Lisbon Philosophical Studies – Uses of Languages in Interdisciplinary Fields – serie

The contextual contributions to meaning are at the core of the debate about the semantics/pragmatics distinction, one of the liveliest topics in current philosophy of language and linguistics. The controversy between semantic minimalists and contextualists regarding context and semantic content is a conspicuous example of the debate’s relevance. This collection of essays, written by leading philosophers as well as talented young researchers, offers new approaches to the ongoing discussion about the status of lexical meaning and the role of context dependence in linguistic theorizing. It covers a broad range of issues in semantics and pragmatics such as presuppositions, reference, lexical meaning, discourse relations and information structure, negation, and metaphors. The book is an essential reading for philosophers, linguists, and graduate students of philosophy of language and linguistics.

The constitutionalisation of the European Union has been a major goal of European politics from the late 1980s until recently. It is supposed to enhance the citizens’ feeling of belonging and give the Union a clearer political identity and legitimacy. The current euro-crisis seems to have stopped the pursuit of an «ever closer» and constitutionalised Union. National interests and intergovernmental bargaining are now at the centre of European business. While we wonder what will become of the European constitutional project, it remains worthwhile to cast additional light onto what it was supposed to be until recently and how it changed the institutional face of the Union. This volume does so by analysing the political and legal facets of constitutionalisation. Contributions delve into the debates that marked the evolution of the constitutionalisation project and its overall institutional consequences, and focus on fundamental rights protection, the implementation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, legal conflicts between the European Court of Justice and national constitutional courts, and the legal and political balance of power between EU institutions and national authorities with regard to the defence of fundamental rights and the rule of law.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has described Morphology as a science dedicated to the observation and description of everything «that is handled by chance and occasionally in other [sciences]». This meant that morphological research could be undertaken by any science or discipline as far as it considers form within its subject. This volume collects eighteen articles from scholars and contributors from philosophy, ranging from epistemology to aesthetics (with explorations into poetry, music, painting and photography), from philosophical anthropology to the philosophy of language, and from ontology to moral and political philosophy. Other contributions represent disciplines including art history, mathematics, cognitive science, linguistics, history, demography, computer science, and architecture. The wide range of areas puts to the test Goethe’s morphological thought, i.e. Goethe’s understanding of form as knowledge. Contributors: Ana Agud, Chiara Cappelletto, Dennis L. Sepper, Diana Soeiro, Diogo Seixas Lopes, Federico Vercellone, Hervé Le Bras, Javier Arnaldo, Jean Petitot, Joachim Schulte, João Constâncio, José Gil, Maria Filomena Molder, Maria João Mayer Branco, Maurizio Gribaudi, Nélio Conceição, Nuno Fonseca, Sílvio Varela Sousa.

For the last decade the topic of the Self has been under intense scrutiny from researchers of various areas spanning from philosophy, neurosciences, and psychology to anthropology and sociology. The present volume addresses the Self under different and influent philosophical perspectives: from phenomenology and psychoanalysis to metaphysics and neurophilosophy and discusses several and distinct problems such as personal identity, the core/narrative self-distinction, psychopathologies, the mind-body problem and the nature of the relations between self, consciousness and emotions. The book reflects these different philosophical problems and approaches and aims to provide a map of current philosophical perspectives on the topic of the Self.

All the chapters in this volume somehow and quite diversely, directly or indirectly, address the relation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, or at least of Wittgenstein- inspired philosophical thought, with scepticism, here generally envisaged as a many-sided tradition and not as a uniform and once for all established theoretical posture.

The first time that Nietzsche crossed the path of Dostoevsky was in the winter of 1886–87. While in Nice, Nietzsche discovered in a bookshop the volume L’esprit souterrain. Two years later, he defined Dostoevsky as the only psychologist from whom he had anything to learn. The second, metaphorical encounter between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky happened on the verge of nihilism. Nietzsche announced the death of God, whereas Dostoevsky warned against the danger of atheism.This book describes the double encounter between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. Following the chronological thread offered by Nietzsche’s correspondence, the author provides a detailed analysis of Nietzsche’s engagement with Dostoevsky from the very beginning of his discovery to the last days before his mental breakdown. The second part of this book aims to dismiss the wide-spread and stereotypical reading according to which Dostoevsky foretold and criticized in his major novels some of Nietzsche’s most dangerous and nihilistic theories. In order to reject such reading, the author focuses on the following moral dilemma: If God does not exist, is everything permitted?