Article
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The role of the Philosophy and Jesuit imagery in the Portuguese missions (1500-1597)
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: O papel da Filosofia e do imaginário jesuítico nas missões portuguesas (1500-1597)
Published in The World of Tradition
As the importance of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese colonizing process is indisputable, the specificities of Jesuit cultural imagery were equally decisive to define several elements in the cultural formation of the colonies. Often centred on literature at many points of its historical development, Portuguese thought of the time was heavily determined by philosophy. Particularly in the sixteenth century, the first century of global colonization, the evangelizing impetus of the Society of Jesus acted as a main existential drive in both cultural and political process of sending missionaries abroad. This paper emphasizes the capital relevance of transcendent beliefs and values in the worldview of such missionaries, and how they shaped the missionary ethos in the daily life, the educational initiatives and the first reports of Jesuit authors.
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The right of life and death in war in De iure belli libri tres (1598) by Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Giuliano MARCHETTO
Original title: Il diritto di vita e di morte in guerra nel De iure belli libri tres (1598) di Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Published in The World of Tradition
In war, there are situations in which one side is given the power of life or death over the other. The medieval legal tradition tries to bring this power back into law and to limit it. The Italian jurist Alberico Gentili in his work De jure belli libri tres (1598) represents, in the modern age, the attempt to offer an interpretation of war as an instrument of justice and therefore regulated in every aspect by the law. Gentili’s theory is the opposite of a different tradition, ancient but always resurfacing in history, which instead sees war as a place from which law is absent, is silent and only violence, which includes an unlimited vitae necisque potestas, thus becomes the origin of law and of every new power and order.
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When everything would appear to man as it is – infinite, from Kant to Viola (1781-1983)
Waldir BARRETO
Original title: Quando tudo pareceria ao homem tal como é – infinito, de Kant a Viola (1781-1983)
Published in The World of Tradition
This essay proposes a theoretical consideration about the possibility of a transcendental analysis of the aesthetic experience with art according to Kantian criticism and the temporal dimension of Bill Viola’s work, taken from the Bergsonian concept of duration.
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Ancient Medicine and the body’s perception in Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC)
Hélio Angotti Neto
Original title: A Medicina Antiga e a percepção do corpo em Hipócrates (c. 460-370 a. C.)
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Hippocratic medicine addresses the human body and its phenomena based on principles like the complexity and the balance of its components among themselves and its relations towards the nature. By means of logical formulations based on the composition of the human body by humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and dark bile) and, consequently, principles (heat, cold, dry and humid), the Hippocratic author seeks an explanation of phenomena such as epidemic diseases and nutritional disorders. Although the text is anachronistic, according to the current scientific perspective, there are epistemological principles obtained through contemplative science and empiricism that still have some value in relation to medical epistemology concerning human body comprehension.
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The World of Dionysus. Visions of bodies in fun in Classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: El mundo de Dioniso. Visiones de los cuerpos en diversión en la Grecia Clásica
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
The figure of the mythical Greek god Dionysus presided over the most playful aspects of classical Hellenic society, whether they were parties, banquets, comedies, or celebrations in general. The visualizations of the scenes of the divinity of wine and orgy, accompanied by his crazy cohort of satyrs and maenads, show the burlesque, critical and comic sense of a culture that laid the foundations of the West. Something as contemporary as today’s graphic humor finds images of its remote origins through the splendid figurative ceramics of the classical Greek period dedicated to this god. This article shows and analyzes some examples of that visual world where the festive, the comic and the conceptually ingenious provide the unveiling of the transgressive universe of Greek society.
