Sergio Andrade

This text proposes some lines of reflection and action related to a project that links philosophy and childhood, whose pedagogical and investigative activity has been developed in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, for more than twenty-five years. To do this we recover an experience of workshops with children and adults, in a continuous process of reflection on childhood and how children think about themselves. That experience focuses on imagining a particular space and time – living together on an island where adults cannot be found--and from there question the forms of decision making and participation – of political action – that children perform in the territories they inhabit. Here it is proposed that the circumstance of incompleteness regarding issues such as politics and sexuality encompass all age situations and, therefore, it is more appropriate to let ourselves be traversed by restlessness and doubt than to accept a preconceived world in which problems quickly find answers, and what you do not know or cannot be located in a fixed category is unknown, ignored, or remains hidden. We propose to start by not postulating any pre-conceived notions regarding childhoods--thinking of them as hypotheses with unexplored names, bodies and thoughts to get to know. Likewise, it is assumed that reflection on teaching practice relocates philosophy teachers as intellectuals who keep universal explanations in their “professorial pockets,” and reinvent themselves by dealing with specific problems, the small discoveries one makes through exchanges with others--those others that, as in the case of children, there is much to learn about and from. This is the ethical and political task that emerges from a continuous reflection on shared action. Welcome, then, to the island where everything is to be decided and participated in, the island of Serendipity.

The COVID-19 pandemic produced immeasurable impacts on the economy, education, and socialization, besides the loss of millions of lives. Thus, there has been an accelerated development of an unprecedented number of COVID-19 vaccine candidates to control the pandemic. The World Health Organization’s emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines still in clinical trial allowed immunizing the population. This paper presents a perspective of the bioethical precepts of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice in the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of surveillance at all stages of vaccine development to detect adverse effects and ensure compliance with bioethical precepts.

The purpose of this study is to determine empirically the state of the art of the medical care, when healthcare personal is confronted with ethical dilemmas related with the care they give to the geriatric population. An observational, longitudinal, prospective and qualitative study was conducted by analyzing the correlation between healthcare personnel–patient relationship, and ethical judgments regarding dilemmas that arise in daily clinical practice with geriatric patients. Mexican healthcare personnel with current active practices were asked to write up an ethical dilemma that arose frequently or that had impacted their medical practice. From the narrative input, we were able to draw up a database with 421 dilemmas, and those corresponding to patients 60 years and older were selected. The axiological analysis of the narrative dilemmas of geriatric patients was made using dialectical empiricism. The axiological analysis values found most frequently were classified into three groups: the impact of healthcare, the roles of the physician, and refusal of therapy; the healthcare role of educator, caring for the patients’ life and the risk of imminent death where the values found more often. The persistence and universality of certain dilemmas in geriatrics calls for awareness and requires a good training in the ethical discernment of these dilemmas. This would help to improve substantially the care and the life quality of this population.

Este texto presenta el Proyecto Filosofar con Niños, que se desarrolla en la provincia de Córdoba, Argentina, desde 1995. Se trata de una experiencia pedagógica e indagativa que busca afirmar una línea de investigación en el nivel general básico del orden escolar. En este texto se hace referencia a la labor investigativa presente en el Proyecto; y se citan algunas experiencias en la escuela. Con recurrencia, la filosofía se ha asumido como una herramienta crítica y liberadora; Wittgenstein afirmaba, con una imagen muy plástica: "¿Qué se propone uno con la Filosofía?, enseñar a la mosca a escapar del frasco" Por otra parte, resulta sugestivo que la filosofía, caracterizada por someter a crítica a todas las actividades humanas, deje fuera de su mirada al orden escolar donde se pretende que se impartan sus enseñanzas. Desde tal asunción, un Proyecto que implique la actividad filosófica con niños debería incluir problemáticas propias de la infancia, junto a métodos y técnicas que permitan leer tal situación – y que puede incluir todas las áreas o distinciones que la tradición ha reconocido. Podría argüirse, entonces, que cada Nivel de Enseñanza necesitaría atenciones particulares. Cuestión que resulta insoslayable desde la misma postulación crítica antes mencionada. El Proyecto Filosofar con Niños está desarrollando una línea de investigación en tal sentido. Este texto articula ambas dimensiones de trabajo. La indagación no pretende agotar las problemáticas propias del Nivel, sino indicar ciertos hilos conductores de las mismas. En principio haremos referencia a la labor investigativa presente en el Proyecto; para luego relatar algunas experiencias en la escuela. Al finalizar el proyecto realizamos un taller con padres, donde revisamos, desde la lectura de textos y la revisión de la tarea emprendida con los chicos, la escuela que entre todos estamos construyendo