Political and social developments in Venezuela have significantly influenced the events of the entire Latin American continent in the first two decades of the 21st century. Our research, time-framed between 1999 and 2013, focuses on the political, legal, social and economic aspects of the Venezuelan society development at the end of the last century and the first two decades of our century. The article also examines how social movements set in motion by chavismo led, in 1999, to the adoption (...) of a new constitution based on the principles of the separation of the five powers and how it contributed to the formation of the political movements across the Latin American continent known as the pink tide (marea rosa). (shrink)

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez has reignited debate in Latin America and internationally on the questions of socialism and revolution. This forum brings together six leading intellectuals from different revolutionary traditions and introduces their reflections on class-struggle, the state, imperialism, counter-power, revolutionary parties, community and communes, workplaces, economy, politics, society, culture, race, gender, and the hopes, contradictions, and prospects of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ in contemporary Venezuela.

El estudio de una Educación para la Revolución a una Revolución en la Educación se refiere al Proceso político de la Independencia de Venezuela (1810 - 1830) respecto al imperio español y su incidencia en la teoría republicana de la educación ideada por el Libertador Simón Bolívar en el marco ..

The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela explores the educational reforms undertaken under late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavéz. Focusing on the University of Bolivarian Venez...

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

Este artículo presenta a Weber y Habermas como los umbrales o polos de una modernidad que tiene al progreso como horizonte teórico-práctico. El diagnóstico weberiano sobre la modernidad y su proceso de desencantamiento del mundo y la injustificada reducción de la actividad racional a una actividad utilitario-estratégica desprovista de su carácter veritativo y de su orientación valórica, Habermas la utiliza para justificar su propuesta teórico-crítica respecto a la modernidad y la "paradoja de la racionalización", distinguiendo "sistema" y "mundo vital". Aquí (...) "desencantamiento del mundo" y "consenso del proyecto de lamodernidad", se encuentranThis article presents Weber and Habermas like the thresholds or poles of a modernity that has to the progress as theoretical- practical horizon. The diagnosis weberiano on the modernity and his process of disenchantment of the world and the unjustified reduction of the rational activity to a utilitarian-strategic activity devoid of his character of truth, Habermas uses to justify his theoretical-critical offerwith regard to themodernity and the "paradox of the rationalization", distinguishing "system" and "vital world". Here "disenchantment of the world" and "consensus of the project of the modernity", they are. (shrink)

1891. The recovered manuscript of Aristotle's Constitutional History of Athens, now for the first time given to the world from the unique text in the British...

After a decade in power, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution faces a newly multilateral Washington DC and global capitalism’s most significant crisis in a generation. In order to properly understand the hopes and impediments for the future of the Revolution, I argue, it is first necessary to consider the current trajectory and series of accomplishments it has made. In this review-essay, I consider the three most recent and comprehensive works on the foreign and domestic situations in Venezuela in English (...) ‐ Eva Golinger’s Bush vs Chávez, Gregory Wilpert’s Changing Venezuela by Taking Power, and Steve Ellner’s Rethinking Venezuelan Politics. (shrink)

The five years that separate the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1999 and the publication of Federico Vegas's Falke in 2004 were filled with change, political polarization, and outbursts of violence. In December 1999, a new constitution was approved along with a plan to replace the traditional bicameral system with an all-elected National Assembly. Thanks to a Chavista majority, the assembly approved the ley habilitante two years later. Its reforms included the expropriation of unused (...) lands, the nationalization of mixed companies, price control, and the creation of several agencies that functioned as a social network to benefit the poor. After the new laws were passed, the Communist Party and... (shrink)

In this essay we explain some of the problems of the Venezuelan criminal justice sub-system and, in general, the criminal law enforcement. That is to say, that which is expressed in the persecutory actions of the investigating authorities and the criminal courts, after having established in Venezuela a Carl Schmitt concept of Dual State with the purpose of eliminating “bourgeois” democracy and implanting the model of so-called Socialism of the XXI Century. In this sense, it is a question of (...) identifying the flagrant persecution and violation of human rights of those who do not have the capacity to resist the attacks emanating from the State in the abusive use of coercion and legal violence. With the Dual State want to impose an utopia by force, which leads to dystopia, due to the division and polarization of society with the dichotomous politics of friend-enemy, In a process of etiquette and "demonization" of the enemy. (shrink)

This paper develops a normative framework for both conceptualizing and assessing various institutional possibilities for democratic modes of constitutional change, with special attention to the recent ferment of constitutional experimentation. The paper’s basic methodological orientation is interdisciplinary, combining research in comparative constitutionalism, political science and normative political philosophy. In particular, it employs a form of normative reconstruction: attempting to glean out of recent institutional innovations the deep political ideals such institutions embody or attempt to realize. Starting from the assumption that (...) contemporary constitutional democracies are attempting to realize the broader ideals of deliberative democratic constitution (ideals outlined briefly in the first section), the paper proposes an evaluative framework, comprised of six criteria, for assessing various mechanisms of constitutional change. It argues that democratic forms of constitutional change embody six distinct ideals—operationalizability, structural independence, democratic co-authorship, political equality, inclusive sensitivity, and reasons-responsiveness—and that these ideals can be used to gauge the normative worth of different mechanisms for carrying out such change. The framework is developed with reference to recent constitutional developments (e.g., in Venezuela, South Africa, Columbia, Bolivia, and Iceland) highlighting distinct criteria and showing how they appear to capture the general direction of institutional innovation. The paper conjectures that the set of six criteria yield the best normative reconstruction of the crucial ideals embodied in the constitutional change mechanisms of contemporary constitutional democracies, and so, ought to be used for purposes of evaluating institutional design proposals. (shrink)

The roots of the « Bolivarian revolution » are located in the fall of the dictatorship in 1958. The role of the armed forces in the history of the Venezuelan left considerably predates Chavez’s accession to power in 1998. If we are to understand the political process involved here, we must grasp the nature of the historical bonds between the radical left and certain sectors of the armed forces. The article reviews this history, examining the achievements of the Chavez (...) governments in power since 1998; It then addresses certain current debates in the country, notably on the question of the construction of a socialism for the twenty-first century and the role of the armed forces in the struggles of the country. (shrink)

Abstrac. The work argues the activation of the competence of the UN Security Council to review the complex humanitarian emergency situation in Venezuela, and adopt as a provisional measure a Humanitarian Electoral Intervention (IHE), which allows to settle and alleviate conflicts by holding some general elections, based on the experience of Cambodia (1992-1993) and Timor Leste (2001-2002), and thus ruling out any possibility of violence in the Venezuelan conflict, also removing any possibility of military intervention, bearing in mind that (...) the continuity or aggravation they constitute a threat to regional and world peace and security. (shrink)

Across a number of countries including Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, incumbent presidents in Latin America have recently sought to amend their constitutions to eliminate or weaken presidential term limits. In some cases, these efforts to extend terms have been part of broader projects to consolidate power, weaken other state institutions, and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents. From a legal perspective, these cases are interesting because they highlight the limits of tools (...) limiting constitutional change, such as eternity clauses and the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine, to constrain potentially anti-democratic or anti-liberal forms of constitutional change. Although constitutional texts in most of these cases gave courts ample ammunition to reject attempts to eliminate term limits or at least to force those changes down more demanding paths, courts did not stand in the way of most of these efforts and in some cases even used the doctrines to eliminate rather than protect term limits. The case studies highlight the extent to which the “superficial” spread of doctrines controlling constitutional change may fail to block, and indeed may promote, forms of constitutional change that threaten liberal democratic constitutionalism. It also suggests possibilities for deepening the effectiveness of transnational dialogue on these issues. (shrink)

Jose Manuel Delgado Ocando presents us with a brilliant and original analysis of Venezuelan political reality. It is well known that due to the election of President Hugo Chavez Frías, a popular referendum was convened with the express intention of constituting a new constitutional order. This..

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces the (...) widespread suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

The objective of this article is to introduce a new concept for grouping all countermajoritarian instruments which became the true casualties of polity design during the New Latin American Constitutionalism (NLAC). This theoretical endeavor, which has not been undertaken until now, will be discussed on the basis of the constitutional upheavals that occurred between 1999 and 2009 in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. By addressing a specific theme of this experience, namely its implications for the relationship between democracy and countermajoritarian (...) devices, this article shows why an aggregating concept such as state ataraxy is needed. This concept fills the gap that hinders understanding of what has been institutionally dismantled in the course of these reforms. The article then challenges the claim that with the collapse of countermajoritarian institutions, democracy necessarily collapses. It concludes with a new assessment of the novelty that the NLAC may have brought concerning the tension between democracy and countermajoritarian institutions. The findings contribute to understand one of the most enduring concerns of state theory in general, the tension between democracy and the rule of law. (shrink)

Today the question of the moral foundations of democracy is more important then ever. In this book the author helps to explain when and why democracy is important and also gives us guidance as to how democracies ought to be shaped.

Populism has been a rather marginalized notion in mainstream social sciences. In his ambitious work On Populist Reason, renowned theoretician Ernesto Laclau aimed to give the notion a more central role. However, the work is dominated by ungrounded theory. In this article I test the factors that the work identifies as conditions to explaining populism, against the backdrop of three historical cases the work analyzes. I add the case of Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. From the (...) comparison I conclude that the work innovates less than it claims when explaining populism. I propose that a hypothetical way to build on its contribution is by shifting the focus from its central notion of heterogeneity to coalitions, and from there to types of populisms as a way towards the construction of grounded, middle-range generalizations. (shrink)

How can science be protected, by whom and at what level? If science is valued positively as the incubator of the most successful solutions to representational problems of reality as well as the basis of the most effective interventions in the natural and social world, then its constitutional foundations must be protected. This book develops a specific normative outlook on science by introducing the idea of a 'Constitution of Science'. Scientific activities are special kinds of epistemic problem-solving activities unfolding (...) in an institutional context. The scientific enterprise is a social process unfolding within an intricate institutional framework that structures the daily activities of scientists and shapes their outcomes. Those institutions of science which are of the highest generality make up the 'Constitution of Science' and are of fundamental importance for channelling the scientific process effectively. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.2 (2003) 119-134 [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition Maurice Charland Rhetoric is not a discipline. That is to say, as a domain of theoretical and practical knowledge, rhetoric is weakly institutionalized, lacking a centralized arbiter and standardized set of procedures for establishing truth claims. It also lacks the basic characteristics that Michel Foucault defines as disciplinary, for while we can identify (...) "groups of objects, methods, their corpus of properties considered to be true, the interplay of rules and definitions, of techniques and tools," these are neither universally admitted, nor do they "constitute a sort of anonymous system, freely available to whoever wishes, or whoever is able to make use of them, without their being any question of their meaning" (1972, 222). On the contrary, despite the fact that rhetoric is usually figured as offering practical and, indeed, positive knowledge, the meaning of its terms is always being questioned and at stake. While we might, by considering terms loosely, seek to identify rhetoric in terms of objects such as "persuasion," or "discourse," these are not exclusively its province. Furthermore, the ends of rhetoric are themselves unclear. Is rhetoric really the art of discovering the available means of persuasion? Or is it an art of citizenship? Or a method of enquiry? It has at times been defined as each. Consequently, none of these methods can fix its identity. At most, we can say that "rhetoric," as a domain of knowledge, signals a commitment to the idea of agency in discourse.Rhetoric, while not disciplinary, nevertheless "hangs together" as a domain of knowledge even though it does not cohere conceptually. It is, or comes close to being, a "discursive formation." That is to say, we can identify a field that produces statements concerning discourse and its operations, which is characterized by certain regularities that articulate with the term rhetoric itself. The first such regularity is the gesture of negation. Rhetoric refuses philosophy (or acts out having been refused by philosophy). [End Page 119] Rhetoric further is defined against other intellectual genres: rhetoric is not poetics, is not political science, is not ethics, though it may "speak" to them. Ultimately, though, this tells us very little about the nature of rhetoric's difference, for while refusal is effective in positing the existence of a boundary between rhetoric and other domains, the location of that boundary and what it contains remains unspecified. Rhetoric must also be attributed an at least provisional sense. This is accomplished by rhetoric's second gesture, which initially appears more substantial. Rhetoric is framed in terms of the positivity of a foundational "tradition." Indeed, the gesture toward tradition is ubiquitous. Consider, for example, both the title and principles of organization of Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg's (1990) anthology, George Kennedy's (1998) recursion to the idea of "tradition" even as he attempts to present rhetoric as a natural and cross-cultural phenomenon, recent feminist works that explicitly address "the tradition," 1 the routine citation of Classical authorities and examples, the recurrence of "new" rhetorics, including Burke's dramatism, Perelman's theory of argumentation, as well as Barthes' semiotics, which are offered as supplements to tradition's lacks, and, finally, the energy devoted to the study of the history of rhetoric. The rhetorical tradition, as something bequeathed or put in play by ancient teachers, appears to offer rhetoric a substance, a literature, and a set of problems, particularly through variants of two other principles of discursive formation identified by Foucault, commentary and the author-function. Even so, the gesture toward tradition does not imply the existence of a historically rooted and fixed corpus or model: "Tradition" is a vague term, there is no unproblematic canon of texts to be commented upon, and tradition itself, rather than Aristotle, Plato, or Cicero, stands as "author." What we debate is the meaning of the "tradition," the uneasy relationship between Socrates and Sophists, Plato and Aristotle, but as positions rather than personae. Furthermore, in the name of rhetoric, ancient and modern texts are often read against the grain, and what is... (shrink)

Resumen. La consideración de una nueva visión para sustituir y revisar las concepciones humanasen relación con el ambiente, plantea necesariamente mantener una misión educativa, dirigiendo laatención al complejo mundo natural, porque bajo esta perspectiva, educar representa una formaviable entre la realidad y el medio, condición indispensable para replantear la promoción de lasactividades ecológicas mediante el panorama gerencial, bajo el rol que desempeña el gerente deaula, para obtener cambios en el futuro posicionamiento humano en relación con la naturaleza. Elestudio tiene como (...) objetivo describir el rol gerencial del docente para la promoción de lasactividades ecológicas en la educación primaria. Tomando como caso el Colegio Jorbalán y EscuelaBásica San José, San Cristóbal, República Bolivariana de Venezuela. El estudio se fundamentó en laactividad promovida por el docente en cuanto a la participación ciudadana y el trabajo colaborativo,así mismo, la gerencia estratégica con referencia a la planificación, organización y dirección deactividades ecológicas. La investigación presentada es de nivel descriptivo, de campo, proyectofactible. Los resultados obtenidos indicaron, que los docentes promueven actividades departicipación ciudadana sobre acciones proambientales y valores ambientales; argumento del cualdiscreparon estudiantes y padres; también se detectaron deficiencias en el desarrollo de la gerenciaestratégica, concluyendo que el trabajo es importante porque hay necesidad de diseñar técnicas parala promoción de actividades ecológicas. Recomendando a los docentes como protagonistasmotivacionales, el ejercicio de los principios gerenciales con mayor firmeza a fin de mejorar lacalidad de vida.Palabras claves. Gerente de aula, promoción actividades ecológicas. Considering a new vision to replace and check the human conceptions in relation to theenvironment, necessarily arises maintain an educational mission, drawing attention to the complexnatural world, because from this perspective, education is a viable way between reality and theenvironment , which is essential to reconsider the promotion of environmental activities bymanagement scenario, in the role played by the manager class, for change in the future positioning inrelation to human nature. The study aimed to describe the managerial role of teachers in thepromotion of environmental activities in primary education. Case: Jorbalán College ElementarySchool and San Jose, San Cristobal, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The same was based onthe activity promoted by the teacher in terms of citizen participation and collaborative work, inaddition, management refers to strategic planning, organization and management of environmentalactivities. The research presented is descriptive level, field, and project feasible. Resultsindicated that teachers promote civic engagement activities on eco-friendly actions andenvironmental values; argument which students and parents disagreed, also identified shortcomingsin the development of strategic management, concluding that there is need to develop techniques forpromoting of environmental activities. It is recommended to teachers asprotagonists motivational exercise management principles more firmly to improve the quality of life.Keywords. Classroom manager, promoting environmental activities. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman takes issue with analytic philosophy's emphasis on the first sort of question to the exclusion of the second.

The Constitution of Independence is a contribution to the newly rejuvenated subject of comparative Commonwealth constitutional law, politics, and history. In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, a series of fascinating developments have been under way for more than a decade, characterized by independent thinking, experimentation, and cross-Commonwealth borrowing of constitutional ideas. These include the final termination of constitutional ties with the United Kingdom Parliament and the emergence of controversial issues including variably entrenched or implied rights and freedoms; wide-ranging claims (...) by indigenous peoples; republicanism; and assertions of national, popular, and sectional sovereignty.This book explores the development of constitutional thinking in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand from early domination by Imperial ideas, through the adoption of the Statute of Westminster and the contemplation of severing Imperial connections, to irreversible acquisition of constitutional independence in the 1980s. This book focusses primarily on sovereignty and the legal system, concepts which are also central to contemporary constitutional theory in Europe and the United States. The book closes with an evaluation of recent varied and often contradictory accounts of the constitutional foundations of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which depict a wide range of scenarios: from constitutional continuity and respect for the rule of law, to popular sovereignty and disguised revolution. Oliver argues that explanations of constitutional independence are characterized by their reliance on independent, country-specific constitutional thinking that evolved over the last century. on. (shrink)

By analysing original sources and evaluating conceptual frameworks, this book discusses the idea proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution that Australia is a federal commonwealth. Taking careful account of the influence which the American, Canadian and Swiss Constitutions had upon the framers of the Australian Constitution, the author shows how the framers wrestled with the problem of integrating federal ideas with inherited British traditions and their own experiences of parliamentary government. In so doing, the book explains how (...) the Constitution came into being in the context of the groundswell of federal ideas then sweeping the English-speaking world. In advancing an original argument about the relationship between the formation of the Constitution, the representative institutions, configurations of power and amending formulas contained therein, fresh light is shed on the terms and structure of the Constitution and a range of problems associated with its interpretation and practical operation are addressed. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the difficulty in the phenomenology of explaining the constitution of objectivities in consciousness. In the context of phenomenological reduction, constitution has to be understood as unveiling the universal and necessary essences. Recognized by Husserl in Ideas I and named as functional problems, the constitution of objectivities refers at first to individual consciousness, and then to an intersubjective one. In Ideas II, the phenomenologist explains how the constitution of nature, psyche, and spirit (...) occurs. This process begins by assuming three premises: the ontological realism, the regularity of nature, and the transcendental idealism. In this process, the ego, apart from constituting objects (the body, the psyche, and the others), constitutes itself. The objects of material reality are constituted through aesthetic synthesis which unifies singularities and contextualizes the lived experience. The body, as a perceptive organ, perceives the exterior, and the location of the sensory stimulus is the soul. The soul is a real and transcendent object, which is linked to physical things that are constituted in a solipsistic way or intersubjectively. Empathy allows the subject to recognize the consciousness of the alter ego as capable of spontaneous movements and actions, a co-presence sharing the same horizons. Thus, through the theoretical attitude, the physical world is perceived, and through the spiritual attitude the spiritual world is perceived, a living world shared by free intelligent beings. For this, intersubjectivity fulfills a fundamental role, because only in the relationship with the other does the identity of the objects, of the other, and of the self become evident. (shrink)

Christine M. Korsgaard is one of today's leading moral philosophers: this volume collects ten influential papers by her on practical reason and moral psychology ...

This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo Bueno’s (...) idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions. (shrink)

Résumé David Chalmers maintient que la réalité virtuelle est une véritable réalité. Une version de ce « réalisme virtuel » affirme que les entités virtuelles dépendent ontologiquement d'entités numériques réelles. Nous explorons ici cette suggestion, en proposant un nouveau modèle pour décrire la dépendance du virtuel à l’égard du numérique. En nous appuyant sur la théorie de la constitution de Lynne Rudder Baker, nous défendons que les objets virtuels sont constitués par des objets numériques, lorsque ceux-ci se trouvent dans (...) certaines circonstances favorables. Nous explorons les motivations et les implications de cette approche, que nous considérons comme une forme prometteuse de réalisme virtuel. (shrink)

The philosophy of mathematical practice sometimes investigates the social constitution of mathematics but does not always make explicit the philosophical-normative framework that guides the discussion. This chapter investigates some recent proposals in the philosophy of mathematical practice that compare social facts and mathematical objects, discussing similarities and differences. An attempt will be made to identify, through a comparison with three different perspectives in social ontology, the kind of objectivity attributed to mathematical knowledge, the type of representational or non-representational semantics (...) adopted, and the justificatory or coordinative role entrusted to axiomatics. After a brief introduction to key issues in social ontology, Sect. 3 of the chapter offers a survey of contributions by Feferman, Ferreirós, and Cole, highlighting a difference between approaches based on rules, practices, and intentional states, respectively. Section 4.1 also discusses results by Carter, Collin, Giardino, and Pantsar, focusing on differences between the objectivity of knowledge and objectivity of objects and showing that many authors combine a realist, structuralist, and pragmatist perspective, as well as the idea that objectivity comes in degrees. Section 4.2 focuses on the kind of semantics that is adopted in socially oriented approaches. A representational semantics is preferred by authors grounding their views on mental states, whereas a non-representational semantics best fits with views based on practices. Section 5 considers how axiomatics can be understood in a social perspective. Axiomatics generally plays a justificatory role also in theories that aim to explain the social constitution of mathematical knowledge. Yet, if one shifts from approaches based on mental states to approaches anchored on rules or habits, axiomatics can be viewed as an institution based on obligations, functions, coordination problems, and agent’s actions and roles, thus playing an organizational and coordination role. (shrink)

Can we understand what makes someone the same person without understanding what it is to be a person? Prereflectively we might not think so, but philosophers often accord these questions separate treatments, with personal-identity theorists claiming the first question and free-will theorists the second. Yet much of what is of interest to a person—the possibility of survival over time, compensation for past hardships, concern for future projects, or moral responsibility—is not obviously intelligible from the perspective of either question alone. Marya (...) Schechtman encourages us to adopt a more unified perspective. (shrink)