Positivism

The aim of this study is to question in what sense the hermeneutic thought that emerged in the context of critics of positivism can be related to Islamic thought or in which channel the paths of these two ways of thinking can intersect. First of all, in order to make this investigation more understandable, a historical and methodological analysis and comparison of two different intellectual media such as positivist and hermeneutic, which are active in today's truth debates, will be made.
The purpose of this analysis and comparison is to emphasize that philosophical hermeneutics, which takes various discourses of truth seriously in the global world and makes it the main goal to reduce subjectivity as much as possible by establishing a dialogue between the different interpretations revealed by this diversity, cannot be ignored in the context of Islamic thought. As a matter of fact, hermeneutic thought, which has the basic problem of correctly reaching, understanding and interpreting the meanings underlying the texts, and Islamic thought seem to have a common problem. While making sense of this common problem, hermeneutic thought's investigation of the truth from the concrete existential world of life rather than objective and ideal questioning draws our attention to the medium where Islamic thought's paths intersect with hermeneutic thought. The positivist method tries to place the investigation of truth in an ideal and objective context by examining the practical life world of man within the framework of fixed, unchanging and quantitative criteria. Contrary to this context, hermeneutic thought, on the other hand, prioritizes different interpretations and interpretations that do not ignore the qualitative context of the truth inquiry, emphasizing the temporal character of the truth inquiry, based on the inevitability of change in practical life.
We claim that how Islamic thought can be positioned in these two different methodological attitudes in truth debates can be reconsidered in the context of the hadith on his return from a battle, the Prophet said: “We are finished with the lesser jihad; now we are starting the greater jihad.” In the context of this claim, the main argument of this study is to emphasize that the investigation of truth, which is based on the moral responsibility of the individual in the concrete human life, is more important and essential than the search for ideal and objective truth in Islamic thought. In the global World, the idea of dialogue between different truth discourses and the moral confrontation that takes place on the axis of this dialogue are priority and important. It is argued that moral confrontation contributes to the updating of the current methodologies of Islamic thought and can provide the opportunity to be productively involved in the solution of global common problems.

This book falls within the limits of academic research, certified by the order of the Romanian Ministry of Education, no. 5766 / December 15, 2021. The book represents the author's doctoral thesis modified according to the format and requirements of a book. It went through the academic process of double peer review and was recommended for publication.

RESUMEN
La relación interna entre filosofía, literatura y arte permite examinar con propiedad qué significan la pluralidad y complejidad en los usos de la razón. Posibilita la aproximación a esos usos y figuras desde un ángulo privilegiado. El interés por lo literario y artístico no tendría por qué significar un apresurado abandono del modelo discursivo y analítico -que es característico de la filosofía-, sino más bien el acceso a un punto de vista más completo, un nuevo método reflexivo, otro límite crítico. Esta perspectiva facilita la puesta al día de las tesis modernas sobre la filosofía como emancipación, esto es, como su salida de la minoría de edad.
Espacios ficcionales, campos de proyección de la experiencia, métodos y perspectivas trasdisciplinarias constituyen los distintos niveles a través de los cuales se trata de definir un nexo complejo entre discursos. La ficción como conocimiento, subjetividad y texto, así como la relación entre mundo y lenguaje pretenden acotar algunas dimensiones de esa relación.
A través de la literatura llegamos a estar familiarizados con situaciones, sentimientos, formas de vida, obteniendo así una mirada desde dentro -epistemológicamente empática-. Cada nueva visión del mundo constituye un nuevo tipo de conocimiento, un conocimiento que puede incluir aspectos cognitivos y emotivos y que demandará, probablemente, algún tipo de lógica paraconsistente. De modo que a la par que por nuestras narrativas creamos o descubrimos mundos (dependiendo del estatuto ontológico otorgado a la ficción) también establecemos o desentrañamos la legislación lógica, según la cual tal curso de sucesos o tal tipo de entidades son o no admisibles al interior de este particular mundo posible.
Precisamente, es en la constante re-creación de sus objetos, práctica que surge en una comunidad de problemas -un espacio de representación colectiva- el espacio en que se da la ciencia. Es, precisamente, en una particular forma de hablar y de referirse a objetos, creándolos con el habla, el que funda a la medicina -por ejemplo- como cuerpo autónomo de conocimientos, vale decir como ciencia de primer orden. Las disciplinas, pues, en tanto discursos, están, literalmente, constituidas por él. Por ello es necesario estudiar el discurso científico en tanto que discurso, hay que reflexionar sobre sus orígenes y modo de constitución, hay que aceptar que no es sólo un producto sino una fuerza productiva. La realidad es una narrativa exitosa. Es aquello que se hace hablando. Las comunidades científicas son comunidades de problemas y, sobre todo, de retóricas, reconstrucciones de objetos que sólo existen en tanto se habla de ellos de una determinada manera,
Hasta los mundos narrativos más imposibles tienen como fondo lo que es posible en el mundo que concebimos como real. Las entidades y situaciones que no son explícitamente nombradas y descritas como diferentes del mundo real son entendidas a partir de las leyes que aplicamos a la comprensión del mundo real.
Así, pues, la narración de ficción construye un modelo análogo del universo real, una proyección...lo que permite conocer la estructura y los procesos internos de la realidad y manipularla cognitivamente. Se otorga así un valor cognoscitivo a la ficción, de modo tal que todas las posibles connotaciones, no expresadas directamente por el texto, sino -más bien- mostradas implícitamente o implicadas contextualmente en lo allí dicho, iluminan aspectos de la realidad que sin estas extrapolaciones ficcionales permanecerían en penumbras.
La perspectiva crítica -propia de la filosofía- puede hallarse así implícita en escritos de ficción, de la misma manera como las teorías filosóficas pueden aceptar como suyos a los argumentos procedentes del discurso literario. La reflexión filosófica se articula, pues, desde distintos ámbitos y modalidades discursivas.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

This article looks at a specific case of intellectual exchange by approaching Luís Pereira Barreto (1840–1923), a Brazilian medic who, having studied in Brussels in the 1850s, came into contact with Comte's positivism and with the ideas of his disciples. While in Europe, Barreto established a long-lasting friendship with Pierre Lafitte, and became a convert to Comte's Religion of Humanity. Upon his return to Brazil in 1864, Barreto sought to apply Comte's principles to Brazilian society and politics. Although Barreto's use of positivism extends beyond the issue of slavery and slave work, I will focus on this priest of humanity's considerations about positivism, social evolutionism, and Brazilian slavery. This will allow me to extrapolate some qualified conclusions about the nature of the intellectual exchange that occurred between Barreto and the French positivists, and the development of Brazilian positivism as a political philosophy and social theory which had to address the problem of slavery in the 1870s and 1880s

What social conditions produce positivism? One position, common to both positivists and some of their major critics, suggests that positivism is an "ideology" or "worldview" of industrial capitalism. Positivism therefore resonates with the basic experience of capitalism for all social groups. Intellectuals draw on this experience in formulating positivist social science. A second position suggests that positivism is a strategy of distinction by which intellectuals attempt to accumulate symbolic capital against their rivals. This position suggests that positivism is a resource for establishing a social science that imitates the methodology of natural science. Our article argues for a third view focused on the internal structure of the intelligentsia as a social group. Positivism could emerge in both industrial capitalist and preindustrial contexts; however, the types of positivism differ in these two cases because the structure of the intelligentsia differs. In preindustrial contexts, such as nineteenth-century Italy, which is the focus of our analysis, positivists claim an ontological continuity between natural and social sciences. In industrial contexts, on the basis of which most theories of positivism rest, positivists claim a methodological similarity between natural and social sciences. We conclude our analysis by reflecting on the implications of our study for work on positivism and social ontology in the social sciences.

This article is an attempt to understand the historical origins of the conceptual distinction between "ethics" and "morals" -as we can find it, for instance, in Habermas. I show also how such a distinction works on the contemporary ethical discussion, not only framing the controversy between liberals and communitarians, but also limiting our possibilities to overcome that controversy.

The purpose of this paper is to question the standards of scholarship now current in the discipline of organization studies. It does so through a close-reading of a paper which has a fair claim to seminal status, since it is widely cited within the literature, is described as seminal in a number of recent contributions and is included in Mats Alvesson’s Classics in Critical Management Studies (2011). The paper is Knights and Morgan’s Foucaultian analysis of strategic management (1991) and the present analysis is best read with that text to hand.
Read in detail, Knights and Morgan’s paper turns out to be deficient in almost every respect. Their claim that strategic management needs to be understood as a discourse which ‘constitutes the subjectivities’ of its practitioners amounts to an innovative of terminology only, since there is no suggestion as to what kind of evidence might distinguish that process from the conventional acquisition of technique. Their proposed history of the origins of strategic management does not fit the historical record. Their claims to theoretical and methodological advances over previous major works in the field are not substantiated and depend in any case on serious misrepresentations of those works. They present a drastically one-sided account of Foucault’s views on power, the application of which to strategic management is claimed as one of their major innovations. The one positive and original thing they have to say about strategic management – that it confers psychological benefits on those who practice it (‘power effects’) – is supported neither by evidence nor convincing argument.
The analysis then proceeds to a 1995 paper by the same authors on the introduction of strategic approaches to IT and product management in a life insurance company. Interesting as a conventional narrative, the notable absence of ‘constituted subjectivities’, ‘power effects’ and, indeed, of any mention of Foucault in this study is primae facia evidence of the complete irrelevance of the ‘genealogical’ approach advocated in the 1991 paper. This conclusion is reinforced by two recent papers which claim to have provided empirical support for the original Foucaultian approach. Neither of them achieve anything of the kind.
The analysis concludes by suggesting that Knights and Morgan’s 1991 paper continues to be cited in despite of its evident shortcomings because of the feverish intellectual climate which now prevails within organizational studies. Under pressure to produce innovative work in fields dominated by established reputations, young researchers may be attracted to any intellectual direction which promises to subvert those reputations and so provide space for new models of academic distinction. This, it is suggested, is the true nature of Knights and Morgan’s achievement, and it is one which may account for the failure of the academic community to take due note of the deficiencies of their work. In this sense it may be symptomatic of a discipline in which standards of scholarship have been eroded in a frantic search for novelty.

Gradually, action research (AR) is becoming one of the major methods employed in education research inquiries. Many researchers and practitioners are enjoying the convenient and flexible dimensions of this relatively new approach, which include being rich, open, dynamic, situation-based, and participatory—dimensions that improve instructional practice based on real learning contexts and experiences. AR advocates also emphasize its constructivist foundations and professional development benefits, both of which have become major foci for many teachers. On the other hand, some critics believe that AR does not effectively follow the requirements for scientific inquiry in education research, disparaging its philosophy, rationale, and tools as well as stressing its limitations. Beyond the debate about the use of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in education research, these critiques specifically address a crucial, yet ignored issue. Hence, this paper reports on an in-depth epistemological analysis of AR with respect to three dominant research paradigms; positivism, post-positivism, and interpretivism (anti-positivism).

Lorsqu’on évoque le « socialisme », on croit savoir de quoi il est question, alors même qu’aujourd’hui tout repère se dérobe qui pourrait nous aider à préciser le sens attaché à ce mot. L’épuisement de l’élan réformiste, tout comme l’effondrement des espérances révolutionnaires, ont fini par vider le socialisme de toute substance, à tel point qu’il se trouve aujourd’hui confiné dans l’espace très étroit d’une alternative prévisible au sein du jeu qui structure le champ de la représentation politique. Les critiques soulignent alors la crise idéologique des partis et la fin de ce conflit des forces sociales où la société démocratique est censée prendre forme. On n’ajoutera pas, ici, une autre voix au concert de ces critiques: il est peut-être temps de décaler le regard et d’envisager le socialisme autrement, à savoir comme une question des sciences sociales, et plus précisément comme un problème sociologique. Si un tel déplacement peut être opéré, c’est que le socialisme a accompagné la naissance même de la sociologie au XIXème siècle, s’imposant comme un objet où elle pouvait reconnaître l’anticipation, sur le plan de l’action, de sa propre réflexion sur la société.

Fundada na primeira metade do século XIX pelo francês Augusto Comte (1798-1857), o positivismo, apesar das suas limitações, representou um avanço às ciências sociais. Na Europa, as origens, o desenvolvimento e a consolidação da referida corrente de pensamento ocorreu em um contexto de estruturação de uma sociedade industrial e burguesa perante a ordem aristocrática, feudal e absolutista. Entre as premissas do positivismo comtiano prima-se por uma análise metodológica, objetiva e neutra, dos grandes fatos e personagens, baseada em documentação oficial escrita, em busca de estabelecer leis gerais naturais necessárias ao progresso da sociedade. A ideologia positivista teve forte repercussão na nascente república brasileira, sobretudo quanto ao desenvolvimento da produção historiográfica no país.

This study analyses theoretical problems in the study of tourism and reviews some major thoughts and literature as well as tourism as an emerging discipline. Tourism as a scientific discipline still does not haveits own and established academic body that distinguishes it from other sciences. Therefore, tourism as a recent field of research is struggling without being understood in the correct way because its theory of knowledge is not delimited and tries to be reflected from the point of view of its formal components. In this sense, the principal aim of this article is to try to delimit the perspectives and definitions of the main authors that have contributed tothe "tourism theory" in general until now, by focusing on several dimensions such us: positivism, materialism, neo-durkheimism, functionalism and post-modernism.

We have recently witnessed a growing, if still arguably marginal, interest in `Critical Management Studies' (CMS). Our aim in this paper is to reflect upon the popularization of CMS; more specifically, we propose to examine the various factors that have contributed to its emergence, and to review the significance of its project. We start by exploring the conditions of possibility for CMS and point to a combination of political, institutional and epistemological trends. In the second part of the paper, we consider what constitutes `CMS' and suggest that whilst it draws upon a plurality of intellectual traditions, CMS is unified by an anti performative stance, and a commitment to (some form of) denaturalization and reflexivity. Finally, we articulate the polemics around which CMS politics have been contested, in particular we review the debates between neo-Marxism and post-structuralism, and discuss the issue of engagement with management practice.

È l’alba del nuovo secolo. Nella semioscurità di un salotto della Roma nobiliare, tante mani si stringono attorno a un tavolo: a capo di questo, il medium convoglia le energie per mettere in contatto le anime del “di là” con i partecipanti di questo rito laico e mondano. Tra questi, ospite d’eccezione, c’è un ancora poco noto Luigi Pirandello, colui che di lì a pochi anni avrebbe molto fatto parlare di sé con "Il fu Mattia Pascal", poi divenuto un classico della letteratura italiana del Novecento. È proprio nel romanzo del 1904 che l’agrigentino eleva e nobilita artisticamente tutte quelle suggestioni di natura spiritica e teosofica che aveva coltivato già a partire dalla fine dell’Ottocento su esortazione del sodale Luigi Capuana, fermamente convinto dei «fatti» della medianità e del paranormale.
Sullo sfondo dell’ambiguo clima culturale a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento, segnato dalla crisi del positivismo materialista e dal conseguente emergere di dottrine di stampo esoterico e pseudo-religioso volte a coniugare fede e scienza, l’Autore approfondisce ed indaga esaustivamente il rapporto tra Pirandello e l’occulto nella Roma di quegli anni, in cui pullulavano spiritisti e teosofi, occultisti e massoni. Combinando storia e letteratura, il volume fornisce un’immagine originale e alternativa dello scrittore agrigentino nel pieno della sua prima formazione intellettuale, inscindibile da quelle tensioni irrazionalistiche che ne avrebbero caratterizzato l’opera e il pensiero negli anni a venire.

In naturalist novels, social and biological determinism is imposed on the fate of an individual located in a specific environment. This environment is decisive for the main theme of any literary text which follows this aesthetics. In L’Assommoir (1877) by Émile Zola, it is in the working class environment hosting Gervaise, the protagonist of the novel, where we can examine the slow but unstoppable fall of her fate, condemned to moral and physical misery and accelerated by her alcoholism. The labour world of Parisian workers, the urban landscape of the French capital, as well as the physical and psychological defects that Gervaise inherits from her father are the inescapable conditions that determine her fate. This article aims at an analytical and descriptive study of the destructive environment that ultimately kills the heroine.

_The Physiology of Love and Other Writings_ is the first English annotated collection of Mantegazza’s selected works. In my extensive introductory essay, Mantegazza’s hybrid contributions from fiction, travel-writing, and ethnography to physiology, medicine, and politics are reevaluated as instances of a proto-cultural-studies approach attuned to the cross-fertilization of disciplines and the circulation of ideas in a period of European intellectual history that defied the notion of specialization.
Table of contents:
The Physiology of Love
And Selections from:
On The Hygienic and Medicinal Virtues of the Coca Plant and on Nervine Nourishment in General
One Day in Madeira
A Voyage to Lapland with my Friend Stephen Sommier
India
Epicurus: Essay in a Physiology of the Beautiful
The Neurosic Century
The Tartuffe Century
Head: Or, Sowing Ideas to Create New Deeds
Political Memoirs of a Foot Soldier in the Italian Parliament
The Year 3000: A Dream
The Psychology of Translation

This paper explores the association between postmodernism and interpretivism. The paper’s objective is to show that the interpretivist research paradigm shows very clear postmodernist traits. After defining the two concepts the paper attempts to answer the research question whether interpretivism is a typical postmodernist approach to Information Systems science and research. The paper is conceptual, using a philosophical-logical approach. It makes a contribution to the discipline of Information Systems by taking the reflection on the continuum of positivism-interpretivism-critical research a level deeper by connecting interpretivism with the broader, encompassing paradigm of postmodernism.

Luigi Capuana believed in the immortality of the soul as conceived by theosophical theories, as well as in the perceptibility of the manifestations of the spirits. At the same time, his short stories and essays reflect his faith in the positivistic approach and in experimental sciences. During a period that sees the proliferation of seances evoking spirits, Capuana writes his only four short stories that depict the perceptible manifestation of a ghost. In “Creazione” (1901), “La evocatrice” and “Forze occulte” (1902), and “Un vampiro” (1904), the spirits appear and show a noticeable originality when compared to the ones that haunt contemporary ghost stories. By examining the structure of the mystery through Freud’s “uncanny”, and by exploring the content of the stories through Capuana’s key science concepts, the analysis will demonstrate how the subtraction of mystery as well as the reflection on science create a common literary ground where Spiritism and Positivism can surprisingly coexist. On that ground, the scientific openness to the discoveries of the Twentieth Century emerges with the strength of reassuring ghosts.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

This paper explores the intellectual influences that Auguste Comte and Harriet Taylor Mill had on John Stuart Mill's work, the essay "The Subjection of Women" in particular. Also discussed is the impact of Positivism on Mill's thought and his ideas regarding women's equality under the law, as well as Mill's wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, who played a major role in the development Mill's work, and his analysis of gender relations.The correspondence between Mill and Comte reveals that Mill had already developed the ideas that would ultimately become the aforementioned essay as early as the 1840's. Comte, who's own views on women were in opposition to any semblance of gender equality, presented Mill the opportunity to defend his progressive ideas and to understand the view-points of those whose minds he hoped to change.

In this study, scientific research paradigms that lead social sciences research were inquired. Definitions, sorts and classifications (positivist, constructivist, critical) of paradigms were discussed. As the theories and epistemologies in the historical background of all three paradigms were given shortly, ontological, epistemological and methodological characteristics were discussed based on Guba's work. Actually, this study is based on Guba's perspective which is parallel to Khun in the sense of incommensurability and revolutionary side of paradigms and which claimed social sciences in a revolutionary situation that led paradigm wars.

Introduzione La figura di Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) non ha bisogno di molte presentazioni. Di fronte ai contributi forniti alle discipline fisiche e matematiche da parte del-lo scienziato francese, gli storici della scienza hanno col-locato il suo lavoro in posizione inferiore soltanto all'opera di Newton (1642-1727). Nato a Beaumont-en-Auge, nella regione della Norman-dia, fin dalla sua giovanile esperienza scolastica presso un collegio benedettino, Laplace ha dimostrato il suo talento che gli ha consentito successivamente di studiare a Caen. Risale al 1768 il suo incarico di docente di mate-matica alla Scuola Militare di Parigi, città nella quale si è affermato negli anni seguenti come uno dei massimi esponenti dell'Accademia Francese delle Scienze. Dopo aver ricoperto diversi incarichi, scientifici e anche politi-ci, tra i quali si ricorda la partecipazione alla Commis-sione dei Pesi e Misure che ha varato il sistema metrico, Laplace è stato anche ministro dell'interno. Alla fine della fase napoleonica si è schierato a favore della restaurazione monarchica, per poi essere nomina-to marchese nel 1817. La sua morte è avvenuta cento anni dopo quella di Newton e questa coincidenza crono-logica sembra ribadire il fatto che la sua attività si pone in linea di continuità con quella dello scienziato inglese. Laplace ha avuto molti meriti come astronomo. E' stato, per esempio, un pioniere nell'idea della possibile esi-stenza dei buchi neri e nell'escogitare nuovi strumenti matematici per progredire negli studi astronomici. A lui si deve, inoltre, la teoria sulla genesi del sistema solare che si sarebbe originato da una nebulosa. Occorre concentrare l'attenzione, tuttavia, su una scoperta in particolare. Laplace è stato in grado di risolvere le ano-malie del moto planetario evidenziatesi all'interno del modello newtoniano. Newton, in accordo con i principi metafisici del suo sistema, aveva affermato l'intervento diretto di Dio per ciò che riguarda la correzione delle orbite dei pianeti, disturbate da quelle interferenze gra-vitazionali che sembravano alterare il sistema planetario stesso. Lo scienziato francese, in seguito alle sue ricerche che sono poi confluite nella Meccanica Celeste (1799-1825), ha stabilito una specie di autocorrezione del sistema planetario. Ponendo attenzione alle anomalie nelle traiettorie di Giove e Saturno, Laplace è riuscito a capire che esse fanno parte di un insieme molto più ampio di irregolarità rientranti in un ciclo generale della durata di 929 anni. Questa è stata la scoperta che maggiormente ha indotto questo ricercatore ad affermare quella visio-ne filosofico-scientifica denominata 'determinismo'. Scopo di questo lavoro è quello di evidenziare in che modo il pensiero scientifico di Laplace sia stato un mo-mento fondamentale, non solo per la scienza naturale, ma, più in generale, per la cultura positivista. L'obiettivo di questo saggio è anche quello di indurre i cultori di queste discipline ad una maggior considerazione di que-sto personaggio. Nonostante la chiara influenza che il suo pensiero ha esercitato sui maggiori rappresentanti

This chapter examines the constitution and evolution of reflexivity in International Relations (IR) in the wider socio-epistemic context of the history of reflexive thought. This dual reading of the genealogy of reflexivity aims to (re)construct and productively exploit a different narrative on reflexivity that opens up IR’s frame of reference beyond the predominant, self-limiting and distortive perspective, which anchors reflexivity exclusively and inherently in IR’s ‘post-positivist turn’ and ‘third debate’. In doing so I argue that far from being a distinctive feature of the ‘post-positivist’ and ‘critical’ scholarship of the last few decades, reflexivity is rather co-constitutive of the emergence of modern positive thought, as illustrated in the now-forgotten positivism of Auguste Comte. An engagement with Comtean ‘historical positivism’, and its early critique of objectivist-foundationalist epistemology and philosophy of science, delineates a coherent conception of reflexivity that can help IR scholars address some fundamental failures of the ‘post-positivist turn’. Grounded in the acknowledgment of the historicity and social-situatedness of scientific knowledge but committed to the emancipatory role of science against metaphysical and theological thought, Comte’s project illuminates the way out of our current incoherencies and dilemmas while providing us with a unity of consciousness, purpose, and praxis.

Hans Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs. Power Politics appeared one year after he received tenure at the University of Chicago. Thus,
the monograph demarcates the beginning of Morgenthau’s career in
the United States, to which he had emigrated nine years earlier. Three main aspects
seem important for understanding this work. The first is Morgenthau’s
bewilderment about American political culture and, as he perceived it, its cheerful
optimism about the betterment of politics, society, and humanity in general. The
second aspect is the nature of the argument: Scientific Man is a dogmatic tract, an
attempt to hammer home certain philosophical positions—positions that were
largely unpopular in the U.S. social sciences in the s (and later)—rather
than a reflective scholarly elaboration of certain philosophical commitments.
The third is Morgenthau’s place between two academic cultures: Morgenthau’s
language in his American writings partly stems from, but also tries to leave behind,
his European academic socialization. The monograph thus reflects the author’s
peculiar situation, as he inhabits two sometimes crucially different
semantic and cultural contexts, but fails to bridge or broker them.

*Volumen intermedio EL DISCURSO SOBRE EL ESPIRITU POSITIVO, publicado en 1844 como introducción a un «Tratado filosófico de astronomía popular», es una incomparable exposición, a la vez densa y clara, del pensamiento de AUGUSTO COMTE (1798-1857), fundador y maestro de una de las corrientes filosóficas que dominaron el siglo XIX. Obra de madurez, posterior al «Sistema d~ filosofía positiva», encierra vigorosamente los momentos fundamentales de las concepciones comtianas y los agrupa en páginas tan escasas como concisas y trasparentes. Como indica JULIAN MARIAS, prologuista y traductor del volumen, «la peregrina suerte del positivismo, al querer convertirlo en casi-religión;' ha hecho que llegue, sobre todo, a nosotros • > jerarquizado y hieratizado, y que se desvanezca toda la sustancia filosófica que pueda tener; conviene, pues, volver. a las fuentes vivas para entender qué han sido la filosofía y el mundo después del Idealismo alemán». Por lo demás, hay en la obra de Comte, aparte de su estricta intención filosófica y de sus concepciones sobre los estadios del progreso de la humanidad, una visión de la realidad histórica, un intento de sociología e-ideas claras sobre la política de su época «y acaso, también, de la nuestra». El libro de bolsillo Alianza Editorial

En este capítulo se reconstruye el argumento del filósofo mexicano Antonio Caso en contra del positivismo. Caso sugiere una relación antagónica entre dos planos de la existencia: el plano de las ciencias positivas y el plano de la contemplación estética y los actos desinteresados. Este desinterés último y elevado es lo que la doctrina cristiana denomina caridad.