Grandes plumes de la science-fiction française ayant participé en 2017 à une anthologie de nouvelles devenue « culte », Au Bal des actifs, Demain le travail, Alain Damasio, Catherine Dufour et Norbert Merjagnan défendent tous trois les principes d’un revenu universel contre la précarisation généralisée du travail salarié. Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, tous trois revendiquent le caractère émancipateur qu’aurait sa mise en place. C’est le message de cette conversation, navigant sans cesse entre dystopie et utopie, et au final (...) pas si pessimiste que ça…. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, Israel has become increasingly salient to imperial strategy and ever more aggressive in its policies toward the Palestinians. In this context, a key ideological weapon is the cynical accusation of "anti-Semitism." For historical reasons, this has been deployed most forcefully in France, and Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan caustically demolish the "anti-Semitism is everywhere" allegation, used to bludgeon opponents of the Israeli state and those who stand in solidarity with the banlieue (...) youth. Ivan Segre undertakes a meticulous deconstruction of a rampant "reactionary philo-Semitism" that identifies Jewish interests with the "democratic West.". (shrink)

Ciencia y lógica de mundos posibles indaga en un aspecto negativo de la visión positivista de la historia del pensamiento. Según esta interpretación, determinante dentro del pensamiento contemporáneo, existe una oposición irredimible entre la metodología del conocimiento científico y la metafísica. El estudio de los supuestos ontológicos de la epistemología aristotélica y de la nueva metodología galileana evidencia, sin embargo, que históricamente la ciencia moderna no nace en oposición a la metafísica, sino que surge a partir de una concepción metafísica (...) determinada. Resulta imposible comprender a fondo el fenómeno de la revolución galileana sin tener en cuenta los aportes lógicos de pensadores medievales que tuvieron una actitud crítica frente a las implicaciones ontológicas de la epistemología aristotélica. Con el advenimiento del idealismo trascendental - a diferencia de Descartes, Leibniz o Newton - la filosofía se separa de la ciencia experimental. Esto se debe a que con Kant la filosofía se aleja de la postura filosófica de los origenes de la ciencia moderna, y retorna a una concepción de la naturaleza en cierto modo similar a la aristotélica. Así mismo, la interpretación propuesta en el manifiesto del Círculo de Viena con respecto a algunas de las revoluciones científicas de los siglos XIX y XX, supone que la ciencia moderna se ha desarrollado en la dirección señalada por la concepción metafísica del mundo que se encuentra en el origen de la revolución galileana. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence to (...) indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extoling the virtues of politics today. Yet in this lively dialogue with journalist Aude Lancelin, leading French thinker Alain Badiou argues that it is precisely through politics that humanity can still achieve its most ambitious aims. As power becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of the state and global corporations, the role of the citizen is reduced to little more than (...) ritual. But Badiou emphasizes that politics is concerned not just with power and the state, but also with justice. So the central question of politics is “What is a just power?”, and the debate over politics is fundamentally about the norms to which power is subject and its relationship to a community – a community that is able to take control of its own destiny and provide its own direction, based on a shared standard of justice. This engaging dialogue, in which Badiou articulates his view of politics with exceptional clarity, will be of great value to anyone interested in radical politics today. (shrink)

Infinite Thought brings together a representative selection of the range of Alain Badiou's work, illustrating the power and diversity of his thought.

This volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's ambitious system.

Trois délires politiques mortifères hantent notre époque. Dans le premier, le délire occidental, la pléonexie (vouloir toujours plus) à l'oeuvre dans le néolibéralisme se transforme en risque de tout perdre (dislocation des subjectivités, déchirure du lien social, épuisement de la planète, destruction des bases mêmes de la vie sur terre). Le second, le délire théo fasciste de l'islamisme djihadiste prétend, contre l'égoïsme érigé en système et la démesure caractérisant l'Occident, restaurer une pureté absolue. Or, quand cette pureté originaire revendiquée se (...) réalise, elle se transforme en souillure et en horreur absolues. Le troisième, le délire identitaire néo-fasciste (qui monte aujourd'hui partout en Europe) se présente comme le seul rempart possible contre les deux premiers. Contre la mondialisation néo-libérale, il prône un retour à la patrie. Non pas une patrie fondée sur un principe universaliste (du type "liberté, égalité, fraternité"), mais une patrie refermée sur elle-même, désignant des boucs émissaires, les étrangers, pour que des acolytes réputés "amis" se regroupent et décrètent contre ces "ennemis" l'"état d'exception". Ces trois délires tendent de plus en plus à former système : on ne sort de l'un que pour entrer dans l'un des deux autres. Puisqu'aucun des garde-fous démocratiques (État, médias et université) ne fonctionne plus, il faut songer à tout refonder à partir des principes de dignité et de commune humanité, également bafoués par ces trois délires. Il se pourrait bien que le travail actuellement fourni par Les Convivialistes puisse fournir les bases de cette reconstruction probablement une des dernières possibles avant la catastrophe annoncée."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This work consists in a bibliography of plotinian studies published between 1950-2000. All the major existing bibliographical indexes have been put to contribution to offer a comprehensive list of more than 1500 entries, collected in a single and easy-to-use book.

L'histoire de la philosophie a toujours vu en Plotin un metaphysicien. Porphyre ne dit-il pas de son maitre qu'il connaissait parfaitement la geometrie, l'arithmetique, la mecanique, l'optique et la musique, mais qu'il n'etait pas enclin a approfondir davantage ces disciplines? Ce peu de gout pour les mathematiques et la physique n'a pourtant pas empeche Plotin de rediger quelques traites exclusivement connsacres a des questions de physique et de cosmologie, traites qui furent les grands oublies des etudes neioplatoniciennes. Parmi ceux-ci, le (...) traite Sur le ciel est d'une importance capitale aussi bien en raison du sujet qu'il aborde que du debat philosophique qu'il engage avec la tradition. La vision plotinienne du monde et du ciel doit en effet trouver sa place au sein des theories cosmologiques dominantes de son epoque: celles transmises par le Timee de Platon, le De Caelo d'Aristote et la vision stoicienne de l'univers. Il va sans dire que Plotin se veut un exegete des doctrines platoniciennes, mais le present traite montre peut-etre plus que tout autre la difficile cohabitation de l'independance d'esprit et de la fidelite aux textes du maitre. Ce qui se presente comme une exegese du Timee devient en fait une trahison des enseignements qui y sont contenus. Le traite II, 1 [40] fut le theatre d'une rebellion, celle d'un interprete platonicinen qui tente de lire dans le Timee une theorie qui ne s'y trouve pas. (shrink)

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction -- Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism' -- 2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq -- 3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today? -- The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002 -- 5. The law on the Islamic headscarf -- 6. Daily humiliation -- (...) Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France -- 8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art -- Notes to part one -- PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction -- 1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews? -- 2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward) -- 3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus -- 4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier) -- 5. Against negationism -- 6. Local angel -- 7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz -- 8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter) -- 9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant -- Notes to part two -- PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics -- 2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution? -- A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels) -- Notes to part three. (shrink)

Les idées ici proposées ne dépendent point de quelque idée supérieure d'abord posée, et ne conduisent même point à quelque notion commune qui puisse définir tous les arts en peu de mots. Au contraire je me suis attaché à marquer les différences, les séparations, les oppositions, me réglant ainsi, autant que peut faire la critique, sur les oeuvres elles-mêmes, dont chacune s'affirme si bien et n'affirme qu'elle.

Hegel once wrote that Truth could not be expressed within a single sentence. His statement could surely be taken as justification for the length of his ...

A passionate critique of Enlightenment--both in its contemporary invocation and its historical and cultural use--and a call to arms to rethink human equality and liberty without the sacrifice of individual rights and ethnicities.

La philosophie est aujourd'hui possible, dans la plénitude de son ambition. La philosophie elle-même, telle que l'entendait Platon.Ce qui a entraîné son éclipse au XIXe siècle, c'est qu'elle s'est identifiée, « suturée », tour à tour à un seul des champs où se pose, par-delà le savoir, une vérité : le scientifique (positivisme), le politique (marxisme), puis, avec Nietzche et plus encore Heidegger, le poème.

Plato's _Republic_ is one of the best-known and most widely-discussed texts in the history of philosophy. But how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2,500 years after its original composition? Alain Badiou breathes life into Plato's landmark text and revives its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has instead worked closely on the original Greek and, through spectacular changes, adapted it to our times. In this innovative reimagining of Plato's work, Badiou has (...) removed all references specific to ancient Greek society--from lengthy exchanges about moral courage in archaic poetry to political considerations mainly of interest to the aristocratic elite--and has expanded the range of cultural references. Here, philosophy is firing on all cylinders: Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud, and Hegel, among others. Together these thinkers demonstrate that true philosophy endures, ready to absorb new horizons without changing its essence. Moreover, Badiou--who is also a dramatist--has transformed the Socratic dialogue into a genuine oratorial contest. In his version of the _Republic_, the interlocutors do much more than simply agree with Socrates. They argue, stand up to him, put him on the spot, and show thought in motion. In this work of dramatic scholarship and philosophy, we encounter a modern version of Plato's text that is alive, stimulating, and directly relevant to our own world. (shrink)

This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of phonological variation resulting from a vowel merger on phoneme perception. The perception of the /e/–/ε/ contrast which does not exist in Southern French-speaking regions, and which is in the process of merging in Northern French-speaking regions, was compared to the /ø/–/y/ contrast, which is stable in all French-speaking regions. French-speaking participants from Switzerland for whom the /e/–/ε/ contrast is preserved, but who are exposed to different regional variants, had to perform a (...) same-different task. They first heard four phonemically identical but acoustically different syllables (e.g., /be/–/be/–/be/–/be/), and then heard the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to (/be/) or phonemically different from (/bε/) the preceding context stimuli. The results showed that the unstable /e/–/ε/ contrast only induced a mismatch negativity (MMN), whereas the /ø/–/y/ contrast elicited both a MMN and electrophysiological differences on the P200. These findings were in line with the behavioral results in which responses were slower and more error-prone in the /e/–/ε/ deviant condition than in the /ø/–/y/ deviant condition. Together these findings suggest that the regional variability in the speech input to which listeners are exposed affects the perception of speech sounds in their own accent. (shrink)

Didacticism, romanticism, and classicism are the possible schemata for the knotting of art and philosophy, the third term in this knot being the education of subjects, youth in particular. What characterizes the century that has just come to a close is that, while it underwent the saturation of these three schemata, it failed to introduce a new one. Today, this predicament tends to produce a kind of unknotting of terms, a desperate dis-relation between art and philosophy, together with the pure (...) and simple collapse of what circulated between them: the theme of education. Whence the thesis of which this book is nothing but a series of variations: faced with such a situation of saturation and closure, we must attempt to propose a new schema, a fourth type of knot between philosophy and art. Among these “inaesthetic” variations, the reader will encounter a sustained debate with contemporary philosophical uses of the poem, bold articulations of the specificity and prospects of theater, cinema, and dance, along with subtle and provocative readings of Fernando Pessoa, Ste;phane Mallarme;, and Samuel Beckett. (shrink)

Le regain d'interet pour la philosophie kantienne est ne en Allemagne vers 1860 et provient essentiellement d'un declin de l'idealisme hegelien, d'une reaction au materialisme, et d'un climat politique qui favorise un abandon des questions morales et politiques pour retourner a des problemes theoriques. De sorte que ce qui caracterise tous les neokantiens est leur volonte de redonner a la philosophie son statut scientifique au titre de theorie de la connaissance. Mais comment construire cette theorie de la connaissance est une (...) question qui donne lieu a des oppositions entre des auteurs qui se reclament pourtant tous de Kant. Or c'est precisement la subtilite des differences entre les ecoles de Heidelberg, de Marbourg, ou encore entre les pensees de Cohen, de Natorp, de Lask ou de Rickert, que nous permet de saisir cet ouvrage en nous offrant un eclairage essentiel. (shrink)

Alain Badiou revient ici sur les principaux éléments de sa philosophie de manière accessible et vivante, en la présentant dans l’horizon de la recherche du bonheur réel (comme effet que produit la vérité dans l’expérience d’un sujet). Dans la première partie, l’auteur explique pourquoi cette recherche, qui est le nom de toute vie philosophique, est aujourd’hui plus que jamais désirable. Analysant les contraintes contemporaines, il entend montrer que la situation de la philosophie est aujourd'hui défensive, et qu’il y a (...) là une raison supplémentaire d’en soutenir le désir. Dans la seconde partie, il confronte cette vision à celle des grands «anti-philosophes» (Pascal, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan), auprès desquels la philosophie trouve la dose de scepticisme et de provocation nécessaire pour ne pas sombrer dans l’académisme. Dans la troisième partie, il affronte une autre forme de critique, celle qui objecterait que la philosophie ne sert à rien quand c’est le monde qu’il s’agit d’abord de changer (pour que les conditions du vrai bonheur y soit enfin accessibles à tous). Enfin, dans une quatrième partie, il revient sur les éléments de sa propre réponse à la question de la «vraie vie», celle que la philosophie nous promet. Reprenant les acquis de L’Etre et l’événement (1988) et de Logiques des mondes (2006), il dessine les contours des questions qu’il reste à aborder et qui feront la matière du troisième volet de ce magnum opus : L’immanence des vérités. Par là même, il est conduit à revenir à une question centrale et laissé de côté dans les précédents traités : celle des affects propres à la philosophie. (shrink)

Profondément liées aux pratiques ascétiques et aux recherches spirituelles monastiques, les oeuvres mystiques syriaques ne se confondent cependant pas avec elles. Elles construisent des visions théologiques qui participent nécessairement aux débats dans les institutions ecclésiales, que ce soit chez les syriaques occidentaux ou les syriaques orientaux. Redevables de l'héritage philosophique grec, des auteurs syro-occidentaux ont élaboré des pensées mystiques et l'oeuvre du Pseudo-Denys a été déterminante dans la mystique sacramentaire de la théologie miaphysite. C'est du côté oriental que la tradition (...) mystique a été la plus riche et a fleuri, en Mésopotamie mais aussi sur les bords du golfe Arabo-Persique dans le Bet Qatraye, où l'on se souvient d'écrivains fameux comme Isaac de Ninive, Dadisho du Qatar, Martyrios Sandona, Jean de Dalyatha ; mais qui connaît Shubhalmaran, Hananisho de Bet Qoqa ou Beh Isho de Kamul? En privilégiant des analyses thématiques et l'étude de motifs mystiques essentiels, l'ouvrage vise à attirer l'attention sur des oeuvres et des auteurs qui, dans la formation et l'évolution des cultures syriaques, ont joué un rôle tout au long de l'histoire du Proche-Orient chrétien et musulman et qui se révèlent précieux pour l'historien. (shrink)

Uses the thoughts of such great minds as Kierkegaard, Plato, and Beckett to examine the concept of love and redefine it in the face of twenty-first century modernity.

Plato's _Republic_ is one of the best-known and most widely-discussed texts in the history of philosophy. But how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2,500 years after its original composition? Alain Badiou breathes life into Plato's landmark text and revives its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has instead worked closely on the original Greek and, through spectacular changes, adapted it to our times. In this innovative reimagining of Plato's work, Badiou has (...) removed all references specific to ancient Greek society--from lengthy exchanges about moral courage in archaic poetry to political considerations mainly of interest to the aristocratic elite--and has expanded the range of cultural references. Here, philosophy is firing on all cylinders: Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud, and Hegel, among others. Together these thinkers demonstrate that true philosophy endures, ready to absorb new horizons without changing its essence. Moreover, Badiou--who is also a dramatist--has transformed the Socratic dialogue into a genuine oratorial contest. In his version of the _Republic_, the interlocutors do much more than simply agree with Socrates. They argue, stand up to him, put him on the spot, and show thought in motion. In this work of dramatic scholarship and philosophy, we encounter a modern version of Plato's text that is alive, stimulating, and directly relevant to our own world. (shrink)

The subtractive : preface by Francois Wahl -- Philosophy itself -- The (re)turn of philosophy itself -- Definition of philosophy -- What is a philosophical institution? -- Philosophy and poetry -- The philosophical recourse to the poem -- Mallarm's method : subtraction and isolation -- Rimbaud's method : interruption -- Philosophy and mathematics -- Conference on subtraction -- Truth : forcing and unnameable -- Philosophy and politics -- Philosophy and love -- What is love? -- Philosophy and psychoanalysis -- Subject (...) and infinite -- Antiphilosophy : Lacan and Plato -- Writing of the generic -- Writing of the generic : Samuel beckett. (shrink)

In this dialogue, Alain Badiou shares the clearest, most detailed account to date of his profound indebtedness to Lacanian psychoanalysis. He explains in depth the tools Lacan gave him to navigate the extremes of his other two philosophical "masters," Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. Élisabeth Roudinesco supplements Badiou's experience with her own perspective on the troubled landscape of the French analytic world since Lacan's death--critiquing, for example, the link (or lack thereof) between politics and psychoanalysis in Lacan's work. Their (...) exchange reinvigorates how the the work of a pivotal twentieth-century thinker is perceived. (shrink)

La quatrième de couverture indique : Deleuze et Guattari étaient des lecteurs sans pareils. C'est la raison pour laquelle Alain Jugnon les lit dans ce livre ; plus précisément, il lit avec eux Artaud et Kafka, Lacan et Klossowski, Büchner et Nietzsche. N'ont-ils pas assez lu Lautréamont ; il les lit pour eux, comme eux l'auraient lu, l'ajoutant à leurs lectures, avec les outils qu'ils ont créés pour lire. Nul mieux qu'Alain Jugnon n'articule les lectures nécessaires à la (...) défaite de ce monde-ci et au surgissement d'un monde transformé : "Deleuze et Guattari ont commencé à dire dans leur livre premier, L'Anti-Oedipe : il n'y a plus de dialectique à penser ou bien d'histoires à raconter, mais il y aura des machines capitalistes et des machines désirantes, des guerres des sexes et des guerres des races, des combats de rue et des révolutions de palais, il y aura tout ça et plus encore, qui fera une bible humaine à revendre ou bien une philosophie populaire à inventer pour demain." (A.J.). (shrink)

This conceptual paper draws on cognitive theory and attribution theory to develop a process model of managerial dissonance and responsibility attribution after harm-doing. Although extant harm-doing literature assumes managerial backing for such decisions, this study suggests that there will, at times, be acts of organizationally mandated harm-doing that managers believe are unnecessary. In these cases, it is proposed that managers will experience dissonance from enacting the harm-doing event, resulting in the externalization of responsibility to either the organization or the harm-doing (...) target. This paper examines the challenges faced by the manager through each phase of the dissonance resolution process and possible outcomes of the process. This study concludes with the model’s implications for moral theorizing. (shrink)

English-speaking readers might be surprised to learn that Alain Badiou writes fiction and plays along with his philosophical works and that they are just as important to understanding his larger intellectual project. In _Ahmed the Philosopher_, Badiou's most entertaining and accessible play, translated into English here for the first time, readers are introduced to Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force that has met with much success in France. _Ahmed the Philosoph_er presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" (...) Ahmed, as a seductively trenchant philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through his example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life. (shrink)

_The Incident at Antioch_ is a key play marking Alain Badiou's transition from classical Marxism to a "politics of subtraction" far removed from party and state. Written with striking eloquence and extraordinary poetic richness, and shifting from highly serious emotional and intellectual drama to surreal comic interlude, the work features statesmen, workers, and revolutionaries struggling to reconcile the nature and practice of politics. This bilingual edition presents _L'Incident d'Antioche_ in its original French and, on facing pages, an expertly executed (...) English translation. Badiou adds a special preface, and an introduction by the scholar Kenneth Reinhard connects the play to Paul Claudel's _The City_, Saint Paul and the early history of the Church, and the innovative mathematical thinking of Paul Cohen. The translation includes Susan Spitzer's extensive notes clarifying allusions and quotations and hinting at Badiou's intentions. An interview with Badiou encompasses the play's settings, themes, and events, as well as his ongoing literary and conceptual experimentation on stage and off. (shrink)

Quali sono lo spazio e il tempo della filosofia nel sapere contemporaneo? È possibile tracciare dei confini e far emergere la figura di un sapere sullo sfondo di un'epoca e della sua forma di vita?