Digitality is increasingly central to individuals’ existence, which has political implications. The article maps the political implications of digitalisation, focusing on African political thought. The latter is marked by Afro-communitarianism ideas, which foster solidarity, relationality, and communalism as foundational values of the polity. However, African communitarianism has granted little attention to contemporary phenomena such as digitalisation. Also, political theory discussions on digitality have looked mainly at (neo)liberal contexts. How the digital age is reshaping the tenets of communitarian political theories represents (...) an underdiscussed issue. This article outlines a research agenda on digitality and African political thought. New digitality-enabled relational modes change human and political interactions. The issue at stake is how these new modes challenge or strengthen the Afro-communitarian political outlook. This article recognises digital-humanism, political community, relations of power as central matters of inquiry. The analysis relies on bibliographic sources from African philosophy and comparative political theory. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, recorded messages and written notes have become a significant test and an intriguing puzzle for the semantics of indexical expressions (see Smith 1989, Predelli 1996, 1998a,1998b, 2002, Corazza et al. 2002, Romdenh-Romluc 2002). In particular, the intention-based approach proposed by Stefano Predelli has proven to bear interesting relations to several major questions in philosophy of language. In a recent paper (Saul 2006), Jennifer Saul draws on the literature on indexicals and recorded messages in order to (...) criticize Rae Langton's claim that works of pornography can be understood as illocutionary acts – in particular acts of subordinating women or acts of silencing women. Saul argues that it does not make sense to understand works of pornography as speech acts, because only utterances in contexts can be speech acts. More precisely, works of pornography such as a film may be seen as recordings that can be used in many different contexts – exactly like a written note or an answering machine message. According to Saul, bringing contexts into the picture undermines Langton's radical thesis – which must be reformulated in much weaker terms. In this paper, I accept Saul's claim that only utterances in contexts can be speech acts, and that therefore only works of pornography in contexts may be seen as illocutionary acts of silencing women. I will, nonetheless, show that Saul's reformulation doesn't undermine Langton's thesis. To this aim, I will use the distinction Predelli proposes in order to account for the semantic behaviour of indexical expressions in recorded messages – namely the distinction between context of utterance and context of interpretation. (shrink)

Based on the findings about the importance of social support network in the success of treatment and long term recovery, this article will provide an insight of the successful elements in addiction individual and group counseling interaction through which addicts manage to overcome the denial of addiction, to accept the recovery program, to go through the stages of recovery, and to identify appropriate research methods for understanding the phenomenon of interaction in recovery from addictions. This exploratory study will attempt to (...) identify an innovative perspective of the aspects pertaining to the recovery from addiction which are susceptible to be disclosed primarily by using methods inspired by the analysis of interactions. The method used in research is qualitative focus group with addictions counsellors and people in recovery, working in a counseling center. Using the application of ELAN software to annotate and transcribe interactions from the video and audio recordings, it will situate the research on addiction and recovery from addiction in the larger field of investigations on communication processes in human interactions in various cultural, social and professional contexts. (shrink)

Social death, central to the evil of genocide, distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

Development economists have suggested that the hopes of the poor are a relevant factor in overcoming poverty. I argue that Kant’s approach to hope provides an important complement to the economists’ perspective. A Kantian account of hope emphasizes the need for the rationality of hope and thereby guards against problematic aspects of the economists’ discourse on hope. Section 1 introduces recent work on hope in development economics. Section 2 clarifies Kant’s question “What may I hope?” and presents the outlines of (...) his answer. Crucially, hope is rational if it is rational to trust in the structures of reality on which the realization of one’s hope depends. Section 3 argues that central tenets of Kant’s account of what makes hope rational can be applied to the context of poverty. It becomes apparent that the poor often have good reason to be hopeless since they may not trust fundamental structures that are necessary for realizing their hope. Thus, the insight that the poor need more hope must go hand in hand with a commitment to establishing trustworthy political structures, such that their hope can be rational. Section 4 highlights the relevance of the secular highest good for a better understanding of the justification and scope of our duties to the poor in a Kantian framework. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Consultation (CEC) has grown significantly in the last decade, and efforts are being made to professionalize the practice. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) has been instrumental in this process, having published the _Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Healthcare Ethics Consultants_ and founded and endorsed the creation of the _Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certified (HCEC) Certification Commission._ The ASBH also published “core competencies” for healthcare ethics consultants and has delineated a clear identity and role of (...) such consultants distinct from that other healthcare professionals. In addition, more enter the field armed with advanced degrees (MA and PhD) or certification in clinical ethics consultation. While some have questioned the trend toward professionalization, the momentum is clearly in its favor. This paper explores three questions: Does the professionalization of healthcare ethics consultation expose those engaged in the field to the types of liability claims faced by professionals in other fields? What specific liabilities could affect a healthcare ethics consultant? And finally, what should healthcare ethics consultants do to protect themselves against liability claims? We conclude that while the risk of liability remains low, those engaged in the field should accept that risk just as part of their status as professionals and, like those in allied professions, seek appropriate protection in the form of liability insurance. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher and writer of notable range and influence whose work is central to feminist theory, French existentialism, and contemporary moral and social philosophy. The essays in this 2003 volume examine all the major aspects of her thought, including her views on issues such as the role of biology, sexuality and sexual difference, and evil, the influence on her work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and others, and the philosophical significance of her memoirs and fiction. New (...) readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Beauvoir currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Beauvoir. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the dynamic of social change in the domain of food consumption and seeks to understand the role played by social representations in the transformation of daily food practices. It rests on a model of change that hinges on the processes of cultivation and naturalization of new components of practices. Social representation theory is used to enhance the understanding of the ways that representations contribute to these processes of cultivation and naturalization. Using a visual and multimodal (...) framework for analyzing online environments, the research looked at 984 Instagram posts published by 34 actors who have an interest in promoting alternative proteins in the Canadian context. Results show an emergent subfield of food consumption defined by representations of alternative proteins actively and fluidly intertwined with those of their meat and dairy counterparts. This interplay emerges as being confrontational in the cultivation phase of the model for changing practices –where alternative proteins are presented as being better than meat and dairy – but becomes much more conciliatory during its naturalization phase, in which alternative proteins are presented as being as good as meat and dairy. (shrink)

The Region Connection Calculus (RCC) is a qualitative spatial reasoning formalism, developed in knowledge representation and geographical information systems. We argue that RCC can be viewed as a more fine-grained approach to the use of Euler diagrams to visualize categorical statements like ‘all A are B’. We present RCC using the syntax of first-order modal logic and a topological semantics. We compare the Gergonne relations (a well-known set of 5 jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint relations between two non-empty sets, visualized (...) using Euler-type diagrams) with RCC8 (a similar set of 8 relations for regions). (shrink)

A Deleuzian incursion into Kantian Criticism. About the Doctrine of the Faculties from the Perspective of their Interest. Deleuze describes the doctrine of the faculties as a complete system of permutations. These faculties are analyzed in part according to their own interest: speculative or practical. Each faculty has a superior form through which it is realized. Deleuze’s question is to what extent a faculty becomes able to achieve its own interest and bear the legislative burden for another. Reflective judgment generally (...) makes it possible to move from the faculty of knowledge to that of desire, from speculative to practical. These are also questions concerning the free agreement of our faculties with the contingency of Nature’s own accord with them. (shrink)

Addressing studying as a distinct educational concept and phenomenon in its own right, the essays in this volume consider study and studying from a range of perspectives. Countering dominant educational discourses, which place a heavy emphasis on learning and instruction, the contributors explore questions such as: What does it mean to study something? How is studying something different from being taught about it, or learning something about it? What does the difficulty demanded by study mean for the one who studies (...) and for the teacher? What mode of existence does study induce? The book highlights the significance of study not only, or even primarily, for its educational outcome, but as a human activity. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that to reverse the excess of specialization and to create room for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, it seems necessary to move the existing epistemic plurality towards a collaborative process of social cognition. In order to achieve this, we propose to extend the psychological notion of joint attention towards what we call joint intellectual attention. This special kind of joint attention involves a shared awareness of sharing the cognitive process of knowledge. We claim that if an interdisciplinary research (...) team aspires to work collaboratively, it is essential for the researchers to jointly focus their attention towards a common object and establish a second-person relatedness among them. We consider some of the intellectual dispositions or virtues fostered by joint intellectual attention that facilitate interdisciplinary exchange, and explore some of the practical consequences of this cognitive approach to interdisciplinarity for education and research. (shrink)

The paper considers Martha Nussbaum's motivation for departing from her earlier cosmopolitan position in favour of now promoting a globally sensitive patriotism. Her reasons for endorsing patriotism will be shown as exemplary for related argumentations by other authors, especially insofar as love of country as a motivating force for civic duty is understood as in tension or even as incompatible with cosmopolitan aspirations. The motivation for turning to patriotism as articulated by Nussbaum and others will be demonstrated to rely on (...) misleading understandings of love of country as a possessive emotion. Relying on Alice Crary's critique, it will be argued that sound moral judgement with regard to the patria as well as from a cosmopolitan stance is equally tied to our sensitivities and equally requires their education. Furthermore, I will discuss Axel Honneth's notion of solidarity, a form of love inflected by justice, as a possible alternative for conceptualising the social bonding patriotic attachment is supposed to provide. However, a critical patriotism ultimately needs to transgress this inward-directed focus and take into account how a country is seen by non-citizens, the historical relationships and the obligations that arise in terms of historical justice in relation to other countries. If we take patriotism in this outward-looking perspective seriously, we also come to understand why it would be a mistake to skip patriotism altogether. Rather than constructing cosmopolitanism and patriotism as mutually exclusive opposites, critical cosmopolitanism and critical patriotism can be shown to have different but complementary and mutually corrective functions. (shrink)

In recent years the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has addressed the predicament of artists and curators who, in their eagerness to convey a critical message or engage their viewers in an emancipatory process, end up predetermining the outcomes of the experience, hence blocking its critical or emancipatory potential. In this essay I consider Rancière’s writing on this topic and draw out the parallels with the predicament of teachers and curriculum designers who have critical and emancipatory objectives. The risk of education (...) that strives for emancipation is that it can become so directive in steering students to the “right” outcomes that it does not leave these students any intellectual room. Rancière’s work is helpful in reminding us that teachers and curricula with explicitly critical, political, emancipatory objectives can defeat their own purposes and become stultifying if they do not leave the student room to use her or his own intelligence. (shrink)

Who or what counts as a feminist subject? This article considers the place of the child, in particular, within the framework of feminist theories of the subject. Locating these theories in a framework of ‘oppositional’ theory, the article asks how and when the child appears in this field of theory. Although children’s oppression and representations of the child in culture have been continuously addressed in contemporary feminism at least since the 1970s, it is simultaneously the case that the child appears (...) in feminism as well as other theories of the subject as the other to the presumed adult subject, even – and sometimes especially – when that subject is being retheorized in oppositional terms, that is, against a hegemonic order of things. The article focuses on instances of the child’s appearance as a resource in feminist theories of the subject, and particularly in feminist uses of psychoanalysis. After considering male poststructuralist or postmodern uses of the child, this article contrasts their generic use of the child with feminist uses of psychoanalysis in the work of Valerie Walkerdine, Judith Butler and Teresa de Lauretis. Psychoanalysis, even in its feminist guises, emerges as a technology of childhood that figures the child as the adult’s ontological origin, and as such an origin that the adult theorist can claim to know by way of psychoanalysis itself. Frequently constituted as a not-yet subject, the child stands in for this ontological origin, from which theorists of the subject, both feminist and not, refashion theories of subjective resistance to the very forms of power that make us subjects in the first place. Working both with and against feminist and other appropriations of the child by way of its ontological positioning, this article attempts to offer an alternative theorization of subjects that accounts for the differences between children and adults. While undercutting the claims to knowledge of the child as the site of human ontology, this alternative theorization also makes a claim to the transformative possibilities that have been located in ontology itself. In addressing feminist uses of the child together with theories of the feminist subject, this article speaks not only to questions of the child, but to the possibility of a feminist politics that begins from a position of privilege – that is, one that does not require subordination as a condition of its own possibility. (shrink)

Is it true that utilitarianism can accommodate the modern belief that human beings have certain moral rights against everybody ‘just in virtue of their human nature?’ I should have thought the most a utilitarian could grant was that we had rights just in virtue of the utility of respecting such rights, not just in virtue of our human nature. In fact, that is more like the view Professor Brandt actually supports. What he argues is that there is not the a (...) priori difficulty with the idea of utilitarian moral rights that some philosophers have thought there was. However, I think the possibility of utilitarian moral rights is not the same as the view that we all have human rights against everybody just in virtue of our human nature. As I hear it, ‘just in virtue of our human nature’ is an alternative to a utilitarian basis for rights. I'll return to that. (shrink)

This review essay on Janice Raymond's A Passion for Friends, sympathetic to the author's inquiry into the institutional contexts of female friendship, criticizes as unnecessary its rejection of feminist separatism and of the “lesbian continuum” and formulates a possible connection of its account of sources of passionate friendship among women to the new research on women and violence.

It has been claimed that most of the world’s preventable suffering and death are caused not by terrorism but by poverty. That claim, if true, could be hard to substantiate. For most terrorism is not publicly recognized as such, and it is far commoner than paradigms of the usual suspects suggest. Everyday lives under oppressive regimes, in racist environments, and of women, children, and elders everywhere who suffer violence in their homes offer instances of terrorisms that seldom capture public attention. (...) Or so this essay argues, through exploring two models of terrorism and the points of view highlighted by each. (shrink)

Epistemological contextualism and semantic contextualism are two distinct but closely entangled projects in contemporary philosophy. According to epistemological contextualism, our knowledge attributions are context-sensitive. That is, the truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing sentences – sentences of the form of (1) S knows that p - vary depending on the context in which they are uttered. Contextualism admits the legitimacy of several epistemic standards that vary with the context of use of (1); it might be right to claim – for the same (...) cognitive subject S and the same proposition p – that (1) is true in one context, and false in another. The epistemological contextualist thesis is grounded in a semantic claim about the context-sensitivity of the predicate “know”: the semantic thesisis that a sentence of the form (1) does not express a complete proposition. Different utterances of (1) can, in different contexts, express different propositions: we must add in information about the context in order to determine the proposition expressed by (1). Many scholars have tried to spell out the semantic contextualist thesis on which epistemological contextualism is grounded. Our general aim in this paper is to evaluate the plausibility of a project that takes the opposite starting point, that is establishing the semantic contextualist thesis on the epistemological one. According to semantic contextualism, virtually no sentences of a naturallanguage express complete propositions – meaning underdetermines truth conditions. In our paper, instead of assuming the traditional view of meaning in terms of truth conditions, we suggest that a theory of meaning as justification may shed new light on the contextualist approach. We thus show how the notion of justification can be contextualized, arguing that our attempt provides an interesting and quite straightforward way of contextualizing meaning. (shrink)

This book is dedicated to the life and work of the mathematician Joachim Lambek. The editors gather together noted experts to discuss the state of the art of various of Lambek’s works in logic, category theory, and linguistics and to celebrate his contributions to those areas over the course of his multifaceted career. After early work in combinatorics and elementary number theory, Lambek became a distinguished algebraist. In the 1960s, he began to work in category theory, categorical algebra, logic, proof (...) theory, and foundations of computability. In a parallel development, beginning in the late 1950s and for the rest of his career, Lambek also worked extensively in mathematical linguistics and computational approaches to natural languages. He and his collaborators perfected production and type grammars for numerous natural languages. Lambek grammars form an early noncommutative precursor to Girard’s linear logic. In a surprising development, he introduced a novel and deeper algebraic framework for analyzing natural language, along with algebraic, higher category, and proof-theoretic semantics. This book is of interest to mathematicians, logicians, linguists, and computer scientists. (shrink)

Most literature in contemporary critical, feminist, and psychoanalytic thought reads Antigone as a figure of resistance and revolutionary change. In this chapter, I challenge such a reading. I discuss Sophocles’ Antigone as a paradigmatic example of what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben identified as homo sacer, who is banned from society and deprived of rights and, thus, may subsequently be killed with impunity. Antigone dwells at the zone of indistinction between the public and the private, the included and the (...) excluded, life and death, the animal and the human. She exposes that it is particularly woman and the feminine that stands for bare life that is exposed to an unconditioned capacity to be killed. (shrink)

This chapter shows that Fraser's redistribution-recognition justice model fails to provide us with a radical political imaginary to transform neoliberal capitalism into a better society. First, her principle of 'parity of participation' aims to include oppressed social groups into capitalism rather than transforming capitalism itself. Second, her idea of a 'constantly shifting identity' is implicated in the spirit of neoliberal capitalism. Third, her account of socialism implies a reformative socialist imaginary that merely attenuates the ills of neoliberal capitalism. Fourth, her (...) attempt to do away with the proletariat as a political subject does not allow us to theorize an agent of transformative change. To envision transformative change, feminists need a clear break with the language of recognition and the idea of the 'constantly shifting identity.' Furthermore, we need to bring back the radical imaginary of Rosa Luxemburg, who opted for a proletarian revolution instead of reforms within capitalism. Finally, I offer my idea of the proletariat as a subject-in-outline to further theorize the agent who incites a revolution. (shrink)

For the past decade and a half, social and political thinkers have appropriated the Hegelian trope of a "struggle for recognition" to generate theories that lead to a democratic politics of inclusion. The different strands within the "politics of recognition" debate share the conviction that "recognition" is a central human good and the precondition for justice in pluralist societies. However, in this article, I show that recognition theorists, instead of creating a democratic politics of inclusion, have perpetuated exclusions. I share (...) Jacques Lacan's suspicion of democratic politics based on recognition or its counterpart—misrecognition. What parades as a pluralist society where subjects supposedly "equally recognize each other in their diversity" often leads to excluding women, sexual and racial minorities, and the poor. Although the influence of the politics of recognition is fading, perhaps because other thinkers have also realized its inherent problems, it remains a dominant strand in contemporary political theorizing. (shrink)

In this book, I develop the novel concept of embodied reflective judgment, which outlines the interconnection between feeling and thinking in judgment. I explain that defense mechanisms to repress feelings of guilt can effectively shut down critical judgment. Finally, I analyze post-war trial cases of Austrian Nazi perpetrators and contemporary debates about Austria’s involvement in Nazi crimes to expose the mechanisms used by individuals and nations to fend off individual and political guilt. Only by confronting guilt can individuals and nations (...) take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims of crimes and their descendants, and ensure that such crimes are not repeated. I also develop two concepts to break the cycle of negative consequences resulting from repressed guilt about a nation’s violent past: Embodied reflective spaces, which allow us to reflect on our guilt feelings, and subjects-in-outline, which means that we abstain from wholly identifying with a nation to counter defensive mechanisms when confronting guilt. I ground my analysis in critical theory (Arendt and Adorno) and psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)

Guala contests the validity of strong reciprocity as a key element in shaping social behavior by contrasting evidence from experimental games to that of natural and historic data. He suggests that in order to understand the evolution of social behavior researchers should focus on natural data and weak reciprocity. We disagree with Guala's proposal to shift the focus of the study from one extreme of the spectrum (strong reciprocity) to the other extreme (weak reciprocity). We argue that the study of (...) the evolution of social behavior must be comparative in nature, and we point out experimental evidence that shows that social behavior is not cooperation determined by a set of fixed factors. We argue for a model that sees social behavior as a dynamic interaction of genetic and environmental factors. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza la integración y proyección del Caribe que Derek Walcott construyó a través de puentes analógicos y la traslación del imaginario del libro-archivo al paisaje en Las Antillas, fragmentos de una memoria épica (1992). Por otra parte, se detiene en la valoración que el autor de Omeros (1990) hizo de la imitación como una matriz intercultural decisiva en El Caribe. ¿cultura o mimetismo? (1974). Destaca posiciones teóricas construidas en el ensayo a partir del cuestionamiento de hipótesis propuestas por (...) Vidia Naipaul en Los simuladores (1967) y considera la relevancia alcanzada por las manifestaciones de la relación especular en la vida antropológica de la región. Por último, describe la articulación intertextual que existe entre aquel proceso y representaciones trazadas en Cuaderno de un retorno al país natal (1939) de Aimé Césaire, por medio de la cual se interpela la creencia en la originalidad cultural y el eurocentrismo. (shrink)

Global concerns over environmental and social issues in agrifood value chains have increased and are reflected in a number of voluntary sustainability standards and regulatory initiatives. However, these initiatives are often based on poor knowledge of production realities, creating a disconnect between producing and consuming countries. Through narrative analysis, this paper reveals asymmetries in the responsibilities of the various actors participating in Ecuadorian banana value chains, providing clear problem- and solution-framings. Despite the broad range of actors interviewed, our analysis reveals (...) convergence in two main narratives that reflect asymmetries amongst local actors in terms of their ability to participate, ability to maintain participation, and adaptation strategies in view of changing external factors. One narrative relates to sustainability adaptations, the cost of which is not shared among all value chain actors. This is combined with a downward trend in the price of bananas and the lack of a differentiated price to account for losses and costs arising from increasing sustainability standards. Another narrative reflects a value chain structure that threatens small-farm survival. It highlights the urgency of protecting small-farm activity by enforcing national regulation and developing new market segments/models that understand small-scale producer reality. Study results show that the multitude of standards is not seen as beneficial and that downstream actors rather wish for common minimum standards to reduce business costs. Compatibility between standards and local realities should be a priority for global sustainability standards adoption. Building on the problems and solution-framings of local value chain links, we give voice to local actors, and link their perceptions to existing literature and discursive politics while contributing to social transparency and addressing the democratic deficit in agrifood value chains. (shrink)

The article draws from a personal clinical experience of two suicides, not far removed from each other in time. The first patient was a 33-year-old intellectual suffering from depression with narcissistic traits but no psychotic elements, while the second patient was a 21-year-old student with a manifest psychotic episode behind him and with characteristics of post-psychotic depression at the time of suicide. The two suicides had very different impacts on the therapist: the first left open some “space” for reflection, communication, (...) and working-through, while the second closed such a “space,” leaving only a tiny door to the existential roots of human beings and suffering. The therapist was able to find some “shelter” by talking to supervisors, colleagues, and friends in the first case; in the second, the only possible “shelter” was glimpsed in the philosophy of groundlessness (Ungrund) of the Russian existentialist Nicolai Berdyaev. The personal experiences of the therapist, along with some theoretical interpretations of the after-effects of both suicides, are presented using a psychodynamic and existential–phenomenological understanding of the therapeutic relationship with a psychotic and a non-psychotic patient. The main dilemmas exposed by a patient’s suicide, especially if the patient suffers from psychosis, are difficult to deal with in the usual clinical settings and call for resources beyond it. The authors propose that these can be found in philosophical and theological insights. (shrink)

The central question of this article is what hope contributes to a good life. The starting point is the assumption that living a good life involves having a good relation to the past, present and future. Hope is a central attitude towards the future that contributes, I argue, to having an own future. I distinguish three ways in which there is reference to an "own future" and thus different ways in which hope contributes to the good life. Finally, I discuss (...) the objection that hope is detrimental to a good life precisely because of its reference to the future, insofar as a good life essentially takes place "in the present". (shrink)

Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism can improve existing typologies in comparative government and has great potential for discussions about democratic innovation and reform. So far, democratic innovations like deliberative mini-publics have remained mostly additive, leaving the underlying decision-making logics of representative political systems unchanged. Ganghof’s ideas can move debates about how deliberative democracy is to be institutionalized forward. Semi-parliamentary government constitutes an intriguing option to meet both demands for legislative flexibility and responsiveness to citizens’ concerns and demands for stability (...) and accountability. At the same time, I identify a limitation of the book in the fact that Ganghof’s normative theory of democracy remains thin. To appeal to citizens in constitutional reform processes, proposals for semi-parliamentary reform need to do more than reconcile conflicting visions of majority rule. They need to speak to democracy’s central promises of equal autonomy and rationality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Aristotle's account of rhetoric goes beyond its previous consideration as an art of persuasion to be regarded as a suitable logic for human affairs. In the realm of ethics and politics, he needs to appeal to a logic that can deal with contingency without discarding the concept of truth. I claim that the double rapport of rhetoric with dialectic and ethical-political issues links public discourse with the question of rationality and practical truth. I will start with a brief overview (...) of two passages of the Rhetoric that account for the liaison of rhetoric with dialectic. Secondly, I consider two contributions that rhetoric theory makes to the enhancement of the rationality of ethics. Lastly, I will reflect on the relationship of rhetorical discourse with practical truth. RESUMEN La reflexión aristotélica sobre la retórica va más allá de su consideración previa como un arte de persuasión para ser comprendida como una lógica adecuada a los asuntos humanos. En el ámbito de la ética y la política se necesita apelar a una técnica de razonamiento que pueda lidiar con la contingencia, sin descartar el concepto de verdad. En este artículo defiendo que la doble relación de la retórica con las cuestiones dialécticas y ético-políticas vincula el discurso público con la cuestión de la racionalidad y la verdad práctica. Comenzaré con una breve descripción de dos pasajes de la Retórica que explican el vínculo de la retórica con la dialéctica. En segundo lugar, consideraré dos contribuciones que hace la teoría de la retórica al realce de la racionalidad de la ética. Por último, reflexionaré sobre la relación del discurso retórico con la verdad práctica. (shrink)

This article analyzes the work and thought of Lélia Gonzalez on the experience of Black women in Brazil. It highlights her legacy within studies of Black Feminism in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the importance of her articulation between sex, class, and race with the intention of understanding the social inequality Indigenous and Black women suffer. Gonzalez's political-cultural category of Amefricanity is presented in this article as an instrument of analysis specific to the region, which promotes an (...) epistemological shift within Black feminism. This category seeks to interpret the stories and survival strategies of previous generations of Black women on the continent, as well as to learn their methods and transgressive practices of asymmetrical power relations as pedagogical processes. (shrink)

Kant holds that transcendental freedom of the will—“a faculty of absolutely beginning a state, and hence also a series of consequences”—is a necessary condition for moral imputation. The question of whether we are really free is a vexed issue. In this contribution, I pursue two aims: On the one hand, I provide an account of how, according to Kant, theoretical and practical reason work together in a way that allows us to affirm that we are free. On the other hand, (...) I bring Kant’s position into contact with the contemporary debate and defend Kant’s decidedly practical justification of freedom against objections. (shrink)