The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. Despite its long history, this story is nothing more than a commentators’ fiction that has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer frequency of repetition. In this paper we shall examine the reception of Leibniz’s doctrine of (...) the best world in the eighteenth century in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate really was. As we shall see, while Leibniz’s doctrine did win a good number of adherents in the 1720s and 1730s, especially in Germany, support for it had largely dried up by the mid-1740s; moreover, while opponents of Leibniz’s doctrine were few and far between in the 1710s and 1720s, they became increasing vocal in the 1730s and afterwards, between them producing an array of objections that served to make Leibnizian optimism both philosophically and theologically toxic years before the Lisbon earthquake struck. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analiza el intento de Hume de compatibilizar el reconocimiento de la diversidad en los juicios estéticos con la existencia de principios del gusto universales. La exégesis de su propuesta de una norma del gusto se desarrollará analizando su relación con las aportaciones anteriores de Locke, Shaftesbury, Addison y Hutcheson, fundamentalmente. Asimismo, se valorará su impacto en la estética posterior, sobre todo en la Crítica del juicio de Kant.

The writings of Diderot, even the most philosophical, are characterized by a poetic style, by the frequent use of figures of speech, especially metaphor. The metaphorical images like, the "great chain of being", the "swarm of bees" and the "sensitive harpsichord", are an expression of experimental philosophy that proceeds by "presentiments", by intuitions and not by concepts. The philosopher, from the experience of natural phenomena, forms an idea, though vague, of nature as a dynamic unity of parts, as the order (...) in the making. Standing at the intersection of philosophy, poetics and life sciences, the metaphor suggests an image of the organic unity of nature and the human body, the continuous and gradual metamorphosis of every natural being. (shrink)

Although cities have been philosophically important since ancient times, the development of phenomenology and, to a lesser degree environmental and everyday aesthetics, made possible the aesthetic consideration of urban life. Unlike much of Western philosophy, phenomenology takes seriously that human beings inhabit a lifeworld, in which they live as embodied beings together with others. These three emphases—world, embodiment and intersubjectivity—together make possible the aesthetic investigation of urban life. I provide a brief survey of current work in urban aesthetics before introducing (...) the five papers that comprise this issue. (shrink)

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a ‘techno-aesthetical’ approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philosophy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes (...) of existence of images, such as the one of ‘ imaginaction ’ that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nanotechnological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implications of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces. (shrink)

El presente trabajo analiza algunas de las estrategias por medio de las cuales la reflexión estética de finales del siglo XVIII intentó dar respuesta al problema de la legitimación de la representación artística. Entre ellas es considerada con particular atención la redefinición del concepto de belleza que propone Immanuel Kant en la Crítica de la facultad de juzgar. A partir de la revisión de la postura kantiana, se pone en evidencia la conexión existente entre la crisis de fundamentación de la (...) belleza artística y la debacle de la historia natural clásica, por una parte. Por la otra, se procura dar cuenta de la modificación del estatuto y de las funciones de la esfera estética que introduce el vuelco kantiano hacia el ámbito de la subjetividad. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Other philosophers, such as Locke and Hobbes, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards were either desirebased instrumental principles of rationality or based on sui generis rational intuitions. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason (...) will reveal only the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle) and hence to moral requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant's moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on Deleuze’s interpretation of small perceptions in Leibniz’s thought, as well as on the supposed abandon of this notion in Kant. In connection with the two issues we contend that the way both authors deal with them makes sense within the framework of the Enlightenment.

Evolutionary Aesthetics is a bourgeoning and thriving sub-field of Aesthetics, the main aim of which is “the importation of aesthetics into natural sciences, and especially its integration into the heuristic of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.” Scholars working in the field attempt to determine through the adoption of an interdisciplinary research methodology whether and to what extent Darwinian evolution can shed light on our capacity to have aesthetic experiences, make aesthetic judgments (both of art and natural beauty), and produce literary, visual, musical (...) artworks. Notwithstanding Evolutionary Aesthetics’ growing popularity in the past two decades, a look into the state of current research suggests a significant degree of haziness in the field from both epistemological-methodological and theoretical points of view. The main aim of the present paper is to make a first step towards a revision and extension of the discipline by assessing the role and potential of epigenetics in evolutionarily inspired aesthetic research. Epigenetics is among the youngest and most fascinating research fields in contemporary biology. But one of the most significant occurrences of the word “epigenesis” (the closest “ancestor” of contemporary “epigenetics”) is in Immanuel Kant’s third Critique, his aesthetic masterpiece. What might be the relationship between epigenetics and aesthetics? What is the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the development and functioning of aesthetic behavior in humans? (shrink)

En la Antropología, en la sección referida a las facultades cognoscitivas superiores, se presenta la sagacidad como el don de la indagación. Con eso se indica que tiene un lugar en la investigación científica. En nuestro trabajo examinamos la función que se puede atribuir a la sagacidad en el método de investigación. La presencia de la sagacidad en un investigador es contingente, pero se la puede considerar como una condición que determina el alcance del método y sus límites. También determina (...) algunas características de los resultados de una investigación. Por eso, sugerimos que la sagacidad es una condición accesoria del método. La inteligencia personal del científico resulta así un elemento decisivo en la investigación, tanto en el planteo de los fines de ésta, como en el progreso del trabajo, y especialmente en las fases de diseño, de invención y de descubrimiento. (shrink)

Hersz Bad (1869–1942) was Kazimierz Twardowski’s student and belonged to the first generation of the Lvov-Warsaw School members. He specialized in the history of philosophy and led a number of remarkable analyses concerning Kant’s philosophy. At the example of his work one may see, how the methodological postulates of the Lvov Warsaw School were fulfilled at the field of historical philosophical investigations. The goal of the paper is to present Bad’s main achievements and to evaluate their meaning from the point (...) of view of the current state of research of Kant’s philosophy. To be reviewed in detail are Bad’s remarks concerning the scientific status of the so called Kant-Laplace Theory as well as the validity of its name. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es caracterizar el tratamiento de los conceptos de claridad y oscuridad en los Apuntes de Lecciones de Antropología de la “década silenciosa” de Kant. El estudio tiene tres momentos. En primer lugar, se describen las condiciones de la claridad y la oscuridad de nuestras representaciones. En segundo término, se reconstruye la argumentación por medio de la que Kant cuestionaba el modo como Baumgarten presentaba esas nociones en la parte de la psicología empírica de su Metaphysica. (...) Por último, se exponen dos aspectos pragmáticos de la investigación de esas nociones: permite elucidar algunas condiciones subjetivas para la posibilidad de las ciencias, facilita la comprensión de un aspecto de la naturaleza humana, dando con ello un recurso provechoso para la intervención en la vida mundana. (shrink)

A mediados del siglo XVIII, A. Baumgarten estableció una “ciencia del conocimiento sensible ” o estética. Su propuesta ampliaba el legado de Leibniz y Wolff, profundizaba la noción de experiencia y asumía el esquema tradicional de la Idea que Leibniz criticó a Descartes, pero considerando la acepción de ideas “simbólicas”. No obstante su relevancia, la propuesta de Baumgarten no siempre es considerada para comprender la teoría del arte, que aparece como una vía menos relevante frente a la revolución kantiana de (...) la estética asociada a la noción de juicio de gusto. (shrink)