In section 49 of his Critique of Judgement, Kant uses the expression “in Schwung verstezt” in order to classify the free play of the faculties when they get involved with aesthetic ideas. “Schwung” shares the same etymological root of “swing” and suggests, literally, a shuttle-like movement for the non-stop exchange of data between the faculties. This text aims at demonstrating that an interpretation closer to the German original text throws a new light upon the nature of the cognitive play driven by aesthetic ideas. Such interpretation may help to understand, for instance, the reason why Kant uses metaphors as examples of aesthetic ideas. Etymologically, “metaphor” also means “transportation” or “to carry over”. Rather than the notion of a juxtaposition of distant semantic domains, this text wishes to employ the sheer dynamics inherent to the concept of metaphor. This dynamic character is useful in order to reinforce the plausibility of a more cinematic reading, so to speak, of Kant’s conception of aesthetic experience.

This paper tackles the complex nature of the concept of enthusiasm in three distinct moments of Kant’s thought. It pervades along the different evolutionary periods of the critical philosophy, both as a symptom of the most ugly features of human condition and as a sign of the way human beings are invited and commanded to take part in the process of fulfîlling the tasks and promises of a moral rational world order.

Kant’s small essay The Conflict of the Faculties was considered by Derrida a blueprint of the modern university, to be born a few years after its publication, through the works of Humboldt, Fichte, Schelling and Schleiermacher. According to Derrida, the concept of a Philosophical Faculty at the centre of the university, responsible for reason and truth, is now extinct. This paper tries to follow the arguments produced by the founding fathers of the modern university, and the way they were recovered at different points in time, by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers and Habermas, to show that through two centuries of change, the German Idea of the university kept in touch with the main arguments developed by Kant.

Ce texte veut démontrer que la critique faite par Hume à Spinoza, dans le Traité de la Nature Humaine (I, IV, V) ne respecte pas le concept de Substance utilisé par le philosophe juif. Hume n’a pas lu l'Éthique et il utilise Pierre Bayle comme médiateur pour exposer les thèses de Spinoza, qu’il approche des thèses des théologiens sur l'immortalité de l’âme. Son argumentation est rhétorique et son utilisation de Spinoza est une stratégie pour empêcher qu’on l'accuse d’athéisme.

Le propos de cet essai c’est de donner une idée de la présence de la philosophie kantienne dans les débats philosophiques contemporains. Pour comprendre ce que certains auteurs interprètent déjà comme un nouveau «retour à Kant» ou même comme la survivance d’un «moment kantien de la philosophie», on a esquissé d’abord l’histoire de l’herméneutique de la philosophie kantienne dans la première partie du XXe siècle dans ses moments plus significatifs (le neokantisme, l’interprétation heideggerienne) pour faire ensuite un bilan des tendances de lecture de l’oeuvre de Kant et d’apropriation de sa philosophie après la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale et surtout dans les trois derniers decénnies du XXe siècle. Ce bilan montre l’ampleur de l’actualité de la pensée du professeur de Königsberg et son pouvoir de donner encore à penser les plus décisives questions de la philosophie en tous ses domaines fondamentaux.

This reflection on ethics has starting point problem: the authenticity. What does one understand by authenticity in human life? Will not authenticity be a beautiful dream, a wandering of philosophers? Our everyday experience fully shows the use of the mask. So, we can ask ourselves: 1) Why should it be otherwise? 2) Could it be otherwise? 3) Which means should one use so that it is otherwise? There seem to exist in nature and history three forces in continuous fight: 1st) the ones that cause the misfortune that now we experience. 2nd) the ones that impel us to refuse the misfortune, that is, the ones that motivate us in search of happiness. The 3rd is, perhaps, our voluntary and conscious contribution to awakening. So our problem is not - what must I do?, but - how must I be? The difference has to do with the basic difference between morality and ethics and has roots in our history. My proposal suggests that it is not enough that we dream or desire to act well to actually act well. It is necessary that we have knowledge (of ourselves and the others) and that we have power, mainly on ourselves. However, our experience shows how fragile is the knowledge that we possess of ourselves (and so refusing the well-known socratic invitation “know thyself") and how fragile is that power, because we are constantly carried along by what we do not want to do (and so we ignore Lao Dzi’s lesson “the one that wins the others is strong; but the one that wins himself is really powerful"). But there is more: though we do what we want, who is it in ourselves that wants what we want? Thus, a practical inquiry on ourselves seems primordial in order to verify which forces act in us and, eventually, to start trying to understand them and to guide them in a more beneficial direction for all the community of living beings of the planet that we inhabit together. Being so, ethics is not only a set of theoretical principles, but over all a set of exercises, guided by a knowledge, that could be able to lead us to a different way of being.

An article by Moulines presents an interesting argument against semantic realism, using Calderôn’s play La Vida en Sueño as a literary device to develop his point. He introduces in the play a new character, a realist philosopher who tries to persuade Prince Segismund to abandon the anti-realist position he maintains, after the experience he undergoes in the play. I introduce a second imaginary realist, who argues for conjectural realism instead of the semantic variety, by means of several sceptical arguments intended to defeat scepticism itself, throwing it in the same boat as anti-realist solipsism.

La tradition hébraïque, la philosophie d’Aristote, l’impérialisme romain et le christianisme qui les synthétise, ont comme thèse, non seulement la distinction mais la supériorité de la nature humaine face aux autres espèces vivantes. La raison ou la capacité de raisonnement, la conscience et le langage sont des attributs exclusifs de l’espèce humaine, affirment les philosophes moralistes traditionnels. Tous ceux qui les possèdent sont égaux. Les autres êtres, destitués de ces attributs spécifiques, sont différents. Cette différence biologique responsable de cette distinction justifie tous les abus et même la destruction des animaux au profit exclusif des humains. Au XVII siècle la théorie mécaniciste de la nature des organismes vivants, appliquée par Descartes aux animaux, a corroboré l’héritage moral judéo-chrétien. Cet article présente d’abord la thèse de Descartes sur la quelle la philosophie morale traditionnelle se bâtit; en deuxième place vient la reconstitution des arguments conservateurs directe ou indirectement dérivés de cette tradition. Finalement il montre les risques et les limites de l’adoption de ces arguments en ce qui concerne la morale contemporaine, affectant non seulement les intérêts des animaux mais aussi ceux des sujets humains non paradigmatiques.

The aim of this paper is to present, in a clear and accessible way, Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. I stress that what distinguishes Davidson’s monism from other identity theories of the mind is the conjunction of an identity thesis (viz. every mental event is a physical event) with an anti-reductionist argument, according to which there are no strict psychophysical laws.

Ce travail vise à poser la continuité entre la psychologie et la morale ainsi qu’à reconnaît re la discontinuité entre celle-ci et la physique dans la pensée cartésienne. En effet, la détermination de la volonté consiste en un processus qui se déploie sur un fond de passivité. Car la liberté recèle des degrés qui vont de l’indétermination pure du libre arbitre jusqu’à l’inclination infaillible vers tel ou tel acte: l’inclination n’affaiblit ni la puissance de la volonté ni la liberté du sujet moral; tout au contraire elle les accroît. Le sage cartésien n’aspire donc pas à annihiler ses passions, il s’attache plutôt à les régler et à les investir afin d’atteindre la perfection, laquelle perfection s’avère indissociable de l’excès. Dépourvu de tout objet déterminé, le désir, pour sa part, constitue le ressort de cette régulation en ce sens qu’il renforce ou atténue chacune des autres passions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the classical problem of knowing if utilitarianism can admit a qualitatively distinction of pleasures or interests, introduced by John Stuart Mill, besides the quantitatively distinction supported by Jeremy Bentham. Moreover, it tries to clarify if the quantity theory of values is consistent with utilitarianism and, even so, if its acceptance does not prevent utilitarians from condemning elitism and speciesist prejudice, as many of them actually do. The claim, here, is that utilitarians can probably still hold that condemnation.

This paper is concerned with the political philosophy of Richard Price, analysing the way this author has developed the concept of liberty and the problem of human rights. The theme of liberty will be interpreted in a double perspective: a) in a private dimension, that sets liberty in the inner side of the individual; b) in a public dimension, that places it in the domain of a manifest action of the individual. We will try to show how this double outlook of liberty is conceived under the optics of a necessary complementarity, since liberty, which is primarily understood as a feature of the subject taken as an individual, acquires only a full meaning when she becomes efective in a comunitary field, as a social and political expression. The concept of human rights will appear located in this analysis, being defined simultaneously as condition and expression of the human dignity and happiness, at the same time natural attributes of an individual that should be cultivated and public effectiveness that contributes to the development of society.

In this article, Susanne Langer’s and Antonio Damasio’s theories are presented as candidates for the validation, both scientific and philosophical, of two different perspectives conceming the complexity of the animal mind. Despite their initial agreement about which kind of animais are incapable of producing mental activity (such as insects and other lower animals), they diverge when it cornes to the study of more developed animals, namely mammals. The present article sides with Damasio against Langer: Langer rejects the idea of ascribing to any animal complex human mental capacities (sense of individuality, extended memory and foresight, altruistic motivation, conceptualization and symbolic language); in turn, Damasio’s neurobiological theory (along with some etological data) gives us good reasons to attribute these same capacities to, at least, some species of mammals.

The main aim of this essay is to defend Don Marquis’s “future-like-ours“ argument against abortion from David Boonin’s recent critique to it. In the first two sections I show that Marquis’s FLO argument is much more plausible than the traditional argument against abortion, grounded on an appeal to the humanity of the fetus. The third section explains Boonin’s critique to the FLO argument. In the last section I show that: (1) Boonin’s critique rests on a misunderstanding conceming the content of Marquis’s moral principle; (2) We can restate Boonin’s position in order to avoid that misunderstanding, but such restatement leads to the (unacceptable) conclusion that infanticide, and not only abortion, is morally permissible.

Predication is a complex entity in Aristotelian thought. The aim of the present essay is to account for this complexity, making explicit the diverse forms it assumes. To this end, we tum to a crucial chapter of the Posterior Analytics (1 22), where, in the most complete and developed manner within the corpus, Aristotle proceeds to systematize this topic. From the analysis, it will become apparent that predication can assume, generically, five forms: 1) the predication of essence (τὸ αύτᾢ εἶναι κατηγορεἲσθαι), that is of the genus and the specific difference; 2) essential predication (τὸ αύτᾢ εἶναι κατηγορεἲσθαι), that is either of the genus or of the differences (or their genera); 3) the predication of accidents per se 4) and of simple accidents (ώς συμβεβηκότα κατηγορεἲσθαι); and 5) accidental predication (κατἁ συμβεβηκός κατηγορεἲσθαι). However, only types 2-4 are forms of strict predication (άπλὢς). In effect, the “predication” of essence is not a genuine predication, but a formula for identity, constituting, technically, the statement of the essence of the subject (or its definition). On the other hand, accidental “predication” can only be conceived of as such equivocally, since it results from a linguistic accident through which the ontological subject of the attribution suffers a displacement to the syntactic position of the predicate, which is not, by nature, its own. In neither case does the phrase bring about any legitimate predication. The study concludes with a discussion of Aristotle’s thesis according to which no substance can be a predicate, which is implied by its notion of accidental predication, a thesis which has been - and in our opinion wrongly so - challenged in modem times.

In Aristotle’s thought, dialectic results not only from a consolidated historical-philosophical tradition, but also from his own original conception of the virtualities of speech in general, as well as those of the philosophical and scientific speech in particular. In this essay I try to describe synthetically the history of the pre-aristotelic dialectic, and to draw up an inventory of the various acceptions that dialectic takes in the works of the Stagirite. It is possible to identify four dialectics in Aristotle, that is to say, four levels of application of the language and knowledge theory that the Stagirite develops in the Topics and other logic treaties. In its critic - or peirastic - dimension Aristotle’s dialectic seems, mainly as praxis of contradiction, somehow to reach the universality proper to sapiential knowledge.

Il s’agit d’abord d’éclairer le motif d'ousia, à partir de trois principes qui rendent possible de comprendre le mouvement des vivants, les étants qui le sont «par eux-mêmes», puis selon les quatre sens du «motif» qui donne ce mouvement et enfin selon la pair dunamis / entelecheia. Ensuite, on considère son double rapport au temps, celui qui le lie au mouvement et celui qui l’oppose aux accidents, rapport qui a été masqué dans la traduction latine des deux sens d'ousia dans les Catégories par substance et essence respectivement, devenues ‘intemporelles’. Dans une deuxième partie, on pose la question de la place de la Physique d’Aristote (qui s’occupe de l’être de l’étant en tant que se mouvant) dans l’ensemble de son oeuvre : c’est en elle qui sont définis et argumentés ces motifs, lesquels, d’une part, rendent possibles ses divers traités scientifiques et, d’autre part, sont repris dans les livres de la Métaphysique (s’occupant de l’être de l’étant en tant qu’étant). La Physique est ainsi l’une et l’autre, une philosophie - avec - sciences. Les considérations finales concernent la façon dont, à travers nommément d’Aquin et d’Occam, l’infidélité à Aristote de l’aristotélisme médiéval et européen a rendu possible que la pensée européenne se fasse à partir de lui et contre lui.