Iberian Philosophy

El objetivo de esta nota es mostrar que no hay ningún motivo para llamar irracionalista a Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno puso límites a la razón y rechazó lo que, a su juicio, constituía una violación de dichos límites (el cientificismo y el intelectualismo), pero en ningún momento despreció el uso de la razón.

Este artículo tiene como finalidad exponer la interpretación del joven Zubiri de la filosofía de Husserl expuesta en su Memoria de Licenciatura (Lovaina) y en su Tesis de Doctorado (Madrid). La comprensión de este primer proyecto filosófico resulta esencial para entender el pensamiento maduro del filósofo español. Al mismo tiempo, nuestro estudio intenta determinar la pertenencia de Zubiri al movimiento fenomenológico. Por último, definimos esta primera filosofía zubiriana como una filosofía de la objetividad pura o dicho de manera más breve; (...) un objetivismo. This paper aims to expose the young Zubiri's interpretation of philosophy of Husserl. Zubiri exhibits this interpretation in his undergraduate Thesis (Leuven) and his PhD Thesis (Madrid). The understanding of this first philosophical project is essential to understand the mature thinking of the Spanish philosopher. At the same time, our study attempts to determine Zubiri's membership in the phenomenological movement. Finally, we define this Zubiri’s early philosophy as a philosophy of pure objectivity or said more briefly; an objectivism. -/- . (shrink)

An early modern scholastic conception of moral possibility helps make sense of Descartes's own perplexing use of that concept and solves the exegetical puzzles surrounding Descartes's conflicting remarks about free will.

Democracy simply put, is the government of “the people”. There is no doubt that the rise of “the people” is now a principal political force in our contemporary world. Though democracy is largely celebrated today, Ortega y Gasset, in his book Revolt of the Masses thinks that it is an unfortunate incident. For him, the masses, regrettably, are vulgar. The masses are drunken by the possibilities that contemporary science has made feasible on one hand. Then again, their obscenity keeps them (...) from realizing what to do with the conceivable outcomes. So, the masses float. The masses don't comprehend the past. This absence of knowledge endangers the masses’ progress with negative potential outcomes, but they want to lead, rule and involve in government. The “revolt of the masses” is simply a rebellion of hysteria against reason in human activities. This paper attempts to look critically at Otega’s Revolt of the Masses and democracy. It then agrees that the rise of the people has caused lot of problems, and against democracy, Plato’s philosopher king should be advocated for. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este libro contiene guías prácticas para aprender filosofía y destinadas principalmente a estudiantes de Filosofía Social. Proporciona sugerencias de actividades y fotografías a utilizar en las investigaciones. El objetivo principal es ayudar a los estudiantes a encontrar formas de hacer filosofía como una experiencia vivida. Las actividades se basan en teorías pedagógicas y filosóficas que promueven el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico y complejo: Epistemología de la complejidad de Edgar Morin, las propuestas metodológicas de Matthew Lipman y la Antropología trascendental (...) de Leonardo Polo. ABSTRACT -/- This book contains practical guides to learn philosophy mainly for students of Social Philosophy. It provides suggestions of activities and photographs to use in the enquiries. The main objective is helping students to find ways to make philosophy as a lived experience. The activities are based in pedagogical and philosophical theories which promote the development of critical and complex thinking: Complexity epistemology of Edgar Morin, the Methodological proposals by Matthew Lipman and the Transcendental Anthropology of Leonardo Polo. (shrink)

This paper regards Leonardo Polo’s motivation for his proposal of a new method in metaphysics, the science of being. It is presented a brief comparison with similar motivations in the area of Thomistic thought. The three main points of the proposal are: the problem of the mental limit, the notion of habitual knowledge, the distinction between metaphysics and the transcendental anthropology.

Las actuales circunstancias políticas y culturales nos sumergen en una realidad paradojal, por un lado se exaltan la subjetividad, la autonomía, la independencia y al mismo tiempo se constriñen las libertades pretendiendo reducir todas las voluntades a una masa informe pero obediente al mandato de una conciencia colectiva omnipresente. Para una cabal comprensión de la realidad y alcances de la libertad humana se hace imprescindible entonces remitirnos a los horizontes de comprensión que nos brinda la Antropología, particularmente la Antropología Trascendental, (...) pues emerge como una respuesta clara, profunda y a grandes interrogantes de nuestro tiempo. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, the issue of the relationship between divine omniscience and human freedom has been the subject of a great debate in the context of Analytic Philosophy of Religion. Many authors have contributed to the debate by formulating some ‘solutions’, taking inspiration from the thought of classical authors (e.g. Boethius, Aquinas, Ockham). One of these, is inspired by Luis de Molina’s thought. The Author, therefore, aims to present the main theoretical thesis of this solution, following the development (...) in the various publications about this question. The Author also tries to show how the thought of Molina has beeen “translated” in contemporary discourse, the limits of the solution, and make understandable the transition occurred within the debate, which led to the Molinist solution and then to the Open Theism. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Durante mucho tiempo las investigaciones sociológicas se centraron en el término exclusión. Existe, sin embargo, un abuso del término designando como tales, situaciones que en realidad responden a la vulnerabilidad creada por la degradación de las relaciones de trabajo, por la precarización o la marginación. Éstas son propiamente situaciones bajo amenaza de exclusión pero no son exclusión propiamente dicha, pueden desembocar en ella pero dependen de otra lógica. La lógica de la exclusión procede por discriminaciones oficiales, la marginación se (...) produce por procesos de desestabilización. En este trabajo se realizará un análisis comparado entre dos perspectivas tan disímiles como las subyacentes en las políticas de inclusión aplicadas en Argentina y Leonardo Polo pues de la confrontación fructífera emergerán las condiciones de posibilidad para una auténtica inclusión social en las organizaciones. SUMMARY: From longtime ago, sociological researches focused on the Word exclusion abusing on it. The fact is that many situations considered as exclusion really are the effect of vulnerability due to degrade of job´s relationships, or due to marginal and precarious situations. Those are situations under danger of exclusion but they are not properly exclusion, those could to end in exclusion but those depend on a different logic which runs by official discriminations. Marginality is consequence of process of unbalances. This article intend to analyzes two different perspectives, that from political plans from Argentinian government and that from Leonardo Polo because it is possible to confront in a positive way and then, many possibilities for authentic social inclusion in organizations will emerge. (shrink)

Para Foucault las relaciones de dominación son el camino de acceso al análisis del poder. Cabe la pregunta si la relación de poder es lucha, enfrentamiento, guerra, siendo ésta última el motor de las instituciones y el orden en la visión foucaultiana de la realidad. Para responderla aparecen nociones como la del mal radical de Hanna Arendt o la de libertad de Leonardo Polo. Aún cuando se trata de posiciones filosóficas distintas todas ellas vislumbran que lo auténticamente radical en el (...) ser humano es la libertad. (shrink)

This article compares the alleged ‘neo-Parmenidian’ philosophy of Severino with the ‘anti-Parmenidean’ philosopher Polo. Following Polo’s view, Severino’s fundamental method is shown to consist in taking on Parmenides’ basic notion of identity and projecting it onto Hegel’s dialectic. On using the principle of non-contradiction, Severino recurs predominately to the mental operation of negation.

The radical evil. Notes on the revolt of masses. In his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant speaks about a radical evil present in the human being, a tendency to place before the desire with regard to the rational duty, which is impossible to tear up by the roots from the human nature. In The revolt of the masses, Ortega also speaks about an evil that is anyway present in the so called mass-man, in each one of us, (...) and that is not to eradicate. The aim of this paper is to read the book of Ortega y Gasset in dialogue with Kant. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers were the first to postulate the possibility of explaining nature in theoretical terms and to initiate attempts at this. With the rise of monotheistic religions of revelation claiming supremacy over human reason and envisaging a new world to come, studies of the natural order of the transient world were widely considered undesirable. Later, in the Middle Ages, the desire for human understanding of nature in terms of reason was revived. This article is concerned with the fundamental reversal (...) of attitudes, from “undesirable” to “desirable”, that eventually led into the foundations of modern science. One of the earliest, most ingenious and most interesting personalities involved was Eriugena, a theologian at the Court of Charles the Bald in the 9th century. Though understanding what we call nature is only one of the several aspects of his theological work, his line of thought implies a turn into a pro-scientific direction: the natural order is to be understood in abstract terms of ‘primordial causes’; understanding nature is considered to be the will of God; man encompasses the whole of creation in a physical as well as a mental sense. Basically similar ideas on the reconciliation of scientific rationality and monotheistic religions of revelation were conceived, independently and nearly simultaneously, by the Arab philosopher al-Kindi in Bagdad. Eriugena was more outspoken in his claim that reason is superior to authority. This claim is implicit in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa with his emphasis on human mental creativity as the image of God’s creativity; and it is the keynote of Galileo’s ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina’ some 800 years later, the manifesto expressing basic attitudes of modern science. -/- This article in English is based on the monography (in German): A. Gierer “Eriugena, al-Kindi, Nikolaus von Kues - Protagonisten einer wissenschaftsfreundlichen Wende im philosophischen und theologischen Denken”, Acta Historica Leopoldina 29 (1999), Barth Verlag in MVH Verlage Heidelberg, ISBN: 3-335-00652-6, which is also available online on this server. -/- -/- . (shrink)

In dieser Arbeit werden die Hauptbegriffe der Strukturalen Anthropologie von Lévi-Strauss analysiert: Struktur, Zeichen, Symbol und Mythos. Es wird die Frage aufgeworfen, ob ein vereintes Objekt der Anthropologie jenseits der verschiedenen Perspektiven der Sozialwissenschaften möglich ist. Die Trennung zwischen Ethnologie und Geschichte wird uns für die Fragestellung über ein allgemeines “menschliches Wesen” dienen. Dem Gegensatz zwischen Natur und Kultur gemäβ werden wir nach der positiven Rolle von Symbolen und Mythen als Gelenk zwischen diesen Extremen forschen. Letztlich werden wir die Grenze (...) der vermuteten Kontinuität zwischen Natur und Kultur durch die Rolle der Schrift erklären. Dazu dienen uns neben dem Werk von Lévi-Strauss auch die Werke der Autoren Cassirer, Rousseau, Eugeunio Trías, Gustavo Bueno und Derrida. (shrink)

It is necessarily true that water is H2O, but it is a contingent fact that there is any water at all. Water therefore seems ill suited to ground the necessary truth that water is H2O. One view traditionally attributed to Scotus and Henry of Ghent was that while water is contingent, the essence of water is necessary; hence, the essence of water can ground the so-called eternal truth that water is H2O. Francisco Suárez rejects this view on the grounds that (...) it contradicts the Christian doctrine of creation, according to which everything other than God was contingently created in time. Suárez’s own view of the eternal truths has proven elusive to commentators, but I argue that Suárez ultimately endorses a version of the view he rejects: essences ground the eternal truths. But this raises several puzzles: how is Suárez’s view distinct from the views traditionally ascribed to Scotus and Henry? How does Suárez’s view escape the argument from creation, which Suárez raises against his opponents? I argue that Suárez distinguishes between his view and his opponents’ view by saying that essences have “extrinsic being,” whereas his opponents claim that essences have “intrinsic being.” The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic being has not received much attention, but I argue that it marks an important fault line in scholastic thinking about the ontological status of non-existents. I argue that the notion of extrinsic being can be explicated in terms of ontological pluralism and grounding. The notion of extrinsic being helps differentiate Suárez’s view from his Scotistic and Henrician opponents, and it allows Suárez to respond to the creation argument he raises against his opponents. On my reading, Suárez’s solution to the problem of eternal truths turns out to be both highly original and philosophically satisfying. (shrink)

Averroes, considered to be the greatest Aristotelian commentator in the Middle Ages, has written three different types of commentary on almost all the works of this great philosopher: short, middle and long. These commentaries have been translated into Latin and Hebrew in the early period, and profoundly influenced both Medieval Europe and Jewish thought for centuries. The effect of Averroes in the West was to spread the whole of Europe under the name of Latin Averroism. The text what you have (...) consists of some remarks about the translation of the commentary on the ‘Book Alpha Meizon’, the second book of Averroes’ Tafsīr Mā Ba’d at-Tabī’a. (shrink)

A seventeenth-century scholastic attempt to restrict the truthmaker principle to positive truths.

During the seventeenth century the major cognitive faculties--sense, imagination, memory, and understanding or intellect--became the central focus of argument in metaphysics and epistemology to an extent not seen before. The theory of the intellect, long an important auxiliary to metaphysics, became the focus of metaphysical dispute, especially over the scope and powers of the intellect and the existence of a `pure' intellect. Rationalist metaphysicians such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche claimed that intellectual knowledge, gained independently of the senses, provides the (...) framework for constructing a new theory of nature. Other writers, including Hobbes and the early Gassendi, denied the existence of a distinct intellectual faculty, and so challenged the metaphysicians' abilities directly to perceive the essences of substances. The theory of the senses, which had long been a part of philosophical discussion, took on a new urgency, for adherents of the new corpuscularian philosophy needed to replace the dominant Aristotelian theory of real sensory qualities and sensible species. The revival of skepticism and a renewed interest in method also brought the faculties into prominence, for skeptical challenges typically were directed toward the faculties of sense and understanding, and the theory of method was conceived as providing instructions for the proper use of one's cognitive equipment. The theory of the faculties, then, is an important key to theories of knowledge in the seventeenth century. Indeed, rather than speaking of seventeenth century epistemology, it would be less anachronistic and more informative to speak of theories of cognition. The familiar (and over-stated) point that epistemology became fundamental to metaphysics during that century can then be restated as the point that the theory of faculties became central in metaphysical dispute. (shrink)

The article tries to reconstruct the Wirkungsgeschichte of the De pace fidei and it focuses on some fundamental moments of its fate. Nicholas of Cusa was one of the first not just to recognize other religions' value, but also to individuate a source of richness in religious pluralism. His work had fortune since the years after its draft, the 1453, known and quoted by Eimerico da Campo, Giovanni of Segovia, Juan de Torquemada and Pope Pius II. The debate, alive and (...) still open, around the possible influence of the work to Italian humanistic context is reconstructed, in particular about Pico and Ficino. Trusted traces of reception of the work can be individuated in France, in authors like Bodin and Postel. Finally the article is focused on modern fate of the work in Germany: beyond the cultural contest into reception and translation had done, the work analyze the reception by the German philosopher Lessing and on his comparison with Cusanian ideas about the vision of tolerance elaborated by the last one. (shrink)

En su Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida, Miguel de Unamuno argumenta que necesitamos creer en Dios y que esta necesidad es suficiente para justificar la adopción de la creencia religiosa. El objetivo de este artículo es reconstruir y analizar el argumento de Miguel de Unamuno, el cual constituye, sin lugar a dudas, el eje vertebrador del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida. En este artículo, defenderé: primero, que el argumento no puede usarse para justificar la adopción de la creencia religiosa; segundo, (...) que el argumento parece ser más convincente si se entiende en términos de deseo y no de necesidad; tercero, que ya sea en términos de deseo o necesidad, lo que realmente demuestra el argumento es el conflicto entre nuestro desear, o necesitar, creer en Dios, por un lado, y nuestra falta de licitud epistémica para adoptar dicha creencia, por otro lado. (shrink)

Ligado directamente a la dinámica de los movimientos renovadores del arte que surgieron en la España de los años veinte, el texto de Ortega y Gasset ofrece unas perspectivas más amplias y entronca con la renovación de la estética y la historia del arte que había iniciado la tradición teórica e historiográfica alemana a finales del siglo XIX. Ofrecemos, además otros escritos que, como «¿Una exposición Zuloaga?», «La Gioconda», «Diálogo sobre el arte nuevo», «Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo» (...) y «Sobre la crítica del arte», permiten una mejor comprensión del pensamiento de Ortega y del debate artístico y estético en España. La presente edición va precedida de un prólogo de Valeriano Bozal. (shrink)

Para intentar comprender la visión que Eugenio d'Ors tiene de España a principios de los años 30 del pasado siglo, es necesario entender su biografía. Cuando Eugenio d’Ors deja Barcelona en julio de 1921 solo le faltaban tres meses para cumplir los cuarenta años. A los cuarenta —escribió su hijo Álvaro— lo más normal es que los hombres no cambien ya su caudal de ideas. La originalidad de la época catalana sobre el resto de la producción de d'Ors no significa, (...) sin embargo, un menosprecio de los años posteriores. Fue en gran medida su producción no catalana y su constante actividad y participación en muchos otros proyectos españoles y europeos, lo que hizo que su “gloria catalana” no quedara diluida y que su figura tenga hoy un lugar destacado en las letras españolas. Por todo ello, la exposición está organizada en las tres secciones siguiente: 1) Su biografía catalana; 2) la primera etapa de su biografía castellana, y 3) Su visión de España en los años 30. (shrink)

To his pupil Nero and to Lucilius (friend and, as metonymy, representative of the entire mankind), Seneca testifies to his pedagogic vocation. With conviction he applies himself to demonstrate the perfect correspondence between the Stoic doctrine and the edu¬cational strategy that he proposes. Firstly, the reciprocity of the relationship between educator and pupil appears fundamental; both further their individual knowledge. Secondly, the limitations of an ethical precept that is not anchored in the intensity and concreteness of human life becomes clearly (...) apparent. Furthermore, it brings to question the weakness of a world vision not inspired by an innovative and original path. The starting point is therefore a rigorous examination of conscience to ultimately reach the revolutionary experience of risk in the moment of the last decision. In the name of truth the wise man must have the courage to embrace fate in order to really understand who he is (in a process of oikeiosis both as experience and as target), and he must instil in his pupils the courage to take risks along their own independent journey. In so doing, self-scrutiny and politics can become intertwined. It is herein that the educator’s risk and responsibilities lie. (shrink)

This paper studies in detail about the early years of José Gaos (1900- 1969) and his education in philosophy and literature. Therefore, we know that their studies (academic or not) were not purely “philosophical” in 1915. Literature and philosophy played in Gaos an equally important role. The first real encounter with philosophy happens before he comes to Valencia in 1915; but in this year Gaos also receives a strong education, in aesthetic and literary, through press and philosophical journals, and especially (...) within the group formed with Max Aub, José Medina Echeverría and his brother Carlos Gaos. (shrink)

The ”dark night of the soul’ is a common motif in Christian spiritual writing; and the locus classicus for this motif is the work of John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite friar of the sixteenth century. My aim in this paper is to use John’s account of the ”night’ to consider how the themes of mystery, humility and religious practice may be subsumed, and related to one another, within a Christian conception of God and of human life lived out (...) in relation to God. (shrink)

In Spain, Peirce's thought has generally remained almost unknown throughout the syllabi of the various Licentiate programs offered. The only exceptions are the degrees of Linguistic, Communication Studies, and Philosophy, in which Peirce's semiotics is normally only alluded to or cursorily presented. Much the same could be said of Latin America. There is evidence, however, that this situation is beginning to change: translations into Spanish are now appearing, particularly in the web, which make a notable amount of Peirce’s vast production (...) accessible to the Spanish-speaking readership. Interest in Peirce's work is clearly growing in the Hispanic world, probably due to the general resurgence of pragmatism, and to the gradual approximation of Hispanic philosophers to American academic philosophy. (shrink)

Ortega y Gasset is known for his philosophy of life and his effort to propose an alternative to both realism and idealism. The goal of this article is to focus on an unfamiliar aspect of his thought. The focus will be given to Ortega’s interpretation of the advancements in modern mathematics in general and Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers in particular. The main argument is that Ortega acknowledged the historical importance of the Cantor’s Set Theory, analyzed it and articulated a (...) response to it. In his writings he referred many times to the advancements in modern mathematics and argued that mathematics should be based on the intuition of counting. In response to Cantor’s mathematics Ortega presented what he defined as an ‘absolute positivism’. In this theory he did not mean to naturalize cognition or to follow the guidelines of the Comte’s positivism, on the contrary. His aim was to present an alternative to Cantor’s mathematics by claiming that mathematicians are allowed to deal only with objects that are immediately present and observable to intuition. Ortega argued that the infinite set cannot be present to the intuition and therefore there is no use to differentiate between cardinals of different infinite sets. (shrink)

The ethics of Ortega y Gasset is described in the historiography as an imperative of his philosophical idea on human vocation. Ortega’s ethics is being analyzed as part of his philosophy of life or in other words as a part of his concepts such as human destiny, happiness and vocation. The contention of this article is that Ortega’s ethics can be better understood together with the reflections he had in regard to the Bourgeoisie culture. Emphasizing the importance of the moral (...) characteristics of the individual is meant to counterweigh what Ortega conceived as the bourgeoisie morality. The attention of Ortega was given to what he conceived as the necessity to acknowledge the importance of the qualities of human characteristics. He criticized the way in which modern culture depreciated the importance of the value of individual characteristics and maintained that money economy led to the historical decline of the ideal of noble distinction. Ortega believed that the decline of the historical ideal of noble distinction was caused by the fact that the possession of money became the final goal for human life. The quantitative criterion of money culture outweighed the qualitative criterion of assessment of the individual characteristics. In the 20th century culture, making money became the central goal (faena central) of human life. Ortega argued that too much attention to money possession overshadowed the moral imperative to improve one’s interior virtues (virtudes interiores). Following this line of interpretation of money culture as it was presented by Ortega can enable us to reconsider his ethics, his alternatives to the Bourgeoisie culture and also the way he evaluated the ethical theories of his time. (shrink)

In many of his writings and lectures Ortega y Gasset criticized Darwinism on numbers of issues. In this paper I aim to reexamine his critique and to prove that in 1916 the harsh critique was designed to hide the similarity between his ideas and Darwin's idea of Natural Selection. The origins of Ortega's idea on the vocation of man can be traced in his dialogue with Darwin in the year 1916. In the historiography his Philosophy of Life is conceived as (...) a metaphysics that stands beyond biological and any other natural explanation. My contention on the other hand is that Ortega's concept of the vocation of man is an elaboration of Darwin's Natural Selection. I will try to show that in 1916 Ortega conceived the human character and the vocation of man as a product of Natural Selection. Instead of following Ortega's critiques on Darwin and his effort to show that there is no connection between his Philosophy of Life and Darwinism the article proposes to reconsider Ortega's thought as a constant dialogue with Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. The Change in Ortega's conception of Darwin's evolution came rather late in his thought and in the first section we will see how Ortega described technology in a manner that allows the human subject to change the environment in his favor. (shrink)

Selection of texts from Santiago Ramón y Cajal, biologist, writer and Nobel laurate. ISBN 978 84 686 6213 8 Published by Bubok Publishing S.L., 2015.

Resumen -/- Las personas somos absolutamente diferentes de las cosas, no cabe ninguna duda al respecto. No obstante, sí debemos diferenciar nítidamente entre los individuos y el concepto de “persona”. Así pues, la persona posee un “horizonte interior”, absolutamente novedoso y que le caracteriza como ser en aproximación a la Verdad y a la Libertad, las cuales no sólo son específicas del propio humano, sino que le son necesarias en cuanto remedios contra la desolación y la tiranía. Asimismo, una sociedad (...) puede ser tiránica en varios sentidos, pero Manuel Mindán sostiene que, para que no lo sea, el individuo entendido como “persona” debe primar siempre sobre el grupo gregario y cerrado. -/- Palabras clave: Manuel Mindán, persona, “Horizonte interior”, sociedad gregaria, “nostrismo”, individualismo, totalitarismo -/- Person as Inner Horizon in the Philosophy of Manuel Mindán -/- Abstract -/- People and things are quite different, but we must distinguish clearly between individuals and the concept of “person”. So, the person possesses an “inner horizon”, completely new, and characterizes him as being on approach to Truth and Freedom -which are specific to the human itself-, while both are needed as remedies against desolation and tyranny. Likewise, a society can be tyrannical, in several senses. However, Manuel Mindán believes that the individual understood as a “person” must always prevail over the gregarious and closed group.Keywords: Manuel Mindán, person, “inner horizon”, things, individuals, “Gregarious Group”, “nostrismo”, truth, freedom, individualism, totalitarianism. -/- Keywords: Manuel Mindán, Person, “inner horizon”, society, “nostrismo”, Individualism, totalitarianism -/- Recepción del original: 15/09/14 Aceptación definitiva: 08/12/14. (shrink)

Comentario de las obras de Diego de Torres Villarroel.

This paper examines Hermann Cohen's idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis . This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides' centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides' precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol's pantheistic doctrine (...) of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides' rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda. (shrink)

Connections between J.L.Vives and C.S. Peirce are shown. Not only is reflec-tion on language and meaning central in both thinkers, but Peirce also knew Vives' thought especially through W. Hamilton and the Scottish common sense school. Peirce credited Vives with being a forerunner of the use of dia-grams in logic, and both share a critical view of late medieval nominalistic logicians and a social and hierarchical conception of knowledge.

This is a compilations of short talks presented at a workshop held at Harvard in April 14 on the life of analytic philosophy today in Spanish. Authors include Susanna Siegel, Diana Acosta and Patricia Marechal, Diana Perez, Laura Pérez, and Josefa Toribio.

Despite what you have heard over the years, the famous evil deceiver argument in Meditation One is not original to Descartes. Early modern meditators often struggle with deceptive demons. The author of the Meditations is merely giving a new spin to a common rhetorical device. Equally surprising is the fact that Descartes’ epistemological rendering of the demon trope is probably inspired by a Spanish nun, Teresa of Ávila, whose works have been ignored by historians of philosophy, although they were a (...) global phenomenon during Descartes’ formative years. In this paper, I first answer the obvious question as to why previous early modernists have missed something so important as the fact that Descartes’ most famous publication relies on a well-established genre and that his deceiver argument bears a striking similarity to ideas in Teresa’s final work, El Castillo Interior? I discuss the meditative tradition at the end of which Descartes’ Meditations stands, present evidence to support the claim that Descartes was familiar with Teresa’s proposals, contrast their meditative goals, and make a point-by-point comparison between the meditative steps in Teresa’s Interior Castle and those in Descartes’ Meditations which constitute their common deceiver strategy. My conclusion makes a case for a broader and more inclusive history of philosophy. (shrink)

There are two fundamental questions that this paper tries to answer: how Zubiri knows God, and whether we can consider his philosophy to be mysticism. The greatest part of the analysis considers the last ten years of his philosophical activity. The first part of the paper analyzes the mature form of his method, which Zubiri revealed in his Trilogy. A brief presentation is made of primordial apprehension, logos and reason. Zubiri’s method goes beyond orthodox phenomenology, because he finds a need (...) also to include metaphysics. The second part of the article applies this method in order to know God. It begins with an analysis of the person in the process of construction of its I. Zubiri analyzes this mostly in Man and God. We can access God only on the metaphysical level of knowledge. On this path he rejects logic and speculation. On our way to know God we must confront the presumed sketch of God with human personal life. We can discover human life only by following strictly the sui generis phenomenological method. The conclusion that Zubiri reaches is that there is a personal absolute God, who influences humans in the construction of the I through the reality of things. On certain conditions, we can call Zubiri’s approach to philosophy a mystical one. This is due to the constant action of God creating a certain tension between the person and reality and a need for a personal answer to the divine action. (shrink)