In French, the word « expérience » has two different meanings, which often merge into each other: whether one hears it as « to experience » or as « to experiment », one will take it towards lay knowledge and techniques of struggle, or towards scientific protocols and techniques of governance. This article rides on this ambiguity, putting the two sides of this notion to the service, and to the test, of an analysis of practices and policies dealing with the (...) issue of drugs. On this specific question, the two meanings of political « expérience » are both maximally divergent and intimately tied to each other. (shrink)

This article presents a gnostic division of truth and the world, or between theory and philosophy. In the course of the article the structure of decision is articulated in both political and theoretical senses. Against the agnosticism of philosophy, always an alibi given over to the functioning of the capitalist world where life is not worth living, this article presents a gnosis that requires creating and beginning with the proletarian subject akin to the way the French Maoist group Gauche prolétarienne (...) began by taking theory into the factories in the late 1960s. (shrink)

Dans la carte des conflits numériques – logiciel libre, open source, théorie de la propriété –Échelle Inconnue relate son expérience de bataille pour le QR-code (encodeur et décodeur libre en ligne, donc gratuit et réalisable par tous) contre le système de « Flash code » payant, érigé comme standard national, commercialisé par Orange. Ce récit, victorieux dans la ville de Rouen, a amené une vingtaine de collectivités territoriales à préférer utiliser le site d’Échelle Inconnue pour élaborer leur code, amenant Orange (...) à abandonner ses rêves de code fermé et payant. (shrink)

Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's world-thought. Over a decade ago, Gilles Grelet left the city to live permanently on the sea, in silence and solitude, with no plans to return to land, rarely leaving his boat Théorème. An act of radical refusal, a process of undoing one by one the ties that attach humans to the world, for Grelet this departure was also (...) inseparable from an ongoing campaign of anti-philosophy. Like François Laruelle's "ordinary man" or Rousseau's "solitary walker," Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's world-thought, point zero of an anti-philosophy as rigorous gnosis, and apprentice in the herethics of navigation. More than a set of scattered reflections, less than a system of thought, Theory of the Solitary Sailor is a gnostic device. It answers the supposed necessity of realizing the world-thought that is philosophy (or whatever takes its place) with a steadfast and melancholeric refusal. As indifferently serene and implacably violent as the ocean itself, devastating for the sufficiency of the world and the reign of semblance, this is a lived anti-philosophy, a perpetual assault waged from the waters off the coast of Brittany, amid sea and wind. (shrink)

This paper considers the rediscovery of Hegel currently taking place in the analytic philosophy. Going back to the Hegelian texts themselves, I will try to show how they can help to decisively solve some problems of contemporary philosophy. I will concentrate on the theme of knowledge, and especially mathematical knowledge, in relation to Hegelian dialectical logic.

Various notions of independence of observables have been proposed within the algebraic framework of quantum field theory. We discuss relationships between these and the recently introduced notion of logical independence in a general operator-algebraic context. We show that C*-independence implies an analogue of classical independence.

Hegel i Nietzsche twierdzili, że żyją w czasach przełomu, który wymusi pojawienie się nowego etapu w dziejach ludzkości. Sytuację człowieka współczesnego określa „fakt” roztrzaskania dotychczasowych horyzontów oraz konieczność stworzenia, lub odkrycia, horyzontów nowych. Postulują oni zatem ustanowienie nowego celu ludzkości. Filozofia polityki winna stać się częścią tego ogólnokulturowego projektu. Tym samym rzucają wyzwanie współczesnej filozofii politycznej, która zrzeka się prawa do ustanawiania takiego celu. Obaj są też przekonani – znów wbrew twierdzeniom współczesnym – że cel ów może i powinien być (...) ugruntowany w naturze całej rzeczywistości i w naturze człowieka. W ich założeniu ma to być cel człowieka empirycznego, historycznego, człowieka, który osiągnął bolesną świadomość tego, że to on był twórcą tych wartości, które dotąd uznawał za obiektywne. Potrzeba sformułowania nowego celu każe Heglowi i Nietzschemu powrócić do klasycznego pojmowania filozofii polityki, do postrzegania w doskonałości człowieka ideału, któremu ma być podporządkowana polityczna działalność. Właściwe rozumienie miejsca człowieka w świecie, ujęcie go jako istoty stwarzającej horyzonty i przekształcającej zgodnie z nimi rzeczywistość, pozwala według nich dotrzeć do prawdy o bycie jako całości, do konstytuującej go zasady samo-rozwoju, będącego zarazem samo-przezwyciężaniem i samo-przekraczaniem. Zaakceptowanie tej prawdy o świecie pozwala ugruntować w nim ideał doskonałości, który można od tej pory ujmować jako istotowy cel człowieka, i żądać podporządkowaniu mu całej kulturowej działalności, w tym także – filozoficzno-politycznej teorii i praktyki. (shrink)

L'anti- phénoménologie prend place dans un quadriparti dont les trois autres places sont occupées par la phénoménologie, la contre- phénoménologie et la non- phénoménologie. On peut voir en cette effectuation de l'antiphilosophie comme gnose rigoureuse la théorie-méthode transcendantale d'une rébellion qui ne serait pas du semblant. Anti-phenomenology takes place within a quadripartite whose three other parts are occupied by phenomenology, counter-phenomenology and nonphenomenology. This effectuation of anti-philosophy as a rigorous gnosis can be seen as the transcendental theory-method for a rebellion (...) that would not be a pretence. (shrink)

MORALITY AS A SOURCE OF (BANAL) EVIL. HANNAH ARENDT READS KANT The experience of totalitarianism made Arendt notice how problematic the common understanding of morality is. If we identify it with the obedience to the rules governing human relationships it can happen that when those rules become questionable we are no longer able to distinguish right from wrong. But totalitarian leaders not only rejected the existing rules; they replaced them with the ones that prescribed evil things. Arendt thinks that the (...) real moral problem is with those "ordinary" people who adapted to the new situation. Both the ease of their conversion and the example of those who were able to resist it, led her to conclude that “morality of rules” might be detrimental to the activities that can make us refrain from doing evil. Analyzing these activities, which are thinking and judging, Arendt often refers to Kant’s philosophy. I want to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this interpretation, and its importance to moral and political thought of Arendt herself. The presentation of these topics is supposed to deepen the reflection on the problem of "banal" evil. (shrink)

Being inherently different from any other lifesaving organ transplant, uterine transplantation does not aim at saving lives but supporting the possibility to generate life. Unlike the kidneys or the liver, the uterus is not specifically a vital organ. Given the non-lifesaving nature of this procedure, questions have been raised about its feasibility. The ethical dilemma revolves around whether it is worth placing two lives at risk related to surgery and immunosuppression, amongst others, to enable a woman with absolute uterine factor (...) infertility to experience the presence of an organ enabling childbirth. In the year 2000, the first uterine transplantation, albeit unsuccessful, was performed in Saudi Arabia from where it has spread to the rest of the world including Sweden, the United States and now recently India. The procedure is, however, still in the preclinical stages and several ethical, legal, social and religious concerns are yet to be addressed before it can be integrated into the clinical setting as standard of care for women with absolute uterine factor infertility. (shrink)

Benjamin Barber on the United States and the challenge of terrorism.

Author: Szutta Artur Title: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ’S CONCEPT OF THE ‘THIRD STATES’ (Stany trzecie w ujęciu Władysława Tatarkiewicza) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 617-627 Keywords: “THIRD STATES”, LEISURE, PHILOSOPHY, THEORY, INTELLECT, SENSE OF LIFE, WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, JOSEPH PIEPER Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article treats on the concept of “third states” (as opposed to the other two kinds of states: those of work and entertainment) introduced by (...) Władysław Tatarkiewicz in his treatise On Happiness. A thorough analysis of the passage on “third states” as well as of the very concept allows to see its relevance to the considerations on such important philosophical questions as those of the nature of doing philosophy, the meaning of life, intellectual intuition, theoria or contemplation. The paper consists of five parts. The first part is focused on Tatarkiewicz’s understanding of “third states” as well as on a phenomenological analysis of the concept itself. The second part is a kind of extension of the analysis enriched by Josef Pieper’s interpretation of the idea of leisure which I find very close to what Tatarkiewicz means by “third states”. In the light of the analysis the concept of the ‘third states’ turns out to be very inspiring and useful in dealing with a number of philosophical questions, which is shown in the fourth part of the paper. The final step consists of questioning the above conclusion by short outlining a possible naturalistic interpretation of the ‘third states’ in the light of which the picture of philosophy, human life or human cognition, based on the concept of the ‘third states’ might turn out to be a mere illusion. I do not give a final answer to this question but treat the conclusion of the paper as an invitation to a deeper consideration of the matter. (shrink)

Translation of David Hume's "Of the Middle Station of Life".