La edición genética tiene muchas aplicaciones en casi todos los ámbitos de la sociedad, pero también puede tener consecuencias impredecibles. La edición del genoma de la línea germinal humana es el centro de una discusión mundial. Debido al creciente número de cuestionamientos científicos, éticos y políticos, muchos sin una respuesta concreta, el consenso de la comunidad científica manifiesta que sería inapropiado modificar genéticamente embriones humanos. Se considera necesario un debate serio y abierto para decidir si se debe suspender o fomentar (...) la investigación en este sentido. En el presente documento, se exponen algunos argumentos audaces a favor de la eliminación de los genes nocivos del genoma humano y los riesgos que supone el eugenismo liberal. (shrink)

El presente artículo presenta los nuevos e importantes descubrimientos en la terraza litoral al pie del oasis de niebla, a partir de Noviembre de 2003, que junto a estudios anteriores conforman un cuadro general bastante completo de los patrones de asentamiento, modus vivendi, costumbres y actividades económicas de los antiguos pobladores costeros del norte de Chile, que reafirman la enorme importancia que adquirió el ecosistema de oasis de niebla costero en el género de vida, tipos de asentamiento y desplazamientos de (...) los cazadores-recolectores marinos del litoral norte. (shrink)

En este artículo exponemos los presupuestos que permiten una reflexión crítica sobre la esfera pública desde una perspectiva marxista. Hemos partido de la consideración del contexto de discusión reciente sobre las ideas políticas de Marx y de la relevancia del concepto de esfera pública para mostrar la importancia de algunos de sus conceptos críticos para la filosofía política. El texto es producto de una investigación dedicada a la elaboración de un marco conceptual que persigue el desarrollo de un análisis crítico (...) de la esfera pública en la actualidad y en el que se ha establecido que algunas cuestiones claves, vinculadas a los conceptos de lenguaje y experiencia, se encontraban presentes en la obra de Marx. En este sentido, el texto presenta una novedosa reflexión al tratar la actualidad del pensamiento de Marx desde el análisis de un problema político contemporáneo que permite poner en evidencia las implicaciones críticas y radicales que poseen sus fundamentos filosófico-críticos para los discursos y las instituciones políticas contemporáneas como la esfera pública. (shrink)

En este artículo exponemos los presupuestos que permiten una reflexión crítica sobre la esfera pública desde una perspectiva marxista. Hemos partido de la consideración del contexto de discusión reciente sobre las ideas políticas de Marx y de la relevancia del concepto de esfera pública para mostrar la importancia de algunos de sus conceptos críticos para la filosofía política. El texto es producto de una investigación dedicada a la elaboración de un marco conceptual que persigue el desarrollo de un análisis crítico (...) de la esfera pública en la actualidad y en el que se ha establecido que algunas cuestiones claves, vinculadas a los conceptos de lenguaje y experiencia, se encontraban presentes en la obra de Marx. En este sentido, el texto presenta una novedosa reflexión al tratar la actualidad del pensamiento de Marx desde el análisis de un problema político contemporáneo que permite poner en evidencia las implicaciones críticas y radicales que poseen sus fundamentos filosófico-críticos para los discursos y las instituciones políticas contemporáneas como la esfera pública. (shrink)

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by (...) using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a “topodynamic” description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research. (shrink)

O pesquisador americano Joseph Banks Rhine (1895 – 1980) e o psiquiatra suíço Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) foram contemporâneos, o interesse mútuo de pesquisa levou os dois autores a estabeleceram uma troca de correspondências a partir de 1934, que duraria as duas décadas seguintes. A partir desse diálogo importantes repercussões teóricas ocorreram no trabalho dos dois autores, especialmente, em relação a Jung. Em nossa metodologia analisamos as obras de Rhine e de Jung, com destaque para o impacto dos (...) experimentos sobre percepção extrassensorial (PES) sobre o trabalho de Jung de 1952, _Sincronicidade: um princípio de conexões acausais_. Apesar das controvérsias existentes sobre o conceito de sincronicidade, com alguns autores estabelecendo que PES e sincronicidade são eventos distintos, o autor suíço estabelece de forma clara três categorias ou facetas de seu conceito, duas delas incluindo a PES. (shrink)

First of all, we would like to gratefully thank all commentators for the attention and effort they have put into reading and responding to our review paper [this issue] and for useful observations that suggest novel applications for our framework. We understand and accept that some of our claims might appear controversial and raise skepticism, because the overall neural framework we have proposed is difficult to frame in established categories, given its strong multidisciplinary character. To make an example, Elsevier is (...) publishing the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) 2017 Special Issue Collection. However, our paper could not fully fit in any of their Special Issues—attention, motivation, behavior; sensory and motor systems; novel treatments and translational neuroscience; genetics and epigenetics; learning and memory; neurodegenerative disorders and ageing; developmental neuroscience; neuronal, glial and cellular mechanisms; neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems; psychiatry and mental health; methods and techniques. Perhaps because our paper was mathematically, physically, biologically (neuroscientifically), and phenomenologically motivated from the start? Nevertheless, venturing in novel, fresh, testable proposals is badly needed in contemporary neuroscience, so to break into “the utter darkness of the inner mechanism of psychic acts… during the production of the concomitant phenomena of perception and thought, namely, feelings, consciousness and volition”—as Cajal had already observed in his opus magnus ‘Textura’. But as he soberly confessed: “This ideal is still very distant” (Ramon y Cajal, 1899-1904, p. 1,141). In the pursuit of that very ideal, neuroscience and psychology have had, and continue to have, a plethora of movements and schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, neural Darwinism, social constructivism, Bayesian optimization...In our paper, we propose to go a step further, via the notion of topodynamics, towards “projectionism.” In what follows, trying to elucidate the main features of this Emperor’s new clothing, we proceed with the responses to the comments received. (shrink)

La propuesta antropológica del médico español Pedro Laín Entralgo, se direcciona a la ejecución de un proyecto académico y autobiográfico, desde el cual se vivencien relaciones interpersonales genuinas, en las que siendo el otro desconocido, sin nombre, sea ayudado en su menesterosidad. Laín está convencido de que la razón suficiente para ser solidario con el otro es su condición de persona y, por serlo, debo creerle y serle prójimo. Dicho proyecto es denominado por Laín “pleisología de la vida cotidiana”; (...) tal propuesta resulta necesaria y debe ser acogida por el cristianismo en nuestros días. Se hace perentorio, hacer del cristianismo una propuesta con sentido, para ello, quien se quiera cristiano, que asuma su modo de serlo como vocación y la formule como un proyecto personal (sea persona), responsable y desde allí contribuya a la humanización de las relaciones humanas mediante la práctica de un amor samaritano. (shrink)

The importance of an author can be evaluated by the extent to which his theoretical contribution transforms a certain area of knowledge: major researchers create new vistas. This certainly applies to Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), one of the most brilliant authors of contemporary psychology. His work, owing to its originality, is of epistemological interest to several areas of knowledge. In fact, Vygotsky was at the center of a historical time of change in twentieth-century Russia, in which Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson, Serguei (...) Eisenstein, Alexander Luria, and Yuri Lotman took part. Their theoretical proposals had repercussions in several areas of knowledge: in literature, semiotics, film, and .. (shrink)

La presente reflexión tiene por objetivo central aportar, desde la teoría científico-filosófica sobre el cuerpo humano construida por Pedro Laín Entralgo, una propuesta antropológica que posibilite el diálogo con el transhumanismo tecnocientífico. A nivel metodológico, el texto se ha estructurado en dos momentos. En el primero, se hace una revisión de la situación (sitius) del cuerpo de cara al transhumanismo info, para luego, en un segundo momento, aportar (locus), desde la obra lainiana, una concepción antropológica integral. Se espera que, (...) al pensar la materia desde un dinamismo estructural que hace de la realidad corpórea una unidad psico-orgánica capaz de decir “yo” (persona), se pueda establecer un cuestionamiento profundo a la concepción antropológica propuesta por el transhumanismo info, para la cual, el cuerpo orgánico es materia inútil de la que es necesario liberarse para superar los límites de la biología. (shrink)

Se habla de las traducciones de Aristóteles y Pseudo-Aristóteles en tierras gallegas o realizados por gallegos en la Edad Media; así como los problemas inherentes a toda operación de traducción en cualquier época y circunstancia. Nos centramos en Pedro Gallego, representante de la 3º generación de los traductores de la corte toledana de Alfonso X el Sabio, de quien fue amigo y confesor, aunque afincado en Murcia y obispo titular de la recién recuperada sede de Cartagena. Y pormenorizamos las (...) distintas secuencias en el traslado de una de las obras capitales de Aristóteles, que tanto interesó a los árabes, del árabe al latín, el Liber de animalibus, compendio de diversos trabajos naturalistas y de biología, que traduce nuestro autor natural de Ortigueira (mariña lucense). (shrink)

For much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an "art of living." This practical aspect of philosophy has been much less dominant in modernity than it was in ancient Greece and Rome, when philosophers of all stripes kept returning to Socrates as a model for living. The idea of philosophy as an art of living has survived in the works of such major modern authors as Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Each of (...) these writers has used philosophical discussion as a means of establishing what a person is and how a worthwhile life is to be lived. In this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Alexander Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Why does each of these philosophers—each fundamentally concerned with his own originality—return to Socrates as a model? The answer lies in the irony that characterizes the Socrates we know from the Platonic dialogues. Socratic irony creates a mask that prevents a view of what lies behind. How Socrates led the life he did, what enabled or inspired him, is never made evident. No tenets are proposed. Socrates remains a silent and ambiguous character, forcing readers to come to their own conclusions about the art of life. This, Nehamas shows, is what allowed Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault to return to Socrates as a model without thereby compelling them to imitate him. This highly readable, erudite study argues for the importance of the tradition within Western philosophy that is best described as "the art of living" and casts Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault as the three major modern representatives of this tradition. Full of original ideas and challenging associations, this work will offer new ways of thinking about the philosophers Nehamas discusses and about the discipline of philosophy itself. (shrink)

This new edition of Alexander Miller’s highly readable introduction to contemporary metaethics provides a critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary metaethics. Miller traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. From Moore’s attack on ethical naturalism, A. J. Ayer’s emotivism and Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism to anti-realist and best opinion accounts (...) of moral truth and the non-reductionist naturalism of the ‘Cornell realists’, this book addresses all the key theories and ideas in this field. As well as revisiting the whole terrain with revised and updated guides to further reading, Miller also introduces major new sections on the revolutionary fictionalism of Richard Joyce and the hermeneutic fictionalism of Mark Kalderon. The new edition will continue to be essential reading for students, teachers and professional philosophers with an interest in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

The rule-following debate, in its concern with the metaphysics and epistemology of linguistic meaning and mental content, goes to the heart of the most fundamental questions of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. This volume gathers together the most important contributions to the topic, including papers by Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Graeme Forbes, Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, John McDowell, Colin McGinn, Ruth Millikan, Philip Pettit, George Wilson, and José Zalabardo. This debate has centred on Saul Kripke's reading of the rule-following (...) sections in Wittgenstein and his consequent posing of a "sceptical paradox" that threatens our every day notions of linguistic meaning and mental content. These essays are attempts to respond to this challenge and represent some of the most important work in contemporary theory of meaning. They examine the notion of meaning; whether it is possible to find a suitable meaning-constituting fact from our previous behaviour or mental histories; objections to, and defenses of, dispositional accounts of meaning; the plausibility of non-factualism about meaning; our attempts to develop non-reductionist accounts of meaning; and the sources of the normativity which attaches to meaning, such as the linguistic practice of the community or the dispositions of the individual. With an introductory essay and a comprehensive guide to further reading the book is an excellent resource for courses in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, Wittgenstein, and metaphysics, as well as for all philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists with interests in these areas. Contributors include Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Graeme Forbes, Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, John McDowell, Colin McGinn, Alexander Miller, Ruth Garrett Millikan, Philip Pettit, George. M. Wilson, Crispin Wright, and José L. Zalabardo. (shrink)

Alexander X. Douglas situates Spinoza's philosophy in its immediate historical context, and argues that much of his work was conceived with the aim of rebutting the claims of his contemporaries. In contrast to them, Spinoza argued that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and reinterpreted the concept of God in profound and radical ways.

What is honor? Has its meaning changed since ancient times? Is it an outmoded notion? Does it still have the power to direct our behavior? In this provocative book Alexander Welsh considers the history and meaning of honor and dismisses the idea that we live in a post-honor culture. He notes that we have words other than _honor_, such as _respect_, _self-respect_, and personal _identity_, that show we do indeed care deeply about honor. Honor, he argues, is a continuing (...) process of respect that motivates or constrains members of a peer group. Honor’s dictates function as moral imperatives. Surprisingly, little systematic study of the history of honor in Western culture has been attempted. Offering a welcome remedy, Welsh provides a genealogy of approaches to the subject, mining some of the most influential texts of the Western tradition. He rereads with fascinating results the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, and others. With a sharp focus on the intersection of honor and ethics in both literature and philosophy, Welsh invites new and constructive debate on a topic of vital interest. (shrink)

Science starts out with the idea of a person as billions of neurons housed in a body that is a cloud of particles. Common sense starts out with the idea of a person having capacities belonging to a single individual. The common sense person does not have parts. Our objectifying science slowly takes over the person as it tends toward physical materialism. Where will it end? What is being gradually pushed out of the world? If science had already taken over, (...) if the categories of neuroscience were complete, then it would be possible to speculate about its relation to earlier stages of thought. However, that is not the situation. The categories of science have yet to emerge. The puzzling character of new scientific objects reveals that we are on the threshold of profound conceptual change. The Humanities are at a crossroad. Do the Humanities scoff at the encroachment of science and risk the fate of those who resisted the Copernican revolution? Do they embrace the changes only to be burned at the stake like those who accepted the Copernican revolution? I suggest that the Humanities mobilize their collective power to create the categories in terms of which science will explicate the very idea of a person. Over the last fifty years, philosophers in the Kantian tradition have offered strategies for developing the new categories in humanistic terms. One approach follows “color” and “consciousness” through their passage from a common sense image of the world to a developing scientific image. It is a journey that illustrates the problems and the puzzles ahead. It indicates the perils of the next recategorization of the world. (shrink)

The range and types of performance metrics has recently proliferated in academic settings, with bibliometric indicators being particularly visible examples. One field that has traditionally been hospitable towards such indicators is biomedicine. Here the relative merits of bibliometrics are widely discussed, with debates often portraying them as heroes or villains. Despite a plethora of controversies, one of the most widely used indicators in this field is said to be the Journal Impact Factor. In this article we argue that much of (...) the current debates around researchers’ uses of the JIF in biomedicine can be classed as ‘folk theories’: explanatory accounts told among a community that seldom get systematically checked. Such accounts rarely disclose how knowledge production itself becomes more-or-less consolidated around the JIF. Using ethnographic materials from different research sites in Dutch University Medical Centers, this article sheds new empirical and theoretical light on how performance metrics variously shape biomedical research on the ‘shop floor.’ Our detailed analysis underscores a need for further research into the constitutive effects of evaluative metrics. (shrink)

Science starts out with the idea of a person as billions of neurons housed in a body that is a cloud of particles. Common sense starts out with the idea of a person having capacities belonging to a single individual. The common sense person does not have parts. Our objectifying science slowly takes over the person as it tends toward physical materialism. Where will it end? What is being gradually pushed out of the world? If science had already taken over, (...) if the categories of neuroscience were complete, then it would be possible to speculate about its relation to earlier stages of thought. However, that is not the situation. The categories of science have yet to emerge. The puzzling character of new scientific objects reveals that we are on the threshold of profound conceptual change. The.. (shrink)

[Alan Weir] This paper addresses the problem of how to account for objective content-for the distinction between how we actually apply terms and the conditions in which we ought to apply them-from within a naturalistic framework. Though behaviourist or dispositionalist approaches are generally held to be unsuccessful in naturalising objective content or 'normativity', I attempt to restore the credibility of such approaches by sketching a behaviouristic programme for explicating objective content. /// [Alexander Miller] Paul Boghossian (1989, 1990) has argued, (...) on grounds concerning the holistic nature of belief fixation, that there are principled reasons for thinking that 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism about content cannot hope to satisfy a condition of extensional accuracy. I discern three separable strands of argument in Boghossian's work-the circularity objection, the open-endedness objection, and the certification objection-and argue that each of these objections fails. My conclusion is that for all that Boghossian has shown, 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

My goal is to illustrate Descartes’ reliance on two quite different and competing interpretations of objective reality by explaining how each is used in defending his causal axioms. The initial criticism comes from Caterus (and is later taken up by Gassendi) who charges that Descartes makes it appear as if the thought in its objective aspect (the intentional entity) is really distinct from the thought qua modification of the mind (i.e., the thought in its formal aspect). This implies that the (...) object-of-the-thought is actually distinct from the thought-of-the-object in which case, (a) Descartes cannot account for the purported relation between the two, and (b) the intentional entity must exemplify properties which belong neither “immaterially” to mental substance nor concretely to physical substance. Descartes rejects Caterus’ assessment of his position: he has not introduced a fourth kind of real entity into the causal order distinct from the mind, its modifications, and the physical object thought of. However, in responding to Caterus, Descartes implicitly appeals to a Suarezian theory of intentionality in which reference to the ostensibly separate reality of the objective entity is reducible to the formal concept: the thought-of-the-object is not really distinct from the object-of-thought. Clearly, Descartes cannot explicitly use the Suarezian theory because it relies on a system of causal explanation (the doctrine of the species “flitting through the air”) which Descartes rejects on scientific grounds. I shall argue that Descartes is committed to a notion of the “form” of the mind, viz., a modification of mind, which should allow for a non-relational modeling of the thought qua modification of the mind and its intentional object, but that he cannot consistently attribute to mental acts enough structure to support his theory. (shrink)

Among late Renaissance and early Modern philosophers, the concepts of “sympathy” or “harmony” are a recurring theme. My goal is to show that theories which rely on such concepts, far from being an attempt to avoid the emerging mechanistic or empirical trends, are actually the form which these trends took in the wake of an increasing disenchantment with Aristotelian psychology. Fracastorius, Suarez and Descartes provide the texts: their accounts of the interaction between cognitive faculties exhibit a growing awareness that the (...) conception of causality had to be supplemented. And while each appears to share the general belief that aspects of the Thomistic-Aristotelian framework can survive the necessary changes, they disagree about how much dogmatic psychology has to be discarded. What they decide to leave in and the reasons given for discarding the rest provide insight into the history of explanation. It is in the metaphysics of harmony that we can trace the early growth of Rationalism. (shrink)

My goal is to illustrate Descartes’ reliance on two quite different and competing interpretations of objective reality by explaining how each is used in defending his causal axioms. The initial criticism comes from Caterus (and is later taken up by Gassendi) who charges that Descartes makes it appear as if the thought in its objective aspect (the intentional entity) is really distinct from the thought qua modification of the mind (i.e., the thought in its formal aspect). This implies that the (...) object-of-the-thought is actually distinct from the thought-of-the-object in which case, (a) Descartes cannot account for the purported relation between the two, and (b) the intentional entity must exemplify properties which belong neither “immaterially” to mental substance nor concretely to physical substance. Descartes rejects Caterus’ assessment of his position: he has not introduced a fourth kind of real entity into the causal order distinct from the mind, its modifications, and the physical object thought of. However, in responding to Caterus, Descartes implicitly appeals to a Suarezian theory of intentionality in which reference to the ostensibly separate reality of the objective entity is reducible to the formal concept: the thought-of-the-object is not really distinct from the object-of-thought. Clearly, Descartes cannot explicitly use the Suarezian theory because it relies on a system of causal explanation (the doctrine of the species “flitting through the air”) which Descartes rejects on scientific grounds. I shall argue that Descartes is committed to a notion of the “form” of the mind, viz., a modification of mind, which should allow for a non-relational modeling of the thought qua modification of the mind and its intentional object, but that he cannot consistently attribute to mental acts enough structure to support his theory. (shrink)

Integration Area C. Nature, sources, and limits of human knowledge; roles of perception, reason, testimony, and intuition in acquiring rational beliefs; e.g. science, mathematics, values, the arts, religion, social issues, and psychological states. G.E. Integration IC.

Resenha do livro de: ALVES NETO, Rodrigo Ribeiro. Alienações do mundo: uma interpretaçáo da obra de Hannah Arendt . Rio de Janeiro/Sáo Paulo: Editora PUC-Rio/Edições Loyola, 2009, 216 p.

Los numerosos interrogantes planteados por el texto sobre el Intelecto Activo en el De Anima de Aristóteles lo convirtieron en un problema central del pensamiento árabe y cristiano. La interpretación de Avempace, cuyo Entendimiento Agente sintetiza los caracteres del Motor Inmóvil aristotélico y del Nous de Plotino, de Dios en definitiva, supone una respuesta de indudable originalidad.The plurality of issues brought up by the text concerning the Active Intellect in the Aristotle´s De Anima made that text to turn into a (...) primary question in the Arab and Christian thought. According to Avempace´s interpretation of it, the Agent Intellect summarizes the traits and notes of Aristotle´s Motionless Motor and Plotinus´ Nous, i. e. of God in short, which no doubt amounts to an original view of the point in question. (shrink)

La Orientación Educativa en la Enseñanza Reglada.

We study how the optimal contract in team production is a¤ected when employees are averse to inequity in the sense described by Fehr and Schmidt (1999). By designing a reward scheme that creates inequity o¤ the desired equilibrium, the employer can induce employees to perform e¤ort at a lower total wage cost than when they are not inequity averse. We also show that the optimal output choice might change when employees are inequity averse. Finally, we show that an employer can (...) gain, and never lose, by designing a contract that accounts for inequity aversion, even if employees have standard preferences. (shrink)

O presente estudo pretende expor algumas das linhas fundamentais sobre as concepções antropológicas e de filosofia moral implícitas na colonização espanhola na América do século XVI, bem como nos discursos que pretenderam promover uma reforma moral da empresa colonizadora, questionando diretamente seus fundamentos antropológicos e éticos. Dentro deste quadro mais geral, o objetivo principal do trabalho será o de abordar a atuação de Bartolomé de Las Casas e os efeitos de seus escritos apologéticos e denunciatórios no interior de um projeto (...) teórico acerca de uma etnologia comparada e de uma visão sobre o estado de natureza e o nativo americano. (shrink)

RESUMO:O objetivo de nossa exposição é mostrar que, em sua Carta a d’Alembert, Rousseau retoma o debate clássico sobre a relação entre o teatro e a moral nas mesmas bases estabelecidas por Platão. Sendo assim, a disputa sobre o teatro tem, da parte de Rousseau, uma objetividade que não encontramos no artigo de d’Alembert. Portanto, não se trata de uma diferença de opinião entre Rousseau e d’Alembert, mas da capacidade filosófica de bem compreender o que é próprio ao teatro e (...) à moralidade. ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to show how Rousseau, in his Letter to D’Alembert, takes up the classic debate between theatre and morals on the same grounds established by Plato. In Rousseau’s work, the debate about theatre has an objectivity that we do not find in D’Alembert’s article. Therefore, what is involved is not a difference of opinion between Rousseau and D’Alembert, but a difference in the philosophical ability to fully understand what concerns both theatre and morality. (shrink)

My dissertation is a critical study of Jose Ortega Y Gasset's attempt to reconcile his notion of lived-experience , which is fundamentally immediate experience, with his idea of life as vital-reason. But life as vital reason is, itself, best understood as consisting of life as a rational-existential project. This, in effect is Ortega's manner of fusing idealism and realism. The result of this mediation is to be interpreted as the self-with-things or what amounts to: I-in-the-world. Man is never what he (...) is in his immediacy and therefore he must create his essence through a self-conscious existential project. Thus, Ortega's notion of life as radical reality is the culmination of an underlying dialectic that is present throughout his work. That is, man's self-awareness of his life as a pre-reflective extranatural phenomenon vis-a-vis the material world can only be understood through reflection and therefore never in its immediacy. Therefore I conclude that for Ortega the synthesis of these apparently antithetical notions culminates in a form of subjective idealism given that primacy is necessarily attributed to the self over the external world. Even though I accept the fundamental tenets of his argument concerning the synthesis of Realism and Idealism and Rationalism and Vitalism, I have focused upon the inherent tension that exists in any such reflective endeavor. I believe that due to Ortega's emphasis that all reflection must originate and therefore concern itself with life as phenomenon, his philosophy necessarily gives primacy to the self over the material world . In arguing "Yo Soy Yo Y Mis Circumstancias" Ortega stresses the character of the Rational Vitalism that results from my self-awareness of my life as a problem for reflection that is forged through my necessary dealings with the world. The result of this self-knowledge is the foundation of a metaphysics of life that is best understood as man as radical reality. (shrink)