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This paper studies one aspect of the career of Ernesto Nelson (1873-1959) covering moreover the years in which he belonged to the National University in La Plata, and evaluates his university career which is quite different both in relation to the policies implemented in the same by its founder and president Joaquin V. Gonzalez (who governed during three consecutive periods: 1908-1918), and from the new policies that were part of the university reform (1918). Nelson affirms, from a liberal point of view, that the state is the principal cause of the decadence in the Argentine university system, and adopted in this manner a position which separated him from both the Liberal Conservatives and from the 1918 Reformists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though Patočka never acheived a critique of the political limits of Husserl's and Heidegger's philosophies, he did clearly set the limits of those philosophies, limits after which the phenomenological philosophy of Patocka adopts a new dimension. En this paper we argue that vis-a-vis Husserl's and Heidegger's limitations, it is indeed possible to find in Patoĉka solid elements upon which to achieve a political and social philosophy in the strongest sense of the word -- and therefore, also an ethic-, that can contribute significantly to Latin America thought in a phenomenological sense, as well as the ongoing development of the contemporary world. Patočka's idea of philosophy represents a meaningful advance in phenomenological philosophy, and allows us to distance ourselves from idealism --whether transcendental or ontological--. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the relationship between the theory of communicative action and the processes of inter-subjective liberation are studied through democratic dialogue and the significance of linguistic practice in capitalist societies. The new pragmatic-hermaneutic paradigm presents the possibility of interpreting social relations from the public space, the place where the genesis of rationalization processes, social representation, and the political life of citizens occurs. The problems and conflicts involved in the technification of semantic and productive relations require discussion through dialogic rationality, in order to overcome the instrumental direction of positivist rationality. This action makes possible the inter-subjectivity of human beings in a dimension of free citizenship to which all have a right in the modern state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes into account the processes of social construction in classification frameworks or conceptual schemes that all societies use as a frame of reference, with its interpretive codes, that give meaning and value to what we do, think, utter and perceive. In modern societies there is conflict between a rigid classificatory frame, based upon "purity" and with quasi-naturalized distinctions, and a flexible classificatory frame, based upon ambivalence, with more blurred and permeable distinctions. Authors considered in this reflection are, among others: Durkheim, Mauss, Simmel, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Goffman, Bourdieu, Douglas, Zerubavel, Luhmann, Bauman, Haraway, Elias, Zizek, Jokisch and Marquard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of some partial research done under the title Daily education, pedagogy and the environment: constructing an ecological perspective of education, where the ethnography of pedagogical practice is one of the principal components. The pedagogical proposal is framed within the theory of social representations, the innovations of Serge Moscovici, the autonomous pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and in the post-modern perspective of environmental education. Using The Social Forum of Porto Alegre as a reference, and the scenario of the utopia of "The other world is possible", we study how the representations were deconstructed, and how a minimum knowledge concept was constructed on the theme by students in the Masters Degree in Education program. The analysis was carried out through texts produced weekly by the male students and by the female students in the Masters Degree program. In the pedagogical program weekly photos taken by the researcher and the professor during the opening walk of the Porto Alegre Social Forum were used and served as didactic material. They also served as didactic material for the purpose of touching upon and stimulating narratives and living testimonials by the anonimous male and female students of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper centers on my interest in certain ideological lines presented in the political work of Bernardo Monteagudo. There are three special aspects: democracy, strong government, and confederacy. The importance of this research is basically in the public relevance of the author in the 1820s as Minister in Peru and defender of General Jose de San Martin. His thoughts on the themes mentioned constitute a central issue in the American debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the preliminary result of research undertaken in Canada during the period August-September 2003, and which is part of a comparative study of several other countries in order to examine the actors, processes and interactions which intervened in the formulation of public policy and the development of learning in public institutions and organizations. In this research the logic motivating the actors, as well as their perspectives and practices in the processes of public agenda formulation in Canada are demonstrated. Documentary techniques, seminar discussions, interviews and observation are employed. The results demonstrate differentiated processes in organizational and institutional practices of new and traditional actors in the formation of public agendas, and which define two large themes: differentiation between government and politics and the re-institutionalization of rules on a local level. All this expresses the tension between the two forms of governmental philosophy that are debated over between the neo-pragmatism of emerging demand sectors for new government and the colaborative market forms of government, implemented by traditional actors who propose good public government. In local public management the municipality is expressed as a point of intersection between policy management and government, and it incorporates learning experiences in community networks, which suggests a new hermaneutic language for the management of municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is not to treat the theme of dissent as conflict in the style of Marx and Engels. This is a theme for Marxism and its proponents. We will not treat it from the perspective of conflict theory, which has also received extensive treatment since the 1970s on the part of Julien Freud and Gaston Bouthoul. The intention here is to analyze dissent from the perspective of the constitution of critical theory. We understand this is not easy, and requires interdisciplinary study, even when a few authors (Cacciari, Siena, Douguin) have meditated on this theme. This small contribution attempts to complete the Ensayos de Disenso. which will soon be published in an Argentinian version. We hope to respond, within limitations, to the School of Frankfurt, since for over thirty years their theory of consensus has been imposed on western democracies, and has its ideological origins in the so-called neo-Marxist school headed by the philosopher Jurgen Habermas. The result of this was that consensus or agreement among major political parties was transformed into the moral basis of our ever-weakening democracies. This replaced genuine representative democracy, transforming universal secret suffrage into a real farce. It merely justified the decisions already made by agreements among political parties. Our proposal is to treat dissent as a true causal agent in critical post-modem theory, and attempt to open truly plural social spaces in the procedural democratic system which is lacking in content. To consensus among major parties we must add multiple and diverse social consensus platforms, patronized by large interest lobby groups and social civic institutions, in order for change to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflection about the originality and contributions of the phenomenological institutional Naples school of philosophy, represented by its major exponent, Gino Capozzi, in relation to the theory of human rights is developed in this paper. His philosophy is explained in his book "Diritti dell 'Uomo, Filosofia, Dichiarazioni, Giurisdizione". Capozzi, using the theoretical concepts of praxeology and praxeologism, analyses reality, the be and the ought-to-be of human rights, in its historical and institutional perspectives, and as a product of the circulation of the three spheres of the ek-stasi of doing. His philosophy, as a criticism of juridic reason in a Kantian sense, is an analysis of the human rights condition of possibility, in history and as an institution. The systemization of diverse classical and modern sources of philosophy, politics and sociology is one of the most important contributions of his theory. This seems to be the key to the reading and understanding of human rights in its origin, development and future development in order to comprehend social and historical functions of human rights. Capozzi warns us as to the need for a theoretical and practical philosophy that allows further developments in order to clarify the essence of human rights in the human world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of the theoretical framework employed in the study of the social representation of lower class housing constructed by the Venezuelan government, and refers to institutional discourse. In the study, the importance of the rationality of the capitalist state in relation to the construction of these social representations is considered. In the same vein, the theory of representations related to social representations of construction on the part of social subjects is examined, specifying this concept in relation to the social representation of housing on the part of the Venezuelan state. Theoretical references are constructed as to public policy, associating it with capitalist rationality and the theory of social representations. In this manner, a theoretical review of the principal authors who touch on these aspects is made. The conclusion is that the social representation of lower class housing and public policy is profoundly related to the capitalist rationality inherent in the Venezuelan government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oriented in communicative functional linguistics, the following paper recaptures Haberma's concept of communicative action and tries to insert it in the communicational model. It describes and explains the importance of the pragmatic component, since it commonly focused on language in use, and in this way completes a previous proposal (Franco, 2000) in which the pragmatics and communicative grammar are related. By incorporating the concept of communicative action into the linguistic model, the linguistic concept and its indispensable importance in communicative grammars are projected, as well as the presence of communicative action in diverse types of discourse analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author presents a critical, philosophical, ethical and epistemological vision of architecture as a scientific and humanistic discipline. In this context, architecture is synonymous with i) a symbolic, conceptual and aesthetic representation of reality; and ii) an ethical commitment to the defense and protection of biotic and ecological interactions between nature and human progress. For whom and for what purpose are two questions to be answered in relation to the means and ends that convert architecture into an interpretive and constructive knowledge of the habitat of human life from the historical, social, environmental and political perspective in which human beings actively participate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops within the context of an externalistic approximation to epistemology. It is an attempt to reflect in a unitary manner on categories such as common sense, philosophy, ideology, progress, good judgment, as well as a reflection on science and it processes. The starting point is the concrete horizon of pedagogical practices in the natural sciences field. To demonstrate the objectives, the historical Marxism implicit in Gramsci is used as a theoretical and philosophical basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodernity is a movement that arose as a result of the crisis of the dominant modernity, confronting many of the great projects which exalted the dominion and the power of man, and replacing them with smallness, what is local, and other alternatives. One of the most outstanding characteristics of postmodernity is the influence of mass media that invades and exerts its influence in daily life, to the point where nothing astonishes or even disturbs us. In this paper certain aspects that characterize postmodernity are presented making special emphasis on aspects such as: the influence of mass media, sexuality in a virtual world and violence in postmodern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What paths are taken by post-positivist social theory?. Beyond the three basic types of contemporarty theories studied in this paper, the presuppositions of which combine structure and agent, the study of society in which acknowledgement of the properties of distinct emerging powers that characterize both the structure and the agent, and which requre a non-reductionist evaluation of inter-relations is imposed. This non-fusionistic generic approximation could help to explain the double morphogenesis of the actors, as well as the manner in which the agents transform themselves throughout this self-satisfaction search process for social transformation, up to but not beyond the point where they are considered as miracle recepies that provide the researcher with profound and rigorous work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we probe the ethical response of Emmanel Lévinas from the perspective of specific suffering that social relations impose on the majority of humanity. We analyze the elements of his ethic which allows us to "read" the injustices and dis-equalities that are caused by avoidable human suffering, by following Levinas and his ethical posture in relation to "socially constructed human suffering." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of the analysis of the history of ideas in Latin America, which is a field of thought that contributes to recovering contributions from diverse fields of knowledge, and which has been focused on by intellectuals who consider our identity to be a theme of reflection. Luis Beltran Prieto Figueroa was one of the more influential intellectuals in 20th Century Venezuela. This paper touches on some of his works, such as Joven Empínate, El Estado y la Educación en América Latina, El humanismo democrático y la educación, La política y los hombres among others, and through philosophical discourse analyzes his ideas in relation to the fundamental doctrines of democracy, their interpretation of reality, and their positions in reference to education, politics, poetry, and nationalism as a dignifying attitude in Latin American countries in the face of the power of the United States. Among the conclusions we find the characterization of his ideas in favor of truly democratic education, the intellectual commitment with the noble aspirations of the people, his ability in studying the Venezuelan reality, and his gift at overcoming factors which were an obstacle to the technical and cultural development desired in Venezuela and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to look at reading and all that this implies, to somehow find a viewpoint, such as a look at oneself and through the eyes of oneself, regarding one situation or another, one matter or another. This view arises from tension between the text of fiction and the reader, carried to his or her maximum development in the dynamic of otherness. This tension is also present due to the attempt to apply the text to the situation the reader experiences, because a text is understood, when it is understood, always in a different way in each case. The tension also has to do with "the identity of the shared matter and (...) the changing situation in which one is trying to understand it". This work comes from some notes made in the empty spaces on pages of Todos los Nombres (All the Names) by José Saramago, seen as a fictitious story, and from words not expressed in the reading, which the act of reading causes to resonate in the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will try to offer a synthesis between two conflicting epistemological positions on the recent philosophical scene: positivism, whose heritage survives as the belief that science is the most genuine form of knowledge, and the defenders of incommensurability. Overcoming the controversy implies rejecting both the classical conception of knowledge (knowledge as theoria) --which, in fact, both positions presuppose-- and the hierarchical view of knowing in favour of a systemic view permitting epistemological pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper is a reflective exercise concerning a philosophy of difference. As a pre-text, the narrative by Joao Anzanello Carrascoza, Sign of the Times (Señal de los tiempos) has been selected. Based on this narrative text, a manner of text will be propitiated in which two words will be intoned; "natality", as in Hannah Arendt, and "otherness", as in Emmanuel Levinas, and will be especially treated. "Natality" is seen as an ineffable event and as an opening to the non predictable, because in some ways it encloses what is diferent, and what anguishes and frightens us to the point of making it unbearable: and "otherness", the face which demands the imperative "do not kill", with the option of forgetting or negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Milton Hatoum was born in 1952 in Manaus. His family was Lebanese. He studied architecture at São Paulo University and literature in Barcelone and Paris. He is a French literature professor at Amazonas University. His two novels: Relato de um certo Oriente (1989) and Dois Irmãos (2000), won the prestigious Jabuti Prize. The city of Manaus surrounded by the rainforest and habitants from everywhere, is the central theme in both novels. In this paper we analyze the meanings of the rainforest and the scholarly trajectory of the Dois Irmãos characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article pretends to be a theoretical incursion into the magmatic world of passion conceived as the unchained power of human acts. This paper is inspired in the works of the Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trías, and proposes passion as a basic category from which to analyze the constituent processes of identity, while understanding that proposals of this type have raised doubts in the great philosophers of western civilization including Aristotle and Descartes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the central hypothesis of this paper, late capitalism is accompanied by a profound redefinition of the condition of the citizen. According to Marshall, citizenship was linked to distributive equality, and the existence of a common culture. It presupposed a gradual conquest of rights. The conditions under which it is presented now cor respond to a different pattern. Consensus which extends beyond national limits and exponential growth of violence constitute challenges in conceptualization. Globalization, times of universal circulation of merchandise, and the emergence of a new international law that redimensions borders and promotes the conquest of collective subordinates (women and ethnic groups), also pro motes the break down of societies considered until recently equalitarian. This state, can be said to be a state of conflict, everyone against everyone, and convokes the reappearance of a new common contract as a theme for theoretical debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflection on human death is a reflection on human life. Death is a dimension of life. It is our faithful companion, the only companion that never abandons us since it can occur at any moment. Rejection of death in the extreme is the negation of life. In order to live life fully man must have the courage to integrate death as part of life. With these words the theme is introduced, a theme which attempts to understand phenomenological, Christian, psychological, medical and anthropological sense in relation to death. The topic is focused from the point of view of the two authors mentioned, one of which, Martin Heidegger, an existentialist philosopher, and the other, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a scientist and priest. Along the way other medieval Christian authors and philosophers are referred to including Boecio, Origenes and Saint Thomas. In this paper an analogy is attempted between the acceptance of the idea of death as an end and human goal, the road to transcendency, and the concept of a full life in Christ as the culmination of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to center our thoughts in the metaphysics and ethics of Hegel's works, pointing out the relationship between the subject, the law and history. This theme arises from an interest in the text on Phenomenology found in the Prologue, number 11.1, entitled "The concept of the absolute as a concept of the subject". Our interpretation and analysis of this theme in the works of Hegel are clearly found in the context of crisis in modern thought and are declared to be the objective of metaphysics. Hegel has been identified as the major exponent of both concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze Latin American magazines as documents of culture, in terms of Benjamin, because they allow us to dissect a particular state of the intellectual field. Also collective texts help us to understand cultural and political projects developed in a period of time. Since they are discursive forms related to journalism, the reviews are seen here as a symptom of dependence between the press and literature, one of the prominent features of our process of cultural autonomy. Likewise, we offer methodological proposals to approach these texts based on the confluence between the History of Ideas and the Sociology of Culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The works of Argentine Arturo Andres Roig not only constitute one of the best developed examples of Latin American philosophy, but is also an important transformation to common philosophical themes. This paper explains three essential points. One is the transformation of the subject and its role in collective society, a transference in which Roig maintains a middle position between idealism and determinism. Two is the moral call to emergence, a concept to which Roig attributes the constructive force function to the subordinate classes of society. And three, the auto-positioning of philosophy which in Roig's transformation mode is not only a contemplative transfer mode, but must actively participate in the positive transformation of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]