Having two issues per year, Revista de Filosofía (ISSN 0034-8244, ISSN-e 1988-284X) publishes articles focusing on philosophical questions from a historical and systematic approach. Aimed at practitioners of philosophy, it publishes articles in Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, English and Italian.
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Revista de Filosofía 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.
Biological Foundations of Behavior, Innateness, and the Limits of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. A Reply to a Critical Note on ¿Cómo entender a los humanos?
The critical note on «¿Cómo entender a los humanos?», published in this issue, discusses four aspects of the book: the biological foundations of behavior, the notion of innateness, the rejection of the nature-nurture opposition, and the claim that genes are the raw material of evolution. This reply argues that the critique suffers from two serious limitations. First, an empirical omission: it does not address the massive evidence provided by twin studies, adoption studies, and genome-wide association studies on the heritability of human psychological traits. Second, a distorted representation of the current debate on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, presented as a displacing consensus when it is in fact a research program with qualified critics within evolutionary biology itself.
IF Reseña de Étienne Souriau, (2025), La instauración filosófica. Bs. As. Cactus. ISBN: 978-631-6714-00-8
Beyond Translation: Music, Language, and Mediation
This article reconsiders the problem of musical meaning by reformulating the relationship between music and language. Through a critical reading of Friedrich Nietzsche and Claude Lévi-Strauss, it examines two insufficient interpretive models: the illustrative model, which subordinates music to prior conceptual contents, and the naturalist model, which seeks to ground its intelligibility in physiological determinations. Against both approaches, musical meaning is understood as a form of non-propositional, non-univocal, and non-arbitrary openness, articulated through operations of cultural ordering and partially stabilized by interpretive mediations. From this perspective, mimesis is redefined as a principle for configuring the sonic continuum, while musical autonomy is conceived as resistance to full translation, rather than as isolation from language or culture.
Childhood and Technology: A Posthumanist Critique of Technopedagogical Reason
This paper explores the relationship between childhood and technology from a posthumanist perspective, challenging the technopedagogical rationality that dominates contemporary educational discourse. Against essentialist views that regard childhood as a natural stage and technology as an external agent, it proposes a relational ontology in which the child emerges as an event within a network of material, symbolic, and digital forces. The analysis addresses algorithmic and prosthetic forms of capture shaping childhood subjectivity under platform capitalism, as well as the risks of a pedagogy oriented toward performance and surveillance. Finally, it argues for imagining technological ecologies and childhood policies grounded in co-agency, openness, and hospitality toward otherness.
Tatián, D. y Eines, J., El susurro del marrano (Spinoza en teatro), Buenos Aires, RedEditorial, 2025, 96 pp.
Orality and Writing: A Proposal for the Reintegration of Ethics and Hermeneutics in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas
If Levinas’s work is characterized by the development of an entirely new philosophical language capable of pointing toward the alterity that has eluded Western ontology, his relation to writing and to books is more problematic. There is, rather, a sustained defense of orality, which would seem to be aligned with the ethical, as opposed to writing, which would belong on the side of the ontological. This holds, at least, for the major works: Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being. Nevertheless, I argue that, if attention is turned to other parts of Levinas’s work –both certain unpublished texts and the Jewish writings– new perspectives may emerge that offer tools for the ethical reintegration of writing. To that end, I examine the relationships between orality and writing and how the saying precedes both instances, as well as the analogical relationship between the ethical and the book.
A critical note on the book How to Comprehend Humans?, by Pablo Rodríguez Palenzuela
This paper offers a critical analysis of the book How to Comprehend Humans?, written by Pablo Rodríguez Palenzuela, which aims to explain the evolution of the human mind and behavior. More specifically, the paper discusses four issues addressed in the book that have far-reaching implications for the biological domain: the biological foundations of behavior, the adoption of the notion of innateness, the rejection of the traditional opposition between nature and nurture, and the assumption that genes are the raw material of evolution. The paper shows that the book reflects a gene-centered perspective that does not help recognize the complexity of organisms.
Deconstruction of Suicide. An Accompanied Reading on The Myth of Sisyphus
The purpose of this article is to highlight the aporia inherent in Camus’s conception of suicide. The methodology employed consists, on the one hand, of an analysis of the concepts used by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus and (secondarily) in The Rebel, and on the other hand, consists of a comparison with the thought of other authors, some of whom were cited by Camus, such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and others, such as Blanchot, who cited Camus. In conclusion, it will be explained why the absurdity that precedes suicide is ethically relevant when interpreted as the origin of the capacity to challenge any universal determination of value, and why it loses its relevance for ethics if it is considered, dogmatically, as a universal condition for existence.
Cosmopolitanism: an alternative to globalisation? Philosophical Reflections on a Kantian Theme
This work analyzes the Kantian concept of cosmopolitanism as a way to overcome the economistic approach to globalization, which leads to polarization and confrontation. The distinctive feature of Kant's proposal lies in its aim to build a world order grounded in rational ethical principles, a need that remains pressing today. The analysis first reviews texts from the Stoic tradition, which emphasize the importance of a just distribution of goods and the shared commitment of citizens and rulers in civil life. It then examines Kant's formulation of cosmopolitanism. From this perspective, two contemporary interpretations of the concept are considered: Nussbaum's liberal‑utilitarian proposal and Cortina's liberal‑social approach. The study concludes that the liberal‑social perspective is more consistent with Kantian thought and better suited to current challenges, due to its appeal to civic commitment as an ideal for guiding institutional reforms and its lesser materialistic emphasis.
Phenomenological Approaches to the Involuntary Somatic World of Laughter (J. Butler and M. Merleau-Ponty)
This paper aims to expand on J. Butler’s insights regarding the embodied and critical nature of laughter by drawing on conceptual tools from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of intercorporeality and touch. To this end, it focuses on the analysis of two specific modalities of laughter: contagion and, more particularly, tickling or gargalesis. The spatial specificity, the impossibility of self-induction, the unusual modality of touch, and the disruptive or crisis-like nature that characterize the latter can be understood through Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of the body schema, haptic reversibility, and passive touch. Finally, the paper suggests possible points of dialogue between the phenomenological account of tickling developed here and certain scientific investigations on gargalesis.
Bruce Bégout and Jean-Luc Marion – radicalizing phenomenology
This article compares Jean-Luc Marion and Bruce Bégout through a shared question: how can phenomenology be freed from its historical confinement within objecthood and theory of knowledge? It argues that, despite the absence of any direct dialogue, both thinkers seek to describe phenomena irreducible to intentional constitution, and both turn to aesthetic experience as a privileged model. Their paths nevertheless diverge. Marion interprets saturated phenomena as a reversal of intentionality, whereas Bégout moves further upstream and thinks mersion as a pre-intentional mode of appearing prior to the split between subject and world. The article therefore opposes saturation and mersion, signification and expression, and the gifted and the intoned subject. It concludes that Bégout does not simply refute Marion but radicalizes his project by relocating phenomenality before relation itself.
(Analytic) Philosophy of Sport: at the Turn of the 20th to the 21st Century
This article explores the philosophy of sport today, particularly its development within the analytic tradition. Within this subfield of philosophy—the philosophy of sport—various interpretations of sporting activity have emerged following Bernard Suits’s seminal work The Grasshopper (1978). These range from “sport conventionalism,” in its “reductive,” “deep,” or “ethical” variants, to “sport interpretivism” (or “broad internalism”), whose main version during the first decades of this century has been the “mutualist” approach. The debate is presented through the voices of its main interlocutors: W.J. Morgan, R.L. Simon, and J.S. Russell. In the end, the initially expository tone gives way to a more critical indication pointing toward the future of the debate.
Gauchet, M. (2026): Comment pensent les démocraties. Les ressorts cachés des idéologies. Paris: Albin Michel
The Dialectic of Master and Servant in Anthropology
This article proposes a philosophically productive use of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and in particular of the dialectic of lordship and bondage, in order to reflect on the anthropological conditions of concept formation. Starting from the thesis that conceptualization emerges from a conflict between singular experience and a socially established ontology, the paper shifts this framework toward non-modern social contexts in which highly institutionalized forms of mediation are absent. In dialogue with contemporary anthropology, especially with the notion of seasonality developed by Graeber and Wengrow, it is argued that seasonal gatherings constitute privileged social configurations for the emergence of practical, technological, and cosmological innovations. In such scenarios, the mediation between the individual subject and the collective conceptual horizon can take place in a concentrated and situated manner. The articulation between Hegelian reflection and ethnographic evidence thus allows conceptualization to be understood as a socially embodied and culturally variable process, without recourse to the figure of an abstract pre-social subject.
Tensions between the oikos and the polis. A reading on the invocation of the agraphoi nomoi in Antigone
The article begins with the traditional debate between eternal laws and written laws in Sophocles’ Antigone. Following Chiocchi (2020) and Nonet (2006), we will explore how Antigone’s funeral rites can be seen as symbolic, even though she professes to follow the agraphoi nomoi. This idea stems from the indistinguishable overlap between her fulfillment of duty as both sister and citizen, as well as the impulses of her emotions and her desire for death (Held, 1983; Fornaro, 2017). It is precisely within this desire that the lines between polis and oikos become blurred in the unique enactment of these agraphoi nomoi (Loraux, 1997). Therefore, I will discuss the notion of stasis (Agamben, 2017) to question whether Antigone’s actions can be interpreted as the fulfillment of a universal law or the satisfaction of a particular desire.
The problem of unveiling the sacred through the divine: a pragmatist dialogue with María Zambrano
This paper analyzes the link María Zambrano establishes between the sacred, the divine, and human experience through "poetic reason," a concept that seeks an existential and spiritual access to reality. However, from a pragmatist perspective, it is argued that this quest for a hidden transcendental is metaphysical and limiting for contemporary thought. The article proposes that poetry and philosophy should shift their focus toward their practical and contextual utility. Consequently, it advocates for the improvement of our cultural and social practices instead of the pursuit of absolute foundations or transcendentals, emphasizing a more functional and immanent approach to philosophical inquiry.
Activist realism revisited: reality, truth, and pluralism beyond Hasok Chang's internalism
Hasok Chang’s activist realism has introduced a pragmatist turn in the debate on scientific realism. In this paper, I argue that, despite succeding in moving beyond some of the difficulties of the classical debate, Chang's proposal faces three main limitations: ontological internalism, which undermines the role of reality in enabling or constraining epistemic practices; veritative internalism, which portrays science as an epistemically self-justifying and self-referential enterprise; and an overly permissive pluralism toward obsolete or incompatible entities and theories. To address these limitations, I propose three complementary strategies: an ontology of constraints, a conception of truth as epistemic calibration, and a differential and selective pluralism. In short, I advocate a sufficiently modest form of realism, one that avoids the pitfalls of traditional realism while remaining robust enough to overcome the difficulties associated with Chang’s activist realism.
About Chinese women: Ethnography, ethnology and anthropology in Julia Kristeva's semanalysis
In this paper I examine the ethnographic, ethnological and anthropological aspect of Julia Kristeva’s semanalysis, signalling About Chinese women [1974] as a clear example of its application. Dialoguing with the French structuralist semiology of the second half of the 20th century, and influenced by Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology, Kristeva introduces the issue of human sociocultural diversity in the very constitution of her semanalysis, thus questioning the ethnocentrism implicit in some of the elements of semiology. From this perspective, and taking into account Kristeva’s own explicit positioning, About Chinese women appears, not as a work of exclusively political motivations that responds to the political climate after May '68, marked by the debacle of the French Communist Party, but as the result of a sociocultural interest akin to the ethnographic, ethnological and anthropological approach.
Verbe silencieux and verbum infans: the language of painting in the phenomenology of Jean-Louis Chrétien
This article argues for the possibility of formulating a language of painting within Jean-Louis Chrétien’s phenomenology of the voice, conceived as a type of non-predicative language. To demonstrate this, we will first address the notions of the “silent verb” (verbe silencieux) and the “infant verb” (verbum infans) proposed by Chrétien, as they appear in his work Corps à corps (1997). Secondly, we will show how Chrétien develops this notion of the language of painting through his reception of the doctrine of the verbum in Christian Neoplatonism, specifically in authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Nicholas of Cusa. Finally, in order to reveal the hermeneutical richness of this non-predicative language of painting and the productive character of its reception and appropriation of Christian Neoplatonism, we will revisit the discussion between painting (image) and poetry (language) in Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura.
Neurosciences, artificial intelligence and human interiority
Currently, there are many reasons to dismiss the claim of a 'human interiority' as a nonsense. Indeed, the astonishing development of neuroscience and AI promises to be able to explain the human mind, at least in principle, from the exclusive perspective of the observer (objective, third person perspective). Moreover, a good number of contemporary philosophers advocate for the abolition of the interior-exterior dichotomy. This article will examine these arguments and attempt to rebuild the foundations of that lost interiority. To this end, it will be essential to engage in dialogue with neuroscience and computer science. The analogies of Leibniz's "mill" and John Searle's "Chinese room" will greatly aid this purpose, as will the notion of the "incommensurability" of physical and mental phenomena. Finally, we will present a model of articulation between realities of such different kinds.
Prolegomena for a Hermeneutic Philosophy of Religion in Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur is recognized as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, standing out in the French phenomenological tradition for his exploration of the relationships between rationality and the sacred, between philosophy and religion. This article examines Paul Ricoeur’s conception of the hermeneutic method as a pathway to a «philosophy of religion» capable of probing the symbolic and mythopoetic sources of thought. This, I argue, makes Ricoeur a key figure in 20th-century philosophy of religion, offering significant contributions to this discipline.
The notion of ἰδέα in Vitruvius’s dispositio and the philosophical legacy of Cicero: aesthetics and creative process
The article examines the philosophical background of Vitruvius’ architectural theory, focusing on the Greek term ἰδέα which he included in his definition of the dispositio and its interrelation with the Latin principles of compositio, forma, species, inventio, cogitatio, figura and imago, among others. These principles are analyzed in the conceptual framework of Cicero’s theory, considering the philosophical implications derived from his interpretation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s doctrine, and its application to the aesthetic dimension in the creation of the discourse’s forma. From this philosophical perspective, attention is set on the interpretation of this knowledge in the creative process of the forma and architectural space of Vitruvius. The concept of ἰδέα allows us to reflect on the meaning of the Greek and Latin terms that Vitruvius articulated in De architectura based on the Platonic-Aristotelian-Ciceronian vocabulary to define the design process.
To give place(-s) to the event. A critical reception of Renaud Barbaras' phenomenological cosmology
This study undertakes a critical examination of the terms in which Renaud Barbaras formulates his recent “phenomenological cosmology,” organized around the concept of an originary “deflagration.” The inquiry aims to bring to light both the unspoken presuppositions and the latent implications that follow from the adoption of “belonging” as the epistemological correlate of ontological deflagration within a horizon still marked by the inherited bifurcation between subjectivity and worldhood. In its final movement, the analysis seeks to show in what sense this phenomenological cosmology may be understood as a covert attempt to reconcile “man” and “world”: a gesture oriented toward securing for the former a fully inhabited status at the heart of the latter, that is, an authentic mode of “dwelling” in a sense resonant with Heidegger’s own conception.
Posthumous review of the writing of Professor Dr. Hegel, on The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy
This text presents the main arguments in Hegel’s The Difference between the Systems of Philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, directed against Fichte’s first principle in the Foundations of the Science of Knowledge. Without considering Fichte’s later works, the result ultimately favors him. It is shown that Hegel’s criticism is unfounded, and the text points out what was truly lacking in Fichte’s philosophy up to that moment.
Consilience and Integration of Knowledge: A Critical Analysis of E. O. Wilson's Proposal
Consilience is a term popularized by the entomologist Edward O. Wilson in 1998 as a key piece of a program aimed at unifying knowledge and fostering dialogue among the scientific, social, and humanistic disciplines. Wilson’s proposal received polarized reactions: its aspirations of synthesis were praised but it was also severely accused of reductionism. This paper analyses Wilson’s concept of consilience, by attending to its antecedents and explaining the mechanisms of extension from biology to culture. I conclude that, although consilience can serve as a source of inspiration for interdisciplinarity, it presents methodological and conceptual inconsistencies that hinder its applicability to the social sciences and humanities, which raises doubts about its viability as an integrative model of knowledge unification.
Negation and Reality in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
In this paper, an interpretation of the Tractatus will be proposed according to which the form that a proposition must have in common with reality in order to depict it is something like A ∨ ~A. In this way, propositions, by showing their logical form, would show, on the one hand, the contingent nature of facts and, on the other, their own bipolarity. Once what I take to be the Tractarian conception of negative facts is introduced, I will argue in favor of this interpretation in terms of its potential to explain the doctrine known as the logical unity of the contradictory pair, the nature of the proposition as a picture of reality, and, finally, the relationship between bipolarity and the sense of a proposition.
Lukács and mimesis: representations, reflections, and literary creation
Mimesis, understood as a representation of reality and a central axis of aesthetic reflection, finds a particularly influencial formulation in the work of György Lukács. This article explores its development in The Theory of the Novel and Aesthetics and places this ideas in dialogue with those proposed by Erich Auerbach and Lubomír Doležel, who interpret it from different angles: the narrative practices of each era and posible worlds theory. From this perspective, mimesis is presented not only as a reflection of reality, but also as an active process of reconstruction and literary creation.
Julius Frauenstädt and the controversy of materialism
This article aims to shed light on the position held by Julius Frauenstädt, one of Schopenhauer’s disciples, during the Materialism controversy (specifically, during its first phase). To do so, firstly this controversy will be presented in board outline by analiysing the works of Carl Vogt and Rudolph Wagner; then, secondly, Frauenstädt as an autonomous thinker and his judgment on materialism will be examined. Finally, by conclusion, it will be examined how Julius Frauenstädt’s participation in the controversy was a turning point in his intellectual relationship with Arthur Schopenhauer due to their disagreement about the practical consequences of materialism.
A Philosophical Reading of the Defense of Palamedes
The Defense of Palamedes is the complete speech of Gorgias that has traditionally received the least attention from a philosophical point of view. However, despite the indisputable importance of the Encomium of Helen, the speech is also worthy of analysis and attention, since its philosophical implications are abundant and significant. What we propose here is an interpretation of the speech in light of the famous three theses of the treatise On Non-Being or on Nature, thus offering a coherent reading of the Sicilian sophist's thought. In particular, the third thesis offers some key notions to understanding the intention and structure of the Defense of Palamedes, as well as Gorgias' general conception of language and rhetoric.
Phrónesis as hermeneutical rationality: Gadamer, Aristotle and a new reinterpretation of Neoplatonism
This article examines the reception of φρόνησις and σοφία in the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Hans- Georg Gadamer in order to rethink hermeneutic ontology beyond the technical-positivist paradigm. I argue that the articulation of practical and theoretical rationality presupposes an originary unity of thinking that remains insufficiently articulated: namely, the mediation of νόησις as the ontological structure of understanding. Whereas Heidegger interprets φρόνησις as a modality of facticity and Gadamer appropriates it as the matrix of a historically situated rationality, both leave implicit the noetic root that unifies φρόνησις and σοφία. The article shows that Neoplatonism systematically develops this unity by integrating life, λόγος, and contemplation within an ontological conception of intellect. From this perspective, νόησις emerges as a pre-predicative dimension grounding self-understanding, thus broadening the ontological horizon of contemporary hermeneutics.