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1. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Alexander Baumgarten

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In this paper I shall debate the thesis according to which in the Aristotelian treatise On Soul the sense of touch works as a kind of knot for the knowledge faculties and, implicitly, as a unity for the entire treatise: it has a primitive function in the feeding process, it also represents a starting point for both the faculty of motion and knowledge, then relates itself symmetrical to the sense of vision through the typology of the intermediaries and to the intellect through the criterion of nonbeing, and finally reveals to the receiver a kind of truth that has no more the false as an alternative. On the other hand, the intellect recovers in its own faculty the sense of touch by recreating its functions in the connection between intellect and the indivisible intelligibles. Given these relations, the sense of touch represents the main connection of the treatise's large themes from the question of motion to that of knowledge and it is also literally (certain aristotelian remarksover the theme of earth being taken into consideration here) related to the living body.

2. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Thomas Kochalumchuvattil

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Africa’s widespread problems are well publicized and none receives more attention than that of periodic outbreaks of ethnic violence. Past events in Rwanda, and in the ongoing conflict in Darfur-Sudan, linger in the memory while the outbreak of postelection violence in Kenya is a more recent example of the seemingly endless capacity of Africa to generate ethnic unrest. The problems of Africa have become the subject of intense philosophical debate and reflection in an effort to find a just and sustainable future for the continent. This contribution to the ongoing debate will argue that the root cause of ethnic violence (and indeed many of Africa’s other problems) is a lack of subjectivity and that the insights of Søren Kierkegaard, with regard to the role of subjectivity in intersubjective relations, will not only give us a perspective on the origins of these problems, but through education, offer a way forward to a more optimistic future.

3. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Sebastian Boţic

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This paper is concerned with the ′criterion of demarcation′ that Karl Popper put forward, while trying to show that it can be safely said that it is still standing. In doing so, I turn to two main objections to it: a Lakatos-Kuhn vision on the growth of science, and the famous Quine-Duhem thesis. The point that I hopefully made here is that the basic message of this prescriptive method is as respectful as ever, and, although not the subject of this paper, for special emerging fields of knowledge, such us urbanism – my main field of interest, falsifiability can offer the right scientific attitude.

4. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Jun Wang

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In Heinrich Rombach’s structural thought the phenomenological tradition has been extended to an intercultural dimension. In Rombach’s opinion the idea of structure has been developed in the East much earlier and much further than in the West. In the following paper I will show from an Eastern perspective that the philosophy of Confucius in terms of “Ren” or “concrete humanity” has an affinity with the Structural Phenomenology, which strives toward the living situations as the original aim. The Structural phenomenology concepts here the “human person” (menschlicher Mensch): people should live with the return back to the life-world, in the origin of the construction of interpersonal relationships, “I” melts in the concrete life history, and the special relationship between people will be placed before the entity or personal “I”. This idea highly matches the concept “Ren” in the Confucian philosophy. Through the understanding of structural thought, we can get a new dimension of comprehension for the Confucian concept “Ren”. By this comparison, we can see the phenomenology and its latest development trends are included in the potential of linking eastern and western cultures. This potential does not come from the single texts, but from the fundamentalrecognition and understanding in the inter-cultural interaction.

5. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Elif Çirakman

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The aim of this article is to investigate the ways in which memory and imagination operate in and through the development of consciousness in literary texts. Itsguiding theme shall be the double consciousness in modern life which sets the plot for one of the masterpieces of Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903). Thus The Ambassadors artfully crafts the “inwardness of the modern mind” by plotting it as a process of maturity and of becoming mindful through the powers of imagination, recollection and memory. The prospect of the novel consists in the possibility of envisioning a sense of freedom or of life that is one’s own making. The interpretation that I endorse here is guided by the question of intimacy and its relation to freedom, and is made in the light of what Hegel says in his Philosophy of Mind with regard to the development of mind’s powers. This assessment may disclose a way of learning and growing through becoming mindful of the oppositions that pervade the modern mind. Henry James and Hegel, each in their unique way, recollect this lesson that modern life teaches by raising it to a higher consciousness as we find in the form of their art and philosophy.

6. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Nicolito A. Gianan

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The article aims to support the notion of philosophy emerging from culture; a notion that paves the way for the emergence of ubuntu as a philosophy from an African culture. Understanding this emergence is vital in the manner a particular human community relates with itself and other communities worldwide. Moreover, the idea of ubuntu has become a philosophy that is in dialogue with culture. Hence, from the writer’s punto de vista, this stance further strengthens the argument affirming the value of African culture from which African philosophy has certainly emerged.

7. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Xiaoxiao Wang

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Architecture culture is the synthesis of material possession and spiritual wealth, created by human society history development and reflects historic continuity and nationality character. This paper has a comprehensive comparison analysis on distinctions of originality, architecture characteristic, developing logic, art forms, and intention between China and Western Countries exhibited on architectural culture, including three parts: ancient period, current period, and future development. Through comparison studies, it presents a comprehensive cognition on different cultural backgrounds and unique exhibition forms for different architectural styles on China and Western Countries; have a deeper understanding on architectural culture communion in two different civilization zones; and find a future developing way with ethical features and spirit for Chinese and Western architecture.

8. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Till Kinzel

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This paper explores the implications of mass migration and the conditions of hybridization for early 21st century Western societies in texts dealing with migrantexperiences. The novel Goodbye Lucille (2007) by the Afro-cosmopolitan writer Segun Afolabi will be explored with respect to the crucial problem of an ethics and politics of belonging, related to the recent controversies surrounding multiculturalism and issues of migration. This text deals with the “in-between world” of migrants and negotiates questions of identity, alienation and belonging in a so-called transcultural/transnational context. The issues raised in Segun Afolabi's fiction are addressed by employing the ways of thinking developed in political philosophy, including recent phenomenological attempts to theorize the notion of “home” and “belonging” (e.g., by Karen Joisten, but also Martin Heidegger) in order to deal with the complexities of the issue. The question, “What constitutes the good life for the individual and the political community?”, needs to be considered by taking into account the current plurality of approaches to forging identitiesin the political sphere as well. The subtlety of literary accounts of this phenomenon – literature may indeed be one of the best diagnostic instrument for studying a society – sheds light, I suggest, on the conditions of politically relevant identity formations. A close reading of literary texts such as those by Afolabi offers an important contribution to a realistic, and therefore complex and complicating, account of our overall situation in the Western world with respect to the politics of belonging.

9. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Raffaella Santi

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William Whewell is usually portraied as an anti-Hegelian. This article shows that, despite his criticism for Hegel’s philosophical system, Whewell was influenced by the Hegelian “historical” approach in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and by the conception of the progressive development of though (philosophy for Hegel, science for Whewell) as a dialectical unity.

10. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Carmen Cozma

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In the context of today.s moral and ecological crisis, and the accelerated advance of information and communication technologies, when human beings intensively experience their own fragility, a major question is that of well-being. That raises the issue of moral health, which represents, in an axiological and normative sense, a basis for the human being to find proper opportunities for remaking and protecting the beingness' equilibrium in face of a variety of risks in a society of excesses. We consider that a significant element of moral health lies in the old Greek value of sophrosýne. In this essay, we highlight its meaning and role. We do this by reviving the core of a wise learning coming from Ancient philosophy about one of the moral excellences. Sophrosýne is approached as a necessary factor in human well-being; it is pursued in the prophylactic and therapeutic potential for the maintenance of human health; finally, it is developed inits fundamental action of allowing happiness in a well-functioning and self-fulfilling life of the human being.

11. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Marţian Iovan

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An extremely profound knower of the history of the Romanian people and of humankind as a whole, Vasile Goldiş brought an original contribution to the development of philosophy of history. In this respect, without having attempted to write a treatise or to work out a systematic body of work in the field, he discovered objective grounds or “natural laws” determining the evolution lines for historical events, analyzed the relation between trends in lawmaking and the unifying force of spiritual values, expressed his persuasion regarding historical progress, the need for solidarity among people and peoples until humanity would reach a planetary organization of society, a world state capable of securing universal peace, based on the precept of Christian love and succeeding in bringing the human soul and the divine absoluteness together.

12. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Kiymet Selvi

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The aim of this article is to discuss and clarify the general framework of teachers’ competencies. The general framework regarding teacher competencies wereexplained in nine different dimensions as field competencies, research competencies, curriculum competencies, lifelong learning competencies, social-cultural competen cies, emotional competencies, communication competencies, information and communication technologies competencies (ICT) and environmental competencies. Teachers’ competencies affect their values, behaviors, communication, aims and practices in school and also they support professional development and curricular studies. Thus, the discussion on teachers’ competencies to improve the teaching-learning process in school is of great importance.

13. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Maximiliano E. Korstanje

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The present piece is aimed at discussing the relationship between religion and political power. Basically, social psychology like other humanistic sciences had been fully impacted by the effects of first and Second World War. Under such a context, many scholars devoted particular attention to the study of prejudice and discrimination. In the following pages we will try to synthesize how religion contributes for the conformation of ideology and social depictions. In part, this does not suffice to affirm religion is responsible for nationalism but both share analogical element in their respective formations. This paper is accompanied with the analysis of an empirical research carried out from 2006-2007 in Cromagnon Sanctuary, Buenos Aires Argentina. In brief, let us readers to remind that on 30 December of 2004, more than 400 hundred youths congregated to celebrate a new year and hear Callejeros recital, their favorite Rock and Roll band. But came out wrong whenever a flare impacted in the ceiling firing suddenly all stadiums wherein this event was being carried out. As a result of this tragic accident, 194people died and more than 400 manifested diverse respiratory chronic pathologies. This event was well known as the Republic of Cromagnon tragedy.

14. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Sanja Ivic Orcid-ID

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In the following lines the symbolic oppression founded on binary hierarchies that exist inside the framework of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms will be presented. In those binary oppositions opposed terms are not equally valued. One of these terms is dominant, while the other is subordinated and mostly defined only as the first term’s other. This symbolic oppression creates various forms of discrimination. This paper argues that this problem can be resolved by deliberative democracy. Effective deliberation leads to more informed public sphere which is capable to embrace otherness and diversity.

15. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Gloria Vergara

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Following the poetics of Gastón Bachelard, the Mexican poet Enriqueta Ochoa takes us to the intensity of the being across the metaphorical configuration of subjectivity. We are a bonfire, us humans, a wasps’ nest, according to the generating principle of the cosmic image of fire in Electra's Return. But this wasps’ nest, before appearing as despair, is a desire. I carus principle is applied in the body that burns for the illusion, for the enchantment of freedom and for the desire as manifestation of fire. In this respect, one of the most important visions in Enriqueta Ochoa’s poem is that of the wasps’ nest, metaphor of the combustion that is generated in flames. Burning is a verb close to human existence. Burning is proof of the existential suffering, of being alive. From the image of the wasps’ nest, the fire turns into the mark of desperation as sting of desire.

16. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Frederic Will

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The essay hypothesizes a norm condition of stasis—the mood of sentient peace occupied on a quiet porch. From there the psyche is drawn upward by concept, into the benign/abstract world or downward into the pre-verbal which links us with prespeech man/woman. Is there any default position in this map of the positions of consciousness?

17. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Dan Chitoiu

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This article suggests an evaluation of the way by which European Culture understands the idea of rationality of the world. We pursue the consequences of the fact that in this cultural tradition the world is seen as a rational and unitary reality, which exists for the human dialogue as a condition for man’s spiritual growth. We also point out the implications of the affirmation according to which the rationality of the world has multiple virtualities, but its malleability and contingence are brought to the light and put in acts by man, the one who uses these dimensions. We evaluate the importance of these theses from today’s necessity to expand the scientific paradigm of describing the reality, when it is clearly necessary to overcome the classic subject-object duality.

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18. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Oana Matei

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19. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
George D. Stănciulescu

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20. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Mihaela Mocanu

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