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Presentation
Ricardo da Costa
Articles
Jñâna Yoga’s “Liberation in Life”, as Viewed by the Vedanta
Edrisi Fernandes
Original title: A “Liberação em vida” do Jñâna Yoga na visão do Vedanta
Keywords: Jivanmukti, Jñana Yoga, Kevaladvaita, Shankara, Uttara-Mimamsa, Vedanta.
Jñâna Yoga, the control of vital functions aiming at the actualization of wisdom/of “absolute knowledge”, is based, with rare exceptions, almost completely on the teachings of the Advaita (non-dualist) branch of the Vedânta (from the “End of the Veda”) school, and has chapter IV of the Bhagavad-Gitâ (the “Song of the Divine Master”) as a fundamental referece. Shankara (788-820), whose philosophical system is called kevalâdvaita (unique/perfect non-dualism [monism]) ou shuddhâdvaita (inqualified nondualism), has taken moral life as an essential requisite to metaphysical knowledge, necessary to reaching the ultimate objective of life: knowledge of the essential identity between the “I”(âtman) and the Supreme Being (Brahman). In his Viveka-Chûdâmani (“The Supreme Jewel of Discernment”), as well as in other vedantic writings, Brahman is called Sat-Chit-Ânanda (Being-Conscience-Blessedness), and G. Dandoy makes the following analogy between this conception and images of God in Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei, VIII, 10): Sat - “causa constituta universitatis”; Chit - “lux percipiendæ veritatis”; Ânanda - “fons bibendæ felicitatis” (G. Dandoy, L’Ontologie du Vedanta, 1932: 33). We analize the way how these characteristics of the divine nature, that can be attained solely by those men that have reached the stage of jîvanmukti (“liberation in life”), can motivate men to reach the Divine, mirroring themselves in His/Her characteristics while trecking the trail of viveka (discerniment), and practicing as pre-requisites the obligatory actions of yama (“moral discipline”, consisting in Ahimsâ [“non-violence”], Satyâ “truthfulness”], Asteyâ [“notrobbing”], Brahmacaryâ [“chastity” or “non-vicious sexuality”], Aparigrahâ [“non-envy”]) and niyama (“self-control”, consisting in Shachka [“cleanliness” or “purity”], Samtosha [“content”], Tapas [“austerity” or “askesis”], Svâdhyâya [“study”], and Îshvara-pranidhâna [“devotion to the Supreme Being”]). We see in depth the reasons why, in the Vedânta, victory over ahamkâra (egotism) is the most important event in the life of the seeker of liberation, in the spirit of what Vivekânanda has thaught: “altruism is the negation of our lower or apparent self. It’s our task to freed ourselves from the miserable dream in which we are those bodies we see...” (Swami Vivekânanda, Jnâna-Yoga, 1936: 463).
Works of Art or Artisan? Some considerations about the figurative greek vases
José Francisco de Moura
Original title: Obras de Arte ou Artesanato? Algumas considerações sobre os vasos figurados gregos
Keywords: Ancient greece, Arkesilas, Art History, Black figure, Sparta, Vase.
The aim of his article is to expose and refleting about some aproaches in the greek vases.
The Magical Knowledge of Medea
Maria Regina Candido
Original title: O Saber mágico de Medéia
Keywords: Greek, Greek woman, Magic, Medea, Myth, Tragedy.
The Medea is one the most remarkable and important imaginative works in all western literature. Medea is presented, initially as victim, but she is able to strike and pursue her revenge on a heroic homeric way.
Considerations about the Woman’s condition in Classical Greece (5th and 6th centuries)
Moisés Romanazzi Tôrres
Original title: Considerações sobre a condição da mulher na Grécia Clássica (séculos V e IV a.C.)
Keywords: Aristophanes., Aristotle, Women.
This article, fundamentally about ateniense case, presents some aspects about woman condition in the Classic Greek. Aristotle justifies the woman submission by the absence of logos plenitude in her spirit. The Aristophanes comedy presents the woman participation in the public life as unusual action. Finally, on the Spartan woman case, we verify a shorter importance in the social body and in the family life.
The end of Ancient World: a historical debate
Gilvan Ventura da Silva
Original title: O fim do mundo antigo: uma discussão historiográfica
Keywords: Ancient World, Disintegration, Historiography..
With this article, we intend to discuss how some writers since 18th century treated the “decline” of the Roman Empire connected with their historical views. Therefore, we analyze the emergence of a new conception of time, the refutation of progress and decadence as useful historical concepts and the dissolution of the positivist paradigm trying to show how the theme of the passage from Antiquity to Medieval Age acquired a new meaning according to these deep and important theoretical changes.
Apocryphal storie's influence on Medieval Art
Patricia Grau-Dieckmann
Original title: Influencia de las historias apócrifas en el Arte
Keywords: Apocryphal Gospels, Art, Canonical Gospels, Flight to Egypt, Iconography, Legends..
Christian art depicts scenes on the life cycles of Virgin Mary and Jesus that, even though they are familiar to our eyes, entail an iconographic content that does not strictly reflect the accounts of the Canonical Gospels. These scenes, although conceived in the Church's own bosom, are based on legends, apocryphal stories and oral traditions. Within this context we will consider works produced from the 5th to the 15th century and will analyze the way in which the Apocryphal Gospels and some orally transmitted traditional legends have conditioned the iconography of the Holy Family's Flight to Egypt.
Erotics and Kwowledge related to a short-story in The Thousand and One Nights
Rafael Ramón Guerrero
Original title: Erótica y Saber a propósito de un cuento de Las Mil y Una Noches
Keywords: Arabic Philosophy., Erotic, Greek Philosophy, wisdom.
The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales; many of which exposed a wisdom elaborated along the history by various peoples. A tale collects the conception that Greek philosophy, since Plato, set up and developed about love as a trend toward wisdom. In this article, I recall shortly this process through Greek philosophy, Christian world and medieval Islam, and I finally sketch the tale of the Thousand and One Nights.
Medieval Significances of the Apple: Forbidden Fruit, Source of the kwowledge, Paradisiac Island
Adriana Zierer
Original title: Significados medievais da maçã: fruto proibido, fonte do conhecimento, ilha Paradisíaca
Keywords: Adan, Apple, Eva, Geoffrey de Monmouth, Medieval Mithology, celts...
Dans ce travail nous cherchons d’analyser quelques symbologies de la pomme. Bien que d’autres fruits soient associées au peché originel, comme le figue et la raissin, depuis le 13ème siecle la pomme est devenu la principal representation de la transgression d’Adam et Eve en Éden. L’ingestion du fruit interdit a signifié la possibilité de l’homme d’atteindre la conaissance par le libre arbitre, mais c’est a conduit aussi à la suffrance (l’expulsion du divine endroit, la besoin du travail et les douleurs du accouchment). Dans autres cultures, comme la germanique, pour obtenir la sagesse le dieu Wotan a abdiqué de la vision d’un de ses yeaux et est demeuré neuf jours acrochée à l’arbre Ygddrasil, sans boir ou manger. Comme on croyait que la conaissance venait d’Aût, une métaphore était l’arbor inversa, dont les racines sont dans le ciel et Christ est consideré le plus beau fruit envoyée par le ciel (Dieu) à la terre (Marie). Une autre symbolisme de la pomme, c’est la Insula Pomorum, royaume de l’Autre Monde plein d’abundance et plaisirs, decrit par Geoffroy de Monmouth au 12ème siècle comme un endroit où, à l’envers de gramme, le soleil était couvert par pommes. Dans la mythologie celtique, ce fruit represente la magie, l’imortalité et la conaissance. Pour les médiévaux, c’était confortant le signification de la pomme comme l’Île du Bienaventureux, qui possibilitait l’access des individus à un monde semblable au paradis. Mais par l’avis de l’ Église seulement après la mort et de la passage par le purgatoire, les individus purifiés pouvaient aspirer à la felicité éternelle.
The lexical-figurative textualism on "Los Beatus"
Nora Marcela Gómez
Original title: La Textualidad Léxico-Figurativa en los Beatos
Keywords: Blessed Spanishes, Doom, iconographic autonomy, iconographic independency., simultaneously and dissimilar texts, written and iconographical text.
The Art history of the Middle Age has been commonly based on the statement that the pictorial-sculptural iconography due its representation exclusively to sacred books. This approach reduce the artistic image to just a visual variant of the text, a mere translocation of the printed word to its formal and material representation with divulgation aims for the unlettered, converting this iconography in a dogmatic one. So, the rich and deep value of the images and their omnifunctionality in medieval society has been misjudged. The text Commentarius in Apocalypsin from Beato had huge publicity in the Hispanic world; with further and multiples copies and illustrations over the next centuries. The thirty-two codices from centuries IX to XIII are enough evidence of the great success of the text. This paper will focus on the relation between text and image to check correlations, dissimilarities, autonomous presentiveness, and plastic innovations that defied the logical system of the time. The illuminators of “Los Beatos”, yet still depending on the canonical versicles and on the commiter demands, produced an iconographical-apocalyptic corpus that testimony a creative freedom, an artistic quality, and a masterfulness on the plasticchromatic ways, that enact those codices as an absolutely exceptional and one-of-a-kind iconographic monument from the Art of the Middle Age.
Reception of San Isidoro of Sevilla by Domingo Gundisalvo (1100-1181): Astronomy, Astrology and Medicine in Middle Ages
Alexander Fidora
Original title: La Recepción de San Isidoro de Sevilla por Domingo Gundisalvo (ca. 1110-1181): Astronomía, Astrología y Medicina en la Edad Media
Keywords: Astrology, Astronomy, Dominicus Gundissalinus, Isidore of Seville, Medicine., Toledan School of Translators.
Although the arabic sources of Dominicus Gundissalinus – archdeacon of Cuéllar and one of the most important representatives of the Toledan School of Translators – have been studied in detail, only few information is available until now concerning the latin-christian foundations of his work. The present article pretends to shed some light on the subject by analysing Gundissalinus’ use of Isidore of Seville’s works, which leads to the surprising conclusion that it is precisely the most arabic topics, i.e. astronomy/astrology and medicine, where Gundissalinus is mostly inspired by Saint Isidore.
Sketch of a transcendental lulian's ethic
Ciléa Dourado
Original title: Esboço de uma ética universal luliana
Keywords: Be, Ethic, Ramon Llull, Trinity., Virtue.
For Lúlio man is the “ humanizing animal” (the one that humanize his context), the only one that while participating in the matter and form of the universe he builds himself. The psychic virtue that endows the rational soul of memory, understanding and will is the space where the conscience and the first cause of the human self-determination are forged. The basis of the Lullian universal and transcendental ethics is that all men of any race or belief possess the trinitary virtue which supports them on being, as well as all of them are able to think, to understand and to love. This doesn’t mean a rupture with the divine, because it is God who keeps each creature on being, consequently He is inner its actions. It means a new vision of God as the one that enables the human essence and contributes updating human perfection. Since I have the freedom to accomplish it that improves me on being, I can use this freedom in a wrong way and go against being. The bad use of freedom depreciates willing, that doesn’t follow understanding, allowong vice to fix. The vicious abominates his being and ignores he is in the Evil, because without the illumination of virtue, the memory doesn’t meditate, understanding doesn’t understand and willing.
Maiorca and Aragon in time of Ramon Llull (1250-1300)
Ricardo da Costa
Original title: Maiorca e Aragão no tempo de Ramon Llull (1250-1300)
Keywords: Aragon, James II of Maiorca, Maiorca, Medieval politics, Peter III of Aragon, Ramon Llull, War.
Description and analysis of the political situation of the kingdons of Maiorca and Aragon in Ramon Llull's time, with enphasis in the relationship of Llull with the kings James II of Maiorca and Peter III of Aragon. This description has for an objective the compreension of the historical circunstances that influenced the political thoughts of Ramon Llull.
The knight to the divine in Ramon Llull: against the sin of the lust
Jordi Pardo Pastor
Original title: El caballero a lo divino en Ramon Llull: contra el pecado de la lujuria
Keywords: Book of chivalries, Knight, constriction, exempla., lust.
The sense of this work consists on demonstrating a new literary model of medieval Knight. Therefore, by means of the influence of the Arab and oriental religious doctrine, the medieval Knight is transmuted, in the literary parameters, of a skillful Knight in the weapons to a being that it looks for in the world the essence of God. In the same way, to support this opinion is analysed the possible relationship with different episodes of medieval chivalry books with oneself leitmotiv.
The philosophical contribution to the constitution of the political theory at the end of the XIII century
Francisco Bertelloni
Original title: La contribución de la filosofía a la formación del pensamiento político laico a fines del siglo XIII y comienzos del siglo XIV
Keywords: Aristotle, Ethics, Political theory., radical aristotelism.
This paper deals with the treatment of the philosophia moralis in the Student´s Guide or guidebook of Barcelona as prelude to the Western reception of the aristotelian libri morales.The author analyzes the political consequences of the guide in connection with the methodical separation between philosophy and theology as antecedent of the same distinction in the political theory of the second half of the XIII. century.
