Este ensayo se propone plantear una nueva perspectiva acerca de una tendencia inquietante que está configurando nuestro mundo en estos primeros años del siglo XXI: el auge del despotismo. Nos preguntamos si los regímenes de poder que se ponen de manifiesto en países como Rusia, Vietnam, Arabia Saudita, Turkmenistán, China y Brunéi, y los Emiratos Árabes Unidos tienen características en común, a pesar de ser a su vez tan diferentes en otros aspectos. La respuesta es afirmativa; empezando por su (...) concentración geográfica en la región Euroasiática, definida ampliamente de tal suerte que incluya el espacio territorial que se extiende a lo largo de Rusia, Turquía, las monarquías del Golfo e Irán en el oeste, atravesando las repúblicas de Asia central, China y Japón, hasta Indonesia, Australia, Nueva Zelanda y Fiji en el extremo este. Esta región es el nuevo centro gravitacional geopolítico del planeta. Este ensayo explica por qué el despotismo, término en desuso, merece ser retomado, y porqué los regímenes despóticos de nuestro tiempo no deben considerarse simplemente como un tipo de estado territorial.This essay sets out to make new sense of a disturbing trend shaping our world in these early years of the 21stcentury: the rise of despotism. It asks whether the regimes of power displayed in countries otherwise as different as Russia, Vietnam, Iran; Saudi Arabia; Turkmenistan; China and Brunei, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates share things in common. It answers that they do, beginning with their geographic concentration in the Eurasian region, broadly defined to include the territorial spaces stretching from Russia, Turkey, the Gulf states and Iran in the west through to the central Asian republics, China and Japan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in the far east. The region is the new geo–political centre of gravity of our planet. It is also the heartland of the new despotisms, which are proving to be powerful actors, both in the region and within a wide range of global settings. The essay explains why the old–fashioned term despotism deserves to be revived, and why the new despotisms of our time should not be thought of simply as a type of territorial state. (shrink)

Aunque el léxico de la “tiranía” y el “despotismo” está sujeto a cambios históricos de significado, seguimos utilizando esos términos para referirnos a algunos tipos de regímenes políticos ilegítimos, injustos o indecentes. También lo hace Tocqueville, cuando describe las nuevas vías del despotismo que surgen en la revolución democrática moderna. En este artículo, exploramos los usos de la“tiranía” y el “despotismo” en el pensamiento de Tocqueville, y también intentamos descubrir los modelos concretos o los prototipos sociales que (...) pudieron inspirarla prognosis de Tocqueville concerniente a un despotismo democrático tutelar. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende demostrar que la categoría despotismo analizada por Tocqueville afecta principalmente a la subjetividad y no a la lógica social de la democracia moderna. Para demostrar esta premisa, se explora la influencia de la filosofía política aristotélica en la psicología moral del autor francés, para mostrar que los atributos empíricos de esta conexión permiten constatar una concepción «asentida» de despotismo que condiciona el comportamiento, en detrimento de interpretaciones que abogan por una exclusiva congruencia estructural de (...) sus efectos. (shrink)

El presente trabajo indaga la concepción de despotismo de Tocqueville, con la finalidad de mostrar sus repercusiones en la intersubjetividad y no en la lógica social de la democracia. Para demostrar esta premisa, reconstruye los fundamentos empíricos de su psicología moral, a los fines de “polemizar” con interpretaciones ilustradas que yuxtaponen diferentes tipologías de despotismo para fundamentar una congruencia exclusivamente racionalistas de sus efectos. Teniendo presente esta dicotomía, explora la metodología comparada del autor francés, con el objetivo de (...) presentar argumentos en favor de una versión hegemónica de los efectos del despotismo, destinada a reproducirse en el comportamiento individual bajo formas “asentidas” de dominación. (shrink)

El presente trabajo evalúa la extensión de la democracia representativa en los ámbitossociales tomando como referencia los aportes de Tocqueville. Por un lado, recuperala influencia de la tradición política clásica para mostrar la relevancia de la libertadpolítica en la democracia liberal. Por otro lado, reconstruye la crisis de la representaciónpolítica en los Estados Unidos para argumentar una concepción “instaurada”de democracia representativa que puede discutir con versiones actuales. Por último,visualizando el origen social del despotismo democrático, muestra cómo la libertadpolítica puede (...) expandir la representatividad de la democracia atenuando las injerenciasde la igualdad. (shrink)

Há anos ou décadas, vemos países que estavam em marcha em direção à democracia como a Rússia, a Turquia e mesmo reais democracias como o Brasil, se tornarem verdadeiras democraduras, ou se encaminharem para esse tipo de regime, a Hungria por exemplo, mas igualmente outros países. Os analistas políticos continuam lutando para entender a origem e a natureza desse direcionamento sobre o qual a leitura de Tocqueville ainda fornece um esclarecimento notável, cujas análises mantêm perfeita atualidade; é um grande pensador (...) para os dias atuais que estabelece como, para pensar o surgimento da democracia e os problemas que aparecem a ela, é apropriado partir do estado social democrático. (shrink)

O pensamento político-constitucional do Marquês de Caravelas -- Extratos de discursos parlamentares do Marquês de Caravelas.

Recently, José María Ariso and Samuel Laves have critically debated whether killing innocent and non‐threatening people [=WK] is a universal moral certainty. One of the main topics of their discussion concerns the case of the pisa‐suaves, children born in the context of the Colombian civil war who grew up with the FARC guerrillas. While Laves argues that such children hold WK, Ariso rejects his claim and stresses that pisa‐suaves have no moral code of conduct. In my work, I side with (...) Laves and contend that WK is a universal moral certainty. Accordingly, I maintain that (i) either pisa‐suaves possess WK and thereby count as human moral agents, or (ii) if they do not possess any moral code of conduct, then they cannot count as human moral agents and, in turn, their existence does not undermine WK's universality. (shrink)

Se examina el trasfondo subjetivo de Respuesta a la pregunta: ¿qué es la ilustración?, que anuncia la condición antropológico-política de la minoría de edad; mostrán-dose que su objetivo es lograr la ilustración del Estado a partir de dicha condición. Finalmente, se expone cómo la minoría de edad es la traslación antropológica del despotismo político, y cómo este se traduce lógico-subjetivamente en los prejuicios.

El propósito de esta intervención es realizar un análisis de la crisis de la democracia contemporánea a través de los estudios de Alexis de Tocqueville y de Max Weber. Nuestro punto de partida considera que el trabajo de ambos autores, no sólo puede ser entendido como el análisis sociológico de la naciente democracia de masas, sino que además presenta las tendencias que semejante sistema político desarrollará en el tiempo. De un lado una predisposición de los sistemas políticos modernos hacia lo (...) que denominaremos el «despotismo individualista». De otro lado, el reforzamiento del sistema plebiscitario a través de una creciente «burocratización» que proviene del desarrollo acelerado de los procesos de racionalización instrumental en la sociedad moderna. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é investigar o republicanismo presente no pensamento de Alexis de Tocqueville, como crítica ao despotismo nas eras democráticas. Para tanto, seguiremos a leitura interpretativa de autores contemporâneos como Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor e Jacques Rancière, que destacam, em suas reflexões, a interpretação de Tocqueville acerca da revolução americana, enfatizando os limites e as possibilidade de uma política participativa como crítica a um despotismo emergente na democracia. Tocqueville observa uma tendência, na democracia, de um crescente (...) individualismo moderno, junto com a perda dos laços comunitários, essenciais para a vida pública. Ele mostra-se preocupado com a indiferença pela política enquanto participação da sociedade nas decisões, havendo o perigo de uma nova, especificamente moderna, forma de despotismo. Não será uma tirania do terror e da opressão. O governo poderá até se manter com eleições periódicas. Porém, tudo poderá ser governado por um enorme poder tutelar sobre o qual o povo terá pouco ou nenhum controle. Esse tipo de servidão regrada, doce e calma pode perfeitamente se estabelecer nas democracias. Somente com uma cultura de participação política, através de associações comunitárias, em vários níveis do poder, poderemos, diz Tocqueville, combater o despotismo crescente na democracia. (shrink)

In this article we are concerned with an analysis of the modern crisis of democracy. This aim should be pursued through the related works of Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber. The study begins with the claim that both authors, not only are concerned with the analysis of the rising mass democracy, but furthermore they outline the main tendencies of this new form of society. On the one hand, there is a proclivity of the contemporary systems to enter into what (...) could be denominated «individualist despotism». On the other hand, the underpinning of the plebiscitary democracy runs through an increasing «bureaucratization», which remains on the intensive process of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

“Our Tyrannies. Tocqueville on Democratic Despotism”. Although thelexicon of “tyranny” and “despotism” is subject to historical changes in meaning,we still keep on using those terms to refer to some types of illegitimate, unjust orindecent political regimes. So does Tocqueville, when he describes the new waysof despotism emerging from modern democratic revolution. In this article, weexplore the uses of “tyranny” and “despotism” in Tocqueville’s thought, and wealso try to discover the concrete models or social prototypes which could inspireTocqueville’s prognosis concerning a (...) tutelary democratic despotism. (shrink)

Han Feizi es el principal representante de la escuela legista china. Los principios de su teoría política le han granjeado el apodo de “el Maquiavelo chino”. Sus ideas serían adoptadas por Qin Shihuang, el Primer Emperador, quien unificó China e impuso un régimen despótico caracterizado por la represión del debate político y la supresión de la libertad de expresión. La conexión entre el desarrollo de la retórica y la situación política en el contexto de la última etapa del clasicismo chino (...) puede servir de fondo para una consideración más amplia de dicho nexo. La retórica comparada proporciona las bases para relacionar el pensamiento legista chino con el discurso neoliberal contemporáneo. (shrink)

Los efectos del individualismo en la participación política son aspectos tratados por Charles Taylor en su obra, preocupado porque ello está menguando el involucramiento de los individuos en el destino de la sociedad. Las personas se alejan de la sociedad sin percatarse que podrían estar camino a su autodestrucción, en tanto se forjen débiles frente al poder del Estado. Serán los actores estatales quienes aprovechen este escenario de desconexión para tomar decisiones que controlen esa “individualidad”. Ello podría estar beneficiando a (...) una clase política perversa – plagada de actores individualistas – que aprovecha estos espacios de indiferencia ciudadana para su favorecimiento. En ese sentido, Taylor desarrolla su “Teoría de los tres malestares de la Modernidad”, donde describe aspectos sobre el individualismo y la razón instrumental que han trascendido a los gobiernos por ser de suma importancia, aislando a los individuos de la sociedad y permitiendo que emerja el despotismo blando como un poder tutelar que deja a los ciudadanos indefensos frente al Estado, siendo la participación política su única manera de defenderse. (shrink)

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventise terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenereedita doctrina sapientum templa serena,despicere unde queas alios passimque videreerrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, 10certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,noctes atque dies niti praestante laboread summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!qualibus in (...) tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 15degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne viderenil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utquicorpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruaturiucundo sensu cura semota metuque?(Lucr. 2.1–19)It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the waters on the great sea,to watch the great struggle of another from land;not because it is a great pleasure that anyone be troubled,but because it is pleasant to observe the troubles you yourself lack.It is also pleasant to watch the great contests of war 5spread out over the plains without taking any part in the danger.But nothing is more pleasing than to hold lofty yet calm templesthat are well defended by the teachings of wise men,from which you can look down and see others everywherego astray and wander while seeking the path of their life, 10competing in wits and contending over their nobility;throughout nights and days they strive with outstanding labourto come out at the peak of riches and have power over everything.O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!In what shadows of life and in how many dangers 15is this bit of life, whatever it may be, being spent by you! Do you not seethat nature barks for nothing other than this – thatgrief be separated from the body and far away, and that the mind enjoypleasant feelings cut off from anxiety and fear?Epicurus' advice to his young friend Pythocles to ‘flee all education, raising up the top sail’ (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, ϕεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, Diog.Laert. 10.6 = Epicurus fr. 163 Us.) contains an allusion to Circe's advice to Odysseus inOdyssey12.37–58. For much of the Greek (and Roman) world, education was based on the Homeric epics, and thus Epicurus' statement represents a complicated position towards Homer in particular and poetry in general. Epicurean philosophy rejects poetry because it is misleading about the gods and the nature of the soul, but Epicurus and his followers, most notably Philodemus and Lucretius, engage in poetic allusion and even the composition of poetry. Much work has been done on allusions to poetry in all three writers, but I hope here to bring out a heretofore unnoticed poetic allusion at the start ofDe rerum naturaBook 2, in which Lucretius makes a programmatic statement about not only his philosophy, but also his poetry and its place in the poetic tradition. (shrink)

Estudio y an lisis del pensamiento e influencia de Thomas Hobbes en la pol tica contempor nea, consider ndolo el creador de la primera teor a del estado moderno. el reconocimiento de Hobbes son sus teor as sobre el materialismo en filosof a, el utilitarismo en moral y el despotismo en pol tica. Textos y ensayos referentes al iusnaturalismo, las sociedades parciales y la ley natural y civil en la filosof a de Hobbes.

It is hard to think of a better subject for the exercise of retrospective analysis with which we are here concerned than Robert Boyle, the leading British scientist of his day, and arguably the most significant before Newton. A prolific and influential author, Boyle was lionized in his time both for his scientific achievement and for his piety and philanthropy. Of late, he has been the subject of attention from a variety of viewpoints which, as we shall see, raises the (...) issue of how he is best understood. In particular, I want to argue that, for all his eminence, there are complications about Boyle's personality that cry out for scrutiny, and it is on the implications of these that I will dwell in the latter stages of my paper.Boyle was born into one of the most privileged aristocratic families in England. His father, Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, was Lord High Treasurer of Ireland before the Civil War, and Robert, the youngest – and, as he himself claimed, favourite – son, was brought up in an opulent, privileged setting, surrounded by servants and with an entrée at the royal court. His elder brothers were suave and active figures, only too ready to be involved in the fighting of the Civil War – in which one, Viscount Kinalmeaky, was killed, though two others, Lords Dungarvan and Broghill, survived to go on to high state office under both Cromwell and Charles II. This background undoubtedly had a significant influence on Boyle, giving him an aristocratic demeanour to which his contemporaries almost automatically deferred. It also made him familiar with the mindless social milieu of landed society, in which it was all too easy to ‘squander away a whole afternoone in tatling of this Ladys Face & tother Lady's Clothes; of this Lords being Drunke & that Lord's Clap; in telling how this Gentleman's horse outrun that other's Mare’. (shrink)

A leitura liberal de Montesquieu não evoca apenas sua concepção de checks and balances, ela insiste na distância tomada por Montesquieu em relação à concepção republicana da liberdade. Montesquieu exprimiria sua escolha em favor da “república moderna”, representativa e comerciante à inglesa, em detrimento da “república participativa” dos antigos e da monarquia absolutista à francesa. O Espírito das leis faria do modelo inglês o regime mais conforme à natureza humana, aquele que garantiria melhor a segurança dos indivíduos. Caso se admita (...) essa visão das coisas, a liberdade positiva cede lugar aqui a uma liberdade negativa, definida como independência no interior de uma esfera protegida pelo direito, garantida pela separação dos poderes no seio do sistema representativo. O presente artigo, a fim de avaliar a pertinência dessa interpretação, examinará (I) as definições da liberdade política que Montesquieu distingue da liberdade dita “filosófica”; em segundo lugar, considerará a “solução” que propõe O Espírito das leis face ao risco que o despotismo causa a todos os governos. O propósito será aqui avaliar o estatuto do “modelo inglês” (II). (shrink)

Este artículo reflexiona sobre dos autores que fueron testigos del declive de sendos periodos histórico-políticos, pero en cuyo pensamiento sigue presente el imaginario político que caracterizaba el período pretérito, del mismo modo que sus textos analizan las causas que produjeron tal declive.Así, Isócrates persigue la defensa del ideal democrático griego y la vuelta a la antigua constitución ateniense, denunciando los errores cometidos y proponiendo las condiciones que posibilitarían su restauración; Tocqueville, por su lado, escribe El Antiguo Régimen y la Revolución (...) motivado por el profundo rechazo que las secuelas del torbellino revolucionario produjeron en él, analizando los desaciertos y las motivaciones que hicieron posible el cataclismo histórico puesto en marcha por el proceso revolucionario, a la vez que desenmascara el sistema de opresión y despotismo que se ha consumado con el triunfo de la Revolución. (shrink)

Como pensar a ética a partir das contradições de um mundo que, no mesmo espaço e ao mesmo tempo, produz uma ciência e intelectuais dedicados a pesquisar princípios de vida e armas de morte; progressos nas comunicações e mecanismos sutis e aberrantes de censura? Eis as questões: falso bem, falsa justiça, falsa liberdade, falsa virtude, que, ao criarem o homem da concórdia, da submissão e da boa-fé, o tornam duas vezes escravo: da superstição e das convenções. Os textos que compõem (...) essa obra, originalmente produzidos para o curso livre Ética, procuram, assim, pensar as razões pelas quais os homens se comportam de determinada maneira e por que a maioria das doutrinas morais conserva vestígios da servidão, no momento mesmo em que promete instaurar a liberdade.ÍndiceCenários - Adauto NovaesA tragédia grega e o humano - Nicole LorauxHumanidade e justiça na historiografia grega, V-I a. C. - Catherine Darbo-PeschanskiAs delícias do jardim - José Américo Motta PessanhaA culpa dos reis: mando e transgressão no Ricardo II - Antonio CandidoO retorno do bom governo - Renato Janine RibeiroAs fronteiras da ética: Maquiavel - Newton BignottoPolítica do céu (anti-Maquiavel) - Antonio Alcir Bernárdez PécoraDilemas da moral iluminista - Sergio Paulo RouanetUma reinvenção da ética socialista - Nelson LevyEstado e Terror - Paulo Sérgio PinheiroO eterno retorno do mesmo: tese cosmológica ou imperativo ético? - Scarlett MartonA mentira: um capítulo das relações entre a ética e a política - Celso LaferMoralidade pública e moralidade privada - José Arthur GianottiO sujeito e a norma - Gerd BornheimA mulher e a lei - Maria Rita KehlImpasses da ética naturalista: Gide e o homoerotismo - Jurandir Freire CostaBom dia, senhor Coubert! - Jorge ColiVer o invisível: a ética das imagens - Nelson Brissac PeixotoIlusões perdidas - José Miguel WisnikPúblico, privado, despotismo - Marilena Chauí. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 20-39 [Access article in PDF] Anderson and the Novel Jonathan Culler 1 Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism has, in the past decade, become a classic of the humanities and social sciences. Any theoretically savvy discussion of nations or of societies of any sort must cite it for its fundamental insight that nations and, as Anderson points out, "all communities (...) larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined" [6]. In retrospect, it seems obvious that nationality, nationness, and nationalism "are cultural artifacts of a particular kind" [4], but this had previously been obscured by intellectuals' sense that nationalism was above all an atavistic passion, an often noxious prejudice of the unenlightened. Imagined Communities both argued that we had better seek to understand it, since "nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time" [3], and gave us a constructivist way of thinking about the phenomenon of nationalism, which becomes more interesting and intellectually more acceptable when we ask how it is created, what discursive, imaginative activities bring particular nationalisms into being and give them their distinctive form. When nationalism was vulgar passion provoked by empirically occurring nations, it was vulnerable to the objection implicitly or explicitly mounted against it: why should I feel more affinity with people who happen to inhabit the country I live in than with others, more like-minded, who happen to have been born in other nations? Anderson neatly turned the tables on us by taking this as a serious question. Why indeed do we feel such affinities? How to explain the fact that people are more willing to make great sacrifices for others of the same nation whom they have never met (and whom they might dislike if they did) than for worthy and unfortunate people elsewhere?Read today, the introduction to Imagined Communities has the rightness and efficiency of a classic ("why hadn't anyone realized this before?"), as it guides us into the paradoxes of the modern world of nationalism: nations are objectively recent but subjectively antique, even eternal; nations may be messianic, but no nation's citizens imagine that everyone should eventually join their nation. Already here Anderson displays what I take to be the key to his appeal to the nonspecialist: his ability concretely to show us the strangeness of the familiar by judicious comparisons. Try to imagine a "Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a Cenotaph for fallen Liberals," he suggests. But a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier does not seem risible. Why? "Many different nations have such tombs without feeling any need to specify the nationality of their absent occupants. What else could they be but Germans, American, Argentinians...?" [10]. We are in a sentence or two brought to appreciate the necessity of accounting for a social and cultural phenomenon that comparison and humor highlight.The second edition of Imagined Communities demonstrates, in a compelling if serendipitous way, just how much we need Anderson to provide such insights, as it takes up what he and his readers had failed to notice in the first edition. There he had quoted Ernest Renan remarking "in his suavely backhanded way," "Or l'essence d'une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous [End Page 20] aient oubliés bien des choses [in fact the essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common and also that they have all forgotten many things]," with a footnote continuing the quotation: "tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIIIe siècle [every French citizen must have forgotten Saint Bartholomew's, the Provence massacres in the thirteenth century]" [6]. In the preface to the second edition Anderson notes, "I had quoted Renan without the slightest understanding of what he had actually said: I had taken as something easily ironical what was in fact utterly bizarre" [xiv]. He calls this a "humiliating recognition" [xiv], which led him to write... (shrink)

Se examina el trasfondo subjetivo de Respuesta a la pregunta: ¿qué es la ilustración?, que anuncia la condición antropológico-política de la minoría de edad; mostrándose que su objetivo es lograr la ilustración del Estado a partir de dicha condición. Finalmente, se expone cómo la minoría de edad es la traslación antropológica del despotismo político, y cómo este se traduce lógico-subjetivamente en los prejuicios. The article examines the subjective background of Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? A text in which (...) the anthropological and political condition of minority is announced. It is shown that the objective of Kant's article is to achieve the enlightenment of the State taking such condition as starting point. Finally, it is shown how minority is the anthropological translation of political despotism and how it is logically and subjectively translated into prejudices. (shrink)

El Vaticano II fue una experiencia vivencial de militantes cristianos que se comprometieron durante su realización y posterior implantación. Como en la liturgia, se recorrió un camino nuevo y vivo pasando de una Iglesia “de espaldas” al pueblo a una Iglesia “vuelta” para el pueblo. Novedad generosa y valiente enriquecida por la esperanza que, con fracasos, dudas, luchas se insertó en los grupos marginados. Desde allí siguieron buscándose nuevos caminos y surgieron nuevas esperanzas. Actitudes que crearon la fuerza de una (...) comunión inspirada en el amor y el sacrificio de Jesús en busca de una humanidad mejor. Novedades y cambios que provocaron conflictos eclesiológicos y mostraron la vida y dinamismo de nacientes comunidades que apostaron por la renovación del Espíritu. Los conflictos fueron anuncio contra el silencio que se quería imponer y confesión de fe de los que creyeron en el Dios de la vida. En nuestras limitadas y condicionadas voluntades, la Ruah divina que fecundó el Concilio, sigue soplando para mejorar la historia. Queriéndolo o no, las estructuras eclesiales se mueven aunque sean como una brisa suave. - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2011v9n24p1325. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo da cuenta de la forma en que el liberalismo del filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), al conceder un rol activo al Estado en la “habilitación de la masa desheredada”, responde al adjetivo “social”. En Abasolo, el deber de asegurar en lo posible la prosperidad de las personas, se sostiene en el derecho natural y en una teología de la historia pan[en]teísta afín al krausismo. Abasolo piensa que la redención del desheredado en naciones aun juveniles debe apoyarse en (...) una forma de Estado “casi socialista”. Esto implica una acción de centralización y de tutela del pueblo que enfrenta a los autores del artículo a la gran dificultad de determinar cómo el autor chileno realiza la transición de una habilitación consumada a través de un buen grado de despotismo, hacia la libertad. Es decir, resulta controversial establecer la factibilidad de la realización de esta vía cuasi socialista a un liberalismo contrafácticamente orientado por el laissez faire. Abstract This article shows how the liberalism of the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), by granting an active role to the State in the “empowerment of the disinherited mass”, responds to the adjective “social”. In Abasolo, the duty to ensure as far as possible the prosperity of the people is based on natural law and on a pan[en]theistic theology of history akin to Krausism. Abasolo thinks that the redemption of the disinherited in even juvenile nations must be supported by an “almost socialist” form of state. This implies an action of centralization and guardianship of the people that confronts the authors of the article with the great difficulty of determining how the Chilean author makes the transition from an empowerment consummated through a good degree of despotism, towards freedom. That is to say, it is controversial to establish the feasibility of the realization of this quasi-socialist path to a liberalism counterfactually oriented by laissez faire. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

Estas páginas se dedican a indagar en ciertos aspectos de la filmografía de Christian Petzold,uno de los directores más signicativos del nuevo cine alemán, posterior a la caída del muro de Berlín. Tomando como clave hermenéutica la presencia en estas películas de «la imagen de perfil», se toma el pulso a la actualidad del efecto de distanciamiento propuesto por Brecht, los nuevos recursos empleados en la técnica de «montaje suave» (Farocki) y la voluntad de Petzold de documentar la verdad (...) a través de la ficción. El tratamiento insistente, a través de la imagen cinematográfica, de los traumas sufridos por las dos Alemanias a lo largo del sigloXX constituye el argumento principal de este artículo. (shrink)

O presente artigo faz considerações sobre dois conceitos essenciais na filosofia de Montesquieu: a natureza e o princípio dos regimes. Num primeiro momento, demonstramos os tipos de regimes existentes no pensamento de Montesquieu. Como ressaltamos, Montesquieu apresenta uma tipologia de regimes diferente da apresentada por Aristóteles. Uma questão que abordamos corresponde ao fato de que, para Montesquieu, o despotismo é considerado um regime próprio e não, um desvio. Após tratar dessa questão, analisamos o conceito de natureza e princípio dos (...) regimes. O primeiro termo diz respeito aos sujeitos que exercem o poder assim como o modo pelo qual o poder é exercido. Já o segundo termo diz respeito aos sentimentos predominantes dos governados em relação ao regime. Por fim, analisamos a natureza e do princípio de cada regime. (shrink)

Lord Acton se mostró partidario de la causa Confederada. Lo hizo guiado por su sentido de la Historia y del poder: los ideales tienen una potencia transformadora y los estados del Sur proclamaron la secesión movidos por la reivindicación de los principios originales de la Revolución norteamericana frente a la tiranía de la mayoría. Acton no entra en interpretaciones jurídicas acerca de la materialización del derecho de secesión, pero explica el significado efectivo de la noción de soberanía y la incluye (...) entre los inalienables derechos de los estados. Acton, celoso de preservar los contrapesos que neutralicen o limiten la tendencia hacia el despotismo de la mayoría y del “Gobierno General”, considera que los estados del Sur lucharon por un ideal: proteger sus derechos sobre la base de la vieja Constitución y por una nueva Unión. (shrink)

* Doutora em Educação, Arte e História da Cultura pela Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie. Servidora na Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo. Colaboradora da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal. Diderot e a educação como projeto de Estado Resumo: O Iluminismo, além de movimento intelectual, também se traduziu em intensa atividade política, sendo uma das faces desta ação o despotismo esclarecido: fruto da aliança entre filósofos, que buscavam divulgar seus ideais, e monarcas absolutistas, empenhados em melhorar a sua imagem pública. (...) A aproximação do filósofo Diderot com a imperatriz russa Catarina II, produziu reflexões sobre vários temas, um deles aqui explorado: o papel do Estado na educação pública, apresentado na obra Plano de Uma Universidade. Em nosso artigo, partimos da apresentação do despotismo esclarecido, com foco na relação de Diderot com a imperatriz russa. Em seguida, discorremos sobre as bases da educação pública no século XVIII, e finalizamos com a proposta diderotiana sobre o papel do Estado no fomento da educação pública, enfatizando três propostas elementares, que, segundo o autor, promoveriam essa aliança: o acesso irrestrito à educação, a presença do Estado na estrutura administrativa e organizacional, e a atualização curricular.Palavras-Chave: Iluminismo; Diderot; Educação. Diderot and education as State project: The Enlightenment was not only an intellectual movement, but was also expressed in politics, such as in enlightened despotism. This was the result of an alliance between philosophers in search to spread their ideas and absolutist monarchs trying to enhance their public figures. Here we explore one among many fruits of the association between Diderot and Catherine the II, Empress of Russia: the role of the State in public education, as presented in The Plan of a University. We start from a general presentation of enlightened despotism, focusing on Diderot and Catherine the Great’s relation; next, we explore the basis of public education on the XVIII century, and finally we present Diderot’s plan itself, in which the State has the role of fostering education, relying on three key aspects: unrestricted access to education, the presence of the State in the organizational and administrative structure, and the update of the curriculum.Keywords: Enlightenment; Diderot; Education. Diderot y la educación como proyecto de Estado Resumen: El Iluminismo, además de movimiento intelectual, también se tradujo en intensa actividad política, siendo una de las caras de esta acción el despotismo ilustrado: fruto de la alianza entre filósofos, que buscaban divulgar sus ideales, y monarcas absolutistas, empeñados en mejorar su imagen pública. La aproximación del filósofo Diderot con la emperatriz rusa Catalina II, produjo reflexiones sobre varios temas, uno de ellos aquí explotado: el rol del Estado en la educación pública, presentado en la obra Plan de una Universidad. En nuestro artículo, partimos de la presentación del despotismo ilustrado, teniendo em cuenta la relación de Diderot con la emperatriz rusa. A continuación, discordamos sobre las bases de la educación pública en el siglo XVIII, y finalizamos con la propuesta diderotiana sobre el rol del Estado en el fomento de la educación pública, enfatizando tres propuestas elementales que, según el autor, promoverían esa alianza: el acceso irrestricto a la educación, la presencia del Estado en la estructura administrativa y organizativa, y la actualización curricular.Palabras Clave: Iluminismo; Diderot; Educación. Data de registro: 08/02/2019 Data de aceite: 30/10/2019. (shrink)

Se examina la posición de Kant con respecto a la vinculación del derecho con el impulso natural a la felicidad: si Estado se establece para satisfacer fines particulares, se termina justificando el despotismo y la rebelión popular. Se plantean dos hipótesis: a) el principio de la felicidad se debe reemplazar por la idea de una voluntad general legisladora como único criterio normativo-evaluativo de la legitimidad de la obligación política; b) este principio jurídico a prioriobliga al soberano y también al (...) pueblo a adoptar la perspectiva de la voluntad general para juzgar el poder político vigente. (shrink)

Este artículo discute las opiniones de Ibn Ḥazm de Córdoba jurista y teólogo, acerca de la homosexualidad. Aunque se hace referencia a su obra literaria Ṭawq al-ḥamāma, rica en anécdotas sobre atracción homoerótica, el artículo se centra en su voluminosa obra legal zahirí Kitāb al-Muḥallā y analiza el razonamiento legal de Ibn Ḥazm sobre la homosexualidad tanto masculina como femenina comparándola con la de otros juristas, en particular, malikíes.A diferencia de sus contemporáneos malikíes, Ibn Hazm mantiene que la homosexualidad no (...) debe equipararse a la fornicación que incurre en la pena de muerte. Por el contrario, aboga por el relativamente suave castigo de diez latigazos por prácticas homosexuales, basado en su interpretación de las fuentes reveladas tal y como se expone en este artículo.Aunque algunos autores modernos han insinuado que el propio Ibn Ḥazm era homosexual, él condena categóricamente las relaciones entre miembros de un mismo sexo y mantiene que los homosexuales deben reformarse. (shrink)

Os Discursos à Nação Alemã de Fichte foram considerados durante muito tempo uma importante contribuição para o desenvolvimento do nacionalismo alemão e do pensamento nacionalista em geral Todavia, embora os Discursos continuem sendo lidos como um prenúncio das aspirações nacionalistas alemãs, grande parte de seu contendo substantivo é hoje ignorado. Neste artigo, o Autor examina um aspecto deveras negligenciado dos Discursos, a saber, o “sistema de educação nacional” neles propostos e que merecem séria consideração pelo modo como Fichte concebe e (...) articula o papel e função da intelligentsia em busca de salvação nacional. Argumenta-se, de modo especial, que é através da exaltação da educação que Fichte legitima sua proposta de governo por uma elite erudita, um tipo de despotismo esclareci do. Mostra-se ainda que o escopo dos privilégios concedidos aos “eruditos” na reforma educacional de Fichte solapa seu potencial radicalmente igualitarista, e que sua proposta termina por mostrar-se incoerente e inconsistente em seus próprios termos, na medida em que os propósitos explícitos de seu sistema e os resultados prometidos invalidariam completamente, se levados a cabo, a reivindicação dos esclarecidos de governa, se não a necessidade de tais governantes. (shrink)

El presente trabajo reconstruye la influencia de Aristóteles en Tocqueville para revitalizar el valor empírico e histórico de su psicología de la democracia, y “polemizar” con interpretaciones racionalistas. De este modo, introduce correctivos en interpretaciones exclusivamente racionalistas y cognoscitivas que yuxtaponen los diferentes modelos de despotismo concebidos por Tocqueville para reconstruir resultados equivalentes de sus efectos. En función de estas premisas, subraya la originalidad del autor francés en el tema del despotismo, argumentando una versión hegemónica de sus efectos (...) destinada a reproducirse en el comportamiento individual bajo formas “asentidas” de dominación. (shrink)

El presente artículo desarrolla la hipótesis de que existiría en la teoría estética de John Dewey una especie de “cognitivismo suave”. Para alcanzar este objetivo, la investigación se ha dividido en cuatro fases. En la primera de ellas, una breve introducción presenta la cuestión del cognitivismo. A continuación, se analiza cómo John Dewey resignifica los conceptos, posibilitando así la formulación de otra teoría. En tercer lugar, se retoma el duodécimo capítulo de su libro El arte como experiencia, de 1934, (...) donde se explica mejor su postura. Por último, a modo de conclusión, se apunta la importancia de esta perspectiva para el diálogo estético contemporáneo. (shrink)

Resumo: Os escritos estéticos de Lukács durante a emigração na URSS constituem uma súmula de seu posicionamento contra o despotismo stalinista e a ortodoxia soviética. A despeito das “autocríticas protocolares”, os textos expressam a crítica interdita pelo dogmatismo e o sectarismo característicos do período e irão repercutir a preocupação do autor de que a Estética e Para uma Ontologia do Ser Social, fossem consideradas como sua contribuição à urgência da construção de um projeto de renovação e renascimento do marxismo.

El prejuicio más aciago de la filosofía es que su historia jalona rivalidades sangrientas, conflictos insuperables, superaciones radicales, reinicios absolutos, fines y clausuras. Se trata de una concepción pobre y desangelada de esta pasión que impulsa mi viaje por la tierra. El paisaje de lo trascendental se anima cuando se lo concibe como el trabajo conjunto de una saga de artistas embriagados por el pensamiento. Esto no quiere decir que se trate de una suave danza de almas bellas; por (...) el contrario, esa misma embriaguez lleva a enfrentamientos salvajes: hay interpretaciones en las que se nos va la vida, hay conceptos cuya importancia nos desvela, hay posturas que nos parecen escandalosas. Sin embargo, también cuando la danza se hace tan turbulenta que se parece más bien a una brutal pelea de box, lo que importa es esa violencia que fuerza a pensar, y no quién tiene razón. Discutimos porque pensamos juntos, nos respetamos cuando nos criticamos de forma salvaje. Así se construye el pensamiento común: en la tensión y no en la calma, en la pasión de la embriaguez que alterna afinidades radicales y diferencias que parecen irreconciliables.Este libro se propone sostener tal visión de la filosofía a través de un experimento crucial: mostrar que entrelazando a Hegel y a Deleuze podemos construir una potente ontología práctica, que tome la multiplicidad como prius, para dar cuenta del mundo y de la experiencia, donde se conjugan movimiento y devenir con identidades y persistencias. Con ese objetivo, a lo largo de estas páginas expondré a la multiplicidad como una fuerza capaz de determinarse en formas concretas y precisas. La alianza de Deleuze y Hegel nos brinda herramientas conceptuales preciosas para esa tarea: el primero nos ofrece esa ontología de la multiplicidad, mientras el segundo nos plaga de determinaciones sutiles hasta el agotamiento. Una lectura de Hegel desde una perspectiva deleuziana abre nuestros ojos a las miríadas de diferencias y al sutil recorrido incluso de lo más bajo (en su filosofía de la naturaleza hay un secreto slum naturalismo: un amor apasionado por la vileza y las formas más precarias de la existencia). Una lectura de Deleuze desde la perspectiva hegeliana abre nuestros ojos a la máquina de determinación y constitución de lo existente que se alimenta de los flujos y rizomas que lo han hecho célebre. (shrink)

Este artículo nos adentra en el estudio del problema del “jansenismo español” durante el siglo de Ilustración. En la primera parte se presenta el origen del jansenismo teológico, moral y disciplinar. Se indican sus representantes y sus obras. Más tarde se convierte en jansenismo político, también llamado jansenismo histórico. La influencia del pensamiento de los jansenistas franceses, holandeses e italianos sobre los jansenistas españoles es evidente y fehaciente. La historiografía sobre el particular es abundante. Se presentan las características más importantes (...) del jansenismo español, en relación con el despotismo ilustrado, el regalismo y el reformismo, además de un gran interés por la Biblia, el Derecho y la Historia. (shrink)

In recent years, the trend to present the notion of imperfection as a plus rather than a problem has resonated across a range of social and creative disciplines and a wealth of world localities. As digital tools allow media users to share ever more suave selfies and success stories, psychologists promote 'the gifts of imperfections' and point to perfectionism as a catalyst for rising depression and burnout complaints and suicide rates among millennials. As sound technologies increasingly permit musicians to (...) 'smoothen' their work, composers increasingly praise glitches, noise, and cracks. As genetic engineering upgrades with swift speed, philosophers, marketeers, and physicians plea 'against perfection' and supermarkets successfully advertize 'perfectly imperfect' vegetables. Meanwhile, cultural analysts point at skewed perspectives, blurry images, and other 'deliberate imperfections' in new and historical cinema, painting, photography, music, and literature. In less positive terms, scholars in fields ranging from disability studies to tourism critically interrogate a trend to fetishize imperfection and poverty. They rightfully warn against projecting privileged (and, often, emphatically western-biased) feel-good stories onto the less privileged, the distorted, or the frail. Imperfections synthesizes the swiftly growing but fragmented critical scholarship on mistakes, glitches, and other aesthetics and logics of imperfection into the first transdisciplinary, transnational framework of imperfection studies. With this framework, the editors offer scholars and students across various disciplines tools to craft more historically grounded and critically informed conceptualizations of the imperfect. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza una de las facetas más relevantes del pensamiento político de Lord Acton: la relación entre catolicismo y liberalismo. Se utilizan algunos de sus escritos más significativos de esa temática durante las décadas de 1850 a 1870, complementados con datos procedentes de su correspondencia y teniendo muy presente los principales estudios disponibles sobre su biografía intelectual. Aquí se sostiene que Acton planteó una simbiosis de catolicismo y liberalismo significativamente particular, deudora de la tradición liberal inglesa, pero con un (...) componente de análisis historiográfico y ético que la singulariza de forma notable. Su forma de entrelazar cristianismo e individualismo moral, a partir de lo que denominó “the Christian notion of conscience”, enfrentaba radicalmente a la iglesia con cualquier forma de despotismo y se amparaba en una ineludible separación de esferas. Esto explica su rechazo a los decretos conciliares proclamados por Pío IX en 1870 y su incómoda y ambigua posición dentro de la iglesia tras esa fecha. Pero también su aportación singular y no exenta de contradicciones al intento de conciliación entre catolicismo y liberalismo en la Europa del último cuarto del siglo XIX. (shrink)

De revolución hemos derivado revolucionario; y esta palabra, con carácter general, se refiere a todo lo atinente a una revolución. Pero el término fue creado específicamente para aplicarse a la nuestra, para la revolución que ha transformado en pocos años a uno de los países en los que el despotismo prevalecía desde más antiguo, en la única república donde la libertad ha tenido alguna vez por base una total igualdad de derechos. Así, la palabra revolucionario se aplica solo a (...) las revoluciones que tienen por objeto la libertad. (shrink)

Frágil é, segundo Alexis de Tocqueville, o equilíbrio em que se encontra a liberdade em um estado social de igualdade de condições. Tomados pela sua maior paixão, a da igualdade, os homens democráticos podem assistir a conversão da liberdade em despotismo ao se entregarem à busca exclusiva de seus interesses e bens privados, ao abdicarem da faculdade de julgar, deixandose guiar servilmente pela opinião da maioria, a fonte da autoridade em tal estado social. Em face disso, este artigo sustenta (...) que, ao discorrer acerca dos costumes estadunidenses, n'A Democracia na América, o autor não faz mera descrição mas delineia uma teoria social, a doutrina do interesse bem compreendido, a qual relacionaria, na república americana, a virtude e o interesse, e poderia fornecer elementos para instruir as sociedades democráticas. (shrink)

No pocos contemporáneos de Kant, incluidos algunos de sus discípulos, fueron pródigos en la crítica mordaz del carácter sistemático de su filosofía, y señaladamente, de la prosa filosófica en que ese carácter se expresaba. Otros, en cambio, no se privaron de manifestar el deseo de ver al filósofo aislado o acorralado en el recinto puramente especulativo del aula académica, en la buena —o en la mala— compañía de todos los políticos metafísicos de la época: «illa se iactet in aula!» Pero, (...) temerosos de que los muros o los barrotes metafóricos del aula no bastaran a contener la propagación «popular» de las ideas del filósofo, completaron, con Burke, el verso de Virgilio en inequívoca alusión a barrotes seguramente menos simbólicos: «Illa se iactet in aula Aeolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet». Kant respondió en su momento a los unos y a los otros, por separado, y también de consuno, pero siempre desde la convicción, tenazmente mantenida, de la importancia de la teoría filosófica y de una disciplina metodológica, las cuales, aun si «impopulares» al comienzo, consideraba esenciales para una práctica moral y política tan hostil al paternalismo moral como a su contracara, el despotismo político. (shrink)