Originally published in 1991, Origins and Species seeks to understand the historical origins of Darwinism. The book analyses the explanatory problem to which Darwinian theory was a response, while contrasting the Darwinian with two other traditions in the interpretation of organic diversity. The book looks in detail at both Charles Darwin's theories and Alfred Russell Wallace's theories of about plant and animal species and raises the question of the context of Darwinism and that of Plato's and Aristotle's understanding of species.

Habermas's early work on action and practical rationality -- Practical rationality in Habermas's communicative paradigm -- Towards a thoroughly communicative conception of social action and its rationality.

Los textos acerca del tiempo de Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) se organizan en torno a tres núcleos temáticos. En una primero época, en las Lecciones de fenomenología de la conciencia interna del tiempo (1904-1905), el hilo conductor es la pregunta acerca de cómo la percepción de un objeto que dura (tiempo objetivo) es constituida por una conciencia que vive en el tiempo inmanete y cómo esta es el resultado de un plano anterior -conciencia interna-. En un segundo momento, en los manuscritos (...) de Bernau (1917-1918) y en los textos sobre el carácter pasivo de los procesos de la conciencia (1921), Husserl profundiza en la relación entre conciencia, reflexión y temporalidad, y destaca la pasividad con la que se llevan a cabo las operaciones de constitución de la conciencia. Por último, en los manuscritos C (1929-1934) introducirá la noción de presente viviente como centro desde el que pensar toda la temporalidad. A la par que una investigación sobre el carácter eternamente enigmático del tiempo, los análisis de Jusserl revelan el ser fundamentalmente temporal de nuestra conciencia, en un ejercicio riguroso de pensamiento que lleva a la fenomenología hasta los límites de su potencial descriptivo. (shrink)

This text explores a set of key concepts in Marxist theory as developed and read by Lacan, demonstrating links and connections between Marxist thought and Lacanian practice. The book examines the complexity of these encounters through the structure of a comprehensive vocabulary which covers diverse areas, from capitalism and communism to history, ideology, politics, work, and family. Offering new perspectives on these concepts in psychoanalysis, as well as in the fields of political and critical theory, the book brings together contributions (...) from a range of international experts to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between Marx and Lacan, as well as illuminating 'untranslatable points' which may offer productive tension between the two. The entries trace the trajectory of Lacan's appropriation of Marx's concepts and analyses how they were questioned, criticized and reworked by Lacan, accounting for the wide reach of two thinkers and worlds in constant homology. Each entry also discusses psychoanalytic debates relating to the concept and seeks to refine the clinical scope of Marx's work, demonstrating its impact on the social and individual dimensions of Lacanian clinical practice. With a practical and structured approach, The Marx Through Lacan Vocabulary will appeal to psychoanalysts and researchers in a range of fields, including political science, cultural studies, and philosophy. (shrink)

The present book verses on the current discussion, between authors writing within the Thomistic tradition, on the issue of human rights, and pretends to adjudicate that discussion. The positions of authors who are critical of the notion of human rights, like Michel Villey and Alasdair MacIntyre, as well as that of those who try to justify their existence and explain their nature, like Jacques Maritain, John Finnis, and others, are carefully explained and evaluated. This book is the first to deal (...) in detail with this contemporary discussion and therefore represents an important contribution to the bibliography on the philosophy of human rights, as well as to the bibliography on the Thomistic tradition. (shrink)

Se examinan las diversas modalidades de la nada como casos de pérdida del sentido y falta de consumación del conocimiento: la nada como noúmeno y su relación con el fenómeno, así como la conexión trascendental de ambos. Aunque la nada pone en jaque al concepto de sentido, este se encuentra supuesto antes de todo tipo de pregunta por el ser, y se constituye en el trasfondo de las condiciones trascendentales que posibilitan el conocimiento.

Norms have been widely enacted in human and agent societies to regulate individuals’ actions. However, although legislators may have ethics in mind when establishing norms, moral values are only sometimes explicitly considered. This paper advances the state of the art by providing a method for selecting the norms to enact within a society that best aligns with the moral values of such a society. Our approach to aligning norms and values is grounded in the ethics literature. Specifically, from the literature’s (...) study of the relations between norms, actions, and values, we formally define how actions and values relate through the so-called value judgment function and how norms and values relate through the so-called norm promotion function. We show that both functions provide the means to compute value alignment for a set of norms. Moreover, we detail how to cast our decision-making problem as an optimisation problem: finding the norms that maximise value alignment. We also show how to solve our problem using off-the-shelf optimisation tools. Finally, we illustrate our approach with a specific case study on the European Value Study. (shrink)