This article addresses – from a theoretical and historical perspective – the discussion on republicanism and populism, in connection to different ways of conceiving political modernity. It places republicanism and populism within the framework of contemporary democracies in the Latin American context, looking at the reciprocal interaction between these political traditions, and their relevance for understanding the current challenges of the liberal model in the region.

A sociedade não se iniciou com a civilização grega, porém fundamentou a civilização ocidental. Pretende-se fazer uma reflexão sobre as questões econômicas do mundo antigo, quando Aristóteles anteviu crescente inserção mercantilista na sociedade e tratará a polis com uma grande autonomia humana. A sociedade grega clássica está centrada na cidade-estado, a polis, a qual era, para os gregos, o estágio final e completo da vida social, a única forma possível de existência civilizada. O conceito aristotélico de economia como ação/política do (...) “cuidar”, como a ciência que busca o melhor uso das riquezas destinadas a manutenção e aperfeiçoamento da vida social, auxilia o mundo moderno à construção de um pensamento econômico. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la relación entre dos autores, Lord Acton y Balmes, en lo que entendemos que ha sido la gran cuestión de la política moderna: la nación y el problema del nacionalismo. Se citan los textos estrechamente relacionados con el tema y se han descartado aquellos más generales o, en el caso de Balmes, de carácter más dogmático o teológico. En el caso del autor español se han seleccionado sus escritos políticos aparecidos en los diferentes medios de prensa en (...) los que colaboró a lo largo de su prolífica carrera. Ambos autores trataron de superar por elevación la dialéctica absolutismo-liberalismo, y propusieron, cada uno a su manera, un modelo de Monarquía Constitucional que no cediese ni al nacionalismo, ni al autoritarismo. Asumieron como propias ideas renovadoras acerca de la libertad política, adaptaron a sus circunstancias las formas políticas propias del federalismo estadounidense, y defendieron la tradición, la religión y el Estado frente a los que ellos entendían que eran las dos grandes amenazas de su época que crecían al amparo del nacionalismo: el individualismo racionalista y el autoritarismo estatalista. (shrink)

In this essay, a brief analysis of the diplomatic efforts to achieve an accord in re- lation to the climatic change process is made. Particularly, it will analyze the two past Climate Summits (Copenhagen and Cancun). It emphasizes the growing social articulation of climatic politics. Finally, it aims to the birth of a new global responsibility of societies in relation to the human relation towards the planet. Also, it explores the impact of this responsibility on the environment global changes.

Most model checking techniques for security protocols make a number of simplifying assumptions on the protocol and/or on its execution environment that greatly complicate or even prevent their applicability in some important cases. For instance, most techniques assume that communication between honest principals is controlled by a Dolev-Yao intruder, i.e. a malicious agent capable to overhear, divert, and fake messages. Yet we might be interested in establishing the security of a protocol that relies on a less unsecure channel (e.g. a (...) confidential channel provided by some other protocol sitting lower in the protocol stack). In this paper we propose a general model for security protocols based on the set-rewriting formalism that, coupled with the use of LTL, allows for the specification of assumptions on principals and communication channels as well as of complex security properties that are normally not handled by state-of-the-art security protocol analysers. By using our approach we have been able to formalise all the assumptions required by the ASW protocol for optimistic fair exchange and some of its key security properties. Besides the previously reported attacks on the protocol, we report a new attack on a patched version of the protocol. (shrink)

The idea of self-realization is one of the most significant points of intersection between ethics and philosophical anthropology, the disciplines that study, respectively, human conduct and human nature. An examination of this idea, therefore, allows us to shed light on these two fields and their entanglement. In this article I present two possible accounts of self-realization: the Essentialist Account, which understands it as the actualization of an intrinsic potential, and the Interactionist Account, which conceives it as the successful interaction between (...) an individual and her environment. My goal is to argue for the Interactionist Account, in the comprehensive version developed by John Dewey. To do so, I proceed as follows: I introduce the Essentialist Account; I present Dewey’s alternative, by examining first the Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics and then some major later works, thereby showing the continuity (and discontinuity) of his conception of self-realization, or growth, throughout his career; after a closer comparison between the Interactionist Account and the Essentialist Account, I finally clarify the relevance of Dewey’s view for understanding the entanglement between ethics and anthropology. (shrink)

En estas líneas se quiere mostrar que la obra de Feijoo puede interpretarse en su conjunto como un proyecto político-científico. Para Feijoo, el escepticismo científico es la clave para la construcción de una comunidad ilustrada que, al dedicarse al verdadero conocimiento del mundo físico, no amenaza la religión católica ni el incipiente despliegue del Estado moderno. La ciencia (o filosofía natural) se presenta como el antídoto de las fuerzas centrífugas del error y la disgregación, en todas sus formas. Feijoo no (...) tiene reparo en recibir y propagar las aportaciones de científicos protestantes y sí intención de generar una cultura científica que constituya un cimiento sólido para una sociedad bien organizada. Feijoo promueve la formación científica porque es útil para el _progreso_ social, para la fundación de una comunidad propiamente católica, que incluya a todas las personas cultivadas, al margen de las incipientes unidades nacionales y de los distintos bandos confesionales. (shrink)

In the evolution of criminally relevant action in modern crime theory, social action has assumed a particular significance as a dogmatic element that enables the effective protection of legal assets in a society beset by risks. In the vast array of theories regarding the role of the guarantor and its legal and doctrinal development, as well as the jurisprudential extension of equivalence clauses of improper omissions that serve as amplifier devices of the criminal statue through an indirect adaptation, there is (...) a need to identify the most effective means to shield legal assets, which allows for an imputation of passive conducts, despite having an active typical description. This introduces the controversial figure of the improper omission, which is used with the function of perfecting all of the structural elements of the criminal conduct. When an individual knows he is in a position of guarantor and is aware of the potential consequences, but fails to take action, having the means to prevent a foreseeable outcome, this device serves to enhance the criminal protection of legal assets, fostering social solidarity as the basis of the criminal justice system. This system, by satisfying the function of general prevention of the punishment, ideally dissuades the individual from committing crimes with the threat of penalty. These theories are fundamental to understanding criminal responsibility by improper omission in the context of the objective imputation theory. By guiding the evolution and delimitation of its application, they serve as a significant factor in criminal social control in Colombia. (shrink)

The Venezuelan-Chilean humanist Andrés Bello has been recognized as one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the 19th century—one of the last polymaths of the stature of figures such as Athanasius Kircher, Gottfried Leibniz or Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, his numerous contributions span fields such as grammar, poetry, civil law, diplomacy, education, political theory, philology and philosophy. However, despite having composed one of the most important philosophical treatises ever written in Spanish, his philosophical proposals have not been engaged with a substantial (...) way by scholars of the Anglophone world. Only a few scholars such as... (shrink)

This essay examines the philosophy of religion of Unamuno, as it is expressed in his fundamental work, El sentimiento trágico de la vida. The structure of this work, that analyses the problem of antropology to evaluate the answers of reason and religion about the destiny of man, culminates in an organic faith, based on a creative voluntarism, and on a heroic-civil ethics, which originates from the tragical dout.

In the first part of the article the author explains the importance of Peirce's reflection about the index as a crucial point of the reformulation of his entire philosophical system that took place around 1885. Then he examines the role of the index in Peircean semiotics and linguistics, where the index clearly shows -in spite of the difficulties deriving from Peirce's acceptance of some Kantian gnoseological thesis- the necessary and close connexion between language and reality.

It is argued that epistemological naturalism is the result of a holist thesis plus a high valuation of empirical science. Epistemological naturalism criticizes the sceptic for entertaining unjustified global doubts and naturalism tries to avoid scepticism by taking for granted as non problematic our background scientific knowledge and by recommending only a localist or piecemealist mending of our corpus of knowledge, these corrections will be motivated by limited and justified questions. It is argued that the epistemological naturalist: i) Cannot justify (...) without vicious circularity the most basic methods of science nor epistemological naturalism's localist recommendation. ii) That if epistemological naturalism intends to be a description of genuine scientific methods then naturalism tacitly takes for granted, i.e., without justification, some epistemic norms. iii) That natural science itself produces traditional sceptic doubts, and therefore epistemological naturalism cannot avoid scepticism. iv) That naturalism can neither avoid sceptic doubts by substituting an argumentative theory of justification with a reliabilist theory. (shrink)