This dissertation seeks to offer an account of wisdom, drawing particularly on contemporary Anglophone epistemological literature. Given wisdom’s complexity, the aim is not to cover every aspect but rather to highlight one interesting phenomenon: the epistemic normativity of the wisdom concept. Specifically, it delves into the expectation that “wise/wisdom” will consistently pick out the same feature across different contexts, such as in the contrasting examples of a hermit’s reclusive wisdom versus a social leader’s worldly wisdom. This particularly prompts epistemological discussions, (...) as the focus is on how the wisdom concept “ought to” be recognized and applied, especially in epistemic activities such as understanding and evaluating one’s achievement of wisdom, which is also significantly influenced by the agent’s epistemic state. The exploration of a plausible interpretation of wisdom, considering its epistemic normativity, commences with an examination of epistemic relativism, which purportedly addresses the underlying concern of reconciling conflicting wisdom concepts. The examination reveals an implicit, second-order inclination beneath the tangible first-order epistemological debates, favoring theories that help preserve successful epistemic practice. This inclination hints at setting aside incompatible theories like epistemic relativism and viewing epistemic linguistic practice as a facilitator within our broader epistemic process. This process understanding implies both a proposal to theorize epistemic notions based on mainstream epistemic discourse, and a defense against criticisms of the proposal’s reliance on past experience. experience. In this light, the dissertation develops a process theory of wisdom based on a refined understanding of the received pursuit of truth in epistemology, positioning wisdom as the ultimate goal of epistemic process. It advocates interpreting the use of “wise/wisdom” as primarily denoting ideal epistemic outcomes from first-person perspectives. With supplementary specification, this approach effectively addresses the issue of conflicting wisdom conceptions and other prominent considerations about wisdom. (shrink)

David Held created an impressive body of work with a great ambition: to redefine the rules of the world. He lived through three major phases in the development of democracy during the past several decades in Europe: the cold war; the brief period described as the “end of history”; and the current era. These troubled times we live in, with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, terrorism, and nationalism, force us to rethink the dynamics of our world. In his own words, (...) Held operated at three levels: “normative-philosophical, empirical-analytical and as […] an advocate ” for what he saw as the “fundamental bedrock of cosmopolitanism”, “the principle of equal worth and dignity” of every human being. The title of my paper is “Globalisation and social democracy: European politics at the crossroads”. I will focus among the 50 countries of the continent Europe, on the 27 members of the Union. (shrink)

Breaking with Aristotle’s Physics, Kant effects a theoretical reconception of teleology. It is this paper’s contention that the truth of the Kantian conception of teleology as ‘a purposiveness of nature in behalf of our faculty for cognizing it’ is not that of being a solution to Hume’s problem of induction or the condition for the possibility of subjective cognition of the empirical, but that it is a theoretical means of the subjective domination over the objective. A materialist reading of Hegel’s (...) criticism of Kant’s antinomy of teleological judgment in the Science of Logic is then proposed. Finally, the non-teleological nature of capital is demonstrated. (shrink)

Émilie Du Châtelet is the only French woman author of a work included in the corpus of clandestine philosophical literature: a set of treatises, dissertations, or letters that circulated in Europe, and especially in France, mainly in manuscript form, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the main purpose of which was to subject religion to rigorous rational criticism (philosophical, historical, scientific). These Examens de la religion, one of the most controversial works in this corpus, circulated during the eighteenth century and (...) gave rise to a form of legend: sometimes said to be the work of Émilie Du Châtelet, sometimes the result of a form of collaboration between Du Châtelet and the one whose life she shared for a long time: Voltaire. If the feminine point of view on the Bible played a role in the recent attribution of this text to Émilie Du Châtelet, the existence of a properly feminine writing in the wider context of clandestine philosophical literature can now be discussed. This article aims to put this debate into perspective, at both the methodological and philosophical level. (shrink)

As soon as there is a human work, one or more non-human dimensions are involved, bearing in mind that, on the other hand, it could be that the pure non-human does not exist, in other words that the non-human itself envelops the human in return. De jure, both movements should be considered from an anthropocosmic perspective. In the context of a contribution on art, however, we will focus on the first perspective, while the second is more of a "technological" approach. (...) We will illustrate this point by focusing on the paintings of Paul Cézanne. (shrink)

The article outlines the central lines of László Tengelyi’s intellectual path and hints at some perspectives that could be continued on the basis of his last writings. The first part shows the development of his thought from the first Hungarian works on Kant up to his last book, so as to pose the question of a possible unity in his work. Such a unity can be seen in the diacritical tension, systematically enlarged in each period, between freedom, the story of (...) a told life, expression and the finite projection of a world on the one hand, and guilt as an event of destiny, the region of a wild sense, a wild responsibility and an open infinite on the other hand. A second part presents the main ideas of «World and Infinit. On the Problem of Phenomenological Metaphysics», especially the programme of a phenomenological answer to the problem of metaphysics. The core of this programme is a metaphysics of facticity in the realm of which a methodological transcendentalism and a metontological transcendentalism become possible. A third part tries to situate László Tengelyi’s ideas within the context of contemporary «realism». Two of Meillassoux’ central arguments are discussed in order to show how László Tengelyi’s approach provides a phenomenological answer to their challenges. (shrink)

The thesis begins with an actual ecological fact: the current ecological crisis goes hand in hand with the proliferation of ecological conflicts. This fact is attested by th evast literature in the social sciences. This led to the search for a grammar of conflict appropriate to these struggles. To do so, an environmental history of the grammars of conflict inherited from modern political philosophy is undertaken. Three general grammars are reviewed: the grammar of having, which includes wars of land appropriation (...) (Hobbes), struggles for distribution and collective appropriation (Babeuf); the grammar of being, which includes the struggle for recognition (Hegel); and the grammar of action, which includes land use conflicts (Fichte). Although these grammars were elaborated in close connection with the question of land, the argument put forward is that they remain inadequate to account for those struggles that are bearers of an ecology of territorial attachments. More especially, three pitfalls are encountered: they did not overcome the alternative between detachment and rootedness; they defined relations with land exclusively in terms of appropriation; and their internal structure remains inadequate to a grammar of attachment. Recent studies in anthropology led us to this grammar which finds an echo in the political philosophy of territorialities elaborated by Deleuze and Guattari. Mille Plateaux is revisited in which a philosophical concept of territory is articulated with a theory of territorial conflicts between social formations. Finally, we test this model through the empirical data provided by the ethnography of ecological conflicts in the low lands of Ecuador. (shrink)

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in philosophy (...) made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

Our common notion of progress has an almost universally positive connotation regardless of the discipline it is associated with. Who could be against making economic, technological or social progress? Isn’t progress the very telos of the human endeavor? But on what terms should progress be evaluated and what does it mean to make progress in philosophy? The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) frequently reflected on the notion of progress, especially as it had been evoked in the course of the early twentieth-century. (...) While these reflections are far from systematic, much of the ambiguity of his position can be eliminated by comparing it to two vastly different notions of progress: the first, the idea of scientific progress as advocated by contemporaries such as Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), and the second, the idea of spiritual progress, as illustrated by religious authors such as John Bunyan (1628-1688). What emerges from this unlikely comparison is Wittgenstein’s clear rejection of the scientific model of progress, which aims at the transformation of society through the accumulation of knowledge, in favor of a spiritual model, which aims at personal conversion to different ways of seeing and acting in the world. Indeed, for Wittgenstein, the progress that philosophy seeks in not about building up increasingly complex explanatory theories; rather, it is a quest for lucidity at all levels, about learning to see under different aspects that which is already present before us. (shrink)

I propose here a new interpretation of the “unconditional hospitality” developed by Derrida in volume 1 of his Seminar On Hospitality (Paris: Le Seuil, 2021). The tension that Derrida introduces into the very heart of the notion of hospitality (through the numerous aporias and antinomies he identifies in it, and through his insistent recourse to violent, even unbearable texts, such as the history of the “Daughters of Lot”) is seen here as a symptom of a much more general problem. I (...) try to show that Derrida’s exalted defense of an “unconditional hospitality” that no one (including himself) has ever experienced is an unconscious way of revealing a temptation towards “realism” that his entire philosophy combats, but which nevertheless exerts a strong attraction on him, as it does on every philosopher. The history of philosophy, from Plato to Derrida via Descartes or Spinoza, has most often made “hospitality to reality” the very definition of philosophy. For millennia, truth and wisdom have been conceived as the acceptance of the violence inflicted on us by the “reality” that penetrates us without our invitation or consent, until it damages us and finally drives us out of existence. Our reading of Derrida’s ‘unconditional hospitality’ thus leads us to an unexpectedly violent dimension of one of philosophy’s main models. (shrink)

Today, the German concept of Bildung has become visible as a threshold concept in science and environmental studies where critical thinking, societal values, ethics, and social responsibility have been introduced as new knowledge domains (Sjöström et al. 2017). In this paper we set out to discuss whether rethinking engineering professionalism through the concept of Bildung would be beneficial for addressing technological issues as well as broader socially pertinent challenges on a global scale such as global warming, pandemics, decreasing biodiversity, increasing (...) economic and social polarization, racism, information- and cybercrimes, etc. by which society is presently confronted. Dealing with such an array of challenges will have bearings on understandings of the very telos of engineering (Aristotle 2000, Buch 2022). Rethinking the telos of engineering has profound implications. Ultimately it is a struggle over knowledge as such endeavour will do away with the technical core/nontechnical periphery distinction in traditional engineering epistemology. The paper starts with a reflection on the present configuration of higher education and the priority given to STEM fields. The concept of Bildung and understandings of Bildung usually rise to prominence when a given configuration of the educational system is no longer able to deliver on its promises (Christensen 2019). Bildung can therefore be seen as a counter and problematizing concept vis-à-vis the present configuration of the educational system. As regards engineering, it is a heterogeneous socio-technical enterprise in which challenges and solutions are distributed across social, material, economic, political, and technical domains. Various understandings of “Bildung in Engineering Education” have been identified: 1. Wilhelm von Humboldt ́s classical Bildung, 2. Anglo-American liberal education, 3. Scandinavian folk-Bildung, 4. Democratic education, and 5. Critical-hermeneutical Bildung (Sjöström et al. 2017). Considering the negotiated nature of engineering solutions, together with the heterogeneous character of its practices, we argued that option 4 has specific relevance. The paper thus points to John Dewey’s ideas of democratic education and unfolds elements in Dewey’s philosophy that are helpful for a contemporary reconstruction of Bildung as democratic education (Dewey 2011). In so doing it is necessary to address the very purpose of engineering – its telos. Considering the challenges facing humankind in the Anthropocene era, this telos will have to be reconsidered. We use Dewey’s pragmatist lens to do so and argue that Engineering should be reconsidered as a problem-solving discipline that seeks to ameliorate living conditions. In the conclusion, we consider possible obstacles for reconstructing engineering along the lines of Bildung through democratic education. References Aristotle (2009). The Nicomachean Ethics, OUP Oxford. Buch, Anders (2022). The Need for Recovery of Engineering. In: Christensen, Steen Hyldgaard et al. (eds.) Engineering, Social Sciences, and the Humanities: Have their Conversations Come of Age? Springer Nature. Christensen, Steen Hyldgaard (2019). Costs and Benefits of Commercializing Teaching, Research, and Service in the American Corporatized University. In: Christensen, Steen Hyldgaard et al (eds.) The Engineering-Business Nexus: Symbiosis, Tension and Co-evolution. Springer Nature. Dewey, John. (2011) Democracy and Education, Simon & Brown. Sjöström et al. (2017). Use of the concept of Bildung in the international science education literature, its potential, and implications for teaching and learning, Studies in Science Education, 53(2). (shrink)

Join Portuguese writer Ana Leorne as she takes us on a trip into the mind of troubled rock star-poet-genius Jim Morrison. Diving into the era, the man, his art, the surrounding people, and not least the myth of The Doors’ enigmatic frontman, Leorne paints an illuminating picture of seemingly inevitable self-destruction – but also one of undeniable brilliance. Leorne’s book is a revealing insight into the fascinating American poet-shaman who helped change the general consciousness of his time. As is often (...) the case, the price of his massive success and creative brilliance was high; his death in Paris in 1971 didn’t come as a surprise to those who knew him well. This Is the Strangest Life I’ve Ever Known is part biography, and part analysis of Morrison’s creative psyche; part a socio-political overview of the late 1960s, and part a closer look at related key works; part a story of demanding public projections, and part one of individual poetic triumphs. Utilising some of Morrison’s favourite literary and philosophical references, relying heavily on his poetry, and writing from the place he last chose to live (and die) in, Leorne successfully manages to paint a deep psychological portrait of a complex character of almost archetypical proportions. (shrink)

The study of Nigidius' linguistic thought involves numerous problems, related to the fragmentary state of the available sources. This paper will focus on the circulation and transmission of the Commentarii grammatici, which Gellius still seems to have consulted directly, but which later sources know only through indirect quotations.

This paper examines the connection between endurance athletes, their bodies, the world, and the present through the lens of trail running, a competitive race in which athletes cover distances longer than a marathon. The study draws on Platonic texts, Rosa's theory of resonance, and Hadot's concept of oceanic feeling to understand how running helps athletes connect with the landscape, their bodies, and the present. According to Platonic writings, running immerses athletes in a state of active presence, while Hadot argues that (...) running provokes feelings of wonder and apprehension that he calls "oceanic feelings," which connect athletes to their bodies and the world. Rosa's theory of resonance posits that consonance between the athlete and the surrounding landscape helps establish a connection between the athlete, their body, and the world. (shrink)

Simondon’s work aims to reform the fundamental concepts of philosophy through a new theory of being as ontogenesis. In his eponymous book, Simondon develops this theory, primarily focusing on the notion of individuation. He puts forward a conception of the individual, taking into consideration the dimension of its being that produce him as an individual, that is the pre-individual. As Simondon resumes the effort of philosophical reflection starting from this primitive reality, he claims to be able to develop this theory (...) of ontogenesis and carry out this reform of philosophical concepts. Thus, ontogenesis appears as a new first philosophy, the starting point for the construction of a system ensuring the de jure foundation of the universality of knowledge. However, it has often been noticed that the way of speaking employed by Simondon contrasts with this ambition. His reasoning is built on postulates and hypotheses and is most often presented through the precaution of the conditional. As if, fundamentally, the task of philosophy was less to realize an ambition, than to make a promise. The nature of philosophical thought in Simondon is caught in this contradiction: on the one hand thetic, even apodictic, and on the other hypothetical, even optative. At the center of this contradiction is a question: can we know individuation? In other words, is a science of the pre-individual possible? Simondon's answer is complicated: “nous ne pouvons, au sens habituel du terme, connaître l'individuation.” (2013, p. 36). In order to clarify this answer, it seems necessary to follow the path he opens for us, by asking: in which meaning should knowledge be taken so that ontogeny will allow itself to be known? In this direction, we find the development of the analogical method and the affirmation of transductive thought, as a means of access to the ontogenetic dimension of the real. But what can we expect from this method and this kind of thinking? The ambition of ontogenic thinking implies that the theory of individuation has a universal validity, but Simondon remains cautious: “[i]l se peut que l'ontogénèse ne soit pas axiomatisable” (2013, p. 228). Our article is devoted to analyzing the reasons for this caution. Why could ontogenesis not be axiomatizable? From this question, Simondon deduces a definition of philosophy : “la pensée philosophie [est] comme perpétuellement marginale par rapport à toutes les autres études” (2013, p. 228). Our goal is to clarify the meaning of this definition. We will attempt to show that this marginality is explained by what we propose to call the ontogenetic finitude of the philosophizing subject. More precisely, Simondon's ontogenetic theory involves the conception of a subject for whom it’s impossible to reflect all of the ontogenetic conditions of his own thought. This means that the problematic at the start of philosophical thought always remains partially obscure to the subject. This obscurity is, on the one hand, the driving force that individuate philosophical thought, the promise of its renewal, and, on the other, that which de jure limits its claim to universality. (shrink)

Le 14 décembre 2019, dans le cadre du Workshop “Political Education for Human Transformation", Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005 Paris, escalier C, 1er étage, salle LalandeTaking the phenomenon of the cinematographic artialisation of recent revolutionary and terrorist behavior seriously encourages us to look in some films for authentic thoughts that can broaden the theoretical framework in which we try to relate to contemporary phenomena such as the relationship of skepticism to digital imagery and fanaticism. (...) One of these thoughts is to recognize the ambivalence of moving images, which can teach us to contain our skepticism by making cinema an instrument for revealing the beauty and goodness of the ordinary, but which can also present us with a world so perfect and seductive that it makes ordinary existence in the real world seem too imperfect and painful to deserve to be lived. (shrink)

Vendredi 14 juin 2019Agreeing with Daniele Lorenzini when he argued that, for Cavell, "cinema can be considered as a real manual of spiritual exercises ", my point is that we can practice similar moral or spiritual exercises thanks to some movies or TV series. According to the Cavellian take, I will try to show this using examples of TV series found in my experience.

My doctoral thesis mainly consists in a new edition of the Prohemium of the Liber introductorius which has been a desideratum within at least three fields of academic research, namely the history of philosophy, the history of astrology and the history of medieval political thought. As the result of an international PhD programme between the University of Salento in Italy and the University of Cologne in Germany, my project was carried out under the supervision of Alessandra Beccarisi (University of Salento) (...) and Andreas Speer (University of Cologne) and primarily developed over the course of two years spent at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. As appropriate for an international programme, the language of the thesis is English. The edition of the Prohemium is preceded by three large chapters and followed by an appendix, a table of figures and a bibliography divided into four categories (manuscripts, archive sources and printed primary sources up to 1800, critical and modern editions, and secondary sources). The thesis is currently under revision for publication. (shrink)

"Of all the theorists of the first Critical Theory, Horkheimer was the one who most explicitly expressed his interest in moral theory. He concludes his research with the impossibility of any moral system possessing its own foundations. Habermas challenged Horkheimer's judgment that it was impossible to establish the completeness of a moral system without a transcendent foundation, and proposed communicational reason as an immanent foundation.

As part of a session entitled “New Television, New Education,” the talk aims to show that the Maid (Molly Smith Metzler, Netflix, 2021) TV series offers authentic adult education outside any school or university context (out of school), particularly on the concept of emotional abuse.

For the book’s coda, the co-editors conduct a roundtable interview with David Zerbib, a French scholar specializing in performance theories. “Performance Knots: Crossed Threads of Anglo-American Thought and French Theory” sheds light on the French perspective as Zerbib tries, carefully, to draw out different strands of thought that weave both accord and discord in transcontinental theories and practices. Situating French Theory as an American invention, Zerbib nonetheless recognizes that Anglo-American influences are slowly making inroads in French culture and its institutions. (...) Yet, despite the growing impact, angles of approach remain remarkably different across the traditions. Evoking the 1966 symposium organized at John Hopkins University where French Theory first took flight, he describes how the encounter between American and French trends reveals a confrontation between what he calls “forms of truth and forces of thought.” Heralding the misunderstandings between philosophy and performance theories around embodied presence, linguistic efficacy, and the event of the sign that were to ensue, this initial exchange stands in contrast to the contemporary evolutions to which Performance Philosophy bears witness. (shrink)

Chapter 9 of Television With Stanley Cavell In Mind, edited by David LaRocca and Sandra Laugier, University of Exeter Press, 2023, p. 173-190.Can season 1 of the Fargo series provoke philosophical astonishment? In other words, can it raise a suspicion that there may be more going on in the world than meets the eye? And are the things that are really going on behind the scenes likely to nourish a philosophical "meta-narrative" held out to us by the series, i.e. a (...) narrative situated beyond the story we are told? Finally, despite the many differences between the two works, how faithful is the series to the Coen brothers' film it was adapted from?Open Access PDF : https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/63190/9781804130209.pdf?sequence=5. (shrink)

In his final book, renowned philosopher Pierre Hadot explores Goethe’s relationship with ancient spiritual exercises—transformative acts of intellect, imagination, or will. Goethe sought both an intense experience of the present moment as well as a kind of cosmic consciousness, both of which are rooted in ancient philosophical practices. These practices shaped Goethe’s audacious contrast to the traditional maxim memento mori (Don’t forget that you will die) with the aim of transforming our ordinary consciousness. Ultimately, Hadot reveals how Goethe cultivated a (...) deep love for life that brings to the forefront a new maxim: Don’t forget to live. (shrink)

The play on words in the title of this chapter directly points to the gender bias that can unconsciously affect the concept of ‘humanity’ in its effective scope – a bias heightened and made especially acute by the fact that Kant shapes this concept as an ideal of the Enlightenment. Indeed, there is evidence from far more than one text – or perhaps subtext – in Kant’s work that his normative approach towards what humans can and should be (i.e. the (...) approach of a pragmatic anthropology in Kant’s sense of what humans ‘have to make of themselves’) fits women as adequately as it does men. In other words, although the concept of humanity should apply to every human being, its application turns out to be problematic when it comes to such a generic feature as gender. To explore this problem and other related ones, the chapter turns to the difference between the sexes in Kant that makes no difference in terms of duty. The precritical 'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime' (1764) offers an answer: presenting us with a binary conception of virtue in terms of the difference between the sexes, this text appears to threaten Kant’s later view of humanity as the universal community of humans converging towards a unique ideal. But that duty is perhaps not Kant’s last word, given that ideals have to be realized by concrete individuals. The chapter provides evidence of how prevalent the issue of desire between the sexes is in Kant’s anthropology, thereby supporting the following thesis: this issue of desire is responsible for the highly contrasting ways Kant constructs male and female gender, and as such it is responsible for a theoretical clash between his construction of gender and his concept of humanity. (shrink)

The problem considered in the paper is whether the stereotype of zerosum games is applicable to present-day discussions on environmental threats. Decision theory could be considered as a tool to substantiate the philosophical notion of rationality of actions and in this aspect, it could be a good methodological instrument of philosophical economics. Decision theory can be used to assess positions in problem situations and predict possible solutions in terms of gains and losses. This can also be applied to human actions (...) in relation to nature. In the paper this theory is used to assess the moral and political validity of the positions of developing countries against the main claims of the forceful countries for unified solutions for protection of the natural environment. Justified solutions in the field of environmental security can be sought only by overcoming the economic and social imbalances and corporate interests. The most justified perspective for international relations and in searching for solutions of present-day social and ecological conflicts is to move from the form of a zero-sum game, in which the powerful countries win and the poor ones invariably lose, to a true non-zero-sum game suitable for implementing cooperative strategies. This type of development can become a reality only on the basis of a new social contract, based on pluralism and balance of interests, on the scale of all humanity. (shrink)

Can an artificial agent "really" think? can it be "really" intelligent? can it "really" have beliefs, goals, intentionality? Such questions have been plaguing AI since its inception. The solution we propose is to assert that an "artificial agent" is a virtual agent - and that all the cognitive or mentalistic attributes we may be tempted to grant it are also virtual. Whereas the first qualifier is purely descriptive, the second one is about the ontological status of such things as appear (...) to us as agents. Our solution relies on: 1°) eliciting a precise core meaning for the word "virtual", a meaning that differs radically from the one used by philosophers (Bergson, Deleuze,...) but that has always been implicit in specialized contexts ("virtual image", "virtual world") and that should now be given its full ontological generality; 2°) relating the virtual to a broadened notion of interoperability, which justifies our assertion on technical and psychological instead of philosophical grounds. We relate this interpretation of AI to strong AI, to weak AI and to Dennett's intentional stance. We stress its implications for the cognitive sciences project of "naturalizing" intentionality. Finally, we mention some consequences in the information systems domain, relative to the acceptance of agent concepts for the modelling of organizations and their business processes. (shrink)

Examines the notion of sustainability and proposes a definition of ethical sustainability on the basis of ethics viewed as a practice of removing contradictions and promoting value in processes. Digital manufacturing is then described and engaged, in a specific case, to show that the aspects of ethical sustainability outlined can be used to analyse and suggest improvement to the digital manufacturing process. Ethical sustainability goes beyond a ‘parsimonious with resources’ paradigm, to adjust action, rethink and rescale temporal relations, embed creativity, (...) and bring the human individual and human society back into the manufacturing process. Being at an early and developing stage, digital manufacturing holds the promise of overcoming some of the regulatory and economic constrictions which tend to hold back a true ethical sustainability. (shrink)

This article undertakes a comparative ethical analysis of the types of public expectations and concerns related to the development of two technologies: the telegraph and artificial intelligence. For each technology I provide a historical survey of public ethical expectations and concerns followed by a survey of the outcome or results of those expectations. Expectations and concerns of the telegraph era public are drawn together from popular and public literature and regulation of the period, whereas the expectations and concerns of our (...) contemporary public AI engagement are drawn both from popular literature and public surveys, and supported by a manual search and ranking of a number of ethics related terms found in the raw feedback of the Stakeholder Consultation on the EU Commission High Level Expert Group Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. I then go on to compare those results, highlighting the similarities and differences between the two technologies, in particular the positive economic and socially responsible use expectations outcomes and the negative concerns regarding monopoly, regulation, and control. Finally, I argue that, taking the telegraph outcome as a guide, an ethical focus on accentuating positive expectations toward AI is more likely to produce definite results than concentrating upon prohibitory and negative approaches. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of how we can know if Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have become or are becoming sentient. After an overview of some arguments regarding AI sentience, it proceeds to an outline of the notion of negation in the philosophy of Josiah Royce, which is then applied to the arguments already presented. Royce’s notion of the primitive dyadic and symmetric negation relation is shown to bypass such arguments. The negation relation and its expansion into higher types of (...) order are then considered with regard to how, in small variations of active negation, they would disclose sentience in AI systems. Finally, I argue that the much-hyped arguments and apocalyptic speculations regarding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) takeover and similar scenarios, abetted by the notion of unlimited data, are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how entities engage their experience. Namely, limitation, proceeding from the symmetric negation relation, expands outward into higher types of order in polyadic relations, wherein the entity self-limits and creatively moves toward uniqueness. (shrink)

The Stoics defined the human soul in two ways: both as a homogeneous, unified and entirely rational substance (the so-called 'psychological monism' of Chrysippus), and as a corporeal entity, a warm breath spread throughout the body, whose permeability with the body can be seen in the theory of exhalation (anathumiasis). The aim of this article is to understand how the Stoics manage to maintain their promise of absolute freedom for the rational faculty, while at the same time making it permeable (...) to the bodily conditions that are its own - that is, the internal and external temperature, and any modifications introduced by the body's own physiology. The article explores the psychologies of Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, particularly in their borrowings from Heraclitus and Aristotle, and then focuses on the phenomenon of exhalation, in the developments proposed by Diogenes of Babylonia and Posidonius, thus presenting new tools for shaping the rational soul. (shrink)

Far from being a product of Locke’s philosophical genius, the theory of the divine superaddition of thought to matter is rooted in the discussions about Descartes’ conception of the soul as res cogitans which took place in France and in the Netherlands in the years 1640-1680, from Mersenne to Regius and Bayle. Locke’s historical and theoretical relationship with these sources can be clearly documented, as well as the influence of the superaddition theory in the eighteenth century, mostly in the realm (...) of free-thinking, from Collins to Bolingbroke and above all Voltaire. In the light of this intellectual genealogy, the accusations of materialism, or even Spinozism, frequently levelled against Locke acquire a new significance and are worth exploring again. (shrink)

This lecture, given at the University of Trieste as part of the PhD Program Applied data Science and AI, aims to present a possible philosophical treatment of AI. It first looks at the research carried out by the Ethics&IA Chair in its context, the Grenoble Multidisciplinary AI Institute, then at some theoretical philosophical questions, and finally at several aspects of AI ethics.

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications, a non-profit organization which promotes interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science. This book presents the papers delivered at FOIS 2023, the 13th edition of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems conference. The event was held as a sequentially-hybrid event, face-to-face in Sherbrooke, Canada, from 17 to 20 July 2023, and online from 18 to 20 (...) September 2023. In total, 62 articles from 19 different countries were submitted, out of which 25 were accepted for inclusion in the conference and for publication; corresponding to an acceptance rate of 40 percent. The contributions are separated into the book’s three sections: (1) Foundational ontological issues; (2) Methodological issues around the development, alignment, verification and use of ontologies; and (3) Domain ontologies and ontology-based applications. In these sections, ontological aspects from a wide variety of fields are covered, primarily from various engineering domains including cybersecurity, manufacturing, petroleum engineering, and robotics, but also extending to the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and dentistry. A noticeable trend among the contributions in this edition of the conference is the recognition that improving the tools to analyze, align, and improve ontologies is of paramount importance in continuing to advance the field of formal ontology. The book will be of interest to all formal and applied ontology researchers, and to those who use formal ontologies and information systems as part of their work. (shrink)

Despite the fact that it has been more than 40 years since Henry Corbin and Hossein Ziai pointed out that the work of Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (549/1155, 587/1191) has not yet been systematically studied, a thorough investigation of his work is still in its infancy. The present brief study, which aims to contribute to filling such a gap by further developing some of the points contained in Rahman & Seck's (2022) paper, articulates some remarks on the relevance of Suhrawardī's epistemology (...) of presence for contemporary studies on temporal logic. More specifically, we will focus our brief presentation on the fruitfulness of his postulate of the priority of experience of immediate knowledge discussed in the Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq and how this postulate is related to the concept of self-consciousness (وعي الذاتي).Thus the particularity of this study is that Suhrawardī's epistemology of presence, unlike contemporary temporal logic developed for example by Prior, emphasizes the temporalization of the instantiation of an event or the performance of an act rather than of the propositions that express that event or act. Moreover, in Suhrawardī's modal syllogistic, there is an analysis of contingency that differs from most contemporary authors and that also involves several dimensions of time. More generally, Suhrawardī's notion of direct knowledge offers new insights into the logical and ontological status of the now. (shrink)

The present study on al-Dīn Suhrawardī's Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq, develops some preliminary explorations on his logic under the background of his remarkable epistemology of pis some witness of d resence. The paper paves the way for responding to the challenges of Tony Street on the compatibility of Suhrawardī's critique of Ibn Sīnā with the development of a temporal and modal syllogism that at first sight seems quite close to that of Ibn Sīnā. In fact, Suhrawardī's modalities are to be understood as (...) the different ways a predicate relates to its subject rather than as propositional operators. Accordingly, necessarily necessary modality relates actual instances (presences) of the Subject-Term with actual (presences) of the Predicate-Term; in contrast, necessarily contingent modality relates these terms conditionally, notably involving states of the Subject-Term within time intervals. Suhrawardī's main innovation, so we claim, is the explicit dialectical role presences or actual instances have in his modal-temporal logic, and particularly so in shaping his notion of contingency that admits both a generic and an individual or de re form of plenitude. (shrink)

This chapter considers in detail two dialogues from the "Appendix Platonica": the short dialogue "On Virtue" and the "Sisyphus". Both build upon Plato’s "Meno", but with notable reformulations and, at least since the end of the nineteenth century, this play of allusions has been interpreted as a sign of forgery, even if confirming the Academic origins of dubia and spuria. By inquiring into the practical and exegetical background of these reprises, the chapter shows how production of school dialogues supported specific (...) interpretations of Plato’s texts and could be used as a way to dialogue with the founder of the school through his writings. (shrink)

Innovation in medieval studies is the creative ability to go back to sources. Digging, exploring, and connecting material pieces of evidence, facts, and individuals uncover new knowledge. One of the most significant sources for the medieval textual production is the university. Understanding the writings stemming from different faculties of medieval universities requires skills, curiosity, and tools. Among such instruments, the statutes of universities help researchers not only to decipher the organization of the academic institutions and interpret the rules that apply (...) to scholars and to their professors, but also to decode how and why texts were produced. The faculty of theology represents the highest level where education led during the Middle Ages and delivers the highest degree such as the master in theology. All over Europe, such faculties become the impetus that drives the intelligentsia to produce a textual heritage that today generates inspiration for magisterial carriers. Among them, Professor Maarten Hoenen is one to praise today. Taking as a point of departure a recent publication of Maarten Hoenen, 1 I will propose to investigate the relation between the statute of universities and of intellectual practices within medieval academia-more precisely, how a researcher should dig for complementary sources when the main documentation depicting an intellectual practice, such as the protestatio and gratiarum actio, is missing. I do not intend to be exhaustive, but simply to focus on how we should understand these two actions, protestatio and gratiarum actio, in connection with the Sentences commentaries. 2 The paradox is that we have traces of these two practices in the surviving manuscripts stemming from the university, but we do not always have a description of these actions in their statutes. Protestatio represents an oath that bachelors take at the beginning of an academic exercise, and the gratiarum actio is the final paragraph that closes the same exercise by thanks addressed to the public. The span of time I will focus on is between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, since this is the period from which some testimonies survived that today help to better clarify how these actions were performed in medieval academia. It is also the period of naissance of the new faculties of theology all around Europe, as it is the case with Bologna, Vienna, Cracow, or Prague. They all embraced the model disseminated in Paris and Oxford on reading on the Sentences of Peter Lombard to obtain the degree of doctor in theology, and they contribute to building tradition, and therefore to produce sources for us today. (shrink)

Philosophy conceives itself, most often, as a "conceptual" activity, and having essentially a relationship to the world, that is to say to reality or to "objects". The "concepts" are intended to deliver men through knowledge, to make them escape the realm of imagination to bring them into the realm of reason. However, this enterprise, everywhere declared crucial, is never crowned with success. We do not find in any philosopher a list of "concepts", or a touchstone for distinguishing "concepts" from other (...) generalities expressed by ordinary language. We try to show that the enterprise to distinguish "concepts" from other "general ideas" cannot succeed, and that philosophy does not deal with "objects" nor with "concepts", but with " problems" and "discourses". (shrink)

This article addresses Barth’s dialectical notion of experience in the 1920s. I argue that the theoretical problem raised by recent studies on Barth’s notion of experience after his break with liberalism (i.e. the apparent inconsistency between Barth’s move towards an increasingly neo-Kantian understanding of experience and his emphasis on the existential and psychological dimensions of experience) can be solved by the hypothesis of a Nietzschean influence on Barth’s epistemology in the 1920s. I defend not only the historical plausibility but also (...) the conceptual fecundity of such a hypothesis, which casts a new light on Barth’s relation to philosophy and the notion of experience, and lays the basis for a consistent Barthian theology of experience. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty had a long-term relationship with Proust. Their association, for that is the appropriate word, was a continuous interaction, never denied, which was connected to the evolution of Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical and written positions, in a gradual reception curve that ended up profoundly permeating the philosopher’s arguments with the novelist’s prose to the extent that we can speak of a shared “style of thinking.” There is in Merleau-Ponty a “Proust’s tone” which never stops resonating because, between the novel and the philosophical (...) treatise, the “rings” of the former to the “chiasm” of the latter, both authors are moved by a shared project: to develop an aesthetic of rapport or intertwining without invoking the obsolete subject/object duality. His early and continuous immersion in the Recherche and passionate reading of Jean Santeuil as soon as it appeared in the early 1950s turned Proust into an increasingly important reference for Merleau-Ponty. The philosopher was particularly fascinated by the transformation of existential duration into a novelistic language, a movement of reciprocal interiorization. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the interweaving of philosophy and exegesis in medieval Jewish philosophy.

Beyond the past, present, future and possible conceptual varieties and variations as well as applications or uses, our purpose is to try to understand what can be concealed and revealed, in terms of residual elements, the various & multiple aspectual dimensions of the idea of " View from Nowhere". For these reasons, we propose to question the concept of "point of view/ View from" from the following interrogation: to what extent would it be necessary for thought to be able to (...) go beyond the limits inherent to any human and individual perspective, necessarily particular and subjective? Our proposal will question the origins of "perspectivism" in order to circumscribe a certain conceptual indeterminacy which seems to haunt also all or part of its possible contemporary uses. To reflect on the different systems where it can be operative and on the structuring function of the "perspectivity", to determine certain epistemic and historical contexts which bring this last one to the metaphysical agenda, to define the problems and limits of any logic of the "point of view" and the various related conceptual strategies, elaborated by the philosophers when they seize the idea of perspective and its aspectual dimensions, such will be the stake of our subject which will undoubtedly tend, according to the points of view, to claim or not to exceed any perspective.... (shrink)

What is the difference between a researcher in philosophy and a philosopher? There are two kinds of answer that we can give to this question. We can say that the difference lies in a sort of internal quality; or, as the authors of this paper do, we can argue that a philosopher would not be a philosopher without the intervention of an ensemble of social actors such as universities, departments, funding, colleagues, editors, journals, media, and so on. In the first (...) section, referring to actor-network theory (ANT), the authors define the philosopher as a Leviathan, i.e. a macro-actor that became macro- not thanks to his/her essence, but because he/she succeeded in translating the interests of other actors. In the second section, it is introduced the notion of digital traces, and the homology between ANT and the image of the social reality we can obtain from a process of extraction, treatment, and (visual) restitution of digital traces. In particular, the authors stress the potential of a digital traces-based scientometric for studying actor-networks related to the academic world, but also its limit. In the third section, the specific case of the actor-networks related to philosopher Paul Ricoeur is considered. First, on the basis of a scientometric analysis of the digital traces contained in the bibliographic database Scopus, and secondly by extending the exploration to digital traces available on the Web via web mapping. In the conclusion, the authors affirm that the merit of their digital hermeneutics consists in bringing forward a «world of the text» which is probably less romantic, but certainly more authentic that the «world of the text» to which Ricoeur has often referred to. (shrink)

Bruno Latour’s long term project is to compare the felicity and infelicity conditions of the different values dearest to the heart of those who have ‘never been modern’. According to him, this is the only way to develop an anthropology of the Moderns. After his work on science, on technology and, more recently, on law, this book explores the truth conditions of religious speech acts.Even though there is no question that religion is one of the values that has been intensely (...) cherished in the course of history, it’s also clear that it has become immensely difficult to tune in to its highly specific mode of enunciation. Every effort to speak in the right key sounds awkward, reactionary, pious or simply empty. Hence the necessity of devising a way of writing that brings to the fore this elusive form of speech to render it audible again. In this highly original book, the author offers a completely different tack on the endless ‘science and religion’ conflict by protecting them both from the confusion with the notion of information. Like The Making of Law, this book is one more attempt at developing this ‘inquiry on modes of existence’ that provides an alternative definition of society. (Publisher's abstract). (shrink)

Since the project on Modes of Existence has been long in coming and has connection with all the successive field works done by the author, the paper tries to retrace the main steps that have led to the project. It shows that this project precedes the work done in actor-network theory and explains the link between philosophy and anthropology through the peculiar notion of mode of existence.

The article examines the definitions of time in Sāṃkhya from the first commentaries on the Sāṃkhyakārikās up to Vijñānabhikṣu’s works. These texts all deny the existence of time as an entity existing over and above the three constitutive elements of reality acknowledged in the tradition (i.e. the Person, Nature, and its manifest evolutes); but they have strikingly different ways of justifying this denial. The Yuktidīpikā offers by far the most elaborate definition; it argues that time cannot be an eternal, omnipresent (...) and static substance as the Vaiśeṣikas contend, and is but a relative concept that results from our comparing various actions – an idea probably inspired by grammatical and astronomical sources. The article outlines the reception of the argument by its Vaiśeṣika adversaries and its fate within Sāṃkhya. It seeks to explain how the commentaries on the late Sāṃkhyasūtras, while still defending the principle that time is no distinct entity, ended up presenting time as being exactly what the Yuktidīpikā’s author had staunchly refused to admit: an eternal, static and omnipresent substance. It shows how this new understanding of time in Sāṃkhya was projected by late exegetes onto a twelfth-century Vaiśeṣika manual by Śivāditya, which has led modern historians to misunderstand Śivāditya’s definition of time. It also highlights differences between the Sāṃkhya and Pātañjalayoga views on time – notably the assertion in the Yogabhāṣya that contrary to succession, the moment (kṣaṇa) is real – and the ways in which commentators reacted to these apparent discrepancies, by ignoring them (as Vācaspatimiśra), by attempting to conciliate the Yogabhāṣya with the Yuktidīpikā’s argument (as the Yogavivaraṇa’s author) or by underscoring the incompatibility of the Sāṃkhya and Yoga views on time (as Vijñānabhikṣu). (shrink)

In this study I interpret Wittgenstein’s work on mathematics as an integral part of his philosophical endeavor at large, in terms of the stated aims and methods of this endeavor, and the (critical, ethical and aesthetical) agendas underlying it. My focus is on Wittgenstein’s later work, but strong continuities in some of the lines of thought I am interested in, lead to many naturally occurring references to earlier material. The study is based on a close reading of extended passages of (...) the manuscripts (as published in the online Bergen edition of the Nachlass), with special attention to the critical remarks that are mostly neglected if not shunned by Wittgenstein-scholarship. I show that Wittgenstein foreshadows many of the themes that are prevalent in 21st century Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, which however lacks the critical bias that is proper to Wittgenstein’s work and argue that the Wittgensteinian themes focused on in the present study still can offer worthwhile contributions to the Philosophy of Mathematics at large, and to Philosophy of Mathematical Practice in particular. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the relation between imagination and technics. There is no actual research on the relationship between imagination, creativity and technics in contemporary cognitive science. Nowhere is the question of thetechnical constitutivity of imagination articulated. This question has only recently been sketched out as a theoretical project by enactive philosophers of cognitive science (Malafouris 2013; Hutto and Myin 2017; Gallagher 2017). In the wakeof it, proponents of 5E cognition approaches (i.e., enactive, embodied, embedded, extended and ecological cognition approach) (...) have started takingthe role of socio-material and technical engagement in imagination more seriously (Poulsgaard 2019; Dereclenne 2020; Van Dijk and Rietveld 2020). This dissertation aims to pursue this reflection. Simply put, in light of a crossreading of pragmatism, French philosophy of technics, material anthropology and contemporary cognitive science, the stake is to show that technics shapes the imaginative and creative mind. Contemporary conceptions of imagination and creativity in the field ofcognitive science are mainly internalist and representationalist. Part one (chapters 1 and 2) argues that these views severely underestimate the role of technical and socio-material engagement in imaginative and creative processes. Guilty of a kind of dualism between mind and technics of which we should get rid of, internalist and representationalist conceptions of imagination and creativity understand technical development and engagement as means for the exteriorization of imaginative and creative achievements. These achievements remain internal to the representational brain only, prior to concrete embodied engagement with the technical environment. In this theoretical context, technics does not constitute, nor participate, in any way, into imaginative and creative processes. Chapter 2 presents epistemological (section one) and ontological (section two) principles that could help us to overcome the limitations of internalism and representationalism, and to think of the constitutive relationship between imagination and technics more efficiently. In light of John Dewey and Nelson’s Goodman’s pragmatist approaches, this chapter argues that the lack of consideration for technics is a result of a philosophical fallacy, the so-called “mereological fallacy”-- i.e. attributing to the mind-brain the only explanatory role while ignoring the essential and constitutive role of external factors and practical engagement. Chapter 2 explains how this fallacy works in the case of imagination and argues that there is another way to explain imaginative processes without postulating the existence of mental representations and reducing imaginative processes to purely internal and brain processes. This epistemological criticism leads to the promotion of an ontology of individual-world transactions, which is developed in the rest of the dissertation through Simondon’s ontology of relations, the enactive ontology of individual world couplings and the ecological ontology of affordances. Part 2 (chapter 3, 4 and 5) combines the analytic and the continental philosophical traditions, to offer an alternative theory of imagination and creativity as technically constituted. More specifically, chapter 3 presents the work of French philosopher of subjectivity and technics, Gilbert Simondon. It is shown how it is possible to combine Simondon’s conceptual framework and intuitions with 5E approaches. Like enactivists, Simondon thematizes the insertion of subjectivity in life. He also offers stimulating perspectives to help enactivists think about the articulation differently. That is, not only, as classical enaction does, between life, cognition and the lived body, but more extensively, between life, cognition and the sociocultural environment. (shrink)

Since Darwin first articulated the theory of evolution by natural selection ([1859] 1964), chance in biology has been considered as intimately connected with the source of heritable variation. In line with Darwin’s thinking, the Modern Synthesis, developed in the 1940s and 1950s, invoked chance to characterize genetic variation via random mutations, as well as the evolutionary processes of genetic drift. In the same vein, philosophical debates on chance in biology have been mainly focused on evolutionary theory, and more generally, on (...) the framework of evolutionary biology. But what about chance underlying evolution? Taking the analysis of explanations found in molecular and cellular biology as a starting point, my contribution to the philosophical debate on chance in biology is to give an epistemological “dignity” to chance. The intention of the account of “stochastic explanation” (SE) developed in my dissertation is for it to function as a philosophical tool which allows the central role of chance in cellular and molecular explanation to be recognized and accounted for. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that ancient commentators would have worked to systematise Aristotle. In doing so, they would have ignored all that was exploratory and problematic in the Aristotelian thought. Alexander of Aphrodite would offer an typical example of this tendency when he seeks to make metaphysics a demonstrative science. In this chapter I examine his use of the dialectical method in metaphysics, in particular in his exegesis on Metaphysics Beta, and in his practice of the aporetic method. Against the (...) idea that Beta’s aporias are no longer genuine puzzles, I would like to show, on the one hand, that aporia retains, in Alexander, an authentically exploratory function and, on the other hand, that its use in metaphysics is not so much a matter of systematization as of the accomplishment of the organon status granted to dialectics. Thanks to the dialectical method, Alexander maintains this exploratory character of aporias within a scientific approach. If we show the heuristic role of the dialectic as an integral part of science, we will then be able to better base the idea that Alexander maintains the exploratory character of the aporias. (shrink)

This book is framed as a dialogue, between Hugo Letiche's iconoclastic appeals to demontrate (as in a demo) for pedagogy/philosophy/politics of (re-)territoralization (as in the demos), and Jacques Rancière's call for dissensus and a new sensibility (le partage du sensible) that may lead to critical democratization. Writing here are: Asmund Born, Damian O'Doherty, Joanna Latimer, Hugo letiche, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley, Alphonso Lingis, Stephen Linstead, Garance Maréchal, Jean-Luc Moriceau, Rolland Munro, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Peter pelzer, Yvon Pesqueux, Burkard Sievers, Isabelle (...) Stengers, and Niels Thyge Thygesen. The authors explore learning and education, research and investigation, writing and practice, in the context of organization and of organizing. They champion, affect, hope, poetic narrative, slow science, justice, the commons, engagement and fairness. (shrink)

What if the consistency of the Goddess’s account of the cosmic order according to the opinions of mortals, in the second part of Parmenides’ poem, was the very sign of its own deceitful character? This chapter attempts to show that Parmenides’ use of the terms kosmos and diakosmos refers to the use of these terms and their cognates in epic poetry and that this source is the best one for us to reconstruct the missing steps of the Doxa part of (...) the poem. Parmenides transposes the Homeric vocabulary of dividing and ordering troops, arranging collective occupations, into the field of cosmology in order to illustrate how the words of men are swift to order a beautiful representation of the universe. Parmenides’ goddess delivers the most complete cosmogony and cosmology of the Archaic world, while also stating that it is merely words. The shaping and ordering of the universe are an arrangement of words, given all power to build a world by their own means. They are all the more consistent as they are demiurgical and deceitful. (shrink)

The constitutional projects described by Plato, especially in the Laws, plainly show that drawing lots may play a fundamental political role, more fundamental in Plato’s view than using it to designate political officers, as ancient democracy does. Plato draws on the Greek culture of chance, a culture that endows drawing lots with the double virtue of divine sanction and establishing equality of shares between equals. The theory of the two forms of equality (based either on equal or proportional shares) allows (...) Plato to marginalize sortition in the process of designating political office: selecting leaders should be based on merit (proportional equality). Drawing equal shares of land, on the other hand, lays the common ground for the city of the Laws. Moreover, having to consider the city as a sum of individuals who are at the receiving end of equal share distributions leads Plato to frame its mathematical structure and power of mobilization. (shrink)

One way to discuss if Confucianism is philosophy or religion can be found in historical approach. In Meiji era Japan, Nakae Chômin and Inoue Tetsujirô had a complete approach. This study is also the occasion to clarify the reception of Nakae Chômin reception in Meiji Japan.

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems central to the philosophy of action. The first volume to survey the entire field of philosophy of action (the central issues and processes relating to human actions) Brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts Discusses a range of ideas and doctrines, including rationality, free will and determinism, virtuous action, criminal responsibility, Attribution Theory, and rational agency in evolutionary perspective Individual chapters also cover prominent (...) historic figures from Plato to Ricoeur Can be approached as a complete narrative, but also serves as a work of reference Offers rich insights into an area of philosophical thought that has attracted thinkers since the time of the ancient Greeks. (shrink)

This thesis aims to discuss Thomas Reid’s (1710-1796) theory of the first principles of knowledge, more particularly, the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals and politics. In the first chapter, I discuss Reid’s foundationalist commitments in philosophy of mind, morals and politics. I argue that he is clearly a foundationalist about speculative and moral knowledge, but it is not clear if he keeps foundationalist commitments with regard to political knowledge – the first principles of politics are not self-evident beliefs: (...) they are not justified from the start and, therefore, they do not have what is needed for being basic beliefs in a foundationalist view of the structure of knowledge. In the second chapter, I discuss Reid’s understanding of the sources of speculative, moral and political knowledge, namely, common sense and knowledge of mankind. I argue that while philosophy of mind and morals are based upon the first principles of common sense – immediate and irresistible beliefs due to the original constitution of mind, politics is based upon first principles of the knowledge of mankind – beliefs that are due to a mixture of the sagacity and the experience of the political scientist who lives among other human beings in a political society. In the third chapter, I try to explain Reid’s comprehension on the first principles of philosophy of mind, morals and politics. I try to explain what a first principle of knowledge is, how to understand the distinction between the principles of contingent and necessary truths and what the means we have to identify the first principles of knowledge are. The fourth and last chapter is entirely dedicated to common sense. More particularly, I discuss how Reid defends the first principles of common sense from the skeptical attack. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point the reception of the Fable of the Bees by the philosophers of the second half of the eighteenth century, this article seeks to examine which parts of Mandeville's system "bordered upon the truth" (Smith) and were therefore useful in contributing to the formation of the political economy of commercial societies. To this end, the article is divided into three parts that address crucial aspects of the Fable's moral philosophy: the quarrel over the refinement of the (...) arts and its link with labour, trade, and inequality; the passions and the political foundation of society; and the manner in which interests are organised. (shrink)