The aim of this paper is to conduct an analysis of the application of the specific rules of nanotechnology incorporated in Regulation No. 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products. It has been ten years since the European Commission had issued its proposal to start the co-decision procedure to create Regulation 1223 of 2009. Although it has been praised for noting the regulatory difference of nanomaterials over the rest of the chemicals, (...) what has been the efficacy of the standard? It is concluded that despite what it meant, the regulation has encountered technical obstacles, thus rendering the objectives relating to nanotechnology that were proposed from the European Commission unfulfilled. This finding is inferred through legal dogmatic methodologies and the identification of nanomaterials that have not been expressly approved. Nevertheless, products incorporating nanomaterials still circulate in the European market. The precepts about nanotechnology in the regulation should be reviewed because technical inconsistencies should be avoided in future regulations or applicable regulations in contexts other than Europe. Such inconsistencies exist with respect to the high level of protection of human health that should be ensured and the provisions intended to protect consumer safety. For instance, the catalog of nanomaterials in circulation does not indicate the materials that have been approved or their toxicological profiles. To date, no comparison studies have been presented between the expectations and legislative objectives set as embodied in the regulation and debated in the European Parliament involving the actual efficacy of this regulation. (shrink)

This book treats Chinese philosophy today as a global project, presenting the work of both Chinese and Western philosophers.

The concept of yinyang lies at the heart of Chinese thought and culture. The relationship between these two opposing, yet mutually dependent, forces is symbolized in the familiar black and white symbol that has become an icon in popular culture across the world. The real significance of yinyang is, however, more complex and subtle. This brilliant and comprehensive analysis by one of the leading authorities in the field captures the richness and multiplicity of the meanings and applications of yinyang, including (...) its visual presentations. Through a vast range of historical and textual sources, the book examines the scope and role of yinyang, the philosophical significance of its various layers of meanings and its relation to numerous schools and traditions within Chinese philosophy. By putting yinyang on a secure and clear philosophical footing, the book roots the concept in the original Chinese idiom, distancing it from Western assumptions, frameworks and terms, yet also seeking to connect its analysis to shared cross-cultural philosophical concerns. (shrink)

La obra de Nicolás Gómez Dávila ha sido leída presuponiendo su desconexión frente a la producción filosófica local del pasado. Esa presuposición ha pasado por alto la existencia de posibles vínculos entre las tesis de la filosofía del derecho en De iure y la reflexión sobre el lenguaje y la tradición presente en el ensayo de Miguel Antonio Caro titulado “Del uso en sus relaciones con el lenguaje”. Este artículo explora los posibles vínculos entre ambos ensayos, a partir de (i) (...) la similitud entre la concepción horaciana del lenguaje presente en la obra de Caro y las tesis de De iure, (ii) las correspondencias entre los esquemas metodológicos y valorativos, derivados de aquella concepción, presentes en ambas obras, y (iii) las similitudes y diferencias de su conservatismo político. (shrink)

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.

A translation of Plato's dialogue on the nature of pleasure and its relation to thought and knowledge. It includes a cogent introduction, notes, and comprehensive bibliography.

The struggle which Plato has Socrates recommend to his interlocutors in Gorgias - and to his readers - is the struggle to overcome the temptations of worldly success and to concentrate on genuine morality. Ostensibly an enquiry into the value of rhetoric, the dialogue soon becomes an investigation into the value of these two contrasting ways of life. In a series of dazzling and bold arguments, Plato attempts to establish that only morality can bring a person true happiness, and to (...) demolish alternative viewpoints. It is not surprising that Gorgias is one of Plato's most widely read dialogues. Philosophers read it for its coverage of central moral issues; others enjoy its vividness, clarity and occasional bitter humour. This new translation is accompanied by explanatory notes and an informative introduction. (shrink)

The first English-language biography of the well-known traditionalist metaphysican René Guénon, including a separate section assessing the impact of his work in the Western world, and an extensive annotated bibliography.

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

La retórica como técnica responsable de la inteligibilidad del discurso, de los modos y espacios de enunciación, de los propósitos y de los públicos, definió, hasta el siglo XIX, la existencia de los llamados géneros literarios devenidos en historia, literatura y periodismo, hoy áreas claramente diferenciadas. Sin la retórica la desmembración de los géneros literarios es incomprensible; se quedan de lado aspectos como las tradiciones narrativas, editoriales y didácticas que delimitaron los procedimientos de escritura, la implementación de formatos que contribuyó (...) a perfilar usos, públicos y apropiaciones, y la disposición de representaciones sobre el quehacer de historiadores, periodistas y literatos. Este texto aborda algunos asuntos relativos a la constitución del saber histórico en Colombia y se detiene en la relación entre historia y formatos, e historia y escritores de historia. (shrink)

Este artículo explora la situación que enfrentaron los llamados realistas durante la Independencia en la Nueva Granada y su lenguaje de amor y subordinación al rey, a través del cual ratificaban su pertenencia a la comunidad política española, aun habiendo nacido en América. El rey no era un símbolo lejano, sino una presencia sentida y vivida por sus vasallos americanos. Las guerras de Independencia no enfrentaron, como lo adujo la historiografía tradicional, a criollos y peninsulares, sino a miembros de un (...) mismo cuerpo político, quienes por mantenerse leales a la corona o haber nacido en la península, fueron convertidos en enemigos a exterminar, tal como se dispuso en el Decreto de guerra a muerte de 1813, expedido por Simón Bolívar. (shrink)

El hilemorfismo como doctrina aristotélicotomista ha sido asumido a través de los siglos como una superación del dualismo platónico y de los monismos, tanto de carácter materialista como espiritualista, propuestos hasta entonces. Sin embargo, Pedro Laín Entralgo sospecha de esta supuesta superación: ante sus conocimientos el hilemorfismo artistotélicotomista no deja de ser sino un dualismo un tanto disfrazado. Las teorías antropo- metafísicas de Zubiri y Ortega le sirven como sustentación para llevar a cabo tal señalamiento. La concepción del cosmos como (...) dinamismo y la del hombre entendido como su cuerpo hacen afirmar a Laín lo innecesario de un principio espiritual llamado alma. Esto, aunque suene herético, se explica desde la concepción antropológica lainiana que asume al hombre como una estructura dinámica que incorpora en sí los rasgos de un ente excepcional: es consciente de su ser y de que en su finitud aspira a la eternidad pues ha sido creado por un Hacedor que es eterno. En esta creencia deposita su esperanza y esta le hace entenderse como un ser futurizo, cuyos proyectos, espera, no fracasarán. (shrink)

El pensamiento de Nicolás Gómez Dávila (Bogotá, 1913-1994), es un gran ausente en el concierto académico de nuestra Nación. Se quiere hacer aquí una presentación de sus principales presupuestos, para sopesar la riqueza argumentativa que podría avalar un verdadero pensamiento filosófico de nuestra tierra. Revisar sus posturas personales, frente a asuntos tales como la crítica a la democracia (a favor de la Aristocracia), la racionalidad moderna, el cristianismo, entre otros, pueden servirnos hoy como excusa para contactar con un erudito que, (...) si bien no dejó una larga producción, sí hizo una interesantísima producción de escolios y textos, que podrían inquietar a todo amigo del saber. A través de sus escritos, se puede observar la mirada crítica de un hombre formado en la tradición: Filósofo, cristiano, políglota, reaccionario confeso. Sin embargo, se logra adivinar en él un matiz de innovación, que vuelve apasionante la experiencia de la lectura de sus obras. Así, Gómez Dávila reta a su lector a saber más, desde su lenguaje exquisito tienta a descubrir aún más... desde el escolio, nos sugiere lo novedoso, teniendo como base la tradición del pensamiento que él mismo conoce al extremo. (shrink)

Pedro Laín Entralgo ha sido conocido a través de su interés personal por la historia, sobre todo por la de la medicina. Sin embargo, es claro que detrás de ello lo que se percibe es una preocupación por la real comprensión de lo que llamamos Historia, así con mayúscula, como él mismo lo escribe. De tal manera que Laín la concibe estrechamente relacionada con el hecho social y con la situación biológica del ser humano. Porque siendo el hombre tempóreo le (...) resulta muy difícil dejar de hacer parte de esta realidad. Pero la realidad histórica debe comprenderse como condición previa del hombre que debe ser asumida desde la libertad y la responsabilidad. Además, la pertenencia a un grupo humano le hace sugerir la idea de generación; es decir, un grupo de personas cercanas en ideas y en edad que desde esa libertad asumen algunos rasgos comunes en aquello que de proyecto tiene su propio acontecer; y este proyectar se puede evidenciar en su biografía. De tal manera que al compartir de modo aproximado el mismo espacio-tiempo y los mismos ideales, tal grupo humano se puede inscribir en un mismo sentido de responsabilidad histórico-social determinado. Laín no escapa a este compromiso y se siente responsable de una culpa histórica ante la historia de su Patria. Por eso su ejercicio conciliador. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger has recently argued that philosophical focus on implicit bias is overly individualist, since social inequalities are best explained in terms of social structures rather than the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that questions of individual responsibility and implicit bias, properly understood, do constitute an important part of addressing structural injustice, and I propose an alternative conception of social structure according to which implicit biases are themselves best understood as a special type of structure.

A model for the ideal state includes discussion of the nature and application of justice, the role of the philosopher in society, the goals of education, and the effects of art upon character.

La confrontación de Heidegger con el humanismo es bien conocida: es la forma de toda metafísica entendida desde la subjetividad. La tesis que se defiende en el ensayo es que hay otra forma de entender su relación con el humanismo desde un punto de vista espacial. Se establece una relación entre la concepción del espacio cotidiano y de lo «a la mano» en Ser y Tiempo, y la noción de colección en los primeros humanistas. De este modo se muestra que (...) el humanismo temprano no es un antecesor del subjetivismo cartesiano, y que, tal como lo proponen Gadamer o Grassi, representa una corriente que bebe de fuentes diferentes a la dominante en el pensamiento occidental. Heidegger, de un modo indirecto, apropia ese pensamiento para su proyecto de Ser y Tiempo. (shrink)

This article focuses on efforts by indigenous activists to oppose a mega-development in the middle of the Two Rivers Urban Park (TRUP) at the River Club site in Observatory, Cape Town. In the article we argue that, even though the mega-development ultimately went ahead, intense contestation surrounding Khoi cultural heritage contributed towards opening up the ‘black box’ of urban development in Cape Town, as well as pressuring the developers to accommodate some of the demands of indigenous activists and environmentalists. We (...) also examine why and on what terms it was even possible for a small group of indigenous activists to temporarily halt a mega-development driven by powerful actors, including Amazon, the City of Cape Town and private developers. Drawing inspiration from Bruno Latour's notion of the black box, we show how these anti-development activists were able to interrupt the construction process and create the conditions for opening up to public and legal scrutiny opaque urban development processes. (shrink)

This 1990 book is a survey of the critical reaction to Beethoven's music as it appeared in the major musical journals, French as well as German, of his day, and represents the first published history of Beethoven reception. The author discusses the philosophical and analytical implications of these reviews and reassesses what has come to be the accepted view of a nineteenth-century musical aesthetics rooted in Romantic Idealism. Wallace sees Beethoven's critics as in fact providing a link between two apparently (...) antithetical approaches to music: the eighteenth-century emphasis on expression and extra-musical interpretation and the nineteenth-century emphasis on 'absolute' music and formal analysis. This book thus provides, in addition to a carefully documented study of Beethoven's critical reception, a re-evaluation of his oeuvre and its significance in music history. An index of all reviews cited is provided, and a further appendix contains the quoted material in its original language. (shrink)

Este artículo desarrolla una reflexión teórica sobre cómo aparece en la obra de Maurice Blanchot una forma de relación que no está determinada por el poder. Se expone inicialmente el modo en que dicha forma de relación emerge en el pensamiento literario de Blanchot, para luego plantear sus repercusiones en una dimensión ética en la que, por un lado, se esboza una “filosofía de la separación” en donde la alteridad es pensada a partir de una disimetría relacional y, por otro (...) lado, se postula una “ética del testimonio” desde la cual se asume la responsabilidad de testimoniar por quienes han padecido una desgracia extrema. (shrink)

En la ciudad de Medellín se hace uso de herramientas y dispositivos, en el marco de la llamada Gestión Social, para ejecutar importantes obras para el llamado desarrollo urbano, que bien pueden configurar una “Gestión social del despojo”, en el marco de una “Planeación institucional de la miseria y el desarraigo”, generando víctimas ya no del conflicto armado sino del desarrollo. Es necesario problematizar esta suerte de modelo de desarrollo urbano, su gestión e implementación.

The article suggests an ethical-anthropological reading of Thoughts, magna opera of the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, which was published after his death by his relatives and friends. Such a reading is presented in three moments: Firstly, an anthropological description aimed at answering the question ‘who is man?’; secondly, an analysis of Pascal’s erotic condition; and, finally, an ethical proposal as cura amoris. The main argument of the article is that every human being has a motivation in acting, that (...) of love and being loved. Thus, having a happy or unhappy life depends on the care for this erotic condition, and the latter is achieved through thought. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend two main claims. The first is a moderate claim: we have a negative duty to not use binary gender-specific pronouns he or she to refer to genderqueer individuals. We defend this with an argument by analogy. It was gravely wrong for Mark Latham to refer to Catherine McGregor, a transgender woman, using the pronoun he; we argue that such cases of misgendering are morally analogous to referring to Angel Haze, who identifies as genderqueer, as he (...) or she. The second is a radical claim: we have a negative duty to not use any gender-specific pronouns to refer to anyone, regardless of their gender identity. We offer three arguments in favor of this claim (which appeal to concerns about inegalitarianism and risk, invasions of privacy, and reinforcing essentialist ideologies). We also show why the radical claim is compatible with the moderate claim. Before concluding, we examine common concerns about incorporating either they or a neologism such as ze as a third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun. These concerns, we argue, do not provide sufficient reason to reject either the moderate or radical claim. (shrink)

Gender classifications often are controversial. These controversies typically focus on whether gender classifications align with facts about gender kind membership: Could someone really be nonbinary? Is Chris Mosier really a man? I think this is a bad approach. Consider the possibility of ontological oppression, which arises when social kinds operating in a context unjustly constrain the behaviors, concepts, or affect of certain groups. Gender kinds operating in dominant contexts, I argue, oppress trans and nonbinary persons in this way: they marginalize (...) trans men and women, and exclude nonbinary persons. As a result, facts about membership in dominant gender kinds should not settle gender classification practices. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s influential Social Connections Model of responsibility offers a compelling approach to theorizing structural injustice. However, the precise nature of the kind of responsibility modelled by the SCM, along with its relationship to the liability model, has remained unclear. I offer a reading of Young that takes the difference between the liability model and the SCM to be an instance of a more longstanding distinction in the literature on moral responsibility: attributability vs. accountability. I show that interpreting the (...) SCM as a conception of accountability resolves a number of objections, while also highlighting the SCM’s distinctive stance on the relationship between ethics and politics. (shrink)

What is objectionable about “blacking up” or other comparable acts of imagining involving unethical attitudes? Can such imaginings be wrong, even if there are no harmful consequences and imaginers are not meant to apply these attitudes beyond the fiction? In this article, we argue that blackface—and imagining in general—can be ethically flawed in virtue of being oppressive, in virtue of either its content or what imaginers do with it, where both depend on how the imagined attitudes interact with the imagining’s (...) context. We explain and demonstrate this using speech act theory alongside a detailed case study of blackface. (shrink)

Robin McKenna argues that we need to make space for an approach to epistemology that avoids the idealizations typical of the field. He applies this approach to topics in applied and social epistemology, such as what to do about science denial, whether we should try to be intellectually autonomous, and what our obligations are to other inquirers.

Alex Byrne’s article, “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, asks a question that Byrne treats as nearly rhetorical. Byrne’s answer is, ‘clearly, yes’. Moreover, Byrne claims, 'woman' is a biological category that does not admit of any interpretation as (also) a social category. It is important to respond to Byrne’s argument, but mostly because it is paradigmatic of a wider phenomenon. The slogan “women are adult human females” is a political slogan championed by anti-trans activists, appearing on billboards, pamphlets, and anti-trans (...) online forums. In this paper, I respond to Byrne’s argument, revealing significant problems with its background assumptions, content, and methodology. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022.

We want to know what gender is. But metaphysical approaches to this question solely have focused on the binary gender kinds men and women. By overlooking those who identify outside of the binary–the group I call ‘genderqueer’–we are left without tools for understanding these new and quickly growing gender identifications. This metaphysical gap in turn creates a conceptual lacuna that contributes to systematic misunderstanding of genderqueer persons. In this paper, I argue that to better understand genderqueer identities, we must recognize (...) a new type of gender kind: critical gender kinds, or kinds whose members collectively destabilize one or more pieces of dominant gender ideology. After developing a model of critical gender kinds, I suggest that genderqueer is best modeled as a critical gender kind that destabilizes the ‘binary axis’, or the piece of dominant gender ideology that says that the only possible genders are the binary, discrete, exclusive, and exhaustive kinds men and women. (shrink)

Postmodernism and Education responds to the interest in postmodernism as a way of understanding social, cultural and economic trends. Robin Usher and Richard Edwards explore the impact which postmodernism has had upon the theory and practice of education, using a broad analysis of postmodernism and an in-depth introduction to key writers in the field, including Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In examining the impact which this thinking has had upon contemporary theory and practice of education, Usher and Edwards concentrate (...) particularly upon how postmodernist ideas challenge existing concepts, structures and hierarchies. (shrink)

Ordinary discourse is filled with discussions about ‘sexual orientation’. This discourse might suggest a common understanding of what sexual orientation is. But even a cursory search turns up vastly differing, conflicting, and sometimes ethically troubling characterizations of sexual orientation. The conceptual jumble surrounding sexual orientation suggests that the topic is overripe for philosophical exploration. This paper lays the groundwork for such an exploration. In it, I offer an account of sexual orientation – called ‘Bidimensional Dispositionalism’ – according to which sexual (...) orientation concerns what sex[es] and gender[s] of persons one is disposed to sexually engage, and makes no reference to one’s own sex and gender. (shrink)

There has been extensive discussion of testimonial epistemic injustice, the phenomenon whereby a speaker’s testimony is rejected due to prejudice regarding who they are. But people also have their testimony rejected or preempted due to prejudice regarding what they communicate. Here, the injustice is content focused. We describe several cases of content focused injustice, and we theoretically interrogate those cases by building up a general framework through which to understand them as a genuine form of epistemic injustice that stands in (...) intertwined relationships to other forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

I propose a new concept of solidarity, which I call “solidarity from below,” that highlights an aspect of solidarity widely recognized in popular uses of the term, but which has hitherto been neglected in the philosophical literature. Solidarity from below is the collective ability of otherwise powerless people to organize themselves for transformative social change. I situate this concept with respect to four distinct but intertwined questions that have motivated extant theorizing about solidarity. I explain what it means to conceptualize (...) solidarity from below as a form of power, rather than as a feeling, disposition, duty, or scheme of social arrangements. Finally, I suggest that the moral-relational aspects of solidarity emerge secondarily from the process of collective power, and not the other way around. (shrink)

2014 Reprint of 1945 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The first part deals with Greek cosmology and is the longest, the most elaborate and, on the whole, the liveliest part of a book which never deviates into dullness. The dominant thought in Greek cosmology, Collingwood holds, was the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, nature being the substance of something ensouled where "soul" meant the self-moving. Part II is "The Renaissance View of Nature ." Collingwood describes (...) the rise and decline of the deists' view of Nature as a machine designed by the Great Contriver who, having turned it out, watches it go. Part III, "The Modern View of Nature," deals with very recent or contemporary philosophy and science, discerning in it a radical evolutionism first in biology and later in cosmology. Remains to this day a classic text in the history of ideas. (shrink)

Inspired by the definition of tense operators on distributive lattices presented by Chajda and Paseka in 2015, in this paper, we introduce and study the variety of tense distributive lattices with implication and we prove that these are categorically equivalent to a full subcategory of the category of tense centered Kleene algebras with implication. Moreover, we apply such an equivalence to describe the congruences of the algebras of each variety by means of tense 1-filters and tense centered deductive systems, respectively.