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This paper carries out a comparative study between the legal questions that surrogate pregnancy raises in Spain and in Brazil. Surrogate motherhood is a reality achieved thanks to the advances in biomedicine and that undoubtedly requires a response from legal science. In the world scene, this technique receives different legal treatments: some countries authorize it without restrictions, others prohibit it, in others it is allowed with restrictions and in others there is a legislative vacuum. The importance of studying the two systems, the Spanish and the Brazilian, lies in confronting totally different realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss the controversy between Harry Frankfurt and Susan Wolf as to whether or not it is important that what we care about is objectively valuable, and whether a completely immoral life is as valuable as a moral life. I argue that although Frankfurt is right in saying that the mere act of caring is already valuable, that is not enough for a meaningful praxis. Given that our ends in life determine our choices, whatever we love will determine the kind of life we have, and different kinds of life are not equally valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critique presented by David Widerker on Frankfurt-counterexamples and known as the "W-defense" has persisted for years and has been considered one of the most difficult challenges these counterexamples have to face. This paper aims to defend Frankfurt counterexamples against Widerker's attack. For doing this, the paper presents a dilemma addressed to the main premise of Widerker's attack: The Principle of Alternative Expectations. The dilemma states: either this principle rests on the Kant's maxim, "ought" implies "can", and then this makes redundant and unnecessary the principle and Widerker's whole argument; or the principle does not rest on such maxim and then there is no good reason to accept it as valid [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to discuss the ethical and political problems that we face when we think of transgenic art. The paper is articulated in three parts that seek, in the first place, to give readers the conceptual tools necessary to think of the transgenic art inserted within the panorama of contemporary aesthetics. In order to fulfill this purpose the paper presents two works by Eduardo Kac, leading exponent of the movement: Genesis and GFP Bunny. Later, visiting some ideas of Jacques Rancière, an ethical political reading of transgenic art is proposed and a path of discussion is opened to think the role of bioethics in a world where genetic manipulation and the upgrade of bodies is a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Max Scheler's idea of person and its meaning in terms of values organized according categories. The work of Scheler on ethics expands the solidarity of the person as cordis ordo by the construction of a hierarchical system of values. Therefore, the recognition of the realm of universal values, a sector of which forms the ethos of a given age, has to be supplemented by that of the order of the time with its individual values and claims. There are many lectures of values in axiological philosophy, as we explain in this paper according to material-values ethics, and they are very important in the revelation of the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of apparatus has turned in a common notion within the Human Sciences. Based on Michel Foucault's ideas, there has been an important reflection about this concept recently. This paper seeks to point out some lines of investigation that have been established by Foucault´s philosophy of the apparatus. I stress, specially, some investigations undertaken by Ian Hacking and Arnold Davidson and some works by Nikolas Rose. On the other hand, it is stated that the philosophy of apparatus is aimed at carrying out a historical ontology, that is to say, thinking about how the interaction between knowledge, technologies, institutions and humans produce certain kinds of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows the role of the other in Gadamer's hermeneutics in the light of the idea of dialogue. Understanding requires the recognition of the other as a thou, the acceptance of the lack of distance from him and the openness to embrace what is said by him as a possible truth. Understanding has a dialectical structure that implies the cancellation of one's own expectations and the access to a more comprehensive knowledge. Even though every understanding is historical, it discloses an aspect of the thing itself which results from the interaction of the I and the thou during the process of hermeneutical conversation and constitutes a common truth that has analogous characteristics to practical reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to reconsider the feasibility of overcoming violent situations. Situations in which reality imposes itself in an indefectible and aggressive manner and in which it is hard to generate spaces of justice, since in them, social inequality and marginalization prevail. The persistence of injustice is the breeding ground for violence. An explicit case of such conditions was the massacre of 43 students of the Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa (Guerrero) on November 26, 2014. Under these circumstances, and, in order to formulate alternatives where peace becomes a viable horizon, this paper assumes the perspective about real injustice developed by Luis Villoro. Based on the recognition of this condition, the collective imagination of alternatives for overcoming violence and achieving peace becomes possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is consensus in disapproving the journalistic articles written by Foucault about the Iranian revolution. They are considered clear mistakes. Some say that this is so because the enthusiasm of Foucault towards the Islamic revolution moved him away from his true theoretical interests; others say that what those texts reveal is a totalitarian, naïve, and even misogynistic background of his philosophy. By doing this, commentators spear themselves a hermeneutical work on the incorporation of those texts into a work whose general bet remains the subject of academic discussion. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to the issue; one in which the texts are not considered a mistake but rather they are seen as part of a diagnosis that can get some light from the ideas of travel, radical journalism and heterotopology. These considered as fundamental elements of a philosophical bet on alterity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the commentators who problematize the issue of the moral self in David Hume's thought, Pauline Chazan (1998) has argued for the existence of some tensions between the passionate self that Hume thematizes in Book 2 of A Treatise of Human Nature and how this self subsequently gets in the moral domain, which Hume elaborated in Book 3. This paper offers an innovative reading of Hume's theory of subjectivity, which allows reconsidering and resolving this apparent conflict between the passionate self and the moral self. To do so, it develops a multidimensional conception of the subjectivity allowing to conceive the formation of the self as a complex and gradual process involving simultaneously different levels that, even though may be studied separately, are closely connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing popularity of Axel Honneth's recognition theory across philosophy and the social sciences, there is almost no philosophical literature on the relation between recognition and poverty from this perspective. In this paper, I am concerned with three questions related to such a reflection. Firstly, I will examine whether and how the recognition approach can contribute to the understanding of poverty. This involves both conceptual and empirical questions and targets the ability of the recognition approach to propose a valid theory of the social world. Secondly, I am interested in figuring out whether and how the recognition approach can help to understand what is wrong about poverty. This means asking about the normative or ethical competence of the recognition approach in regard to poverty. Thirdly, the recognition approach claims to transcend theory and research, but also affect the social and political practice. Then the question arises as to whether and how it can help to design or implement poverty reduction or poverty alleviation practices and policies. In discussing these three matters, I aim to show that the recognition approach can in fact be a valuable and important contribution to poverty research and poverty politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the principles of corporate social responsibility are included in the Colombian legal system. This is a descriptive and cross-sectional research based on qualitative data, which examines the legal regulation of CSR in Colombia, from the analysis of the principles of Global Compact grouped into four areas: human rights, labor, environmental and fight against corruption. It is concluded that the different aspects of CSR are regulated to a greater or lesser extent in the Colombian legal system, which shows that this is not, at least not entirely voluntary and that the regulation in this area as well as voluntary initiatives are appropriate and necessary, not contradictory, but are complementary instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the concept gray area, presented by Primo Levi from his testimony proven literary vocation as a survivor of the extermination camps and German, which highlights the conflict between the failure of law and the need to develop a new ethic that is closer to man's actions. The analysis is developed from the proposals presented by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt that includes another key element for the development of the gray zone: the banality of evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts virtue ethics and care ethics to determine their mutual relation. It is argued that there is one tradition within virtue ethics that emphasises that virtue is knowledge and also focuses on direct altruism. There is no opposition between that form of virtue ethics and ethics of care. Furthermore, there are principled objections to generalising the necessarily asymmetric relations of an ethic of care to the case of justice as reciprocal fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the problem of particularistic and objective approach to morals in the debate on global justice. The former one is usually defended by the communitarian philosophy and moderate liberal nationalism that claim for moral significance of national borders. Within this approach, patriotism is a fundamental virtue. The latter approach is presented by the cosmopolitans who apply the Rawlsian justice as fairness to the world at large. They reject moral significance of national borders and claim for equal rights and obligations to all human beings regardless of their origin and nationality. This approach to global justice treats patriotism as a vice. The main aim of this essay is to analyse whether the concept of patriotism and the concept of global justice necessarily come into conflict with one other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]