Filosofia Unisinos / Unisinos Journal of Philosophy

Individuation in Margaret Cavendish

2025-04-01T16:50:36-03:00

For Cavendish, the theory of individuation consists of a causal process in which infinite matter herself individuates into infinite parts through her own movement. This paper analyzes the process of individuation in her book Philosophical Letters (1664). To do so, the study is divided into two parts. First, we characterize infinite matter, her parts, and their mereological relationship. Then, we examine the role of infinite matter in the individuation of creatures, that is, of individuals, as a cause-effect relationship. The hypothesis is that this process of individuation establishes a whole-parts relationship in which the whole serves as the prime cause without implying that the parts cannot act as efficient or occasional causes, and therefore they have causal agency.

Stoic-influenced epistemology in Margaret Cavendish’s theory of perception

2025-04-01T16:38:39-03:00

Recent scholarship has explored various aspects of Cavendish’s epistemology and some concepts of her philosophy of nature have been shown to trace back to Stoic mechanics and aetiology. This paper argues that there was also a significant influence of the first Stoa’s epistemology on the duchess’ theory of perception, made possible by her readings of Thomas Stanley. By comparing key features of Stoic (kataleptic) sense-impression to Cavendishian double (regular) perception, I show that uncovering this influence helps us understand her late philosophical works.

Apresentação

2025-11-07T18:24:33-03:00

Public sphere, common sense, and public opinion

2025-03-18T18:20:52-03:00

The central problem of this study lies in how the structural transformations of the public sphere impact the formation and mobilization of common sense, in a scenario where communication becomes increasingly mediated by digital technologies and social networks. With this, the need arises to reflect on the changes in the public sphere, the influence of public opinion, and the contradictions that emerge from this new context. This study seeks to examine these issues in light of the theory of the public sphere proposed by Jürgen Habermas. The objective of this research is to analyze the main transformations of the contemporary public sphere, identifying its structural characteristics and the contradictions that arise in its new format. Furthermore, it seeks to understand how common sense is articulated with public opinion and what implications this has for civic participation and the exercise of democracy. To this end, the relationship between these concepts will be explored, highlighting their influences and tensions in current social and political practices. The analysis is based on the reconstruction of the notion of the public sphere in Habermas and the characteristics of the new structural change of the public sphere. We present the contradictions of the Habermasian ‘new public sphere’, questioning the feasibility of a truly democratic public sphere. From this evaluation, we make explicit the relationship between common sense, as a form of massive and intuitive knowledge, and public opinion, investigating how it is a phenomenon of the contradiction of opinion in its immediate expression. Thus, common sense and opinion suffer the impact of communication technologies in this process.

On On the normative impact of demanding

2025-05-02T08:04:31-03:00

In our everyday assertions about rights, we often speak of demands as things people have, and of demanding as something they do. This article offers a new Hohfeldian interpretation of the normative impact of demanding. Section I clarifies the notions of demand and demanding as employed here. Section II presents the Hohfeldian framework underlying the analysis, explains my choice of interpretive approach, and highlights a key point of divergence from three dominant variants - namely, my decision to keep the Hohfeldian distinction between powers and claims. Sections III and IV examine Carl Wellman’s and Margaret Gilbert’s theories. Although I agree with both authors that demanding creates a new reason for the duty-bearer to comply, I challenge their accounts of the normative impact of that reason. In Section V, I propose an alternative theory: demanding functions as a prima facie trigger for the reconsideration of prior non-compliance and supplies a new reason for compliance that may - depending on context - alter the balance of reasons in favor of fulfilling the duty. Section VI concludes with a summary of the argument.

The free ones do not discriminate

2025-04-23T10:36:18-03:00

The Stoic conception of “metaphysical” liberty establishes that this is a characteristic of the virtuous person and, therefore, of the person who possesses happiness (eudaimonía). We argue, pushing the ancient Stoic conception of virtue (areté) towards contemporary political-moral conceptions, that, necessarily, whoever is virtuous and possesses the mentioned metaphysical liberty never discriminates and will always have an anti-discriminatory behavior. We propose, consequently, that those who are discriminatory and/or promote inequality and/or discrimination are in a metaphysical slavery. We establish that the cause of discrimination, following Stoicism, lies in wrongly considering certain issues as “goods” and in developing passions towards such issues. That is, discrimination is born because we do not recognize that only acting virtuously has value.

Diagrammatic method for modal syllogistic

2025-05-16T10:17:34-03:00

I develop a diagrammatic method for Modal Syllogistic restricted to de dicto modalities in their contemporary interpretation. This method is a conservative extension of a previous diagrammatic method for Assertoric Syllogistic. It uses two types of inference rules: the intralevel inference rules contain the inference rules of the diagrammatic method for Assertoric Syllogistic, while the interlevel inference rules implement Theophrastus’ in peiorem rule.

The philosophical yields of Meister Eckhart’s thought in the phenomenology of the young Heidegger

2025-05-30T15:28:25-03:00

This article analyses the influence of Meister Eckhart on the development of phenomenology in the young Heidegger. Starting from the first confrontation with Eckhart in the context of his habilitation thesis, it shows how Heidegger finds in Eckhart’s doctrine throughout this period that essential impulse which he himself wanted for the development of his phenomenology: the primacy of religious experience over the created faculties, that is, an essential countermovement to the pre-eminence of the theoretical. Consequently, we will try to present how Eckhart is present both in his phenomenological approach to early Christianity and St. Augustine, and in his alternative reading of Aristotle’s neo-scholasticism.

Walter Benjamin’s “Second Technique”

2025-05-12T09:03:26-03:00

This article seeks to analyse Walter Benjamin’s concept of “second technique” to comprehend the relationship between humanity and nature that it implies. This concept emerges in L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction mécanisée, but has roots in previous texts. This article aims to be, in strict sense, a contribution to the interpretations of Benjamin’s concept of second technique, and, in a general sense, an input to the current debates surrounding technique and nature, within the framework of the environmental crisis. My argument is that since the mid-1920s, Benjamin introduces a conception of technique as a relationship between humanity and nature. This conception appears in several texts of the period and is crystallised in the concept of second technique, of which film provides an illustrative example. The concept of second technique, which first appears in L’œuvre d’art..., has antecedents in Einbahnstraße and Theorien des deutschen Faschismus for two reasons: in both texts 1) Benjamin defines technique as a relationship between nature and humanity; 2) this technique is posed in opposition to a misuse of technique, whether as domination in Einbahnstraße, or as destruction in Theorien des deutschen Faschismus. The concept of second technique represents an innovation that highlights the nature of this relationship, namely harmonious, and is explicitly opposed to a first technique defined by domination.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological reduction

2025-07-25T11:26:33-03:00

In this article I oppose the idea that in the “Phenomenology of Perception”, Merleau-Ponty rejects any form of ‘phenomenological reduction’. Not only does he not reject the ‘phenomenological reduction’: the introductory chapters of the work are also meant to carry it out. The starting-point of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘phenomenological reduction’ lies, therefore, in the critique of the notion of ‘sensation’. However, his reduction differs from the Husserlian one. Whereas for Husserl performing the reduction means suspending adherence to the belief in the existence of the world, for Merleau-Ponty the reduction consists in the return to the ‘lived world’, to the ‘immediate’ or, as he also says, to the ‘phenomenal field’. The latter cannot in turn, be traced back to its constitution in the domain of pure or transcendental consciousness. I conclude with the idea that the difference between Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s conception and execution of the ‘phenomenological reduction’ lies in their different understanding of subjectivity. As opposed to Husserl’s transcendental subject, Merleau-Ponty’s body-subject is essentially opaque to itself and therefore it is not possible to account, in a fully transparent manner, for the way it opens itself to the world.

For a cartography of collective power equipment at the end of the 20th century in Colombia

2025-05-12T09:35:16-03:00

The text draws a cartography of some collective power equipment at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in Colombia from some assumptions of the analytical work of Félix Guattari in the seventies. This is based on the identification of the modes of semiotization, the forms of subjectivation and the social practices that these Facilities produced and modulated in the territory. To achieve this objective, three moments are established. Initially, the Guattarian understanding of Collective power equipment is characterized in the context of the research carried out by the group of the Center for Institutional Studies, Research and Training (CERFI) and the magazine Recherches. Subsequently, some social practices, modes of semiotization and subjectivation are characterized, especially linked to the armed conflict and the neoliberal economic, political and social management that the country has experienced since the late 1980s. Furthermore, the existence of sign machines such as radio, television and the Internet and the machinic subjectivity that they produce are analyzed. Finally, the legal, conservatist, war, clientelism and corruption facilities are pointed out, their productive-semiotic-libidinal function and how this was contested by the function of collective agency in the last decade.

Perfectionism and antiracism

2025-04-23T10:09:46-03:00

This article defends the need for the prior adoption of the political virtue of anti-racism as a necessary step towards the possible realization of the corrective justice proposed by Charles Mills. To support this claim, anti-racism will initially be proposed as one of the democratic political virtues, considered as those capable, together, of affecting the basic structure of liberal democracies. Next, the article suggests that only societies in which such virtue is sufficiently present could adopt the demanding principles of corrective justice proposed by Mills to correct accumulated injustices against their racialized population nonwhite, leaving open the question of the possibility/necessity of state promotion of that virtue through political perfectionism.

Christian Garve as philosopher of the enlightenment

2025-05-12T16:23:36-03:00

In the following text, the aim is to argue that, despite his mistaken positioning in relation to Kant, especially that concerning to moral philosophy, Garve carried out a considerable work in his philosophical, philological and literary activity and occupied an important position, alongside other names, in the context of the German Enlightenment. To this aim, the work is divided into three steps:1) first, the context in which Garve emerged and established himself as a philosopher is characterized and with it also the movement of “Popularphilosophie” in the context of the German Enlightenment; 2) second, Garve’s activities as translator, essayist and thinker are analyzed, in order to understand his position in relation to the field of Philosophy and concerning the issues of his time, and; 3) third, the most central aspects of his conception of moral philosophy are revisited and analyzed.

G. W. Leibniz’s on the irrationality of the existence of homogeneous space on the correspondence with Samuel Clarke

2024-10-16T17:37:24-03:00

The paper advances the hypothesis that, in the Correspondence with Samuel Clarke, G. W. Leibniz’s arguments that establish that absolute space would contradict the Principles of Sufficient Reason and Identity of Indiscernibles do not directly affect the view according to which the existence of space is absolute. It argues that these arguments concern the homogeneity of space, not its absolute existence.