Logos. Anales del Seminario de Metafísica
Logos. Anales del Seminario de Metafísica (1575-6866, ISSN-e 1988-3242) is a bi-annual journal devoted to philosophical topics, fundamentally related to Metaphysics and the Theory of Knowledge. It includes a book reviews section and offers particularly relevant classical texts.
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Tosaka Jun and the epistemic functions of culture: materials for a study on transhistoricity and collective identities
The work of the Japanese philosopher Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) remains very unknown, both in the framework of Japanese studies and in the philosophical field. And this, despite the importance of his reflections for the yesterday to which he belonged, and our present time that is being resignified, in part, with the residual materials of the last century. Within his philosophically polyphonic project, Tosaka endeavored to clarify the relationships between cultural nationalism, capitalism, totalitarianism and everyday life. This essay aims to present his figure among Spanish-speaking readers and scholars and invite them to weigh critically the value of some of his reflections to our challenges today. To achieve such purposes, some essential lines of his thought will be analyzed in order to clarify how cultural notions crystallize, what gears are used by reactionary ideologies for the mobilization of the social mass and their broken dreams or the mechanism behind the translation movement of the academic world and the mass media, issues that will lead to a final reflection on transhistoricity, and the returned mythologization of collective identities.
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Logic and contingency of history. Merleau-Ponty and Marxism
In this article, I explore Merleau-Ponty’s problem in Marxism, or the inquiry into the logic and contingency of history. Especially concerning its intentions to delve deeper, after his works on perception, into the bond between his research on the phenomenon of expression and the general problem of interhuman relations. My purpose consists, firstly, in exhibiting that this experimental character reveals in a better way the singularity of his philosophy of history within the Marxist’s understanding of the individual as a social and historical being on the scope of intersubjective relations. That’s why Merleau-Ponty adopted the well-known attitude of a “Marxist waiting” [attentisme marxiste] during this period, convinced that, according to the principles of Marxist philosophy, the contingency of the proletariat’s concealment in a certain period does not invalidate the possibility of a future revolutionary flux. Nonetheless, by introducing the notion of “institution” into his interpretation, history is now understood through that symbolic medium in which the inquiry into meaning or the attention to institution in history emphasizes the bond between passivity and resistance to meaning. This was less clear in a conception of contingency that placed all the weight on human activity. Thus, from a solidarity between phenomenology and Marxism, Merleau-Ponty transitions towards an ontological questioning of Marx. This runs parallel with his shift from phenomenology, centered on consciousness, to ontology.
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The Unperceived of Perception or On the Unthought of Philosophy: The Ontological Rehabilitation of the Sensible Being in Merleau-Ponty
The purpose of this article is to delimit the main theoretical contributions of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception to the problem of the relationship between perception and philosophy. Our analysis will be structured in two stages. In the first, we will describe his phenomenological conception of perception as it takes shape in the initial phase of his theoretical work, taking as our reference the text The primacy of Perception, which summarizes the theoretical achievements of his first two works, The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception. It is within this framework that Merleau-Ponty undertakes his critique of the modern dualism of thought and nature, with the aim of clarifying the philosophical meaning of perception on the basis of perceptual experience as such. Next, we will present the ontological reformulation of this approach, carried out in the posthumous work The Visible and the Invisible. In this later context, perception not only concerns the original mode of being of the corporeal subject described in his earlier writings, but refers, in a more radical sense, to a generalized perceptibility proper to an asubjective being: the Sensible Being as Flesh of the World. Rereading this posthumous work will allow us to highlight the originality of his “new ontology,” within which we are offered a vision of the sensible being as the reversibility of visible–perceived and invisible–unperceived, while at the same time being given an unprecedented perspective from which to interrogate perception as the unthought of philosophy.
Some Objections to Markus Gabriel’s New Realism
The article critically examines the ontology of Markus Gabriel’s new realism, centered on the thesis that to exist is to appear in a field of sense. Based on an analysis of some of Gabriel’s most significant works, it is argued that his proposal, while seeking to overcome postmodern constructivism and naïve realism, ultimately undermines the very conditions of realism, thus failing in its original purpose. The paper contends that Gabriel’s rejection of the world as a totality and his ontological pluralism lead to a renewed form of relativism. In contrast, it defends a critical naturalism and a scientifically informed realism as alternatives capable of integrating epistemic plurality without sacrificing ontological unity. We include sections discussing what is precisely meant by naturalism and realism, and we argue in favor of these positions in accordance with contemporary science. The text concludes that Gabriel’s new realism does not transcend postmodernity but rather reformulates it in semantic terms.
From the Self to the Reader: The Construction of the Subject in Montaigne
This paper explores the constitution of the self in Montaigne’s Essays under the hypothesis that its unity structurally depends on an instance of otherness: the reader. Far from operating as a solipsistic exercise, Montaigne’s writing deploys a dialogical mechanism in which the reader functions as boundary, mirror, and counterpoint to the self under description. The identity that emerges arises from a constant interplay between self-reflection and the anticipated gaze of the other, whose virtual presence enables the ordering and stabilization of an identity otherwise marked by dispersion. The article thus argues that Montaigne’s self is inseparable from its relation to the reader, who serves as an indispensable agent in its unification.
Sufficient Reason for the Principle of Sufficient Reason
The principle of sufficient reason –so important for rationalist metaphysics such as those of Plotinus, Spinoza, Leibniz, or Hegel– has recently been interpreted in terms of the relation of ‘grounding’, which has been assumed to be a primitive relation of non-causal ontological determination of an explanatory character. The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) has been formulated, then, as the requirement that everything is grounded. The question that will be considered in this work is the question about what is the ground of the PSR. In effect, if everything really has a ground, then there must be a ground for the fact that everything has a ground. Four alternatives will be explored to address this question: (i) assigning it a ground such as that assigned to any universal fact; (ii) assigning it a ‘higher-order’ ground, which would generate an infinite sequence of grounds; (iii) assuming the PRS to be self-grounded; and (iv) to assume that it has no grounding, since it is an ‘autonomous’ fact about the essence of what it is to be. It will be concluded that none of these alternatives seems satisfactory.
Emmanuel Levinas’s Europe: Notes on Its Essence and Structure, Around Sameness and Alterity
Drawing on, and in dialogue with, various philosophies of Europe developed over recent decades, this article investigates the meaning and function of the notion of “Europe” in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In a constant relationship –and by analogy– with his reflection on the relation of alterity between the “Same” and the “Other,” I seek to identify the difference, the gap, and the constitution of this Europe between the two great cities present in Levinas’s philosophy: Athens and Jerusalem. After outlining the context of self-fatigue in which Europe found itself when Levinas reflected upon it, I address both the limits and the strengths of Levinas’s theory of this same-in-the-other grounded in two spiritual sources, with particular attention to the accusations of Eurocentrism raised against it from postcolonial perspectives. I conclude that only by broadening the European archē can a moral conception of Europe be preserved and defended, and that this depends on a continuous interaction between universality and particularity –one that preserves difference without becoming enclosed within it.
Sacrificial ontology and theory of illusion. A rehabilitation program for Jean Baudrillard
This article attempts to bring Jean Baudrillard back to the philosophical stage and reposition him two decades after his death, during which few works have emerged that account for his philosophical legacy as a singular conceptual body of thought. It proposes a reconstruction of his thought based on the notion of sacrificial ontology and the doctrine of illusion founded upon it. In contrast to the powerful traditions of the philosophy of representation and of production, Baudrillard posits that entities emerge and disappear according to a ritualistic game where illusion, generally considered the enemy of thought, has ontological value. This reading allows for a radical critique of the reality principle, renewing the analysis of simulacra and proposing the concept of hyperreality as the defining characteristic of our relationship with the world in contemporary societies. Finally, a description of the ethical and moral orientation that guides his thought is offered. Through this framework, the enduring relevance and philosophical depth of his work are reaffirmed.
Formal Possibility as Contradiction in Hegel’s Logic
This article analyzes Hegel’s definition of formal possibility as contradiction, examining its critical relationship with the philosophical tradition that, from medieval scholasticism to the Wolffian school, defined the possible as the absence of contradiction. After genealogically reconstructing this traditional conception from Thomas Aquinas to Kant, the systematic framework in which Hegel elaborates his antinomic definition is delimited: the constitutive relationship between possibility and actuality. The analysis focuses on the logical foundations that allow Hegel to identify formal possibility with contradiction, demonstrating that this identification results from the necessary relationship between the possible and the impossible. Through a formal reconstruction in terms of modal logic, the dialectical mechanism by which possibility is affirmed through the exclusion of its contrary is made explicit. Finally, it is demonstrated that the apparent Hegelian paradox constitutes a critical rescue of the notion of formal possibility, revealing its contradictory dimension as a necessary condition for understanding its transition towards real possibility.
Robert Chenavier (2025). Simone Weil y la cuestión judía (trad. de Alejandro del Río Hermann), Trotta.
Valor Yébenes, Juan Antonio (2025): Qué será de nosotros: cómo la IA transforma la humanidad, Madrid, Editorial Plaza y Valdés.
Review of "Conventionalism about personal identity"
Vázquez García, Francisco (2025). Tras la autoestima. Variaciones sobre el yo expresivo en la modernidad tardía. Madrid, Dado Ediciones, 2025, 336 pp.
García Linera, Álvaro, El concepto de Estado en Marx. Lo común por monopolios, Madrid, Akal, 2025, 222 págs.
Thinking on the margin of the horizon and on the horizon of the margins: towards a “phenomenological constructivism”
The aim of this article is to draw on the fundamental principles of the program of what we could designate as “phenomenological constructivism”. In order to this, we begin by establishing the meaning of the notion of “horizon” phenomenologically understood, as well as briefly examining the most notable precedents of the constructivist position (Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche). Next, it is pertinent to determine the specific carácter of “phenomenological constructivism” in the face of “sociological” and “psychological” incarnations of the constructivist point of view. And finally, it is indicated “what”, “how” and “from what” the constituted is constituited and also which is the role that corresponds to hermeneutics in the context of the phenomenological process of constitution of the given.
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“This is a theory of monads…”. Sketching the similarities between Leibniz’s monads and Whitehead’s actual entities
The article explores certain similarities between Leibniz’s theory of monads and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. Starting from Whitehead’s claim that his proposal constitutes “a theory of monads”, five key aspects are examined: the homogeneous character of ultimate realities, their relational nature, the priority of perception over apperception (in Leibniz) or of experience over consciousness (in Whitehead), the generality of perception or prehension, and the use of the notion of appetition in relation to final causality. The proposed similarities, however, are far from implying full agreement between their respective conceptions. In this regard, some points of divergence are also highlighted. Thus, it is argued that although the philosophies of Leibniz and Whitehead share a certain common structure, there are significant differences between them.
The vitality of the monad: the concept of life in Husserl’s phenomenology
This paper examines the concept of life in Husserl’s phenomenology, highlighting its centrality and conceptual ambiguity within the transcendental project. It begins from the premise that the human being, as a living body, provides the original site for the experience of life. From this basis, it becomes possible to deconstruct constitutive layers of our own experience and, through a transfer of sense, to interpret non-human forms of life. Building on this framework, the paper proposes three phenomenological approaches to life: (1) a privative approach, in which human life serves as the normative standard of experience; (2) an aporetic approach, which recognizes the radical originality of life as a form of temporality; and (3) an intentional-monadic approach, in which life is understood within a pulsional community of monads. The paper concludes that a phenomenology of life requires an expansion of Husserl’s monadology to include non-human forms of subjectivity.
Cassandra and the Challenge of Persuasion
In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, the character of Cassandra embodies a unique communicative challenge: the failure of persuasion. Unlike misunderstandings caused by ignorance of language or context, Cassandra’s tragedy lies in her inability to convince others despite speaking the truth. This disconnect between appearance and reality reflects a deeper issue rooted in the Greek religious worldview, which sees human beings as trapped in a world of appearances and dependent on divine mediation to access truth. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, builds on this divide and exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of democratic discourse in ancient Greece.
Enslaved body, greatness of soul. A critique of Thomistic anthropology from the conflict between natural slavery, magnanimity, and delayed animation
This article seeks to uncover an internal conflict within Thomas Aquinas’s anthropology, stemming from his synthesis of three doctrines taken from Aristotle: the theory of natural slavery, the virtue of magnanimity, and an embryology based on delayed animation. When Aquinas asserts that the rational soul is free and capable of attaining magnanimity, that certain bodies are naturally servile, and that the rational soul is infused only once the body has been fully formed (following the vegetative and sensitive souls), he appears to embrace a split anthropology that undermines his own metaphysical principle of the substantial unity of the human being.
From Edition to Exegesis: Andronicus, Commentator and Editor of the Aristotelian Corpus
This article argues that the work of Andronicus of Rhodes did not merely fix and arrange the Aristotelian corpus; rather, it instituted an exegetical program that repositioned the Categories as a key propaedeutic to reading the Stagirite philosophically. Drawing on testimonia such as Porphyry (Vita Plotini 24) and Simplicius (In Cat.), it contends that the combination of canonical organization (division into treatises, thematic grouping) and paraphrase introduced a way of reading that, in the early Empire, became a mode of doing philosophy. The paper examines brief cases (homonymy, pros ti, and the debate over the postpraedicamenta) and shows how Andronicus’ “edition” shaped teaching and the practice of commentary, in dialogue with Peripatetic plurality (Boethus) and Platonic reception. It concludes that the Aristotelian text-commentary, as a way of doing Aristotelian philosophy, emerged as a synthesis of philology and speculation, with lasting effects in the later school.
The Nietzsche-Husserl confrontation in Michel Foucault's unpublished early works
This article explores the Husserl-Nietzsche confrontation in Michel Foucault's writings from the 1950s. After demonstrating the importance of the Husserl-Nietzsche confrontation in Foucaultian thought, we first address the reception of Nietzsche in France during those years, particularly in relation to Michel Foucault. Second, we present the general theses of Foucault's interpretation of Husserl in Phénoménologie et psychologie. Third, in light of this interpretation, we address two recently published short texts from this period dedicated to Nietzsche: “Wahrsagen et Wahrnehmen” and “La profondeur.” Our intention is to show how the confrontation with Husserl constitutes one of the specificities of Foucault's reception of Nietzsche, leaving its mark on the author's subsequent developments.
Over the past decade, a debate on atmospheres has developed among philosophers (see, e.g., Schmitz 2016; Böhme 2017; Griffero 2017; Jagnow 2024; Fernandez Velasco and Niikawa 2025). Examples of atmospheres are the joyful atmosphere exuding from a lively party; the shady atmosphere of a run-down back alley; the poignant atmosphere of Venice, Italy. Philosophers working in the phenomenological tradition, such as Gernot Böhme and Tonino Griffero, typically characterize atmospheres as “quasi-things” that are neither entirely subjective nor entirely objective, that emerge out of a combination of aspects of environments, and that arouse affective reactions in perceivers. Recently, analytic philosophers have joined the debate on atmospheres, seeking to provide accounts that are firmly grounded in current research on metaphysics and affectivity: Pablo Fernandez Velasco & Takuya Niikawa (2025) defend a metaphysics of atmospheres, while René Jagnow (2024) puts forward a view of how atmospheric experiences are elicited and of how paintings can elicit them too. Interestingly, both Fernandez Velasco & Niikawa and Jagnow agree with phenomenologists in characterizing atmospheres as having an intrinsically affective dimension. As I shall argue, this claim is, however, not convincing. Still, it is natural to think of atmospheres as bound to producing affective reactions. The reason for this, I shall suggest, is likely to have something to do with the fact that atmospheres are properties of environments. Environments are typically experienced from within and a look at some contemporary media practices reveals that there is a quite widespread assumption that environments are particularly well-suited for producing affective reactions in experiencers.
EN Anarchism, State and the non-governable. Explore the insubordinate in Catherine Malabou
The following article explores the event of anarchism in the work of the French philosopher Catherine Malabou, which, is thought, opens up new considerations on this problem and the political, essentially based on the difference between what is non-governable and what is ungovernable. In this line, our search is organized around four central points and a conclusion. The first of them tests an understanding on the «invention» of anarchism in Malabou as well as on the ontological power attached to the «being anarchist». In a second place, we investigate in what is called «the horizontal» and that would be deployed laterally to the «reason» of State. In a third moment, we examine the tensions proposed by the author between Anarchism and Marxism, in the sense that the former –according to the latter–would have forgotten the dimension of capitalism’s economic exploitation focusing only on politics. As a fourth point, reflects and exposes Catherine Malabou’s critique of philosophers close to post-structuralism. All these parts seek to support the difference that the author shows between the non-governable and the ungovernable, which will be the central point to develop in this text, as mentioned previously. Finally, some considerations are presented that open the possibility of future research in this area.
Martínez Liébana, I.: El Camino de Santiago con otra mirada (2ª edición). Entre Líneas Sunrise Editorial, 2025, 264 págs.
La Estética de Kant. A propósito de una nueva edición de la tesis doctoral de García Morente
El emperador como exemplum: a propósito de la edición de Maria Carmen De Vita de Lettere e discorsi de Flavio Claudio Juliano
This bibliographic note analyzes the philosophical-political testimony of the Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus presented by Maria Carmen de Vita in her bilingual edition of Lettere e discorsi. The editor proposes a direct reading of the author as a princeps philosophus who is constructing himself from writing. Rhetoric, philosophy and power come together in the figure of this emperor and philosopher, whose modus scribendi turns rhetoric into a philosophical and political instrument to constitute a Hellenic community founded on paideia, where the princeps would be the mediator between the intelligible world and civic life. Either he is the offspring of Helios, legitimized to take the role of the exemplum (the interpretation proposed by the author) or a Quixote who wanted to be like the philosophers he has read in the doxographies, who dreamed himself outside the cave.
Rodríguez García, Ramón (2024). La metafísica del siglo XX. Tecnos
El amor, una intercoporeidad extrañamente expresiva
This paper describes the characterization of the phenomenon of love from a phenomenological perspective, understood as a magical, mysterious experience that resists any conceptualization or categorization since it anticipates such attempts. For this, intercorporeality is proposed as an expressive nucleus that shows the non-univocity of interpersonal relations themselves, which show the inevitable interweaving between the spheres of the self and the stranger in a páthic dimension, where the other is never given to me completely. This makes love reveal itself as a halo of uncertainty that commits itself and knows beyond what it knows. More than a feeling it will be a presentiment that seeks to make its own truth or reality beneath all obviousness or observation.
Is capitalism dead? The primacy of information: vectorialism. A reading with McKenzie Wark
This article studies McKenzie Wark's reflections on the death of capitalism and the emergence of new social classes. The commitment to “vulgar” Marxism implies the rejection of the academic theoretical dogmas that have developed certain orthodox readings of Marx. In the struggle against capitalism, taking Abensour's terms, we will analyze irenism (utopian) and catastrophism (dystopian), avoiding thinking of the relationship between machine and labor in a metaphorical or abstract way. We will then dwell on the current importance of information, which gives rise to two new social classes (vectorialist and hacker), according to Wark. Recovering Marx, we will reflect on the death of capitalism and the possible emergence of a new system, vectorialism. Finally, we will propose some ways of liberation, always minority, such as drift or potlach in the field of lyricism and situationism.
Richir, Merleau Ponty, and the possibility of a transcendental aesthetics
This article exposes Marc Richir’s grounding of a transcendental aesthetics and his understanding of art, which considers the idea, already investigated by Husserl, that imagination and phantasy are fundamental pre-intentional acts that delineate the horizons of the relationship of human and world, both affectively and epistemologically. It has been studied how Richir’s phenomenological perspective was influenced on the one hand by Edmund Husserl’s analysis of specific acts of consciousness, and, on the other hand, by Kant’s transcendental schematism. However, in my article I show how Richir’s perspective on a transcendental aesthetics is particularly fertile because it incorporates, not only Kant’s schematism and Husserl’s Aktanalyse, but also Merleau-Ponty’s idea of a “flesh of the world” and his contribution to the understanding of the affective, bodily nature of knowledge, which, as it will be exposed, offers a new account of the transcendental. This sheds a light not only on specific epistemological matters, but also on the fact of art itself.