Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

La question de la fondation n’a cessé de hanter la métaphysique. Elle a reçu trois formulations majeures dans l’Idéalisme Allemand. Chez Kant la subjectivité a priori est montrée comme la base de la validité de la connaissance humaine. Dans la spéculation hégélienne, les notions mêmes de substrat ou fondement cèdent le pas à l’unité de la forme et de la matière, de l’historique et du conceptuel, c’est-à-dire à la transparence du réel tout entier. Finalement, chez Schelling l’idée de Dieu est repensée pour réunir l’intelligibilité de l’essence et la factualité de l’existence.

Este escrito pretende abordar la crítica que le hace Vico a la educación de corte cartesiano que se impartía a los jóvenes de la Nápoles de su tiempo. La razón para ello era que formaba ciudadanos ineptos para la vida civil. La propuesta viquiana se encamina a mostrar que además de educar en el método cartesiano, se hace necesario promover entre los jóvenes el estudio de la elocuencia, dado que esta es una poderosa herramienta para que puedan enfrentarse con prudencia a la vida civil. Esta propuesta debe comprenderse a la luz del verum factum, este principio es la posibilidad de articular los dos métodos de estudios y zanjar, de una forma original la querella entre antiguos y modernos en aras de educar hombres aptos para la vida en la ciudad.

El estereotipo de René Descartes como reformador, reforzado por la visión de un agudo y vigoroso pensador como Jacques Maritain, así como por el seductor discurso heideggeriano quienes a su modo ven en Cartesio más que a un Parménides de la modernidad, a un Protágoras moderno, hacen que se construya en torno al Caballero de la Turena, una versión convencional de nuestro tiempo a partir de la cual el autor del Discurso es el responsable (si no, más bien el culpable) de las atrocidades de nuestros días, por un lado, así como por otro, como hace, por ejemplo Richard Watson, se crea en torno a él, el mito del nuevo Prometeo que nos trajo no el fuego, sino la televisión, la democracia, la ciencia “liberada” y la internet. Analizaremos la filiación metafísica de Descartes al proyecto de la Contrarreforma, y señalaremos que su pensamiento no es de ruptura civilizacional sino antes bien, de continuidad, pese a su originalidad.

A partir de la constatación de que la cuestión del lenguaje en Kant oscila entre un polo, donde se verifica que Kant prácticamente no ha hablado del lenguaje y que en sus obras no se halla una filosofía del lenguaje elaborada y articulada explícitamente, y otro donde se ve su decisiva influencia en la filosofía del lenguaje, el presente trabajo: presenta un caso relevante en la Deducción metafísica de Crítica de la razón pura para un enfoque de dicha cuestión. Con ello el trabajo sugiere, entonces, la posibilidad de una interpretación interna que asume positivamente las indicaciones kantianas explícitas y su valor como punto de partida para la reconstrucción de la posición de Kant respecto del lenguaje. Esta interpretación sostiene que cuando se analiza lo que Kant explícitamente indicó en el marco de su propia terminología y conceptuación se puede, a pesar de que no está desarrollada, identificar una posición respecto del lenguaje fundada en la concepción misma de la filosofía crítica, de posible relevancia para discusión actual en filosofía del lenguaje.

La Modernidad es hija, se dice, de esa voluntad cartesiana de refundación radical de la filosofía y la ciencia como tales, que pasa por la prueba decisiva de la duda metódica. El pensamiento existencialista que va de Pascal a Kierkegaard, y de éste a Barth, pasando por Unamuno, cuestiona la radicalidad de esa refundación, que deja intacta a la fe religiosa profesada por Descartes. En la (re)fundación del mundo Moderno, cabría “traducir”: ¿qué es lo que en el fondo pesa más, Atenas, o Jerusalén? Se trata de una crítica muy aguda, que nos obliga a elaborar toda una relectura del presente, y del pasado inmediato de nuestra civilización occidental. Esta breve comunicación intenta, simple y sencillamente, trazar los ejes “cartesianos” de ese importante problema.

Ο καρδινάλιος Βησσαρίων υπήρξε ένας από τους σημαντικότερους Έλληνες λογίους και συνέβαλε στον επαναπροσδιορισμό της πλατωνικής φιλοσοφίας στη δυτική Ευρώπη του 15ου αιώνα. Το In Calumniatorem Platonis (1469) είναι το σημαίνον φιλοσοφικό έργο του και αποτελεί μία συστηματική παρουσίαση της πλατωνικής φιλοσοφίας. Πρόκειται για μία συγκροτημένη ανασκευή του Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis (1458) του Γεωργίου Τραπεζούντιου, μιας πραγματείας που εναντιώνεται σθεναρά στον Πλάτωνα αναδεικνύοντας την υπεροχή του Αριστοτέλη. Αντιπροσωπευτικό παράδειγμα είναι η απόπειρα του Βησσαρίωνα να αντικρούσει την κατηγορία που επιρρίπτει ο Τραπεζούντιος στον Πλάτωνα αναφορικά προς την αδυναμία απόδειξης της αθανασίας της ψυχής. Προβάλλοντας την επιχειρηματολογία του Πλάτωνα που διατυπώνεται στο Φαίδρο (245c5-246a2), ο Βησσαρίων επιχειρεί να αποδείξει ότι ο Πλάτων τεκμηριώνει την αθάνατη φύση της ψυχής. Μέσω της συγκριτικής μελέτης των δύο κειμένων, του Πλάτωνα και του Βησσαρίωνα, η παρούσα εισήγηση επικεντρώνεται στην κριτική αποτίμηση της ερμηνευτικής προσέγγισης του πλατωνικού εγχειρήματος από τον Βησσαρίωνα και στην ανάδειξη των ερμηνευτικών αποκλίσεων αυτού, που υπαγορεύονται από τη γενικότερη σκοποθεσία της πραγματείας του: το συγκερασμό των πλατωνικών και αριστοτελικών αρχών.

Despite the ideological differences among the most influential contemporary interpretations of Spinoza’s political philosophy (i.e. A. Negri, M. Hardt, E. Balibar and J. Israel), they all agree in considering Spinoza as a radical, subversive, revolutionary political thinker who defends the sacred inviolability of individual liberties (especially liberty of thought, expression and belief) and recognises the multitude as genuine subject of democracy. They relegate or simply ignore, however, polemic and yet central topics of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) such as Spinoza’s negative considerations on the multitude, his resolutely anti-revolutionary tone and his view of the State as an absolute power principally concerning the regulation of public opinion. These ideas contradict the radical (liberal) democratic Spinoza of contemporary interpretations, because of their apparently anti-democratic nature. In this paper I argue that these ideas, on the contrary, are consistent with Spinoza’s conception of democracy. Furthermore, I claim that they can help for re-thinking politics and the political in the context of today’s crisis of democracy and democratic State, since they make visible the conflict and struggle for power inherent to all democracy between political and apolitical (counter-political) actors. This paper firstly analyses 1) the distribution of power and the different social/political actors in Spinoza’s democratic state; 2) the administration/regulation of public opinion and Spinoza’s concern on rebellion and revolution; and 3) the current crisis of democracy in the light of Spinoza’s political thought.

To identify with confidence some ways in which the politics of Africa could be improved depends not at all upon a vision of a utopia. With Karl Popper, I agree that utopian thinking muddles meaningful political reform rather than assisting it. Liberalism opposes large scale planning, and quite without reference to any utopia supplies terms in which to be aptly critical of the corruption, by which in the present day, African states all are riddled. Liberal reforms in Africa would institute market accountability there. That there is in Africa at present no operative “institution of market accountability” (Shearmur 1996: 118) means among other things that information that is crucial for considering ways to improve conditions in Africa does not collect and so remains unavailable to citizens, planners, and political decision-makers. Lack of accountability because of economic corruption is tantamount to a failure of intellectual openness. Liberals typically defend intellectual openness by focusing on the protection of individuals. This aspect of liberalism is potentially harmful to Africa, where the ambient ethic to the extent that one functions is communitarian. I argue that the individualism aspect of liberalism is incidental not essential: I deny that liberalism is counter to a society’s upholding communitarian ideals. I argue that to fully institute market accountability in Africa would mitigate many of the chief harms to Africa and would produce many benefits. It would not require that Africans sacrifice their communitarian spirit.

The alleged legitimacy of democracy is founded on the legislative and executive representative power. But, the voters sometimes are ignored by their representatives. However, with the instrumental possibility of the new media, democracy can evolve into participative citizenship and can overcome the limitations of centralized democracy. While the traditional mass media were kept in the hands of interest groups and suppose that ordinary citizens possessed democracy and seek to find information, the new media (weblogs, email, twitter, facebook, wikis, etc.) grant information and seek democracy. With it, voters can to have an active role in legislation, execution, jurisdiction and audit regarding the acts performed by the government. The limitations (absence of constitutional recognition, inefficient mechanisms of citizenship consultation, criminalization of social protests) are solved by the new media. We proposed to create a mediated citizenship. It is here that the role of the new media takes a higher position in the increment of political communication reciprocity between representatives and their constituents. The importance of the new media, then, lies in the fact that they have the capacity to sustain the rights of the ignored majorities and the oppressed minorities.

Although ancient philosophers used to attribute great significance to the heroic actions of statesmen, this element of “greatness of soul” was purged off, if not entirely, then at least to considerable degree with the coming of Christian philosophy. Augustine in particular, related the element of bravery to the original sin of pride, the fundamental of all sins. Aristotle mentions in the Nichomachean Ethics: “In the decisive sense, one is said to be andreios when he fearlessly faces a noble death and those things that lead to it –such things especially concern military affairs” (NE 1115a32–35). Plato also refers to that element of human psychology in The Republic, saying that the guardians will be andreios “if they choose death in battles over both defeat and slavery” (386b5–6). Another reference is made by Thucydides in Pericles’ Funeral Oration where Pericles congratulates the Athenian soldiers for exchanging their life on earth to honour their polis: “To me it seems that the consummation which has overtaken these men shows us the meaning of manliness in its first revelation and in its final proof.” Although the Socratics argued that politics aspire to perfection and praise heroic actions, Christian philosophers argued that the role politics is to contain the damage that human beings cause to each other due to their evil wills. This aspect of Christian thought finds its secular incarnation in the political thought of Hobbes, who teaches that violent human pride must be subdued by the State for the sake of political peace.

With the intention of considering again the relation between Biopolitics and Human Rights, the following lines are devoted once more to the dialogue that Giorgio Agamben establishes with Hannah Arendt. The origins of totalitarianism, published in 1951, and Homo sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita and Mezzi senza fine: note sulla politica, published respectively in 1995 and 1996, shall be our more prominent references. The dialogue will be, however, oriented by the courtship of humanitarian help. We should take seriously the hypothesis of the Italian philosopher hereupon. For one side, the humanitarian sense emerges in our century purified of every political commitment, contributing to consolidate the comprehension of life as mere life, as biological life, as simple fact of being alive. For another side, holding paradoxically the vision of bare life as the one dismissed of rights, we could observe that the humanitarian aid replaces the recognition, the assignment and the guarantees of rights. The distribution of food and medicine delays always more the gesture of recognition of equality, the fair assignment of rights and the guarantees of opportunities in order to allow the exercise those rights. It takes us to the point where we cannot avoid anymore the suspicions that a secret solidarity, renewed between the international organizations of humanitarian aid and the forces that they must confront, nourishes the contemporary dreams.

Catoptric interpretation of political symbols makes it possible to investigate the “image effects” of political symbolism, which, in the context of catoptrics, can be considered as an identification of image effects. That identification has been made by raising associative structures in rationally ordered political space. Abstract symbols are often directed at the catoptric assimilation of politics, actualization of “inventing thought” to influence the political life and assessment of political events and facts. Structural properties of political symbols mean homology of political matters and vary due to the logic of specular return of reality, while maintaining a basic condition for the stability of the rational and irrational representations. A political symbol can appear as a “creator” of the worlds that are perceived as behind the looking-glass, actually manifesting meanings. The catoptric concept has the most appropriate explanatory and heuristic capabilities, and the consideration of the image effects of political symbol reveals limits of descriptivity and ambiguity.

John Dewey considered democracy not only procedural and politically technical as a mere form of government under other institutional forms, but as a specific form and way of life of a political community. The substance of democracy as a way of life is firstly its ethical, cultural and spiritual ideal, and then its procedural state and proper technology of political power. The task of a democratic form of government is to make proper social arrangements that include all individuals and that eliminate external arrangements of status, birth, wealth, sex, etc., which restrict the opportunity of each individual for full self-development. Democratic order thus contributes to human happiness very significantly. Human beings aspire after happiness which grows in the processes of sharing experiences with others and their common contribution to the common good. Democracy always remains some kind of a moral ideal in the thoughts and deeds of citizens. In a political context, freedom without real opportunities for participation is empty and purely formal. Real and active participation of citizens in politics is, therefore, very important.

Liberal cosmopolitanism, from Kant to Habermas, has been designed as an ethical/political project based on inalienable rights. Accordingly, liberal cosmopolitans offered institutions to protect these rights. While Kant conceptualized a three-layered juridical order to create a League of Nations, Benhabib pointed out the creation of cosmopolitan norms, and Habermas emphasized the need for a constitutionalization of international law within the UN system. This moral and juridical project of liberal cosmopolitanism eliminated the political significance of cosmopolitanism and pushed the democratic elements based on political struggle aside. Can cosmopolitanism be defined on the basis of political struggles for rights? As a response to liberal cosmopolitanism, Arendt’s political thought offers a new cosmopolitan vision with her aim to refound the concept of authority in a post-metaphysical world and redefine the concept of humanity in dark times, her conceptualization of political action with agonistic character, her replacement of dissent at the center of political life, and her concept of “a right to have rights” as a critique of international human rights. This preliminary study traces a new understanding of cosmopolitanism in political thought of Hannah Arendt. In this context, her thought, which is followed by liberal as well as radical thinkers, will be argued in a creative fashion. The central argument of this study is that an Arendtian cosmopolitanism cuts across the conceptualizations trying to order the world through moral norms or extra-legal and extra-political regulations. It enables us to create a principle to reconsider our understanding of cosmopolitanism in a political manner.

First, I will briefly sketch the philosophical background of Nancy’s thought by highlighting an important feature of his fellow philosopher and friend Jacques Derrida’s understanding of religion; second, I will discuss Nancy’s own critique of the discourse about both the contemporary so-called ‘return of religion’ and about ‘secularization’ respectively; and third, I will show how in Nancy’s own thinking secularization and ‘mondialisation’, i.e. globalization interrelate within one and the same movement of ‘mondanisation’: mundanisation (the becoming-world of the world) whose immediate political importance becomes obvious within the scope of what he calls a deconstruction of Christianity.

Kant’s idea of Perpetual Peace has set the world in a constant search for peace amongst nations and peoples through the construction of an international relations project whereby these relations are based on an international law that has actually moved towards this goal without obtaining the best results: we are still engaged in conflict. Constructing a contemporary law of peoples implies considerable transformations in international organizations, in the way ordinary citizens ought to be seen (as citizens of the world), in the establishment of a cosmopolitan law based on the positivization of Human Rights, and in the achievement of a cosmopolitan justice that allows for larger and better mechanisms for people’s inclusion and participation in the solution to global problems.

Political society is essentially a totality of behavior, so behavior is the basic unit of political society. Traditional behavioral theory studies behavior mainly from the perspective of psychology. Modern behavior theory should study behavior from the perspective of logic，and the logic research of behavior should take on the psychological implication of suspension behavior as the prerequisite. Behavioral logic is the first premise of political philosophy. Behaviors are divided into atomic behavior and molecular behavior. There are six models of atomic behavior. The causal relationship among behaviors forms behavior chain. The chain is constituted by objective behavior, pre-behavior and post behavior.

The Weberian theory of the rationalisation of the world, which has as its cornerstone the idea of “elective affinities” (Wahlverwandschaften) between Protestantism and capitalism, has generated considerable controversy. The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of that theory and to study three possible ways of understanding it: the first suggests that Protestantism gave rise to capitalism; the second that capitalism caused Protestantism; and the third asserts that no causal relationship exists between them and that the question must, rather, be explained as the historical convergence between the two phenomena. I shall argue that the theory should be read in this third way and I will try to briefly give the reasons why.

In this paper, I seek to challenge two prevailing views about religious accommodation. The first maintains that religious practices deserve accommodation only if they are regarded as something unchosen on a par with the involuntary circumstances of life people must face. The other view maintains that religious practices are nothing more than preferences but questions the necessity of their accommodation. Against these views, I argue that religious conducts, even on the assumption that they represent voluntary behaviours, deserve in certain circumstances certain kinds of accommodation. In the first part of the paper, I explain how religious conscience should be understood and show that they must be understood as one possible expression, along with nonreligious or secular beliefs, of a person’s convictions of conscience. In the second part, I demonstrate that the main ground for religious accommodation is the need to protect fairly, through such rights as religious freedom and freedom of conscience, the ethical commitments and conscientious beliefs of all citizens.

In this brief lecture I intend to consider some aspects of the theory of justice as proposed by Amartya Sen in his 2009 book, The idea of justice, where, besides summarizing his intellectual journey (dealing with some recurring subjects, such as the social choice theory and the capabilities approach), Sen broadens the scope of his critique of John Rawls. I would like to focus on this particular feature of Sen’s recent thinking, trying to situate it in its comparative approach of justice. As I show, Sen does not appear committed to propose a theory of justice that is exactly new, but to analyze which aspects of the existing theories, particularly the Rawlsian one, have prevented, or at least have not favored the effective attainment of justice that they themselves advocate.