The Thinning and Deformation of Ethical and Political Concepts in the Era of Globalization

In contemporary literature, it is acknowledged as a fact that while we currently find ourselves facing the ‘Era of Globalization’, still very little work has been done to analyze this concept, which rather appears as a deus ex machina; as a product of the contemporary crisis, lacking political history and semantic genealogy, wanting nevertheless to become an explanatory wildcard for all present events, both in a positive and negative sense. The initial thesis of this article is that the current concept of globalization is an empty one that has been stripped of its historical content. This emptying is part of the ‘postmodern’ processes of thinning and deformation afflicting ethical-political concepts (freedom, equality, democracy) by depriving them of their ‘modern’ content without endowing any other. Taking this into account, I defend the consequent thesis that the suppression of these concepts’ semantic history implies in turn the eradication of the ethical commitment that they entailed, whose inheritance by contrast should not be renounced. I conclude that there is the need for a socio-political pedagogy that contributes to transmitting ‘responsibility for the concepts’ that are the true shapers of collective identities. Without this responsibility, our ability to adopt any other type of historical, ethical or political responsibility would be impeded. With this proposal, I want to recover in its true ‘universal’—not ‘global’—sense the Leibnizian motto ‘Theoria cum praxi’ taken up by the Enlightenment, in which a renewed philosophy of history acts as a bridge between history (memory) and politics (action), endowing both with ethical content. This article is an outcome of the projects WORLDBRIDGES (F7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES: PIRSES-GA2013-612644); PRISMAS (FFI2013-42395-P); and NEW TRUST-CM (S2015-HUM-3466 / DER2015-


Introduction: Globalism,g lobalization, crisis and conceptualr eductionism
The great debate on globalization burgeoned two decades agow ith the turn of the century,u nifying at least three different phenomenat hat in the collective imagination converged under the name of 'globalt hreat':p lanetary ecology, free market economya nd information technology.Iwill not delve here into the details of the debate maintained by sociologists Ulrich Beck and Niklas Luhmann (among others) on the global threats that weret hemeda round the socalled 'risk society' (Beck 1986;L uhmann 2003). YetIdo want to reiterate ad istinctionthat Beck made between three different concepts that has become somewhat blurred: 'globality' (we live in aworld in which no country or group can live on the fringes of global society); 'globalism' (a conception defending thatt he world market dislodgeso rr eplacesp olitical action); and 'globalization' (the processes by virtue of which the sovereign nation states interminglea nd interweave through transnational actors). In my opinion: (i) this distinction has become increasinglyblurred to the extent thatthe intuition that different economic, political and cultural forms do not cease to interweave has overlapped with the ideologyofworld market domination (liberalism and neoliberalism), crystallizing in the idea of an inevitable and impersonal process that will affect the whole planetw hether we want it to or not-ap rocess called 'globalization '; and (ii) in sociological approaches, we have forgotten aperspective that years before the philosopherso fe thics Hans Jonas (1979) and Agnes Heller (1988) had shown, aiming to emphasize the indissoluble relationship of individual and collective actionswith the degree of responsibility of the actors of these actions, as I have highlighted previously ( Roldán 1999). Fort his reason, we face ag lobalization that, on the one hand, inherits the deterministic and dehumanized characteristics of the oft-criticized classic idea of 'progress'-with acomponent of greater threat by the 'historical acceleration' that it introduces (Koselleck 2000)-and that,onthe other hand, by adopting such apolysemic character (economic, ecological, political,c ultural, etc.), evolvest ob ecome an empty concept.
Less than adecade ago, the economic crisisof2008 further polarized the socalled 'debate on globalization'-both towards an egative sense of the concept globalization, and towards its identification with its economic content.I t seemed, in this way, that there was onlyo ne crisis-an economic crisis-and that it was the onlya nd inevitable resulto ft he process of globalization. I have been working(togetherwith some of the colleagues that publish in this collective book)onthe analysis of this simplification as the main leader of the project 'The Philosophical-Moral Prismso fC rises: Towards aN ew Socio-Political Pedagogy',a nd can verify both thatw ea re facing ap lurality of crises, and that this phenomenon is not as novel as commonlyb elieved, but rather recurrent throughout history.T ot akeaconcrete example of the latter,L eibniz mentions in his writings 'ac risis that ravagesE urope',while Koselleck devotes in Heidelberghis doctoral thesis to the subject: Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zurPathogenese der bürgerligen Welt (1954), referring respectively to am oral and ap olitical crisis. The stereotype of economic crisis has become ap retext thath as allowed the creation of apocalyptical political designs with aspecific ideological bias underminingt he importance of the welfares tate. Usingt he metaphor of a 'prism', our aim wast oe xamine the concept of crisis from several perspectives-philosophical, sociological, historical, juridical, political and ethical-in order to approach the complexity of this phenomena. Therefore, our team broughttogether sociologists,c onceptual historians, philologists,h istorians and political scientists, from different culturalt raditions. The analysis of the above-mentioned issue required ac orrect diagnosis facilitated by the etymologyi tself. After all, in addition to 'separation' and 'dispute', 'crisis' also means 'process' and 'justice' in Greek; from 'divide' (krínein)comes kritikós-the one thatdiscerns or judgesand from there derives the critique or the aptitude to judge.
The etymological background of the concept of 'crisis' has further channeled my latest research towardsthe objective of tracking both its continuities and ruptures in the history of our concepts. The historical inflectionst hatt hinkers like Thomas Kuhn call 'paradigm shifts' are in fact warningusofasemantic renewal concerning certain conceptst hat compel them to abandon some referents in favorofadopting others. This process always takes place gradually, but we nonetheless become aware of it at ac ertain moment,i nt he same way, for instance, that happens with aging: though growingold is agradual process, thereisamoment at which we 'suddenly' notice it,a fter seeing our imagei nt he mirror.The medicalmeaningthatthe concept of 'crisis' alsohas in Spanish and English (we can say: 'the disease has become critical')seems to me avery adequate complement to explain this phenomenon. In every disease we witness a 'critical' moment thatenables the healing of the same if the diagnosish as been successful. Re-directing this metaphor to the issue at hand: we witness atime in which concepts are becoming 'empty' of their previous content,t ob egin being filled with others (hence the title of this article). As Isee it,the ethical-political concepts we use, includingt he one of globalization, are undergoing ac ritical period in which, as in adisease, they are losing weight and deforming,sofar without finding an articulation that will lead them to be filled with univocal meaning,granting that this would ever be possible. It is preciselyi nt his sense that in recent decades we have witnessed an inflation of 'turns' in philosophical inquiry:t he 'linguistic turn', 'contextual turn', 'iconic turn',e tc. All this twisting,c oupled The Thinning and Deformation of Ethicala nd Political Concepts with the historical acceleration that we are experiencing,h as placed us in as ituation of 'vertigo' (Böhme 2008), thanks to which we no longer know wherewe are going.
In moments of loss of balance, it helps to step on firm ground and to hold on to astructure sufficientlyanchored such that it does not fall with us. In the definition of the current moment,thinkingabout 'perspectives' (as Leibniz and Or-tegayGasset alreadyadvocated) instead of 'turns' helps us to find our waytoa new conceptual articulation of reality.D ifferent perspectiveso ft he same reality become implemented from an interdisciplinary perspective,i nvolving us in the complexity of the real, which can onlyb ea ccessedt hrough scientific cooperation, by virtueo ft he complementarity provided by collective effort.B esides being complex, the conceptsa re not neutral; rather they transmit certain ethical-political values-something always attempted by established powers (be they political,religious and/or cultural), and which different communities or citizenships try to resist.
In what follows, Iw ill try to show these twom ovementsi nt wo small sections. Iw ill refer to the restorative process of ethical-political conceptsw ithin the framework of anew philosophyofhistory,from an ethical and semanticperspective respectively.Iwill conclude by pointing to some of the tasks that now lie before the new philosopher of history,inthe so-called 'EraofGlobalization' and on the road to becomingr esponsible for concepts.
The 'ethical perspective' in the face of 'historical-political prescription': valuing from history In his work on the Begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts), Reinhart Koselleck evidenced that historicale xperiences had been leaving theirm ark on language -one thatthe historian can trace and try to interpret.However,not insignificantly,the possibility of living such experiences presupposed in turn that the actors of history necessarilyh ad to have certain notions and categories around which they organized theirlived experiences, since social reality is linguisticallyconstituted and onlyw hat has been previouslyconceptualized is visible and intelligible to the actors.I ti sp reciselyt his dialectic between notions and experiences that conceptual history strivest ob ring to light around its two well-known expressions: 'space of experiences' and 'horizon of expectations' (Koselleck 1988).
Seen in this way, everythingseems to have gone by calmlyand smoothly. But actually, farfrom being objective,exhaustive and common accounts of asociety or people, historiesare the subjective,incompleteand partial or biased accounts presented by the established powers with hegemonic pretensions. It becomes not onlya'conceptual description' of the past,but also a 'valuation prescription' for how the society in question should continue to be. Thus, the 'collective memory with claims of universality' attempts to build by the forceofsemantics a 'collective identity' thatultimatelyis'fictitious'.And in each coming back that each individual or group makes to thath istory-as if it wereat rip to Narnia-it can be verifiedthat this alleged universal history was neither so universalnor so all-encompassing, but rather local and biased: the history of the aristocratic, liberal and patriarchal groups (Roldán 2013a)o ft he most powerful and dominant emerging western cities.
Reinhart Koselleck contemplated in his works what he calls 'Sattelzeit' ('saddle period')-the period from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century,¹ in which the same concept of 'society' was being forged, and the idea of 'nation' wasg ainingg reat strength against the more neutral idea of 'state' developedi nt he first modernity. 'Nationalism' gained great relevancea tt his time in Europe, North America and Latin America, becomingt he new subject of political life against moref ederalist and pro-European streams of thought that werer eclaimingt he ideas of Saint-Pierre, Leibniz, Rousseau and even more cosmopolitan approaches like the Kantian one, to which the reflections of contemporary authorshavebeenreturning in an effort to emphasize solidarity among all the peoples of the earth (Habermas 1998,p.79). Aside from some divergences in focus (on which Iwill not dwell now), regarding the German perspective of Reinhart Koselleck, authorss uch as Quentin Skinner (who gives an Anglo-Saxon interpretation), GiuseppeD uso (Italian interpretation), Jacques Guilhaumou (French interpretation) and Javier Fernández Sebastián( Spanish and Ibero-American interpretation, especiallyf or the IBERCONCEPTOS project of 2004) have been unanimous in stressingthat political and semantic processes are interwoven in this erat os uch an extent that when authors speak of history, nation or society,they are referringtothe samething from different perspectives.
Most human groups-comprisingb oth the 'actors' of history,a nd its 'interpreters' (historians)-possess and cultivates ome kind of relationship with the past,e speciallyw ith what they imagine is their genealogy, their own collective past,a sÁ lvarez Junco (2013) has shown.I nt his way, history has normally been erected as the discipline thatc ollects and thematizes these collective pasts-although often we forgett hat the hegemonic powers write and present the typicala nd the most spread histories,t endingt ou nify them as the stories  Form yc riticism of this periodization, see: Roldán 2013b.
The Thinning and Deformation of Ethicala nd PoliticalC oncepts of just one of the manyhuman groups that conform collectivities and to silence the 'real multiplicity' of different groups' voices.These told histories thus constitute what we call a 'narrow mindset' thatoriginates from the 'hegemonic group' or 'victor',forgetting the voices of the 'defeated'-as Reyes Mate points out (Mate 1991;2011)-of the marginalized and of the invisibilized, as has been the case of women in all the histories of knowledge (Roldán 2013a), earning mention in political histories onlyb ym erit of their social status.
In short: on the one hand,from afalse historical unity (Belvedresi 2012), the plurality of collective imaginaries was usurped; on the other hand, an umber of dominant political concepts, inheritors of am odern tradition, werei mposed as hegemonic, when they wereactuallyanexpression of de facto powers of the origins of modernity-what Ihavecalled in my work the 'triumphantline of the Enlightenment' (Roldán 2005;2 012). These concepts weren ot neutral, but rather transmitters of particulare thical-political values. Forc enturies,p rotagonism was entrusted to some concepts of the Enlightenment that nurtured away of interpreting the meaning of history in afinalistic and deterministic way, leading to ac raving for explaining historicale vents that we call the 'universal history' through an all-encompassing, scientistic discourse, rendering these concepts predominant: rationality, teleology, continuity and perfection (progress). At the same time, other elements present in the works of authorsofthe Enlightenment werer elegated. They did not triumph and wereh idden for almost two centuries in the 'blind spot' (that part thatcannot be seen in the rear-view mirror when we are driving) of history-blind spots to which Israel (2010) also refers,but which now,however,begin to break through and laythe foundations for anew philosophyofhistory doublyconcernedwith ethics: the one that Iwant to defend and uphold here.
In other words, alongside these concepts that we maycategorized as 'rigid', there appears in the origin of modernity another group of 'flexible' concepts (Roldán /N avarro 2007)t hata re instrumental in introducing diversity,g radualism and pragmatism (Ausín 2006) into our reflections. These concepts are none other than thoseo fc ontingency, freedom (autonomy), equality and tolerance (Roldán 1997)-all of them placed under the umbrella of the broader principle of 'plurality',w hich Leibnizd escribes from an ontological-gnoseological point of view as 'perspectivism' in his Monadology,r ecaptured by OrtegayGasset as 'historicalp erspectivism'.
Iaim to show that aphilosophyofhistory with anew conception is possible (Roldán 2005,2 006;R ohbeck 2007,2 014). Ankersmit (1986) coined the expression 'new philosophyo fh istory',r eferringt oanew movement that,o nt he one hand,radicallyquestions the epistemological presuppositions of traditional historiography (especiallyits ideal of reaching atrue account about the past and its consideration of history as as cience) and, on the other hand,p roposes new forms of historical writinga sa na lternative to the traditionalo nes. From my point of view,this new philosophyofh istory,i ni ts complexity,plurality,m odulation and detail, is not something alien to the enlightened spirit,with its emancipatory breath ( Muñoz 2002)-bothi ni ts ethical commitment and in its pure narrativity of the contingent.P erhaps these are the genuiner oots of an Enlightenment,h iddenb yt he rationalistic and scientistic excesses of the triumphant enlightened line, but that nevertheless continue to nourish the new offshoots of historical reflection in our postmodernity with even more radicality (Bloom 2010). It is my contention that it is an urgent task to rehabilitate politics and producen ew collective actors, in accordance with concepts such as isogoria and isonomy, includingt he necessary gender perspectives. The claim for ac ritical spirit fleshed out with values of the Enlightenment can help us to counterbalance the hegemonic wayo ft hinking,which is riddled with prejudices that prevent independent thinking.Reprioritizing the Enlightenment ideal of republican cosmopolitanism would servet or edirect the dangerous drifts of globalization.
At this point,l et me brieflyr ecapitulate: we have considered concepts that represent,s ot os peak, the 'negative inheritance' of the Enlightenment,a nd a problematic conception of the philosophyo fh istory that focuses on the idea of progress:r ationality,teleology,c ontinuity and perfection.These are concepts that,onthe otherhand, have been weakening and losing their semantic strength to the point of being nothing more thanemptyterms that,nevertheless, are useful in the description of phenomena, processes and, ultimately, conceptssuch as globalization. Also, what happened to the other concepts that did not playa leading role at the time, but which we are currentlyr ecovering for philosophy of history-the 'positive inheritance'-such as contingency, freedom, equality or tolerance? Aret hese concepts not also becomingw eaker?
The semantic perspective: sense and objectivity in the narrative margins; towardsanew hermeneutical rationality In addition to the question of the semantic weakening of the conceptsthat Iwant to recover for the new philosophyofhistory,Ibelievethat we can not leave aside in these considerations the othergreat horse of history:namely, the historical veracity and objectivity that other contemporary theorists qualify (downgrading in this waytheir pretensions) as 'reliable information about the past' (White1999), leading reflection on the meaningofhistory into the margins of narrativity.Let's brieflyr eview the development of the problem.
The notion of 'narration' has been introducedi nto philosophyo fh istory hand in hand with analytic philosophy, filling the central role that 'explanation' had previouslyp layed. That is, the narratives tructure emergesa sa na lternative to causal explanation-as an alternative to as cientifich istoriography. Thus, the philosopher of history seems to have stopped consideringc onclusively whether history makessense or,onthe contrary,lacks it.That sense, as well as objectivity and historical truth, must be sought in the statements that historians make in their accounts. Is the philosopher of history,o nce dismissed from her trades as prophet and meteorologist,perhapsbeing relegated to the role of literarycritic?The historian has become onlyanarrator (for without anarrator therecan be no history), losing her role as ἵστωρ (hístōr), i. e. as witness of af actual history. Reflections on history exhibit,inturn, asimilar narrative structure. Then, the differenceb etween ah istory-and Is ay 'ah istory' because there willb ea sm any histories as narrations of an event will be written-and ap hilosophyo fh istory cannot be that the latter provides relationships basedo nd etailed findings on facts, while the formerdoes not.Ifthere is anymission of the philosopher of history that is different from thatofthe historian, this willconsist in problematizing the interpretation that the historian suggests of her own account,criticizing her approaches, her references,h er omissions-of all thingst hata re reflections of her intentions. In aword, the philosopher of history acquires the status of a 'metanarrator' and her workw ill be presented as am etanarration.
Historical narration organizes and, at the same time, by applying its selection criteria, interprets. It is not am ere vehicle for the transmission of information, but is instead aprocedurefor the production of meaningand, therefore, has an explanatory function. As Fina Biruléshas pointed out,although Danto'swork attributes an explanatory function to narration, we should not forgetthat history can onlyb ek nown from within;w ea re subjects historicallyl ocated at al ater time than the events recounted (Birulés 1989,p p. 26-27). Thus, the histories we tell saya sm uch about our past as they do about our present interests; to ac ertain extent,w ea re am icrocosm of the stories we are able to tell. Thisi s what prompts Habermas to state that Danto bringsa nalytic philosophyt ot he very threshold of hermeneutics. Theh istorian does not speakf rom outside; history is not an impersonal reflection. So Danto'swork movesawayfrom Hempel's covering lawmodel and givesrise to apossible dialogue between the hermeneutic and analyticalt raditions,a llowing the problematizingo ft he links between historical understanding and philosophyo fa ction.
The new narrative structure stressingthe importance of the present emerges as an alternative to as cientific historiography, though it is condemned to leave the concepts of truth and objectivity in the very margins of the different narratives. From these margins (this limit), therei st he impulset oc ontrol different narrators' subjective and particulare xperiences, narrowing down the sense of their necessarilyf ragmentary perspectives ( Roldán 2005,p p. 175 -180).
It is not aq uestion of renouncing the truthfulness and sense in historical narrative-although this unfortunately seems to be the (increasinglywidespread) practice in the speeches of our politicians. Should the new philosopher of history renounce the role of 'metanarrator' or 'metahistorian';o fg uardian of the veracity of the narrateds ense and of historical interpretations of the past (Roldán 2005,p.176); and of tracing the limits between the literary imagination and historical veracity?Itcannot be otherwise if philosophyacquires its 'ethical commitment',w hich is how it seems to me that we have to interpret Agnes Heller's words in ATheoryofHistory-i. e., in favorofgiving sense to history and looking for the sense in history: [D]espitesevere criticism of the false consciousness of the philosophyofhistory,despiteall scepticism in regardt oi ts achievement,despitea wareness of the dangers inherent in this undertaking, both theoretical and practical […]o ne has to repeatw ith Herder: 'Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit' (a philosophyofhistory,too, is needed for the education of mankind). (Heller 1982, p. 190) (Provisional) conclusion: responsibility for conceptso fp hilosophy of historyi nt he 'Erao fG lobalization' In concluding these pages, we find that the problem that reappears in the socalled 'EraofGlobalization' is not very different from the gapbetween language and reality openedb yt he work of Kant at at ime when conceptsd escribed not onlyu niversal abstractions, but also states of things. Koselleck'sp roposals (like Rawls'si nt he area of justice) do not depart much from the Kantian orbit. The promoter of conceptual history develops Gadamer'si dea of the centrality of languagei nt he articulation of historical experience,b ut moves away from the Gadamerian influencebyhighlighting the irreducibility of the second (historical experience) to the first (language). Social factors-the extralinguistic plotexceed languagei nsofara st he implementation of an action always exceeds its mere enunciation or symbolicrepresentation. Still, an action that is not narrated -orallyorinwriting-is condemned to ostracism and invisibility: it is as if it had The Thinning and Deformation of Ethicala nd Political Concepts not happened. To narrate is to conceptualize and to conceptualize is, in turn, to structure, interpret and value the contingent.
Everything in the universe is contingent,but history is contingent par excellence,i nsofara si ti mmediatelyd epends on human action. To narrate an event that is itself contingent means to try to transmit the plurality of the points of view expressed in it,for which a 'hermeneutical rationality' is needed that focuses on the grasping of the part of truth present in each perspective of reality.The plurality of perspectiveswill be the best safeguard for an approach to truth, free from prejudice and dogma, which prioritizes none of them.I nt his approach, however,acommitment will need to be found for avoiding falling into relativism: ac ommitment that is nothing more than the individual or social group's ethical responsibility when acting;t he political responsibility of every citizen aware of the history of his/her ownp olitical concepts (Gómez Ramos 2007), but still willing to review its use and meaning to overcome the inherent fragility of human actions (in the most Arendtian tradition); in short, if we takeu pt he original meaning of politics (understood as 'conceptual elaboration of experiences'), it is all about taking on responsibility for concepts, since reflection on history calls us to return to ethics-to action. The philosopher of history can no longerd evoteh erself to making terrifying or hopeful predictions of the future, though nor must she renounce making anye stimative assessments about it; she cannot announce what it willb e, but she can propose how it should beor in anyc ase, how it should never be (Roldán 2005,p .16).
The new philosophyo fh istory has ac omplex task ahead. It is concerned with, on the one hand, the problems suggested by its historicalp resent,a nd on the other,directingi tself to questioning the receivedp hilosophical tradition, knowing that its interpretation is onlyone more perspective that provides an incompletetruth (from its subjectivity and present) in the framework of a dynamic history of philosophy. Just as the future cannot be predicted, nor is the past something fixed, closed, finished-av iewf or which Danto reproached Peirce: "We are always revisingo ur beliefs about the past,a nd to suppose them 'fixed' would be unfaithful to the spirit of historical inquiry" (Danto 1985, p. 145). We are always reviewingo ur research on the past,which is onlyi ntelligible to us in the light of the present and with our eyes on the horizon, since without afuture project our concept of humanitywould vanish. Therefore, reflection on history does not pursue specialization in ap hilosophicald iscourse,but rather advocates interdisciplinarity-an interdisciplinarity in which ethics, politics, literature and sociologya re perhaps the starring protagonists. It is all about an evolving thinkingthat is ever more interested in defending a 'living history' (with acritical perspective from both an omnivorous past,pluperfect,and a rickety future) than in elucidatinghow manydegrees far to the starboard side of postmodernity it is.
Arsi nveniendi thriveso nlyf rom complexity,j ust as the crossroads are the best places at which to exchangeexperiences or knowledge,toenrich ourselves. Human history is, likehuman life, a 'complex adaptive system' that develops by trial and error.B ut we mustn'tf orgett hat the idea of a 'continuous increasing complexity' is amyth (Rivera 2000,p.29) that demonstrates that the idea of history as progress is false, justa so ne can not presuppose a 'natural' or 'cultural' selection that always favors optimal solutions or the best possibleo nes. History is ac ollective event,b ut is alson one other than the desires and beliefs that shaped those human actions. In fact,wecould affirm thathistory is a 'collective by-product',the resultof'multiple multi-personal games',s ometimes the collateral effect of what we are doing guided by other ends (Rivera 2000,p .4 7).
This new philosophyo fh istory requires, ultimately, a new rationality: flexible, gradual and 'hermeneuticallyimperfect'.Itwould be aconcept of rationality in the line of that defended by Stephen Toulmin (2003) as situated rationality, which would movea wayfrom 'arrogance of reason' in an inverselyproportional relationship to its approximation to ac oncept of 'perspectivism' àl aL eibniz: what Marcelo Dascal (2001) has termed a blandiorratio. It would be arationality that is no longer basedona bsolutetruths, but rather on the graduality of them; i. e., ordered in different steps, 'modulated',s ot hat 'true' and 'false' lose their static and abstract character,but without falling into relativism; in which the values of truth are not onlyhoused in the propositions themselves, but in their 'intervals' (as fuzzy calculus defends) or in its 'intermediates teps',s upported by the relational character of truth, as the ontologicala nd moral point of view of Dewey'sp ragmatism holds. It would be ar ationality for whose definitionw e could also borrow from the field of legal logic the concepts of 'weighting' and 'presumption' (Ausín 2006). It would be an argumentative rationality, in short, that is the recovery of ac ertain 'heterodox' enlightened tradition that we can find in the 'nuanced' rationalism of Leibniz, in Marie de Gournay'sd iscourse on equality; in the one on sympathyb yS ophie de Grouchy( excluded from the usual histories of philosophy, as is Marquise de Châtelet's Lessons in Physics), or in Lessing'sc oncept of tolerance.
An ew philosophyo fh istory would not pretend, therefore, to dispute Clio's favors to history,nor to emulate Cassandrainher prophetic gifts, but more modestlyt or emind us that we are all morals ubjects of ah istory that,whether we want to recognize it or not,concerns all of us-as Javier Muguerza notes (Roldán 2005,p p. 6 -7); ah istory that does not do or saya nything by itself, but always through human beings, who are its actors,narrators and interpreters.Nohistory will 'tell' or 'give us reason' as the misnamed popular wisdom affirms, regardless of what we all do (or do not do) and say(or do not say).Itistime to abandon the exaggerated victimhood, the perverse ageo fi nnocencei nwhich we have fallen asleep,a nd try to grasp the reins of our destiny-because whent he facts go beyond language, the intellectual can not ignore her task: she has to take responsibility for the concepts. We cannot and should not wait with arms crossed hoping that history,l ike ag racious sea, will return to us the remains of our shipwreck.