Lipman’s curriculum of “Philosophy for Children” was the outcome of a harmonious and fruitful partnership between philosophy and pedagogy, but over the time practice shows the risk of a double fall and reduction: on the one side into the ditch of pedagese and, on the other, into the ditch of philosofese. Using the expression “Philosophical Practice of Community” instead of “Philosophy for children” appears preferable to protect the latter from the risk of being considered, because of its evocative vagueness, both (...) a sort of toy-philosophy, and a kind of pedagogical device suitable for all purposes. Set out in terms of PPC, the project of doing philosophy with children becomes part of a broader field of research concerning each of the three components and their relationships. If ideas are not clear about what “philosophical” means, the risk is that philosophy can be assimilated to other approaches and used as general as empty label. Among the many questions that a PPC puts on the table, I’ll try to frame three of them: 1) Is it necessary to know the philosophical tradition to practice philosophy with children? 2) Who are the philosophers? 3) How to revitalize the Socratic orality? (shrink)

In this article we aim to distinguish between the transhuman and posthuman condition, according to their anthropological, ontological, and ethical natures. We will show that the current historical moment can be considered the beginning of a transhuman civilisation, given that the characteristics of the transhuman are already present in today’s human being. We will show that a series of decisive limitations for belonging to the human condition are in the process of being transcended due to acquisition of attributes of divinity (...) that human beings do not currently possess: omnipotence, omnipresence , ex nihilo creation – starting from the divine creative ideation – and immortality. Humans are increasingly taking on the attributes of divinity in the process of human enhancements. We will discuss the ways in which technology allows the human to overcome these limitations, elevating humans past their current condition, in a process in which they gain technological transcendence. Excepting immortality, all other limitations, once exceeded, generate a transhuman condition. Immortality generates a posthuman condition, since it can only be obtained by modifying the human ontological status from that of a biological being to that of a resident being in informatics networks. In order to clarify this process, we will discuss the concepts of everlastingness and artificial life prolongation. (shrink)

The synthesis between death and vocation that has in the structure ‘being toward vocation’ its conclusion is the key to human finitude according to Ortega y Gasset. This means, against Heidegger’s ‘being toward death’, that in Ortega death, far from being understood as a priori horizon of meaning of existence and sign of human finitude, is an essential ingredient -and a posteriori- of human life which, together with the human vocation, essentially defines existence. The development of that synthesis obliges us (...) to explain two fundamental problems that form part of the essence of death. The first is the mystery of death, which is basically due to two questions: the enigmatic ceasing to be that describes death, and the particular fact that death is simultaneously exterior and interior to life, strange and familiar. The second problem is the question of why human beings do not want to die and want to live, a question substantially linked to the question of the meaning of human life. (shrink)

The present review is a critical reflection on Kenny’s book ’What I believe’. The author tries to understand why Kenny is neither a theist nor an atheist, but an agnostic. He thinks that Kenny is not a theist because arguments for the existence of God always have for him logical weaknesses. According to the author, in this point appears Kenny’s "central belief", namely that human logic makes reality to be true. Nevertheless, the author shows that Kenny is closer to the (...) theist position, and that his conceptions of both the unity of the human being and of virtue are very similar to Christian moral teaching. The author also adds the comments on this review that Kenny has sent to him. (shrink)

Nowadays the world is the witness of en acceleration in the economic regional union -either in craes of free trade or in custom association- as an intermediary step to the consolidation of the economical globalization. In the Ainerican spheres. The United Stares showed en ancient interest in this sense. The history of the economical union emerges the decada of 1950 with the specific case of Centroamerica which has a common political past. This experience has been recently reactivated after the "last (...) decade". The structural plans of adjustment and the politics o market liberation have been imposed in countries such as Nicaragua, suffered from economic conditions extremely weakmakins worse the population's life conditions. Officers of politics and economy of the country express their view about some aspects of this process. (shrink)

Perché quella faccia triste, lettore? Non sapere ti rende infelice. Non sai nulla di quello che ti circonda: non sai come fa a volare l'aereo che ti porterà a Londra, non sai quante zampe ha una Pseudoiulia cambriensis, come funziona il wi-fi, quanta acqua c'è nell'Oceano Atlantico. Sai cosa vuol dire entelechìa? Quanti capelli abbiamo in testa? Hai mai provato a contare tutte le stelle? No, ma l'ha già fatto l'astronomo Ipparco, e le notizie non sono buone: non potremo saperlo (...) mai. Più cerchi di trovare risposte più si formulano ulteriori domande. Ogni informazione è superata nel momento in cui la ricevi, ogni novità è storia vecchia. Grazie a Internet puoi sapere dove sono i tuoi amici in questo momento, con chi sono, cosa fanno. Ma ti interessa davvero? Se digiti parole a caso su Google (“kefYDl9”) qualche risultato verrà fuori di sicuro. Ma saperlo potrà farti vivere meglio? Hai uno sguardo sconsolato, lettore. Non sai che potresti vivere anche senza tutte queste conoscenze. Tu sei Prometeo, prigioniero del fuoco. Sei il fratello spirituale di Friedrich Nietzsche. Se fossi un personaggio di Game of Thrones saresti il Guardiano della Notte Jon Snow, il paladino che lotta trafitto dal dolore di non conoscere né il suo passato né il suo destino. Non lo conosci, ma forse non hai mai voluto saperlo. Anche sapere ti rende infelice: sai benissimo che più cose riuscirai a conoscere più diventerai ignorante. È il paradosso dell'ignoranza: non sapremo mai cosa esattamente sappiamo, e sappiamo solamente ciò che pensiamo di sapere. (shrink)

The literatures on bounded and ecological rationality are built on adaptationism—and its associated modular, cognitivist and computational paradigm—that does not address or explain the evolutionary origins of rationality. We argue that the adaptive mechanisms of evolution are not sufficient for explaining human rationality, and we posit that human rationality presents exaptive origins, where exaptations are traits evolved for other functions or no function at all, and later co-opted for new uses. We propose an embodied reconceptualization of rationality—embodied rationality—based on the (...) reuse of the perception-action system, where many neural processes involved in the control of the sensory-motor system, salient in ancestral environments have been later co-opted to create—by tinkering—high-level reasoning processes, employed in civilized niches. (shrink)

Es altamente probable que este siglo que está recién comenzando supere al siglo XX descrito por Hobsbawm como el más sanguinario del que la Historia tenga registro; juicio éste compartido por personajes tan dispares como René Dumont, William Golding e Isaiah Berlin.Vivimos en tiempos violentos. Hemos hasta llegado a perder la capacidad de asombro frente a las diversas manifestaciones de violencia que nos hacen conocer los programas cotidianos de noticias: de una parte aquellas provenientes de..

v. 1. Dal primo periodo padovano al periodo presalernitano.

We show how interest in “human enhancement” and "optimization” is rooted in a broader social phenomenon – the medicalization of life – and argue that the push to enhance and optimize human beings has a distinctively neoliberal character. Indeed, human enhancement and optimization practices reflect a growing tendency to apply market concepts and logic to individuals, who increasingly conceive of themselves as performative subjects. The Quantified Self is, we suggest, the Marketized Self. Moreover, the Quantified Self is not merely a (...) symptom of the marketization of individuals but serves also to perpetuate that marketization: the Quantified Self threatens to become that concept which defines who the individual “really” is. We argue that this metaphysically weighty idea affects how we think about what is good for human beings. (shrink)

In ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions', Keith Donnellan claimed that Bertrand Russell and Peter Strawson ignored referential uses of definite descriptions. The intense debate that followed Donnellan's paper focused on the contrast between Donnellan and Russell, leaving Strawson aside. In this paper, I focus on the contrast between Donnellan and Strawson. By focusing on this contrast, my aim is, first, to clarify the nature of Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and, second, to argue that a proper (...) understanding of referential uses holds the key to a proper understanding of direct reference. Contrary to the standard view, the crucial issue is not the nature of the proposition expressed (singular versus general) but how a speaker comes to talk about an object. (shrink)

In this short introduction, the guest editors present the main themes of the special issue.

No prefácio da Genealogia da moral, Nietzsche anuncia que a terceira dissertação daquele livro consiste na interpretação de um aforismo. O aforismo em questão diz respeito ao perigo que representa para o homem a falta de sentido para o sofrimento e também às soluções adotadas no Ocidente para enfrentar esse perigo. De fato, a formulação daquele aforismo corresponde a um desdobramento da seção final de O mundo como vontade e representação, de Schopenhauer. Assim, a compreensão da interpretação que se segue (...) ao aforismo deve considerar esse vínculo entre a terceira dissertação da Genealogia da moral e o livro de Schopenhauer, o modo como Schopenhauer sintetiza as principais soluções para aquele problema e também a crítica de Nietzsche a Schopenhauer. Uma crítica construída em grande parte, conforme pretendo mostrar, sobre o conceito de ressentimento. (shrink)

Julián Sanz del Río, founder of the philosophical movement of Spanish krausism, evolved politically from the moderate to the progressive liberalism between 1844 and 1854. His moderate friends ignored this occurrence, and supported him, until his reviews of two french books published in the Gaceta de Madrid, denounced for heterodoxy by the traditionalist press and then by the Bishops from Barcelona and Zamora, revealed to them his true true political positions and his anticlericalism.

En este artículo se propone una línea de continuidad entre el pensamiento de Zubiri y el de Ellacuría en lo que se refiere a la ¿realidad histórica¿, partiendo de la crítica que hace el primero a una concepción aristotelizante de la historia, que caracterizaría al pensamiento moderno, entendida como actualización de posibilidades. A este respecto, se analiza la fecundidad de la perspectiva de Ellacuría respecto del significado de la globalización y su tesis de la civilización de la pobreza contrastándola con (...) el análisis de Karl Otto Apel. (shrink)