El presente trabajo indaga las relaciones entre la política y el secreto desde las discusiones y polémicas en torno al Estado. Su tema es el entrelazo entre lo político y el Estado. Para ello, procura reconstruir una constelación de lecturas sobre la razón de Estado e identifica en la crítica ilustrada el mayor desafío a dichas razones. La cuestión del secreto orienta el recorrido a través de los estudios sobre la razón de Estado y ubica a la ilustración en el (...) vértice entre la transparencia y el arcano. Finalmente, el trabajo plantea algunas sugestiones teóricas sobre la política argentina tras la crisis del 2001. (shrink)

The article derives from a perplexing situation. It brings a remarkable absence in the well-known lectures of Merleau-Ponty on Institution to attention: There is no mention of politics as an institution. Therefore, the article raises the following question: why the course does not deal with politics like it does with life, culture or history? To answer this question, the article addresses the relations between the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and politics. Thus, the purpose of the article is to find the reason (...) behind the contradictory link that Merleau-Ponty develops for politics in the lectures on Institution, that is, a profound concern over political issues that do not find theoretical considerations as complement. First, it considers the link with the philosophy of history of the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. Second, it identifies a political moment of his philosophy linked to Machiavelli. Then, it highlights the reasons behind the disconnection between Merleau-Ponty’s Machiavellian view of politics and the original perspective on institution. Finally, it addresses the question of whether such disconnection, which in the lectures becomes an absence, does not signal towards a different way to think politics linked to other concepts of the thought of Merleau-Ponty: Life, time and institution. These concepts were developed by him to undermine the predominance of the philosophies of reflection, which can expand new horizons regarding politics and the connection between the instituting and the instituted. (shrink)

El artículo analiza el impacto de la Revolución húngara de 1956 en el pensamiento político de Claude Lefort desde sus comienzos como intelectual y militante de una organización revolucionaria hasta su consagrada teorización acerca de la democracia en contraposición con el totalitarismo. Para ello, el artículo reconstruye los rasgos principales de la Revolución húngara y recoge tres interpretaciones del suceso —la de Jean Paul Sartre, Raymond Aron y Hannah Arendt— a fin de contrastarlas con la de Claude Lefort; también, con (...) idéntico fin, indaga las discrepancias en el seno de Socialisme ou barbarie ocasionadas como consecuencia del acontecimiento húngaro. En el plano teórico-político, el artículo pretende mostrar la relación estrecha entre democracia, revolución y emancipación en la noción de democracia salvaje movilizada por Lefort, revelando la existencia de un hilo conductor entre la ponderación lefortiana de la Revolución húngara y dicha noción crucial. (shrink)

El trabajo se interroga por el sentido de lo político en el pensamiento de Merleau-Ponty. Con este objetivo, toma tres escritos señeros que permiten comprender dicha interrogación. El análisis de tales escritos da cuenta del núcleo de la filosofía política merleau-pontyana más allá de las habituales periodizaciones a la que es sometida el conjunto de su obra. Ese núcleo condensa una noción de lo político como contingencia y conflicto de raíz maquiaveliana que dialoga críticamente con la tradición marxista. Por otra (...) parte, el trabajo concluye con la hipótesis acerca de que las reflexiones merleau-pontyanas sobre lo político se nutren de un concepto de humanismo que se sustrae a la visión heideggeriana del mismo para enmarcarse en la saga republicana del humanismo político. (shrink)

El artículo procura destacar la relevancia teórico-política de una obra filosófica como _Fenomenología de la percepción _en el planteo de algunas cuestiones centrales para el pensamiento político. La estrategia fue la siguiente: en primer lugar, identificar las zonas de la obra donde irrumpen cuestiones políticas; en segundo lugar, extraer las consecuencias a partir de una hipótesis de lectura que postula, por un lado, el vínculo entre libertad-poder-espacio y, por el otro, entre institución-autoridad-tiempo. Finalmente, se trata de poner en relación ambos (...) vínculos a través de la figura del cuerpo y de su posible deriva hacia la noción de cuerpo político. (shrink)

La obra de pensamiento de Maurice Merleau-Ponty constituye hoy un pilar medular dentro del itinerario filosófico del siglo xx. No siempre fue así. Desplazada por el vendaval estructuralista y la sucedánea consagración del llamado post-estructuralismo, la filosofía de Merleau-Ponty qued ó arrinconada por las controversias rupturistas en torno al sujeto, la revolución y la metafísica humanista. Sin embargo, hacia finales del pasado siglo, la obra de nuestro autor comenzó a releerse y estudiarse con renovados bríos. La periódica publicación — aún (...) no completada — de sus cursos en el Collège de France, cruciales para iluminar los meandros de un pensar que jamás dej ó de interrogar sus propios fundamentos, colaboraron al retorno de Merleau-Ponty al primer plano de la escena filosófica. El presente libro de Mariana Larison asume, por un lado, la tarea de restañar la vitalidad de la filosofía merleau-pontyana, pero, por otro lado, cumplida en gran medida la faena por anteriores trabajos — como los del prologuista del libro: Renaud Barbaras —, inaugura un conjunto de debates cuya actualidad filosófica y política es insoslayable. Los debates se ofrecen en círculos concéntricos, de los cuales podemos recortar tres. En conjunto organizan la melodía del libro... (shrink)

In the present work we try to return to the problem of Merleau-Ponty’s historic and political evaluation of action in the light of his accounts in Humanism and Terror and their updating in the last years by commentators such as Alexandre Hubeny, Leonardo Eiff and Jérôme Melançon. We will present some arguments against two very close related theses by Merleau-Ponty: that of the “objective” evaluation of action, which holds that the subjects behavior can be described as constituing a (...) “betrayal” or a “crime” independently of any attribution of intentions to the agents and the thesis of the “objective” responsibility of the agent, that is, the tenet that affirms that the historic and political subjects can be “responsible” or “guilty” for an outcome of their actions, that they cannot have foreseen or can be the exact opposite for what they intended. (shrink)

Subject of constant reflections in other works and published studies, the theme of memory and its relations between past and present always provokes renewed perspectives regarding the readings of the ancient texts in our academic discussions. Analyzing the present time of a community behind an ancient document is likewise always challenging. However, in the present document (Mark’s Gospel), when analyzed in the light of heuristic concepts - such as memory, for example - there are very effective indications in proposing new (...) perceptions about the constant interaction between past memories and memory constructions in present times (of the ancient document that has been analysed). New horizons open up in the field of study of the texts that make up the New Testament when dialogues with psychology and research on memory. In this sense, this work applies the postulate of D.L. Schacter on the adaptations that are made in the memories of the past so that they meet the needs of the present to the gospel of Mark. It follows that the author of the said gospel rewrote the traditions received so that they answered questions that were made to them in the present. (shrink)

Palabras de agradecimiento al promotor del Congreso Internacional y a los participantes en él. Asimismo, a la persona que ha trabajado en la labor de transcripción de mis escritos y a otros colaboradores míos. También a quienes han tomado en cuenta mis ideas para elaborar sus tesis doctorales, y a otros colegas cuyos planteamientos filosóficos distan de los míos. Como la filosofía es una actividad interminable, queda abierta la sucesiva investigación en mis propuestas.

This chapter argues that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the limits of the mainstream individualistic notion of resilience and, in light of these limits, it advances a new, relational notion of the concept of resilience that contributes to the individuals’ well-being and takes into consideration the role of systemic inequality. The first half of the paper argues that the individualistic notion is flawed in two ways: i) it can foster ill-being because it is cognitively taxing, and ii) it discounts systemic (...) inequality because it transfers the responsibility of any achievement and failure onto the single individual without regard for conditions of oppression. The second half of the paper reconceptualizes the concept of resilience as a relational notion that takes into account structural support as well as conditions of oppression and marginalization. According to this latter notion of resilience, the chapter argues that oppression, lack of material conditions, or lack of structural support are elements that can impact the appropriateness of calls to be resilient. A relational notion of resilience fosters well-being because it puts the collective community at the center (instead of the individual) and it takes into consideration material conditions and structural injustices. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to indicate in a contemporary perspective how transhumanism fits into religious discourse as, in seeking to resignify human existence and lead humanity to a posthuman dimension, it finds roots in the ancient gnostic movements, transforming itself into a new Contemporary religion. Given this, we will first try to identify common ground between Gnosticism and Transhumanism, especially the idea linked to the denial of corporeality. In a second moment, we will show the dangers that transhumanism (...) faces when it intends to give man powers to modify its existence, dispensing with the figure of the creator God. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is less ambitious than its title might suggest, since it does not deal with everything that Plato has said on time and on eternity. Rather, it attempts to clarify some issues which have arisen in the controversy as to whether Parmenides or Plato was the first Western philosopher to grasp the notion of atemporal eternity. It is particularly concerned with some publications on the subject that have appeared within the last twelve years or so. G. (...) E. L. Owen, in a paper published in this journal, has defended his earlier interpretation that Parmenides discovered the notion of atemporal eternity. J. Whittaker for his part has contended that both Parmenides and Plato failed to grasp it, and would ascribe its discovery to some later thinker. Yet another scholar, G. Reale, believes that there is no essential difference between the position of Parmenides as reconstructed by Owen and others and that of Melissus. For Reale maintains that Melissus’ formula “it is and always was and always will be” does not exclude atemporality, that it means the same thing as the alleged tenseless ‘is’ predicated of Parmenides’ Being. (shrink)

This paper analyses conceptual and experimental work in synthetic biology on different types of interactions considered as minimal examples or models of communication. It discusses their pertinence and relevance for the wider understanding of this biological and cognitive phenomenon. It critically analyses their limits and it argues that a conceptual framework is needed. As a possible solution, it provides a theoretical account of communication based on the notion of organisation, and characterised in terms of the functional influence exerted by the (...) sender upon the receiver. It shows that this account can be operationalised in synthetic biology, and that it can supply criteria and guidelines for the design and evaluation of synthetic models. (shrink)

Ciência: conceitos-chave em filosofia é uma introdução atualizada de filosofia da ciência escrita pelo professor Steven French com base no material utilizado por ele com os alunos do primeiro ano na Universidade de Leeds. O livro é composto de um total de dez capítulos, relativamente curtos, embora bastante densos em termos da quantidade de teorias analisadas e aspectos considerados de cada uma.

Ludwig Edelstein is well-known for his work on the history of anceint medicine and ancient philosophy, and to both of these areas he made contributions of primary importance. This collection, originally published in 1987, makes avaialable Edelstein’s main papers to scholars and students, and includes papers from 1931-1965.

Living systems employ several mechanisms and behaviors to achieve robustness and maintain themselves under changing internal and external conditions. Regulation stands out from them as a specific form of higher-order control, exerted over the basic regime responsible for the production and maintenance of the organism, and provides the system with the capacity to act on its own constitutive dynamics. It consists in the capability to selectively shift between different available regimes of self-production and self-maintenance in response to specific signals and (...) perturbations, due to the action of a dedicated subsystem which is operationally distinct from the regulated ones. The role of regulation, however, is not exhausted by its contribution to maintain a living system’s viability. While enhancing robustness, regulatory mechanisms play a fundamental role in the realization of an autonomous biological organization. Specifically, they are at the basis of the remarkable integration of biological systems, insofar as they coordinate and modulate the activity of distinct functional subsystems. Moreover, by implementing complex and hierarchically organized control architectures, they allow for an increase in structural and organizational complexity while minimizing fragility. Finally, they endow living systems, from their most basic unicellular instances, with the capability to control their own internal dynamics to adaptively respond to specific features of their interaction with the environment, thus providing the basis for the emergence of minimal forms of cognition. (shrink)

Los científicos tratan de persuadir a sus colegas y, en última instancia, al conjunto de la sociedad, para que acepten sus tesis, descubrimientos y propuestas. Desarrollan para ello una serie de estrategias que pueden ser estudiadas como un"juego de persuasión" en el que intervienen, además de los procesos de argumentación formal e informal típicamente estudiados por la lógica y metodología de la ciencia, aspectos tradicionalmente considerados "sociológicos". En este artículo se analiza el debate sobre la ciencia del cambio climático como (...) un juego de este tipo, desde un enfoque inferencialista, sobre la base del esquema presentado en Zamora Bonilla (2006a).Scientists try to persuade their colleagues, and ultimately the whole society, of the acceptability of their claims, discoveries and proposals. In order to reach that goal, they develop a number of strategies that can be studied as a 'game of persuasion', in which, beside the processes of formal and informal argumentation typically studied by logic and methodology of science, there are also 'sociological' aspects intervening. This paper analyses the debate on climate change science as a 'persuasion game', from an inferentialist point of view, according to the lines of Zamora Bonilla (2006a). (shrink)

Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance of the organisms that produce them. In this paper we analyze and compare these two (...) accounts of organization and argue that understanding biological organisms as cohesively integrated systems benefits from insights from both. To bring together the two accounts, we focus on the notions of control and regulation as bridge concepts. We start from a characterization of biological mechanisms in terms of constraints and focus on a specific type of mechanism, control mechanisms, that operate on other mechanisms on the basis of measurements of variables in the system and its environment. Control mechanisms are characterized by their own set of constraints that enable them to sense conditions, convey signals, and effect changes on constraints in the controlled mechanism. They thereby allow living organisms to adapt to internal and external variations and to coordinate their parts in such a manner as to maintain viability. Because living organisms contain a vast number of control mechanisms, a central challenge is to understand how they are themselves organized. With the support of examples from both unicellular and multicellular systems we argue that control mechanisms are organized heterarchically, and we discuss how this type of control architecture can, without invoking top-down and centralized forms of organizations, succeed in coordinating internal activities of organisms. (shrink)

BackgroundMinorities are an underrepresented population in clinical trials. A potential explanation for this underrepresentation could be lack of willingness to participate. The aim of our study was to evaluate willingness to participate in different hypothetical clinical research scenarios and to evaluate the role that predictors could have on the willingness of minorities to participate in clinical research studies.MethodsWe conducted a mixed-methods study at the Miami VA Healthcare system and included primary care patients with hypertension. We measured willingness to participate as (...) a survey of four clinical research scenarios that evaluated common study designs encountered in clinical research and that differed in degree of complexity. Our qualitative portion included comments about the scenarios.ResultsWe included 123 patients with hypertension in our study. Of the entire sample, ninety-three patients were minorities. Seventy per cent of the minorities were willing to participate, compared to 60 per cent of the non-minorities. The odds ratio of willingness to participate in simple studies was 0.58; 95 per cent CI 0.18–1.88 p=0.37 and the OR of willingness to participate in complex studies was 5.8; 95 per cent CI 1.10–1.31 p=0.03. In complex studies, minorities with low health literacy cited obtaining benefits as the most common reason to be willing to participate. Minorities who were not willing to participate, cited fear of unintended outcomes as the main reason.ConclusionsMinorities were more likely to be willing to participate in complex studies compared to non-minorities. Low health literacy and therapeutic misconception are important mediators when considering willingness to participate in clinical research. (shrink)

This important new editio maior of Aristotle's Poetics is based on all the primary sources and is accompanied by a details critical apparatus. The introductory chapters provide important new insights about the transmission of the text to the present day and especially the significance of the Syro-Arabic tradition.