Feelings of guilt are human emotions that may arise if a person committed an action that contradicts basic moral mores or failed to commit an action that is considered moral according to their ethical standards and values. Psychological scholarship distinguishes between altruistic guilt (AG) and deontological guilt (DG). AG results from having caused harm to an innocent victim, either by acting or failing to act, whereas DG is caused by violating a moral principle. Although physicians may be expected to experience (...) frequent feelings of guilt in their demanding and intensive work, it is surprising to find that this issue has not been explored in the professional literature on medical ethics. To that end, we conducted a qualitative study that included personal in-depth interviews with Sunni Muslim gynaecologists. These doctors provide underground infertility care and perform religiously forbidden treatments involving sex selection and gamete donation. They opened their hearts and spoke about the emotionally taxing pangs of conscience they suffer. Analysing their narratives led us to characterize their feelings of guilt as DG. We discuss the causes for their plight and the way they cope with it, compare DG to the concept of moral distress, and call for future research on clinicians’ feelings of guilt and pangs of conscience. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Kant’s reception of and solution to the problem of the unity of the political will. I propose that Kant distances himself from the modern paradigmatic foundations of sovereignty principally with his theses of the ideality of the general will and of the apriority of the justification of popular sovereignty. My interpretative hypothesis is that Kant solves the problem by grounding sovereignty in a conceptual element which is new in the history of political philosophy, i. e. (...) the a priori unified omnilateral will. In section IV, I explain why my reading of the ideality of the general will can respond to seemingly plausible objections arising from Kant’s own texts and how it works in the face of concrete political states of affairs. (shrink)

In this paper we engage with and contribute to the critical project of highlighting the dilemmas that arise from structurally unequal and unjust social, political, and institutional realities when dealing with past wrongs or, better phrased, historic injustices. We emphasise the present-time character of historic injustices. We think that there is a risk of allochronism in discussing historic injustices mainly as wrongs done in the past. This risk consists in making people forget that redressing these injustices is something to be (...) done in an unjust present structured by domination, and that those very past wrongs and harms helped to shape the present-time condition of structural injustice. As the misplacing in the past phenomena that occur in the present and in one’s practical context, allochronism has the effect that people do not feel responsible for those present-time injustices that derive from wrongs done in the past. Our aim is to propose one way of dealing with this risk of misallocating responsibility (and thus accountability), which consists in intersecting the notion of historic injustices with the notion of coloniality. After showing how an approach oriented by the notion of coloniality helps surmount the negative effects of allochronism and provides a significant complement to a structural approach to injustice (Sect. ‘ Coloniality and Responsibility for Justice ’), we turn to Frantz Fanon (Sect. ‘ Fanon ’) and José Carlos Mariátegui (Sect. ‘ Mariátegui ’) to illustrate the relationship between coloniality and justice and how it is possible to render a construal of ‘past wrongs’ without losing sight of their pervasiveness in the present time. (shrink)

En este trabajo intento hacer algunos aportes al diálogo entre María Julia Bertomeu y Nuria Sánchez Madrid publicado en Con-Textos Kantianos en 2019. Me interesa establecer que la teoría kantiana de la propiedad es una teoría crítica que no justifica los derechos de propiedad privada y las relaciones de propiedad existentes sino que sirve para señalar el carácter no absoluto de los derechos de propiedad privada y la necesidad normativa de modificar las relaciones de propiedad existentes.

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en ofrecer algunas consideraciones acerca del esquema contractualista kantiano. Se analiza la particularidad de dos elementos que son fundamentales para las teorías contractualistas, en la medida en que determinan el modo en que cada una de ellas justifica la necesidad práctica del exeundum y del modelo político que se deriva de ello: la concepción de libertad que se adscribe a los agentes que ingresan a un contrato, y el modo de concebir la interacción práctica (...) entre esos agentes. Respecto de , se propone que la independencia entre ética y derecho redunda en una diferenciación entre la aplicación de la idea de «libertad» en ambos ámbitos, diferencia que permite comprender en qué sentido el derecho kantiano se maneja con una concepción política de la autonomía . Respecto de , se intenta mostrar que Kant no concibió al estado natural en términos individualistas, sino por el contrario en los términos de una comunidad interactiva. (shrink)

En este trabajo, me propongo reconstruir dos tesis de importancia metaética, jurídica y política que Kant expone en Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft. Se trata de dos tesis que mantienen una sólida consistencia con dos de los núcleos temáticos de la Rechstlehre, lo que nos permite proponer que el texto de 1793 puede ser considerado una suerte de crítica propedéutica para la metafísica jurídico-política de Kant. La primera de estas tesis será analizada en la sección I y (...) atañe a la concepción metaética de la libertad que Kant presenta en Religion a propósito del análisis del mal radical. La segunda, analizada en la sección II, a la serie de diferencias trazadas entre el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad éticos, por un lado, y el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad jurídico-políticos, por el otro. En una sección III, presentaré el sentido que estas tesis obtienen respecto de la recepción crítica que Kant hace de las teorías modernas iusnaturales. (shrink)

We have measured the change of lung mechanical parameters on isolated rabbit lungs exposed to chlorine gas (Cl{in2}). Experimental results show parallel increase in elastance and resistance of impaired lungs. We tried to determine whether this may be explained by a reduction of the ventilated areas in the lung, consecutive to closure of some airways. We have then tried to simulate these experimental results by studying the effects of various airways occlusions imposed on two concurrent models (symmetrical and dissymmetrical) of (...) the tracheo-bronchial tree. For each model, we successively evaluated the resistance of the normal lung, simulated a partial peripheral airways occlusion and estimated the induced changes in total resistance. Analytical expressions of the "occluded lung" elastance and resistance have been found for the symmetrical model but not for the dissymmetrical model (a graphical approach is proposed). With the symmetrical model, simulated results are comparable to experimental ones when the occlusion level is proximal. Whatever the dissymmetry level (δ) of the fractal tree model, we could not simulate the expected increase in resistance with the observed increase in elastance. We conclude that either the occlusion is non homogeneous or the lung impairment is not only a reduction in ventilated areas. (shrink)

With this brief text I introduce the homonymous dossier. The idea of the dossier was to compile texts on matters that are not usually studied in the literature, written from original and polemical perspectives. These papers focus on subjects like the extraterrestrial perspective on humans, the a priori character of political conflict, drinking alcohol with friends and political philosophy of the mind.

En este estudio crítico, analizo la obra de Rivera Castro Virtud, felicidad y religión en la filosofía moral de Kant, obra en la que se resalta la importancia de la felicidad en la ética de Kant y se busca establecer su relación con la virtud. Mis objeciones conceptuales y metodológicas se orientan eminentemente a cuestionar su tesis básica sobre el alcance y especificidad del rol motivacional de la felicidad en tanto que componente del bien supremo. In this critical essay, I (...) analyse Rivera Castro's Virtud, felicidad y religión en la filosofía moral de Kant. In this work, the author highlights the significance of happiness in Kant's Ethics, aiming at establishing its relation to virtue. My conceptual and methodological objections are intended to question her fundamental thesis on the scope and specificity of the motivational role happiness plays as component element of the highest good. (shrink)

En este texto de presentación del número especial “Filosofía de la participación política”, coeditado con Moira Pérez y Blas Radi, mapeo algunos de los temas y problemas que motivaron la convocatoria a trabajos. En la primera sección presento dos grandes modelos de la participación política en contextos democráticos, con la tesis de que los fenómenos desdemocratizantes del presente se ven facilitados por un cierto modo de entenderla. En la segunda sección propongo que una manera fructífera de estudiar la participación política (...) es a través de los problemas que la inclusión en los procesos colectivos formales de decisión política democrática acarrea para determinadas personas y colectivos, en el marco de sistemas de dominación estructural. Por último, presento brevemente los diferentes trabajos que componen este número especial. (shrink)

Este texto reseña el libro Biglieri, Paula y Cadahia, Luciana, Seven essays on populism. For a Renewed Theoretical Perspective, Medford: Polity, 2021. Traducido por George Ciccariello-Maher y con prólogo de Wendy Brown.

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

¿Es el desideratum secularista de separación Iglesia-Estado capaz de enfrentar las consecuencias negativas de la revitalización política de los conservadurismos religiosos y la instrumentalización de la religiosidad popular para fines antiigualitarios? La respuesta negativa es la tesis de la que parto para analizar por qué los liberalismos secularistas y postsecularistas no pueden procesar ni en la teoría ni en la práctica la reordenación política de las iglesias cristianas conservadoras (católicas y evangélicas) en nuestra región. Esto no me conduce a abrazar (...) una teología política ni un relativismo abstencionista. Me interesa estudiar la plausibilidad de desarrollar una postura ético-política anticlerical que no desprecia la religiosidad popular ni el potencial emancipador en los fenómenos religiosos, en un mundo en el que no es ni moral ni históricamente viable soslayarlos insistiendo en colocarlos en la esfera inasible de lo privado o en un pasado sublimado en procesos de secularización. La hipótesis guía de este artículo es que la cuestión normativa y política básica sobre la que tratan la mayor parte de los debates sobre secularización en la actualidad es la participación de las iglesias en lo político por medio de la formación del juicio y la voluntad públicos. -/- . (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo, presento e intento resolver un problema que la oposición de Kant al eudaimonismo podría plantear al segundo deber de virtud. Tras analizarlo, propondré que el deber de la felicidad ajena consigue disolver al menos uno de los obstáculos para alcanzar la felicidad en la Tierra. El motivo de esto es que el deber de promover los fines de los demás logra reubicar la felicidad hedónica en el plano de la moralidad, algo que la noción intelectual de (...) felicidad como componente del bien supremo no consigue hacer y en esto consiste el rol que el deber de la felicidad ajena cumple en el sistema ético kantiano.: The aim of this paper is to introduce and try to solve a problem Kant’s opposition to eudemonism could pose to the second duty of virtue. After analysing this problem, I hold that the duty to promote the happiness of others dissolves at least one of the obstacles one faces when striving to achieve one’s own happiness on Earth, which we naturally desire as finite rational beings. Unlike the intellectual notion of happiness implied by the concept of the highest good, the duty to promote the happiness of others places hedonic happiness within the realm of morality. This is, I propose, the fundamental role the second duty of virtue plays in Kant’s ethical system. (shrink)

¿Es el desideratum secularista de separación Iglesia-Estado capaz de enfrentar las consecuencias negativas de la revitalización política de los conservadurismos religiosos y la instrumentalización de la religiosidad popular para fines antiigualitarios? La respuesta negativa es la tesis de la que parto para analizar por qué los liberalismos secularistas y postsecularistas no pueden procesar ni en la teoría ni en la práctica la reordenación política de las iglesias cristianas conservadoras (católicas y evangélicas) en nuestra región. Esto no me conduce a abrazar (...) una teología política ni un relativismo abstencionista. Me interesa estudiar la plausibilidad de desarrollar una postura ético-política anticlerical que no desprecia la religiosidad popular ni el potencial emancipador en los fenómenos religiosos, en un mundo en el que no es ni moral ni históricamente viable soslayarlos insistiendo en colocarlos en la esfera inasible de lo privado o en un pasado sublimado en procesos de secularización. La hipótesis guía de este artículo es que la cuestión normativa y política básica sobre la que tratan la mayor parte de los debates sobre secularización en la actualidad es la participación de las iglesias en lo político por medio de la formación del juicio y la voluntad públicos. -/- . (shrink)

Tomando la interpretación de Richard Tuck como un ejemplo paradigmático de las (hiper)críticas realistas al pensamiento kantiano, en este artículo presento cuatro grupos de razones por las cuales resulta que la lectura que Tuck realiza de la filosofía política kantiana del derecho de gentes es errónea. In this article I put forward four series of reasons to rebut Richard Tuck's construction of Kant's political philosophy of the law of peoples. Tuck's interpretation is taken here as a paradigmatic model of the (...) realistic (hyper)criticism against Kant's thought. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

The X-ray and bulk densities of PdIn alloys have been determined at ambient temperature on samples annealed at 1273 and 1373 K and quenched in water-ice mixtures. From these measurements the vacancy concentrations in this intermetallic phase have been obtained as a function of In concentration at these two temperatures. In addition, a generalized thermodynamic model is presented which considers the existence of antisite and vacancy defects on both sublattices without any dilute solution approximations. This model uses three energy parameters, (...) whose values have been obtained for PdIn using the measured vacancy concentrations and the chemical potentials of In. This model is able to describe all the available vacancy data and is suitable for calculating these values at compositions and temperatures when such data are not available. In addition, the model permits the calculation of the concentrations of the minority point defects. It is shown that dilute-solution approximations, which have invariably been used in this kind of modelling, are unsatisfactory. The present results and their analysis confirm that PdIn is a near-triple-defect type of intermetallic and not a near-Schottky type, as has been claimed recently. (shrink)

The paper sets forth programmatically a series of conditions necessary for a deliberative theory of democracy to be able to account for the normative value of the two fundamental principles of democracy: human rights and popular sovereignty. The starting point is the question of whether aggregate conceptions are capable ofdesigning collective decision-making procedures in which those two principles are mutually entailed. The article emphasizes the importance for democratic procedures to include a reciprocal justification requirement that cannot be fully satisfied by (...) aggregate or agonistic conceptions. (shrink)

Se postula de manera programática un conjunto de condiciones para que una teoría deliberativa de la política democrática logre dar cuenta del valor normativo equivalentede los dos principios fundamentales de la democracia: derechos humanos y soberanía popular. Se parte de la pregunta acerca de si la..

“Is the Kantian Universalization Demand a Suficient Procedure forthe Establishment of Moral-Ethical Contents? Some Considerations Regardinga Negative Answer to this Question”. In this article we analyze the thesis thatclaims the suficiency of the Kantian universalization procedure expressed inthe categorical imperative of the general law (Groundwork of the Metaphysics ofMorals) to determine the content of morality, with the aim of holding that thisthesis contradicts Kant’s inal conception of Ethics as it is expounded in Metaphysicsof Morals, insofar as it is structured upon (...) the normative priority of the“end of humanity”. The effective adoption of this end –or practical principle– isa necessary condition for the ascription of morality and for the determination ofthe “content” of the “moral law”. In order to achieve this aim, we analyze two ofthe most inluential interpretations that are at the base of the aforementionedthesis, v.gr., John R. Silber’s, in “Procedural Formalism in Kant’s Ethics”, andHenry E. Allison’s in “Morality and Freedom: Kant’s Reciprocity Thesis”. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a non-ideal analysis of a series of theoretical problems affecting liberalism, which have bearing on liberal discourses in today’s concrete political practices with de-democratizing consequences, including the instrumentalization of liberalism by neoconservative actors. I use Benjamin Constant’s attitude towards slavery as case study to show that liberalism is culpably ignorant of many structural injustices, and that this is so because of its basic thesis that the main oppression is the one the state and the political (...) community exert of the individual. The centrality of this oppression makes liberalism unable to give oppressions exerted within the web of social relations a proper place in its own theory. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es exponer un paso argumental para una justificación kantiana de la aplicación jurídico-política del principio de la humanidad que sea plenamente compatible con la tesis de la diferencia deontológica entre ética y derecho. Dicho paso se ubica en el nivel metaético de justificación de los principios de justicia en el marco del contrato originario. Específicamente, mi tesis interpretativa consiste en que este nivel se inicia con una teoría de la acción por la cual la descripción (...) de los rasgos de los agentes o personas que participan de él resulta compatible con el 'hecho del pluralismo'.The aim of this paper is to develop a step within the justificatory argumentation that bases the juridical-political application of the principle of humanity in a way that makes it fully compatible with the thesis of the deontological distinction between ethics and law. This step belongs to the metaethical level that serves to justify Kant's principles of justice within the original contract. Specifically, my interpretative thesis holds that this level begins with a theory of action by which the description of the agents or persons that participate in the contract is fully compatible with the fact of pluralism. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta por primera vez en castellano la “Introducción” de las lecciones kantianas conocidas como Naturrecht Feyerabend, a partir de la nueva edición del manuscrito preparada por Heinrich P. Delfosse, Norbert Hinske y Gianluca Sadun Bordoni. La traducción está antecedida por un estudio crítico en el que sostenemos la tesis de que la obra en cuestión constituye una fuente jurídico-política crucial para entender la formación del pensamiento práctico de Kant. Intentamos mostrar que si bien el texto puede ser leído (...) como complemento de la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres, la preocupación central de la “Introducción” de Naturrecht Feyerabend gira en torno a tres ejes conceptuales que recaen, por entero, dentro del reino de la filosofía jurídica y política. En primer lugar, encontramos en el curso una preocupación por definir el concepto de la obligación jurídica desde la idea de coacción, distinguiéndolo así del de la obligación ética y asociándolo a la definición de derecho subjetivo como potestad o título para ejercer coacción de manera legítima. En segundo lugar, es central la tesis propiamente kantiana de que el derecho debe fundarse en la libertad externa y en la posibilidad de su compatibilidad universal, y no en la felicidad entendida como fin natural que todos los individuos deberían perseguir y como propósito del Estado. En tercer lugar, aparecen in nuce los fundamentos conceptuales por los cuales Kant delimita la obligación jurídica desde la realidad práctica del derecho político, esto es, de un Estado, y no desde una supuesta confluencia pre-jurídica de intereses privados. (shrink)

En este artículo propongo una lectura de la ilustración kantiana como tarea que solo puede realizar el pueblo, en discusión con las visiones hegemónicas (críticas y defensivas) de la ilustración producidas en Europa Occidental en el siglo XX.

Reprint of paper first published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1984.

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)