Dos sentidos à verdade suprema. Uma leitura comparada entre Agostinho e Anselmo

Com base em De musica de Santo Agostinho e em De veritate de Santo Anselmo, propõe-se a articulação do conceito agostiniano numerus com o conceito anselmiano rectitudo. Embora pertençam a idiolectos distintos, e apesar dos sete séculos que separam os textos em questão, numerus e rectitudo apresentam um mesmo valor de síntese e um mesmo modo de existência que é, simultaneamente, causa e medida de conformidade das coisas em relação à essência da qual provêm. A articulação destes conceitos constituirá, pois, a base para uma análise do papel dos sentidos na percepção dos elos divinos presentes no mundo sensível e na capacidade humana de conhecer Deus.

A proposta (i)modesta de Berkeley. Um mundo sem matéria

Berkeley’s general tenet about immaterialism is presented and discussed. I examined apart the several theses that concur to the immaterialist theory. After that, the general argument is presented and discussed. In particular, I stress Berkeley’s assumption that a world without matter and a world with matter would be indistinguishable from the point of view of (i) the content of perceptions, (ii) natural science (viz. Newtonian mechanics). I stress that this assumption depends on a relative account of circular motion, generating the centrifugal forces, as Newton shows in his bucket experiment. In spite of the efforts by Leibniz and Huygens, such a relative account of rotational motion was never presented. So the thesis about the scientific and perceptual identity between worlds with and without matter remains a simple case of wishful thinking in need for a justification.

O conceito de Klugheit em Kant

This paper aims to analyze Kant’s concept of Klugheit and how it relates to morality. For Kant, this concept does not belong to the field of morality as it is, according to him, an interested act, therefore only capable of hypothetical imperatives. In this sense, prudence generates at most one’s own happiness, but not necessarily goodness. On the other hand, we reason that prudence plays an important role in promoting man’s moral improvement towards the exercise of virtue. Prudence only holds good, therefore, if understood from a Kantian anthropological point of view.