The present paper tries to tackle the philosophical, ethical and social problem of posthumanism through an analysis of Michel Houellebecq´s novel The possibility of an island. We will defend that, when dealing with future and uncertain phenomena like posthumanism, literatura constituyes an extremely adequate tool. Through Houellebecq´s novel, we will reflect on posthumanist issues as body and immortality, the problem of the Other and human – posthuman relationships, as well as the peril of posthuman life turning out senseless and empty. (...) We will conclude that literatura, and The possibility of an island concretely, allows us to better understand and, therefore, better discuss and decide upon the important problems posthumanism puts forward. (shrink)

Taking as a starting point the existence of an unimaginable large number of human beings, who, because of poverty, are prevented from a life worth of living and the assumption that the origin of action is a certain sense of responsibility, I will draw a general distinction between the responsibility for the past and the responsibility for the future. This is the framework for the fundamental part of the article, in which I will examine the various types of responsibility of (...) ordinary people in our western countries with regard to poverty in the world. The responsibility for taking collective and political actions to solve the problem stems from this analysis. Until this is not achieved, the responsibility for individual actions is maintained. And the meta-responsibility of showing our responsibility for this problem is required for those whose task is to communicate ideas. (shrink)

This paper critically compares the philosophy of Günther Anders and the contemporary transhumanists, like Julian Savulescu, Ingmar Persson, or Thomas Douglas. The Andersian concepts of moral blindness, promethean gap, and promethean shame will be discussed in order to understand human beings’ outdatedness; parallel to this, we will also expose the transhumanist analysis on the unfitness of human beings in evolutive and cognitive terms. We will show that much of the transhumanist analysis is a reformulation of the Andersian thesis, now under (...) scientific terminology. Finally, we will approach the transhumanist proposal of moral enhancement, explaining and confronting some critics raised on the grounds of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I want to defend the necessary role played by the recognition of human animal subjectivity in the articulation of a posthuman ethics. For this I propose that what I have called “animal writing” is a way of writing that seeks to express that human animality. I will analyze the features of what animal writing is, proposing Zambrano’s poetic reason as an adequate method to articulate animal writing. As an example of animal writing, I will examine the narratives (...) of the feminist wild. Finally, going through these texts will allow me to highlight some principles of what I consider to be a posthuman ethics. (shrink)

The paper begins with the distinction between different ways of thinking about the posthuman. From the question about the possibility of the formulation of an ethics that goes beyond the precautionary principle the following thesis is defended: posthumanism, in its transhumanist interpretation, is the most consistent standpoint with normative ethics as we know it, if and only if the consequentialist approach characteristic of their supporters is complemented with the deontological one. For this two assumptions are made: the idea of a (...) continuity between humans and posthumans and the right of a human to exercise enhancements on himself/herself that take him/her to a state qualifiable as posthuman, provided that those do not conflict with human dignity. (shrink)

Clearly in contrast to the sociosymbolic approaches that underlie the positions of Butler or Derrida, this article delves into a materialist and machinic reading of the ontology of Deleuze and Guattari. This ontology is the basis of a posthumanist conception that allows to join political philosophy, technology and biology understood as complex rhizomatic systems. From this point of view, we propose to construct an antagonistic posthumanist politics that is an alternative to the pluriversal ethics defended by Braidotti. We believe that (...) the latter maintains an excessively liberal position that prioritizes inclusion as a new form of consensus in the face of conflict. (shrink)

Antoni Domènech was one of Spain’s most important political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Known primarily as a scholar of republicanism, his work on the concepts of individual liberty and rights complicates standard liberal definitions, which he believed erred in defining these terms independent of institutional context, as pre-political attributes of the individual. He argued that republicanism corrected liberalism’s abstraction by making one’s actually being able to exercise liberty and rights depend on one’s enjoying a sufficiently (...) robust set of material conditions, or on having enough property so that one could always avoid unequal social relationships. (shrink)

We must undoubtedly take advantage of the benefits brought by new technologies, and we must apply them to the human being to the extent that a prolonged and serene reflection tells us that this application brings improvements in a full sense. But that does not mean that we should accept the ideological discourse of transhumanism. This discourse owes much of its power of conviction to certain philosophical assumptions that have not been sufficiently clarified and discussed. This article aims to highlight (...) some of them. (shrink)

Transhumanism and philosophical posthumanism have paid special attention to human corporeality in relation to technological breakthroughs. This article begins by pointing out how the two movements differ significantly about the inheritance of humanism. Subsequently, the transhumanist notion of ‘morphological freedom’ is addressed from the proposals of More, Sandberg, and Bostrom. Then, paradigmatic cases of body modifications through cybernetic implants are considered. Finally, the issues of identity, corporeality, and the disagreement between the two currents regarding ‘mind uploading’ are problematized.

The radical posthumanism of Kurzweil aims to achieve immortality. Fukuyama and Habermas criticize posthumanism defending the idea of an inalterable human nature. Pinker, for his part, considers that there is a human nature, but susceptible to modifications. There is a limit to human nature: it is found in the mortal nature of each member of the human species. Sloterdijk will introduce a nuance and insist on the natality of the creative acts of man, standing in continuity with the Nietzschean concept (...) of overman. (shrink)

This research aims to analyses Leibniz’ Monadologic Ontology and his theory of expression as opposed to those readings of Leibniz’ work that define monads as isolated entities that lack that all possible relation. The analysis will also show that, beyond his notion of Personal Identity, underlies a logic of Otherness able to dialogue with contemporary Personalism. This logic of otherness, if our reading of Leibniz is right, it is especially ostensible in the ‘spirits’, which expressive nature establish not only a (...) systematic bond with the totality of beings that integrate the world, but also a notion of Personal Identity. Such notion allows that otherness acquires a prescriptive character: to place us in other’s situation and thus understand their needs and, through this, acknowledge our place in the cosmos. In order to achieve this we will carry four tasks: first, we will analyze in depth the application of his theory of expression to Monadologic ontology and his notio completa. Second, we will appreciate what implicatures have both for the specific case of spirits, emphasizing the communitarian nature of these rational monads. Third, we will rebuild a Leibnizian theory of Personal Identity and finally, we will compare the results with the main Personalists’ body of thesis. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to relate the critical core of Jesus Conill’s last essay, Bodily Intimacy and the Human Person. From Nietzsche to Ortega and Zubiri, with the problem of nihilism, as a structure that survives in our contemporary societies, especially in the context of neurosciences, technology and our way of relating to both. After outlining the key insights of the book, especially its innovative conception of bodily intimacy, I will retrieve some contributions from Nietzsche’s notes regarding nihilism, (...) to show that after the “death of God”, other instances take his place, the logics of nihilism remain intact and underly the majority approach of neurosciences. I will conclude that the elements presented by Conill for a strong intimacy and subjectivity will be necessary for the task, still pending, of overcoming nihilism. (shrink)

After posing the problem of technocracy according to the debate between Marcuse and Habermas, the article situates Simondon’s perspective and, thematizing the relations between society, culture and technological development, it analyzes a series of ethical and political elements involved in his philosophy. In this vein, the paper addresses Simondon’s criticism of the technocratic utopia, introduces his conceptualization of the technique and examines the three concepts he provides to rethink political practice.

The article presents the political thinking of Suárez’s De opere sex dierum, a literary work which as yet does not count on a translation into Spanish. The article is divided into two parts. The first one describes and analyses the political thinking of this work, reaching the conclusion that the central theme is that of the distinction between economic and political power, carried out in order to save –faced with the theory of the divine right of kings– the liberty and (...) equality of all men and the contractual character of the State. The second part covers the relation of this work with Filmer’s Patriarcha, as well as the inspiration found in Suárez’s writing upon which to base the themes of liberty and equality found in Locke’s second Treatise on Government. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically evaluate some impacts of the so-called “posthumanist turn” for philosophy of technology, with special reference to the problem of ontological status of artifacts. In the first place, we reconstruct the meaning and scope of posthumanist turn in social and human sciences, while we indicate in what sense this turn questions a group of traditional operative concepts for philosophy. Second, we propose to admit a “weak” version of posthumanism for philosophy of technology. In this sense, two (...) lines of research compatible to this “weak” approach are pointed out. The first one consists in the exploration of immanent aspects of technical objects. The second one commits us to introduce the category of “hybridization” in order to account for the complex and multidimensional relationships between humans and environments. (shrink)

This article aims at demonstrating that the theory of potency developed by Giorgio Agamben lacks a fundamental aspect. The Italian philosopher has pointed out the amphibious nature of potency. However, his analysis does not cover the act, thus failing to observe its amphibious nature. We will demonstrate that this insufficiency lies at the root of several problems –whether ontological, political, aesthetic, ethical, etc.– found in Agamben’s thinking.

One of the most recognizable features of the fragmentary work of the Spanish philosopher Manuel Sacristán is a critical reception of different Marxist currents by means of epistemological tools inherited from the analytic philosophical tradition. It is a frame that anticipated in several decades the emergence of “analytical Marxism”, a collective intervention of great international impact in which, however, Sacristán barely took part. This article tries to reconstruct a possible dialogue between some central elements of analytical Marxism and the epistemological (...) and political reflections of Manuel Sacristán. (shrink)

The possible linkages among liberty and power is a philosophical issue that gets to special important inside to contemporary political philosophy’s context. During this stage, a notion of legitimacy began to develop on which both freedom and power would be sustained, without being justified in a supposed statalist originin. Neither the legitimate power no the legitime freedom come to be backing by the juristic order up in the first instance, inasmuch up its source would be prior. From Foucault and Marcuse (...) outlooks on this issue, it will treat to inquire on the disquisitions that both their ever speeches propose. (shrink)

The notions of fetishism and mystification constitute the fundamental concepts with which Marx analyzes the forms of appearance relating to capitalist societies. These concepts have an architectural role in the internal structure of Marx’ project of a critique of political economy. This paper aims to expose and discuss the interpretative contributions opened up by the book by Clara Ramas San Miguel: Fetiche y Mistificación capitalistas. La crítica de la economía política de Marx published in 2018 at Siglo XXI.

The aim of this study consists of postulating an ethical approach to Human Rights conceiving them as rights of the other, claiming that this approach represent a starting point for the development of a legal pluralism that contributes to the achievement of an effective and authentic peace. For this study is based on the premise that the law must be able to deal with the serious and still pending social and environmental problems that underlie the violations of human rights, especially (...) those of ecological nature. By way of conclusion, the need for a radical change of the paradigm is evidenced, for which a perspective of ethics as a linguistic praxis is proposed, since such praxis has the potential to inspire the reformulation of human rights, for the purpose of reversing the dynamics of violence imposed by the logic of identity underlying the current legal system. (shrink)

This article deals with the nature of the visual representation of knowledge with historical and contemporary examples of the analysis of its defining characteristics as epistemic, heuristic and communicative representation. With this aim along the text we explain the visual material features and their relationship with the elaboration of scientific knowledge. And, finally, we must take into account the status of scientific representation in the complex of contemporary visual culture claiming the urgent need to address this type of particular representation (...) of visuals with greater intensity from its epistemic, heuristic and communicative nature. (shrink)

Following Lazzarato’s hypothesis, the increasing incidence of antiproduction in the productive system would lead to questioning the “progressive” character of capitalism, a vision shared by both Liberalism and Marxism when they associate the logic of capital with the development of productive forces. It is proposed the exploration of this thesis–the problem of the vitality of capitalism– through the development of the concept of antiproduction, which is traced through its sources –Deleuze and Guattari, Baran and Sweezy– and related to the theorical (...) baggage of Marx himself. (shrink)

In this article we examine one of the viewpoints linked to Platonic dialectics which directly concerns the conformity of the polis : the underlying questioning which the modus operandi of dialectics applies to everyday life, to social conventions, formalities, and generally accepted beliefs. We focus here on the passage in the Republic 537e-539e where dialectics is intimately linked to refutation. This procedure, which leads to the development of the dialectic method, requires distancing from the everyday and unconsciously assumed viewpoint, exercising (...) critical consciousness. Plato explores the dangers of dialectics at the border between questioning the norm and assuming responsibility towards the polis. (shrink)

In this text is carried out a study of the Derrida’s concept «cap» in comparison with the way in which Heidegger sets out the «polis» in his texts developed throughout 1935 and 1943. In this way, through the word «khôra», shared this by Heidegger and Derrida, the topology of human dwelling is tackled as dimension necessarily opened towards the other. Thus, it is realized, through the «hospitality» showed by Heidegger and Derrida, the difference between the two regarding the possibility or (...) impossibility of this aporetic place for human dwelling. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze why the interpretation and even the misinterpretation that Jacques Derrida did of the speech act theory is political. I will expose four aspects that distance Derrida from Austin’s theory that allow a political reading of performativity: the notion force, the origin of the convention, the idea of subjectivity and finally the way in which Derrida reads performativity and the political through his notion of promise understood as an event that exceeds all convention (...) and contract, denying deontological interpretations of the speech act. (shrink)

The founding operation of the American States involves a mediating mechanism that enables the connection between the ideals supporting it and the intent for its popularization among people. Such is the function assigned to the founding heroes, which is analyzed as a cultural operation that aims to enshrine these ideals, thereby eliding the violence contained in the formation of modern States.

Republicanism is increasingly attracting more attention from political philosophy. However, a mere hermeneutical approach it is usually used, which tends to neglect the political, social and economic circumstances that shaped this tradition of thought. This article addresses the modern conception of republican freedom with the North American and the French case through the work of two of their most representative figures, Thomas Jefferson and Maximilien Robespierre. The article defends that the political, juridical and economic government – the republican political economy– (...) devised by both, keeps important similarities that the current political philosophy cannot ignore. To illustrate this relationship, it is shown that both thinkers received a deep and similar influence of natural law philosophy and of fiduciary theory when thinking and trying to implement their models of government and their idea of ownership. (shrink)

This paper inquires in a central question in the Jean-Luc Nancy’s work, that is, the end of the West and his inmediate concequence: the return schema. The evaluation that Nancy realize is associated to his affirmation about this question is that the West has finished product planetary extension of its foundational philosophical slogans. The main argument is that one of the most conspicuous causes of that finishing is the global structure, regulated by the exclusive pattern of the One, in any (...) case, neutralizer considered singular beings. It is argued that the main output to said planetary nancyana neutralization is the concept of a community of singular beings under the being-in-common that cover deploys unique and unrepeatable sense networks. (shrink)

Transmedia storytelling nowadays represents a genuine communicative revolution; a new paradigm for generating and spreading all kinds of information and content. It is the best means of expression through digital techno-communicative networks; networks that make collaborative environments a reality and create close links between political organizations, the media and the target. The Internet, combined with the social networking sites, has certainly empowered common citizens and, consequently, has forced brands to get to know their interests and values in order to create (...) conversations with them. Not only do people provide their opinions, but also turn out to be genuinely emotional, social and intellectual investors. Their contributions have become so important that the key to measuring communicative success lies in clarifying the gratifications that pronet@rians obtain by participating in the narrative world of the organizations and by committing themselves to them, until they end up identifying themselves, as fans, in the transmedial world-building. (shrink)

This paper analyses the place of sortition in the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière. The idea of sortition is linked to a philosophical reflection on arithmetic equality and geometric equality. Thus, starting from an important work of Cornelius Castoriadis in this sense, we will analyze below the relationship of Rancière’s political philosophy with equality. Finally we will analyze the sortition and the place it occupies in his work. Bernard Manin’s work on ancient democracies and systems of representative government will help (...) us contextualize Rancière’s proposals on the use of random selection in politics. (shrink)

The link between force, violence and events in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida is explored, arguing that this relationship is at the very heart of the problem of meaning and its performativity. This thesis is based on the analysis of Derrida’s reading of both Benjamin’s Critique of Violence, as well as Austin’s linguistic performative theory, which allows, at first, to link the question of signification with that of force or violence. Subsequently, we use the analysis of W. Hamacher about Benjamin (...) in order to strengthen that connection and propose a new reading of the question of the event in Derrida. We obtain a philosophy of the event that moves between ethics, politics and linguistics that allows new approaches to the “critique” of violence. (shrink)

This article deals with the category of antagonism as proposed by Ernesto Laclau, delving into its basal philosophies and analyzing some of their tensional aspects. We being by identifying two fields, namely, post-foundational political thought and the Lacanian left, and link them to the category of antagonism. Second, the philosophical tensions between the category and these fields are examined through two concrete exponents: Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek, reporting certain incompatibilities and criticism regarding both authors’ proposals. Finally, a few open (...) questions are raised in regard to the category of antagonism, stemming from previous discussions and Laclau’s own limitations. (shrink)