This paper intersects the literature on the democratic boundary problem with the literature on the constructivist turn in political representation to show that the boundary problem broadly construed involves a distinction between ‘the problem of inclusion’ (into pre-existing demoi and their decision-making procedures) and ‘the problem of constituting the demos’ (which involves criteria for partaking in constituent power). This distinction is consistently neglected by democratic theorists. However, it has serious implications for representative democracies because the standard answers to the boundary (...) problem – the all-affected-interests principle, the all-subjected principle, and the substantive-demos principle – do not apply to the problem of constituting the demos. A new principle aimed at the latter problem is here proposed: the constructivist-representative principle. In the end, it should be clear that ascertaining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision requires the adoption of different principles depending on the specific demos in question and on the type of decision-making procedure involved (e.g., constitution-making-or-changing, lawmaking, policymaking, etc.). (shrink)

This article proposes, with a focus on discussions around norms and bodies, to expose the conceptions of power, as well as the application of its concept, in Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. It begins by exposing the conception of power found in Foucault. After that, the connection between Foucault's thought and Butler's thought begins, explaining how Foucault's conception of power is inserted in the North American philosopher's theory of gender. Finally, the appropriations made by Butler of Foucault's thought regarding the (...) productive aspects of power in the fabrication of intelligible genres are exposed. (shrink)

In the debate between the Historische Rechtschule (Hugo and Savigny) and Hegel about who is legitimately entitled to develop legal theory, the former considered philosophy of law to be inherent to systematic science of law, whereas the latter considered the concept of Law in a necessary transdisciplinary dialectic – there would then be a difference between ‘the jurists’ philosophy of law’ and ‘the philosophers’ philosophy of law’. I will demonstrate that such distinction cannot stand. A ‘jurists’ philosophy of law’ does (...) not exist precisely because legal norms and their application are merely one of the law’s moments. The law’s attitude is one of inclusion: philosophy of law’s disciplinary autonomy occurs in the law’s interdisciplinary immanence. (shrink)

Legal positivism understands natural law as performing classifying connections between morality and law as tests of legal validity: if a norm with some pretence to legality contradicts a moral good, it cannot be called a legal norm. The new natural law school, however, claims that natural law develops qualifying connections between morality and law: tests of legal validity are performed by non-moral criteria such as due enactment or efficacy, and morality determines not what the law is, but rather which law (...) is legally binding and which is legally defective. This article will demonstrate that Aquinas's endorsement of the lexeme lex iniusta non est lex cannot be interpreted in any of these senses. Rather, Aquinas's strong version of natural law indicates clearly that it can indeed be a classifying criterion of positive law, and that it cannot be the only and exclusive criterion of legal validity. (shrink)

In the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli maintains that the people is often superior epistemically to princes. This forms the outlines of an argument from popular epistemocracy. However, in light of his theory of humours, how can governance belong to the most epistemically capable if they are driven solely by a negative desire? How can the best decisions regarding domination be made by those who only have a desire to not dominate? This paper develops the thesis that the people’s negative humours (...) can be consistent with the claim that it has the best epistemic capacities to rule insofar as such capacities are understood only negatively, based on the people’s competencies to assess error and identify mistakes in collective decision-making. The argument is divided into three sections. The first unpacks the problem by clarifying how multiplicity in Machiavelli has more robust epistemic value and, consequentially, more political value in certain circumstances. The second explains the negative dimension of epistemic capacity and how Machiavelli attributes it to the people by highlighting two epistemically crucial characteristics: multiplicity and diversity. The third lists the people’s three forms of negative governance displayed in the Discourses: intra-institutional opposition, institutional participation (in litigation, the selection of magistrates, and lawmaking), and extra-institutional contestation. In the end, it should be clear that Machiavelli qualifies as an epistemocrat with democratic tendencies insofar as the people fulfils the role of a ‘negative legislator’. (shrink)

1. Partir en philosophie -- 2. La condition humaine.

Traduction commentée de fragments araméens de Qoumrân contenant des restes de légendes sur les temps précédant le Déluge, insistant surtout sur les méfaits des Géants, nés des anges déchus et des filles de l’homme, et leur condamnation. Mis au nombre des écritures saintes du manichéisme, le « livre des Géants » a été traduit en des langues diverses et on en a retrouvé des vestiges à Tourfân. Ils sont rapprochés ici de leur original araméen. Translation and commentary on the Aramaic (...) fragments from Qumran , which include the remainders of legends about the period before the Flood, mainly about the wrongdoings of the Giants who were born from fallen angels and the daughters of men, and their condemnation. Since the « Book of the Giants » was included among the holy scriptures of Manichaeism, it has been translated into several languages. Traces of it have been found, for instance, in Turfan. This paper establishes their connection with the Aramaic original. (shrink)

Cet article réagit à l’affaire Clinton. Le « Monicagate » apparaît comme une bataille autour de la dérive partisane d’un mécanisme régulateur des rapports du privé et du public. Ces rapports ne s’établissent pas selon une frontière unique, entre l’individu et la famille d’une part et l’État d’autre part. L’expression des subjectivités ne se satisfait plus de l’oralité familiale, mais elle investit l’écriture et, maintenant, tous les médias. La construction en cours d’une société mondiale de la communication entraînera d’immenses conséquences (...) relatives aux fonctions du privé et du public. (shrink)

This paper is a translation to Portuguese of the ninth chapter of Alvin Plantinga’s 1974 book The Nature of Necessity, in which the famous freewill defense for the problem of evil is presented in its most complete form. By making use of the theory of possible worlds developed in the previous chapters of the book, Plantinga engages in a recognizably successful attempt to show that the existence of evil is not inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient (...) being. In addition to the translation, we provide a brief introduction to Plantinga’s free-will defense and to the debate about God and evil in the analytic philosophy of religion. Key words: problem of evil, free-will defense, possible worlds, analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Partindo da disjuntiva neoliberal entre a vida e o lucro, o propósito deste artigo é o de discutir, no contexto da crise provocada pelo coronavírus, o conceito central de biopolítica em termos de uma gestão da morte ou, mais exatamente, de uma necropolítica.

Let S∞ denote the topological group of permutations of the natural numbers. A closed subgroup G of S∞ is called oligomorphic if for each n, its natural action on n-tuples of natural numbers has onl...

La photographie est à présent devenue une source abondante qui irrigue à son tour les corpus de l’histoire des femmes. Témoignage d’un instantané du passé, elle fixe le temps sur l’expression d’un visage, une coupe de cheveux, une attitude du corps, une tâche quotidienne ou le rituel d’une cérémonie. Polysémique, l’image nécessite la mise en œuvre de modèles interprétatifs qui renouvellent la curiosité des chercheurs-ses habitué-e-s à exploiter les archives écrites communément utilisées jusqu...

Die Ausgabe der Oeuvres Complètes von A. A. Cournot erlaubt es, den Umfang und den genauen Stellenwert, die der Lektüre von Leibniz und dem Nachdenken über seine Gedanken in der Entwicklung des Autors zukommen, zu bestimmen. Eine vollständige Untersuchung würde ein Buch füllen. 1. Zunächst möchten wir hervorheben, daß Cournot Leibniz in beachtlichem Maße verpflichtet ist. Die Leibniz-Bezüge durchziehen die Werke von Cournot nicht nur, sondern sie verleihen ihnen ein fundamentales Gerüst. Er beruft sich auf die Ausgaben der Primärliteratur, die (...) um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts zur Verfügung standen: Des Maizeaux, Raspe, Dutens, den Briefwechsel mit Arnauld und mit Clarke, das Specimen dynamicum, das Système nouveau, die Nouveaux Essais, die Théodicée usw. Zwei Kapitel sind Leibniz gewidmet: eins bei der Untersuchung der Systeme in §§ 381-392 des Essai, ein anderes handelt über Newton, Leibniz und Locke. Diese Präsenz ist nicht nur historischer, sondern philosophischer, wissenschaftlicher und kritischer Natur. Leibniz' Lehren befruchten Cournots Denken. 2. Umgekehrt können wir sagen, daß Leibniz Cournot wenigstens im gleichen Maße verpflichtet ist. Indem Cournot Leibniz' Gedanken unter vielfältigen Aspekten angeht, trägt er zur Präzisierung ihrer Interpretation bei. Aber es sind nicht nur gelehrte Kommentare, was die Aufmerksamkeit auf sich zieht, Leibniz' Thesen sind vielmehr weitergeführt und zu neuem Leben erweckt, sie sind konfrontiert mit dem Wissen und der Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts, sie treten ein in das intellektuelle Kapital der Zeit Cournots. Cournot hat ebensoviel für Leibniz getan wie Leibniz für Cournot; denn er hat die wissenschaftlichen Thesen von Leibniz über die Algebra, die Geometrie und die Wahrscheinlichkeit weitergeführt, er hat die Lehren über die Substanz, die Kraft und den zureichenden Grund erneuert und -was noch wichtiger ist — er hat von einigen Gedanken Leibnizens aus die Grundlagen der ökometrie erarbeitet. 3. Jetzt, im November 1980, verfügen wir über die Gesamtheit der Bände der Oeuvres Complètes, die der Philosophie und der Ökonomie gewidmet sind. Wir begrenzen daher diesen ersten Aufsatz auf Fragen, die dort herausgearbeitet sind. Für einen zweiten Aufsatz, welcher sich auf die in Arbeit befindlichen Bände der Mathematik stützen wird, lassen wir die im engeren Sinne wissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkte des Werkes von Cournot in ihren Beziehungen zu denen von Leibniz zurück 1. (shrink)

Le possible s'y revele a l'etat pur et c'est pourquoi le titre en devient un verbe actif; Le Sera.

In recent years, digital visual culture has confronted film studies with a series of profound questions. These concern a new ontology of moving images, the design of the global media system or the genealogy of digital media. This paper suggests to solve some of these issues by means of the actor-network theory. German Die gegenwärtige digitale visuelle Kultur hat die Filmwissenschaft in den letzten Jahren mit einer Reihe tiefgreifender Fragen konfrontiert. Das sind Fragen nach einer neuen Ontologie bewegter Bilder, dem (...) Zuschnitt des globalen Mediensystems oder der Genealogie digitaler Medien. Der Beitrag schlägt vor, einige der in diesen Debatten aufgeworfenen Fragen mit Hilfe der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) zu lösen. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende apresentar um recorte da filosofia da arte na Alemanha, nos séculos XVIII e XIX, tendo como foco o contexto em que se insere O nascimento da tragédia, de Nietzsche. Para isso, serão discutidos mais especificamente os conceitos de intuição estética e princípio de individuação, a partir de Schelling e Schopenhauer, respectivamente.

O presente artigo científico é parte de pesquisa destinada a investigar as implicações e interpretações advindas da transformação do posicionamento do princípio de universalização (U) operada na teoria do discurso do filósofo alemão Jürgen Habermas, sobretudo a partir de algumas de suas obras das décadas de 80 e 90. A pretensão cognitivista da ética do discurso fundamenta a moral diante da possibilidade de reconstrução racional discursiva das justificativas das normas. O teste de universalização faz parte da fundamentação, mas em que (...) sentido? A fim de afastar o ceticismo quanto a pretensão de justificação prática, Habermas repensa a relação kantiana entre moral e direito. Mais precisamente, diante de sociedades complexas marcadas pelo Estado Democrático de Direito e pelo uso de discursos práticos diversos da moral para a justificação das práticas sociais, a legitimidade das normas passa por explicitar a relação discursiva entre direito, moral e política. É no âmbito deste desafio que o filósofo alemão vem modificando a formulação e o posicionamento de seu princípio de universalização (U) ao longo do tempo, bem como sua relação com o princípio do discurso (D) e, posteriormente, com o princípio da democracia (De). Após percorrermos este caminho, lançamos a hipótese, segundo a qual, a ênfase que Habermas confere ao direito em Facticidade e Validade junto do reposicionamento do ponto de vista moral, permite pensar de maneira dialógica a interação social como práxis comunicativa sem sujeitos. (shrink)