Search

This paper intends to analyze the role played by ideology in regard to the historical implementation of human rights, questioning whether this implementation has fulfilled an eminently ideological function. The reflection will pass through the vision of two scholars who have held one of the most interesting contemporary philosophical discussions: Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. At first, the Althusserian theory of ideology will be outlined, in order to defend that human rights have operated as an "ideological apparatus", questioning the individual from an immanently capitalist context. Then, we will verify that Michel Foucault was very critical of the Althusserian approaches. The notion of a transcendental subject will be crucial in such criticism, since in the Foucaultian perspective there are never subjects that are constituted prior to effective dynamics of power. In Foucaultian analysis, ideology will no longer occupy an essential place. The contributions of Slavoj Žižek will also be, by the way, decisive throughout this discussion. Finally, some critical reflections will be drawn to think about the emancipatory possibility of human rights in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the dimensions of citizenship, helping to recognize how work has been done around the concept and practices of being a citizen in different social, economic, political and cultural contexts. In this way, the document traces the ways of conceiving citizenship in different periods of history and emphasizes the new constructions developed today. Finally, we will refer to a theme of citizenship as a social construction resulting from the intersubjectivities of human beings with other human beings and the institutions that make up societies in each historical moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to examine some of the limitations of the well-known Merleau- Pontian account of the lived body in terms of "body schema" and "habitual body", by taking into account some alternative references of the philosopher's textual corpus to certain dimensions of corporeal experience that exceed such frames. After analyzing these former definitions that outline the profile of a skillful and competent body correlative of a pragmatic environment (1), we consider cases of non-teleological and non-functional behaviors and non-objective and non-instrumental spatialities (2) to end up by showing the relationship between these analyses and the wider Merleau-Pontian account of the natural horizons of experience (3). Secondarily, we evaluate critiques such as A. Lingis' and J. Butler's aiming to certain deficits of Merleau-Pontian theses, and we identify certain relations that these theses hold with philosophical developments showing certain specific affinities, such as E. Levinas' and R. Caillois'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two main purposes. First, I recall a relevant methodological reservation that concerns our reading of the Homeric poems (is it right to take one of our modern concepts, namely "body", as point of departure for our study of an ancient text?). Second, I try to explain how something like our common body-mind dualism could emerge from what originally was a single reality (in order to grasp the meaning of a Greek word like phrénes the modern reader would have to put his dualistic language aside in some way); nevertheless, it is also true that in the Homeric poems, especially in the Odyssey, phrénes seems to be one of the names for that peculiar space we would nowadays call "the innerness of the mind or thought". Finally, I suggest that this original single reality is related to Nietzsche's criticism of Metaphysics by means of the reference to the Ancient Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is consensus in disapproving the journalistic articles written by Foucault about the Iranian revolution. They are considered clear mistakes. Some say that this is so because the enthusiasm of Foucault towards the Islamic revolution moved him away from his true theoretical interests; others say that what those texts reveal is a totalitarian, naïve, and even misogynistic background of his philosophy. By doing this, commentators spear themselves a hermeneutical work on the incorporation of those texts into a work whose general bet remains the subject of academic discussion. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to the issue; one in which the texts are not considered a mistake but rather they are seen as part of a diagnosis that can get some light from the ideas of travel, radical journalism and heterotopology. These considered as fundamental elements of a philosophical bet on alterity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of developing a theory of pleasure that incorporates elements from subsequent philosophical traditions, Damascius defends, in his Commentary on the Philebus, the Platonic conception of pleasure as a "process of filling". This paper aims to show that Damascius respects not only the letter of the Philebus, but also the spirit of Plato's understanding of the nature of pleasure and, in particular, that of intellectual pleasures. Having assumed the polarity between desire and its satisfaction, Damascius proposes to understand the experience of intellectual pleasure as the experience where desire is fully achieved, so that both the process and the result of knowing produce pleasure. Contrary to what one may initially expect, the exegesis of the Neoplatonic Philosopher allows to highlighting some of Plato's underlying assumptions about the nature of pleasure, namely: the connection between pleasure and the human experience of temporality, and the dependence of pleasure on the structure of desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the fourth century BC, Greek thinkers discussed about the limits and characteristics of philosophy in order to distinguish it from other practices. In this paper, I will focus on the portrait of sophists as diametrically opposed to philosophers. Specifically, I will discuss the platonic answer to the charge that Isocrates directed against all Socrates' disciples in the treatises Against the Sophists and Encomium of Helen. I will defend that Plato's strategy to avoid his critics was to develop, in the Euthydemus and the fifth definition of the Sophist, a character that combines the most significant attributes censured by Isocrates: the eristic sophist. I will argue that this figure does not refer to the Sophists of the fifth century BC., but to the Megaric group. They would have been those who, according to Plato, really deserved the Isocratic attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue against the modalist logical pluralism of Bueno and Shalkowski (2009). In the first part, I show that it is not well motivated, at least if its motivation comes from the objections they raise against the approach of Beall and Restall (2006). I defend the position of Beall and Restall against these objections, resorting to the requisites of necessity and normativity, which were misunderstood by Bueno and Shalkowski. In the second part, I analyze the modalist position and provide some arguments against it. I show that the examples offered by Bueno and Shalkowski do not justify a logical pluralism, but rather a logical monism based on classical logic where some inferential contexts can be internalized. I show that these internalizations are very plausible for the two examples the authors provide: database management and the analysis of epistemic concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present the problem of virtuality from a philosophical perspective to think contemporary forms of understanding of the term related to technological developments in recent history. This perspective pretends to establish a thoughtful critique of the levity with which some concepts related to virtuality (such as "possibility", "potential", "reality", "actual", "cyberspace", "artificial intelligence", etc...) are taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper two conceptualizations of labour in current capitalism are reconstructed and opposed. On the one hand, Habermas and Gorz understand that labor loses centrality in social life while it is crossed by instrumental and productive logics, whereupon they propose to expand other social spheres governed by principles other than those dominant in the productive space. On the other hand, the Italian Autonomism envisions a qualitative change in current production processes, which gradually abandon the instrumental logic to become governed by others more related to communication, cooperation and the search for autonomy. Here a comparison of those two lines will take place, trying to elucidate its theoretical assumptions, and according to the requirements of a critical theory that can study the present detecting both its fissures and its inherent possibilities for social and political transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes an alternative narrative of the financial crisis that fifteen years ago occasioned the homelessness of thousands of mortgagors. Much has been said on this subject at this time. The Corte Constitucional, Consejo de Estado, Corte Suprema de Justicia, academics, constitucionalist, economist and debtor associations have examined the causes, consequences and effectiveness of the strategies from the government to solve the problem. Specifically, this paper was derived from the analysis of the experience of judges and magistrates who attended the judicial process of the obligations of UPAC. These judges refused the ordering the termination of court proceedings given by the Corte Constitucional being aware of the precarious situation of housing debtors. Consequently, many borrowers lost their homes despite the protection committed by the high Court, but why the judges refused to apply these judgments? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the electoral process in 1836 in Cartagena which meant the transition of the presidency of Francisco de Paula Santander to Jose Ignacio de Marquez, to show the role played by the provincial power to define them. Our hypothesis is that in the province of Cartagena, the network of local authorities had control of the parish elections and thus helped to define the election results in favor of the moderate faction of the Liberals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at revealing the originality of Max Weber's conception of the logical category of "historicity", suggesting that in his writings on the methodology of the social sciences we can find a stimulating and forerunner contribution to the analysis of some logical and formal problems concerning the relationship between human knowledge and the chaos of reality (what we might call, antelitteram, "science of chaos"). In particular, considering that in Weber's conception scientific knowledge finds no facts "to grasp" in the natural world, but rather a chaos of unique and infinitely divisible events, the analysis will be focused on the following aspects: (a) Weber's separation of causal imputation from the notion of necessary (natural) law; (b) the importance attached to "probability judgments" with different degrees of certainty; (c) the proclaimed irreducibility of individual events to scientific models, laws, and (ideal)-types; (d) the effects imputed to the differentiation of the point of view of a scientific observer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe some general and historical characteristics of globalization and the role that it has played in Multinational Enterprise (MNE) evolution. It seeks to demonstrate that the process of globalization and the development of MNEs are parallel. In other words, there is a close relationship between one phenomenon and the other. They need each other and they are strongly correlated, which implies that the characterization of globalization depends to a large extent on the form or nature the MNE, which is transformed and adapted to changes in globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is drawing an interpretation around the idea of philosophy understood as thought's liberation, just based on the work of José Gaos. We think that this is possible because in our author's work at least two mentions to this sense of emancipation of the philosophy can be found. The first one has to do with the collapse of the spirit of system as the only form and unique way of philosophical thinking. Likewise, the second mention to this emancipation is fulfilled when, through hypostatization of historical consciousness, the author sketches the horizon for the liberation of the individual existence and thinking, under the pretext of an immanentist philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to show that there has been an evolution in Paul Ricoeur's concept of testimony and that his first juridical definition is also different from others of the same origin. To determine this point we will compare his definition with C.A.J. Coady's. We will try to explain the motives, implications and limitations of its differences. Then it will be established that in Remembering, history and oblivion, the philosopher leaves the juridical concept of testimony, which main issues are to be a declaration inside a debate, and prefers another one that define it as a dialogical natural institution. Our hypothesis is that this change was not due to phenomenical but contextual causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]