Timely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat.

Dieser Beitrag handelt von der Empathie in der Kunst. Ich beginne mit einer Reflexion über die Ursprünge des Begriffes und seine Verwendung in der Ästhetik. Es folgt eine Analyse der Empathie im Vergleich zu anderen Formen der Anteilnahme an Kunstwerken. Im dritten Teil untersuche ich die Mechanismen der Empathie in der Kunst und die Funktion der Imagination. Der vierte Teil widmet sich der Bedeutung der Gefühle bei der Empathie für Kunstfiguren. Schließlich thematisiere ich den epistemischen, moralischen und ästhetischen Wert der (...) Empathie für die Kunst. (shrink)

While standard definitions of envy tend to focus on the coveted good or the envied rival, this paper describes envy by reflecting on the envious self and its feelings. The paper begins by describing envy and establishing its key features and objects. It presents envy as an emotion of self-assessment which necessarily involves a sense of powerlessness and a feeling of one’s own diminishing value as a person. The second section illustrates the link between envy and the feeling of self-worth (...) by exploring one of its most radical manifestations: the phenomenon of existential envy. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the legal situation regarding physician-assisted suicide in the world. Our hypothesis is that the prohibitive stance on physician-assisted suicide in most societies in the world today seems to be related to our moral attitudes toward suicide. This brings us to a discussion about life itself. We claim that the total lack of legal protection for physician-assisted suicide from international organizations and most countries in the world lies in a philosophical assumption that supports much of our (...) common beliefs about what life really is. This assumption states that life must be thought of as not belonging exclusively to the individual. We argue that this assumption is a misconception that can be heard in the debate on suicide. Consequently we endorse a different conception of life which tends to favor a pro-choice stance towards suicide and assisted death in general. This position takes the patient’s decision about when to die more seriously. We conclude that there is no reason why physician-assisted suicide does not deserve legal protection as an individual right to die under international law. (shrink)

In Vom Selbstgefühl (1910) (identical to Über die Typen des Selbstgefühls), Else Voigtländer undertakes an accurate analysis of a category of feelings named “feeling of self-worth” and its types. This entry presents Voigtländer's definition, characterization and taxonomy of the feeling of self-worth.

The authors consider the nature of explanatory models in the social sciences in order to suggest ways in which conceptual systems differ. They suggest that, in many cases, theorists, researchers and clinicians can utilize insights from rival models in building their own models, without sacrificing the integrity of their own work.

Todo cuanto constituye la personalidad de un hombre proviene de la imitación de otros hombres: sus convicciones, sus anhelos, sus gestos. La personalidad puede ser calcada con todos sus atributos, hasta en los detalles más nimios, puede transferirse de un hombre a otro sin variaciones sustanciales, y también puede crearse a partir de distintos modelos. Sin embargo, no puede aspirar a la originalidad. Por decirlo con palabras de Gombrowicz, el autor más aludido en el presente ensayo, la autenticidad está fuera (...) del alcance humano. Un ensayo literario en el que el discurso expositivo se alterna y mezcla con la narración autobiográfica y la descripción. Everything that constitutes the personality of man is derived from the imitation of other men, their convictions, desires, and behaviors. Personalities can be imprinted upon us. A personality can be transferred from one person to another without any variation, though it can also be created through encountering various models. No person can aspire to be original. As Gombrowicz wisely said, authenticity is beyond the reach of man. This is a literary essay that explores a wonderful autobiography. (shrink)

Vor etwa einem Jahrhundert entwickelte sich im deutschsprachigen Raum imRahmen einer allgemeinen Charakterisierung unserer ästhetischen Erfahrungvon Kunst eine umfassende Debatte über die Natur und die Möglichkeit vonGefühlen über fiktionale Charaktere und Situationen. Die damalige Debatteweist große Ähnlichkeit zur heutigen analytischen Debatte über das Paradoxonder Fiktion auf. Trotz des unterschiedlichen jeweiligen historischen Kontextesfindet sich in der analytischen Debatte und in der Philosophie zu Beginn des20. Jahrhunderts fast der gleiche Lösungsansatz. Gefühle über Fiktionen seienQuasi-Gefühle, d.h. ein gefühlsartiges Phänomen mit einer Realität sui (...) generis ,dem im Unterschied zu den wirklichen Gefühlen kein Urteil über die Existenzdes Objektes zugrunde liegt und dem die Verbindung zur Motivation fehlt. Zieldieses Aufsatzes ist es, eine Untersuchung der These der Quasi-Gefühle An-fang des 20. Jahrhunderts zu unternehmen sowie die Analogien zur heutigenDebatte zu zeigen. Der Aufsatz baut sich um drei thematische Achsen herumauf. Zunächst wird eine historische Darstellung der These der Gefühle über Fiktionen bei Groos, Lipps, Lange, Geiger und Külpe unternommen. Diese bil-det den Rahmen für die Debatte über die Quasi-Gefühle in der Grazer Schule.Anschließend wird die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Diskussion über Quasi-Gefühle bei Meinong, Witasek, Saxinger und Schwarz gerichtet. Zuletzt wer-den die Berührungspunkte zur heutigen analytischen Debatte im Ausgang vonsystematischen Fragen aufgezeigt. (shrink)

Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, das Projekt angewandter interkultureller Philosophie „Briefe über Philosophie weltweit“ vorzustellen. Der Beitrag ist in vier Teile gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt werden Anlass und Profil des Projektes vorgestellt. Der „akademische Nomadismus“ der Gegenwart verstärkt die immer schon interkulturelle Verfasstheit der akademischen Praxis und stellt den lebensweltlichen Anlass des Projektes dar, dies in Form von Briefen über die verschiedenen Bedingungen des Philosophierens auch zu reflektieren. Im zweiten Abschnitt wird genauer nach Erfahrungen gefragt, die in den Briefen zum (...) Ausdruck kommen und die wir als „interkulturelle Erfahrungen“ bezeichnen und näher bestimmen wollen. Thema des dritten Abschnitts ist die gewählte Darstellungsform für derartige interkulturelle Erfahrungen, nämlich die Briefform als Medium für Perspektivität. Im vierten Abschnitt machen wir abschließend den Versuch, das Projekt als Form angewandter interkultureller Philosophie zu profilieren. (shrink)

This paper explores how individuals experiencing hostile affective states such as envy, jealousy, hate, contempt, and Ressentiment tend to deceive themselves about their own mental states. More precisely, it examines how the feeling of being diminished in worth experienced by the subject of these hostile affective states motivates a series of self-deceptive maneuvers that generate a fictitious upliftment of the subject’s sense of self. After introducing the topic (section 1), the paper explores the main arguments that explain why several hostile (...) affective states involve a feeling of diminution in the subject’s own value (section 2). Next, it offers an analysis of how the negative feeling of self-worth motivates self-deception. While in extrinsically motivated self-deception, the subject feels diminished in worth after negatively evaluating her own hostile affective states, in intrinsically motivated self-deception, the negative feelings of self-worth are constituent elements of the hostile affective state in question (section 3). Cases of intrinsically motivated self-deception are particularly intriguing because in them the motivation for self-deception is inherent to the hostile affective state, independently of external reasons. I coin the expression “self-deceptive style” to capture the distinctive form in which each hostile affective state intrinsically motivates changes in the architecture of the mind (e.g., perception, imagining, memory, judgment, attention, etc.) in order to generate an upliftment of the self (section 4). To show the descriptive and explanatory function of this concept, a comparative analysis of the self-deceptive styles of envy and hate is provided (section 5). The conclusion summarizes the main findings and explores directions for further research (section 6). (shrink)

Der Aufsatz ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Im ersten Teil unterscheide ich das Phänomen der Empathie von ähnlichen Phänomenen. Im zweiten Teil werde ich auf die Bedingungen für Empathie eingehen. In diesem Teil geht es mir darum zu zeigen, dass wir es trotz einiger Unterschiede zwischen Empathie für Mitmenschen und Empathie für Figuren mit demselben Phänomen zu tun haben.

Este no es un libro de filosofía, ni de astrología, ni de esoterismo. No hay en él ninguna pretensión más allá de la simple expresión de un recorrido intelectual y vital, de una búsqueda y un encuentro. Desde este punto de vista se intentan exponer tres esferas distintas del ser y del conocer, de forma separada pero con las oportunas referencias cruzadas, y manteniendo siempre la jerarquía que las diferencia. La primera de ellas es la que aquí se considera como (...) un tipo de exoterismo, es decir, un ámbito externo de considerar las cosas (en referencia a los dos siguientes): la filosofía; con la razón como facultad analítica y reflexiva por excelencia, pretende buscar las razones de ciertas problemáticas mediante el pensamiento discursivo. El segundo ámbito, el intermedio, definido como el del simbolismo, de la analogía universal o del anima mundi, es tratado aquí en referencia a una ciencia tradicional y sagrada: la astrología. Y el tercero y último es aquel dominio correspondiente a la Metafísica integral, en el sentido profundo que apunta hacia la Trascendencia misma, como núcleo de toda forma espiritual; se presentará aquí desde el esoterismo tradicional en la línea de los trabajos de René Guénon, pero principalmente desde la tradición más reciente (la islámica) y la considerada por muchos más primordial (la hindú). (shrink)

This chapter examines the critiques of sentimentalism developed by Moritz Geiger and José Ortega y Gasset within the field of phenomenological aesthetics. It explores and evaluates the main arguments behind this critique: namely the existence of an aesthetic attitude, an intellectualized view of appreciation, and the predominance of form over content. Though both authors utilize Kant’s idea of “aesthetic disinterestedness”, they endorse a view of appreciation which differs from the Kantian one in substantial respects.

This chapter examines the critiques of sentimentalism developed by Moritz Geiger and José Ortega y Gasset within the field of phenomenological aesthetics. It explores and evaluates the main arguments behind this critique: namely, the existence of an aesthetic attitude, an intellectualized view of appreciation, and the predominance of form over content. Though both authors utilize Kant’s idea of “aesthetic disinterestedness,” they endorse a view of appreciation that differs from the Kantian one in substantial respects.

This paper provides an account on how to understand “emotional depth” and applies it to the particular case of religious experiences. After motivating the topic (section 1), I turn to classical and contemporary approaches to “emotional depth”. I divide these accounts into two main groups depending on whether they interpret depth as a constitutive or a momentary feature of the affective experience. I argue that despite their descriptive power, none of the existing accounts adequately captures the depth of affective religious (...) experiences (section 2). Next, I present and critically assess Kurt Stavenhagen’s neglected account of the depth of religious feelings. In particular, I explore his concept of “specific depth”. In my reading, this notion conveys the momentary structure of a feeling (section 3). I then proceed to develop my own account according to which emotional depth is a phenomenal quality which depends on the intentional structure of a feeling. In particular, I argue that the feature of depth is explainable in terms of the specific ways in which a feeling is directed toward an object (directedness) and evaluatively presents it (evaluative presentation). Drawing on this idea, I examine three varieties of affective intentionality and distinguish between emotions, sentiments, and moods (section 4). I then apply my model to explain the depth of affective religious experiences (section 5). The main findings are summarized in the conclusion (section 6). (shrink)

Aunque la figura de Meinong se asocia a posiciones realistas acerca delos valores, un análisis más cuidadoso de su obra revela al menos tres concepcionesdiferentes de esta noción. El objetivo de este artículo consiste en examinar sistemáti-camente las tesis acerca de los valores sostenidas en tres de sus obras. Se analizará primero la teoría disposicionalista defendida en Psychologische ethische Untersuc-hungen zur Werttheorie (1894) según la cual los valores son posibles sentimientosde valor. Centraremos después nuestra atención a los cambios realizados en (...) “ÜberWerthaltung und Wert” (1895), obra en la que se explica el concepto de valor rela-cionándolo con los conceptos de emoción y deseo. Finalmente, nos centraremos enlas tesis realistas expuestas en Emotionale Präsentation (1917) y mostraremos la actualidad de las mismas para el debate contemporáneo. (shrink)

Recent research in philosophy of science has shown that scientists rely on a plurality of strategies to develop successful explanations of different types of phenomena. In the case of biology, most of these strategies go far beyond the traditional and reductionistic models of scientific explanation that have proven so successful in the fundamental sciences. Concretely, in the last two decades, philosophers of science have discovered the existence of at least two different types of scientific explanation at work in the biological (...) sciences, namely: mechanistic and structural explanations. Despite the growing evidence about the radically different nature of these two types of explanation, no inquiry has been conducted to date to determine the ontological reasons that might underlie these differences, nor the way in which these types of explanations can be systematically related with each other. Here, we aim to cover this gap by connecting this plurality of research strategies with the existence of emergent levels of reality. We argue that the existence of these different—and apparently incompatible—explanatory strategies to account for biological phenomena derives from the existence of “ontological jumps” in nature, which generate different regimes of causation that in turn demand the development of different explanatory frameworks. We identify two of these strategies—mechanistic modelling and network modelling—and connect them to the existence of two ontological regimes of causation. Finally, we relate them with each other in a systematic way. In this vein, our paper provides an ontological justification for the plurality of explanatory strategies that we see in the life sciences. (shrink)

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes werfen die Frage nach dem Erkenntniswert der Literatur auf. Der erste Teil des Bandes enthält Beiträge, welche die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen literarischen und anderen Weisen menschlicher Selbstverständigung diskutieren. Im zweiten Teil des Buches finden sich Aufsätze, welche die verschiedenen Argumente, die in der Diskussion um die Frage nach dem kognitiven Wert der Literatur eine Rolle spielen, einer eingehenden Prüfung unterziehen. Sie fragen danach, ob und inwieweit die Literatur Wissen vermittelt. Die Beiträge des dritten Teils (...) vertiefen die Untersuchungen zum kognitiven Wert der Literatur, indem sie verschiedene Formen des Wissens behandeln. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit erhalten die Vergegenwärtigungsleitung der Literatur, das propositionale Wissen, das Zeugniswissen und das begriffliche Wissen. Der vierte Teil des Buches schließlich enthält Aufsätze, die sich mit der Literatur als Quelle moralischen Wissens beschäftigen und den Beitrag der Literatur zu psychologischen Fragen diskutieren, welche das Verständnis der Rolle der Gefühle und die narrative Dimension der Selbstidentität betreffen. (shrink)

In contrast to previous conceptualizations of episodic self-esteem as a cognitive assessment of one’s own self, recent proposals have categorized this phenomenon as an affective state. In this vein, self-esteem has been regarded as a self-conscious emotion (Salice 2020) and an existential feeling (Bortolan 2018, 2020). While concurring with these recent accounts on the affective nature of self-esteem, this chapter also argues that none of them fully captures its nature. It argues that self-esteem is better understood as an umbrella term (...) for a group of intentional feelings in which the subject valuates herself and senses fluctuations in her own value. The chapter also discusses the place of self-esteem feelings within the affective mind. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

How to distinguish emotions such as envy, disgust, and shame from sentiments such as love, hate, and adoration? While the standard approach argues that emotions and sentiments differ in terms of their temporal structures (e.g., Ben-ze’ev, 2000; Deonna & Teroni, 2012; Frijda et al., 1991), this paper sketches an alternative approach according to which each of these states exhibits a distinctive intentional structure. More precisely, this paper argues that emotions and sentiments exhibit distinct forms of affective intentionality. The paper begins (...) by examining the temporal criteria of duration, etiology, and phenomenology widely employed to distinguish between both states. It demonstrates that none of them provides a clear-cut distinction between emotions and sentiments. Next, it presents the intentional approach as an alternative. To this end, it discusses what I call the axiological account (De Monticelli’s 2006; 2020), before introducing my version of the intentional approach according to which emotions and sentiments exhibit different forms of affective intentionality. The main findings are summarized in the conclusion. (shrink)

In contrast with the progressive dilution of religions predicted by traditional liberal and Marxist approaches, religions remain important for many people, even in Europe, the most secularised continent. In the context of increasingly culturally diverse societies, this calls for a reinterpretation of the secular legacy of the Enlightenment and also for an updating of democratic institutions. This book focuses on a central question: are the classical secularist arrangements well equipped to tackle the challenge of fast-growing religious pluralism? Or should we (...) move to new post-secular arrangements when dealing with pluralism in Europe? Offering an interdisciplinary approach that combines political theory and legal analysis, the authors tackle two interrelated facets of this controversial question. They begin by exploring the theoretical perspective, asking what post-secularism is and looking at its relation to secularism. The practical consequences of this debate are then examined, focusing on case-law through four empirical case studies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, philosophy, religion and politics, European law, human rights, legal theory and socio-legal studies. (shrink)

In her foreword to Science Next, Elizabeth Edwards wrote of science as a tool for social progress: "Innovation is not simply the abstract victory of knowledge [or] the research that gave me years to live; the next science can advance human flourishing and serve the common good. That's the kind of world I want to leave for my children, and for yours." With these words, she joined a tradition that goes back to America's founders, who saw America itself as a (...) "great experiment." Yet while no one can deny that science undergirds the American Dream, it has long been fertile terrain for the "culture wars." Along with arguing the pros and cons of abortion and healthcare, policymakers must now grapple with advancements that raise questions about what it means to be human: we've decoded the genome, but should we modify it to enhance certain "desirable" traits? If we can, should we prolong life at any cost? Will we soon be counting robots, cyborgs, and chimeras among our friends and family?The first book to unpack our love/hate relationship with science from our country's origins to today, The Body Politic is essential reading for science buffs and concerned citizens alike.Jonathan D. Moreno is editor of the Center for American Progress' online magazine Science Progress and professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Author and editor of many seminal books and articles on science and science policy, he divides his time between Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC. (shrink)

In this article, we expand the analytical and theoretical foundations of the study of knowledge commons in the context of more classical agrarian commons, such as seed commons. We show that it is possible to overcome a number of criticisms of earlier work by Ostrom on natural commons and its excludability/rivalry matrix in addressing the inclusive social practices of “commoning”, defined as a way of living and acting for the preservation of the commons. Our empirical analysis emphasizes, using the most (...) recent advances in the IAD/ses framework, the distributed and collaborative knowledge governance in a French peasant seed network as a key driver for reintroducing cultivated agrobiodiversity and on-farm seed conservation of ancient and landrace varieties. These inclusive peasant seed groups developed alternative peer-to-peer models of collaborative peasant-led community-based breeding and grassroots innovations in the search for more resilient population varieties. Our results highlight the various models of collective action within the network and discuss the organizational tradeoffs of opting out of peasant seed activities and recreating a shared collective knowledge base on the benefits of restoring cultivated agrobiodiversity. It helps us better understand how modern peasant seed groups function as epistemic communities which contributes to envisioning alternative agricultural systems. (shrink)

The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the (...) constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate. (shrink)

"¿És possible que tota Modernitat estigui travessada per un model antropològic inconscient i contradictori, resultat d’aquelles interessades distorsions que les cròniques de viatges exòtics van inocular en el si de la filosofia europea des de.

Seit ungefähr Mitte der 90er-Jahre und bis heute wird der Frage nach dem Zusammenhang zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik hauptsächlich in der angloamerikanischen und der angelsächsischen analytischen Ästhetik besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. In der Einleitung des Bandes Aesthetics and Ethics. Essays at the Intersection (1998), der eine der ersten Publikationen über das Thema ist, macht Levinson deutlich, dass das Buch das Ziel hat, Debatten der Ästhetik und Ethik zu verbinden, die während der vergangenen 30 Jahre isoliert behandelt worden sind (Levinson 1998, 1). (...) Er bezieht sich dabei auf die angloamerikanische Ästhetik. Seit der Veröffentlichung dieses Bandes ist eine beachtliche Zahl von Beiträgen entstanden, die explizit Themen an der Schnittstelle beider Disziplinen behandeln. Vor diesem Hintergrund soll in diesem Beitrag die Beziehung zwischen Ästhetik und Ethik unter dem Gesichtspunkt der zeitgenössischen philosophischen Ästhetik behandelt werden. Dabei sollen die Anknüpfungspunkte zwischen der neuen englischsprachigen Literatur und den Beiträgen in der deutschen ästhetischen Tradition sichtbar gemacht werden. (shrink)

In contemporary discourses, it has become common sense to acknowledge that humans and some species of animals, from their very inception, are embedded in social and intersubjective contexts. As social beings, we live, interact, communicate, and cooperate with others for a range of different reasons: sometimes we do so for strategic and instrumental reasons, while at other times it is purely for its own sake. Moreover, in one way or another, we encounter others not only as rational but also as (...) sentient beings; our interactions with others are shaped by reason, though not exclusively so. They are also affected by our emotions, feelings, moods, and environments. In this way, we seek understanding both for and by others. We are able to recognize, interpret, and categorize others’ expression and behavior; in turn, we express our emotions, desires, and motivations to act towards others and hope that others will react adequately and appropriately. Empathy is usually understood as the capacity to apprehend others’ mental states—especially emotions. In recent decades, it has become one of the most widely discussed concepts, especially in the philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics. Although there is a vast array of publications on the topic of empathy, a number of controversies have persisted, particularly in relation to how the process, outcome, and value of empathy should be understood. One recent debate concerns the question of whether we directly perceive others’ mental states or whether we rather imagine their perspective. Another central discussion is ongoing regarding empathy in respect of narratives and fictional characters. The aim of this Special Issue is to interrelate these two branches—fiction and imagination—and to examine the role of imagination in the empathic process, especially in relation to the thesis of direct perception of others’ mental states. Despite the wealth of recent research into empathy that has emerged from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, there is still no consensus about the nature and role of imagination and whether empathizing with fictions should be categorically or just gradually distinguished from empathizing with real persons. (shrink)

This chapter links a conception of global justice, moral cosmopolitanism, with plurinational democracies. After giving a brief description of moral cosmopolitanism, I go on to analyse notions of cosmopolitanism and patriotism in Kant's work and the political significance that the notion of unsocial sociability and the Ideas of Pure Reason of Kant's first Critique have for cosmopolitanism. Finally, I analyse the relationship between cosmopolitanism and minority nations based on the preceding sections. I postulate the need for a moral and institutional (...) refinement of democracies and international society that is better able to accommodate national pluralism than has so far been achieved by traditional liberal constitutionalism and cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

This book addresses the democratic accommodation of national pluralism through federal rules. The key question is: can federalism be a fair and workable way of articulating multinational societies according to revised liberal-democratic patterns? In recent years, scholarly discussion on this issue has undergone a change. Nowadays, the answer to this question is much more complex than the one that traditional political liberalism and federalism used to give us. In the past, these two political approaches usually addressed the question of political (...) pluralism without seriously including national pluralism in the discussion, a theoretical attitude that has often misrepresented and impoverished the moral discussions and the institutional practices of multinational democratic federations. _Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism_ has been awarded the prize for the best book in 2005 by the Spanish Political Science Association. (shrink)

En este artículo abordamos la tesis de Kant sobre la insociable sociabilidad de los humanos y algunos temas conexos como la paz perpetua, el cosmopolitismo y el patriotismo, así como su continuación por parte de Hegel. En la tesis kantiana vemos un marco más adecuado para observar la realidad actual que el ofrecido por muchas de las teorías políticas y sociales más en uso. A pesar de que Kant era sin duda un filósofo moral, la tesis mencionada responde a cierta (...) desconfianza sobrevenida hacia los meros imperativos morales. Estos últimos, por sí mismos, resultan ineficaces para «humanizar a la humanidad ». La racionalidad pasada por el lenguaje es lo que más nos distingue como especie. Sin embargo, probablemente no sea esto lo que más nos constituya como individuos de esta especie. La insociable sociabilidad, que caracteriza la doble pulsión conflictiva y cooperativa de los humanos, supone un concepto- marco que permite pensar mejor las dificultades actuales de las democracias, tanto en la esfera internacional como en el de proceder a una acomodación política estable de su pluralismo interno de carácter cultural y, en su caso, de carácter nacional. Kant y Hegel son filósofos de la historia porque esta última ofrece ejemplos de la superación de muchos conflictos mediante la política. Desde una perspectiva contemporánea, la insociable sociabilidad es un concepto que complementa tanto en sus dimensiones individuales como sociopolíticas lo que también resulta ser un rasgo insuperable del mundo contemporáneo: el pluralismo de valores, intereses, e identidades que habitualmente revisten un carácter agonístico y que remiten a componentes emocionales. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to articulate a precise concept of at least a certain kind of disease-mongering, showing how pharmaceutical marketing can commercially exploit certain diseases when their best definition is given through the success of a treatment in a clinical trial. We distinguish two types of disease-mongering according to the way they exploit the definition of the trial population for marketing purposes. We argue that behind these two forms of disease-mongering there are two well-known problems in the (...) statistical methodology of clinical trials (the reference class problem and the distinction between statistical and clinical significance). Overcoming them is far from simple. (shrink)

La globalización y el pluralismo cultural y nacional constituyen dos retos importantes para las democracias y el federalismo actuales. En términos generales, tanto la cuestión de la multiculturalidad como la cuestión de la plurinacionalidad han planteado una nueva agenda de temas en el debate democrático. La discusión actual de estos temas ya no se limita al lenguaje de los derechos individuales y a los valores de libertad, igualdad y pluralismo tal como éstos últimos han sido habitualmente entendidos por las corrientes (...) del liberalismo democrático y del constitucionalismo tradicionales. De hecho, podemos decir que esta nueva agenda de temas ha implicado la superación del enfoque tradicional que a menudo consistía en ver los derechos de las minorías como injustos, discriminatorios y moralmente arbitrarios. (shrink)