ARTICLES

Donald Davidson y el argumento de 'la conexión lógica'. ByFelipe Curcó Cobos

The publication of "Actions, reasons and causes" by Donald Davidson was a turning point in philosophy. In that paper, Davidson put forward the idea that accounting for an action in terms of reasons is a form of causal explanation, whereby reasons are understood effectively as a cause for action. This thesis became highly relevant within the intellectual climate where it appeared. At the time, the idea that reasons are no cause for action -defended mainly by philosophers of a wittgensteinian turn- was dominant in the anglosaxon tradition. This essay approaches some of the main alleged proofs of the non-causal nature of reasons, and confronts them with Davidson's arguments for the possibility of the existence of logical implications between certain descriptions of events, which does not prevent their association in terms of cause and effect. These gave rise to what at the time was, and continues to be, an original philosophical claim.. [Download full text]

Islam and Democracy. By Eliane Ursula Ettmueller

This paper proposes a short apprehension of the reflections of one of the most important progressive Islamic scholars, the Egyptian theologian Ali Abderraziq. It focuses on his work about Islam and the Fundamentals of Power, published in 1925. The main purpose is to allow a more sophisticated view of Islamic political thought and to show that there are roots and possibilities for an endogen democratic evolution and secularization progress coming from within Islamic dogma. [Download full text]

Verdad y política: la crítica de Eric Voegelin a Max Weber sobre la relación entre ciencia y valores. By Javier Franzé

The purpose of this essay is to analyse Eric Voegelin´s critique of Max Weber theory about the relation between science and values, in order to find its implications in the Western history of the concept of politics. At the beginning of XIX century, Weber broke with the classical aristotelic concept of politics, when he shows politics is defined mainly by the means through which act (violence), instead by the ends it could pursuit.Voegelin considers this postulate related with the ruling positivism at the second post-war period, and he deliberately set out to restore the classical notion of politics, joining together truth and politics. Following Voegelin, Weber failed in his attempt to build a free-values science, and this fault would be useful for Voegelin in order to develop a science of order. [Download full text]

Compromiso con una noción de verdad. By Mónica Gómez Salazar

Based on Putnam’s internal realism and based on the thesis that realism can be compatible with conceptual relativity, in this article I discuss the necessity of an epistemic and social notion or truth. With this notion of truth we are able to justify our beliefs, decisions and politics with the best possible reasons. This means that our beliefs, decisions and politics can be based on reasons that guarantee us the restrictions imposed by the reality’s limits increasing the possibilities of successful actions. [Download full text]

La ‘Democracia’ de Tocqueville: las potencialidades y los problemas de una palabra antigua para dar cuenta de una forma de vida “radicalmente nueva”. By Gabriela Rodríguez and Matías Esteban Ilivitzky

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the theoretical and linguistic use of the word ‘democracy’ in Alexis de Tocqueville’s work, especially in Democracy in America. In order to do it, we will establish comparisons between the meanings of the concept in previous political thought, and the particular way in which Tocqueville uses it. It is necessary to recall that for Malherbes’ great-grandson, modern democracy represents a new type of society, that differs from other forms of life experimented in the past. Moreover, for Tocqueville, ‘democracy’ is not only a theoretical term used to characterize a certain institutional and social reality, but also a political word employed to identify positions in the political arena. Tocqueville was not only an intellectual, but also a politician and this is the reason why his interest for the role of democracy in modern societies was much more than speculative. [Download full text]