Why do people respond emotionally to works of fiction they know are make-believe? Boruah tackles this question, which is fundamental aesthetics and literary studies, from a totally new perspective. Bringing together the various answers that have been offered by philosophers from Aristotle to Roger Scruton, he shows that while some philosophers have denied any rational basis to our emotional responses to fiction, others have argued that the emotions evoked by fiction are not real emotions at all. In response to this, (...) Boruah contends that fictional emotions are rational because they are based on the same sorts of beliefs that we form about real situations and real people. He illustrates this argument with literary examples ranging from Shakespeare to Tolstoy. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to construct a (...) normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance. (shrink)

The education of the emotions is a valuable tool not always taken into account in the development of the democratic, egalitarian background essential to empower citizens. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that, firstly, it is necessary to probe the possibilities of educability of emotions. Martha Nussbaum is one of the contemporary philosophers who have devoted much of their work to the study of emotions, and from her theory, conclusions can be drawn about the question of their educability. Her (...) theory of emotions can be situated within a set of theories that understand emotions as cognitive, which turns literature into a useful tool for their education. However, the author does not put forward an explicit methodology for such development from narrative. To this end, in this interview Nussbaum is asked about the concept of self-conscious reflection as a feasible proposal to enable the education of emotions, as well as about whether a list of “democratic emotions” can be built from her theory. Also, in this context, Nussbaum responds and elaborates on these themes. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se expone una reflexión sobre la deriva actual de la educación a partir del pensamiento de Martha Nussbaum. Sometida a los imperativos del crecimiento económico, la educación es vista como una mera herramienta para triunfar en el mercado laboral, y las artes y las humanidades se están viendo cada vez más marginadas en los programas de estudios. Hablaremos del cultivo de la imaginación empática y de la compasión como mecanismos que nos ayudan a comprender a personas (...) distintas de nosotros, y a preocuparnos por ellos. Veremos cómo el papel de estas emociones resulta relevante para impulsarnos a ayudar a aquél que se encuentra en una situación de vulnerabilidad o sufrimiento. Por ello, defenderemos que el cultivo de estas emociones puede forjar una mejor agencia moral, y también mejorar nuestra faceta como ciudadanos, haciéndonos más sensibles a las necesidades de los demás e inclinando nuestras decisiones políticas hacia la cooperación y la solidaridad. (shrink)

Esta obra propone una interpretación alternativa de las relaciones entre la ética y la tragedia en Aristóteles sobre la base de una revisión que parte de la Poética, pero no ha quedado encerrada en ella, considerando otros textos ...

Resumen: Aristóteles no formuló, en rigor, una teorí­a de las emociones, pero encontramos algunos esbozos de ella dispersos en varios de sus tratados. La mayorí­a de los estudios en torno a su concepción de las emociones pierden de vista que el análisis aristótelico de las pasiones o emociones responde en cada contexto teórico a un interos filosófico particular y apunta a contestar un problema especí­fico, y tienden a reducir el concepto aristotélico de pathÄ“ a alguno de sus componentes, sin tomar (...) en cuenta las diversas aproximaciones al tema, las cuales nos dan una visión sumamente rica y compleja de las pasiones o emociones. El propósito de este artí­culo es reconstruir la parte medular de las distintas aproximaciones al tema dispersas en el corpus y del análisis y la discusión de las vertientes interpretativas más aceptadas en nuestros dí­as. Analizo los diferentes componentes de las emociones, en particular, los procesos fisiológicos y las sensaciones de placer y dolor, y los diversos estados y procesos cognitivos y discuto, en especial, la lectura cognitivista extrema de Martha Nussbaum. Por último, propongo una interpretación cognotivista moderada de la teorí­a artistotélica de las emociones.: Strictly speaking, Aristotle did not formulate a theory of the emotions, but we find indications of one in several of his treatise. Many studies about his conception of the emotions lose sight of the fact that the Aristotelian analysis of the passions or emotions in every theoretical context responds to a particular philosophical interest and to a specific problem, and they tend to reduce the Aristotelian concept of pathe to one of its components without taking into account the many approaches to the issue, which offer up a very rich and complex perspective of the passions or emotions. My purpose is to reconstruct the core of the Aristotelian theory of the emotions based in the diferent approaches to the issue that are dispersed throughout the corpus, and the analysis and discussion of the more current interpretive positions. I analize the different components of the emotions, particularly the physiological processes and sensations of pleasure and pain, as well as diverse states and cognitive processes, and I discuss the main interpretative positions, specially the extreme cognitive perspective of Martha Nusbaum. Lastly, I offer a moderate cognitive interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of the emotions. (shrink)