Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía
Contrastes. International Journal of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, open-access research journal published quarterly by UMA Editorial. With an interdisciplinary approach, it encompasses the thematic fields of Philosophy, Moral and Political Philosophy, Logic and Philosophy of Science, and Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts. The articles published in Contrastes are indexed in SCOPUS (Q3), The Philosopher’s Index, Latindex, ISOC-Filosofía e Indice Español de Humanidades, FRANCIS-Philosophie, Réper-toire Bibliographique de la Philosophie, Bulletin Signalétique Philosophie, Informa-tionsdienst für Philosophie, Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory, European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico (REDIB), Dulcinea.
This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle of making research freely available to the public. All content published in Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, are subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license whose full text can be found at <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0> It is the responsibility of the authors to obtain the necessary permissions of the images that are subject to copyright. Authors whose contributions are accepted for publication in this journal will retain the non-exclusive right to use their contributions for academic, research and educational purposes, including self-archiving or repository in open access repositories of any kind. The electronic edition of this magazine is edited by the Editorial Service of the University of Malaga (Uma Editorial), being necessary to cite the origin in any partial or total reproduction.
Crossing the boundaries of gender: the symbolic and material artifact of subjectivity in the work of Teresa de Lauretis
This article reviews the main contributions of the Italian philosopher Teresa de Lauretis to contemporary feminist thought. To do so, we will first focus on her genealogical and critical proposal of feminism. Beyond gender oppression and a homogeneous conception of patriarchy as a system of power, De Lauretis shifts the foundational axis of both the so-called feminism of equality and difference, to descend to the materiality of bodies and subjects. Therefore, we will analyze, in a second moment, her well-known theory on the technology of gender, as a symbolic-discursive and representational-visual device, to end with her most important and polemic proposal on an eccentric and decentered subjectivity.
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Virtuous politics and feminist power in a historic time marked by crisis
In the following pages, I propose reading the feminist mobilizations of recent years as a “virtuous revolt” that has a strong ethical-political component due to its capacity to propose a better life that is not only livable, but also desirable, insofar as it is not only committed to resisting the impact of the deterioration of the conditions for reproduction of existence, but also to reactivating and promoting encouraging imaginaries of the future. The hypothesis of this essay is that feminist mobilization in the regions of the global South promotes visions of the future at a time when the aspiration for a desirable horizon seems to have been closed off by a context strongly marked by crisis. These feminist struggles face a series of challenges that make it necessary to try out new forms of articulation and assembly. From this last concern arises the idea of a feminist politics of the common, with which I wish to point to a hopeful future horizon, not only for feminism, but also for the leftist projects of the 21st century that have left behind the totalizing and unitary narratives that sustained them.
The mosaic and the Law. A Derridean rereading of Julia Kristeva’s chora
In this paper I propose a critique of Julia Kristeva’s notion of chora. To do so, I make use of her own notion of “intertextuality”, which I situate in the context of her intellectual encounter with Jacques Derrida and, specifically, with his notions of “différance” and “deconstruction”. Accepting that Kristeva's theory of chora reproduces a binary version of sexual difference by positing the symbolic and the semiotic as distinct spaces, I defend the thesis that “intertextuality” enables a conception of the symbolic that challenges the binary opposition posed by Kristeva.
A Post-Foundational Proposal to the Feminist Debate around khôra: Receptacle, Space, Matter or Void? Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva and Butler
From Aristotle to Heidegger –going through figures as diverse as Theophrastus, Simplicius, Plotinus or Ficinus–, the khôra of Plato’s Timaeus is one of the philosophical topics which have caused the greatest interest, always accompanied by an equal confusion. Should it be understood as space, matter, void or a receptacle? It seems that even Plato himself would not have decided between such different options. More recently, no doubt due to the sexed metaphors that Plato used, the khôra has caused a great debate in French philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Sometimes seen as oppressive, others as liberating, the khôra has reawakened an enormous interest in post-structuralist and post-feminist thinkers such as Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva or Butler. In the present article, we will propose a solution to the problem of khôra by defining it as “empty of form, but full instead of space and matter”. Through this thesis we will try to develop a framework for a post-foundational feminism “from the beginning” that shines a new light on such burning issues nowadays as abortion, prostitution or surrogacy.
#VivasNosQueremos: political friendship between women for life and onlife against femicide
This article analyses the aggregative force of political friendship among women for ‘onlife’ action: in life, alive and online, during the cycle of feminist protests in Mexico between 2016 and 2021. In this period, the political emerges prefiguring a community of women declaring themselves alive and invoking the disappeared and murdered as a shared destiny. The movement began with hashtags such as #VivasNosQueremos. It continued with mobilisations and direct action on digital networks and in physical spaces, to ‘change fear’. Its potential managed to destabilise the organising axes of antagonism, showing that power is where women come together, paraphrasing Hannah Arendt and her associative proposal. In their becoming a laboratory of symbolic production, women created words, heterotopias and other spaces, seizures of monuments, occupations, artivism and calls to burn and destroy everything, pointing to the state as responsible with #MéxicoFeminicida.
Populist Feminism: New Keys to Rethinking Emancipation
In this article we propose the hypothesis that it is possible to think of populist feminism as an emancipatory force. To do this, we are going to explore the following points. First, we are going to show to what extent the pejorative conception of populism developed by the comparative political sciences of the global north prevent an edifying link between feminism and populism. Secondly, we are going to refute the criticisms that autonomist and decolonial feminism have made of populism. Finally, we are going to expose the rise of populist feminism among different authors from Latin America and why it can offer keys to think about emancipation beyond the particularisms expressed by other feminist theorizations.
“To have done with the judgement of sexuality”: Toward an anarchic ethics and politics of con-sensual pleasures
Contemporary debates around the notion of consent often contrast an understanding of consent in terms of law with an understanding of consent in terms of desire. According to Michel Foucault's diagnosis, both concepts are articulated within the modern sexuality device from which, according to the author, it is necessary to free oneself. The article accompanies the author's invitation to explore a new culture of sex that unfolds on the basis of pleasure and not desire.
Mothering against motherhood: doula work, xenohospitality and the idea of the momrade
Today, a new vein of queer Marxist-feminist family-abolitionist theorising is reviving contemporary feminists willingness to imagine, politically, what women's liberationists in the 1970s called “mothering against motherhood”. Concurrently, the jokey portmanteau “momrade”, i.e., mom + comrade, has circulated persistently in the twenty-first century on online forums maintained by communities of mothers and/or leftists. This article asks: what if, in the name of abolishing the family, we took the joke entirely seriously? What makes a “mom” a “momrade”, or vice versa? In what ways does the work of reproduction, conceivably, actively participate in class struggles, producing new worlds (and un-producing others)? How do the collective arts of mothering unmake selves? And how does the verb “to mother” work to abolish the present state of things? The chosen point of departure for exploring these questions is the concept of xenohospitality; a term I borrow from Helen Hester – one of the authors of the Xenofeminist Manifesto – who defines it as openness to the alien, a definition I link closely to “comradeliness”. Further, the meaning of the term “family abolition”, here, is aptly summed up by the formula “xenofam ≥ biofam”; to abolish the family is not to destroy relationships of care and nurturance, but on the contrary, to expand and proliferate them. Reflecting on the conditions of possibility for such universally xenofamilial – that is to say, comradely – kin relations, this article implicitly argues for utopia(nism) in feminist kinship studies. It grounds this utopianism, however, in first-hand experiences of informal “death doula” labour. The labour of mothering one's mother is offered as a potential practice of un-mothering oneself and others. In fact, the argument pivots on these auto-ethnographic observations about maternal bereavement, because the event of the author's mother's death interrupted and intruded upon the feminist theorising involved.
Introduction: Towards a post-foundational feminism
Following the footsteps of his friend Erasmus in Stultitiae Laus, More did not conceive his most striking and original work, Utopia, as a “serious” text but as a “cheerful” and “festive little book” aimed at revealing truths through the via diversa of laughter. Thus, his 1516 work would inscribe itself in the rich tradition of classical satire in general, particularly “Menippean satire” (in the style of Lucian), characterized by its strong “erudite” (i.e., philosophical) imprint. In this paper, I begin by identifying the main text passages that display explicitly comical content and intent. Then, I attempt to interpret those passages in their relations to one another and the overall organization of the work. I conclude by offering some tentative considerations about the significance of humor for philosophy in the view of Thomas More.
Utopía, Thomas More, Erasmo, Humor, Sátira
Representação, paixão e mentira em Thomas Hobbes
O texto apresenta o modo em que a razão pode criar objetos para a paixão. O escopo do estudo é o Leviatã (1651), de Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Observa-se que os objetos das paixões são produzidos a partir de imaginação (ou memória), do que participa a razão. A razão, como cálculo de nomes, tem afinidade com a linguagem. Já que a linguagem é um produto do consenso, é relevante considerar que a política, a retórica e a mentira são seus elementos constitutivos. Disso se conclui que a paixão pode ter objetos baseados na mentira, ou seja, pode se querer o falso.
Miguel de Unamuno y su ética universitaria
This paper aims to tackle the university ethic of Miguel de Unamuno. For this purpose, first of all, the criticism he made of his contemporary Spanish university is analysed and, thereafter, the figure of the university professor is studied. Thus, the characteristics, values and objective that every university education must acquire are presented. Finally, the direct influence of Francisco Giner de los Ríos in the unamunian university ethic is shown.
Schopenhauer, Freud and the Debt of Psychoanalysis
This article investigates the influence of Schopenhauer’s will and intellect in Freud’s second topography, as well as the influence of the former’s pessimism and asceticism in the latter’s last motivational theory. We can conclude that both concepts match in functioning and structure with Freud’s id and ego, and that from Schopenhauer’s pessimism and asceticism derives the worldview that Freud would express in his death instinct. This link between both thinkers brings to light a connection between Philosophy and Psychology as research fields, despite their current apparent distance.
Aristotle is one of the greatest advocates of the intensely examined research field referred to as “Virtue Ethics”. This study forms part of this interpretative framework. It recovers the meaning of three virtues related to knowledge of the particular: Judgment (γνώμη), Understanding (σύνησις) and Intuitive Reason (νοῦς). A careful reading of the pages devoted to these virtues in Book VI of the Nichomachean Ethics (NE) confirms that Aristotle not only has a doctrine of ethically relevant perception but also one of ethical perception.
Proposal for a Theatrical Philosophy with Scientific Purposes
The aim of this paper is to analyse Aristotle's dialogue Protrepticus, underlining the continuity and indicating the differences with Plato's dialogues. The starting point of the reflection is the observation that this type of works in both authors were plays, even if their intention was not to stage them. The analysis of theatre in the Poetics, the constitutive theatricality of the resources used in the discourse of the rhetoricians and sophists, as they are studied in the Rhetoric, and the importance of the integration of previous knowledge in the same reflection through the concept of endoxa show that the theatrical permeates Aristotle's thought in a broader sense than just the use of the dialogical form.
The The Middle-Platonic determination of Hermeneutics in Philo of Alexandria
This paper suggests to reevaluate the determination that Middle-Platonism exerted on Philo of Alexandria’s hermeneutical method, considering that the appropriation by the author of the philosophical epistemes contemporaries to him, was primary in leading him to his critical, rationalist and renovating analysis of the sacred text, rising above literalist readings, and to his precocious “demythologization” of the Bible. Aspects which set an early and non-fundamentalist precedent to the critical interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.
The philosophical potential of catastrophe theory
Abstract: In this paper we will study the philosophical potential of René Thom's theory of catastrophes. From the field of mathematics in which it arises, this theory has generated a vast literature about diverse applications in other branches far from mathematics. The aim is to explain the main points of the theory in accordance with the ontological conception on which it rests, an ontology of becoming, immanent and relational. We will present the theory of catastrophes as an analytical and critical tool, offering some examples of application.
Copyright (c) 2024 Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The perception of the irreplaceable character of the person
We explore the understanding of the irreplaceability of the personal self in adults through a qualitative study with focus group. The subjects had watched an episode of Black Mirror in which a person replaces her deceased partner with an android. Following the guidelines of Grounded Theory, these categories were constructed: negative or shock; unreality; temporality; spontaneity; a whole; something else; irreplaceability. The reference to something fundamental in the person, not understood in its qualities, emerged. The study is preceded by a reflection on the relevance of qualitative studies in the so-called experimental philosophy.
The relevance of the presentism/eternalism debate in ethics
According to metaphysical presentism, only the present exists. Contrary to this, eternalism holds that the past and the future are as real as the present, and that the universe has a timeless nature. However, it has sometimes been argued that the whole debate is actually empty, and that it makes no difference to our understanding of the world or to our attitudes towards it. There are, nevertheless, several issues in moral philosophy for which the choice between one of these views may make a relevant difference.
The invention of metaphysical prisons in Piranesi and Foucault:
This article studies the emergence of the concept of metaphysical prisons, understood as psychic or mental confinements for the purpose of regulation, control and even punishment, which a person can impose on himself or on others. This research has two aims: the first, to formulate an interpretation of some of Piranesi's prison engravings, in the ligth of the definitions of enunciation and archive proposed by Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. The second, I seek to show how Giovanni Battista Piranesi's engravings converge with Michel Foucault's philosophical work in his conception of the prison.
Isabel Estefanía Gutiérrez López Olivera
“Anticipate perfection” as a hermeneutical imprint of philosophy
Based on the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer, in this article I propose to develop and justify the claim that philosophy and its performance always carry a hermeneutic imprint, which manifests itself as concrete experience in that assumption that Gadamer calls “anticipation of perfection”. From this claim —and stretching a little the theoretical intentions of the author of Truth and Method— I will argue, likewise, that the best way to performance and take advantage of this assumption of perfection depends, in a lot, on the attitude that an interpreter adopts with respect to one of its two dimensions: that which refers to the intelligibility of the texts. With this I can finally point out which aspect of philosophical performance manages to escape the determination of the hermeneutic imprint.
Towards a Narrative Thinking: Hannah Arendt’s Legacy in Donna Haraway
The paper sets out to reconstruct Donna Haraway’s reading of Hannah Arendt in her book Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Taking up Arendt's notion of thoughtlessness as a diagnosis of our times, Haraway deploys a "narrative thinking" in which she places Arendt in unexpected company: Vinciane Despret, Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Woolf. Thus Arendt’s perspective is renewed to face the actually challenges and “go visiting” is shown as a thinking with diverse others beings and from marginal positions in dissonance with the dominant tradition.
THOUGHTLESSNESS; LONELINESS; THINKING-WITH; NARRATIVES; WORLD.
The myth of the faceless Palestinian and the politicization of Emmanuel Levinas’ thought
The article analyses the various cases of several authors who attribute one or more of the following statements to Emmanuel Levinas: the Palestinian is not the Other, responsibility does not apply to the Palestinian or applies less than to the Israeli, the Palestinian is «faceless». It will be shown that these statements are not contentious or erroneous interpretation, but rather a «myth», that is, a fiction or false narrative, due to the politicization of Levinas’ thought by certain intellectuals. The origin, genesis, dissemination, content, variations and motives of this «myth» are the focal points of the research.
Levinas, ethics, Face, Israel, Palestinian
Jung, Carl Gustav. Los Libros Negros. Cuadernos de transformación. 7 vols. Buenos Aires: El Hilo de Ariadna, 2024
Herrera Guevara, Asunción. Más que posthumano, transhumano. Madrid: Tecnos, 2024
In Más que posthumano, transhumano (2025), María Asunción Herrera Guevara analyzes transhumanism from a philosophical and ethical perspective, considering intergenerational and interspecific justice. Through narrative methodology, she addresses the implications of technological enhancement, posthumanism and critical transhumanism. The author argues that scientific-technological development should be governed by principles of justice that include all sentient beings, rejecting anthropocentrism and promoting an ecofeminist and sustainable approach.
Is Descartes still wrong three decades later?
Thirty years ago a book appeared that was destined to have a great impact: Descartes' Error. Its author was Antonio Damasio (1994) and, after its appearance in English, there were many reviews, mostly positive, as well as translations that included the Spanish language. Four years later, in 1999, the journal Enrahonar published a special issue dedicated to the French philosopher, celebrating, somewhat belatedly, the four Centuries since his birth in 1596. In Enrahonar's tribute an article appeared that reviewed Descartes' reading by Damasio. Let's return now, taking advantage of some of what has been written since then, about the keys that neuroscience provides us today about the relationship between mind and brain that Descartes began to consider.
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Reason and Emotion: Necessary Collaboration for Knowledge
The approach to reason can be traced throughout the history of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant to the present day. Emotion has not been alien to philosophy either, although its relationship with reason has motivated debates in which positions on the matter have given rise to disparate epistemological systems. Antonio Damasio's work is extensive with relevant contributions on brain processes, emotions, feelings, and consciousness. The objective of this article is the analysis of some ideas developed by Damasio throughout his work that have special relevance for the philosophy of science and epistemology.
Damasio's insight: the information from affect
Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error (1994) is a landmark in the discussions regarding human mind and emotions, both for its characterization of emotions and for the role they play in our mental economy. In this paper I intend to extend the spirit of Damasio's approach showing that emotions are not only indispensable for decision making and rational thinking, but that they are also essential for agency. I will begin by offering a brief reconstruction of his proposal, emphasizing his improvements over the original Jamesian intuition (section I). Then, I will address the value of emotions for agency by synthesizing the contribution Damasio provided with his hypothesis of somatic markers and, secondly, by gathering other contributions that strengthen the argument for the influence of emotions on other aspects of our mental life (section II). Finally (section III) I will suggest a way of reinterpreting the phenomena presented, in order to integrate what I consider to be Damasio's insight, namely the revolution introduced at core of the conceptualization of emotions and their importance for agency.
Does the Heart Have Reasons? Damasio's Somatic Markers in the Light of the Debate on Practical Rationality
The article puts forward a critical examination of Damasio's somatic-markers hypothesis in Descartes' Error by means of conceptual distinctions from the debate on practical rationality. After the introduction (I) and the reconstructing of the Damasian hypothesis (II) the paper highlights some of its conceptual problems (III). It subsequently approaches the hypothesis from the distinction between internal and external rationality (IV) and from a distinction between types of explanatory reasons (V). It finally discusses the Pascalian idea that the heart has reasons in a critical light by means of several arguments developed in the preceding sections (VI).
Moderate innatism and the political projections of the homeostatic imperative
The aim of the paper is to offer a critical analysis of the political projections that Antonio Damasio has put forward of his specific conception of homeostasis. By starting from a complex conception of homeostasis, one that focuses not only on the maintenance of life but also on flourishing, Damasio argues that certain cultures are contrary to the homeostatic imperative. I will suggest that, even if we adopt the complex interpretation of homeostasis (rather than the deflated one that is usual in most evolutionary approaches), resorting to the concept of homeostasis would lead to a condemnation of modern capitalist societies, not from an ethical or political point of view, but from a strictly evolutionary one.