Nel presente lavoro si tenta di analizzare, a un livello piuttosto semplice ed elementare, le relazioni che eventualmente esistano tra Bonaventura di Bagnoregio e Bernardo di Chiaravalle. L’analisi si svolge attorno un aspetto particolare del pensiero di questi autori, cioè quello della conoscenza de Dio e l’unione con Lui. Lo studio viene incorniciato nell’ambito della scuola francescana di Parigi nel tredicesimo secolo, giacché in quell’ambito è vissuto Bonaventura —l’autore sul quale si vuole approfondire—. Anche se il confronto viene effettuato principalmente (...) fra Bernardo e Bonaventura, appaiono nel percorso del lavoro alcuni altri autori il cui influsso non può essere dimenticato se si desidera ottenere delle conclusioni valide sulla teologia mistica bonaventuriana. (shrink)

Il lavoro consiste in un'analisi del concetto di essere in Aristotele considerandolo dal punto di vista dell'espressione "to ti en einai". L'essere in quanto tale non è tematizzato in quanto tale, ma visto come sinonimo di ente, e questo nel suo significato principale di "ousia". Siccome l'ousia aristotelica venne successivamente interpretata e tradotta in ambiente latino come "substantia" ed "essentia" l'espressione "to ti en einai" aiuta a comprendere la ragione di questi termini e a determinare realmente la portata concettuale di (...) ciò che attualmente si dedomina in Occidente "essentia". Dunque il "ti en einai" non solo indica l'essere/ente della realtà extramentale (to...einai), ma contemporaneamente il suo contenuto specifico persistente nel tempo (ti en) . (shrink)

q. 16 of John of Naples’ Quodlibet III – Utrum dolor vel passio damnatae animae separatae sit, sicut in subiecto immediato, in eius essentia vel potentia – evokes one of the most delicate debates, both from a theological and philosophical point of view, of scholastic eschatology between the end of the 13th century and the first decades of the 14th: that relating to the action of hellfire (considered, due to the auctoritas of Gregory the Great, corporeal and identical in essence (...) to sublunar fire) on an immaterial reality such as the soul in its state of separation (i.e. in the period between the individual death and the final judgement). The article retraces the way in which (in the well-known q. 2 of Quodlibet VI) John of Naples defends Thomas Aquinas from the suspicion of incurring, with his position, the condemnations of Tempier in 1270 and 1277, and how Aquinas himself tries to explain (especially in q. 26 of his Quaestiones disputatae de veritate) the passio or pain of the soul (both in the state of separation and in that of conjunction), through the double distinction between passio corporalis and passio animalis, and, within the former, between laesio and experimentalis perceptio laesionis. It then analyses q. 16 of Quodlibet III, in which John of Naples identifies the rational appetite – i.e. the will – as the immediate subject of the separate soul’s pain. In the appendix, an edition of John’s question is provided on the basis of the manuscripts Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, VII.B. 28 (= N) and Tortosa, Biblioteca de la Catedral, 244 (= T). (shrink)

Il cuore di Napoli da Masaniello all'epoca contemporanea.

The interview focuses on specific aspects of Giuseppe Cacciatore's philosophy, with particular emphasis on the connection between theoretical speculation and civil practice. As highlighted by philosopher Giuseppe Cantillo, Cacciatore' s works strive to combine thought and history at every point, starting with Pietro Piovani's 'critical-problematic historicism'. The outcome is a theoretical system that is aimed at civil and political commitment, while at the same time maintaining a genuinely ideal motivation.

L'esperienza del naufragio nella storia di Napoli.

Il contributo consiste in una analisi e commento della prima sezione del De docta ignorantia di Nicola Cusano (capp. I-XVI), dedicata ai concetti di precisione matematica e di uguaglianza. Il saggio offre la possibilità di ripercorrere la teoria della conoscenza di Cusano, laddove l'impossibilità per la ragione di giungere ad una mens-ura precisa dell'oggetto da conoscere non si trasforma in una mera cultura del limite, bensì la filosofia negativa diviene base per la mistica. In altri termini l'obiettivo specifico del saggio (...) è rilevare come il metodo della dotta ignoranza apra alla conoscenza dell'infinito proprio nel momento in cui essa nega ogni conoscenza razionale precisa. La matematica diviene dunque il fondamento su cui far leva per innalzare la propria mente (transferre) verso la conoscenza simbolica di Dio, nel medesimo solco tracciato da Dionigi e dalla tradizione della mistica speculativa. (shrink)

La Cappella Carafa di Santa Severina, nella chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore a Napoli, era uno dei luoghi preferiti della giovinezza di Giordano Bruno. La sua struttura, che ricorda il teatro di Giulio Camillo, e la presenza di trenta simboli astrologici scolpiti sugli archi, la rendono la “stanza della memoria” ideale per l’applicazione dell’innovativa arte della memoria sviluppata dal filosofo Nolano. -/- The ‘memory place’ of Giordano Bruno. The Carafa of Santa Severina Chapel in the church of San Domenico (...) Maggiore, Naples, was one of the favourite places of Giordano Bruno’s youth. Its structure, similar to that of Giulio Camillo’s theatre, and the presence of thirty astrological symbols carved on the arches, make it the ideal ‘memory place’ for the application of the innovative ‘art of memory’ developed by the philosopher. (shrink)

Basilio Sabazio was the first in Italy to argue for the unity and corruptibility of either sublunar or celestial matter. In this paper new insight of his intellectual activity between Napoli and Milano is provided, and in particular his relationship with Scipione Capece, from whose letter to Giovan Francesco di Capua, Count of Palena we learn that Sabazio was an expert in philology and astronomy. The surviving part of an essay by Sabazio to the astronomer Francesco Cigalini from Como (...) is here edited with some informations about Cigalini’s reply. A newly recovered Sabazio’s astronomical work is here edited – from which his endorsement of Eraclides Ponticus’ astronomical system is evident –, as well as his Consilium to Pope Paolo III about the urgency of convening a general council. (shrink)

FROM THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHYSICS By Antonino Drago, formerly at Naples University “Federico II”, Italy – drago@unina,.it (Size : 391.800 bytes 75,400 words) The book summarizes a half a century author’s work on the foundations of physics. For the forst time is established a level of discourse on theoretical physics which at the same time is philosophical in nature (kinds of infinity, kinds of organization) and formal (kinds of mathematics, kinds of logic). (...) This double side of the two dichotomies assures a deep comprehension of theoretical physics by avoiding both a purely philosophical analysis and a purely formal analysis, each manifestly insufficient for representing all the aspects of theoretical physics. Among the many formulations of a physical theory, e.g. Mechanics, also Mach(1) recognized technical differences only, Instead my suggestion is to consider their differences as revealing the characteristic features of their foundations. No more radical differences may exist than those concerning both their kinds of Mathematics and their kinds of Logic. As a fact, after the 20th Century within each of these sciences there exist two antagonist foundations, within Mathematics either the classical one or the constructive one(2); within Mathematical Logic either the classical logic or the intuitionist one(3). Let us take Mechanics as an instance. Being the choices of the Newton’s formulation respectively the actual infinity of the differential equations relying on the infinitesimals and the classical logic, a formulation based on the alternative choices is Lazare Carnot’s,(4) whose mathematics is no more than algebraic-trigonometric and the logic is the intuitionist one, because this formulation makes use of doubly negated propositions, whose corresponding affirmative propositions are idealistic or false; i.e. in these cases the law of double negation fails, as in intuitionist logic occurs. By considering these two dichotomies as the foundations of the physical theories, each couple of choices upon them fashions one out four models of scientific theory, which are baptized through the authors of their most representative theories: Newtonian, Carnotian, Lagrangian, Descartesian. In correspondence four versions of the principle of inertia are recognized, as suggested by respectively: Descartes. Lazare Carnot, Enriques and Cavalieri.(5) All that suggests that the four models of scientific theory may be graphically represented as a compass orientating our minds amid the so numerous physical theories. By taking these dichotomies as interpretative categories, a new interpretative history of Physics including both classical and modern physics results according to a quadrilinear development. The birth of modern physics is characterized by the two theories - Einstein’s paper on special relativity and Einstein’s first paper on quanta - whose choices are the alternative ones to those of the previously dominant physical theory, Newtonian mechanics: in the latter paper Einstein i) declares the dichotomy on the kinds of mathematics (“Introduction”) and then he chooses the discrete mathematics; ii) by using doubly negated propositions he organizes his theory in an alternative way to the deductive-axiomatic one.(6) Moreover, a new history of Philosophy of knowledge results. Kant’s first two a priori transcendental categories represent the physical interpretation of the two choices out of the four pairs of choices on the two dichotomies, i.e. the choices of the dominant theory of mechanics, Newton’s. Hegel’s dialectic was a misleading attempt of anticipating the subsequent intuitionist logic. The book starts by a comparison of different formulations of thermodynamics in order to recognize the first dichotomy on the kind of organization. In chapter 2 the dichotomy on the kind of infinity is recognized through a comparison of Newrton’s mechanics and Lazare Carnot’s. A quickly history of the other classical physical theories is illustrated in chapter 3; it results a foundational conflict between the last two theories, and hence a conflict between their opposite couples of choices. The two main theories of modern physics, special realtivity and quantum mechanics confirm the foundational role played by the two dichotomies which gives reason for the radical change in the history of theoretical physics. Indeed, the opposition of the two main pairs of choices gives reason of the crisis in theoretical physics in the early 1900s. As a global result, the book represents the first interpretation of the entire history of Physics, both classical and modern; This fact proves that the four models of scientific theories can works as a compass (that of the front cover) suggesting a direction among the many physical theories. This new history of physics leads to re-visit both Koyré’s and Kuhn’s historiographies. Their interpretative categories are interpreted and explained through the two dichotomies so that it is possible to suggest à la Koyré categories based on the alternative choices theories to Newton’s as the suitable categories for interpreting the alternative theories to Newton’s mechanics. All that suggests a new interpretation of the crucial step in the history of Western philosophy of knowledge, i.e. the passage from Leibniz to Kant: Leibniz’s suggestion of the two labyrinths of human minds may be seen as a close anticipation of the two above dichotomies. Kant applied them in order to construct the well-known four cosmological proofs, which however he misinterpreted as leading to contradictions, instead to tow different methods of investigation corresponding to the two different kinds of logic.(7) Bibliography 1. Mach E. (1883), Die Mechanik, Leipzig: Brockhaus, Chap. IV, Sect. III. 2. Bishop E. (1967), Constructive Analysis, New York: Mc Graw-Hill. 3. Heyting A. (1962), Intuitionism. An Introduction, Amsterdam: North-Holland. 4. L. Carnot (1783), Essai on the Machines en général, Defay, Dijion (Enlish translation: Springer, Berlin, 2020). Drago A. (2004), “A new appraisal of old formulations of mechanics”, Am. J. Phys., 72(3), pp. 407-9. 5. Vella M.R. (2007), “Le quattro versioni del principio di inerzia”, in M. Leone et al. (eds.), L’eredità di Fermi, Majorana e altri Temi. Napoli: ESI, pp. 147-151. 6. Drago A. (2014), “The emergence of two options from Einstein°s first paper on Quanta”, in Pisano R., Capecchi D., Lukesova A. (eds.), Physics, Astronomy and Engineering. Critical Problems in the History of Science and Society, Scientia Socialis P., Siauliai, 2013, pp. 227-234. 7. This and all in the above points are illustrated by the book Drago A. (2017), Dalla Storia della Fisica ai Fondamenti della Scienza, Roma: Aracne. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a quasi-transcendental argument to justify Kant’s infamous claim “man is evil by nature.” The cornerstone of my reconstruction lies in drawing a systematic distinction between the seemingly identical concepts of “evil disposition” (böseGesinnung) and “propensity to evil” (Hang zumBösen). The former, I argue, Kant reserves to describe the fundamental moral outlook of a single individual; the latter, the moral orientation of the whole species. Moreover, the appellative “evil” ranges over two different types of moral failure: (...) while an “evil disposition” is a failure to realize the good (i.e., to adopt the motive of duty as limiting condition for all one’s desires), an “evil propensity” is a failure to realize the highest good (i.e., to engage in the collective project of transforming the legal order into an ethical community). This correlation between units of moral analysis and types of obligation suggests a way to offer a deduction of the universal propensity on behalf of Kant. It consists in tracing the source of radical evil to the same subjective necessity that gives rise to the doctrine of the highest good. For, at the basis of Kant’s two doctrines lies the same natural dialectic between happiness and morality. While the highest good brings about the critically acceptable resolution of this dialectic, the propensity to evil perpetuates and aggravates it. Instead of connecting happiness and morality in an objective relation, the human will subordinatesmorality to the pursuit of happiness according to the subjective order of association. If this reading is correct, it would explain why prior attempts at a transcendental deduction have failed: interpreters have looked for the key to the deduction in the body of Kant’s text, where it is not to be found, for it is tucked, instead, in the Preface to the first edition. (shrink)

In this article I defend that an underlying framework exists among those interpretations of quantum mechanics which crucially consider the measurement problem as a central obstacle. I characterise that framework as the Received View on the realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. In particular, I analyse the extent to which two of the most relevant attempts at quantum mechanics, namely, many worlds interpretations and Bohmian mechanics, belong within the Received View. However, I claim that scientific realism in itself does not entail (...) commitment to such a view, and I propose to consider a form of realism that dissolves the measurement problem. It is simply a stripped down version of realism. I derive the methodological questions in this form of realism, speculating that within it a novel realist interpretation of quantum mechanics could be conceived. (shrink)

It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...) duties to expand agents’ power to fulfill ambitious principles of justice. (shrink)

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important prin- cipled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) (...) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson’s contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not pro- vide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism’s protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice. -/- . (shrink)

It’s a common assumption in psychiatry and psychotherapy that mental health conditions are marked out by some form of epistemic irrationality. With respect to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the mainstream view is that OCD causes irrational beliefs. Recently, however, this ‘doxastic view’ has been criticized from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Instead a more promising ‘zetetic view’ has been proposed which locates the epistemic irrationality of OCD not in irrational beliefs, but in the senseless inquiries it prompts. Yet, in this paper (...) I present a special class of cases—sexual obsessive-compulsive disorder (S-OCD)—which cannot be explained by existing doxastic and zetetic accounts of the epistemic irrationality of OCD. In addition, some people with S-OCD appear to be adhering too well to a plausible set of norms for inquiry. Their suffering seems to be partially caused by an excess of rationality, and not a lack thereof. They seem, if anything, too rational. This shows firstly that it’s unlikely that there is one form of epistemic irrationality common to all persons living with OCD. Secondly, it should lead us to rethink the epistemic categories we use in classifying mental health conditions such as OCD. (shrink)

This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut (...) goods other than self-esteem. But the relation between competition and access to self-esteem is still significant, and it is worth asking how we might foster a desirable distribution of the latter in the face of difficulties created by the former. That is the question addressed in this paper. The approach I propose neither recommends self-denial nor the uncritical celebration of the rat race. It charts instead a solidaristic path to support the social conditions of the self-esteem of each individual. The paper proceeds as follows. I start, in section 2, by clarifying key concepts involved in the discussion. In section 3, I identify ten mechanisms that support individuals’ self-esteem and impose limits on competition. I focus, in particular, on the challenges faced by people in their practices of work. In section 4, I outline prudential and moral arguments to justify the use of the proposed mechanisms. Section 5 concludes with remarks on the role of social criticism in the processes of change implementing the mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper offers an exploration of the socialist principle “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” The Abilities/Needs Principle is arguably the ethical heart of socialism but, surprisingly, has received almost no attention by political philosophers. I propose an interpretation of the principle and argue that it involves appealing ideas of solidarity, fair reciprocity, recognition of individual differences, and meaningful work. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I analyze Marx’s formulation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Second, (...) I identify the principle’s initial plausibility, but show that it faces serious problems that cannot be addressed without developing a fresh interpretation of it. Third, I provide an interpretation of the principle that highlights demands concerning opportunities for self-realization in work, positive duties of solidarity, sensitivity to individual differences, and mechanisms of fair reciprocity. Fourth, I discuss a possible institutional implementation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Finally, I identify some normative puzzles about the transition from capitalism to socialism, and suggest how the Abilities/Needs Principle might gain motivational traction by mobilizing the powerful idea of human dignity. (shrink)

What is a duty of justice? And how is it different from a duty of beneficence? We need a clear account of the contrast. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the philosophical literature as to how to characterize it. Different articulations of it have been provided, but it is hard to identify a common core that is invariant across them. In this paper, I propose an account of how to understand duties of justice, explain how it contrasts with several proposals (...) as to how to distinguish justice and beneficence, respond to some objections and suggest further elaborations of it. The conceptual exploration pursued in this paper has practical stakes. A central aim is to propose and defend a capacious concept of justice that makes a direct discussion of important demands of justice (domestic and global) possible. Duties of justice can be positive besides negative, they can be imperfect as well as perfect, they can range over personal besides institutional contexts, they can include multiple associative reasons such us non-domination, non-exploitation and reciprocity, and they can even go beyond existing national, political, and economic associative frameworks to embrace strictly universal humanist concerns. We should reject ideological abridgments of the concept of justice that render these possibilities, and the important human interests and claims they may foster, invisible. (shrink)

The topic of alienation has fallen out of fashion in social and political philosophy. It used to be salient, especially in socialist thought and in debates about labor practices in capitalism. Although the lack of identification of people with their working lives—their alienation as workers—remains practically important, normative engagement with it has been set back by at least four objections. They concern the problems of essentialist views, a mishandling of the distinction between the good and the right, the danger of (...) paternalistic impositions, and the significance of democratic authorization. This paper recasts the critique of alienation in a way that vindicates its importance for social and political philosophy and rebuts these objections. First, it provides an analytic framework to understand alienation—distinguishing its various conceptual, explanatory, and normative dimensions. Second, it accounts for the normative aspect of the critique of alienation by articulating it in terms of prudential and moral ideas of positive freedom regarding human flourishing and solidaristic empowerment. Finally, the normative account is developed further, and sharpened to respond to the four objections, through the introduction of the Dignitarian Approach—the view that we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individual human beings that give rise to their dignity. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of human dignity based on a discussion of Kant's moral and political philosophy and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, and the view of socialism as involving a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is advanced here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and partly criticizes (...) it. The same is the case with the account of socialism in relation to Marx’s work. As articulated, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism turn out to be quite appealing and mutually supportive. (shrink)

The idea of dignity is pervasive in political discourse. It is central to human rights theory and practice, and it features regularly in conceptions of social justice as well as in the social movements they seek to understand or orient. However, dignity talk has been criticized for leading to problematic exclusion. Critics challenge it for undermining our recognition of the rights of non-human animals and of many human individuals (such as children, the elderly, and people with disabilities). I argue that, (...) on a plausible articulation of it, the idea of dignity does not lead to these exclusions and that it in fact helps defend an appropriately inclusive moral and political treatment of all individuals. Difficult issues about equality and diversity indeed arise, but a dignitarian approach can provide good answers to them or at least help make them clearer and more tractable. (shrink)

This paper offers a justification of labor rights based on an interpretation of the idea of human dignity. According to the dignitarian approach, we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable capacities of human beings that give rise to their dignity. That dignity is a deontic status in virtue of which people are owed certain forms of respect and concern. Dignity at work involves the treatment of people in accordance to (...) the ideal of solidaristic empowerment as it pertains to their life as workers. This requires that we generate feasible and reasonable social schemes to support each other as we pursue the development and exercise of our valuable capacities to produce in personally and socially beneficial ways. The spectrum of dignitarian justice goes from basic rights to decent working conditions to maximal rights to flourish in working practices that are free from domination, alienation, and exploitation. (shrink)

Substructural approaches to paradoxes have attracted much attention from the philosophical community in the last decade. In this paper we focus on two substructural logics, named ST and TS, along with two structural cousins, LP and K3. It is well known that LP and K3 are duals in the sense that an inference is valid in one logic just in case the contrapositive is valid in the other logic. As a consequence of this duality, theories based on either logic are (...) tightly connected since many of the arguments for and objections against one theory reappear in the other theory in dual form. The target of the paper is making explicit in exactly what way, if any, ST and TS are dual to one another. The connection will allow us to gain a more fine-grained understanding of these logics and of the theories based on them. In particular, we will obtain new insights on two questions concerning ST which are being intensively discussed in the current literature: whether ST preserves classical logic and whether it is LP in sheep’s clothing. Explaining in what way ST and TS are duals requires comparing these logics at a metainferential level. We provide to this end a uniform proof theory to decide on valid metainferences for each of the four logics. This proof procedure allows us to show in a very simple way how different properties of inferences (unsatisfiability, supersatisfiability and antivalidity) that behave in very different ways for each logic can be captured in terms of the validity of a metainference. (shrink)

This paper discusses Fara's so-called 'Paradox of Higher-Order Vagueness' concerning supervaluationism. In the paper I argue that supervaluationism is not committed to global validity, as it is largely assumed in the literature, but to a weaker notion of logical consequence I call 'regional validity'. Then I show that the supervaluationist might solve Fara's paradox making use of this weaker notion of logical consequence. The paper is discussed by Delia Fara in the same volume.

This paper reflects on the exchange that took place in a session organized by the North American Kant Society at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Washington, DC (January, 2016). The session, “New Perspectives in Kant’s Psychology,” marked a rare occurrence: the almost simultaneous publication in 2014 of two important new books on this topic, Corey Dyck’s Kant and Rational Psychology (Oxford University Press) and Patrick Frierson’s Kant’s Empirical Psychology (Cambridge University Press). At first glance, these (...) books have little in common. While the bulk of Dyck’s project is devoted to interpreting Kant’s Paralogisms in light of 18th century German discussions of rational psychology, Frierson shows how Kant’s conception of human beings as objects of empirical investigation is essential to understanding his theory of action, cognition, and moral motivation. If one looks more closely, however, these projects share a fundamental assumption, namely, that in order to understand what motivates and shapes the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, one must grapple with the implications of his empirical psychology. (shrink)

This paper offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. Such exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power to benefit oneself at the expense of others. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making other less powerful than you, in order to get them to benefit you more than they (...) ought to. This account of exploitation is appealing because it simultaneously captures three morally significant dimensions of exploitation—its material and social background, the relational (interpersonal and systemic) attitudes it enacts, and the final distributive results it generates. Exploitation is indeed a multidimensional social process. The flipside of the proposed critical characterization of this process is a positive ideal of solidaristic empowerment in the allocation and use of economic power, which the paper articulates in terms of the socialist Abilities/Needs Principle (“from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”). The Abilities/Needs Principle is grounded in human dignity. (shrink)

Mediante una investigación teórica y de trabajo de campo en relación a la adaptación de la titulación de arquitectura al EEES y con el objetivo de hacer efectivo un despliegue gradual del desarrollo de las competencias del submódulo de dibujo, se exponen los resultados de la coordinación entre asignaturas y una selección crítica y comparativa de actividades de aprendizaje. Se indaga además en la dispar distribución de las materias de dibujo de la adaptación al plan de bolonia, concluyendo con una (...) propuesta de despliegue independiente y mejorada del submódulo desvinculado de las materias que no le son afines. (shrink)

Human rights are particularly relevant in contexts in which there are significant asymmetries of power, but where these asymmetries exist the human rights project turns out to be especially difficult to realize. The stronger can use their disproportionate power both to threaten others’ human rights and to frustrate attempts to secure their fulfillment. They may even monopolize the international discussion as to what human rights are and how they should be implemented. This paper explores this tension between the normative ideal (...) of human rights and the facts of asymmetric power. It has two objectives. The first, pursued in section 2, is to reconstruct and assess a set of important power-related worries about human rights. These worries are sometimes presented as falsifying the view that human rights exist, or at least as warranting the abandonment of human rights practice. The paper argues that the worries do not support such conclusions. Instead, they motivate the identification of certain desiderata for the amelioration of human rights practice. The paper proceeds to articulate twelve such desiderata. The second objective, pursued in section 3, is to propose a strategy for satisfying the desiderata identified in the previous section. In particular, the paper suggests some ways to build empowerment into the human rights project that reduce the absolute and relative powerlessness of human rights holders, while also identifying an ethics of responsibility and solidarity for contexts in which power asymmetries will not dissolve. Power analysis does not debunk the human rights project. Properly articulated, it is an important tool for those pursuing it. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an (...) analysis of the content and an interpretation of the role of the idea of human dignity in current human rights discourse. The interpretation includes a pluralist view of human interests and dignity that avoids a narrow focus on rational agency. Second, this paper characterizes the two aspects of human dignity in terms of capabilities. Certain general human capabilities are among the facts that ground status-dignity, and the presence of certain more specific capabilities constitutes condition-dignity. Finally, this paper explores how the pursuit of human rights and human dignity links to distributions and uses of power. Since capabilities are a form of power, and human rights are in part aimed at respecting and promoting capabilities, human rights involve empowerment. Exploring the connections between human rights, capabilities, and empowerment provides resources to defend controversial human rights such as the right to democratic political participation, and to respond to worries about the feasibility of their fulfillment. This paper also argues that empowerment must be coupled with solidaristic concern in order to respond to unavoidable facts of social dependency and vulnerability. (shrink)

Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be more plausible (...) if it abandons reliance on it and focuses instead on the unfolding of some valuable capacities that need not be unique to, or shared by all human beings. This revised perfectionism is evaluative all the way down, pragmatic but not unprincipled, and holistic. In its second part, the paper articulates this account in terms of the dignitarian approach—the view that we have reason to organize our personal and social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individuals that give rise to their dignity. Dignity is a non-conventional, normative status based on a diverse and disjunctive set of valuable capacities. The dignitarian approach helps develop, defend, and identify the implications of the revised perfectionism suggested in the previous part of the paper while also allowing us to make sense of the role of some generalizations that animated some of the plausibility of traditional perfectionism—and this without the pitfalls of reliance on an idea of human nature. On this paper’s proposed view—Dignitarian Perfectionism—human individuals’ well-being consists, at least in part, in developing and exercising the capacities at the basis of their dignity. (shrink)

Supervaluationism is a well known theory of vagueness. Subvaluationism is a less well known theory of vagueness. But these theories cannot be taken apart, for they are in a relation of duality that can be made precise. This paper provides an introduction to the subvaluationist theory of vagueness in connection to its dual, supervaluationism. A survey on the supervaluationist theory can be found in the Compass paper of Keefe (2008); our presentation of the theory in this paper will be short (...) to get rapidly into the logical issues. This paper is relatively self-contained. A modest background on propositional modal logic is, though not strictly necessary, advisable. The reader might find useful the Compass papers Kracht (2011) and Negri (2011) (though these papers cover issues of more complexity than what is demanded to follow this paper). (shrink)

Can we develop a definition of power that is satisfactorily determinate but also enables rather than foreclose important substantive debates about how power relations proceed and should proceed in social and political life? I present a broad definition of agential power that meets these desiderata. On this account, agents have power with respect to a certain outcome (including, inter alia, the shaping of certain social relations) to the extent that they can voluntarily determine whether that outcome occurs. This simple definition (...) generates a surprisingly complex agenda for substantive research. It is quite fruitful for both descriptive and normative purposes-or so this paper argues. The broad account of agential power offered here is partly developed through a critical engagement with Rainer Forst's important recent account of "noumenal power.". (shrink)

The wide presence of the right to work in national and international legal texts contrasts with a lack of agreement about the concrete content of this right. According to the hegemonic interpretation, it consists of two elements: (a) extension of wage labour and (b) significant improvement of working conditions. However, if we study the history of right to work claims, especially from the French Revolution to 1848, we can notice that the meaning of this right was rather wider in the (...) past. Rescuing the historical significance of the right to work may help to face the problem of the future of work. In particular, and unlike what might seem at first sight, the claim that everyone should have his or her right to work guaranteed can be a way of articulating and concretizing issues such as workplace democracy, the organization of domestic work or the transition to a sustainable society. (shrink)

“But surely if it's not irrational, it can’t be OCD!” my friend exclaimed, when I told them about the paper Carolina Flores and Brent Kious provided their excellent comments for. In all fairness, my friend is not working in philosophy, or psychiatry, or in psychology. Still, I take their sentiment to be expressive of a widely held view: if you have a certain mental illness, then you must be irrational. Conversely, rationality guarantees mental health; the sane life is the rational (...) life. -/- In my paper, I attempted to complicate this picture. My main line of thought was that if the sane life is the rational life, we do not have a good conception of rationality yet. For, our best theories of rationality fail to capture what is going wrong in some cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Addressing the criticisms raised by my commentators will allow me to clear up some misunderstandings and sketch avenues for further work. (shrink)

El artículo es un comentario crítico a“Realismo, esencialismo yextensionalismo”, del profesor IgnacioÁvila. En particular, se contestan lascríticas que el profesor Ávila hace a lametafísica esencialista, argumentando,principalmente, que esta metafísica escompatible con el fenómeno de larelatividad conceptual.This paper is a critical commentary to“Realism, Essentialism and Extensionalism”, by professor Ignacio Ávila. In particular, professor Ávila’s criticisms to an essentialist metaphysics are answered,arguing, mainly, that this metaphysicsis compatible with the phenom-enon of conceptual relativity.

Estudios de filosofía contemporánea, lleva por título este volumen que reúne varios trabajos del Prof. Ricardo Navia, algunos publicados previamente en revistas especializadas de Brasil y Perú, otros que se editan por primera vez. No obstante tratarse de artículos independientes, la obra presenta continuidad temática en torno a problemas de teoría del conocimiento, filosofía del lenguaje y metafilosofía, especialmente centrados en la filosofía de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

This paper analyzes the system of inferences Kant uses to determine whether an agent is evil.

Many philosophers claim that we have duty to know our motives. However, prominent theories of the mind suggest that we can’t. Such scepticism about knowledge of one’s motives is based on psychological evidence. I show that this evidence only mandates scepticism about knowledge of one’s motives if we rely on a mistaken assumption which I call ‘the myth of the one true motive’. If we reject this myth, we see that there is space to plausibly interpret the empirical data such (...) that knowledge of one’s motives is difficult, but not impossible. (shrink)

Three metascientific concepts that have been object of philosophical analysis are the concepts oflaw, model and theory. The aim ofthis article is to present the explication of these concepts, and of their relationships, made within the framework of Sneedean or Metatheoretical Structuralism (Balzer et al. 1987), and of their application to a case from the realm of biology: Population Dynamics. The analysis carried out will make it possible to support, contrary to what some philosophers of science in general and of (...) biology in particular hold, the following claims: a) there are "laws" in biological sciences, b) many of the heterogeneous and different "models" of biology can be accommodated under some "theory", and c) this is exactly what confers great unifying power to biological theories. (shrink)

This is a revised version of a Licenciatura Thesis (defended at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1997).