Extragalactic Planetary Nebulae: tracers of the chemical evolution of nearby galaxies

The study of the chemical composition of Planetary Nebulae in external galaxies is of paramount importance in the fields of stellar evolution and of the chemical enrichment history of galaxies. In the last years a number of spectroscopic studies with 6-8m-class telescopes have been devoted to this subject improving our knowledge of, among other, the time-evolution of the radial metallicity gradient in disk galaxies, the chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies, and the stellar evolution at low metallicity.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Invited Review to IAU Symposium 283, "Planetary Nebulae: an Eye to the Future", Tenerife, 25-29 July 201

Pessimism, Hope, and the Tragic-Art of the Greeks (Nietzsche and the Pandora Myth)

This essay is focused on Nietzsche’s unique reading of the Pandora myth as it appears in Human, All Too Human and develops an interpretation of Hope, the most profound evil of the many evils released by Pandora infecting the human condition, as it might be understood in relation to Nietzsche’s analysis of the ancient Greeks in The Birth of Tragedy. In reading this early work of Nietzsche, modes of comportment that fall under two specific categories are considered: Passive Nihilism-Pessimism of Decline and Active Nihilism-Pessimism of Strength as understood by Nietzsche in the late compilation of his notes published as The Will to Power. Ultimately, this essay explores the artistic responses to the bleak and pessimistic conditions of the Greeks’ lives found in the Apolline art in the Homeric Greeks and the tragic-art of the Greeks, which Nietzsche argues is the ultimate expression of art as the merging of the “aesthetic” principles of the Apolline and Dionysiac. These aesthetic responses are elucidated in and through the comparison to modes of existence that impede the spirit’s optimal, flourishing development, specifically, as expressed through Christianity and “Socratic optimism” in the superior power of human reason

Huebner\u27s Critical Encounter with the Philosophy of Heidegger in \u3cem\u3eBeing and Time\u3c/em\u3e: Learning, Understanding, and the Authentic Unfolding of History in the Curriculum

This paper responds to the following question: What are the issues concerned with potential educational reform that arise from Huebner\u27s critical encounter with Heidegger and the tradition in education and curriculum theory? In attempting a rejoinder, I revisit Huebner\u27s groundbreaking essay, Curriculum as Concern for Man\u27s Temporality, which introduces the phenomenological method in education and curriculum studies, with the goal of examining in detail the underlying themes, issues, and concepts, which ground Huebner\u27s reconceptualization of curriculum reform, as they emerge from Heidegger\u27s philosophy. I show that Huebner\u27s understanding of Being-in-the-world in terms of the design of the educational environment, not only mirrors, but as well, embodies the flux, flow, and rhythmic dynamics of history\u27s dialectic unfolding as a temporal phenomenon, which for Heidegger represents our authentic historizing in the moment of vision, or Augenblick, and this for Heidegger is the definitive embodiment of Dasein\u27s authentic mode of existence as historical Being-in-the-world as Being-with Others

The Work of Art and Truth of Being as Historical : Reading Being and Time, The Origin of the Work of Art, and the Turn (Kehre) in Heidegger’s Philosophy of the 1930s

Reading Heidegger’s Being and Time, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and the 1934-35 lecture courses Hölderlin’s Hymns“Germania” and “The Rhine,” the aim of this essay is twofold. First, the essay attempts to elucidate the manner in which the work of art functions as a superlative event of “truth-happening” (aletheia), which facilitates the movement of Dasein into the truth of Being as a legitimate member of a community, serving as, “the origin of a people’s authentic historical existence.”1 Second, it explains why this notion of art as the historical manifestation of Being is crucial to understanding the shift, or “turn,” (Kehre) in Heidegger’s philosophy of the 1930s and 1940s, i.e., it examines the philosophical problems Heidegger rectified when moving from Being and Time, and the conceptual-linguistic constraints of metaphysics and the subject-centered model of Dasein, to the later works on art and poetry

The Potential for Ethics Without God Through Bertrand Russell\u27s Authentic Notion of Philosophical Inquiry

Violence dominates the landscape of our present world. Prejudice and sectarianism threaten human rights, putting our hopes for the authentic possibility of humane ethical/moral interaction on a global scale in serious question. Ours is a world where epistemological and ethical relativism appear to rule the day. In these extremely “hard times,” as Nietzsche was fond of saying, it would benefit us, as philosophers, informed thinkers, and concerned human beings, to revisit with a discerning eye and charitable heart the philosophy of Bertrand Russell as it appears in The Problems of Philosophy (1912), wherein Russell reminds us in a powerfully persuasive manner just how important philosophy can be in offering hope for a better world during dark, turbulent times. In this paper is an examination of the unique way in which Russell responds to the following question: What is philosophy good for, what is the value of philosophy for the world and its inhabitants