Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía
The journal Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía (ISSN 0211-2337, ISSN-e 1988-2564) is published every six months. It publishes research on issues of philosophical historiography and philosophical matters from Ancient times to the present day, focusing particularly on Spanish and Ibero-American thinking. It accepts original works in major Western languages and includes reviews and bibliographical notes on the latest books in the field of the history of philosophy.
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Lost in Translation: The Distinction between Mens-Anima-Intellectum in Spinoza’s Philosophy and its Conceptual Relevance in Ethica V
The objective of this article is to unravel a philosophical problem in Spinoza’s thought that, under the appearance of a semantic difficulty linked to translation, shows the complexity of the relationships between the mind and the intellect, as well as the consequences that arise. They derive from the ontology of immanence in the Fifth Part of Ethics. This difficulty arises from the meanings of the terms Anima, Mens, and Intellectum in Spinoza’s philosophy. To address this, the indissoluble identity between Mens and the body will be analyzed, highlighting the radical nature of the ontology of immanence in contrast to the substantialization introduced by Descartes. Furthermore, the article proposes a reinterpretation of the meaning of Mens in Spinoza’s ontology through the exposition of the intellectual love of God as an experience of the third kind of knowledge. We argue that it is in the Fifth Part of the Ethics where the materialist significance of Spinoza’s conception of Mens is most clearly reflected.
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Expression as the origin of culture in Eduardo Nicol's thought
Throughout this paper an approach to Eduardo Nicol's concept of «expression» in relation to «culture» is exposed. The starting point is the confluence of the three main guiding lines of his thought: metaphysics, dialectic and phenomenology, which led Nicol to establish «expression» as the center of all his thought. In The Human Vocation, Metaphysics of Expression or Critique of Symbolic Reason using figures such as the mystic, the artist, the poet and the philosopher, different perspectives on expression are displayed that come together in a concept of culture as an expression of the same human being.
The pedagogical action as Practical reason: observations on Lectures about Takes of Wise (Jena 1794)
The work studies the elements that make up the pedagogical thinking in the book “Lectures about Takes of Wise”. Some biographical notes are made, which provide support and origin to the construction of this philosophical thinking regarding education, as well as the characteristics of pedagogical and formative thinking for the improvement and perfection of humankind. It is concluded that Fichte’s educational thinking involves cultural and social exchange and an ethical intersubjective relationship. Reciprocity is a rational activity associated with pedagogy and the expansion of the practical dimension of freedom.
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Diseases of the soul in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa: A metaphor or a true analogy?:
The figure of Christ the doctor runs through the vast majority of apostolic and patristic writings. Christ presents himself as the healer of men's sins. Therefore, it should not surprise us that this medicinal metaphor was extended to a large part of moral and theological writings until the middle of the 13th century. Sin is presented, metaphorically, as a disease of the soul. Now, if we look at certain writings of the Cappadocian fathers, particularly those of Gregory of Nyssa, the medical metaphor in certain cases is replaced by a true analogy. Diseases of the soul are not only metaphorically predicated on moral dispositions and sin, but they are understood in themselves as an authentic participation of the soul in human illness. Galenic medicine seems to have had a direct impact on this new understanding of the illness of the soul.
The Special Metaphysics of Pietro Pomponazzi
This work recovers the main positions, and the arguments on which the special metaphysics of Pietro Pomponazzi is based. This metaphysics takes shape in anthropological and theological themes, that is, about the soul, free will and predestination. In the opinion of scholars such as Martin Pine, Pomponazzi represents the most radical Renaissance Aristotelianism. However, as demonstrated in the work, the Mantuan philosopher continues to declare his adherence to the teaching of the Church, even when he cannot combine it with rationality.
Heidegger's confrontation with Hegel in the lecture of 1930-1931: the «restricted» concept of being and the «ontotheology» in the Phenomenology of Spirit
This paper undertakes a critical analysis of the philosophical stance that Heidegger counterposes to Hegel in the Freiburg lecture of the winter semester of 1930-1931. To do so, it synthesizes their points of encounter and locates them within the framework of Heidegger's writings of the same period. In this way, the concept of «ontotheology», as a diagnosis of Hegelian philosophy, is embedded in Heidegger's other more familiar conceptual schemes, such as the «ontological difference» and the critique of the «metaphysics of presence». This provides the reader the access to the interpretation that Heidegger carries out of Hegel, thus approaching a possible evaluation on this interpretation.
“Reiterated Empathy” as Empathic Reverberation in Stein
In the phenomenological context intentionality makes a back-and-forth movement possible, since the ecstatic openness towards intentional correlates opens the way for their repercussion or reverberation in one’s own ‘subjectivity’ as the other pole of the intentional correlation. This paper deals with the phenomenon of reiterated empathy which appears briefly in Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy and which we interpret in its specific manifestation as an empathetic reverberation. At first, the latent presence of different forms of a reverberating process is shown in Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger and Sartre, for whom reverberation always carries a negative feature. In a second step our aim is to prove that reiterated empathy and empathic reverberation fulfils, on the contrary, an essentially positive function according to Stein, because (a) they serve as a motivational genesis for inner perception and (b) they allow us to deepen our own self-knowledge and self-assessment. Keywords: phenomenology; inner perception; “interpersonality”; reverberation; self-deception. .
Stoic external negation as existential negation
Stoic negation is external, since the negative particle is placed before the statement as a whole. This contrasts with Aristotelian internal negation, which affects only a part of the statement, such as the predicate. Moreover, Stoic external negation also has an existential value. The paper argues that these features of Stoic negation were introduced to expand the possibilities of Peripatetic negation, which the Stoics regarded as lacking universality. These features outline a new conception of logic that allows no exceptions to either the principle of non-contradiction or the principle of bivalence. On this view, propositions and their existential import are understood as inseparably connected to a world causally determined by the λόγος.
Spinoza by León Dujovne: Between Mysticism, Geometry, and Jewish Philosophy
Between 1941 and 1945, a monumental work on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza was published in Argentina. This work is Spinoza, a four-volume set by León Dujovne, which systematically and exhaustively addresses the philosopher’s life, his intellectual context, his thought, and his reception in European philosophy. The aim of this Argentine scholar’s work was to gather and critically analyze the secondary literature on Spinozism produced in the early decades of the 20th century, while also offering a thorough interpretation of Spinoza’s thought. However, the fate of this work was unexpected: shortly after its publication, and without gaining significant recognition, it fell into obscurity, a fate that has persisted to this day. In this paper, we seek to revive this work, arguing that it presents the author’s unique, original interpretation, which emphasizes the presence of a religious spirit that shapes, permeates, and nourishes Spinozism, and which is a legacy of his Jewish cultural heritage. Furthermore, we aim to discuss this interpretation on the basis of a close examination of the source, particularly Spinoza’s Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata.
Greek dialectics as a rigorous method. A research into the earliest known philosophical methodology
Dialectics is a philosophical method, it has methodology rigor for academic research. It is divided into two main variants: Greek and German. In turn, there are particularities between each variant, the Greek is subdivided into Platonic and Aristotelian, and the German into Hegelian and Marxist. The present article focuses on the first variant. It explores the ontological and epistemological presuppositions, through a specific review of the Platonic Dialogues Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman (also called Politicus); it also deals with Aristotle’s Topics. The reading of these works, with the dialectical method as the object of study, is done from the approach of a Metaphysics of Relation, a notion that is assumed from the connotative and explicative view as a strategy to identify a common thread of the Greek variant of dialectics.
Biopics in the light: a view of biographical cinema from the metaphysics of the person, by Julian Marias
This article aims to show how the writings of Julián Marías on biographical films or biopics, which are included in what he called “cinematographic anthropology”, have greater depth if they are considered in the light of a general theory of human life, understandable from the vital or historical reason and that will be formulated as a metaphysics of the person, which the philosopher defines as “someboy corporeal”. This will make it possible to establish an interpretative bridge between the writings of a theoretical nature and the cinema articles that the Spanish philosopher wrote for decades, on historical characters such as Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, El Cid and Jimena, Christina of Sweden, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, Mata Hari, Van Gogh, Kafka or C.S. Lewis. Throughout his film writings, topics such as historical appropriateness, imagination (or lack thereof), the biographical argument or the ultimate reality of human life are frequently mentioned, which he has explained in great detail in his more theoretical writings. In conclusion, having posed with precise philosophical terms what is a biography and what is its metaphysical constitution, the articles of cinematographic anthropology of Marías can be interpreted as anticipations or extensions of his metaphysics of the person.
Community as a Body of Bodies. Potencies, Affects and Collective Agency in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
The present article draws upon the materialist and vitalist ontology of Gilles Deleuze, in dialogue with an ethological reading of Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, which places the relation at the centre. Based on the principles of this relational ontology, the text proposes a distinction between matter, body and organism according to the degree of stratification of chaotic matter. This distinction enables us to conceptualise the body beyond the organism, as an assemblage of intensities, affects and potencies in constant composition and decomposition. This, in turn, serves to emphasise the ontological-political dimension of existence. Thus, community is proposed as a common body in becoming, always in the process of production, which opens the possibility of experiencing new modes of existence and political relations that transcend the traditional limits of the human.
The political community of memory: Ortega as reader of Proust in Revista de Occidente
The influence of Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu, since the publication of its first volume in 1913, on the constellation of Spanish intellectuals, writers, and artists of the early 20th century —particularly those of the Generation of ‘14 and Generation of ‘27— is significant. Proust emerges as a paradigm that defines the new art or the new novel. Ortega y Gasset played a fundamental role in the reception of Proust’s work through its inclusion in Revista de Occidente and through the essays he published on the novel in La Nouvelle Revue Française. This article aims to examine that reception as a way of constructing a political community rooted in the faculty of memory, given that the only moment of human identity lies in the recalled past.
The Revolt of the Means. An Introductory Study, Translation, and Notes on “What is the Human Being?” by Hans-Georg Gadamer
This article presents the first Spanish translation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s 1944 essay “Was ist der Mensch?” (“What is the Human Being?”), published in the Illustrierte Zeitung Leipzig in the context of the waning years of the Second World War. The introductory study situates this text, which was excluded from Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, within the constellation of his writings from the period and underscores its philosophical significance. Gadamer reconstructs a genealogy of Western self-understanding, from mythical-religious configurations and the Christian-Platonic synthesis to modern rationalisation and Nietzsche’s radical critique of reason. The core of his argument is that each historical response to the question of the human being -whether religious, philosophical, or technical- reveals its own one-sidedness and thereby compels the question to be reopened in the tension between the striving for totality and the awareness of finitude. This introduction presents the principal contents of the essay, with particular emphasis on Gadamer’s reflections on reason, the uprising of technical means, and the historical responsibility of philosophy.
Just ‘Skeptic’? Critical note to ‘The names of Ancient Skepticism: aporētikoí, ephektikoí, pyrrhōneioi, skeptikoí and zētētikoí’ by Ramón Román Alcalá
The history of Pyrrhonism is fragmented and complex, as reflected in the various names applied to its practitioners. Román Alcalá has examined this issue in «The Names of Ancient Skepticism: aporētikoí, ephektikoí, pyrrhōneioi, skeptikoí, and zētētikoí», concluding that the proper and established designation is ‘Skeptic.’ In this note, I offer historiographical, historical, and conceptual considerations that qualify this conclusion. I further argue for the generic use of ‘Skeptic’ to refer to both Academic and Pyrrhonian thinkers, and for the specific use of ‘Pyrrhonist’ to denote the latter. On this basis, I sketch an account of the history of Pyrrhonism that highlights its polynomic character.
Personal Identity and the Order of Principles in Leibniz’s Nouveaux Essais
The aim of this paper is to analyze Leibniz’s metaphysical theory of personal identity and to engage with the debate initiated by Margaret D. Wilson, whose interpretation has significantly shaped contemporary scholarship. According to her reading, Leibniz would incur an inconsistency by simultaneously maintaining that we are immaterial substances and that a personal identity without substantiality would be possible. This article argues that such an interpretation rests on a misunderstanding of Leibniz’s sources. To this end, the two allegedly inconsistent theses are examined through an exposition of Locke’s theory of personal identity and of Leibniz’s response to it. In conclusion, it is argued that Leibniz’s concessions to Locke must be understood as rhetorical rather than systematic commitments: to admit the mere logical possibility of an apparent identity without substance does not amount to acknowledging its metaphysical possibility, since this would imply denying the rational order of the world, grounded in the principles of rationality.
Between Facticity and Hope: Heidegger, Benjamin, and Agamben in José Esteban Muñoz’s Queer Hermeneutics
This article traces the philosophical genealogy linking Heidegger, Benjamin, and Agamben to José Esteban Muñoz’s queer hermeneutics. Starting from Heidegger’s notion of facticity and Agamben’s paradigm of bare life, it examines how Muñoz reinterprets the ontology of impropriety in aesthetic and affective terms. His thought transforms exposure and abandonment into forms of potency and hope, locating in affect the site of a historical politics of persistence. Drawing on Benjamin, temporality is conceived as interruption and promise: the time of the “not-yet,” where queer and brown community embodies an immanent utopia –an ontology of affect open to the future.
This article explains a crucial detail about the French thinker Sarah Kofman, namely, how her last book Rue Ordener, Rue Labat is not merely a biographical text that foretells her imminent suicide a few months after it was written, but rather expresses the deepest aspects of her thought and life. To understand this, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo is proposed as the interpretative horizon, because it is in the light of Nietzsche's last book that we can comprehend Kofman’s writing style in her book, and within this, see that her work revolves around the eternal return, that is a nuance of the subtle that points to the life-death that is constitutive of both the human and reality itself.
Based on a reading of some of the works of the philosopher Sarah Kofman (especially those dedicated to E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gérard de Nerval, Sigmund Freud, as well as her unique autobiographical writing), these pages trace the intimacy between two figures (‘the double’ and ‘the woman’), in order to expose, firstly, two modalities of a single being, metamorphic and aporetic, and, secondly, how this being is identified, in his own work and in much of what has been written based on it, with two abyssal improprieties: ‘death’ and ‘writing’.
The Oblivion of the Metaphor: Nietzsche between Sarah Kofman and Derrida
This essay delves into the concepts of metaphor, abyss, oblivion, and deconstruction as discussed by Sarah Kofman, Jacques Derrida, and Martin Heidegger. Tracing the trajectories of their works on Nietzsche, we explore how these thinkers approach the concept of metaphor as a gateway to understanding language, reality, and art. Their distinct perspectives converge and diverge, offering a rich tapestry of ideas that reshape our understanding of metaphorical language and its profound implications on our comprehension of deconstructionism.
Sarah Kofman, reader of Schopenhauer as Educator
By means of an interpretative work of Sarah Kofman’s reading of Nietzsche’s third Untimely Consideration: Schopenhauer as Educator, in the following article we will show the conflicting relationship between institutional education and the liberating education of the singularities that Nietzsche establishes from the example of Schopenhauer as an untimely figure. The elevation of culture is then here the transition to become what one wants to be.
The approach to Nietzsche, untimely philosopher, who did not find good readers in his time, allows Kofman to approach reading through different innovatives and creatives forms of reappropriation of the text and the trauma that its loss implies. The book as an object gets lost for its author when it is published, abandoned in the hands of others, and at the same time removed from the blind and possessive love that prevented the author from other forms of elucidation. Following Nietzsche’s trail in his chapter “Why I write such good books” Kofman addresses the question of masculine motherhood and its philosophical vicissitudes, outlining a theory of the irreparable from writing and reading as different modalities of an aporetical relation with the book. These arguments lead us to an understanding of Sarah Kofman’s work as a philosophy of the book.
ENG Sarah Kofman in the debate on the existentialist morality
Sarah Kofman dealt with the viability of existentialist morality in her writings, although she added a plus in its epistemic acceptance. In addition to giving viability to the writings and proposals of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Kofman’s text reveals elements of their philosophical activity that allow them to give even more visibility to their moral work.
ENG Sarah Kofman, philosophy as aporetic procedure
Sarah Kofman (1934-1994), an extraordinary post-World War II French philosopher, remains almost ignored in the great reconstructions of Western thought, for multiple reasons, such as the sad sexism that often characterizes the philosophical gaze, but also the ‘dusty’ custom of the academy (of whatever nation one speaks of) to isolate and discredit rebellious thoughts from the established authority. Sarah Kofman has worked from the inside to disrupt the established order, and has fought for recognition that would allow her to introduce something new into traditional philosophical teaching. Sarah Kofman is an author who demands an attentive reader because of the depth of a thought that often does not appear in all its clarity on first reading, but whose enormous consistency can be perceived. This contribution seeks to sketch her figure, starting with some typical elements of her way of being a philosopher, i.e. taking a critical account of her own gendered position. The lack of neutrality in her thinking was an awareness that guided her in her search for a new way of doing philosophy. This approach has made her capable of irreverent freedom and an original outlook, making her a truly exceptional performer in a landscape dominated by the academic rules of ‘just’ quotation or deference to rules. Sarah Kofman, very clearly and with absolute awareness, bypasses and returns to the text, relying on an excavation that is always first and foremost nourishment for her intelligence, but also a clear understanding of the said and the unsaid.
Sarah Kofman; on the childhood of art, genesis, structure and repression
The present article gives an account of a deconstructive reception together with the effort of elaborating a psychoanalytic conceptuality to understand the "childhood" of art. It is the idea of "childhood", of its genetic and structural understanding, through the study of repression, that is of interest to develop. The result of this analysis understands childhood by dis-identifying it from a foundation based on the temporal present, radicalizes in this sense an idea of the past that has never taken place, and goes on to propose a horizon where childhood works with another order of resources; substitution, double bind, the double in general. This is a first attempt to reinsert the deconstructive discussion in the author's psychoanalytic reception.
In 1980, at a conference that brought together philosophers to discuss the work of Jacques Derrida, Sarah Kofman spoke up immediately afterwards Jean-François Lyotard’s paper to recall the death of her father, a rabbi, “for having wanted to rest on Sabbath in Auschwitz”. This paper follows the traces that the non-reception of this word has left in Kofman’s How to get out ?(Comment s’en sortir -1983) and Smothered words (Paroles suffoquées-1987). If the most dreadful aporia from which philosophy seeks to extricate man is that of his own death, is philosophy in a position to confront the “most aporetic of situations,” the “death worse than death” that deprived her of her father? This “extreme aporetic situation”, which has actually occurred in human history, gives rise to another declension of the aporia: “how not to say it? and how to say it?
Jenaro Abasolo: idealistic foundation for the care of human dignity
This article analyzes the notion of “dignity” of the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884). For this purpose, a conceptual relationship is established with four source authors: Kant, Fichte, Quinet and Michelet. In general, Fichte's conception of dignity, linked to the shaping of the material world from the spirit and to perfectibility, becomes the explanatory axis of Quinet and Michelet, and, consequently, of Abasolo's idealistic approach. In these authors, Kant's idea of dignity remains in the background when they notice that Fichte connects spiritual causality to the shaping of the empirical world through work. For him, and for Abasolo, this activity, being universally participatory, allows perfectibility to be a vocation not only of the wise, but of any person in his own circumstance, however modest it may be. In turn, Abasolo will try to find the reasons that support the state's protection of work and, in general, of the minimum social and economic conditions that are the basis for the care of people's dignity.
Enlightened and positivist seeds of the modern philosophy of science in texts by Jullien de Paris and Auguste Comte
This paper aims to examine two philosophical projects worked on in the first half of the 19th Century concerning science and its place in society, one by Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris, and the other by Auguste Comte. Starting from the reading of two short texts, this paper identifies the contributions to the modern philosophy of science made by the enlightened thought of Jullien de Paris and by the positivist proposal of Comte: both authors coincide on the necessity to coordinate scientific efforts to promote social well-being and achieve an efficient political organization. Because such philosophical reflections on science precede the most recognized theoretical proposals in the field by more than half a century, this article characterizes those philosophical projects as enlightened and positivist seeds of the modern philosophy of science.
Dual Modernity: The Return of The Grand Narratives
This article problematizes the modernity/postmodernity debate based on the thesis of the dual nature of modernity in Ernesto Laclau, Antonio Negri, and Enrique Dussel. From the perspective of these authors, we delve into the critics aimed to towards the thesis of end of modernity and the grand narratives to explore the possibility of news grand narratives in the present. The text explores three meta-narrative models: Laulau’s populism, Negri’s meta-perspectivism, and Dussel’s transmodernity. The objective of the article is to explicit the relationship between the thesis of dual modernity and the proposal to reactivate the grand narrative as a resource for political action in the present.
Thinking and Banal Evil in Arendt: Towards a New Interpretation
This article disputes the notion of banal evil, understood as thoughtlessness or inability to think. The reasons are various. Arendt does not clarify how one arrives at the unfortunate state of thoughtlessness. There are also some confusing interpretations of banal evil. But more than that, the definition of banal evil contains a kind of contradictory thesis: that evil does not result from an inability to think, but from a failure to think morally correctly, in which the evil is hidden. According to St. Thomas, the causes of wrong moral thinking are passion, vice and ignorance. They are passion, vice, and ignorance. It is from this approach to banal evil that Arendt and St. Thomas can be articulated in harmony. Finally, a possible approach between the two philosophers from a metaphysical perspective on evil is discussed. It is worth noting that the article shows how much the debate on the meaning of banal evil is still alive.