Ante las distintas maneras de entender la objetividad científica, con prevalencia del sentido empirista, que propugna una discriminación sobre la cientificidad de las distintas áreas del conocimiento, Evandro Agazzi, con su realismo científico y su concepción epistemológica abierta, configura un concepto de objetividad adecuado para todo quehacer científico y académico. Con su distinción entre objetividad en sentido débil y fuerte, Agazzi sostiene que estas formas de entender la objetividad pueden incluir y armonizar los variados horizontes epistemológicos desde los cuales es (...) posible hacer ciencia. (shrink)

In business, politics, marriage, indeed in any significant relationship, trust is the essential precondition upon which all real success depends. But what, precisely, is trust? How can it be achieved and sustained? And, most importantly, how can it be regained once it has been broken? In Building Trust, Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores offer compelling answers to these questions. They argue that trust is not something that simply exists from the beginning, something we can assume or take (...) for granted; that it is not a static quality or "social glue." Instead, they assert that trust is an emotional skill, an active and dynamic part of our lives that we build and sustain with our promises and commitments, our emotions and integrity. In looking closely at the effects of mistrust, such as insidious office politics that can sabotage a company's efficiency, Solomon and Flores demonstrate how to move from naïve trust that is easily shattered to an authentic trust that is sophisticated, reflective, and possible to renew. As the global economy makes us more and more reliant on "strangers," and as our political and personal interactions become more complex, Building Trust offers invaluable insight into a vital aspect of human relationships. (shrink)

2. The equal status mentioned in Thesis 2 need not mean, "equally concrete" or "inclusive," but only, "equally real," where "real" means having a character of its own with reference to which opinions can be true or false. But becoming or process is alone fully concrete or inclusive, since if A is without becoming, and B becomes, then the togetherness of AB also becomes. A new constituent means a new totality. In this sense, becoming is the ultimate principle.

By way of preface it should be noted that Jordan was mainly concerned with formulating a metaphysics of value and a philosophy of art. And although this formulation can serve as a foundation for specific art criticism, Jordan was not attempting such criticism, and should not be held responsible for not doing what was extraneous to his purpose. It is helpful to remember also that Jordan's polemics are directed against a philosophy of subjectivism in the theory of art criticism and (...) art creation; i.e., he denies that the private consciousness is the sole standard of the nature and value of a work of art, and he denies that the artist creates by merely revealing the state of his own internal feelings and emotions. (shrink)

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. _The Moral Authority of Nature_ offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of (...) cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome _The Moral Authority of Nature_, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo general examinar los elementos que conforman el no-positivismo inclusivo; postura epistemológica y filosófica desarrollada a través de los años por Robert Alexy. Los métodos empleados son el deductivo, analítico y dialéctico; la principal técnica utilizada ha sido la investigación documental. El presente documento, grosso modo, se encuentra dividido en tres apartados. Primero, son explicados los elementos que conforman el no-positivismo inclusivo de Robert Alexy. Segundo, se explican algunas críticas formuladas a los elementos constitutivos (...) del no-positivismo inclusivo con base en las ideas de Riccardo Guastini, Juan Antonio García Amado, Joseph Raz, Eugenio Bulygin, Matthias Klatt, Carlos Bernal Pulido; entre otros autores. Por último, en tanto objetivo particular, se expone una reflexión con el propósito de indicar uno de los múltiples caminos que los estudios jurídico-científicos sobre el no-positivismo inclusivo podrían seguir en el porvenir. (shrink)

Fernando Ortiz introduced his account of transculturation to replace Melville Herskovits’s notion of acculturation as a way of describing the historical contact between cultures. Ortiz understood the idea of acculturation to be promoting a kind of assimilationist model very different from what he witnessed in his native Cuba. Transculturation conforms neither to the model of cosmopolitanism promoted by Kant’s universal history, nor to the kind of multiculturalism that is rooted in Herder’s rival approach to history. Instead, it presents a (...) concept of cultural contact and cultural transformation that highlights the way the material and economic conditions of social existence shape the institutions in which cultures more narrowly conceived are embedded and relate to each other. By bringing transculturation into dialogue with the idea of the porosity of cultures initially promoted in 1925 by Walter Benjamin in his essay on Naples, we find a way to free transculturation from Ortiz’s tendency to lapse into biological metaphors with the danger of retaining a reference to cultural purity that he would not endorse. Transculturation, thus revised, recommends itself as a term helpful for thinking about a world shaped by mass migration and the new technological forms of ever more rapid cultural exchange. Properly understood, it promotes a future where openness and sharing are valued over ownership and preservation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the close relationship between two of the extant manuscripts of the Qur’ān’s Latin translation by Robert of Ketton, and the figure of Juan de Segobia, who from 1437 had studied this version of the Koran until he himself, with the collaboration of a Spanish alfaquí, produced a new translation. After exposing the news that Juan de Segobia offers about the copies of the Latin Qur’ān that he possessed, a general arrangement of (...) the manuscript tradition of the Alchoran by Robert of Ketton is outlined. This is divided into two families, α and β. The comparison between the wording offered by a group of manuscripts of family α with the variants present in the codices of family β and in the edition of Theodor Bibliander itself allows us to conclude that the codex Paris BNF lat. 3669 is a copy of a manuscript supervised by Juan de Segobia, which offered a revised wording of the Alchoran by Robert of Ketton based on the variants taken from the codex of John of Ragusio. (shrink)

Hans Jonas developed in ‘Past and Truth’ (1991) a demonstration of the existence of God based on the ‘truth of past things’. And in ‘The Concept of God after Auschwitz’ (1984) he created a new myth of divine self-alienation in order to take away God’s responsibility for human misery. Both these texts were conceived as an alternative to a more Hegelian, objective idealist perspective on theology. This article shows that Jonas’s alternative does not fully succeed in this respect because his (...) arguments bring him back to an idealist perspective. His proof of God is revisited and explained using new insights recently developed by Robert Spaemann, whose interpretation of the proof makes it clear that many important critics of Jonas are too quick to reject his claims. The arguments of Jonas now seem to show a new strength even though they still fail to give an alternative to an objective idealist theological framework. (shrink)

This paper presents an interpretation of the 1945 forbidden film Scarlet Street in a way so as to touch the problem of gender in film noir. Firstly, I give an ac-count of film noir, agreeing with Robert Pippin’s argument concerning film genres. Then, I claim that time and repetition, irony and hierarchy, art and per-spective constitute the core subjects explored in Scarlet Street. Furthermore, I try to connect all the subjects into a single one. My point is to show (...) how art, perspective, time, repetition, irony and hierarchy are articulated in the main character’s gender identity. Finally, I suggest there is a deep connection be-tween the movie’s character constitution and Cavell’s understanding of gender and agency.Keywords: Film. Gender. Psychoanalysis. Cavell. Freud. (shrink)

Notes by Dr. Robert Gahringer, who was C.I. Lewis' assistant at Harvard, Dr. Francis H. Parker, and those of the editor were used to reconstruct Lewis' lectures in Phil. 130, Kant, as those lectures were presented at Harvard in the late 40's and early 50's. The test of the reconstruction includes a detailed discussion of European epistemology in the period before Kant in addition to Lewis' interpretation of Kant's epistemology, critique of metaphysics, theology, and a brief presentation of his (...) moral philosophy. (shrink)

Notes by Dr. Robert Gahringer, who was C.I. Lewis' assistant at Harvard, Dr. Francis H. Parker, and those of the editor were used to reconstruct Lewis' lectures in Phil. 130, Kant, as those lectures were presented at Harvard in the late 40's and early 50's. The test of the reconstruction includes a detailed discussion of European epistemology in the period before Kant in addition to Lewis' interpretation of Kant's epistemology, critique of metaphysics, theology, and a brief presentation of his (...) moral philosophy. (shrink)

Notes by Dr. Robert Gahringer, who was C.I. Lewis' assistant at Harvard, Dr. Francis H. Parker, and those of the editor were used to reconstruct Lewis' lectures in Phil. 130, Kant, as those lectures were presented at Harvard in the late 40's and early 50's. The test of the reconstruction includes a detailed discussion of European epistemology in the period before Kant in addition to Lewis' interpretation of Kant's epistemology, critique of metaphysics, theology, and a brief presentation of his (...) moral philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The question of human consciousness is a crucial part of Novalis’ aim of construing a self-critique of the I, or critique of human identity, as it is proposed in his “Fichte-Studien”. Namely, this question is an intermediary stage in said critique, serving as proof for Novalis’ theory of the opposites, the fundamental stage, and his position on philosophizing, the final stage of this endeavor, which will be at the basis of his whole philosophical system; and as such, it is (...) a topic of great importance, as it is not only a link in a chain of thought which aims at proving the organicity or living heterogeneity - and not Fichte’s machine-like homogeneity - of the human but is also a key topic towards the resolution of Novalis’problem of philosophy as an existential problem. Given this, the present article intends to situate the question of human consciousness in the framework of Novalis’greater scope of a critique of the I; and from then, to comment on Novalis’own position on the problem of human consciousness, as it is stated in the formula “Consciousness is the Being outside of Being, within Being”; a position which further separates the young poet from Fichte, as it renders him closer and closer to other young idealists, such as Hölderlin or Schelling. RESUMO A questão da consciência humana é uma parte crucial no intento novaliano de construir uma autocrítica do Eu, ou crítica da identidade humana, como ela é proposta nos seus “Fichte-Studien”. Designadamente, esta questão constitui um estado intermédio em tal crítica, servindo como prova da teoria dos contrários de Novalis, o estádio fundamental desta, e a posição de Novalis sobre o filosofar, o estádio final da sua empresa, a qual está na base de todo o seu sistema filosófico; e, como tal, é um tópico de grande importância, visto ser não só um elo em uma linha de pensamento que visa provar a organicidade ou heterogeneidade viva - e não a maquinal homogeneidade de Fichte - do humano, mas também um tópico-chave tendo em vista a resolução da questão novaliana da filosofia enquanto problema existencial. Assim sendo, o presente artigo propõe-se situar a questão da consciência humana no contexto maior da crítica da identidade de Novalis; e, a partir daí, comentar a posição de Novalis sobre o problema da consciência humana, como ele surge exposto na fórmula “A consciência é o Ser fora do Ser, no Ser”; uma posição que decisivamente separa o jovem poeta de Fichte, enquanto o aproxima de outros jovens idealistas, tais como Hölderlin ou Schelling. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines how Robert Owen’s ideas, and the example of his New Lanark Mill, were understood and received in Spain in the nineteenth century. It follows recent historiographic trends in the history of early Spanish socialism to show that although Owen’s ideas could not have a decisive impact in a largely agricultural economy and society, his ideas did draw more significant attention that has been thought. The article examines how Owen’s ideas, like those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, (...) were transmitted in Spain through different channels, in particular in education through the work of Pablo Montesino, and in the 1850s and 60s how they proved important to the creation of workers’ co-operatives in Valencia and Madrid. The article also explores how Owen’s ideas were important to the influential Spanish author Ramón de Sagra, and shows that the epistolary relationship between the two suggests that de Sagra might have been a more important voice for Owen’s ideas in Spain than has been appreciated. (shrink)

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of (...) cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal. (shrink)

Tomando como ponto de partida o diálogo "Clara", escrito por Schelling, o autor faz da conexão da Natureza com o Espírito o fio condutor da trajetória do pensamento schellinguiano. É, antes de tudo, na disputa com as filosofias de Fichte e Hegel, que se revela a convergência entre a concepção transcendental do Espírito e a filosofia da Natureza, dando-se assim a entender a importância de um conceito especulativo da Natureza como acesso ao mundo real. Taking the dialogue "Clara", written by (...) Schelling, as a starting point, the author uses the conection of Nature with the Spirit as a guiding line for his exposition of Schelling’s thought. It is, above all, the dispute with the philosophies of Fichte e Hegel that reveals the convergence between a transcendental conception of Spirit and the philosophy of Nature. Thus, the author implies the importance of speculative concept of Nature as an access to the real world. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 27-32. “My”—what does this word designate? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to,what contains my whole being, which is mine insofar as I belong to it. Søren Kierkegaard. The Seducer’s Diary . I can’t sleep till I devour you / And I’ll love you, if you let me… Marilyn Manson “Devour” The role of poetry in the relationalities between people has a long history—from epic poetry recounting tales of yore; to emotive lyric poetry; to (...) rude, irreverent limericks; to Hallmark cards which have ditties that allow one to cringe, and somehow fall in love at the same moment. Without going into a notion of aesthetics, or attempting to choose which form of poetry is superior, we might want to consider why the form of poetry itself has long been a part of relationality. And whilst doing so, we might always keep in mind that poetry—especially poetry that moves, transports us—is the form that Plato has been warning us about, particularly if we want to become good citizens.As Avital Ronell teaches us in Stupidity : the poet, irremediably split between exaltation and vulgarity, between the autonomy that produces the concept within intuition and the foolish earthly being, functions as a contaminant for philosophy—a being who at least since Plato, has been trying to read and master an eviction notice served by philosophy. The poet as genius continues to threaten and fascinate, menacing the philosopher with the beyond of knowledge. Philosophy cringes (287). And considering that the philosopher is the lover of wisdom, we might begin to ask ourselves why one lover is warning against another—if the philosopher is in love with wisdom, then is the poet perhaps his rival, his challenger, for that very love? For, one must also remember that Plato—through Socrates—mentions constantly that Homer is his favourite. Moreover, by adopting both his own voice, whilst mixing it with Socrates’, Plato is adopting the form of poetry that he warns most about—the warning almost serves more as a homage to poetry than anything else. Here, we might open the register that one of the main reasons that he ejects a particular kind of poet is on the grounds of effecting effeminacy on the populace—good poetry moves you, affects you, transports you, shifts you beyond reason, puts you “out of your mind.” However, Plato also teaches us that rhetoric in its highest form requires divine inspiration by way of the daemon, or the muse. This moment of divine intervention is one that seizes—perhaps even ceases—you; putting you “beyond yourself.” In other words, a good rhetorician must always already be open to the possibility of otherness—the same otherness that possibly resides in the feminine. One could also trace this back to the poet that he both loved, and feared, most—Homer. Perhaps the effect of effeminacy that Homer's poetry opened is precisely the source of its power: through listening to Homer, one's body, one’s habitus is opened to the possibility of the feminine. And here, one must remember that the source of all learning—and all teaching—also lies in mimesis, in repetition, in habit. Once the habitus is opened to the possibility of invasion, of intervention, of otherness, there is quite possibly no possibility of distinguishing whether the mimesis is that of reproduction, or if there is always already a productive aspect to it. And by extension, if learning cannot be controlled, the very notion of teaching itself is shifted from a master-student relationality to one where the master is potentially changed as well—the relationality between the master and the student is not only inter-changing, but one cannot even know who is teaching, or learning, at any point. All that can be said is that they are in a relationality; which means that one is ultimately unable to locate the locus of knowledge, of wisdom—the site of which Plato is attempting to convince us is the sole domain of the philosopher. And it is this that philosophy is cringing from. To compound matters, philosophy is striving for wisdom; which can only come from the Gods. In other words, this is a gift that has to be bestowed on them—and more than that, wisdom is always already exterior to one’s control and knowledge. At best, it is the role of one to recognise the gift, to answer the call as it were. Here, if we listen carefully, we can hear the echo of Alexander Graham Bell, and the telephone. And as we are attempting to respond to the call of wisdom—the call that both poetry and philosophy are listening out for—it might be helpful to recall the agreement between Alexander Graham Bell and his brother Melville. In the biography, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude , Robert V. Bruce notes that Aleck and Melly made a “solemn compact that whichever of us should die first would endeavour to communication with the other if it were possible to do so” (63). Since Melville was the one who passed on first, this pact put the onus on Aleck to receive the call of his brother. If you take into consideration the fact that until Melville’s death, both brothers had been working on an early prototype of the telephone, the instrument of distant sound can be read as an attempt by Aleck to maintain the possibility of keeping in touch with Melly, of hearing the voice from beyond. However, this was a connection that was not premised on any knowing, reason, or rationality; it was rather, one that was based on hope, and born out of love. And here, if we eves-drop on a cross-line with The Telephone Book , we can pick up the voice of Avital Ronell once again and hear, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading” (380). In other words, the telephone can be read as the openness to the possibility of responding to the other; one that might always remain unknown. Even in this day of caller-identification, we can never know for sure who the other person on the line is until we pick up: hence, the only decision we can make—the effects of which we remain blind to until it affects us—is to either pick up or not, to either respond or not. And it is not as if the decision to pick up comes without risks: each time we answer a call, we run the risk of it ruining our day. Even when we don’t know who the caller is, perhaps especially when we don’t know who the person on the other end of the line is—and here one only has to think of prank calls—we are leaving ourselves completely open to being affected by another. Thus, philosophy finds itself in the position of Vladimir and Estragon. Since they have no idea who Godot is, they can never know if or when he shows up—thus, if he (and we are taking his gender on the word of the boy, some boy—we don’t even know if it is the same boy—who comes round in the evening) has already come, they would not be in the position to know it. And even if someone comes to them and announces that “I am Godot,” the wait would not be over—without referentiality to the name, they would have to take on faith that that person is indeed Godot. Hence, all they can know is that they are waiting for Godot; and Godot is the name of that waiting itself. All philosophy can know is that it is waiting; and wisdom is the name of that waiting itself. Which brings us to Tina Turner’s eternal question, “what’s love got to do, got to do with it?” In order to begin to consider that, we have to first attempt to examine the notion of love itself. Perhaps we might begin to consider what the difficulty of the statement “I love you.” For, if love is a relationality between two persons—both of whom remain singular, and are attempting to respond to each other—this suggests that neither of them subsume the other under themselves. In other words, the other remains wholly other. If this is so, then the “you” in the statement always remains shrouded in mystery. And even if the “you” was replaced with the name of the person, the veiling remains: for, names refer both to the singularity that is the person, and also every other person bearing that name, at exactly the same time. To compound matters, the only time one has to utter a persons name is in their absence—thus, the correspondence of a name to that particular person is at best an affect of memory. And if we consider the notion of memory, we have to also open the register of forgetting—bringing along with it the problem that there is no object to forgetting. For instance, when one utters “I forgot,” all one is uttering is the fact that one has forgotten, and nothing more—the moment there is an object to the statement, one has strictly speaking remembered what one has forgotten. Moreover, we have no control over when forgetting happens to us. And since it is always already exterior to us, affects us, and has no necessary object, there is no reason to believe that every moment of memory might not bring with it a moment of forgetting. Hence, whenever we utter a name—even if we accept the correspondence between the utterance and the person in front of us—all we are doing is uttering the fact that we are naming. Thus, it is not so much that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ but more appropriately, ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’—the relationality between its name and the phenomenon of its sweet smell can only be established after that moment of naming, that instance of catachresis. So, whenever one utters “I love you,” not only is it a performative statement, it is the very naming of that love—all you are doing is establishing a relationality between you and the other. And since there is no necessary referent—one is naming that referentiality as one utters it—this suggests that it is always already a symbolic statement; without which the mystery of the other cannot me maintained. In other words, one cannot love the other without maintaining this symbolic distance—through a ritual; in this case the utterance “I love you.” This might be why Valentine’s Day seems to provoke such a massive reaction: the most common one from people (besides florists) being, Valentine’s Day is mere commercialism. Those among the nay-sayers who maintain a soft spot for Karl Marx would proceed to call it the commodification of relationships; those who prefer the Gods would claim that the sanctity of relationships has been profaned; the gender theorists would note how the fact that males buy the gifts only serves to highlight the unequal power-relation between the genders. Whichever side and variation of the arguments they choose boils down to this: the discomfort lies in the fact that they are confronted with the notion of relationships moving into a mediated sphere. The underlying logic is that love is between two persons only; it should not only remain between them, but more pertinently, be an unmediated experience between two persons. Which of course completely misses the point. For, if we reopen the register that relationships are the result of a negotiation between two persons, there must then be a space between them for this very negotiation to occur. Otherwise, all that is happening is, one person is subsuming the other within their own sphere of understanding; effectively effacing the other. If that were the case, there would no longer be any relationality; all negotiation is gone and the other person is a mere extension of the self—one is in a masturbatory relationality with one’s imaginary. Hence, any relationship must always already carry with it the unknown, and possibly always unknowable. The other person is an enigma, remains—must remain—enigmatic to you. This is the only way in which the proclamation “I love you” remains singular, remains a love that is about the person as a singular person—and not merely about the qualities of the person, what the person is. For, if the mystery of the other is unveiled, then the love for the other person is also a completely transparent love: one that you can know thoroughly, calculate; a check-list. And if they are knowable, this suggests that they can also be negated, and hence, the love can also go away. Only when the love for the other person is an enigmatic one, one that cannot be understood, can that love potentially be an event—and if it is an event, then strictly speaking, it cannot be known before it happens; at best, it can be glimpsed as it is happening, or perhaps even only realised retrospectively. At the point in which it happens, it is a love that comes from elsewhere: this strange phenomenon is best captured in the colloquial phrase, I was struck by love;” or even more so by, “I was blinded by love.” This is a blinding to not only the subject of the encounter—the self—but also of the very object of that encounter, the “you”—all that can be said is that there is an encounter. And it is for this reason Cupid is blind: not just because love is random (and can happen to anyone at any time), but more importantly because even after it happens, both the reason you are in love, and the person you are in love with, remain blind to you. Since there is an unknowable relationality with the other person, the only way you can approach it is through a ritual. This is the lesson that religions have taught us: since one is never able to phenomenally experience the God(s), one has no choice but to approach them symbolically. These rituals are strictly speaking meaningless—the actual content is interchangeable—as it is the form that is important. Rituals allow us momentary glimpses at secrets; and secrets are never about their content(s). Rather, secrets entail the recognition that they are secrets; the secret lies in their form as secret. This can be seen when we consider how group secrets work: since the entire group knows the secret, clearly the content of the secret is not as important as the fact that only members within the group are privy to this secret. Occasionally the actual content can be so trivial that even other people outside the group might know the information; they just do not realize its significance. For instance, if I used my date of birth as my bank-account password, merely knowing when I was born would not instantly give you the key to my life savings. In order for that to happen, you would have had to recognise the significance of the knowledge of my birthday. This means that you have to know that you know something. Since the God(s) are, strictly speaking, unknowable, this suggests that rituals put one in a position to potentially experience the God(s). The meaningless gestures on Valentine’s Day play precisely this ritualised role. It is not so much what you give the other person, but the fact that you give it to them. The gift in this sense is very much akin to an offering; the gift opens the possibility of an exchange. Gift-giving does not guarantee that you will like what is returned; there is always a reciprocation of the gift, but what is returned to you is never known in advance, until the moment it is received. This means that the worst thing that one can do is not give the gift: that would be akin to a cutting off of all possibilities, a complete closing of all communication with the other person. This at the same time also means that you cannot wait for the other person to give you something before you get them their gift: if that were the scenario, the reciprocal gift would be nothing more than a calculated return. The only manner in which both persons can give true gifts is to offer them independently of the other person, whilst keeping them in mind. In this way, the two gifts are always already both uncalculated (in the sense of not knowing what the return is) and also a reciprocation for the other (without knowing whether the other person actually has a gift in the first place). Naturally, this would seem like an irrational, even stupid, way of buying gifts. But it is precisely the stupidity involved that saves the relationship from being banal—more importantly, stupidity prevents it from entering the mere profane. This is not to say that an enigmatic love cannot end—of course it can. However, the difference lies in the fact that if the relationality is wholly transparent, it is subsumed under reason—completely predictable, within the self, and thus never open to the possibility of otherness, exteriority, musing. A love that is an event is one that is also open to the possibility of the divine, the sacred—always already closer to the possibility of wisdom. If we establish that both love and wisdom are exterior, to our knowledge, and the finitude to our selves, this suggests that both are names for the possibility of openness to otherness. In other words, and what choice do we have here but to use the words of the other, the philosopher—the lover of wisdom—is a name for one who is waiting, and nothing more. But that still leaves us with the question of this uncomfortable relationality between philosophy and poetry. But before we address that question, we have to take a momentary detour, and consider the whether it is possible to call one a poet. For, if we take the notion of a poet to be one who reaches the highest levels of rhetoric (beyond the lawyer, and the orator, who only aim to either please the crowds, or convince by way of sophistry), then we must also acknowledge that one can only become a poet at the moment of seizing, the point of inspiration, by the muses. Without this divine moment, all (s)he can do is practice her craft. As no one can control when the muses make their appearance, one could always be practising in vain—in some way, one is always already practising to be least in the way when the muse whispers into one’s ear; one is practising so as not to be vain. And since one cannot know when the muse will appear, there is no time frame to the practising—unlike the lawyer who speaks against a clock, poetry knows no time; the only time that matters is the time appropriate to poetry itself. Thus, all the poet (if one can use this term) is practising for the possibility of effacing her/him self—and waiting. Thus, in order for poetry to occur, in order to be seized, the poet—along with all her concerns—must cease. In other words, there is no poet; there is only the possibility of poetry. However, even as there is no time frame to this waiting, even as all we can say is that poetry is a name for waiting, the one who is practising is always already also in time. And since (s)he is in a symbolic relationality with the possibility of poetry, this suggests that the practising is her sacrifice, and time is precisely what she is sacrificing. Here, it might be helpful to turn to a strange source when it comes to poetry—Georges Bataille—and consider his teachings in the first volume of The Accursed Share where he reminds us that, the “essence [of sacrifice] is to consume profitlessly .” This is where each exchange is beyond rationality, beyond calculability, beyond reason itself, “unsubordinated to the ‘real’ order and occupied only with the present.” He continues: Sacrifice destroys that which it consecrates. It does not have to destroy as fire does; only the tie that connected the offering to the world of profitable activity is severed, but this separation has the sense of a definitive consumption; the consecrated offering cannot be restored to the real order.” (58) Since there is no need for a physical change in the object of sacrifice—“it does not have to destroy as fire does”—this suggests that the tie is severed symbolically. Hence, there is an aspect of trans-substantiation in this sacrifice: the form remains the same; in fact there is no perceivable change—this is the point at which all phenomenology fails—but there is always already a difference, an absolute separation from the “real order,” from logic, calculability, reason. The object of sacrifice, the victim [,] is a surplus taken from the mass of useful wealth…Once chosen, he is the accursed share , destined for violent consumption. But the curse tears him away from the order of things…” (59). And it is this tearing away from the order of things—the order of rationality—that “restores to the sacred world that which servile use has degraded, rendered profane” (55). For, only when it is no longer useful, when it is no longer abstracted—subjected, subsumed under—merely a use-value, can the object be an object as such, can a subject be a subject as such; be a singularity. Thus, it is never so much who or what is sacrificed, but the fact that there is a sacrifice. So even as (s)he is sacrificing her time to poetry, it is always already beyond her knowledge whether what (s)he is doing is actually preparing her for poetry or not—all (s)he can know is that she is sacrificing and nothing more. Hence, all (s)he can do is to open her self to the possibility of this relationality—all (s)he can do is be in love with poetry. At the moment the muse whispers into her ear, (s)he ceases to be, and becomes a medium for poetry—and since this possession is always already beyond our cognitive knowledge, this is also a moment of divine wisdom. In other words, there is no difference between poetry and wisdom—the moment of poetry is the moment of wisdom. And this might be the very reason for the philosopher’s aversion to poets. Not so much because they may corrupt the youth (this is after all the aim of all thinking, all philosophy), but precisely because in order to do so, the philosopher must wait for a moment of possession, for divine musing, for poetry. Hence, all thought, all thinking, all philosophy, is nothing but the waiting for the possibility of poetry itself. (shrink)

An explanatorily powerful approach to the modal dimension of knowledge is Robert Nozick’s idea that knowledge stands in a tracking relation to the world. However, pinning down a specific modal condition has proved elusive. In this paper, I offer a diagnosis and a positive proposal. The root of the problem, I argue, is the unquestioned assumption that tracking is a matter of directly preserving conformity between what is believed and what is the case in certain possible worlds. My proposal (...) is that what we track is whether the conditions for belief formation are appropriate in such worlds. Accordingly, we indirectly track the truth by ensuring that we only use our methods of belief formation in conditions that make it likely that conformity is preserved between what is believed and what is the case. (shrink)

Que la sociedad corre peligro de ser destruida es un tema recurrente en todas las áreas de la cultura. Pero en el libro que aquí reseñamos se nos recuerda que Émile Durkheim y otros grandes colaboradores a la gestación y desarrollo de la sociología eran extremadamente conscientes de esta problemática e insistían en la necesidad de no sólo abordar sus temáticas intrínsecas, sino también en mantener viva y activa esa reflexión. Rodrigo Ottonello, el autor de esta obra, hace honor a (...) dicho mandato como muy pocos lo logran en la actualidad. Pero también nos advierte: para entender el verdadero problema que acarrea la discusión sobre la destrucción de las sociedades se requiere afrontar, primero, la pregunta por la posibilidad de que el objeto de la sociología, esto es, la sociedad en sí -y no tan sólo ésta o aquella sociedad- pueda o no padecer destrucción... (shrink)

This paper discusses the commitment account of assertion, according to which two necessary conditions for asserting that p are the speaker's undertaking a commitment to justify her assertion in the face of challenges and the speaker's licensing the audience to defer justificatory challenges back to her. Relying on what I call the "cancellation test," and focusing on Robert Brandom's version of the CAA, I show that the latter is wrong: it is perfectly possible to assert that p even while (...) explicitly disavowing the justificatory commitment and while refusing to issue a deferring license. Then I sketch an alternative to the CAA, the trust account of assertion, according to which speakers necessarily present themselves as trustworthy concerning p's truth whenever they assert p. I explain why this is different from undertaking a justificatory commitment, and offer some reasons for thinking that this is a more promising account. (shrink)

La intuición no es tratada por la etología, lo cual la excluye de los animales no humanos, sin embargo, psicólogos, neurólogos y filósofos reconocen que la intuición, del latín intueri «mirar hacia dentro», es percibir y decidir instantáneamente, sin la participación de la razón, y con la intervención de la parte más primitiva del sistema nervioso central de los animales humanos. La fenomenología apela a la experiencia intuitiva como fundamento del estudio de la realidad, manifiesta al ser, tal como es. (...) La intuición se asocia con experiencias previas, y de acuerdo al controversial misticismo cuántico: incluso con el futuro. Pero no se puede explicar con claridad racional, sino con expresiones emotivas, de por qué, luego de procesar tal información, se llega a tal conclusión, decisión o creación. La intuición es un fenómeno de animales humanos, y de animales no humanos, y más que eso. Es un fenómeno de las cosas vivas. Propongo, obviamente por intuición, su reconocimiento en un dialogo de saberes donde se ejercite más ésta y menos la razón. (shrink)

Old Havana: Spirit of the Living City artistically captures the architecture, people, and daily life of La Habana Vieja through the lenses of two visionary photographers and colleagues, one American and the other Cuban. Chip Cooper and Néstor Martí began collaborating in 2008, documenting the picturesque features of the oldest and most historically rich quarter in Cuba's capital city at the behest of Eusebio Leal Spengler, the historian of the city of Havana and the director of the Habana Vieja restoration (...) project. Cooper's and Martí's images highlight the spirit of change and renewal underlying the restoration of this international treasure and its revival as a vibrant business and residential area. Inspired by the work of twentieth century American photographer Walker Evans, Cooper and Martí, through perspectives both unique and deeply entwined, capture the humanity of the city, in a language at once universal and transcendent. (shrink)

In this sixth issue of Speculations, a serial imprint created to explore post-continental philosophy and speculative realism, a wide range of contemporary philosophical issues pertaining to the contemporary philosophical scene is touched upon, from the continental realism of Tristan Garcia, Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux to the 'new realism' of Maurizio Ferraris, from Lacanian and Laurellian speculations to the synthetic philosophy of Fernando Zalamea's mathematics.

O presente artigo visa elucidar as relações entre Fernando Pessoa, Schopenhauer e a questão do livre arbítrio, tendo por base a leitura que o autor português fez da obra schopenhaueriana. Com efeito, ao longo dos escritos de Pessoa encontramos múltiplos testemunhos da leitura que o poeta e pensador português fez do pensamento schopenhaueriano. Um importante indício para o estudo da reapropriação pessoana do pensamento de Schopenhauer constata-se, desde logo, na Biblioteca Particular de Fernando Pessoa, onde encontramos uma tradução (...) francesa do texto Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens [Sobre a liberdade da vontade] de Schopenhauer. A leitura deste livro viria a ocasionar a produção de uma multiplicidade de escritos filosóficos que Fernando Pessoa atribui a duas das suas personalidades literárias fictícias inglesas do universo pré-heteronímico: Charles Robert Anon e Alexander Search. Assim, tendo por base todos estes indícios, pretendemos mostrar o impacto da leitura de Schopenhauer no universo literário pessoano. (shrink)

Research examining Service-Learning in Physical Education Teacher Education is ample. However, long-term investigations are still scarce and literature demands the application of this type of design to uncover the effects of SL on the long run. This study followed a longitudinal quantitative approach; thus, the participants completed the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire in three occasions. Results show that there exist significant differences between mean values of the global outcomes of the CASQ; concretely, there was an improvement in the first (...) interval followed by a decrease in the second period. Regarding the different dimensions of the CASQ, leadership skills, attitudes towards social justice and attitudes towards diversity showed significant differences too. This research leads towards better understanding of methodological strategies promoting quality education, positing SL as an adequate possibility in this respect, also in the long term. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

The United States Army’s Future Combat Systems Project, which aims to manufacture a “robot army” to be ready for deployment by 2012, is only the latest and most dramatic example of military interest in the use of artificially intelligent systems in modern warfare. This paper considers the ethics of a decision to send artificially intelligent robots into war, by asking who we should hold responsible when an autonomous weapon system is involved in an atrocity of the sort that would normally (...) be described as a war crime. A number of possible loci of responsibility for robot war crimes are canvassed; the persons who designed or programmed the system, the commanding officer who ordered its use, the machine itself. I argue that in fact none of these are ultimately satisfactory. Yet it is a necessary condition for fighting a just war, under the principle of jus in bellum, that someone can be justly held responsible for deaths that occur in the course of the war. As this condition cannot be met in relation to deaths caused by an autonomous weapon system it would therefore be unethical to deploy such systems in warfare. (shrink)

Utilitarianism, the great reforming philosophy of the nineteenth century, has today acquired the reputation for being a crassly calculating, impersonal philosophy unfit to serve as a guide to moral conduct. Yet what may disqualify utilitarianism as a personal philosophy makes it an eminently suitable guide for public officials in the pursuit of their professional responsibilities. Robert E. Goodin, a philosopher with many books on political theory, public policy and applied ethics to his credit, defends utilitarianism against its critics and (...) shows how it can be applied most effectively over a wide range of public policies. In discussions of such issues as paternalism, social welfare policy, international ethics, nuclear armaments, and international responses to the environment crisis, he demonstrates what a flexible tool his brand of utilitarianism can be in confronting the dilemmas of public policy in the real world. (shrink)

Robert Brandom's latest book, the product of his John Locke lectures in Oxford in 2006, is a return to the philosophy of language and is easily read as a continuation and development of the views defended in Making it Explicit. The text of the lectures is presented much as they were delivered, but it contains an ‘Afterword’ of more than 30 pages which responds to questions raised when he gave the lectures, and also when they were subsequently delivered in (...) Prague the following year. The published text also contains relatively technical appendices to two of the lectures.The individual lectures engage with some important and difficult issues, often ones that were explored in detail in the earlier book. However, these discussions are located within a broader meta-philosophical context, and it says something about the abstract and difficult character of these views that they provide the main subject matter of the Afterword. This framework affects how we should understand the relations between this book and Making It Explicit too. Although most of the detailed discussions happily belong within the general project of the earlier book, they are offered as illustrations of a framework that is independent of this project. Indeed, Brandom suggests that defenders of the semantic views of David Lewis, for example, could embrace his main message as well as those who favour Brandom's own form of pragmatism.Neo-pragmatist philosophers such as Brandom's teacher, Richard Rorty, often present themselves as rejecting the analytic tradition in philosophy. When Brandom describes the ‘pragmatist challenge’ to the ‘classical project of analysis’, he appeals to the criticisms found in the work of Wittgenstein and Sellars that are often appealed to by the critics of the analytic tradition. The message of the new book is that the views he has built on this …. (shrink)

If personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, brainhood could name the quality or condition of being a brain. This ontological quality would define the `cerebral subject' that has, at least in industrialized and highly medicalized societies, gained numerous social inscriptions since the mid-20th century. This article explores the historical development of brainhood. It suggests that the brain is necessarily the location of the `modern self', and that, consequently, the cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent (...) to modernity (at least insofar as modernity gives supreme value to the individual as autonomous agent of choice and initiative). It further argues that the ideology of brainhood impelled neuroscientific investigation much more than it resulted from it, and sketches how an expanding constellation of neurocultural discourses and practices embodies and sustains that ideology. (shrink)

It has historically been a crime in Canada to provide assistance to someone in ending their own life, however, this paradigm was inverted in 2015 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that restrictions on this practice, within certain defined parameters, violated the right to life, liberty, and security of the person. Subsequently, recent legal and policy decisions have highlighted the issue of how to balance the rights of individuals to access MAiD with the rights of care providers to exercise (...) conscience-based objections to participation in this process. We argue that there is significant harm and ethical hazard in disregarding individual and institutional rights to conscientious objection and since measures less coercive than the threat of regulatory or economic sanctions do exist, there should be no justification for such threats in Canada’s health care systems. (shrink)