A manera de estudio comparativo, en este artículo se propone un paralelo formal entre la física de Aristóteles y la física de Einstein. La finalidad no es la del rigor histórico. Se trata más bien de un ejercicio de análisis conceptual. En este sentido, se discute la posible similitud entre la forma..

¿Es el espacio una entidad física real en toda regla o se trata simplemente de un conjunto de relaciones entre objetos materiales coexistentes? Esta pregunta sobre el estatus ontológico del espacio físico enfrentó a Leibniz y Newton. Mientras que Leibniz cuestionó la identidad de las partes del espacio, Newton pudo cargar a la tradición relacional originada en Leibniz con el problema de la inercia. La importancia de la estructura inercial en esta discusión fue reconocida por Mach y sus críticas fueron (...) adoptadas como una especie de credo relacional por Einstein. De la mano de los protagonistas más destacados en este debate, se muestra que la identidad de las partes del espacio absoluto, frecuentemente discutida en artículos sobre el tema, es casi irrelevante al lado del problema del origen de la estructura inercial. Para esto incluyo una breve presentación de la representación neo-newtoniana de la dinámica clásica. (shrink)

En este artículo pretendo desmantelar la opinión generalizada según la cual una interpretación relacional del espaciotiempo no es posible. Centro mi atención en el hecho de que las variables dinámicas usualmente están asociadas a objetos materiales en las teorías físicas. El tensor métrico de la Teoría General de la Relatividad (TGR) es un objeto dinámico así que —sostengo— este debe ser mejor entendido como un campo material en toda regla. Este argumento me lleva a vincular la naturaleza relacional del espaciotiempo (...) a las dificultades para formular una genuina ley de conservación de energía-momento en la TGR.I will try to dismantle the widespread impression that a relational account of spacetime is not possible. I concentrate on the fact that dynamical variables are usually linked to material objects in physical theories. The metric tensor field of GR is a dynamical object so, I claim, it should be viewed as a matter field. The argument links the relational ontological status of spacetime to the failure to provide a genuine law of energy-momentum conservation within General Relativity. (shrink)

This paper proposes a parallel in the forms of Aristotle’s and Einstein’s physics. It’s an exercise on conceptual analysis rather than history. The possible similarity between Aristotle’s world and the form (global geometry) of Einstein’s universe is discussed. The correlation between kinematics, dynamics and gravity in their respective theories is also studied. Finally, Aristotle’s ontology of space is compared to the relativistic ontology spacetime.

En su artículo titulado Weimar Culture; Causality and Quantum Theory,1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists to a Hostile IntellectualEnvironment, Paul Forman intentó dibujar una historia de la vieja mecánicacuántica según la cual la influencia cultural de la época resultó determinanteen la introducción, aceptación y asimilación de la acausalidad en esta teoría.Estas afirmaciones conocidas como las tesis de Forman, son puestas enperspectiva historiográfica, es decir, desde el panorama ofrecido por lastensiones propias de la historiografía y la filosofía de la ciencia contemporá-nea se (...) perfila su importancia. Se argumenta que el dilema del determinismoes central en esta discusión y finalmente se presenta una breve revisióncrítica de las tesis de Forman revelando sus principales debilidades. (shrink)

Damaskios (5./6. Jh.) ist der letzte Scholarch der Platonischen Akademie und zugleich der letzte systematische Denker der paganen Antike. Die von Paşcalău vorgelegte Arbeit untersucht die zentralen Themen der Damaskenischen Metaphysik, deren originellster Zug in der Überbietung des neuplatonischen Transzendenz-Diskurses und in der Setzung eines Prinzips jenseits des „Einen" besteht. Die Dialektik, die Damaskios entwickelt, um vom „Unsagbaren" jenseits des Einen zu sprechen, bildet zweifellos die konsequenteste Theorie des Absoluten in der abendländischen Geistesgeschichte. Paşcalău analysiert Damaskios’ Argumente für die Annahme (...) eines absolut transzendenten Prinzips sowie die Methodik, die zu einem „unartikulierbaren Bewusstsein" des Absoluten hinleitet. Im Lichte des vertieften Transzendenzbewusstseins erweisen sich alle Konzepte der Metaphysik als „unartikulierbare Begriffe" (arrhetoi ennoiai), die „das Unsagbare" einzuholen versuchen und dabei ständig scheitern. Paşcalău zeigt, dass die Vorwürfe des „Mystizismus", die vielfach gegen Damaskios vorgebracht wurden, eben aufgrund dieser radikalisierten Theorie des Absoluten unhaltbar sind: Die unio mystica der Seele mit dem „Einen" scheitert bei Damaskios wegen der Einheits-Transzendenz des „Unsagbaren". Was bleibt, ist die Einsicht in die Unerreichbarkeit des ersten Urgrundes und die Selbstbescheidung des Menschen angesichts dieser „überwältigenden Wahrheit". (shrink)

The way of thinking of mathematicians and chemists in their respective disciplines seems to have very different levels of abstractions. While the firsts are involved in the most abstract of all sciences, the seconds are engaged in a practical, mainly experimental discipline. Therefore, it is surprising that many luminaries of the mathematics universe have studied chemistry as their main subject. Others have started studying chemistry before swapping to mathematics or have declared some admiration and even love for this discipline. Here (...) I reveal some of these mathematicians who were involved in chemistry from a biographical perspective. Then, I analyze what these remarkable mathematicians and statisticians could have learned while studying chemical subjects. I found analogies between code-breaking and molecular structure elucidation, inspiration for statistics in quantitative analytical chemistry, and on the role of topology in the study of some organic molecules. I also analyze some parallelisms between the way of thinking of organic chemists and mathematicians in terms of the use of backward analysis, search for patterns, and use of pictures in their respective researches. (shrink)

Participar del món es deté en alguns dels temes clau sobre els quals la filòsofa Hannah Arendt va escriure entre 1941 i 1945 a la revista estatunidenca Aufbau: la gratitud, les figures jueves de la pària i la forana, l’autoemancipació i la qüestió jueva i àrab a Palestina. Participar del món no sols té el valor de rescatar el desconegut perfil sionista d’Hannah Arendt, sinó que també és la primera traducció íntegra dels articles publicats a Aufbau i de les actes (...) del Jove Grup Jueu que Arendt va posar a funcionar el 1942. (shrink)

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

In this article, we shift the usual analytical attention of the GPN framework from lead firms to suppliers in the network and from production to IT services. Our focus is on how Indian IT suppliers embed in the Netherlands along the threefold characterization of societal, territorial and network embeddedness. We argue that Indian IT suppliers attempt to display societal embeddedness when they move to The Netherlands. Our findings reveal that the endeavour by Indian IT suppliers to territorially dis-embed from the (...) Dutch context is reinforced by their peripheral position in the network and their ability to offshore work in a bid to contain costs, in addition to the influence of client domination. Therefore, territorial embeddedness is considered to be secondary to societal embeddedness which is intertwined with client interest while neglecting the interest of other network members. Nonetheless, the inter-firm relationship is complex, given the tension between societal, territorial and network embeddedness. While preferring Indian IT suppliers because of their low pricing, Dutch clients also insist on compliance with the institutional context of the Netherlands especially when it comes to Dutch employees. This results in hybridization which means that Indian IT suppliers find ways to adhere to the institutional framework for Dutch nationals while simultaneously insulating Indian employees from the same. Consequently, a highly unfair segmented internal labour market develops, with Dutch nationals being treated more favourably as compared to Indian nationals. Nonetheless, to address these violations, Indian employees prefer individual strategies of resilience and rework rather than a collectivization response. (shrink)

Sostiene el autor que en la cosmovisión de las sociedades indígenas no existe el concepto de desarrollo, menos como algo a transitar por las personas para la consecución de bienestar; y tampoco los conceptos de riqueza y pobreza determinados por la acumulación y carencia de bienes materiales. Sí existe una visión holística a cerca de lo que debe ser el objetivo o la misión de todo esfuerzo humano, que consiste en buscar y crear las condiciones materiales y espirituales para construir (...) y mantener una ‘vida armónica’. Esto coloca a la sustentabilidad bajo otro paradigma que incorpora lo trascendente y lo espiritual. (shrink)

Increasing global competition has intensified the use of informal sector workforce worldwide. This phenomenon is true with regard to India, where 92% of the workers hold precarious jobs. Our study examines the dynamics of workplace dignity in the context of Indian security guards deployed as contract labour by private suppliers, recognising that security guards’ jobs were marked by easy access, low status, disrespect and precariousness. The experiences of guards serving bank ATMs were compared with those working in large reputed organisations. (...) The former reported loss of dignity though their inherent self-worth remained partially intact, whereas the latter reclaimed dignity despite the precarious working conditions and the absence of unions. Guards from large reputed organisations evolved strategies by which they took advantage of the client’s vulnerabilities, developed ‘thick’ relationships at work and immersed themselves in 'doing dignity work' to ensure that they are not disposable. ‘Doing dignity work’ was a visible device which involved actions that met or went beyond the norms laid down by the client and was used by security guards to limit the extent of their precariousness. Since the opportunity to reclaim dignity was facilitated by large reputed clients’ adherence to legal regulations, we see implications of the study for the moral economy. (shrink)

By going back to the Italian humanist tradition and aspects of earlier Greek and Latin thought Ernesto Grassi develops a conception of rhetoric as the basis of philosophical thought. In the development of modern philosophy since Descartes and Locke rhetoric has been seen as superfluous to knowledge. Rhetoric has been commonly understood as the speech that plays on the emotions the use of thought and words to persuade, rather than their use as the basis to seek knowledge. How does (...) the mind generate the principles upon which rational thought is based? Rational thinking exploits the logical power of the word, but logic never enlightens us on the nature of its own starting points. Grassi explores the sense in which the first principles of rational thought come from the metaphorical power of the word. He finds the basis for his conception in the last thinker of the Italian humanist tradition, Giambattista Vice, in Vice's understanding of imagination and the sense of human ingenuity contained in the metaphor. Professor Grassi connects rhetoric with the power of language to bring the starting points for thought into being. This power of speech is at the basis of the philosophical and rational search for truth. (shrink)

Praise for First Edition: `This book is highly recommended to a wide range of people as a clear and systematic introduction to phenomenological psychology... the book has set the stage for possible new colloquia between the phenomenological and other approaches in psychology' - Changes `As a trainee interested in matters existential, I have been put off in the past by the long-winded and confusing texts usually available in academic libraries. Thankfully, here is a text that remedies that situation... [it] provides (...) a readable and insightful account' - Clinical Psychology Forum 'Spinelli’s classic introduction to phenomenology should be essential reading on all person-centred, existential and humanistic trainings, and any other counselling or psychotherapy course which aims to help students develop an in-depth understanding of human lived-experience. This book is sure to remain a key text for many years to come' - Mick Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Counselling, University of Strathclyde 'This is by far the most monumental, erudite, comprehensive, authoritative case that Existentialism and Phenomenology (a) have a rightful place in the academy; (b) are tough-minded bodies of thought; (c) have rigorous scientific foundations; (d) bequeath a distinctive school of psychotherapy and counselling; and (e) are just as good as the more established systems of psychology' - Alvin R. Mahrer, Ph.D. University of Ottawa, Canada, Author of The Complete Guide To Experiential Psychotherapy 'This book’s rich insight into the lacunae of modern psychological thinking illustrates the contribution that existential phenomenology can make to founding a coherently mature Psychology that is both fully human(e) and responsibly ‘scientific’ in the best sense of that term' - Richard House, Ph.D., Magdalen Medical Practice, Norwich; Steiner Waldorf teacher. The Interpreted World, Second Edition, is a welcome introduction to phenomenological psychology, an area of psychology which has its roots in notoriously difficult philosophical literature. Writing in a highly accessible, jargon-free style, Ernesto Spinelli traces the philosophical origins of phenomenological theory and presents phenomenological perspectives on central topics in psychology - perception, social cognition and the self. He compares the phenomenological approach with other major contemporary psychological approaches, pointing up areas of divergence and convergence with these systems. He also examines implications of phenomenology for the precepts and process of psychotherapy. For the Second Edition, a new chapter on phenomenological research has been added in which the author focuses on the contribution of phenomenology in relation to contemporary scientific enquiry. He describes the methodology used in phenomenological research and illustrates the approach through an actual research study. The Interpreted World, Second Edition demystifies an exciting branch of psychology, making its insights available to all students of psychology, psychotherapy and counselling. (shrink)

Derrida's recent book, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, offers a succinct and elegant understanding of forgiveness as ‘impossibility’, unencumbered by any conditions or threats of instrumentalization. However it also contains a disturbing implication. The first part of this article discusses the theory at length, followed by a series of critiques in the second part that shows how his aporetic theory of forgiveness is morally dangerous, for it unwittingly rests upon erasing the memory of the transcendental shortcomings of his conception. The article (...) goes on to outline an alternative theory of forgiveness. (shrink)

En este escrito se trata de mostrar una concepción de la educación como un proceso desarrollado colectivamente a partir de la realización de las “vocaciones vitales” y de la capacidad de “darse cuenta”, en todos los contextos de la vida.

Esta investigação histórica e documental enquadra-se no âmbito da História d Educação em Portugal. Trata-se de uma temática pouco usual, mas serve para uma melhor compreensão da criança nas sua problemáticas educativas, sociais, assistenciais e de reeducação no período entre 1871 - altura da primeira fundação da primeira Casa de Correção e Detenção de Lisboa ocupando-se a partir desse momento o Estado destas. Problemáticas infantis e juvenis da marginalidade, abandono, desamparo e delinquência até 1962. Neste estudo admitimos a existência especial (...) de uma pedagogia social portuguesa que integra contributos das várias ciências da época: jurídico-penais, ciências médicopedagógicas, sociológicas, psicopedagógicas, filosofia do direito, etc. Todas estas influências permitiram a reflexão sobre aquelas situações da criança o que originou a criação de vários estabelecimentos especiais de correção e de reeducação, ao nivel estatal e ao nível particular. Houve a aplicação de métodos inovadores no diagnóstico e na orientação dessas crianças. Demos, assim, um contributo valioso para a elaboração de uma História da Assistência à Infância Inadaptada em Portugal. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them (...) believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions. (shrink)

La visión tradicional del pensamiento crítico (PC) fundada en un enfoque racionalista ha sido puesta en duda a partir de fines del siglo pasado por la ‘segunda ola’ del PC, la cual, a pesar de no ser un movimiento del todo definido, ha incluido aspectos como la imaginación, la creatividad y el trabajo cooperativo en su comprensión y en su aplicación a la enseñanza. Paralelamente, perspectivas actuales en psicología moral como el modelo ‘intuicionista social’ propuesto por Jonathan Haidt, representan un (...) desafío al modelo racionalista de la moral que suponen gran parte de las éticas normativas canónicas. Siendo que tanto el PC como el fundamento moral representan factores fundamentales en la enseñanza de ética, se hace explicito que esta última precisa también ser revisada. Es por ello que el presente trabajo analiza una perspectiva del PC alternativa a la tradicional basada en el potencial aporte de la metacognición y del modelo intuicionista social, con el fin de abrir nuevas vías de investigación para la actualización del fundamento moral que se supone en la enseñanza de ética. Para ahondar en ello, se ejemplificará la relevancia y aplicabilidad de la metacognición en la enseñanza de ética con situaciones vinculadas a la actual pandemia por Covid-19. (shrink)

On the traditional view, Butler maintains that forgiveness involves a kind of “conversion experience” in which we must forswear or let go of our resentment against wrongdoers. Against this reading, I argue that Butler never demands that we forswear resentment but only that we be resentful in the right kind of way. That is, he insists that we should be virtuously resentful, avoiding both too much resentment exhibited by the vices of malice and revenge and too little resentment where we (...) merely condone the wrongdoer and leave ourselves open to future injury. I argue that this Butlerian approach offers us a more attractive account of forgiveness as a “virtue” than many recent discussions. In the final section, I address Butler’s challenging thesis that forgiveness is an unconditional moral duty. I argue against those who claim that forgiveness is supererogatory (Kolnai/Calhoun) or else merely morally conditional and even morally blameworthy in some cases (Murphy/Hampton/Novitz/Richards). By contrast, I defend a context-sensitive account of forgiveness which recognizes that it takes place on many different levels. I conclude by taking up the difficult issue of whether anybody can be ultimately “unforgivable”, offering some Butlerian and Strawsonian reflections that might help mitigate our judgments about such matters. (shrink)

This chapter offers some insight into Spinoza's understanding of the concept of potentia. As is well known amongst scholars, the concept of potentia is fundamental for Spinoza. From ontology, to ethics and politics, the concept of potentia seems to embody the unity of Spinoza's thought. Unlike E1p9, Spinoza focuses on the independence or in the per se nature of the intelligibility of each attribute. The demonstration of the proposition recalls both the definition of the attribute and the definition of substance (...) as explanations. Having more reality, Spinoza states, means having more powers or strength, that is, more potentia to exist. The chapter shows that Spinoza's radical ontology of power emerges in the propositions preparing the consideration of God's necessary existence, namely E1p9–10. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Seven Poems NICOLAS CALAS (Translated by Avi Sharon) hellenizing surrealism: a greek door to europe Nicolas calas (Kalamares) may be considered merely a minor Greek poet, but he had a major global persona and influence. In the middle of the last century he played a catalyzing role in the international avant garde: He was a Zelig-like polemicist in three languages (Greek, French, and English) and across three cultural (...) capitals (Athens, Paris, and New York). But he always fought on a singular front: surrealism. Born in Lausanne in 1907, he grew up in Athens and by the later 1920s began to stand out in literary circles (he was over 6' 4") for his modernist if not revolutionary views. Starting from an interest in Freud and Marx, the subconscious and the revolutionary, Calas soon arrived at their natural synthesis—surrealism. Around the time when a distinctly Greek form of surrealist poetry emerged, with the 1935 publication of “Blast Furnace” by Andreas Embiricos, Calas was on his way to becoming its unofficial spokesman. He moved to the epicenter of the movement in Paris and with the 1938 publication of Foyers d’Incendie became the “most lucid and audacious” of founder André Breton’s acolytes, both prophet and demagogue of the group. Carried along in the current of European artists and thinkers leaving Europe for New York, he would continue the fight on the western wing of the faction (literally, coming to blows at a cocktail party with Clement Greenberg, representing the opposing Abstract Expressionist side). In 1942 he published another clarion pamphlet, Confound the Wise, giving the movement voice in English and befriending its most visible local supporters and practitioners, from Peggy Guggenheim to Marcel Duchamp. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 The Wyndham Lewis of the operation, Calas was a cross-border catalyst, evangelizing the role of surrealism as a liberating and generative force in modern literature and art. For him and other writers and poets, the weapon that would most effectively derange the reader’s habitual conformism into revelatory and revolutionary perception was the surrealist image, poetry’s lingua franca. For Greek practitioners it was completely natural for that magical representation to arise out of their god-infested, sun-filled landscape. Here they had a force that was both blinding and enlightening, penetrating and transformative, local and universal. For Calas, the primary echo or reflection of that essential image was the island of Santorini, referenced in several of the translations here (and reminiscent of his fellow national Nikos Gatsos’s use of the island of Amorgos in a similar context). It stood as the very symbol of fiery transformation, an image monstrous enough to shock the reader into a super-rational embrace of its own form of logic. This Hellenization of surrealism, like the Hellenization of modernism itself, was to become an important, transformative power in its own right. For many, the origin (and likewise, for many, the enclosing border ) of surrealism was France. “But it is French. It is their invention,” was how William Carlos Williams saw it, to his chagrin. Williams was convinced that the objective concentration on the image itself (“no ideas but in things”) could offer a salutary corrective to American poetry of his time. “It is the surrealists who have invented the living defense of literature,” he wrote in a 1929 essay. But for a poet so at one with the American Grain to be reconciled with surrealism’s ‘Francite’ he needed some way to cross the divide. His admiration for Calas’s work in clarifying and promoting the group’s ideas enabled the Greek poet to serve as a mediator, to allow the creative transference of its rebellious wisdom into Williams’s poetry. To borrow the title of one of his early American essays, Calas provided Williams a “Greek door to Europe.” In translating four of Calas’s French poems into English, published in 1941 with a frontispiece by the surrealist painter and magician Kurt Seligman, Williams leveraged Calas as the vehicle through which the “enabling foreignness” of surrealism could be grafted into the grain of his American modernist work, just as he set out on his magnum opus, Paterson. In a similar way... (shrink)

Equational reasoning arises in many areas of mathematics and computer science. It is a cornerstone of algebraic reasoning and results essential in tasks of specification and verification in functional programming, where a program is mainly a set of equations. The usual manipulation of identities while conducting informal proofs obviates many intermediate steps that are neccesary while developing them using a formal system, such as the equationally complete Birkhoff calculus ${\mathcal{B}}$. This deductive system does not fit in the common manner of (...) doing mathematical proofs, and it is not compatible with the mechanisms of proof assistants. The aim of this work is to provide a deductive system ${\mathcal{B}}^{\textrm{GOAL}}$ for equality, equivalent to ${\mathcal{B}}$ but suitable for constructing equational proofs in a backward fashion. This feature makes it adequate for interactive proof-search in the approach of proof assistants. This will be achieved by turning ${\mathcal{B}}^{\textrm{GOAL}}$ into a transition system of formal tactics in the style of Edinburgh LCF, such transformation allows us to give a direct formal definition of backward proof in equational logic. (shrink)

Study of Vedāntatattvaviveka, work on Advaita philosophy, by Nr̥siṃhāśrama.

Se busca rastrear la imagen que Platón tiene de Heráclito y articularla con la estructura argumentativa del Cratilo, para comprender las necesidades textuales a las que responde la doctrina del flujo perpetuo, es decir, la discusión sobre la corrección (ὀρθότης) del nombre. Gracias a la inclusión del testimonio heraclíteo, resulta posible rastrear la presunta consolidación de la tesis sobre los nombres primarios y los secundarios como el eje de la separación entre dos planos de realidad (uno estable y uno móvil) (...) y de la teoría de las Ideas -es decir, como la base de la epistemología platónica presente en los diálogos de madurez-. The article seeks to trace the image Plato has of Heraclitus and connect it with the argumentative structure of the Cratylus in order to understand the textual needs that give rise to the doctrine of perpetual flux, that is, the discussion regarding the correctness (ὀρθότης) of names. The inclusion of Heraclitus's testimony makes it possible to trace the alleged consolidation of the thesis regarding primary and secondary names as the axis of separation between two levels of reality (one stable, the other, changing) and the theory of Ideas -that is, as the basis of Plato's epistemology as set forth in the late dialogues-. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende analizar el problema de la agonía y la muerte en el pensamiento de Miguel de Unamuno, como estos dos aspectos innegables en la vida del hombre se constituyen en el fundamento del filosofar y del existir. La lucha encarnizada por no morir generará en el autor una duda muy grande a la que no se la puede negar pero que estará presente en todo el proceso vital del ser humano, para después dar paso a unas alternativas (...) de pervivencia que el mismo autor presenta pero que no logran convencerlo como una solución final. (shrink)

Este trabajo es el ganador de la III Olimpiada de Filosofía que organiza FICUM en la modalidad de primero de bachillerato. A los alumnos se le hizo la siguiente pregunta: ¿cuál es la filosofía del siglo XXI? Adriana, ha afrontado la cuestión comentado la importancia de recuperar la pasión por pensar las cosas con profundidad filosófica.

Cet article interroge la construction de la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze à partir de son rapport à la pensée de Spinoza. En partant d’une remarque dans Différence et répétition au sujet de l’ontologie spinozienne, nous interrogeons à la fois le problème du temps et de l’éternité chez Spinoza et la genèse de l’ontologie deleuzienne de la différence dans la mesure où elle s’affirme comme héritière de l’affirmation spinozienne de l’univocité de l’être.

Abstract:This essay traces the intellectual journey of the Queer/Cuir/Cuyr Américas Working Group, a dedicated network of queer scholars from across the Americas who came together to address how knowledge is produced and constructed as Anglocentric and North-centric and how it circulates across the hemisphere. I discuss how this occurs by placing heteronormativity at the center to cross-examine the multiple ways in which it feeds both socialist and capitalist regimes. Thinking cuir as well as thinking cuir feminista confronts gender, sexual, racial, (...) and/or ethnic determinism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 3-10 [Access article in PDF] Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. In a recent interview 1 Jacques Rancière opposes his notion of "people" (peuple) 2 to the category of "multitude" as presented by the authors of Empire. As is well known, Rancière differentiates between police and politics, the first being the logic of (...) counting and assigning the population to differential places, and the second the subversion of that differentiating logic through the constitution of an egalitarian discourse which puts into question established identities. "The people" is the specific subject of politics, and this term presupposes a sharp division in the social body which cannot be led back to any kind of immanent unity. Empire, on the contrary, makes immanence its central category and the ultimate ground of the multitude's unity.The main lines of Rancière's critique provide a good starting point for what we have to say about the book. The immanentism of Hardt and Negri would be linked, according to Rancière, to their Nietzschean/Deleuzian ethics of affirmation, which does away with any reactive or negative dimension. Empire would belong, in that respect, to the whole tradition of modern political philosophy, which is profoundly metapolitical: "the kernel of metapolitics is to lead back the precarious artifices of the political scene to the truth of an immanent power which organizes beings in a community and identifies the true community with the grasped and sensible operation of this truth" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 96]. From Hardt and Negri's rejection of any inherent negativity in political subjects, it follows that the power inherent in the multitude has to be a disruptive power, "lodged in all states of domination as its ultimate content, a content destined to destroy all barriers. 'Multitudes' have to be a content whose continent is Empire" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 97]. Disruptive forces operating through a purely immanent movement are what Marxist theory called "productive forces," and there would be, according to Rancière, a strict homology between the place of productive forces and that in which multitudes, as described in Empire, act. Rancière points out that productive forces should not necessarily be understood in any narrow productivist sense: there has been a constant widening of the concept from the strict economism of classical Marxism, to the recent attempts to introduce in it the ensemble of scientific and intellectual abilities, passing through the Leninist attempt to supplement via political intervention a role that productive forces refused to fulfill.I think that Rancière has rightly stressed what I see as the main source of several weaknesses of Empire, including a central one: that within its theoretical framework politics become unthinkable. So I will start from a discussion of its notion of immanence and move later to various other theoretical and political aspects of the book. [End Page 3]Let us start with the authors' discussion of the origins of European modernity. While the usual insistence is on the secularization process, that process would be, "in our view... only a symptom of the primary event of modernity: the affirmation of the powers of this world, the discovery of the plane of immanence. 'Omne ens habet aliquod esse proprium'—every entity has a singular essence. Duns Scotus' affirmation subverts the medieval conception of being as an object of analogical, and thus dualistic predication—a being with one foot in this world and one in a transcendent realm" [Empire 71]. Duns Scotus's insistence on the singularity of being would have initiated an assertion of immanence that the authors describe as a process whose representative names would have been Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Bovillus—other names quoted are Bacon and Occam—and whose point of arrival is Spinoza. "By the time we arrive at Spinoza, in fact, the horizon of immanence and the horizon of the democratic political order coincide completely. The plane of immanence is the one on which the powers of singularity are realized and the one on which the truth of the new... (shrink)

The paper is concerned with negation in artificial and natural languages. "Negation" is an ambiguous word. It can mean three different things: An operation(negating), an operator (a sign of negation), the result of an operation. The threethings, however, are intimately linked. An operation such as negation, is realizedthrough an operator of negation, i.e. consists in adding a symbol of negation to an entity to obtain an entity of the same type; and which operation it is dependson what it applies to (...) and on what results from its application.I argue that negation is not an operation on linguistic acts but rather anoperation on the objects of linguistic acts, namely sentences. And I assume that the negation of a sentence is a sentence that contradicts it. If so, the negation of a sentence may be obtained, in case the sentence is molecular, by applying the operation of negation not to the sentence itself but to a constituent sentence. To put it in a succinct and paradoxically sounding way we could say that in order to negate a sentence it is sufficient but not necessary to negate it.However that negation applies to sentences is true only for artificial languages, in which the sign of negation is a monadic sentential connective. In natural language, negation applies to expressions other than sentences, namely word sand non-sentential phrases. Still words and not sentential phrases are interesting and valuable only as ultimate or immediate constituents of sentences, as a means of saying (something that can be true or false) and the concern with negation is ultimately the concern with the negation of sentences. So the problem is what sub-sentential and non sentential expressions negation should apply to in order to obtain the negation of the containing sentence. The standard answer is that the negation of a natural language sentence is equivalent to the negation of its predicate. Yet, I argue, predicate negation is necessary but not sufficient, due to the existence of molecular sentences.Finally I notice that if to apply negation to an artificial sentence is to put the negation sign in front of it, to negate the predicate of a natural language sentencemay or may not be to put the negation sign in front of it. (shrink)

Heidegger's affirmation is categorical: “… the thinking expressed in Being and Time is against humanism”. Heidegger's thesis is not only categorical, it is also polemical. He maintains that the humanist conception does not grasp man's essence, and it is for this reason that he is opposed to humanism, which is a doctrine that “has not thought profoundly enough of man's humanitas.