This volume of essays brings together leading commentators from both sides of the Atlantic to provide an introduction to Badiou's work through critical studies ...

En el siguiente artículo analizaremos las nociones de angustia y desesperación desarrolladas por Sören Kierkegaard en El concepto de angustia y en el Tratado de la desesperación con el fin de resaltar la importancia de las mismas para el autor danés y, a su vez, vislumbraremos su papel determinante en las relaciones concretas con el prójimo descritas por Jean-Paul Sartre en El ser y la nada. Nuestra hipótesis de trabajo establece que Sartre sigue el cuadro de la desesperación kierkergaardiana y (...) que por ello condena al fracaso las relaciones con el prójimo. Nosotros consideramos que las nociones de angustia y desesperación de Kierkegaard analizadas en este artículo constituyen el meollo del problema en el autor francés, pues, sólo a partir del estudio de ellas, se podrá discutir e intervenir el concepto de mala fe en Sartre que determina el fracaso de las relaciones concretas con el prójimo en El ser y la nada. (shrink)

La ruptura del paradigma tradicional en la educación ecuatoriana emerge ante la imperiosa necesidad de la omnipresencia de la sociedad del conocimiento, las prescripciones de solución son variadas, mitigadas en su efectividad por el contexto; sin ser la panacea la presente propuesta ha legitimado la eficiencia y eficacia del proceso formativo académico de profesionales versátiles, competentes y competitivos que aportan al desarrollo sostenible, sustentable del país en concordancia con sus pares regionales enfocados a la competitividad internacional (escalada profesional). Se identifica (...) las habilidades de los estudiantes, se potencia sus destrezas, satisface sus necesidades personales, contribuye con la satisfacción de las necesidades del colectivo permeando relaciones humanas cálidas, comportamiento cooperativo asertivo maximizando logros a través de evidencia fáctica real. Los métodos, técnicas y estrategias varían en función del nivel que cursan los preprofesionales; un modelo estándar educativo con base en las competencias reales, la comunicación y la satisfacción de las necesidades humanas en concordancia con el ecosistema, legitima los procesos de formación en escenarios reales a través de la cooperación. (shrink)

In this conceptual article, we argue that defining corporate social responsibility and corporate social irresponsibility as opposite constructs produces a lack of clarity between responsible and irresponsible acts. Furthermore, we contend that the treatment of the CSR and CSI concepts as opposites de-emphasizes the value of CSI as a stand-alone construct. Thus, we reorient the CSI discussion to include multiple aspects that current conceptualizations have not adequately accommodated. We provide an in-depth exploration of how researchers define CSI and both identify (...) and analyze three important gray zones between CSR and CSI: the role of harm and benefit, the role of the actor and intentionality, and the role of rectification. We offer these gray zones as factors contributing to the present lack of conceptual clarity of the term CSI, as a concept in its own right, leading to difficulties that researchers and managers experience in categorizing CSI acts as distinct from CSR. (shrink)

El trabajo que se presenta gira en torno a la metodología del aprendizaje cooperativo para favorecer la inclusión del alumnado. Se toma como referente el trabajo realizado en diferentes investigaciones vinculadas a la implementación de un programa didáctico para implementar el aprendizaje cooperativo en las aula: el “programa CA/AC : Cooperar para aprender/aprender a cooperar “; así como los procesos de formación y asesoramiento que hemos llevado a cabo en este campo hasta la fecha.

Qualsevol que es llegeixi aquest llibre s'adonarà que molts d'aquests mites amb els quals ens han promès la felicitat no són ni tan sòlids, ni tan certs, ni tan "progres" com sembla. Amb lúcida ironia, Ignasi Riera reflexiona sobre algunes de les qüestions que actualment saturen els mitjans de comunicació i que, com a polític i periodista, l'han preocupat al llarg de la seva vida: la idealització del món rural, l'obsessió per la salut, però també el maniqueisme de certes (...) actituds pseudodemocràtiques, les paradoxes de la societat del benestar o el fals esquerrisme. La crítica de fons és doblement interessant: marcada pel to satíric i desenfadat que el caracteritza, Riera ens proposa la deconstrucció d'un concepte viciat com és el de la felicitat, enganyós, mercantil i utilitari, i d'aquestes formes de pensament dirigit que, segons ens diuen alguns, són el camí per arribar-hi. La conclusió és clara: els que pretenem lluitar contra la felicitat, hem de canviar de sentit tota la nostra vida així com el conjunt de les nostres creences: tirar al foc moltes de les que semblen veritats eternes.IGNASI RIERA, escriptor, articulista, comentarista radiofònic i polític, ha conreat tots els gèneres literaris. Ha estat guardonat amb els premis Octubre, Ramon Llull i Pere Quart d'Humor i Sàtira. És autor de llibres de narrativa breu, de novel·les, de pamflets, dels llibres de no ficció: El meu oncle Pere Quart, Un patriota exemplar, Els catalans de Franco, Viatgers de Barcelona, Jordi Pujol. Llums i ombres ; de la biografia, Lluís Llach: companys no és això i de Llibre d'hores del ben menjar. A Edicions 62 ha publicat: Pàries, sindicalistes, demagogs, Diccionari de la Cuina Catalana i Un català a Madrid. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.2 (2006) 14-36 [Access article in PDF] "The Possibility of the Poetic Said" in Otherwise than Being (Allusion, or Blanchot in Lévinas) Gabriel Riera Language would exceed the limits of what is thought, by suggesting, letting be understood without ever making understandable [en laissant sous-entendre, sans jamais faire entendre] an implication of meaning distinct from that which comes to signs from the simultaneity of systems or the (...) logical definition of concepts. This possibility [vertu] is laid bare in the poetic said. [...] It is shown in the prophetic said. —Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise than Being [my emphasis] Writing, without placing itself above art, supposes that one not prefer art, but efface art as writing effaces itself. —Maurice Blanchot, Writing of the DisasterIn an effort to elucidate a more originary difference than Heidegger's ontological difference between Being and entities, as well as an ethicity of thinking able to respond to the trace of transcendence of the other's face, Lévinas's philosophy redefines language radically and does so in uneasy proximity to poetic language. In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974), Lévinas deploys a constellation of terms—discourse, expression, communication, face, sincerity, witnessing, prophecy—in order to elucidate the ethical dimension of language, the ethicity of philosophical discourse. This constellation revolves around the crucial notion of signification and the two operative concepts of the said (le dit) and saying (le dire). By the former Lévinas understands the semantic content of an utterance or the giving of signs by a sender to an addressee, but also the different modalities by which a subject masters the world by assimilating it to the measure of consciousness (discourse, narration, history, manifestation, representation). Saying (le dire) refers to the way of signifying primarily that I am for the other, the expression of being-for-the-other that subjectivity "is" before positioned as the source of signs or comprehension: subjectivity as exposition. While the said expresses a content, the saying is expression without content.Language for Lévinas is the "structure" of both the retraction and the inscription of infinity (l'infini), and this "structure" is what Lévinas calls ethics. It is thus possible to affirm that in Lévinas there is no ethical turn without a certain linguistic turn, one in which the a priori of language is interrupted by an anteriority whose a priori character is enigmatic. But Lévinas's linguistic turn is turned inside out: for him language contains the other's call and thus harbors a form of exteriority within itself. This is because language is elevated to a metaphysical category (in the sense of Totality and Infinity [1961], where it means the breaching or interruption of totality) that exceeds the simple [End Page 14] "giving out of signs" [délivrance de signes] [AE 81/OB 48] or communication. Lévinas claims that "saying is communication, to be sure, but as a condition for all communication, as exposure [exposition]" [AE 82/OB 48]. Signification precedes and defines language as proximity and contact with the other and not as the "vicissitude [peripetia] of the thematizing intentionality" [AE 216/OB 137] of a subject whose main attribute is its ability to synchronize questions and answers, being and its manifestations, and by so doing leaves no margin for being exposed to the other. Further, signification also names an enigmatic pre-diction that challenges the primacy that language, understood as a system of signs, enjoys in other philosophies (structuralism and analytic philosophy, for example).Most critics agree that Lévinas's philosophy is inhospitable to aesthetic phenomena and ambivalent toward poetic language. His severe condemnation of the work of art in "Reality and Its Shadow" (1948) is still present in Totality and Infinity, Lévinas's first major work, where he establishes a relation with the other as face-to-face in discourse. And although in Otherwise than Being Lévinas finally acknowledges "poetic" language's ability to suggest significations that exceed the order of discourse and even endows it with a (quasi)-ethical force... (shrink)

En este artículo, trato de mostrar la pertinencia de Fenomenología de la percepción para responder a los desafíos de la filosofía en un mundo, a la vez, desgarrado y globalizador. Si dejamos de lado la dimensión teorética del mundo, recuperamos el fondo oscuro de la existencia, fondo de todos los espacios. Se trataría de un espacio primigenio en el que se encuentra el vínculo afectivo que es el propio de la experiencia de los niños y los primitivos. Lo vivido de (...) estos espacios implica empero una pérdida del espacio de juego gracias al cual «hay mundo», como apertura y posibilidad de intersubjetividad. Pero la respuesta ante el psicologismo de Merleau-Ponty supone un giro respecto a la filosofía tradicional al conseguir mantener cercana a su conciencia las conciencias otras del esquizofrénico o del niño. (shrink)

It is undeniable that human beings seek happiness and have difficulty finding it. This is not a new phenomenon: ever since ancient times man has wondered about what happiness is, where it lies and how to achieve it. For the Greeks, a people of deep pessimism, the search for happiness (eudaimonia) was a traditional theme of philosophy and it was precisely in Greece where Epicurus ́ (341-270 BC) doctrine of happiness emerged. A cursed and manipulated author (just like his admirer (...) Nietzsche), Epicurus has probably been the thinker who has most lucidly approached the question of eudaimonia. Its doctrine seeks and promises its followers happiness through pleasure (hedoné), self-sufficiency (autarky), friendship (philía) and mental calm (ataraxia), offering itself as medicine against the pain of flesh and the sufferings of the mind. But Epicurean hedonism, which harmonizes well with the ancient Apollonian maxim that wisdom consists of moderation and the knowledge of limits, is totally removed from both the tyranny of the happycracy and from the noxious culture of unrestrained and vacuous desire of contemporary postmodernity. This is precisely why Epicurus's timeless proposal for authentic happiness deserves to be known for everyone: for constituting an effective therapy against the ills that afflict the nihilistic human being of the neoliberal era. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to test the effect of face cooling with cold water vs. face cooling with neutral water during high-intensity swimming training on both the core temperature and thermal perceptions in internationally ranked long-distance swimmers during 2 randomized swimming sessions. After a standardized warm-up of 1,200 m, the athletes performed a standardized training session that consisted of 2,000 m at a best velocity then 600 m of aerobic work. Heart rate was continuously monitored during 5 × (...) 400 m, whereas Tco, thermal comfort, and thermal sensation were measured before and after each 400 m. Before and after each 400 m, the swimmers were asked to flow 200 mL of cold water or neutral water packaged in standardized bottles on their face. The swimmers were asked don’t drink during exercise. The velocity was significantly different between cold water and neutral water. The Tco was increased by ±0.5°C at race pace, under both face cooling conditions with no significant difference. No significant changes were noted in mean HR. TC was higher with Cold Cooling than Neutral Cooling and TS was lower with Cold cooling compared with Neutral cooling. The changes in perceptual parameters caused by face cooling with cold water reflect the psychological impact on the physical parameters. The mean velocity was less important with face cooling whereas the heat rate and Tco were the same in the both conditions. The mechanism leading to these results seems to involve brain integration of signals from physiological and psychological sources. (shrink)

Intrigues: From Being to the Other examines the possibility of writing the other, explores whether an ethical writing that preserves the other as such is possible, and discusses what the implications are for an ethically inflected criticism. Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, whose works constitute the most thorough contemporary exploration of the question of the other and of its relation to writing, are the main focus of this study. The book's horizon is ethics in the Levinasian sense: the question of (...) the other, which, on the hither side of language understood as a system of signs and of representation, must be welcomed by language and preserved in its alterity. Martin Heidegger is an unavoidable reference, however. While it is true that for the German philosopher Being is an immanent production, his elucidation of a more essential understanding of Being entails a deconstruction of onto-theology, of the sign and the grammatical and logical determinations of language, all decisive starting points for both Levinas and Blanchot. At stake for both Levinas and Blanchot, then, is how to mark a nondiscursive excess within discourse without erasing or reducing it. How should one read and write the other in the same without reducing the other to the same? Critics in recent years have discussed an ethical moment or turn characterized by the other's irruption into the order of discourse. The other becomes a true crossroads of disciplines, since it affects several aspects of discourse: the constitution of the subject, the status of knowledge, the nature of representation, and what that representation represses (gender, power). Yet there has been a tendency to graft the other onto paradigms whose main purpose is to reassess questions of identity, fundamentally in terms of representation; the other thus loses some of its most crucial features. Through close readings of texts by Heidegger, Levinas, and Blanchot the book examines how the question of the other engages the very limits of philosophy, rationality, and power. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo tratamos de rastrear en la producción teórica y literaria del destacado médico y escritor zuliano Jesús Semprún (1882-1931), sus ideas fundamentales acerca de la literatura, el americanismo, y la organización social, así como la presencia de los diversos componentes humanistas en las reflexiones ofrecidas a lo largo y ancho de toda su trayectoria intelectual.

The essay addresses the main shifts in Badiou’s conception of the event and the subject as they unfold in his late Logiques des mondes. In this text he develops an objective phenomenology of appearing in view of specifying the logical character of real change. The main focus of the essay is how Logiques des mondes stipulates a set of directives for an “ethics of living with an Idea,” that is, a subjective incorporation to truth as exception. How does Badiou’s text (...) write what is excluded from the inertia of a restricted economy of Being? I show that in order to account for this exception, Logiques des mondes must resituate the notionof site, prevalent in Being and Event, and that it does so in terms of the notion of world and of the localisation of appearing. This logic posits the articulation of a new transcendental regime whose major coordinates unfold as a true war machine against cultural relativism, or what Badiou calls “democratic materialism” and to which he contraposes a “materialist dialectics”. (shrink)

The essay addresses the main shifts in Badiou’s conception of the event and the subject as they unfold in his late Logiques des mondes. In this text he develops an objective phenomenology of appearing in view of specifying the logical character of real change. The main focus of the essay is how Logiques des mondes stipulates a set of directives for an “ethics of living with an Idea,” that is, a subjective incorporation to truth as exception. How does Badiou’s text (...) write what is excluded from the inertia of a restricted economy of Being? I show that in order to account for this exception, Logiques des mondes must resituate the notionof site, prevalent in Being and Event, and that it does so in terms of the notion of world and of the localisation of appearing (both of which entail the formulation of an objective phenomenology of appearing or logic of appearing). This logic posits the articulation of a new transcendental regime whose major coordinates unfold as a true war machine against cultural relativism, or what Badiou calls “democratic materialism” and to which he contraposes a “materialist dialectics”(dialectique matérialiste). (shrink)

Dans cet article, j’essaie de montrer la pertinence de la Phénoménologie de la perception pour répondre aux défis de la philosophie dans un monde à la fois déchirée et globalisateur. Si on laisse de côté la dimension théorétique du monde, nous recupérons le fond obscure de l’existence, fond de tous les espaces. Il s’agirait d’un espace primigène dans lequel on trouve le lien affectif propre de l’expérience des enfants et des primitives. Mais le vécu de ces espaces implique une perte (...) du espace de jeu qui fait possible le monde comme ouverture et intersubjectivité. La réponse de Merleau-Ponty devant le psychologisme suppose un tournant envers la philosophie traditionnelle parce qu´il réussit à garder près de sa conscience les consciences «autres» du schizophrène ou de l’enfant. (shrink)

Language would exceed the limits of what is thought, by suggesting, letting be understood without ever making understandable [en laissant sous‐entendre, sans jamais faire entendre] an implication o...

This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.