Epistemological Horizons of the Humanities: Research, Method, and State
In order to encourage academic production in the field of State sciences, the Editorial Team of the Journal of State Sciences (REVICE) makes this call public regarding the composition of the dossier of volume 10, number 2, year 2025. The theme of this edition's dossier will be "EPISTEMOLOGICAL HORIZONS OF THE HUMANITIES: RESEARCH, METHOD AND STATE".
Epistemology, born from the Greek etymological roots ἐπιστήμη (knowledge) and λόγος (reason), invites us to investigate the foundations, limits and disputes that shape knowledge. Thus, epistemology can be understood as the investigation of knowledge itself: its possibilities, foundations and limits. We can try to understand, in today's sense, epistemology as a manifestation of the disputes that cross knowledge and reflect different worldviews - Weltanschauungen. We know that knowledge is the locus human par excellence, inherent to our existence and, if knowledge comes from us, from the plurality of each human being and each culture, it is, par excellence, plural. When we speak of the human sciences, the subject also becomes an object, and this movement constitutes the highest degree of complexity that requires a continuous effort, an inexhaustible field of knowledge. The humanities can be read as separate disciplines, like anthropology, history, social sciences, political science, but a critical and attentive look, a philosophical look, therefore, reveals their essentially one character: humanity in all its complexity. But how to know what we are?
The search for the essential, universal and true, through reason, is the great challenge of the humanities. Science and philosophy are a continuous effort to unveil the “how” and “why” of human existence, from the individual to collective structures, from the micro to the macro. It is the infinite effort to give new answers and reveal new meanings or, even more significantly, new questions.
The questions are the movement of the humanities, the impulse of knowledge. And, when directed to think about and know the State, a range of contradictions opens up and, more than that, we see ourselves as in an almost bellicose field of debate. The sciences of the State are the humanities in their highest degree of ideological, interpretative and epistemological disputes, where truths confront and reinvent themselves. And it is this nature of an inexhaustible and paradoxical field of knowledge that we want to bring to light. It is about transforming differences into identity and welcoming contradictions into a space that avoids fragmentation. It is a space for projects. In view of this, we ask:
Is the State a mechanism of freedom or violence? How many ideas of States are possible? How many realities coexist within the same State? How to compare hegemonic and peripheral States? Is there something beyond State power? In how many ways is it possible to legitimize the power of the State? And in how many can it be condemned? What is the relationship between ethics, justice, human dignity and the different configurations of the present and the past? Is there a more correct method to think about and know the State? How many ways are needed to understand such a complex reality? What do History, Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy and so many other human sciences teach us about the State? Do digital platforms, artificial intelligences, and neurosciences challenge the traditional epistemologies of the State? What can the encounter between different cultures show us about our own ways of organizing ourselves socially? Is the State the “end” of history? What is the relationship between History and the State? Is it possible to imagine a State beyond capitalism? Or is he doomed to this? Is the State an obstacle or stimulus to a better world?
We do not intend to offer definitive answers, but to open paths: to integrate methods from human sciences to analyze the State, to question paradigms in the light of new technologies and intercultural perspectives, and to design scenarios in which differences fuel innovation, not division. It consists of the eternal human problem of thinking about the ideal political organization, and we bet that, by exploring the epistemological horizons of the humanities, it may be possible to understand our limits and possibilities. This is an invitation to do so.
This issue therefore includes works on: State; Epistemology; Freedom; Humanities; Violence; Culture; Human development; Politics; Anthropology; Sociology; Philosophy; History; Geography; Social sciences; Epistemology of the Humanities; Epistemological pluralism; Epistemological Disputes; Theories of Knowledge; Interdisciplinarity; Research Methods; Knowledge and Power; Theory of the State; Forms of State; Sovereignty; Governmentality; State and Democracy; Authoritarianism; State and Technology; State and Human Rights; State, Emotions, and Religion; Critical Humanities; History of Political Ideas; Political Imagination; Political Culture; Geopolitics; Digital Culture; Neurosciences and Politics; State and Algorithms; Posthumanism; New Media and Subjectivity; Interculturality; Human Dignity; Future of the State; Social Imagination; Political Utopias; Civilizational Alternatives; Philosophy of History.
I - The publication of REVICE will take place in a continuous flow.
II – REVICE will receive papers for the present of the dossier from the date of its publication until September 14, 2025.
III - Papers whose evaluation and correction process are not completed by December 31, 2025 will be published in the following issues of REVICE.
IV - All REVICE's submission policies, as well as its editorial policies, can be found on its official website.
V – Only articles, essays, reviews, unpublished translations and historical memoirs will be accepted.
VI – Papers with free themes continue to be accepted by REVICE.
Belo Horizonte, July 9, 2025.
Theo Augusto Apolinário Moreira Fonseca
Editor-in-Chief of REVICE
Lucas Antônio Nogueira Rodrigues
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of REVICE
