At the centre of the monograph (1984, first edition) lies a detailed interpretation and critique of the idea of the Good in the Republic. The main thesis of the interpretation runs as follows: The idea of the Good functions as a third item between thinking and being. The main purpose of the monograph is to introduce the systematic problem of the third item via the historical problem of the idea of the Good. The second, enlarged edition (1989) gives a new (...) reconstruction of an "exasperatingly difficult but ever fascinating topic" (H. Cherniss), that is, of the platonic theory of the ideal numbers and the two principles that were contained in the “so-called unwritten doctrines” (Aristotle). The final chapter gives new information on the reception of Plato's idea of the Good in P. Natorp and M. Heidegger. It also includes an updated bibliography. The third edition (2015) is a reprint of the second edition of 1989. Further remarks and an updated bibliography to 2005 are to be found in: - Ferber, Rafael (2005). Ist die Idee des Guten nicht transzendent oder ist sie es doch? Nochmals Platons ΕΠΕΚΕΙΝΑ ΤΗΣ ΟΥΣΙΑΣ. In: Barbaric Damir: Platon über das Gute und die Gerechtigkeit / Plato on Goodness and Justice / Platone sul Bene e sulla Giustizia. Würzburg, 149-174. - Ferber, Rafael / Damschen, Gregor (2015). Is the Idea of the Good Beyond Being? Plato's "epekeinea tês ousias" Revisted (Republic, 6, 509b8-10). In: Nails, Debra; Harold, Tarrant; Kajava, Mika; Salmenkivi, Eero. Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato. Espoo, 197-203. (shrink)

At the centre of the monograph (1984, first edition) lies a detailed interpretation and critique of the idea of the Good in the Republic. The main thesis of the interpretation runs as follows: The idea of the Good functions as a third item between thinking and being. The main purpose of the monograph is to introduce the systematic problem of the third item via the historical problem of the idea of the Good. The second, enlarged edition (1989) gives a new (...) reconstruction of an "exasperatingly difficult but ever fascinating topic" (H. Cherniss), that is, of the platonic theory of the ideal numbers and the two principles that were contained in the “so-called unwritten doctrines” (Aristotle). The final chapter gives new information on the reception of Plato's idea of the Good in P. Natorp and M. Heidegger. It also includes an updated bibliography. The third edition (2015) is a reprint of the second edition of 1989. Further remarks and an updated bibliography to 2005 are to be found in: - Ferber, Rafael (2005). Ist die Idee des Guten nicht transzendent oder ist sie es doch? Nochmals Platons ΕΠΕΚΕΙΝΑ ΤΗΣ ΟΥΣΙΑΣ. In: Barbaric Damir: Platon über das Gute und die Gerechtigkeit / Plato on Goodness and Justice / Platone sul Bene e sulla Giustizia. Würzburg, 149-174. - Ferber, Rafael / Damschen, Gregor (2015). Is the Idea of the Good Beyond Being? Plato's "epekeinea tês ousias" Revisted (Republic, 6, 509b8-10). In: Nails, Debra; Harold, Tarrant; Kajava, Mika; Salmenkivi, Eero. Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato. Espoo, 197-203. (shrink)

J. S. Mill and the Art of Compromise The word compromise means a kind of agreement and a concession to something harmful or wrong. I argue that particularly this second sense is quite relevant in the ethics of political action. John Stuart Mill focused upon this issue in his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform 1859. I outline Mill's doctrine on compromise looking at the external and internal features of an acceptable measure of compromise. These features provide a set of conditions necessary (...) in order for compromise to take place, but they do not guarantee sufficient conditions. In order to assess Mill's political coherence and to draw a general distinction between strategic and ethical compromises the paper concludes by considering two compromise measures that Mill adopted while he was a Member of Parliament. (shrink)

The paper proposes (1.) a non-standard interpretation of the proverbial expression “deuteros plous” by giving a fresh look to Phaedo, 99c9-d1. Then (2.) it proceeds to the philosophical problem raised in this passage according to this interpretation, that is, the problem of the “hypothesis” or the “unproved principle”. It indicates finally (3.) the kernel of truth contained in the standard Interpretation and it concludes with some remarks on the “weakness of the logoi”.

A strange dialectical reversal characterizes the oppositions which psychoanalysis posits against philosophy and neuroscience: what psychoanalysis intervenes with as a unique and missing quality of these subjects, reveals itself upon enquiry as already having been a feature of said subjects. This article first discusses the failed intervention of psychoanalysis within the perceived totalities and absolutes of German idealism. Psychoanalysis, founded on an ontological division and internal inconsistency with a retroactive logic, finds this internal contradiction already reflected within the supposed totalities (...) of Schelling and Hegel. Schelling’s “blind act,” a decision with no prior foundation that grounds an abstract identity-in-itself, appears as the counterpart to what Badiou calls the strictly “analytic act.” Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which the inconclusive interpenetration of being and nothing presupposes its own conclusion in the transitions to essence, and in which an internal incompleteness and contradiction are retroactively constitutive of the concept, similarly nullifies the intervention of psychoanalysis. Finally, precisely such a reversal is presented in neuroscience, where the constitutive contradiction of contingently functional neuronal formations in the adaptive “multiple demand” model of executive functioning repeats the contingent and self-contradicting psychoanalytic subject as being its own deference within linguistic, discursive formations. (shrink)

*Winner of the American Philosophical Association's 2020 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This essay offers a novel account of the secularity of Latin American liberation philosophy. It challenges the accepted notion that liberation philosophy applies the methods and approaches of Latin American liberation theology to the philosophical arena, thus putting liberation theology on secular grounds. While this formulation is true insofar as liberation philosophy is not bound by the hermeneutics of any particular religious tradition, this formulation could be misconstrued (...) given that liberation philosophy does not premise such secularization in an undialectical understanding of secularity as secularism that disavows religion. Rather, liberation philosophy’s secularity is dialectical in that it requires constant engagement with re-ligion, not in the hermeneutics of any specific tradition but with “the traditional question of the Absolute.” Due to this often-misunderstood element of liberation philosophy, it has frequently been “ghettoized and relegated to the ‘safe’ area of theological studies,” as Eduardo Mendieta argues. However, I contend that liberation philosophy’s secular grounds offer an original contribution to philosophy as a decolonial and postsecularist liberation philosophy, one that conceives of secularism as an aspect of coloniality to be overcome, an obstacle rather than a benefit for Latin American philosophers seeking to gain a better understanding of our historical conditions. (shrink)

De la identidad literaria salvadoreña como exilio, se examina la obra clásica de nueve autores. Al aplicar una perspectiva psicoanalítica, el ensayo toma como punto de partida una tarjeta que Roque Dalton envió desde Cuba a una amante lejana en El Salvador. La escritura establece la deuda y la memoria como principios rectores para recuperar el pasado. Un compromiso subjetivo con el objeto del amor perdido la patria y la amante dicta el movimiento de la inscripción poética. Esta ausencia del (...) cuerpo a recuperar se aplica en seguida, en primer lugar, a Francisco Gavidia, que funda el indigenismo salvadoreño, utilizando técnicas literarias europeas, con lo cual ignora las lenguas indígenas, luego a Alberto Masferrer, que se retrata sufriendo las tribulaciones y la pasión de Cristo en el exilio, antes de construir un proyecto político de país. En tercer lugar, Arturo Ambrogi percibe en el campesino salvadoreño al poeta medieval localizado en un locus amoenus, encantado por la belleza del campo. Francisco Miranda Ruano inaugura una visión más trágica, ya que su salida de la ciudad para recrear el esplendor del campo concluye con su regreso a los suburbios pobres, antes de suicidarse. En quinto lugar, Salarrué mezcla fantasía y realismo para retratar sus diversas máscaras o personajes, así como para disimular la violencia sexual y racial. Según el proverbio español “el hábito hace al monje”, el ser y los actos se juzgan siempre por la apariencia. Claudia Lars prescribe un movimiento dual, primero para sustituir su nombre real, Carmen Brannon, por su seudónimo literario, y luego para recuperar su infancia de sus habilidades adultas, que ella desarrolla, gracias al legado poético de su padre extranjero. Los hermanos Alfred y Miguel Ángel Espino proponen un patrimonio complejo. Si el primero idealiza el campo en una recuperación nostálgica del vientre materno cuya contrapartida nombra al amante imposible que lo inclina al suicidio, el segundo apunta a restituir una educación verdaderamente americana, sin revitalización alguna de las lenguas indígenas ni de su tierra ancestral confiscada. José Napoleón Rodríguez Ruiz estipula cómo solo un recuerdo lejano recupera un relato testimonial del pasado. Al vaticinar un tema de actualidad -el acoso sexual y la migración, su personaje campesino narra cómo el exilio reinventa su identidad rural. Finalmente, en un retorno sinodal, desde lejos, Dalton replica la nostalgia de Rubén Darío por ser alguien más de lo que es a la hora de recrear sus años de formación como poeta. En resumen, este bosquejo de nueve autores del siglo XX delinea no solo cómo una idea de exilio anticipa la diáspora actual. El ensayo también sugiere cómo los estudios culturales continúan una nostálgica recuperación de la memoria por una revolución sinódica, y reclama la actualidad de aquellos autores consagrados en un canon literario monolingüe. (shrink)

En el presente estudio se indaga acerca del proceso histórico de transformación seguido por el Derecho español para fijar el instante temporal preciso en que un individuo deviene en plenitud de condiciones para gobernar su propia existencia.En él se constata el preponderante papel protagonizado por la tradición romanista, en particular desde el resurgimiento de sus instituciones a través de Las Partidas, así como su posterior evolución hacia fórmulas caracterizadas por un mayor nivel de autosuf iciencia, tendentes a reducir o limitar (...) la edad o edades en que legalmente se considera a las personas, desde un punto de vista civil, como sujetos autónomos. Estas oscilaciones cronológicas han encontrado su debida justificación en múltiples y circunstanciales motivaciones de carácter político, legal, cultural y psicológico. (shrink)

This paper presents an experience in developing professional ethics by an approach that integrates knowledge, teaching methodologies and assessment coherently. It has been implemented for students in both the Software Engineering and Computer Engineering degree programs of the Technical University of Madrid, in which professional ethics is studied as a part of a required course. Our contribution of this paper is a model for formative assessment that clarifies the learning goals, enhances the results, simplifies the scoring and can be replicated (...) in other contexts. A quasi-experimental study that involves many of the students of the required course has been developed. To test the effectiveness of the teaching process, the analysis of ethical dilemmas and the use of deontological codes have been integrated, and a scoring rubric has been designed. Currently, this model is also being used to develop skills related to social responsibility and sustainability for undergraduate and postgraduate students of diverse academic context. (shrink)

In the whole Corpus Platonicum, we find in principle only one "direct argument" (Charles Kahn) for the existence of the ideas (Tim.51d3-51e6). The purpose of the article is to analyse this argument and to answer the question of why Plato in the Timaeus again defended the existence of the ideas despite the objections in the Parmenides. He defended it again because the latent presupposition of the apories in the Parmenides, the substantial view of sensibles, is removed through the introduction of (...) space as "substantialized extension". First (I) it is shown that Plato remained in dialogues, like the Sophist and Politicus, faithful to the "theory of ideas" despite his criticism in the Parmenides. The common theme in the trilogy of the Theaetetus, Sophist and Politicus is to refute relativism by showing that any relativism presupposes something absolute that is something like the "theory of ideas". The second part of the paper (II) examines closely the logical structure of the argument for the existence of ideas in the Timaeus (51d3-52a7). The third part (III) shows how this argument can avoid the criticism of ideas in the Parmenides. In the Parmenides, sensibles are treated as substantial entities. But, as the Timaeus shows, sensibles are not substantial entities but merely qualities, namely qualities of space, which is the only substance in the sensible world. A shortened English version of the paper appeared in Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum, Granada, Selected papers, ed. by T. Calvo/L. Brisson, Academia Verlag, St. Augustin, 1997, 179-186. -/- But the only "direct argument" (Tim.51d3-51e6) seems to be interestingly flawed. Cf. Ferber, Rafael; Hiltbrunner, Thomas, (2005). (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I try to analyze the fate of a new medical model that was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in European Latin society, particularly in the southern parts of Latin Europe. This model won the approval of the communities in which it was developed as part of an incipient network of medical care and attention. The new healer (Christian and male )that emerged from this model, whether physician or surgeon, based his practice on his knowledge (...) of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was an intellectual and a social product fashioned and supported by traditional and new urban leader groups, whether civil or ecclesiastic, Christian or Jewish. Health and healers were considered part of the urban social organization both in large cities and in smaller towns.Full social acceptance of this new model was achieved only after heated debate. In practice, the new way of conceiving of medicine did not begin to become socially accepted outside intellectual circles until the new healer was able to offer specific solutions for the maintenance or restoration of health, both at an individual and at a collective level, and according to the criteria and feelings of the leader groups of the society of that time.Progress in research allows us to identify nene factors, at least, that were involed in the construction of these novelties in late medieval Latin society. (shrink)

Cuando se leen los relatos que los grandes santos hacen de su experiencia de Dios, encontramos expresiones que rompen las reglas de la lógica lingüística, prueba de que hay experiencias que no son fáciles de describir y transmitir. San Agustín, en el contexto de una de las más célebres páginas de sus Confesiones, esa en la que exclama: “Tarde te amé, hermosura tan antigua y siempre nueva”, dice, por una parte, que Dios está “dentro” de él, para añadir a renglón (...) seguido que las cosas están dentro de Dios, pues si no estuvieran en él, no serían. En San Pablo encontramos expresiones similares: por una parte, se puede leer en sus cartas que “Cristo vive en mí”, y por otra, el autor de los Hechos de los Apóstoles pone en su boca que “en Dios vivimos, nos movemos y somos”. Este doble modo de concebir la relación de Dios con la realidad creada, con el cosmos y con el ser humano, resulta paradójico y es una provocación para el pensamiento.¿Dios está en la realidad, se hace presente en ella de algún modo, o es más bien la realidad la que está en Dios? Posiblemente no hay contradicción entre ambas imágenes, sino complementariedad. Tomás de Aquino, como veremos, afirma las dos cosas. Dios es de una naturaleza tal que, por una parte puede hacerse presente en la realidad mundana y humana y, por otra, llevar dentro de sí estas mismas realidades. ¿Hay alguna analogía, alguna imagen que pueda servir para describir una naturaleza así y ayudarnos a comprender mejor el ser divino? En definitiva, ¿qué significa “estar en” o “dentro de” las criaturas por parte de Dios y en o dentro de Dios por parte de las criaturas? ¿Se trata de simples imágenes o estas imágenes son modelos que tienen alguna correspondencia con la realidad?When you read the accounts that the great saints do of their experience of God, you find expressions that break the rules of linguistic logic, what proves that there are experiences not easy to describe and transmit. St Augustine in the context of one of the most known pages of his Confessions, where he exclaims: “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new”, says that God is inside him and adds immediately after that things are inside God, since if things were not in him they wouldn’t exist. We find similar expressions in St Paul: On the one hand, one can read in one of his letters: “Christ lives in me”, on the other hand, the author of the Acts of the Apostles puts in his mouth: “in God we live and move and have our being”. This double way of understanding God’s relation to created things, the cosmos and human beings, is paradoxical and becomes a provocation to reason.Is God inside reality, is he present in it someway, or is rather reality which is in God? Possibly there is not contradiction between the two images, but they complement each other. Thomas Aquinas, as we’ll see later, states the two. God is such a nature, that, on the one hand, he can be present in wordly and human reality, on the other hand, he can contain inside himself these realities. Is there any analogy, any image able to describe a nature like this that could help us to understand better his divine being? In short, what does it mean to be in or inside the creatures in relation to God and to be in or inside God in relation to creatures? Is it about simple images or these images are models with some relation to reality? (shrink)

Tomás de Aquino comienza su síntesis teológica definitiva preguntándose por la legitimidad y necesidad de la teología. Inmediatamente después se plantea la pregunta por sus contenidos: ¿de qué trata la ciencia teológica? Si la teología es la ciencia de la Revelación y su fundamento está en la revelación que Dios en Cristo hace de sí mismo, parece que su contenido tiene que ser Dios mismo. Un contenido que solo es cognoscible si Dios se da a conocer, porque el ser humano, (...) con sus fuerzas, con su sola razón, solo puede alcanzarle de forma limitada y parcial, en suma, solo puede saber de su existencia, pero no de sus designios, de sus intenciones y mucho menos de su naturaleza.Para Sto. Tomás es claro que Dios es el sujeto, el contenido de la Teología. Esta ciencia es un “tratado sobre Dios”. Ahora bien, Tomás de Aquino es consciente de una dificultad: si el fundamento de la Teología es la Sagrada Escritura, que es el lugar en el que se contiene la Revelación de Dios, resulta que “en la Sagrada Escritura se trata de muchas cosas además de Dios, como son las criaturas y los actos humanos”. Tomás de Aquino resuelve la dificultad argumentando que Dios es el sujeto de la teología no exactamente por ser su único contenido o por ser el único sujeto del que trata esta ciencia, sino porque todo lo que ella trata “lo hace teniendo como punto de mira a Dios, bien porque se trata de Dios mismo, bien porque se trata de algo referido a él como principio y como fin”.Thomas Aquinas begins his definitive theological synthesis asking for legitimacy and need of theology. Immediately he asks for the contents: what is theological science about? If theology is the science of Revelation, and its foundation is the revelation that God makes of himself in Christ, it seems that its content must be God himself1. A content that can only be known, if God shows himself, because a human being, with its strength and its sole mind, only can get him in a limited and partial way, in short, it can only know of his existence, but not his plans, his intentions, and even less, his nature.For St Thomas it is clear that God is the subject, the content of theology. This science is a “treatise about God”. However, Thomas Aquinas is conscious of a difficulty: If Sacred Scripture that is the place where God’s revelation is contained, is the foundation of theology, “it turns out that Sacred Scripture deals with many more things besides God, that is, creatures and human acts”. Thomas Aquinas will solve this difficulty arguing that God is the subject of theology not because he is exactly the only content or subject of this science, but because all it deals with, “is done with reference to God himself either because it is about God or about something referred to God as beginning and end”. (shrink)