Leading scholars in the field of religious studies show that scholasticism as a comparative category is useful in the analysis of a variety of religious and philosophical traditions and even in the task of cultural criticism.

It is the aim of this paper to trace, firstly, how far Epicurus is indebted to pre-Socratic physiology regarding the axiom of nihil ex nihilo, which the Samian philosopher accepts in toto; secondly to prove that physics, with this axiom as a ground, is a requisite for a both natural and mental framework where ἀταραξία can be achieved. In the first part of this writing, the aforementioned principle is presented as a struggle against myth, for a new interpretative structure of (...) the world. Afterwards, a path is defined, that goes from Parmenides and Melissus of Samos, as a necessary conceptual link, to the first ancient atomism. In the second part of this research effort, the role of atomistic materialistic physics is presented as an essential explanatory foundation for achieving, in the Epicurean way, a happy life without fear or mental disturbance. Accordingly, the study of nature, and the rational assumption of its conclusions, becomes a tool for soul care. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

Prof. Brague explores in this interview the usefulness of the study of medieval thought in order to understand the problems of our time. He reflects on the different approaches to reason, politics and religion in Islam and Christianity, and the problems which derivate from the radical modern separation between society and religion. Is it correct to ascribe the casuse of social conflicts to religion or to a strong rationality? Is it possible in the long run to build a society without (...) any religion? Why is the notion of natural law controversial in modern times? And what is the relation between natural law and the law of God, as proposed by certain religions? (shrink)

Platón puede ser considerado el iniciador de la antropología como disciplina filosófica. El estudio filosófico del hombre aparece en el seno de la discusión ontológica cuando se cae en la cuenta de que tiene una consistencia propia y que presenta unos problemas que no pueden ser decididos por la mera ontología. Ante todo, el tema del hombre aparece como un problema gnoseológico: cuál es la relación del hombre con el intelecto, entendido como la capacidad de conocer lo real como real.

RESUMEN La filosofia de Sócrates posee un carácter muy peculiar debido a la ausencia de doctrinas bien establecidas y a la inseparable vinculación entre vida y pensamiento. Por este motivo, el filosofar socrático debe entenderse unido a sus andanzas callejeras y a la revisión constante de cualquier planteamiento. Partiendo de esta hipótesis, el artículo pretende mostrar tanto la originalidad del pensamiento socrático y su concepción de la filosofía como la enorme influencia que ejerce en los textos de Platón, que emplean (...) de manera sutil esos extravíos y divagaciones con el propósito de enriquecer la conversación, de dotar de profundidad a las argumentaciones y de obligar al lector a recorrer ese mismo camino sinuoso que es el de la reflexión filosófica. Con ello, ambos pensadores muestran que la filosofía no es tanto un saber sino una actividad. ABSTRACT Socrates' philosophy has a very peculiar character due to the absence of well-established doctrines and the unbreakable bond between life and thought. For this reason, Socratic philosophy must be understood along with his street wanderings and the constant revision of any intellectual approach. Starting from this hypothesis, this paper aims to show both the originality of Socratic thought and his notion of philosophy, as well as the enormous influence he exerts on Plato, who subtly employs these wanderings and digressions in his texts to enrich the dialogue, providing depth to the arguments, and forcing the reader to travel that same winding road that is philosophical thought. Thus, both thinkers show that philosophy is not so much a kind of knowledge as it is an activity. (shrink)

Introduction: Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation. Objective: This study aims to enrich knowledge of the empathic experience of pain by using an experimental phenomenological method. Method: (...) Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories. Results: Experiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main-themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. Temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them. Discussion: We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory for non-interactive social experience. (shrink)

Resumen: Se efectúa una aproximación a los derechos humanos desde la perspectiva de la inteligencia en sus distintas facetas, especialmente desde la inteligencia artificial pero también desde la inteligencia institucional y la emocional. Aparecen como derechos inteligentes, que desarrollan la inteligencia de los individuos y hacen a las sociedades más inteligentes. Se presenta su dimensión cognitiva y su capacidada para cuestionar programas. Son instancias críticas que preservan la dignidad de los seres humanos en su compleja interacción con las máquinas inteligentes (...) y estimulan un pensamiento no mecánico. Absrtact: This article aims to give an approach to the human rights from the point of view of intelligence in their different types, especially from artificial intelligence, but also from institutional and emotional intelligence. They appear as smart rights that develop the intelligence of the individuals and make societies more intelligent. Their cognitive dimension is shown, as well as their capacity to question programs. They are critical instances that preserve the human dignity in their complex interaction with intelligent machines and stimulate a not-mechanical thinking. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the genderization of the difference between the beautiful and the sublime as it is stated in Kant's Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime. This difference is posed under the assumption of sexual difference, and not only a difference is stipulated but a hierarchization that places man in the sublime-rational pole above woman, located in the beautiful-sensitive pole, thus replicating an old metaphysical-androcentric tradition. From this initial proposal, the evolution of the same distinction is (...) analyzed, but in the context of the theory of aesthetic judgment raised in the Critique of judgement. The 1790 work, which continues to replicate the beautiful / sublime difference already operating in the 1764 essay, however, at the same time offers a theory of taste that places aesthetic judgment beyond the masculinist hierarchies of reason and understanding. The text proposes that explicit misogyny coexists in Kant's aesthetics with a theory of taste implicitly profitable for the deconstruction of the metaphysical dichotomies on which that misogyny is based. (shrink)

This paper is located at the threshold between aesthetics and politics in order to interrogate the most recent works by Georges Didi-Huberman. It is argued that his “thinking of images” implies not only a politics of art, but also an art of politics, i. e., an aesthetic politics that lead us to the arena of actual political debate, showing not only the political implications of images but, much more decisively, the figural assumptions of politics. We discuss the main features of (...) this program, before showing the scope of montage as an aesthetic and political articulation of the common, and as the culmination of Didi-Huberman’s intervention. (shrink)

La atención al problema de la circulación internacional de las ideas se ha transformado en uno de los rasgos característicos de la renovación de la historia intelectual en los últimos años. La cuestión viene siendo abordada desde distintas perspectivas teóricas que han enriquecido las herramientas metodológicas del campo. Sin embargo, el problema de la "recepción" ha sido un interrogante persistente en culturas como las latinoamericanas que, por su condición "periférica", han enfrentado la experiencia de la traslación de sentidos desde su (...) propia emergencia. Resulta entonces pertinente enriquecer aquellos debates con las sugerencias que desde hace años viene aportando el ensayismo latinoamericano sobre la cuestión. Se abordan aquí distintos autores y discusiones que condensan con especial riqueza las múltiples aristas del problema. Los diferentes casos tratados contribuyen a delinear una concepción eminentemente activa de la recepción como reconfiguración permanente de sentidos, en el marco de una visión no esencialista de la cultura.The question of the international circulation of ideas has become one of the main problems of the intellectual history's renewal in the last years. The matter has been tackled from different theoretical perspectives that had enriched the field's methodological tools. However, the problem of "reception" has been a persistent question in Latin American cultures. Because of its "peripheral" condition, they have faced the experience of translating different meanings since their own emergence. Therefore, it is relevant to enrich those methodological discussions with the suggestions about the topic that have developed for some time in Latin American essays. This paper deals with several authors and discussions that condense the many aspects of this problem. The different cases discussed contribute to outline an active conception of reception as a continuous reconfiguration of meanings, within the framework of a not esencialist conception of culture. (shrink)

Los tropos presentados por los escépticos antiguos constituyen un punto de referencia para todo aquel que pretenda demostrar, alcanzar alguna verdad o justificar alguna creencia. Por ello, este artículo analiza las objeciones de los filósofos escépticos posteriores a Enesidemo y anteriores a Sexto Empírico, que generalmente se atribuyen a Agripa y que suponen un cuestionamiento de los fundamentos del conocimiento mismo y de los procedimientos que han de emplearse para cualquier demostración o justificación. Asimismo, intentaremos mostrar algunas de las soluciones (...) posibles, especialmente las planteadas varios siglos antes por Aristóteles. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone argumentar que el proyecto sociopolítico enunciado por Alberdi en Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina contribuyó a imposibilitar la constitución del moderno estado nacional cuya existencia buscó promover. El logro de dicho objetivo sólo resultará posible a partir de explicitar los supuestos alrededor de los que se estructura el razonamiento que permite alcanzar dicha conclusión; hacerlo implicará, en primer lugar, señalar las reflexiones de Aníbal Quijano en torno a (...) la constitución de los modernos estados nacionales y al eurocentrismo, en segundo lugar, establecer el carácter eurocéntrico de Las Bases y, por último, reconstruir el razonamiento que sustenta la idea directriz que atraviesa al trabajo. This paper intends to argue that the sociopolitical project enunciated by Alberdi on Bases and starting points for the political organization of Argentina contributed to preclude the constitution of the modern national state of which existence it sought to promote. Achieving this goal will only be possible by making explicit the assumptions from which the reasoning that allows to reach such conclusion are structured; it will involve, first, to point out Quijano's reflections about the constitution of modern national states and the eurocentrism, secondly, to establish The Bases's eurocentric nature and, finally, to rebuild the reasoning behind the leading idea running through the work. (shrink)

Los riesgos que conlleva el desarrollo de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) desatan múltiples distopías, siendo su aplicación en el ámbito de la Seguridad y la Defensa uno de sus aspectos más controvertidos. A pesar de las numerosas llamadas de atención de diferentes actores gubernamentales, no gubernamentales e interestatales, los Estados afrontan el desarrollo de los Sistemas Autónomos Letales (SALAS) de forma diferente en función de sus intereses, su cultura y sus valores éticos, frecuentemente, ante la ausencia de una clara legalidad (...) internacional. Es en este entorno geopolítico, donde los principios y valores occidentales que antaño fueron guía en la esfera mundial y que en la actualidad se encuentran cuestionados y eclipsados por una realidad propia de un mundo diferente, en el que las Naciones Unidas tratan de alcanzar acuerdos que regulen el desarrollo de los SALAS y limiten el riesgo de que las máquinas pudieran escapar al control de los seres humanos. (shrink)

RESUMENUn atento examen de la conocida y problemática cuestión "¿qué es antes el huevo o la gallina?" sirve, en este breve escrito, de introducción metodológica al estudio filósofico de la vida orgánica. Una vez señalado lo incorrecto de la disyunción, se procede, mediante sucesivas ampliaciones, a una profundización teórica en sus implícitos, y, finalmente, a la detección del supuesto que la problematiza y que reside en el sentido pretendidamente unívoco del "antes". La multiplicidad de sentidos reales de la anterioridad pone (...) de manifiesto que el método adecuado para entender la vida orgánica es el método sistémico.PALABRAS CLAVETEORÍA DE LA VIDA-COSMOLOGÍA-ANTROPOLOGÍA-MÉTODO SITÉMICOABSTRACTA carefully study of the popular puzzle "what comes first, the chicken or the egg?" will serve in this short paper as a methodological introduction for the philosophical theory of organic life. After pointing that this disjunction is incorrect, I will arrive, by means of successive amplifications, at an in-depth theoretical study of their assumptions, ans, eventually, at the dislosure of the implicit aspects that make its understanding problematic and which are rooted in the supposed univocal meaning of "first". The multiplicity of actual meanings of priority makes clear that the systemic method is the appropriate one in order to understand organic life.KEYWORDSTHEORY OF LIFE-COSMOLOGY-ANTHROPOLOGY-SISTEMIC METHOD. (shrink)

Resumen Esta investigación propone a la alteridad como un concepto para el estudio de la comunicación digital. Su justificación está basada en el hecho de que, si bien la literatura que se enfoca en interacciones en espacios online involucra a un yo y un otro, el rol de ambas nociones tiende a ser abordado de manera más bien tangencial y con un énfasis en el otro como un enemigo. A raíz de ello, este artículo toma el trabajo de Emmanuel Lévinas (...) sobre la alteridad y promueve las distintas maneras en que esta noción puede ayudarnos a observar al yo y al otro desde nuevas perspectivas en la comunicación digital. Esencialmente, se argumenta que esta mirada respecto de la alteridad permite poner de relieve que los intercambios en internet van más allá de la violencia, por un lado, y que incluso cuando ello ocurre, eso no significa que no necesitemos al otro de todas formas, por el otro. Abstract This research proposes alterity as a concept for the study of digital communication. Its justification is based on the fact that although the literature focused on interactions on online spaces involves a self and an other, the role of both notions tends to be approached in a rather tangential manner and with an emphasis on the other as an enemy. In light of this, this article takes the work of Emmanuel Lévinas on alteriry and puts forward the different ways in which this notion can help us observe the self and the other from new perspectives within digital communication. Essentially, what is argued is that this standpoint in regard to alterity allows to shed light on how exchanges on the Internet go beyond violence, on the one hand, and that when that occurs, it does not mean that we do not need the other anyway, on the other. (shrink)

The hypothesis that terrorism often emerges when mass collective action declines and radicals take up arms to compensate for the weakness of a mass movement has been around for some time; however, it has never been tested systematically. In this article the authors investigate the relationship between terrorist violence and mass protest in the context of the Spanish transition to democracy. This period is known for its pacts and negotiations between political elites, but in fact, it was accompanied by high (...) levels of terrorist violence and popular mobilization. To test the hypothesis, the authors have created two data sets, one on victims of terrorism and another on participation in demonstrations. The data clearly confirm that terrorism erupted in Spain when participation in demonstrations started to decline. This result sheds new light on the nonstructural conditions associated with the onset of terrorist violence. (shrink)