Emmanuel Cattin pursues the problem of what Schürmann calls, throughout his work, the “origin” and seeks to clarify its essential link with language and translation, or with the “originary experience with language”. Drawing on the legacy of Heidegger’s Ereignis, Schürmann never ceased to meditate on the meaning of the source of every appearance, and the mode of dwelling that is in accordance with it, namely “errancy”. Between Maître Eckhart (1972) and Broken Hegemonies (1996), the “errant joy” disappeared, yielding (...) to a tragic gaze. (shrink)

resumo O presente trabalho é uma contribuição ao estudo do sentido da « personalidade pura », que surge ao final da Ciência de Lógica de Hegel, e que é ali o nome correto e último do « Conceito ». Com esse nome, Hegel pretende designar a afirmação da liberdade em sua ide nt ida de com a negatividade absoluta. Pa ra esclarecer esse ponto, será preciso, primeiro, explicar o sentido hegeliano de pessoa no campo do espírito objetivo, onde ela é (...) alçada, na figurado imperador, à condição de « pessoa absoluta » . No entanto, para além da rigidez desta última, a pessoa hegeliana é o nome do sujeito que decide. Tal decisão é pensada por Hegel como uma criação, a personalidade é precisamente a identidade da vontade e da inteligência, e é possível então passar da sua aparência objetiva à decisão da Id é ia absoluta em sua própria afirmação como conhecimento absoluto, isto é, à identidade he geliana da verda de substancial e do sujeito pessoal. palavras-chave Personalidade pura; sujeito; negatividade; Hegel; Ciência da Lógica. (shrink)

Le probleme theologico-politique comprend une diversite de questions qui trouvent cependant leur unite dans la necessite, ou la contrainte, dont la philosophie dans son histoire ne s'est pas defaite: celle de se confronter au religieux, a l'ecclesial et au theologique. Cette confrontation du philosophique et du religieux emprunte plusieurs voies, selon qu'il s'agit pour la philosophie d'examiner la fondation religieuse du politique et plus generalement les relations du pouvoir et du sacre, ou bien de recommander ou de contester l'usage politique (...) du religieux, ou encore d'affirmer la liberte de la croyance contre toute censure. Les etudes ici reunies portent sur les pythagoriciens, Thomas d'Aquin, Jacques 1er d'Angleterre, Milton, Spinoza, Bayle, Toland, Hume, Kant et Rosenzweig, et proposent une perspective traversiere sur les transformations d'une question qui, tout en etant encore la notre, est indissociable d'une histoire. (shrink)

A la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la philosophie, dans un débat autour de l'héritage de Kant, s'autodétermine comme système de la liberté, pour achever la révolution copernicienne, et accéder, dans le système du savoir, au concept, à la conscience de soi. La liberté s'affirme comme identité du penser et de l'être. Schelling est alors inspiré d'une part par Spinoza, et d'autre part par Kant et Fichte.

La pensée de Hans Jonas aura partagé avec celles de Hobbes et de Hegel le rôle créateur, inspirateur, qu’elle a fait jouer à la peur. Non pas toute peur. La peur de la mort violente au centre du Hobbes de Leo Strauss (1936) pouvait de loin venir au devant du tremblement de la conscience servile devant la mort, une mort qu’apportait à celle-ci un visage en lequel elle devait reconnaître son maître : le visage du maître aura toujours les traits (...) du Maître absolu. De ce regard dans la mort Alexan... (shrink)

« Je suis la vérité ». Dans cette parole du Christ de Jean, la vérité s’avance dans la figure d’une première personne en son auto-attestation. La vérité est le témoin d’elle-même. Face à elle et contre elle, face à son « nouveau commandement », se configure, dans la pensée de Heidegger, la situation étrange d’un Dieu des commandements dans une histoire de l’être où le tournant romain dans l’essence de l’alètheia donne au theos son empreinte impériale-curiale. C’est un tel face-à-face (...) entre deux visages de l’alètheia qui est ici dessiné, ou plutôt seulement préparé, où le « Je suis la vérité » sera étudié, dans l’évangile de Jean, à partir de la structure du témoignage, de l’auto-attestation comme accomplissement de la manifestation. (shrink)

Esta contribución plantea una sola pregunta: ¿quién es el Anticristo de Nietzsche? A partir de la figura del Nuevo Testamento en el Evangelio de Juan y las indicaciones apocalípticas en la Segunda Epístola de Pablo a los Tesalonicenses, estudia al Anticristo en el libro de 1888 como una inversión del anatema de Lutero contra Roma y el papado en 1520, ahora vuelto contra el cristianismo mismo. Una lucha tan despiadada tiene el significado de Reino y redención como apuesta única.

Dans ses cours sur la théologie protestante, donnés à Bonn entre 1932 et 1933, Karl Barth engage une confrontation magistrale avec Hegel, la « confiance en soi » de la pensée humaine et « l’événement de la raison » qui sont au centre de cette œuvre. Hegel, mieux que les théologiens, fut aussi le penseur de la majesté, de la seigneurie de Dieu, mais il ne conçut pas, au centre de la vérité, « l’inconcevable de Dieu ».

This contribution studies the German translations for reality: Realität, Sachheit, Wirklichkeit, first in their own ambiguity, then at the end of the hegelian Objective Logic in The Science of Logi...

Le Stern der Erlösung se tient, à l’égard de l’idéalisme, dans une situation étrange : il le renverse dans sa propre langue. Alors même que tout l’enseignement du livre, se confiant à la langue, s’oppose à l’idéalisme en lequel s’accomplit la philosophie, il trouve dans Schelling, mais aussi dans Hegel, les concepts de son dépassement. Ainsi de la pensée de la Création, retournant la langue hégélienne contre elle-même.

La doctrine kierkegaardienne de la vérité expose celle-ci en tant que personnalité, vérité venue dans le monde et toujours personnellement adressée. Mais elle la considère aussi en sa royauté essentielle, selon laquelle l’enseignement de la vérité est, en son centre, annonce de la venue du royaume. La réponse à la vérité est alors le redoublement personnel selon lequel chacun est appelé à suivre la vérité, autrement dit à se tenir dans le combat de l’ ecclesia militans dans le monde et (...) contre le monde, selon l’inconditionnalité du « Tu dois » et la rigueur de l’obéissance, dans le silence de l’écoute. (shrink)

La situation doit indiquer le site ou le lieu. Elle doit le montrer (in den Ort weisen), mais elle demandera aussi, selon Heidegger, qui en fut le penseur, que l’on se rende attentif à lui (den Ort beachten). Alors seulement la situation ouvre la question du domaine ou de la contrée, Gegend, « à laquelle appartient le site ». Alors la situation « médite le site », bedenkt den Ort. Une « situation » de la logique hégélienne devrait elle aussi, (...) quelle que soit l’ampleur du regard dont elle ser... (shrink)

This contribution studies the thing in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, its strange mode of presence, its consistency and disparition by itself, its confusion. The concept of property or quality is...

This is an in-depth study of J.G. Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics and theory of geometry. It investigates both the external formal and internal cognitive parallels between the axioms, intuitions and constructions of geometry and the scientific methodology of the Fichtean system of philosophy. In contrast to “ordinary” Euclidean geometry, in his Erlanger Logik of 1805 Fichte posits a model of an “ursprüngliche” or original geometry – that is to say, a synthetic and constructivistic conception grounded in ideal archetypal elements that (...) are grasped through geometrical or intelligible intuition. -/- Accordingly, this study classifies Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics as a whole as a species of mathematical Platonism or neo-Platonism, and concludes that the Wissenschaftslehre itself may be read as an attempt at a new philosophical mathesis, or “mathesis of the mind.” -/- “This work testifies to the author's exact and extensive knowledge of the Fichtean texts, as well as of the philosophical, scientific and historical contexts. Wood has opened up completely new paths for Fichte research, and examines with clarity and precision a domain that up to now has hardly been researched.” Professor Dr. Marco Ivaldo -/- “This study, written in a language distinguished by its limpidity and precision, and constantly supported by a close reading of the Fichtean texts and secondary literature, furnishes highly detailed and convincing demonstrations. In directly confronting the difficult historical relationship between the Wissenschaftslehre and mathematics, the author has broken new ground that is at once stimulating, decidedly innovative, and elegantly audacious.” Professor Dr. Emmanuel Cattin. (shrink)

Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this “selective laziness,” we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was (...) someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own. (shrink)

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that it is because (...) deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader sets out a timely and powerful agenda for contemporary African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American philosophy.

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings, who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be (...) available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both. (shrink)

L’argument de base de cet article est que le débat consensuel n’a pas été une notion très significative jusqu’à présent parce que le consensus n’a pas été étudié de manière approfondie en tant que concept et que la délibération n’a pas été étudiée précisément en termes de sa propension à parvenir à un accord commun. En particulier, la délibération et les problèmes qui en découlent n’ont pas été classées en plusieurs niveaux afin d’exposer les différents défis qui se posent lorsque (...) l’on tente de parvenir à un accord et les types d’approches délibératives impliquées dans chaque catégorie. La présente recherche propose une telle catégorisation dans le but de clarifier davantage le débat. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model. Empirical studies (...) show that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences. Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians' behaviors. (shrink)

In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability (...) to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my turn (...) to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my turn (...) to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions. (shrink)

Bernard Matolino argues that the communal foundation of classical African communitarianism should be discarded if communitarian theories would be of any use to modern African political theory. He sets out to propose a theory of communitarianism that not only suits modern African realities but would also be useful to any people including non-Africans. I argue that what he ends up doing is proposing cosmopolitanism, calling into question the “Afro” designation of the title of his theory. I also argue that his (...) position on the relationship between the individual and the community is technically not communitarianism of any sort, calling into question the “communitarian” appellation in his theory. His attempt to divorce communitarianism from communalism is unsuccessful, making communitarianism as unsuitable as a theory of world relations as Matolino claims it is unsuitable for contemporary multiethnic African societies. (shrink)

Prevailing literature argues that arguing is the only appropriate mode of deliberation. The literature acknowledges bargaining, story telling, and other forms of communication, but is unwilling to describe these as deliberation, properly speaking. The claim is that describing them as such would amount to concept stretching. In this article I argue that arguing exhausts neither the legitimate modes of deliberation nor the modes for effective deliberation. To do this I delineate two basic categories of issues we normally deliberate upon, and (...) demonstrate that arguing is more appropriate for one category, not so appropriate for the other. (shrink)

Preoccupation with multiparty aggregative democracy in Africa has produced superficial forms of political/electoral choice-making by subjects that deepen pre-existing ethnic and primordial cleavages. This is because the principles of the multiparty system presuppose that decision-making through voting should be the result of a mere aggregation of pre-existing, fixed preferences. To this kind of decision-making, I propose deliberative democracy as a supplementary approach. My reason is that deliberation, beyond mere voting, should be central to decisionmaking and that, for a decision to (...) be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation, not merely the aggregation of pre-existing fixed preferences. I agree with arguments that when adequate justifications are made for claims/demands/conclusions, deliberation has the potential to have a salutary effect on people’s opinions, transform/evolve preferences, better inform judgments/voting, lead to increasingly ‘common good’ decisions, have moral educative power, place more burden of account-giving on public officers, and furnish subjects/losers/outvoted with justifications for collectively binding decisions. I argue that a deliberative turn in politics in Africa will have a mitigating effect on tribal and money politics. (shrink)

Everything is phenomenon, everything is gift, or everything is given. This presupposition of phenomenology, which makes giveness the starting point for phenomenality, is not altogether self-evident. It is not sufficient to look merely at the reverse of the gift, but it is a matter of questioning the impossibility of even giving. Questioning the strategies of the contemporary reappropriations of Kant—radicalization, disproportion, and inversion —this text works under a fourth possibility, seldom examined and yet still envisaged by Kant: the “Extra-Phenomenal”, or (...) in other words, the “Chaos”, the “pell-mell”, the “Cinnabar”, or the “melee of sensations”. (shrink)

" Pourquoi demandons-nous avec tant d'empressement au cerveau d'expliquer ce qui nous arrive et ce que nous devons faire? On se dit, n'est-ce pas dans ses replis que nous devons désormais chercher notre sort? La philosophie peut-elle rester indifférente à un tel sujet? [...] Mais avons-nous éclairci notre monde et résolu nos questions de vie en les enracinant dans nos cerveaux? A-t-on rendu la conscience moins mystérieuse? Et penser? L'organe de la pensée va-t-il enfin nous en dispenser? " L'auteur s'interroge (...) avec une douce ironie sur les espoirs et les fragilités qui s'expriment dans cette nouvelle quête de fondement que nous avons entreprise. Qu'on ne s'attende pas à trouver ici une théorie du fonctionnement cérébral, mais mille interrogations, mille formulations des questions qui surgissent dès lors qu'on interpose l'idée de cerveau entre nous et le monde. L'ensemble compose une suite de méditations, ramassées en brefs chapitres, pour trouver une place au cerveau et varier notre distance à son égard. (shrink)

There have been two parallel views regarding the role of voting in deliberation. The first is that deliberation before the fabrication of balloting was completely devoid of voting. The second is that voting is, not just part of deliberation, but is standard to deliberation. I argue in this article that neither of these views is correct. Implicit voting has always existed across time and space but only as a last resort in the event of a failure of natural unanimity. What (...) is relatively modern is the establishment of what I call explicit voting, namely, balloting, outside deliberation and often without deliberation. I also distinguish between natural and artificial unanimities, and clarify that artificial unanimities are products of implicit voting. I demonstrate these clarifications with some examples of deliberation. I deploy these clarifications to rid a certain debate of confusion regarding the precise role of voting in consensual deliberation. (shrink)