While the Academic sceptics followed the plausible as a criterion of truth and guided their practice by a doxastic norm, so thinking that agential performances are actions for which the agent assumes responsibility, the Pyrrhonists did not accept rational belief-management, dispensing with judgment in empirical matters. In this sense, the Pyrrhonian Sceptic described himself as not acting in any robust sense of the notion, or as ‘acting’ out of sub-personal and social mechanisms. The important point is that the Pyrrhonian advocacy (...) of a minimal conception of ‘belief’ was motivated by ethical concerns: avoiding any sort of commitment, he attempted to preserve his peace of mind. In this article, I argue for a Cartesian model of rational guidance that, in line with some current versions of an agential virtue epistemology, does involve judgment and risk, and thus which is true both to our rational constitution and to our finite and fallible nature. Insofar as epistemic humility is a virtue of rational agents that recognise the limits of their judgments, Pyrrhonian scepticism, and a fortiori any variety of naturalism, is unable to accommodate this virtue. This means that, in contrast to the Cartesian model, the Pyrrhonist does not provide a satisfactory answer to the problem of cognitive disintegration. The Pyrrhonist thus becomes a social rebel, one that violates the norm of serious personal assent that enables the flourishing of a collaborative and social species which depends on agents that, however fallible, are accountable for their actions and judgments. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es arrojar luz sobre la significación histórica de la teoría política de Spinoza, mostrando que, en lo que respecta a la explicación de la dinámica del poder y de la naturaleza de las entidades políticas, compite con ventaja con teorías rivales de inspiración contractualista, y que es capaz de superar las ambigüedades y contradicciones que asolan a las concepciones modernas de la ley. Mediante una lectura atenta de los textos, argumento que el análisis metafísico que (...) Spinoza lleva a cabo para determinar la naturaleza, condiciones y alcance del poder del Estado le permite eludir algunos de los dualismos característicos del pensamiento político contemporáneo. En la medida en que para Spinoza el consentimiento general es un requisito inherente al poder, y rompe con un modelo contractualista de las normas políticas todavía vinculado a concepciones abstractas de orden platónico. La perspectiva spinozista puede conciliar así la dinámica del poder con la de la libertad. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es arrojar luz sobre las doctrinas políticas más significativas de Spinoza: su rechazo del contractualismo clásico, la tesis de la equivalencia de derecho y poder, la descripción de los límites del gobierno bien como limitaciones lógicas o como medios para garantizar la independencia y el poder del estado, y su refrendo de la democracia como la forma más natural y racional de constitución política. Además, se resuelven dos paradojas que, supuestamente, amenazan con desarticular su pensamiento (...) político: el conflicto entre una perspectiva naturalista y un discurso que pretende alcanzar los fundamentos de la legitimidad política, y la tensión entre la dinámica de la libertad y la del poder. El resultado es una vindicación de la relevancia de la filosofía política de Spinoza para el mundo contemporáneo. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that hinge-commitments are deprived of an epistemically normative structure, and yet, that although groundless, the acceptance of Wittgensteinian certainties is still rational. The problem comes from the intellectualist view of hinge-approvals which many recent proposals advance—one that falls short of the necessities and impossibilities pertaining to what would be the right description of how it is like to approve of hinges. I will raise the Newman-inspired worry as how to cash the abstract acceptance of principles of (...) enquiry into real assent, as well as the question about how to extend normativity all the way back to foundations. It is my aim here to argue that ethical normativity is the only kind of normativity capable to ground the rationality of hinges. In defence of this, I will draw some consequences from Ernest Sosa’s claim that hinges about the external world are logically related to the _cogito_. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the meaning of Wittgenstein’s remarks on suicide should be elucidated against the background of the transcendental picture that permeates Wittgenstein’s early writings. This picture is, in its essentials, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the Will. It is part of my purpose here to argue that the question of suicide such as Wittgenstein raises it, far from being a side issue, is internally related to problems concerning the ethical integration of Will and world, and the meaning of (...) the world. As it will be seen, Wittgenstein manages to present a highly original view on the fundamental character of ethics that combines asceticism with an affirmative attitude to the world. Suicide would undermine ethics. As such, it stands for a nihilistic worldview. (shrink)