This paper delves into the deconstruction of the notion of responsibility, drawing a correlation with the process of decomposition of the concept of sovereignty as discussed by Derrida in his last research works. We explore Derrida’s consideration of absolute responsibility as no longer passing through the figure of the sovereign. Derrida’s thought takes its distance from the philosophical and hegemonic determination of the notion of responsibility, for the conceptual system of its axiomatic defines responsibility based on the sovereign individual’s freedom (...) and makes responsibility the effect of his power. Yet, this definition condemns ethics to failure, since it does not account for the other supposed in the idea of response. Derrida incorporates absolute singularity, and consequently secrecy, into the structure of responsibility, enabling thought to encounter the absolute other. The text outlines the influence of Nietzsche and Celan in Derrida’s thought and develops an approach that sees in his work the effort to create a poetic revolution in the history of philosophy and knowledge by opening thought to radical alterity. (shrink)

Nuestra hipótesis es la siguiente: Históricamente, las políticas públicas de comunicación ayudaron a construir una posición de desventaja en términos de sostenibilidad económica de los medios comunitarios, populares y alternativos de Argentina, con respecto a los medios de propiedad privada con fines de lucro y a los estatales. Después de una breve etapa entre 2009 y 2015 en la que las políticas dirigidas al sector no lucrativo se orientaron -con sus demoras y problemas- a su legalización y fomento, las políticas (...) del gobierno actual, aunque no modificaron el marco legal, restauran las persecuciones a las radios en situación de ilegalidad forzosa. (shrink)

Derek Parfit influentially defends reductionism about persons, the view that a person’s existence just consists in the existence of a brain and body and the occurrence of a series of physical and mental events. Yet some critics, particularly Mark Johnston, have raised powerful objections to Parfit’s reductionism. In this paper, I defend reductionism against Johnston. In particular, I defend a radical form of reductionism that Buddhist philosophers developed. Buddhist reductionism can justify key features of Parfit’s position, such as the claims (...) that personal identity is not what matters and can also be indeterminate. Furthermore, Buddhist reductionism can avoid Johnston’s objections to Parfit’s reductionism. I conclude that reductionists have good reasons to favor Buddhist reductionism over Parfit’s version. (shrink)

The Communicational Theory of Law (CTL) usually differentiates between Legal Sociology and Legal Theory, in the sense that Legal Sociology is concerned with the social validity of the rules and Legal Theory with the formal or legal validity of the rules. It can be argued that both disciplines are two different perspectives of the same empirical reality (legal rules). Also, legal System and social milieu are two closely linked realities; they cannot be separated because they need each other. The Law (...) is the form or order that the social milieu takes, and, at the same time, the social environment provides the ideas, collective representations and other matters that need a legal regulation. For this reason, the epistemological separation between Sociology and Legal Theory must be overcome when the theoretical perspective comes to legal decisions. Thus, the decisional moment becomes the meeting point between the legal System and the social milieu. This is where the concept of the legal System fulfils its main function, as it allows for the dynamism and adaptability of the legal order. The hermeneutic re-elaboration of the normative texts will be the channel through which the social facts and other material elements can inform the meaning or possible interpretations of the rules and institutions of the legal order. This happens primarily by influencing theoretical and doctrinal works of an expository and didactic nature; and secondarily by influencing the decisions of legal operators and courts. This study seeks to explain how the social context influences legal decisions and the formation of the legal System, from a communicational perspective of Law. In order to do so, it will be necessary to set out two epistemological premises of CTL: the semiotic tripartition of the Theory of Law and the legal Order-legal System distinction. (shrink)

Iberian repertorios de los tiempos stemmed from Medieval almanacs and calendars. During the sixteenth century significant editorial, conceptual and material changes in repertorios incorporated astronomy, geography, chronology and natural philosophy. From De Li’s Repertorio (1492) to Zamorano’s Cronología (1585), the genre evolved from simple almanacs to more complex cosmological works which circulated throughout the Iberian-American world. This article claims that repertorios are a form of syncretic knowledge rather than “popular science” by relying on the concept of “knowledge in transit”. Elaborating (...) on this perspective, I present how repertorios ended up delivering a worldview from existing materials, a fact so far unnoticed by scholarship. At the same time, repertorios should not be considered an exclusively Iberian phenomenon, but the full scope of their nature as a form of syncretic knowledge should include their networks with migrants, indigenous, mestizos, and criollos across the Atlantic. In this sense, I try to trace the paths connecting productions in the Americas with Iberian repertorios. (shrink)

This book provides both an introduction to the philosophy of scientific modeling and a contribution to the discussion and clarification of two recent philosophical conceptions of models: artifactualism and fictionalism. These can be viewed as different stances concerning the standard representationalist account of scientific models. By better understanding these two alternative views, readers will gain a deeper insight into what a model is as well as how models function in different sciences. Fictionalism has been a traditional epistemological stance related to (...) antirealist construals of laws and theories, such as instrumentalism and inferentialism. By contrast, the more recent fictional view of models holds that scientific models must be conceived of as the same kind of entities as literary characters and places. This approach is essentially an answer to the ontological question concerning the nature of models, which in principle is not incompatible with a representationalist account of the function of models. The artifactual view of models is an approach according to which scientific models are epistemic artifacts, whose main function is not to represent the phenomena but rather to provide epistemic access to them. It can be conceived of as a non-representationalist and pragmatic account of modeling, which does not intend to focus on the ontology of models but rather on the ways they are built and used for different purposes. The different essays address questions such as the artifactual view of idealization, the use of information theory to elucidate the concepts of abstraction and idealization, the deidealization of models, the nature of scientific fictions, the structural account of representation and the ontological status of structures, the role of surrogative reasoning with models, and the use of models for explaining and predicting physical phenomena. (shrink)

Ensayos-homenaje en el primer centenario del nacimiento del fil sofo espa ol, que abordan diversos aspectos de la obra de Ortega. Los cuatro trabajos dibujan con rigor algunos de los horizontes planteados por el maestro y respetan la debida modernidad conceptual. la compilaci n estuvo a cargo de Fernando Salmer n, Alejandro Rossi, Luis Villoro y Ram n Xirau.

Este articulo investiga el cada vez más frecuente fenómeno de las intervenciones internacionales noviolentas para la transformación de conflictos y, en concreto, analiza los efectos que pueden tener dichas intervenciones sobre la protección y el empoderamiento de los activistas de derechos humanos que viven en situaciones de riesgo por su trabajo en entornos conflictivos altamente violentos. Para ello se situará el contexto en el que han surgido y se han desarrollado estas iniciativas, analizándose los principales elementos que las caracterizan, y (...) se estudiará el caso de la protección que proporciona Peace Brigades International a los defensores de derechos humanos, lo que permitirá extraer conclusiones relativas a las posibilidades que ofrecen las intervenciones internacionales noviolentas a la comunidad internacional en los campos de la prevención de la violencia, la gestión de conflictos y de construcción de la paz. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The current political, economic and social processes that appear as symptoms of the new World order organization attempt to take account by Antoni Negri and Michael Hardt in their book Empire. The power, now is in transnational (...) and supranational organisms hands. The new power is decentralized, deterritorialized and its con fi gured as a network. In this sense, capital is imposed over any constraint that prevents from its global expansion. In sum, capital organise its territory as a “non place”. Meanwhile this new world is organized certain practices arise in order to subvert it. Inmaterial labor political proposal implies the reappropiation of the control over the space by the multitude: to build a “new place” in the “non place”. (shrink)

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper we treat participants’ sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on (...) heart rate variability and on utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient. (shrink)

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning theory (...) do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling. (shrink)

In this essay I revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao.

El presente trabajo busca reflexionar, desde la perspectiva de los estudios interartísticos, sobre la práctica narrativa de Adolfo Couve, escritor y pintor chileno que tematiza el mundo plástico en toda su producción narrativa. A partir de una concepción desprejuiciada respecto de lo marginal, de la fealdad y la miseria, el autor despliega una mirada alterna sobre los espacios de borde en busca de la reivindicación de la miseria, a la vez que relativizar el canon estético que prestigia temas y motivos (...) lejanos al campo de referencia de quienes habitan el borde. La exhibición de aquellos espacios, los personajes y los paisajes minoritarios, su composición plástica y narrativa, sin embargo, dialogan permanentemente con la tradición pictórica de elite. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente trabajo busca reflexionar, desde la perspectiva de los estudios interartísticos, acerca de la práctica narrativa de Adolfo Couve, escritor y pintor chileno que tematiza el mundo plástico en toda su producción narrativa. A partir de una concepción desprejuiciada respecto de lo marginal, de la fealdad y la miseria, el autor despliega una mirada alterna en los espacios de borde en busca de la reivindicación de la miseria, a la vez que relativizar el canon estético que prestigia temas (...) y motivos lejanos al campo de referencia de quienes habitan el borde. La exhibición de aquellos espacios, los personajes y los paisajes minoritarios, su composición plástica y narrativa, sin embargo, dialogan permanentemente con la tradición pictórica de elite.: The present work seeks to reflect, from the perspective of interartistic studies, on the narrative practice of Adolfo Couve, Chilean writer and painter who thematizes the plastic world in all his narrative production. Starting from an unprejudiced conception regarding the marginal, the ugliness and the misery, our author displays an alternate look on the edge spaces in search of the vindication of the misery, at the same time that relativizes the aesthetic canon that prestige subjects and reasons far from the reference field of those who inhabit the edge. The exhibition of those spaces, the characters and the minority landscapes, their plastic and narrative composition, nevertheless, permanently dialogue with the pictorial tradition of elite. (shrink)

En La nave de los locos los signos propuestos alrededor del tópico de la embarcación recolectora de orates que replica el espacio manicomial, o de los campos de concentración, o de las dictaduras, subraya además el abandono y el despojo de la sociedad y su asentamiento fundamental, la ciudad, que niega una y otra vez la presencia de los perturbadores. En esta circunstancias, creemos que el texto de Cristina Peri Rossi va mutando desde la concepción de la marginación como puro (...) despojo y negatividad, a la asunción del éxodo como instancia de liberación, y por tanto, de superación de las categorizaciones propuestas por el poder. (shrink)

Recent descendants of David Lewis, such as Stephen Torre, Dilip Ninan, and Dirk Kindermann have utilized multi-centered propositions, which are roughly sets of possible worlds centered on a sequence of individuals, to characterize the content of attitudes. In an attempt to explain counterfactual attitudes such as wishing and imagining, Ninan (2012, 2013) developed a more fine-grained characterization of multi-centered propositions than others in the multi-centered camp. While Ninan provides a systematic explanation of the nature of de se attitudes (attitudes one (...) expresses with first-person pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘me’), the nature of other types of indexical attitudes (attitudes one expresses with indexical terms like ‘you,’ ‘today,’ ‘now,’) is not explored. This paper does two things. First, it demonstrates how we can account for indexical attitudes within Ninan’s framework. This, however, has the consequence of generating propositions of limited accessibility of sorts, which in turn conflict with a received and simple model of linguistic communication. According to this simple model, successful communication consists of the transmission of mental content from speaker to hearer. Second, in light of this conflict, the paper proposes an adjustment to Ninan’s theory in order to avoid commitment to propositions of limited accessibility, and thus preserve the shareability of attitudinal content from speaker to hearer. (shrink)

A reality-design gap in the conceptualization and practice of digital agriculture has been systematically reported in the literature. This condition is favored by the lack of understanding and inclusion of local worldviews around digital technologies. Informed by Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, this study looks to bring stories of local appropriation to the spotlight. Based on a qualitative approach that included data collected through interviews with 73 households, the authors explored the way in which two selected communities of Colombian coffee growers (...) are engaged in the use of digital technologies in material and symbolic ways. Three emergent themes—a relational way of farming, (dis)connected machines, and nurtured families and communities – articulate multiple interactions between farmers, farms, institutional programs, and technologies, that originate local forms of digitalization (and non-digitalization). This study points out the relevant role of situated ideas of development in positioning technologies in or out of the farm, and broader digitalization agendas in or out of farmers’ life projects. At the same time, it presents a critique of notions of universality that drive unquestioned quests for technification. In contrast, building on a relational perspective, this study calls for embracing a perspective of multiplicity within notions of development and innovation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article interprets a recently recovered manuscript, Tratado de astronomía y la reformaçión del tiempo, composed by Antonio Sánchez in New Granada c.1696, in the context of the Spanish and Renaissance cosmographies. Sánchez’s Tratado proposes a spherical astronomy, in which celestial bodies – including comets — move in orbs containing pyramidal knots that explain the changing speed observed in the motion of planets. From this astronomy and following the peninsular style of repertorios, Sánchez derives two major conclusions: the corrected (...) length of the solar year and a revised birth date of Jesus. Taking as center of reference Vélez, where Sánchez was based, these claims led to conclusions in domains ranging from calendric astronomy to eschatology, including the incorporation of the indigenous peoples into salvation narrative and a demonstration of the arrangement of the celestial orbs at the Last Judgment. Sánchez’s Tratado constitutes an expansion of the Spanish mathematical cosmography that sheds light on the production of knowledge in the Spanish-American world and, at the same time, provides elements to reassess our understanding of the global circulation of Renaissance and early modern ideas. (shrink)

Civic Humanism is one de most relevant theories in present day political philosophy. Its main characteristics are the rejection of radical individualism, the emphasis on the social and political responsibility of citizens, and the consideration that the realisation of a mature personality is only possible through communities on pre-political and pre-economical levels. The author of this paper maintains that there is a continuity from the start of Civic Humanism in Renaissance until its revival in XX Century. He defends as well (...) that the philosophical roots of Civic Humanism can be found in the aristotelian practical philosophy, especially in the notions of good citizen, good life, common good and teleological praxis. (shrink)

En su intervención en el debate alemán de finales del siglo XVIII sobre el significado de la ilustración, Moses Mendelssohn asigna a la ilustración (Auflkärung) y a la cultura (Kultur), componentes teórico y práctico respectivamente de la formación (Bildung) de un pueblo, una función de profilaxis recíproca. El desarrollo de cada una constituye el mejor medio para prevenir la corrupción que produce el mal uso de la otra. Dado que la “manera de destruir” de cada una se contrapone a la (...) de la otra, la felicidad de una nación depende de su avance equilibrado. La intención de este artículo es determinar la posición de Mendelssohn respecto a los límites de la ilustración así como clarificar el vínculo profiláctico entre ilustración y cultura. (shrink)

Background:Stress can frequently occur in the driving context. Its cognitive effects can be deleterious and lead to uncomfortable or risky situations. While stress detection in this context is well developed, regulation using dedicated advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) is still emergent.Objectives:This systematic review focuses on stress regulation strategies that can be qualified as “subtle” or “mindless”: the technology employed to perform regulation does not interfere with an ongoing task. The review goal is 2-fold: establishing the state of the art on such (...) technological implementation in the driving context and identifying complementary technologies relying on subtle regulation that could be applied in driving.Methods:A systematic review was conducted using search operators previously identified through a concept analysis. The patents and scientific studies selected provide an overview of actual and potential mindless technology implementations. These are then analyzed from a scientific perspective. A classification of results was performed according to the different stages of emotion regulation proposed by the Gross model.Results:A total of 47 publications were retrieved, including 21 patents and 26 studies. Six of the studies investigated mindless stress regulation in the driving context. Patents implemented strategies mostly linked to attentional deployment, while studies tended to investigate response modulation strategies.Conclusions:This review allowed us to identify several ADAS relying on mindless computing technologies to reduce stress and better understand the underlying mechanisms allowing stress reduction. Further studies are necessary to better grasp the effect of mindless technologies on driving safety. However, we have established the feasibility of their implementation as ADAS and proposed directions for future research in this field. (shrink)

Erudition as a cultist topic and style, recreated in countless traditional sources, helps Colombian writer R. H. Moreno-Durán to establish a delicate equilibrium between the parodic forms of linguistics research and the recreational contents that reflect the thinking conscience of men and the dialogic sphere of their existence. All these elements are present in his novel, El toque de Diana (Diana’s touch) and are conjugated to the theoretical contribution of Mijail Bajtín, and they make it possible to explain the exploration (...) of a fictional legacy that depends on the willful language of its characters to metaphorize the unfinished and multifaceted character of a violent society, in continuous crisis, such as the Colombian society. (shrink)

ABSTRACTImmigrant origin children and youth are now, and will continue to be, a diverse and demographically important segment of all post-industrial nations’ populations. In order to realize their potential, receiving contexts will need to find effective ways to integrate them into the fabric of their society. Using an ethic of care approach, we must begin by taking a comprehensive perspective on integration, which incorporates both a risk and resilience framework and an ecological perspective. A number of practices have emerged that (...) have promise for positive implications for the schooling performance and educational integration of immigrant students These practices include 1 – short-term newcomer programs; 2 – specialized services for Students with Interrupted Formal Education; 3 – sustained services focused on new language development; 4 – services focused on heritage language development; 5 – providing explicit college pathway knowledge; 6 – summer and after-school academic enrichment programs; 7 – facilitating parental involvement ; and 8 – advisory groups, after-school academic supports, mentoring and health services, and postsecondary supports. Providing the kinds of ecologies of care outlined here will go a long way toward helping these children and youth thrive and become the kinds of contributing members to their new society that will serve our collective future well. (shrink)

Excelente iniciativa de publicar escritos éditos e inéditos de José Torres Orozco, uno de los últimos representantes del positivismo en México. Juan Hernández Luna presenta los aspectos biográficos del autor como su posición dentro del positivismo mexicano. Es de interés señalar que entre los escritos filosóficos hay varios dedicados a Nietzche. Entre los psicológicos, uno de 1922 se ocupa de Freud"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Epistemic Utility Theory is often identified with the project of *axiology-first epistemology*—the project of vindicating norms of epistemic rationality purely in terms of epistemic value. One of the central goals of axiology-first epistemology is to provide a justification of the central norm of Bayesian epistemology, Probabilism. The first part of this paper presents a new challenge to axiology first epistemology: I argue that in order to justify Probabilism in purely axiological terms, proponents of axiology first epistemology need to justify a (...) claim about epistemic value—what I label ‘Downwards Propriety’—much stronger than any they have offered justification. The second part of this paper offers an argument that this challenge cannot be met: that there is no hope for providing a purely axiological justification of Downwards Propriety, at least given widely accepted assumptions about epistemic value. (shrink)

This work analyzes and characterizes the spread of the COVID-19 disease in Mexico, using complex networks and optimization approaches. Specifically, we present two methodologies based on the principle of the rupture for the GC and Newton's law of motion to quantify the robustness and identify the Mexican municipalities whose population causes a fast spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Specifically, the first methodology is based on several characteristics of the original version of the Vertex Separator Problem, and the second is based (...) on a new mathematical model. By solving VSP, we can find nodes that cause the rupture of the giant component. On the other hand, solving the NLM can find more influential nodes for the entire system’s development. Specifically, we present an analysis using a coupled social network model with information about the main characteristics of the contagion and deaths caused by COVID-19 in Mexico for 19 months. This work aims to show through the approach of complex networks how the spread of the disease behaves, and, thus, researchers from other areas can delve into the characteristics that cause this behavior. (shrink)

This study aimed to analyze the levels of personal aggression and victimization, ethnic-cultural aggression and victimization, self-esteem, empathy, social skills and gender in adolescents as potential predictors of bullying in Spain and Ecuador. The wide pluricultural sample comprised Secondary Education students from both countries (N = 25190, average age = 13.92, SD = 1.306; NSpain = 14437; NEcuador = 10753), who took part in the study by filling in a self-report. The results revealed that predictive models of bullying for both (...) countries explain 50-70% of variance. A transnational predictive pattern of personal victimization can be observed based on the levels of ethnic-cultural victimization, ethnic-cultural aggression, personal aggression, self-deprecation and affective empathy. A transnational predictive pattern of personal aggression is evidenced depending on the levels of ethnic-cultural aggression, personal victimization, self-deprecation, ethnic-cultural victimization and the fact of being female. We concluded that bullying can largely be predicted by involvement in ethnic-cultural discrimination. These results are discussed, and educational inferences are drawn for prevention. (shrink)

The literary genesis of Einbahnstraße by Walter Benjamin represents a very special case of the use of the procedures of surrealism in the philosophical-literary production of the author. The process of evolution of thinking that ended up in the writing of this piece is unveiled throughout the present analysis. This is a sign of both waiver and restart; the opening for a new productive dimension in the career of one of the most important —and misunderstood— philosophers of the 20th century. (...) More than enlightening a small master piece of philosophy from a literary perspective, or analyzing a small master piece of literature from the philosophy, what is being problematized here is the division, cultivated or figured throughout the years, between both disciplines. This work is intended to recover what is insoluble from the philosophical-literary labor of Walter Benjamin, besides tracing a possible reconfiguration for an interdisciplinary field of work to come up and contribute in the understanding of the problem called The Retreat of Metaphor by Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

In "Machiavelli’s Art of Politics" Alejandro Bárcenas offers a reexamination of Niccolò Machiavelli’s political thought in order to propose a concise and historically accurate portrayal of his ideas and intellectual context. -/- This study provides a nuanced view of the complexities of Machiavelli’s thought by analyzing his classical background, taking into particular consideration the influence of Xenophon, and his view of the ideal ruler as someone who creates the conditions for a flourishing human life. In addition, Bárcenas explains why (...) Machiavelli defends a republican political order that encourages citizens to live according to their own laws while serving a common good and revises his legacy through the writings of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Maurizio Viroli. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s concept of position-taking, Stellungnahme, is adequate to understand the idea of second nature as an issue of philosophical anthropology. I claim that the methodological focus must be the living subject that acts and lives among others, and that the notion of second nature must respond to precisely this fundamental active character of subjectivity. The appropriate concept should satisfy two additional desiderata. First, it should be able to develop alongside the biological, psychological, and social individual development. Second, (...) it should be able to underlie the vast diversity of human beings within and across communities. As possible candidates, I contrast position-taking with two types of habit-like concepts: instinct and habitus, on the one hand, and customary habits, on the other. I argue that position-taking represents the active aspect of the subject while the habit-like concepts are passive. A subject’s position-takings and ensuing comportments are tied together by motivations, which evince a certain consistency, and for this reason are expression of the subject’s identity. I conclude by nuancing the relation between Stellungnahme and passivity. Passivity is deemed necessary to action but subservient to it; position-taking is thought to be prior to passivity. (shrink)