No deja de llamar la atención que un autor considerado como subversivo y expulsado de su comunidad, sea después de todo el creador de los límites del estado político. Pareciera que debía haber sido el destructor de todo orden, cuando es precisamente el inspirador de un orden y además limitado. Su concepción del estado político no supone, como en Hobbes, el abandono del estado de naturaleza, sino la metamorfosis de este último en el primero, ya que aquello que se modifica, (...) el estado natural, permanece en lo modificado, el estado político. Reconoce que únicamente en la medida en que no es posible asegurar nuestra pervivencia en el estado natural por sí solo, es por lo que se requiere la institucionalización del estado político, aunque éste no puede construirse rompiendo con la razón de su creación que no es sino el aseguramiento de nuestra pervivencia física, el incremento de nuestra riqueza y la generación de las condiciones que hagan posible el cultivo de la razón. Las ideas de un autor como Spinoza fueron relevantes para resolver el problema de la fundamentación del Estado desde los inicios de la modernidad. Su presencia en la reflexión jurídico-política occidental impresiona, está desde el comienzo, con Hobbes, pero contra Hobbes, y además destacando la insuficiencia del núcleo central de la argumentación hobbesiana, en la medida en que la libertad de pensamiento exigirá para Spinoza la libertad de expresión. Desde entonces no dejará de acompañarnos, si bien de manera larvada, pues cada vez que se acercaron a justificar de una u otra manera el orden jurídico-político, la sombra de Spinoza puede entreverse. Spinoza pergeña el orden moderno, lo traza, aunque también es verdad que a partir de ese momento intentaron olvidarlo, en el sentido en que la mayor parte de los grandes autores, Kant y Hegel por ejemplo, si bien no frenaron sus propuestas, aunque a veces uno piensa que sí que lo hicieron, lo que es cierto es que no desarrollaron aquello que Spinoza dejó en ciernes. (shrink)

Aunque se ha caracterizado el pensamiento liberal-democrático como la última ideología propia del fin de la historia, en este texto se considera que tal apreciación no es correcta pues ese pensamiento se apoya fundamentalmente en dos pilares, la democracia y la defensa de unos derechos humanos, que se encuentran en una tensión, que lejos de mostrar signos de agotamiento ideológico, constituye el núcleo teórico de la reflexión jurídico-política a lo largo del siglo veinte. La prueba más evidente de tal afirmación (...) la constituye el pensamiento de autores como Kelsen, Hart y Habermas, desde el que se ha intentado lograr la armonización entre el principio de la soberanía popular y el reconocimiento de una serie de límites al ejercicio del principio de las mayorías. (shrink)

Reconocida la función creadora del juez y especialmente la del juez constitucional, que puede poner en cuestión mediante sus decisiones la capacidad normativa del propio poder legislativo, hasta el extremo de llegar a anular la ley adoptada por éste, se plantean dos cuestiones. La primera consiste en establecer los antecedentes de por qué el poder judicial es poder. En la segunda se aborda de manera específica el poder de la justicia constitucional con la finalidad de adentrarse en el problema central (...) de todo poder, el de su legitimidad enfrentada, en este último caso de manera evidente, a la legitimidad democrática del legislador. (shrink)

Este artículo es un trabajo de campo sobre los temas de justicia social en El Quijote. Es una lectura sesgada de esta inspirada novela tratando de descubrir lo que este clásico sigue diciendo hoy en día. Los temas rastreados entre las páginas de la novela son la utopía social, la crítica social, la fundamentación de la moral y los criterios morales básicos.

Confucio no sólo es el filósofo más conocido de la cultura China, sino que es, en cierto modo, el padre de su filosofía. Las Analectasde Confucio es el texto en el que la filosofía confuciana se expone con mayor claridad y concisión, la claridad de la narración y la concisión del lenguaje de máximas morales. Una perspectiva fecunda de análisis puede ser leerlas desde la Ética a Nicómaco y, en general, desde la perspectiva de los filósofos griegos fundadores de la (...) filosofía en nuestra cultura. (shrink)

En una época en la que el "pensamiento débil" del posmodernismo intenta desmantelar las bases del comportamiento ético, es muy necesaria una reflexión profunda sobre las ideas de libertad y responsabilidad. No es sólo la "mente" humana la que exige la excelencia moral, sino también la realidad del "ser" humano, en particular de los seres humanos que sufren. Este ensayo se ha escrito como un diálogo entre dos autores contemporáneos.

Este artículo intenta mostrar la intrínseca unión que se da entre experiencia de fe cristiana y promoción de los derechos humanos. El autor que se escoge como guía en este problema es Ignacio Ellacuría, como reconocimiento a su aportación a la reflexión sobre fe y justicia, cercano el 30 aniversario de su asesinato. El signo de los derechos humanos nos llama a ir transformando toda la realidad de la Iglesia. Tanto en su relación con el mundo, como en su propia (...) configuración interna. (shrink)

“La ley natural, tal y como santo Tomás la definió, ha servido de fundamento ético para la moral católica. Este artículo analiza, con perspectiva y detenimiento, los textos de la Suma Teológica en relación con ese concepto filosófico. El autor define, desde ellos, una posible forma de pluralismo moral cristiano. La reflexión sobre el pluralismo de von Balthasar y de la Veritatis splendor sirven para marcar la necesidad y algunos de los perfiles del pluralismo moral cristiano".

A novel non-classical mereological concept built up by blending the Metaphysics of Xavier Zubiri and the Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules of R. F. W. Bader is proposed. It is argued that this philosophical concept is necessary to properly account for what happens in a chemical reaction. From the topology of the gradient of the laplacian of the electronic charge density, \\) within the QTAIM framework, different “atomic graphs” are found for each atom depending on the molecular context, reflecting (...) how the whole molecule affects each atom. In this way, the whole molecular system imposes certain geometry onto each atom, and every atom exhibits different ontological modality. On the Metaphysical side, for X. Zubiri real things are system of different notes. The physical essence is the subsystem of essential notes with a coherence unity. Every note is grounded on the essence. The unity of the system is present somehow in every note-of beforehand, and every essential note-of turns towards the other. The essence determines the position of each note within the system, and hence is the grounding for modality of the notes. By conflating both “theories” and taking the atoms as essential notes, we propose the concept of “Molecule in atoms-of” or “atoms-of in Molecules”. Within the course of a chemical reaction the atoms-of modified their “of” as required by the new molecular unity being formed, and eventually change their modality. The validity to the Zubiri’s statements, is attained by evaluating necessity and possibility in a set-up of finite accessible “possible worlds”. (shrink)

Este artículo busca poner en diálogo la reflexión ética de Ignacio Ellacuría con la reflexión de filosofía ética y política actual, así como poner de manifiesto las virtualidades que su pensamiento crítico-realista posee. Comienza por un análisis personal del autor sobre el concepto de libertad que servirá de horizonte para situar las diversas reflexiones éticas y políticas, también la ética de la liberación ellacuriana.

Este artículo es una reflexión de la crítica de Gabriel Marcel sobre la tecnología; proponiendo las líneas de fuerza de su pensamiento, poniéndolas en el contexto en el que fue escrita. Continúa la reflexión de Marcel aplicando sus intuiciones a la situación de nuestro mundo tecnificado, especialmente en lo que se refiere a las redes sociales. Es una introducción viva al pensamiento del autor francés no desde un punto de vista sistemático, sino desde el diálogo con su pensamiento.

Publicamos dos obras desconocidas de Ellacuria: "Comunicación y trabajo" y "El sentido de la historia". Ambos textos han permanecido inéditos porque su elaboración no había sido completada. Sin embargo, muestran dos aspectos de este pensamiento l filosófico es tan interesante que podría ser necesario para que los estudiosos les tengan en cuenta la importancia del trabajoy comunicación para la realidad personal y si la historia tiene un sentido o no y cuál podría ser este sentido.

Postmodernism may seem a particularly inappropriate term when used in conjunction with a region that is usually thought of as having only recently, and then unevenly, acceded to modernity. Yet in the last several years the concept has risen to the top of the agenda of cultural and political debate in Latin America. This collection explores the Latin American engagement with postmodernism, less to present a regional variant of the concept than to situate it in a transnational framework. Recognizing that (...) postmodernism in Latin America can only inaccurately be thought of as having traveled from an advanced capitalist "center" to arrive at a still dependent neocolonial "periphery," the contributors share the assumption that postmodernism is itself about the dynamics of interaction between local and metropolitan cultures in a global system in which the center-periphery model has begun to break down. These essays examine the ways in which postmodernism not only designates the effects of this transnationalism in Latin America, but also registers the cultural and political impact on an increasingly simultaneous global culture of a Latin America struggling with its own set of postcolonial contingencies, particularly the crisis of its political left, the dominance of neoliberal economic models, and the new challenges and possibilities opened by democratization. With new essays on the dynamics of Brazilian culture, the relationship between postmodernism and Latin American feminism, postmodernism and imperialism, and the implications of postmodernist theory for social policy, as well as the text of the Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatatista National Liberation Army, this expanded edition of boundary 2 will interest not only Latin Americanists, but scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern. Contributors. Xavier Albó, José Joaquín Brunner, Fernando Calderón, Enrique Dussel, Néstor García Canclini, Martín Hopenhayn, Neil Larsen, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Norbert Lechner, María Milagros López, Raquel Olea, Aníbal Quijano, Nelly Richard, Carlos Rincón, Silviano Santiago, Beatriz Sarlo, Roberto Schwarz, and Hernán Vidal. (shrink)

Resumen El concepto de fraternidad, tal y como se propone en la Fratelli Tutti, se vería privado de su potencial descriptivo y crítico si se entendiera como una mera opción sentimental de la persona. En este artículo se busca profundizar en su virtualidad ética desde la experiencia cristiana concretada en Pablo de Tarso, afianzando la dignidad humana, mostrando la diferencia con el camino de la excelencia aristocrática de los clásicos; pretende, así mismo, mostrar cómo las reflexiones metafísicas de Zubiri y (...) Levinas desvelan el fundamento fraternal de nuestra dignidad, y la exigencia de justicia y solidaridad que nos constituye.The concept of fraternity, as proposed in the Fratelli Tutti, would be deprived of its descriptive and critical potential if it were understood as a mere sentimental option of the person. This article seeks to deepen its ethical virtuality from the Christian experience concretized in Paul of Tarsus, strengthening the human dignity, showing the difference with the path of aristocratic excellence of the classics; it also aims to show how the metaphysical reflections of Zubiri and Levinas reveal the fraternal foundation of our dignity, and the condition for justice and solidarity that constitutes us. (shrink)

Este artículo intenta acercarse a la complejidad de la realidad moral de la persona desde el análisis de la libertad humana y ver su proyección en la dimensión política. Esta complejidad se concreta en cuatro momentos estructurales solidarios: la virtud, el otro, la razón y la trascendencia. Estos momentos han de plasmarse también en la acción política; también se señalan criterios generales de acción política, aunque siempre será el análisis de la realidad social la que defina su implementación histórica.

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el contexto en el que los los cristianos vivimos nuestra fe, las distorsiones que pueden producirse cuando intentamos vivirla y una justificación filosófica sobre una vía de acceso a cualquier experiencia de Dios. El estilo de este trabajo es una reflexión filosófica libre de tecnicismos. El sentido de vivir, la experiencia de la otredad, la sensación de vivir, la experiencia de la alteridad y la profunda emoción de ver los rostros de la gente (...) pobre se proponen como vías de acceso a cualquier dimensión religiosa profunda de ver los rostros de los pobres. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

This Article shows how three modern English thinkers — Hobbes, Locke and Bentham — construe the law as an intersection of secular eternity on the one one hand and transience in modernity on the other, allowing for immovability and movement at the same time, combining stability with change. It details how these theorists, who undoubtedly have earned themselves places of honor in the canon of modern political thought, tried to solve the problem of self-grounding in three different and yet paradigmatically (...) modern ways, each of them intertwining law and time in a different fashion, and each of them connecting both law and temporality to happiness. Thus this Article shows not only that these three British thinkers claim in one way or another that while natural desires may provide pleasure, only the law can bring happiness, but also emphasizes that, in their view, the transformation of the former into the latter entails a transformation of temporal consciousness. Thereby this Article foregrounds two elements that are crucial to an understanding of how seventeenth and eighteenth century British thinkers envisaged the transformation of pleasure into happiness by means of the law: first, the notion that the law creates or reinforces duration in social life, and second, the idea that the law can harness the immediacy of desires by assuring the legal protection of enduring pleasures, which lead to happiness. (shrink)

Automated legal reasoning and its application in smart contracts and automated decisions are increasingly attracting interest. In this context, ethical and legal concerns make it necessary for automated reasoners to justify in human-understandable terms the advice given. Logic Programming, specially Answer Set Programming, has a rich semantics and has been used to very concisely express complex knowledge. However, modelling discretionality to act and other vague concepts such as ambiguity cannot be expressed in top-down execution models based on Prolog, and in (...) bottom-up execution models based on ASP the justifications are incomplete and/or not scalable. We propose to use s(CASP), a top-down execution model for predicate ASP, to model vague concepts following a set of patterns. We have implemented a framework, called s(LAW), to model, reason, and justify the applicable legislation and validate it by translating (and benchmarking) a representative use case, the criteria for the admission of students in the “Comunidad de Madrid”. (shrink)

Freud uses paradoxical and conflictual rhetoric to create an unstable and conflictual picture of the mind. Thus he diverges from both dominant traditions of thought in the West: the Judeo-Christian way of filling all gaps in meaning by putting a single omnipotent divinity in charge of them, and the Enlightenment quest for a final, causal language to describe reality. By both suggesting and displacing a plurality of perspectives on the unconscious, Freud’s text mirrors what it claims happens in our minds, (...) in which unconscious impulses undermine the pretense of total rational self-control. Though Freud suggests that a mechanistic description of the mind may bring us nearer to the reality of the unconscious, he also explains that this reality will remain dark. He not only develops an ostensibly mechanistic vocabulary for unconscious mental processes, but also clarifies that his terminology is most fictional precisely when it seems most scientific. Hence, Freud’s science of the unconscious cannot be assimilated to an empiricist position; its philosophical underpinnings are both Kantian and Nietzschean, with metaphors and analogies playing a crucial role. Two dramatic images, in which the mind appears as a domain of warring gods and a realm of political conflict, demonstrate that Freud did not regard the unconscious as some kind of true inner self. He depicts the mind in general and the unconscious in particular as a pagan, conflictual universe over which no god or goddess can gain exclusive control and where no rigid dictatorship is possible. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay examines Freud's construction of a mythical moment during early childhood, in which differences between male and female sexual identities are said to originate. It focuses on the way in which Freud divides fear and envy between the sexes, allocating the emotion of fear to men, and that of envy to women. On the one hand, the problems of this construction are pointed out, but on the other hand, it is shown that even a much-maligned myth may still (...) provide food for thought.Then, four critiques of Freud which have been articulated by prominent feminist psychoanalysts – Karen Horney, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Jessica Benjamin – are presented, as well as the alternative visions of sexual identities which these thinkers have developed. The basic metaphors or economies guiding these visions of sexual difference are appraised in terms of their breadth and depth, with particular reference to their ability to acknowledge and integrate the presence of fear and envy as passions which are evoked but also repressed in the face of sexual difference.From this angle, the contributions of Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray are found to be more limited than those of Karen Horney and Jessica Benjamin, since the former two theorists allocate fear primarily or exclusively to men, as Freud has done, while they remain completely silent on envy. Differences in the scope or reach of the four feminist approaches are explained as a result of the theorists' differing perceptions of the social, political, and cultural position of women in patriarchal society. (shrink)

This article focuses on the dialectic of metapsychology and hermeneutics in psychoanalysis. By combining the causal language of the former with the intentional terminology of the latter, Freud's discourse continuously transgresses narrowly conceived boundaries of scientific disciplines and places its stakes both in the humanities and the natural sciences. The argument is made that attempts to reduce psychoanalytic theory to either causal explanation or interpretation of meaning, turn it into a closed thought-system and rob it of its vitality. Moreover, it (...) is argued that although Freud understood himself to be a scientist, by eschewing the dichotomous reductionism characteristic for both his orthodox followers and critics who try to turn psychoanalysis into either a natural-science-like discipline or a hermeneutics, Freud demonstrated that his self-understanding was far more sophisticated than either of these two groups admit to. This argument is supported by a detailed discussion of Freud's epistemological premises, his conception of science and reality, and, especially, the place which Freud allocated to metapsychology in his interdisciplinary science. It is claimed that metapsychology served Freud as a double-edged sword, both enabling creative and metaphorical thought about the mind's hidden reality, and revealing the necessary incompleteness of hermeneutics. The article concludes with the claim that psychoanalysis needs metapsychology in order to pursue this dual task. (shrink)

This essay discusses various representations of Eichmann's mind that were fashioned on the occasion of his trial in Jerusalem in 1961. Gideon Hausner the prosecutor presented the defendant as demonic. Hannah Arendt, the German-born American Jewish philosopher portrayed him as banal or thoughtless. Limiting themselves to the issue of mens rea in their judgment, the Israeli Supreme Court justices described Eichmann's mind as controlled by criminal intent. While these views have been widely discussed in the literature, much of this essay (...) focuses on a hitherto little noted perspective on Eichmann's mind that was formulated by the mental health experts who examined Eichmann for the prosecution. As compared to the inclusionist, confictual, and complex picture these experts presented of Eichmann's mind, Arendt's and Hausner's views appear similar in their reductionism, rather than diametrically opposed, while the approach of the Supreme Court justices to Eichmann's mind can be regarded as restrictive. Methodological problems involved in all these different perspectives are discussed, and it is argued that even though the psychological outlook declares itself to be non-judgmental, it does, in fact, entail a dimension of moral judgment. Finally, Eichmann 's recently declassified memoirs are adduced and interpreted as lending some support to the psychological, inclusionist perspective on Eichmann's mind. (shrink)

In ‘What on Earth is Logic?’, Michael Shenefelt and Heidi White offer this observation about the nature of logic: ‘If one tries to justify logic logically, one ends up arguing in a circle’. From this, they conclude that ‘logic is a horizon beyond which none of our earnest self-reflecting arguments can help us see’. While there is much to appreciate in how they developed this idea, there are several worrying points that could still be raised against their view. In this (...) article, we outline such problems.Export citation. (shrink)

This paper discusses a dialectic whereby the law not only influenced medical thinking in late nineteenth-century Germany, but also underwent medicalization of its own initiative. At the end of the 1880s, social legislation was crucial in initiating the German discourse on traumatic nervous disorders. By employing doctors as medical experts in court, the law also created a new experiential realm for doctors, altering their behavior toward patients and shifting their focus from therapy to investigation. However, in the wake of their (...) experiences in court, doctors developed a dual etiology of traumatic symptoms, which included the law itself as a pathogenic element with the power to aggravate symptoms. Two medical views of law can be distinguished: some doctors claimed that it was the desire to receive the pensions offered under social legislation that induced workers to perpetuate and exaggerate their symptoms; others argued that since pension claims embroiled claimants in intimidating legal proceedings, the pathogenic effect of social legislation stemmed from fear rather than greed. (shrink)