The article investigates how two different conceptions of the edifying potential of education attempt to take into account the normative dimension of scientific knowledge. In the first conception it is the demand for truth that is edifying, whereas in the second concept it is a distinctively ethical demand. It is argued that the first concept in the end implies the subjection of education to the ‘brutality of facticity’, under which it risks losing its critical point. The second conception, drawing on (...) Levinas and Arendt, tries to safeguard this critical point. It conceives education as a process through which scientific knowledge is made subject to reflection, and is thus confronted with the ethical challenges and demands of society. (shrink)

La formulación tradicional de los derechos humanos se basa en la libertad y la igualdad, pero Emmanuel Lévinas hace de la diferencia absoluta la fuente y el fundamento de tales derechos. Los Derechos Humanos aparecen entonces como los derechos del Otro y extienden el alcance de la responsabilidad hasta comprometer la propia libertad. La primera parte de este trabajo muestra cómo la preocupación por los derechos humanos fue una constante en la existencia y el pensamiento de Lévinas. La segunda parte (...) está dedicada a exponer la fundamentación levinasiana de los derechos humanos con base en la illeidad. (shrink)

Do our present circumstances allow us to defend a specific connection (that specific connection) between «legal rules», «moral claims» and «democratic principles» which we may say is granted by an unproblematic presupposition of universality or by an «acultural» experience of modernity? In order to discuss this question, this paper invokes the challenge-visée of a plausible reinvention of Law’s autonomous project (a reinvention which may be capable of critically re-thinking and re-experiencing Law’s constitutive cultural-civilizational originarium in a «limit-situation» such as our (...) own). The discussion is developed by recognising that the claim to universality is not only incompatible with a substantive conception of juridicalness as validity but also sustained with difficulty by a procedural representation of discourse and rationality (a representation which, against its own conclusion-claims, could also be said to be culturally and civilizationally bounded). Not forgetting some specific features of contemporary juridical pluralism—namely that which emerges from the counterpoint between semiotic groups or interpretative communities (and their differently assumed claims of intersemioticity concerning the signifier law)—this train of reflection diagnoses briefly a sequence of complementary main difficulties (as «obstacles» to recognising Law’s demand as an unmistakable cultural project), namely those arising from the formalistic normativistic inheritance (confounding legal autonomy with isolationism), from the challenges and seductions of practical holism (justifying a continuum in which Law’s project loses its sense and autonomy), and also from the familiar debate between exclusive and inclusive versions of positivism and non-positivism (a debate which establishes-consecrates an equivocal counterpoint between Law and Morality). (shrink)

At the border between the fields of anthropology of theatre and phenomenology, this article presents and analyses the answers given by a sample of French theatre actors to an apparently simple question: How would you define your art? One could have been expect a wide range of answers, which would have reflected the infinite multiplicity of perspectives about that subject. Yet unexpectedly, the author deduces from the field investigation she conducted, a common and almost consensual vision of theatre expressed by (...) these actors: an art in which practitioners are in the poetic quest of themselves, in their most accomplished humanity, in harmony with the self, the Other and the life. (shrink)

The project of this thesis is to provide a novel reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas to extract theoretical resources that can help address the numerous crises of the contemporary world. Beginning from the premise that the world is in a state of multiple crises and that current political groups and institutions are failing to find adequate responses, I argue that Levinas’ thought provides radically different, and often unsettling, contributions to these discussions. I first review the areas where Levinas (...) discusses the political and identify key dynamics in his work that can hinder its deployment and contribute to unhelpful readings. Following this with an examination of the secondary literature of this topic, I establish important parameters of the future course of the thesis. Recognising the limitations of Levinas, I nevertheless proceed with the main exposition of the thesis, which aims to extract what is of most value in Levinas’ work, aiming to maximise its utility in challenging the political structures which are currently falling short. The project then circles back to the limitations left unresolved earlier and through the intervention of other thinkers seeks to ameliorate these issues. The main conclusions are as follows: first, Levinas’ work on the political should be read as being torn between commitments to both transcendence and freedom, and a somewhat conservative approach to politics. Second, the most helpful approach is to strongly emphasise the radical and antiauthoritarian elements. Third, that the result of this reading leads to an anti-political position, or at least with a vision of politics so alien it is hardly recognised as such. Finally, while Levinas’ work has issues, particularly around race and colonialism, that cannot be simply resolved, it retains the capacity for compatibility with other thinkers who can address them more adequately. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the what, the how, and the why of moral phenomenology. I consider first the question What is moral phenomenology?, secondly the question How to pursue moral phenomenology?, and thirdly the question Why pursue moral phenomenology? My treatment of these questions is preliminary and tentative, and is meant not so much to settle them as to point in their answers’ direction.

Levinas est traditionnellement perçu comme une voix critique à propos de la pensée de la totalité de Hegel et, ainsi, comme un philosophe qui cherche à dénoncer la négation de toute différence dans la pensée de l’identité, que ce soit dans l’unité de la vie, de l’esprit, du savoir ou du concept. Or, le paradoxe de Levinas est de critiquer Hegel tout en réinterprétant et en s’appropriant certains de ses concepts fondamentaux. Plus particulièrement, c'est le cas avec la radicalisation de (...) la puissance du négatif. Il s’agit donc de s’interroger sur l’effort de Levinas pour développer une forme intrinsèque à la dialectique hégélienne que Hegel aurait entrevue sans développer dans sa philosophie, encore trop enracinée dans une métaphysique que Levinas tente de quitter. Ce faisant, il s’agit d’éclaircir si l’on peut même parler d’une dialectique négative lévinassienne. (shrink)

Fiodor Dostoievski rasga el alma humana hasta dejarla herida por el sufrimiento, la culpa y el aislamiento. Y, sin embargo, la derrota no gana la batalla. La escritora sureña estadounidense Carson McCullers escribe sobre la soledad y la miseria del sur de los Estados Unidos con una mirada atenta a los paisajes desolados de la Rusia de Fiodor Dostoievski, no sólo físicos sino esencialmente metafísicos. Esta autora que ya leyó al maestro ruso a los 13 años explora las entrañas humanas (...) desde un terreno rural, desolador, inhóspito y desafortunado, con diferencias raciales, sobreexposición de alcohol y con un concepto de bien moral interno que aparece como una pulsión constante e inagotable. En esta aproximación queremos destacar cómo el misterio del mal, pero también el acto de la voluntad y la incomunicación, son aspectos que unen a ambos autores, especialmente en dos de sus obras maestras, Crimen y Castigo y El corazón es un cazador solitario, respectivamente. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

The main objective of this work is to achieve an understanding of Husserl's phenomenology as philosophical foundation for theology. It sustains, in the first place, that theology and philosophy do more than converge. It deepens, in second place, in the connection between phenomenology and theology, as well as in the Husserlian conception of God as entelechy and ἐνέργεια. This study concludes with a reflection, in third place, on the possibility of elaborating a theology from the phenomenological inspiration. The thesis that (...) is defended is that phenomenology means for theology, literally, an authentic Herausforderung, that is to say, a provocation that from outside interpellates a discourse, the theological one, that many judged already exhausted and at risk of extinction. In the conclusions are detailed the main contributions that the phenomenology makes to theology. El principal objetivo de este trabajo es lograr una comprensión de la la fenomenología de Husserl como fundamento filosófico para la teología. Sostiene, en primer lugar, la idea de que la teología y la filosofía hacen algo más que converger. Profundiza, en segundo lugar, en la conexión entre fenomenología y teología, así como en la concepción husserliana de Dios como entelequia y ἐνέργεια. Este estudio concluye con una reflexión, en tercer lugar, sobre la posibilidad de elaborar una teología de inspiración fenomenológica. La tesis que se defiende es que la fenomenología supone para la teología, literalmente, una auténtica Herausforderung, es decir, una provocación que desde fuera interpela a un discurso, el teológico, que muchos juzgaban ya agotado y en riesgo de extinción. En las conclusiones se detallan las principales aportaciones que la fenomenología hace a la teología. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if we understand Levinas’s Desire of the Other as gift, we can understand it as joyful—that is, as celebratory. After presenting Levinas’s conception of Desire, I consider his claim, found in Otherwise than Being, that the self is a hostage to the Other, and I contend that, paradoxical as it may seem, being a hostage to the Other is actually liberating. Then, drawing on insights Richard Kearney offers in Reimagining the Sacred, I argue for (...) understanding Desire as a gift that is the condition of possibility for joy. If I offer hospitality to the Other, I thereby accept the gift that makes joy possible, and this joy is not egoistic but is the proper response to the gift. Finally, I ask whether Desire can be joyful in practice, given that the pure gift is an originary condition and never a historical one, and I conclude that imperfect joy remains possible. Moreover, this imperfect joy is better than any solitary enjoyment I might experience in the total absence of the Other. (shrink)

One of the still unsolved problems in liberal anarchism is a definition of social constituency in positive terms. Partially, this had been solved by the advancements of liberal discourse ethics. These approaches, built on praxeology as a universal framework for social formation, are detached from the need of any previous or external authority or rule for the discursive partners. However, the relationship between action, personal identity, and liberty within the process of a community becoming solely generated from the praxeological a (...) priori remains largely disputed. In order to develop a testable constitutional model, this study revises how the “ontological turn” was introduced into liberal theories and redefines the concept of liberty. Liberty is usually understood as a moral goal or measurement for just actions, as the generative principle of all social existence - individual and interpersonal. For this purpose, the function of performative contradiction within the mechanism of interpersonal “encounter”, as part of the co-generative process of the individual becoming and social formation was explored through the production of a game-based narrative historiography grounded on 19th century life writings. This narrative historiography was developed in the context of Swiss history, with a “design-based” research approach, and resulted in a prototype for networked storytelling through which the transformative learning process could be visible and the negotiation of competing individual visions of the future could be re-enacted. (shrink)

Physician-assisted dying is currently an intensely discussed topic in several countries. Despite differences in legislation and application, countries with end-of-life laws have similar eligibility criteria for assistance in dying: individuals must be in a hopeless situation and experience unbearable suffering. Hopelessness, as a basic aspect of the human condition, is a central topic in Albert Camus’ philosophical work The Myth of Sisyphus, which addresses the question of suicide. Suffering in the face of a hopeless situation, and the way doctors approach (...) this suffering, is the topic of his novel The Plague, which describes the story of a city confronted with a plague epidemic. In this paper, I draw philosophical and ethical conclusions about physician-assisted dying based on an analysis of central concepts in the work of Camus—specifically, those treated in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Plague. On the basis of my interpretation of Camus’ work, I argue that hopelessness and unbearable suffering are useless as eligibility criteria for physician-assisted dying, given that they do not sufficiently elucidate where the line should be drawn between patients who should to be eligible for assistance and those who should not. (shrink)

En el siguiente texto intentaremos elucidar la particular estructura social, que define la utopía en el pensamiento de Lévinas, enfatizando su antagonismo estructural con la forma social propia de la estructura totalitaria. Es nuestro interés el argumentar aquí, que la utopía levinasiana en cuanto forma social, se fundamenta sobre la matriz de la "separación intersubjetiva", y que bajo este respecto ella aparece como una dimensión radicalmente opuesta a la estructura social del totalitarismo, en donde la "separación intersubjetiva" es imposible. De (...) una a la otra, el ser social se juega como separación, o bien, como aglutinación; mientras la utopía separa, el totalitarismo fusiona. Nuestro acercamiento será articulado con elementos de análisis aportados por el contundente trabajo de Miguel Abensour respecto a la utopía. Por ello, asumimos como nuestra la perspectiva de análisis críticopolítica de nuestro autor, según la cual, la crítica al totalitarismo resulta determinante para el despeje de la dimensión utópica. This articule attemps to clarify the unique social structure, which defines utopia in Levinas's thought, emphasizing its structural antagonism to the social form of the totalitarian structure. We argue that Levinasian utopia, as social form, is founded on the matrix of the "intersubjective separation". Hence, under this relation, the Levianasian utopia appears as a dimension that is radically opposed to the social structure of totalitarianism, where the "intersubjective separation" is impossible. The social being of utopia in Levinas is separation, whereas in totalitarianism the social being is agglutination. While the utopia separates the totalitarianism fuses together. Our approach will be supported with analytical elements drawn from Miguel Abensour's work about utopia. Thus, we assume Miguel Abensour's critical-political perspective of analysis as our own; consequently the critique of totalitarianism is determinant for the clearing of the utopian dimension. (shrink)

Filosofía Judía, una noción, problemática, incluso ambigua para muchos, catalogada como incierta, dado su ligamen con una comprensión de filosofía regionalizada, e incluso como una filosofía de una nación. Sin embargo, tales barullos encuentran una contraposición, desde un área académica que apunta al esclarecimiento de la noción. Uno de los trabajos que retoman esta labor de elucidación se desprende del texto intitulado “History of Jewish Philosophy” editado por Daniel H. Frank y Olivier Leaman (1997), en dicho trabajo se realiza una (...) mención de principios y fundamentos, así como una descripción de diferentes momentos del pensamiento desde la época medieval hasta nuestros días. En el escrutinio de las fuentes de reflexión de la designada Filosofía Judía, ahí se reconocer como elementos de inspiración el Tanaj, el Talmud y la interacción con las escuelas griegas de pensamiento; además, en lo que respecta al itinerario investigativo, los autores exponen una serie de propuestas, de múltiples autores ligados a este tendencia, entre los que se pueden citar Moses Maimonides, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber y Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

My view on what I see as the predicament of Christian philosophy in ethics has been shaped by a number of experiences. I will first share with you some of these experiences, to give you an impression of the background against which this article has been written.

Resumen: El propósito de este artículo es exponer la tesis levinasiana de la inevitabilidad de lo dicho, teniendo como trasfondo algunas cuestiones epistemológicas que suscita. Para esto, se comienza presentando la contraposición que establece Levinas entre verdad del desvelamiento y verdad del testimonio, destacando sus diferencias más radicales. Posteriormente, teniendo la subjetividad como hilo conductor, se reconstruye el camino que relacionaría ambos tipos de verdad, mostrando cómo la tesis de la inevitabilidad de lo dicho adquiere relevancia en las discusiones epistemológicas. (...) Finalmente, se concluye sugiriendo algunos aportes de esta reflexión para las consideraciones acerca de una racionalidad renovada.: This paper discusses the Levinasian thesis of the inevitability of the Said, having as its background certain epistemological issues arising from that thesis. I begin by showing the contraposition between truth of disclosure and truth of testimony, as Levinas defines them, and point out the most radical differences between the two. I then reconstruct, with subjectivity as the connecting thread, a way of relating both kinds of truth, showing how the thesis on the inevitability of the Said is relevant to epistemological discussions. I conclude by suggesting some considerations with regard to a renewed rationality. (shrink)

Drawing upon the practice of caregiving and the insights of feminist care ethics, I offer a phenomenology of caregiving through the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that caregiving is a material dialectic of embodied response involving moments of leveling, attention, and interruption. In this light, the Levinasian opposition between responding to another's singularity and leveling it via parity-based principles is belied in the experience of care. Contra much of response ethics’ and care ethics’ respective literatures, (...) this dialectic suggests that they are complementary in ways that productively illuminate themes of each. I conclude by suggesting that when response and care ethics are thought together through the experience of caregiving, such labors produce finite responsibility with infinite hope. (shrink)

Depuis ses premiers travaux pour élaborer une phénoménologie de la volonté jusqu’à son tout dernier écrit inachevé sur la mort, Paul Ricoeur a médité sur le problème du mal. Or, à l’intime de sa vie, une épreuve terrible l’a frappé, celle du suicide de l’un de ses fils. L’article tente d’évaluer en quoi la pensée de Ricoeur sur le mal s’est modifiée et approfondie à la suite de ce malheur. Il repère plusieurs déplacements. Héritier de Jean Nabert, Ricoeur dépasse la (...) catégorie de l’injustifiable vers celle de l’intolérable. Ami critique d’Emmanuel Lévinas, il affirme la nécessité de ne pas déposséder le sujet atteint par l’inintégrable du mal, de son initiative et de sa capacité d’attestation de soi. Enfin, admirateur de Kant et lecteur des psaumes, il retrouve au fondement ultime de toute nécessaire estime de soi, l’idée-limite d’une bonté radicale du créé et la catégorie d’une espérance «en dépit de» face à l’inscrutable. (shrink)

Criticizing Lacan and Levinas, and starting from Freud and Lacan’s denial of the womb and from the Genius-Male-Hero, who is self-creating and holds the power of creation and thus depends on the elimination of the birth-giving begetting mother, I continue my research to formulate a feminine difference that is neither dependency/disguise nor revolt and struggle in the phallic texture. Unlike other ideas concerning the difference of the feminine, the originary difference that I call matrixial supplies a measure of difference that (...) functions between a woman and a woman, and not only between a man and a woman. With the concepts of the Matrixial, metramorphosis, border-swerving, borderlinking, I outline how both male and female subjects have access to the matrixial sphere and might, as artists, become a ‘woman-artist’; how the Matrixial dissolves the concept of the unitary, separate phallic subject; and how female bodily specificity allows the conceptualization of a field of co-affectivity, shareability and transmissibility. I develop the aesthetic and psychic value of the matrixial voice and its resonance as trans-subjective, based upon a psychic Encounter-Event. Even though the matrixial difference refers both primarily and on the levels of the Imaginary and the Symbolic to the female body – womb, fetus, gestation, pregnancy provide its corpo-real basis – the Matrixial is formulated in terms of a transgressive stratum of subjectivation, where unconscious trans-subjectivity occurs due to particular links and transmission between partial-subjects and partial-objects in co-emergence and co-fading. (shrink)

La filosofía de Lévinas se inspira en las fuentes tradicionales del judaísmo, por más que apenas consienta que afloren a la superficie del discurso. De ahí la conveniencia de abordar su obra como un palimpsesto en el que operan dos niveles textuales, uno de ellos explícito y el otro velado. El Otro y el Mismo se relacionan entre sí según el modelo bíblico del vínculo YHWH-Israel: mientras que la Revelación inspira la epifanía del rostro, la Redención subyace a la reconstrucción (...) de la subjetividad en clave ética. En su conjunto, la heterología de Lévinas reitera, en el elemento de la filosofía, las experiencias centrales del monoteísmo hebreo. (shrink)

This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the work. Unlike previous (...) literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud. (shrink)

In this article the author seeks to highlight a specific disorder related to bodily experience in melancholia conceived as a severe form of clinical depression. The article is divided into three parts. In the first section, the author investigates the intersubjective dimension of bodily experience in light of the categories of Außen- and Innenleiblichkeit. In the second section, I explore a specific disturbance of the dimension of intercorporeality. The excessive feeling of the bodily (außenleibliche) visibility of his/her own sufferance is (...) a fundamental aspect of depression. At a pre-reflexive level, we constantly assume the noncoincidence between one's own bodily expression and the Other's experience/reading of these expressions. An alteration of this (pre-reflexive) awareness occurs in melancholia. The patient feels as if the melancholic condition would be transparent to the other. In the third section, the author intends to show the alteration of the embodied communication between the melancholic person and the other investigating two particular phenomena: the exchange of gaze in a face to face encounter, and the disturbance of the oral sense, revealing a specific form of irresponsiveness and the experience of void. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the set of problems regarding the HIV/AIDS crisis in the specific domain of corporate moral responsibility within a context of the Levinasian notion of proximity and the Third. Against a totalitarian, homogeneous society, Levinas opens the way to a social pluralism, which has its sources in the disquiet provoked by the strangeness of the Other's face. Corporate responsibility, understood from this point of view, would not reduce institutional relations to an anonymous world of neutrality. Corporate responsibility (...) is unconditional in the sense that to be responsible is not a question of choice, but one of deep liberty, the liberty of taking the burden of the infinite responsibility for the Other – customers, employees, the public at large and those who suffer in the world. This paper argues that it would then also mean that society in accordance with the spirit of the Levinasian philosophy of infinite responsibility could exert pressure on corporations, such as pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their power, they could change their present responsibility policies to a more affirmative and engaged responsibility with regard to those who are ill and who suffer death or debilitation from HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases in the poorest parts of the world today. (shrink)

This contribution is a critical and constructive engage ment with discourse ethics. First, it clarifies why discourse ethics has difficulties with the grounding and application of moral norms. Second, it turns to a positive appropriation of the formal and proce dural aspects of discourse ethics. The goal is the elaboration of an ethics that is able to incorporate the material aspects of goods and the formal dimension of ethical validity and consensuability. Every morality is the formal application of some substantive (...) good. Every ethical perspective demands its evaluation in terms of its uni versability. In order to achieve this mediation, it is suggested that we must incorporate not only the historical dimension of moral systems, but also the role of critical consciousness and the negativity embod ied by those who are victims of the existing consensus. The essay con cludes with six points that need to be considered when formulating a material ethics that is universalizable and, most importantly, that can address the massive poverty and dehumanization of those excluded from the present community of communication. Key Words: application • consensual • corporeality • discourse ethics • formal • grounding • intersubjective • Kantian • liberation • ethics • material • phronesis • procedural • validity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the set of problems regarding the HIV/AIDS crisis in the specific domain of corporate moral responsibility within a context of the Levinasian notion of proximity (infinite responsibility) and the Third. Against a totalitarian, homogeneous society, Levinas opens the way to a social pluralism, which has its sources in the disquiet provoked by the strangeness of the Other's face. Corporate responsibility, understood from this point of view, would not reduce institutional relations to an anonymous world of neutrality. (...) Corporate responsibility is unconditional in the sense that to be responsible is not a question of choice, but one of deep liberty, the liberty of taking the burden of the infinite responsibility for the Other customers, employees, the public at large and those who suffer in the world. This paper argues that it would then also mean that society (individuals, NGOs and governments) in accordance with the spirit of the Levinasian philosophy of infinite responsibility could exert pressure on corporations, such as pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their power, they could change their present responsibility policies to a more affirmative and engaged responsibility with regard to those who are ill and who suffer death or debilitation from HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases in the poorest parts of the world today. (shrink)

My aim is to prove that Hermann Cohen was not only a philosopher of dialogue but has played an exceedingly important role in the history of that current of thought. His books Ethics of Pure Will (1904) and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (1919) offer a detailed analysis of the relationships between I and Thou, I and It, I and We. In the first book these relationships are considered from the ethical-legal point of view and in (...) the second from the viewpoint of religious anthropology. However, Cohen considers the problem of inter-personal relationships not in isolation, but as an important component of his entire philosophical system. Deduction of the concept of personality in Ethics of Pure Will is based on Cohen’s logic of the origin expounded in the first part of his system in The Logic of Pure Cognition. Cohen explains that the origin of the self-consciousness of I as a personality is not the external world, but another person, i.e. Thou. In turn, the partnership relationships between I and Thou create the community We which forms the basis of the law-governed state. The process of artistic creation in the framework of inter-personal relationship is explored in Aesthetics of Pure Feeling. Finally, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism formulates the conception of religion as the most complete realisation of inter-personal relationship. Thus, dialogism became an important dimension of Cohen’s entire philosophical system, a fact noted by Martin Buber. Franz Rosenzweig, in unfolding dialogical thinking, expressly appeals to all the elements of Cohen’s system. There are signs of his influence on Bakhtin’s doctrine. Thus, examining Cohen’s doctrine as part of the philosophy of dialogue gives insights into this entire trend as a coherent whole. (shrink)

En este artículo el autor responde a cuatro objeciones que Karí-Otto Apel desarrolla en el trabajo: «La ética del Discurso ante el desafío de la Filosofía de la Liberación» . 1) La miseria, que es una evidencia de exigencia ética, necesita para alcanzar validez intersubjetiva de la mediación hermenéutica de las ciencias sociales criticas. 2) En el nivel ideológico la Filosofía de la Liberación no acepta ser criticada de historicisrno y de un cierto econornicismo marxista Standard, ya que reconstruye el (...) pensamiento de Marx de manera original. 3) La trascendentalidad trans-ontológica que propone la Filosofía de la Liberación es propia de la alteridad de tipo levínasíano, 4) Aunque se acepta la necesidad de efectuar una fundamentación formal antiescéptica, lo que importa ética y materialmente es la demostración ante el cínico que pretende justificar la muerte de la verdad ética de la praxis de liberación. (shrink)

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the (...) view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

This essay discusses Stanley Cavell’s remarkable interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought against the background of his own ongoing engagement with Wittgenstein, Austin, and the problem of other minds. This unlikely debate, the only extensive discussion of Levinas by Cavell in his long philosophical career sofar, focuses on their different reception of Descartes’s idea of the infinite. The essay proposes to read both thinkers against the background of Wittgenstein’s model of philosophical meditation and raises the question as to whether Cavell and (...) Levinas do not indirectly shed light on the early modern motif of the spiritual automaton. (shrink)

O trabalho articula alguns conceitos da ética e da filosofia política para pensar a crise dos refugiados. O que significa tolerar e acolher são questões que buscamos investigar para lançar luz sobre o campo de problematização da ética e da política. Se a pluralidade é a condição fundamental da política, o conceito de alteridade ética deverá funcionar como um dispositivo para uma interpretação consequente do atual estado de nosso engajamento ético-político. O conceito de natalidade, que em Arendt fundamenta a ação (...) política, é apropriado para afirmar uma ética e uma política do acolhimento e para indicar os limites de uma suposta ética da tolerância. Palavras-chave: Tolerar. Acolher. Natalidade. Alteridade. (shrink)

A crítica da verdade tem sido tônica do pensamento de muitos autores da contemporaneidade, e, dentre esses destacamos a obra do filósofo lituano/francês Emmanuel Levinas em sua Crítica à ontologia e na defesa da exterioridade como alteridade. Em seu escopo, o artigo que apresentamos traça uma análise da precariedade e finitude de nossos ditos, assim como da impossibilidade desses se darem conta da dimensão maior do dizer da vida. A ideia é dar ênfase à precariedade, à complexidade e à imponderabilidade (...) de nossos discursos e de nossos saberes. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Ricoeur’s conception of the capable human being; a conception that interprets personal identity as constituted through a hermeneutical process which is simultaneously a vertical dialectic of self-emancipation and a horizontal dialectic of recognition. Ricoeur’s speculative investigations around the human being progresses in parallel with the evolution of his hermeneutical conception, from the paradigm of an interpretation of symbols and myths to the analysis of text and narration, thence to phenomenological hermeneutics of the self, and finally to (...) the hermeneutics of translation and recognition. It is in particular the latter movement that allows a productive dialogue with Levinas and Ricoeur on vulnerability and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Does atrocity age? What I mean to ask is, does time heal wounds that were genocidal or otherwise broad, deep, and caused by a fatal combination of human depravity and widespread indifference? Jean Améry famously refused to let the past be past in his essay “Resentments.” He argued that even if, with regard to the Holocaust, logically speaking, what happened is in the past, there is no moral sense to that. Morality requires of us that we refuse to let the (...) past be whenever we are faced with a past that should have been otherwise. For him, writing 20 years after he was freed from the camps, time had not healed all wounds. Atrocity was not aging gracefully. (shrink)

Pokusacu da objasnim vezu izmedju nasilja, potom mog ili Levinasovog ili drzavnog nasilja kao odgovora na ovo prvo nasilje i na kraju, nasilja koje preostaje u ustima, u grlu, u ukusu [gout] ili u gadjenju [degout]. 'Cet arri?re-go?t de violence' ili 'un quelconque arri?re-go?t de degout' [neki zaostali ukus gadjenja; a sort of aftertaste of disgust].