Virtualia Journal

Socrates the Traveler

2026-06-30T20:07:42-03:00

This article aims to present the character of Plato's Socrates in The Republic as a kind of traveler, using some images of travel that Plato employs at the beginning of his dialogue: the catabasis, the theōriā, nautical voyages, and long-distance journeys. The aim is to demonstrate that even the very sedentary Socrates, who, according to Diogenes Laertius, traveled only in times of war, or even Socrates, the most deeply rooted Athenian of philosophers, can also be seen from the perspective of a certain nomadism.

The Symbolic Battlefield of the Woke

2026-06-30T20:07:26-03:00

This article examines the contemporary circulation of the term “woke” and its transformation from an anti-racist awakening gesture into a marketable repertoire. Through a conceptual genealogy and three case studies (Bud Light, Jaguar, American Eagle), it investigates how advertising campaigns reconfigure identities, turning differences into symbolic value and simulacra. Drawing on Foucault, Deleuze, Han, and Baudrillard, the text shows how difference can both open lines of flight and be reabsorbed by capital’s logic, functioning as a device of power that modulates subjectivity through positivity and visibility. The essay concludes that identity politics, once commodified, risks becoming a consumable surface, draining its emancipatory potential.

Habermas and the Brazilian Context

2026-06-30T20:06:20-03:00

The article “Habermas and the Brazilian Context: Theoretical Translation and Practical Challenge” proposes a situated reading of Habermas’s theory, reinterpreting communicative rationality in light of Brazil’s historical, social, and political conditions. Based on the idea that “thinking Habermas from the South” entails an epistemological rather than merely terminological crossing, the text examines the tensions between the universalism of the theory and the peripheral contingency of Latin American societies. It argues that, in Brazil, language functions simultaneously as a medium of understanding and as a symbolic arena of struggle, where recognition becomes a daily battle against structural inequalities. When reread from the South, the theory of communicative action acquires ethical and political depth: it becomes a project of insurgent reason, transforming listening into an act of emancipation and language into an instrument of democratic reconstruction.

Overview of the concept of incarnation. From the 4th century AD to the 18th century.

2026-06-30T20:06:36-03:00

This article aims to outline an overview of the concept of incarnation from the 4th century AD to the 18th century. This is justified insofar as the 4th century marks a watershed in the history of the Christian church and its decisions, mainly from the Council of Nicaea onwards, will set the tone for the debate surrounding the concept of incarnation in subsequent centuries until after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. To outline this overview, our text begins with the Christological debate of the 4th century that culminates in the formulation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed in 381 AD. We then analyze how the concept of incarnation is treated by three scholastic authors, namely, Alexander of Hales, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and then we highlight the tone of the debate in modernity until the 18th century.

Cameras and bodies

2026-06-30T20:06:53-03:00

Following in the footsteps of Heidegger and Cavell, this text aims to explore how technological advancements have developed new relationships between individuals and images. In particular, it will be argued that we have a yearning to see – we take sight as the primary sense, thus neglecting other ways of relating to the world except through visual contact as a form of consumption. To elaborate on this perspective, parts of the film Men, Women & Children will be analyzed, and how the central characters has their development affected by the consumption of images.

The reversal of the prosthetic moment

2026-06-30T20:07:09-03:00

In this essay, we examine the dual function of technology, namely, the expansion of human senses—the prosthetic moment of technology—and the reversal of this expansion of human senses onto the fragile and minuscule human body, whereby the machine becomes both armor and a generator of excessive stimuli flooding the human body. We map this difference based on the different technical modes of capitalist production, from manufacturing to machinery, and inscribe the dual function of technology within the conditions of transformation of the human psychosensory apparatus, brought about by the process of industrial modernization. It is through industrial modernization that the reversal of the prosthetic moment occurs: from technology as an instrumental appendage of humans, to humans as an appendage organ of the technical machinery subjected to the process of capital valorization.

Design, counter-conduct, and algorithms

2026-06-30T20:06:00-03:00

In this study, we propose to think of design as the capacity to conceive critical and disobedient ways of life. To this end, in the first section, we outline how part of utilitarian design is conceived from the concept of obedience, shaping behaviors and modes of being. Based on a historical view of the philosophy of design and examples of what we consider the practices of disobedient artists and designers, we address both the concept of disobedience and modes of counter-conduct as ways of escaping the subtle control of algorithms. Finally, we reflect on the possibilities of designing disobedient ways of life from forms of being-in-the-world closer to art and live performances that focus on corporeality, which allows us to perceive that the most disobedient way of life involves a more critical life that understands the value of being-with other beings in a more situated way.

Schlick's Critique of Kant's Synthetic A Priori Knowledge

2026-06-30T20:05:45-03:00

This article examines Kant’s concept of synthetic a priori judgments and Moritz Schlick’s criticisms from a logical-positivist perspective. For Kant, such judgments expand knowledge with universality and necessity, grounding mathematics, geometry, physics, and the very possibility of metaphysics as a science. They arise from pure forms of sensibility (space and time) and from categories of the understanding, such as causality. Schlick challenges this view by arguing that: (i) geometry depends on axioms and conventions and is reshaped by non-Euclidean systems and relativity; (ii) arithmetic is analytic, based on definitions and rules rather than temporal intuitions; and (iii) causality is an empirical hypothesis, not an a priori category. He concludes that synthetic a priori judgments do not exist, and thus metaphysics cannot claim scientific status.

Machiavellian Anthropological Reflections

2026-06-30T20:05:29-03:00

This work aims to analyze the thought developed by Machiavelli, contained in his writings, reflections and concepts about the virtuous action of a ruler, in the light of commentators who debate about the author and his philosophy. Seeking to be faithful to Maquiavelian thought, we seek to identify the pillars of his moral and political theory, taking into account their historical references, concepts and analysis. When contemplating the philosophy contained in the writings of Machiavelli, we cannot leave aside his worked concepts and the historical context by which he is inserted and speaks. The break with the medieval concept of ethics, linked to the dogmas of the Christian faith, is overcome by another model in Machiavelli’s theory, significantly changing the concept of moral action. The new model of virtue, called virtù, pari passo a fortuna, are the instruments developed by the author capable of transforming reality through effective political action. Thus, it is intended to perform a critical reading of the facts and the consequences brought by the thought of the author, as well as the originality of this to explain the scenario of political conflicts. For this, the readings of the Florentine author in the original language, Italian, as well as of commentators like Fabio Frosini, will be decisive to develop the proposed themes.

From Ancient Greece to the New World

2026-06-30T20:05:14-03:00

This article investigates the role of philosophical skepticism in the formation of European modernity, linking its roots in Ancient Greece to the historical processes that shaped Europe between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. By examining the structural medieval crises—wars, plagues, famine, feudal decline, religious reforms, and political instability—it shows how doubt reemerged both as a philosophical attitude and as a response to the social, cultural, and epistemic tensions of the period. It then explores the relationship between skepticism and the great navigations, highlighting how the metaphor of “Columbus’s egg” synthesizes both the rupture with medieval paradigms and the logic of appropriation that characterized European expansion. The encounter with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas produced an epistemological crisis that unsettled the European imaginary and contributed to the reconfiguration of modern skepticism. In this context, the works of Montaigne (2018), Danilo Marcondes (2019), and Popkin (2000) serve as our point of departure and are analyzed as privileged expressions of this critique, revealing the relativity of customs and the violence embedded in colonial narratives. The article concludes that skepticism, far from being merely an abstract philosophical current, is a fundamental element for understanding the tensions between modernity, coloniality, and the invention of the Americas.

Akira

2026-06-30T20:04:57-03:00

This article discusses the Japanese work Akira (1988) as a symbolic expression of the human-machine hybridism and the crisis of modern humanism. Through the analysis of Tetsuo Shima's becoming-cyborg, it investigates the dissolution of the boundaries between the organic and the technological, articulating concepts from Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Deleuze and Guattari, Althusser, Nick Land and Mark Fisher. Methodologically, the research adopts a theoretical-conceptual and analytical approach, examining the film as a critical device for the ontological and political transformations of the subject in modernity. The study demonstrates how the figure of the cyborg destabilizes central dichotomies—human/non-human, nature/culture, technology/body—and operates as a metaphor for capitalist acceleration and post-human deterritorialization. It concludes that Akira proposes a reconfiguration of the human through the failure of the modern project and the emergence of new collective and hybrid sensibilities.

Can We Teach Morality to Machines?

2026-06-30T20:04:41-03:00

This review presents, analyzes, and critically discusses the work "Can We Teach Morality to Machines? – Artificial Intelligence and Ethics in Debate" (original title: Podemos Ensinar Moralidade às Máquinas? – Inteligência Artificial e Ética em Debate), published in 2025 by Dialética and written by Flávia Braga de Azambuja, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from UFPel. Derived from the author's doctoral thesis, the text seeks to ascertain whether an Artificial Intelligence can make moral decisions, which would imply an understanding of concepts such as right and wrong, permissible and forbidden, and good and evil. To this purpose, Azambuja investigates the possibility of representing abstract moral knowledge through modal logic. The book stands out for its interdisciplinary nature, as it deals with philosophical, technological, and even psychological themes. The text is divided into five segments, each with a well-organized internal structure and, in many cases, self-sufficient: the first part introduces the field of Artificial Intelligence and concepts such as Machine Learning, Deep-learning, Connectionism, and related terms. Also in part one, Azambuja discusses the consequentialist and utilitarian moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill, as well as the social constructivist approach of Jesse Prinz. In the second part, the work discusses mental logic, mental models, and the phenomenon of "belief bias." Chapter three is dedicated to modal logic, a type of non-monotonic formal logic that helps capture relations of possibility, necessity, and belief. In the fourth part, the preceding reflections on logic are used to address three moral dilemmas involving issues of public health, individual freedom, and national security. The last part of the book seeks to answer the initial question, finalizing the argument built throughout the entire work. "Can We Teach Morality to Machines?" is commendable as an introductory and accessible work. However, due to structural and methodological reasons, there are some insufficiencies in the treatment given to the subject of morality, which loses space to logic and cognitive psychology. The work, therefore, focuses too much on theoretical philosophy to the detriment of practical philosophy, which results in a final answer that is not fully satisfactory in view of the question posed, considering the breadth of perspectives and the intense debate that is inseparable from moral philosophy.

Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask and Gustav Radbruch

2026-06-30T20:04:24-03:00

This article investigates the axiological-juridical foundations underpinning Gustav Radbruch's philosophy of law, with special attention to his renowned formula of extreme injustice, proceeding from the hypothesis that this formulation does not represent a rupture in the author's work, but rather the organic maturation of a thought carefully constructed upon the structures of the Philosophy of Values of the Baden School, particularly in the figure of Heinrich Rickert, and upon Emil Lask's theory of objects, the latter being profoundly strained by the phenomenological critique of Edmund Husserl. The argumentative path begins with a detailed analysis of Rickert's method of cultural sciences, advances through Lask's critical mediation, which inscribes law as a cultural object referred to values, and culminates in the Radbruchian synthesis itself, which defines law as a reality whose meaning lies in serving the idea of justice. The ineliminable conflict among the antinomies of the idea of law — justice, purpose, and legal certainty — is then examined, to finally demonstrate how the formula of extreme injustice emerges as a necessary result of a philosophy that situates law in the intermediate space between being and ought-to-be, fact and value, finding in human rights the insurmountable material limit of positivity.

Weitz and the Open Concept Argument

2026-06-30T20:04:09-03:00

The first aim of this article is to reconstruct Morris Weitz’s open concept argument in defense of the thesis that the concept of art cannot be defined. The interpretation proposed here has two important consequences: (a) Weitz is not actually committed to the controversial claim, sometimes attributed to him, that only open concepts are compatible with manifestations of creativity; and (b) the open concept argument does not presuppose the family resemblance model, so that objections to the latter, even if correct, do not refute the former. The second aim of the article is to respond to the objection raised by Noël Carroll that the open concept argument constitutes an instance of the fallacy of equivocation. We argue that Carroll’s criticism relies on a possible but implausible reconstruction of Morris Weitz’s proposal. On the one hand, Carroll introduces at least two unnecessary premises into Weitz’s argument. Removing these premises would not only avoid the alleged fallacy but would also yield a reading that is more faithful to Weitz’s text. On the other hand, the reconstruction of the open concept argument proposed here is more charitable than Carroll’s, and also more faithful to Weitz’s argumentative strategy. We conclude that there are no good reasons to accept that the open concept argument is a case of the fallacy of equivocation.

The Linguistic Impossibility of the Divine:

2026-06-30T20:03:55-03:00

This paper argues for a novel thesis in philosophy of language and philosophy of religion: that language itself renders impossible any genuine encounter with, description of, or reference to infinite, perfect, or omnipotent beings. Unlike traditional arguments against divine attributes that focus on logical contradictions between properties (omnipotence paradoxes, problem of evil), this paper demonstrates that the very act of linguistic engagement with the concept of the divine necessarily corrupts and limits any absolute being. Drawing on insights from Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Derrida's deconstruction, and original analysis of the performative contradictions inherent in theological discourse, we establish that the linguistic prerequisite for conflict makes any "speakable paradise" logically impossible. This constitutes an original contribution to both negative theology and philosophy of language, providing a new foundation for understanding why mystical traditions consistently emphasize the ineffability of the divine.

Digital Democracy and Pathological Digital Interactions

2026-06-30T20:03:39-03:00

The research focus of this article is the latest book by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, “A New Structural Change of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics” (2023), in which he offers a contemporary analysis of the digital tools of democracy, specifically in the context of deliberative politics and the formation of public opinion. Our aim is to conduct a critical examination of Habermas’s idea of the deformation of the public sphere, precisely due to the rise of digital-technological instruments. Furthermore, we seek to identify and highlight shortcomings in Habermas’s analysis regarding the functioning of algorithmic degenerations that fragment democracy. This research analyzes how subtle aspects of the establishment of technological neoliberalism, beginning in the 21st century, bring about a collapse of the democratic model, with the aim of perpetuating the digitization of democracy, resulting in conspiracy theories, fake news, and hate speech. To this end, this work explores the Habermasian ideas present in that book, contrasting them with the perspectives of critics of contemporary algorithmic trends, such as Byung-Chul Han (1959-), Shoshana Zuboff (1951-), Evgeny Morozov (1984-), among others. As a result, this investigation raises alarms about the minefield in which contemporary democracy finds itself, pointing out shortcomings in Habermasian analysis and outlining fundamental steps for reflecting on the pathological dictates of the algorithm.

Artificial Intelligence under the Scrutiny of Theories of Knowledge

2026-06-30T20:03:23-03:00

This article discusses whether “knowledge” and “intelligence” can be attributed to machines in light of major theories of knowledge. Drawing on Hume’s empiricism, the rationalism of Plato and Leibniz, and Kant’s synthesis, it examines the functioning of machine learning models and, in particular, large language models (LLMs), emphasizing the role of repetition, induction, and habit. It then analyzes whether such models can be regarded as genuine bearers of knowledge or merely as sophisticated simulators of human cognitive capacities. The text also addresses the biases that emerge from Artificial Intelligence (AI) training processes and the risk of amplifying pre-existing asymmetries in the underlying data. In conclusion, based on the Theories of Knowledge, it becomes possible to conclude whether cognitive activity can be attributed exclusively to the human subject or whether it can be extended to the machine.

Purification in Plato

2026-06-30T20:03:05-03:00

This article examines purification (kátharsis) in Plato's philosophy, with an emphasis on the Phaedo, highlighting its role in the separation between soul and body as a condition for true knowledge. It also proposes a grammar of purification in Plato, illustrating how this concept structures his views on knowledge, ethics, and ontology, establishing kátharsis as a central principle of his metaphysics. In the epistemological realm, kátharsis appears as an imperative, requiring the withdrawal of the senses for the contemplation of truth. This separation also has an ethical dimension, as attachment to the body leads to ignorance, while purification directs the soul toward wisdom. Thus, philosophy is framed as a cathartic exercise that prepares and purifies the soul, enabling it to reach its true nature by freeing itself from bodily influences and turning to the intelligible.

Hyperaesthetics

2026-06-30T20:02:51-03:00

This article proposes the concept of hyperaesthetics as an inaugural hypothesis for understanding the emergence of a new technical regime of the sensible in contemporary times. In the face of widespread aestheticization, the technomediation of perception, and the financialization of attention, hyperaesthetics is presented not as mere digital aesthetics or style, but as a structural mutation of sensitivity operated by digital architectures. Between aisthesis and the modern aesthetics of judgment, a regime of performed presence, sensory coding, and technical production of experience is outlined. In dialogue with Benjamin, Gumbrecht, Kittler, and Baudrillard, the sensible appears as a strategic field of modulation, control, and economic valuation. The essay establishes conceptual landmarks, discusses epistemological, political, and ontological foundations, and indicates effects on perception, desire, and the economy of presence. Naming hyperaesthetics is, ultimately, an epistemic, political, and ontological gesture.

Do tempo como medida do movimento ao tempo absoluto

2026-06-09T03:05:02-03:00

The article traces the conceptual trajectory that leads from the Aristotelian definition of time as the measure of motion to the modern formulation of absolute time. It examines how the Aristotelian notion of time – defined as the number or measure of the motion of celestial bodies – shaped the early development of astronomy. With the advancement of Copernican astronomy from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onward, this connection began to unravel: time ceased to be understood through motion and came to be conceived primarily as duration and succession. This process culminated in the Newtonian notion of absolute time, independent of external motion, which flows uniformly without reference to any body or external change.

Alain Badiou de Ser e Evento a Condições

2026-06-30T20:02:34-03:00

This article aims to demonstrate how Badiou responds to the crisis of contemporary philosophy, which is linked to the announcement by the Heideggerian, Marxist, and analytic traditions of the end of metaphysics. Here, metaphysics is stripped of its status as the science of being, which falls back upon the very domain of ontological thought. In view of this, Badiou finds in the return to Plato and in the mathematical novelty of the last centuries the means to reconstitute a mathematical ontology capable of representing the characteristics of that which appears in the world—that is, of that which is capable of being represented. What emerges in this representation is the fundamental feature of being and of all existing beings: multiplicity. However, mathematics by itself cannot decide how, from the void, something new can be apprehended—the event, that is, the inaugural novelty of each condition of philosophy. There is a need for the presentation of presentation, of being, but also—and perhaps more importantly—there is a need for subjects faithful to the event.

Angústia, Possibilidade e Liberdade: Um estudo kierkegaardiano através da obra “O Idiota” de Dostoiévski

2026-06-30T20:02:17-03:00

This article investigates a development within the concept of angst introduced by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard through its articulation with a narrative described in The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Starting from the understanding that angst does not depend on concrete realizations, the analysis focuses on the account of a condemned man facing execution, in which an extreme configuration becomes evident: even in the face of the inexorability of death, the individual’s consciousness persists in projecting situations that are not linked to any effective horizon of realization. Such narrative allows for the exploration of a form of experience in which openness to possibility is not annulled, but is almost entirely restricted in terms of the capacity for action. In this way, the duality imposed by the narrated context indicates the need to rethink the Kierkegaardian concept of angst and its developments at the limits of its formulation, especially in contexts in which freedom is radically constrained.

Keywords: angst; Dostoevsky; possibility; freedom; consciousness.