Revista Filosofía UIS

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2016): Revista filosofía UIS
Research Article

Forma mentis: appearance and reality in the Germania of Tacitus

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  • Ricardo Gabriel Caputo
Ricardo Gabriel Caputo
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v15n2-2016006

Published 2016-11-30

Keywords

  • mind,
  • form,
  • appearance,
  • reality,
  • eternity

How to Cite

Gabriel Caputo, R. (2016). Forma mentis: appearance and reality in the Germania of Tacitus. Revista Filosofía UIS, 15(2), 111–135. https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v15n2-2016006

Copyright (c) 2016 Revista Filosofía UIS

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Germania of Tacitus as an ethnographic as well as an autoethnographic text, i.e. as a criticism of the Roman society. After rejecting the philosophical presuppositions that underlie Ellen O’Gorman’s “No Place like Rome: Identity and Difference in The Germania of Tacitus” (§1), we analyze the ethnographic writing of Tacitus and its Roman context (war and trade), emphasising the ideas of form, beauty, matter, mores and mind (§2). Finally, we conclude underlining the utopian and critical possibilities that gave and give shape to this text (§3).
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