3000

The student -under the supervision of a professor- is supposed to apply the tools of thinking and exegesis of texts he/she has gained throughout his/her research project.

This course will focus on Heidegger´s Capital Work,Being and Time. A limit to heideggerian´s suggestion vis-á-vis the French existentialism, together with the classification of the 20s in the German academic philosophy (the influence of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Scheler, Weber and Jaspers) will serve as introduction to the new approach of human existence with respect to the restitution of the question of being.

By Special Metaphysics it is understood that part of Aristotle’s Metaphysics which doesn’t have as its subject the study of being qua being (General Metaphysics), but which focuses on a special kind of being: God. The Lambda book (XII) of Metaphysics is a treaty destined to elaborate a theory regarding this special being. It is, also, one of the books which have become more relevant to scholars during the last decade, to the point where it has come to be considered as the key to understanding the whole of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Central problems to this subject are the determination of an eternal substance, separate from the realm of the sensible, its relationship with the latter, the very possibility of an unmoved mover, and its abstract but, at the same time, particular character with causal force, its relationship with the intellect and the sublunary bodies. Aristotelian theses on this subject have profoundly influenced both Metaphysics and Theology to our day. The main sources for this seminar will be the eighth (VIII) book of the Physics and book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics.

The seminar seeks to use the knowledge gained in the courses Latin I,II,III and IV for the translation of different texts.

The seminar seeks to use the knowledge gained in the courses Greek, I,II,III and IV for the translation of different texts.

In this course, some selected texts of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences’ so-called ‘Small Logic’ are examined, which will be sought to be clarified in the light of the ‘Big Logic’. If we consider the Hegelian Logic as a new ‘Transcendental Deduction of the Categories’, in Hegel’s way, the course will focus in trying to determine the main articulations of these categories, divided, as they are, into Being Categories, Essence Categories, and Concept Categories. This leads to distinguish between an Objective Logic, which spans the first two parts, and a Subjective Logic, which deals with the Logic of the Concept. It must not be forgotten that it was Logic, or what is logic, which Hegel developed with most care, and where we find a great part of the keys to understand his thought.

During the twentieth century there arises a great diversity of reflections and points of view about war. This is not surprising, given the number and seriousness of the types of armed conflicts which have their place during that period. Within this rainbow of posits, which goes from realist and decisionist postures, like those of C. Schmitt, to juridical pacifisms, like those of Kelsen, there stands out a novel reformulation of the ancient and traditional theory of the just war, in M. Walzer’s opus. Its contribution can be understood as a necessary referent to the philosophy of war of our time, not only because of its marked influence in liberal thinkers like Rawls, but also because of the different types of conflict it analyzes, and because it constitutes itself as a sort of midpoint between extreme pacifism and belicisms. This seminar has, as its general purpose, to be the departure point of a research on contemporary philosophy of war, through the reading of its main texts in a propaedeutic manner.

The course is about Carl Schmitt’s political theory. Work in the seminar will be advanced with the text Political Theology, a compilation of important works by the German philosopher, which include his concept of what is political (the friend/foe distinction), his vital space theory (Lebensraum), his critique of liberalism (close to that of Donoso Cortés, Bonald, etc.), the difference between normality and the state of exception, the relationship between legitimacy and legality, among others. The aim is to have a detailed discussion of this influential author’s theses, and to analyze their relevance regarding both national and international states of affairs in the present time.

Given the advance of global capitalism, the breaking of the State’s power, the growth of poverty and inequality, the expansion and generalization of unemployment which condemns millions and millions of people to desperation, among other things, the investigation about Western history’s background and cultural wealth becomes more important, in such a way that it may become possible to renew the collective imaginaries and to retake the tradition surrounding Solidarity, in the search for better worlds and more loveable societies where dignity and welfare for all become realized. The principle of Solidarity is central to the recovery project of Humanistic tradition. The vagueness of the concept and the multiple "layers of meaning" which have been associated to it justify a philosophical study about its origins, transformations in its meaning, and its relationships with political and social organization, even more when Solidarity is frequently invoked to justify actions and decisions in political, juridical and moral discourses.

The objective of the course is to make an approximation to some of Walter Benjamin’s politico-philosophical writings, studying the hints and proposals regarding the necessary transformation of contemporary philosophy. Likewise, the seminar seeks to carry out an exploration of Walter Benjamin’s intellectual biography, and the consolidation of his concerns regarding philosophy and politics. Lastly, the seminar aims to establish links with other contemporary philosophical traditions which nowadays dialogue with Benjamin’s opus.

The purpose of this seminar is to examine the fundamental texts to phenomenology during its stages of formation and consolidation as a philosophical method. The seminar is organized around the phenomenological description of conscience made by the founder of this school: Edmund Husserl. To begin with, the first description of intentional conscience is presented and its basic elements analyzed: quality, matter, immanent content, etc. Afterwards, a posterior re-elaboration based on the method of phenomenological reduction is examined. Again, basic elements of intentional life experiences are analyzed: noesis, matter, noema, noematic sense, etc. Finally, in the third part, some concrete studies about the problem of constitution are addressed: solipsism, empathy, psychophysical relationships, etc. The seminar pretends to serve as an elementary introduction to the phenomenological method, and as a starting point for more advanced seminars regarding the internal conscience of time, the life’s world, solipsism, regional ontologies, etc.

The purpose of this course is to study skeptic lines. Skepticism´s contribution to philosophy includes a reflection on the limits of knowledge as a series of more and less complex methods for the evaluation of beliefs. Among the former methods, the skeptical one was dialectic and included the review of each thesis with its anti-thesis. If the exam produced the same plausibility of each position as output, it was concluded that both beliefs had to be abandoned and the judgment suspended. In modernity, even though the dialectic facet of the sceptical methods is diluted, the power of doubt increases.

What is memory? What is the nature of memories? What is the object of our memories? Does what we remember consist of past events, or is it about past experiences? Do we remember through the representation of past perceptions, or do we rebuild our memories by means of actual perceptual representations? What is the nature of the memories which are not perceptual? What is the function of memory? How are memory and other cognitive capacities, such as perception and imagination, related? Can animals remember? Can babies? Why do we have so many false memories? Does the fallibility of our memory constitute an obstacle towards the acquisition of knowledge about our own past? These and other questions will be discussed during this seminar.

This course will be enrolled by those who intend to graduate in the following semester.