María Pía Lara

In this article I deal with Kant's concept of reflective judgment, and recover it through its links to the aesthetic dimension as its fundamental scenario. Then I go on to explain why Hannah Arendt understood this important Kantian connection, and why she thought it would allow her to develop it through a political dimension. Last, having reviewed both Kant and Arendt's contributions to the concept of reflective judgment, I recover my own input to the concept by showing its linguistic dimension based on the Heideggerian notion of world-disclosure. With this in mind, I show how the concept of reflective judgment is the most suitable to analyze evil actions.

This essay investigates the new meaning of human capabilities that can be drawn out of the feminist model. Drawing on a further elaboration of narratives and the dynamics established between the public sphere and the new emergent publics, I explain how such moral narratives constitute the symbolic order in three stages of 'mimetic representation'. This model articulates the feedbacks between specific historical moments when 'lay narratives' are invented in response to a particular challenge; the subsequent creative process of the initial construction of the literary narrative; and the return to the experiential dimension of the readers, where narratives gain influence and transform previous ways of seeing things, the process that can occur both contemporaneously and decades or centuries earlier.

The main goal of this essay is to show the dangers and the goals of political wars as they are very much related to how we use concepts. First, I present a brief explanation of terms that relate to Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. I will then discuss the analytical elements and key concepts I will be using to develop my own perspective about his contribution to the thematization of the genealogies of the concepts of crisis and critique. My goal is not to defend Koselleck’s views but to help us clarify why these concepts can help trigger change for the better or destroy political enterprises.

My text is written to answer the questions asked at the APA Meeting's presentation of the book Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere by professors María Lugones and Eduardo Mendieta. The answer seeks to clarify that Lugones's infrapolitics position is not so distant from mine. I also address Mendieta's question directed more to the aesthetic domain. There, I seek to show how my position could be taken as a creative effort to extend some of Habermas's early work on the public sphere, and to develop the thesis of the important relations between the aesthetic and the moral realms.

In this paper I want to leave behind the failed attempts to think about populism as ideology, strategy, style, or even discourse. I will focus on the ‘conceptual battles of politics’ and their potential to influence actors to pursue and effect specific ends. Reinhart Koselleck and his ideas about conceptual history will figure prominently in my discussion, as will his concept of asymmetrical combat-concept as a means of unleashing a theoretical and political war. The goal is to demonstrate that concepts have taken the place of weapons of war among political actors.