RESUMEN Este artículo reconstruye la genealogia arendtiana de las formas extremas de la violencia, tomando como hilo conductor los procesos de desingularización con un doble propósito: por un lado, analizar las (dis)continuidades históricas de dicha genealogia que trasciende la dimensión fisico-instrumental de la violencia y entra conexión con la (des)configuración de la identidad personal; por otro lado, reivindicar la vigencia de la obra de Hannah Arendt para explorar los ecos presentes de esa violencia, sin perder de vista su especificad actual. (...) ABSTRACT This paper reconstructs the Arendtian genealogy of the extreme forms of violence, taking desingularization processes as its guiding thread, with a twofold goal: on the one hand, to analyze the historical (dis)continuities of that genealogy, that goes beyond the physical-instrumental dimension of violence and comes into connection with the (de)configuration of personal identity; on the other hand, to claim the validity of Arendt's work to explore the echoes of that violence, without losing sight of its current specificity. (shrink)

In the cognitive stage of religious traditions, science, in the light of the authority of religious revelation and reason, was dominant in relation to culture, which means that it was possible to determine the true value of different cultures using scientific knowledge. Nowadays, the completely opposite approach is gaining in popularity. Namely, when they discovered the fundamental weaknesses of empiristic definition of science, postmodern philosophers started more vocally saying that culture actually has a crucial influence on the method and internal (...) science structure. Thus, science loses its cognitive independence and becomes the product of culture. In other words, each culture creates a separate scientific knowledge in accordance with its other cognitive layers and needs of the members of that culture. Among the Muslim reformist thinkers, influential Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd wrote in a most comprehensive and thorough manner about the text of the Quran undergoing the influence of culture from the time of life of t he Prophet Muhammad. He explained that the interpreter necessarily has a crucial role in forming the meaning of a text and that the meaning of the text will not be determined on its own until the hermeneutical position of the person reading and interpreting it is taken into consideration. Abu Zayd believed that the primal meaning of the Quran was conditioned by cultural and historic contexts of the time when the Quran appeared and that meaning was no longer credible. However, according to his opinion, the essence of the Quran message will be discovered using hermeneutics, when we harmonize the text with our contemporary cultural realities. With his pioneering attitude, Abu Zayd broke all ontological and metaphysical principles of mystical hermeneutics in the traditional cognitive environment of Islam. The renowned representatives of Islamic mystical heritage insisted that essential and inner meanings of the Quran text are in no way opposing its outer meaning. Using various methods, they uncovered sophisticated secrets of the Quran teachings in the heart of outer layer of the words of God and, in that manner, they ascended to the heaven of metaphysical realities of the Quran and the whole universe. (shrink)

In this article I defend pluralist theory against various objections. First, I argue that although traditional theories may also account for multiple ways to achieve social understanding, they still put some emphasis on one particular epistemic strategy. Pluralist theory, in contrast, rejects the so-called ‘default assumption’ that there is any primary or default method in social understanding. Second, I illustrate that pluralist theory needs to be distinguished from integration theory. On one hand, integration theory faces the difficulty of trying to (...) combine traditional theories of social understanding that have contradictory background assumptions. On the other hand, pluralist theory goes beyond integrating traditional theories by accounting for a variety of factors that may play a role in social understanding but have been neglected in such theories, including stereotype activation, social and personal relationships, contextual features, individual moods, perceptions, and so on. Third, I argue that if the default assumption is rejected, pluralist theorists need to provide another positive account of why particular cognitive processes are more likely to come into play in a specific instance of social understanding than others in order to provide a genuine alternative to traditional theories. I discuss three versions of pluralist theory that meet this challenge by pointing to normativity, fluency, and interaction. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este artículo reconstruye la genealogia arendtiana de las formas extremas de la violencia, tomando como hilo conductor los procesos de desingularización con un doble propósito: por un lado, analizar las (dis)continuidades históricas de dicha genealogia que trasciende la dimensión fisico-instrumental de la violencia y entra conexión con la (des)configuración de la identidad personal; por otro lado, reivindicar la vigencia de la obra de Hannah Arendt para explorar los ecos presentes de esa violencia, sin perder de vista su especificad actual. (...) ABSTRACT This paper reconstructs the Arendtian genealogy of the extreme forms of violence, taking desingularization processes as its guiding thread, with a twofold goal: on the one hand, to analyze the historical (dis)continuities of that genealogy, that goes beyond the physical-instrumental dimension of violence and comes into connection with the (de)configuration of personal identity; on the other hand, to claim the validity of Arendt's work to explore the echoes of that violence, without losing sight of its current specificity. (shrink)