The article aims at analyzing and connecting the ideas of justice and generations in a phenomenological perspective beyond the classical approaches. It suggests a shift from the concept of generations to those of generating and generativity in a phenomenological sense. The debate involves different philosophical positions about the main distinction ‘contemporaneity/not-contemporaneity’. At the end, the essay proposes a confrontation between phenomenology and philosophies of the otherness, discussing three basic ideas: temporalization, historicity and generating of generations.

The question of the animal is one of the most intensely debated in the contemporary philosophical arena. The present article makes the case that Husserl’s phenomenological approach offers a stimulating and open-ended perspective on this discussion. The animal, indeed, is an instance of extreme otherness, which pushes phenomenology to its limits. The paper opens with an outline of the methodological issues raised by the question of the animal. It then examines what the animal—at this point, taken as a whole—and the (...) human being have in common and what Husserl sees as the main differences between them. A critical aspect here is the question of personhood. Finally, Sect. 3 traces Husserl’s progression from a general concept of animality to detailed and nuanced phenomenological descriptions of different animals and their intra- and inter-specific relationships. Husserl understands that the threshold that joins and divides human beings and animals is difficult to pin down, because there is more than one threshold: it is plural. (shrink)

Franco “Bifo” Berardi tells us that the current transformation of every domain of social life into economy has led to “the subjugation of the soul to work processes.” There is a newfound love of work and, consequently, writes Berardi, “no desire, no vitality seems to exist anymore outside of the economic enterprise.” Concerned as it once was with “fostering the soul,” and concerned as it now is with preparing students for the job market, what role might education have in Berardi’s (...) musings? Can “creativity,” “self-actualization” and “curiosity,” which are so valued in education, still speak and help foster a sense of the soul that exceeds economy and work? In this paper, I explore these questions by providing an account of what is at stake in Berardi’s conception of the soul and its subjugation to work. I draw on his ideas to critically appraise the seemingly-benign aspirations of the “creative class,” a term coined to signal a new era for human flourishing afforded by shifts towards personal creativity in the digital economy. I then move to consider how, in particular, the ubiquitous promotion of “creativity” and “curiosity” in education tends to replicate a form of learning that puts the soul to work, as it were, promoting a narrow, self-enterprising subject with a frantic instrumental orientation towards the world. I conclude with a discussion on how demands on learners, to be always curious, innovative, nimble and open to discovery lead to panic, collapse and depression: the diseases of the soul. (shrink)

In this article I draw on Lauren Berlant's notion of ‘cruel optimism’ to identify and untangle how the prevailing sense of ‘optimism’ in education works against our common hope or collective striving for what is educational in education. In particular, I discuss how the ‘cruel optimism’ that invites individuals to constantly innovate and improve themselves through ever more learning leads ultimately to a sense of ‘presentism’, ‘privation’ and ‘loneliness’, which comes to threaten the role that education plays in sustaining and (...) forging a common world. Proposing that education is where the concern with ‘passing-on’ properly takes place, I discuss how education can tend to and pine towards something larger and more durable than the individual acquisition of knowledge and skills that serve immediate transient interests. As an exemplar of a place of ‘passing-on’, I ask us to consider how education invites us to affirm the ‘living-on’ of the question of what it might mean to live together after all: to forge, sustain and pledge something of significance in common amidst what is constantly passing away. In this sense, I seek to gesture to the possibility of hope within education: a sensibility and affirmation for ‘passing-on’ and ‘sur-vivance’. Such a hope might help to address the cruel depravity and isolation affecting our time that is caught up in the ‘learnification of education’. (shrink)

Few thinkers have left such an influence across such a diverse range of studies as Michel Foucault has. This book pays homage to that diversity by presenting a multidisciplinary series of analyses dedicated to the question of power today.

Hannah Arendt has a particular notion of thinking that both is and is not philosophical. While not guided by the search for meta principles, nor concerned with establishing logical systems, her notion of thinking as the examination of “whatever happens to come to pass,” and its significance for saving our world from thoughtlessness, retains and is motivated by the fundamental pathos at the heart of philosophy—wonder. In this paper, I consider the limiting and enabling sense in which Arendt invokes “wonder” (...) for the possibility of thinking. I do so, in turn, to explore what the pathos of wonderment might offer education—an institution charged with cultivating “thinking” and, yet, constantly susceptible to the thoughtless trappings of technocratic jargon and the mechanical logic of assessment, learning processes and social reproduction. Can wonder—the very pathos of philosophy—cultivate a thinking that helps us retain an “unclouded attentiveness” to what is educational in education? Might wonder help us to overcome the thoughtlessness that dulls our attention to what we do to each other through education? (shrink)

Objective: Mindfulness disposition is associated with various psychological factors and prevent emotional distress in chronic diseases. In the present study, we analyzed the key role of mindfulness dispositions in protecting the individual against psychological distress consequent to COVID-19 social distancing and quarantining. Methods: An online survey was launched on March 13, 2020, with 6,412 responses by April 6, 2020. Socio-demographic information, exposure to the pandemic, and quarantining were assessed together with psychological distress and mindfulness disposition. Multivariate linear regression analysis was (...) performed to study the influence of predictive factors on psychological distress and quality of life in Italian responders during the early days of lockdown. Pearson correlations were calculated to study the relations between mindfulness and psychiatric symptoms. Results: Multivariate linear regression run on socio-demographics, COVID-19-related variables, and mindfulness disposition as moderators of overall psychological distress showed that mindfulness was the best predictor of psychological distress (β = -0.504; p =.000). High negative correlations were found between mindfulness disposition and overall Global Severity Index (r = -.637; p =.000), while moderate to high associations were found between mindfulness and all SCL-90 sub-scales. Discussion: Findings showed that high dispositional mindfulness enhances well-being and helps in dealing with stressful situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Mindfulness-based mental training could represent an effective intervention to stem the post-traumatic psychopathological beginnings and preventing the onset of chronic mental disorders. (shrink)

Whereas there are many aspects of Roger Simon’s thought that can be privileged, one of the most compelling points of entry for beginning to consider his legacy in the field of education, and beyond, lies with his concern for the difficult work of receiving and transmitting, of giving countenance to, the traces of those now absent. Indeed, in the last 20 years of his scholarly work, Simon pressed us to consider the pedagogical stakes in forging an ethical living relation with (...) the remnants of past and presently unsettled—ongoing—historical wrongs. Keenly aware of how memorial practices risk falling into facile assurances and deferrals, Simon emphasized the important work of “remembrance-learning,” in which the task is to learn how to ethically receive and translate the remnants of a difficult past in our present, so that we might be able to more thoroughly think our time. In this paper I provide an overview of a certain tendency in Simon’s later thinking, pointing to how his work on pedagogy, aesthetics, curation and collective study was motivated by a not so ordinary way of thinking that takes seriously the fact that the dead cannot bury the dead; that they need those in the present, those whose turn it is to do the work, to offer human significance and a human completion to what remains a remnant. (shrink)

Ernst Haeckel was convinced that the origin of language was the keyto understand human evolution. The distinguished slavist AugustSchleicher was his original inspiration on that matter but hiscousin Wilhelm Bleek was the deciisive source for his views of human language. Bleek lived in Southern Africa, studied Xhosa andZulu, and had the rare opportunity to learn the bushman languagewhich, with its characteristic clicks, suggested the form of theoriginal human language in its evolution from ape-like sounds.Haeckel's view of anthropology based on cultural (...) elements ratherthan physical characters alone was shared by other scholars includingthe Vienna-based Friedrich Mueller who applied Haeckel's approachin his studies during the voyage of the Habsburg ship ``Novara.'' Haeckel's anthropological views were heavily entangled with contemporaryconceps of race so that he and Mueller related different languages todifferent human groups both from a cultural and racial angle. Suchracialist attitude presented obvious political implications which allauthors mentioned denied vehemently. (shrink)

En este artículo se revisa el lugar que ocupa Eckhart en L’essence de la manifestation, a fin de establecer correspondencias y afini­dades entre el místico renano y la peculiar concepción que de la fenomenología sostiene Michel Henry. Se trata de analizar la es­trecha cercanía entre el alma humana y Dios postulada por Meister Eckhart y su vinculación con la conocida noción de Vida presente en el autor francés. Henry es proclive a fundar una filosofía primera asociada a la pura autoafección, (...) describiendo la Vida sea como pura inmanencia, sea como una ipseidad algo problemática. En general, el trabajo teórico de los representantes del “giro teológico de la fenomenología francesa” (Janicaud) cuestiona al sujeto clásico de la Modernidad, sin por eso traer a colación la causa de un Dios Revelado ni el que resulta de una teología natural. Este trabajo, en suma, no es el esfuerzo de pensar a un Dios confesional ni tiene un propósito evangélico. Lejos de ello, se trata de precisar el nexo entre Henry y Eckhart, puesto en escena por aquél, y si tal nexo es coherente con lo que Henry piensa acerca de un modo de manifestación que ya no implica distancia fenomenológica alguna: la manifestación del pathos de la Vida. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la noción de fenómeno saturado en el pensamiento de Marion, pero, ante todo, y relacionado con dicho fenómeno, el tipo de sujeto que corresponde a la afectación saturante. La discusión se centra en la superación de la figura del Yo trascendental, y de la Modernidad en general, para dar lugar a un sujeto disminuido, a una diminutio ipseitatis, debida fundamentalmente a una iniciativa que, alega Marion, no proviene tanto del sujeto afectado, cuanto del fenómeno que (...) lo afecta. Desalojado de su formidable centro, el sujeto kenotizado emprende una clase de recreación bastante peculiar, la cual consiste en el conjunto de respuestas que habrá de ofrecer a la densidad del fenómeno mencionado. El sujeto se recibe de lo que recibe. En una hermenéutica sucesiva que retoma la afectación, tendrá que hacerse cargo del golpe de lo dado, es decir, de aquello que lo afecta, pero no exactamente de la manera como afectan los objetos a un sujeto cognoscente. A la pregunta de Nancy “¿qué viene después del sujeto?”, hay que responder sin ninguna hesitación: el sujeto, empero ahora disminuido en su capacidad creadora de mundo a través de la síntesis trascendental: l’adonné, el adonado. (shrink)

Este trabajo aborda la visión arendtiana de la política, entendida como mundo humano común y mantenido en común a través del discurso. La sociedad como lenguaje se aparta de la peligrosa posibilidad de la unicidad discursiva en la vida política. La abolición de la pluralidad se encuentra en las antípodas del pensamiento de Arendt. Su telos es, más bien, contra toda figura totalitaria, la reivindicación de una política ceñida a la esencial relatividad de la doxa. El �nosotros� de la política (...) se produce así en la confluencia de perspectivas particulares. Habermas se opone par- cialmente a Arendt, pues asume que su perspectiva carece de un canon ideal que permita distinguir un falso acuerdo de un acuerdo genuino. (shrink)

Este trabajo, desarrollado en el contexto del giro teológico de la fenomenología francesa, reflexiona sobre la significación de la Vida en Michel Henry, Vida y pasividad que no resultan de la volición de un sujeto moderno que parecería haber sido hoy superado. Estamos en los umbrales de una filosofía primera que no deja absolutamente de lado la intencionalidad de otrora, así como su carácter activo en la donación de significado, pero subordina ambos a un fundamento primero, único e irreductible: la (...) Vida. Hemos titulado este trabajo Gloria de la pasividad puesto que, en efecto, el ego no aparece como el artífice originario de la constitución del mundo, de sus significados y de sus idealidades. Una pasividad primitiva del sujeto antecedería al ego constituyente de la fenomenología clásica, una pasividad viejísima, que no cabría, sin lugar a duda, en ninguna memoria. No hemos querido, sin embargo, introducirnos al pensamiento de Henry sin antes darnos una idea de lo que significa la pasividad del sujeto reflejada en algunas líneas de Marion, cuya comprensión se da en el marco de una fenomenología de lo invisible y de una fenomenología abierta al exceso de evidencia. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora la concepción de Marsilio de Padua sobre el poder dentro de una teoría ascendente de gobierno. Siguiendo la línea de la crítica medieval a la plenitudopotestatis , él propone, desde una orientación populista de su doctrina, una organización sociopolítica cuyo fundamento es la voluntas populi y la ley que de allí emana. Es así como en su obra El defensor de la paz puede encontrarse una sorprendente visión republicana de la política, donde la esfera religiosa queda absorbida (...) por la dimensión estatal. La salvación del mundo profano queda, por consiguiente, en sus propias manos, y la praxis intramundana se halla desprovista del auxilio que prestaban los viejos expedientes extracotidianos. Marsilius of Padua and emerging theories of government This paper explores the view maintained by Marsilius of Padua on power within an ascendant theory of government. Following the line of medieval criticism of plenitudo potestatis , he proposes, from a populist orientation of his doctrine, a socio-political organization founded upon the voluntas populi and the law that emanates from it. Thus, readers will be surprised to find a Republican view of politics in his work The Defender of Peace, where the State dimension absorbs the religious sphere. Salvation from the profane world is, therefore, in the State's own hands, and worldly practice is devoid of relief once provided by extraquotidian old records.  . (shrink)

En este artículo se exploran las relaciones entre finito-infinito y los límites del lenguaje posible, del lenguaje finito, para hablar de su callado fundamento. En este sentido, el mismo vaciamiento del lenguaje, expresión de una imposibilidad a la cual empero no se hurta, la de hablar de Dios, conduce a ponderar la importancia que tiene la teología negativa en el sentido de permitir al mundo humano barruntar las dimensiones del misterio que lo funda. Se tocan, de esta manera, las concepciones (...) de Maimónides y de santo Tomás acerca de la vía negativa como mecanismo parcial que afronta eso que, precisamente, desborda las fronteras del entendimiento humano. No porque Dios, en sí mismo, no sea, por decirlo con Erígena, plus quam esse, hiperesencial, sino porque en la noche cognoscitiva del lenguaje a éste no le queda sino su propia abdicación en relación al telos que lo mueve. En la desproporción existente entre el lenguaje y aquello que lo anima, aquél, el lenguaje, celebrará su propio silencio y la lejanía abismal en relación a su fundamento. Palabras clave : teología negativa; vía negativa; teología apofática; teología catafática; vía de la eminencia. Maimonides and Thomas: The Triumph of NegationIn this article I explore the finite-infinite relations and the limits of the possible language, of the finite language, in order to speak of its silent foundation. In this regard, the very emptying of language, expression of an impossibility from which it nevertheless does not hide, that of speaking of God, leads to think over the importance that negative theology has, in the sense of allowing the human world to conjecture the dimensions of the mystery on which it is founded. Thus, the conceptions of Maimonides and Saint Thomas are found to be very akin as to their regarding the negative way as a partial mechanism to deal with that which, precisely, surpasses the bounds of human understanding. Not because God in himself is not, to say it with Erigena, plus quam esse, hyperessential, but because in the cognitive night of language the latter has no choice but its own abdication with respect to the telos that animates it. In the disproportion existing between language and that which animates it, the former, language, will celebrate its own silence and the abysmal distance in relation to its foundation. Keywords: Negative theology; Negative way; Apophatic theology; Cataphatic theology; Way of eminence. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analiza la doctrina de la doble verdad del siglo XIII, atribuida al maestro de la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de París, Sigerio de Brabante. Sin embargo, no nos detendremos a determinar si ese maestro es el autor auténtico de la duplex veritas;más bien, nuestra interpretación se centra en la importancia de tal doctrina como origen, inicio, de un complejo proceso secularizador que concluirá separando la fe de la razón, la teología de la filosofía y, (...) sociopolíticamente, el poder espiritual del poder temporal. University, Philosophy and doble truth in the XIII centuryThis paper analyzes the XIII century´s doctrine of double truth attributed to Siger of Brabant,Master of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. However, we will not concentrate on determining if he was the authentic author of the duplex veritas; instead, our interpretation will focus on the importance of this doctrine as the source of a complex process of secularization that would end separating faith from reason, theology from philosophy; and the spiritual power from the temporal one, if looked from a socio-political perspective. (shrink)

It would seem that the difficulty in attempting to bring together ideas based on centuries-old academic disciplines with the more modern ones, which originate directly from business schools and the world of finance and economy, could explain why few, if any, real attempts have been made, over the last decade or so, to discover possible parallelisms between management and philosophy. However, through the thorough study of certain subjects, and the “history of ideas”, such parallelisms, and the so-called “masked philosophy” which (...) seems to undoubtedly inspire managerial conduct, can be found. In order to help us undertake and to better comprehend this “journey of discovery”, various schools of thought, stemming from ancient to more recent times are fundamental. References to the dissimulation philosophical paradigms of leadership, the Jesuitical schools of philosophical thinking of the Sixteenth century, the pioneer contributions of Leo Strauss, which are particularly illuminating with regards to the relation of the mutability of managerial conduct and the more recent and epoch-makingconsiderations of Richard Popkin, to quote but a few, are all crucial for the discovery and identification of these parallelisms, here particularly studied between dissimulation and business ethics. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This article explores the ethical consequences of the seemingly benign suggestion that the retelling of an event of state sponsored violence through the protocols of the law can provide a lesson/forum for fostering “discursive solidarity.” Focusing on the example of post‐dictatorship Argentina, the apparent pedagogical soundness of transmitting the traumatic event through legal commemoration will be complicated by considering how the law is employed as a mechanism for bracketing divisive memories and affects that interrupt the coherence of the national imaginary. (...) Underlining these issues will be a concern with the difficulty of historicizing abject affections, of interpreting and transmitting post‐traumatic rage through the intertextual web of normative allusions. The discussion grapples not only with the political/practical consequences of attempting to absorb and transmit (hermeneutically) the disavowed affects of a social traumatic event, but also speculatively gestures us to consider another sense of justice: one that provides the impetus to confront how we are obligated before that which is lost through our terms.1. (shrink)