With Arendt's insight regarding the need of judgment in the background, this paper pursues the ways in which the need for theory, or political philosophy, articulates Rawls' overall approach in order to tell just from unjust institutions. It suggests that the Kantian mould of reflective judgment gives form to the construction of a theory of justice via the mechanism of reflective equilibrium. The need for theory so devised has to constantly move between the demands of theory itself — the social (...) contract tradition as understood by Rawls — and the demands of action understood as the guide that our considered judgments lend to our understanding of the social world. Finally, it is also suggested that a particular grasp of the lessons of historical experience, as a way of fulfilling the need for theory that lies in the heart of the exercise of judgment, is what renders the Rawlsian proposal theoretically attractive, and what constantly underlies the construction of his theory via the particular exemplification and the theoretical rendering of the moral semantics underlying democratic culture. (shrink)

En este trabajo, el autor analiza las contradicciones que el multiculturalismo plantea en las sociedades actuales, resaltando la importante mediación que el sistema político democrático lleva a cabo en la resolución de las mismas. A partir de los artículos de tres autores ('The Politics ofRecognition" de CH Taylor: "Struggles for Recognition in Constitutional States" de J. Habermas y "Legitimacy and Diversity: Dialectical Reflections on Analytical Distinctions" de T. McCarthy) y de la referencia final al trabajo de Rawls 'The Law of (...) the People", expone una serie de momentos teóricos que representan diferentes estadios en la discusión entre el pensamiento liberal y el comunitarismo, y que componen un proceso explicativo en el que cada uno de esos momentos supondría una superación teórica del anterior. En concreto, el autor trata de situar la discusión sobre el reconocimiento del derecho a la diferencia, en el terreno en el que del análista del modelo teórico del liberalismo más acorde con el reconocimiento de derechos a las colectividades-el republicanismo comunitarista al que se refiere Taylor-, se pase al análisis del tipo de sistema político dentro del cual se reconozca la diferencia y la existencia de otras culturas como algo que ya estaba implícito en la teoría de los derechos. Este sistema político sería la democracia deliberativa y su procedimiento discursivo para tomar decisiciones y llegar a acuerdos, propuesto por J. Habermas. El trabajo de McCarthy tratarla de resolver algunas fisuras en la democracia deliberativa que afectarían a su legitimidad por cuanto suponen un menoscabo a la idea misma de las diferencias. Finalmente, la alusión a Rawls permite al autor erigir el sistema de los derechos humanos en el estándar mínimo necesario para llegar a un acuerdo global lo suficientemente amplio y abstracto como para garantizar el máximo respeto a las diferencias. Un acuerdo que, insiste el autor, sólo puede enmarcarse en un proyecto democrático con dimensión internacional, al que llama "horizonte cosmopolitamente democrático". (shrink)

Algunas experiencias del siglo XX -Auschwitz, el Gulag, Hiroshima- han vuelto a herir la conciencia ilustrada y replanteado el problema del mal en nuestra cultura. Más que una indagación metafísica sobre la naturaleza del mal, el artículo aboga por un análisis de cómo llegamos a elaborar su experiencia, un proceso que aquí prefiere concebirse como una indagación en torno al daño. Se analizan las estructuras conceptuales, modales y temporales de esa experiencia y, en la segunda parte, se propone la idea (...) de que la elaboración pública del daño es una clave para comprender la dimensión normativa del espacio público. (shrink)

Three philosophical attitudes in dialogue are suggested in answering the question posed by the Journal. An inviting, First Inner Voice undeerstands philosophy as a shareable theoretical task that can be explained and understood even across distant philosophical paradigms. A Second Inner Voice, sometimes termed in the dialogue as sceptic, distrusts any metaphilosophical definition of what philosophy is and what it should do, but would, nevertheless, aspire to retain a certain universalistic understanding of its own work, though it cannot be strongly (...) and conceptualy rendered. A Third Inner Voice, regarded in the text as somewhat Hegelian, insists in the unavoidability of strong philosophical definitions both in historical and in conceptual terms. No proposal or conclusion is forwarded regarding what should be done in contemporary philosophy, though an analysis of harm experiences is taken as an example of philosophical work. (shrink)

Reseña del libro: Cortés, F.. Del arte de la paz: reflexiones filosóficas sobre justicia transicional. Siglo del Hombre.

Harm experiences are defined by two sets of traits. In the first place, by the double type of modality of its experience: in contrast with the type of negativity that has been traditionally understood as evil, harm is defined not by its being or being experienced as necessary but by its negative possibility-what is not necessary that it should happen or have happened-and by the practical necessity that it should not happen again. In the second place, harm experiences are worked (...) through in non-symmetrical relational structures between victims or survivors, wrongdoers or victimizers, and the set of third-party figures that attend to them and adopt a concerned attitude towards them, when this is achieved. In virtue of the first set of traits, harms are open to their closure that is articulated, at least, in three types of labors or tasks: its cessation, its reparation or cure, and the commitment of its non-repetition. In virtue of the second set of traits, these tasks entail differential authorities and responsibilities in the three types of figures involved in experiences of harm. (shrink)

Some cases of countries and cultures in which traditional Catholicism has played a major role in defining public culture are undergoing accelerated secularization processes; the result should be relevant for the diagnoses underlying contemporary post-secular proposals. It is argued, first, that in these countries (Spain has been taken as a main example), where the Catholic Church lost its institutional power, it is also losing its ethical hegemony. While public and political debates still retain the sense of symbolically laden, communal ethical (...) accord, they are no longer understood with religious overtones. It is suggested, second, that laïcité — a non-aggressive stance concerning religion — could adequately describe this predicament, though it retains a trait of self-defence vis-à-vis the Church that is normally attached to the term ‘laicism’. It is proposed, third, that secularization takes place at the ethical level, in which no sense of loss can be attached to the secular citizen. It is at this level, where the conflicts around meanings and values, which can be framed in religious or secularized terms, set the agenda for legal and political discussions, and where the equal standing of religious and secular interpretations should be assessed. (shrink)

Lo que quisiera sostener, de entrada, es que nuestra percepción o nuestro concepto del pluralismo es determinante para comprender el espacio público y esa unidad de agencia que denominaba, con Rawls, la Unión Social- o la unión social de las uniones sociales, por ser más fiel a su concepto. La hipótesis central que guiará mi reflexión es qué concebiremos, cómo es y cómo haya de ser el espacio público según sean nuestras concepciones de qué es lo que hace diferentes, diversas (...) a las personas y que, a su vez, distintas concepciones de esa diversidad conllevan diversas nociones de cómo es el espacio público y de cuál habría de ser su papel y su estructura y de cómo debería estar normativamente regulado. [Fragmento]. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos Paris, (...) Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Los trabajos que componen este volumen recorren los conceptos centrales de la Ilustracion: razon, critica, autonomia, naturaleza humana, humanidad, libertad, solidaridad, igualdad, justicia y emancipacion, cuyo fracaso etico obliga a replantear las formulaciones de la filosofia ilustrada, y a someter a critica sus presupuestos. (shrink)

How have the conceptions of the subject in Contemporary Philosophy changed? There are four moments in this development: a) The ethical conception of enlightened subjectivity; b) the different suspicious altitudes of such project in the XIX and XX centuries; e) the follow-up of those suspicious altitudes in what is called the philosophies of "malaise" in the XX century; d) the new conceptual articulation at the end of the century. Why have these changes and processes occurred? A general interpretive hypothesis belonging (...) to the realm of moral philosophy is suggested: n the realm of practical life we are oriented "forwards" and the subject has aperformative and projective attitude; this dimension becomes opaque when the interpretation of such practica! life is understood as the result or product (and is understood as moving backwards). In light of that hypothesis, the different ways in which the philosophies of suspicion and malaise are blind to the ethical subject are analized and it is claimed that they are. therefore.blind to the ways in which the Twentieth Century has built, against those philosophical interpretations. moral dimensions -as the rejection of damage and the imputation of responsibilities- to which only the last moment of the last century seems to do justice. (shrink)