This article analyzes Machado de Assis's short story O Espelho (1882) from the perspective of moderate semantic holism, arguing that personal identity can be understood as a discursive phenomenon whose stability depends on networks of belief, practices of recognition, and context-sensitive semantic anchors. Rather than adopting a psychological reading focused on inner life, the paper interprets Jacobina's crisis as a semantic destabilization of self-reference: when the social practices that name and confirm him withdraw, the meaning of the self becomes blurred and indeterminate. The military uniform functions as a re-anchoring device that restores identity by reorganizing a contextual economy of relevance. On this view, the story operates as a literary laboratory for examining the semantic dependence of the self and the fragility of identity once its discursive conditions collapse.
This article examines the concept of human nature through the lens of moderate innatism, contrasting it with both radical innatism and strong culturalist perspectives. It argues that while radical approaches-such as those in Evolutionary Psychology-postulate genetically determined, universal behavioral traits, moderate innatism proposes the existence of innate psychological mechanisms that are indirect and potential in their influence. These psychological mechanisms can be modulated, regulated, or even inhibited by higher-order processes such as conditioning and deliberation. The result is a deflated, pluralistic, and causal-essentialist conception of human nature, which accounts for behavioral diversity while acknowledging the role of evolved predispositions. This framework avoids the pitfalls of genetic determinism and aligns with contemporary evolutionary and neuroscientific evidence, offering a nuanced middle ground in the enduring nature-versus-culture debate.
This article examines the transformation of the archaeological method from Michel Foucault to Giorgio Agamben, analyzing how archaeology constitutes itself as a means of accessing the present through the investigation of the conditions of possibility of knowledge. In Foucault, archaeology describes the archives and systems of discursive dispersion that regulate what can be said and seen in each episteme, distancing itself from both hermeneutics and metahistory. Its shift towards genealogy incorporates the political dimension, understood as the coupling of erudite knowledge and local memories in current struggles. Agamben, for his part, transforms Foucauldian archaeology through the introduction of the paradigm as a methodological tool, recovering Enzo Melandri's analogical thinking. This paradigmatology allows movement from singularity to singularity without resorting to a founding origin, neutralizing dichotomies through an analogical medium that opens nuances suppressed by binary logic. The concept of use [chresis], understood as a middle voice where subject and object enter into indetermination, functions as a hinge between method and political life. Through the paradigm of the slave, Agamben exposes the constitutive inoperativity captured by sovereign dispositifs.
This work aims to critically analyze the meaning and functions of borders in the context of international migration. The article begins with a brief overview of different related concepts and the historical evolution of borders, before focusing on their three core functions: legal-political, symbolic, and flow regulation. As a functional concept, borders cannot be understood without considering these three dimensions. A fourth function will then be added: to spatially circumscribe opportunities, put forward by cosmopolitan approaches to denounce the unjust consequences that such an arbitrary and morally irrelevant fact as the drawing of borders has on people's life chances. Finally, the proposal of open borders is examined, and the need to rethink them from the perspective of global justice is asserted
El objetivo general del artículo consiste en examinar el concepto de naturaleza humana desde la perspectiva del innatismo moderado, contrastándolo con el innatismo radical y las posturas culturalistas. Frente a los enfoques radicales, que postulan rasgos conductuales universales y genéticamente determinados, el innatismo moderado propone la existencia de mecanismos psicológicos innatos, de influencia indirecta y potencial. Estos mecanismos psicológicos pueden ser modulados, regulados o incluso inhibidos por procesos de orden superior (condicionamiento y deliberación). El resultado es una concepción deflacionaria, pluralista y de esencialismo causal de la naturaleza humana, que explica la diversidad conductual sin renunciar a ciertas predisposiciones evolucionadas. Este marco evita el determinismo genético y se alinea con evidencias contemporáneas de la neurociencia y la evolución, ofreciendo una vía intermedia promisoria en el debate naturaleza versus cultura.
