Humanism is a violence typical of the beasts. Philosozing with a Hammer, using Levinas and Derrida, the Measure of the Human and the Human as a measure

Levinas’s reflections arose as a critique of traditional philosophy which, since it was based on presence and identity, leads to the exclusion of the other. Instead of an onto-logical thought the Lithuanian proposes that the ipseity of the human being be constituted by alterity, and that it be so ethically, because the subject is sub-ject, that is, that which upholds, responsibility. In an attempt to take the obligatory attention to the otherness of the other even further, Derrida would develop a radical critique of the Levinasian posture. Deconstruction of every trace of ipseity and sovereignty in the relationship with the other, the reading that we have done of the work of Derrida opts for a no definable understanding of the human. That is why every de-limitation of an ethical field as a properly human implies a brutal violence that the levinasian humanism of the other tried to exceed.

The gift of the ungiven: Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness facing Levinas’ “there is”

Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness constitutes one of the most outstanding attempts to set up a universal theory of the phenomenologically given as a whole within the framework of contemporary philosophical thought. The aim of the present study is to apply the main categories of this phenomenological theory concerning gift to the singular type of phenomenon represented by the pure indeterminate and anonymous being to which Emmanuel Levinas refers by the name of il y a (“there is”) in his early writings (and also subsequently). Therefore, this concerns examining the multiple specific modes of giveness proper to the impersonal “there is” and also its paradoxical relationship both with the donor and with the receiver of such gift in order to show the possibility of a “third way” of phenomenological investigation. This is a way equally distant from the western traditional concept of Being as “stable presence” and from Levinas’ proposal geared to substitute ontology for ethics as “first philosophy”.

El declive de la memoria en "Tu rostro" mañana de Javier Marías: la escritura revivida

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo estudiar los diferentes estados mentales de los personajes de las novelas de Tu rostro mañana, de Javier Marías. Estudiando las reflexiones del narrador sobre J. Deza, Peter Wheeler o Francisco Rico observamos que su decadencia mental se muestra a través de una suerte de ―presciencia‖ o lucidez momentánea que puede servir para mostrar el silencio como única tendencia de todo discurso. Desde el momento en que toda historia de ficción se cimenta sobre un discurso –no importa su cauce de presentación, ni su fuente– este es falsificado por el tiempo, la gente y cualquier otra herramienta que pueda ser utilizada para contar nada. Las conclusiones de este trabajo muestran la quimera que implica tratar de mantener una contención absoluta sobre lo acaecido, pues dicho vacío de narrativas será ocupado por una suplantación que suele ser el reverso más infame de sus actores. Es por ello que el narrador J. Deza sigue conminado a explicar sus historias, incluso allí donde uno diría que ya no puede haber ni palabras suficientes para traducir un hecho en ficción.

The body, the device, the sleepwalkers. On the spinozian uses of experience as a critics of the cartesian concept of freedom

In this paper I discuss one of the most significant strategies in Spinoza’s theoretical approach against those that entrave its understanding in a very powerful way. As well as Descartes, Spinoza uses the inmediate or unreflexive experience for developing his conception of free will or the distinction between body and soul, but he does so in order to prove that the experience is useful to demonstrate some purely anti-Cartesian thesis that express the core principles of Spinozism.

“Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen”. Temporalidad y memoria en la poesía de Paul Celan

El artículo analiza cómo Paul Celan, utilizando recursos arreferenciales y antimiméticos propios de la poésie pure y la poesía absoluta, desarrolla un modelo poético en el que la temporalidad y la memoria son determinantes. En el nuevo modelo, el lenguaje no constituye una realidad autónoma e inmanente; antes bien, se concreta en una acción dialógica y remite a una realidad extralingüística. El mismo texto poético configura un espacio del recuerdo, se erige en un lugar de memoria que, a través de las sedimentaciones históricas que arrastra el lenguaje, da testimonio de lo ocurrido.