Volume XX (2015), no. 2

In the Nicomachean Ethics, traditionally assumed to be the last of the three ethical writings attributed to Aristotle, practical wisdom (phronesis) is given two descriptions whose relationship is far from being completely elucidated. Phronesis is described as the capability of truly understanding the end of human life and also of discerning the appropriate means to attain this end. In their attempt to capture the way in which these two definitions are coordinated, scholars have proposed considerably different hypotheses. These would be enough reasons to justify a detailed analysis of the highly corrupted text dealing with the subject of phronesis in the Eudemian Ethics. [*]

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[*] This work was possible due to the financial support of the Sectorial Operational Program for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/140863 with the title “Competitive European researchers in the fields of socio-economics and humanities. Multiregional research net (CCPE)”.

This paper analyzes an anthropological and philosophical point of view concerning the creation and evolution of every individual; in that respect the moment of birth is of a capital importance. It comes to put an end to a way of life (the intrauterine one) and to open the perspectives of human life as we generally understand it. But the ontogenesis as a process can be viewed from a broad perspective, at least as a part of philogenesis. Ontogenesis also presents, besides its manifest aspects (physiological and psychological), the possibility of some cognitive studies, anthropologically oriented, which may enlarge, and give nuance to, the comprehension of this circumstance, generally discussed in the anatomy, physiology and psychology textbooks (mainly developmental psychology). Ontogenesis, as a cast out of the intrauterine sphere, sees itself framed, contained and absorbed through the integration in the family system, which is formative and, obvious, necessary, but, at the same time, limited and restrictive to the cultural topos of a micro-group. On the one hand, we have the modernist tendency towards humanisation and adequate social enrolling, and, on the other hand, we may explore the necessary methodology for giving back the individual to himself, through trying the ways of autarchic re-finding and redefining. Even if it looks segregationist, the discussed approach allows the possibility of (re)gaining personal autonomy and interiority by re-discovering the personal fundamentals. What we want to underline in this paper is oriented to the re-analysis of the subjective interiority, delineated and re-gained out of the multiple aspects of the exteriority or exteriorities that contain us, include us and oblige us. Comprising and engaging the subject in exteriority may lead to a loss of specific substance, to a dissolution into the omnipresent objective given. We are worried because of the predominant valorisation of the extravert tendency to rapidly and suddenly entrain into the social, and neglecting the values of an introvert character, centred on the subject and settled in self, in the personal sphere. We shall present some aspects of the casting in exteriority, some pernicious effects of this unilateral tendency that is so trendy, being focused on a (re)calibration of the balance, more exactly on the ethical recovery of the subject.

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This article presents a theoretical analysis of the various aspects involved in the construction of knowledge in the medical research article, currently a highly demanding but also rewarding genre in the international academic environment. The analysis takes into consideration the most prevalent features of present-day written academic discourse, with focus on the writing conventions and rhetorical strategies primarily used for successful scientific communication in medicine. The paper offers a multidisciplinary approach by adopting a pragmatic view of linguistics applied to written medical discourse in order to create a comprehensive picture of the current requirements of medical research reporting.

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The paper grapples with the cultural implications brought about by the “right to be forgotten” ruled by the European Court of Justice in May 2014. The main argument developed at length in this paper is that we are witnessing a momentous shift in the order of social memory, from an old-age paradigm of anamnesis characterized by a will to memory against the background set by a default of forgetting towards a paradigm of public amnesia characterized by a quest for privacy against an ever-expanding digital memory. [*]

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[*] This work was possible due to the financial support of the Sectorial Operational Program for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/132400 with the title “Young successful researchers – professional development in an international and interdisciplinary environment”.

The paper overviews some of the most important anti-Marxist traditions in the Romanian public sphere and analyses the discourse of three of the most important anti-communist philosophers today: Andrei Pleşu, Gabriel Liiceanu and Horia-Roman Patapievici. The main argument is that most relevant ideas of the author The Capital are misused and misinterpreted, due to a primitive understanding of Marxism. One problem is that Romania lacks academic studies of post-Marxism. The other is that the Romanian intellectuals are most often propagating ready-made Marxist ideas, half-truths without referencing the original context. Returning to the classical work of Terry Eagleton, who suggested that “Marx was right,” the author proposes a return to Marxist concepts, so necessary when it comes to critically understanding present day capitalism.

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