RESUMEN El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en resaltar y rescatar la apropiación que Gadamer hace del concepto de la amistad, la philía griega. Se intentará ver su sentido específico en una suerte de exhortación, una contribución que no se hace bajo el título de experto ni de especialista sino de ciudadano que interpreta su propia realidad. En primer lugar, observaremos cómo este llamado se puede identificar como una tendencia propia de los análisis que Gadamer realiza sobre problemáticas sociales de (...) actualidad. Luego, se verá en la noción de amistad una forma de hacerle frente, según nuestro autor, a la evasión de sí al rescatar del olvido los vínculos auténticos con los otros que siempre están presentes como posibilidad abierta, pero que es necesario hacer efectiva en el involucramiento activo de cada uno de nosotros. ABSTRACT The aim of the present article is to emphasize and revive Gadamer's appropriation of the concept «friendship». I will try to construe its specific sense as a sort of exhortation, a contribution made, not by an expert or specialist, but by a citizen that interprets his own reality. First we will see how this call can be identified as a characteristic tendency of Gadamer's analysis of actual social problems. Then we will see in the notion of friendship a way to face the evasion of the self by recovering from the oblivion the authentic links with the others which are always present as an open possibility, but which need to be made effective in the active involvement of each and everyone of us. (shrink)

Dentro de la obra madura de Spinoza, la _Ética_ y el _Tratado Teológico-Político _ se han analizado ampliamente. Sin embargo, el _Tratado Político_ ha sido menormente estudiado por ser una obra inconclusa y con problemas estructurales. Nosotros afirmamos que la teoría política más acabada de Spinoza se encuentra en el TP. En esta obra se sacan todas las consecuencias de guiarse por una noción estrictamente inmanente de la política. En ese sentido, el TP sigue de manera más coherente el programa (...) trazado por la doctrina fundamental de Spinoza expuesta en la _Ética_, y no el TTP. Esto nos lleva a la consideración de la política como tendencia en dos direcciones opuestas: ampliación de poder y concentración de poder. (shrink)

This paper has a double purpose: firstly, to assess the importance of seiðr magic rituals and of its practitioners within the social and mythological framework of Old norse-icelandic Literature. Secondly, by means of the analysis of certain scenes in The Saga of Gísli Súrsson, i aim to demonstrate that the inclusion of magic-religious motifs in the Sagas of icelanders has a triple objective: to provide a model to help understand apparently inexplicable phenomena, to intensify the tragic tone of the plot (...) and finally to depict those involved in the performance of seiðr in a very negative light. (shrink)

"El devorador de sueños" es un cuento de Lafcadio Hearn, Koizumi Yakumo, publicado en 1903 en Kott?, una colección de leyendas del folclore japonés recopiladas a partir de fuentes orales y libros tradicionales. Aquí, Hearn nos presenta la criatura del Bakú, un ser mitológico creado por los dioses con las partes sobrantes de otros animales tras la Creación. Su origen se remonta a China, donde se creía que se alimentaba de malos espíritus. Al llegar a Japón, mantuvo esta función, mutando, (...) poco a poco, en un devorador de sueños malignos, de pesadillas, que protegía a los soñadores de la mala fortuna. El Bakú es un yokai cuya clara impronta en la cultura japonesa aún es visible, por ejemplo, se cantan canciones de cuna sobre él antes de dormir o es posible encontrar amuletos tallados con su figura. No siendo más, presentamos esta destacada historia de Hearn cuyo propósito fue presentar al lector occidental la sacralidad del Bakú, su relevancia e influencia en la vida cotidiana nipona y la profunda conexión espiritual de los japoneses con dioses, espíritus y seres sobrenaturales. (shrink)

Resumen: Una de las problemáticas más recurrente y también más importante para el mundo del arte del siglo XX, tanto el filosófico como el de los artistas, fue la salida de la belleza como el único relato legitimador de un objeto del que se pretendía el estatus de arte. En tal sentido, la reflexión que Arthur Coleman Danto, filósofo del arte norteamericano, ha hecho carrera como una de las posturas teóricas para enfrentarse al arte después de la belleza y, además, (...) para sustentar la necesidad de una definición del mismo a pesar de la entropía propia del siglo XX, que implicó el advenimiento del arte como producción humana determinada tanto por la belleza como por la fealdad, el asco, la industria y un largo etcétera.: One of the problems not only more recurrent but also more important to the world of art of the 20th century, both the philosophical and the artists, was the departure of beauty as the only legitimizing account of an object which is intended to the status of art. In this sense, the reflection that Arthur Coleman Danto, philosopher of American art, it has made a career as one of the theoretical positions to confront the art after the beauty and, in addition, to support the need for a definition of the same despite the entropy of the 20th century, which meant the advent of art as a human production already determined not only for beauty but for the ugliness, the repugnance, the industry and a long etcetera. (shrink)

RESUMEN La filosofía hegeliana en general, y en particular la “Ciencia de la lógica” y el tratamiento que en esta se hace sobre nociones como las de identidad y diferencia, generaron desde el momento mismo en que vio la luz, un sinnúmero de posiciones críticas tales como las de Schelling, los hegelianos de izquierda y, en general, de todos aquellos filósofos que, en virtud de las posibles implicaciones prácticas de una filosofía de la identidad buscaron “expurgar la semilla del dragón (...) del panteísmo hegeliano”, entre las cuales es necesario mencionar la legitimación de estados totalitarios y los genocidios asociados a ellos. Esta búsqueda, fue realizada sobre la afirmación de que el pensamiento hegeliano, al estar soportado sobre la identidad, implica una negación y, por tanto, aniquilación y reducción de la diferencia. En este sentido, el presente artículo busca examinar la noción hegeliana de la identidad, la correspondencia o no de las críticas que sobre el particular se han hecho sobre Hegel y, finalmente, analizar una de las salidas que, desde las interpretaciones hegelianas más recientes, se han hecho para responder a las críticas: la filosofía hegeliana in stricto sensu, una filosofía de la diferencia. ABSTRACT The Hegelian philosophy in general, and in particular the “Science of Logic” and the treatment that in this is made about notions as identity and difference, generated since its conception a countless critical positions such as those of Schelling, the left Hegelian and, in general, of all those philosophers who, accordingly with the posible practical implications of a philosophy of identity sought to “purge the dragon’s seed from Hegelian pantheism” among which it is worth to mention the legitimization of totalitarian states and genocide associated with them. This search was made on the assertion that Hegelian thought, being supported on the identity, implies a negation and, therefore, annihilation and reduction of the difference. In this sense, the present article seeks to examine the Hegelian notion of identity, the correspondence or not of the criticisms that have been made about Hegel and, finally, to analyze one of the outlets that, from the most recent Hegelian interpretations, have been made to respond to the criticisms: the Hegelian philosophy in stricto sensu, a philosophy of the difference. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to carry out a psychosocial analysis of child-to-parent violence (CPV) in a sample of school adolescents, considering a set of individual variables (psychological distress, problematic use of social networking sites, and perceived non-conformist social reputation) and family variables (open and problematic communication with parents) according to sex. The sample consisted of 3,731 adolescents (54% boys), aged between 14 and 16 years (M = 14.6 years, SD = 0.567), from the state of Nuevo León, Mexico. (...) The scores of the boys and girls were analyzed to check for differences. Also, correlations between all the study variables were calculated. Finally, a multiple stepwise regression analysis was carried out for the total sample and also for boys and girls separately. Results confirmed the important role of individual variables as predictors of CPV in boys and girls. The main difference between boys and girls was observed in the predictive weight of problematic use of social networking sites, which was higher in girls than in boys. Open communication with the father was a significant factor for predicting the decrease of CPV levels in the case of boys, while open communication with the mother predicted the decrease of CPV in girls. Problematic communication with the mother showed similar values in boys and girls when predicting CPV, however, the predictive weight of problematic communication with the father was higher in girls than in boys. These results are interesting and have important implications for the prevention of CPV. (shrink)

Is it justified to hold that an agent S has a (moral) right to P if the duty-bearer is not specified? There is an intense ongoing debate on this question. There are two positions in the literature. On the one hand, O´Neill´s much-discussed account of rights holds that it is justified to say that an agent S has a right to P if and only if the duty-bearer is sufficiently determined – i.e. if and only if it is clear against (...) whom S may claim her right to P (O’Neill 1986, 1988, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2016). Call this, the ‘claimability condition’. On the other hand, interest-based theorists argue that it can be justified to say that an agent S has a right to P even if the duty-bearer is not sufficiently determined (Caney 2007; Griffin, 2008; Raz 1988; Tasioulas 2007; see also: Etinson, 2013; Ypi 2010). Who (if anyone) is correct in this fundamental discussion about the very nature of rights? In this paper, I provide an answer to this crucial question. Neither O´Neill nor interest-based theorists provide good reasons to justify their positions. However, I argue, the claimability condition is an existence condition of rights justified on the basis of their action-guiding character. The reason is that if the duty-bearer is not specified, the content of the right (its correlative obligation) does not sufficiently guide what the agent should do because it is indeterminate who is required to act (or refrain from acting). (shrink)

In this paper I explore the implications of moral vagueness (viz., the vagueness of moral predicates) for non-naturalist metaethical theories like those recently championed by Shafer-Landau, Parfit, and others. I characterise non-naturalism in terms of its commitment to 7 theses: Cognitivism, Correspondence, Atomism, Objectivism, Supervenience, Non-reductivism, and Rationalism. I start by offering a number of reasons for thinking that moral predicates are vague in the same way in which ‘red’, ‘tall’, and ‘heap’ are said to be. I then argue that (...) the moral non-naturalist seeking to countenance moral vagueness faces a dilemma: are moral properties vague, or perfectly sharp? On either horn of the dilemma, serious problems arise for some of the central tenets of non-naturalism: vague properties seem to threaten Objectivism, Supervenience, and Non-reductivism; on the other hand, sharp properties raise problems for Supervenience and Rationalism. The difficulties on each horn of the dilemma are real, and while they may not be insuperable, they do, at the very least, drastically limit the things non-naturalists can consistently say about moral properties, facts, and reasons. (shrink)

The forfeiture thesis is posed as an independent thesis in moral philosophy according to which agents forfeit (or lose) rights if they perform certain act-types. According to many, this thesis plays a crucial role in the justification of (legal) punishment. In this paper, I argue that the forfeiture thesis is unnecessary – we can simply dismiss it without any substantive loss. Echoing an aspect of the specificationist approach to rights, the reason is that we may replace the forfeiture thesis with (...) an exception clause in the very content of the right not to be subjected to hard treatment: P has no right not to be subjected to hard treatment simpliciter, but a right not to be subjected to hard treatment unless P performs an act-type φ – e.g., murdering an innocent person. This alternative has substantive advantages over the forfeiture thesis, which, in turn, shows that the former cannot be reduced to the latter. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the conditions under which sovereign debts are not morally binding for a state. Following an old legal doctrine, I call non-binding debts ‘odious'. I proceed as follows. First, I argue that alternative accounts on the morality of debts are unsatisfactory. The problem these accounts have are that they do not clearly identify the philosophical issues that underlie the notion of odious debts, or that they fail to specify what exactly the immorality of odious debts consists (...) in. Second, I defend the view that a debt is odious when two conditions are satisfied: borrowed funds were used by public officials for purposes for which they were not authorised lenders knew, or should have known, about possible unauthorised uses of those funds. If these two conditions are both satisfied, debts should not be considered debts of the state, but rather personal debts of rulers. Third, I discuss the feasibility of my approach by exploring how it would work in the current world. Finally, I d.. (shrink)

What are the main conditions that any theory of human rights should satisfy to guide action? If agents must take action for a fairer world as human rights discourse suggests, this is a crucial question to reflect upon. In this paper, I make a proposal. I argue that any theory of (moral) human rights that guides action on the basis of correlative duties must satisfy three key conditions. The first condition is focused on the specification of act-types, the second concerns (...) the distribution of correlative duties, and the third is focused on the resolution of (resolvable) conflicts of human rights. I show that this proposal has substantive implications because it implies to reject, challenge and, in some cases, resist ideas that are commonly accepted in the literature on human rights. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo esclarecer la relación entre juicio y deseo en el pensamiento de Gilles Deleuze y destacar la importancia de Spinoza para la resolución de este problema. La concepción negativa del deseo es la base de la cultura y el pensamiento de Occidente; sin embargo, Spinoza nos propone una concepción afirmativa e inmanente. Estos elementos son fundamentales para esclarecer el sentido teórico y práctico de la propuesta de Gilles Deleuze en su obra, donde una concepción afirmativa del (...) deseo le permite proponer la existencia de dos imágenes del pensamiento: una imagen moral, la cual crítica; y, una imagen ética, que restituye, a partir de la teoría de los afectos y la naturaleza de Spinoza, el valor afirmativo del cuerpo y los afectos. Deleuze y Spinoza, así, nos proponen una imagen del pensamiento que sostiene el valor de lo afirmativo sobre lo negativo, es decir, que relieva la producción de lo diferente y lo múltiple sobre la jerarquía de lo idéntico o lo hegemónico. (shrink)

This chapter explores the implications of moral vagueness for non-naturalist metaethical theories like those recently championed by Shafer-Landau, Parfit, and others. It characterizes non-naturalism in terms of its commitment to seven theses: Cognitivism, Correspondence, Atomism, Objectivism, Supervenience, Non-reductivism, and Rationalism. It starts by offering a number of reasons for thinking that moral predicates are vague in the same way in which “red,” “tall,” and “heap” are said to be. It then argues that the moral non-naturalist seeking to countenance moral vagueness (...) faces a dilemma: are moral properties vague, or perfectly sharp? On either horn of the dilemma, serious problems arise for some of the central tenets of non-naturalism: vague properties seem to threaten Objectivism, Supervenience, and Non-reductivism; on the other hand, sharp properties raise problems for Supervenience and Rationalism. The difficulties on each horn of the dilemma are real, and while they may not be insuperable, they do, at the very least, drastically limit the things non-naturalists can consistently say about moral properties, facts, and reasons. (shrink)

The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity and political constraints mean governments often face difficult trade-offs on the path to UHC. In a 2014 report, Making fair choices on the path to UHC, the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage articulated principles for making such trade-offs in an equitable manner. We present three case studies which illustrate how these principles can guide practical decision-making. These case studies (...) show how progressive realization of the right to health can be effectively guided by priority-setting principles, including generating the greatest total health gain, priority for the worse off, and financial risk protection. They also demonstrate the value of a fair and accountable process of priority setting. (shrink)

What are the main conditions that any theory of human rights should satisfy to guide action? If agents must take action for a fairer world as human rights discourse suggests, this is a crucial question to reflect upon. In this paper, I make a proposal. I argue that any theory of (moral) human rights that guides action on the basis of correlative duties must satisfy three key conditions. The first condition is focused on the specification of act-types, the second concerns (...) the distribution of correlative duties, and the third is focused on the resolution of (resolvable) conflicts of human rights. I show that this proposal has substantive implications because it implies to reject, challenge and, in some cases, resist ideas that are commonly accepted in the literature on human rights. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo es doble; por un lado, se cuestionan las concepciones sobre la historia de la filosofía que insisten en partir por Platón, y, por otro, se enfoca en el movimiento filosófico conocido en la Grecia antigua como sofística, con el fin de reconocer y reflexionar sobre los aportes de este movimiento para el desarrollo posterior del pensamiento filosófico y científico occidental. En tal sentido, se explica el contexto de su origen y desarrollo en la Grecia antigua, (...) la importancia de sus enseñanzas —en especial la retórica y el estudio del lenguaje— para la reflexión posterior en educación, política, derecho, psicología y antropología modernas, su redefinición de la moral centrada en una naturaleza humana constitutiva de sí misma, así como las críticas de que fueron objeto —principalmente por parte de Platón— y que en parte construyeron y consolidaron la imagen peyorativa que, durante siglos, acompañó su nombre. ¿En qué se fundamentaban estas críticas? ¿Eran fundadas estas críticas? (shrink)

Este trabajo busca reconstruir la estructura del constitutivismo para facilitar su difusión en lengua española. Para lograrlo, parte de un análisis de la formulación del objetivo general de la estrategia constitutivista, para luego rastrear sus orígenes históricos en los problemas de las fuentes de la normatividad, el constructivismo y la normatividad de las razones, posteriormente se explica el movimiento simple constitutivista y se cierra el artículo presentando las tres tesis principales que sostiene toda estrategia constitutivista.

Progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. In this journal, Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, has endorsed the principles for making such decisions put forward by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and UHC. These principles include maximizing population health, priority for the worse off, and shielding people from health-related financial risks. But how should one apply these principles in particular cases and how should one adjudicate between them when their demands conflict? This paper by some (...) members of the Consultative Group and a diverse group of health policy professionals addresses these questions. It considers three stylized versions of actual policy dilemmas. Each of these cases pertains to one of the three principal dimensions of progress towards UHC: which services to cover first, which populations to prioritize for coverage, and how to move from out-of-pocket expenditures to pre-payment with pooling of funds. Our cases are simplified to highlight common trade-offs. While we make specific recommendations, our primary aim is to demonstrate both the form and substance of the reasoning involved in striking a fair balance between competing interests on the road to UHC. (shrink)

Two competing accounts of value incomparability have been put forward in the recent literature. According to the standard account, developed most famously by Joseph Raz, ‘incomparability’ means determinate failure of the three classic value relations ( better than , worse than , and equally good ): two value-bearers are incomparable with respect to a value V if and only if (i) it is false that x is better than y with respect to V , (ii) it is false that x (...) is worse than y with respect to V and (iii) it is false that x and y are equally good with respect to V . Most philosophers have followed Raz in adopting this account of incomparability. Recently, however, John Broome has advocated an alternative view, on which value incomparability is explained in terms of vagueness or indeterminacy . In this paper I aim to further Broome’s view in two ways. Firstly, I want to supply independent reasons for thinking that the phenomenon of value incomparability is indeed a matter of the indeterminacy inherent in our comparative predicates. Secondly, I attempt to defend Broome’s account by warding off several objections that worry him, due mainly to Erik Carlson and Ruth Chang. (shrink)

Resumen Este estudio tiene como objetivo perfilar el concepto de abuso de conciencia en vistas a su tipificación en el derecho canónico. Se comienza describiendo la reflexión postconciliar sobre la manipulación de conciencia desde una perspectiva teológico-moral, que anticipa el concepto actual de abuso de conciencia. El centro del artículo es el esclarecimiento del concepto de abuso de conciencia y de su gravedad. Este abuso se da en el contexto de relaciones de cuidado, donde se traspasan los límites de la (...) mediación eclesial que corresponde a dicha relación: el abuso de conciencia implica apropiarse indebidamente de la autoridad de Dios. El presente estudio continúa la línea de investigaciones precedentes para perfilar con mayor nitidez el abuso de conciencia propiamente tal en el contexto católico. Es un paso indis pensable para la necesaria justicia y reparación para las víctimas de este grave delito.This article offers a systematic characterization of abuse of conscience in order to its typification as a canonical crime. We begin exploring the study of conscience manipulation in moral theology after Vatican II as an important background for the understanding of abuse of conscience in more recent studies. The core statement of this study is the definition of abuse of conscience and its gravity. This kind of abuse is set within care relationships, where the abuser steps over the limits of his ecclesial mediation: he appropriates himself of God’s own authority. This study builds on this literature to understand abuse of conscience as a specific type of spiritual abuse in catholic settings. We understand this is absolutely necessary for justice and reparation towards victims. (shrink)

The general idea of this investigation is to emphasize the elusiveness of the concept of terrorism and the pitfalls of the so-called “War on Terror” by way of confronting, roughly, the reflections made in the immediate following of 9/11 by Habermas and Derrida on the legacy of Enlightenment, globalization and tolerance, with Foucault’s concept of biopolitics seen as the modern political paradigm and Agamben’s understanding of “the state of exception” in the context of liberal democratic governments. The main argument will (...) state that the modern Western individual and the modern terrorist are in a way linked together as products of the same biopolitical network. So I shall argue that religious fundamentalism and international terrorism are not external factors to the Western civilization, nor even some radical late forms of ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ threatening the Western ‘way of life,’ but phenomena revealing what we could call, borrowing J. Derrida’s biological metaphor, a “crisis of autoimmunization” of Western neo-liberal democracies. The only long-term solution to the threat of global terrorism would have to involve the “deconstruction” of our common notion of tolerance and the experience of an unconditional hospitality that is actually the inversion of the terrorist action that is threatening us “from within,” according to Derrida. But we cannot reasonably hope for this radical change in our relationship to others unless we aren’t really trying to modify the relationship to the self that is prevalent in contemporary Western societies: a vision of us as self-encapsulated monads or ‘nuclear’ selves, for whom genuine community life is, at the most, only a nostalgic evocation of a past long gone, and the respect for the others, a strategic name for moral indifference. (shrink)

Public goods, as well as commercial commodities, are affected by exclusive arrangements secured by intellectual property (IP) rights. These rights serve as an incentive to invest human and material capital in research and development. Particularly in the life sciences, IP rights regulate objects such as food and medicines that are key to securing human rights, especially the right to adequate food and the right to health. Consequently, IP serves private (economic) and public interests. Part of this charge claims that the (...) current IP regime is privatizing the very building blocks of research and development – that used to be part of the commons. The public domain, in contrast to the private domain, may be the locus of much more diverse forms of creativity that at the same time ensures a wider plurality of productive traditions. An IP regime must support a sense of public morality because it is dependent upon civil support. This inevitably prompts questions of what are “good” exclusive rights and what are “bad” exclusive rights, and how shall such IP rights be developed. We argue that the democratization of the current IP regimes is an important first step to respond to these issues. (shrink)

The traditional doctrine on federalism claims that economic inequalities are morally justified as long as they result from the legitimate exercise of federal subunit self-government. This paper discusses that claim and examines the philosophical grounds of federal economic decentralization in order to lay the basis for a federal theory of distributive justice. I explore the analogy between federal organizations and the international order claiming that moral conditions of political legitimacy generate some requirements for distribution. But also, I criticize the idea (...) of fraternity as a demanding and fragile political virtue. I try to show that fraternity gives us stronger reasons to reduce economic inequality in territorial federal states than in multicultural federal states. (shrink)

Mihai Ralea was a university professor and prominent representative of the Romanian interwar literary intelligentsia. M. Ralea taught psychology, sociology and aesthetics, and was at the same time the director of a reputed literary magazine (Viaţa românească-Romanian Life). Ralea was also a politician, initially an important member of the National Peasant Party, representing its centre left wing. In his case, one may notice the contradiction between his moral arguments in public and his deeds after he reached positions of power (Minister (...) of Labour under the royal dictatorship, Minister of Arts under the pro-communist Petru Groza government, etc.). Ralea was also called “the moralist without morals”, and the compromises he made – manifested through his adherence to anti-democratic regimes – can be documented by numerous archival documents. Due to strong political connections, Ralea survived in the high ranks of cultural bureaucracy even during cultural Stalinism. He maintained important positions both at the University of Bucharest and with humanities research institutes of the post-1948 Soviet-style Romanian Academy of Sciences. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he also gained posi-tions of international cultural representation with the Romanian branch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNES-CO) and the Romanian Institute for the Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (IRRCS, the Romanian VOKS). His survival (as a professor of psychology after 1948) had a significant price – Ralea’s collaboration with the Stalinist regime. Using open sources and also newly declassified archival documents, the article is an attempt to approach M. Ralea’s case of survival in the high cultural bureaucracy in the East European context. (shrink)

In this article, I make the idea that poverty outcomes are not necessarily morally relevant for assessing policies as clear as possible by discussing a specific case within the global justice debate: sovereign debts. The claim I would like to defend is that generating poverty among the population of a poor state as a result of a loan is independent from the fact that such debt is morally binding. People might become poorer as a result of a loan, and the (...) loan might still be binding; and people might not be negatively affected as a result of a loan, and the loan might be non-binding. It is of course often the case that there is something wrong with lending that generates massive poverty. However, in my view, the fact that lending and poverty exist parallel to each other is not what makes a loan binding or non-binding. Thus, it is misguided to measure poverty as a way of testing the bindingness of a debt. I will proceed as follows. First, I will explain in some detail Pogge’s view about lending and justice, as he is the main defender of the outcome-view that I am trying to refute. Second, I will show two possible worries about Pogge’s view. I will call the first one the “agnosticism objection” and the second one the “normative limitation objection”. Third, I will briefly describe my own account of the conditions under which lending would count as non-binding. This account does not necessarily rely on outcomes. (shrink)

En este artículo sostengo que muchos países deudores tienen el derecho moral de incurrir en cesación de pagos de sus deudas soberanas. Muestro que deben hacerse excepciones a la afirmación general de que los gobiernos tienen la obligación de devolver préstamos contraídos por gobiernos que le antecedieron.

: There is a puzzling fact about recent discussions on global justice. The debate, as of today, is fairly sophisticated and advanced, and all kinds of views have been defended. However, this debate has often ignored some of the most flagrant injustices of the real world, or is useless to asses them. Consider the following example: currently, the international financial system is set up in such a way that it forces countries to repay their sovereign debts, even if these debts (...) are not morally binding for them. Thus, entire generations end up burdened with debts that were fraudulently incurred in their name. Despite the fact that this problem is massive, global justice scholars have either neglected it, or have not addressed it adequately. In this paper, I attempt to solve the puzzle. That is, I try to explain why there is such a gap in the global justice literature. Also, I propose a new approach to global justice which, in my view, fills this gap. Resumen: Hay un hecho enigmático acerca de las recientes discusiones sobre justicia global. El debate, al día de hoy, es bastante sofisticado y avanzado, y se han defendido todo tipo de teorías. Sin embargo, este debate típicamente ha ignorado algunas de las más flagrantes injusticias del mundo real, o es inútil para evaluarlas. Considérese el siguiente ejemplo: actualmente, el sistema financiero internacional está organizado de manera tal que fuerza a los países a pagar sus deudas soberanas, aun cuando estas no son vinculantes. De esta manera, generaciones enteras terminan siendo cargadas con deudas que fueron incurridas de manera fraudulenta en su nombre. A pesar de que este problema es masivo, los especialistas en justicia global lo han ignorado, o no lo han tratado adecuadamente. En este trabajo, intento explicar este enigma. Esto es, intento explicar por qué existe semejante ausencia en los debates recientes sobre justicia global. Además, propongo un nuevo enfoque a la justicia global que, desde mi punto de vista, subsana parcialmente esta deficiencia. (shrink)

This article draws upon discursive psychology to explore the organization of public accountability in accounting for an alleged conflict of interest in journalism. The analysis focuses on the published record of an interview given by the editorial director of one of the major Romanian daily newspapers on the issue of an assumed conflict of interest involving a senior editor of the same newspaper. The analysis shows how a moral order is constituted by the use of various discursive resources: role and (...) professional incumbency discourse, disposition avowals and doing being fair/ democratic. This is a moral order where adherence to personal ethical principles, professional incumbencies and responsibilities are practically managed in dialogue and publicly displayed. Acting in-role, reporting a general disposition to engage in moral courses of action and making reference to the values of citizenship and democracy are all publicly available discursive resources used in this context to express a cautious moral judgement bounded and constrained by both personal and professional accountability perspectives. (shrink)

RESUMEN La concepción de la persona se ha trasladado a una discusión sobre la teoría republicana de la autodeterminación política. Hito fundamental es lo "político", introducido por J. Rawls para definir una región artificial, no metafísica, de la organización de la vida humana en sociedad. Es un concepto normativo para definir ciudadanía que incluye una concepción moral del hombre. Se sostiene que, en la articulación de este concepto y sus nociones asociadas de autonomía plena y razonabilidad de los agentes, el (...) constructivismo político recoge la concepción del hombre como sujeto de sentidos, tema central del comunitarismo. ABSTRACT The conception of person has shifted to the discussion on the republican theory of political self-determination. A fundamental milestone was the concept of the "political", introduced by J. Rawls to define an artificial, non-metaphysical region of organization of human life in society. It is a normative concept to define citizenship, which includes a moral conception of human beings- The article claims that, in the articulation of this concept and its associated notions of full autonomy and rationality of agents, political constructivism takes up the conception of human being as a subject of meanings, which is central to communitarianism. (shrink)

Taking people’s longevity as a measure of good life, humankind can proudly say that the average person is living a much longer life than ever before. The AIDS epidemic has however for the first time in decades stalled and in some cases even reverted this trend in a number of countries. Climate change is increasingly becoming a major challenge for food security and we can anticipate that hunger caused by crop damages will become much more common. -/- Since many of (...) the challenges humanity faced in the past were overcome by inventive solutions coming from the life sciences, we are compelled to reconsider how we incentivize science and technology development so that those in need can benefit more broadly from scientific research. There is a huge portion of the world population that is in urgent need for medicines to combat diseases that are currently neglected by the scientific community and could immensely benefit from agricultural research that specifically targets their environmental conditions. At the same time efforts have to be made to make the fruits of current and future research more widely accessible. These changes would have to be backed by a range of moral arguments to attract people with diverging notions of global justice. This article explores the main ethical theories used to demand a greater share in the benefits from scientific progress for the poor. Since life sciences bring about a number of special concerns, a short list of conflictive issues is also offered. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to present Michel Foucault's perspective on the formation of moral subjectivity according to his text entitled “The use of pleasures and the techniques of self”. In the referred text, Foucault emphasizes that moral action should not be constituted in acts according to a rule of conduct supported by moral concepts, but in acts according to a pure relation of the subject with his internal wisdom (subjectivity), a relationship that should not be understood as simply (...) a “self-awareness” as a moral subject, but as a “constitution of the self” as a moral subject In this article, Foucault's position on the formation of moral subjectivity is considered to analyze the place of desire in the autonomy of oneself and of practical attitudes, especially if they are considered: the subject's experience as a process in which both subjectivity and desires are modified or annulled by specific norms or laws, established in certain societies and culture, almost always linked to norms of sexuality; the power of the strongest, insofar as it influences institutions to spread interests in society, corrupting the particular desires of individuals; the “techniques of self”, as rational and voluntary practices that curb desires, by which human beings determine for themselves rules of conduct that correspond to aesthetic values. (shrink)

Using a discursive and ethnomethodological analytic framework, this article explores the social construction of moral transgression and moral meanings in the context of coming to terms with the recent communist past in Eastern Europe. This article illustrates some significant aspects of everyday uses of morality and the socio-communicative organization of public judgements on moral transgression. The article considers the range of public reactions and commentaries to a public confession of having been an informer for the former Romanian secret police. Moral (...) reasoning around transgression takes several forms: a) invoking everyday psychological categories and morally implicative descriptions associated with identities of persons and actions; b) drawing upon culturally available metaphors and images with roots in Judaeo-Christian ethics and morality; c) using the wider political context of coming to terms with the past as foundation and criterion for moral judgement. This article argues that rather than attempting to analyse moral judgement in abstract, one must focus on the everyday constructions and uses of morality found in social interaction and social responses to moral transgression. (shrink)

Review of Ștefan Iloaie, Cultura vieții. Aspecte morale în bioetică (Culture of life. Moral aspects in bioethics) (Cluj -Napoca: Editura Renașterea, 2009).

Conservation biology has embraced the development and application of artificial intelligence to optimize its work. The efficiency with which machine learning processes data helps to identify wild species, repair anthropogenic impacts, and intervene in ecosystems, offering supposedly good results for conservation. Thus, artificial intelligence can here be proposed as an ally of environmental justice. However, I will dispute this thesis, arguing that since conservation biology does not start from absolute parameters and environmental justice is not free from moral plurality, then (...) artificial intelligence could reproduce and increase epistemological and ethical biases. La biología de la conservación se ha sumado al uso de la inteligencia artificial para optimizar su trabajo. La eficiencia con que esta procesa los datos ayuda a identificar especies salvajes, reparar los impactos antropogénicos e intervenir en ecosistemas, ofreciendo resultados supuestamente buenos para la conservación. Así, la inteligencia artificial puede proponerse como una aliada de la justicia ambiental. Pero discutiré esta tesis, argumentando que como la biología de la conservación no parte de parámetros absolutos y la justicia ambiental no está exenta de una pluralidad moral, entonces la inteligencia artificial puede reproducir y aumentar los sesgos epistemológicos y éticos. (shrink)

We are already past the point where climate change mitigation alone does not suffice and major efforts need to be undertaken to adapt agriculture to climate change. As this situation was both foreseeable and avoidable, it is urgent to see that particularly people who have historically contributed the least to climate change do not end up assuming most of the costs. Climate change will have the worst effects on agriculture in the tropical region in the form of droughts, extreme heat (...) waves and massive storms. The historical unequal contributions to climate change and its unjustly distributed consequences morally oblige us to distribute global adaptation costs fairly. Yet to have a full understanding of the social implications of adapting to climate change we need to look beyond making adaptation technologies accessible and available. Using a social justice framework, I defend fair prices of adaptation technologies as a demand of justice in exchange, an allocation of research attention proportional to urgent global needs as distributive justice, inclusive technology development and governance as contributive justice and addressing the interests of future generations as intergenerational justice. (shrink)

Martin HEIDEGGER, Fiinţă şi timp [Être et temps] ; Bruce BÉGOUT, La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l’antéprédicatif et le catégorial ; François-David SEBBAH, L’épreuve de la limite. Derrida, Henry, Levinas et la phénoménologie ; Marcus BRAINARD, Belief and its Neutralization. Husserl’s System of Phenomenology in Ideas I ; Toine KORTOOMS, Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness ; Roland BREEUR, Singularité et sujet. Une lecture phénoménologique de Proust ; John J. DRUMMOND & Lester EMBREE, Phenomenological Approaches to Moral (...) Philosophy A Handbook. (shrink)

Hoy en día, el fuerte consagramiento y la expansión de la propiedad privada ha llevado al olvido a muchos métodos de gobernar recursos que no están basados en la exclusividad. Frecuentemente se escucha hablar de la propiedad como un derecho de dominio absoluto, algo inviolable que no conlleva obligaciones. Sin embargo, desde los inicios de la historia jurídica podemos observar que los derechos de propiedad han estado habitualmente acompañados de obligaciones y limitaciones, además de un mandato moral solicitando que el (...) manejo de la propiedad sea en vista al bien común. (shrink)

Human Evolution provides a comprehensive overview of hominid evolution, synthesising data and approaches from fields as diverse as physical anthropology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, genetics, archaeology, psychology and philosophy. The book starts with chapters on evolution, population genetics, systematics, and the methods for constructing evolutionary trees. These are followed by a comprehensive review of the fossil history of human evolution since our divergence from the apes. Subsequent chapters cover more recent data, both fossil and molecular, relating to the evolution of (...) modern humans. A final section describes the evolution of culture, language, art, and morality. The authors are leading experts in two complementary fields of scholarship, physical anthropology and molecular evolution. Throughout the book they successfully integrate their expertise in evolutionary theory, phylogenetics, genomics, cultural evolution, language, aesthetics and morality to produce a cutting edge textbook, copiously illustrated and with an extensive and up-to-date bibliography. It will be suitable for both senior undergraduate and graduate level students taking courses on human evolution within departments of biology, anthropology, psychology and philosophy. The book will also appeal to a more general audience seeking a readable, up-to-date and inclusive treatment of human origins and evolution. (shrink)

In this thesis we have examined the complex interaction between intellectual property rights, life sciences and global justice. Science and the innovations developed in its wake have an enormous effect on our daily lives, providing countless opportunities but also raising numerous problems of justice. The complexity of a problem however does not liberate society as a whole from moral responsibilities. Our intellectual property regimes clash at various points with human rights law and commonly held notions of justice.

The objective of this work is to reflect on the usual and the unusual, based on Friedrich Nietzsche's perspective on the opposition between the pathos of distance or nobility and the ethos from the point of view of utility. In order to do so, an analysis of selected excerpts from Nietzsche's works is carried out, mainly On the genealogy of morality and Beyond Good and Evil. According to Nietzsche, there is no ethos, but only pathos, being the ethos, affirmed by (...) asceticism, only a strategy, a cunning and deceitful invention for the conservation of a precarious way of life. It is this ethos that forges and fixes ascetic values that represent the usual, by inverting values from the point of view of the resentful human's utility. Based on this Nietzschean perspective, we seek to reflect on the unusual as an active impulse that characterizes the noble-type pathos of distance, and the usual as a reactive impulse that characterizes the éthos from the point of view of utility. (shrink)

Martin HEIDEGGER, Fiinţă şi timp [Être et temps] ; Bruce BÉGOUT, La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l’antéprédicatif et le catégorial ; François-David SEBBAH, L’épreuve de la limite. Derrida, Henry, Levinas et la phénoménologie ; Marcus BRAINARD, Belief and its Neutralization. Husserl’s System of Phenomenology in Ideas I ; Toine KORTOOMS, Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness ; Roland BREEUR, Singularité et sujet. Une lecture phénoménologique de Proust ; John J. DRUMMOND & Lester EMBREE, Phenomenological Approaches to Moral (...) Philosophy A Handbook. (shrink)

An idea is a public good. The use of an idea by one person does not hinder others to benefit from the same idea. However in order to generate new life-saving ideas, e.g. inventions in the life sciences, a huge amount of human and material resources are needed. Powerful, but highly criticized tools to speed up the rate of innovation are exclusive rights, most prominently the use of patents and plant breeders’ rights. Exclusive rights leave by nature a number of (...) people empty-handed, with starvation, stuntedness, prevalence of disease and death as preventable and quotidian consequences. To stimulate a human rights compatible use of exclusive rights a wide range of moral frameworks have been developed to condemn current praxes. Most prominent in the debate are theories building on (1) utilitarian calculations of weighing benefits with Peter Singer as a prominent advocate, (2) Pogge’s vindication of compensatory duties for institutional harms, (3) a comprehensive analysis on how the current innovation incentive system fails to secure human rights and human capabilities and lastly (4) showing how the status quo nurtures misrecognition. With help of those theories modest targets as well as a thorough restructure of the innovation incentive system can be justified. Those theories have the mammoth task of restraining well-established ideas supporting the permissibility of a reckless use of property rights that are deeply anchored in the property law discourse. Life sciences raise a range of special problems when justifying pro-poor innovation. Healthy people living in a society with a good sanitary infrastructure need far less resources to tackle health problems than people in places with a poor infrastructure. Patents that involve gene sequences (or part thereof) make inventing around impossible, making the seeking of licenses mandatory for investigators wanting to make follow-up research with the molecule. Speedy sharing of data concerning public health hazards or threats to food security are vital to maintain living standards. (shrink)