In "Machiavelli’s Art of Politics" Alejandro Bárcenas offers a reexamination of Niccolò Machiavelli’s political thought in order to propose a concise and historically accurate portrayal of his ideas and intellectual context. -/- This study provides a nuanced view of the complexities of Machiavelli’s thought by analyzing his classical background, taking into particular consideration the influence of Xenophon, and his view of the ideal ruler as someone who creates the conditions for a flourishing human life. In addition, Bárcenas explains why Machiavelli (...) defends a republican political order that encourages citizens to live according to their own laws while serving a common good and revises his legacy through the writings of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Maurizio Viroli. (shrink)

In this essay I revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao.

Aunque el tema de este texto parece muy centrado en una lectura de la ¿estética de a existencia¿ de Foucault en paralelo a la estética de Oscar Wilde, que define la vida como la realización de una existencia bajo el signo de la belleza, la cuestión que se plantea tiene que ver con los modos en que es todavía hoy filosóficamente pensable la educación como un experiencia estética. La estética de la existencia de Foucault es, de algún modo, la puesta (...) en práctica de un filosofar que busca constituir no tanto una disciplina teórica cuanto un arte de vida. Este modo de filosofar es de una enorme ayuda para la filosofía de la educación, pues todo arte de vida crea nuevas posibilidades -nuevos comienzos- para la vida de los demás. Este planteamiento nos sitúa en un orden donde la dimensión estética se sitúa más allá de un planteamiento según el cual en el centro mismo de la aísthesis se concentra la posibilidad de conquistar un momento pacificador en el que dolor y lucha se vean momentáneamente suspendidos. Muchos discursos (filosóficos) sobre la educación comparten con este planteamiento conciliador la necesidad de anticipar el fin de un posible conflicto, volviendo difícil, cuando no imposible, pensar la diferencia de experiencias y la noción misma de acontecimiento. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that Han Fei studied under Xunzi sometime during the late third century BCE. However, there is surprisingly little dedicated to the in-depth study of the relationship between Xunzi’s ideas and one of his best-known followers. In this essay I argue that Han Fei’s notion of xing, commonly translated as human nature, was not only influenced by Xunzi but also that it is an important feature of his political philosophy.

This essay explains the role of history and ethical life (Sittlichkeit) in the first section of the chapter entitled “Spirit” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, in which Hegel interprets the meaning of Sophocles’' Antigone as the best expression of the ancient Greeks’ ethical life in its preliminary and most immediate state. It is argued, first, that Hegel’s understanding of the ethical life was developed as an alternative, based on history, to Kant’s notion of morals (Sitten) and, second, that Hegel considered (...) the ancient Greek mode of living limited by its immediacy and, therefore, never hoped to revive it during his own time. (shrink)

Jon Stewart, a cynic? Perhaps not, according to some die-hard fans. But it's not difficult to imagine that for many viewers of The Daily Show, even those who enjoy watching the host “speak truth to power,” Stewart is no more than a neatly dressed cynic. The cynics lived in the heart of ancient democracies, confronting accepted habits, unchallenged assumptions, and above all institutional corruption. Their aim wasn't just to avoid what they considered to be harmful pursuits and practices, but to (...) expose and ridicule those traditions that most people unreflectively considered moral and proper. If this chapter looks at Stewart in the context of this “dog philosophy,” it sheds light on the meaning of his role in contemporary culture. (shrink)

La evolución del rol del profesor en las aulas en las dos últimas décadas se ha destacado por la preocupación de cumplir con las grandes exigencias de las instituciones educativas: adquirir habilidades digitales que les permita alcanzar un nivel “óptimo” de conocimiento en el uso de los recursos tecnológicos informáticos e incorporar estos recursos en sus actividades en el aula. No obstante, aún no se encuentra la fórmula para que los profesores modifiquen el modelo de enseñanza (transmisor-receptor) vigente en las (...) escuelas y en el salón de clase. Sin embargo, aunque las actividades que se realizan en el aula se encierran en una aparente caja negra, en este trabajo se presentan modelos tecno-pedagógicos que han implementado profesores de educación superior en el aula y que propone un nuevo rol del profesor, el docente innovador. Un profesor que combina el curriculum, contenidos, didácticas, actitudes, habilidades digitales, y estilos de aprendizaje para innovar en su método didáctico y que da cuenta de su habilidad didáctica, su conocimiento y preparación profesional así como de una cultura digital que va más allá de saber usar los dispositivos digitales y que conjunta los saberes humanos y tecnológicos en un modelo tecno-pedagógica para construir nuevos entornos de aprendizaje y modelos de enseñanza. (shrink)

In the beginning of Star Trek Into Darkness, Mr. Spock descends into the heart of a raging volcano on the planet Nibiru. His mission: to detonate a cold fusion device that will solidify the bubbling magma before it erupts and destroys an entire civilization. Meanwhile, Captain James T. Kirk is on the bridge of the Enterprise facing a dilemma. He's duty‐bound never to violate the Prime Directive. One way to address the problem of the Prime Directive is to follow the (...) criteria used by Vulcans: reason and logic. This approach has been highly revered in the history of moral philosophy, and was most convincingly articulated by Immanuel Kant. Confucius and Aristotle would agree that while the Prime Directive is usually correct, there will be cases where it's wrong not to break it. The Prime Directive symbolizes just how difficult making good moral decisions can be. (shrink)

Jon Stewart, a cynic? Perhaps not, according to some die‐hard fans. But it's not difficult to imagine that for many viewers of The Daily Show, even those who enjoy watching the host “speak truth to power,” Stewart is no more than a neatly dressed cynic. The cynics lived in the heart of ancient democracies, confronting accepted habits, unchallenged assumptions, and above all institutional corruption. Their aim wasn't just to avoid what they considered to be harmful pursuits and practices, but to (...) expose and ridicule those traditions that most people unreflectively considered moral and proper. If this chapter looks at Stewart in the context of this “dog philosophy,” it sheds light on the meaning of his role in contemporary culture. (shrink)

Despite impressive technological developments, there is something that does not seem to have changed in the future of the Alien saga: capitalist society. The capitalist mode of production was largely triggered by an important event in the history of humanity: the Industrial Revolution. In the Alien films the worst tendencies of capitalism seem to drive the Weyland‐Yutani Corporation's decisions, confirming Karl Marx's fears that people would not be at the center of the process of capitalist production. It is clear the (...) Weyland‐Yutani Corporation has taken its goal of acquisition of profit at all costs very seriously, as demonstrated by Special Order 937. Alienation is one of Marx's key ideas. This chapter mainly focuses on alienation as it is described in a series of notebooks written in 1857‐1858, also known as the Grundrisse. Marx concludes, based on insights from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, that the good life should be one of active self‐realization and autonomy. (shrink)

ENSEÑAR; APRENDER: LO QUE ENTONCES DEVINO FALSO. LA EDUCACIÓN COMO PRETEXTO LITERARIO.

Este estudio examinó las percepciones del profesorado sobre su práctica docente y el uso de las TIC, antes y después de la pandemia COVID-19, a través de dos cuestionarios. Los resultados mostraron un aumento general en el uso de las TIC, aunque menos acusado en docentes que hacían un uso esporádico de ellas anteriormente. Asimismo, percibieron un aumento de la motivación del alumnado y de los resultados académicos en el curso 2020/21. Los profesores también señalaron las dificultades que tuvieron para (...) seguir el currículo, evaluar al alumnado y resolver comportamientos disruptivos en línea. (shrink)

La crítica de los valores ejercida por Nietzsche problematiza el origen de los valores. La filosofía tradicional considera que éstos tienen un origen privilegiado, ya sea de naturaleza teológica o metafísica. Este origen supremo es lo que les otorga una validez incuestionable. El pensador alemán se opone a esta convicción y propone la tesis contraria: los valores provienen, no de una región plena de realidad, sino de un ámbito sujeto al cambio, al azar y a la contingencia. Esto posibilita concebir (...) los valores sumos como creaciones humanas susceptibles de examen. La crítica de los valores suscita así un extrañamiento ante lo familiar, pues los valores heredados se tornan ajenos. De igual forma, conlleva un ejercicio de remoción de máscaras encubridoras que busca exhibir aquello que se oculta en los valores heredados, a saber, el carácter nihilista de los principios fundamentales de la cultura occidental. (shrink)

The concept of polarity is pervasive in natural language. It relates syntax, semantics and pragmatics narrowly, Semantics: an international handbook of natural language meaning, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, 2011; Israel in The grammar of polarity: pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales, Cambridge studies in linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014), it refers to items of many syntactic categories such as nouns, verbs and adverbs. Neutral polarity items appear in affirmative and negative sentences, negative polarity items cannot appear in affirmative (...) sentences, and positive polarity items cannot appear in negative sentences. A way of reasoning in Natural Language is through Natural Logic. This logic is based on the concept of polarity in order to make the meaning of a sentence weaker o stronger without changing its truth value. There exist many proposals to compute polarity in the Natural Logic context, the most widely known are the ones by: van Benthem, Sánchez-Valencia, Dowty, and van Eijck, 6th international Tbilisi symposium on logic, language, and computation, Batumi, Georgia, Springer, 2007). If Natural Logic is going to be used, as an inferential mechanism between text fragments, in Natural Language Processing applications such as text summarization, question answering, and information extraction, it is a priority to know what the existing relationship among the aforementioned algorithms is; for example, to implement the most general. We show in this paper the equivalence among the analyzed algorithms, filling a gap in Natural Logic research, particularly in computing polarity, and the soundness of their algorithms. (shrink)

Paraconsistent extensions of 3-valued Gödel logic are studied as tools for knowledge representation and nonmonotonic reasoning. Particularly, Osorio and his collaborators showed that some of these logics can be used to express interesting nonmonotonic semantics. CG’3 is one of these 3-valued logics. In this paper, we introduce Fidel semantics for a certain calculus of CG’3 by means of Fidel structures, named CG’3-structures. These structures are constructed from enriched Boolean algebras with a special family of sets. Moreover, we also show that (...) the most basic CG’3-structures coincide with da Costa–Alves’ bi-valuation semantics; this connection is displayed through a Representation Theorem for CG’3-structures. By contrast, we show that for other paraconsistent logics that allow us to present semantics through Fidel structures, this connection is not held. Finally, Fidel semantics for the first-order version of the logic of CG’3 are presented by means of adapting algebraic tools. (shrink)

La integración de libros electrónicos como elementos destinados a favorecer la construcción de aprendizajes en los procesos educativos, supone una serie de conocimientos previos concernientes a las tendencias hipertextuales del e-book que los estudiantes universitarios deberían poseer, dadas las características de la sociedad actual en la que los jóvenes hacen uso cotidiano de ese tipo de tecnología para llevar a cabo diversas tareas. En ese tenor, el presente trabajo da cuenta de una investigación realizada con una población estudiantil de la (...) Carrera de Cirujano Dentista, cuyo objetivo se encaminó a identificar aquellos elementos involucrados con la adopción del libro en formato electrónico como apoyo didáctico para la asignatura Metodología de la Investigación. (shrink)

Uno de los grandes problemas que enfrenta la educación en la actualidad, radica en el hecho de que los profesores de pronto se ven invadidos, y en su caso, obligados a utilizar las computadoras, los dispositivos móviles e Internet en el salón de clase. La falta de programas efectivos de capacitación y formación docente en el uso y aplicación de las TIC en los procesos de enseñanza aprendizaje, se ha convertido en un problema de grandes dimensiones que alcanza prácticamente a (...) todos los niveles educativos. Ante tal escenario, el presente trabajo pretende la adopción por parte de los profesores, de una herramienta que les sea de utilidad para orientar su formación en el campo de las TIC: “El árbol diagnóstico de las competencias digitales”, el cual ofrece un panorama general acerca de los recursos informáticos y de la Web que hemos identificado como relevantes en el ejercicio de la docencia. Este “árbol diagnóstico” es el resultado de un proceso de evaluación y seguimiento llevado a cabo con grupos de profesores que ya utilizan la tecnología en su práctica docente; y tiene la finalidad de orientar y facilitar el aprendizaje autónomo de los profesores que se inician en el uso de las TIC. (shrink)

Entrevista realizada a Fernando Bárcena Orbe, profesor de Filosofía de la Educación del Departamento de Teoría e Historia de la Educación de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (España), por Maximiliano Valerio López, profesor de la Universidad Federal Fluminense (Brasil). Rio de Janeiro, setiembre de 2009.

This article analyses the sign systems or semiotic models that make up the meaning of a double face or mask drawing in the pre-Columbian rock art of Colombia, also discussing two human figures with depicted faces associated with the main picture. The sample of rock art was detected on the walls of the Chicamocha Canyon at the Mirador de Barcenas site in the Santander Department in Northeast Colombia. Its origin is attributed to the Guane chiefdom. We hold as a central (...) argument that this face and its gestures were part of a sign system or visual semiosphere that spread along the banks of the Chicamocha Canyon. However, the image shared some semiotic models and visual communication strategies with societies that inhabited areas in central Colombia located hundreds of kilometers away from the site studied. We support this claim because the forms, the use of the space in the images, and the gestures of a hieratic character appear both in the faces of the petroglyphs of the Huila Department as well as in some pre-Hispanic gold masks from the Cundinamarca region. The images of the rock art faces were analysed using a visual semiotic model based on the suggestions of the Mu group and analyses by Felix Thurleman and Jean Marie Floch. The analysis was complemented by Jacques Fontanille’s proposal for the levels of semiotic relevance, with Juri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere employed as a key concept. (shrink)

Luego de un rápido bosquejo de las etapas por las que ha pasado el pensamiento filosófico-cristiano en América Latina, el trabajo se concentra en la principales tendencias y autores en el período que va de la década del 40 del siglo XX hasta el momento que se publica el ensayo en 1998.