En este ensayo se reflexiona, en primer lugar, sobre el conflicto de interpretaciones que surge a partir de la obra de Marx. El conflicto se inicia con el significado que le da el propio Engels y continúa con la versión soviética del materialismo dialéctico; la teoría crítica de la sociedad y las diversas concepciones que se han realizado bajo el rubro de filosofía de la praxis, empezando con Gramsci. En esa dirección se destaca la propuesta de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (...) que coincide, pero también difiere del gran pensador italiano. Sánchez Vázquez, filósofo español exiliado en México en 1939, a raíz de la derrota de la República, da a conocer una propuesta original y define sus tareas del futuro: crítica del capitalismo; explicación científica y estrategia política; proyecto de emancipación; autocrítica y debilidad teoría y práctica. El presente ensayo confronta estas tareas con los desafíos de la sociedad contemporánea. (shrink)

Proponents of probabilism argued that 'when an opinion is probable it may be followed even when the contrary opinion is more probable'. Gabriel Vazquez (1549-1604) was the first Jesuit theologian to defend and expand this doctrine. The prevalent theory of sovereignty at the time held that: (1) when sovereigns are victims of wrongs, they take on the role of international judges (thus just wars are just punishments); and (2) the sovereign need not stand before the judgment of any other (...) human being. The conjunction of probabilism and the idea of the sovereign as a superior judge made it conceptually possible for a war to be just on both sides. The reason is that probabilism allows two sovereigns to inculpably carry out two conflicting but probable judicial sentences about the same case. Confronted with this problem, Vazquez decided to eliminate the overlap between sovereign jurisdictions by revising the then dominant conception of sovereign supremacy and proposing criteria for determining > the competent forum to settle sovereign disputes. His views developed during his involvement in the controversy about Castilian claims to the Portuguese throne. (shrink)

The title of this book is too modest. In his Disputationes on the text of the Summa of St. Thomas, Gabriel Vazquez draws upon a very wide reading of the theological literature of his own and previous ages. His conclusions present a synthesis, not without originality, of the speculation of the 15th and 16th centuries. The problem here considered, that of the obligation of civil law, raises the great issues of civil obedience and the limits of human authority. The (...) book, then, is more than a monograph on a single author; it is an important study in the history of moral philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In this essay a quick review of the bibliography of the Mexican-Spanish philosopher Adolfo Sanchez Vasquez is made, and the characteristics of his philosophical evolution are analyzed, which since 1965 implies a rupture with the official thesis of Soviet Marxism through out his books, The aesthet..

An important step in In Pierre Bayle’s defense of religious tolerance is to refute St Augustine’s claim that heretics who refuse to convert to the true faith do so out of ill will. This claim legitimizes, for Augustine and his followers, the application of temporal sanctions to those heretics, in order to offset their wicked inclination and restore their free will. To counter this view, Bayle uses the theological notions of invincible ignorance and dutiful erroneous conscience, elaborated during the Middle (...) Ages. However, these notions had a very restricted scope, which needed to be extended to so-called heretical beliefs. I show how two early modern scholastics, the Jesuits Gabriel Vázquez and Rodrigo Arriaga, have prepared this evolution and have paved the way for Bayle's denunciation any form of coercion in religious matters. (shrink)

Gabriel Vázquez explained that natural law is properly «the whole of radical or structural requirements of human nature as such, which is biological and rational at the same time». Natural law has also «self-consistency» by its own nature, and not by the consent or will of anyone, not even God. There is a double natural law: the primary one is the rational nature, and the secondary one is the judgment of our reason. This secondary natural law, based on (...) the rational nature —which is our first moral rule—, gives a guideline, a practical judgment about the morality and immorality of human acts. The first is properly rule, the second is properly law. The present study examines this dual intentional structure of natural law. (shrink)

En forma de síntesis reflexiva sobre la vida y la obra de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, el trabajo responde in inicialmente a una solicitud de la revista Casa de las Américas. Esta revista-institución había pedido, en justo homenaje a este genuino marxista, un comentario a dos volúmenes que celebraban desde México, con inteligente selección, abierta a la controversia, su 80 aniversario (1995). Se trataba de los libros Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez: los trabajos y los días y En torno a la (...) obra de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, editados por Federico Álvarez y Gabriel Vargas Lozano, respectivamente. Publicado originalmente con el título “La empecinada herejía de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez” en la mencionada revista (núm. 203, La Habana,1996, pp.142-147), el texto fue revisado y actualizado para la presente edición. (shrink)

El texto constituye una reseña-comentario a dos volúmenes que celebraban desde México, con inteligente selección, abierta a la controversia, el 80 aniversario (1995) del destacado pensador hispano-mexicano. Se trataba de los libros Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez: los trabajos y los días y En torno a la obra de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, editados por Federico Álvarez y Gabriel Vargas Lozano, respectivamente. El título del comentario hace alusión a la permanente actitud de principios de Sánchez Vázquez, quien mantuvo, primero, (...) una actitud crítica ante el marxismo ortodoxo y dogmático que se difundía desde la URSS y el llamado socialismo real y, después, asumió estoicamente la defensa del marxismo cuando aquellos habían desaparecido. (shrink)

Who owns the girl’s body, the parents, or the daughter herself? In Catholic casuistry, this issue has not only been occasionally touched upon, it has been topical among the commentators on Aquinas (STh II-II, q. 154, a. 6) from the 16th up to the 18th centuries. Nevertheless, modern scholarship ignores this big dispute. The distortion of early modern history in consequence thereof precludes a fair appraisal of the achievements of the Christian schools within the Habsburgian commonwealth. Whereas the Iberian Peninsula (...) was the theatre of the endeavour here described (Domingo de Soto OP, Luis de Molina SJ, Gabriel Vázquez SJ, Juan de Lugo SJ, the Salmantine Carmelites), Jansenist France was forward in defeating it. The quarrel about this issue gains an additional interest by the observation that it represents the rare case where the schoolmen themselves had the keen feeling that the stand they took represented a divide between two ages, medieval and modern, viz. Pre-Tridentine and Post-Tridentine. The main purpose of the present paper, then, is to render a necessary piece of apologetics. Its focus is on the deplorable situation in which we presently are due to the rotten feminist convictions about how things went. (shrink)

The paper explores the status of the proposition "God exists" in late scholastic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some key authors of the era. A proposition is said to be self-evident if its truth is known solely from the meaning of the terms and is not inferred from other propositions. It does not appear to be immediately evident from the terms that God exists, for the concept expressed by "God" is based on the relation to creatures and (...) negation of imperfection and does not reach to the divine essence. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are two types of self-evident propositions: those self-evident in themselves but not to us and those self-evident in themselves as well as to us. "God exists" is of the fi rst type. For Scotus a self-evident proposition is such that if its terms are conceived by any intellect, the truth of the proposition becomes known from the terms, non-inferentially. In his view there is no distinction between a self-evident proposition in itself and that in relation to us, because any proposition self-evident in itself is known to be such to any intellect, even though it might not be actually known; it would be known, provided that the terms are conceived. So for Scotus the sentence "God exists" expresses diff erent propositions for the blessed in heaven, the angels and God on the one hand and humans on the other. The former is self-evident, the latter is not. While later scholastics accept either the solution of Thomas or that of Scotus, according to which "God exists" is not self-evident for humans, Thomas de Argentina diff ers in that for him "God exists" is self-evident for humans too. The position of Thomas Aquinas was defended by Domingo Ban¯ez, Francisco Zumel and Gregorio de Valentia. In contrast, Johannes Poncius was a famous adherent of Scotus. There is a fair number of scholastics harmonizing the doctrine of Thomas and Scotus: Bernard Sannig, Luis de Molina, Gabriel Vázquez, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Jean Lalemandet. According to these authors, when Thomas says that "God exists" is self-evident in itself, he speaks about the extensional proposition, i.e. the state of affairs being conceptualized, which does not contradict Scotus’s teaching. © FILOSOFIA, 2013. (shrink)

This paper delves into a pivotal issue of scholastic angelology, the problem of angelic self-knowledge. It compares positions ranging from Thomas Aquinas’s to João Poinsot’s. I stress in particular what I dub ‘the problem of immanent knowledge in presence’, i.e. the problem of the actual, immanent and presential interplay between the angelic intellect and the angelic substance, which Aquinas sees as the rationale for angelic self-knowledge. I then discuss the perspectives of Cajetan and Vázquez, which revolve around the identity (...) between the angelic intellect and the angelic substance, and how they should interact so to enable self-knowledge in the angelic intellect. I finally deal with Poinsot’s account of the problem and its strong rebuttal to Vázquez. Poinsot’s view champions Aquinas’s original doctrine and is grounded upon the notions of “radical intellect” and “intelligible identity”. (shrink)

Suárez undertakes systematic study of natural moral law in Book II of De legibus, which is integrally consecrated to the study of the eternal law, natural right and the right of nations. In confrontation, among others, with the thesis of Gabriel Vázquez, Suárez maintains the natural moral law is a divine obligatory law or command, which orders to do or to avoid that which is «fitting» or «unfitting» with the human rational nature. Divine Mind and Will contribute thus, (...) each within the bounds of his own sphere, towards the promulgation of the natural moral law. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez se inserta en la línea de los escolásticos españoles del siglo XVI, especialmente de los dos jesuitas que, junto con él, culminan esta escuela: Gabriel Vázquez de Belmonte y Luis de Molina. Se diferencia de ellos en que él es nominalista. Se adelantó a los autores de la Edad Moderna en la carrera por las libertades típicamente modernas, tales como la afirmación de los derechos subjetivos naturales, la democracia como la forma más natural o más próxima (...) a la libertad del hombre, la libertad de conciencia (no de cultos). Estuvo omnipresente en los escolásticos de las Edades Modernas y Contemporánea que, de hecho, entendieron que él culminó la escolástica, de forma tal que también Tomás de Aquino debe ser interpretado a la luz de sus escritos. (shrink)

What is it for a picture to depict a scene? The most orthodox philosophical theory of pictorial representation holds that depiction is grounded in resemblance. A picture represents a scene in virtue of being similar to that scene in certain ways. This essay presents evidence against this claim: curvilinear perspective is one common style of depiction in which successful pictorial representation depends as much on a picture's systematic differences with the scene depicted as on the similarities; it cannot be analyzed (...) in terms of similarity alone. The same problem arises for many other kinds of depiction. The essay concludes that depiction in general is not grounded in resemblance but geometrical transformation. (shrink)

Economic theory teaches that it is in every country’s interest to trade. Trade is a voluntary activity among consenting parties. On this view, considerations of justice have little bearing on trade, and political philosophers concerned with global justice should stay largely silent on trade. According to a very different view that has recently gained prominence, international trade can only occur before the background of an international market reliance practice shaped by states. Trade is a shared activity among states, and all (...) participating states have in principle equal claims to gains from trade. Trade then becomes a central topic for political philosophers. Both views are problematic. A third view about the role of trade in a theory of global justice is then presented, which gives pride of place to a notion of exploitation. The other two views should be abandoned. (shrink)

This essay argues for a model of pictorial representation which aims to explain the relationship between pictorial content and pictorial accuracy. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the model distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, the model follows the traditional (...) division of content into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model because it distinguishes between the triad of factors, singular content, attributive content, and target, which together determine pictorial accuracy. Though previous work on depiction has not recognized the distinctive role played by target, I will argue that it is essential in order to make sense of accuracy judgements across a range of central cases. (shrink)

This essay calls attention to a set of linguistic interactions between counterfactual conditionals, on one hand, and possibility modals like could have and might have, on the other. These data present a challenge to the popular variably strict semantics for counterfactual conditionals. Instead, they support a version of the strict conditional semantics in which counterfactuals and possibility modals share a unified quantificational domain. I’ll argue that pragmatic explanations of this evidence are not available to the variable analysis. And putative counterexamples (...) to the unified strict analysis, on careful inspection, in fact support it. Ultimately, the semantics of conditionals and modals must be linked together more closely than has sometimes been recognized, and a unified strict semantics for conditionals and modals is the only way to fully achieve this. (shrink)

El Estado de Hegel es el Estado de Derecho. Sin embargo en su Filosofía del Derecho se encuentran fundamentos decisivos para una teoría del Estado Social. Siguiendo el hilo de las Líneas fundamentales de la Filosofía del Derecho, se empieza por ver el derecho al bienestar, tal como se formula en la Moralidad (1). En la familia aparece el derecho de los hijos "de ser alimentados y educados" (2). El Derecho al bienestar se concreta en la sociedad civil (3), se (...) hace posible en el sistema de las necesidades (3.1.) y efectivo en la policía y la corporación (3.2 y 3.3), que ejercen funciones de suplencia de la familia. El mayor problema es la pobreza, tanto la que surge por contingencias subjetivas y sociales como por el funcionamiento mismo de la sociedad civil: la plebe. A este problema la sociedad es incapaz de darle una solución. (shrink)

Ce volume contient les contributions au colloque « Lire Althusser aujourd'hui » organisé les 16 et 17 octobre 1995 à l'Ecole normale supérieure, par l'Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine. La publication de l'Avenir dure longtemps, puis de nombreux autres inédits, ont donné à la pensée de Louis Althusser un regain d'actualité, indissociable d'une profonde modification de la lecture qui peut être faite de son oeuvre. On ne peut pas lire Althusser aujourd'hui comme on le faisait de son vivant. A leur (...) manière, chacun de ces exposés tournent ainsi autour d'une même question : qu'est-ce que lire Althusser aujourd'hui? (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know-how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about (...) concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action. (shrink)

During the last few decades, the historical turn within the tradition of the analytic tradition has experienced growing enthusiasm concerning the procedure of rational reconstruction, whose validity or importance, despite its paradigmatic examples in Frege and Russell, has not always enjoyed a consensus. Among the analytic philosophers who are the frontrunners of this movement, Robert Brandom is one of a kind: his work on Hegel as well as on German Idealism has been increasing interest in, as well as awareness of, (...) Hegel´s possible contributions to some current problems in that tradition, and connecting Hegel scholars to current questions. Thus, this work aims to explore Brandom´s methodology of rational reconstruction, as well as his dialogue with history of Philosophy, mainly exposed in his Tales of the mighty dead (2002). As we will see, Brandom´s distinction between a de dicto and a de re approach intends to present a way of identifying and analyzing a given philosopher´s theoretical (hidden) commitments that can be useful to improve the quality of the dialogue with past philosophers. From such methodological exposition, I to turn to Kierkegaard in order to make explicit some of his ontological commitments and presenting Brandom’s approach as a valuable tool for doing history of philosophy. (shrink)

Part I of Frege’s Grundgesetze is devoted to the “exposition [Darlegung]” of his formal system.

The so-called Trolley Problem was first discussed by Philippa Foot in 1967 as a way to test moral intuitions regarding the doctrine of double effect, Kantian principles and utilitarianism. Ever since, a great number of philosophers and psychologists have come up with alternative scenarios to further test intuitions and the relevance of conventional moral doctrines. Given that physicians routinely face moral decisions regarding life and death, the Trolley Problem should be considered of great importance in medical ethics. In this article, (...) five “classic” trolley scenarios are discussed: the driver diverting the trolley, a bystander pulling a lever to divert the trolley, a fat man being thrown from a bridge to stop the trolley, a bystander pulling a lever to divert a trolley so that a fat man may be run over, and a bystander pulling a lever so that a fat man falls off from a bridge to stop the trolley. As these scenarios are discussed, relevant moral differences amongst them are addressed, and some of the applications in medical ethics are discussed. The article concludes that Trolley scenarios are not the ultimate criterion to make ethical decisions in difficult ethical challenges in medicine cases but they do serve as an initial intuitive guide. (shrink)

Em 1845, ainda durante o período de redação da obra que seria o Pós-Escrito Conclusivo Não-Científico às Migalhas Filosóficas – trabalhado sob o título provisório de Problemas Lógicos –, Kierkegaard esboça em seus Papirer (IV A 145) um curioso esquete que se passaria nos Infernos – ou Submundo – envolvendo um diálogo entre Sócrates e Hegel. Neste diálogo acerca do famigerado problema do início da filosofia hegeliana, Kierkegaard descreve Hegel fazendo a leitura da página 198 do segundo volume das Logische (...) Untersuchungen, de F. A. Trendelenburg. A citação precisa da página, feita por Kierkegaard, não poderia ser senão uma indicação da relevância de seu conteúdo para o tema debatido entre os dois filósofos no diálogo imaginário. De fato, está aí presente, entre outros argumentos, a acusação da intromissão da Anschauung no reino do pensamento puro, em especial no início da Lógica de Hegel. Assim, pretendemos neste trabalho (1) explicitar o argumento trendelenburguiano relativo à Anschauung, bem como (2) fazer alguns apontamentos da recepção kierkegaardiana do argumento a partir das relações deste com as teses centrais do Pós-Escrito. (shrink)

We show from an abstract comparison principle that the Mitchell order is linear on sufficiently strong ultrafilters: normal ultrafilters, Dodd solid ultrafilters, and assuming GCH, generalized normal ultrafilters. This gives a conditional answer to the well-known question of whether a [Formula: see text]-supercompact cardinal [Formula: see text] must carry more than one normal measure of order 0. Conditioned on a very plausible iteration hypothesis, the answer is no, since the Ultrapower Axiom holds in the canonical inner models at the finite (...) levels of supercompactness. (shrink)

Scott Sehon recently argued that the standard notion of determinism employed in the Consequence Argument makes it so that, if our world turns out to be deterministic, then an interventionist God is logically impossible. He further argues that because of this, we should revise our notion of determinism. In this paper I show that Sehon’s argument for the claim that the truth of determinism, in this sense, would make an interventionist God logically impossible ultimately fails. I then offer and respond (...) to a weaker version of the argument for the claim that we should revise our notion of determinism. (shrink)

I examine two explanatory models of choking: the representationalist model and the anti-representationalist model. The representationalist model is based largely on Anderson's ACT model of procedural knowledge and is developed by Masters, Beilock and Carr. The antirepresentationalist model is based on dynamical models of cognition and embodied action and is developed by Dreyfus who employs an antirepresentational view of know-how. I identify the models' similarities and differences. I then suggest that Dreyfus is wrong to believe representational activity requires reflection and (...) attention. I also argue that the representationalist model of choking is preferable, since some embodied actions require appeals to representations, something not available to Dreyfus's anti-representational model. (shrink)

Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with new (...) analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Some political philosophers believe that equality emerges as a moral concern where and because people coerce each other. I shall argue that they are wrong. The idea of coercion as a trigger of equality is neither as plausible nor as powerful as it may initially appear. Those who rely on the idea that coercion is among the conditions that give rise to equality as a moral demand face a threefold challenge. They will have to succeed in jointly (a) offering a (...) convincing account of the wrongness of coercion, (b) rendering cogent the idea that the demand of equality arises in response to the moral problem of coercion, and (c) identifying some types of interaction as relevantly coercive. This challenge, I believe, cannot be met. More precisely, I argue that two important accounts of coercion fail to meet it. (shrink)

Trolley dilemmas have been tested cross-culturally, but only recently have researchers begun to assess the effect of responding to such dilemmas in a foreign language. Previous studies have found a Moral Foreign Language Effect in trolley dilemmas, whereby subjects who respond to these dilemmas in a foreign language, tend to offer more utilitarian responses. The present study seeks to test whether the MFLE holds amongst native speakers of Arabic. Additionally, the present study seeks to test whether the use of visual (...) images has any effect on responses. For such purposes, four groups were compared: 1) participants responding to trolley dilemmas in English without visual images; 2) participants responding to trolley dilemmas in Arabic without visual images; 3) participants responding to trolley dilemmas in English with visual images; 4) participants responding to trolley dilemmas in Arabic with visual images. (shrink)