The definition of love given by Descartes in the Passions of the Soul has never stopped puzzling commentators. If the first Cartesian textbooks discreetly evoke or even fail to discuss Descartes’s account of love, Spinoza harshly criticizes it, pointing out that it is ‘on all hands admitted to be very obscure’. More recently several scholars have noticed the puzzling character of the articles of the Passions of the Soul on love and hate. In this paper, I would like to propose (...) a reassessment of the definition of love provided by the Passions of the Soul and the Letters to Elisabeth and Chanut. By tracing back Descartes’s scholastic sources, I will demonstrate how Descartes builds up his definition of love by displacing or subverting the meaning of several major elements of the thomistic vulgata on love. Hence, a significant part of the obscurity of the definition given by the Passions of the Soul possibly finds its ultimate rationale in this attempt to recover some traditional questions of the scholastic debate on love, while advancing new answers to them. (shrink)

This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these This This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these entities, according to which a fictional entity is a compound entity built up from (...) both a make-believe theoretical element and a set-theoretical element. The fictional entity is constructed by imagining the existence of an individual with certain properties and adding a set-theoretical element consisting of the set of properties corresponding to the properties of the imagined entity. Moreover, the book advances a new combined semantic and ontological defence of the existence of fictional entities. (shrink)

In this paper, I will claim that fictional works apparently about utterly immigrant objects, i.e., real individuals imported in fiction from reality, are instead about fictional individuals that intentionally resemble those real individuals in a significant manner: fictional surrogates of such individuals. Since I also share the realists’ conviction that the remaining fictional works concern native characters, i.e., full-fledged fictional individuals that originate in fiction itself, I will here defend a hyperrealist position according to which fictional works only concern fictional (...) individuals. (shrink)

Alain Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, Translated, Edited and withan Introduction by Norman Madarasz ISBN - 9780791442197Alain Badiou, Deleuze. The Clamor of Being, Translated and with aPreface by Louise Burchill ISBN - 9780816631391.

In this paper I will undertake a review on Hans Blumenberg’s analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works. My point is underline the peculiar position that Wittgenstein has in Blumenberg’s texts. I will consider his impolite commentaries concerning the Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein’s decision of becoming a teacher. I will try to characterize Blumenberg’s conception of Wittgenstein as an intellectual figure and on the most popular contributions of Wittgenstein’s thought.

En 1976, mientras Milton Friedman recoge el Premio Nobel de Economía por sus logros en los campos del análisis del consumo y la teoría monetaria, el punk expande su mensaje de disonancia empujando los límites de lo decible hacia espacios hasta entonces poco conocidos. En ese mismo momento bandas como Iron Maiden comienzan a generar imaginarios extraños que canalizan algunas tendencias sociales; las pistas de baile exploran nuevas formas de relación cultural, y el espíritu nihilista de Iggy Pop flota en (...) el ambiente. La década de 1970 es la década del extrañamiento, en la que el sueño económico de la posguerra se deshace provocando la aparición en el horizonte de una “nueva” forma de revisar la construcción de la vida cotidiana: el neoliberalismo. En paralelo a este proceso, y en dirección opuesta, existe una búsqueda de respuestas a nivel cultural. Respuestas que no pretenden salvar nada, sino ahondar en la miseria de ese mismo tiempo. Ahí aparecen el punk y otros movimientos que pronto son devorados por el mercado. Pero ¿desde dónde se nos ha contado esta historia de derrotas? ¿Hemos aceptado que la historia de nuestras derrotas culturales sea narrada por la maquinaria neoliberal? Quizá debamos plantarnos y pensar otras formas de narrar una década, la de los setenta, en cuya estela seguimos. Este libro es un intento radical y novedoso de explorar este periodo donde cultura y política se cruzan a través de la música"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

In his highly regarded history of the rise of clinical trials in America, HarryMarks describes how their widespread adoption resulted largely fromthe efforts of ‘therapeutic reformers’ who sought to replace the individualexpertise of clinicians with the ‘science of controlled experiment’. Thetransition described by Marks resembles in many respects the transition fromthe ‘truth-to-nature’ objectivity of individual experts to a ‘mechanical’ formof objectivity portrayed by Daston and Galison. In particular,Marks details the passage from a regime of trust in expertise and experts to (...) aregime based on the mechanical generation of data, the elimination ofhuman judgement and the adoption of a ‘view from nowhere’ where individual and group idiosyncrasies are systematically suppressedthrough recourse to quantitative methods.[...]. (shrink)

In this paper I will undertake a review on Hans Blumenberg’s analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works. My point is underline the peculiar position that Wittgenstein has in Blumenberg’s texts. I will consider his impolite commentaries concerning the Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein’s decision of becoming a teacher. I will try to characterize Blumenberg’s conception of Wittgenstein as an intellectual figure and on the most popular contributions of Wittgenstein’s thought.

Trees with indistinguishability relations provide a semantics for a temporal language “composed by” the Peircean tense operators and the Ockhamist modal operator. In this paper, a finite axiomatization with a non standard rule for this language interpreted over bundled trees with indistinguishability relations is given. This axiomatization is proved to be sound and strongly complete.

El propósito de este trabajo es presentar una recons­trucción de cómo se articulan las nociones de finalidad y naturaleza en la física de Aristóteles, así como de la relación que guardan estos principios con la substan­cia eterna e inmóvil que introduce el filósofo griego en _Metaph_. XII. Como es bien sabido, hay un espectro amplio de lecturas acerca de la postura aristotélica sobre el particular, las cuales responden a distintas valoraciones de los argumentos que aparecen en los pasajes que el (...) filósofo griego dedica al estudio de estos temas. La lectura que se defenderá en el presente texto podría describirse como minimalista. (shrink)

We prove that the maximal order type of the wqo of linear orders of finite Hausdorff rank under embeddability is φ2, the first fixed point of the ε-function. We then show that Fraïssé’s conjecture restricted to linear orders of finite Hausdorff rank is provable in +“φ2 is well-ordered” and, over , implies +“φ2 is well-ordered”.

n un momento determinado de su historia, nuestra revista modificó el nombre. El leve cambio hecho se contempla aquí desde una doble perspectiva: 1. como justificación de lo abolido en ese título, y 2. como desafío y compromiso para lo conservado en él. ¿Por qué estos dos puntos de vista? Se impone el primero, porque nada podría autorizar el atribuirse la exclusividad en ser fieles a Tomás de Aquino. Y se reafirma hoy la opción por el segundo, porque, a zaga (...) de la huella del encuentro Habermas-Ratzinger de 2004, impresiona hondamente el hallar en recientes intervenciones, repetidas y notables, del Papa Benedicto XVI, un claro sentimiento de preocupación y un rico ofrecimiento de sugerencias. Una y otras, relativas a campos muy específicos y concretos de trabajo e investigación cosmológica, filosófica y teológica, en el terreno –importante y casi yermo– del diálogo entre ciencia y religión. A la postre, una vez más, veremos emerger una antiquísima fórmula de los incombustibles griegos, rememorada de tanto en tanto y de una u otra forma, a lo largo de los siglos. También en nuestros días.The journal altered its name in a fixed moment of its history. The slight change made in 1970 is seen here under a double perspective. First, like a justification of the abolished in that title. Second, like a challenge and a commitment of the maintained in it. Why these two viewpoints? The first prevails because nothing could authorize claiming exclusiveness in being faithful to Thomas Aquinas. And the option for the second is reaffirmed today, because after the track of Habermas-Ratzinger’s meeting in 2004, it is deeply impressive to find, in recent, repeated and notable Pope Benedictus XVI’s interventions, a clear feeling of preoccupation and a rich offering of suggestions. One and the others are relative to very specific and concrete fields of work and cosmological, philosophical and theological investigation on the important and almost barren ground of the dialogue between science and religion. At the end, once more, we will see emerge an ancient formula of the ever present Greeks remembered from time to time and one way or another along the centuries, nowadays, too. (shrink)