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This paper considers and distinguishes two objections which ordinarily are thought to oppose a realistic conception of ethics: G. E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy and Hume’s law. After having presented both objections, having developed their presuppositions and consequences and having answered each of them, the paper concludes that it is possible to hold today a realistic conception of ethics. It is structured in the style of a disputed question, divided in six articles.

A main area of Hans Blumenberg’s works, the history of science, has received little attention, in particular Blumenberg’s history of astronomy. Since 1955 Blumenberg [1920-1996] had undertaken a research on Copernican astronomy, and published many papers during the 50’s and 60’s, later put together in Die kopernikanische Wende [1965]. Blumenberg had also prepared preliminary studies on Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius and Cusa’s De coniecturis. All this work will culminate in Blumenberg’s monumental Die genesis der kopernikanischen Welt [1975] and his posthumous book Die Vollzähligkeit der Sterne [1997]. The aim of this paper is to undertake a review on this neglected area of Blumenberg’s works. We will focus on the Heideggerian background in Blumenberg’s history of astronomy. Our thesis is that in Blumenberg’s history of astronomy we can find a metaphysics of existence in a Heideggerian way, as astronomical existential paradigms.

Taking for granted that Marx’s economic theory enjoys a scientific status and, furthermore, that it installed a real Copernican revolution in sociology, the present paper explores the possibility of deriving a system of law deserving the name of “scientific” in so far as it would be in keeping with the theses of the latter scientific theory. In this context, the paper argues against a claim recently sustained by Fernández Liria and Alegre Zahonero, for whom a system of right compatible with Marx’s theory would be compatible, too, with the classic juridical formulations conceived during the Enlightenment. The main reason why this paper testifies against such compatibility is that the enlightened concepts of “equality”, “liberty” and “autonomy” count with the individual as the realm for their juridical application. However, Marx’s subject matter being the social means of production (and not the individuals’ production of value), we conclude that the only juridical subject that could justifiably be derived from his economic investigation would be the “social class”. Finally, the paper suggests that the only way a scientific system of law could grant a juridical status to the individual would be by taking into account the other theory that also installed a Copernican revolution in the social sciences, though this time in the field of psychology: Freud’s psychoanalysis. Key words: Copernican revolution, science, scientific

The paper examines a recent proposal of substitution of classic (normative) philosophy of science by a post-positivist and pluralistic axiology governed by aesthetic or formal values. The author of the paper proposes a different set of values that can enconpass not only “internal” values, but is also open to the examination of the ethical limits of tecnoscience and the principles that can govern scientific development in oru “risk societies”, which depends heavily on the general evolution of science.

This paper presents a reflection about the way in which Kant treats Future in his work, its possibility and conditions. First, I will present a résumé of the principal ideas on this task in his works Dreams os a Spirit Seer and The Conflict of the Faculties , published in 1766 and 1798. In the thirty years between both, Kant wrote his Critical Philosophy. We will see that the problem of the possibility of the speech about Future was always present on his works, and it didn’t change in the deep sense other themes did. Secondly, I will outline the most important ideas of that first part in an Antinomy and I will complete the paper with other relevant considerations in the Critique of the pure Reason. In that way I will try to offer a solution to our principal task: Is it possible to talk with Kant about knowledge refered to the Future?.

This paper analyses the recent debate between J. Habermas and C. Lafont on discourse ethics. The aim is to show that Lafont’s proposal of a realist interpretation of discourse ethics must face several problems which are difficult to resolve from within the theoretical frame of discourse ethics. First of all, the paper sets out how Lafont’s position extends to the field of practical reason some important objections against Habermas’s consensus theory of truth. Subsequently Lafont’s arguments in support of moral realism are criticised, and the paper concludes with an analysis of the difference between rational agreements and compromises of interests from a procedural point of view.

In the beginning of 1980’s Michel Foucault lectured on «παρρησία» at the Collège de France. Foucault’s lectures have become an important new way to interpret the parrhesía notion, from the political and philosophical point of view. Basically, Foucault distinguishes between a political parrhesía of democratic nature and a philosophical parrhesía whose origin can be traced to Plato. In this paper I focus my analysis on the political parrhesía, and I try to prove that Foucault’s definition of this concept is not in accordance with the Democratic Thinking of Ancient Athens. According to Foucault, parrhesía is a «une parole d’au-dessus», a discourse spoken from above. However, an alternative interpretation of ancient sources can prove that in reality the parrhesía is a discourse spoken from below. Contrary to what Foucault maintains, the works of Euripides, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and other authors contribute toward finding a popular root in the parrhesía, that it should be defined as the dignity of the popular speech.

This paper focuses on the role affectivity plays in the so-called young Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology. After establishing in the introduction the close connection existing between affectivity and facticity, I take the notion of movedness (Bewegtheit) of factical life as my main guiding thread. Firstly, I explain the peculiar meaning this notion has in young Heidegger’s philosophy. Secondly, I analyze the double “basic movedness” (Grundbewegtheit) of love and hate as being the intentional matrix of curare (Bekümmerung) according to the Heideggerian interpretation of Augustine’s Confessions during the summer semester lecture course in 1921. Thirdly, I consider the double movedness of pathos and Befindlichkeit as laid out in the summer semester lecture course in 1924, called Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. And, finally, I elucidate the “Logic of the Heart” behind the hermeneutics of facticity as jointly articulating both the New Testament tradition of affectus (Augustine) and the Greek tradition of pathos (Aristotle).

This paper aims to tackle Arendt’s thinking in connection with our current knowledge on the history of Greece, in order to examine the philosopher’s interpretation of the Greek world – a special emphasis will be placed on the concepts of action, nomos and freedom, as well as on the importance of the agora’s political space. Furthermore, I intend to put into question those readings that attribute a kind of naïve hellenophilia to Arendt, also pointing out the limitations that she herself observed within the political approach of the polis. I argue that Arendt does not find, in Ancient Greece, any of the resorts that can counterbalance action and which she considers necessary in order for it to avoid falling into hybris, such as: forgiving, promise and authority. Finally, I claim that the Roman concept of lex, due to its relational dimension, is closer to her account of politics than the Greek concept of nomos.

The scholastic scientific diagram of the 13th century has a main component: the translations of Aristotle treatises. In this way Boethius’ works are highly significant both for his translations of Greek terms and for fixing a precise lexicology that allows us to interpret it. These records were enriched with meaningful translations and comments that began to spread in the 12th century and the following ones of the 13th century. However, Thomas Aquinas’ scientific view shows this tradition and enhances a certain understanding of the Aristotelian texts. On this basis the following paper analyzes the notion of ‘dignitates’ on the thomistic opera omnia, because this is one of the terms which sets up the scientific scheme of Aristotelian root, with the objective to show its place, its meaning and its scope in the order of sciences.

In order to examine whether the usual identification of neoliberal ideas with an ideological discourse is valid, this paper starts off with an analysis of what Marx terms commodity fetishism in Capital, based on which a certain sense of the concept of ideology may be inferred which would result in its being both true and false. In order to determine whether this definition of ideology may be applied to neoliberal theory, we look at its fundamental features and how they continue with or break away from economic liberalism as studied in Michel Foucault’s Birth of biopolitics. Attention is later moved to the characteristics detected by David Harvey in the socalled flexible accumulation as the latest stage of capitalism which coincides with the political implementation of neoliberal doctrine. At the end of the road travelled, it is hypothesised that this theory would be a form of ideology containing a dimension of both truth and falsehood, in line with Marx’s thought.

In this paper I discuss one of the most significant strategies in Spinoza’s theoretical approach against those that entrave its understanding in a very powerful way. As well as Descartes, Spinoza uses the inmediate or unreflexive experience for developing his conception of free will or the distinction between body and soul, but he does so in order to prove that the experience is useful to demonstrate some purely anti-Cartesian thesis that express the core principles of Spinozism.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the Greek motto γνῶθι σεαυτόν plays a central role in Plato’s philosophy in order to show how ethics and knowledge go hand in hand in his model of παιδεία. The question of self-knowledge is a practical and theoretical task in life which is developed implicitly in his dialogues, it is for this reason that i examine some passages of the Charmides, Alcibiades I, Phaedo and Republic in order to show how Plato discovers the human interiority (Phaedo) and how self-knowledge is refined and articulated with the tripartition of the soul in the Republic.

It is usually assumed that Heraclitus is, exclusively, the philosopher of flux, diversity and opposition while Parmenides puts the case for unity and changelessness. However, there is a significant common understanding of things (though in differing contexts), not simply an accidental similarity of understanding. Both philosophers, critically, distinguish two realms: on the one hand, there is the one, common realm, identical for all, which is grasped by the ‘logos that is common’(Heraclitus) or the steady nous (Parmenides) that follows a right method in order to interpret the real. On the other hand, the realm of multiplicity seen and heard by the senses, when interpreted by ‘barbarian souls’, is not understood in its common unity. Analogously, when grasped by the wandering weak nous it does not comprehend the real’s basic unity. In this paper I attempt to defend the thesis that both thinkers claim that the common logos (to put it in Heraclitean terms) or the steady intellect (to say it with Parmenides) grasp and affirm the unity of the real.

In this paper we defend the thesis that the notion of life, in Foucault’s work, is not only the historical correlate of power and knowledge practices. Foucault argues a Vitalist ontological position, however intermittent and not at all explicit. The source of this philosophical choice in Foucault is not Nietzsche or Deleuze, but it coincides in many respects with the non-essentialist Vitalism of Georges Canguilhem. First, we compare Canguilhem and Foucault’s relation to the Kantian tradition, in its critical and transcendental aspects. Secondly, we confront the notion of life on the philosophical proposals of Canguilhem and Foucault. Finally we analyze the canguilhemian origin of the normalization foucauldian concept. This affiliation also regards the concept of biopolitics, referred to a power that acts on life, imitating its operation. This rooting of the thought of Foucault in the Vitalism of his master resolves two internal tensions in the path of the first: the justification of movements of revolt and self-formative character of subjectivity.

The following paper focuses on the theory of imitation developed by Walter Benjamin in the famous work of art essay. The essay is approached as a new sample of the “research on the origin” already used in his previous works, which will allow us to highlight the key role assigned to “mimesis” as the “origin” which discloses the unitary law of the whole age. The essay, therefore, overcomes the limited scope of aesthetics in which traditionally has been framed and aims to a wider reflection on the inner contradictions of modernity, regarding which mimesis indicates both the problem and a possible way out.

According to Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Avrum Stroll, there are compelling reasons for talking about a “third Wittgenstein” whose corpus would be made up of all the works written by the Viennese philosopher following 1946, including the second part of his Philosophical Investigations. The main reasons are the description of a new form of foundationalism in which foundational items and the items which rest upon them do not belong to the same category; the grammaticalization of experience; the dissolution of the mind-body problem, and the demystification of scepticism. In this paper, I will not only analyze these arguments, but I will also bear in mind the main differences between the so-called “first” and “second Wittgenstein” to conclude that it doesn’t make sense to talk about a “third Wittgenstein”.

The concern of this paper is to analyse what kind of replay to the problem of the philosophical scepticism we can expect from the so-called transcendental arguments. The general conclusion is that transcendental arguments are not able to neutralise the sceptical doubts considered as verbal formulations of logical possibilities. Now, provided that the sceptic cannot meaningfully present his doubts, it seems that he has only three options: to doubt with the aid of a mystical silence, to doubt using the words in a metaphorical or evocative sense, or to doubt using the words with literal sense, but being conscious that he is saying a nonsense. To sum up: the sceptical doubt can never have the value of a real doubt.

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it deals with showing that Spinoza´s ontology is naturalistic because it conceives of reality as nature, and, in this way, it combats all form of mystification that presents us the reality as something supernatural and transcendent nature itself. Secondly, it deals with showing, according to characteristic features of Spinoza ´s naturalism, that is, its dynamism and its materialistic elements, that Spinoza´s ontology is an ontology of the passions. The passions are, according to Spinoza´s philosophy, modes of being, finite, human modes of being.

This paper takes into account the philosophical issue of alterity, enriched by feminist theory and its reflection on sexual difference. There are, at least, three aspects of feminist theory which are related to alterity: on the first hand, the critique on construction of femininity as alterity against masculinity; secondly, and together with feminism of difference, it is interesting to think about physical and symbolic experiences of motherhood, which provide a new model of ‘irreducible alterity’ and new contents for a Care Ethics; third, and considering Ricoeur’s dialectics between idem-identity and ipse-identity, sexual identity can be redefined as a dialogical and dynamic process concerning discursive and performative dimensions.

It is discussed in this paper on the existence and the consistency of a concept of human nature in Nietzsche’s work that would not relapse into the extreme readings neither of the biologicism nor of the historicism. For it it’s carried out an interpretation that joins Nietzsche’s consideration of the nature and the history about the matrix concept of the ahistorical, which will lead the initial reflection on the culture to an analysis in ontological-formal terms of the man’s nature and his anchorage in the nature of the world.

The “transformation problem” in Marx’s Capital (how to make compatible the labour theory of value from the first book with “prices of production” from the third book) has been one of the main reasons to refute the marxist theory and, at the same time, a privileged matter in order to analyze the method question. In this paper, we try to analyze the sense and foundation of the labobour theory of value discussing with any attempt of reading Marx Capital as the development of a supposed “dialectic method”. Analyzing the manuscripts and drafts that Marx did not finish, we try to defend that, contrary to what Engels thought (because it had been anounced by Marx himself), it is not possible to find in the third book a trace of the so expected “dialectic solution” to the “transformation problem”. That demands, of course, a different interpretation to explain the sense of the “transformation” of value into “production prices”.

nowadays it is necessary to understand the Character and Destiny topic from the point of view of emotions because we can integrate some philosophical and neurobiological perspectives better than ever. in this paper the result is deliberately ambiguous for life and for anthropology and Ethics, far away from the usual notions (subject, consciousness, free will, determinism…) and opened, on the contrary, to a multiform discussion in relation to different elements and circumstances.

Knowledge and true relations represent the principal task of Theory of Knowledge. This paper argues about various solutions to the justification of knowledge, given by William James, Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. For classic Pragmatism Knowledge and Truth converge with the idea of a guideline, direction and orientation with an effective value for men. The Newpragmatism represented by Rorty tries out the way of the widest possible widening of justification contexts, taking as last referent the features of a western liberal culture. Habermas pleads for a strong idealization in his discussion with Rorty up to the ideal speech situation.

The paper analyses the main trends in the discussions about the notion of supervenience in the last decades, putting the emphasis in some crucial problems. The starting point will be the various concepts of supervenience proposed by Jaegwon Kim. Through them, we will identify a dramatic tension between the extremes of eliminativism and dualism (in general, pluralism), being placed in the middle of them the positions of a non-eliminativist reductionism and of a non-dualist epiphenomenism. The open options facing that tension show a very peculiar and valuable sort of philosophical work which could be called “conceptual engineering”.

In this paper I will undertake a review on Hans Blumenberg’s analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works. My point is underline the peculiar position that Wittgenstein has in Blumenberg’s texts. I will consider his impolite commentaries concerning the Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein’s decision of becoming a teacher. I will try to characterize Blumenberg’s conception of Wittgenstein as an intellectual figure and on the most popular contributions of Wittgenstein’s thought.

With Cartesio appears the ontological rupture between the res cogitans and the res extensa, division that it goes accompanied by the dichotomy certainty – doubt. Applying this outline to the human being, we find a conscience separated from the world, a body-machine, a cogito and a body that aren’t intrinsically united. For that reason, the vision of a body is not to enter in contact with a conscience, which, ultimately, prevents to explain the other people's existence. Merleau-Ponty seeks to give solution to the problem of the alterity and, for that reason, he criticizes the Cartesian position. To give some few examples tried in this paper, Merleau-Ponty attacks the notion of conscience, the representation, the introspection, the reasoning for analogy…

Based on the conditions of Kantian Theory of Knowledge, this paper investigates the proper place of freedom, considered from the practical point of view in which maxims try to achieve happiness. In the same way, reason recognize the necessary respect for the moral law. Where must freedom be placed? In the elections in the world of sense or in the submit to that law? Assumption of the second propos- al implies to set up the origin of morality in the reason that recognize itself subordinate to moral legislation and it that way becomes an active role in the establishment of morality.

In this paper I show that madness, in the context of Wittgenstein’s later work, should not be mistaken for the grammatical gap which is opened when a reaction takes place, which has no place in the language-game played in that very moment. Besides, and bearing in mind that we often do not place worth on something until we miss it, it is emphasized that it is in the madman, taken as a grammatically isolated individual, with whom, we are best able to appreciate agreement in form of life on which Wittgenstein’s later work is based.

Many authors have tried to offer a definition of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical problems. In this paper my aim is to show that essentialist tendency is just the opposite of Wittgenstein’s attitude, an attitude based on paying attention to the clarification of misunderstandings concerning the use of words: the term ‘problem’ invites us to think on the corresponding ‘solution’, but far from offering solutions or explanations, Wittgenstein wanted to show a philosophical modus operandi comparable to the task of untying knots.

In this paper a comparison of some central elements of the philosophies of H.Bergson and J. Ortega and Gasset is tried. After analyzing their coincidences and divergences we will establish their common ownership to a line of development of the european metaphysics that starts up from the critic to the kantismo.

In this paper a non-paradoxical interpretation of Hobbes’s defence of scientific realism of materialistic type is proposed. It attempts to explain how this author was able to defend the truth of materialism and at the same time to deny that it could be demonstrated in a metaphysical way. The key to his position depends on the metaphorical use of the concept of ‘imitation’ and the treatment of the infinite and irresistible power as the philosophically relevant attribute of God. So Hobbes’s intention would consist of saying that the explanation, but not the demonstration, of the truth of materialism depends on the ontological parity and continuity between the world and the human being, in the way in which they are explained by empirical science. In this sense Hobbes’s project, very different to Descartes’s one, would be an attempt to naturalise the epistemology that yet is conscious of the metaphysical limits affecting the naturalistic proposals of philosophy.

This paper tries to undertake one more time the well-know image of the divided line to take out its political meaning by situating it in its context: a dialogue in which the justice is inquired. But it has at once the intention to intepret the question: what is justice? Not only as a moral or political question, but also as ontological, the question for that that makes posible every delimitation and every discernment. The place where both topics converge is the pólis, the place where the absence of principle, of arkhé, rest alive.

The aim of this paper is to show the capacity of creative mind, its prospective efficacy, which enables human reality to be an open and exuberant reality. We enter in the anthropological journey of the imaginary order to discover the symbolic power, that driving force of imagination that makes of it the basic structure of psychic life and creativity.

Foucault’s analysis of “parrhesy” ends his project of a “history of the truth”. The parrhesy shows the being of the subject as only activity and, thus, it points out the essential limit between the subject’s being as éthos and the subject’s being as téchne. That is, it points out the border, which we can find first in Plato, between philosophy and rethoric (non-philosophy). The purpose of this paper is to show that (1) philosophy is un-thematized as opposed to the dependence of the theme of rhetoric.( 2) Philosohy is duty, the acknowledgment of the factical finitude of man (soul), and criticism, the discovery of the need of truth-telling in the game of the soul and the pólis.(3) Philosophy is the exposition to the danger that means the decadence of the pólis, as opposed to the assurance of the more advantageous position in it.