El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar algunos de los documentos normativo-institucionales que regulan los valores éticos que identifican la conducta de los servidores públicos de México, Chile y Colombia, con el fin de conocer sus similitudes y diferencias, para lo cual utilizaremos el método comparado; desde luego, sin profundizar en éste con todo su rigor, dadas las características propias de este ensayo. Los tres países heredaron los valores de los padres del Contrato Social, sin embargo, estos han sido histórica, (...) política, social y culturalmente cuestionados por muchos motivos, en especial, por la enorme infuencia de la doctrina neoliberal. (shrink)

Corporations perform actions that can inflict harm with different levels of intensity, from death to material loss, to both companies’ internal and external stakeholders. Research has analysed corporate harm using the notions of corporate social irresponsibility and corporate crime. Critical management studies have been subjecting management and organizational practices and knowledge to critical analysis, and corporate harm has been one of the main concerns of CMS. However, CMS has rarely been deployed to analyse CSIR and corporate crime. Thus, the aim (...) of this paper is to critically analyse the perspectives of CSIR and corporate crimes on corporate harm via CMS in general and postcolonial studies in particular. The paper contributes by arguing that research on CSIR and corporate crime could be perceived as producing research that does not challenge the essence of contemporary corporation profit-seeking activities that ultimately produces corporate harm. We argue that CSIR and corporate crime are ideologies that assist in disguising the contradiction between producing shareholder value and the social good that is at the heart of the modern corporation system and the current economic system. Furthermore, the postcolonial view of CSIR and corporate crime highlights how they are based on a Western-centric view of corporate harm that ignores the realities and perspectives of the Global South, especially in situations where corporate harm leads to death in the Global South. (shrink)

The Gongsun Longzi is often considered the only extant work of the Classical Chinese “School of Names”, an early intellectual tradition mainly concerned with logic and the philosophy of language. The Gongsun Longzi is a heterogeneous collection of five chapters that include short treatises and largely fictive dialogues between an anonymous persuader and his opponent, which typically revolve around a paradoxical claim. Its value as a testimony to Early Chinese philosophy, however, is somewhat controversial due to the intricate textual history (...) of the text and our limited knowledge about its intellectual backgrounds. This volume gathers contributions by leading specialists in the fields of Classical Chinese philosophy, philology, logic, and linguistics. Besides an overview of the scholarly literature on the topic and a detailed account of the reception of the text throughout time, it presents fresh insights into philological and philosophical problems raised by the Gongsun Longzi and other closely-related texts equally attributed to the “School of Names”. (shrink)

Na década de 20 do século passado, época do aparecimento de _Ser e tempo, _Heidegger posiciona-se veementemente contra o modelo _teórico-cognitivo _de sujeito-objeto, problematizando, assim, a hegemonia da teoria do conhecimento na filosofia.Contra este paradigma, o filósofo alemão traz à tona um modo original de abordar a lida mais primária do _Dasein_ no mundo, cuja primazia recai em um sentido _prático, _por assim dizer.Neste sentido, nosso objetivo reside em explicitar, a partir do pensamento heideggeriano, a relação mais primária que o (...) _Dasein_ estabelece com o mundo, a saber: uma relação de familiaridade prático-originária.Para tanto, investiga-se o pensamento de Martin Heidegger em sua primeira fase, notadamente a sua obra-mestra: _Ser e tempo_, de 1927.Na obra, o filósofo alemão explicita que o mundo que preliminarmente se apresenta ao _Dasein_ e com o qual ele se relaciona não é de ordem teórica, no sentido de relação cognoscitiva, mas, isto sim: é o da práxis cotidiana, da postura prática, isto é, o mundo circundante, no qual o _Dasein_, enquanto ser-no-mundo de compreensão pré-teórica, dispensa a postura temática explícita como secundária – isto é, _derivada_, portanto, não fundamental da constituição humana.Neste sentido, nota-se que o ser-no-mundo, conforme indica _Ser e tempo_, consiste em um empenho prático, por isso mais originário, guiado por uma visão circundante que contempla a articulação de entes intramundanos os quais formam, no limite, um contexto no qual o mundo circundante se anuncia. (shrink)

The paper presents, firstly, a brief review of the long history\nof information ethics beginning with the Greek concept of parrhesia\nor freedom of speech as analyzed by Michel Foucault. The recent concept\nof information ethics is related particularly to problems which arose\nin the last century with the development of computer technology and\nthe internet. A broader concept of information ethics as dealing\nwith the digital reconstruction of all possible phenomena leads to\nquestions relating to digital ontology. Following Heidegger{\textquoteright}s\nconception of the relation between ontology and metaphysics, (...) the\nauthor argues that ontology has to do with Being itself and not just\nwith the Being of beings which is the matter of metaphysics. The\nprimary aim of an ontological foundation of information ethics is\nto question the metaphysical ambitions of digital ontology understood\nas today{\textquoteright}s pervading understanding of Being. The\nauthor analyzes some challenges of digital technology, particularly\nwith regard to the moral status of digital agents. The author argues\nthat information ethics does not only deal with ethical questions\nrelating to the infosphere. This view is contrasted with arguments\npresented by Luciano Floridi on the foundation of information ethics\nas well as on the moral status of digital agents. It is argued that\na reductionist view of the human body as digital data overlooks the\nlimits of digital ontology and gives up one basis for ethical orientation.\nFinally issues related to the digital divide as well as to intercultural\naspects of information ethics are explored {\textendash} and long\nand short-term agendas for appropriate responses are presented. (shrink)

Populist representation is the process by which a body or set of bodies become the signifier of a powerful act of political transgression of the social order. We call this specific type of representative linkage ‘synecdochal representation’. In it, the leader’s body performs three key functions: it mirrors certain popular traits that are characterized as ‘low’, it displays marks of exceptionality, and it appropriates symbols of institutional power. These tasks are performed through particular ways of acting, dressing, talking, eating, and (...) the like, in public. Social media has become a key locus for bodily self-presentation because it is used to create the appearance of intimacy and spontaneity through the distribution of ‘candid’ pictures and videos. This paper will analyze how the self-presentation of populist and non-populist leaders are established through Twitter, what images they choose to disseminate, and how they are re-signified by the audience. To do so, we will focus on the two Latin American politicians: Cristina Fernández (with a populist style) and Mauricio Macri (with a technocratic one). (shrink)

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: nayra (“front”) and qhipa (“back”), denoting east and west, respectively. Why? We use different but complementary ethnographic methods to investigate the nature of this encoding: (a) linguistic expressions and speech–gesture co-production, (b) linguistic patterns in the distinct regional Spanish-based variety Castellano Andino (...) (CA), (c) metaphorical extensions of CA’s spatial patterns to temporal ones, and (d) layouts of traditional houses. Findings indicate that, following fundamental principles of Aymara cosmology, people, objects, and land—as a whole—are conceived as having an implicit canonical orientation facing east, a primary landmark determined by the sunrise. The above bodily based lexicalizations are thus linguistic manifestations of a broader macro-cultural worldview and its psycho-cognitive reality. (shrink)

Contentions about the origin of early modern empiricism have been floating about at least since the 1980s, where its exclusive “Britishness” was initially question, and the name of Gassendi was provocatively put forward as the putative “founder” of the current to the detriment of Francis Bacon. Recent scholarship has shown that early modern empiricism did not derive from philosophical speculation exclusively but had multiple sources and “foundations.” Yet, from a historical viewpoint, the question whether Bacon’s method had any influence on (...) the origin and development of Gassendi’s version of empiricism still carries significance, for its answer may open up different views on how the relation between British and “continental” empiricisms shall be framed. In this paper, I deal with Gassendi’s reception of Bacon. On the basis of a deep examination of Gassendi’s corpus, I contend that there is no trace of a consistent influence of Bacon on Gassendi’s empiricism before 1650s; although I show that an indirect influence can be found through the mediation of Peiresc, I put forward the hypothesis that it was more the empirical attitude characterizing Peiresc’s intellectual figure, rather than his interest in Baconianism, to be relevant, along with Epicurus’ philosophy, for Gassendi’s early empiricism. I then analyze Gassendi’s treatment of Bacon’s logic in Gassendi’s Syntagma philosophicum. I show that despite Gassendi’s sympathy for Bacon’s project, his own logic lays on fundamentally different assumptions. Despite this, I argue for Gassendi’s reception of Bacon’s theory of the idols in Syntagma philosophicum. On this basis, I conclude by restating the untenability of “national” accounts of the rise of empiricism, and the importance of highlighting instead the sharing of ideas between its actors. (shrink)

What is the nature of number systems and arithmetic that we use in science for quantification, analysis, and modeling? I argue that number concepts and arithmetic are neither hardwired in the brain, nor do they exist out there in the universe. Innate subitizing and early cognitive preconditions for number— which we share with many other species—cannot provide the foundations for the precision, richness, and range of number concepts and simple arithmetic, let alone that of more complex mathematical concepts. Numbers and (...) arithmetic, and mathematics in general, have unique features—precision, objectivity, rigor, generalizability, stability, symbolizability, and applicability to the real world—that must be accounted for. They are sophisticated concepts that developed culturally only in recent human history. I suggest that numbers and arithmetic are realized through precise combinations of non-mathematical everyday cognitive mechanisms that make human imagination and abstraction possible. One such mechanism, conceptual metaphor, is a neurally instantiated inference-preserving cross-domain mapping that allows the conceptualization of abstract entities in terms of grounded bodily experience. I analyze how the inferential organization of the properties and “laws” of arithmetic emerge metaphorically from everyday meaningful actions. Numbers and arithmetic are thus—outside of natural selection—the product of the biologically constrained interaction of individuals with the appropriate cultural and historical phenotypic variation supported by language, writing systems, and education. (shrink)

Introduction Conatus is a specific concept within Descartes’s physics. In particular, it assumes a crucial importance in the purely mechanistic description of the nature of light – an issue that Des- cartes considered one of the most crucial challenges, and major achievements, of his natural phil- osophy. According to Descartes’s cosmology, the universe – understood as a material continuum in which there is no vacuum – is composed of a number of separate yet interconnected vortices. Each of these vortices consists (...) in a set of bands rotating around their centres. The bands are com- posed of corpuscles of the three elements, each distinguished on the basis of their different shapes and sizes. The small globules of the second element, although impeded by the other parts of heaven, strive to move away from the centre of the vortex around which they revolve, thus exerting a certain force against the surrounding bodies. This striving or conatus, though a mere force rather than a genuine motion, is transmitted instan- taneously and along straight lines from body to body. According to Descartes, then, the nature of light consists in this striving alone. This account must be understood as strictly connected to the fundamental laws that regulate the Cartesian world. It is particularly important to recall that for Descartes the centrifugal force exerted by a rotating body is understood to be a consequence of the intrinsic rectilinearity of every motion. As the second of the three Laws of Nature set forth in Book II of the Principles of Philosophy establishes, “all motion is in itself rectilinear; and hence any body moving in a circle tends to move away from the centre of the circle which it describes as proved by the fact that a stone rotating in a sling tends to move centrifugally along the tangent of each point described by a circle.1 Similarly, each of the globules of the second element “strives to recede with a great force from the centre of the vortex in which it rotates; it is in fact prevented by the other globules placed all around, not differently than a stone in a sling”. Within this framework, as I show later, conatus occurs when a body’s intrinsic tendency to rectilinear motion is impeded by an external constraint. As Stephen Gaukroger notes, the use of the term conatus in the Principles – like “vis” and “ action ” – shows that Descartes “cannot avoid dynamic terminology”, despite his declared intent “to construe motion in a purely kinematic way”. Indeed, Gaukroger observes that the notions of force action and striving are systematically employed in the Principles – appearing 290, 59 and 8 times, respectively. Also noteworthy, conatus was – together with the more familiar concepts of actio and vis – a significant element of the conceptual apparatus of Scholastic natural philosophy. As will be seen later – and this is the first goal of this paper – here the concept of conatus had a very specific function. Indeed, it was a central part of the Aristotelian- Scholastic account of gravitation. Conatus was used to refer to the striving of a body to move towards its natural place – especially in cases where its natural motion was hindered or impeded by an external mover. This specific use of the concept of conatus can be found in texts on natural philosophy from the end of the sixteenth through the late seventeenth century. Notably, it occurs in some of the late -Scho- lastic texts which held special significance for Descartes’s thought. Therefore, Descartes introduces conatus in a context in which this concept already had a very specific meaning, and one of which he was very probably aware. The possible relations between these two apparently very different con- cepts have therefore to be scrutinized. I thereby propose to undertake a comparison between the Scho- lastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. I hope to show that certain traits of the former are indeed echoed by the latter, although adapted to the much changed physical paradigm of Cartesian physics. In fact, Descartes’s conatus, though sharing some important similarities with the old one, underwent significant transformations in terms of both its meaning and its application. However, I hope to show that these concepts are both used to describe the behaviour of bodies in relation to their intrinsic motive tendency, and in particular when this tendency is impeded or prevented. Such a reconstruction offers two main areas of interest. On an immediate level, it furthers the general efforts of scholars over the past decades to reconstruct the full extent of the relations between Descartes’s thought and Scholastic philosophy. However, there is another significant reason for taking an interest in the ties between the Scholastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. Indeed, the Cartesian conatus must be seen as crucial to a proper understanding of the broader, diverse conceptualization that this idea enjoyed in the thought of many of the most important philosophers of the early modern period, namely Spinoza, Hobbes and Leibniz. In particular, Spinoza, were directly influenced by Descartes in their unique formulations of conatus. Thus a reconstruction of the context in which Descartes formulated his conatus and of its relations to a pre-existing Scholastic conception will enable us to better reconstruct the history of this idea in the early modern period. The paper is structured as follows: in the first part, I provide a thorough review of the Scho- lastic employment of the concept conatus – both its meaning and the extent of its usage. I then show that it occurs in some of the most prominent Cartesian sources. Finally, I shall provide an account of Descartes’s theory of circular motion and conatus with the specific aim of empha- sizing the elements of both continuity and discontinuity that justify the claim that Descartes’s con- ception of conatus is reminiscent of the Scholastic one. (shrink)

Lists the practical problems found in the manuscript of Book III of the Algebra which were not included in the printed text. The author believes that their omission reflects the influence of Bombelli's discovery of Diophantus.

El propósito de este artículo es el de indagar en los presupuestos conceptuales e históricos subyacentes al perdón colectivo. Dada la naturaleza híbrida – entre lo ético y lo político - de esta noción, diversos autores la han conceptualizado integrándola o bien en las prácticas de legitimación de la soberanía o, al contrario, en un espacio ético incompatible con las relaciones políticas. Ambas interpretaciones niegan la posibilidad de un perdón colectivo auténtico en el espacio público. Frente a ambas aproximaciones, reconstruiremos (...) diferentes argumentos para defender la fertilidad de dicha práctica ética en el interior de los procesos recientes de justicia transicional. (shrink)

Nuestra época, y seguramente la de las generaciones venideras, desarrolla su vida dentro de los lineamientos trazados por la Carta Política, esto resulta un axioma. Pero no siempre fue así, mucho camino se ha tenido que labrar para llegar a consolidar la realidad que atravesamos. Nuestra actual concepción de la Constitución es producto de muchos años de práctica socio – política y de actividad teórica, y este ensayo pretende, de una manera genérica, por supuesto, mostrar cómo se ha formado este (...) concepto de Constitución en la cultura jurídica moderna, siendo consecuentes con los elementos teóricos del Estado Social de Derecho. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2008v12n2p193 In this paper I claim that the bias to pass from the acknowledgement of the explanatory virtues of a hypothesis to the belief that it is true or approximate to the truth is so strong that scientific realists can hardly elude that temptation. For that reason, some philosophers, like McMullin and Okasha, following Peirce and Hanson, participate of the conviction that the skill of founding scientific explanations bears the ability of founding true theories. But, this way, they pass the (...) limits that they themselves had fixed and their attempt to overcome objections like the one which was formulated by van Fraassen against the inference to the best explanation fails. (shrink)

This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements – epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities (...) with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a “monstrous” birth as “contingent”, a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the analysis of the relationship between Davidson’s classical essays in Philosophy of Language and the thesis he developed with the article “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs”. I shall argue that the idea of language defended by Davidson in the eighties doesn’t present similarities with Wittgenstein’s approach, as it is assumed by some scholars. In this respect, I reject the idea according to which we should assume the existence of an “early” and a “later” Donald Davidson (...) after the publication of “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs”. By analyzing his works, I will show that the main elements of his theory of meaning remain unchanged and that there are no radical changes in Davidson’s philosophical perspective on language and meaning. (shrink)

According to the thesis of powerism, our world is pervaded by causal powers which are metaphysically basic. The aim of this paper is to defend the existence of the self, defined as a substantial entity, and its mental powers. This claim, which may seem a bold one, should not be deemed as inconsistent with scientific evidence. In fact, this approach does not ignore empirical knowledge, but is not bound only to it in order to understand entities, properties, and the relationship (...) between them. Aristotelian powerism may show that the self, as the subject of one’s mental acts, is a substance that has an essential nature. Firstly, we shall analyze the immediate evidence we have in support of the existence of the self as a substantial entity. We will show that the self is a substance because it possesses an essential character, i.e. an individual essence. We will take into account the Aristotelian perspective of substance, trying to show how the presence of a necessary property that makes every subject identical to itself and the phenomenal features of one’s private experience point to the existence of a substantial entity that corresponds to the self. Secondly, we will try to justify the adoption of a metaphysical theory of causation based on powers, analyzing it in comparison with the main competing theories, namely hypotheticalism and nomism. Then, we shall proceed to show the causal properties of the substance in question, namely the mental powers. In fact, thirdly, we will embrace the thesis of powerism by defending the existence of a set of mental powers that should be attributed to the self. We will describe the main features of mental powers and we will show that they are conceivable as the pure intentional acts we perform by directing an intentional state towards an intentional object. In this way we show how a classic problem of philosophy of mind, relevant to science as well, can be addressed in an original way by a metaphysical approach involving powers. (shrink)

This article presents the Gabriel Tarde’s monadology and imitation philosophy to show its complementarity in the constitution of a “universal sociological point of view”, the sociological interpretation of all phenomena, material, biological and human. On the one hand Tarde establishes a neo-monadology by opening Leibniz's closed monads. The open monads constitutes, through their mutual possessions, the agreements and harmonies that Leibniz explained by the system of pre-established harmony. These agreements are monadic societies of many types who explain the constitution of (...) any phenomenon. On the other hand Tarde tries, through its imitation philosophy, to provide a scientific substrate to an emerging sociology, taking the imitation as the anthropological aspect of an associative activity that is present in the entire cosmos. Thus, trying to purify to depurate the social science’s own subject, Tarde find a kind of causality that, for the clarity by which she offers itself to the observer on the human societies, is extended to the entire nature, illuminating the obscure and inaccessible background in which the monadic associations take place. (shrink)

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always (...) takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous. (shrink)

El crecimiento y el desarrollo de la complejidad cultural a lo largo de la historia humana, poseen la forma de una espiral en movimiento que se abre a las posibilidades; desde un punto se extienden una serie de círculos concéntricos que amplían el espectro cultural. Esta apertura la podemos percibir desde un concepto clave en la obra wittgensteineana, a saber, la noción de ver aspectos. Por otra parte, con ella también podemos distinguir y entender otro punto clave en esa dinámica (...) cultural, ello es: la idea de cambio y conflicto social. Así pues, la idea del presente trabajo es mostrar las estructuras epistémicas con las que operan los conflictos y los cambios socioculturales -tan relevantes para el desarrollo social y la teoría antropológica-, tomando como fondo la idea wittgensteineana de visión de aspectos. Con lo que encontramos, que el presente artículo además de ser una contribución al “estudio cultural” con base en un interés epistemológico, pretende vincular la filosofía wittgensteineana con la antropología científica.Palabras clave: Visión de aspectos, conflicto, cambio social, Wittgenstein, epistemología.The growth and development of cultural complexity throughout human history has had the form of a moving spiral that opens to possibilities; from one point, a series of concentric circles is extended that expand the cultural spectrum. This opening can be perceived from a key concept in Wittgenstein’s thought, namely, the notion of seeing aspects. On the other hand, with this concept we can also identify and understand another key point in that cultural dynamic: the idea of change and social conflict. Thus, the idea of this paper is to show the epistemic structures through which conflicts and socio-cultural changes operate, which are so relevant to social development and the anthropological theory, taking the Wittgensteinian idea of seeing aspects as a background. This article is not only a contribution to “cultural study” based on an epistemological interest, but it also tries to link Wittgenstein’s philosophy with scientific anthropology.Key words: Vision of aspects, conflict, social change, Wittgenstein, epistemology. (shrink)

Instrumental variables allow for quantification of cause and effect relationships even in the absence of interventions. To achieve this, a number of causal assumptions must be met, the most important of which is the independence assumption, which states that the instrument and any confounding factor must be independent. However, if this independence condition is not met, can we still work with imperfect instrumental variables? Imperfect instruments can manifest themselves by violations of the instrumental inequalities that constrain the set of correlations (...) in the scenario. In this article, we establish a quantitative relationship between such violations of instrumental inequalities and the minimal amount of measurement dependence required to explain them for the case of discrete observed variables. As a result, we provide adapted inequalities that are valid in the presence of a relaxed measurement dependence assumption in the instrumental scenario. This allows for the adaptation of existing and new lower bounds on the average causal effect for instrumental scenarios with binary outcomes. Finally, we discuss our findings in the context of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

La lógica modal epistémica estándar se ha constituido en una herramienta realmente útil para los estudiosos interesados en la descripción formal de diferentes nociones epistémicas, tales como las de conocimiento y creencia, que desempeñan un importante papel en muchos estudios ? losó? cos. En este trabajo se muestra cómo el mayor poder expresivo de las modalidades graduadas puede ser utilizado en la lógica epistémica para poder hacer referencia a un tipo de conocimiento que no es siempre absolutamente verdadero, sino que (...) puede admitir excepciones e incertidumbre. (shrink)

This article discusses how some childhood senses have been triggered in the confrontations about the legitimacy of gender and sexuality themes in education, considering the contemporary scenario in the country. For this, we aim to analyze two practical-discursive pitfalls that have been consolidated. The first, forged by the actors of the anti-gender offensive, consists of the narrative construction of vulnerable children, to be protected, and triggers moral panic against discussions about gender and sexuality in schools. The second, more subtle trap, (...) concerns the place of the passivity of students in the school context, which are the subject of instruction by teachers - including when gender and sexuality issues are addressed in the classroom. The image of a child-prisoner of the “gender ideologues”, passive and in danger, populates the statements analyzed in the first session, and allows us to discuss the political uses mitigated by the hyperinflation of this idea of child vulnerability. However, even in educational practices that focus on working with issues of gender and sexuality in school contexts, we observe that minority can be thought of in conservative perspectives and without agency, as discussed in the second session. To tension these logics, we point out the dimension of playfulness and play as conceptual and methodological tools that can contribute to a non-pedagogical approach to sexuality and gender in the field of education. (shrink)