Le présent ouvrage réunit les conférences que Stéphane Mosès a prononcées en janvier 2006, en tant que titulaire de la chaire de méta-physique Étienne-Gilson, à l'Institut catholique de Paris. Connu dès 1982, après la publication de son magistral ouvrage Système et révélation chez Franz Rosenzweig, préfacé par Emmanuel Levinas, son nom sera définitivement associé à l'auteur de L'Étoile de la Rédemption. Aussi bien fut-il un commentateur assidu des grands moments de la pensée juive moderne et contemporaine ou de la philosophie (...) allemande, y associant une incessante méditation de la Bible et du Talmud. C'est en examinant les différents types de relations aux textes pratiquées par les divers penseurs juifs, qu'il théorise progressivement une distinction, centralement exploitée ici, qui concerne la longue trajectoire de la pensée juive moderne depuis Moses Mendelssohn, entre " modernité normative " et " modernité critique ". (shrink)

Albert Einstein's bold assertion of the form-invariance of the equation of a spherical light wave with respect to inertial frames of reference became, in the space of six years, the preferred foundation of his theory of relativity. Early on, however, Einstein's universal light-sphere invariance was challenged on epistemological grounds by Henri Poincaré, who promoted an alternative demonstration of the foundations of relativity theory based on the notion of a light-ellipsoid. Drawing in part on archival sources, this paper shows how an (...) informal, international group of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, including Einstein, Paul Langevin, Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Ebenezer Cunningham, Harry Bateman, Otto Berg, Max Planck, Max Laue, A. A. Robb, and Ludwig Silberstein, employed figures of light during the formative years of relativity theory in their discovery of the salient features of the relativistic worldview. (shrink)

Michel Serres is a major twentieth-century thinker who has made decisive contributions to major debates across disciplines ranging from the history of science to literary studies and philosophy. This is the first monograph to offer a comprehensive assessment of Serres’ thought from his early work on Leibniz to his final publications in 2019. The first three chapters carefully explore Serres’ ‘global intuition’, how he understands and engages with the world, and his characteristic ‘figures of thought’, the repeated intellectual moves (...) that characterize his unique approach. Chapters Four to Six explore in detail Serres’ revolutionary contributions to three key areas: language, objects, and ecology. (shrink)

Biographical sketches show how six writers and public figures prepared for their deaths.

Aaron Ridley explores Nietzsche's mature ethical thought as expressed in his masterpiece On the Genealogy of Morals. Taking seriously the use that Nietzsche makes of human types, Ridley arranges his book thematically around the six characters who loom largest in that work—the slave, the priest, the philosopher, the artist, the scientist, and the noble. By elucidating what the Genealogy says about these figures, he achieves a persuasive new assessment of Nietzsche's ethics. Ridley's intellectually supple interpretation reveals Nietzsche's ethical position (...) to be deeper and more interesting than is often supposed: the relation, for instance, between Nietzsche's ideal of the noble and the ascetic or priestly conscience does not emerge as a stark opposition but as a rich interplay between the tensions inherent in each. Equally, he shows that certain under-appreciated confusions in Nietzsche's thought reveal much about the positive aspects of the philosopher's moral vision. The only book devoted entirely to the Genealogy, Nietzsche's Conscience offers a sympathetic but tough-minded critical reading of the philosopher's most important work. Delivered in clear and vigorous language and employing a broadly analytical approach, Ridley's commentary makes Nietzsche's reflections on morality more accessible than they have been hitherto. (shrink)

Two key themes in contemporary social theory are particularly relevant to the interpretation and critique of figurational sociology. On the one hand, some recent critiques of the sociological tradition — Touraine's attempt to deconstruct the received image of society is the most important example — have called into question a dominant paradigm that underlies both Marxist and structural-functional theories. Norbert Elias has not only anticipated some of the most important criticisms but also suggested correctives to some of the currently fashionable (...) alternatives. More specifically, his relationship to the sociological traditions and to its contemporary offshoots can be described in terms of six antitheses: his approach is anti-economistic, anti-normativistic, anti-reductionistic, anti-functionalist, anti-structuralist and anti-individualistic. On the other hand, the impact of all these critical strategies is somewhat blunted by the one-sided emphasis on power. A more balanced version of figurational sociology would need a concept of culture to match and counter-balance Elias's insights into the problematic of power. Further exploration of this issue could draw both on the classics and on post-Parsonian debates about cultural power and their interconnections. Cultural interpretations of power are the most important link between those two dimensions of social life; although Elias has never explicitly thematized them, his recent writings touch upon some aspects of their specifically modern variants. (shrink)

It is time for a reconsideration of the dating and interpretation of the Middle English narrative work in rhyming couplets known as The Prophecy of the Six Kings to Follow John . It has hitherto been confidently given a rough date of composition and a particular political role. Its only editor, Joseph Hall, says that “it was most probably written with a view to discredit Henry the Fourth.” He continues: “the poem says he is the Mole cursed from God's mouth, (...) in whose days terrible evils must come on England. It is a good example of the political use made of the popular belief in the ‘prophecies of Merlin.’” The notes to his text identify figures in the prophecy as representing, for example, Thomas of Woodstock, Henry Percy , Owen Glendower, and “perhaps Macmurrugh.” The only historian of the whole genre of political prophecy in medieval England, Rupert Taylor, says that the work “is very important because of its historical connections, for it is the prophecy that was used against Henry the Fourth by the Percy-Glendower faction, the ‘skimble-skamble stuff’ of Shakspere.”. (shrink)

En 1988, les éditions Privat de Toulouse publiaient, sous le titre Les Marseillais dans l'Histoire, un dictionnaire des figures marquantes « phocéennes ». Les femmes y étaient réduites à la portion congrue (vingt-cinq notices « féminines » contre sept cent sept notices « masculines »). À l'évidence, il y avait là une injustice à réparer! Il s'agissait de rendre aux Marseillaises leur passé et leur mémoire. Déjà au début des années 1970, à l'époque de l'éclosion en France de l'Histoire...

This work brings together Max Lemer's extended and enduring essays on Aristotle, Niccolb Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Thorstein Veblen, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Combining biography and interpretation, Lerner insightfully examines a cluster of thinkers who helped shape his own influential work in political theory and civilizational analysis. Viewed collectively, these essays show Turner's method and mind at their best. Like Lerner himself, the "masters" were tough-minded realists--philosophers who saw human experience in all of its variety as (...) central to study. Less inclined to metaphysical speculation, they wrestled with the real concerns and circumstances of therr times--but always within the larger context of ultimate meaning and consequence. Lerner eloquently introduces each philosopher and his work, but he also provides his own criticism and commentary. Complicated subjects are clearly presented, and cross-disciplinary analysis enhances the reader's sense of the whole. In his introduction, Robert Schmuhl discusses why Lerner was attracted to these particular thinkers and how they refined his approach to the human sciences. Schmuhl also traces the influence of these figures on Lemer's work. Magisterial Imagination will be of importance to philosophers, political theorists, and sociologists. (shrink)

The visual arts operated as a touchstone for French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, influencing his thinking on everything from epistemology to politics. Building on the recent publication of a bilingual, six-volume edition of his writings on contemporary art and artists, this special issue of_ Cultural Politics_ provides a focus on Lyotard’s aesthetics. The issue includes a review of Lyotard’s writings on art, a discussion of his early figural aesthetics, and an essay on Lyotard’s little-known work, _Pacific Wall_, as well as two (...) essays on Lyotard and music. Two previously untranslated works by Lyotard himself are also featured: the influential article “Argumentation and Presentation: The Crisis of Foundations” and the interview “What to Paint?,” given at the time of the publication of the book of the same name. Painter Leon Phillips, whose work embodies many of the attributes of painting that were most important to Lyotard, is the featured artist for the issue. Throughout, the contributors argue for the primary importance of aesthetics in understanding Lyotard’s thought. Peter W. Milne is Assistant Professor in the Department of Aesthetics at Seoul National University. (shrink)

What would the global history of philosophy look like if it were told not as a story of ideas but as a series of job descriptions—ones that might have been used to fill the position of philosopher at different times and places over the past 2,500 years? The Philosopher does just that, providing a new way of looking at the history of philosophy by bringing to life six kinds of figures who have occupied the role of philosopher in a (...) wide range of societies around the world over the millennia—the Natural Philosopher, the Sage, the Gadfly, the Ascetic, the Mandarin, and the Courtier. The result is at once an unconventional introduction to the global history of philosophy and an original exploration of what philosophy has been—and perhaps could be again. By uncovering forgotten or neglected philosophical job descriptions, the book reveals that philosophy is a universal activity, much broader—and more gender inclusive—than we normally think today. In doing so, The Philosopher challenges us to reconsider our idea of what philosophers can do and what counts as philosophy. (shrink)

Moral distress is one of the core topics of clinical ethics. Although there is a large and growing empirical literature on the psychological aspects of moral distress, scholars, and empirical investigators of moral distress have recently called for greater conceptual clarity. To meet this recognized need, we provide a philosophical taxonomy of the categories of what we call ethically significant moral distress: the judgment that one is not able, to differing degrees, to act on one’s moral knowledge about what one (...) ought to do. We begin by unpacking the philosophical components of Andrew Jameton’s original formulation from his landmark 1984 work and identify two key respects in which that formulation remains unclear: the origins of moral knowledge and impediments to acting on that moral knowledge. We then selectively review subsequent literature that shows that there is more than one concept of moral distress and that explores the origin of the values implicated in moral distress and impediments to acting on those values. This review sets the stage for identifying the elements of a philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress. The taxonomy uses these elements to create six categories of ethically significant moral distress: challenges to, threats to, and violations of professional integrity; and challenges to, threats to, and violations of individual integrity. We close with suggestions about how the proposed philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress sheds light on the concepts of moral residue and crescendo effect of moral distress and how the proposed taxonomy might usefully guide prevention of and future qualitative and quantitative empirical research on ethically significant moral distress. (shrink)

This paper engages with Italo Calvino’s lecture on Visibility, included in his last—and testamentary—volume Six Memos, by understanding it in an educational and pedagogical key. While the question of pedagogy is expressly addressed by Calvino himself in his lecture, the interpretation here provided is not merely an application of his tenets but an elaboration on and an autonomous development of them. In particular, in the spotlight there is the intimate bond image-cum-writing which seems to preside over Calvino’s insights and is (...) here suggested as key to tackling the challenges of the contemporary mediascape and the “tautological vision” dominating therein. While a part of the educational discourse invokes “homeostatic” pedagogical solutions, namely the (ultimately confrontational) deployment of writing to compensate for the iconic ruling regime, this paper explores the possibility of a specific kind of visual education (instantiated by comics and Otto Neurath’s Isotype), which combines the role of the image with some features traditionally attributed to the pedagogy of writing (e.g. the cultivation of abilities of abstraction, of reflection etc.). A pedagogy of figuration is, accordingly, proposed as an interruption of the tautological vision of the new media and as conducive to educating readers of the unwritten world and of the world of digital images, Mr. Palomar—the hero of Calvino’s last novel—possibly being the archetype of this kind of (new?) readership. By referring to two influential notions in the contemporary debate in educational philosophy and theory, this pedagogy is finally interpreted in term of (visual) thing-centredness rather than (visual) subjectification. (shrink)

Suscités par la reprise massive de la recherche en astronomie au IXe siècle dans le monde islamique et essentiellement à Bagdad, laquelle nécessite des outils mathématiques nouveaux, une floraison de traités, tant astronomiques que mathématiques, voit le jour à cette époque. D'entre les traités mathématiques, un certain nombre est consacré à la ‘‘figure secteur”, c’est-à-dire au théorème dit ‘‘de Ménélaüs” sur la sphère, lequel généralise le théorème dit ‘‘de Ménélaüs” dans le plan. Ce théorème de Ménélaüs sur la sphère, ou (...) règle des six quantités, est, en l’absence du théorème des sinus sur la sphère, lequel ne date que de la deuxième moitié du Xe siècle, le principal outil de l'astronomie sphérique. Le traité de Thābit ibn Qurra sur La figure secteur est le premier de ces traités consacrés au théorème de Ménélaüs, tant dans le plan que sur la sphère, à nous être parvenu; point de départ de tout un courant, il influencera profondément le développement ultérieur de la géométrie sphérique. Ce traité, qui est en fait une épître adressée à un correspondant malheureusement anonyme, présente en outre l'intérêt de montrer que, dans le milieu scientifique de cette époque à Bagdad, beaucoup s'intéressaient à ce théorème, essayaient d'en énoncer d'autres cas de figure et de compléter la démonstration qu'en donne Ptolémée dans l'Almageste. (shrink)

To what extent was the evolution of secularism in twentieth-century South and Southeast Asia a result of transnational exchange? Six argues that networks of non-state actors played a bigger role than previously understood.

I seek to emphasize Immanuel Kant’s lingering and unsavory impact on medical ethics by emphasizing Kantian ethics’ disregard for non- rational humans. We must be considerate when discussing individuals who have some form of dementia, conditions that irreversibly diminish the ability to use rational thought, sometimes to a degree of severity that hinders essential daily functions. I argue that to consider ourselves proponents of human equality we must treat humans with dementia as members of the kingdom of ends.

Une postérité,bien connue, est née de Charles de Foucauld : des congrégations religieuses qui se sont inspirées de lui et qui ont fait surgir des ≪ tiers-ordres ≫ (Fraternités Sacerdotale et Séculière). Une autre postérité existe, née du vivant de Charles de Foucauld, une ≪UNION ≫ qu’il a fondée, rassemblant des baptises, maries ou non, ordonnes ou non, religieux ou non, qu’il a destines a être, comme lui, des ≪ missionnaires isoles ≫, disait-il, des ≪ défricheurs évangéliques≫ ; mille membres (...) existent aujourd’hui a travers le monde, qui veulent, dans leur vie quotidienne et leurs insertions, leur ≪Nazareth ≫, vivre selon cette vocation. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] the best tradition of Max Weber’s theses on the Protestant ethic and its role in the evolution of modern capitalism Edward Schneier’s book is a daring and inspiring attempt to assess another form of religion’s impact on society. The focus here is on Islam, or, more precisely on the broad range of Islamic political thought and (...) ideals and their impact on democracy in not less than the Islamic world as a whole. Concerned by the heated debates on Islam, violence, and authoritarianism triggered by the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the troubled history of the Middle East since the invasion in Iraq in 2003, and the Arab Spring in 2011, Schneier starts with the question what the resources of ‘Islamic... (shrink)

This article argues for a transregional historical approach to explain the career of political secularism, i.e. the ideas and practices that inform the modern state’s relationship to and administration of religion, in the 20th century. More specifically, it asks in how far we can understand secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transregional patterns that evolved within and beyond these regions. The argument is based on (...) three brief case studies on Atatürk’s Turkey as a contested source of inspiration for state secularity and religious reform, regional women’s networks to foster secularism and social change in the 1930s, and secularism as a strategy of postcolonial state-building and territorial integration. Conceptually, the article suggests to use global intellectual history as a means to combine research on connectivity with historical comparison. (shrink)

Recent work by Piers Stephens has established axiological pluralism as the common element between various strands of theorizing in environmental ethics. However, a tension still exists in contemporary theories between the need for practical convergence among the values through rational argumentation and the experience of the motivational power of the value orientations in living human experience. The pragmatist phenomenological foundation for a pluralist environmental ethics developed in the philosophy of William James is consistent with the contemporary theories, while potentially solving (...) some of their tensions. In particular, the proposed approach of James adds a deeper layer of experiential values, which are not always considered in the public discursive practices and which often mobilize non‐scientific and not explicitly rational motivations and beliefs (including the environmental as well as the psychological, social, and cultural). In doing so, the phenomenological pragmatism of William James opens up an avenue for integrating experiential values into a broadened pluralist environmental ethics. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Analysis of sites of newly integrated DNA in cellular genomes is important to several fields, but methods for analyzing and visualizing these datasets are still under development. Here, we describe tools for data analysis and visualization that take as input integration site data from our INSPIIRED pipeline. Paired-end sequencing allows inference of the numbers of transduced cells as well as the distributions of integration sites in target genomes. We present interactive heatmaps that allow comparison of distributions of integration sites to (...) genomic features and that support numerous user-defined statistical tests. To summarize integration site data from human gene therapy samples, we developed a reproducible report format that catalogs sample population structure, longitudinal dynamics, and integration frequency near cancer-associated genes. We also introduce a novel summary statistic, the UC50, which provides a single number summarizing possible clonal expansion. Using these tools, we characterize ongoing longitudinal characterization of a patient from the first trial to treat severe combined immunodeficiency-X1, showing successful reconstitution for 15 years accompanied by persistence of a cell clone with an integration site near the cancer-associated gene CCND2. Software is available at https://github.com/BushmanLab/INSPIIRED. (shrink)

Philosophy was born in China in the 6th century, in the person of Confucius. But to properly understand this beginning and its development, we need to recall the beginning of the Zhou dynasty in the 11th century BC. Animated by a vision of the Mandate of Heaven for their rule, the Zhou rulers initiated and maintained a dynasty in north China aimed at achieving a civilized life for all human beings on earth. After a brief sketch of this background, Richard (...) Gotshalk attempts an exposition of the six major figures who gave shape to the early Chinese tradition of philosophy: Confucius, Mo-zi, Lao-zi, Mencius, Zhuang-zi, and Xun-zi. Presenting the thought of each separately, Gotshalk concludes the work by drawing together some of the basic themes and emphases which mark the early Chinese realization of philosophical thought and that distinguishes philosophy in its beginnings in China from philosophy in its beginnings in India and Greece. (shrink)

In this chapter, I approach the subject of peace by way of Andrew Fiala’s pioneering, synthetic work on “practical pacifism.” One of Fiala’s articles on the subject of peace is entitled “Radical Forgiveness and Human Justice”—and if one were to replace “Radical Forgiveness” with “Peace,” this would be a fair title for my chapter. In fact, Fiala himself explicitly makes a connection in the article between radical forgiveness and peace. Also in support of my project, Fiala’s article names four of (...) the six historical figures who are central to my chapter, namely Marcus Aurelius, King, Arendt, and Nietzsche. Moreover, Fiala also insists there “forgiveness must be held in creative tension with justice,” and it is this very tension that forms the basis of my new conception of socially-just peace. To wit, I propose that socially-just peace is lovingly generous reimagining (peace) through intuitively self-overcoming tension (social justice). (shrink)

The author examines literary sources, takes poets as subjects, and allows their philosophical implications to emerge. Man is thought, but thought is figuring. Hence man is the figure who figures. And good figuring works. Sewell selects six modern figures for man: temple, labyrinth, gambler, laboratory, language, machine, showing the partiality of each, only to lead into a detailed examination of the cosmic figures: the universe itself, as pole of the I; suffering and effort, as capabilities of the (...) I; love and death, as man's absolute reach. Though the book as a whole may not work, its somewhat ragged character may well display the true state of our philosophical methods for coming to grips with man.—D. B. B. (shrink)

Now available in English for the first time, The Visibility of the Image explores the development of an influential aesthetic tradition through the work of six figures. Analysing their contribution to the progress of formal aesthetics, from its origins in Germany in the 1880s to semiotic interpretations in America a century later, the six chapters cover: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), the first to separate aesthetics and metaphysics and approach aesthetics along the lines of formal logic, providing a purely syntactic way (...) of using signs, regardless of objective content; Alois Riegl (1858-1905), who went on to further develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic, creating a theory of style in response to Zimmermann's call for an aesthetics oriented toward formal logic; Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who represents a step toward an understanding of consciousness by using pictures as cognitive tools; Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895), the Saxon philosopher who considered the possibility that some kinds of images are made and viewed not for what they show, but for their visibility's sake alone; Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), responsible for taking up the connections between the problems of reducing the range of potential meanings and contexts of a given image down to just the picture surface; Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who set out to establish whether a picture with no objective reference, such as an abstract painting, still counts as a sign, and if so, in what sense. Bringing these thinkers together and interlinking their ideas, Lambert Wiesing presents an engaging history of formal aesthetics, while reconstructing the philosophical foundations for the appearance of new image forms in the 20th century, including the video-clip, abstract collage, digital simulation and virtual reality. Using this original approach, The Visibility of the Image introduces the rise of modern image theory and provides a valuable account of our engagement with pictures in the 21st century. (shrink)

In this work Thomas surveys the contributions of (pre-Kantian) early modern philosophy to our understanding of the mind. She focuses on the six canonical figures of the period -- Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume -- and asks what each has to say about five topics within the philosophy of mind. The topics are (1) the ontological status of mind, (2) the scope and nature of self-knowledge, (3) the nature of consciousness, (4) the problem of mental causation, and (...) (5) the nature of representation or intentionality. The overarching aim of the book is to show that the theories articulated by these thinkers are not just historical curiosities, but have much to contribute to our understanding of these topics today. (shrink)

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the (...) earliest of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

Dans Folioplus philosophie, le texte philosophique, associé une oeuvre d'art qui l'éclaire et le questionne, est suivi d'un dossier organisé en six points :Les mots du texte : Corps, entrelacs (chiasme), chair ; L'œuvre dans l'histoire des idées ; La figure du philosophe ; Trois questions posées au texte : Y a-t-il une chair de l'image? L'accès à l'être implique-t-il la neutralisation du sensible? Y a-t-il une chair de l'histoire? ; Groupement de textes : L'écriture et l'image: l'existence, la mort (...) ; Prolongements. (shrink)