BUDDHISM AND MODERNITY: IN THE MARGIN OF DONALD S. LOPEZ JR.'S "BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE

ABSTRACT The present article aims at setting the issue of the relationship between Buddhism and science in a historical and philosophical frame wider than that one taken into account by the international scholarship so far. The historical point of view allows us to conclude that the narrative that connects Buddhism with science is not based on features intrinsic to Buddhist thought. In fact, such narrative prospered thanks to the development of a dialectic, typical of the 18th and 19th centuries, between science and religion. The philosophical point of view allows us to conclude that such narrative is backed by a metaphysical-like thought that denies the specificity of both science and Buddhism.

Heidegger and Blumenberg on modernity

The debate surrounding the way in which Heidegger and Blumenberg understand the modern age is an opportunity to discuss two different approaches to history. On one hand, from Heidegger's perspective, history should be understood as starting from how Western thought related to Being, which, in metaphysical thinking, took the form of the forgetfulness of Being. Thus, the modern age represents the last stage in the process of forgetfulness of Being, which announces the moment of the rethinking of the relationship with Being by appealing to the authentic disclosure of Being. On the other hand, Blumenberg understands history as the result of the reoccupation process, which means replacing old theories with other new ones. Thus, to the historical approach it is not important to identify epochs as periods of time between two events, but to think about the discontinuities occurring throughout history. Starting from here, the modern age will be thought of not as an expression of the radicalization of the forgetfulness of Being, but as a response to the crises of medieval conceptions. For the same reason, the interpretation of history as a history of the forgetfulness of Being is considered by Blumenberg to subordinate history to an absolute principle, without taking into account its protagonists' needs and necessities.

A química do estanho no século 18, ou como uma consulta se transformou num projeto de pesquisa

An ominous suspicion arose in France in the second half of the 18th century, that household tin objects might be contaminated with arsenic. Charged with the task of studying and deciding the question, the chemists Pierre Bayen and Louis Charlard set up a comprehensive research project, which resulted in a book describing the whole enterprise. It is very gratifying to analyse this work today, for the many lights it sheds on the way chemistry was practised and reasoned at the time, and for the whiff of modernity we are presented with.

A new cultural cleavage in post-modern society

The attitudes towards gender and homosexuality tend to be linked at the micro level (individuals), which explains the political saliency of this newly emerging cleavage. At the macro level (country), the main finding is that the value orientations towards gender and homosexuality are strongly embedded in the basic cultural or civilisation differences among countries. As developing countries modernise and enter post-modernity, they will also experience the gender cleavage, especially when they adhere to an individualistic culture. Cultural cleavages in the post-modern society, whether in rich or developing countries, can only be properly researched by the survey method. It opens up a large area for both micro and macro analyses in the social sciences.

Respostas a uma crítica marxista às perspectivas retórica e pragmática em economia

Answers to a marxist critic of the rhetorical and pragmatic perspectives in economics. Based on recent discussions regarding the rhetorical perspective in economics, this paper presents an interpretation of the philosophical approach of Habermas which attempts to rescue the so called 'modern spirit', forgotten in the annals of the 19th century, similar to that presented by Marshall Berman in 1982. Following the reconstructive approach of Habermas's project of modernity, we attempt to show how a 'rhetorical approach' could be applied in the field of economics, and yet still be clearly modern by taking into account intersubjectivities, given the expanded sphere of human communication (as defended in the theory of communicative action of Habermas). In this sense, we will seek to demonstrate the philosophical limits of the anti-rhetorical critiques of, for example, Paulani (1996, 2003, 2005, 2006), which seem to underestimate the linguistic and intersubjective aspect of Habermas's philosophical project that can also be found in McCloskey’s methodological approach.

A aventura da crítica

The adventure of the critic. The aim of this paper is to reply the critical observations made by Fernandes, Rego and Gala in this number of Revista de Economia Política about a paper of mine, also published in this same journal in January 2006, which deals with the relationship between Economics and Rethoric and its unfolding in Brazil. Answering these critical observations I have tried to show that: a) it is not easy, as they do, to associate Habermas’s project to the defense of the approach of Rethoric in Economics; Habermas himself has a lot of objections to the association of his project with Rorty’s pragmatism which seems to be the strongest McCloskey’s influence; b) it is not true that my considerations have a kind of epistemological immunity and that they are not liable to contestations; if it seems so it is because the nature of the materialistic approach itself. At the end I observe that my carpers didn’t reply my observations about the unfolding of the rethorical project in Brazil and that this is, at some measure, surprising, because they are central personages in it.

Leigos, expertos e formação de expectativa

Laypeople, experts and expectation formation. This article is a critical discussion, under the light of expectation formation, of the relation that interposes between economic science as body of knowledge and its agents.