Sistema Regional de Información
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Contrary to what realists believe, the world, either that in which we live our daily lives or the world of science, is not a given, something already fully constituted standing out there. It is instead, as phenomenological transcendental idealists believe, an elaborate intentional construct. The world of the modern mathematized physical science in particular is constituted from raw sensorial data that suggest the existence of a transcendent reality, but that can hardly be taken as a complete disclosure of it, by a series of subconscious and fully conscious intentional acts that, from the production of objectively valid perceptions out of subjective sensations deliver, at the end, a mathematically idealized manifold representing certain formal-abstract aspects of perceptual reality so that mathematics can participate in empirical science as a methodologicaltool. In this paper, I go through the moments of this process, highlighting its many transcendental presuppositions (which are the transcendental a priori of the world) and argue that only such an idealist perspective can make sense of the many uses of mathematics in empirical science that the realists tend to see as utterly incomprehensible, a “gift we do not understand or deserve”.1

This paper aims at showing that David Hume outlines the identity of the true philosopher by means of two distinctions: the first one confronts two ways of considering our experience, which reveals an underlying difference between a pre-reflective and a reflective attitude. The second one concerns two parts of humankind that appear to be incompatible: the contemplative and the active, which the true philosopher aims at mediate. The identity thus proposed results in two original contributions: on the one hand, it motivates philosophers to deal with topics focused on common life. On the other hand, it suggests philosophers are notexclusively endowed with a reflective attitude, rather, this attitude is shared with anyone who is an expert on any other occupation. Neither is the philosophical identity assumed once and for all. On the contrary, it is adopted at certain times and places, and alternates with the pre-reflective attitude.

Hegel may reasonably be conceived as the founder of contemporary philosophy of religion because he has influenced important twentieth-century thinkers by providing them with a new approach to the study of the religious life of humankind. In this paper, I will argue that in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel also prefigures key insights that are connected with Gottlob Frege, the founder of analytic philosophy, and Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. In the Introduction to the 1824 Lectures, Hegel, in distinguishing two meanings of the expression “God,” comes close to formulate Frege’s notable semantic distinction of the sense (Sinn) and the reference (Bedeutung) of linguistic expressions. In the same text, when discussing the approach taken by the philosophy of religion in order to gain knowledge of the essence (Wesen) of God, he also anticipates main aspects of Husserl’s phenomenological attitude and method for the apprehension of the essences (Wesensschau) of the objects that are given to consciousness. In contemporary philosophy, the “silent” influence of Hegel is noticeable in Paul Tillich’s phenomenological approach to religion.

The main interpretations of Xenophon’s Economics consist in reading it either as an economic treatise, or as an ethical dialogue with no economic content. In this paper, in the wake of L.A. Dorion’s approach, I claim that it is possible to reconcile both readings, that is, the economic content of the text and its Socratic nature –i.e., its ethical purpose and its dialogical form. To do so, I focus on a specific passage of the Economics, in which Socrates explains that “earth teaches justice”. I first show the limits of the Straussian-inspired readings according to which references to agriculture are purely allegorical and ironic in Socrates’ mouth, and agriculture is alien to ethics. Second, I refer to other passages of the Economics and other texts by Xenophon to demonstrate that, and explain why, his Socrates considers household management (oikonomia) in general and agriculture in particular as activities propitious to individual and collective ethics.

Jean Grondin, La belleza de la metafísica, traducción de María Pons Irazazábal, Herder, Barcelona, 2021, 181 pp.

Winston Black, Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West. A History in Documents, The Broadview Sources Series, Canadá, 2020, 272 pp.

Antonio Zirión Quijano, editor of José Gaos’ Complete Works, has brought together in El sentido de la filosofía all the texts he has published on Gaos, a very important philosopher for the reception of phenomenology in Mexico. In my comments on this book, I first compare the stance of Fernando Salmerón, the previous editor of Gaos’ works, with Zirión’s view on Gaos’ conception of metaphysics, an extreme subjectivism in which the figure of the philosopher stands out as an arrogant, determined to carry out an impossible task. Later, I point out the concerns that Zirión expresses for this pessimistic view with increasing emphasis throughout the series of essays in the first part of his book.

Beyond the Public Sphere deals with the main role of films in the making of the social imaginary. In my paper, I reflect on the conceptual construction of the term ‘social imaginary’. Then, I wonder how far does the ‘Beyond’ in the tittle go —does it mean a change, a structural transformation or the disappearance of the public sphere? 

In Beyond The Public Sphere. Film and The Feminist Imaginary, María Pía Lara writes about the need to build a feminist social imaginary as a counter- hegemonic strategy to the capitalist and patriarchal imaginary. This imaginary must be understood as a faculty, as a collective imaginary, and as the representation of forms in which we contemplate ourselves situated in our concrete world. In this article I discuss the possibilities and problems that Lara opens with her proposal.

In El sentido de la filosofía [The meaning of philosophy], Antonio Zirión aims at analyzing —among other issues— the role and function of phenomenology in José Gaos’s work and thought. In my commentary, I reflect on the contrast between the concepts of phenomenology and phenomenological method in Husserl and Gaos. Next, I focus on the discussion about the limits between phenomenology and metaphysics at the core of Gaos thought, which leads to a broader concept of phenomenology linked to the idea of a scientific philosophy. Finally, I propose another possible approach to phenomenological motives in Gaos.