DA IMPOSSIBILIDADE DE UMA EDUCAÇÃO TOLERANTE

O texto, neste artigo, trata de uma educação para tolerância, desenvolvida numa sociedade liberal. Entretanto, a assertiva a qual chegamos é a da impossibilidade desta tolerância, sob esse tipo de sociedade. Para tal constatação, realizamos uma investigação a respeito do conceito de tolerância talhado por Voltaire e Locke. Acompanhamos, ainda, a escuta deste conceito, em outras referências, agora contemporâneas. Assim, construímos dois quadros teóricos a partir de duas fontes seguras acerca do tema. Para a primeira delas, consideramos o livro Da Tolerância, de Michael Walzer (1999). Sobre a segunda, investigamos o livro Two Faces of Liberalism, de John Gray (2000). O primeiro livro finaliza o século XX e o segundo inicia o século XXI, dois momentos históricos importantes, o fim e o começo de séculos, para pensar um conceito cujas forças epistemológicas e ética podem ser observadas em tempos de diferenças brutais, pujantes nas sociedades, de modo particular na educação, na política e na filosofia.

No, the Universe Is Not on Our Side

In the 1990 “pale blue dot” photograph that Carl Sagan asked NASA to take, we see the potential of a negative answer to Bernard Lonergan’s question to renew American public life. For Sagan, the isolation of the Earth in the cosmic vastness “underscores our responsibility to deal kindly with each other” and preserve our planet. The conclusion that the universe is not on our side is supported by numerous features of reality: lifeless matter, knowledge limited to the senses, death, decline, the vagaries of history, entropy of the universe, and more. We can accept living in this no. The universe is not hostile, merely neutral. Several thinkers show the way forward, especially John Gray. We can practice Simon Critchley’s faith of the faithless. The instrumental thought of Randy Barnett demonstrates how to construct healthy institutions. Anthony Kronman reminds us that our lives are meaningful only because of our mortality.

Myth and technology: Finding philosophy’s role in technological change

In this paper, I argue that philosophy’s potential to influence technological change is impeded by the presence of two common and influential myths surrounding technology—the myth of progress and the myth of technological determinism. Such myths, I suggest, hinder philosophy’s influence by presenting a distorted image of technology—respectively, as an unqualified good, and as an entity with its own autonomous logic. Steven Pinker and Martin Heidegger are selected as influential advocates for progress and technological determinism respectively, and their work is explored in turn. The work of John Gray and of Herbert Marcuse is then employed to demythologise technology by articulating an alternative image of technology that is not just more accurate, but also more conducive to philosophical influence. Finally, the work of Hans Jonas and Luciano Floridi is used to ground the conclusion that, should philosophy wish to influence technological change, an effective method of doing so could be the articulation of ethical maxims and the supervision of their translation into a real world setting.

Falling from horses: medical controversy in early eighteenth-century England

On Tuesday, 12 April 1726, Robert Worger fell from his horse at Barnham Down, Kent, hitting his head on the ground ‘with strong Force’. Unconscious, he was taken to Bridge, a nearby village, and laid out at the home of Sarah Knot, ‘Nurse and Landlady to the Patient’, bled several times, given ‘volatile mixture’ (ammonia, salt, opium) and treated with purgatives and clysters. He vomited as many as five times over the course of his illness and delivered ‘half a score [of] very foul, stinking, loose Stools’. Worger died, ‘without … Agony’, at 5 am, Thursday, 21 April 1726, after living for 8 days in the care of Knot, his wife, two surgeons, an assistant, an apothecary and two physicians, Christopher Packe and John Gray. An autopsy was performed – the next night, by the light of a single candle – and, although there was little extravasation and no severe fractures or depressions in the skull, slight abnormalities were found: the cerebellum ‘Turgid with Blood’, two small fissures appeared on the os frontis. Worger’s illness and death spurred months of rebarbative public controversy: in order to exonerate themselves, both physicians published pamphlets and letters, secured affidavits, importuned surgeons and Worger’s relatives for support, vied for authority and mastery over the circumstances of the case and argued about propriety, professionalism and conduct. This paper explores Worger’s case – controversy about diagnosis and prognosis, concern with ‘knowledge and deportment’, with the status of medical offices and medical jurisprudence and with relationships between physicians, patients, surgeons – as an instance of learned medical controversy in early eighteenth-century England.