Joao Pinto

O aforismo 3.263 do Tractatus de Wittgenstein parece enunciar um paradoxo: para elucidar o significado de um nome, pode-se recorrer a uma proposição que inclua este nome; mas uma tal proposição só será compreendida se já for conhecido o significado daquele nome. Neste artigo, pretendemos cumprir duas tarefas: (1) avaliar criticamente duas interpretações daquele aforismo (as de Hacker e Ishiguro), levando em consideração os eventuais papéis cumpridos na elucidação de um nome pela ostensão e pelo conhecimento sensível (acquaintance) do objeto nomeado; e (2) propor os requisitos mínimos de uma leitura mais bem-sucedida de 3.263, dentre os quais estarão a interpretação da elucidação como uma proposição tractariana genuína e o reconhecimento de uma habilidade fundamental do destinatário da elucidação em apreender a proposição elucidativa, o fato afigurado pela proposição e a forma lógica comum entre a proposição e o fato.AbstractAphorism 3.263 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus seems to state a paradox: to elucidate the meaning of a name, one can resort to a proposition that includes this name; but such a proposition can only be understood if the meaning of that name is already known. In this paper, we intend to fulfill two tasks: (1) critically evaluate two interpretations of that aphorism (by Hacker and Ishiguro), taking into account the possible roles played in the elucidation of a name by ostension and by acquaintance with the object named; and (2) propose the minimum requirements for a more successful reading of 3.263, among which are the interpretation of the elucidation as a genuine Tractarian proposition and the acknowledgement of a fundamental ability by the recipient of the elucidation to grasp the elucidatory proposition, the fact pictured by the proposition and the common logical form between the proposition and the fact.

The response to the profound crisis posed by SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has demanded the best commitment from the various agents of society and called upon researchers from the various fields of knowledge to seek solutions to the challenges we face and to reflect on the impact of the pandemic on the various dimensions of human life. In this context, the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia intends to contribute to the philosophical reflection on the challenges posed by the pandemic, publishing original essays that address, from different philosophical perspectives, problematics associated with the crisis we are facing. The disease caused by the Covid-19 is much more than a mere biological phenomenon, it is a phenomenon that is experienced by concrete human beings in its psychological, social, existential, and spiritual dimensions. Because of the complex nature of this phenomenon, social distance measures that have been adopted to battle the pandemic have had a disruptive impact on the core of the human experience, characterized by embodied social interactions. In this scenario, new urgent questions regarding the spiritual dimension of the human person, the meaning of life and death, and the human connection with an ultimate source of meaning have been emerging. Philosophy can make an important contribution to the understanding and interpretation of these complex experiences. Among the many problems associated with the pandemic, ethical issues have occupied a prominent place. For example, what are the ethical criteria that should guide health professionals when faced with the need to decide who has access to basic life support? How to manage the tension between the imperative to protect the most vulnerable members of society and the need to guarantee the economic and financial sustainability of countries, organizations, and families? Important questions also arise in the field of bioethics. At the political level, the response to the pandemic has led to the suspension, albeit temporary, of many of the practices that govern the life of democratic societies, with the limitation of human rights and freedoms. The adoption of this type of measures, demands an in-depth reflection on the role of the State and the difficulty to balance the protection of the health of citizens and the respect for individual rights and liberties. Reflection on this issue is particularly urgent in face of new threats posed by the emerging populisms and nationalisms. The social consequences of the pandemic are particularly profound. The situation we are experiencing has already had a visible impact on the way we work, the way we relate to one another, the way we communicate, teach, and learn. The digitalization of the society has been significantly enhanced in this period and privacy issues are even more pressing. During the confinement, many citizens begun working remotely, and classrooms were moved to virtual rooms. All these experiences raise psychological, social, and anthropological issues that can and should also be addressed by philosophers. In the current pandemic context, science has assumed a major role. Despite the efforts of teams of researchers around the world to find a treatment and to develop vaccines for Covid-19, which at the beginning exceeded the general expectations, in the course of time public opinion has been confronted with a certain feeling of the inefficiency of science to solve the health problem in a definitive way, which could result in a new perception of the limits and possibilities of science. The uncertainty associated with many of the predictions regarding the evolution of the pandemic poses questions about the limitations of quantitative models in health sciences and about the epistemological limits of multivariable analysis. The problem of discerning between causality and correlation also takes on a new relevance.

The virtues approach dominated ethics during the period of Classical Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. During Modernity, this rich tradition went through a progressive decline, and was eventually replaced by the influential traditions initiated by authors such as Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill. As it is well known, a seminal article written in 1958 by Elizabeth Anscombe initiated a revival of virtue ethics. Since then, an increasing number of moral philosophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, Bernard Williams or Martha Nussbaum, have made important contributions to the retrieval of this approach to normative ethics. While several authors have devoted their efforts to a deeper understanding of the classical thinkers and texts of virtue ethics, such as Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, others have proposed new approaches in dialogue with contemporary developments within normative ethics. Although contemporary virtue ethics was initially developed at the level of general fundamental ethics, in recent years this approach was increasingly used to address contemporary problems within applied ethics, in fields such as human bioethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, communication ethics, political science, etc. It is the goal of the present issue of RPF to offer a contribution to an assessment of the contemporary retrieval of contemporary virtue ethics, evaluating its possibilities and limits, and exploring applications to different realms of human activity. The volume is divided in four parts. The first set of articles addresses fundamental questions concerning the relevance and status of virtues ethics within moral philosophy, opening up fresh perspectives and offering new insightful discussions on themes such as the exemplarist virtue theory, the relation between happiness and the virtues, and the dialogue between virtue ethics and the ethics of care. The second set of articles invites a retrieval of important themes of virtue ethics from an historical perspective, privileging two major authors of the virtues’ tradition, namely Aristotle and Aquinas. In the third part, we gather fresh discussions on unexplored virtues, such “mothering virtues” and honesty. Finally, the last set of articles draws our attention to different applications of virtue ethics within the realm of education, bioethics, and environmentalism.

The contribution of Jesuits to the different fields of knowledge, including philosophy, is historically well known. In fact, since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in the 16th century, Jesuits from different generations and cultures have taken part in the philosophical debates of their time and their different contexts. Since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in 1540, the Jesuits, individually and as a body, have engaged in a fruitful dialogue between the Christian tradition and different dimensions of human culture. During almost five centuries, numerous Jesuits taught philosophy in academic institutions all over the world. Some of them have their names recorded in the history of philosophy. Of course, the majority of them is not anymore remembered, despite their valuable contribution to the development of the Jesuit intellectual tradition up to our times. In fact, as an heir of the Roman College, the first academic institution founded by the Society of Jesus, in 1551, the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, is a witness to this tradition, which has been kept alive thanks to the discrete work of both Jesuits and lay intellectuals. Known as the University of the Nations, this institution corroborates not only the capacity of the Jesuit tradition to put faith in dialogue with reason, but also the option to take the concrete reality of each human culture and its historical context as its point of departure. The Jesuits’ willingness to engage in dialogue with different intellectual perspectives is underpinned by one of the most defining traits of the Jesuit charism, namely, the conviction that God can be found and served in all things. Accordingly, Jesuits have adopted, from the beginning, an amenable stance towards the world with its different cultures and intellectual trends. As such, Jesuits have, since the beginning, inhabited the frontiers of human thought. According to the contemporary philosopher Paul Gilbert, SJ, within the institutions under the leadership of the Society of Jesus, it was always possible to maintain an equilibrium between two principles: “intellectual unity” and “openness to the world.” Without detriment to the Jesuit identity, the companions of Ignatius have been willing to dwell in the various dimensions of human reality, in their multiplicity and plurality. Either in the renewal of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ metaphysics, or in the dialogue with modern philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, or Hegel, and even in the inculturation in non-European contexts, the Jesuits have been able to preserve the Christian tradition through an original development of human culture in all its richness and diversity. With respect to the last century, it has to be acknowledged that a significant number of Jesuits made significant contributions, with recognized competence, to philosophy. Certainly, the 20th century was particularly complex in many respects. It would be enough to recall that this period, which brought with it unprecedented social, scientific, and technological developments, was also the stage for the two World Wars. With the emergence or consolidation of philosophical currents such as Marxism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Structuralism, and Post-Modernism, the past century was, without any doubt, fascinating from the intellectual point of view. Jesuits such as Karl Rahner, Frederick Copleston, Bernard Lonergan, William Norris Clarke, John F. Kavanaugh, Teilhard de Chardin, Gaston Fessard, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Michel de Certeau, Xavier Tilliette, Paul Valadier, Paweł Siwek, Ignacio Ellacuría, Francisco Taborda, Henrique de Lima Vaz and, in the Portuguese context, Diamantino Martins or Júlio Fragata, among many others, were able to engage different philosophical currents, problems and controversies of their times. Faithful to their long tradition of being present in the frontiers of thought, those Jesuits have engaged in a fruitful dialogue with these intellectual trends, offering relevant contributions to different ongoing debates. Within this context, the present volume recalls and discusses the philosophical contribution of some of the most prominent Jesuit protagonists of the intellectual interchange that took place in the 20th century. This volume also intends to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, which happens just before the inauguration of the Ignatian Year. Decreed by Father Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, this celebratory Year will start on May 20, 2021, precisely 500 years after Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, was wounded at the battle of Pamplona. We are happy that this volume could bring together outstanding specialists in the thought of some of the most prominent Jesuits philosophers of the last century, namely Paul Valadier, Paul Gilbert, Józef Bremer, Jacek Poznański, Alexander Maar, Patrick H. Byrne, M. Ross Romero, Carlos Alvarez, Hélio Pereira Lima, José Gama, Domingos Terra, Gabriel Flynn, Marie-Gabrielle Lemaire, José Sols Lucia, Lorena Zuchel Lovera, Pedro Pablo Achondo Moya, Enzo Solari, Massimo Borghesi, Mendo Castro Henriques, João Barbosa, and Dominique Lambert. In addition, in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Júlio Fragata’s birth, Maria Teresa Fragata presents a memory of his life and thought. We hope that this volume may be useful to all those interested in the Jesuit philosophical tradition. Hopefully, it will stimulate scholars to pursue a fruitful and creative dialogue with contemporary philosophy, in the footsteps of the Jesuit philosophers featured here. We would like to thank all the authors and all those who, in different ways, made this volume possible.

Why talk about the Good in present times? It seems unreasonable, naïve, and romantic in these days of isolation, sadness, and needs of all kinds; days that make it hard for us to see a way out. However, it is precisely because we live in challenging times that it becomes urgent to talk and think about the Good, its practice, its works and its power to make the human, Human. In this special issue we propose to engage in contemporary readings on the question of the Good in ancient philosophy. We go over some of the thoughts produced then and still relevant to our time. The dialogue with the ancients has become extremely necessary because of the difficulty to conceive the good life beyond the narrow limits imposed by present closed model of well-being and its promises of economic prosperity, which are increasingly distant from our daily reality, characterized by the desire for security, by fear, and by the exclusion of differences. In ancient philosophy, many ways lead to the Good. The first major dispute on the subject opposes Socrates and Plato to sophistry; then it unfolds in the clash between Aristotle and Plato. The good is also the object of desire for Plotinus and continues to be disputed by Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics and Skeptics. In ancient philosophy, the search for the good is inseparable from the question of the best way of living available to human beings, a question that must be answered in a practical way. With this special issue we want to retrieve the ancient thought on the Good with the purpose of deepening the reflection about the ways to the good life. The volume is divided into four sections. The first one addresses issues related to the conceptions of happiness and the different understandings of the notion of good, bringing us reflections on moral action. The next section discusses the nature and the knowledge of the good, articulating desire and self-sufficiency, as well as the relative or absolute character of the good. The third section considers the good from the perspective of action and its intentionality, seeking to highlight the link between the human good and the other goods. The fourth and last section presents readings, by contemporary authors, who have been influenced by the ancient problematization of the good. The article that opens the special issue, “O Bem Humano em Epicteto”, by Aldo Dinucci and Kelli Rudolph, invites us to think, through Epictetus, how the use of things can be good or bad. The authors focus their investigation on understanding what things that are not ours are, so that we can make good use of them. To this end, Dinucci and Rudolph discuss the distinction between things that depend on us and things that do not depend on us, and between the material and its use. Alex R Gillham, in his article “Classifying the Epicurean Goods and Contending with Zeus for Happiness,” proposes us to think of divine happiness as something possible to be achieved through our own efforts, regardless of external circumstances. To reach this conclusion, the author starts from the Epicurean classification of the goods, dealing with instrumental goods and constitutive goods, personal goods and immortal goods. Bringing Epicurus’ thought to our time, Gillham challenges us to think on the current importance of this vision. In “What does Divination Mean for Plato’s Socrates? From the Relationship between Being and the Good,” Huaiyuan Zhang invites us to reflect on an unusual dimension of Platonic thought, examining the relationship between divination and philosophy that appears in Socrates’ discourse. According to the author, Plato not only complements the rational process of Socratic dialectic with divination but even seems not to give up divination when it comes to the vision of the Good. Thus, Zhang identifies a mixture between divination and reason in the Platonic text that corresponds to the very ambiguous relationship between being and good. Closing this first part of the volume, Giannicola Maraglino, in “Eudaimonia: il ritorno agli antichi e degli antichi. Annotazioni attorno ad una proposta filosofica”, highlights the ever-present philosophical interest in the thought of the ancients through the reflections of Martha Nussbaum. The visit to Aristotle’s thought is understood as necessary for thinking contemporarily about moral action. The second part of this volume opens with Paulo Butti’s article, “A Autossuficiência do Bem. Sobre alguns Paradoxos da Ética Aristotélica”. In this article, the author highlights that in Aristotle’s Ethics we are frequently led from the self-sufficiency of the good to the needs of the human being, but the Stagyrian did not noticed this change in the object of the argument. Aristotle does not seem to feel the need to remember, in the face of the perfection of the good, the imperfection of human nature and the requirement, assumed by himself, that humans live in community. Luís Felipe Bellintani Ribeiro, in “Sobre o Caráter Absoluto ou Relativo da Noção de Bem em sua Conexão com as Noções de Forma e Matéria”, thinks about the good from what he calls the kingdom of nature, questioning the relativization of the absolute meaning of good. The author calls our attention to the fact that if good is thought within the realm of what is useful and advantageous for life, then we will have a relativization of good, since good for one can be evil for other. In “Good’s Irreducibility: The Discordancy Argument and Aristotle,” Aaron Morgan Anderson argues for the irreducibility of good in the sense that it can only be explained by itself. Defending Aristotle’s affinity with ethical intuitionism, building on the theories of G.E. Moore, the author considers the Discordancy Argument and general ethical intuitionism as justification for the Aristotelian idea that good actions are found in concrete particulars rather than in reducible abstractions. In the last article of this part, “Desejo, Fantasia, Cognição e Bem Aparente em Aristóteles”, Francisco Marques Miranda Filho proposes, based on the resumption of the studies of Jessica Moss and Hendrik Lorenz, to highlight the important function that fantasy plays in Aristotle’s thought. The author proposes to consider fantasy as an important factor in understanding our deliberations and actions. In the article “Sobre o Bem nas Memoráveis de Xenofonte”, which opens the third section of the issue, Alice Bitencourt Haddad analyzes the notion of good according to the general view presented by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, which links good to utility and usefulness. The author points to the human difficulty of recognizing what is the properly advantageous, which requires enkratéia. The centrality of self-control and the restriction of pleasures points to the exemplarity of Socrates as the master of self-knowledge. The figure of Socrates thus appears as the figure of a benefactor. In the article “Aristóteles Contra o Bem dos Economistas” Mário Maximo takes as his starting point the refusal of economics as a descriptive, neutral science, as understood by economists. Economic science empties out any robust understanding of good, reducing goods to mere means, which is equivalent to elevating means to a condition of sovereignty. The debate with Aristotle becomes fruitful, because it allows us to see to what extent the error of the economic conception of good lies in a confusion between means and ends, since, for Aristotle, sovereign is only the ultimate end, and not the means that contribute to achieve it, such as wealth. In “A Insuficiência das Leis: uma Reflexão sobre o Pensamento de Antifonte”, Cristiane A. de Azevedo reflects on the relationship between nomos and phýsis in Antiphon’s thought. Contrary to the usual path of the Sophists, Antiphon emphasizes the role of nature, considering it superior to law. It is not a matter, however, of discarding the nomos, but rather of listening to nature’s call for human being to go beyond his/her own limits. It would be up to human being to know and know how to deal with his/her limits in order to live as well as possible according to his/her own nature. In the article “Aristóteles e a Hierarquia dos Bens”, Francisco Moraes presents the hierarchy of goods as a proper Aristotelian solution to the impasse established between two conceptions of virtue that conflict in several of Plato’s dialogues: virtue as the wise man’s self-sufficiency and virtue as the capacity to reach and enjoy beautiful and good things. The author argues that Aristotle, while incorporating the Platonic critique of the instrumentalization of virtue, saves the traditional conception of virtue by understanding external goods and wealth itself as goods perfectly compatible with the noble, with the kalon, although he does not fail to reduce them to means, removing from the latter the first-order attractiveness. Closing the section, in “Revisiting the Boy-and-Girl Fallacy at Nicomachean Ethics I 2,” Marco Zingano takes on the task of examining the alleged fallacy present in the argument developed by Aristotle at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics and aimed at establishing happiness as the ultimate end of our actions. The argument was accused of being fallacious by Peter Geach in an article published in 1958 and labeled by him as “the boy-and-girl fallacy”. For the author, however, it is a valid and rather complex argument that takes a firm first step, but whose result will only be achieved in the second half of book X of the same work, when contemplation will be shown to be the first happiness. Opening the fourth and last section, the article “A Doença de Sócrates, ou a Doença Sócrates? Nietzsche entre Instinto e Razão”, by Fabíola Menezes de Araújo, presents and problematizes the Nietzschean verdict about Socrates and the role he would have played in the annihilation of Attic tragedy. Following the Socratic maxim reason = virtue = happiness, the author explains that, for Nietzsche, the philosophical unfoldings of the dichotomy between rationality and instinct necessarily led to the weakening of life, making it sick. But, for the author, despite this unilateral judgment, there are other elements that suggest a Dionysian Socrates, sensitive to the feminine, erotic, which would have even aroused Nietzsche’s admiration. In “‘Expliquer le bien par une image’. Simone Weil et l’image platonicienne du Bien dans la République”, Francesca Simeone highlights that the Athenian philosopher becomes an important reference for Simone Weil in her project of elaborating an ethics for contemporaneity. According to the author, Weil recovers from Plato the instance of conversion of the soul, the path it takes to contemplate the sun when it leaves the cave and bows down to it. However, for Weil, this path does not concern only the noûs. In this sense, the freer interpretive line adopted by Weil is to integrate desire. She would thus move away from an intellectualist understanding of the view of the good. In the article “Ethics of Friendship: Ancient and Modern Philosophical Approaches to the Good,” John Holst maintains that, in spite of many divergences concerning epistemological and metaphysical questions, Plato and Aristotle coincide in endowing friendship with an ethical meaning, which will exert considerable influence on several modern and contemporary thinkers. Philosophers such as Nietzsche, who in his posthumous writings assumes the importance of an ethics of friendship, as well as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre are expressly mentioned, which demonstrates the timeliness of the Platonic-Aristotelian ethics of friendship. And closing the last section, in the article “Aristotle’s Account of Moral Perception & Nussbaum’s Priority of the Particular Thesis”, Benjamin Hole proposes to problematize the thesis supported by Martha Nussbaum, coined from a return to Aristotle, of the priority of the perception of particular cases, of moral perception, in relation to moral principles. Nussbaum’s argument, clearly inspired by Aristotle, consists in highlighting that practical matters require a flexibility that is even absent in scientific matters. For the author, however, the prioritization of moral particularities over ethical principles opens the way to intuitionistic moral epistemology and relativism, which would be absolutely undesirable. Finally, we hope that the articles presented here will contribute to deepen the reflections about the good and its actuality. We thank the authors for having contributed to this discussion, highlighting all the richness and scope of the issues related to the theme.

The imperative to practice hospitality constitutes a mark of Western civilization. Already in Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Ulysses punishes Polyphemus for not having respected the obligation of hospitality towards him and his companions. In fact, hospitality has been a constitutive element of the West, marked by linguistic, cultural, and religious differences, in a world whose borders are supposed to be well defined. In his discussion of hospitality, Derrida shows how Socrates, in Plato’s dialogue The Apology of Socrates, places himself in the position of a foreigner. In fact, Socrates presents himself as foreigner, that is, someone who is alien to the language and procedures of the court that is judging him. According to Derrida, he shows, in this way, the extent to which the foreigner is forced to ask for hospitality in a language he does not know. The court reduces Socrates to the other, the different. Moreover, the court forces him to deny his difference, his own identity, asking him to adapt himself to a system that he does not control. The paradox arises when Socrates, who regrets being regarded as a foreigner, asks the court to treat him at least as a foreigner. He feels so outraged that he asks to be granted at least the rights of a non-national. In doing so, Socrates shows how recognizing the rights of the foreigner generates hospitality but, at the same time, also limits it. Whenever a human being is recognized as human being, he or she will necessarily be seen as another, as someone different. This person will have to adapt him or herself to a system, culture or world that will define him or her as a foreigner. In short, in the phenomena that we tend to see as hospitality there is always a certain hostility. In a world of ongoing migratory crises, and in the context of a return to nationalisms of exclusion combined with populisms of prejudice and aversion to those who are different, it becomes imperative to rethink the ethics and politics of hospitality. In this context, Derrida’s distinction between conditioned and unconditioned hospitality can be useful.

Following the issue on Edith Stein, on the 80th anniversary of her death in Auschwitz, we dedicate the present issue to other forgotten disciples of Husserl. Recalling Paul Ricœur’s famous statement, phenomenology is the sum of Husserl’s own work and the “heresies” which followed from him. At its heart, phenomenology could be understood as a set of multiple variations on Husserl’s philosophical thought, some of which could be understood as “heresies” regarding the original phenomenological theses. Some of these “heresies” are still insufficiently explored, especially those associated with generation of students and disciples of the father of phenomenology. The first section, “Current Husserlian Heresies,” contains three important articles. Claude Romano opens the section asking if “La perception est-elle intentionnelle?” His heterodox thesis is that there is no intentionality of perception in the sense that there is an intentionality of memory or imagination. Next, based on Marleau-Ponty and Levinas, Emmanuel Falque argues that phenomenology must be in relationship with non-phenomenology, inviting contemporary phenomenologists to enquire what is outside the phenomenon. To conclude this first section, Pascal Ide presents “Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’amour. Sources et ressources,” arguing that metaphysics is completed with the question of disinterested love, because it is this experience of reciprocity and communion that is aimed at by the intentionality of the human person. In the second section, “Husserl’s Context and Early Disciples,” we present five articles. In “Como Husserl chegou ao idealismo transcendental? Uma leitura de Roman Ingarden,” Elias Francisco Fontele Dourado clarifies the reasons that led Husserl to transcendental idealism. Afterwards, in “Revisiting Reinach and the Early Husserl. For a Phenomenology of Communication,” Pedro M. S. Alves argues that Husserl’s approach, with respect to the intentional structure of communicative intentions, is “very close to a full-fledged theory of communicative intentions in the years around 1910,” leading to the same problems. In this way, the author suggests a solution based on “Reinach’s theory of the Vernehmung.” The following article, called “A Importância dos Modelos para o Florescimento Humano. O Contributo de Dietrich von Hildebrand,” is written by Eugénio Lopes. This is a defense of the realist phenomenology of Dietrich von Hildebrand, based on its capacity to support the application of models that promote human virtues and social development. This is followed by “How to See the Essential. Hedwig Conrad Martius’ Theory of Representation,” in which Daniel Neumann argues that Conrad-Martius’ theory of representation is able to free itself from modernity’s own dilemma between idealism and realism. Up next, Jimmy Hernández Marcelo’s article, “Koyré y Husserl: De las matemáticas a la fenomenología,” shows, by analyzing Alexandre Koyré’s work in the genesis of its historical context, the continuity and complementarity of the initial development of phenomenology with the progress in mathematics. In the third section, focused on “Husserl’s Critical Phenomenologists,” we start by presenting the article “Göttingen contra Husserl: The Transcendental Turn and its Discontents.” The author, Victor Portugal, analyzing important criticisms that Husserl’s students addressed to him, concerning the possibility of a pure consciousness and the method by reductions, leads us to the understanding of how Husserl improved his work towards a “mature transcendental idealism which came to express the real meaning of phenomenology.” Afterwards, in “Shestov, anti-discípulo de Husserl,” Ángel Viñas Vera analyzes the way Shestov received Husserl’s phenomenology in the French context. In doing so, the author shows how Shestov changed the way Husserl took on the relationship between the universal and the particular and between truth and freedom, opening the horizon to atypical phenomenologies, which flourished in a Francophone environment. Next, we present two articles on the Sartrian critique of Husserl: “La ricezione critica del pensiero husserliano nel primo Sartre. Intenzionalità, Ego e coscienza” by Ciro Adinolfi and “Ego na fenomenologia. Crítica de Sartre ao Ego transcendental de Husserl” by Pedro Dias. While the first illuminates the way in which Sartre appropriated Husserl’s notions of phenomenology, namely intentionality, clarifying their meaning, the second article shows the importance of Sartre, insofar as he shows that the Husserlian ego is a “product” of the conscience itself. In the final addendum, we present an article situated in the field of theology: “What Can Wojtyła’s Ethics Speak to the Abuse Crisis?” With this analysis, Rebecca Pawloski and Andreas Gonçalves Lind seek to extract from Wojtyla’s ethics lessons for the contemporary Church with regard to the abuse crisis. Independently of his action as Supreme Pontiff, the ethics of his philosophical work, inspired by Max Scheler’s phenomenology, makes it possible to understand various causes and to find preventive measures impacting the way in which abuse is understood within the context of the Church.

Two ephemerides motivated this issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia. October 2021 marks the 130th anniversary of Edith Stein’s birth, and in August 2022 we remember her death in Auschwitz. To pay tribute to Edith Stein, this issue seeks to retrieve and discuss her philosophical inheritance. After having studied in Göttingen, Edith Stein moved to Freiburg, where she became an assistant of Edmund Husserl, known as the father of phenomenology. She was among the first women to work as an assistant teacher in one of the most respected European universities of her time. Besides her retrieval of Husserl’s work, a synthesis whose value was recognized by her academic peers, she also developed her own philosophical thought in diverse domains, such as the meaning of values, the role of women in society, the critique against totalitarianisms, among many other contributions. Edith Stein’s most relevant contribution in the field of phenomenology is, probably, an in-depth study of the notion of empathy. She inherited this notion from her master, Husserl, who had, in his turn, inherited it from Theodor Lipps. By defending the thesis that, through empathy, it is possible for one to grasp subjective experiences of other persons, Edith Stein emerged as an original thinker in the philosophical milieu of her time. Her research around the notion of empathy brings out a thematization of the possibility of knowing what other persons, who are different from oneself and with whom one cohabits this world, might subjectively suffer. Edith Stein’s analysis sought to ensure this possibility even without the direct and personal experience that other persons feel. In addition to Husserl’s influence, Edith Stein’s philosophical work was profoundly affected by her conversion to Catholicism in 1922, and, from 1933, influenced by her Carmelite vocation, according to which she lived the last years of her life. In this respect, the interest that she showed in the thought of John Henry Newman and Thomas Aquinas, whose work Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate she translated directly from Latin to German, stands out. Together with Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquin, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, and Kreuzeswissenschaft, and without forgetting the fundamental work Endliches und ewiges Sein, published posthumously in 1950, phenomenology, in the works of Edith Stein, developed into a fruitful dialogue with Thomism and Dark Night of the Soul mysticism. This issue starts by posthumously publishing a text by the Jesuit philosopher Xavier Tilliette, S.J.. We are honored to present “La doctrine des anges d’après Edith Stein” in this special issue, which celebrates the figure of the Christian martyr and other disciples of Husserl. The text is followed by a brief presentation by Cécile Rastoin. Tilliette argues that angelology remains current in the context of contemporary philosophy. And Edith Stein was able to express it by connecting classical angelology with the epistemological and anthropological questions of her time. Then, in this first part, we begin with a section dedicated to one of the most important notions in Edith Stein’s work: empathy. “Reflections around the Steinian notion of ‘Empathy’” contains five studies. Anna Maria Pezzella opens the section with “La passione per l’umano. Empatia e persona in Edith Stein,” an article in which the description of the phenomenon of empathy illustrates a person who comes out of himself and is therefore relational. Anna Maria Pezzella analyzes, in this context, what is proper to Edith Stein’s phenomenology, especially in relation to Husserl and Scheler. With the article “‘L’enigma dell’esistenza dell’altro’. Empatia e intersoggettività in Edith Stein,” Antonio Di Chiro draws out from Edith Stein’s philosophical itinerary a phenomenology that, instead of trying to access the consciousness of the other, describes the gesture of opening up to the other in his or her own situation within a shared world. The following article, entitled “Esencia y posibilidad de la intersubjetividad en Edith Stein y Max Scheler: Presentificación empática y percepción simpatética en la Fremderfahrung,” by Juan Velázquez González, proposes a fruitful complementarity, for the phenomenological description of the experience of alterity, between Edith Stein’s notion of empathy and Max Scheler’s concept of sympathy. This text is followed by “Ampliación trascendental de la empatía en Edith Stein: el tipo analógico,” by José Luís Caballero Bono, according to whom analogy is present in intersubjective experience in both Husserl and Stein. To conclude the first section, we include Rastko Jovanov’s article, entitled “Edith Stein’s Theory of Empathy in Applied Context.” This is an original practical application of Steinian theory to group psychotherapy. Entitled “Metaphysical and Phenomenological Issues,” the second section begins with the article “Edith Stein et le débat idéalisme versus réalisme en phénoménologie,” in which Juvenal Savian Filho argues that Edith Stein remains a phenomenologist throughout her entire work, i.e., faithful to Husserl’s approach, in refusing the classical opposition between idealism and realism. Next, in “Il complessivo ed ultimo pensiero di Edith Stein nell’orizzonte della Fenomenologia ultra-husserliana di Karl Jaspers,” Vincenzo Nuzzo shows the dependence on Husserl that Edith Stein exhibits even in the mystical-religious period of her work. Here follows the article “Entre Husserl y Tomás de Aquino. Aspectos metafísicos y epistemológicos del diálogo entre fenomenología y escolástica según Edith Stein,” in which Miriam Ramos Gómez shows how, in Edith Stein, scholastic philosophy meets the epistemological turn of Modernity. This relationship, between phenomenology and scholasticism, concerns the questions regarding the starting point of philosophy and how habit influences knowledge. By Michel Faye, the article “Edith Stein, entre Husserl et Thomas d’Aquin” follows the same direction, insofar as Edith Stein nuances Thomistic realism by staying true to Husserl’s essentialism. The result of this original synthesis is a kind of Augustinian Thomism. Entitled “Análisis de la noción de virtualidad en el contexto de una fenomenología de la conciencia de imagen: un estudio steiniano,” Maria Teresa Alvarez’s article goes further in the relationship between phenomenology and Thomism, showing Stein’s capacity to integrate Thomistic metaphysics in order to better clarify the notion of imagination and virtuality. Section III, entitled “Anthropology, Ethics, and Politics,” contains five articles. In “La questione del male nella filosofia di Edith Stein. Politica, etica e metafisica,” Angela Ales Bello addresses the question of evil in Steinian phenomenology, drawing out its metaphysical and political consequences. The article “A essência do eu: uma análise da constituição do si humano em Edith Stein e Hedwig Conrad-Martius” by Clio Tricarico, reveals the proximity between these two philosophical women in the conception of the human person in his or her pneumatic substance: the intentionality to the other is due to the spiritual and free nature of the person. In “Leib mehr als Körper. Bemerkungen zu Edith Steins Anthropologie,” Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz deepens the distinction between Leib and Körper, to show how the notion of “living body” characterizes the experience that Edith Stein describes as freedom and self-consciousness.” Next, Joachim Feldes seeks to understand, in “Edith Steins Umgang mit Krisen – Phänomenologie, Gemeinschaft und Glaube,” in a very original way, what Steinian philosophy and life experience may say to our contemporary social crisis, linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same direction, Eric De Rus revisits, in his article “Anthropologie et éducation selon Edith Stein : une approche de la destination surnaturelle de la personne humaine,” the intrinsic connection between phenomenology, metaphysics, and anthropology found in Stein’s work. Thus, insofar as human finitude is inevitably described in its openness to the eternal being, pedagogy that does not take this inner connection into account tends to reduce and destroy the human person. Finally, the fourth section, “Philosophy, Religion, and Mysticism,” begins with the article “El reposo y la seguridad en Dios. Bases para una fenomenología de la religión en Edith Stein,” in which Rubén Sánchez Muñoz elaborates, from the description of the experience of rest, a philosophy of religion from the work of Stein, who never detailed or made explicit such a philosophy. The following article is “El misterio de Edith Stein,” in which Walter Redmond shows how Stein combines philosophy with the mysticism of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, in the final period of her philosophical-spiritual production and in the concrete experience of her life. At the end, we present the article “Edith Stein : une philosophie juive? De quelques résonnances philosophiques avec Martin Buber et Franz Rosenzweig,” in which Bénédicte Bouillot examines the Judaic concepts found in Steinian thought, arguing that her philosophy differs from the Thomistic models because it is inspired by some Jew philosophers.

It is the goal of this article to present and discuss the phenomenological interpretation of quantum mechanics of the twentieth-century Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri. After presenting an introduction to Zubiri and his relationship with phenomenology, we discuss the prominent role of the natural sciences, namely, physics, in the author’s philosophical system. To a certain extent, one can say that, in the footsteps of Edmund Husserl, one of Zubiri’s chief concerns was to develop a philosophical system that could accommodate the discoveries of contemporary science. Following a brief presentation of Zubiri’s discussion on physics, the article focuses on his interpretation of quantum mechanics. As we shall see, Zubiri’s original interpretation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in terms of the phenomenological notion of light may provide a significant, although limited, contribution for a deeper understanding of quantum indeterminacy. In addition, we suggest that the Zubirian notions of reality, intelligence, and actuality, which dominate the last stage of his philosophy, may provide a key hermeneutic framework that allows a fresh philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics.