Estudios de Filosofía

López-Pellisa, Teresa. (2015). Patologías de la realidad virtual: Cibercultura y ciencia ficción. Fondo de Cultura Económica

Tatiana Afanador López — 2025-01-01

Book reviwed

Review of Puddifoot, K. (2021). How Stereotypes Deceive Us. Oxford University Press. 214 p.

Lou Thomine — 2025-01-01

This text is a critical review of Katherine Puddifoot's book, How Stereotypes Deceive Us (2021).

Responsivity and co-responsivity from a phenomenological perspective

Bernhard Waldenfels — 2025-01-01

In this article, I will use terms such as “responsive” and “responsivity”, that became indispensable for my own thinking when I tried to develop a theory of radical Fremdheit. In this article I develop the basic features of this responsivity in which others are involved. Methodologically, I am guided by a variant of responsive phenomenology that is to be understood as a phenomenology grounded in the body. Crucial to this is the descent into a radical form of experience that precedes all constructs and models, as well as its own theory.

Helen’s argumentative coherence and the didactic element of Gorgias’ rhetoric

Maicon Reus-Engler — 2025-01-01

I argue in this paper that Gorgias’ Helen is a coherent epideictic speech with a strong didactic element. This didactic element refers to the fact that, by using antilogic and making the weaker argument the stronger, Gorgias conducts the audience’s opinion from one perspective to another. The coherence of the speech comes from the fact that Gorgias employs a commonsensical pattern of argumentation in the first two arguments to prepare the reader for the digressions on logos and love. Even though he never states it explicitly, Gorgias holds the endoxic idea that no one is responsible for an action com-mitted under coercion. I argue that the reasoning structure of the digressions depends on the two previous arguments, i.e., that Gorgias transforms logos and love into a sort of violence. To conclude, I show that Helen is both a coherent and a didactic speech that imparts an antilogical education to the audience.

Blaise Pascal: Politics as a différance of God’s will

Stephane Vinolo — 2025-01-01

Pascal's work is punctuated by a paradox. On the one hand, only a handful of the texts that constitute it are explicitly political; on the other hand, it is haunted by a constant political concern. To resolve this paradox, the paper shows that Pascal incites us to rethink the very definition of politics. Emerging on the basis of a double human nature marked by the Fall, violence is an ontological problem that arises from the need to preserve an infinite object for human love. For this reason, its solution lies in affective self-regulation, which makes politics an exclusively behavioralist field that cannot be a part of the intimacy of individuals who belong to another order. Thus, Pascalian politics does no more than serve the same gesture of the divine creation of the human being that keeps him alive to praise God. Pascalian politics is, then, an indirect way of realizing God’s will: its différance.

Language of shock and present experience: Benjamin as a reader of Baudelaire

Gustavo Chataignier — 2025-01-01

This article discusses Benjamin's interpretation of Baudelaire's poetry as a key to reading modernity. Understanding the ambiguities between novelty and archaism, typical of the time, is only possible thanks to the poet’s gesture of privileging radical contingency. On the one hand, the violence of unwanted encounters amid the crowd does not allow for reflection; on the other, its productive dimension makes contingency speakable. The poet’s verses will make possible the encounter of the now of experience with the available past in terms of expectation: explanatory images are produced from the singularity of language. Finally, the Lacanian real is produced thanks to the understanding of the psyche as structure.

The philosophical expression of Walter Benjamin and María Zambrano: between poets and prophets of a forgotten past.

Luis Eduardo Hernández-Gutiérrez — 2025-01-01

The objective of this work is to show that the cognitive and ontological connections between Benjamin’s and Zambrano’s works, more than similarities and differences, are based on the exercise of their expressive action. Along with the image that appears in the writing, both thinkers cite old poetic forms, which allows them to update philosophical, political and theological figurations to configure an experience of thinking in work.

The two political faces of Janus. A proposal for a justification of the relationship between consensus and conflict in deliberative democracy

Santiago Prono — 2025-01-01

This paper analyses J. Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy from the point of view of conflict. Leaving aside the external criticisms that object to the validity claims of this political theory, it is argued that, along with the search for consensus, conflict is also constitutive of this theoretical approach to democracy. This relationship (between consensus and conflict) in deliberative democracy is justified by taking into account not only the reconstructive procedure of the pragmatic presuppositions of argumentative discourse that are inherent to decision making processes, but also by making explicit the democratic implications of its theoretical approach to institutional organisation, and the consequent interaction between the formal and informal spaces of politics in the rule of law. The explanation and analysis of this connection, which the Frankfurt philosopher does not recognise, contributes to the theoretical expansion of deliberative democracy without thereby nullifying its conceptual status.

Ontología, historia y epistemología en la teoría de los ensamblajes

Alberto Villalobos-Manjarrez — 2025-01-01

Within the framework of the assemblage theory formulated by Manuel De Landa, in this article, we develop the following points: the definition of the concept of assemblage, the explanation of its historical character and the problematization of this theory from its relation with epistemology, ethics, and ontology. In addition, we show briefly how this flat ontology is linked to political philosophy and, again, to epistemol-ogy. Problematizing the assemblage theory, whose philosophical source is in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, allows us to recognize the scope of an ontology that postulates the existence of a world composed of historical and heterogeneous multiplicities. To conclude, we clarify the concept of matter underlying this philosophy

Jean-Luc Nancy, ontological communism and the revolution of the spirit

Daniel Alvaro — 2025-01-01

This article aims to carry out a historical, philosophical, and political analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy’s conception of communism. To achieve this end, a series of texts by the author, published between 1986 and 2021, are referenced, where the question of communism is approached in relation to themes such as totalitarianism, community, the common, literature, democracy, and capitalist civilization. The paper investigates the development of Nancy’s approach until it reaches its more or less definitive form in the mid-2000s, within the framework of the debate on “the Idea of communism” (Alain Badiou). The interpretation of Nancy’s position in this international debate leads to the two main contributions of the article. First, the characterization of an ontological or existential understanding of communism radically differs from other current positions and does not have antecedents within communist theoretical traditions. Secondly, the identification of a threshold in Nancy’s thought, and by extension in contemporary thought, where the sense of “communism,” as the demand for granting inestimable value to every existence, communicates with the search for another “spirit” for our time.

Language and social groups. Some remarks on the intentional program in social ontology

Leandro Paolicchi — 2025-01-01

The following paper examines Tuomela’s explanation of the appearance of basic social facts. In this proposal, the elementary components of a social ontology are due to the “collective intentionality” shared by different actors. Even though Tuomela alludes to language being present in some forms of intentionality in his exhibition, his reconstruction is oriented towards other forms of generating social facts that suppos-edly would not include it. In this writing, it will be argued, on the contrary, that it is not possible to avoid the main mechanism of generation of basic phenomena of sociality in any of its instances. Once language takes its central place as the main mechanism for coordinating action, creator of social groups and guide for a social ontology, many of the distinctions of the intentionalist program lose relevance from an ontological point of view.

Byung-Chul Han Goes to the Movies: Phenomenology of Relations with the World in Der Himmel über Berlin (1987)

Andrés Botero-Bernal — 2025-01-01

In this paper we show how the film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wenders, 1987) allows for a phenomenological reflection on the bonds of human beings with the world. We submit the hypothesis that the thinking of Byung-Chul Han, functions as a philosophical lens through which such a reading may be advanced. This paper has three sections: the first sees Damiel, one of the film’s main characters, as a vehicle to describe the light-ness of the world and the angst resulting from not being able to bond with the weight of existence. The second presents Peter Falk as the main trigger that causes Damiel to decide to enter the world of mortals and live a life exiled from eternity. Finally, we pres-ent Marion, Damiel’s romantic interest, as the main motivation for Damiel to renounce being an angel, as she fulfills the role of an Eros capable of triggering in the individual the vital strength to cause the subject to enter into a bond with the world.