El propósito del presente ensayo es presentar una lectura crítica del modelo de constitución concebido por Jesse Prinz. De acuerdo con los modelos más significativos que se han producido hasta el momento, el juicio moral es el resultado de procesos cognitivos específicos, ya sean estos de tipo intuitivo, emocional o racional. Según afirma Prinz, la perspectiva sentimentalista sostiene que tales juicios son causados por emociones. En contraste, él defiende una tesis según la cual el juicio moral está constituido, no es (...) causado, por aquéllas. En este artículo se presentará el argumento con el que Prinz sustenta su propuesta y se expondrán algunas inconsistencias. (shrink)

In this paper, I use Jonathan Haidt’s theory to explore an affective disposition that I call “indolent sympathy”. I argue that this disposition prevents a considerable group of human beings from showing solidarity with the millions of people who find themselves in conditions of poverty or extreme poverty. To demonstrate this, I will first present two dissimilar cases that show the type of affective disposition that I wish to submit to the reader’s consideration. Secondly, I will discuss the main characteristics (...) of this affective disposition. Thirdly, I will discuss the social intuitionist model, highlighting the aspects that will help me to account for indolent sympathy. Finally, I will read indolent sympathy in the light of Haidt’s theory and explain one of its most important features: brutality. (shrink)

El propósito de este ensayo es proponer una interpretación de los conceptosde “ley de naturaleza” y de “pacto” para disolver algunos problemas dela teoría de Hobbes. Para ello, primero, muestro que hay justicia en el estadode guerra de Hobbes, lo que implica que las leyes de naturaleza son vinculantesen tal Estado. Segundo, arguyo que en el estado de guerra no puedehaber justicia, lo que implica que las leyes de naturaleza no son vinculantes.Lo anterior me permitirá señalar una contradicción con respecto (...) a las leyesde naturaleza. Tercero, sugiero una interpretación para disolver dicha contradicción. Finalmente, muestro que en la propuesta contractual de Hobbeshay un círculo vicioso y, valiéndome de lo dicho en la tercera parte, sugierouna posible solución. Por último, presento una limitación a dicha solución. (shrink)

Se recoge en este artículo un análisis del perfil de la mujer pintada por el maestro Félix Revello de Toro, desde el punto de vista de la psicología moderna. El autor, José M.ª Porta Tovar, psiquiatra de profesión, estudia minuciosamente los detalles de las modelos de su pintura, para descubrir, a partir del conjunto de todos ellos, ese perfil de la mujer ideal, sublimado e inalcanzable, pero presente y sugestivo en el subconsciente colectivo del hombre de nuestros días.

This article focuses on the book Vida de Socrates (Life of Socrates; 1947) by Antonio Tovar Llorente (1911–1985), a Naziphile during World War II, loyal to the ideals of the Falange (a Spanish fascist organization) for many years until he publicly shifted to more liberal positions during the 1960s. The essay examines why Socrates was chosen as the book’s subject, how he is linked to the author’s political ideology in the 1940s, and the author’s relationship to his book when (...) it was reprinted in 1966 and 1984. The article explores the difference between scholars’ intellectual ideas, scientific output, and political positions, as well as the social, cultural, political, and biographical determinations and contradictions that inform the ideological and imaginary texture of a book. (shrink)

El Padre en el Antiguo TestamentoVivir la experiencia de ser Padre en la historia de la humanidad ha sido siempre un gran desafió. A través de los testimonios de diversas culturas es posible rescatar los significados y características del ser padre, desde ser administrador de los conocimientos ancestrales y la comunicación con la divinidad, los ciclos de la tierra, los tiempos de siembra y cosecha, los tiempos de las artes y los tiempos de la guerra. Así reconocemos las aracterísticas del (...) .. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The focus of this essay is Kant's argument in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals III that regarding oneself as rational implies regarding oneself as free. After setting out an interpretation of how the argument is meant to go, I argue that Kant fails to show that regarding oneself as free is incompatible with accepting universal causal determinism. However, I suggest that the argument succeeds in showing that regarding oneself as rational is inconsistent with accepting universal causal determinism (...) if one accepts a certain, plausible view of the explanation of events. RESUMEN El ensayo se enfoca en el argumento de Kant en la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres III según el cual considerarse racional implica verse a uno mismo como libre. Se interpreta la forma en que debe entenderse el argumento y se afirma que Kant no logra demostrar que considerarse libre es incompatible con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal. No obstante, se sugiere que el argumento sí logra demostrar que considerarse a uno mismo como racional es incompatible con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal, si se acepta una cierta versión plausible de la explicación de los eventos. (shrink)

In this essay, Stefano Oliverio engages with the question of how to think about education in times of climate change and the “intrusion of Gaia” by establishing a dialogue between Bruno Latour's political ecology and John Dewey's appeal to the need to bring a genuine Copernican revolution to fruition. Oliverio argues that the panoply of conceptual tools Dewey fashioned by recognizing the influence of Darwin on philosophy not only maintains its topicality but can be fruitfully deployed to make (...) sense of our contemporary condition and to frame an earthbound education. On the other hand, the encounter with the views of contemporary thinkers reflecting on the New Climate Regime and the endeavors it invokes may help us to recontextualize the Deweyan heritage in order to “face Gaia.” In this horizon, the idea of the school as a site of collective inquiry is acclimatized to the new existential situation, and its significance in promoting an art of the learning of attention to contrast the contemporary negligence and risk of barbarism is vindicated. (shrink)

In this paper, I will establish a conversation between Rorty and the recent proposal of post-critical pedagogy. The assumption is that through this dialogue some tenets of the latter could find a Rortyan redescription that avoids the risk of ‘metaphysical’ formulations, whereas Rorty’s ideas can increase in their relevance with respect to education thanks to the post-critical perspective. In particular, the conversation will develop by focusing on the shared attitude towards the critical-negative attitude of poststructuralist thought, the significance of the (...) subject-matter in education and an interpretation of pedagogical hermeneutics (a key notion of post-critical pedagogy) through the lens of the Rortyan idea of edification. In the conclusion, by distinguishing two views of hope – an eventist and a transitionalist – it is argued that it is precisely in this theme, which seems to be a privileged meeting ground for Rorty and post-critical pedagogy, that there may lie a major fault line. (shrink)

In this paper, the endeavour to understand how to think of education ‘after progress’, viz. in an age in which progress has become problematic, is undertaken by focusing on the theme of time. Dovetailing Klaus Mollenhauer’s reflections on the rise of the Bildungszeit at the dawn of modernity with Thomas Popkewitz’s analyses of ‘cosmopolitan time’ presiding over pedagogical reform from the 19th century to the present, I shall, first, explore this temporal configuration of modern schooling (which goes hand in hand (...) with a specific understanding of the child). Against this backdrop, I shall, second, advance an interpretive hypothesis, that of substituting what will be called the ‘child-as-migrant’ for the ‘cosmopolitan child’, by appropriating, in an educational key, some insights of Thomas Nail’s ‘migrant cosmopolitanism’. I shall thereby suggest an alternative view of ‘progressivity’, construed not along modern-developmentalist lines but as a form of non-conservativeness, linked with a recognition of the ekstatikon (that is, destabilizing) character of time. This will require a revisiting of some Aristotelian intuitions about time as the rhythm of movement, reinterpreted as the affective experience of that ek-statikon without which there is no potential for the new. Accordingly, ‘progressive’ education (in the different interpretation investigated here) is the concern to allow all of us as ‘migrants’ to live actively in the abode of our ek-static and unpredictable condition and, therefore, to be vulnerable to the new, without merely remaining in a taken-for-granted ethos, cosmopolitan, inclusive, and progress-oriented though it may be. (Editor's note: This paper forms part of the suite entitled ‘Education After Progress’.). (shrink)

En el artículo realizaré un estudio de algunos pasajes de Troyanas de Eurípides, en busca de posibles sentidos de justicia en el texto. En primer lugar, analizaré el pacto realizado entre Poseidón y Atenea en la primera parte del prólogo ; a continuación, me concentraré en la paradójica intervención de Casandra, antes de ser embarcada como esclava de Agamenón ; para terminar, resaltaré algunos puntos del agón entre Hécuba y Helena, que tiene como juez a Menelao. Considero que en estos (...) pasajes hay alguna alusión a débiles concepciones de justicia, aunque llegaré a conclusiones pesimistas al respecto. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to the outlining of the philosophical and epistemological status of post-critical pedagogy in the light of the body of scholarship (both positive and negative) that has, in the last few years, already grown in relation to this theoretical project. The article invites readers to follow its authors on a stroll in ‘Post-Criticalland’. Moreover, the article raises the question of whether post-critique is a new paradigm or merely a different attitude within the critical (...) tradition. The authors conclude by arguing for a principle of complementarity and for practices of diplomatic negotiation, on the grounds that post-critique should not be construed as dependent on critique but as complementary to it and as deserving a time and space of its own. (shrink)

After outlining the renascent interest in teaching within contemporary educational theory, the present paper engages with a reflection on teaching beyond the predominant learnification and the related emphasis on efficacy as a primary value. In this endeavour, the theme of teachers’ demoralization is introduced in a philosophical-educational key, by deploying an existential perspective. Within this horizon, a special focus is on failure construed as intimately linked with the ‘essence’ of education qua an encounter of free beings and as a possibility (...) inherent to the dignity of teaching. In conclusion, some implications of this recognition of the ‘significance’ of failure are indicated in regard to teacher education. (shrink)

In her recent much-debated manifesto for Socratic education, Martha Nussbaum (2010) makes two statements seemingly dissonant with each other: on the one hand, she recognizes in Dewey "a thinker who brought Socrates into virtually every American classroom" (p. 64); on the other hand, she points out that "Dewey, however, never addressed systematically the question of how Socratic critical reasoning might be taught to children of various ages" (p. 73). The latter remark works as a sort of springboard to the introduction (...) of Matthew Lipman's curriculum as a "source of practical guidance" for teachers "who want to teach Socratically" (p. 73).We could rephrase such a double position in the evaluation of Dewey's .. (shrink)

Dijkstra and Scholten have proposed a formalization of classical predicate logic on a novel deductive system as an alternative to Hilbert's style of proof and Gentzen's deductive systems. In this context we call it CED (Calculus of Equational Deduction). This deductive method promotes logical equivalence over implication and shows that there are easy ways to prove predicate formulas without the introduction of hypotheses or metamathematical tools such as the deduction theorem. Moreover, syntactic considerations (in Dijkstra's words, "letting the symbols do (...) the work") have led to the "calculational style," an impressive array of techniques for elegant proof constructions. In this paper, we formalize intuitionistic predicate logic according to CED with similar success. In this system (I-CED), we prove Leibniz's principle for intuitionistic logic and also prove that any (intuitionistic) valid formula of predicate logic can be proved in I-CED. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore Rorty’s recommendation to shift from a philosophical to a literary culture by addressing this theme through a philosophical-educational lens and in reference to the question of what kind of education we need in order to foster democratic ethos. In this perspective, I will establish a comparison/contrast between Rorty’s idea of sentimental education and Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children understood as two (alternative?) ways of recontextualizing Dewey’s heritage. After discussing Rorty’s understanding of a need for (...) an end (instead of a “Deweyan” recovery) of philosophy starting from his dialogue with Castoriadis and by reconstructing his appeal to a poeticized culture, I will present Lipman’s case for education for philosophical inquiry in order to cultivate a democratic ethos in primary and secondary schools. I will contrast it with Rorty’s education as socialization and, contextually, I will illustrate their different stances towards Hirsch’s cultural literacy and his core curriculum approach to civic education. Finally, after problematizing Rorty’s views on the use of literature for a democratic culture, I will indicate the need to combine the Rortyan and Lipmanian thrusts and will claim that an aspect of the novel-driven education advocated by Rorty maintains a constitutive Socratic-inquiring dimension. (shrink)

In this paper I take my cue from what I suggest calling “the Adamitic modernity.” By this phrase I endeavor to capture a specific ‘removal’ of childhood that occurs in the Cartesian gesture of the enthroning of Reason. By drawing upon a reading of the major philosophical works of Descartes, I will argue that one of the main thrusts of his conceptual device is a deep-seated, and even anguished, mistrust of childhood and its errors. To put it in a nutshell: (...) in the Cartesian modernity philosophy/science and childhood are at odds with each other. In the second step of my argumentation, I will show in what sense Dewey rehabilitates childhood and its form of experience by, thus, healing the rift between childhood and science. This notwithstanding, Dewey was not ready to take the decisive step of thinking of a philosophy for children. Precisely by activating and developing the significance of qualitative thought, Matthew Lipman was able, instead, to progress beyond Dewey. In this perspective, I will show how Lipman and Ann Sharp, while walking in Dewey’s footsteps as far as their non-Cartesian interpretation of childhood is concerned, part company with him in their educational take on philosophy and on how this results in a revamping of the way of construing the Deweyan relationship between the child and the curriculum. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis introduction outlines the rationale of the symposium 'Vocabularies of Hope in Place of Vocabularies of Critique: Can Rorty Help Us to Redescribe Education?'. In particular, it argues that, despite some early statements of Richard Rorty, he may turn out to be a particularly timely thinker in reference to debates occurring in the field of educational theory and philosophy, especially by suggesting an engagement with the latter through vocabularies of hope. Moreover, after highlighting that a valuable dialogue may be established (...) between Rorty's stance and post-critical pedagogy, the introduction describes in broad strokes along which lines this conversation will unfold in the three papers and one response composing the symposium. (shrink)

Who owns nature? The answer to this question opens the way to a series of investigations on the civilizational crisis generated by human beings, which we echo in this issue. The question, from its philosophical point of view, considers both our understanding as human beings and the foundations of the current civilization, which has created a wide justificatory repertoire, from which it legitimizes the monopolization, exploitation and enslavement of all non-human nature.

El artículo analiza la reactivación, para la Ética, de la pregunta por la importancia de la amistad. En una primera parte analiza desde diversas perspectivas las críticas cada vez más fuertes a las teorías éticas imparcialistas y universalistas, que han suscitado a su vez el renacimiento del tratamiento de la amistad como fenómeno moral; dicho análisis pretende también llamar la atención sobre diversos puntos críticos de las llamadas teorías de la amistad. En una segunda parte se analiza el modelo aristotélico (...) de las amistades virtuosas, mostrando la estructura de este tipo de amistad y su relación con la ética, para resaltar así algunos puntos de la teoría aristotélica de la amistad que pueden ser de ayuda para una mejor comprensión del problema hoy en día. (shrink)

Dijkstra and Scholten have proposed a formalization of classical predicate logic on a novel deductive system as an alternative to Hilbert's style of proof and Gentzen's deductive systems. In this context we call it CED . This deductive method promotes logical equivalence over implication and shows that there are easy ways to prove predicate formulas without the introduction of hypotheses or metamathematical tools such as the deduction theorem. Moreover, syntactic considerations have led to the "calculational style," an impressive array of (...) techniques for elegant proof constructions. In this paper, we formalize intuitionistic predicate logic according to CED with similar success. In this system , we prove Leibniz's principle for intuitionistic logic and also prove that any valid formula of predicate logic can be proved in I-CED. (shrink)

El siguiente texto aborda la poesía de Carlos Fajardo Fajardo, cuya obra sólida, rigurosa y de estupenda factura, lo sitúa entre uno de los poetas más representativos de la actual poesía colombiana. El texto muestra las constantes poéticas de Fajardo, sus propuestas estéticas e influencias, rastreando la sugerente lucidez y la exquisita sensibilidad que habitan en sus poemas.

Este artículo busca situar la dicotomía entre leer y escribir, mediante una apropiación crítica de estos dos conceptos. Ambos participan de una doble implicación sin que uno pueda prescindir del otro y viceversa. La lectura y la escritura se aproximan como ejes de discusión a una definición intelectual de lector y de investigador, aspecto en el que constituyen un oficio de creación contingente y continua. Consecuente con esto, leer y escribir son en este caso objetos conjugados de un análisis que (...) tangencialmente recupera la exégesis sobre la teoría comunicativa, pertinente y posible para una crítica conceptual y sustancialmente creativa. (shrink)

In this paper, I will endeavour to revisit a central theme of Dewey’s Experience and Education and show its continuing relevance by contextualizing it within a momentous issue in education today. More specifically, I will attempt to proceed along the path of Dewey’s engagement with progressive education by marshalling some of his arguments in discussing what I will call—with a touch of irony—a techno-revolutionary tone recently adopted in education. It is appropriate to specify in advance what I mean by this (...) expression. Nobody can gainsay that we are facing major developments in technology and in the human ways of producing, organizing, and disseminating knowledge, and that we must draw important.. (shrink)

1. A Travelling Classic On the centennial anniversary of the publication of Dewey’s Democracy and Education (New York, Macmillan, 1916) this symposium (including contributions from European and non European scholars) explores both the epoch-making significance and the topicality of the ideas in Dewey’s masterpiece for the development of European educational reflection. Democracy and Education has frequently been represented as a turning point in educational discourse, inaugurating a radically...

This paper engages with Italo Calvino’s lecture on Visibility, included in his last—and testamentary—volume Six Memos, by understanding it in an educational and pedagogical key. While the question of pedagogy is expressly addressed by Calvino himself in his lecture, the interpretation here provided is not merely an application of his tenets but an elaboration on and an autonomous development of them. In particular, in the spotlight there is the intimate bond image-cum-writing which seems to preside over Calvino’s insights and is (...) here suggested as key to tackling the challenges of the contemporary mediascape and the “tautological vision” dominating therein. While a part of the educational discourse invokes “homeostatic” pedagogical solutions, namely the (ultimately confrontational) deployment of writing to compensate for the iconic ruling regime, this paper explores the possibility of a specific kind of visual education (instantiated by comics and Otto Neurath’s Isotype), which combines the role of the image with some features traditionally attributed to the pedagogy of writing (e.g. the cultivation of abilities of abstraction, of reflection etc.). A pedagogy of figuration is, accordingly, proposed as an interruption of the tautological vision of the new media and as conducive to educating readers of the unwritten world and of the world of digital images, Mr. Palomar—the hero of Calvino’s last novel—possibly being the archetype of this kind of (new?) readership. By referring to two influential notions in the contemporary debate in educational philosophy and theory, this pedagogy is finally interpreted in term of (visual) thing-centredness rather than (visual) subjectification. (shrink)

Starting from two passages of the autobiography of Lipman, which represent the description of a sort of ‘primary scene’ of P4C, the presented paper shows how the Deweyan notion of qualitative thought is pivotal for the entire Lipmanian undertaking. Dewey’s distinction between ‘situation’ and ‘object’ in thinking is read into the Lipman differentiation of schemata and concepts and used to analyze the reasons for which narrative comes to play a crucial role in the project of education for thinking. The mobilization (...) of narrative entails a movement of turning the history of philosophy inside out, which may be considered the major achievement of Lipman. This movement is opposite to that of mere historicization and can also be construed in terms of ‘dramatization,’ culminating in the Bildung. (shrink)

Starting from a suggestion of Stephen Toulmin and through an interpretation of the criticism to which Neurath, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, submits Descartes’ views on science, the paper attempts to outline a pattern of modernity opposed to the Cartesian one, that has been obtaining over the last four centuries. In particular, it is argued that a new alliance has to be established between science and education, overcoming Descartes’ banishment against education. In a Neurathian perspective education is (...) a key-moment of the scientific enterprise without which science itself is in danger of going astray and no scientific outlook is promoted in the society at large. Such an anti-Cartesian attitude is a leitmotiv of the whole Neurath’s production and characterizes his fundamental approach to the sense of modernity. For this reasons, despite all its shortcomings, Neurath’s proposal represents a very promising option for a new agenda of the modernity away from Descartes’ spell. By elaborating on Neurath’s (and Dewey’s) insights, the paper puts forward the idea that philosophy of science (such as it was originated by neopositivism in its Reichenbachian version) should give way to an educational philosophy of science which could allow us “to bring the genuine modern into existence”. (shrink)

The paper discusses the characteristics of Biological Intelligence (BI) and its differences with artificial intelligence. In particular the plasticity of the nervous system is considered in the different forms with special attention to deterministic and localizationist views of the brain vs holistic approaches. When memory and learning are considered the localizationist views do not offer a possible solution to a number of problems while memory may be better conceptualized in terms of categorization procedures and generalizing strategies. Finally, the problem of (...) individual variability, an important feature in terms of BI, is considered. The legitimacy of analogies between BI and AI is discussed and the necessity for an innovative approach to the field of AI is stressed. (shrink)

The proposed paper situates the question about the ‘success’ of the P4C program within the ‘what works’ debate which has taken place in the Anglo-American educational community over the last 15 years. Against this backdrop, the cultural significance of P4C is highlighted and a special focus is devoted to how P4C has changed (or should have changed) the practice of teaching. Finally, the P4C-oriented teaching of disciplines is indicated as a possible promising way out of the current educational predicament marked (...) by the detraditionalization and individualization of knowledge. (shrink)

The paper takes its cue from the emergence in our society of a new view of the adolescent, which a branch of the psychological literature has spelled out in terms of a passage from Oedipus to Narcissus. It is argued that pre-college ethics education should engage with this passage by deploying educational strategies modelled according to the Care of the Self paradigm but revisiting it through Kierkegaard’s idea of repetition. The latter prevents that paradigm from fostering a sort of aestheticization (...) of ethical life and allows us to mobilize it in ethics education. Against this backdrop two pedagogical methods—autobiographical writing and essay writing—are discussed as possible tools for a Care-of-the-Self-oriented education. (shrink)

A decade ago the German sociologist Ulrich Beck seemed to consign democracy to the past and, significantly, drew upon an ironically religion-inspired vocabulary:Democracy becomes the religion of the past epoch. One still practises it—on Sunday or on Christmas under the ‘Christmas tree’ of polls. But no one really still believes in it. It is the dead God of the first modernity.1When Ulrich Beck dismisses democracy as “the dead god” of a past era or as a liturgy drained of any substantial (...) meaning, he misses the target principally in reference to modernity: indeed, from a Deweyan perspective, if democracy is really going to expire it may be not because of the end of modernity but precisely because modernity is “as .. (shrink)