Carlos Thiebaut

Three philosophical attitudes in dialogue are suggested in answering the question posed by the Journal. An inviting, First Inner Voice undeerstands philosophy as a shareable theoretical task that can be explained and understood even across distant philosophical paradigms. A Second Inner Voice, sometimes termed in the dialogue as sceptic, distrusts any metaphilosophical definition of what philosophy is and what it should do, but would, nevertheless, aspire to retain a certain universalistic understanding of its own work, though it cannot be strongly and conceptualy rendered. A Third Inner Voice, regarded in the text as somewhat Hegelian, insists in the unavoidability of strong philosophical definitions both in historical and in conceptual terms. No proposal or conclusion is forwarded regarding what should be done in contemporary philosophy, though an analysis of harm experiences is taken as an example of philosophical work.

With Arendt's insight regarding the need of judgment in the background, this paper pursues the ways in which the need for theory, or political philosophy, articulates Rawls' overall approach in order to tell just from unjust institutions. It suggests that the Kantian mould of reflective judgment gives form to the construction of a theory of justice via the mechanism of reflective equilibrium. The need for theory so devised has to constantly move between the demands of theory itself — the social contract tradition as understood by Rawls — and the demands of action understood as the guide that our considered judgments lend to our understanding of the social world. Finally, it is also suggested that a particular grasp of the lessons of historical experience, as a way of fulfilling the need for theory that lies in the heart of the exercise of judgment, is what renders the Rawlsian proposal theoretically attractive, and what constantly underlies the construction of his theory via the particular exemplification and the theoretical rendering of the moral semantics underlying democratic culture

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Los trabajos que componen este volumen recorren los conceptos centrales de la Ilustracion: razon, critica, autonomia, naturaleza humana, humanidad, libertad, solidaridad, igualdad, justicia y emancipacion, cuyo fracaso etico obliga a replantear las formulaciones de la filosofia ilustrada, y a someter a critica sus presupuestos.