O tema do reconhecimento é central na obra de G. W. F Hegel. Classicamente, situa-se na figura da luta entre o senhor e o escravo, na Fenomenologia do Espírito. A intersubjetividade e, portanto, o reconhecimento, na obra hegeliana, colocam o seguinte problema: como é possível construir uma interpretação que supere o conceito de subjetividads moderna, positivado pela prática jusfilosófica, vindo a garantir um novo paradigma fundado na intersubjetividade e, portanto, pressupondo a teoria hegeliana do reconhecimento? Em primeiro lugar, analisa-se o (...) desejo antropológico de reconhecimento como fonte da idéia de justiça em A. Kojéve. Em seguida, apresenta-se, segundo 0 mesmo autor, a fenomenologia da justiça, que parte do princípio de que o desejo, conforme Hegel, quer o reconhecimento, sendo este a fonte última da idéia de justiça. Kojéve expõe fenomenologicamente a idéia de justiça, em três momentos: a justiça aristocrática ou a igualdade, a justiça burguesa ou a equivalência e a justiça cidadã ou a equidade. Finalmente, conclui-se que o reconhecimento intersubjetivo ocorre em vários níveis de mediação social, jurídica e política. Assim, na complexidade da sociedade mundializada, produzir uma hermenêutica jusfilosófica de cunho intersubjetivo encontra, na teoria hegeliana do reconhecimento, um fundamental pressuposto epistemológico. (shrink)

Alfonso Monsalve Solórzano: Colombia: democracia y paz. Medellín, Fondo Editorial Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 1999, pp. 378.

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at least (...) some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . 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A short account of the genesis and present state of English linguistic philosophy. Warnock looks briefly at the metaphysicians at the turn of the century, and then goes through the work of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Ryle, to that of Austin and Strawson. The book is mainly expository, and includes chapters on logic and metaphysics as these are related to linguistic philosophy. Sometimes Warnock's style is as mannered as it is lucid, but it is lucid nevertheless; a fine introduction to (...) linguistic philosophy --B. N. F. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger’s epic-making work on Aristotle long ago established that the form and substance of the various types of Aristotelian logoi, or treatises, are historically unique in that their intelligibility is indissolubly connected with the Lyceum as an educational institution. The laborious reconstructive work of centuries of commentators should not obscure the fact that both the exoteric and the esoteric treatises have their ultimate Sitz im Leben in the Lyceum, that peculiar philosophical school whose communal life formed, perhaps, the first (...) historical semblance of a "university" in the modern sense. Professor Lynch studies Aristotle’s school from its pre-Aristotelian origins as a religious sanctuary in Athens to the expiration of the Athenian Peripatos at the beginning of the first century before Christ. Although his primary focus is not on the relation between the nature of the school and the kind of philosophical thought it produced, his scholarly book reinforces the conviction of the historian of philosophy that investigating the Peripatos as a community of men concerned with higher education is a necessary propaedeutic for understanding how the Perpatetikoi actually philosophized. In a famous essay on the Academy and the Peripatos Hermann Usener discerned that the essence of these philosophical schools resided in their geistige Arbeit. (shrink)

This article argues that in Pindar's epinicians first-person statements may occasionally be made in the persona of the chorus and the athletic victor. The speaking persona behind Pindar's first-person statements varies quite widely: from generic, rhetorical poses—a laudator, an aoidos in the rhapsodic tradition (the “bardic first person”), an Everyman (the “first person indefinite”)—to strongly individualized figures: the Theban poet Pindar, the chorus, the victor. The arguable changes in the speaker's persona are not explicitly signalled in the text. This can (...) lead to significant ambiguities concerning the identity of the speaker (“blurred quotation,” “indeterminate speech boundaries”). The lack of a concern always to distinguish clearly the primary from the secondary narrators relates to a desire to confuse diegetic and mimetic forms; the practice of the fifth-century choral lyric poets in this regard is compared to that of other ancient Greek writers. The main challenge is to indicate how it is possible, in theory and in practice, for the athletic victor to be identified as the speaker when this is not explicitly signalled in the text; and, if this is possible, to suggest how it is possible for an audience to recognize when the speaking persona subsequently reverts to laudator or poet. An attempt is made to consider whether any formal, structural, or thematic tendencies can be observed in those passages in choral lyric where the chorus or the victor are tacitly introduced as speaking personae: such effects, it is argued, occur especially when links of ritual or genealogy enable the ode to “zoom” from the mythical past to the present occasion of the performance. The main passages discussed in the article are Pind. P.8.56–60, P.9.89–92, N.7.85, Pae. 2.73–79, and Bacch. 3.84–85. But the phenomena discussed are related broadly to other phenomena in Greek literature, in Latin poetry, and, especially, in Cicero's forensic oratory. (shrink)

Philosophy of science education can play a vital role in the preparation and professional development of science teachers. In order to fulfill this role a philosophy of science education should be made practical for teachers. First, multiple and inherently incomplete philosophies on the teacher and teaching on what, how and why should be integrated. In this paper we describe our philosophy of science education which is composed of bounded rationalism as a guideline for understanding teachers’ practical reasoning, liberal education underlying (...) the why of teaching, scientific perspectivism as guideline for the what and educational social constructivism as guiding choices about the how of science education. Integration of multiple philosophies into a coherent philosophy of science education is necessary but not sufficient to make it practical for teachers. Philosophies are still formulated at a too abstract level to guide teachers’ practical reasoning. For this purpose, a heuristic model must be developed on an intermediate level of abstraction that will provide teachers with a bridge between these abstract ideas and their specific teaching situation. We have developed and validated such a heuristic model, the CLASS model in order to complement our ASSET approach. We illustrate how science teachers use the ASSET approach and the CLASS model to make choices about the what, the how and the why of science teaching. (shrink)

The polymathic Leibniz was surely one of the greatest and most enigmatic figures produced by the "century of genius." He is the only philosopher whom the renowned historian of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Adolf von Harnack, would admit as a colleague to that august body, and Leibniz is universally admired by metaphysicians, theologians, advocates of cosmopolitanism and religious tolerance, students of international law, and, not the least, by philosophers of logic and language. Although efforts to canonize Leibniz as the (...) pure type of "harmonic synthesizer" have been under way for quite a long time, philosophers and historians are no longer so anxious as they once were to work out a synthetic unification of these and many other perspectives of Leibniz as was Mahnke, for instance, who characterized Leibniz’ philosophy as a synthesis of universal mathematics and individual metaphysics. (shrink)

This limpidly composed memoir should fascinate anyone interested in Wittgenstein. It consists of personal reminiscences, letters from Wittgenstein, and some straight philosophical material in the form of - notes, taken by Malcolm at the time, on lectures and conversations. A revised version of the already-published biographical sketch of Wittgenstein by von Wright is included.--B. N. F.

These books were dictated by Wittgenstein to pupils between 1933 and 1935, and present an earlier version of the ideas of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's main concern is with problems of meaning, but this leads him to consider many connected problems, particularly in the philosophy of mind. Part of the interest of these books is historical, since manuscript copies of them helped to spread Wittgenstein's influence in the '30's and '40's; but they are also important philosophically, for they cast new (...) light on the problems of the Investigations.--B. N. F. (shrink)

This collection of essays in honor of Prof. Stig Andur Pedersen's 60th Birthday spans over a broad scope of topics, ranging from mathematical modelling over realism in philosophy of science to an analysis of apology after medical mistakes. The unusually broad range is a fair but still inadequate reflection of the work of Stig Andur Pedersen, a philosopher and scientist whose range of interests, abilities and production is itself unusually broad.

It is demonstrated that one can in principle register an arbitrarily small force acting on a free particle by employing only measurements of its coordinates.

Muhammadiyah and NU are two well-known socio-religious organizations in the world over the years. In spite of the fact that both organizations are characterized as religious social movement, each of them has their individual creativity, which is called al-thaqafat in their motions. This study aims to identify the organization of Muhammadiyah-NU as a religious heritage,which affects other religious organizations both in Indonesia and other countries. This research employed a qualitative approach by using historical method to obtain the actual reality. For (...) data collection, literature reviews,documentation and interviews were also conducted to gather empiric facts.The researchers interviewed public figures of the organizations. Al-thaqafat becomes part of elements rather than cultivated culture, which is understood as habitual patterns of human creativity, including a religious organization. Both organizations are the result of an al-thaqafat religious creativity created by each founder and can be pursued into the world monumental heritage. Without denying, the existence of al-thaqafat creativity will continue to enlighten the world civilization. Therefore, Muhammadiyah and NU have been doing and keeping continuing al-thaqafat creativity enlightenment through their charitable organizations and institutions. The result is profoundly proven so that they have been in an existence more than a century. (shrink)

(1884). MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. xxi-xxvii.