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.

De acuerdo con Francisco Suárez, la acción humana de elaborar una ley implica la producción de una obligación en los súbditos a través de las palabras del legislador. El objetivo de este trabajo es defender que la posición de Suárez acerca de la ley humana y su producción puede describirse como un acto performativo. Para justificar esta idea presentaré, primero, las facultades y disposiciones que el legislador humano debe poseer para promulgar una ley, según Suárez. En segundo lugar mostraré que la promulgación de una ley debe hacerse según ciertas convenciones, entre las cuales se incluye la formulación proposicional de la ley para poder producir exitosamente una obligación. Por último, argu-mentaré que las condiciones internas y las convenciones externas consideradas por Suárez se corresponden a las condiciones descritas por J. L. Austin para que una proposición sea performativ

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.