Entre 1919 et 1923, Martin Heidegger (1927-1976) caresse le voeu de faire "exploser l'ensemble du système traditionnel des catégories". C'est avant la parution de son maître ouvrage Etre et Temps (1927), qui consacra la "question de l'être" comme fondamentale, tout en ravalant ses propres essais antérieurs au rang de simple propédeutique. En réalité, ces essais de jeunesse recèlent un projet philosophique original et ambitieux. Le jeune philosophe y soupçonne en effet toute conceptualisation de masquer le mouvement de la vie et (...) d'éteindre l'inquiétude native de la pensée qui y trouve pourtant son ancrage irréductible. Il exige donc que les questions philosophiques fondamentales soient désormais interprétées à partir de la concrétude propre de la vie. C'est ce qu'on a appelé rétrospectivement son "herméneutique de la facticité". La "vie" devient alors le leitmotiv de la pensée du jeune Heidegger, pointant vers une sphère originaire, celle de l'expérience facticielle, d'où le philosopher trouve sa provenance, dont il doit rendre compte et où il revient toujours. Ce livre retrace le développement des thèses du jeune Heidegger et en dégage l'originalité et l'intérêt philosophiques propres plutôt que de les considérer sous l'éclairage rétrospectif d'Etre et Temps. (shrink)

C’est un acquis de la philosophie de Ricœur : il y a entre l’identité narrative, par laquelle le soi se donne à lui-même une consistance dans le temps, et la question éthico-morale1, dévoilant un soi responsable face à autrui, des liens avérés. Dès Temps et récit, les limites de la notion d’identité narrative coïncident ainsi avec...

En este artículo, examino la transformación del gesto hermenéutico de Heidegger respecto a los grandes textos de la filosofía occidental. Defiendo que, entre 1920 y 1939, Heidegger pasa de un trabajo de «destrucción fenomenológica», donde la interpretación se mide a partir de la experiencia de fenómenos positivos (la historia, el sí-mismo, la fe, la existencia) a un trabajo de «destrucción poiética», dirigido hacia una historia «por venir», ligada a una «experiencia originaria» de la cual tan solo el poeta (Hölderlin) y (...) el pensador (Heidegger) parecen tener la llave. Sin embargo, el pensar heideggeriano amenaza así con hundirse en una forma de hybris (o de desmedida), al sobrepasar la finitud constitutiva de toda hermenéutica digna de ese nombre. (shrink)

La réception extraordinairement féconde de Heidegger, singulièrement en France, est entrée dans une phase nouvelle et le moment semble propice pour demander « ce qui est vivant » et « ce qui est mort » dans sa pensée, en interrogeant ses percées réelles comme ses impasses. La publication de l'édition intégrale en 102 volumes touche à sa fin : au-delà de tous les textes publiés du vivant de Heidegger, nous avons désormais à disposition tous les cours de Fribourg et de (...) Marbourg, les traités « ésotériques » rédigés dans le sillage des Beiträge dans les années 1930-1940 et les Cahiers noirs de cette période. Le colloque de Québec, documenté par le présent ouvrage et complété par des textes inédits, se concentrait moins sur le maître-ouvrage Être et temps que sur la période complexe initiée avec la conférence "L'essence de la vérité". C'est en effet à partir du « tournant » des années 1930 qu'émergent les concepts qui guident la pensée de l'Ereignis inscrite dans une « Histoire de l'être », selon ses dimensions phénoménologique et herméneutique, mais aussi théologique et politique.Les contributions ici réunies, portant sur l'histoire, la technique, l'art, le politique, le mythe ou le divin, tentent d'éclairer la nature et les limites de ce legs philosophique majeur du XXe siècle en envisageant la question de sa postérité et de son actualité pour nous, aujourd'hui. (shrink)

The phenomenon of life — yours, or mine always — is given to be seen or to be understood in its cohesion and in its proper identity through a narrative “montage”. This is the hypothesis which this article explores in trying to determine if the narrative montage refers to a “staged coup”, as Artaud suggests, or if instead it is not, following the very different analysis by Ricoeur, a plot in which the character, entangled in his or her own experiences, (...) fights against the scattering of the self, or again, as according to Schapp, if each person is not simply involved in his or her own stories as well as in those of others, with no other means of reaching himself or herself than through such tangles. (shrink)

Notion polysémique et concept problématique, la « vie », qui connut de Schlegel à Bergson, en passant par Schopenhauer, Nietzsche et Dilthey, une fortune philosophique certaine, constitue le cœur et le thème fédérateur de l’enseignement du jeune Heidegger à Fribourg, entre 1919 et 1923. La vie, loin de représenter un « simple » élan vital ou une pulsion biologique, nomme chez lui l’avènement concret d’un contexte signifiant (ou monde) pour et par un soi qui, dans l’expérience vécue quotidienn...

"L’œuvre de Marc Richir, riche et polyphonique, nous lègue un ensemble complexe d’analyses, de propositions et de concepts qui puisent tant dans la tradition philosophique que dans les sciences exactes, l’anthropologie, l’esthétique et la pensée politique, créant entre ces discours autant d’intersections inédites opérées en régime phénoménologique. En chacun de ces croisements, l’œuvre de Richir appelle à être examinée, déchiffrée et éclairée à partir de perspectives inédites que lui-même a rendu possible. L’immensité du corpus richirien invite à travailler autant aux (...) marges de la phénoménologie husserlienne qu’aux marges de sa phénoménologie, à travers ses dialogues, ses obsessions et ses ambitions, afin de mieux ressaisir en elles la vivacité et l’originalité des phénomènes."--. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmaticaAnne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio)Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up by (...) these relics: was such-and-such a shell, a mollusk, or an arthropod? Did this fossil fish live high up in the water, among the plankton, or grub in the mud on the sea floor?These studies have for many paleontologists been a blessedly human-free zone, detached from the busy realities of our everyday lives. The science of paleontology, though, is simply one obscure part of a burgeoning and rapidly evolving technosphere that underpins our lives, and that is now evolving millions of new kinds of fossils—technofossils—far more rapidly than ever happened in biological evolution. Many of these objects will, quite certainly, become part of Earth’s future fossil record.If such an endeavor as paleontology were ever to arise again, in a distant post-human future, how would its practitioners deal with these bizarre relics?We provide a preview, on the following pages, of just one such enigma, and how it may be resolved (or not) by our puzzled disciplinary descendants. [End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 35] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 36] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 37] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 41] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 44]Anne-Sophie Milon Anne-Sophie Milon is an artist-researcher who applies her illustration skills (HEAR, Strasbourg, France, 2010) and 2D traditional animation (UWE, Bristol, UK, 2012) to political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po, 2015) and science and technology studies (HSTS, EHESS, 2022). For the past ten years, she has translated geological narratives–and ordinary ones for Earth sciences–into extraordinary plots for the uninitiated, including the humanities. She is currently working with Jan Zalasiewicz on a play, The Petrified Museum (2024), based on the British Geological Survey (Keyworth, UK), and on a PhD project in science and technology studies looking at limestones’ agencies in extractive industry practices (2025). She regularly collaborates with researchers from the Anthropocene Working Group: The Cosmic Oasis (Oxford University Press, 2022), “The Victims of Carbon Dioxide are Starting to Appear” in Feral Atlas (2021), and The Epochs of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2016).Jan Zalasiewicz Jan Zalasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He was formerly a field geologist and paleontologist with the British Geological Survey, involved in the geological mapping of eastern England and central Wales. His interests include Early Paleozoic fossils, notably the graptolites (a kind of extinct zooplankton), mud and mudrocks, the Quaternary Ice Ages, the nature of geological time, and the geology made by humans. In recent years, he has helped develop the concept of an Anthropocene epoch. He enjoys writing popular science articles and books, and being involved in art/science projects.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

Cramer et al's proposal to view mental disorders as the outcome of network dynamics among symptoms obviates the need to invoke latent traits to explain co-occurrence of symptoms and syndromes. This commentary considers the consequences of such a network view for genetic association studies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 30.1 (2006) 174-189 [Access article in PDF] Sophie's Choice: Letting Chance Decide Suzanne Dovi University of Arizona When, if ever, should individuals facing a genuine moral dilemma adopt a random decision procedure to determine the outcome of that dilemma? Or to put the question more metaphorically, is it ever morally preferable to determine the outcome of a moral dilemma by flipping a coin? In this (...) paper, I will argue that sometimes it is. To make this argument, I consider a particularly agonizing moral dilemma—the one found in William Styron's Sophie's Choice. Drawing on this famous example of a moral dilemma, I identify three salient features of a moral dilemma that make it morally permissible, and even morally preferable, for an agent to adopt a random decision procedure to determine its outcome. By 'morally preferable,' I do not mean to imply that an agent is morally required to adopt a random decision procedure to determine the outcome of a moral dilemma. As will be seen, I disagree with the view that humans must always pursue the most morally preferable course of action. Nevertheless, I contend that agents should adopt a random decision procedure when faced with a moral dilemma that possesses three salient features. These three features are: (1) when there is clearly no "better" outcome from the range of choices available to the agent; (2) when particular kinds of moral burdens (guilt burdens) can be alleviated by that agent adopting a random decision procedure; and (3) when the alternatives were given to, and not made by, the agent. The first two salient features are necessary for it to be morally permissible [End Page 174] to decide a moral dilemma using a random decision procedure. The third feature is not necessary since a person could, due to her morally permissible decisions, face a moral dilemma whose outcome could be legitimately determined by a random decision procedure. However, I maintain that all three features are jointly sufficient for determining when it is morally preferable to adopt a random decision procedure to decide the outcome of a moral dilemma. I Hard choices are decisions that require us to choose among conflicting goals, purposes, values, or goods that are very important to us. Such choices pervade our lives. According to David Schmidtz, to face such a hard choice can be "the price of the richness and complexity of a life well-lived. To have both ideals and loved ones is to run the risk of having to make decisions under unresolved conflicts of value."1 Although hard choices are often ordinary, some hard choices can also be genuine moral dilemmas.2For my purposes, hard choices become genuine moral dilemmas when an agent cannot avoid violating his or her deeply held moral beliefs. Moreover, genuine moral dilemmas are dilemmas that have no "right" answer. So, for example, genuine moral dilemmas occur when an agent faces a decision between outcomes that are, as far as the agent can reasonably determine, equally bad or incommensurable. Indeed, some genuine moral dilemmas can involve choices between such horrible outcomes that it does not make sense to use moral language to justify their decisions—that is, to provide reasons for thinking that one outcome is preferable to another. In these cases, genuine moral dilemmas do not offer any possibility for moral redemption: the agent cannot morally justify choosing one outcome over another. Thus, genuine moral dilemmas can impose serious (and potentially devastating) moral costs on the decision-maker.William Styron's Sophie's Choice presents an example of such a genuine moral dilemma. Sophie Zawistowska has been asked to choose which of her two children, Eva or Jan, will be sent to the gas chamber in Auschwitz. An SS doctor, Fritz Jemand von Niemand, will grant a dispensation to only one of Sophie's children. If she does not choose which one should live, Dr. von Niemand will send both to their death. Sophie chooses her daughter Eva to go to the gas chamber. Her son, Jan, is sent to the Children's Camp and she... (shrink)

Should citizens have equal say regarding the running of society? Following the principles of democracy, and most of political philosophy: yes (at least at a fundamental level, thus allowing for representatives and the like). Indeed, comparing the main alternative seemingly supports this intuition. Epistocracy would instead give power just to the most epistemically competent. Yet testing citizens’ political and economic knowledge looks apt to disproportionately disempower marginalised groups, making the position seem like a nonstarter and democracy the clear winner. Nevertheless, (...) this paper argues against giving citizens equal say, or at least, it offers the strongest possible motivation for this position. In particular, I introduce the progressive case for epistocracy, and what I term standpoint epistocracy. This account refigures the relevant notion of political competence such that it is not the most privileged classes who would most likely constitute our epistocracy, but rather, the least. The resulting picture considerably improves on traditional versions of epistocracy and also democracy. (shrink)

What determines qualitative sameness and difference? This book explores four principal accounts of the ontological basis of properties, including universals, trope theory, resemblance nominalism, and class nominalism, considering the assumptions and ontolological commitments which are required to make each into a plausible account of properties. -/- The latter half of the book investigates the applications of property theory and the different conceptions of properties which might be adopted with these in mind: first, the possibility and desirability of individuating properties, and (...) the distinction between sparse and abundant conceptions of properties; second, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties; third, the relationship between properties and their causal powers, and whether this is necessary or contingent; fourth, the relationship between properties and causation, modality, and laws of nature; finally, whether properties exist objectively, and if they do, what our epistemic position is with respect to such entities. (shrink)

Le Poidevin has recently presented an argument that gives rise to a serious problem for relationist theories of space. It appeals to the simple geometrical fact that if A, B and C are three points lying in a straight line, then AB and BC together entail AC. He suggests that an ontological relationship of supervenience must be appealed to to explain this entailment. Given this thesis of supervenience, relationism is implausible. I argue that the problem that Le Poidevin raises for (...) relationism should be rejected, because the thesis of supervenience is false. The latter rests upon what Le Poidevin refers to as ‘The explanatory principle', a principle which he claims to be a natural extension of the truthmaker principle. Contrary to this, I argue that given any plausible theory of truthmaking, the explanatory principle is false. With the rejection of this principle, Le Poidevin's argument against relationism collapses. (shrink)

What is salience? This collection addresses this neglected question by considering the role of salience in a wide variety of areas. All 13 chapters are specially commissioned, and written by an international team of contributors.

Many views rely on the idea that it can never be rational to have high confidence in something like, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P.” Call this idea the “Non-Akrasia Constraint”. Just as an akratic agent acts in a way she believes she ought not act, an epistemically akratic agent believes something that she believes is unsupported by her evidence. The Non-Akrasia Constraint says that ideally rational agents will never be epistemically akratic. In a number of recent papers, the (...) Non-Akrasia Constraint has been called into question. The goal of this paper is to defend it... for the most part. (shrink)

The most widespread statement of political philosophy is presented here in the simplified and trivialised form of “man is X; he must become Y. ” Man must do so at the same time for himself, for his own survival, but also for the good of all, of the Community, of the City: the plurality must absolutely, in any way whatsoever, give way to unity, subject to [sous peine] and under threat of chaos. The essential question found confronting political doctrines, moreover (...) since the prominence of the idea of democracy is the following: how to bring about the existence of a united society across a heterogeneous social body? The response from philosophy articulates itself around three principle schemas: the theoretical construction of a unified community under the order of similar laws to those of nature (Platonic schema); the search for the best regime, which will have as its ultimate end the moderation and perpetual regulation of conflicts, by an optimal combination of freedom and stability (Aristotelian schema); and the theorisation of the “end of politics” by the locating of a “social wrong” inscribed in a structure doomed to collapse by the practical negation of its ideological foundations (Marxian schema and derivatives). The mode of thought which imposes itself here is decisional. Beyond the third schema which constitutes in some way a meta-political critique, and necessitates that it alone has a particular analysis, in the two preceding, man constitutes a kind of material – raw or primary, depending – that philosophy will work on, and sculpt to give it a form that harmonises fully with the Whole that it prescribes. In political philosophy, we always turn more or less around the “Let’s make man” of Hobbes, that is, around the technical transformation of a material given. Or to say it otherwise: the creation of an oeuvre from crude and imperfect elements, an oeuvre thought like a masterpiece – that is to say, one that contains within it an idea of perfection and permanence – but doomed here to serial reproduction. (shrink)

Believing rationally is epistemically valuable, or so we tend to think. It’s something we strive for in our own beliefs, and we criticize others for falling short of it. We theorize about rationality, in part, because we want to be rational. But why? I argue that how we answer this question depends on how permissive our theory of rationality is. Impermissive and extremely permissive views can give good answers; moderately permissive views cannot.

It can be tempting to think of affect as a matter of the present moment – a reaction, a feeling, an experience or engagement that unfolds right now. This paper will make the case that affect is better thought of as not only temporally extended but as saturated with temporality, especially with the past. In and through affectivity, concrete, ongoing history continues to weigh on present comportment. In order to spell this out, I sketch a Heidegger-inspired perspective. It revolves around (...) two claims. The first is that we should understand what Heidegger calls 'Befindlichkeit' (findingness) as radical situatedness. Affectivity is a matter of 'finding oneself' constellated – thrown – into the world in ways that outrun what an individual or collective might grasp and process. The second claim is that the temporal dimension, as a relatedness to the past, takes precedence in affect's situatedness. Key to affect is the way in which the past continues to hold sway over present comportment, collectively and individually. In order to articulate this perspective, it is important to overcome the idea that affect must be understood mainly in terms of feeling or experiential states of other kinds. Better suited to grasp the idea of findingness is the concept of 'disclosive posture', as proposed by Katherine Withy. I suggest that this notion should be put at the fore of a phenomenological approach to situated affectivity. (shrink)

Epistemologists often assume that rationality bears an important connection to the truth. In this paper I examine the implications of this commitment for permissivism: if rationality is a guide to the truth, can it also allow some leeway in how we should respond to our evidence? I first discuss a particular strategy for connecting permissive rationality and the truth, developed in a recent paper by Miriam Schoenfield. I argue that this limited truth-connection is unsatisfying, and the version of permissivism that (...) supports it faces serious challenges; so, for mainstream permissivism, the truth problem is still unsolved. I then discuss a strategy available to impermissivists, according to which rationality bears a quite strong connection to truth. I argue that this second strategy is successful. (shrink)

The subject of this book is young children's emotional-social learning and development within early childhood care and education settings in Aotearoa-New Zealand. The focus on emotional complexity fills a gap in early childhood care and education research where young children are frequently framed narrowly as 'learners,' ignoring the importance of emotional functioning and the feelings with which children make sense of themselves and the world. This book draws on original data in the form of narrative-like framed events to creatively illustrate (...) the complexities in children's diverse ways of feeling, thinking, playing, being, and becoming. Events illuminate the feelings and meanings of observed experiences in holistic and contextualised gestalts. Awareness of unconscious processes, the feeling of feelings, and cultural dimensions of development and meaning-making are addressed. The book emphasises the emergent and psychodynamic nature of children's development and learning with strong links to the role of play and playfulness in the events, drawing on two ethnographically inspired research projects that present theory, experience and practice in real-life events. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue Sociologie, N° 4, vol. 4 | 2014. Nous remercions Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier et Marie Plessz de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : La théorie des pratiques est un courant d'analyse qui s'est développé en Grande-Bretagne et dans les pays scandinaves dans les années 2000. L'analyse de pratiques de consommation est l'un de ses domaines de prédilection. Se réclamant de Bourdieu et de Giddens, elle s'oppose à la fois aux analyses (...) de la consommation reposant sur (...) - Sociologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

The conventional view of Hobbes’s commonwealth is that it was inspired by contemporary theories of tyranny. This article explores the idea that a paradigm for Hobbes’s state could in fact be found in early modern readings of Aristotle on democracy, as found in Book Three of the Politics. It argues that by the late sixteenth century, these meditations on the democratic body politic had developed claims about unity, mythology, and personation that would become central to Hobbes’s own theory of the (...) commonwealth. Tracing the history of commentary on the relevant passages in Aristotle reveals new perspectives not only on the political theories of both Aristotle and Hobbes but also introduces modern readers to the richness of early modern commentaries on classical political texts. The article ends with some thoughts on why attention to traditions of commentary might be valuable for political theorists today. (shrink)

Epigenetics is currently one of the fastest-growing fields in the sciences. Epigenetic information not only controls DNA expression but links genetic factors with the environmental experiences that influence the traits and characteristics of an individual. What we eat, where we work, and how we live affects not only the activity of our genes but that of our offspring as well. This discovery has imposed a revolutionary theoretical shift on modern biology, especially on evolutionary theory. It has helped to uncover the (...) developmental processes leading to cancer, obesity, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and aging, and to facilitate associated medial applications such as stem cell therapy and cloning. Above the Gene, Beyond Biology explores how biologists in this booming field investigate and explain living systems. Jan Baedke offers the first comprehensive philosophical discussion of epigenetic concepts, explanations, and methodologies so that we can better understand this "epigenetic turn" in the life sciences from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Credences, unlike full beliefs, can’t be true or false. So what makes credences more or less accurate? This chapter offers a new answer to this question: credences are accurate insofar as they license true educated guesses, and less accurate insofar as they license false educated guesses. This account is compatible with immodesty; : a rational agent will regard her own credences to be best for the purposes of making true educated guesses. The guessing account can also be used to justify (...) certain coherence constraints on rational credence, such as probabilism. The chapter concludes by discussing some advantages of the guessing account over rival accounts of accuracy. (shrink)