Watsuji Tetsurô is famous for having constructed a systematic socio-political ethics on the basis of the idea of emptiness. This essay examines his 1938 essay “The Concept of ‘Dharma’ and the Dialectics of Emptiness in Buddhist Philosophy” and the posthumously published The History of Buddhist Ethical Thought, in order to clarify the Buddhist roots of his ethics. It aims to answer two main questions which are fundamentally linked: “Which way does Watsuji's legacy turn: toward totalitarianism or toward a balanced theory (...) of selflessness?” and “Is Watsuji's systematic ethics Buddhist?” In order to answer these questions, this essay discusses Watsuji's view of dharma, dependent arising, and morality in Hīnayāna Buddhism. It then proceeds to Watsuji's fine-tuning of the concept of emptiness in Mādhyamika and Yogācāra Buddhism. Finally, this essay shows how Watsuji's modernist Buddhist theory connects to his own systematic ethical theory. These two theories share a focus on non-duality, negation, and emptiness. But they differ in their accounts of the relations between the individual and the community, between the “is” and the “ought,” and between hermeneutics and transcendence. These findings give us hints as to Watsuji's origins, pitfalls, and possibilities. (shrink)

Watsuji Tetsurô’s Ethics is one of the most important works in Japanese ethical thought. But scholarly research in English has largely focused on the first of three volumes of Ethics, leaving the latter two oft-neglected. In order to balance out the views of Watsuji’s ethics, this paper focuses on the contributions of the second and third volumes of Ethics. These volumes are essential for any concrete understanding of Watsuji’s ‘ethics of emptiness’. The second volume develops the ideas of the first, (...) particularly how the dual-structure is concretely realized through the various stages of ethical organization. The third volume develops the notions of space and time from the first volume into a theory of climate and history. By analyzing these, we can understand Watsuji’s system as a whole and clarify Watsuji’s unique contribution to ethical theory. (shrink)

This article builds on the growing literature on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and its influences on the field of Education. First, I argue that the influence of the Kyoto School of Philosophy is historically significant in Japan, and that the connection between this philosophical school and the philosophy of education is by no means superficial. Second, I suggest that this school contributes a unique view of ‘negative education’ founded in the philosophical idea of ‘nothingness’. I examine how this negative (...) education is manifest both in religious cultivation and in more general views of education, and I develop these ideas through the models of self-negation proposed by Nishitani Keiji and Hisamatsu Shin'ichi. Third, taking up the Herbartian idea of ‘pedagogical tact’, I analyse the characteristics of the I-Thou relationship, in the vector of nothingness, implicit in the above-mentioned view of education. I examine two approaches to this relationship—one of ‘sharing in nothingness’ as found in Nishitani and Hisamatsu, and one that goes beyond the idea of ‘sharing’ and accommodates alterity, as found in Nishida Kitarô and Nishihira Tadashi. By threshing out these three points, I hope to highlight the continued pedagogical relevance of the philosophical ideas of the Kyoto School. (shrink)

The possibility and extent of thought without language have been subject to much controversy. Insight from non- or minimally verbal humans can inform this debate empirically. Since most such individuals are on the autism spectrum, of which they make up a sizable 25–30%, an important connection between language and autism transpires. Here we propose a model which makes sense of this link and explains why the non-verbal human mind, as present evidence suggests, represents a fundamentally different cognitive phenotype. This model (...) views the relevant part of the autism spectrum as reflecting the breakdown of a cognitive phenotype of which language is an inherent element and which will manifest principled limitations in the latter's absence. (shrink)

El artículo reflexiona sobre las fases de la introducción en el pensamiento español de la Teoría Crítica. (1) En los años sesenta, las traducciones de Adorno o Marcuse coinciden con la influencia de otros elementos de la historia efectual del pensamiento de Marx. (2) En un segundo periodo, que abarca la transición y los primeros gobiernos socialdemócratas, las otras formas de marxismo se repliegan y se normaliza la producción española de tesis doctorales, artículos y libros sobre la Escuela de Frankfurt (...) y desde sus postulados. (3) Después de 1989, la crisis de una forma de marxismo influye en las otras, y asistimos a la normalización académica que coexiste con la necesidad de una reformulación profunda del paradigma crítico. (shrink)

Este nuevo repertorio bibliográfico continúa la bibliografía viquiana en español que acrecienta y actualiza anteriores contribuciones del autor. A su anterior repertorio, "Bibliografía viquiana en español" , base con 266 referencias, se añaden ahora 98 nuevas entradas más, constituyendo en conjunto un imprescindible instrumento de acercamiento e investigacion a la cuestión de Vico en español.This new bibliography catalogue continues the bibliography of Vico in Spanish, expanding and bringing up-to-date previous contributions of the author. To his existing works "Bibliografía viquiana en (...) español" ninety-five new references are added, which together constitute an invaluable instrument in the approach to and research of the question of Vico in Spanish. (shrink)

El concepto de razón que emerge con Vico, y que será análogo al propuesto por Ortega, no es ya el de la razón física y pura, natural y abstracta, sino el de una razón vital e histórica, la cual viene a ejercitarse y expresarse como razón narrativa : aquélla única capaz de comprender "la lingua con cui parla la storia".The concept of reason that emerges with Vico, and that is analogous to the one proposed by Ortega, is not only the (...) one of physical and pure, natural and abstract reason, but rather the one of vital and historic reason, which comes to exercise itself and express itself as narrative reason: that only capacity of comprehension "la lingua con cui parla la storia". (shrink)

Sobre la base estudios anteriores el autor expone la recepción de la modernidad "problemática" de Vico en la filosofía española en el exilio. A su vez, se obtienen algunas nuevas categorías que iluminan importantes aspectos de las ideas de estos pensadores "transterrados".Developing precedent studies, the author exposes the reception of the "problematic" modernity of Vico in Spanish banished philosophy. Some new categories are also obtained, that clarify important aspects in the ideas of those expatriated thinkers.

El presente estudio contiene algunas recientes indagaciones que continúan y se agregan a anteriores trabajos del autor sobre el problema de la recepción de Vico en la cultura hispánica del siglo XIX.The present study contains some recent investigations that continue to previous works of the author on the problem of the reception of Vico during the XIX Century in the Hispanic culture.

This article is based on a perspective on circulation of knowledge that allows the consideration of science as the result of the encounter between diverse communities. We tell a story that constantly changes places, scales, and cultures in order to stress the importance of networks as an alternative to the centre/periphery trope, which entangles world histories of science. The result is a picture much more complex and intertwined than the one suggested by these simplifying dichotomies. We focus on a case (...) study that illuminates the process of knowledge production in non-European spaces of modernity. The return of the Society of Jesus to the newly independent nation-states of Latin America is the point of departure to analyse the circulation of a specific scientific idea in Ecuador: Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. The article follows the paths of three different knowledge makers whose encounters are seen as sites of knowledge production: a religious order, a Latin American... (shrink)

La celebración del centenario de la publicación de las Meditaciones del Quijote ofrece la oportunidad única de reflexionar sobre una obra que creó un nuevo tipo de reflexión filosófica contemporánea en lengua castellana, reflexión caracterizada por una forma de “ontología del presente”.

El Repertorio bibliográfico sobre Martin Heidegger que se presenta a continuación, reúne la información obtenida de las más de 240 revistas de filosofía disponibles en la Hemeroteca de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. El Repertorio incluye referencias bibliográficas completas de los artículos, reseñas, estudios críticos, traducciones y otros documentos que abordan la obra del importante pensador alemán hasta el año 2010.

Comentario del libro de Franco Ratto, Materiali per un confronto: Hobbes-Vico . Guerra Edizioni, Perugia, 2000. pp. 181).

Suplemento a / Some Additions to: Jose M. Sevilla, "Bibliografía viquiana en español", Cuadernos sobre Vico, 1, 1991, pp. 179-196 ; ID., "Añadido a la bibliografía viquiana en español", Cuadernos sobre Vico, 3, 1993, pp. 199-205 ; ID., "Nuevo añadido a la Bibliografía Viquiana en español", Cuadernos sobre Vico, 5/6, 1995-1996, pp. 419-422 ; ID., "Tercer añadido a la Bibliografía Viquiana en español", Cuadernos sobre Vico, 7/8, 1997, pp. 451-455 . 307 nuevas entradas / 307 new entries nn. 500 - (...) 807. (shrink)

This paper argues that the different ways of facing Hegel's system, as an impossible attempt to harmonize tradition and openness to novelty, respond to an underlying malaise: that provoked by the disturbing question of “the actuality of philosophy” after Hegel. That question insistently arises with respect to different paradigms of contemporary philosophy, and is found in critical theory, in analytical philosophy of action, in Žižek's materialism, and in Derrida's deconstructive reading. Adorno's interpretation introduces the tension between universal concepts and laws, (...) transmitted by the cultural tradition, and particular elements that the subject of the action must always take into account. As a consequence, the subject must include what is not reducible to a concept, which enables the construction of a language of experience that transcends the identifying thinking of the concept and makes negative dialectics possible as a theory of action. (shrink)

This review highlights The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy’s focus on “departures from nothingness.” These departures are seen in four themes: the definition of tetsugaku, interpersonal relationships, culture, and the socio-political sphere. In the first theme, I examine the dialogical character of nothingness and how it might relate with being. In the second, I show how this engagement with being connects to how we relate with the Thou, and examine its particulars in a unique spiritual form of Japanese (...) feminism. In the third, I examine how this relational nothingness connects to society, social imaginaries, and aesthetics. And in the fourth, I delve into the complex interrelationship of nothingness and politics. I end with a note on the philosophical relevance of Yusa’s ordering of these chapters, and the potential of both departing from and returning to nothingness. (shrink)

Estudio bibliográfico de: / A Bibliographical Study of: G. Cacciatore, Storicismo problematico e metodo critico, Guida editori, Nápoles, 1993, pp. 426.

El artículo elabora la tesis de que las aportaciones de Benjamin y Adorno realizan su propio “giro lingüístico”, diferenciado de la tradición analítica, tanto como de la hermenéutica y de las filosofías de la conciencia. Compara la concepción del lenguaje de Benjamin con la de Adorno, y valora la apropiación que realizan de Schlegel y Freud. Adorno rechaza entender la Deutung como reconstrucción de un hipotético sentido de la realidad, puesto que falsea a su juicio nuestra experiencia del sinsentido estructural (...) en las sociedades contemporáneas que tiene su expresión en ciertas obras de arte de las vanguardias. Para captar su verdad introduce la noción de “imagen dialéctica”. (shrink)

Vico permite repensar la condición problemática de la misma Modemidad en cuanto condición de "verosimile" , y cómo consecuentemente hay elementos viquianos para ofrecer una visión más amplia y plural de esta modemidad. Se intenta aportar, así, un elemento más para comprender la modemidad en su configuración problemática, apreciando cómo pronto en ella se procesan ya los elementos de la crisis de la racionalidad: dimensión en la que se hallan aspectos que, representados en las ideas de Vico, permiten "repensar" viquianamente, (...) desde la contemporánea racionalidad emergente de la crisis, esa condición problemática de la misma modernidad en esta actitud postcursora modema .Vico allows us to re-think the problematic condition of the very Modernity when regarded it as a condition of "verosimile" and consequently how we arrange Vichian elements in order to offer a wilder and manifold view of this very modemity. We try to suply in this way another element to understand modemity in its problematic background, seeing also within it how soon we can observe the elements of the crisis of racionality: a dimension in which there are same aspects which, embodied in Vico’s ideas, allow us in Vichian temrs and from the stand point of the racionality springing out of the crisis, that very same problematic condition of modernity in this "postcursor" modem atritude. (shrink)

La existencia de evidentes semejanzas en cuestiones concretas entre las concepciones históricas y, sobre todo, entre algunos principios de la Muqaddimah de Ibn Jaldún y la Scienza Nuova de Vico, inducen a una puesta en confrontación de las principales ideas históricas de ambos pensadores. Considerando la distancia temporal de cuatro siglos entre el historiador magrebí y el filósofo napolitano, así como sus diferentes ámbitos culturales, se apuntan una serie de afinidades y de contrastes.The existence of plain resemblances on specific questions (...) between historical conceptions and more specially between some of the principles of Ibn Jaldún’s Muqaddimah and Vico’s Scienza Nuova might lead us to confront the two thinkers’ main conceptions. Taking into account both the four century temporal distance between the North-african thinker and the Neapolitan philosopher and the different background, there is an attempt to sketch a series of affinities and contrasts. (shrink)

Estudio bibliográfico-crítico que traza la recepción viquiana en las obras de Sir Isaiah Berlin y analiza la interpretación que éste ofrece del pensamiento de Vico, integrándolo en una línea "contra-corriente" con referencia a la llustración y asumiéndolo en la concepción pluralista y antimonista de la historia cultural defendida por el propio Berlin.A critical bibliographical study which traces the Vichian reception in Sir Isaiah Berlin’s works and analyzes his particular interpretation of Vico’s thought. The paper moves along his views according to (...) wich Vico is related with the "counter-current" movement against the Enlightenment and tries to emphasizes his efforts to comprise the Vichian doctrines in an antimonist and wilder open conception wich seems to be closely associated with Berlin’s own concerns with cultural history. (shrink)

This article examines certain marxist critiques of the theories of justice that arose after the publication of A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, in 1971. This book led the field of liberal political theory towards an explicitly normative focus that tended to develop into general theories or in systematic analyses of more specific concepts. In this article we shall broaden the sociological and historical critique of theories of justice based on the debate that began in the pages of the (...) New Left Review. (shrink)

Suplemento a / Some Additions to: José M. Sevilla, "Bibliografía viquiana en español" entradas / entries 1-266; ID., "Añadido a la Bibliografía viquiana en español" , entradas / entries 267-364. Ahora 62 nuevas entradas / 62 new entries now: 365-426.

En su anterior estudio sobre la recepción de Vico en el s. XIX español, el autor analizó los casos de importantes intelectuales como Juan Donoso Cortés, Jaime Luciano Balmes, Juan Valera, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Alfredo Adolfo Camus y Nicolás Serrano. Con ello se cumplió parte del plan de desmontar la tesis frecuentemente aceptada de una "ausencia" de Vico en España. Este plan se viene a desarrollar ahora con una nueva aportación investigadora en la que el autor muestra y analiza tres (...) importantes casos más de recepción viquiana: la del ecléctico historiador Fermin Gonzalo Morón, la del renovador neoescolástico Ceferino González, y la del fundador de la escuela jurídica catalana Manuel Durán y Bas. Con ellos el autor confirma su tesis de que Vico es apreciado, tanto desde la recepción positiva como desde la crítica, como un pensador modemo y heterodoxo de considerable valía.In his former paper on Vico’s reception during the XIX century in Spain, the author reviewed such significant intellectuals as Juan Donoso Cortés, Jaime Luciano Balmes, Juan Valera, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Alfredo Adolfo Camus and Nicolás Serrano. In so doing, the task of dislodging the thesis so frequently held that there is a Vico’s "absence" in Spain was partially accomplished. This task is taken up again in a recent investigation where the author analyzes and assesses three further important cases related with the Spanish Vichian reception: that of eclectic historian Femín Gonzalo Morón, the neo-scholastic Ceferino González and finally the Catalan legal school founder Manuel Durán y Bas. With those examples the author aims to validate his claim that Vico was indeed acknowledged both as a modern and heterodox thinker by the positive as well as by the critical reception. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador – cundurango – that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements – including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of (...) Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles – played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters. The development and international trade of this remedy offer interesting insights into the global history of drugs, particularly how medical knowledge was challenged during a period when scientific medicine was struggling for hegemony. It explores how newspapers expanded “the public interest” in a possible cancer cure. (shrink)

This examination of the often-inaccessible work and semiotics of George Herbert Mead focuses first on his pivotal ideas of Sociality, Consciousness, and Communication. Mead’s insight of sociality as forced relatedness, or forced semiosis, appearing early in evolution, or appearing in simple systems, guarantees him a foundational place among biosemioticians. These ideas are Mead’s exemplar description of multiple referentiality afforded to social organisms (connected to his idea of the generalized other), thus enabling passing from one umwelt to another, with relative ease. (...) Although Mead’s comprehensive semiosis is basically sound, and in concordance with modern and contemporary semiotics (and biosemiotics), it nevertheless lacks a satisfactory explanation of how conscious organisms achieve passing into new frames of reference. Semiotic Matrix Theory (SMT), its pansemiosis, describes falsifiable existential and cognitive heuristics of recognizing Energy requirements, Safety concerns and Possibility or Opportunity as “passing” functions. Finally, another type of emergence, ecoethics, isan embedded constant in biosemiosis. Not all semiosis is good semiosis, not all text is good text. Because our species is moving away from ancient biosemiosisand interrelatedness, this historicity, even ductile enough to invent synthetic semiosis or capricious umwelten, is facing the ecological reality and consequences of an overly anthropocentric text. (shrink)

Vico otorga a la fantasia un doble papel: creador y expresivo y reconocedor y reconstructivo , que tiene su significación viquiana en los "caracteres poéticos" y en la consideración de "naturaleza poética" del hombre primitivo, además, en su segundo sentido, en el carácter que posee la imaginación como "llave" de la misma Scienza nuova. En trabajos anteriormente publicados por el autor ya han sido desarrollados aspectos concretos de esta cuestión, destacando su importancia tanto para el pensamiento viquiano como para las (...) ciencias humanas. En el presente trabajo se considera la cuestión de la "fantasía" articulando las más interesantes perspectivas desde las que se ha revalorizado el tema .Vico confers on "fantasia" a double role: creating and expresing and recognising and reconstructing , which has its Vichian significance in the "poetic characters" and in the consideration of the "poetic nature" of primitive man, and furthermore, in a second sense in the characteristics that imagination possesses as a "Key" to the Scienza nuova itself. Concrete aspects of this question have been already developed by the author in earlier published works, emphasising its importance as much for Vichian thought as for the Human Sciences. In this present work the question of "fantasia" is considered, bringing together the most interesting perspectives through wich this topic has been re-evaluated. (shrink)

La recepción de Vico en el pensamiento y la obra del filósofo español Eugenio Imaz, exiliado en México, ha sido evidente. Vico, junto a Dilthey, Croce o Collingwood, ha sido uno de los autores "familiares" de Imaz, el cual ha influido notablemente en su humanismo integral y en su historicismo filosófico.Vico's reception in the thought and work of the Spanish philosopher Eugenio Imaz, exiled in México, was evident. Vico, along with Dilthey, Croce or Collingwood, has been one of the "familiar" (...) authors of Imaz, which has notably influenced his integral humanism and his philosophical historicism. (shrink)

Reseña crítica del volumen del Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani que recoge las Actas del Congreso "Vico in Italia e in Germania" , con análisis de las aportaciones de Gebhardt, Agrimi, Otto, Cantelli, Papini, Grassi, Pinchard, Di Magno, Fellmann, Di Cesare, Badaloni, Poggeler, Jermann, Giuliani, Geldsetzer y Jacobelli Isoldi.A Critical review of the Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani , volume which includes the Congress’ proceedings "Vico in Italia e in Germania" . It contains also an assessment of Gebhardt’s, (...) Agrimi’s, Otto’s, Cantelli’s, Papini’s, Grassi’s, Pinchard’s, Di Magno’s, Fellmann’s, Di Cesare’s, Badaloni’s, Poggeler’s, Jermann’s, Giuliani’s, Geldsetzer’s and Jacobelli Isoldi’s studies. (shrink)