Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
type: channel
description: The Journal Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy (ISSN: 2255-3827) is an electronic scientific publication edited by the Department of Philosophy and Society of the Faculty of Philosophy focused on political philosophy with an eye on our historical present.
publisher: Ediciones Complutense
language: en
publication name: Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
issn: 2255-3827
copyright: In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
items: Critical Theory and the Ontologization of the Political. A Reading of Ernesto Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony through the Lens of Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
items: Faust as the “automatic subject” of fossil capital: elective affinities between Marx and Goethe
items: Introduction to the dossier. Materialism and culture. Itineraries, tensions, and ambivalences of Marxism
items: Kant and Sacristán. Itineraries of Marxism in Manuel Sacristán on the occasion of his centenary (1925-1985). The role of Kant in his intellectual trajectory
items: Ortega Esquembre, César (2026). Axel Honneth y la lucha por el reconocimiento. Trotta. 200 páginas.
items: On De-imagination as a Regime: Technique and Algorithmisation
items: Shadow Theatre: Is Marxism on Trial for the Climate?
items: Pluralism, Constitution, Neutrality. Carl Schmitt’s Remarks at the Langnamverein Assembly in 1930
items: Civil War and Hobbes: Origin and Foundation of Politics between Schmitt and Agamben
items: The vertical emancipation of philosophical orientation
items: An obsession called "Oneself". A political cartography of neoliberal techniques of the self
items: Rethinking “sincretismo” in Mexico: between the sacred and the profane
items: The Ecosophy of Félix Guattari: Views from the South
items: Justice beyond borders. A critical theory of transnational justice
items: Recognition and glory in Thomas Hobbes
items: Neoliberalism and Education: An Analysis of Key European Educational Policies on Entrepreneurship
items: Between Marxism and the Kyoto School. Kakehashi Akihide's political-economic theory as a development of Lenin's and Nishida's thought
items: Undoing work, preserving abstraction? A critique of the post-capitalism narrative of the “end of work”
items: Remembering or Forgetting the Civil War: Reflections on a Core Problem of State Formation
items: Identidad del enemigo y civilidad política: una lectura de Hobbes desde Balibar
items: Critique, Genealogy, Normativity. Koselleck, Foucault, and the historic-critical reflection on law
items: Hobbes and his monsters: on the possibility of a Hobbesian zoopolis
items: In the shadow of the Leviathan: political representation in party democracy
items: Gnoseological scepticism as a consequence of Thomas Hobbes’ epistemic position: the limits of political artifice
items: ¿Dónde va el cuidado de sí de Michel Foucault?
items: Infrastructure and sovereignity: ¿Leviathan vs Behemoth again?
items: Del Estado soberano al Leviatán zombi. Una reflexión hobbesiana sobre el narcotráfico en América Latina
items: Presentation of the dossier. Present of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
items: The imperial script of affluent democracies. On Inés Valdez's Democracy and empire. Labor, nature, and the reproduction of capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
items: Vulnerable Bodies: Critical Notes on Vulnerability, Interdependence, and Political Mediations

Critical Theory and the Ontologization of the Political. A Reading of Ernesto Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony through the Lens of Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
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description: The purpose of this article is to present a critical reading of the so-called post-Marxism developed by E. Laclau, focusing particularly on the ontological dimension that derives from his thinking. To this end, the negative dialectic developed by Theodor W. Adorno will be adopted as the interpretative framework for this work. In light of this, we will revisit the Frankfurt School thinker's reading of the fundamental assumptions of Heideggerian ontology and its philosophical consequences, echoing these critiques within the categorical corpus of the theory of hegemony. Therefore, we will proceed to analyse the concept of political difference, as conceptualised by Laclau, taking up three critical lines that Adorno directs against ontological thought, namely: 1) the problem of historicity and contingency; 2) the interrelation between the question of being and the question of meaning; and 3) ontological necessity and its link to idealistic consciousness. This interpretative task will allow us to argue that, although Laclau's theoretical project devalues the notion of “critique”, the concept of the political can be recovered in dialectical-materialist terms, redefining its emancipatory potential.
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creator: Agustín Mendez Samoiloff
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 333
ending page: 345
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.106043

Faust as the “automatic subject” of fossil capital: elective affinities between Marx and Goethe
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description: The article offers a materialist interpretation of Goethe’s seminal work, employing the fundamental principles of Marxist critique to argue that Faust, through its literary devices, foreshadows the functioning of capitalism, particularly its reliance on fossil fuels, a dependency that has led to the ecological crisis. To this end, the article first analyses the innovations Goethe introduces to the literary treatment of space and time through the notions of “abstract space” and “abstract time”. It then explains the emergence of money in both the play and the history of Western capitalism via the idea of the carnivalesque. Finally, it explores the question of the domination of territory and nature.
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creator: Violeta Garrido
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 257
ending page: 267
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.105965

Introduction to the dossier. Materialism and culture. Itineraries, tensions, and ambivalences of Marxism
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description: Atravesamos tiempos convulsos, tiempos de aceleración vinculados a la exacerbación de las contradicciones propias de las sociedades capitalistas. La evolución de por sí volátil de la economía financiera parece desquiciada por los vaivenes geopolíticos, revelando de forma cada vez más clara su profunda hibridación con los intereses de unas clases dominantes que interfieren decididamente en un espacio económico que hasta hace no mucho se presentaba bajo un ideal mistificante: el de su pretendida autorregulación. Este desplazamiento en el eje rector de la acción política encuentra su correlato más evidente en la emergencia de liderazgos de nuevo tipo que ponen en cuestión la imagen que habían proyectado y la autocomprensión que de sí mismas tenían las élites internacionales. La cultura y la industria cultural no son ajenas a estos movimientos en la tectónica sociopolítica, por lo que buscan amortiguar las dislocaciones de la conciencia mediante la producción seriada de productos de consumo y de mediaciones institucionales que apuntalan una conformación antropológica –anclada en códigos de la comunicación y conocimiento, redes institucionales y patrones de la convivencia– funcional, o cuando menos adaptable, a los nuevos escenarios de hiperexplotación y de precariedad existencial que, en nuestro presente, componen el mundo de la vida de ingentes masas de población.
subject: Dossier Articles
  topic: section
creator: Anxo Garrido
creator: Manuel Romero
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 255
ending page: 256
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.109229

Kant and Sacristán. Itineraries of Marxism in Manuel Sacristán on the occasion of his centenary (1925-1985). The role of Kant in his intellectual trajectory
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description: These pages attempt to highlight Manuel Sacristán's critical efforts against dogmatic Marxism and the mechanistic and dialectic understood as a method, with its mechanicist features that surround it. In this endeavor, Kant played a significant role in the development of his intellectual trajectory.
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creator: Carlos Marzán Trujillo
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 321
ending page: 331
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.106051

Ortega Esquembre, César (2026). Axel Honneth y la lucha por el reconocimiento. Trotta. 200 páginas.
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subject: Book Reviews
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creator: David Mengual Garcerán
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 493
ending page: 495
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.108345

On De-imagination as a Regime: Technique and Algorithmisation
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description: This article develops the notion of “de-imagination” as a central part of the contemporary political-technological regime in which the imaginative faculty is captured by algorithmic governmentality (Rouvroy and Berns). The concept is developed from the idea of active production which, through exomatisation (Stiegler) and predictive standardisation, closes off alternative futures and the medial power of radical imagination. Drawing on philosophical archaeology and in dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Cornelius Castoriadis (social imaginary) and Jacques Rancière (distribution of the sensible), the text seeks to situate imagination as a central field of political dispute. Finally, in opposition to this regime, it proposes an eroticism of the future as a practice of profanation which, through inoperability and aesthetic reappropriation, can liberate the instituting power of the common.
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creator: Hernan Gabriel Borisonik
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 445
ending page: 455
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.107219

Shadow Theatre: Is Marxism on Trial for the Climate?
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description: Nota crítica sobre el libro de reciente publicación de César Rendueles, A la sombra de Marx. Fragmentos de materialismo accidental, Madrid, Akal, 2025, 205 pp.
subject: Notes and Discussions
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creator: Julio Martínez Cava-Aguilar
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 481
ending page: 486
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.107875

Pluralism, Constitution, Neutrality. Carl Schmitt’s Remarks at the Langnamverein Assembly in 1930
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description: The aim of this article is to examine Carl Schmitt's remarks at the Langnamverein assembly in November 1930 —two years before the popularised lecture "Strong State and Sound Economy" was delivered within the same association— in which it was suggested that all the legal means at the Reich government's disposal should be made use of. To this end, each of the topics that structure his remarks and allow us to understand his political proposal is covered in a separate section: 1) pluralism, 2) constitutional reform, and 3) internal political neutrality. Finally, concluding reflections highlight the contributions and enduring relevance of Schmitt's remarks.
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creator: Nicolás Fraile
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 457
ending page: 467
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.106810

Civil War and Hobbes: Origin and Foundation of Politics between Schmitt and Agamben
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description: The research argues that civil war is an origin phenomenon of modern politics, which cannot be reduced to a chronological event or the linear flow of time. It is a historical force that interrupts and transforms politics, even during moments when order is being established. Hobbes is regarded as a thinker situated at the vortex of this origin. Through a dialogue with Schmitt and Agamben, the research explores the discrepancy between civil war and political order, revealing how the history of the state confronts its truth at the cessation of command. Civil war, as an ontological phenomenon, condenses time into a continuous present, creating a gap that demands rethinking the categories of political order. This duality is unveiled: as a mark of the collapse of order and as its most radical source, always tied to the inherent risk of the political.
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creator: Domenico Scalzo
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 101
ending page: 112
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.93478

The vertical emancipation of philosophical orientation
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description: One of the most widespread criticisms of philosophical counselling in academic environments is that its sessions are normalizing and pay homage to productivist and individualist ideologies. This argument conflicts not only with Gerd Achenbach’s works, one of the world's first philosophical counsellors, but also with the theories and work of the leading theorists in the field. This paper aims to analyse the legitimacy of this condemnatory judgement by examining the thinking of three prominent national and international theorists: Ran Lahav, Mónica Cavallé and Nacho Bañeras. On this basis, the emancipatory possibilities of these philosophical encounters will also be explored.
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creator: José Barrientos Rastrojo
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 113
ending page: 123
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.96510

An obsession called "Oneself". A political cartography of neoliberal techniques of the self
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description: This study aims to analyze key aspects of the production of neoliberal subjectivities and ways of life through the array of discourses, techniques and practices that individuals are encouraged to apply to themselves. These neoliberal techniques of the self are explored in terms of their philosophical assumptions, cultural expressions, and political implications. Their main dimensions include the emphasis on voluntarism, the imperative of adaptability, the standardization of habits and routines, and the therapeutic privatization of distress caused by performance pressure and continuous mobilization. In this sense, the study explores and advocates for the perspective of politicizing distress, seeking to establish connections between individual symptoms and their structural conditions, as a fundamental task of contemporary critical theory.
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creator: Ignacio De Boni
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 125
ending page: 137
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.96757

Rethinking “sincretismo” in Mexico: between the sacred and the profane
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description: Syncretism constantly occupies a standpoint based upon double critique that generates clashes and perplexity between different worlds. On such a basis, I intend to reinterpret some doubts regarding the artwork "Sincretismo" by the Mexican artist Ismael Vargas, using a filter of readings that amalgamates current paradigms and ideologies through its impact in Mexico recently. This piece of art provoked a strong echo of controversy and utterances of repudiation and criticism regarding syncretism as a phenomenon in this mestizo country. With such practices and models of domination, a new socio-cultural and even economic structure emerged via an ontological vision of politics that looks towards a ‘’crisis of identity’’. This sudden change in conception towards “Sincretismo” may contribute to the need to re-signify these cultural elements, which confer ethnic and identity issues in particular. Therefore, it argued to understand the need to organize such elements, especially with a new sociopolitical and philosophical yield of this new nation where the indigenous and the European converge.
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creator: Rana Rizk
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 139
ending page: 153
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.97446

The Ecosophy of Félix Guattari: Views from the South
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description: In the context of the ecological debate of the 1980s, Félix Guattari formulates his ecosophy, a response to the warning of climate change, but above all to the production of subjectivity in Integrated World Capitalism. It is the elaboration of an expanded notion of ecology and the eminently practical roots of his political reflection that distinguish this proposal. This article seeks to resituate ecosophy in the current political and ecological debate. To this end, it begins by analyzing the crisis of the production of subjectivity in current capitalism, a problem that has repercussions not only in the psychological sphere, but also in the social and environmental, forcing the construction of an ecology that transversally integrates such registers. Later, the review of Guattari's visit to Chile will allow us to analyze the tensions that nourish the political and ethical scope of the ecosophical practice. Finally, the analysis of Guattari's link with Latin America will allow us to understand the impact of his fieldwork on the conception of the aesthetic paradigm that sustains ecosophy as a response to the desire for catastrophe expanded by the discourses on the crisis.
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creator: Patricio Landaeta
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 169
ending page: 179
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.98249

Justice beyond borders. A critical theory of transnational justice
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description: This article proposes a review of a critical theory of transnational justice based on the human right to justification, with aim of assessing a normative model to address injustices beyond the borders of the nation-state. First, it presents the three main theoretical approaches to justice in global contexts: international justice (IJ), global justice (GJ), and transnationa justice (TJ). Then, it reconstructs two normative perspectives on transnational justice focused on rights and obligations. Finally, Rainer Forst's proposal develops as the foundation of a critical architecture of global justice, in which the right to justification and the concept of freedom as non-domination allows for overcoming the limitations of existing conceptions. This proposal offers a coherent and normatively robust alternative for building legitimate, democratic, and emancipatory transnational structures.
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creator: Andrés Sandoval Sarrias
creator: Ana María Salazar Canaval
creator: Katherine Esponda Contreras
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 155
ending page: 167
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.99668

Recognition and glory in Thomas Hobbes
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description: The aim of this article is to problematize the relationship between the passion for glory and the dynamics of power in Hobbes. To this end, it examines how Hobbes presents the passion for glory, as a manifestation of the desire for recognition and superiority, constituting itself as a form of power acquisition. This connection highlights how glory transcends the desire for recognition, revealing itself as a fundamental driver for obtaining the appropriate means to establish security as a necessary guarantee for achieving a pleasant life. The hypothesis intended to be evidenced pertains to the idea that the attainment of a pleasant life is linked to the recognition of power exercised through the passion for glory, a necessary condition for achieving security. Thus, the passion for glory is presented not only as an element that amplifies conflict among men but also as a central component in the dynamics of power and recognition, which underpins that condition of security that encompasses the material and spiritual development of individuals.
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creator: Delmo Mattos
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 93
ending page: 99
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.100169

Neoliberalism and Education: An Analysis of Key European Educational Policies on Entrepreneurship
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description: The aim of this study is to analyse European educational policies on entrepeneurship and the promotion of entrepeneurial spirit from theoretical-philosophical perspective. To achieve this, a documentary analysis was conducted using a selection of key texts issued by the European Comission over the past two decades. The units of analysis were drawn from the EUR-Lex platform of the European Union. This research is guided by two core questions. First, under what social, political, and economic conditions do these entrepeneurial selves operate? Second, what are the educational implications of understanding the process of human formation as a strategy of personal investment? Guided by these questions, the study argues that educational policies on entrepeneurship can be understood as a questions, the study argues that educational policies on entrepeurship can be understood as a technology of governance -in the Foucauldian sense- designed to shape individuals into "entrepeneurs of the self". These policies aim to instil an ethos of self-valorisation that serves as a new mandate for subjective regulation. The ultimate purpose is to align individuals' bejaviour with enterprise model, positioning eduation as a key instrument in this process.
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creator: Marcelo Posca Cohen
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 181
ending page: 193
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.100868

Between Marxism and the Kyoto School. Kakehashi Akihide's political-economic theory as a development of Lenin's and Nishida's thought
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description: Japanese is the language that has produced the gratest amount of Marxist theory after English, German, and French. However, Eurocentric tendencies still prevail in the intellectual circuits of this field, relegating the theory of important Japanese Marxist thinkers to a secondary plane or even rendering them invisible. This article aims to contribute to countering this intellectually impoverishing Eurocentric tendency by exploring the political-economic theory of Kakehashi Akihide, whose life and work represent an ideal bridge for traversing the transition from the most internationally well-known Japanese thought, that of the Kyote School circle, to Marxism. Kakehashi believed that the Marxist system of thought should be refined through the incorporation of Nishida Kitaro's philosophy, and that Nishida's philosophy should be refined by providing it with a Marxist foundation mediated by Lenin's philosophy. The originality of Kakehashi's theory made him a prominent figure in the fisrt decades after World War II, contributing to the emergence of a political movement, the Japanese New Left, articulated around the valorization of subjectivity, direct action, and the goal of revolution as an alternative to the objectivism and economism of the institutional left, especially the Communist Party.
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creator: Ferran de Vargas
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 195
ending page: 208
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.100961

Undoing work, preserving abstraction? A critique of the post-capitalism narrative of the “end of work”
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description: The aim of this article is the critique, from a conception fo capital as abstract domination, of the theoretical proposals of post-captialism of, on the one hand, Paul Mason and, on the other hand, Alex Williams, Nick Srnicek and Helen Hester. In these authors there is the idea of buiding a post-capitalist horizon where human beings stop working and break with mercantile logic through the use of information technologies. However, is it enough to stop working in order to exit capitalism? After presenting the main ideas of these authors, the text argues that their emphasis on the abolition of work does not address the dundamental split between concrete and abstract labor. Finally, some future research directions are briefly suggested, focused on how to think about emancipation without falling back into the abstraction of labor or the logic of the commodity.
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creator: Jesús Ayala-Colqui
creator: Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo
creator: Karla Castillo Villapudua
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 209
ending page: 220
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.101650

Remembering or Forgetting the Civil War: Reflections on a Core Problem of State Formation
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description: In this article we focus on the relationship between civil war, memory and oblivion. If civil war is the worst evil of a political community and a people wants to avoid falling back into it, should they forget it or remember it? Hobbes offers a good understanding on this subject, despite the distance, from which we can extract a set of reflections for the contemporary world. Our text carries out a critical evaluation of this possible Hobbesian response.
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creator: Rosanovich Damian
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 69
ending page: 78
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102339

Identidad del enemigo y civilidad política: una lectura de Hobbes desde Balibar
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description: In this paper, I propose a critical reading of the figure of the enemy in the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, contrasting it with Carl Schmitt’s characterization and bringing it into dialogue with Étienne Balibar’s notion of “ultrasubjective violence.” Although Hobbesian philosophy is often associated with a pessimistic view of human nature and the justification of absolute sovereign power, I will argue that his theory contains elements that can be interpreted as strategies of civility –ways of avoiding the dehumanization of the other even in contexts of extreme violence. In contrast, Schmitt’s friend-enemy opposition, insofar as it depends on an identitarian rather than merely circumstantial logic, opens the door to forms of ferocious violence that Hobbes manages to avoid. The aim, therefore, is to recover certain aspects of Hobbes’s proposal as useful tools for critically thinking about contemporary politics, marked by forms of enmity that overflow the political sphere and result in exclusions, discriminations, and forms of violence justified by supposedly incompatible essences.
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creator: Isabel Ríos Gómez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 57
ending page: 67
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102722

Critique, Genealogy, Normativity. Koselleck, Foucault, and the historic-critical reflection on law
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description: In contemporary political philosophy, an ongoing debate concerns the relationship between genealogy and normativity, according to which the two are seen as mutually exclusive. This controversy is framed within the coordinates of the Anglo-Saxon context, where the value of Foucault’s analyses for thinking the legal domain has often been sidelined. This paper therefore proposes to revisit the connection that, in Foucauldian thought, links critique with genealogy as a method of philosophical inquiry, and with normativity as one of the dimensions of this relationship. The aim is to reassess the relevance of genealogical approaches within the legal field and to reinsert law as a valid object of historical-critical reflection. The article is structured in three parts: the first focuses on the notion of critique in the works of Foucault and Koselleck, both of whom explored how this issue has been shaped in the West since modernity. The second part addresses genealogy as a critical philosophical method in Foucault's thought. The third part examines how normativity lies at the core of Foucauldian philosophy, and explores the types of characterizations and distinctions Foucault made regarding it during the 1970s.
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creator: Luciana Alvarez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 221
ending page: 231
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102560

Hobbes and his monsters: on the possibility of a Hobbesian zoopolis
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description: Through a textual, conceptual, and comparative analysis of Hobbes’s work, this article proposes a reinterpretation of his political philosophy from a zoopolitical perspective. This approach, which incorporates humans, nonhuman animals, and monsters, challenges the anthropocentric foundations of modern political thought. A comparative examination of Aristotelian and Hobbesian zoology highlights the semiotic framework Hobbes assigns to animality, bestiality, and monstrosity, showing that his political ontology contains conceptual resources for thinking community beyond the boundaries of the human species. Using a hermeneutic approach centered on the distinction between animality and brutality, and on the conception of the State as a monstrous automaton, I argue that the internal logic of the Hobbesian system provides theoretical grounds for expanding the social contract toward a “Hobbesian zoopolis.” I contend that Hobbes recognizes in nonhuman animals an ontological equality with humans, while locating brutality as an exclusively human condition. Likewise, his conception of sovereignty—directed toward the preservation of life, collective prosperity, and happiness—allows the Commonwealth to be reinterpreted as a project aimed at guaranteeing the stability and flourishing of all forms of life that sustain it. This logic opens the theoretical possibility of reimagining the modern State as a multispecies Commonwealth.
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creator: Gonzalo Bustamante Kuschel
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 5
ending page: 16
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102762

In the shadow of the Leviathan: political representation in party democracy
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description: This article explores the possility of understanding the crisis of contemporary democracy in light of the challenges posed by the Hobbesian concept of representation. Through a methodological and substantive dialogue with the work of Giuseppe Duso, we will analyze the evolution of modern representation based on the dialectic between conceptual and political order. Starting with Hobbes, and taking into account the divergences among Elements, De Cive, and Leviathan, we will show how his logic permeates modern constitutions, displacing medieval representation, but it is inverted—or even dissolved—with the goverment of public opinion in the early 19th century, the emergence of mass parties, and the constitutionalization of multiparty systems after World War II. In all these moments, however, we remain within the conceptual horizon of political modernity, where the reference of representation to an ideal unity and the prohibition of the imperative mandate are unquestionable elements. Based on a conceptual clarification of the current crisis and on the above background, we will conclude that the issue is not so much about locating the genesis of the concept of representation in the Leviathan, but rather about recognizing that, insofar as we remain modern, Hobbes is—still today—a lurking specter.
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creator: María del Campo Márquez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 45
ending page: 55
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102780

Gnoseological scepticism as a consequence of Thomas Hobbes’ epistemic position: the limits of political artifice
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description: Thomas Hobbes states in Leviathan that, in order to secure lasting peace, we might secure lasting conditions of sovereignty. Accordingly, a number of mechanisms of eternity of life or artificial immortality are established: the succession of the sovereign; the government of doctrines and opinions; and the good government of the sovereign. However, if we consider the Hobbesian epistemic position, we find an intrinsic limitation for political science, since we are not able know with the same degree of certainty about human nature, whose action we want to restrict on the basis of politics, as we are able to know about the effects of the very mechanisms artificially constructed for this purpose. Consequently, Hobbesian gnoseological scepticism reveals itself as a fundamental limitation for politics.
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creator: Roger Castellanos Corbera
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 79
ending page: 91
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.102785

¿Dónde va el cuidado de sí de Michel Foucault?
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description: El objetivo del presente artículo es ponderar la propuesta etopolítica de Michel Foucault en relación con las corrientes morales contemporáneas, específicamente respecto de aquellas variantes particularistas: la ética del cuidado y el particularismo moral de Jonathan Dancy. Frente a una tendencia interpretativa actual a estrechar la relación entre ética del cuidado y ética del cuidado de sí, asociada al pensamiento de Foucault, proponemos una revisión teórica y conceptual del desarrollo de su propuesta ética, dimensión esta última muy descuidada. Sugerimos que, en diálogo con estas posiciones morales, la ética foucaultiana estaría, en realidad, más cerca del particularismo de Dancy que de la ética del cuidado, sobre todo respecto del alcance teórico-práctico desde el que ambas se levantan. Las razones para sostener esto son principalmente dos: una posible compatibilidad entre el análisis foucaultiano de la microfísica del poder respecto de la motivación interpretativo-metodológica que inspira el trabajo teórico de Dancy, y la compatibilidad entre la pretensión práctica expresada explícitamente por Foucault para su ética, que se identificaría con la pretensión práctica de Dancy en Ethics Without Principles (2024)
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creator: Pedro Reyes
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 233
ending page: 243
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.103002

Infrastructure and sovereignity: ¿Leviathan vs Behemoth again?
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description: What is the relevance of Hobbes' works regarding contemporary challenges to the State posed by the privatization of infrastructure and logistics? To answer this question, in the first section we review Chapter XXIV of Leviathan and we discuss the "nutrition" of the Republic as a form of sovereign management of material infrastructures and logistics necessary to attain the salus populi. In the second section, we propose a brief review of the emergence of critical infrastructure, from ports and roads to digital platforms, linking its evolution to the development of modern states. The third section presents two contemporary cases of state withdrawal or absence in relation to the administration of critical infrastructe: drug trafficking and private drainage services, and how these cases enable forms of criminal or ground-root quasi-sovereignty, as well as forms of parasitic infrastructure and logistics. These cases are compared with the growing relevance of private digital platforms in contemporary social life. In the fourth section, we present three infrastructural threats: social dependence on platforms, the privatization of knowledge about the population, and the inherent fragility of interdependent infrastructures. The conclusions argue for the urgent need to rethink the ties between sovereignty and infrastructure in the context of the privatization of essential services. Drawing on Hobbes, the article argues for the need to recongifure state power as ultmately responsible for an expanded form of salus populi.
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creator: Carlos Balzi
creator: Agustín Berti
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 17
ending page: 30
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.103051

Del Estado soberano al Leviatán zombi. Una reflexión hobbesiana sobre el narcotráfico en América Latina
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description: This article reinterprets Latin American drug trafficking through the lens of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651), complemented by Friedrich Schiller's notion of aesthetic education. Building on Hobbes's dictum protego ergo obligo, it argues that when state institutions are infiltrated by criminal networks, the "state of nature" resurfaces inside the polity: the state becomes a zombie Leviathan—institutionally intact yet powerless and illegitimate. The argument is developed through a comparative analysis of three hotspots selected for their high homicide rates and distinct patterns of state capture. In each setting, drug cartels exploit Hobbes's triad of passions—competition, diffidence, and glory—to create parallel orders that deliver "selective security". These dynamics nurture an aesthetic of terror and ostentatious illicit wealth that endows violence with cultural legitimacy. Purely coercive state responses prove short-lived; lasting pacification demands a dual strategy: re-establishing the state's monopoly on coercion while reshaping collective emotions and imagination. Drawing on Schiller, the article outlines "counter-imagination" policies—community arts programs, neighborhood-based creative economies, and pedagogies of alterity—that can redirect fear, desire and hope away from criminal glamour and back toward civic life. The study thus offers a novel analytical framework linking sovereignty, passions, and aesthetics, bridging empirical work on criminal governance with political-philosophical debates on legitimacy, and highlighting the sensory dimension that underpins illicit authority.
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creator: Esteban Mizrahi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 31
ending page: 43
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.103792

Presentation of the dossier. Present of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
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subject: Dossier Articles
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creator: María Liliana Lukac de Stier
creator: Andrés Di Leo Razuk
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-01-30
publication date: 2026-01-30
starting page: 1
ending page: 3
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.105893

The imperial script of affluent democracies. On Inés Valdez's Democracy and empire. Labor, nature, and the reproduction of capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
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description: Review of Inés Valdez's Democracy and empire. Labor, nature, and the reproduction of capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
subject: Book Reviews
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creator: Macarena Marey
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.107283

Vulnerable Bodies: Critical Notes on Vulnerability, Interdependence, and Political Mediations
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description: This article deploys a critique of the expansion of the concept of “vulnerability” as an ethical-political foundation in contemporary feminist literature. It distinguishes between a sociological-descriptive usage—differential exposure to material conditions of existence—and an ontological-universalist one—a shared human condition—showing that the ontologization of the category dehistoricizes it and moralizes conflict, transforming negativity into the immanent management of harm. The text examines the biopolitical institutionalization of vulnerability, through which subjects deemed “vulnerable” become objects of tutelage, screening, and administration, as well as its political indeterminacy, since the notion can be appropriated both by progressive projects and by reactionary victimisms. Against those readings that naturalize interdependence, the text seeks to re-inscribe the body within the field of social reproduction through the historical-material mediations that constitute it, thus avoiding a moral fetishization and the reduction of politics to a demand for recognition and protection. The article concludes by advancing a politics of mediation and composition: departing not from a pre-political universal—“we are all vulnerable”—, but a unity constructed from situated experiences of exploitation, dispossession, and oppression, reclaiming negativity as the driving force of social emancipation.
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creator: Bruno Monfort
creator: Jesús Aguilera
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy
date: 2026-07-13
publication date: 2026-07-13
starting page: 383
ending page: 396
doi: 10.5209/ltdl.105787