Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Presentation of the monograph

Ignacio Ellacuría's contemporary relevance is based on having combined the political analysis of reality, university work, and philosophical reflection with vital -personal and community- commitment. Handwritten and typed notes are added.

Since Hobbes, the theorization of the personal sovereign within the political order as a denatured representative instance has been conflictive. This study aims to address that problem in the work of Max Weber and Carl Schmitt, who, parting from a diagnosis of modernity as disenchantment of the world, display opposing conceptions of political representation and democracy which grant a major role to the sovereign as the last ratio of order before the democratization of the State. In the light of two historical-anthropological conceptions of domination, three crucial aporias are detected in this propositive transition to understand the relationship between both authors: how to personify the impersonal domination of the modern State, how to accommodate plurality in a disenchanted political order and how to deal with the ethical relationship between ends and means in politics. On one hand, Weber proposes a republican form in which the president, supported by the masses in a plebiscite, acts by consolidating the legal-rational legitimacy of the democratic regime through his charisma. On the other hand, Schmitt theorizes a form of representation inspired by the Catholic Church, in which the sovereign acts as a decision-maker in the political sphere in exceptional cases and to a greater extent, as a catalyst for the total identification of the people with the State under the distinction friend- enemy.                  

Both the Soviet and United States military interventions failed in their respective efforts to establish stable regimes in Afghanistan, whose reputation for resistance to foreign occupation and state-building operations has earned it a near-mythical moniker: “the graveyard of empires”. This study examines the history of regime development in Afghanistan with a focus on the perennial challenge of finding a balance between the degree of centralized power necessary to maintain security and perform state functions, on the one hand, and the threshold of tolerance for centralized power among the country’s tribal population, on the other. The analysis shows how the highly centralized communist regime established through the Soviet intervention as well as the excessively decentralized democratic regime established through the United States intervention represent just two chapters in Afghanistan’s historical struggle to establish legitimate and enduring sources of centralized state power.

An essay is presented whose objective is to succinctly reveal a systematization of Fidel Castro's thought and work on Socialism in Cuba based on indicators that evidence the process of its construction from the perspective of the Cuban historical leader, from several methods based on materialist dialectics. In its structure —as it provides a conceptual operationality in each key word—, it is based on a critical examination of sources that have dealt with the subject. The argumentation is useful to complement the contents of Marxism-Leninism and Cuban History subjects in Cuban Universities; it disarticulates the supposed cult to Fidel Castro's personality; it pays tribute to the Project "Challenges of Citizen Education in the construction of a prosperous and sustainable socialism" of the University of Camagüey; it is inscribed in the priorities of the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education; it becomes a budget for further studies in this sense; and it constitutes a reference for international teaching and research institutions that address the issue.

Know-how brings a transfer of knowledge from the society to the European Union. Its transversality makes it to take place in most of all UE policies. It is an engine that drives all European legislation and places society in a very important step into the European market. The contribution of the know-how to the development of the EU is really enriching. Just for this reason, this study is focused on demonstrating its evolution over the years and so to reach a broad definition of know-how that could reflects this social impulse.

The paper carries out an ontological review of the principles of classical liberalism to approach the three aspects that influenced Latin America in the 19th century, in other words, the most important aspects of Spanish liberalism (Constitution of Cádiz), French (Letter of Rights of the Man and the Citizen), and American (Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights). The result in much of Ibero-America was the application of a version of the doctrinaire liberalism of Cadiz, without a monarchy, but with an official religion. This event motivated the appearance of certain anticlerical movements, ideologically led by José María Luis Mora, in the case of Mexico, or pragmatically, as in the case of General Eloy Alfaro in Ecuador. It is concluded that the anticlerical liberals were not ideologically based on liberalism but on Freemasonry.

This text makes a brief summary of the issues that have been object of study and analysis by legal philosophers and anticipates some of the important issues that are being and will be dealt with in the future. In particular, it highlights the projection of the development of science and tecnology in legal-political categories and the emergence of two new issues: the rights of humans as a specie and the return of the naturalistic fallacy.

The interest of this work lies in the narrative that the Uruguayan president José Mujica (2010-2015) built to legitimize himself. To meet this objective, the political story is first conceptualized, then its requirements and functions are identified, and finally its analysis is systematized through five dimensions. The findings of the investigation show that the president displayed a plot linked to cultural transformation, a conflict between citizenship and consumerism, a chronology that connects the present with a horizon of expectations, a personalized symbology and a self-representation that emphasizes reconciliation and sobriety.

The dimension of future time has been incorporated into iusphilosophical reflections. The human being has entered a 21st century marked by various events that invite us to think about risk, uncertainty and to reflect on a society that is experiencing dizzying, accelerated change, which demands a response from the Law in general, and from the Philosophy of Law in particular. The future in Law, the Law of the future, the right to the future, constitute some of the projections of that temporal coordinate that will be analyzed and that will highlight the urgency of meeting the requirements of future generations and the corresponding intergenerational justice.