v. 1. El tiempo histórico de Mario Hernández Sánchez-Barba -- v. 2. Generaciones y mentalidades. Estudios de teoría de la Historia.

Root text and autocommentary on Buddhist logic.

This contradiction ”1. The universal right to free speech did not exist before the European Enlightenment, at which time it came into existence. 2. The universal right to free speech has always existed, but this right was recognized only at the time of the European Enlightenment.” draws on two common and conflicting intuitions: The human right to free speech exists because institutions, or the law, says so. In contrast, the human right to free speech can exist independently of institutions—these institutions (...) simply recognize a right we already have. John Searle argues that his status function account of human rights can preserve both intuitions by showing that the inconsistency between and is merely apparent. I argue that this solution works for tokens of human rights but not for types, while the contradiction concerns types. Hence, the status function account of human rights fails to preserve both intuitions. (shrink)

Obwohl nur in einer anonymen Kopie überliefert, zählt die in diesem "Gespräch" von 1648 vollzogene Erörterung der wesentlichen Punkte der cartesischen Lehre zu den meistzitierten Texten Descartes'. Die Ausgabe bietet die aufgrund des Manuskripts bereinigte lateinische Originalfassung mit Lesarten und parallel dazu eine erste deutsche Übersetzung.

Picking up on John Forrester’s (1949–2015) disclosure that he felt ‘haunted’ by the suspicion that Thomas Kuhn’s (1922–96) interests had become his own, this essay complexifies our understanding of both of their legacies by presenting two sites for that haunting. The first is located by engaging Forrester’s argument that the connection between Kuhn and psychoanalysis was direct. (This was the supposed source of his historiographical method: ‘climbing into other people’s heads’.) However, recent archival discoveries suggest that that is incorrect. Instead, (...) Kuhn’s influence in this regard was Jean Piaget (1896–1980). And it is Piaget’s thinking that was influenced directly by psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis then haunts Kuhn’s thinking through Piaget, and thus Piaget haunts Forrester through Kuhn. To better understand this second site of the haunting—which is ultimately the more important one, given the intent of this special issue—Piaget’s early psychoanalytic ideas are uncovered through their interaction with his early biology and subsequent turn to philosophy. But several layers of conflicting contemporary misunderstandings are first excavated. The method of hauntology is also developed, taking advantage of its origins as a critical response to the psychoanalytic discourse. As a result of adopting this approach, a larger than usual number of primary sources have been unearthed and presented as evidence (including new translations from French originals). Where those influences have continued to have an impact, but their sources forgotten, they have thus been returned. They can then all be considered together in deriving new perspectives of Forrester’s cases/Kuhn’s exemplars/Piaget’s stages. (shrink)

I argue that a central claim of Ásta’s conferralist framework – that it can account for all social properties of individuals – is false, by drawing attention to (opaque) class. I then discuss an implication of this objection; conferralism does not meet its own conditions of adequacy, such as providing a theory that helps to understand oppression. My diagnosis is that this objection points to a methodological problem: Ásta and other social ontologists have been fed on a “one-sided diet” of (...) types of examples, resulting in a limited view of the paradigmatic social phenomena, thus making conferralism too narrow to fulfill its intended role. (shrink)

This paper revisits Fanon’s relationship with psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian psychoanalysis, via a close reading of his rhetorics of childhood – primarily as mobilized by the ‘Look, a Negro!’ scenario from Black Skin, White Masks, the traumatogenic scene which installs the black man’s sense of alienation from his own body and his inferiority. While this scene has been much discussed, the role accorded the child in this has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on the role and positioning of the child (...) to reconsider Fanon’s ideas, in relation to his contribution to the social constitution of subjectivity, arguing that reading Fanon alongside both his citations of Lacan and some aspects of Lacanian theory opens up further interpretive possibilities in teasing out tensions in Fanon’s writing around models of subjectivity. Finally, it is argued that it is where Fanon retains an indeterminacy surrounding the child that he is most politically fruitful. (shrink)

How close is feminist psychology to contemporary feminism? How can feminist psychological practice address issues of `difference' between women in meaningful ways? What price has feminist psychology had to pay for attempting to engage with mainstream psychology to revise and improve it? This book critiques feminist practice within psychology, and reflects the diversity from across the globe of feminist struggles around psychology. An international group of key feminist psychologists explore the relations between feminist politics and psychological practices in: transitional and (...) postcolonial contexts; the distinct European traditions of critical psychology and women's studies; and psychology's colonial `centre' in the United. (shrink)

It was a strange posthumous fate that awaited the Englishman Robert of Ketton : he was to be both best known and most strenuously criticized for a work that he surely viewed as a sideline to his own interests and career. By trade Robert was a Latin translator of Arabic scientific and mathematical works, one of those remarkable twelfth-century men who, as his contemporary Petrus Alfonsi put it, were willing “to traverse distant provinces and withdraw into remote regions so as (...) to be able to attain fuller knowledge of the astronomical art.” Like other contemporary translators, such as the Italian Gerard of Cremona , Robert had left his birthplace—in his case Rutlandshire—and traveled to Spain in order to have access to the great works of Arabic astronomy and mathematics that could be found in the still very Arab Iberian Peninsula. By 1141 we find him and his close friend Herman of Carinthia studying and translating scientific works together in northeastern Spain, and in later years his astronomical interests and ecclesiastical responsibilities led him to travel widely in Spain and England. As a scientific translator, he is perhaps best known for his Liber algebrae et Almucabola, a Latin version of al-Khwarazmī's great manual of algebra, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-al-muqābalah. (shrink)

This essay takes—as its point of departure—Cavicchi’s (2006) argument that knowledge develops through experimentation, both in science and in educational settings. In attempting to support and extend her conclusions, which are drawn in part from the replication of some early tasks in the history of developmental psychology, the late realist-constructivist theory of Jean Piaget is presented and summarized. This is then turned back on the subjects of Cavicchi’s larger enquiry (education and science) to offer a firmer foundation for future debate. (...) Several of Piaget’s “forgotten works” are discussed; their theoretical contributions synthesized to form a single interdisciplinary, cross-pollinating narrative describing how it is that both children and scientists grow into the world. (In addition, translated excerpts from two related historical documents have been provided in an appendix, while detailed footnotes add further context and integrate the discussion with current advances in related fields.). (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the ways we look to children to educate us and explores how we might depart from that dynamic, exploring how a range of conceptual frameworks from historical and cultural studies and psychoanalysis might contribute to understanding the problematic of childhood, its problems and its limitations. While ‘child as educator’ may appear to reverse the typical power relations between adults and children, it is argued that this motif in fact repeats many of the same problems as any (...) claims about what children, and especially what ‘child’, is like. Specifically, the paper first reviews analyses of what is at stake in the figure of ‘child’; second, feminist engagement with the notion of ‘intersectionality’ is discussed in terms of how it might inform debates about childhood. Finally, drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches, analysis focuses on the notion of misrecognition structured in the ‘as’ connecting ‘child’ and ‘educator’. (shrink)

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." "From the outset [in 1976] the reviews were gratifyingly favorable and it [The Selfish Gene] was not seen, initially, as a controversial book. Its reputation for contentiousness took years to grow until, by now, it is widely regarded as a work of radical extremism. But over the very same years as the book’s reputation for (...) extremism has escalated, its actual content has seemed less and less extreme, more and more the common currency." How could it be that Dawkins’ most famous book became controversial, but not as a result of what it .. (shrink)

Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of His Latin Translation of the Qurʾān in the Light of His Newly Discovered Manuscripts. With an Edition and a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18. By Reinhold F. Glei and Roberto Tottoli. Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Arabica-Latina, vol. 1. Wiesbaden: harraSSoWitz, 2016. Pp. 188. €48.

This book argues for the use of nonideal theory in social ontology. The central claim is that a paradigm shift is underway in contemporary social ontology, from ideal to nonideal, and that this shift should be fully followed through. To develop and defend this central claim, the first step is to show that the key questions and central dividing lines within contemporary social ontology can be fruitfully reconstructed as a clash between two worlds, referred to as ideal and nonideal social (...) ontology. Ideal social ontology is characterized by consensus and cooperation, while nonideal social ontology is characterized by conflict and contestation. The second step is to show that, when taken together, objections to the standard model of ideal social ontology (the dominant version of ideal social ontology) imply that this model needs to be given up in favor of nonideal social ontology. In other words, we should look to nonideal rather than ideal social ontology for core concepts. The third step is to offer a positive account, called the power view, of nonideal social ontology. This account places the concept of social power at the core of a general theory of the social world and replaces the flat and narrow conception of power in ideal social ontology with a richer and more extensive conception. In addition, it rectifies a shortcoming in nonideal social ontology by attending to class, which has been notably and oddly overlooked in the literature. (shrink)