Francisco Gonzalez

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Method and Politics in Plato’s Statesman by M. S. LaneFrancisco J. GonzalezM. S. Lane. Method and Politics in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii + 229. Cloth, $59.95.This rewarding book not only is another sign of growing interest in the Statesman, but also does much to justify this interest. The reasons for the dialogue’s relative neglect until recently are easily stated: readers have been puzzled by the amount of space devoted to method in a dialogue ostensibly about politics; furthermore, they have found both the method and the politics highly unsatisfactory. Lane addresses each of these concerns. She continually draws our attention to the unity of method and politics in the dialogue: the limitations of the Stranger’s initial divisions are shown to be equally methodological and political (44–5); the cosmic story is shown to be flawed by a political prejudice (the traditional model of king as shepherd), which turns into a methodological prejudice (the telling of a story too long to be profitably used as an example; 9–10, 121–3); the capacities ultimately shown to be necessary for a successful inquiry (division, exemplification, and finding the mean) also prove to be essential requirements of political knowledge (143–4, 202).Lane’s major contribution to our understanding of the dialogue’s method is her demonstration of the central role played by example (paradeigma). Lane expresses a common objection to the method of division: “But how to choose just which apparently similar things or names to investigate? Similarities are ubiquitous; there is some respect in which everything is similar to everything else. What is more, it is usually on the basis of prejudice and preconceived ideas … that similarities are distinguished” (75–6). Lane sees example as the solution, since it is precisely the task of an example to fix on those similarities relevant to the aim of the inquiry (76, 86–7).This is a very appealing solution, but one must wonder if it does not simply postpone the problem. To choose the right example, must we not make assumptions about which similarities are relevant to defining the object of inquiry and therefore about the nature of this object? And may not these assumptions be no more than prejudices or preconceived ideas? While the Stranger indeed develops his own example of weaving to an extent unparalleled in other dialogues (93), that there are essential similarities between statecraft and weaving appears to be more assumed than demonstrated by the example.With regard to politics, Lane provides a very illuminating account of the dialogue’s characterization of political expertise as certain knowledge of the good in a temporal context, or the kairos. She shows in what way this “knowledge of timing” (142) both is distinct from, and rules over, other contenders for the title of statecraft (such as rhetoric and strategy).Since, however, the existence of a statesman possessing such political expertise is, from the dialogue’s perspective, “a logical but unlikely possibility” (111) and, “from a [End Page 159] modern perspective,” seemingly impossible (4–5), the practical value of the Stranger’s political theory depends on his claim that the regimes which do exist can ‘imitate’ this ideal (300e11–301a3). But how? Even the second-best regimes are characterized by strict adherence to laws based on nothing more than persuasion, experiment and majority consensus (300b1–6), while in the ideal regime a knowledgeable statesman creates laws only as “memoranda” which he is entitled to revise or revoke at any time. According to Lane there is nevertheless one similarity that allows the second-best regimes to be called “second-order imitations” (see 109–111) of the ideal: both will not change laws without expert advice (158–9). This assumes that the second-best regimes acknowledge the authority of a political expert to change the laws, should one appear, an assumption that Lane reiterates throughout the book (11, 111, 114, 139, 147).Yet it is precisely this assumption that appears to be refuted by the thought-experiment at 298a–299e. The Stranger describes a city in which the practice of medicine, navigation and the other technai must adhere strictly to laws...

Con el horizonte de una marcada preocupación ante el problema que se le plantea a la Lengua española por el abandono a que la somete el imperio de la Lengua inglesa en la creación y uso de términos científicos, y por el exilio lingüístico de los científicos españoles, en este trabajo se tratan los siguientes problemas: 1) la dificultad del Lenguaje para la Filosofía, para la conceptualización y la designación; 2) la participación de los científicos españoles en las tareas de la Academia Española, particularizada en Leonardo Torres Quevedo y Blas Cabrera; 3) el panorama del Español científico ante la creación y el uso de términos; para terminar con 4) la exposición de algunas vías para detener el proceso de deterioro de la Lengua española.

Nuestra Infantería de Marina es la más antigua del mundo. Sus orígenes se remontan al Tercio de Ñapóles de 1537, y desde entonces sus fuerzas han mantenido su tradición naval y expedicionaria con una permanente vinculación a la Armada. Tras una referencia histórica a las diferentes campañas en que ha participado la Infantería de Marina, el que fue su Comandante General durante los últimos cuatro años nos introduce en las vicisitudes y proceso de evolución de este Cuerpo como componente esencial de la Fuerza Anfibia de la Flota, destacando su versatilidad y capacidad de respuesta a las exigencias de hoy día para actuar como vanguardia de la proyección del poder naval en los nuevos escenarios estratégicos que se nos presentan. El artículo es una excelente síntesis para quien desee conocer qué.esy cómo opera la Infantería de Marina, cuáles son sus capacidades, medios, organización y estructura, y cómo está adaptándose para afrontar los desafíos del futuro a medio plazo.

What makes Christopher P. Long’s study of Aristotle’s ontology especially rewarding is that it is philosophically motivated. The goal is not simply to “get right what Aristotle said,” but rather to think in dialogue with Aristotle, which implies a willingness to think beyond and even against him. Long makes the general philosophical motivation of his book perfectly clear: it is the desire to find “a way between the totalizing tendencies of modernism and the anarchy of postmodernism”. This is an ethical motivation, since for Long justice requires both a recognition of the fundamental autarchy of each being and a recognition of principles. But why turn back to an ancient Greek philosopher in this contemporary debate? The reason is that Long sees Aristotle as pointing “to a form of knowledge that is neither totalizing nor anarchic”. This third way of knowing is described by Long as a matter of conceptualizing the individual in such a way as to acknowledge its singularity and not reduce it to the mere instantiation of a concept. It is to see the individual neither as an inexplicable singularity nor as only the particular instantiation of a universal. Long finds this neither/nor in Aristotle’s concept of the τόδε τι, which he at one point aptly describes as “the very conceptualization of that which always escapes the concept” : “The term τόδε τι designates this individual emerging out of its isolated singularity, prior to its being reduced to particularity, the mere instantiation of a dominating concept”. Thus we get the following account of what a non-totalizing and non-anarchic form of knowledge would be like and therefore of what Long seeks to find in Aristotle

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Form and Argument in Late Plato ed. by Christopher Gill and Mary Margaret McCabeFrancisco J. GonzalezChristopher Gill and Mary Margaret McCabe, editors. Form and Argument in Late Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 345. Cloth, $65.00.This collection has the commendable aim of challenging the view that in Plato’s “late” works the dialogue form is a mere formality adding little to the argumentative content, a view still widespread among “analytic” scholars. The qualification is necessary because this view has already been seriously challenged by “nonanalytic” interpreters. It is therefore surprising that the editors chose contributors who almost all “share the analytic’ approach which is prominent in Anglo-American scholarship on Plato,” despite their admission that this approach has focused more on arguments than on the dialogue form (2, 299–300). Why seek to reinvent the wheel without the help of those who have already invented it? As a result, while the volume certainly makes an important contribution to our understanding of the form of this group of dialogues, it is much more successful in providing helpful and illuminating readings of their argumentative content: the detailed and rigorous analyses of McCabe, Malcolm Schofield (both on the Parmenides), and Gail Fine (on the Theaetetus) deserve special mention. The aim of the present review, which could not even begin to do justice to what the volume provides in the latter area, is therefore limited to documenting its mixed success in addressing some fundamental questions about form that have already occupied nonanalytic scholars (perhaps too exclusively):1) Does the main speaker speak for Plato?Given the great variety of main speakers in the “late” dialogues (Socrates, Parmenides, the Eleatic Stranger, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger), each with a distinct personality and a distinct method, no attempt to understand the form of these dialogues should avoid this question. Gill raises it (293–95) and Schofield provides the most explicit response in denying that any interlocutor in a Platonic dialogue “can be assumed to be merely a spokesman for Plato’s own views” (51). More importantly, the essays by Dorothea Frede (on the Philebus) and Catherine Osborne (on the Timaeus), probably the most valuable in the volume, show what results can be achieved without this assumption. On the other hand, Michael Frede (on the Sophist) and Christopher Rowe (on the Politicus; see 158 and cf. 172 n.48) simply assume without argument that the Eleatic Stranger = Plato. All other contributors make the “spokesman” assumption, either implicitly or explicitly (see Christopher Bobonich’s reading of the Laws, 254–55).2) What is the significance of the dramatic context, especially dramatic chronology and characterization?As often noted, the Parmenides is set in Socrates’ youth and is in this sense the earliest [End Page 311] dialogue, while the series Theaetetus-Sophist-Politicus is set immediately before Socrates’ trial and condemnation. McCabe and Schofield are silent about the first fact. M. Frede briefly discusses the second (146–47), but adds little to what has already been said by others. As for the characterization of specific interlocutors, this volume overall has surprisingly little to offer. The essays of D. Frede and Osborne, however, are exemplary in this area.3) Why did Plato choose to write these works as dialogues rather than as treatises?Bobonich, D. Frede, and Osborne succeed in demonstrating the significance and even necessity of the dialogue form, an extraordinary achievement given the dialogues they discuss. Osborne in particular brilliantly shows how the dialogue form undercuts the common tendency to read the Timaeus as a treatise on natural science. Other contributors are less successful in answering this question central to the volume’s task. Schofield takes himself to be reading the Parmenides as a dialogue (51) because he, unlike Vlastos, interprets the Third Man Argument (second version) in the wider context of other arguments in the dialogue, including those of the second half. But “reading arguments in context” is demanded by any philosophical text and has nothing per se to do with the dialogue form. Fine reads the first part of the Theaetetus as the dialectical elaboration and refutation of an opponent’s view (109), but this could just as well be...

En un sistema educativo español siempre en crisis, con reformas sucesivas encadenándose a todos los niveles, la enseñanza de la Matemática -quizá de manera más llamativa que la de otras materias- mantiene constante su relevancia especial: es intrínsecamente problemática. Finalizado el 2000, pomposamente denominado «Año Mundial de las Matemáticas», la situación no sólo no se ha aclarado sino que el problema alcanza incluso al hasta ahora intocable nivel universitario. Admitidas sin discusión en el mundo de la pedagogía matemática las estrechas relaciones que existen -y deben existir- entre los procesos de aprehensión de los conceptos y métodos de la disciplina, y los asociados a la evolución que ha tenido nuestra Ciencia en la Historia, la génesis de los conocimientos y la transmisión de los mismos, en este trabajo se presenta un modelo historiográfico que podría contribuir a fijar algunos puntos del siempre vivo debate.

A partir de la recabación de testimonios profesionales y de pregrado, se describe la elaboración de un proyecto de divulgación de la filosofía en la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, se exponen diferentes enfoques que parten de las necesidades académicas, escolares y se extiende a la oralidad vivencial, virtual y de interconexión en diferentes plataformas tecnológicas que cubren diversos segmentos de población con el propósito de divulgar a la filosofía a partir de nuevas estrategias de comunicación filosófica, así como descubrir nuevos enfoques didácticos de transmisión del conocimiento y la cultura filosófica en el centro de México.

El Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada de San Fernando, fundado en Cádiz en 1753, es una institución científica que, a lo largo de más de dos siglos, ha reunido un importante patrimonio cultural e histórico, del que forma parte la colección de instrumentos científicos a la que se refiere este articulo. Tras un capítulo introductorio sobre el origen y las misiones de la institución, se estudia la evolución histórica de la adquisición de los principales instrumentos del Observatorio durante los siglos XVIII, XIX y XX. Por último, se describen las características y organización de la exposición de instrumentos instalada en el edificio principal del Real Observatorio de la Armada, y se incluye un apéndice con la relación de instrumentos expuestos ordenados alfabéticamente.

Heidegger’s recently published 1932 seminar on Plato’s Phaedrus arguably represents his most successful dialogue with Plato, where such dialogue is characterized by both the deepest affinity and the most incisive opposition. The central thesis of Heidegger’s interpretation is that the Phaedrus is not simply a logos about eros, but rather an attempt to show that eros is the very essence of logos and that logos is thereby in its very essence dia-logue. Heidegger is thus here more attuned than ever before to the erotic and dialogical character of philosophy while at the same time concerned with how this conception of philosophy can lead to the eclipse of being and truth.

Francisco J. Gonzalez - Die Idee des Guten in Platons Politeia: Beobachtungen zu den mittleren Buchern - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 354-355 Thomas A. Szlezák. Die Idee des Guten in Platons Politeia: Beobachtungen zu den mittleren Büchern. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2003. Pp. viii + 160. Cloth, € 24,50. The first part of this book consists of a series of lectures delivered at the University of Macerata in April 2000. These lectures provide a detailed and illuminating analysis of the middle books of the Republic, with the focus naturally on the three great similes. Appended to these lectures are three previously published articles on the Cave Analogy, the Idea of the Good, and Rafael Ferber's supposedly "skeptical interpretation" of Plato . While some repetition is unavoidable in such a compilation, the different parts of the book for the most part complement and..

According to Heidegger’s own testimony, his 1940 essay, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” is derived from a course he first delivered in 1931/32. Yet, while an interpretation of the Theaetetus is central to the argument in 1931/32, this dialogue is not so much as mentioned in the 1940 essay. The reason is that Heidegger’s own careful and insightful reading of the Theaetetus simply does not support his thesis regarding Plato’s “doctrine of truth.” But then the real interest of this reading is that it affords the opportunity for pursuing a genuine dialogue between Heidegger and Plato that was too abruptly discontinued.

The present paper uses the theme of dialectic and dialogue to begin unraveling the similarities and differences between the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and H.G. Gadamer. Ricoeur is shown to distance himself from Heidegger by insisting on a dimension of explanation and distanciation (which he sometimes identifies with Plato's `descending dialectic') that cannot be reduced to, or absorbed by, understanding and appropriation. This same move, however, leads him to reject Platonic dialogue, with the attendant prioritizing of oral conversation over the written text, as a model for hermeneutics. Ricoeur therefore sees in Gadamer's recourse to such a model a regression to the problematic position of Heidegger. Yet the conception of philosophy as dialectical and dialogical which Gadamer finds in Plato is capable of responding to Ricoeur's objections. Where the fundamental difference between the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer emerges is in the question of whether experience is fundamentally dialectical and whether language is inherently dialogical.

This study explores the relationship between criminal thinking and other variables related to criminal cognition. Prosocial behavior, emotional intelligence, and cultural dimensions were chosen to check their predictive capacity for criminal thinking. The research sample comprised 695 young university students and adults, chosen by a non-probabilistic sampling method. The instruments used were the Criminal Sentiments Scales (CSS-M), the Prosociality Scale, the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EQI-C), and the Scale of Cultural Dimensions in its Spanish adaptation. A MANOVA, correlations, and lineal regressions were conducted using SPSS 26 and a SEM was proposed with the results obtained. Criminal thinking’s scores showed differences depending on the age of the participants. The SEM indicated that uncertainty avoidance is a good predictor of criminal thinking. Also, prosocial behavior and emotional intelligence are good predictors of uncertainty avoidance. Although future studies are needed, these results could be used to help future research, rehabilitation, or prevention programs.

Desde el ámbito filosófico cada vez más autores muestran interés por abordar la reflexión filosófica de la ingeniería. Del lado de la ingeniería, existe una demanda definida por las sociedades profesionales y los organismos de acreditación de las titulaciones de ingeniería de inclusión de las ciencias sociales y humanidades en la formación de los ingenieros que, sin embargo, presenta deficiencias en su implantación. El objetivo del presente trabajo es justificar la inclusión de la reflexión filosófica en la formación de los titulados en ingeniería y, para mejorar la situación actual, presentar una propuesta de asignaturas que muestre cuál pueda ser su espacio. La propuesta consiste en la inclusión de una asignatura específica que relacione la ingeniería y la sociedad, donde la reflexión filosófica juega un papel significativo, como complemento a la inclusión de la reflexión filosófica sobre problemas concretos en asignaturas específicas de corte tecnológico.

Enseñar la pronunciación del inglés en un contexto de pandemia a nivel terciario se caracterizó por la ausencia de una interacción cara a cara; aunque esta interacción facilita los procesos de aprendizaje y uso oral en una lengua extranjera, las condiciones existentes en pandemia afectaron su enseñanza y disminuyeron la velocidad de internalización de esta lengua. Se hipotetiza que la aplicación de prácticas basales en la enseñanza de la pronunciación mejorará la competencia oral. Los resultados de esta investigación demuestran que un periodo de entrenamiento formal permanente, continuo y evaluable aplicando las prácticas basales permiten alcanzar la competencia esperada.

En este trabajo se describen los datos aportados por 40 profesores de Educación Secundaria sobre su conocimiento y docencia en temas de bioética. El libro de texto, el debate y los trabajos de investigación en grupos reducidos son las herramientas habituales. Se comentan sus necesidades de formación y la metodología más adecuada para la enseñanza. La salud humana, la biotecnología y nuevos temas, como el maltrato animal, son los más comentadas entre los estudiantes, sin apreciarse diferencias de género. La bioética puede plantearse como una transversal que fomente el trabajo interdisciplinar y la adquisición de las competencias.