En la ciudad de Medellín se hace uso de herramientas y dispositivos, en el marco de la llamada Gestión Social, para ejecutar importantes obras para el llamado desarrollo urbano, que bien pueden configurar una “Gestión social del despojo”, en el marco de una “Planeación institucional de la miseria y el desarraigo”, generando víctimas ya no del conflicto armado sino del desarrollo. Es necesario problematizar esta suerte de modelo de desarrollo urbano, su gestión e implementación.

La ingeniería constitucional de Sartori plantea la necesidad analizar la edificación de instituciones jurídico-políticas a través de una técnica de incentivos y castigos. El presente trabajo indaga la existencia o no de incentivos para dirigir la facultad del control disciplinario por parte de la Procuraduría General de la Nación contra el presidente y sus ministros como consecuencia de un poder legislativo pasivo en esa actividad debido a un régimen presidencialista que mezcla las agendas del Congreso y el Presidente. El resultado (...) de este estudio muestra un craso error en el despliegue de la ingeniería constitucional que hizo insipiente el control del Ministerio Público sobre el Gobierno. (shrink)

Esta investigación pretende determinar, a través del estudio de un corpus de novelas constituido por: Daewoo de Francois Bon, Terminal Frigo de Jean Rolin, Les Vivants et les morts de Gérard Mordillat, Les Heures souterraines de Delphine de Vigan y Nous étions des êtres vivants de Nathalie Kuperman ; la manera en la que la literatura contemporánea representa el trabajo como objeto de ficción. Con el propósito de aportar respuestas sobre la interrelación entre la experiencia del presente y las transformaciones (...) que esta origina en la poética actual de la novela, se busca identificar los rasgos más relevantes de una escritura de lo real que se ha consolidado, en el panorama literario francés actual, como una tendencia estética con carácter propio. (shrink)

Christian PlantinCentre National de Recherche Scientifi que:CNRS. Universidad de Lyon.

The formation of the human being is a fundamental subject in Saint Augustine’s thinking. In his first works references to liberal arts are highlighted, and the dialogue form appears as a privileged vehicle of the educative process. In De Ordine, Saint Augustine represents a clear example of the interest and the appropriation of dialogue as a philosophical exercise, which has the double purpose of taking his listeners to the truth and to introduce the reader to the same dynamic.

Peter Zachar. A Metaphysics of Psychopathology. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Press, 2014. 274 pp.

This article investigates the impact of the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the comparability, quality, and efficiency of financial reporting, both in public administration and in emerging markets. Through a quantitative approach, data from various public institutions and emerging market companies that have adopted IFRS in recent years were analyzed. The results indicate a significant improvement in the comparability and quality of financial reports, although accounting efficiency varies depending on the degree of implementation and administrative modernization in (...) the countries. It is concluded that the adoption of IFRS has an overall positive effect, but its total impact depends on the institutional capacity of countries. (shrink)

Introducción: La relación entre la comida y cultura es bastante amplia, por ello, se expone la agenda de investigación en torno al tema, a través de la revisión de artículos indexados publicados entre el 2016 y el 2022. Objetivo: sintetizar la producción académica de los últimos años teniendo en cuenta los temas claves, los países de producción y las corrientes teórico-metodológicas utilizadas en los diseños de investigación. Metodología: Revisión documental integrativa. Conclusiones: La literatura encontrada se presenta a través de seis (...) ejes temáticos grandes: alimentos y medicina, identidad y nación, transmisión de saberes, relaciones G-locales y dimensiones sociales. (shrink)

O objetivo geral deste artigo se concentra em abordar, a partir de uma abordagem holística, as implicações éticas relacionadas ao uso da Inteligência Artificial, doravante IA, na geração de conteúdos acadêmicos. Três elementos-chave são abordados neste artigo: um estado da arte sobre as IA de maior demanda no âmbito acadêmico atual; as implicações éticas vinculadas ao plágio, à originalidade e à fraude; e, por fim, a caracterização das ferramentas de monitoramento de conteúdos acadêmicos gerados por IA. A pesquisa se enquadra (...) dentro de uma abordagem qualitativa, cuja fonte de coleta de informações é documental e, quanto ao nível ou grau de conhecimento gerado, trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva. A principal conclusão a que esta pesquisa chega consiste em alertar para os benefícios das ferramentas de inteligência artificial na otimização de tarefas acadêmicas e de pesquisa, mas também advertir sobre as implicações éticas desfavoráveis que o uso dessas ferramentas pode acarretar quando não utilizadas de forma responsável, especialmente no campo da pesquisa acadêmica. Existem muitas ferramentas de inteligência artificial que podem auxiliar o pesquisador na realização de tarefas como coleta, sistematização e análise de dados e informações, revisão da escrita, citações e referências, entre outras; porém, também há o risco de perda de originalidade na pesquisa. (shrink)

The increased prevalence of advanced‐stage chronic diseases has augmented the need for palliative care teams. In Colombia, although the legislation promotes palliative care development, people still die without receiving management from a palliative care team. In addition, judiciary regulations regarding euthanasia have generated public confusion and ethical conflicts among members of the palliative care teams. Therefore, this study aimed to perform a bioethical reflection on the relationship between palliative care and euthanasia supported by data on euthanasia requests in a palliative (...) care program. This reflection is based on retrospective and descriptive observational data, collected in two highly complex hospitals in Bogotá, Colombia. A total of 50 euthanasia requests were identified, of which 62% met the defined criteria, 16% did not, and 22% were not considered by the interdisciplinary committee for the right to die with dignity due to early death. All patients were treated and followed up by a palliative care team until their death. This study considered that palliative care could be a complement management for patients requesting euthanasia based on their experience by supporting the decision‐making, alleviating suffering, and providing emotional support in the last days of life. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza “Contéstame, Baila mi danza”, la antología de seis poetas norteamericanas que tradujera y publicara Diana Bellesi en 1984. El objetivo es comprender las implicancias políticas, artísiticas e ideológicas de la misma. La antología editada por Bellesi incluye poemas de las autoras estadounidenses Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, June Jordan, Diane Di Prima, Adrienne Rich, Irena Klepfisz, y un ensayo de Barbara Deming. El volumen mostró al público hispanohablante algunas de las escritoras más relevantes del siglo XX, que (...) en algunos casos no habían sido traducidas antes al español. Bellesi considera que las seis autoras que seleccionó comparten el espíritu rebelde, un lenguaje potente, una historia común, pero sobre todo, sus voces de mujeres. Esta ponencia se propone leer la antología como un diálogo político, artístico y de género entre la poeta-traductora argentina y sus seis pares norteamericanas. A través de la lectura de la Intro-ducción, las notas de presentación de las escritoras, y las traducciones propiamente dichas, la labor de investigación busca demostrar la importancia de la traducción literaria como un programa artístico e ideológico que resulta en un fructífero diálogo entre las lenguas y las culturas. (shrink)

Alfred Mele presents an influential argument for incompatibilism which compares an agent, Ernie, whose life has been carefully planned by the goddess Diana, to normal deterministic agents. The argument suggests both that Ernie is not free, and that there is no relevant difference between him and normal deterministic agents in respect of free will. In this paper, I suggest that what drives our judgement that Ernie is not free in the Diana case is that his actions are merely (...) an extension of Diana's—he is akin to a tool, which she uses solely for her own purposes, and his behaviour occurs only because of the interest Diana takes in its occurring. This contrasts with normal deterministic universes, in which normal agents are not such tools. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s 2021 essay “Bodies That Still Matter” offers a compressed rehearsal of themes and moves that are developed in more detail in their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. In both projects, Butler spotlights the term feminicidio as an instructive indicator of brutality and violence against feminized individuals, including trans women. Feminicidio exemplifies the violence of “unequal grievability” that Butler’s recent work seeks to overcome; therefore, in particular relation to their recent work on nonviolence, Butler insists (...) that the horror of feminicidio should be closely linked to analysis that mobilizes against the full social force of the crimes. Following the work of Montserrat Sagot, Butler calls for analysis that links the brutality of the killings with a structure of social domination and terror. Additionally, Butler introduces questions for further exploration about representation, social organization, and the relation of sexual terror to domination, extermination, or a general theory of sexuality and violence. In this article, I make a start on the set of questions that come along with the term feminicidio in the work of some of its key theorists such as Diana Russell, Marcela Lagarde, Monserrat Sagot, and Alicia Schmidt Camacho. Here, in support of Butler’s claim that feminicidio should be analyzed in ways that mobilize comprehensive resistance, this article (1) defends Lagarde’s definition of feminicidio as an institutionalized crime, especially against Russell’s objection; (2) develops Sagot’s analysis of femicide in relation to Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, (3) considers Schmidt Camacho’s critique of the term in the context of maquiladora labor in Mexico, and (4) excavates the salience of Foucault’s concept of biopower as an important model for Butler’s analysis. Finally, this article (5) argues that Butler’s work challenges nonviolence researchers to expand their interest and understanding of grieving as a form of resistance. (shrink)

This study tests a model that links stakeholder pressure to the implementation of corporate social responsibility activities and market performance. Stakeholder groups and competitors might exert pressure on companies to implement CSR, which could lead to positive effects on market performance. Using structural equation modeling, the authors find that stakeholders and competitors exert pressure differently. The effect of CSR implementation on market performance is moderated by market dynamism: It affects market performance more in dynamic environments. The authors discuss implications for (...) both companies and stakeholders. (shrink)

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper compares the results of large-scale U.S. and U.K. surveys designed to identify managers' major ethical concerns and to investigate how firms are formulating and communicating ethics policies responsive to these concerns.Our findings indicate some important differences between U.S. and U.K. firms in perceptions of what are important ethical issues, in the means used to communicate ethics policies, and in the issues addressed in ethics policies and employee training. U.K. companies tend to be more likely to communicate ethics policies (...) through senior executives, whereas U.S. companies tend to rely more on their Human Resources and Legal Departments. U.S. firms consider most ethical issues to be more important than do their U.K. counterparts, and are especially concerned with employee behavior which may harm the firm. In contrast, the issues which U.K. managers consider more important tend to be concerned with external corporate stakeholders rather than employees. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper examines expressed hopelessness among environmental activists in Extinction Rebellion. While activists claim that they have lost all hope for a future without global warming and species extinction, through despair emerges a new hope for saving what can still be saved—a hope for what is left. This radical hope, emerging from despair, may make Extinction Rebellion even more effective. Drawing from personal interviews with 25 Extinction Rebellion activists in the United Kingdom and the published work of other Extinction Rebellion (...) activists, this paper identifies signs of radical hope. While activists have cast off false hope and passive hope, a new hope for what is still possible remains. This hope is based on virtue ethics: doing what is right in the moment, rather than being attached to a desired outcome. This drives forward activism despite the results. Through their principle of regenerative culture, Extinction Rebellion activists learn to support each other and be prepared for a more turbulent and challenging future. Through a regenerative culture they can salvage and repair what is left and sustain radical hope. (shrink)

This paper examines the difficulties of dealing with child labour in the supply chain. It begins by identifying a number of the factors which make global supply chains so difficult to manage. It goes on to outline a framework of different approaches that can be taken to managing the supply chain with relation to child labour, moving from national and international regulation, through to the role of NGOs and the companies themselves. Focusing on an ‘engagement’ strategy for dealing with child (...) labour, the paper traces a case study of Adidas‐Salomon and its attempts to implement their ‘standards of engagement’ in this area with relation to one of their supplier factories in Vietnam. The research draws on the direct involvement of one of the authors who visited the site and was able to interview staff and observe the operation in practice. Her findings are supported by wider work on the implementation of corporate approaches to human rights at a range of companies interviewed by another of the authors. The paper aims to highlight the issues needing to be addressed for companies considering the ‘involvement’ approach to child labour. It also aims to develop theory on our understanding of different approaches to corporate rights. (shrink)

Victim's Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights takes on a set of questions suggested by the worldwide persistence of human rights abuse and the prevalence of victims' stories in human rights campaigns, truth commissions, and international criminal tribunals: What conceptions of victims are presumed in contemporary human rights discourse? How do conventional narrative templates fail victims of human rights abuse and resist raising novel human rights issues? What is empathy, and how can victims frame their stories to overcome empathetic (...) obstacles and promote commitment to human rights? How can victims' stories be used ethically in the service of human rights? The book addresses these concerns by analyzing the rhetorical resources for and constraints on victims' ability to articulate their stories and by clarifying how their stories can contribute to enlarged understandings of human rights protections and deepened commitments to realizing human rights. It theorizes the normative content that victims' stories can convey and the bearing of that normative content on human rights. Throughout the book, published victims' stories-including stories of torture, slavery, genocide, rape in wartime, and child soldiering-are analyzed in conjunction with philosophical arguments. This book mobilizes philosophical theory to illuminate victims' stories and appeals to victims' stories to enrich the philosophy of human rights. (shrink)

The paper provides an interpretation of Aristotle’s view on scientific inquiry as problem solving. It tackles passages where Aristotle emphasises the role that the problem-solving activity has in science, and where he describes the history of humans’ problem-solving activity and the historical development of natural science as a problem-solving activity. Further, the paper examines Aristotle’s practice of raising, assessing and solving problems as well as the heuristic procedures he employs to move from ignorance to scientific knowledge. Finally, it raises a (...) question about Aristotle’s view on the epistemic status of scientific definitions: does Aristotle conceive of the definitions, which are the results of scientific inquiries, as truths or rather as plausible hypotheses that may or may not be true? (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a series of arguments in order to show that it is preferable for analytic philosophy to be practiced in different languages. In the first section, I show that the analytic tradition includes people developing their philosophical work in different natural languages. In the second section, I will address the question of the role of language in thought, and more specifically in philosophical thought, concluding that it is preferable to allow for the use of different languages (...) as a vehicle for philosophical ideas. Finally, I make some suggestions regarding changes that could be made in academic practices to better allow a plurality of languages and voices within the analytic tradition. (shrink)

The U.S. and U.K. models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are relatively well defined. As the phenomenon of CSR establishes itself more globally, the question arises as to the nature of CSR in other countries. Is a universal model of CSR applicable across countries or is CSR specific to country context? This article uses integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and four institutional factors – firm ownership structure, corporate governance, openness of the economy to international investment, and the role of civil (...) society – to examine CSR in Singapore, Turkey, and Ethiopia. Field research results illustrate variation across the institutional factors and suggest that CSR is responsive to country differences. Research findings have implications for consideration of the tradeoff between global and local CSR priorities and practices. (shrink)

This paper examines structural barriers to the adoption of climate change mitigation practices and the evolution of a climate change ethic among American farmers. It examines how seed corn contracts in Michigan constrain the choices of farmers and allow farmers to rationalize the over-application of fertilizer and associated water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Seed corn contracts use a competitive “tournament” system where farmers are rewarded for maximizing yields. Interviews and a focus group were used to understand fertilizer over-application and (...) barriers to participating in a climate change mitigation program. Results indicate that farmers agree that they over-apply fertilizer but would be unlikely to participate in a mitigation program due to their contracts and lack of support from seed corn companies. Because only a few companies control access to the seed corn market, farmers feel they have few choices. Farmers rationalized their practices as their only option given the competitive nature of their contracts and blamed other sources of pollution. Despite increasing efforts to educate farmers about climate change, structural barriers will continue to constrain participation in mitigation efforts and the development of a climate change ethic. (shrink)

Recent liberal moral and political philosophy has placed great emphasis on the good of self-respect. But it is not always evident what is involved in self-respect, nor is it evident how societies can promote it. Assuming that self-respect is highly desirable, I begin by considering how people can live in a self-respecting fashion, and I argue that autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of one's own life plans is necessary for self-respect. I next turn to the question of how societal implementation of (...) rights may affect self-respect, and I urge that discretionary rights, which allow people to decline the benefits they confer, support self-respect more effectively than mandatory rights, which forbid people to refuse the benefits they confer. I conclude by examining the import of these contentions for feminist theory. I believe that my arguments are of particular concern to women because women have traditionally been victimized by a mandatory right to play a distinctively "feminine" role which has undermined their self-respect. (shrink)

This paper1 aims to develop a model of practitioner narrative competence specifically for mental health care. I begin by considering the status of narratives as a form of evidence. Following Rita Charon and Cheryl Misak, I claim that there is no distinction to be made between evidence-based medicine and narrative medicine. I then explore Charon’s model of practitioner narrative competence, and suggest that it can be fruitfully adapted for mental health care contexts, a project for which I employ Jennifer Radden (...) and John Z. Sadler’s psychiatric ethics. This project brings together two independently promising accounts to develop what I refer to as the adapted model of... (shrink)

In this paper I aim at showing that, in Aristotle’s view, spoken and written language differ in their material organisation, in particular in their respective part-whole relations. I argue that, according to Aristotle, written language is an additive system (i.e. a system whose parts exist and are produced prior to what they are parts of), whereas spoken language is a non-additive system (i.e. a system whose parts cannot exist and be produced prior to what they are parts of), and that, (...) in his view, spoken language, qua non-additive system, is analogous to organisms. Further, I outline two possible implications of this hypothesis. The first concerns the relevance of Aristotle’s conception of spoken language as a non-additive system to his account of human language’s power to signify. I set out some reasons for thinking that Aristotle endorses the view that the form of human language (i.e. its power to signify) is matter-involving. The second implication concerns the syllable analogy that Aristotle employs in Metaphysics Ζ 17. I argue that the syllable Aristotle refers to is a spoken one, and I develop some consequences of this hypothesis for the meaning of the analogy and, more generally, of the chapter. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth study of Physics I, the first book of Aristotle's foundational treatise on natural philosophy. While the text has inspired a rich scholarly literature, this is the first volume devoted solely to it to have been published for many years, and it includes a new translation of the Greek text. Book I introduces Aristotle's approach to topics such as matter and form, and discusses the fundamental problems of the study of natural science, examining the (...) theories of previous thinkers including Parmenides. Leading experts provide fresh interpretations of key passages and raise new problems. The volume will appeal to scholars and students of ancient philosophy as well as to specialists working in the fields of philosophy and the history of science. (shrink)

The study used a thematic analysis to examine student and faculty responses to two qualitative questions focused on their perceptions of the consequence of incivility and solutions that would embed civility expectations as a key element to professional role socialization in higher education. Participants included students and faculty across multiple academic programs and respondent subgroups at a regional university in the southern United States. A new adapted conceptual model using Clark’s in _Nursing Education Perspectives_, _28_(2), 93–97 ( 2007, revised 2020) (...) Conceptual Model for Fostering Civility in Nursing Education and Daniel Goleman’s in _Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ_. Bantam Books ( 1995 ) Emotional Intelligence domains was used as the framework for this study to give meaning and context to its findings. For this group of respondents, the study found that seventy percent of faculty and students agree that incivility has the largest impact on the emotional intelligence domain of self-management, which includes negative emotional outcomes, loss of respect, negative professional and student outcomes, poor academic outcomes, attrition, and less success. Leadership in higher education will strengthen their institutions by using a relational approach centered on communication skill-building to ensure that faculty have been socialized to the importance of civil professional behavior and that stakeholders collectively explore and agree on the meaning and organizational integration of civility. (shrink)

Las emociones han sido tradicionalmente consideradas por la filosofía, un obstáculo para la obtención de conocimiento confiable. La falta de valor epistémico atribuida a lo emocional, su pasividad, junto con la naturalización de la distribución sexista que considera la razón una cualidad masculina y opuesta a la feminización de las emociones, obstaculizó históricamente el acceso de las mujeres a la ciencia y al conocimiento abstracto, así como a los más altos grados de educación superior y actividades de alta responsabilidad social. (...) En la filosofía del conocimiento contemporánea, la interfaz entre conocimiento y emoción recibe una intensa atención, sobre todo por parte de las corrientes cognitivas. Se mencionarán modelos diferentes de vincular conocimiento y emoción, destacando el interés de revisar el carácter dicotómico de este par de conceptos. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to bridge the gap between feminist structural explanations for rape and the social psychological mechanisms that make it possible for some men in patriarchal societies to feel neutral about sexual violence toward women. The concept of role taking is used to analyze the perceptions of self and victim held by 79 convicted rapists. Men who defined their behavior during sexual encounters as rape saw themselves from the perspective of their victim through reflexive role taking, had (...) inferred their victims' experience through synesic role taking, and used this awareness to further their plan of action. Men who did not define their behavior as rape did neither reflexive nor synesic role taking and appeared incapable of understanding the meaning of sexual violence to women. The majority of both groups did not experience role-taking emotions, that is, guilt, shame, or empathy, which symbolic interactionists posit are the mediators of self-control. I argue that the gender imbalance of power and the status of women as property are the social factors that render normative emotions inoperative in sexual violence. (shrink)

Faced with the absurdity of continued climate inaction, more people are becoming morally outraged about the projections of human suffering and loss due to global warming impacts. This article draws from the work of Albert Camus to examine human responses to absurdity through rebellion and how this can be applied to understand the notion of climate rebellion. Focusing on Camus’ works The Rebel and The Plague, as well as his speech “The Human Crisis”, I examine the conditions of climate injustice (...) that present the grounds for climate rebellion, what becoming a climate rebel might mean, the importance of solidarity in climate rebellion, and lastly how Camus’ value of limitation might inform ethical responses to minimize climate-related harm. (shrink)

Philosophers have had surprisingly little to say about the concept of a victim although it is presupposed by the extensive philosophical literature on rights. Proceeding in four stages, I seek to remedy this deficiency and to offer an alternative to the two current paradigms that eliminates the Othering of victims. First, I analyze two victim paradigms that emerged in the late 20th century along with the initial iteration of the international human rights regime – the pathetic victim paradigm and the (...) heroic victim paradigm. Holocaust victims are quintessential instances of the pathetic victim paradigm. They are marked by passivity and innocence in the face of overpowering force and unspeakable humanly inflicted suffering. Aung San Suu Kyi is an exemplar of the heroic victim paradigm – prisoners of conscience, in Amnesty International’s terms. Because heroic victims face off against the repressive power of the state to fight injustice, they are by no means passive, but they must be innocent of wrongdoing – that is, they must use nonviolent means of dissent – to qualify as heroic victims. Second, I problematize the asymmetrical conceptions of innocence that underwrite the two victim paradigms. Whereas the pathetic victim paradigm identifies innocence with passivity, the heroic victim paradigm countenances agentic victims and adverts to a universalist, absolutist stance on the limits of the legitimate use of state power to ascribe innocence to heroic victims. Both conceptions of innocence are out of keeping with well established social and legal practices regarding what constitutes coercive force and innocent victimhood. Consequently, there is reason to be skeptical of the two victim paradigms. Third, I identify two kinds of human rights violations and two categories of victims that AI defends despite their failure to fit the two paradigms – women trafficked into sex work and prisoners on death row. In many cases, women forced to do sex work are not innocent girls who are ignorant of the trafficking system and who helplessly fall prey to smugglers. They are desperately poor women who for that reason are willing to take enormous risks to try to relieve their own and often their families’ deprivation and suffering. Although these women act nonviolently for irreproachable reasons, they lack the public political agendas that characterize heroic victims. Unless non-fulfillment of subsistence rights is recognized as a form of overpowering force that inflicts severe, avoidable suffering, these women do not qualify as pathetic victims either. The victim paradigms pose an even greater obstacle to recognizing that the death penalty is a human rights violation and that death row prisoners are victims. Because a jury concluded that these individuals committed heinous, violent crimes, they are excluded by the heroic victim paradigm. Only if death row prisoners can be proven (usually through DNA evidence) not to have committed the crimes for which they were convicted can these individuals qualify as pathetic victims. In the absence of any reason to believe that they are innocent and especially if they are unrepentant, they are widely regarded as brutal victimizers of others who deserve no sympathy for, let along relief from, the suffering they “brought on themselves.” Finally, I confront the Othering of victims that results from the two victim paradigms, which leads many victims to eschew the label, thereby opting out of human right discourse. I propose revisions in the victim paradigms that eliminate the real-world exclusions they sponsor as well as the Othering of victims of human rights abuses. In particular, I endorse greater attention to what people and the institutions they create do to other people, and I favor a presumption that unnecessary and severe humanly inflicted suffering is a human rights violation. Moreover, I reject the innocence criterion embedded in the two paradigms and urge that it be replaced by a burdened agency criterion. These modifications better align the concept of a victim with a realistic understanding of human subjectivity and agency and allow for a more capacious understanding of who is a bearer of human rights and under what conditions right-holders become victims of rights violations. (shrink)

Richard Miller uses the concepts of alterity and intimacy as touchstones for analyzing neglected aspects of our interpersonal and social relationships. He argues that, as persons in relation, we oscillate between experiences of alterity and intimacy, and it is with a greater awareness of this oscillation that we do best to consider our ethical responsibilities. This paper affirms the value of thinking about—and potentially reimagining—how we conceive and relate to various others. It also makes explicit that, as persons, each of (...) us is separate, not only from some, but from all other persons, even as we are also one with them. Moreover, each of us is different from all other persons, even as we are also like them. The aspects of persons and relationships on which we focus, in a given situation, matter because they partly determine the choices that we make in another’s regard. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy was introduced in Latin America in the mid-twentieth century. Its development has been heterogeneous in different countries of the region but has today reached a considerable degree of maturity and originality, with a strong community working within the analytic tradition in Latin America. This entry describes the historical development of analytic philosophy in Latin America and offers some examples of original contributions by Latin American analytic philosophers.