En años recientes, los enfoques globales se han constituido como alternativas metodológicas que configuran importantes desarrollos en la historiografía al intentar superar las divisiones propias de las fronteras y de las tradicionales historias nacionales. A partir de la revisión de algunos trabajos destacados en este campo, el artículo plantea una reflexión historiográfica sobre esos enfoques, sus propósitos, aportes metodológicos y progresos en el contexto latinoamericano. Se propone la pertinencia de entender una parte sustancial de la historia humana desde una perspectiva (...) más amplia y diversa que intenta superar las habituales visiones eurocéntricas, como resultado de los contactos e intercambios producidos entre las personas y los grupos que conectan a distintas partes del mundo. (shrink)

Los grandes flujos migratorios globales que tuvieron lugar entre mediados del siglo XIX e inicios del XX vieron a cientos de millones de personas en todo el mundo cruzar la frontera de su país para ir a otro. En ese escenario, y a diferencia de otros países suramericanos, Colombia no fue un gran receptor de inmigrantes. Sin embargo, algunos de quienes llegaron, entre ellos judíos de distintos orígenes, enfrentaron restricciones para su ingreso al país, que fueron incrementándose particularmente en la (...) década de los años treinta, todo ello bajo gobiernos, en principio, de distintas vertientes ideológicas. Este artículo tiene el propósito de caracterizar los discursos, políticas y percepciones alrededor de la inmigración judía en Colombia durante las primeras cuatro décadas del siglo pasado, en el marco de una serie concepciones sobre cuestiones como la_ raza_ y la _nación_ y sus supuestas vinculaciones con las posibilidades de _progreso_. (shrink)

Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to (...) Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle.. (shrink)

Kant and the Unity of Reason is a comprehensive reconstruction and a detailed analysis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. In the light of the third Critique, the book offers a final inter­pretation of the critical project as a whole. It proposes a new reading of Kant's notion of human experience in which domains, as different as knowledge, morality, and the experience of beauty and life, are finally viewed in a unified perspective. The book proposes a reading of Kant's critical project (...) as one of the most sophisticated attempts in the history of philosophy to articulate a complex notion of human "sensi­bility" as an alternative to both eighteenth-century empiricism and rationalism. The fun­damental contribution of rationality to human experience cannot be fully appreciated if the sensuous component of experience is not adequately taken into account. For Kant, "sensibility" includes functions as different as sensation, intuition, perception, emotion, passion, drive, moral feeling, and feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Kant's idea of "reflective" judgment is the peculiar discovery of the third Critique. Re­flective judgment articulates the interplay between sensibility and rationality, the world of nature and the human mind, in order to constitute human experience and the sphere of human intersubjective relationships. In the act of reflection, Kant's philosophy fi­nally comes to reflect upon itself and the meaning of its critical endeavor. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the argument of Kritik der Urteilskraft §§76 –77 by placing it in the context of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment”. What role does the problematic and historically so successful figure of the intuitive understanding play in the antinomy of teleological judgment? The answer is considered indispensable to address the issue of the reception of §§76 – 77. The claim is that these sections institute the “closure” of transcendental philosophy—a closure fundamentally misunderstood by the post Kantians. On the (...) series of distinctions drawn to characterize the “peculiarity” of our human understanding and, by contrast, that of a non-human mind hinges the specific transcendental character of Kant’s philosophy. Once the condition that sustains those distinctions is abandoned transcendental philosophy is abandoned as well. (shrink)

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are. It involves (...) integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology, ontology is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself. (shrink)

The following article is a reflection on the value of peace, a term often attributes to the absence of war or the lack of violence, conflict, suppression or, in short, phenomena considerer opposite to peace. But, is this really how peace should be defined? It is a fact that peace, be it personal inner peace or peace within a society, is constantly threatened, attacked, violated, and destroyed by a variation of causes: the failure to keep a promise, the breach of (...) a contract, obtained by illegitimate means, economical ambitions, diverse geo-political strategies, anarchy, social pressure, the lack of understanding on an interpersonal level, a family crisis, immaturity, unemployment, acts of injustice, poverty, the failure to adapt, discrimination, migration, terrorism, arms trafficking, civil wars, the threat of a world war and the usage of weapons of mass destruction, etc.; factors that take away peace, among men and women, societies, and entire countries. But…what is peace? Why do we struggle so much to obtain it? Why is it so appreciated by the majority mankind? Why have humanists, philosophers, politicians, civil right organizations, and men of good will in general dealt with this topic in such an extended manner? Why it has written so much about peace? Why peace is so fragile? These are some of the questions that I will try to answer in this contribution, using some of the texts of St. Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel as reference. (shrink)

Este artículo explora las formas en que la migración afecta al sentimiento de pertenencia del migrante al grupo nacional-cultural a partir de un ensayo autobiográfico del escritor heleno-sueco Theodor Kallifatides. El estudio se basa en los análisis del sentimiento de pertenencia al grupo procedentes de la fenomenología contemporánea. Pese a su gran interés, dichos estudios se fijan o bien en episodios afectivos demasiado circunscritos en el tiempo, o bien en orientaciones afectivas de fondo con contornos demasiado vagos para capturar la (...) especificidad del fenómeno que nos interesa. Apoyándose en el texto de Kallifatides, el artículo esboza algunos elementos específicos del sentimiento de pertenencia que se reconfiguran en la migración, apuntando a los papeles que juegan el reconocimiento y la identidad narrativa, y subrayando los matices, gradaciones y la maleabilidad de dicho sentimiento. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

El presente artículo se ocupa de la orientación marxista del filósofo esloveno Slavoj Žižek. Se intenta elucidar su lectura de Marx, su relación con él y su particular versión del marxismo. Primero se indaga cómo Žižek adopta ciertas concepciones marxianas de la universalidad, la retroactividad, la contingencia, el materialismo, la libertad y la economía. Luego se examina la forma en que, por un lado, Žižek aplica ciertas ideas de Marx a la explicación del mundo actual y, por otro lado, reinterpreta (...) el pensamiento marxiano desde una perspectiva lacaniana u original, propiamente žižekiana. Por último, después de haberse detectado algunos puntos en los que Žižek adhiere a Marx, se abordan críticamente otros puntos en los que discrepa de él. (shrink)

Todo ahora es diferente, la vida ha cambiado de manera inminente y casi sin que nos demos cuenta de ello. Se ha dejado de lado la importancia de tantas cosas, al parecer vivimos en una clase de “modo automático”, ya no surgen preguntas filosóficas, ya no hay interés en el porqué de las cosas, no hay curiosidad dentro de nosotros; ¿Qué está pasándole a la sociedad?, acaso es que hemos perdido una parte de ser humano que jamás volverá, la sensibilidad, (...) el deseo de vivir, la felicidad, la importancia del cuerpo, del arte, la cultura, el amor, el conocimiento, la vocación, ¿todo esto ya ha sido reemplazado? creemos que sí.Avanzamos a zancadas enormes, la vida está corriendo muy aprisa, la ciencia y la tecnología parecen encerrarnos en una burbuja invisible, de la cual es imposible escapar, todos y cada uno de nosotros estamos dentro de ella.Las nuevas tecnologías nos han transformado en lo que Guy Deboard llama ‘La sociedad del espectáculo’ y que más adelante Mario Vargas Llosa vuelve a retomar en ‘la civilización del espectáculo’; las redes sociales han generado en nosotros actitudes de desinterés, pérdida de identidad, nos hemos convertido, claramente, en una sociedad en la que se premia a los mejores civiles en base al éxito que tienen en sus redes, la influencia que tienen ante los demás; hemos perdido la importancia de la intelectualidad, los saberes contenidos en nosotros, ya no almacenamos nada, todo se ha vuelto desechable, y tal parece que vivimos en una sociedad desechable también, que no se preocupa por valorar, cuidar, recompensar las buena acciones; se premia a un futbolista de la misma manera que se premia a un intelectual del premio nobel, y esto claramente es indignante. En el presente trabajo pretendemos dar a conocer, ampliar y relacionar la ‘civilización’ del espectáculo y la ‘sociedad’ del espectáculo en las redes sociales, y cómo esto, sin duda, genera en nosotros conflictos, tanto individuales como colectivos. (shrink)

En el presente escrito, se da a conocer una interpretación _“personal”_, no por ello arbitraria, del texto _Sobre el concepto de historia _o _Tesis de filosofía de la historia_, _Über den Begriff der Geschichte_ de Walter Benjamín, leído de manera situada, una lectura cuya óptica pretende ser _desde_ América Latina. Se insistirá en la excepcionalidad crítica de la obra de Benjamín, sugiriendo que su propuesta alcanza una re-definición y transvaloración del concepto de historia, aquel que de manera habitual nos determina, (...) y que impide todo actuar, toda praxis revolucionaria, que para un tiempo como el nuestro, y que es ahora, se requiere más que nunca. (shrink)

El vocabulario en los niños con Trastorno del Desarrollo del Lenguaje (TDL) o con Retraso del Lenguaje (RL) es más pobre que en los niños con un desarrollo típico del lenguaje, por lo que se pretende conocer qué diferencias existen entre ellos. Han participado 66 infantes entre 3 y 5 años; se ha valorado que vocabulario conocen, se ha determinado que tienen menos vocabulario (52%) que sus homónimos (69%), a excepción de la categoría de transportes, en la que tienen los (...) mismos resultados. Finalmente, se determina el listado de categorías que más necesitan trabajar los niños con RL o TDL. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. remark that not all fear instances lead to heightened amygdalar activity and, instead, point to roles of the amygdala in detecting or stimuli. By reviewing research on the amygdala's functions in episodic-autobiographical memory, we further emphasize the involvement of the amygdala in coding the subjective relevance and extracting the biological and social significance of the stimuli.

The issue of time within Augustine’s work requires a new look, as the problem has been seen in an almost generalized way from the perspective of Book XI of Confessions, and sufficient prominence has not been given to his reflection before this great work. The central text on time has received excessive interpretation, leaving in the background previous approaches, such as in De Musica, Book VI, where the saint addresses the issue of time in the middle of his analysis of (...) temporal and eternal rhythms. (shrink)

Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure (...) and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible. (shrink)

An unprecedented reading of Hegel’s Logic that sets this difficult work in a dialogue with literary texts. In this book, Angelica Nuzzo proposes a reading of Hegel’s Logic as “logic of transformation” and “logic of action,” and supports this thesis by looking to works of literature and history as exemplary of Hegel’s argument and method. By examining Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, Elizabeth Bishop’s and Giacomo Leopardi’s late poetry along with Thucydides’ History in this way, Nuzzo finds an (...) unprecedented and productive way to render Hegel’s Logic alive and engaging. She argues that Melville’s Billy Budd is the most successful embodiment of the abstract movement of thinking presented in Hegel’s Logic, connecting Billy Budd’s stutter to the puzzlingly inarticulate beginning of Hegel’s Logic, “Being, pure Being,” identical with “Nothing,” and argues that the Logic serves as an especially appropriate tool for understanding the sudden violent action that strikes Claggart dead. Through these and other readings, Nuzzo finds a fresh way to address interpretive issues that have remained unresolved for almost two centuries in Hegel scholarship, and also presents well-known works of literature in an entirely new light. This account of Hegel’s Logic is framed by the need for an interpretive tool able to orient our understanding of the contemporary world as mired in an unprecedented global crisis. How can the story of our historical present—the tragedy or the comedy we all play parts in—be told? What is the inner logic of our changing world? “Angelica Nuzzo presents an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic by representing it as a logic of action. This novel approach is supported by insightful readings of the literary texts she covers in the book.” — Andrew Cutrofello, author of All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity. (shrink)

Mind blanking is a mental state in which attention does not bring any perceptual input into conscious awareness. As this state is still largely unexplored, we suggest that a comprehensive understanding of mind blanking can be achieved through a multifaceted approach combining self-assessment methods, neuroimaging, and neuromodulation. In this article, we explain how EEG and TMS could be combined to help determine whether mind blanking is associated with a lack of mental content or a lack of linguistically or conceptually determinable (...) mental content. We also question whether mind blanking occurs spontaneously or intentionally and whether these two forms are instantiated by the same or different neural correlates. (shrink)

Taking as point of departure Hegelrsquo;s early reflections on his historical present, this essay examines the relationship between dialectical reason and the activity of the understanding in generating contradiction. Dialecticmdash;as logic and methodmdash;is Hegelrsquo;s attempt at a philosophical comprehension of the conflicts and the deep changes of his contemporary world. This idea of dialectic as logic of historical transformation guides the development of consciousness in the emPhenomenology of Spirit/em. Since my claim is that the dialectic of consciousness and its capacity (...) of overcoming contradiction are rooted in the historical situation of 1807, the question is raised of what would be the specific problems encountered by consciousness in our contemporary worldmdash;in 2007. What are the challenges posed by our globalized world to a phenomenology of contemporary spirit; and what is the role that contradiction and dialectic play in the understanding of our own historical present? (shrink)

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are (becoming). It (...) involves integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology (or theory of knowing), ontology (or theory of being) is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself. (shrink)

: This essay analyzes the U.S. political situation before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ties this conflict to the events of 9/11. The guiding thread of the discussion is the definition of “terrorism” that has led to George W. Bush's declared “war on terrorism.” By means of Hegel's dialectic logic, the essay exposes the problem offered by the category of causality involved in the definition of terrorism: Is terrorism the original “cause” of the war declared on it by the (...) United States or is terrorism rather the very “consequence” of that war? (shrink)

Ample attention is being paid in the higher education literature to promoting active learning among students. However, critical examination of educational purposes and ends is largely lacki...

El presente trabajo trata de explicitar en qué medida el proyecto de M. Heidegger de una ontología fundamental coincide con el programa crítico kantiano. Dicha identificación permitirá mostrar las consecuencias que ello depara en la recepción y crítica heideggeriana de la antropología filosófica como disciplina; recepción que, a su vez, delimita los presupuestos fundamentales de su analítica de la existencia.

During the last decades the question of defining life has gained increased interest but, at the same time, the difficulty in reaching consensus on a possible answer has led many to skeptical positions. This, in turn, has raised a wider debate about why defining life is so hard and controversial. Such a debate introduces additional aspects to be considered, like the role and nature of a definition of life itself. In this paper, we will focus on those aspects, arguing that (...) progress can be made if we conceive definitions of life as open heuristic tools that contribute to develop specific research strategies in the biological sciences and, more generally, to increase our understanding of life’s complexity. In contrast with pragmatic or operationalist approaches, we will defend that definitions of life comprise a set of ontological assumptions, together with an inherent unifying vocation, so they should be subject to comparison and critical assessment, closely related to the success or failure of the corresponding research programs, but also to the success or failure in establishing well-grounded interconnections among the latter. We consider that the search for a more coherent, integrated and generalized theory of biology cannot be pursued without keeping an empirical standpoint, and the exercise of defining life should not be taken as an obstacle but as a valuable instrument to achieve that goal. (shrink)

This essay is a renewal of Hölderlin’s poetic question as raised again philosophically by Heidegger, and is an attempt to frame the issue anew bringing Hegel into the conversation. At stake, first, is the way in which poetry and philosophy respectively—or perhaps in conjunction—are able to address the chief question of the time as a question of “truth.” What is it that poetry and the poet properly and uniquely do in relation to their time? Does the poet think, and how (...) does she think poetically in language? And, crucially, how does poetic thinking differ from philosophical thinking? But at stake is also, second, the way in which philosophy can—and should—itself speak of poetry. Significantly, both Heidegger and Hegel propose a thoroughly new way of addressing the question of poetry in philosophy. (shrink)

_Critical essays on Hegel's views concerning the relationship between religion and politics._.

El filósofo mexicano Emilio Uranga (1921-1988) es recordado por su Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) y por su labor como periodista político y asesor de López Mateos, Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría y López Portillo. Es posible tender un puente entre los dos aspectos, gracias a su concepción ontologizante de la Revolución Mexicana, leitmotiv de su producción teórica.

According to some evolutionary theorists human prosocial dispositions emerged in a context of inter-group competition and violence that made our psychology parochially prosocial, ie. cooperative towards in-groups and competitive towards strangers. This evolutionary hypothesis is sometimes employed in bioethical debates to argue that human nature and contemporary environments, and especially large-scale societies, are mismatched. In this article we caution against the use of mismatch theories in moral philosophy in general and discuss empirical evidence that puts into question mismatch theories based (...) on parochial prosociality. Evolutionary mismatch theories play at best a rhetorical role in these moral debates and may misrepresent the status of relevant evolutionary research. We finally recommend that moral philosophers interested in the evolutionary literature also engage with dispositions such as xenophilia and social tolerance to counterbalance the focus on psychological mismatches adopted so far. (shrink)

Moving into the space of tension and contradiction between philosophy and psychoanalysis, I reflect on the spectral way in which Marx and his legacy appear in the Lacanian Left. I explain this spectrality through the impossible mourning of Marxism. I bring in three authors who prescribe mourning here and ignore its impossibility: Özselçuk, Stavrakakis and Alemán. I resort to Benjamin, Lacan, Allouch and Traverso to problematise the Freudian distinction between mourning and melancholy in its application to Marxism. Instead of mourning (...) with its post-Marxist bet, I defend an openly melancholic position based on the militant historical commitment to the dead and what Lacan has represented as the insurmountable directions indicated by Marx. I distinguish three great idealist attempts by the Lacanian Left to overcome the materially insurmountable directions: Laclau’s anti-essentialist discursive postmodernism, Žižek’s pessimistic Lacanian Hegelianism and Badiou’s Jacobin political Platonism. I contrast the Laclauian democratic populist concessions with the Badiouan-Žižekian fidelity to Marxism and communism. (shrink)

Para las empresas recolectoras de residuos sólidos es indispensable controlar los factores de riesgos asociados a la calidad del aire del entorno laboral de sus empleados con el objetivo de minimizar las afecciones de salud de sus trabajadores. El propósito del estudio es desarrollar un prototipo de un sensor inalámbrico de medición de calidad de aire. Este instrumento de medición será implementado en ambientes laborales para trabajadores de recolección de residuos sólidos. A partir del estudio se concluye que para empresas (...) de este sector es indispensable el control de factores de riesgos asociados a la exposición a gases y vapores. (shrink)

The ability to think for cooperating is called Shared Intentionality (Tomasello, 2014, p. 125). The advocates of the Shared Intentionality Hypothesis maintain that this is a distinctively human skill, for humans possess a foundational ability to ascribe distal intentions to conspecifics, and to share distal intentions courtesy of this capacity. Accordingly, humans appear to be provided with a specific capacity to coordinate joint actions and plans over time. I investigate to what extent such capacity can be observed to emerge in (...) non-human animals as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Translation, (Self-)Transformation, and the Power of the MiddleAngelica NuzzoThe etymologies of the word translation—the real and the imaginary ones—are many and varied across languages and traditions. I want to frame my present remarks by appealing to the well-known derivation of the Latin traducere from trans-ducere, the verb that designates the movement of carrying across, of bringing over across and between heterogeneous and apparently incompatible terms—different languages, different places and (...) times, and more generally different identities and cultures. I propose to indicate with translation the dynamic space of the action that takes place in-between, in the middle between two extremes—whatever these extremes may be. And I propose to dwell in this in-between space—not in order to get anywhere, but to stay there and learn how to appreciate the powerful condition of the middle. My suggestion will be that translation is the intermediate and intermediary space of transformation that precedes that which it transforms as well as that into which it transforms; that translation is the middle that comes before the extremes between which it lies and which it connects, and makes them possible for the first time. The logic of translation, I submit, is the logic of immanent self-transformation that is based on the power of the middle. This is a logic that may help us advance beyond the binary static logic in which everything is instead dictated by the predetermined, fixed identity of the extremes, and by the exclusive choice of either one or the other—the logic that Virginia Woolf aptly describes in this way: “Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old” (Woolf 1990, ch. 5). While this may sound logically indisputable it is also—to [End Page 19] Woolf at least—existentially unacceptable and cognitively faulty when at issue is the understanding of the movement of our lives. Thus, in what follows, I am interested in exploring the meaning—the existential, historical, linguistic meaning—of the predicament of being-in-the-middle, of being-in-transition or in-translation—of being neither one extreme nor the other but both of them at the same time and also neither of them. I want to dwell, in particular, on the cipher of movement proper to this condition, on the idea of transformation that translation constitutively entails—the self-transformation that is proper to translation as such an in-between dynamic activity. But to push this point further, I also want to suggest that the movement of translation is essential for an understanding of how processes move on and advance precisely as processes; of how change and something truly new are achieved beyond the present standpoint and beyond the standpoint of the present; of how, more concretely, the individual and collective self is reconstituted and immanently transformed after a crisis and through it. For translation, in this sense, is the powerful, destabilizing moment of crisis and open possibility that invests individuals and societies alike (but also texts and languages); it is also, at the same time, a strategy of survival and a fundamental tool of advancement and progress.Let me begin with a famous philosophical scene. Plato’s Symposium opens with the intriguing account of Socrates’s unusual habits in a speech delivered by Aristodemus, and culminates with Alcibiades’s story regarding Socrates’s strange behavior during the campaign of Potidaea. Upon meeting Socrates all dressed up1 on his way to Agathon’s banquet, Aristodemus is asked to come along to Agathon’s house. He accepts, a bit embarrassed at the thought of showing up uninvited. On the way to Agathon’s, however, Socrates becomes absorbed in his thoughts and falls behind his companion. Aristodemus repeatedly waits for him, but Socrates encourages him to go on ahead alone. This puts Aristodemus in a “ridiculous position” when he arrives, all by himself, at Agathon’s house. He shows up, indeed uninvited, as there is still no sign of Socrates. Now everybody at Agathon’s is waiting and looking for him. This perplexing situation goes on until a servant discovers Socrates calmly standing... (shrink)

En este trabajo se analiza críticamente la literatura sobre el capital social, con énfasis en la situación actual del tema. En la primera parte se presenta el concepto, se da cuenta de algunos antecedentes relacionados con el contexto teórico en que surgió y se indican los momentos más importantes de la discusión posterior. Aquí también se enuncia la tesis del trabajo, que sostiene que parte de la confusión e indeterminación conceptual existente deriva de la manera como fue inicialmente establecido el (...) enfoque. A continuación se analizan críticamente las estrategias para delimitar el campo teórico y de aplicación del capital social, se presentan los componentes básicos en el plano de los indicadores y se resumen las elaboraciones más importantes que han caracterizado su desarrollo. En la parte final, se entrega un resumen y se hacen algunas consideraciones generales sobre el tema. (shrink)

This Article considers the conditions under which administrative agencies - particularly those with public health-related missions - may obtain partial autonomy from external interests or politicians. In the process, it critiques the proposition that administrative agencies in advanced industrialized countries such as the United States are routinely “captured” by external economic interests. Through case studies and the application of relevant theory from law and the study of political organization, the Article describes how agencies can produce a measure of autonomy by (...) forging coalitions of stakeholders both internal and external to the agency, and considers how partial autonomy may be modeled as a strategic process involving decisions under uncertainty. The Article then investigates how American publichealth agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Food Safety Inspection Service, and the Centers for Disease Control have been able to use their partial autonomy to develop significant health policy innovations. Although agencies are by no means guaranteed even a partial degree of autonomy, they are nonetheless capable of affecting their political and legal environment, with consequences not only for public-health policy but also for the legitimacy of the nation-state. (shrink)

BackgroundLow-stakes crimes related to alcohol and/or drugs are common around the world, but research is lacking on police–suspect interactions of such crimes. A large proportion of these suspects are intoxicated during interrogations, and many may have substance use disorder, making them potentially vulnerable to interrogative pressure.MethodsTo address this lack of knowledge, the taxonomy of interrogation methods framework and a common classification of question types were applied in the coding of written police interrogations. Two archival studies, one pilot and one main (...) study analyzed police interrogations with suspects of alcohol- and drug-related crimes in Sweden.ResultsFor both Study 1 and 2, suspects showed signs of alcohol and/or drug intoxication, hangover or withdrawal in more than 50% of all interrogations. In Study 2, additional coding indicated that suspects displayed signs of substance use disorder in 57% of the interrogations. The main results from both studies revealed a large number of direct questions asked by the police across all interrogations, and relatively little use of the strategic interrogation techniques from the taxonomy of interrogation methods framework. In fact, when it came to interrogation techniques, law enforcement used more confrontational techniques in their interactions with intoxicated suspects compared to sober suspects. Furthermore, suspects displaying signs of substance use disorder were significantly more cooperative and prone to confess than suspects without indicators of substance use disorder.ConclusionAs the first novel study on low-stakes crime interrogations related to alcohol and/or drugs, the present study provides useful information about current Swedish interrogation practices and areas for improvement. The study results indicate that suspects displaying signs of intoxication or substance use disorder may be more vulnerable during police interrogations. This may in turn have the potential to inform the development of new interrogation policies. Due to the novelty of this research, more studies are needed, both on a national and international level, to examine interrogations in low-stakes crimes further. (shrink)