What are human rights? What makes a particular human rights claim ‘genuine’ or ‘valid’? These are difficult questions with which current philosophical literature on human rights is concerned. They are also the same kind of questions that legal philosophers asked about Law throughout the 20th century. Drawing from the similarities between the two fields, I attempt to do with the concept of human rights something similar to what Ronald Dworkin accomplished with that of Law in Law’s Empire. First, I offer (...) a critique of the two dominant perspectives on human rights—the Orthodox and Political views—that is similar in character to Dworkin’s Semantic Sting objection to Legal Positivism. Second, I sketch an alternative, Dworkinian-inspired framework that seeks to develop the notion of human rights as an interpretive concept. According to this framework, different accounts of human rights are to be understood as expressing different interpretations of the point (or purpose) of human rights practice. (shrink)

O objetivo do presente texto é explanar e correlacionar duas interpretações do conceito de consciência infeliz [conscience malhereuse], desenvolvido por Hegel na Phänomenologie des Geistes: a de Jean Wahl, introduzida em Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, de 1929; e a de Gilles Deleuze, apresentada em Nietzsche et la philosophie, de 1962. Antes de tudo, expomos a interpretação de Wahl, que, marcada pela defesa da centralidade da noção de consciência infeliz no interior da obra hegeliana, foi (...) determinante para a recepção de Hegel na filosofia francesa do século XX, antes das célebres palestras de Kojève. A seguir, descrevemos de que maneira Deleuze, em Nietzsche et la philosophie, articula uma leitura crítica do hegelianismo, em que também subscreve à centralidade da consciência infeliz, mas associando-a, à sua maneira, ao conceito nietzschiano de má consciência, a ser também tipificado. Por fim, relacionamos as duas leituras apresentadas, o que deve elucidar a maneira pela qual Deleuze retoma as concepções de Wahl no contexto de sua própria crítica a Hegel como, segundo a caracterização deleuziana, filósofo da representação e do ressentimento. (shrink)

Um dos objetivos da revista eletrônica Kínesis é apresentar pesquisadores que tenham seu nome vinculado a pesquisas sobre temas filosóficos contemporâneos. Para abrilhantar a edição inaugural e especial da revista Kínesis, apresentamos uma entrevista com um dos professores que, além de pesquisar temas filosóficos contemporâneos, fortemente trabalhou para a instalação do programa de pós-graduação em Filosofia na Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências do campus da UNESP de Marília.

The scarcity of transitional forms in the geological record was a problem concerning 19th-century transmutation species theories. According to Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), it was perhaps the most serious objection to his proposed theory in the several Editions of The Origin of Species, departing 1859. Although Darwin and other scholars proposed explanations, this problem persisted until the 20th century in the Modern Synthesis. In the 1970s, two American palaeontologists, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), presented the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis (...) as an alternative to the gradualism that Darwin and the Modern Synthesis admitted. This paper aims to discuss the proposal of the punctuated equilibrium. In addition, the foundation Gould and Eldredge gave and how the scientific community reacted to it. The analysis showed that punctuated equilibrium complemented Darwin's proposal and the Modern Synthesis. Thus, criticisms such as opposition to these ideas are unjustified. The authors sought to base their hypothesis on evidence from their and other authors' investigations. The reactions to the proposal varied during the period studied (1972-1993). Still, it got more accepted among palaeontologists and met with more significant restrictions among those who dedicated themselves to genetics, mainly to population genetics. (shrink)