Philosophical Readings
Not a member yet
181 research outputs found
Sort by
La memoria no es “cosa del pasado” Los retos de la memoria en Colombia desde una perspectiva filosófica
The dissociation that we use to establish between present and past, as well as between experience and remembrance, leads to major dilemmas for those who try to make memory. This article reveals the implications and limitations of the assumption that memory “starts” when a chapter of history has been “closed”. In contrast to this view, and by means of Walter Benjamin’s concept of “remembrance” (Eingedenken), we will present the conception of a productive, critical, and dynamic memory, where times will coalesce and be inverted. The challenge with which Colombia has to confront itself results precisely from this premise: memory is not a “matter of the past”, since the past is not dissociated from the present
Penser les fondements de l’éthique sociale dans les deux derniers siècles de la République romaine
The purpose of this article is to analyze how
the reflection on the origins of the civilization was developed
in Rome, at the end of the Republic, in a city where
during centuries, nobody tried to go beyond this point of
absolute origin that was the foundation of the Vrbs. In order
to explore not only Cicéro’s philosophic reflection,
but also his rhetorical texts, especially the De inuentione,
which contains at the beginning of its first book a very
interesting explanatory myth both on the birth civilization,
and on the evolution of human institutions. Before
Cicero, the satiric poet Lucilius had tried to give a Roman
adaptation of the Stoic social naturalism, by depriving it
of its universalist ambition and Lucretius had an extremely
deep reflection of the evolution of the selfish instinct
which characterizes the human beings as all the living
beings, towards forms more and more sophisticated of
sociability. We evoke also a Roman peculiarity in the expression
of the social oikeiôsis. All this shows the density
and the variety of the Roman thought on society at the
end of the Republic
Volgarizzare e tradurre. Teoria e lessico di un atto politico
After a brief contextualization concerning the
political and cultural role of Albertano da Brescia and his
works, with particular regard to his trilogy of moral treatises,
this paper examines some of the innovations introduced
into Italian vulgar political lexicon by two of the
most ancient Tuscan vernacular translations – produced in
the second half of the 13th century – of those treatises.
Making comparisons with other Medieval thinkers’
works, this article discusses a bunch of terms and expressions
which convey crucial concepts of the Middle Age
political thought and which became part of the Italian
language and cultural tradition also due to those vernacular
versions
Hermeneutical Reflections on Mathematical Significance
This paper aims to investigate the meaning of mathematics in context of its applicability. Realism and Nominalism as dominant traditional ways of philosophizing are critically analyzed with the end of working out the problematics that would lead to the priority of the question of applicability over abstract theorizing about metaphysical existence of mathematical entities. An answer to the question of applicability will be examined to the extent which would lead to an analogy with historical practices of classical philology. Interpretive historical inquiry will be made to further extend analogy between the role of mathematics in context of its descriptive applicability in natural sciences, and the role of Dilthey’s hermeneutics as universal methodology for human sciences. The purpose of this investigation is to enrich conventional conceptions of mathematics within the sphere of mathematics education to incorporate a possibility of a hermeneutic approach to mathematical pedagogy.
References
Apel, K.-O. (1982). The Erklären-Verstehen controversy in the philosophy of the natural and human sciences. In G. Floistad (Ed.), Contemporary Philosophy (Vol. 2, pp. 19-50). Hague: Martinus Nijhof.
Balaguer, M. (1998). Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dilthey, W. (1977). The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life. In W. Dilthey, Descriptive Psychology and Histrical Understanding (R. M. Zaner, & K. I. Heiges, Trans.). Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Dilthey, W. (1985). The Imagination of the Poet: Elements for a Poetics. In Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Selected Works (L. Agosta, & R. A. Makkreel, Trans., Vol. V). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dilthey, W. (1989). Metaphysics as the Foundation of Human Sciences: Its Dominance and Decline. In R. A. Makkreel, & F. Rodi (Eds.), Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Selected Works: An Introduction to Human Sciences (M. Neville, Trans., Vol. I). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dilthey, W. (1996a). Schleiermacher\u27s Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics. In R. A. Makkreel, & F. Rodi (Eds.), Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Selected Works: Hermeneutics and the Study of History (T. Nordenhaug, Trans., Vol. IV, pp. 33-228). New Jersey: Princeton Universtity Press.
Dilthey, W. (1996b). The Rise of Hermeneutics. In R. A. Makkreel, & F. Rodi (Eds.), Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Selected Works: Hermeneutics and the Study of History (F. R. Jameson, & R. A. Makkreel, Trans., Vol. IV, pp. 235-258). New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Dilthey, W. (2002). Plan for the Continuation of the Formation of the Hitorical World in the Human Sciences. In R. A. Makkreel, & R. Rodi (Eds.), Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Selected Works (R. A. Makkreel, & W. H. Oman, Trans., Vol. III). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dummet, M. (1991). Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Dummet, M. (1994). What is Mathematic About? In A. George (Ed.), Mathematics and Mind (pp. 11-26). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Field, H. (1989). Realism, Mathematics and Modality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Fields, H. (2016). Science without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in Interpretation. New Heavens: Yale University Press.
Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. (F. Kersten, Trans.) Hague: Martinus Nijhof.
Husserl, E. (2001). The Shorter Logical Investigations. (D. Moran, Ed., & J. N. Findlay, Trans.) London: Routledge.
Lane, S. M. (1986). Mathematics Form and Function. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Myres, J. L. (2014). Homer and His Critics. New York: Routledge.
Peck, H. T. (1911). A History of Classical Philology: From the Seventh Century BC to the Twenteeth Century AD. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Plato. (1997). Republic. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato: Complete Works (G. M. Grube, & C. D. Reeves, Trans., pp. 971-1223). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Plato. (1997). Symposium. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato: Complete Works (A. Nehamas, & P. Woodruff, Trans., pp. 457-505). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Scholtz, G. (2015). Ast and Schleiermacher: Hermeneutics and Critical Philosophy. In J. Malpas, & H.-H. Gander (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics (pp. 62-73). New York: Rouotledge.
Smornyski, C. (1977). The Incompleteness Theorems. In J. Barwise (Ed.), Handbook of Mathematical Logic (pp. 821-866). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Steiner, M. (1998). The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Verburg, P. A. (1998). Language and its Functions. (P. Salmon, Trans.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Exhortatio: parola, filosofia e società negli scritti teologici di Pietro Abelardo
This paper intends to investigate Peter Abelard’s
use of the notion of ‘exhortation’ in his theological
writings. Abelard’s notion of exhortatio must be described
as correlative to the notions of preaching, teaching,
prophecy, edification, advice and consolation
(praedicatio, doctrina, prophetia, aedificatio, consilium,
consolatio). For Peter Abelard ‘exhorting’ means ‘persuading’
somebody to act well, and this is first of all the
main aim of the Scriptures: persuading then follows
theaching (what is acting well) and preceeds confirming,
by way of examples, the exhortations and doctrines precedently
given. According to Abelard, exhortation differs
from preaching on the following three points: Preaching
spreads the knowledge of the law and of the precepts
which is necessary to respect in order to be saved, while
exhortations aim to produce a moral edification in the listeners;
Preaching preceeds and founds exhortation, while
exhortation follows and presuppose preaching; Only prelates,
i.e. bishops and priests, are allowed to ‘preach’,
while also non-prelates may produce exhortations. According
to Abelard monks and philosophers specially
practice exhortation: philosophers, in fact, play within the
pagan society the very same role that monks plays within
the Christian one
I regni danteschi come allegorie della vita civile e dei suoi limiti. Su alcune implicazioni “politiche” della prima ricezione della Commedia
According to an ancient interpretive key, the
representations of life after death elaborated by poets are
always allegories of earthly life. The first commentators
of Dante’s Comedy used this key to interpret the three
reigns represented in the poem as allegories of the three
different conditions of living people: the condition of
living people ‘imprisoned’ by sins (Hell), the conditions
of living people that are following a path of conversion
and penitence (Purgatory), the condition of living people
that achieved the perfection in virtues (Paradise). But
concretely, who are the latter? In other words, what does
it mean, according to the first commentators of Dante’s
Comedy, to achieve perfection in this life? The essay
examines the paths through which, in the course of the
Fourteenth Century, Dante’s Paradise is interpreted –
against Dante’s thought – as an allegory of the solitary
life, intended as the place of actualization of a
contemplative perfection which would not be achievable
within civil society
Mimetismo y filosofía o cómo pensar las modernidades periféricas
This paper is a preliminary version of the introduction to my forthcoming book, Modernidades periféricas(Peripheral Modernities). It offers a retrospective insight into the problematical question of the nature and character of the “periphery” in the case of Latin America. I start by presenting a general diagnosis of “Modernity” from a peripheral perspective, namely, by approaching synchronically, rather than diachronically or chronologically, the relationships between pre-modernity, modernity, and post-modernity in the case of Latin American thought. I then follow this diagnosis with an exposition of the methodology that I have developed throughout my research as an appropriate theoretical framework for my project. It is here that I want to insist on the need for a move beyond the concept of “mestizaje” to that of “mimetism,” both in its historical and cultural significance, as well as from a philosophical perspective. This step is a key turn, I contend, for tackling the question of “our” Latin American Modernities. I conclude by exposing the pragmatic implications of the liberal, the Marxist and the pos-structuralist approaches to these questions. My position is an attempt to bring to light the shortcomings of each one of these perspectives and to develop a new possibility of approach, together with a new methodology, to the question of Latin American Modernities. 
La socialità naturale dell’uomo nei commenti all’Ethica Nicomachea
The article investigates how the topic of the
naturalness of human sociability is discussed in the medieval
understanding of the Nichomachean Ethics, starting
from the first commentaries on the so-called ethica
nova and vetus up to the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-
century commentaries. This partial excursus shows
that, first of all, a great gap separates the earliest commentaries
from the latest ones: the knowledge of the full
text of the NE, as well as the translation of the Politics,
deeply impacts on the relevance that the readers of the NE
give to this issue. However, the inquiry into this naturalness
does not reach in the exegesis of the NE the depth of
analysis and the centrality of interest found in the commentaries
on the Politics or on De animalibus. In addition,
the masters of the arts, authors of the so-called ‘Averroists’
commentaries, have little consideration for the
role of language and its naturalness and attribute a secondary
role to political life, considering it as instrumental to
the achievement of contemplative life
La bestialità umana in Dante. Modelli e riscritture
The essay investigates the presence in Dante of
the ancient metaphor of the man-beast. Focused on Convivio
and Comedia, the analysis reveals a strong occurrence
of this image, derived from Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics, in the places of Dante’s work where ethical and
political themes emerge. After analyzing some places particularly
significant, the contribution ends with a reflection
on Purgatorio XIV: the powerful and numerous images
of bestiality present in this canto offer an adequate
example of the poet’s tendency to read the descent of man
in evil and matter in terms of a regression from the plane
of rationality, civil and properly human, to that of the brute
and formless sensuality
«O dolze terra aretina»: una canzone politica di Guittone d’Arezzo
This essay proposes a political reading of the
song O dolze terra aretina by Guittone d’Arezzo. We
show that Guittone condemns the current situation of the
city of Arezzo and urges the citizens to reject the alliance
with Manfredi and to rejoin the Florentine Guelphs. According
to Guittone, the pro-imperial political group has
degraded the civil coexistence of the city, putting it in
danger. The song is explicitly critical toward the risky
choices of the powerful Guglielmino degli Ubertini,
bishop from 1248 to 1289, who in 1258, with the conquest
of Cortona, broke the pacts with the Florentines.
The song is a fine example of “municipal” political poetry,
based on a strong idea of city autonomy: in Guittone’s
vision, Arezzo could overcome the processes of
internal disintegration and develop itself only through a
framework of regional alliances in particular with Florence,
so realizing the deep ambition of the Tuscan
Guelphs