This research inquires the genesis of Friedrich Engels' dialectical conception of nature. Exposed, in its general lines, in works such as the unfinished Dialectics of nature (1873-1882), the Anti-Dühring (1876-1878) and Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy (1886-1888), it was formulated in the late 1850s and matured over the course of the 1860s, in constant contact with the natural sciences and philosophies of his time. The research follows the main moments of the genesis and development of this conception and the theoretical and ideopolitical context of each one of these moments. In the Introduction, we make methodological considerations, justify the scope and object of the research and present an overview of the issues surrounding Engels' dialectic of nature. In chapter 1, The insight of a dialectic of nature, we look into: 1) Engels' finding that new scientific discoveries attested to the occurrence of dialectical phenomena in nature; 2) his description to Marx, in his letter of July 14, 1858, of these phenomena – the documentary mark of the then nascent dialectical conception; and 3) the philosophical repercussions of such a finding, especially the outlines of a theoretical program that, even if it did not materialize at that moment in a proper writing project, would direct his subsequent scientific and natural-philosophical studies towards the foundation of a materialistic natural dialectic. Finally, in chapter 2, The “natural-historical basis for our views”: the Engelsian reception of Darwin's work, we follow, from the impact that the theory of evolution of species had on Engels' thought, the development of his dialectical conception throughout the 1860s, until its culmination, in a letter to Marx of May 30, 1873, in a project to write a Dialectics of nature.

This work aims to examine the human individuality involved in the phenomenon of suicide from the perspective of Karl Marx. Many interpreters conceive the essay On Suicide (2006) as an untimely text by Marx. However, it seeks to problematize that it is not a writing that presents disagreement with the whole of this philosopher's work, starting, among other aspects, with the literary style used. Furthermore, there are also epigones who strive to produce the image of an economistic Marx, who would have dissolved human subjectivity in strictly economic processes. In contrast to these readings, it is intended to demonstrate the philosopher's heuristic concern about human individuality and its implication in the phenomenon of suicide, based on the debate on alienation, detachment, patriarchy and loneliness

This dissertation addresses the communal identity as an object of the generative method. Before dealing with the primary objective of the research, the dissertation clarifies some relevant points. First, it demystifies intersubjectivity as a theme of Husserlian phenomenology through the analyses of Husserl's cartesianism. Second, it states the ways Husserl used to describe intersubjectivity. Third, it defines the structure of history as generative synthesis. Once these three objectives wore fulfilled, it is possible to refer to the community that has an identity as an intersubjective form, which is necessarily social-historical nature and needs to be studied in accordance with its constitution.  The community that has an identity phenomenologically inquired has its genesis investigated. It appears as social-historical genesis established throughout generations. These generations are described as working together to preserve and transform the heritage they receive as being part of a community.

The categorical imperative is the central idea formulated by Kant in order
to analyze what motivates human action and understand both morals and ethics. How
an individual acts on the basis of principles he would like to see applied is the maxim
and could become what Kant calls universal law. Acting based on duty (in this case,
based solely on the supreme principle of morality) goes beyond the concept of doing
what you would like to be done, since your attitude must be free of any interest and
always have an end in itself. same. It is above moral relativism in which what is correct
depends on the situation and context in which the subject finds itself, being beyond
subjectivity, as it can be applied to everyone. At its core is “doing what I would like
everyone to do with everyone”, assuming that your actions will be right if they can
become a universal law followed by the collectivity. Kant's categorical imperative is
based on statements that complement each other, guiding the way in which morally
correct conduct is analyzed: 1. "Act as if the maxim of your action should become,
through your will, a universal law”. 2. “Act in such a way that you use humanity both in
yourself and in the person of anyone else, always and at the same time, as an end and
never as a means”. 3. "Act in such a way that your will can face itself, at the same time
as a universal legislator through maxims." Taking these statements as a starting point,
the categorical imperative is understood as a moral duty that must absolutely reach
everyone. Such a precept is the end in itself and cannot have external justification. Its
objective is to escape the subjective aspects of utilitarianism and understand that the
moral value of actions is closely linked to the agent's motivation and not to the
consequences of any rational agent's act. An action will be morally correct if the
motivation for the agent's conduct is free from any internal or external interest. Thus,
the morally correct act can be analyzed by the procedure of establishing the maxim to
be evaluated (the Principle of Action) and presupposing the transformation of this
maxim into universal law, verifying the consequences of its universalization and
ascertaining whether the moral agent would accept the consequences of transforming
their conduct into a universal law followed by all. Thus, the categorical imperative ends
up valuing the intrinsic value of conduct, the fulfillment of duty driven only by the correct
decision to be taken impartially and disinterestedly respecting the value and humanity
of each rational being and acting according to maxims that everyone could embrace
and practice. The idea of the reason that determines the imperative as it is is about
Freedom. For Kant, freedom is the autonomy to fulfill one's duty in accordance with the
Laws of Nature. “By “moral freedom” must be understood, according to Kant, the
faculty of adaptation to the laws that our reason gives to ourselves; by “juridical
freedom”, the faculty of acting according to the external world, not being impeded by
the equal freedom of other human beings, free like me, internally and externally”.
These are two important concepts that govern the Kantian theory of morality. The
objective of this work is to analyze these concepts, their relationships and their
implications, with a special focus on the books Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals and The Critique of Practical Reason.

The core of our research is, strictly speaking, the issue of hegemony in the Andean world. The approach we have chosen to address this theoretical-political problem is not based on the analysis of this category from a firmly philological point of view nor have we chosen to draw a frame of modulations, uses and potentialities of the notion of hegemony, but we have drawn a political contour — understood as equivalent to the different historical efforts to build hegemony relations — in two countries strongly marked by the Hispanic colonial heritage: Bolivia and Peru. Therefore, our research is not only focused on the history and politics in those nations, but it does so by deploying, as the backbone of the narration, a critical dialogue with the historical approaches and political proposals that emerge from the intellectual production of two of the most important Latin American Marxists of the twentieth century: the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui and the Bolivian René Zavaleta Mercado. The approach to the question of hegemony in the Andean world required questioning the effectiveness of the colonial heritage. Actually, to establish the framework of the hegemony issue, was required a prior genealogical explanation that would account for the motley condition [abigarramiento] on which any political project had to be based in the Andean region. Consequently, we could say that what René Zavaleta Mercado categorized as motley society [formación social abigarrada] and which in a schematic way we could characterize as the disarticulated coexistence of different modes of production, ideological patterns, domination structures and, in short, the simultaneity of temporalities out of sync in the same economic, political, and social scenario, decisively marked the various political projects in the region. Simultaneously, the motley condition —in the particular case that concerns us, the Andean world— could not be understood but as the result of the successive agreements and disagreements between uneven human groups: since the expansion of the Inca Empire, followed by the Conquest and the erection of the Viceroyalty of Peru, interceded by the expansion of commercial capitalism, the Latin American independence processes, the consolidation of the national oligarchies, the irruption of the capitalist mode of production in regional enclaves and so many other factors to which this research dedicates its pages. Ultimately, the motley condition does not refer exclusively to centrifugal tendencies, but also to those centripetal tendencies of attraction to the centers of power (economic, political, religious, etc.): the unresolved tensions between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies illustrate what is at stake with the notion of motley society. The crossroad is evident: if the motley condition indicates the tendency to the disarticulation of the different and, consequently, deepens the separation between the parties; hegemony, on the other hand, consists basically in the construction of a unity between the ruler and the ruled. Thus, as the 16 motley condition is constituted by the tension between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies that determine the normal functioning of power relations, between the separatist ratification of difference and the integrationist drive represented by identity, in the hegemony is also perceptible the tension that configures the metonymic link between the part and the whole, inseparable conflict of all political construction with hegemonic aspirations. These tensions between the notions of motley society and hegemony will appear again and again throughout our research and not only from a theoretical prism centered on the description of the elements that make up the semantic field of these categories, but also —and fundamentally— from the analysis of the historical ambiguities and the strategic instability of the political commitment of an Andean Marxism that finds in the works of Mariátegui and Zavaleta Mercado its most accomplished formulation

This thesis aims to problematize the proposal of overcoming metaphysics presented by Heidegger and, with it, the place of his thought in the stage in which Western philosophy reaches its extreme possibility. Some critics argue that his question of being inaugurates a new mode of unveiling in the history of Western thought. And, therefore, they consider him either as a philosopher of the end of metaphysics, or as responsible for the emergence of a post-modern and post-humanist thought. We will see throughout this thesis that, despite such interpretations, Heidegger does not understand the possibility of overcoming metaphysics as a closure of the preceding history. But as a recognition of the unveiling of being as a condition for the historicity from which metaphysics unfolded and in which we are situated. With that, we will see that he is not consistent with his philosophy to think of it as an effort to break with this tradition, nor to think of the possibility of an epochal transition as an effort of an individual will. Such an overcoming depends on the dispositions of the being's own history.

The  path  to  a  possible  reflection  on  a  struggle  for  recognition  in  Sartre  was,  for  us,  from the  human  body  in  the  sartrian  perspective.  However,  before,  we  provide  some  Sartrian concepts;  we  go  through  the  issue  of  conflict  -  objectifying  or  being  objectified  through the  eyes  of  the  other;  we  approach  Hegelian  thinking  based  on  Sartrian  reading  and carry  out  a  brief  analysis  between  Sartre  and  Hegel  with  regard  to  the  recognition  of  the other.  Furthermore,  this  research  required  us  to  make  distinctions  between  the  concepts of  recognitions,  which  are  present  in  both  Sartre  and  Hegel,  leading  us  to  analyze  the ontological  recognition  in  Sartre  as  critical  to  the  gnosiological  recognition  and,  finally, the  place  of  the  body.  The  body,  at  a  given  moment,  became  relevant,  since  this  whole examination  would  be  abstract  if  it  were  not  present.  Then,  we  investigate  how  the  body is  present  in  intersubjectivity,  understanding  that  it  offers  concreteness  for  the  struggle for  recognition  that,  here,  came  from  consciousness  in  Hegel,  passing  through consciousness  in  Sartre  and  ―ending‖  in  the  sartrian  body.  Thus,  we  conclude  that Sartre's  philosophy  allows  a  discussion  about  the  struggle  for  recognition,  a  discussion that  is  very  current  in  the  philosophical  sphere.  Sartrian  thought  observes  the circumspection  of  the  body,  which  expresses  concreteness  in  intersubjective relationships:  without  the body, there  is no  recognition of the  other.

This research aims to define and dimension the idea of transfiguration in Emil Cioran's Romanian work, with the more specific objective of elucidating the ways that this thought explores the movement to overcome skepticism as a psychological state, without, however, disqualifying it as a theory of knowledge. For this purpose, we have structured the path of our investigation based on two fundamental questions: (i) What is the cioranian conception of skepticism? (ii) What is the concept of transfiguration? By defining them, we can conclude that transfiguration is a proposal to overcome skepticism, that is, a methodological anti-skepticism.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the role of moral feelings in the theory of justice as equity as proposed by the philosopher John Rawls. In Chapter VIII of A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls introduces the idea that moral feelings are important to guarantee social stability in well-ordered societies. In Political liberalism, Rawls reviews some points of the theory of justice as equity, however, he remains firm in his main ideas. It is possible to see a considerable advance between A theory of justice and Political liberalism, since in political liberalism Rawls defends a political conception of justice without refers to current moral conceptions in society. The sense of justice in political liberalism is presented as a social virtue indispensable to achieve a superimposed consensus. Moreover, the sense of justice remains linked to the issue of social stability. The role of the sense of justice in both works is mediate possible conflicts and disagreements inherent to all democratic social system. Thus, this research analyzes how moral feelings, as the sense of justice, can intermediate the conflict of interests between individuals and groups in contemporary democratic societies.

In the present research I propose the analysis of an occasion of reception of Aristotle's Physics in the 13th century, the opuscle De tempore written by Pseudo Thomas Aquinas. I treat the De tempore as a special case of reception of Aristotelian physics, whose content corresponds to the discussion presented by the philosopher in book IV of the work. For its analysis, first, it is discussed how the De tempore stands out in relation to the tradition of commentaries on the Physics and other forms of presentation of the concept of time, this includes its authorship, structure and development of concepts. Secondly, the Commentary on the Sentences of Thomas Aquinas is considered, with incursions on the Commentary on Physics by Averroes, signaling aspects present in the Thomistic theory of time that later figure in his Commentary on Physics, and, consequently, in the De tempore. Finally, I deal with the discussion present in Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on Physics, and its development in the first chapter of the De tempore, which concerns the existence of time outside the soul. That said, I analyze the De tempore by Pseudo Thomas Aquinas, especially the relationship between time and soul, in the context of the reception of Aristotle's Physics by th the scholasticism, as well as its relationship with the texts that would have originated the opuscle, the commentaries on Physics by Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Averroes.

The result of a study on the concept of natural law in Thomas Aquinas was on the analysis of the so-called Treatise on Law of Summa Theologica I-II pars. From the moral and epistemological conception of a set of laws the task was undertaken to demonstrate the political character that the concept of natural law incures through the transit of human nature from its state of sociability to that of politicity. In fact, natural law transits from the social sphere, in which it acts as a moral rule conducting human action, to acting as a political rule in the sphere of dominium in civitas, as part of the legal structure composed on human law, justice and the different types of rights. In a preliminary way, this investigation has inferred the analysis of some moments and authors of the history of philosophy, such as, Aristotle, Augustine and Cicero, who were characterized as keys to reading not only the concept of natural law, but the moral and political theory of Thomas Aquinas. 

This thesis inquires about the problem of rational disagreement between epistemic peers. Recently, there is much discussion in epistemology on what would be our epistemic duty in peer disagreements. In others words, the philosophy wants to know what is the rule, the norm, or the rational attitude we should follow in contexts of disagreement. About this question, many pieces of literature arose and several theoretical positions consolidate as an alternative to this problem. For many authors, called conciliationists, disagreement works as a kind of epistemic defeater, for this reason, both parts should re-evaluate their own belief and give equal weight to the opposite belief. Other authors, however, defend a kind of non-conciliationism, for this perspective, we can be steadfast and we can ignore the opponent, the disagreement does not defeat the previous justification we have for the belief. Besides these extreme positions, lately are appearing in the debate many intermediate positions. Furthermore, many problems and objections are directed to each part involved in this debate. The first three chapters of the thesis bring a general discussion on this debate, in these chapters I discuss the main positions – their arguments and their problems. In the fourth and last chapter, I defend a personal position, this one says that in face of a peer disagreement we should have a conciliationist attitude of intellectual humility. This intellectual attitude is conciliationist because understanding that a disagreement with an epistemic peer can affect our own belief, then we should revise our own justification and consider the opposite belief. It is intellectually humble because makes us to recognize our own intellectual limitations. Different from others conciliationist positions, this attitude of humility is not exactly a universal principle, it is more precisely a kind of disposition or intellectual posture. Thus, the conciliationist attitude of intellectual humility in face of peer disagreement could deal better with some objections that affect traditional conciliationism.

Keywords: Disagreement. Epistemic Peers. Intellectual Humility.

Sartre approaches intersubjectivity, in his work Being and Nothingness (1943/2014), taking into
consideration the perspective that man, described by him as human reality, relates to other men in a
fundamentally conflictive way. We opt, following Sartre himself, to use in the Dissertation the term
“human reality” in most of the times that we refer to man.2 Other times, depending on the context, we
use the terms subject, subjectivity, being-for-itself (ontologically) or conscience, but each of the terms
will be placed in due time and fully related to the context mentioned in the topic or chapter in which it
will be approached. That said, as it appears, the conflictive way we talked about above, a result of the
encounter between human realities, concentrates in the manner we encounter, fundamentally, the
other, as constitutive of our being-in-the-world, and in the fact that this constitution reflects itself on
the concrete world of our actions. This would imply, in any case, in the encounter between freedoms,
in a constant process of transcendence of their original situations. The radicality of freedom would be
in the core of the conflict. The question about how each human reality exists in the world, in the
presence of the other, and how Sartre explains this constant tension, that follows the encounter, must
accompany us as a guiding thread in the process of writing this Dissertation, since we strive to
understand if this tension, in human relations, for Sartre, means isolation and dehumanization. We
consider, first, that, Sartre addresses, above all, man as being-in-the-world, conscience understood as
freedom; second, the encounter with the other as contingent; third, human actions as free and,
consequently, as responsible, therefore ethical; and, fourth, that it is based on overcoming, that is, of
transcendence of these contingencies, that it can be expected the accomplishment of humanism, as
Sartre defends in Existencialism is a Humanism (1946/2010), his most famous lecture. In the final
considerations, we will have a dialog with Franklin Leopoldo e Silva, presenting his analysis of the
sartrean humanism, described by him as hard humanism.

The object of study of this dissertation goes through the notion of body in the genealogy of
subjectivity by Michel Foucault in three distinct moments in the light of the so-called
Foucaultian ethical phase: (i) the development of dietetics arts in relation to the body in
classical antiquity; (ii) the practices and procedures, which emerged at the height of the
“culture of the self” in the Hellenistic-Roman period, through which it was possible, under the
sign of self-care, to increase attention in relation to the body; and finally, (iii) ascetic practices
(askesis) as a mechanism for assimilation and incorporation of true discourses. For this, we
use the Foucaultian analyzes regarding the moral and medical knowledge of Antiquity as a
support for the development of the processes of subjectivation.

The present work aims to analyze in an initial way the interpretative debate about the relationship between concept and object in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. The emphasis of the debate is on the interpretative opposition between Direct Realism and Representationalism, with regard to the notion of similarity. Thomas presents the concept as a similarity through which we know the external object. Realistic interpretation understands that the term similarity should be read as a relationship of formal identity, between concept and object. Representationalism interprets the concept as a similarity, in the sense that the concept is a mental representation of the essence of the external object. To reach this debate, we have developed an epistemological path that aims to demonstrate, as Thomas knows, the human being. Initially we define what it means to know for Thomas, from there we present the double way in which the human being apprehends the external world. First we engage in sensible apprehension through the senses. Subsequently the intelligible apprehension of bodies, which results in the formation of the concept in the intellect. Only after the conceptual formation in the intellect can we analyze the interpretative debate about the formal relationship between concept and object.

This thesis has as its theme the roots of institutionality. It makes a question about which philosophical ideas allow us to think about human willingness to create and conserve institutions, and it goes in two fronts. First, it consists in a presentation of a binary typology of philosophical ideas about the subject. Each conceived type composes an institutionalist position that concerns a central problem. Inmanential institutionalism, which has authors as G.W.F. Hegel, Arnold Ghlen and Émile Durkheim, deals with the challenge of deinstitutionalization: imminent danger to dissolution that attacks the link and the institutional durability. It sustains that the roots of institutionality are on the reason effectuate in customs, on the ethos of reciprocity or at the social solidarity, ideas that converge to the thesis according to which the main attribute of institutions is stability. Transcendentalist institutionalism, which has authors as Cornelius Castoriadis and Roberto Unger, deals with the problem of hyperinstitutionalization: the threat of current institutional apparatus autonomization. It defends that the roots of institutionality are in the imaginary creator, in historicaççy frozen conflicts or on the normalization of domination, ideas that converge to the thesis according to which institutions can be thought of by its plasticity. The main goal of this front is theming. The second front is the formulation of an theoretical contribution essay that dialogues with these types but which starts from the problem that will be presented as a feature of brazilian institutional experience, that is, semi-institutionalization: the historical trend to make possible a conflictual coexistence between official institutional order and para-institutional order. To deal with this problem one requires identifying the roots of institutionality in the commitment that coming from adherence and in the personhood that projected as material autonomy.

This thesis aims to analyze the concept of epistemic agency, that is, the role of the cognitive agent in the achievement of epistemic goals. The epistemic agency is one of the central topics of discussion in contemporary epistemology, being an essential element for the foundation of Ernest Sosa's Epistemology of Virtues, which understands human cognitive performances as intellectual virtues. The development, in recent decades, of research in the field of Cognitive Psychology, has supported the arguments of naturalistic philosophers who challenge the image of the epistemic agent as defended by Sosa and point to the impossibility of having an agency related to the processes of belief formation. Taking this context into account, I submit the main statements defended by Sosa in his epistemological project to the counter arguments offered by naturalist philosophers such as Hillary Kornblith and Joëlle Proust, reaching the conclusion that the picture sketched by Sosa for the epistemic agency lacks empirical plausibility and therefore, it does not offer an adequate response to the role of the cognitive agent in satisfying epistemic goals. Then, based on Proust's conceptions about the structure of mental actions, I present a model of epistemic agency that seeks to attend both the normative project of epistemology and naturalistic intuitions about human cognitive functioning. The acceptance to this perspective on epistemic agency leads to a more realistic view of the epistemic role of human agents and to an understanding of epistemic normativity aimed at epistemic-motivational purposes.

This research investigates the notion of appropriation in relation to modernity, based on philosophy. The fundamental thesis I seek is that, taking appropriation as the structuring of the dialectic that guided the philosophical discourse of modernity, we can offer a version of appropriation as devouration that can be supported philosophically as a perspective of modernity in its transformative and affirmative character. There is an existential sense of appropriation in post-Hegelian philosophy posed by Max Stirner, as well as an important role of the notion of appropriation in Karl Marx's transformative materialist philosophy – both starting from the Hegelian dialectic, where the concept of appropriation is inserted. Taking modernity as the time of ruptures and changes, of technical protagonism, of the autonomy of the individual and the rise of democracies, the philosophy that wants to apprehend its time and context as a matter for reflection – that is, (post) Hegelian philosophy, a transformation philosophy – will guide you as perspectives of that time. This gives rise to attitudes towards modernity: rejection or fulfillment, affirmation or denial. In the peripheral context of modernity, also starting from the Hegelian influence, Oswald de Andrade develops the suggestion of anthropophagy as a worldview. Here the transformative sense of dialectics and modernity is radicalized in a positive, anti-colonial, exuberant operation, both in an existential dimension and in an offer from a global perspective. I believe that this orientation of dialectic not explored in philosophy (that of anthropophagy) is also a path to modernity. Its limits and advantages is what this research finally wants to point out, in the form of a philosophical narrative that starts from the establishment of the philosophical discourse of modernity to what I will call a dialectic of devouring, a practical-creative anthropophagy.

ABSTRACT

The present dissertation has as main objective to investigate the concept of work of art proposed by Arthur Coleman Danto with the purpose of verifying its capacity to differentiate the mere things of works of art. The research will analyze, in parts, each one of the constituent elements of the concept of work of art presented by Danto and its consequent applications with the objective of differentiating works of art from mere things. As is known, Danto develops his reflections on contemporary art under the impact of the productions of some American pop art artists. This work intends to investigate the conception of work of art proposed by Danto, in view of the successive formulations of his theories and some criticisms that were made to him. Although Danto's philosophical approach to art overcomes the task of definition, I will limit the scope of this research to the definition of his concept of art and to some notions he has presented and which have somehow become well known in the contemporary discussion of difference between "works of art" and "mere real things".

This research proposes to analyze in Foucault's thought two possible conceptions of freedom. On the one hand, politics (genealogical axis) that, through governmentality, the strategic field of power relations, implies mutual relations that make room for resistance; on the other hand, ethical freedom (ethical axis – subjective), which is presented in the examination made of the practice of freedom in late stoicism, from self-care, through regular exercises that allow the individual to to live life as art, since ethics, as a reflected practice, is also an exercise of freedom. Indeed, ethics as a practice of freedom, as something that transforms the world and oneself, occurs in the encounter with the other, far from being an solitary with the self, is realized in association with others. In this way, we will try relate ethical freedom to politics, showing how the individual practices freedom to from the care of the self, and understand how it is possible to problematize this practice of freedom as a movement of resistance, since when the individual resists the power of the other through self-practices, a variety of possibilities opens up, and this it only occurs because the individual is free. From this perspective, the game existing in the relationships takes place from the government, that is, from the conduction of conducts, and must give way to resistance movements, that is, instead of just understanding the mechanisms of driving or letting oneself be driven, it is necessary to resist it, so that there can be possibility of the development of forms of counter-conducts, which happen as opening to new subjectivities in the field of insubordination, of disobedience.

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze silencing as an epistemological problem. The way it is understood in this work, silencing refers to a communicative phenomenon in which a sender keeps his words to himself instead of enunciating them to his interlocutor. As a linguistic problem, the harmful silence is not that derived from a strategy or deliberation in which the alleged emitter gives way in turn for his interlocutor to pronounce himself, on the contrary, it refers to an imposed silence in which the emitters are coerced not to manifest themselves. With regard to this problem as an epistemological question, the type of communicative act in question are those aimed at transmitting knowledge to other people. From Miranda Fricker's inaugural work, Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics of knowing (2007), a fruitful field of investigation was opened in analytical philosophy about how social relations can negatively interfere in the production, maintenance and dissemination of knowledge practices. This work is situated in the field of social epistemology and, therefore, conceives individual and collective agents within the contexts and dynamics of the real world, considering the social structures to which it is subjected - in this sense, moving away from the subject of knowledge taken in abstract by classical epistemology. Based on these considerations, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand the role of testimony in the cognitive life of other people, to analyze the epistemically dysfunctional mechanisms that induce certain individuals and groups to be silenced and, finally, to glimpse possibilities of reverting these processes through virtues and practices that promote epistemic justice, that is, the opening and inclusion of marginalized agents in epistemic practices.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

This investigation – from the standpoint of present reality and based on Hannah Arendt's philosophical work – looks for the possible relations between the fundamental human activities of action and thinking. The careful analysis of Arendt's work, I wish to argue, be it focused on studying our mental activities or historical events and the phenomenality characteristic of the universe of action, points out the existence of a central axis for understanding what configure the peculiarity of the beings we are. This same axis is what will allow us, considering the proposed, to expose the nature of the relationships between action and thinking while trying to understand our time and the depth of the crisis we are in. Such an axis focuses on the Arendtian notion of freedom, and this notion comes to light through the hypothesis that human freedom, the central factor of our humanity, is a cyclical political exercise to which converge mutually, in harmonic tension, the activities of acting and thinking. In order to corroborate this hypothesis, are investigated, in a transversal way across the text, three dimensions of human existence taken as constitutive of the understanding of freedom here at stake: a) the metaphorical discursive language we are capable of, b) the singular personality we perform in the world and c) our faculty of reflective judgment.

ARAÚJO, Rodrigo Oliveira. The question of writing in the work of Walter Benjamin. Doctoral thesis. Graduate Program in Philosophy. Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, 2018.

Walter Benjamin has found that the issue of presentation (Darstellung) has historically proven to be a problem immanent to philosophical doing in itself. The present work aims to understand how he confronted this problem in the scope of his philosophical writing. The thesis deals with this theme through three perspectives that it considers structuring in the author's work: the way in which he understood language and place of writing in this process of understanding; the place of writing in his epistemological critique, as well as in his presentation of the aesthetic concept of allegory; and, finally, the theme of philosophical writing in its connection with politics. The discussion on this connection is based on the relationship that Benjamin established with the literary experiments present in the historical vanguards of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through his own remarkably experimental writing. The thesis intends, therefore, to offer a detailed examination of Benjamin's conceptualization of the subject of writing in philosophy, and of the way in which he faced the question by shifting, experimenting, and exercising in various ways his own activity as a writer of a very peculiar philosophy.

The philosophy of David Hume has as one of its characteristics the fact of unifying what was traditionally thought to belong to the scope of necessity and that which belonged to the realm of freedom. Hume thinks of Nature as a unity, and although his works have internal divisions that distinguish the matters between which is relative to the understanding, which is relative to the passions and which is relative to the morals, what we perceive is that these divisions only serve to show that the scope of disciplines can be integrated under the same approach, under the same explanatory principle, just as Newton unified heavens and Earth under universal gravitation. But his thought was reformulated, and what appeared in the third book on morals in the Treatise of Human Nature is dispersed in his later synthesis in appendices to the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the principles of Morals and in his Essays Moral, Political and Literary. In these texts we find his reflection on issues such as justice, property, contracts and a series of aspects related to Economics and Politics, understood under the treatment that he dispenses to luxury, refinement, excess and superfluous, as far as he considers them as objects at once of morals and passions. Hume’s moral sentimentalism imposes the consideration of these themes in the key of the consideration between private interest and public interest, the sovereign agency and the good of the Nation, in a reflection in which moral development is not dissociated from material prosperity. Thus, a more precise understanding of these texts promotes not only the opportunity to consider his philosophy as a totality that faces the empirical issues expressed in History, Politics and Economy, but allows us to discern the position of Hume in vivid debates of his time, in a moment when Economics was being formed as a scientific body of knowledge separated from Morals. His peculiar way of understanding human nature allowed him to formulate a series of economic considerations that do not dissociate them from moral reflection, since for Hume the passions are the human motive. Thus understood, his contributions carry the marks that characterize economics to this day: that of being a body of probable knowledge, founded rather on probability than on the certainty of internal laws known in the manner of ultimate causes; and to constitute an amalgam of descriptions and prescriptions, at the same time meant to explain economic phenomena and influence their future courses. Hume’s economic reflection thus provides elements to consider the various theoretical traditions in which contemporary Economics divides today, in as much as it points out that the operation of separation from Morals has not been definitively completed and may not be possible to do so. It poses itself as a possible synthesis; and although limited to some aspects and little served of precise calculation tools to guide political and economic actions, it already offers several elements that have continued to populate the theoretical universe of Economics, as for example the notions of utility, pleasure, excess and the importance of feelings for the explanation of economic phenomena.

The present work starts from the investigation of the statute of the relation between the body and the conscience, demonstrating how the unfolding of this relationship will enable the construction of a horizon of meaning that can be shared, establishing an opening for the intersubjectivity, which, being always inscribed within the scope of sensibility, will enable not only the individual sensible apprehension of reality data, but also the sharing of the senses elaborated through the expressiveness of the body, revealing this last as a true channel of communication. In this sense, we intend to describe the articulation between the biological dimension of the organism, its self-regulation and its unfolding into a model of integration of functions that will structure, in an integral whole and interdependent, motor skills, affectivity, sexuality, and language. This structuring will found the perfectly elaborate mental space that is the hallmark of man, which it will function as the center from which all your expressive endeavors will derive. In As a result of this integration, we will assume intercorporeality as the concrete mode of intersubjectivity, unequivocally establishing the fact that a communication originating from between the individuals operated by the sensitivity pathway. Through this movement it will be possible describe the genesis of meaning from the sensitive intertwining of the individual body, things and others, intertwining this grounding in the spontaneous experience of a world which will unfold in an articulated language - elaborated from the intersubjective elements cataloged by community experience - and its institutions derivatives. Finally, as a result of this itinerary, we intend to support the hypothesis that this spontaneous communication is only possible because we have always been connected with each other through our body so that we find in the incorporeality the dimension of our existence that sustains and from which all our symbolic practices sprout.

The present dissertation aims to offer an analysis of Richard Rorty's interpretation of Freudian theory, with special attention to the absence of the concept of resistance, a problem recognized by the author himself. Interested in Freud's contribution to moral reflection, Rorty elaborates his interpretation by emphasizing the conversational aspect of the psychic instances, thus softening the dimension of conflict present in Freud. Part of Rorty's argumentative strategy is to eliminate the metapsychological explanation, which makes it difficult to attempt a redescription of the concept of resistance compatible with this reading. It remains to be seen what consequences result from the absence of this concept. We argue here that such absence derives from the philosophical choices on which Rorty bases his interpretation. In this way, we try to present Rorty's assumptions regarding philosophy and interpretation. The clarification of the meaning and relevance of the Freudian concept of resistance was also developed to highlight the distinctions between Freud and the interpretation offered. The work is complemented with the support of Roy Schafer, who offers a redescription of the resistance that in our judgment is compatible with the proposal rortyana.

The presence of literature in Marx's writings dates from before his project of critique of political economy, but it is from this that literary art merges with his analyzes in an odd way, especially in "Capital", which it is linked to scientificity and re-signifies it. The analysis of the relationship between literature and the critique of political economy in "Capital" presented some possibilities of understanding literature in Marx's work: a) source of historical research; b) source of social criticism; c) source of analogies and metaphors. However, these possibilities have as main axis the exposition of the contradictions of capitalist society and the incitement to the creation of a new conception of reality distinct and in opposition to the capitalist. The reading of classical authors such as Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes and Balzac, mentioned by Marx, was carried out with the aim of seeking to understand how Marx articulated them to his critique of political economy. In order to problematize this question in a adequately way, contemporary authors were appreciated in their works, like Lukács, Kosik, Kundera and Blanchot. The conceptions of these authors, when confronted, brought contributions that broadened the understanding of the ways in which Marx used literature both in the critique of political economy and especially in the heyday of this project: the publication of Capital. The manner in which Marx wrote "Capital," merging science and literature, gave the work a dramatic dimension. "Capital" thus became a drama about bourgeois society.

Interpretivism is a philosophical position that seeks to understand the mental from the third person point of view. The main representatives of this position are Daniel Dennett e Donald Davidson. In order for communication to be possible, a behavioral interpretation needs to take place, which demands the attribution of a number of mental states. In Davidson, one can find the principles of charity and rationality. According to him, one must presuppose a high rate of coincidence between someone´s beliefs and his interlocutor so that they can communicate. In the same direction, Dennett argues that the behavior of particular actors can only be explained and anticipated through the adoption of the Intentional stance, i.e., through the attribution of intentionality. Such attribution is never of isolated beliefs and desires, but of a diffused set of mental states, including a background of beliefs that are mostly true. To these authors, it is not possible to relinquish of a typically intentional vocabulary. The vocabulary of psychology, therefore, cannot be reduced to that of physics. For this reason, interpretivism is considered a form of non-reductive materialism. They advocate that the standpoint of the interpreter takes precedent over subject’s viewpoint in the search for an understanding of the mind. They call for an inversion of the starting-point: research should start from the outside to the inside; otherwise, it becomes barren, imprisoned within the subject. This text aims to present the interpretative headings of those two authors, asking if they are realistic or unrealistic concerning the mind. In this investigation, it is crucial to understand the epistemological role assigned to mental states by supporters of that approach. We claim that, for these authors, the mind have to be understood from the subject’s relations to the world and with others subjects. Dennett finds in the evolutionary history the grounds on which those relations are set. Davidson finds them in the triangulation processes present in any situation of communication. We argue that the existence of mental states cannot be denied if you adopt an interpretivist perspective, even if these mind states are not situated within the subject. The reason is that they have a crucial epistemological role. Without them, one could not give any meaning for someone else’s behavior, much less communicate with others. The ontological power does not stem, here, from them being obvious from a first-person standpoint. The reality of the states of mind, in an interpretivist position, is bound to its usefulness and indispensability. This position has the advantage of being compatible with a scientific take on the mind, because it approaches the mental from a publicly accessible viewpoint. Simultaneously, such a position acknowledges and sustains the role played by common-sense psychology, being neither eliminativist nor reductionist.