Sciences based on analytical methods are insufficient to understand human beings and organize society. We need therefore a more suitable way to study man which allows to grasp both his complexity and his freedom. Quién es el hombre takes on this project having human temporality as thread and proposing a method —systemic method— to understand correctly the diverse aspects of man.

Thomas Aquinas holds that the actual content of our thought is not accessible for any creature, and that free will cannot be superseded. These theses are founded on the spiritual condition of our intelligence and will, which makes them directly invulnerable to any intervention on our body. On the other hand, he enthrones the will as the keeper of interiority: it precludes a full transparency that would make our free decision to communicate superfluous, and it exert an inalienable control over (...) the action through which we direct ourselves to the good. In this sense, Aquinas departs from reductionist accounts, which either refuse the existence of free will, suppressing the reason to protect its expression, or face the difficulty of explaining the meaning and justification of the rights that are claimed for free will. However, Thomas Aquinas admits the possibility of indirectly accessing our minds through the knowledge of brain states and of influencing our will through passions by means of alterations of our organisms. Although this possibility was not within the reach of the human being in his time, he considered it was within the reach of separated substances. The consideration of the limits of their perspicacity and control sheds light on the possibilities that neurotechnology can allow in the future. The existence of an unassailable stronghold that guarantees our interiority and free will legitimates our right to be respected but does not make their protection superfluous. (shrink)

Prof. Brague explores in this interview the usefulness of the study of medieval thought in order to understand the problems of our time. He reflects on the different approaches to reason, politics and religion in Islam and Christianity, and the problems which derivate from the radical modern separation between society and religion. Is it correct to ascribe the casuse of social conflicts to religion or to a strong rationality? Is it possible in the long run to build a society without (...) any religion? Why is the notion of natural law controversial in modern times? And what is the relation between natural law and the law of God, as proposed by certain religions? (shrink)

This article offers a presentation of the recent book of Santiago Collado and shows the importance of the notion of "habitus" in order to grasp the continuity between the philosophy of Leonardo Polo and the Aristotelian tradition.

El estudio de la libertad plantea el problema de cuál es el método o los métodos más adecuados y qué podemos esperar de ellos. La filosofía clásica accede a la libertad desde la noción de naturaleza, mientras que la filosofía moderna, que concibe la naturaleza de un modo mecanicista y ateleológico, accede a ella desde la subjetividad. Dos ejemplos de estos planteamientos son, respectivamente, los de Aristóteles y Schelling. Se analizan sus méritos y sus deficiencias para dar cuenta de los (...) rasgos esenciales de lo que entendemos por libertad. (shrink)

Classic and modern philosophy propose different views on the question of self-knowledge. Ancient philosophy identifies self-knowledge with the knowledge of the soul, which is the principle of unity in man. Modern philosophy is intereseted in subjectivity, but has a problematic view of it. Some currents, like Idealism, consider that a total reflexcion is possible, in which the subjectivity becomes totally present to itself, but others, as Empiricists, are skeptical and even deny the existence of a true subject. The difficulties of (...) the Idealistic project have are uncovered by some contemporary philosophers, like Heidegger and post-modern thinkers. Polo shows how the denial of a reflective and objective knowledge of the person is compatible with the claim that the person is a radical and transcendental act of intellect. The key of this proposal is the affirmation that there are different kinds of acts of the intellect, according to their theme. (shrink)

El problema mente-cuerpo es central para algunos filósofos que pertenecen a la tradición analítica. Este es uno de los temas principales de la la filosofía de la mente. Una de las características de esta tradición es que considera la ciencia moderna como el paradigma del saber riguroso; otra, que parte de un planteamiento dualista, pero busca una solución de corte monista. Este planteamiento tiene importantes implicaciones metafísicas, y plantea algunas dificultades, que pueden ser afrontadas con el método dual, que Leonardo (...) Polo propone para la antropología. (shrink)

Para Polo, el cuerpo es un tema oscuro pero decisivo para la antropología. Del modo en que comprendemos su lugar en el ser humano y la mortalidad que su condición introduce depende nuestra visión de la persona humana. Polo acepta la tesis de Tomás de Aquino de que el alma intelectual es causa formal del cuerpo, pero la piensa de nuevo y evita algunas de sus dificultades ampliándola a la luz de su antropología trascendental.

Platón puede ser considerado el iniciador de la antropología como disciplina filosófica. El estudio filosófico del hombre aparece en el seno de la discusión ontológica cuando se cae en la cuenta de que tiene una consistencia propia y que presenta unos problemas que no pueden ser decididos por la mera ontología. Ante todo, el tema del hombre aparece como un problema gnoseológico: cuál es la relación del hombre con el intelecto, entendido como la capacidad de conocer lo real como real.

Contemporary Biology shares with modern science the same understanding of knowledge. This implies a reduction in its objectives. Nevertheless, in order to describe properly its object it had to move from a mechanistic model to more refined theories, as cybernetics and theory of systems. This allows us to formulate a better account of the time of living beings. But only philosophy, which exmines reality without restrictions, can really explain biological time.

Culture is a social and historical continuatio ficta naturae which represents the solution to the problem of a plurality of persons who share the same nature and dispose of the universe according to the limitation of their knowledge.

The philosophy of Plotino represents, with respect to Parménides -although in dependency of him-, a new way to think the relations between Unity and Thought. Whereas Parménides maintains that being is the only object adapted to thought, Plotino considers that it is not possible to think without the distinction between intelligible contents. Consequently, thinking cannot be the highest. But, although in this sense he surpasses to Parménides, his forgetfulness of some Aristotelian contributions prevents him to extract all potentialities contained in (...) his discovery. (shrink)

Los artículos aquí reunidos estudian la relación entre el organismo humano y la subjetividad, inspirándose en el proyecto de la antropología filosófica del siglo XX. Muchos de los representantes de esta corriente coinciden en aceptar que es posible, e incluso necesario, un diálogo entre la filosofía y la biología, y que éste es un requisito para alcanzar una visión más comprensiva del hombre, capaz de superar los límites de la filosofía moderna y de la ciencia actual.

La mente se ha convertido recientemente en un tema de la ciencia gracias a los nuevos avances de la neurociencia. Pero el modo en que se suele acometer su estudio no ha escapado todavía a las limitaciones del planteamiento dualista moderno. Para mejorar este situación, la biología debe tomar conciencia de la insuficiencia del modelo mecanicista para entender la vida, y esto exige que comprenda mejor su método y sus objetivos, y que se disponga a entablar un diálogo eficaz con (...) la filosofía. (shrink)

In the middle of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein warned that “the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws…leads…into complete darkness” (1958, p. 18). At the time, few philosophers and even fewer scientists were prepared to heed his warning. A half-century later, however, the reductive method of science—the method famously defined by Descartes, brilliantly exemplified by Newtonian physics, and long upheld as the gold standard of scientific explanation—seems to have finally lost (...) its luster. While reduction is still widely defended, in the last decades alternative views have gained credibility, to the extent that a “non-reductive science” is no longer dismissed as an oxymoron. (shrink)

Presentamos, a modo de introducción al número, algunos aspectos que ayuden a enmarcar la aproximación al estudio comparado de las propuestas filosóficas de Xavier Zubiri y Polo. Mostramos la influencia que tuvieron en ambos las corrientes renovadoras del primer tercio del siglo XX y el interés de ambos en continuar y, a la vez, renovar, el pensamiento filosófico anterior, siempre en continuo diálogo con la tradición clásica. Hacemos también mención a las particularidades de la recepción de sus filosofías y a (...) las inquietudes intelectuales comunes ante el problema de Dios, la creación y la persona y su trascendencia. (shrink)

Para el transhumanismo, la humanidad es una etapa que, guiada por la evolución biológica, estuvo precedida por otras anteriores y a la que seguirán otras nuevas. Según el transhumanismo hemos de romper la inercia de causas ciegas que gobierna la evolución y, a través de la biotecnología, alcanzar lo que denominan una “vida mejor”. Los autores afines a esta corriente desarrollan sus propuestas negando la existencia de una naturaleza humana, pero sin abandonar la convicción de que resulta posible definir en (...) qué consiste una “vida mejor”. En este artículo analizamos la claridad y el rigor con la que presentan el fin último de su propuesta, la relación entre el fin y los medios planteados para alcanzarlo, y, finalmente, pondremos de manifiesto algunas inconsistencias derivadas de su rechazo de que la naturaleza humana pueda tener valor normativo. (shrink)

This essay explores the contact between the Italian and Argentine cultures during the period of mass immigration by pointing out and commenting on a series of translations and artistic creations made by Italian artists in Buenos Aires: musical, literary, theatrical and pictorial works. In order to understand how the semiotic frontier was composed, we approached the question from a methodology that arises at the intersection of the phenomenon of translation and the semiotic theory of cultural interaction. Thinking about translation in (...) this way highlights its sociological dimension given the links that the source-text establishes with the programs of certain trends in the organization of a culture. The methodology consists on the description of the semiotic frontier showing which texts are of interest to whom and for what. In this way, we seek to understand how a certain tendency was positioned in relation to the project of sustaining italianità in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th Century. The path proposed shows the frontier between the Italian and Argentine cultures as a bilingual mechanism of mediation from which a cultural group of immigrants developed actions to propose the textual and metatextual guidelines of c. (shrink)

En el presente artículo hacemos una revisión del método neurofenomenólogico de Thomas Metzinger y su capacidad para responder a problemas habituales de filosofía de la mente y evitar dificultades de otros materialismos. Metzinger define estados mentales en función de estados cerebrales, sin embargo, frente al materialismo eliminativo, sí considera como real la experiencia fenoménica y rechaza su reducción conceptual o epistémica. Esta peculiaridad salva su propuesta de críticas como la de José Ignacio Murillo o Graham Harman, que (...) parecen dirigidas a otros tipos de materialismos. Por ello, consideramos necesario repensar las consecuencias éticas de la tajante negación del libre albedrío y la afirmación de la posibilidad de máquinas artificiales conscientes que conlleva la propuesta de Metzinger. (shrink)

Taking language as its general theme, this book explores how the tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophical speculation exemplifies the character of scholasticism. Scholasticism, as an abstract and general category, is developed as a valuable theoretical tool for understanding a variety of intellectual movements in the history of philosophy of religion. The book investigates the Buddhist Scholastic theory and use of scripture, the nature of doctrine and its transcendence in experience, Mahayana Buddhist hermeneutics, the theory and practice of exegesis, and questions (...) concerning the authority of sacred texts. It also deals with the Buddhist Scholastic theory of conceptual thought as the mirror of language, the Scholastic defense of logic and rationality as a method, as well as the role of language in the idealist and nominalist ontologies of the Mahayana. Finally, the author treats the question of ineffability and the silence of the Buddha from a new perspective. (shrink)

This article begins with Feuerbach’s critique of religion in order to recover the humanist sense of such critique, which is more than an affirmation of atheism or a denial of God’s existence, it is a defense of dignity and freedom Human. Throughout this study Feuerbach’s thinking is placed beyond the discussion between atheism and theism, establishing a dialogue that set aside the limitations of this dichotomy. In the history of philosophy, the importance of Feuerbach’s thought for the later philosophy of (...) suspicion has been emphasized, but in this case a less explored path is followed: his relation to dialogical thinking and the religion of love. (shrink)

Western scholars have written on the theory of Buddhist argumentation. They have also analyzed examples of arguments found in philosophical and polemical writing. However, little has been written to date about what might have transpired when Buddhists and their opponents met in face-to-face debates in classical India. Drawing on Chinese and Tibetan historical and biographical writings about famous Indian debates, this essay analyzes the structure and conventions of these accounts as a literary form. While it is difficult to assess the (...) historicity of particular narratives, an analysis of this literature as a whole gives us clues about what might have occured when Indian scholars faced their adversaries in live debates. These sources provide us with a picture of the etiquette, rules of engagement, and strategies that may have been used in such encounters. They also suggest what constituted defeat in ancient Indian verbal contests, and they point to some of the real-political and material benefits of victory. The essay ends by reflecting on the function of these narratives vis-à-vis Tibetan Buddhist scholastic identity. (shrink)