Mauricio Lecon Rosales

In most academic works laughter is praised because of its social, religious, and psychological benefits. However, when laughter’s morality has been historically discussed it usually has been condemned. To assign human responsibility to the act of laughing, it must be acknowledged as voluntary. However, studies indicate that laughter is not a voluntary action, but rather a neurophysiological reaction. If this is so, there is no basis on which to ground the moral relevance of laughter. In this article, I will put forward an argument that can help to ground the ethics of spontaneous laughter at least. I claim that humans have the power to avoid laughing or suspend it because they can voluntarily prevent some of the circumstances that are necessary for it to happen. If humans fail to do so when they are expected to, laughter becomes relevant as a kind of negligent omission.

The will as first mover created in Francisco Suárez: The aim of this paper is to show that Francisco Suarez’s claim that the will is the prime mover of the human actions is grounded in his own metaphysical system. For that purpose, I argue that the will is not necessitated to act by any extrinsic efficient cause: nor by God’s grace, neither by the intellect, the law or fate. For all these active principles are either just a necessary condition for the will’s act or something that necessitates the practical act of the intellect by which it guides the will, but does not affects the will itself. On the other hand, I argue that Suárez’s account on potency and act allows conceiving an efficient cause that is able to determine itself. Besides Suárez distinction between the transcendental sense of potency and act and the predicamental one –among which only the latter is relevant for this matte—, for him act does not perfect potency. Then the will can simultaneously be denominated patient and agent regarding its own action since it does not imply that the will can give itself something it previously lacked.

In his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, Francisco Suárez offers a rich account of the psychology and physiology of laughter. Among other claims, he asserts that laughter is a voluntary act, without giving any further explanation. The aim of this paper is to glean from his texts a philosophically compelling argument for this claim. I will claim that for Suárez laughter is a commanded act of the will, since it somehow needs the will’s consent to be elicited. This kind of voluntariness is enough to make laughter morally relevant.

El objetivo de este trabajo es defender que la doctrina de Francisco Suárez de la potencia y el acto debe considerarse como una teoría de raigambre aristotélica. Revisaré las nociones suarecianas de potencia y acto predicamental y trascendental para compararlas con las nociones aristotélicas de δύναμις, ἐνέργεια y ἐντελέχεια. Después, argumentaré que la posición de Suárez no ha de pensarse como una teoría reduccionista, según la cual la potencia queda reducida al acto, sino como un intento de recuperar la doctrina de Aristóteles.

Resumen: En este artículo reviso la interpretación de Eduardo Nicol de la teoría de la propiedad de Francisco Suárez. Para ello, presento la posición de Suárez acerca de la propiedad y la propiedad privada atendiendo dos cuestiones fundamentales. La primera es si la propiedad y la propiedad privada son derechos; la segunda es si ambos pertenecen a la naturaleza humana o no. Al final, argumento que la lectura de Nicol es insostenible, pues difícilmente puede admitirse que Suárez defendió algún tipo de comunismo.: In this paper I revisit Eduardo Nicol’s interpretation of Suarez’s theory of property. To this purpose, I present Suárez’s account of property and private property focusing on two main aspects. The first is whether property and private property are rights; the second is whether they belong to the human nature or not. Finally, I argue that Nicol’s reading of Suárez is untenable for it can hardly be accepted that Suárez defended some kind of communism.