AMECHANON

International Journal of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy

ISSN: 2459-2846

 
 
 
 

Orientation

Clarify, recognize, question, reopen the places, ways, forms, withdrawals, recitations, incarnationσ, transmutations, twists of the apparition and development of practical philosophy, its singular cartography and kinesiology within various interdisciplinary and intercultural spatio-temporals. The philosophical understandings and deconstructions of the concept of praxis, of its appearances, movements, voices within multiple forms of life and thinking. 

 
 

Content

The International Journal of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph.) Amechanon is biennial single blind and collaborative peer reviewed Journal whose the main focus is the research on practical philosophy.

The sections of the Journal contain:

  • Critical thoughts, dia-logues, texts which attempt to dislodge, understand and complexify the concept of practical philosophy
  • Researches on practical philosophy
  • Philosophical practices which can introduce a reflection on practical philosophy
  • Methodological questions
  • Interdisciplinary approaches on practical philosophy
  • Discussions on the relation between Education (educational practices) and Practical Philosophy
  • Practical philosophy and arts/interdisciplinary arts

Separated sections are also included per volume with:

  • Reports, texts, visual material on activities of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph)
  • A dossier dedicated to concepts & themes in relation with practical philosophy

Editor & Scientific Responsibility

Articles formatting 

Issue 1

Eugenia Patta (PhDc, Univ/ty of the Aegean)

Katerina Renti (PhDc, Univ/ty of the Aegean)

Issue 2

Sotirios Bardas (MEd., Univ/ty of the Aegean)

Eleni Chronopoulou (PhDc, Univ/ty of the Aegean)

Elena Nikolakopoulou (PhDc, Univ/ty of the Aegean)

Eugenia Patta

Issue 3

Eugenia Patta

Reviewing Committee:

  • Adalberto Carvalho, University of Porto
  • Filipe Ceppas de Carvalho e Faria, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Jean-Francois Dupeyron, Université de Bordeaux
  • Alekos Theodoridis Democritus University of Thrace
  • Arie Kizel, Haifa University
  • Walter Kohan, University of State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
  • Didier Moreau, Université  de Paris 8 Saint-Denis
  • Pablo Flores del Rosario, ISCEEM, Mexico
  • Jacques Quintin, University of Sherbrooke
 
 

Call for Articles Submission in the Thematic Dossier of the 4rth Issue (2022-2024)

 
 

The subject of the thematic dossier to be included in the International Journal AMECHANON of the Laboratory of Research on Practical  Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph.), is as follows:

Literature & Practical Philosophy

 

Manuscripts should be submitted until June 30, 2025.

For abstracts’ submitting, please press HERE

  • Texts & Abstracts are to be submitted in French, English or Greek.
  • For texts in Greek, the submission should include an extensive summary (from 3 to 5 pages) in French or English.
  • Articles should follow the journal’s recommendations regarding formatting and bibliographic references (see below: References Recording System).
  • Articles must not exceed 30 pages (including titles, abstracts, keywords & footnotes).

For the References Recording System & General Guidelines, click here

For additional information, contact us, at:   lab-prapl-ph@aegean.gr

PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION POLICY

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR – EU 2016/679) came into full force on 25 May 2018. In this context, we would like to inform you that we have made adjustments to the terms governing the article submission process in Journal Amechanon.  The main changes concern the Protection of Personal Data in order to meet the requirements of the EU Data Protection Regulation.

  1. Collection and processing of personal data

When submitting articles in  Journal Amechanon   personal data (hereinafter personal data) of the authors are collected, maintained and processed. 
The exact personal data collected and processed are limited to what is required for the article review process and contact with the author. These data, which are not communicated or disclosed to third parties can be viewed in detail at LinkedIn here

  1. The purpose of processing personal data

The collection and processing of personal data is exclusively conducted for the following purposes:

                    2.1 Submission and evaluation of articles

Submission and evaluation of articles according of the publishes policy of the magazine

                    2.2. Processing necessary in order to safeguard the legitimate interest of those who submit an article to judgement

 The data submitted by the author through the article submission request will be retained and processed to the extent necessary to establish, exercise or support their legal claims.

 

  1. Time period for keeping personal data

Applications from authors whose articles have not been admitted are deleted and destroyed after one (1) academic year.

Applications by authors whose articles have been admitted are kept indefinitely.

  1. Rights of candidates with respect to personal data

The University of the Aegean guarantees the rights of authors regarding processing of their personal data and makes it easier for them to exercise their rights.

Candidates have the right to request:

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If this journal aims at the emergence, identification, questioning, investigation of philosophical places and ways and their peculiar cartography and kinesiology within the various educational spacetimes, the ways, the forms, the foldings, the narratives, the incorporations of practical philosophy, the philosophical re-deconstruction of the concept of application, the ways, the forms, the foldings the transformations, the turns of applied philosophy, the philosophical comprehensions of the concept, of appearances, of movements, of voices of action within life forms, it is, after all, a bewildered /amechanon journal. Αmechanon in the face of its aims, of the things that must emerge, in the face of forms and their foldings, in the face of the various turns and meaning reconstructions, in the face of the question about the practical and the applied, about philosophy itself and philosophical comprehension. Amechanon as impractical, ineffective, unskilled, inexpugnabilis, ineluctabilis, inennarabilis, immensus, infinitus, incredibilis, as bewildered speech, in a amechanon manner, to stand with the things it includes in puzzlement, with the infinite, as the sea of Socratic aporia and its stupor are, like stupor. An alien speech.
Σκρατες, κουον μν γωγε πρν κα συγγενσθαι σοι τι σ οδν λλο ατς τε πορες κα τος λλους ποιες πορεν·κα νν, ς γ μοι δοκες, γοητεεις με κα φαρμττεις κα τεχνς κατεπδεις, στε μεστν πορας γεγονναι. κα δοκες μοι παντελς, ε δε τι κα σκψαι, μοιτατος εναι τ τε εδος κα τλλα τατ τ πλατείᾳ νρκ τ θαλαττίᾳ·κα γρ ατη τν ε πλησιζοντα κα πτμενον ναρκν ποιε, κα σ δοκες μοι νν μ τοιοτν τι πεποιηκναι, [ναρκνληθς γρ γωγε κα τν ψυχν κα τ στμα ναρκ, κα οκ χω τι ποκρνωμα σοι. κατοι μυρικις γε περ ρετς παμπλλους λγους ερηκα κα πρς πολλος, κα πνυ ε, ς γε μαυτ δκουν νν δ οδτι στν τ παρπαν χω επεν. κα μοι δοκες ε βουλεεσθαι οκ κπλων νθνδε οδποδημν ε γρ ξνος ν λλ πλει τοιατα ποιος, τχν ς γης παχθεης [Μένων, 80a-b]
 Socrates, I used to be told, before I began to meet you, [80a] that yours was just a case of being in doubt yourself and making others doubt also : and so now I find you are merely bewitching me with your spells and incantations, which have reduced me to utter perplexity. And if I am indeed to have my jest, I consider that both in your appearance and in other respects you are extremely like the flat torpedo sea-fish; for it benumbs anyone who approaches and touches it, and something of the sort is what I find you have done to me now. For in truth [80b] I feel my soul and my tongue quite benumbed, and I am at a loss what answer to give you. And yet on countless occasions I have made abundant speeches on virtue to various people—and very good speeches they were, so I thought—but now I cannot say one word as to what it is. You are well advised, I consider, in not voyaging or taking a trip away from home; for if you went on like this as a stranger in any other city you would very likely be taken up for a wizard [Menon, 80a-b] [W.R.M. Lamb, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/].
And, if all these can pass into the background of such a journal, on the foreground words seem anything but bewildered, as a paradox which cannot be confronted, only to be brought to light as much as possible. Amechanon monitors the moves of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy, attempting to bring this attitude to light, as a primary attitude of the Laboratory itself. With the intention of including the gaps, the adversities, the aporiae, the entrenchments of investigating and comprehending concepts that are driven in the Practical Philosophy field, of the selection, creation and employment of materials, activities and actions that are related with the development of a field. In a sense, the journal turns into a diary.
 In this 1st issue, we itemize L.R.P.Ph.’s past activities (in the past, as Laboratory of Research on Practical & Applied Philosophy, L.R.P.A.Ph.) which have been developed during the academic year 2015-16, trying to show the element of slowness in building thoughts and beliefs, as, in a research way, we approach our thematics of interest.
The 1st section, [Auditorium], includes theoretical texts that deal with the body as a concept and its philosophical comprehension on different levels (aesthetic, anthropological, ethical, historical, educational, phenomenological) in the wake of a scientific meeting that was organized by the L.R.P.Ph. in 2016, in an attempt to investigate the traces of the body in a series of action and praxis which slowly shape an understanding of Practical Philosophy, as it seems to be able to intergrate and reorganize them. This section will be a main part of the Amechanon Journal and will make attempts to bring such concepts or thematics into discussion which can be related to Practical Philosophy furthering and specializing this connection even more.
The 2nd section [In the Laboratory] keeps track of the L.R.P.Ph. activities designed, in order to investigate the way in which research methods, employing philosophical ways, can possibly be structured for further use in public places (school, community) and for examining their applications’ results in correlation with the dynamic of their theoretical frame and their connection especially with the field of art.
The 3rd section [Theories and Practices] includes some philosophical practices with children that have been developed outside the L.R.P.Ph.: bringing philosophy in the field of experience, through art and dialogue, once again posing the question of their possible interrelation with Practical Philosophy, if that is, and in which way they are traced to the field and in what way they form it.
Finally, the 4th section [Interviews] introduces a personal scientific path regarding philosophy – the way in which new ways are opened up, through the engagement with philosophy, both for philosophy and for the person doing it. In this section, there will be a systematization and intensification of the investigation into personal engagement with philosophy as a form of praxis.
 
Εκ τε γαρ ουδάμ’εόντος αμήχανόν εστι γενέσθαι
Και τα’εόν εξαπολέσθαι ανήνυστον και άπυστον.
Αιεί γαρ τη γ’έσται, όπη κέ τις αιέν ερείδη
Eμπεδοκλέους, Απόσπ. 12 [Αριστοτέλης] Μ.Ξ.Γ. 2, 975b1
G.S.Kirk & J.E. Raven, M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers
 
Prof. Elena Theodoropoulou
Directress of L.R.P.Ph.
Dossier: «Thinking the body: philosophical approaches»
The section of Auditorium includes theoretical texts that deal each time with a concept or thematic which is considered to participate to the shaping of an understanding of practical philosophy, as it seems, inversely, to be able to intergrate and reorganize them. The aim is to bring such concepts or thematics into discussion, which could permit to progressively furthering and specializing their connection with the field of practical philosophy even more.
2016-2019
«Thinking the body: philosophical approaches»
More than the image, the status and the place of the body in the educational space and mechanism, the battle for or against the body-spirit duality, the transition between interiority and exteriority, the embodied and the experienced, the representation and the performance, the suffering and the pleasure, the connection between the beautiful and the ugly and the emergence of the monstrous, more than the biopolitics and the torture, the intercorporeality and the gaze, the mysteries of flesh and sensibility, the tension between distance and touch, more than the connection between gestures and speech, the poetics of here and there, life and death, more than the body of art, the poetics of movement and immobility, the mirror and the opacity, the ethics of the limit, the experience of cruelty, more than the nudity, the «thing» [res] and the dehumanization, the religious body and the ecstatic body, the visible limit between life and death, the wound and the earth of human substantiality – Rather a trap for the thinking. More than the body spectrum, the animal body and the body of carnival, the body construction and the body project, the body experienced, more than the material body and the desired body, more than the body mass, the body assembly, the body-object and the Cyborg and lesser than all these, what remains of the body, what is corporal, embodied, disembodied in education? What about its philosophical apprehension and how does this conveys the apperception and the inclusion of the body in the diverse experiences and forms of expression?
Ιn the wake of «Days of Workshops. Philosophy of Education in Praxis» [4th Meeting] under the theme «Philosophical Body / Body in education» (Rhodes, Rhodes, 26 -29 May) the texts included in this chapter understand the body from different points of view showing exactly on the one hand the tips on which strike the efforts of definition, on the other hand a peculiar openess which permits multiple approaches to its study. On anthropogical, educational, phenomenogical, socio-political, aesthetical, ethcial level, literally or metaphorically, the point of views ara multiplied stirring the question which for the education has still meaning, because the two poles exist equally: is the body the ultimate, unsurpassable reality (even with its own destruction) or agent of meaning is the beyond the body, the disembodied or the tug-of-war between the body and what it is not body, organizes the reason of our existence? A philosophy which will bring to light as a movement of their designation, the unspeakable or the untouchable by education, is the practical philosophy considered as the place of their reception and as her labor to be transformed to a such place – thus it will be recognized from its obstinate movement to the identification, the integration and the defence of mirabilia, of the irreducible, of the disorderd, the indisciplined (of the educational act), of those which behave obstinately like strangers either to philosophy (for example the body as such) or to education (for example, the body as a pedagogically unburned «rest» or as an eloquent sign of the educational order). In fact, philosophy has not been able to escape from the body, even if this appears as a ludibrium materiae and education has not been able to get rid of the body; even if it looses it behind its multiple decarnations.
Εlena Theodoropoulou
2016-2019
Philosophers did not neglect body
The body is often confined in its natural dimension if not in its physiological one. And it doesn’t find its place in a frame of study generally dedicated to cognitive activity. Or even, in France, a place is reserved exclusively for it in the case of «Athletic and Physical Activities» (APS). What follows is the old division of the body and spirit, that recurs incessantly in the framework of an uneven hierarchy in the very function of the institutions. I would like to support here that the problem is not to provide behind the body the position it deserves (how then, could we after all determine that position?) however to suggest a reevaluation of it. Nothing anyway is less certain, than the idea that we have that this division corresponds to something different than a social and historic construction of opinion. We refer for instance the work of Galen of Pergamon, who in the second century, didn’t consider that we can separate the soul from the body, connecting in this way all kind of illnesses of the body and soul with a bad idiosyncrasy of the body, in which they would have an effect upon. His treatise that the excellent doctor is also a philosopher provides for this a characteristic experience. In the same period, the Pyrrhonian impressions of Sextus Empiricus, develop a noteworthy presentation of the meaning that could be attributed to emotions (therefore to the body) in the framework of the cognitive activity, suggesting at the same time a philosophy as a way of life (education) and a premature ethology. As far as Spinoza is concerned there is no doubt: «The spirit and the body is one in itself» Ethics, ΙΙΙ, 2nd sent.), he confirms clarifying in the following: «No one until now has determined what the body can do». Deleuze from his side, stressed this point (for example in his the book about Spinoza, Practical Philosophy), which I would like to read ab initio in the framework of education. Not what I can teach? Rather what can the body do? It is a radical acknowledgement of the presupposition. Beginning not just from the transcendental recommendations of the institution of the state, but rather from the innate results of the experience. We don’t know what the body can do (its power to endure and act), and more generally what can the bodies do (in their crossing with one another) – therefore we must experiment. Does this mean to learn to write? The question is it not: what shall I teach? Rather: what can I do inside the relationship with this «language» which is the writing. A relationship henceforth «socialized», in a way that for someone to write is expressed as a «sentiment» of writing. This presupposes a practice of free writing, with continuance and social recognition, in that way that the writing become a «spiritual exercise», as Pierre Hadot would say ∙ not an activity of institutional normalization but rather a philosophical or existential action. Not a scholar (or scholastic) activity, but a transformation of the self. Study becomes a social experiment in which everyone investigates and expands that of which he/she is capable, according to two principles: the confirmation of equality (Rancière) and the practice of joy.
Keywords: «what can the body do?», experience, writing, confirmation of equality, practice of joy.

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The physiology of the subject: a symbolism for the eye
According to Nietzsche, the modern philosophical conception of the construction of identity from Descartes to Hegel seems to assume that the primacy of the thinking subject (or of consciousness), constitutes a unitary field or substratum which determines and upholds the existence of the world. Counter opposed to this perspective, Nietzsche holds that the «subject» is nothing but a fiction founded on that kind of faith which is useful for life but nonetheless remains an interpretation. As such, the «subject» constitutes a fiction and not an absolute fact or truth. For him the timely confirmation of the «Ego’s» identity furnishes the «subject» with individuality: the subject is nothing but the timely the finite passage of the moment. In Nietzsche the conception of the subject «as multiplicity» is so precise that it does not permit margins for metaphysical consolation or peace. On the contrary, it exposes one to dionysian excess the very excess of dionysian life that dismembers us. Nietzsche contends that thought – as interpretation – is an activity undertaken not by a unitary «subject» but by a much more subtle and complex interplay of drives and forces of domination that in unison, constitute the phenomenon of the living body.
Keywords: Nietzsche, «subject as multiplicity», living body, timely experience, thinking as praxis.

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Βοdy in arts. Mimetic and performative processus.
To a great extent, cultural learning is mimetic learning, which is at the center of many processes of education and self-education. Mimetic learning is a sensory, body-based form of learning in which images, schemas and movements needed to perform actions are learned. This embodiment is responsible for the lasting effects that play an important role in all social and cultural fields. By participating in the living practices of other people, humans expand their own life-worlds and create for themselves new ways of experiencing and acting. Receptivity and activity overlap. In all areas of human existence rituals and gestures are important for the mimetic development of body knowledge. Embodied knowledge is indispensable in religion, politics, economy, science, families, and education. Ritual knowledge facilitates both continuity and change, as well as experiences of transition and transcendence.
Keywords: mimetic learning, embodied knowledge, sensory, body-based form of learning, ritual knowledge.

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The Other, the same (?) in Biotech Art. The example of SymbioticA and the Tissue Culture & Art Project.
In 1996, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr create Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC & A) and found SymbioticA around a research and development project on the use of tissue technologies as an artistic medium. This first research laboratory brings together scientists and artists who comment on and explore the possibilities of biotechnology. We propose in this article to present some of the semi-living sculptures of the couple of artists who, through a new class of objects / being, questions the relationship between Human and environment.
Keywords: Biotech Art, tissue culture, ethics, sciences.

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Theater and philosophy, body and thinking.
This text explores the relationship between body and thinking, and between theater and philosophy as well. It gives some notes on how to conceive philosophy, as practice, pathos and relationship to knowledge and it offers three characteristics of what could be considered the educational dimension of such a practice: invention, errancy and improvisation. It also provides an example of a concrete technique adopted from the Brazilian theater intellectual A. Boal and explores its connections with some philosophical exercises in order to explicit and problematize the connections between philosophical practice and theater and more specifically between body and thinking.
Keywords: theater, body, philosophical practice, A. Boal, philodrama.

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The place of the body in education: the challenge of self-presence.
Hardly a day goes by that media do not remind us of the benefits of physical activity in favor of our wellbeing and to counter the adverse effects of the modern world. We would like to bring out what we can think about the place of the body in education by valuing physical and motor activities. The contribution of phenomenology and hermeneutics can give a perspective on these physical practices. We shall use the thought of Heidegger to illustrate the passage from free activity toward activity connected to expectations of results highlighting the transformation of the playful character of these activities. We shall wonder if there exists a relation of truth to the body.
Keywords: Body, education, relation to oneself, Heidegger, play, nature, ethics.

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Travel-School And The Thinking Body: the place of intensities in a non-structured thinking.
If we think about school not as a place for learning or socialization, not as a place to insert people in a society or in a cultural logic, but more than that, as a place to amaze, to surprise – and if we do believe that thinking comes out of an encounter with difference, as Deleuze stated, we are thus speaking about school as a specific place for thinking –, in that sense we can relate what happens within school to what happens in a travel. In this article, is not the relevance of this travel-school possibility that is put under discussion, but more specifically the place of the body in this school of thinking. How is it possible to think in displacement? How can we amaze or surprise our body? Can the body think?
Keywords: body, travel, cartography, difference.

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«Ι eat my notebook»: for an anthropophagic philosophy of education.
This text explores the pedagogical dimension of the Anthropophagy of Oswald de Andrade. We try to show how Anthropophagy — as a platform of a philosophy of education, a «cultural theory» or a «program for the re-education of sensibility» — is also a pedagogy of the body and a struggle against the patriarchy, the venality and the usury of capitalism.
Keywords: Education, Anthropophagic pedagogy, Body.

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«The physical body is not here but the Body of Memories is still with us»: Philosophy with Children and the Living Body of Memory of the Deceased.
A philosophy with children community of inquiry encourages children to develop a philosophical sensitivity that entails awareness of abstract questions related to human existence. When it operates, it can allow insight into significant philosophical aspects of various situations and their analysis. This article offers a hermeneutic perspective to the discussions of children and adolescents during philosophical communities of inquiry around their attitude towards their deceased family members. The analysis of the texts reveals that the young members of the communities referred to the deceased through three main categories, all related to the body: (1) The «living memory body of the dead person»; (2) The «un-present body that accompanied me»; (3) The meaning of «life after death». This article uses some aspects of narrative theory in order to explain the statements of the participants.
Keywords: philosophy with children, community of inquiry, body, living memory, deceased.

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Childlike bodies and adult spirits
The anthropology of education cannot be reduced into an anthropology encoded in biology, it is equally and above all, a cultural anthropology (dedicated to the societal forms of life and human practices) and a philosophical anthropology (concentrated on the meaning of human life). If the physical is what is produced in its own order, man is something more than a piece of nature, exactly because it is a part of nature that declares what is nature. The body itself, a body experienced, phenomenological, comes to increase the societal body, which in turn comes to increase the biological body. It is from this clumsy and incomplete encapsulation that emerges the anthropological mystery of the human. Thus, we propose the study of the representation of the child body in relation with the childhood representations in the West, namely the observation of the socially structured body of the child through the prism of an anthropology of education.
Keywords: anthropology of education, cultural anthropology, body experienced-social body, childhood representations.

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Ethics against racism
The body, in education, has a dual status, to be the medium and to be the training project of the individual. One can educate only by the sensitive, which makes it suspicious to the powers that want to subjugate it. In this paper, we analyze how corporeality can be turned against itself by institutions of domination so that self-hatred becomes hatred of the other. Racism can no longer be portrayed as an embarrassing epiphenomenon anchored in the heart of a guilty humanity, but as a structure implementing new techniques of governmentality. The research is based on a historical and philosophical characterization of racism as a state apparatus under the third Reich. It then proposes a characterization of the lines of force of a pedagogy against racism, based on the fundamental postulate of the equality of intelligences.
Keywords: Body, education, racism, emancipation pedagogy.

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The body and the experience of intensity in autism
The purpose of this paper is to think the idea of difference from gestures and crisis by autistic subjects. If the difference is conflated with negation and opposition (as Gilles Deleuze points out in Difference and Repetition) and if it is misunderstood in an educational context, it can lead to the unbearable exclusion of autistic children from school. It is possible to think the difference in other ways. If we base an analysis on the body and its movements, and on the nature of the crisis and on stereotypies of autistic behaviour, we can move away from an idea of the difference understood as operating according to a logic of the Similar, or the likeness to oneself. This logic we will term the identiquement. Seen from an autistic point of view, the difference is elsewhere; it is in the self as a modality, or as the condition of an experience. This we call the mêmement. It can be thought of as an experience in the moment of the intensity of the seizure. To understand the moment, it is necessary to examine what we will call the instansité of this difference- in the sense that, if the ‘difference’ in autism can be described, it must be described in terms of a difference in intensity. Renewing the philosophy of difference, as it relates to autism, therefore requires new conceptual thinking; in this paper, we present the first draft of a new conceptual approach.
Keywords: Autism, Philosophie of the Difference, Deleuze, body, experience.

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The Section In the Laboratory keeps track of the L.R.P.Ph. activities designed, in order to investigate the way in which research methods, employing philosophical ways, can possibly be structured for further use in public places (as they are here, the school and the community) and for examining their applications’ results in correlation with the dynamic of their theoretical frame and their connection especially with the field of art. 
«Artistic & Philosophical Practices to Change School? (PHILARPE)»
Ι. The Artistic Residency and the «Phantom- vessel»
October 17 – November 6, 2016
Presentation
As part of the research project «Artistic & Philosophical Practices to Change School? (PHILARPE)», with scientifically and organizationally responsible the Laboratory «Education, Cultures, Politics» (ECP, University of Lumière Lyon2) & the «Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.) / University of the Aegean & collaborating partner the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts artistic residency was planned, in collaboration with the Directorate of Secondary Education of Dodecanesos and the Municipality of Leros (see //practphilab.aegean.gr/φιλοσοφικές-διεπιστημονικές-πρακτικ/).
The objects and the practices that PHILARPE expects to disclose and to analyze, are placed at the crossroads of art, philosophy and education, as well as those of art and philosophy within education (and vice versa). PHILARPE proposes to correlate artistic and philosophical practices in light of the question about their common stakes, their formative influence on the educational environment and their ability to educate differently, notably to «change school». This perspective is systematically supported by art education – the intervening artist constitutes here a central figure. The same analysis can be made with regard to the development of philosophical practice as a generalized educational practice, even though the figure of the «intervening philosopher» remains rarer and tradition tends to connect philosophy to the development of cognitive and ethical-political skills and to the shaping of an active citizen. Placed at the intersection of these two areas considered as levers of educational change, PHILARPE is enrolled in a european and international trend and perspective.
More specifically, it is about the installation of an original mechanism of artistic and philosophical intervention on the islands of Dodocanese, as part of the research carried out by the two cooperating laboratories, starting from Leros. The animators invite the participants to think and give shape together in one of the most widespread myths that fuel the island imaginary: the phantom- ship myth.
At the end of the artistic and philosophical residence, an original work, a collective creation, will be installed at the emblematic site which will have been chosen as the trace of the phantom ship’s passage. This phase is integrated in the framework of the 4th cycle of «Days of Workshops» (May 26-29, 2016) organized by the «Research Laboratory in Practical & Applied Philosophy» (L.R.P.A.Ph) and the International Network «Philosophy of Education in Praxis»(NePhedinPrax).
The action is illustrated in the text of Alain Kerlan & Yves Henri: «For Art, Philosophy, and Education as a ‘Performance’, October 17-November 6, 2016» [«De L’art, de la Philosophie et de l’Education Comme ‘Performance’»], October 17 – November 6, 2016.
It is accompanied by an extended summary of the text in Greek.
Elena Theodoropoulou
2016 – 2019
 
In the Laboratory
«Artistic & Philosophical Practices to Change School? (PHILARPE)»
The Artistic Residency and the «Phantom- vessel». October 17-November 6, 2016
For Art, Philosophy, and Education as a «Performance». The Leros «Phantom-Vessel», October 17-November 6, 2016. Chronicle of an artistic, philosophical and pedagogical experimentation.

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«Artistic & Philosophical Practices to Change School? (PHILARPE)»
ΙΙ. Child, photography, philosophy
19, 20 February & 25 May 2016
Presentation
As part of the research project «Artistic & Philosophical Practices to Change School? (PHILARPE)», the «Laboratory of Research on Practical & Applied Philosophy» (L.R.P.A.Ph.) / University of the Aegean, organized a workshop & a procedure of artistic and philosophical intervention (with the participation of students of 1st Experimental Elementary School of Rhodes) in relation to photography were organized, in 19 & 20 February 2016.
The recognition of photography as a philosophical object is proposed here, as a process of attempting to understand and partially remove the obstacles, at the same time, both from the point of view of photography, to be seen as such, and from the point of view of philosophy, to contemplate, compose and reconstruct its relationship to photography. On the basis of the above reasoning, the organization of a second workshop, this time in a classroom setting is attempted.
The children and the participants had the opportunity to think, to express themselves and discuss about the photographs which they had been asked to select based on different areas of interest. The reasons for the selection of photographs and the relevant discussion can pinpoint the «philosophy of an image» that permeates the photos as well as the basic philosophical notions found within, while, at the same time, the particularity of this medium through the viewpoint of children will become apparent. What makes the photo what it is, but, at the same time, what it is not and what makes it to turn out to a philosophical object?
In this framework, further questions that arise when we want to think of photography in the context of an «image philosophy» in its anthropological, philosophical and aesthetic potential were developed. [The first phase of these workshops was conducted in the frame of the International Symposium, «Ethics in Education. Philosophical tracings and clearings», and of the Days of Workshops, «Philosophy of Education in Praxis» /3rd International Meeting (Rhodes, May 12-13-14, 2015 //practphilab.aegean.gr/συνέδρια-συμπόσια-ημερίδες-congres-colloques-journees-congresses-colloquia-c/).
The collective product of the collaboration with children and with the collaboration of students of the Department of Preschool Education and Educational Design (D.P.E.S.E.D.) was included in the framework of the 2nd Exhibition «Philosophical Objects» which was organized by L.R. P. PH. (May 25, 2016, http://practphilab.
aegean.gr/φιλοσοφalia-philosophalia/
).
The above is described through the following texts:
– Alain Kerlan: «La Photographie Comme Objet Philosophique Et Porte D’entrée Dans La Réflexion Philosophique. Intervention Dans La Classe, Suivie D’un Séminaire A L’université. Le Dispositif». [Photography As a Philosophical Object. Intervention In the Classroom & door of Entrance in philosophical thinking: the plan of process].
– Elena Theodoropoulou: «Photography in classroom: the discussional processus and the object of thought».
The texts are accompanied by the video: «The phantom- vessel, From Philosophical Object to the Object of Aesthetics» (Phase 2) [https://youtu.be/cwem6x6PN5g] in the framework of «Days of Workshops», Philosophy of Education in Praxis (4th International Meeting) «Philosophical Body/Body in Education», 26-29 / 05/2016 organized by the «Laboratory of Research in Practical & Applied Philosophy (L.R.PA.Ph.)». It is an outdoor workshop, organized on May 28 from the R.L.PA.PH. as conclusion of the above collaboration with the Sixth Class of 1st Experimental School of Rhodes (animators: Philosophy Professor Alain Kerlan and visual artist Yves Henri). The workshop has been attended by school children of the last class of the 1st Experimental School, with the kind support of their teacher, the school director and their parents.
Elena Theodoropoulou
2016 – 2019
 
Photography As a Philosophical Object. Intervention In the Classroom & door of Entrance in philosophical thinking: the plan of process.
Based on the acceptance that photography is a «royal way» for the children’s initiation to philosophy, the text presents, on the one hand, the mechanism set up to develop a discussion with children in 6th grade of an Elementary school, and on the other hand, the theoretical context, philosophical dimensions of photography, so that a workshop with a group of students at the university can then be organized on the themes that the discussion with children had brought to light. The philosophical and pedagogical key questions that posed in the workshop were: why is photography an ideal way for us to do philosophy with children? And how can we go to a such entreprise?

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Photography in classroom: the discussional process and the object of thought
The text follows the steps of a discussion among children in a primary school classroom on photography. Among the steps of such an observation are the following: discussion modalities, pedagogical mechanism, non-directive and non-thematic approach of photography, the main philosophical lines, the development of children thinking, the constitution of a map of criteria for the lecture of photos by the children by releasing its philosophy, the of deterritorialization, the understanding of photography as a philosophical object and the meta-object produced by children in the wake of previous discussions in classroom.

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Τhe project Ou-tis [No-body], aims to represent a meeting point for those educators who are interested in observation, identification, highlighting and trial of the forms and ways through which philosophy in school, exists or is likely to exist πwhere educators tend to use prefabricated «practices» and educational materials, in order to serve goals (didactic, pedagogical etc.) alien to philosophy or pseudo-philosophical goals. The recognition of philosophical traces and the excavation of philosophical debris, moving unseen or transformed or deformed within the educational environments are numbered among the goals. Conversely, the identification and examination of pedagogical tissues within philosophical speeches, ways and places. Exploring the possibility to cultivate common or hybrid or circularized forms or ways that will not skimp on the needs of both fields runs through the pedagogical activities in and out the school which are organized around the school classroom as their center of interest.
Within the above-mentioned framework, a certain investigation takes place, as far as primary school grades are concerned, which would be interested to discover points of coarticulation between the philosophical and the pedagogical level depending on a possible understanding that the educator gains while he/she attempts to coordinate different, yet convergent within the classroom, dynamics through an ever-advancing realization of their interplay: that of the literary text, of the children regarded as debaters, of the school curriculum’s demands, of the consolidated technics and methods, of the educator’s own pedagogical-didactic habits, of the philosophical perspective, of the existing pedagogical-didactic culture.
On this basis, an examination took place which concerned the possibility of activating probational guidelines/ red lines, commitments so to speak, regarding a self-observation process and exercise in the classroom which would attempt to be integrated precisely at the framework’s dynamic. These guidelines would support the educator’s possible choices without them getting distanced from the basic commitments, both those concerning the philosophical education, and those concerning the pedagogical management of the terms of classroom discussion, as they respond to the principle of a question-centered approach of the didactic process, with what ever that goes with in terms of principles, method, technics, procedural choices, values, making good use of the related literature.
This section includes four articles. The first one draws the basic lines of the theoretical frame and the remaining three attempt to list observations and comments related to the applications attempted.
– Elena Theodoropoulou: «Detection in classroom: texts, discussions and philosophical fragments – the emergence of a research».
– Maiiri Voukanou: «Discussing a children’s literature text in the classroom: traces of a research activity».
– Μania Monioudi: «Debating with children in primary school as a means of redefining the educator’s attitude: Notes of reflective self/observation».
– Aikaterini Renti: «”I will help you to approach if you approach, and to keep away if you keep away”: Observing the potential advent of philosophy in a classroom, through a literary text».
Elena Theodoropoulou
2016-2019
Detection in classroom: texts, discussions and philosophical fragments – the emergence of a research
Through the disagreements, incompatibilities, arrythmias, deviations, recessions appearing during the co-function of those dynamics created where the teaching of literature meets philosophy and discussion (or discussion meets literature and philosophy) emerges in fact the intention of an exploration which will be able to reveal the minor places where these meetings manifest themselves (directly or indirectly) not in order to establish the right of a didactic object (like philosophy is) to claim the application of the presuppositions appropriated to its introduction and exercise in education, but mainly, the right not to be articulated as a major didactic choice contenting henceforth itself with the demand of a minor but critical attention to detail.

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Discussing a children’s literature text in the classroom: traces of a pre-research activity
The main theme of this article is presenting elements and comments in the context of a self-observation οn behalf of the teacher during the progress of conversation among primary school children with an intermediate literary material. In the frame of the activities of the Laboratory of Research in Practical Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph.), this article is about a pre-research activity in classroom, where main emphasis is placed on less intervention of the pedagogical presence, on the part of the teacher, in order to identify potentially well-established characteristics of the pedagogical culture that do not enhance children’s thinking free expression.

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Debating with children in primary school as a means of redefining the educator’s attitude: Notes of reflective self/observation
Debating with children in primary school can constitute «a place and a way» of reflecting on the attitude of the teacher, when formal educational settings incorporate pedagogical methods of a different culture (e.g. the culture cultivated as part of studying under the Practical Philosophy Research Lab). The notes on this specific «reflective observation» concern the recording of personal experiences during targeted discussions with students and within a framework of binding condition as well as pointing out the difficulties that were identified both during the discussions and (mainly) later, in any reflective approach to these discussions.

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«I will help you to approach if you approach, and to keep away if you keep away»: Observing the potential advent of philosophy in a classroom, through a literary text
In this text, data from the study of a hypothetical scenario about the observation that took place during the course of Modern Greek in a primary school classroom are introduced. During the lesson a literature text was analyzed as well. On that basis, we are trying to highlight a concern related not only to the connection between literature and philosophy in the classroom, but also to the question whether a teacher can «meet» his/her students and discuss concepts that have philosophical interest.

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The Section Theories and Practices includes some philosophical practices with children that have been developed outside the L.R.P.Ph.: bringing philosophy in the field of experience, through art and dialogue, once again posing the question of their possible interrelation with Practical Philosophy, if that is, and in which way they are traced to the field and in what way they form it.
What a child can?
This article is about a philosophical reflection on a Portuguese artist’s work, a choreographer, during a specific creative process that was culminated in a show titled, «What if everything was yellow?». This show was developed by the artist, from the scratch, in co-creation with a group of children. The article intends to analyze the way in which the artist departed from the usual conception about childhood, according to which children’s ideas must be judged as right or wrong (depending on the adult-centered perspective), in order to, progressively, arrive to a conception open to the new, the unpredictable, the unexpected – in that way, a new creative potential recognized in children’s thinking. This work developed, not only within an artistic plane, but also a philosophical one, through the introduction of philosophical encounters – the artist continued to participate as a screenwriter, always in co-creation with the children involved in the process. Consequently, this article aims to show this very connection between these two levels, inasmuch the contamination that occurred between the artistic work and the philosophical one.

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Εxperiences and enchantment during a school excursion to the university
This text narrates an experience in the context of «Does philosophy fit into boxes?» project (in cooperation with the Philosophy and Childhood Studies Program (NEFI / UERJ) of Rio de Janeiro State University, with two public schools near the city of Rio de Janeiro). Ιn this particular university they are systematically organized workshops with students and teachers from schools of preschool and primary education and young people and adults as well studying in night schools. In this case, it’s about the visit to the university on behalf of 25 children from 9 to 11 years old. The objective of this visit would be a joint reflection attempt, an experiment of philosophical experience in an unknown space for the children. In this experience, starting from an heraclitean fragment, a discussion was developed about friendship, emerged from a question formuladed by these kids themselves: «How do you take care of a friend?». The dialogue traced an unthinkable connexion with the Deulezian thought, what gives rise to a reflexion about the value and the meaning to do philosophy childishly in the frame of a university level project.

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The Section Interviews introduces a personal scientific path regarding philosophy – the way in which new ways are opened up, through the engagement with philosophy, both for philosophy and for the person doing it. In this section, there will be a systematization and intensification of the investigation into personal engagement with philosophy as a form of praxis.
Ιnterviewer: Dr. Sofia Nikolidaki (M.Ed. University of Crete, MPhil, University of Crete/ Ph.D, University of Wales)
Frame of the interview: Days of Workshops «Philosophy of Education in Praxis» [4th International Meeting]
 Philosophical Body/ Body in Education, 26-29 May 2016.
In this frame, prof. Santi had presented a workshop under the title: «Embodiment in the unexpected: improvisation as form of developmental ‘complex thinking’».                                                                                              
Transcript: Elizabeth Giamakidou (M. Ed., University of Nicosia)
Reviewing of the transcript: prof. Elena Theodoropoulou

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Copyright 2019 – Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph.), University of the Aegean.

If this journal aims at the emergence, identification, questioning, investigation of philosophical places and ways and their peculiar cartography and kinesiology within the various educational spacetimes, the ways, the forms, the foldings, the narratives, the incorporations of practical philosophy, the philosophical re-deconstruction of the concept of application, the ways, the forms, the foldings the transformations, the turns of applied philosophy, the philosophical comprehensions of the concept, of appearances, of movements, of voices of action within life forms, it is, after all, a bewildered /amechanon journal. Αmechanon in the face of its aims, of the things that must emerge, in the face of forms and their foldings, in the face of the various turns and meaning reconstructions, in the face of the question about the practical and the applied, about philosophy itself and philosophical comprehension. Amechanon as impractical, ineffective, unskilled, inexpugnabilis, ineluctabilis, inennarabilis, immensus, infinitus, incredibilis, as bewildered speech, in a amechanon manner, to stand with the things it includes in puzzlement, with the infinite, as the sea of Socratic aporia and its stupor are, like stupor. An alien speech.
[…] Σκρατες, κουον μν γωγε πρν κα συγγενσθαι σοι τι σ οδν λλο ατς τε πορες κα τος λλους ποιες πορεν κα νν, ς γ μοι δοκες, γοητεεις με κα φαρμττεις κα τεχνς κατεπδεις, στε μεστν πορας γεγονναι. Κα δοκες μοι παντελς, ε δε τι κα σκψαι, μοιτατος εναι τ τε εδος κα τλλα τατ τ πλατείᾳ νρκ τ θαλαττίᾳ· κα γρ ατη τν ε πλησιζοντα κα πτμενον ναρκν ποιε, κα σ δοκες μοι νν μ τοιοτν τι πεποιηκναι, [ναρκνληθς γρ γωγε κα τν ψυχν κα τ στμα ναρκ, κα οκ χω τι ποκρνωμα σοι. Κατοι μυρικις γε περ ρετς παμπλλους λγους ερηκα κα πρς πολλος, κα πνυ ε, ς γε μαυτ δκουν νν δ οδτι στν τ παρπαν χω επεν. Κα μοι δοκες ε βουλεεσθαι οκ κπλων νθνδε οδποδημν· ε γρ ξνος ν λλ πλει τοιατα ποιος, τχν ς γης παχθεης […] (Μένων, 80a-b)
Socrates, I used to be told, before I began to meet you, [80a] that yours was just a case of being in doubt yourself and making others doubt also: and so now I find you are merely bewitching me with your spells and incantations, which have reduced me to utter perplexity. And if I am indeed to have my jest, I consider that both in your appearance and in other respects you are extremely like the flat torpedo sea-fish; for it benumbs anyone who approaches and touches it, and something of the sort is what I find you have done to me now. For in truth [80b] I feel my soul and my tongue quite benumbed, and I am at a loss what answer to give you. And yet on countless occasions I have made abundant speeches on virtue to various people—and very good speeches they were, so I thought—but now I cannot say one word as to what it is. You are well advised, I consider, in not voyaging or taking a trip away from home; for if you went on like this as a stranger in any other city you would very likely be taken up for a wizard [Menon, 80a-b] [W.R.M. Lamb, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/].
And, if all these can pass into the background of such a journal, on the foreground words seem anything but bewildered, as a paradox which cannot be confronted, only to be brought to light as much as possible. Amechanon monitors the moves of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy, attempting to bring this attitude to light, as a primary attitude of the Laboratory itself. With the intention of including the gaps, the adversities, the aporiae, the entrenchments of investigating and comprehending concepts that are driven in the Practical Philosophy field, of the selection, creation and employment of materials, activities and actions that are related with the development of a field. In a sense, the journal turns into a diary.
The second issue of the journal includes two of its regular sections.
The 1st section [Auditorium] hosts texts dealing with cinema and its philosophical readings in the wake of the seminar on cinema and existence, held in 2018 in Québec. The relationship between cinema and philosophy is not obvious and unfolds on different levels. With a vehicle the reference to human existence and its depictions in films, the texts gathered here discuss aspects of this relationship, highlighting points that transfer thought in the field of Practical Philosophy. The title of this section is: Cinema and Existence
The 2nd section [In the Laboratory] includes the Proceedings of the 1st Doctoral students International Seminar under the title Research Themes Ι, 2019-2020, which took place as part of the activities of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy. The texts imprint a variety of research paths and choices and designate on the one hand, common threads of research interests in the presentations of PhD candidates from different countries and on the other hand, the coherence of an intercultural dialogue within a Laboratory that seeks the dynamics of thinking diversity.
Εκ τε γρ οδάμ’ έόντος μήχανόν έστι γενέσθαι
Κα τα’όν έξαπολέσθαι νήνυστον κα πυστον.
Αεί γρ τη γ’έσται, πη κ τις αέν έρείδη
(Eμπεδοκλέους, Απόσπ. 12 [Αριστοτέλης] Μ.Ξ.Γ. 2, 975b1
S. Kirk & J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers)
Prof. Elena Theodoropoulou
Directress of L.R.P.Ph.
 
The section of Auditorium includes theoretical texts that deal each time with a concept or thematic which is considered to participate to the shaping of an understanding of practical philosophy, as it seems, inversely, to be able to intergrate and reorganize them. The aim is to bring such concepts or thematics into discussion, which could permit to progressively furthering and specializing their connection with the field of practical philosophy even more.
2018-2020
Cinema and Existence
The texts gathered in this dossier are the outcome of a seminar on cinema and existence, held in 2018 in Québec. The aspiration was to explore and understand human existence through cinematic images, aware that both human existence and cinema contain more meaning than we can reveal. There is a long tradition between philosophy and art, often in the form of a fundamental rift. There are exceptions, however, including Hegel, who placed art with philosophy and religion at a higher level in terms of self-understanding.
Cinema, just like myths and all works of art, is an object that, without being philosophical, opens up to philosophical and existential questions, which are not intended exclusively for philosophy as a science, but for an exploratory process, which we can locate in fields different from that of philosophy, such as humanistic psychology and pedagogy. This does not mean that the film appears to be a work that expresses a position on the basis of which we would recognize theories and philosophical reasoning in that work, even if, at times, the films do indeed refer to these.
Cinema acts as a mechanism that reveals our consciousness, which is presented in many forms. Could we then wonder, to what extent are we in control of our lives or to what extent are we governed by existence? So would we not be mere witnesses of our own lives, capable of narrating it afterwards? In that case, not being able to narrate would not be the worst thing that could happen to a human subject? Isn’t that what cinema does, like all works of art? We can then think that cinema works as a psychotherapy. Without language, therefore, without narrative, ideas remain poor in content. Agamben, following Benjamin, speaks of a poverty of experience. We can conclude that a cinematic experience becomes an important experience if we have the opportunity to narrate it.
In this sense, the cinema can become an important educational tool, if the films become the object of narration, according to a symbolic interpretation that touches existence. So that the films themselves are not meaningful, but what we can say about them. To say something about a movie means to learn to talk, to learn a little more about yourself. The act of speaking takes us beyond the sensory level to touch the existential, that part of ourselves that only waits to be recognized in order to live and give meaning to our lives.
Our life is a cinematic life
Prof. Jacques Quintin,
Quebec, Canada, 2020
Ιntroduction: Τhe projection of the human subject and the meeting of oneself
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Cinema, philosophy and the pedagogical trap: gestures and details 
Building on a question concerning the interrogation and re-imagining of the way by which cinema permits the exploration and understanding of existential questions, we try to discuss the function of the cinema as pedagogical means through a reflection on the relation between film and philosophy. The conception’s revisitation of the pedagogical approach during the philosophical processing of a film, through a series of reading gestures, is flanked by a thinking on a possible highlighting of the detail. 
Keywords: cinema, philosophy, pedagogical means, detail, gesture.
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Ethical and philosophical reflection on euthanasia and assisted suicide based on Alejandro Amenábar’ s film «The Inner Sea»
Amenábar’s film Inner Sea recounts the story of Sampedro, a quadriplegic Galician poet who fought for the decriminalization of euthanasia in the 80s and 90s in Spain. The film serves as a guide for reflection on the ethical and philosophical issues raised by Sampedro’s request to die, to examine the evolution of the situation on assisted dying in our Western society and to discuss how cinematic experience touches us and transforms our perception of others and the world.
Keywords: euthanasia, assisted suicide, die assistance, ethic, philosophy, cinema.
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Monsters and physicians. A clinical and aesthetic reflection on the film «The Elephant Man», by David Lynch
The article develops the link between the doctor/patient relationship as presented by David Lynch’s film «The Elephant Man» as a metaphor for the role of the psychotherapist, explorer of the shadows of the human spirit, not without the risk of getting lost in the darkness or not finding the path to his client. By a phenomenological reduction method, the film puts us back to an image drawn from Japanese architecture, the «toko no ma», and we believe therapy is an experience of the contact between shadow and light, which the contrast equals of what comes out of the consciousness and overflows in the clinical relationship.
Keywords: cinema, psychiatry, phenomenology, therapeutic relationship.
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Melancholy, the Word and Hope in the movie «Arrival»
 Fixing her thoughts in the hermeneutical encounter in the film Arrival, the author proposes an uncommon and existential understanding of melancholy. For this purpose, she argues that there is an ontological dimension to melancholy, meaning that human beings essentially respond to the necessity for separation, loss and individuation, while there remains in them a melancholy for the absolute, for painless and infinit unity. Likewise, considered existentially, Arrival appears as a genuine display of pathos and human affectivity with regards to existentials truths, such as alterity and responsability, as well as solitude and finitude. An interstellar tragedy metaphorizing existential dramas, it appears that the movie displays a phenomenality well related to melanchol- and by its side, to hope and despair – namely by itss reflections revolving around the fall, loss and grief, but also as a promise of possibilities through language.
Keywords: Cinema, existence, Arrival, melancholia, hope, hermeneutics.
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Cinema and Stanley Cavell’s philosophy: «realism» in sound films and the question of metaphor and language games in cinema (the case of Dogtooth)
This article presents Stanley Cavell’s thinking on cinema. It presents and analyzes the basic argument of the American philosopher that cinema is the absence of reality that is projected but also the moving image of skepticism. The article also refers to talking films (talkies) which, among other things, are, according to Cavell, a significant medium of seeing cinema as a mimesis of people’s everyday language. Trying to approach the lingual elements of the filmic world, as Cavell puts it, we explore the possibility of analyzing specifically the metaphor and the language games, as they are presented in the movie Dogtooth (2009) of Yorgos Lanthimos.
Keywords: cinema, realism, skepticism, reality, ordinary language, language games, metaphor, Stanley Cavell, photography.
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From liberating speech to the writing of civic existence. A sartrian analysis of «Freedom writers» and «The Great Debaters»
In the Hollywood film landscape, African-Americans occupy a preponderant place that can be interpreted in various ways. Our article is part of an analysis through the use of a Sartrean perspective about the liberating effect of speech and writing on citizen existence through two films: Freedom writers and The Great Debaters. Far from the image of poverty, delinquency and failure, these two films pave the way for a more realistic analysis of young black students who, doomed to delinquency and perdition, have succeeded in taking charge of a positive horizon focused on the rejection of fatality and inaction. With Sartre’s glasses, the analysis of these two films allowed to show the idea that the important thing is not what people do to you, but what you do of what people have done to you.
Keywords: racism, education, freedom, education, young, citizen, black, commitment.
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Initiatory monsters and TV series for adolescents
Ancient societies ritualised the passage of young people to adult responsibilities. But these rites are gone. On the other hand, the rich initiatory symbols associated with them such as the bite, the swallowing, the monster and the regressus in the womb invade the contemporary imagination. Literatures, cinema, series and video games regularly put them on the scene. What do these productions of the imaginary tell us about the passage of teenagers into adulthood in our modernized societies? This text answers this question in two stages. First, by referring to the old pubertary rites to know the origin of the initiatory symbols. Subsequently, by raising the veil on the initiatory monsters in the contemporary imaginary of the young series.
Keywords: Initiation, passage, adulthood, monster, swallowing, bite, adult identity.
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The ontological scope of hermeneutics: film and the development of empathy
 Film is an art that fits into people’s ordinary lives. More than the narrative framework, it is the images that penetrate the intimacy of the spectators. We can see it as a tool for education, mainly empathy. For example, in medicine, film is used to give access to the lived world of patients. Film allows the spectator to exercise a phenomenological look. However, we will show that hermeneutics is necessary to understand and participate in the development of empathy towards what inhabits the human being, knowing that there is always more in a work, as in a human experience, than what we can say about it. In this way, film, by exposing worlds that are particularly different from ours, becomes another way of exercising philosophy and ethics, which gives film an ontological scope. The thinking of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and Gadamer will serve as support.
Keywords: World, empathy, openness, hermeneutics, phenomenology, education.
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The Section In the Laboratory keeps track of the L.R.P.Ph. activities designed, in order to investigate the way in which research methods, employing philosophical ways, can possibly be structured for further use in public places (as they are here, the school and the community) and for examining their applications’ results in correlation with the dynamic of their theoretical frame and their connection especially with the field of art.
 
Proceedings: 1st Doctoral students International Seminar «Research Themes Ι, 2019-2020»
 On Saturday, September 28, 2019, Elena Theodoropoulou and Christophe Miqueu had the pleasure to host an international seminar for Ph.D. candidates, in the frame of the Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy / L.R.P.Ph. (Department of Preschool Education Sciences & Educational Design, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece). This 1st Seminar, with title Research Themes Ι, 2019-2020, was designed and inaugurated by Elena Theodoropoulou, developing with this way the collaborative and intercultural actions of L.R.P.Ph., in order to provide a comfort zone for reflection and dialogue with the young researchers. Thus, they were invited to present and propose for discussion their research work in the philosophy and sciences of education, through different perspectives and different approaches.
This moment of intercultural dialogue and co-research has developed in at least three axes. First of all, as the seminar focused mainly on educational practices, especially on the part of the young researchers who participated in the seminar (most of them are educators), it allowed to move forward the procedure of appropriation of the empirical topics that cross the educational systems in Greece, France and Latin American countries (according to the origin of those who participated in the seminar). On this basis, participants also had the opportunity to reflect on the difference between laws, educational mechanisms and regulations, pedagogical perceptions, and the political and educational theories on which they are based. The question concerning the pedagogical freedom and its complex development, in the light of the educational reforms inspired by the new public administration, or even the moral stakes associated with the complex situations in which educators find themselves in their daily school lives as reflective practitioners in the field, are issues that have addressed on the seminar and have come to the forefront of the discussions. They also had the opportunity to gain knowledge of situations that arise in classes related to or similar to their own and in different contexts, to wonder and step into a questioning process concerning an educational act, which is constantly in the process of renewal, to question or dispute the narrative that unfolds around it and the conceptuality that accompanies it, and of course to think about the schools of each country, the diversity of professional standpoints we trace in school and the multitude of philosophical attitudes that govern the understanding of what it means to educate.
Secondly, the participants had the opportunity to reflect at the level of practical philosophy and its connection with different approaches and themes, that originate from art or literature, trying to conceive the complications of such a connection, its various aspects as well as possible misunderstandings. At a third level, this day of co-research was an opportunity to try and discuss the different methodological approaches that each researcher brings with his/her research project and to try to understand their philosophical stakes and the questions that these approaches highlight regarding the very meaning of the method.
The 1st international seminar for Ph.D. candidates is a significant step in the context of the strategic cooperation between the L.R.P.Ph and SPH (EA4574, joint laboratory of the Universities of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Montaigne). This was made possible by the support of the Erasmus + program, which allowed Christophe Miqueu to come to the University of the Aegean as a visiting professor. There is therefore a desire to renew this seminar, in order to multiply in the future the exchanges between both experienced researchers and young researchers, in France, Greece and other countries, and to utilize, through collective publications, the work that has jointly undertaken.
Prof. Elena Theodoropoulou and Prof. Christophe Miqueu,
Rhodes-Bordeaux, 2018-2020
How to cite this article: Alfonzo, R., N., «Três Cantos Nativos dos Índios Kraó & Papaoutai (Stromae) [videos]», Amechanon. International Journal of the «Laboratory of Research on Practical  Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.), 2018-2020, Rhodes: L.R.P.Ph., 2020, pp. 187-189.
 Choir of Pedro II School- campus Engenho Novo II
Group singing is taken as an experience of opening and creation through listening/making listening (to oneself, to the other, to the world) with an emphasis in experimentation in the many fields involved in the construction of the individual/collective voice, of repertoire and of the choir as a group. What is desired is the weaving of a knowledge of relations instead of contents, in which the most important is how to make, its effects and the refining of the feeling of whether something is good in what it is – all of which involve thinking a way of being in a group, a way of being. Attention is to be given to musical relations in conversations and the dialogical relations in musical practices; composing with what is proper (singular) and also improper (common), potentializing the forces of the group and stimulating the overcoming of limits. It is important that all the production of the choir result from collaborative effort, from such a composition in which there is a feeling of collective authorship – even if the music or arrangement was not invented by the singers. The two videos show that feeling – the result of the group trafficking between regions «close» or «distant» from their culture, with interventions of collective composition in body and sound movement…
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How to cite this article: Miqueu, C., «Disobeying in the name of the Republic: about the ethical revolt of ‘disobedient’ teachers», Amechanon. International Journal of the «Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.), 2018-2020, Rhodes: L.R.P.Ph., 2020, pp. 191-200.
Disobeying in the name of the Republic: about the ethical revolt of «disobedient» teachers
This paper focuses on the case of disobedient teachers, and particularly on the example of Alain Refalo, a French primary school teacher who refused to implement a national reform of education in 2008. Driven by an ethic imbued with a keen sense of what the historic mission of the school of the people is, A. Refalo justifies his choice not to follow reforms that are, according to him, contrary to the principles of the republican school. If the individual merit of his «ethical revolt» is understandable, it remains that one can question the limits of insubordination assumed alone (or even as part of an ephemeral Collective), and the meaning of disobedience in the name of Republic values themselves.  
Keywords: disobedience, Republic, resistance, principles, emancipation.
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Philosophy and Critical Thinking, a non-relationship in education: from misunderstanding to eradication and counterfeiting
This essay is about the investigation of the conditions and the search and clarification of causes that may explain the paradoxical state of the recede of Critical Thought, while it is considered a selective educational goal. In this context, the understanding of Critical Thinking is chosen, within its philosophical matrix, as a precondition for the clarification of the causes that weaken its existence and its results in education, as well as a condition for the discovery of ways to alleviate this weakness. It is attempted to show that the cultivation of Critical Thinking is an imperative obligation of education, not as a selective and opportunistic teaching choice, but, on the basis of its fundamental connection with the history and methodology of philosophy, as a way of redefining the educational culture itself. and the attitude of teachers in the classroom, both towards knowledge and towards the child.
Keywords: philosophy, critical thinking, education.
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Character Education: a critical approach
This paper tries to show that character education is an educational program – tool of the educational policy of the countries that implement it, aiming – explicitly and implicitly – at manipulating young people’s way of thinking and behaving, in compliance with predefined standards. Moreover, character education requires and produces the catechism, manipulation, indoctrination and strict teacher-centred discipline, aiming at a defined values’ inculcation and a cogitation and behavior guided modification, through sterile processes of knowledge acquisition, role modeling, deduction and evaluation. Therefore, the aims and practices of character education indicate that do not cultivate the development of a critical and autonomous thinking, thus, strengthening individuals towards a conscious formation of their values choices.
Keywords: character, education, values, indoctrination, catechism, manipulation.
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From the code of professional conduct to professional ethics
In Greece there is only one general code of deontology and conduct for civil servants, which every employee must know and apply. The reference to professional ethics, however, should generally signal the emphasis of the need for individuals to formulate an ethical conception of the profession (regardless of whether or not there is a given code) instead of simply applying external rules. This configuration is a prerequisite for the functioning of a regulatory framework in the Hellenic public sector.
Keywords: Hellenic public sector, code of professional conduct, professional ethics.
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«Is philosophy here
This article attempts a short presentation of the dispose of philosophy in the curriculum of the Greek educational system. Even though this has been tried again and again to be reflected by important researchers and philosophers, philosophy recommend to appear «in a vacuum, the crack, in the probability of the game» during lessons time.
«When is considered to be early for such teaching but farther when it is too late?»*
Keywords: curriculum, philosophy, educational system.
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How to cite this article: Ramos, D., B., A., «Ethical and political possibilities of teacher’s narratives: the responsibility of being together in school space», Amechanon. International Journal of the «Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.), 2018-2020, Rhodes: L.R.P.Ph., 2020, pp. 289-304.
Ethical and political possibilities of teacher’s narratives: the responsibility of being-together in school space
This document presents the result of an exploration of teacher’s narratives about «being-together» at school. The objective was to reflect on the ethical and political possibilities of these stories. The intersubjective encounter in daily life in the school space is analysed. This phenomenon is assumed as the substrate that gives meaning to the school, without thinking about the reasons for our actions, that is, as the intuitive, pre-rational and pre-predicative space where immediate educational action emerges.
It discusses with the apparent unquestionability of an harmonious coexistence and assumes the possibility of wondering widely about what happens to us when we are together at school. The analysis of one of the stories that account for the warp of meaning of daily existence is presented, configured by the stories and tragedies that open possibilities to think of the school as a space for ethical and political coexistence.
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How to cite this article: López, P., M., «The immanent to life body», Amechanon. International Journal of the «Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.), 2018-2020, Rhodes: L.R.P.Ph., 2020, pp. 305-346.
The immanent to life body
During my practicum in the Laboratory of the Research on Practical Philosophy (L.R.P.Ph.) of the University of Aegean (Rhodes/Greece), under the responsibility of Professor Elena Theodoropoulou, we carried out diverse discussions on my doctoral investigation topic: «from the graduate student to the novice teacher: the construction of the self». From a Nietzchean philosophical point of view and through the genealogy method, it was found that the concept condensing the rigor of the research object and resolve its enigma is the concept of Body itself and its multiple instinctive drives awaken within the subject as its own potency. The self inhabits the body and it is always listening, looking for itself, comparing, subjugating, conquering and destroying. Our research shows that the recently graduated teacher is Dionysiac and dialectically Apollonian, he/she suffers, desires, looks for perfection, and on occasions, is a rebellious.
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How to cite this article: Gaivota, D., «Invisibility and materialism: what can a thought of hiddenness do?», Amechanon. International Journal of the «Laboratory of Research on Practical Philosophy» (L.R.P.Ph.), 2018-2020, Rhodes: L.R.P.Ph., 2020, pp. 348-361.
Invisibility and materialism: what can a thought of hiddenness do?
We grew up and learned to speak and think in a world where visibility is taken for granted. Raised to the position of main sense, we organize our world around the capacity to see. Due to the way our culture deals with visibility, especially in the context of Western thought, the dark, the invisible, the hidden, the occult and the mystery have taken a predominantly negative shape – always requiring a revelation, an illumination that frees the human condition from darkness. This article seeks to find other lines to think about reality, demonstrating first that all visibility comes from structures and institutions whose functioning is outlined by links and power pacts and, second, that these structures only exist in a completely abstract state. Through the reading of authors who think directly or indirectly about hiddenness and/or invisibility in their work, the article seeks to point out an alternative to relate to the world from a radically materialistic perspective: overcoming the abstraction of meaning and visibility as a way of thinking and proposing more tactile ways of becoming sensitive to signs that are not shown.
 Keywords: Invisibility, hiddenness, materialism, signs.
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The emergence of portemanteau words in literature and their deleuzian reception
In this paper, we will try to write down and highlight aspects of portemanteau words, as they first appear in literature, and in particular in Lewis Carroll and James Joyce, and then they are received in deleuzian philosophy, starting from Logique du sens, as ‘esoteric’ portemanteau words, paradoxes of voice, which are restricted by, and a priori contradict to, themselves. Gilles Deleuze, having regard to language, games and literature, tries to define and set between sense and non-sense an authentic type of internal relationship, not as a denial of an existing structure, but as a continuous production of sense.
Keywords: portemanteau words, Gilles Deleuze, language, literature, philosophy, sense, non-sense.
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The Hidden: An exploration for the Latent Curriculum
The research on the meaning of the Latent Curriculum inevitably brings it face to face with the concept of hidden. Apart from the qualities and the extent of what is hidden during the pedagogical and didactic endeavor, a more comprehensive approach to the concept of hiddenness seems necessary, for a trace of the various paths that the concept of hidden may follow to meet, randomly or not, concepts of the field(s) of education such as the Latent Curriculum. Τhis paper, motivated by a bibliography that is not directly related to educational issues, imprints this reflection, examining firstly the concept of hidden and then its relationship to language, myth, magic, ritual, religion, theatre and politics, to arrive at the possible articulation of all this with the meaning of the Latent Curriculum, a possibility that will lead to its redefinition and will illuminate its intersections with Professional Ethics.
Keywords: Hidden Curriculum, Latent Curriculum, hiddenness, hidden, Philosophy of Education.
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The connection between human being and space. Theatrical environments of disorder
This article attempts an approach to the relationship between human being and space. Our intention is to point out the dynamic interdependencies that lead to emancipation from the established representations of the space. To ask questions in relation to the creative habitation of the space in environments of theatrical ataxia, in order to perceive the relationship between space and human being in the western world, through the context of indicative moments of both historical, social and scientific, philosophical which influenced their coexistence. Focusing on the multiplicity of identities of space in the modern city, while progressively we ΄ll observe the human importance in it, projecting anti-structures that support, encourage, liberate, the relationship between human and space. Particularly, across the theatrical environment we will deliberate, deepen on relation between space, actor and spectator while, we will recognize in the ataxia places where actions are cultivated creating outlets, openings, passages, no – possibilities of transition, constitution of thought and creation of meaning.
 Keywords: Space, human, relationships, emancipation, theater, ataxia.
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 Τhe comic element in the graphic novel «Maus: A survivor’s tale»
On account of the etymology of the word comics, which derives from the word comic (ancient Greek κωμικός <κῶμος)- in order to declare the goofy and funny content of the early comics- and the existence of structural elements of the medium, which could be characterized as comical such as visual metaphors, framing, graphics, the shaping-distortion of the heroes, we are attempted to detect the comic element in Art Spiegelman’s «Maus», since the graphic novel follows the same code-rules as the comic language. It seems that the author lets the comic element appear verbally, whereas, at the same time, the potential comic structural elements of graphic novels are suppressed. This very tendency regarding «Maus»’ s Holocaust theme (a content deeply traumatic), sets the boundaries of tragic and comic under consideration, but mainly turns the graphic novel itself into a more sophisticated literary version of comics, a conversion that will be of our interest in this paper.
Keywords: comic element, Maus, Holocaust, graphic novel.
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