“Person” in CIC and CCEO Matrimonial Law. On the Idea of Vetera et Nova Harmonization in the Church Doctrine and Jurisprudence

serious confrontation with the subject: “Person” in the Code of Matrimonial Law (CIC and CCEO), is an—invariably relevant—challenge that the study of canon law and jurisprudence have to face. The argument for the validity of this conclusion is provided by the famous John Paul II’s thesis, proclaimed in the Familiaris Consortio exhortation (1981) and the famous 1997 Address to the Roman Rota, which can be summarized in the following words: the foundation and structural principle of interpersonal (ethical and legal!) relationships in marriage is matrimonial love. This axiom—still insufficiently present in the thoughts of canonists and church judges—reflects the deepest truth, of which “prophetically” the author of the monumental works Love and Responsibility and The Acting Person gave testimony; the truth that not elsewhere, but in the conciliar spiritually person-centric vision of matrimonial community (communio/consortium), a hermeneutic key should be sought for an adequate and complete understanding of the structure of marriage, harmoniously integrating its two personal and institutional dimensions.Karol Wojtyła’s/John Paul II’s brilliant thought deserved to be confronted with the premises that prove the hypothesis that the mere declarative identification in the expressed judgments/concepts with the idea of a personalistic aggiornamento (“programmed” especially in numbers 47–52 of the Council’s Constitution Gaudium et Spes) does not yet guarantee the adequacy and completeness of the canonistic approaches to the “truth of matrimony.” This is both in the sphere of theological exposure in accordance with the Magisterium (in the light of the “Image of God”) and at the praxis level: the interpretation and application of the normative records in the nodal canons of CIC and CCEO. The first part of the study is dedicated to illustrating such a state of affairs – in various proposals of doctrine and jurisprudence: from a concept that is completely misguided and destined to fail in advance; through a concept that, because of its extremely conservative approach to the need for vetera et nova harmonisation, has not stood the test of time, to concepts, indeed, universally acknowledged in the study of canon law, whose authors (or their adherents), after all, should be suggested to implement certain necessary corrections: bigger or smaller. In the second part, the research contemplation focuses on the conclusions of the realization of the conciliar postulate of “harmonization” in presenting a person-centric vision of matrimony. These synthetic remarks constitute an attempt to show the basis for an adequate interpretation of the formula adopted by the two codes announced in the title: “a partnership of the whole of life”.

Conflict as a Category of Literary Studies: Analytical Research Strategies

The substantiation of the methodological viability and hermeneutic potential of the category conflict is given. The role of conflict as a category of world modeling in fiction is pointed out. Consideration of the conflict in the aspect of dialogism is suggested. Conflict in fiction is a special kind of communicative act arising from the antagonism of misunderstanding of the opposing sides, but providing a new level of understanding to the perceiving consciousness of the reader, making it intellectually armed (R. Jacobson) in the face of conflicting structures. Analytical strategies for the study of conflict are presented in the semantic aspect (conflict as an object of artistic depiction) and the aspect of structure (conflict as a fundamental structural principle). It is proved that the dual nature of the conflict presupposes taking into account in research practice the possibilities of textocentric and anthropological approaches to the study of conflict, understood as antagonistic relations of oppositional units. The development of epistemology, axiology and poetics of conflict in fiction is seen in the way of studying all levels of conflict dialogue.

System-synergetic approach to studying the essence of state power

This article is devoted to the problem of cognition and understanding of the essence of state power. Actualization is carried out by searching for a new paradigm approach in order to determine the fundamental principles that are correlated with the idea to optimize and increase the efficiency of the corresponding sphere of public relations. Acting as an alternative to the substantial and relativistic approach to the study of state power, the system-synergetic approach analyzes the phenomenon of power based on the definition of system, within which the functions of communication and regulation of public relations are assigned to power. As a result, power is seen as a property or function of a social, in particular, political system, the need for which is determined by the presence of society itself and the task of maintaining its integrity. The analysis allows stating that in most modern concepts there is a consistent rejection of the traditional interpretation of power as the result of subject-object relations, where the subject of power is an active, energetic principle, and the object undergoes impact. In contrast to the position of traditionalism, there is a tendency to interpret power as a complex polysystem permeating the entire social structure of society. As a structural and synergistic effect of the system, power is not a property of its individual element, since each element must certainly be correlated with other units of the given system. Power is an intrasystem relatedness of all elements. As a structural principle, power is realized on the basis of equivalent exchange, which means not the equivalence of the exchanged elements, but a situation in which one element is unconceivable without the other, i.e. one element exists in relation to the other, and co-develops with it. Thus, power really fulfills the function of streamlining socio-political ties, making their separation and differentiation expedient. Power, therefore, is the beginning, creating structures, increasing heterogeneities in a continuous social environment and connecting them together. Such a view allows interpreting power as a principle of functioning of the state system: if the state system, with the help of some value proposition, manages to reproduce the corresponding content of consciousness, then it functions quite stably.

Cognitive Liminalism

Beckett’s fictional minds are pensive and tensive cognitive agents. If rumination feels to many of them a task to be performed or a “pensum to discharge” (U, 304), it is the way they think, however, that sparks a sustained and unsolvable cognitive differential or tension: a state of liminality due to the fact that they are not yet, or not anymore, endowed with what it takes to navigate the world effortlessly and meaningfully. The twilight atmosphere of Beckett’s boundary storyworlds or innerscapes therefore exponentially resonates with the wavering cognitive processes of what this chapter will define as liminal minds. After an overture section reinforcing how liminality is a structural principle that applies to many of Beckett’s storyworlds on several domains, the chapter heads on to the cognitive functioning of Beckett’s fictional minds. The second section focuses on Beckett’s alteration of the enactive scaffolding co-operation of language, narrative, and motility in human development. The third section analyzes his lesioning of human teleological dispositions on the motivational and emotional level, as well as the malfunctioning of predictive processes. In the final section, it addresses what kind of readerly experience results from engaging with cognitive liminalism, where liminal minds are constantly occupied by the activity of sense-making without the functional possibility of making sense.

The Rule of Law as the Lodestar of the European Convention on Human Rights: The Strasbourg Court and the Independence of the Judiciary

The rule of law is a principle of constitutional importance under the European Convention on Human Rights. For decades, it has guided the work of the Strasbourg Court. The article discusses the principle’s ideological core as a fundamental component of “European public order” and its three normative dimensions, as they find their expression in the case-law of the Court. The author then discusses in detail the rule of law’s most important structural principle under the Convention, the independence of the judiciary.

On deconventionalization of modern English business communication [Book review: A. Yu. Bagiyan, O. I. Natkho, T. A. Shiryaeva «Wisdom of the ages in the language of business. Paremiae in the English-speaking popular scientific business discourse : cognitive-discourse aspect»]

The authors presented a comprehensive study of English paremiae used in modern popular scientific business discourse. Two approaches were applied in this multi-vector study: cognitive-discursive and pragma-communicative. The book aimed to identify the main regularities in paremiae functional range. The authors were the pioneers to argue for the need to study the popular science business discourse as a separate sub-discourse of business discourse and to prove its framing status. They also offer a new view on the status of paremia as a precedent cultural sign as a recurrent fragment of the English-language popular scientific business discourse. Another novelty was a complex of specific cognitive-discursive features of paremiae functioning in the English-language popular scientific business discourse. The authors managed to reveal paremiae main functions within the framework of their discursive usage. They also proposed the main methods of paremiological modification. Paremia was used as the main functioning element in the stratification of complex article headings in popular science business discourse. A comprehensive approach including structural principle enabled the authors to divide the paremia repertoir into two sizable groups – original paremiae and modified paremiae – and to determine the percentage for each of the two. The authors brought forward three functional types of headings with paremic elements and identified five new functions characteristic for English paremiae in the examined type of discourse: mimicry, deregulation, remodeling, catalyzing and anticipation. A number of challenging issue were addressed in the book including, first of all, paremia functions discursive convergence, their “functional synergy” which is a very significant phenomenon and an effecient tool to manage information abundace and functional density of all units of the studied discourse. The reasons for the frequent use of paremiae by communicants in various professional contexts were also discussed.

Topographic organization of single-neuron projectome for mouse prefrontal cortex

Neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are responsible for high-level cognitive functions. Comparing to sensory and motor cortices, however, the connectivity organization of PFC is far more complex and still poorly understood. Here we report that whole-brain reconstruction of complete axonal morphologies of over 6,000 projection neurons in mouse PFC revealed fine-grained topographic relationship between the soma locations in PFC and their projection patterns before and after arriving the cortical and subcortical target regions. We first mapped the long-range projections of intratelencephalic (IT), pyramidal tract (PT), and corticothalamic (CT) neurons, and found that each class of these neurons can be further categorized into target-based subclasses, with somata of each subclass preferentially located at different PFC domains. Furthermore, the distribution of individual axon projections within each target region exhibited subregion preference, with their somata located in specific PFC subdomains. Mapping of single axons revealed a topographic order of primary axons within IT, PT, and CT fiber tracts that preserved the topography of their soma locations within PFC, and a spatial order of collateral branching points that yielded ordered clusters of collaterals aiming at specific targets. Within the target regions, we further observed subregion-specific arbor distribution that depended on the soma location. Such arbor distribution analysis of cortico-cortical PFC axons unveiled asymmetric terminal connectivity in PFC network. Our results demonstrate how large-scale single-neuron projectome analysis can provide new insights into the structural principle within the brain.

Desire and Curiosity in En Diciembre llegaban las brisas

Marvel Moreno’s En diciembre llegaban las brisas is one of Colombia’s least studied masterpieces. Critical attention on her work has focused on the fraught interaction between female sexuality and patriarchal forces in society. However, while female sexual desire plays a key role in the novel, it is not the most important type of desire in the text. This article analyzes the various types of desire in En diciembre llegaban las brisas. It finds that curiosity (desire for knowledge) plays an essential role in the narrator’s emotional and artistic apprenticeship and is the novel’s structural principle. This understanding of curiosity in terms of desire sheds new light on Moreno’s work and could prove useful in the study of other similarly autobiographical texts.

The Horizontal Effect of the Charter: Towards an Understanding of Horizontality as a Structural Constitutional Principle

This article analyses the main debates over the application of the Charter to disputes between private parties and assesses the ways in which the case law over the last ten years has responded to them. The article goes on to propose an alternative schema, whereby horizontality can be understood as a structural principle of EU fundamental rights adjudication on its own terms, rather than as an extension of the direct effect doctrine. It is argued that a self-standing principle of horizontality with equally valuable—yet operationally distinct—direct, indirect, and state-mediated manifestations, could respond more coherently to the conceptual, procedural, and remedial challenges displayed in the case law.