El presente texto es un experimento: el de leer la Novela del curioso impertinente con el fin de encontrar en ella modelos diversos de argumentación práctica. Persigo allí -particularmente en el diálogo inicial entre Anselmo y Lotario- la forma como se ofrecen tres formas básicas de razonamiento moral, según el conflicto pueda ser objeto de acuerdo y negociación, se dé entre principios del buen vivir y sentimientos que nos desbordan, o se presente entre deberes morales y las pautas elementales de (...) una acción razonable. Cada uno de estos conflictos da lugar a formas de argumentación bastante diferentes, pero ninguna de ellas se presenta como forma única o absoluta de conducir la reflexión moral. Sugiero que la "curiosidad impertinente" de Anselmo obedece a la absurda pretensión de pretender alcanzar en cuestiones morales más precisión que aquella que la materia consiente. Me apoyo para mi lectura del texto de Cervantes en pasajes de la Ética Nicomaquea de Aristóteles y algunos escritos de Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes’s Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish OrientalismE. C. Graf (bio)My purpose has been to place in the plaza of our republic a game table which everyone can approach to entertain themselves without fear of being harmed by the rods; by which I mean without harm to spirit or body, because honest and agreeable exercises are always more likely to do good than (...) harm.—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Prologue to Novelas ejemplares [my translation]We are engaged in a technical enterprise at the species scale.—Jacques Lacan, “L’agressivité en psychanalyse” [my translation]While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself!”!—Dante Alighieri, Inferno 28.28–30 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child (c. 1490). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; ©1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening (1941). Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; ©1999 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York.For much of this century, Hispanists have labored in an effort to elevate Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) to the coveted status of the “first modern novel.” Today this kind of criticism may strike our postmodern sensibilities as a rather traditional enterprise, the kind more interested in establishing an elite hierarchy of literary tastes than in saying anything new about an author or text. For many, the study of literature is still an aesthetic beauty pageant in which “great books” like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) or Marie de la Vergne de La Fayette’s La princesse de Clèves (1678) are paraded across the stage in a contest to seduce the Western intelligentsia. 1 The postmodern student of literature may not have much concern for this age-old territorial contest, but she might be interested to learn that the fallout from Hispanism’s quest for the “first modern novel” has involved so much attention to, indeed complication of, Don Quixote, that the book now resembles more a postmodern text than an early modern one. At the turn of the century, we have been left with what Jorge Luis Borges would recognize as an “aleph”: an infinite ideological labyrinth that reflects and/or cannibalizes all forms, thereby escaping all attempts [End Page 68] to describe it. 2 Whatever we currently mean by “Cervantes” (an author, a collection of texts, an ideological construction, and so forth) carries with it an impressive range of critical responses. Cervantes has been labeled converso (Castro, Canavaggio), Christian humanist (Castro, Bataillon, Forcione, Herrero, Vilanova), disillusioned secularist (Lukács, Cascardi), precapitalist (Johnson), anti-essentialist (Wilson), anti-Eusebian (Presberg), Menippean (Bakhtin), feminist (El Saffar, Rabin, Cruz), sadist (Nabokov), ethnocentric imperialist (Mariscal), medieval (Gorfkle), homophobic (Martín), non-organicist Aristotelian (Read), and either discursively or actually homosexual (Combet, Rossi, Smith, Arrabal). This list is nowhere near complete, but the reader will grasp the robust effects of the plurality of perspectives on Cervantes.Each of these interpretations is valid to varying degrees within various contexts, but at present I am interested in reading Cervantes as the author of a multicultural manifesto on behalf of the Moriscos of Southern Spain. 3 Within the contexts of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Palestinian postcolonial literary critic Edward Said, materialist, postcolonial, and multicultural critiques of various forms of power and their ideologies can be seen as the fundamental propositions of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. 4 Cervantes’s ultimate orientation may perhaps be inescapably Eurocentric, but his responses to the European experience of the rise and expansion of an ethnocentric militaristic nation state are relatively centrifugal when compared to the attitudes of many of his contemporaries.In surveying some of the antihegemonic details of Cervantes’s novel, I am also interested in dispelling the popular myth of Don Quixote. Especially in the English-speaking world, and particularly in the United States, Don Quixote remains captive to a... (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa de la fusión entre las dominantes narrativa y crítica en Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda. Con base en el análisis de determinados pasajes en que tiene lugar una crítica intradiegética sobre las historias —también éstas son intradiegéticas— contadas por uno de los protagonistas (Persiles/Periandro), se busca demostrar que Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra reflexionó sobre su quehacer como escritor de ficción y que particularmente en esta obra pueden hallarse rigurosas ideas sobre lo que (...) hoy llamamos ‘recepción’, ‘proceso de lectura’, ‘crítica’. Así, si el Quijote es la obra en que se representa al lector obsesivo y los efectos de la ficción, en este trabajo se propone que el Persiles es entonces la obra en que se retrata al receptor obsesivo, el que toma distancia con respecto al relato y es, sobre todo, un crítico muy semejante al filólogo. (shrink)

With the following two approaches to Cervantes it is intended to: 1. contextualize in literary, cultural, and historical terms the place where the writer was born, and high light some aspects which are relevant to the formation, relations and difficulties that his work will assume; 2. go through his vital and literary trajectory, in a double movement, from the chronological history: life and work. These two aspects offer the reader and the literature student precise parameters to approach to his (...) place of origin, life and work, which are not always precisely and clearly established. (shrink)

Cervantes crea la novela moderna. Don Quijote y su contrapunto Sancho Panza atraviesan un universo pleno de aventuras y peripecias, y se convierten en dos personajes que, con las novedosas técnicas narrativas del escritor, mueven a la reflexión, a la risa, al llanto. La novela es un canto a la libertad, a la razón y la locura, y una concreción literaria de las utopías.

En el ámbito del pensamiento, la preocupación por España estuvo representada en el proyecto novecentista por Ortega y Gasset. Las "Meditaciones del Quijote" fue el primer libro publicado por Ortega, en 1914. Es el punto de partida de toda su obra posterior. Sobre la convicción íntima del carácter fundamental del "Quijote", su profundidad y su plenitud española, el autor hila estas "Meditaciones" concentrando en el libro de Cervantes sus preocupaciones en relación con el tema de España.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cervantes in Italy:Christian Humanism and the Visual Impact of Renaissance RomeFernando CervantesToward the end of 1569, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Miguel de Cervantes arrived in Rome to serve as chamberlain to the young monsignor Giulio de Acquaviva, soon to be made a cardinal by Pope Pius V.1 The event marked the beginning of a six-year sojourn about which surprisingly little is known with certainty. From (...) scattered semiautobiographical references we can infer that Cervantes traveled widely and that he developed a particular fondness for Italy. We know for sure that he fought bravely against the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he received wounds that rendered his left arm useless for the rest of his life, and that he remained in service as a soldier, based in Italy, until his ill-fated attempt to return to Spain in 1575. Ten years later, in the dedication of his pastoral romance La Galatea to Ascanio Colonna, he reminded his dedicatee that the reverence he had for him did not only stem from having served under his illustrious father, the famous general Marco Antonio Colonna, but also from the many things that he had heard Cardinal Acquaviva say, "like prophesies," about him in Rome. There follows a brief encomium about the "noble virtues," "magnificence," "goodness," and "Christianity" that sustain the "clear and generous line" of the Colonnas, known to all for the "virtuous and heroic deeds" that have been their mark since time immemorial.2 Some of Cervantes's best lyric poetry dates from these years. In it, as in the rest of his work, the unmistakable mark of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Bembo, to name but the most explicit ones, leaves us in little doubt about his genuine love of Italian literature.For good reasons, modern biographers have been loath to take these scattered [End Page 325] references too candidly. Can we, for example, assume that Cervantes had more than a very superficial acquaintance with the Colonnas and the Acquavivas? Could a writer still widely regarded as a self-taught, untutored mind realistically have attracted the favors of some of the most illustrious Roman and Neapolitan noble families? More pointedly, is it safe to take the varied and abundant observations about Italy scattered throughout his works as reliable reflections of his own personal experiences? After all, between the latter and the written page there is a time lag often approaching forty years. Add to this the weight of subsequent intellectual influences and of literary conventions, of novelistic invention and of the viewpoints of the characters themselves, and we are left on rather shaky ground. As Jean Canavaggio has remarked, it is not Cervantes the keen visual observer, but rather Cervantes the devoted reader of Boccaccio and the novellieri who brings Italy and Italian themes into his fiction. Even the memorable descriptions of Italian cities to be found in some of his novelas are rather formulaic passages, perfectly in tune with the rhetorical canons of the time.3Our topic, however, is not biography but intellectual history; and here we can afford to be more candid. There can be no doubt that many of Cervantes's descriptions have the unmistakable ring of genuine experience. Take Tomás Rodaja's arrival, "soaked, sleep-deprived and with bags under the eyes," in Genoa's "sheltered Mandraccio,"4 where he becomes acquainted withthe smoothness of the Trebbiano, the fullness of the Montefiascone, the strength of the Asperino, the generosity of the Greeks Candia and Soma, the grandeur of the one from the Five Vineyards, the sweetness and mellowness of the lady Vernaccia, the rustic touch of the Centola, while the lowly one from Rome dared not appear in the presence of such illustrious gentlemen.5Charmed by the gallantry of the Genoese, Rodaja leaves by land for Rome, "the queen of cities and mistress of the world." "Just as the size and ferocity of a lion can be gauged by its claws," Cervantes observed,so Rome's greatness became manifest by its broken marbles, its statues..., its fallen arches and ruined baths, its magnificent porticoes and large amphitheatres, its famous and sacred river whose waters... (shrink)

Estas líneas están escritas como homenaje a Ricardo Sánchez Ortiz de Urbina, con todo el cariño y con la esperanza de ser acogido con la benevolencia que demanda el ensayo. En todo caso, nunca podré dejar de agradecer a nuestro maestro que me permitiera salir sin brusquedad del encierro al que me había conducido el sujeto gnoseológico, el sujeto de la ciencia, siempre omnipresente en toda investigación. Siguiendo la estela de la matriz fenomenológica configurada por Urbina, entreví en el nivel (...) superior ―el nivel de máxima ambigüedad―, y mediante trasposiciones sucesivas, el origen humano de los celos, que desbordan el simple comportamiento o el mero afecto. Los celos como fondo siempre desbordante en el proceso que nunca concluye de fijación de la identidad humana. Un camino que habían recorrido, con los medios de que disponían, los escritores del Barroco español en el contexto de los conversos hispanos y Miguel de Cervantes como centro. (shrink)

Esta entrevista retoma la experiencia de enseñanza de la profesora María Luisa Roel en función de la producción literaria de España. El objetivo es interiorizar sobre cómo esta se ha transferido en el ámbito de educación universitaria. A partir de la trayectoria de la docente, se brinda un panorama de cómo los estudiantes de la carrera profesional de Literatura acatan el conocimiento y la lectura de autores españoles, como Miguel de Cervantes. De igual forma, se mencionan dos momentos (...) históricos en los que se vería la presencia o la ausencia de esta producción: en la Literatura del Virreinato y la creación literaria contemporánea. (shrink)

La obra de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) siempre suele relacionarse con la de autores ajenos a la literatura española como De Quincey, Stevenson, Whitman, Chesterton, Coleridge o Poe. Su anglofilia es bien conocida por todos. También su relación con el idioma de Goethe o con la cultura árabe y Las mil y una noches. Sin embargo, asumiendo su propia sentencia «Mi destino es la lengua castellana, el bronce de Francisco de Quevedo», rastrearemos las huellas indelebles que dejó la literatura española (...) del Barroco y de los Siglos de Oro en la obra del escritor argentino, y cómo los símbolos del siglo XVII son recuperados desde la literatura reconstructivista de Borges para continuar con una tradición y al mismo tiempo transformar su significado. (shrink)

En el Canto V del Infierno, uno de los pasajes más universalmente conocidos de la Divina Comedia, Dante sugiere la fuerza corruptora de la literatura, desencadenante del adulterio de Paolo y Francesca. Este esquema en que lo literario se convierte en motivo de perdición, reaparece en casos tan conocidos como el de Don Quijote y otros menos conocidos como el dickensiano Nicodemus Boffin de Nuestro común amigo. Estos escritores dejan traslucir en sus obras sus inquietudes respecto a una influencia que (...) simultáneamente buscan y temen sobre los lectores. Sus «libros dentro de los libros» pueden ser interpretados como una vacuna con la que el escritor quiere proveer al lector de las herramientas para protegerse de los efectos perversos de una literatura recibida en clave romántica. Proponemos, siguiendo especialmente a Renato Poggioli, John Freccero o René Girard, una interpretación antirromántica que subraya la actualidad de la arquitectura moral de la Divina Comedia y su ascendencia sobre varios clásicos de la literatura moderna posterior. (shrink)

Miguel de Cervantès a ouvert le dossier des rapports de « la vérité » avec le « réel », appliquant à cette question toute sa puissance visionnaire. Dans au moins deux de ses œuvres, il compose une approche très originale de ce questionnement : Le Retable des Merveilles, joué longtemps avant sa date de publication en 1615, et le fameux Don Quichotte. Le réel est-il « vrai » ou répond-il d’une construction mentale confinant à la folie? Le Retable, par (...) la mise en scène hallucinatoire de la pseudo-réalité suggérée, dénonce l’emprise du pouvoir politique sur l’imaginaire collectif, soumis à la domestication qu’impose le Saint-Office, tandis que le Quichotte, irrémédiablement placé sous la direction de la « doctrine dulcinéenne », brave l’oppression du système inquisitorial en créant sa propre épistémologie fondée sur un « code ». En matière de vérité, comme le dit le Chevalier de Lions, ne s’agit-il pas de « peser la chose et la mettre à son vrai point »? Aussi, dans ces deux œuvres, le lecteur est-il constamment invité à transcender toute lecture littéraliste, à surplomber la quiétude des banalisations indéfiniment répétées, pour découvrir ce qui constitue l’épistémologie quichottienne, libératrice du sens. Et si ce « point de vérité » se trouvait précisément dans le nom du Quichotte, audible en une langue bannie de la Péninsule en 1492 dont l’auteur semble être un fin connaisseur? L’histoire du Quichotte devient alors l’histoire de la vérité en mouvement, accompagnée de la grâce tutélaire de Dulcinée, que le lecteur est appelé à suivre, peut-être même à rattraper, pour mieux comprendre combien le réel se code selon une haute folie que le rationalisme ne rejoint pas. (shrink)

Instituciones como el Consejo de Europa o el Instituto Cervantes y expertos como Byram o Deardorff han desarrollado modelos y bases educativas que dan luz a los docentes para ejecutar programas para el desarrollo de una ciudadanía pluricultural, que se comunica y está inmersa en la diversidad.Este estudio analiza si dichos modelos permiten establecer unos descriptores que definan la competencia intercultural desde una perspectiva procedimental. De esta manera, se pretende establecer un análisis de las bases teóricas y prácticas de (...) la competencia intercultural, tanto en el nivel del marco teórico como en el nivel de actuación del alumnado. (shrink)

RESUMO O presente artigo parte de várias considerações de Bakhtin a respeito do discurso romanesco a fim de compreender alguns aspectos discursivos do Dom Quixote, de Miguel de Cervantes. Procede-se, então, a uma comparação com o discurso de outra obra que reproduz parcialmente o Dom Quixote: o conto Pierre Menard, autor do Quixote, de Jorge Luis Borges. Por fim, discute-se brevemente o problema da quase ausência do Dom Quixote nas discussões de Bakhtin sobre o romance, apresentando-se a hipótese (...) de Walter Reed de que, tal como no conto de Borges, a própria teoria bakhtiniana também reproduz parcialmente o peculiar pensamento do Quixote. ABSTRACT This article discusses several of Bakhtin’s concepts regarding discourse in the novel genre as a way to understand some discursive aspects of Miguel de Cervantes’ Dom Quixote. We then proceed to a comparison with the discourse in another literary work that partially reproduces Dom Quixote: the short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” by Jorge Luis Borges. Finally, we briefly discuss the problem of Dom Quixote’s almost absence in Bakhtin’s work about the novel genre, while presenting the hypothesis by Walter Reed that, as in Borges’ short story, Bakhtin’s theory itself also partially reproduces the Quixote’s particular way of thinking. (shrink)

Miguel de Cervantes was taken captive in Algiers after the Battle of Lepanto and spent 5 years in prison.1 In his writings thereafter, recurring images and references to humans in captivity—cages, bondage, beatings—suggest that Cervantes remained haunted by his imprisonment. As Maria Antonia Garcés argues in Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive's Tale, Cervantes's writings allude to an "afterlife of trauma" that should be part of any analysis of his writings, including Don Quijote.2 Indeed, Garcés contends (...) that, three centuries before Freud, Don Quijote offers a profound reflection on the psychological legacy of trauma.3 Equally important, even as Cervantes navigates between sanity and madness, reality and... (shrink)

The article presents some poetic-narratological thoughts on the function of the narrator in the 1615 Quijote. The author claims for Cervantes the invention of the “narrador infidente” (“unreliable narrator”), wrongly attributed to the American novelist Henry James. This ploy consists in guiding the reader through a series of unsuspected clues by employing statements that take advantage of the traditional confidence in the veracity of what is being narrated, but which in reality lead into error. This is a device used (...) increasingly more often in the contemporary novel. (shrink)

Miguel de Cervantes, no último capítulo de sua obra O engenhoso fidalgo Dom Quixote de La Mancha, retrata o falecimento de seu protagonista, decorrente de uma profunda tristeza. O cavaleiro, depois de vencido, sente-se obrigado a retornar ao seu povoado e a renunciar à cavalaria andante, o que lhe causa a transformação de sua realidade e de seu estado mental - da loucura à cordura -, além do seu direcionamento à morte. Assim como faz Cervantes no início (...) do século XVII, Espinosa, ao final do mesmo século, também parece estabelecer analogias entre as ideias de transformação e morte, ao apontar, em sua Ética, a relação entre a natureza do ser e sua proporção de movimento e repouso, responsável pelas inconstâncias humanas. A partir de tais considerações, este trabalho pretende aproximar o último capítulo da obra Dom Quixote à proposição 39 da Quarta Parte da Ética espinosana, de forma a ressaltar as devidas semelhanças entre o conceito de morte como transformação, retratado tanto pelo escritor espanhol quanto pelo filósofo holandês, uma vez que a morte, para ambos, demonstra estar vinculada à mesma ideia. (shrink)

In this short essay I will aim to show that literary fiction is consistently at the vanguard of the exploration of philosophical problems relating to the concept of world, while what we think of as philosophy, in the narrower sense, typically arrives late on the scene, picking up themes that have already been explored in literary texts that are explicitly intended as exercises of the imagination. I will pursue this argument with a sustained investigation of the shared aims and methods (...) of Miguel de Cervantes and René Descartes. (shrink)

Leitor obstinado e escritor prolífico, Frei Betto chega ao seu sexagésimo livro. Não à toa ele se dedica, nesta obra que marca um feito tão notável, justamente ao ato de escrever, para ele uma verdadeira missão. Em Ofício de escrever, Frei Betto discorre sobre seus hábitos, técnicas e os pequenos macetes que adquiriu com a experiência, oferecendo dicas preciosas para estudantes, professores e aspirantes a escritor. Mas sua análise não se restringe à sua própria obra. Ele também examina os processos (...) criativos e a técnica de autores diversos, como William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Tomasi di Lamepdusa, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, T.S. Eliot e os mineiros Bartolomeu Campos de Queirós e Adélia Prado, entre outros, prestando uma verdadeira homenagem a seus escritores favoritos e à literatura. (shrink)

O texto apresenta a tradução ao português uma seleção de microcontos do escritor paraguaio Mario Halley Mora, que foi o precursor desse gênero no Paraguai (BARCO, 2002). Os microontos fazem parte da obra “Cuentos, microcuentos y anticuentos” publicada em 1987 pela editora El Lector, cuja versão online pode ser acessada na Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.

Identifies immanence as the original impetus and the driving force behind Deleuze's philosophy In 5 chapters dealing with the status of thought itself, ontology, logic, ethics and aesthetics, de Beistegui reveals how immanence is realised in each of these classical domains of philosophy. Ultimately, he argues, immanence is an infinite task, and transcendence the opposition with which philosophy will always need to reckon.

En este trabajo se lleva a cabo un estudio filosófico-jurídico del derecho al debido proceso reconocido en el artículo 24 de la Constitución Española, a fin de adaptarlo a la Era algorítmica. Para la consecución de este objetivo, el trabajo se divide en tres puntos. En el primero se hará un repaso por la historia y la fundamentación jurídica del debido proceso en el sistema jurídico español. En el segundo se considerarán las garantías y los principios que habrían de conformar (...) un derecho al debido proceso tecnológico, derecho necesario en esta nuestra Era algorítmica. Por último, a modo de conclusión, se adelantará una propuesta de inclusión constitucional de los principios y garantías tecnológicas descritas. (shrink)

(2005). Science and Ontology. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the french tradition issue editor: andrew aitken, pp. 109-122.

Mediante una investigación teórica y de trabajo de campo en relación a la adaptación de la titulación de arquitectura al EEES y con el objetivo de hacer efectivo un despliegue gradual del desarrollo de las competencias del submódulo de dibujo, se exponen los resultados de la coordinación entre asignaturas y una selección crítica y comparativa de actividades de aprendizaje. Se indaga además en la dispar distribución de las materias de dibujo de la adaptación al plan de bolonia, concluyendo con una (...) propuesta de despliegue independiente y mejorada del submódulo desvinculado de las materias que no le son afines. (shrink)

Richard Popkin, no capítulo VII de sua “História do ceticismo de Erasmo a Spinoza”, apresenta uma tendência predominante na filosofia moderna de rejeitar o ceticismo pirrônico, por ser demasiado destrutivo, e o dogmatismo extremo, por ser questionável. A solução para esses partidários foi a de adotar um ceticismo que Popkin denomina mitigado ou construtivo, isto é, uma teoria que reconheça a impossibilidade de alcançarmos as verdades absolutas acerca da natureza e realidade, mas que admita a possibilidade de um certo conhecimento, (...) que possa ser convincente e provável, embora não metafisicamente inquestionável. Esta espécie de dúvida filosófica ganhou força com o advento da filosofia cartesiana, mas só tornou-se definitivamente respeitável com a sua formulação por David Hume, sustenta ainda Popkin. Neste trabalho mostraremos que os filósofos Pierre-Daniel Huet e Simon Foucher, além de Hume, poderiam entrar nesta categoria, que também pode ser definida de ceticismo acadêmico. (shrink)

The acknowledged masterpiece of Unamuno expresses the anguish of modern man as he is caught up in the struggle between the dictates of reason and the demands of his own heart.

La cristología de la carta a los Hebreos está determinada por el sacerdocio de Cristo. Esa presentación magistral viene precedida por el principio de “Cristo como kerygma del Padre” (cc. 1-2), en que se pone de manifiesto el papel profético de Jesús, lo que debe ser valorado en su justa medida. Aunque es verdad que el sacerdocio de Cristo, lo más exclusivo de todo el NT, pone de manifiesto una visión particular y original de lo que se quiere afirmar. Es (...) un sacerdocio de solidaridad con sus hermanos; se trata de un sacerdocio misericordioso y, por ello, no estamos simplemente ante un título exótico que el autor rescata exegéticamente de Gn 14; la cristología del sacerdocio de Cristo nos hace asomarnos al papel kenótico de su sacerdocio: compasivo y semejante a sus hermanos. No es un sacerdocio de casta, sino de solidaridad fraternal para acercarnos al misterio de Dios. Se debe entender que estamos ante un sacerdocio compasivo, humano, que es lo que llevará a la exaltación de ese sacerdocio,. La comparación con el himno de Filipenses (Flp 2,5-11) es muy sugerente. Y no menos decisivo es que ese sacerdocio trae para la humanidad un “alianza nueva” que implica para los cristianos una conciencia de salvación y liberación; una nueva concepción de la santidad de Dios y de lo divino; y, en definitiva, se quiere mostrar una religión de absoluta confianza en Dios y en la obra salvífica de Cristo. (shrink)

La crisis multidimensional por la que atraviesa actualmente la humanidad coloca en primer plano la cuestión, más que de «la salida de la crisis», de la superación de los condicionamientos negativos que han conducido a ella. Más allá de las causas próximas reconocibles se hallan las apuestas paradigmáticas, la Weltanschauung dominante que inspira las conductas erróneas. En el artículo se sostiene que a la metafísica materialista —que el autor distingue del ateísmo—, en tanto que idea-guía principal de la modernidad, corresponde (...) gran parte de la responsabilidad por las patologías de la sociedad actual, a cuyo clímax estamos asistiendo. Se asume que el mundo ha experimentado tales transformaciones que ninguna de las concepciones metafísicas o criptometafísicas a las que estamos acostumbrados sirve para fundamentar una guía de actuación capaz de sacarnos del atolladero. Y se propone una idea de fondo que se estima que sí podría hacerlo: un noocentrismo, la consideración de la consciencia como la realidad fundamental y, por supuesto, referencial. Un neoespiritualismo, si se quiere, capaz de fundamentar una Ética universal, y orientado a la liberación individual y colectiva del ser humano, en armonía con una Naturaleza entendida como de igual importancia, y dejando atrás el espejismo pseudocientífico —y en realidad sojuzgador y bloqueante— del materialismo metafísico. (shrink)

Ultimamente bastante atençáo vem sendo dispensada ao estudo do ceticismo moderado na modernidade. O famoso historiador da filosofia Richard Popkin, em sua História do Ceticismo de Erasmo a Espinosa , cunhou a denominaçáo de ceticismo epistemológico para qualificar os membros desta corrente e nela inseriu os filósofos setecentistas Gassendi e Mersenne, considerando-os seus principais representantes. Além disso, no século XVIII temos o denominado ceticismo mitigado de Hume, que chamou a atençáo dos filósofos modernos para definir os limites do ceticismo. Este (...) artigo procura contribuir para o estudo do ceticismo moderado na modernidade, mostrando náo só que Hume, Mersenne e Gassendi podem fazer parte do assim chamado ceticismo epistemológico ou mitigado, mas também que há certos elementos comuns em suas filosofias destinados a mitigar os argumentos dos céticos de seu tempo. (shrink)

O pensamento de Hume pode ser comparado ao dos céticos modernos em muitos aspectos. Com relação ao tópico da racionalidade dos animais, Hume parece seguir de perto a leitura de alguns céticos modernos e se afastar consideravelmente da de Descartes. Por outro lado, diferente de filósofos como Montaigne, Charron e La Mothe Le Vayer, Hume não tinha por finalidade colocar a racionalidade humana num nível próximo dos animais para apenas provar a fraqueza do intelecto diante do desconhecido, mas intentava comparar (...) o nosso modo de proceder ao do animal para avaliar, com mais precisão, as suas teorias acerca da natureza humana. Neste artigo analiso o modo como os primeiros céticos da modernidade trataram da questão da razão dos animais e o comparo com as ideias de Hume sobre o assunto, sem deixar de mencionar as contribuições de Descartes e de Pierre Bayle. (shrink)

The work that we have the honour to present here in its first Italian translation is a short essay published by Carl Schmitt in the first half of the ‘10s in the German Journal Die Rheinlande and titled Don Quixote and the public. A very brief but at the same time dense piece of literary criticism in which the future Kronjurist of the Third Reich, in those years still engaged in his legal practice, offers to the readers a juvenile proof (...) of his vastly and heterogeneous interests, trying to determine which is the proper interpretation of the renowned masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote of the Mancha. A juvenile work, therefore, in which Schmitt, as we will try to highlight in the introduction that accompanies the translation, offers an interpretation of the novel and particularly of its main character focusing on the contraposition between the level of the simple reading and that of erudite valorisation, applying a methodology similar to that he used in the coeval Law and Judgement that in some ways anticipate the critique of Romanticism that he will develop just a few years later in Political Romanticism. (shrink)

ExcerptCarl Schmitt (1888–1985) is known as the most consequential German legal and political mind of the twentieth century.1 Many crimes of the Nazi regime found support in his conceptual justifications, and Schmitt is called the “Crown Jurist” of the Third Reich with good reason. Historians, political scientists, and sociologists must grapple with the author in order to understand the course of totalitarianism in modernity. Whether literary historians should do so is far less settled, though he was fascinated by their object (...) of study. His writings on literary topics are said to reveal much about Schmitt’s person, politics, and period, but little about literature itself.2 This explains why his “Don Quijote und das Publikum” (“Don Quixote and the Public”), published in the arts and cultural journal Die Rheinlande in 1912, was almost unknown in literary studies for a century.3 Schmitt’s text on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes has not been reprinted, and until recently it had not been translated from the original German. Size has a role too. At under two thousand words, the text has probably escaped notice due to its small scale.4 Recent English and Italian translations in major humanistic journals may signal the end of its obscurity though.5 “Don Quixote and the Public” is at the door of literary studies. The question now is not whether to respond, but how. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 80-97 [Access article in PDF] Literary Truth as Dreamlike Expression in Foucault's and Borges's "Chinese Encyclopedia" Robert Wicks ALTHOUGH THE TOPIC REMAINS MOSTLY unexplored, Michel Foucault had an aesthetic and intellectual attraction towards writers and artists in the Spanish-speaking tradition. For example, at the conclusion of his Histoire de la folie (Madness and Civilization, 1961)—a book which brought him extensive intellectual recognition in France—Foucault (...) drew his readers' attention to José de Goya y Lucientes's (1746-1828) well-known etching, El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, Plate 43 of Los Caprichos, 1797). In Foucault's estimation, by revealing a "night which is doubtless that of classical unreason," Goya's work represented a socially removed condition within which people encounter "what is most solitary" and experience what is "deepest" within themselves. With his reference to Goya's imagery, Foucault illustrated a major theme of his history of madness, namely, how people referred to as "mentally ill" experienced a gradual, physical exclusion from participation in public society, and how they were eventually isolated in a more frightening way: within their physical confinement, they were subject to techniques of psychological and spiritual alienation that reduced them to a condition of utter solitude.In a comparable, if not more central manner, Foucault used as thematic motifs for the preface, first and second chapters of a book for which he is widely known, Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things, 1966), the work of three major writers and artists from the Spanish-speaking world: Jorges Luis Borges (1899-1986), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Among these references, the most popular is probably Foucault's discussion of [End Page 80] Velázquez's Las Meninas—a painting which captured Foucault's interest as a perfect exemplar of its time period—and which inspired him to devote the entire first chapter of his book to decoding the mechanics of its perspectival arrangement. And within the community of those who read, write and discuss the interrelationship between Foucault's thought, literary theory and the contemporary emphasis upon the multivocal quality of textual meaning, Foucault's citation of an excerpt from a short story by Borges—the subject of this essay—is also familiar. Foucault introduced his 1966 book, The Order of Things, with the following words: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a "certain Chinese encyclopedia" in which it is written that "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies." In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. 1The short story from which Foucault extracted the above, quasi-cubistic, excerpt was published in Borges's 1952 collection, Otras Inquisiciones (Other Inquisitions), and is entitled, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins." Although this story's entirety is rarely surveyed in discussions of Foucault, appreciating its broader contents helps illuminate why Foucault began The Order of Things with this entertaining and bizarre segment. Borges's original... (shrink)