El artículo expone la influencia de la teoría estética de Th. W. Adorno en la filosofía contemporánea o, más concretamente, en la obra del postestructuralista J. F. Lyotard. Se centra en una interpretación novedosa de cuatro conceptos fundamentales en ambos autores: el de crítica, la adhesión a una ética radical, la elección del panteón de los artistas preferidos por uno y otro y la defensa de ambos, frente a las estéticas sistemáticas y totales, de una estética micrológica. Palabras clave: (...) Teoría estética; Micrología; Crítica; Ética; Arte. (shrink)

In the modal literature various notions of completeness have been studied for normal modal logics. Four of these are defined here, viz. (plain) completeness, first-order completeness, canonicity and possession of the finite model property — and their connections are studied. Up to one important exception, all possible inclusion relations are either proved or disproved. Hopefully, this helps to establish some order in the jungle of concepts concerning modal logics. In the course of the exposition, the interesting properties of first-order definability (...) and preservation under ultrafilter extensions are introduced and studied as well. (shrink)

Avez-vous remarqué que dans le monde tout ce qui compte va par quatre? La musique : timbre, harmonie, rythme et mélodie. Le repérage : altitude, latitude, longitude et datation. Les quatre aspects de la cause: pour quoi, avec quoi, par quoi et selon quoi? Les forces de la nature : interactions faible, forte, électromagnétique et gravitationnelle... Les vingt-quatre particules élémentaires qui constituent la matière une famille de six leptons associée à trois familles de quarks. Et aussi la logique d'un discours (...) nuancé : oui, non, oui et non, ni oui ni non. Pourquoi quatre est-il partout? La notion de quaternité apporte une réponse à la fois simple et surprenante à cette question. A partir d'exemples tirés de l'expérience humaine, les auteurs en dégagent les aspects structurels et s'en servent pour approfondir le sens des mathématiques et de divers autres domaines liés à la genèse de la connaissance. Il s'agit d'une nouvelle épistémologie, fondée sur un modèle logique qui complète celui d'Aristote. (shrink)

Roman Catholic moral theology follows a centuries-old tradition of moral reflection. Contemporary Roman Catholic moral theory applies these traditional arguments to the realm of medical ethics, including the issues of active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Unavoidable moral limits on licit medical intervention sometimes require that the moral duty to treat, cede to the duty to cease treatment when measures become more harmful than beneficial to the patient. This does not reduce the need for the compassionate use of palliative care in (...) response to suffering. However, it does mean that rather than being excessively committed to maintaining mere biological human life, or actively seeking death, that we learn a sober realism about the limits of human life. Catholic moral analysis examines an act objectively, both in its relation to the agent and as a material event in the world. This allows both the virtuous or vicious intentions of the agent and the effects of the action to be included in its moral evaluation. Thus, Catholic moral analysis is both quasi-deontological and quasi-consequentialist. Objectively, active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, as acts of deliberate killing, are seen as repugnant, in that they fail to incarnate a benign inner intention or to form an agent in virtue. Catholic moral theology is extremely skeptical that an act of intending death directly can be consonant with a sincere compassion for the dying, suffering person and views it as a direct negation of the precious gift of human life. (shrink)

Much ink has been spilt in consideration of the once pervasive reliance on military metaphors to depict the relationships between science and religion in the nineteenth century. This has resulted in historically sensitive treatments of secularization; and the realization that the relationship between science and religion was not a bloody war between intellectual nation states, but a protracted divorce of former partners. Moreover, historians of science have been encouraged to throw off the yoke of the internalism–externalism debate, and to explore (...) the cultural boundaries that impinged upon practitioners of a natural knowledge of the world. Within the historiography of nineteenth-century science, this has resulted in many new perspectives on science and natural knowledge in relation to cultural control and authority. (shrink)