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This article juxtaposes different and conflicting temporalities as configured in the context of care and caring. Weaving together (1) an autobiographical narrative in which I share parts of my own breast cancer journey with (2) research with men employed as care workers in Australia, I attempt to get at how differentially experienced temporal densities, trajectories, and orientations can be found when receiving and giving care. The slow and deep time of experiencing sickness, and the protective, forgetful time induced by medical trauma – both often perceived as nonlinear time –, clash with the neoliberal, sped-up, linear temporality of the late-capitalist medical industrial complex; leaving care workers and cared-for squeezed between temporalities that can be, and are, at odds with each other. The theoretical framing holding my consideration of these different ‘kinds’ of time, is a composite of feminist care ethics scholarship, critical time studies and the literary work by the Aboriginal author and scholar Mykaela Saunders. Specifically, I draw on Saunders’s short story ‘Buried time’, in which she connects with Aboriginal deep time and writes the abolition of colonial clock time into being. Taking a cue from Saunders narrative, I maintain that the temporalities of colonial/racial capitalism evince segmentation, fragmentation, and, ultimately, destruction. This is a mechanistic time not suitable for human and more-than-human life’s flourishing (that includes living and dying as well as possible); as such, it is a temporality that stands against the relational paradigms of care theory.

The present study addresses the problem of the relationship between mind and body in the thought of the Italian Franciscan philosopher Matthew of Acquasparta (1240–1302). In Question 10 of the Questions on Faith and Knowledge, titled “Whether the Intellect, with Regard to Its Act, Is Bound by the Weakness and Ineptitude of the Body,” Matthew argues that bodily dispositions influence the actuality of the intellect. His reflection is guided by various authorities (auctoritates), foremost among whom is Augustine of Hippo, a general point of reference that the thinker of Acquasparta adopts for his theorization. However, Matthew develops a rigorous line of reasoning in which Aristotle—through whom he also implicitly reinterprets Augustine—as well as Avicenna and al-Ghazālī play crucial roles. The Franciscan philosopher maintains that the body can distract the intellect from properly exercising its function, impairing both the soul’s inward focus and the tranquility required for intellectual activity due to external disturbances. Furthermore, the compromised sensory organs of a sick, aged, or wounded body will provide confused images to the mind, thereby clouding its capacity for understanding. The strong connection between body and mind clarifies the unity of the human person as a composite of soul and body, with significant implications both in anthropology and soteriology, particularly concerning the prospect of the unity between the soul and a finally glorified body, which Christian doctrine awaits in the resurrection at the end of time.

Truth, ethics, and Evil are significant concepts for philosophy and Alain Badiou attempted to approach them with a new perspective. However, he reconsidered these concepts in engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis. This study aims to shed light more on Badiou’s ideas of situation, knowledge, event, void, truth, Evil, and ethics, with a focus on meeting points with Lacanian terms and theory. The first six terms are examined concerning Lacanian theory of four Discourses in order to represent how truth changes a situation and frameworks of knowledge through the appearance of the event and in what way a philosopher or analyst can approach them through truth-procedures. On the other hand, Badiou elaborates on Evil with respect to ethics and truth. This study also introduces neurosis, pervert, and psychosis as structures to analyze Evil since they might be involved in it as simulacrum, betrayal, and disaster, respectively. Ultimately, this exploration contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities of truth, ethics, and Evil, emphasizing the need for critical inquiry and ethical reflection in navigating the challenges of a situation and knowledge.

The experience of our conscience belongs in the same category as feeling, thinking and wanting. However, it has a special aspect, namely the presence of other human beings as absolute entities. The process of experience is concerned with the way to best promote your own interests, with how far you will go in actualising your essential characteristics as an absolute entity. The discussion of our urge for survival shows that we can go quite far in that respect, and that to actualise that urge, there are in fact no boundaries; everything is permitted. The same can be said about actualising our other essential characteristics, but the difference is that our need to do so is perhaps less cogently present; it is not our life, or at least not our continued material existence, that is at stake. Nonetheless, we can and may even choose to go to extremes in this respect and thus to give ourselves priority over others. Respect for the interests of others is based on self-respect, which may lead you to decide to subject your dealings with other people to a set of standards for yourself. Here we enter the area of morals and ethics, to which we can attach a complete moral philosophy and on the basis of a belief, a moral theology. At the end of this road is total love of yourself and others, because you have come to realise that it is the only way that can lead to the fourth essential characteristic of human beings as absolute entities, namely self-fulfilment. You will then have developed in a way that allows you to give yourself and others the scope we need as absolute entities (compassion, solidarity). Self-fulfilment is achieved through self-development, i.e. discovering and honing our gifts and talents and thus finding our own identity (development), a process by which the lives of human beings as absolute entities acquire purpose (the search for meaning). Self-fulfilment is self-actualisation, the state that results from the realisation of the essential characteristics of human beings as absolute entities, and it leads to satisfaction derived from ourselves or our activities, a sense of being satisfied with what we have accomplished.