Recensión de Notas al comentario de A. Peña Freire.

This is a critical-hermeneutical and historical-comparative study on Political Economy, Economic History and Social Thought, applied to the American utopias in the 19th century and its role in the colonisation of the United States (US) west. This review is based on a heterodox economic approach, used in the disciplines of Religion and Economics. It gives a general view of religious and ideological utopias, as cooperative enterprises of intentional life in farms and workshop, making a comparative analysis of efficiency and sustainability. (...) This study attempts to explain the colonial paradox of American utopias because the last established, with more inversion, they were the first to fall. This study shapes the development of the western territories, from the Quaker’s Holy Experiment framework and its support for the utopias experiments in the expansion to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Contribution: This review offers a descriptive and explanatory study on the colonisation of the US west, under the hermeneutical turn from heterodox economic approaches, to deal with some current contradictions and anachronism in the mainstream view. Also, there is a systematisation of the American utopias, divided into religious and ideological experiments, with a comparison. (shrink)

Sem querer ser uma aproximação histórica e cultural ao tema indicado no título, este artigo visa discutir o seu quadro metafísico a fim de, em diálogo com uma interpretação de Miguel B. Pereira, fazer repercutir tal quadro mais na linhagem futura da análise leibniziana e menos na do apriori kantiano.

In the three previous chapters we mapped out Žižek’s philosophical thinking—territory in which we situated his critique of “postmodern historicism”, as well as his bleak assessment of the struggles of the contemporary left. We have also examined his theory of revolution and his recourse to Christianity as a paradigm for communist brotherhood that may well function as a real alternative to capitalism. Throughout this interpretative and reconstructive exercise, I subjected Žižek’s proposals to a hail of critical questions and commentary, on (...) which I have not yet adequately elaborated. This will precisely be the task that I will undertake in the last two chapters of the book. Our starting point will be to pick up on some of Žižek’s central ideas with which I agree, while taking them to a philosophical terrain that will help us avoid their fatidic consequences: the avowal of subjectless revolutions. I am referring to two Žižekian motifs that are worth reconsidering: the ontology of incompleteness and the universal dimension of politics. Our goal is to “de-Lacanize” those concepts and to see how they could operate in a different kind of political ontology that does not resort to the figure of a transcendental subject, and that renders power as an inescapable condition of experience. I would then like to articulate the two aforementioned concepts with a third one—the Gramscian notion of hegemony—but read alongside the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The purpose of this exercise is to create the conceptual conditions to formulate an emancipatory theory of democracy—a matter that will be taken up in the following chapter. (shrink)

Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the ‘castes’. Epistemic violence—and not only physical violence—is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

Sob o tema da filosofia do Espírito em Mestre Eckhart, o presente artigo revitaliza alguns escritos anteriores do autor sobre aquele filósofo, agora atendendo sobretudo ao Sermão do Homem Nobre e no contexto epocal de um intelectualismo ético enquanto pretexto de discussão de conflitos epistémicos. Alguns textos inseríveis nessa corrente são apresentados e confrontados, de seguida, com a expressão tomista com que dialogaram, mas da qual se distinguiram. Sob a dominante matricial da "vida segundo o espírito", de Pseudo-Dionísio a Eckhart, (...) convidar-se-á à superação de uma metafísica do espírito por uma filosofia da liberdade. Em termos disciplinares tradicionais, embora na esteira pensante de Eckhart, isto equivale, contra Feuerbach, justamente, a dizer que o verdadeiro sentido da antropologia é a teologia. /// 'Living in accordance with the spirit' is the theoretical underlying motive of this paper. It resumes previous articles of the author on Eckhart, now stressing the theme of the Noble Man focused on the following historical horizon: the ethical intellectualism of Siger, Boethius and Peter of Auvergne is confronted with the anthropology of beatitude of Thomas Aquinas and mainly with the anthropology of the Portuguese Jesuits of the 16th Century, being the reason for this Duns Scotus' criticism of the former while the latter tried to respond to that criticism. The above-mentioned historical and hermeneutical horizon invites to surpass a permanent metaphysics of the spirit by a philosophy of freedom, thus allowing one to defend that the true meaning of anthropology lies in theology. (shrink)

El artículo explora el devenir de la melancolía en los siglos XVIII y XIX, intentando establecer las relaciones históricas, filosóficas, literarias y, en menor medida, médicas, que permitieron asociarla con una característica notable de la sensibilidad en que se reconocía a ciertos hombres “privilegiados”. Igualmente, el artículo intenta mostrar los nuevos campos semánticos que la palabra “melancolía” conquistó a partir del siglo XVIII, mostrando cómo se la asoció con adjetivos como “dulce” y “tierna”, y cómo terminó por convertirse en la (...) manifestación de la sensibilidad. (shrink)

How do nuclear technologies become commonplace? How have the borders between the exceptional and the banal been drawn and redrawn over the last 70 years in order to make nuclear energy part of everyday life? This special issue analyzes the role of fun and display, broadly construed, in shaping the cultural representation and the material circulation (or non-circulation) of nuclear technologies. Four case studies, covering the United States, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine from the 1950s to the 2000s, explore (...) how specific forms of public display and playful practices of cultural production were used as means to banalize (or de-banalize) nuclear energy. This introduction addresses the main theoretical and historiographical signposts of the special issue and outlines the different ways in which the articles explore them. (shrink)

Como é que três eminentes Jesuítas comentadores de Aristóteles poderiam ler o método concebido por Inácio de Loyola nos Exercícios Espirituais, denominado “aplicação dos sentidos” externos? A resposta a esta hipotética questão, absolutamente inédita, será dada em três passos. Começando com a doutrina dos sentidos e tocando na passagem da ontologia para a semiótica, atender-‑se-‑á ao aparecimento do mundo – mediante uma segunda passagem, da psicologia para a cosmologia – em que o lugar do ser humano, entendido no espaço de (...) uma antropologia criatural, nos conduz a uma nova perceção das relações entre imaginação e espiritualidade mundana, na aceção de “incarnada”. (shrink)

Resumen:Actualmente, la euforia y la ira deambulan entre las multitudes como oscilaciones ambiguas de miedo y esperanza, pasiones que, en aquella ya lejana modernidad del barroco, Spinoza catalogó como fluctuaciones del ánimo provocadas por afectos inconstantes de alegría y tristeza. Durante el desarrollo del capitalismo, el miedo y la esperanza dejaron de ser pasiones efectivas para llevar a cabo el gobierno de las masas. Ambas fueron reemplazadas por la euforia y la ira, segmentaciones de frecuencias afectivas que dominan los flujos (...) sociales con el propósito de obtener mayores rendimientos en la concentración de capital.Palabras clave: Pasiones; Ira; Euforia; Fluctuaciones; Composiciones de afectos; Consumo; Multitudes; Frecuencias afectivas; Flujos sociales. (shrink)

Background: This study investigated the factors affecting the acceptability in France of abortions. Method: 80 study participants from Toulouse and 124 from Metz judged the acceptability of abortion in 64 vignettes composed of five factors: 1) the adolescent's age (15 or 17.5 years), 2) the adolescent's plans to continue schooling or not, 3) the fetus' age (1, 2, 3, or 4 months), 4) the adolescent's parents' agreement or not, and 5) the agreement or not of baby's father. Results: Three clusters (...) were noted: 1) abortion is never acceptable (8% of participants), 2) abortion is always acceptable (23%), and 3) acceptability of abortion depends on the circumstances (63%). In the majority cluster (3), all five factors had significant effects, but the fetus's age accounted for most of the variance (78%). Conclusion: Most subjects in this study judged, in accordance with French law, that the acceptability of induced abortion in minors depends on the circumstances and, in particular, on the fetus' age. (shrink)

El papel que ocupa la poesía en la escuela queda, generalmente, reducido a ejercicios de recitación de poemas en jornadas que conmemoran fechas señaladas. Como formadores de maestros y maestras en la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad de Lleida, en las materias relacionadas con la didáctica de la literatura, pretendemos que nuestros estudiantes amplíen su mirada sobre el género poético y lo conciban como parte de la educación literaria de calidad de sus futuros discentes. La dramatización de poemas, como (...) aquí explicamos y ejemplificamos, es un buen modo de hacerlo para lograr la educación literaria antes citada. (shrink)

El artículo es una reflexión sapiencial sobre la pra-xis pastoral y la enseñanza de la materia de Teología Pastoral que el autor ha realizado a lo largo de su vida en la U. P. de Comillas y en el I. Superior de Pastoral. La finalidad es ofre-cer algunas claves deducidas de la experiencia para repensar la fun-ción de la Teología Pastoral en la vida de la Iglesia. El hilo conductor de estas páginas es el siguiente: el marco para repensar la (...) Teolo-gía Pastoral, la comprensión de la Teología Pastoral de la que se parte, algunas cuestiones referidas al fondo de la cuestión, objetivos de las clases de Teología Pastoral, retos y propuestas para renovar la acción pastoral. (shrink)

The new contexts of literary education allow for the creation of digital reading and writing practices related to what specialised literature calls digital literature. Among these practices and with an eminently theoretical content and with an example of this content, in this paper, we want to focus our gaze on cyberpoetry, conceived as an exercise in literary creativity that firstly involves use of technology and specific software for the digital creation of poetic texts and, last but not least, knowledge and (...) mastery of poetic language and the literary conventions linked thereto. From this point of view, in initial teacher training, we work with future teachers to create cyberpoems with a dual purpose: on the one hand, to reflect on what literary reading in digital format entails and to rehearse reading mediation processes that can be carried out with this type of literature, and, on the other, to begin in the digital creation of cyberpoems that, later, may be presented and worked in a real context of the school classroom. In this paper, we present digital practices of literary reading that have been created by student teachers in initial training. The creation of these practices has been carried out with the Genially tool. For data collection, the URL of each creation is accessed in order to analyse them. The analysis of the data follows the parameters of the qualitative methodology, specifically based on three categories of analysis for each digital creation: multimodality, hypertextuality and the interaction of each digital reading proposal. The conclusions of all this allow us to affirm that the creation of cyberpoems is an exercise in literary creativity that has to take into account the digital dimension of the literary text and its reading comprehension in a multimodal environment. Thus, the teacher in initial training carries out a digital literary mediation exercise, of a creative type, which he will later carry out in his pedagogical practice. (shrink)

This article analyzes the changing politics of hands-on display at the New York Museum of Science and Industry by following its urban deambulation within Midtown Manhattan, which went hand in hand with sharp shifts in promoters, narrative, and exhibition techniques. The museum was inaugurated in 1927 as the Museum of the Peaceful Arts on the 7th and 8th floors of the Scientific American Building. It changed its name in 1930 to the New York Museum of Science and Industry while on (...) the 4th floor of the Daily News Building, and it was close to being renamed the Science Center when it finally moved in 1936 to the ground floor of the Rockefeller Center. The analysis of how the political agenda of the different promoters of the New York Museum of Science and Industry was spatially and performatively inscribed in each of its sites suggests that the 1930s boom of visitor-operated exhibits had nothing to do with an Exploratorium-like rhetoric of democratic empowerment. The social paternalistic ideology of the vocational education movement, the ideas on innovation of the early sociology of invention, and the corporate behavioral approach to mass communications are more suitable contexts in which to understand the changing politics of hands-on display in interwar American museums of science and industry. (shrink)

hay una importante contradicción en el pensamiento de Hume. Por una parte sostiene que las creencias religiosas son en el fondo bastante débiles, pero por otra parte se las hace responsables de importantes males a nivel social. Esto se complementa con una teoría donde se insiste en la hipocresía de la profesión eclesiástica. El resultado de la confluencia de estas tesis es una propuesta de tolerancia y de control secular de la Iglesia, porque es en ese contexto donde las creencias (...) religiosas pierden la fuerza que puedan tener y se convierten en inofensivas para los verdaderos intereses de la sociedad, que son siempre seculares. (shrink)

In Locke’s economic and politic thinking is possible appraise some articulations that connect the teological, the economic and the politic. The humans work for divine decree and the labor is an economic concept inasmuch as it is the activity that yields private ownership, whose possession entails a natural right for all individuals. Safeguarding this right is liability of the government and of the state institutions. For Locke the market is previous to the civilian society, trade’s regulative structure sets the guidelines (...) of the governmental action, so that money’s circulation should not be interfered directly by the sovereign power neither leading it under particular politic interests. Thus, it is can find out an ontology of market in lockean thought, insomuch as trade space’s existence takes up the natural laws and project them in the space`s political. (shrink)

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words’ emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical implications of this (...) finding are discussed. (shrink)

Socrates’ inquiry into the nature of the virtues and human excellence led him to experience Socratic ignorance, a practical puzzlement experienced by his recognition that his central life commitments were conceptually problematic. This practical perplexity was not, however, an epistemic weakness but a reflection of his wisdom. I argue that Socratic ignorance, a concept that has not received scholarly attention in business ethics, is a central aim that business practitioners should seek. It is what a truthful, thorough, and courageous inquiry (...) into their professional roles and commitments leads to. It wakes them up from the moral complacency engendered by organizations, forcing them to become much more critical of their day-to-day activities and more intentional about living virtuously. It curbs the corrupting potential of authority positions and prevents the tendency of subordinates to routinely conform to sanctioned norms and expectations. Finally, it opens up novel and creative moral avenues and provides a promising model to deal with the conflicts posed by our globalized and increasingly polarized world. (shrink)

Background: This study investigated the factors affecting the acceptability in France of abortions. Method: 80 study participants from Toulouse and 124 from Metz judged the acceptability of abortion in 64 vignettes composed of five factors: 1) the adolescent's age (15 or 17.5 years), 2) the adolescent's plans to continue schooling or not, 3) the fetus' age (1, 2, 3, or 4 months), 4) the adolescent's parents' agreement or not, and 5) the agreement or not of baby's father. Results: Three clusters (...) were noted: 1) abortion is never acceptable (8% of participants), 2) abortion is always acceptable (23%), and 3) acceptability of abortion depends on the circumstances (63%). In the majority cluster (3), all five factors had significant effects, but the fetus's age accounted for most of the variance (78%). Conclusion: Most subjects in this study judged, in accordance with French law, that the acceptability of induced abortion in minors depends on the circumstances and, in particular, on the fetus' age. (shrink)

The moral value of Religion could be doubtful from an utilitarian evaluative standpoint. J. S. Mill analysis about that question in Utility of Religion is well-known.However Hume's similar study in his Enquiry Concerning the Principies of Morals is not known in the same degree. There Hume writes that we consider something a virtue when (1) it is useful to others; (2) it is useful to the subject himself; (3) it is immediately agreeable to others; or ( 4) it is immediately (...) agreeable to the person himself. But, if everything which is useful or agreeable must be considered a virtue, onthe contrary everything useless or disagreeable must be a vice. That is the case with Cristian, monkish, or religious virtues, or «vices»?, in general terms. (shrink)

The scholarship on meaningful work has approached the topic mostly from the perspective of the subjective experience of the individual worker. This has led the literature to under-theorize, if not outright ignore, the cultural and normative dimension of meaningful work. In particular, it has obscured that a person’s ability to find meaning in her life in general, and her work in particular, is typically anchored and dependent on shared institutions and cultural aspirations. Reflecting on the future of work, particularly on (...) the dangers posed by the threat of technological unemployment, helps us recognize this cultural and normative dimension of meaningful work. I argue that a world with few work opportunities is a world devoid of a core structuring ideal around which our society has organized itself and, as such, will strain our ability to make sense of what it means to find life meaningful. To make this case I show that work operates as a central organizing _telos_ around which our contemporary lives gravitate. Work touches everyone and everything, defining the rhythms of our days and weeks and providing a center of gravity around which our lives are structured. Work constitutes a central dimension of human flourishing. Through work we provide for our material needs, develop our skills and virtues, build community, and contribute to the common good. As such, work constitutes a central organizing ideal in contemporary Western societies, a fact has significant normative force and plays an important role in our finding work meaningful. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a flurry of social scientific research on the use of racial categories in human genetics research. This literature has critically analyzed how U.S. race relations are being shaped by and themselves shaping research on human biological difference and disease. Recent work, however, suggests that the particular configurations of science and ethnoracial politics in the US are not exportable. Instead, research on human biology in other contexts reveals the importance of not just racial categories, but national, (...) ethnic, regional and linguistic classifications of bodies and communities... (shrink)

Respuesta al comentario de Gustavo Caponi. “Ginnobili, Santiago. ‘El estatus fenomenológico de la teoría de la selección natural’”, Ideas y Valores LXII/152 (2013): 319-322.

Philosophical accounts of moral responsibility are standardly framed by two platitudes. According to them, blame requires the presence of a moral defect in the agent and the absence of excuses. In this chapter, this kind of approach is challenged. It is argued that (a) people sometimes violate moral norms due to performance mistakes, (b) it often appears reasonable to hold them responsible for it, and (c) their mistakes cannot be traced to their moral qualities or to the presence of excuses. (...) In the end, the implications for discussions of moral responsibility are discussed. (shrink)

The concept of fitness has generated a lot of discussion in philosophy of biology. There is, however, relative agreement about the need to distinguish at least two uses of the term: ecological fitness on the one hand, and population genetics fitness on the other. The goal of this paper is to give an explication of the concept of ecological fitness by providing a reconstruction of the theory of natural selection in which this concept was framed, that is, based on the (...) way the theory was put to use in Darwin’s main texts. I will contend that this reconstruction enables us to account for the current use of the theory of natural selection. The framework presupposed in the analysis will be that of metatheoretical structuralism. This framework will provide both a better understanding of the nature of ecological fitness and a more complete reconstruction of the theory. In particular, it will provide what I think is a better way of understanding how the concept of fitness is applied through heterogeneous cases. One of the major advantages of my way of thinking about natural selection theory is that it would not have the peculiar metatheoretical status that it has in other available views. I will argue that in order to achieve these goals it is necessary to make several concepts explicit, concepts that are frequently omitted in usual reconstructions. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the Simple View, the claim that someone intentionally φs only if the person intends to φ. To do this, I raise a problem for Bratman’s classic argument (1984, 1987) against it. The problem brings into focus an evaluative dimension behind the View, whose recognition allows for an improved version of it. With this improved version, I then go on to answer other criticisms that have been raised to it.

RESUMEN: El tema de este trabajo es la reconstrucción de la teoría de la selección natural darwiniana. Me propongo esbozar la ley fundamental de esta teoría de manera informal a partir de sus aplicaciones en El origen de las especies de Darwin y presentar sus conceptos fundamentales. Presentaré la red teórica de leyes especiales que surgen de la especialización de esta ley fundamental. Supondré el estructuralismo como marco metateórico. Señalaré también algunas consecuencias que mi propuesta tiene sobre ciertas discusiones metateóricas (...) en torno a la teoría y, finalmente, relacionaré mi reconstrucción con otras reconstrucciones disponibles.ABSTRACT: This paper is about the reconstruction of the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection. My aim here is to outline the fundamental law of this theory in an informal way from its applications in The Origin of Species and to make explicit its fundamental concepts. I will introduce the theory-nets of special laws that arisefrom the specialization of the fundamental law. I will assume the metatheoretical structuralist frame. I will also point out many consequences that my proposal has about a few metatheoretical discussions around the theory and, finally, I will relate my propose to other reconstructions available. (shrink)

"A demain le bon sexe"... disait, non sans une pointe d'ironie, Michel Foucault, au plus fort de la "révolution sexuelle", et l'on sentait que ce n'était pas gagné. Qu'est-ce que le bon sexe? J'ai écrit ce livre en neuf mois... et toute une vie... Sans doute, pour moi, une manière de réaliser une certaine façon qui fut mienne d'être femme je me revois, dans ma petite chambre mansardée, étudiante, tentant en vain de lire en son entier l'Histoire de la sexualité (...) de Michel Foucault... Que savais-je de la sexualité, que pouvais-je recevoir de cet essai, que je trouvais grandiose, lumineux et obscur? Foucault, le seul des philosophes à parler de "ces choses-là", était bien isolé. Il faudrait du temps pour que ses écrits fassent leur route et du temps pour changer les mentalités. Du temps aussi pour moi, pour pouvoir les entendre, qu'ils fassent écho en moi. "Le sexe, disait Foucault, ça s'administre, la sexualité, ça se subit ; quant à la sensualité, elle est chaque jour à inventer." J'ai voulu rouvrir le dossier, emprunter les chemins qu'il a tracés en 1976 en écrivant son Histoire de la sexualité, qui est l'histoire des discours sur la sexualité, eux-mêmes histoire des corps investis par le pouvoir. Danièle Sastre. (shrink)

John Locke y Jeremy Bentham son dos de los autores del liberalismo inglés más reconocidos en el ámbito filosófico. Entre sus teorías es posible apreciar diferencias respecto a la fundamentación de una temática tan importante para el liberalismo como lo es el derecho de propiedad privada, que es una cuestión clave tanto para la reflexión política como económica. Conviene tratar estas diferencias con el fin de extraer problemas teóricos de gran calado en la comprensión del liberalismo y en relación con (...) las argumentaciones sobre el origen del derecho de propiedad privada. (shrink)

The importance of cultivating creativity in language education has been widely acknowledged in the academic literature. In this respect, digital technologies can play a key role in achieving this endeavour. The socio-cultural conceptualization of creativity stresses the role of communication, collaboration and dialogical interaction of creative expression in language education. The objective of this paper is to study the literature focusing on cases of collaborative creativity and technology embedded in language education. To this end, we carry out a systematic revision (...) of state-of-the-art literature consisting of 26 blind peer-reviewed empirical studies selected from several databases that address our main research question, namely, which specific roles and forms of digital technology can be identified in the existing literature that support collaborative creativity in language education. Results show that the features of digital technology unfold a range of learning opportunities in language education and can play three different roles in promoting collaborative creativity: as a tutoring device that guides the implementation of key co-creation skills; as a tool that enables and shapes the development of co-creative thinking skills; and as a medium that creates rich and resourceful environments to stimulate the emergence of collective creative processes. The paper also reveals that these three roles can be performed using a wide range of interactive technologies that encourage students to participate in a rich, co-creative language learning experience and equip learners with key competences to approach complex problems in a globalised and hyper-connected world. Finally, this paper may contribute to developing future language technology-enhanced learning projects capable of promoting key collaborative and creative processes. (shrink)

In this article, I examine recent debates concerning the existence and the nature of basic actions. The discussion is structured around four theses, with which Arthur Danto introduced basic actions to contemporary theorists. The theses concern (i) the relationship between agency and causality, (ii) the distinction between basic and complex actions, (iii) the regress argument for basic actions, and (iv) the structure of practical knowledge in the light of these actions.