This is my personal homepage. Find my philosophical papers under "Philosophy".

RESUMENEl autor se ocupa del análisis crítico de un reciente estudio sobre el marco y dimensiones estéticas de la violencia, y reflexiona en proyección a diversos temas y problemas de filosofía jurídico-penal y juridico-politicaPALABRAS CLAVEESTÉTICA-VIOLENCIA-FILOSOFIA JURIDICO-PENAL-DERECHO Y LITERATURAABSTRACTThe author analyses a recent study about framework and aesthetic dimensions of violence, and thinks in focus of topics and problemas about philosophy of criminal law and political philosophy. KEYWORDSAESTHETICS-VILENCE-LEGAL AND PENAL PHILOSOHPY-LAW AND LITERATURE.

Das spezifische Können der Philosohpie als [eu legein] (1937).--Das System von Leibniz (1946).--Über einen neuen ontologischen Beweis des Satzes von der Notwendigkeit alles Geschehens (1948).--Bemerkungen über den Begriff der Ursache (1949).--Die Natur der ästhetischen Wirkung (1957).--Einige Bemerkungen über den formalen Charakter des Unterschieds von Ding und Eigenschaft (1967).

Since the late 1960s, philosophy for children has become a global, multi-disciplinary movement involving innovations in curriculum, pedagogy, educational theory, and teacher education; in moral, social and political philosophy; and in discourse and literary theory. And it has generated the new academic field of philosophy of childhood. Gareth B. Matthews (1929-2011) traced contemporary disrespect for children to Aristotle, for whom the child is essentially a pre-intellectual and pre-moral precursor to the fully realized human adult. Matthews Matthews dubbed this the “deficit (...) conception of childhood” and wrote extensive critiques of its perpetuation in Jean Piaget’s stage model of cognitive development and in Lawrence Kholberg’s stage model of moral development. He published the first book (1994) in the field of philosophy of childhood and wrote a column of reviews of philosophically-oriented children’s books. He argued that even academic philosophers can benefit from the freshness and directness of children’s thinking. For Matthew Lipman (1923-2010) and Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010), the child is only potentially a philosophical agent and grows into becoming such by means of a philosophical education. Lipman invented the literary genre of children’s philosophical fiction, which systematically reconstructs key philosophical issues and positions in language accessible by children, attempts to help children recognize philosophical dimensions of their own experience, and models philosophical dialogue. Lipman and Sharp developed a protocol for a “community of philosophical inquiry,” in which people with diverse experiences, ideas and concerns dialogue together around a shared philosophical question, with the aim of forming reasonable, meaningful judgments about the matter. The early success of philosophy for children was due in part to its coincidence with the critical thinking movement in education, in which Lipman was an important figure. Its emphasis on ethics has justified its use as a program of ethics, character, and even religious education. It has also been used for civics education, because of how it instantiates democratic deliberation and power-sharing. At the same time, philosophy for children has been criticized by religious and social conservatives, developmental psychologists, and philosophers. Today, the diversity of approaches, aims, materials, and grounding theories of philosophy for children signifies different understandings of philosophy, childhood and education, which have become “essentially contested concepts” within the movement. Philosophy for children is no longer unified by an identifiable theory, purpose, pedagogy, method or curriculum, but is now used to further a number of disparate educational agendas. Shaun Gallagher’s (1992) heuristic of four schools of hermeneutics is helpful in understanding these competing agendas. Conservative hermeneutics is the attempt to devise methods of interpretation that uncover and preserve truth or original meaning without distortion or bias. This is consonant with the use of philosophy for children to help young people appropriate the fundamental questions, ideas and skills of (Western) philosophy as a resource for understanding the world and managing their own experience, and with the understanding critical thinking as a way of avoiding prejudice and approaching truth. Critical hermeneutics approaches interpretation—including teaching and learning—as a method of liberating the interpreter from the racist, sexist, homophobic, capitalist, religiously fanatical, and other kinds of ideologies that commonly distort thinking, feeling and behavior. This is consonant with those who argue that the attributes of mutual criticism, inclusion, solidarity, self-regulation, and distributed power make the community of philosophical inquiry an ideal site for recognizing and overcoming ideology. Others find philosophy for children politically ineffectual due to the limited role of students and teachers in co-constructing the curriculum and its lack of an explicit component of political critique and action. Radical hermeneutics suggests that because every text is open to a plurality of meanings, the purpose of interpretation is not to artificially constrain that plurality but to play with the signs that constitute the text in order to achieve fresh insights. A radical hermeneutical strand is identifiable in the philosophy for children literature when scholars resist the idea that the aim of philosophical dialogue is to find consensus or to narrow down on the most reasonable conclusions. Moderate hermeneutics holds that the work of interpretation is the attempt to reach meaning or shared understanding in a process modeled on dialogue between the familiar and the strange. This is consonant with those who argue that philosophical traditions can still give meaning to (young) people’s lives, but that those traditions must be continually reinterpreted (including by children) in order to survive and flourish. Fifty-odd years since its inception, philosophy for children has deepened and diversified, both theoretically and as a field of practice. Perhaps the only point of agreement among (most) everyone in the movement is that children’s philosophical thinking, variously understood, is necessary for the realization of the intellectual, moral, and political agency the movement attributes to them. (shrink)

RESUMENEl llamado “giro pragmático-hermenéutico” de la filosofía actual ha producido inevitablemente un proceso de “des-trascendentalización” de la filosofía. K.-O. Apel propone, desde la pragmática del lenguaje, una “re-trascendentalización” de la filosofía y, en concreto, de la hermenéutica, a fin de superar el historicismo en el que cayeron tanto Heidegger como Gadamer.PALABRAS CLAVEPRAGMATICA – HERMENEUTICA – TRASCENDENTALABSTRACTThe so called “pragmatic-hermeneutic turn” of current philosohpy has generated unavoidably a process of “de-transcendentalisation” of philosphy. K.-O. Apel proposes quite the reverse, fron the (...) pragmatics of language: a “re-transcendalisation” of philosphy and specifially of hermeneutic, in order to overcome Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s historicism.KEYWORDSPRAGMATIC – HERMENEUTICS – TRANSCEDENTAL. (shrink)

The majority of aestheticians have focused their attention during the past three decades on the identity, or essential nature, of art: can 'art' be defined? What makes an object a work of art? Under what conditions can we characterize in a classificatory sense an object as an art work? The debate, and at times controversy, over these questions proved to be constructive, intellectually stimulating, and in many cases suggestive of new ideas. I hope this debate continues in its momentum and (...) creative outcome. The time is, however, ripe to direct our attention to another important, yet neglected, concept - viz. , 'aesthetic experience' - which occupies a prominent place in the philosohpy of art. We do not only create art; we also enjoy, i. e. , experience, and evaluate it. How can we theorize about the nature of art in general and the art work in particular, and about what makes an object a good work of art, if we do not experience it? For example, how can we identify an object as an art work and distinguish it from other types of objects unless we first perceive it, that is in a critical, educated manner? Again, how can we judge a work as good, elegant, melodramatic, or beautiful unless we first perceive it and recognize its artistic aspect? It seems to me that experiencing art works is a necessary condition for any reasonable theory on the nature of art and artistic criticism. (shrink)

Turning away from entities and focusing instead exclusively on ‘structural’ aspects of scientific theories has been advocated as a cogent response to objections levelled at realist conceptions of the aim and success of science. Physical theories whose (predictive) past successes are genuine would, in particular, share with their successors structural traits that would ultimately latch on to ‘structural’ features of the natural world. Motives for subscribing to Structural Realism are reviewed and discussed. It is argued that structural retention claims lose (...) their force if one gives up merely historical readings of the transition from Galilean-relativistic classical mechanics to the ‘special’ theory of relativity, heeding instead basic requirements that lead to their common derivation. Further cause for scepticism is found upon realising that the basic mathematical framework of quantum theory essentially reflects its predictive purpose, without any necessary input, be it of a ‘structural’ kind, from the physical world. (shrink)

RESUMENEl autor se ocupa del análisis crítico de un reciente estudio sobre el marco y dimensiones estéticas de la violencia, y reflexiona en proyección a diversos temas y problemas de filosofía jurídico-penal y juridico-politicaPALABRAS CLAVEESTÉTICA-VIOLENCIA-FILOSOFIA JURIDICO-PENAL-DERECHO Y LITERATURAABSTRACTThe author analyses a recent study about framework and aesthetic dimensions of violence, and thinks in focus of topics and problemas about philosophy of criminal law and political philosophy. KEYWORDSAESTHETICS-VILENCE-LEGAL AND PENAL PHILOSOHPY-LAW AND LITERATURE.