, understanding the risk as a component always present in the relations society-nature. I n the first part the connection between Modernity and risk is explained theoretically; whereas later in the two following sections the historical development of the City of Cartago is exposed, parallel to the threat, as well as the modernist attempts to control the Reventado River. While in its last part the article presents an analysis based on the underlying factors of the case study risk.

Este artículo da a conocer la relevancia de una buena parte del desconocido patrimonio arquitectónico salmantino de la década de 1950. Finalizada la Guerra Civil, el objetivo de la arquitectura se concentró en la reconstrucción y dignificación del país a base de un estilo historicista anacrónico, que fue remitiendo a finales de la década de 1940. Este fue el caso de Salamanca, ciudad en la que la renovación arquitectónica se dio en las tipologías religiosa, doméstica e industrial. Las nuevas obras proyectadas en Madrid se erigieron rápidamente como los modelos a seguir, de las que tuvieron noticia los técnicos bien por conocimiento directo o bien a través de las numerosas publicaciones que se promovieron desde el Estado. Aquellas constituyeron un indudable estímulo y favorecieron el viraje hacia la modernidad, a la que se dio en llamar la «Nueva Arquitectura». Tras el análisis del corpus salmantino, resulta fácil demostrar la voluntad de renovación con la que fue proyectado, así como la distinción de notables ejemplos objeto de estudio, de los que se incorpora referencias archivísticas, hemerográficas y gráficas.This paper offers a view of the importance of Salamanca’s architecture during the Fifties. The situation in Spain in the aftermath of the Civil War change the orientation of the Spanish architecture, so that during the Fifties Salamanca redefined religious, housing and industrial architectural models. Publications were crucial for spreading the modern models but also travelling and studying the buildings in big cities like Madrid. Having this reference, the architects that worked in Salamanca knew how to change from historical design to modern one that are worth to study. The aim of this work is also give detailed newspapers, graphic and archive’s documentation that will show the importance of the architectural heritage of the city of Salamanca in that period.

[es] Este trabajo aborda ciertos aspectos de la obra de Paul Virilio con la intención de recuperar un pensamiento singular y novedoso que nos permita interpelar alguna de las problemáticas que suscita en la actualidad el campo de estudios de la comunicación, en especial aquella que se refiere a la relación entre medios de comunicación, técnicas de percepción y modos de experimentación del espacio y del tiempo. En este sentido, se intenta dar cuenta de los aspectos más importantes y sobresalientes que implica la revolución de las transmisiones con su desarrollo de una velocidad absoluta y límite, intentando asimismo establecer algunos vínculos que podrían diferenciarla o no de la revolución precedente, esto es, la revolución de los transportes. Los modernos medios eléctricos y electrónicos de comunicación, desde el teléfono, pasando por la radio, la fotografía, el cine, la televisión, hasta llegar a Internet o al ciberespacio, consuman y acaban cumpliendo quizá el gran sueño de la especie humana, el proyecto más ambicioso, más osado: la sociedad veloz, la sociedad dromológica, la sociedad de carreras, la dromocracia.[en] This paper addresses certain aspects of Paul Virilio’s work with the intent of recovering a particular and innovative thought that will allow us considering some of the issues currently dealt with in communication studies, especially those focusing on the relationship between media, perception techniques and various forms of experiencing space and time. In this respect, the aim is to account for the most prominent and important aspects entailed in the revolution of transmissions and its development of an absolute and limit speed, while establishing some relations that could differentiate this revolution from a previous one, that is, the transport revolution. The modern electric and electronic means of communication – from the telephone, radio, photography, cinema, television to the arrival of Internet and the cyberspace – may have fulfilled the great dream of the human species, the most ambitious and daring project: the high-speed society, the dromological society, the race society, the dromocracy.

Several initiatives within literary theory and criticism have been endeavored toestablish the frontiers of literature. Every new historical and literary contextbrings forth new expectations with regard to the literary text and consequentlynew evaluation criteria. Contemporary Brazilian literature, produced within theso-called post-modernity and marked by diffidence in universal discourses, hasreflected upon itself to problematizefrontiers, cross-roads and intersectionsestablished with other languages. The current paper discusses the metafiction inthe short stories of Luci Collin. The theoretical interdisciplinary perspective isforegrounded on post-structuralist thought.

This paper presents the “question” of evil in direct relation to modernity. The proposed theses hold that evil cannot be studied by searching for its origins, but by inscribing it within specific historical and cultural coordinates. In this case, the coordinates are located in the modern world and a Modernity that launched the promise of progress and in fact opened the door to anthropological correction, disguising it as a necessary gesture for re-founding humanity itself.

The commemorative phenomenon, the keystone of the construction of the national imaginary, has been used often in the service of integrating an official history into the collective memory. This work studies the official image of the Bolivian nation, proposed in 1925 during the celebrations of the “first centenary of the Independence,” through the elaboration of a real “monument of paper” sponsored by the government of Bautista Saavedra: Bolivia en el primer centenario de su Independencia. Following three didactic objectives (for foreigners, for natives and for posterity), we’ll show that it functioned as a performative narrative-portrait of the model of an ideal imagined nation.

Often highlighted are the modern features of some art works that caused them to be rejected in their time, such as the Paraíba, by Almeida Reis, 1866, set in Europe during the scholarship of the artist. In this paper, we analyze and question the modern or traditional character of this work, through its detailed study, its relationships and influences, its situation in the tradition of the subject represented, and the important fact that it was received into a very different artistic environment to the one in which it was created.

Even though explanatory models tided in with the dominated Theory of Dependence, as Marcos Kaplan’s, are global and generic enough to make possible general interpretations around the function of the world structure, they allow likewise highpoint the specificity of the process of Latin-American region and, in this case, the formation of the State. In consequence, and even its limitations, it is possible to affirm that these models can open enlightened perspectives and questions as well to the LatinAmerican political science as to Latin-American thinking. In this context, the paper of authoritarianism is transcendental to understand the evolution of historical process of the construction of the State (the way to authority modernity in Latin-American).

In this work we analyze the relationship between science and religion in the beginning of the 21st century in a context of change. The hypothesis from which we articulate the paper is that we are immersed in a failure of the so-called “secular raison”. Next, we show the aspects that in a fi rst sight illustrate this change from the point of view of religion and experimental science. Finally, we suggest some proposals to integrate in an interdisciplinary perspective this relationship, which is so important to obtain a comprehensive and profound vision of reality.