Modern barbarity will soon get rid of the human species unless a new form of violence is found able to compete with the state, without turning into a new form a state. This new form is authoritative, legitimate intimidation. But what are the conditions to speak out authoritatively? Are they not distinctive state conditions? Moreover, does authority lie in the form of discourse? If not, because consentment has superseded mere submission, which are the authoritative sources of discourse which, though neither (...) overtly nor primarily conflicting with the state, nor with corporations, could somehow not completely coincide with the interests of it and even work against it, though like it? This paper examines these questions. (shrink)

This paper takes place inside the theoretical frame restored after that the false secular Bortkiewicz-debate around the transformation problem has been solved in the years 1990 and whose flaw had not been identified for ages by most of Marxist economists, accepting its double accountancy of prices’ in money prices and workhours “prices”. Beyond the re-identification of finite values and prices, this paper aims at showing that, going back to a concept of value as an infinite working process which unifies money, (...) time and work, machinery not only devoids every particular work of any peculiarity, but also its time, reduced to the mechanical clock movement. Once such spatialization of time occurs, succession dominates duration instead of the other way round. Time is not the time of any living movement any longer, but merely corresponds to locomotion. Hence, money as a mathematical real, is not neither quantity of anything, but pure number. Money and clock time made identical as empty numbers identify into value with devoiced work, reduced to mere, or pure, unqualified effort.work becomes real abstraction by making the real still more adequate to itself, i.e., work still simpler abstract work induces simple work. (shrink)

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented (...) as a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

Lyotard’s earliest major work, available in English for the first time. Jean-François Lyotard is recognized as one of the most significant French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although nearly all of his major writing has been translated into English, one important work has until now been unavailable. Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting (...) and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp. A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the measurability and interfirm comparability of sustainability performance through the qualitative content analysis of 12 sustainability reports of mining firms using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The systematic comparison of information disclosed in 92 GRI indicators sheds light on the reasons underlying the impossibility of rigorously measuring and comparing the sustainability performance of firms from the same sector, which are supposed to be strictly following the same reporting guideline. These reasons include qualitative (...) aspects of sustainability, lack of compliance with GRI protocols, indicator contingency, ambiguous or incomplete information, data heterogeneity, and report opacity. The study makes it possible to return to the very notion of sustainability, its meaning, and flexible application by organizations. The results are discussed from three different theoretical perspectives, each of which proposes possible and complementary explanations of the main findings. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

Jean-Francois Lyotard's contribution to the debate, Heidegger and 'the Jews, ' is a marked departure from the standard fare. In the first of the two interrelated essays, 'the Jews, ' Leotard quickly establishes the theme of the entire text, placing 'the Jews' in lower case, plural, and in quotation marks to represent the outsiders, the nonconformists: the artists, anarchists, blacks, homeless, Arabs, etc. --and the Jews; as an alien and dangerous disruption, they represent an 'other' to be excised from (...) the West's dream of unbounded fulfillment and development. (shrink)

On the basis of a historical reconstruction of the stages through which the Christian notion of sin took shape in Protestantism, the significance of this term for modern bioethics is derived from its opposition to a holiness of God and his creatures, which in turn translates into the secular moral concept of dignity. This dignity imposes obligations to respect and to relationships that are sustained by faithfulness and trust. In being based on the gratuitousness of God’s grace, such relationships preclude (...) attempts at instrumentalization, denial of singularity, and subjection to market forces. Accordingly, reproductive cloning as well as exposing medicine to economical considerations can be classified as sinful. The difference between sinful acts and humans’ sinful state furthermore permits to address the problems of evil and misfortune in the world, and to acknowledge humans’ responsibility for the threats to humanity entailed by those ills. While the Christian faith relies on God’s mercy, it also imposes the task of following Christ by fighting against evil and misfortune. (shrink)

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

The political writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard, the prophet of the postmodern, are presented here as both the missing dimension of his work and the key to understanding his position within contemporary debate.

This latest offering from one of the founding figures of postmodernism is a collection of fifteen "fables" that ask, in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live, and why?

Presents a series of the Wellek Library lectures given in May of 1986 entitled: Clouds, Touches, and Gaps.

L’unité du monde est un motif récurrent de l’œuvre de Carl Schmitt, malgré les ruptures apparentes ou réelles qu’elle comporte. Il est présent dans les écrits de la période décisionniste , où il illustre le fantasme d’un dépassement définitif du conflit politique. Durant la période national-socialiste, Schmitt oppose sa théorie du « grand espace » et des Empires aux rêves mondialistes, d’autant plus dangereux qu’ils servent les intérêts d’une puissance aspirant à l’hégémonie, les États-Unis. Mais c’est dans les écrits postérieurs (...) à 1945 que ce motif devient central, en même temps que la réflexion désabusée sur « le nouveau nomos de la terre » qui pourrait succéder au jus publicum europaeum de l’époque moderne. En fin de compte, le rejet constant du rêve d’une unification politique illustre à la fois la conviction étatiste de Schmitt et son refus d’une philosophie rationaliste de l’histoire.The theme of the unity of the world is recurrent in Carl Schmitt’s work, despite the apparent or real breaks it presents. The theme appears in the writings of the decisionist period , as an illustration of a fantasm : that of definitive go-beyond any political conflictuality. During the national-socialist period, Schmitt opposes his theory of the « Great Space » and of the Empires to the dreams of globalisation, considered as a very dangerous as they would, in fact, express the interests of a great power seeking for hegemony, the United States. But, it’s in the writings posterior to 1945 that the theme is becoming central, when Schmitt produces his disillusioned reflexion on the « new nomos of earth » that could take the place of the jus publicum europaeum of the modern period. In the end, his constant refusal of a possible political unification of the world illustrates the statist convictions of Carl Schmitt, and is denial of a rationalist philosophy of history. (shrink)

"In a wide-ranging discussion the author examines the philosophy of Kant, Heidegger, Adorno and Derrida and looks at the works of modernist and postmodernist artists such as Cezanne, Debussy and Boulez. Lyotard addresses issues such as time and memory, the sublime and the avant-garde, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Throughout his discussion he considers the close but problematic links between modernity, progress and humanity, and the transition to postmodernity. Lyotard claims that it is the task of literature, philosophy (...) and the arts to bear witness to and explain this difficult transition." "This important contribution to aesthetic and philosophical debates will be of great interest to students in philosophy, literary and cultural theory and politics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Research on reasoning about consequential arguments has been an active but piecemeal enterprise. Previous research considered in depth some subclasses ofconsequential arguments, but further understanding of consequential arguments requires that we address their greater variety, avoiding the risk of over-generalisation from specific examples. Ideally we ought to be able to systematically generate the set of consequential arguments, and then engage in random sampling of stimuli within that set. The current article aims at making steps in that direction, using the theory (...) of utility conditionals as a way to generate a large set of consequential arguments, and offering one study illustrating how the theory can be used for the random sampling of stimuli. Itis expected that further use of this method will bring more diversity to experimental research on consequential arguments, and more robustness to models of argumentation from consequences. (shrink)

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

The psychology of reasoning is increasingly considering agents' values and preferences, achieving greater integration with judgment and decision making, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Some of this research investigates utility conditionals, ‘‘if p then q’’ statements where the realization of p or q or both is valued by some agents. Various approaches to utility conditionals share the assumption that reasoners make inferences from utility conditionals based on the comparison between the utility of p and the expected utility of q. This (...) article introduces a new parameter in this analysis, the underlying causal structure of the conditional. Four experiments showed that causal structure moderated utility-informed conditional reasoning. These inferences were strongly invited when the underlying structure of the conditional was causal, and significantly less so when the underlying structure of the conditional was diagnostic. This asymmetry was only observed for conditionals in which the utility of q was clear, and disappeared when the utility of q was unclear. Thus, an adequate account of utility-informed inferences conditional reasoning requires three components: utility, probability, and causal structure. (shrink)

A major figure in the contemporary critical world, Jean-Francois Lyotard originally introduced the term 'postmodern' into current discussions of philosophy. The Postmodern Explained is an engaging collection of letters addressed to young philosophers, including the actual children of some of Lyotard's colleagues, that inform the trajectory of his thinking in the period before The Postmodern Condition through The Differend.

First recorded in the 14th century, the analogy of spit-roast meat argues that expecting the Sun to rotate around a strictly immobile Earth would be just as ludicrous as trying to move the fire around the roasting meat. On the contrary, it should be the Earth that spins upon itself in order to glean, from all possible angles, all the benefits of the Sun, just as it is the meat’s responsibility to turn on the spit before the motionless fire for (...) it to be perfectly cooked on all sides. Aimed at demonstrating, in geocentricism, the plausibility of the rotation of the Earth and, in heliocentrism, at supporting the physical reality of this terrestrial rotation, nowadays this analogy barely elicits more than an amused, or even condescending, smile. However, its continued long-term existence and its frequency of use — from the 14th to the 19th century, we found it mentioned by no less than 45 different authors — incited us to finally pay attention to it. We then noticed that beyond its explicitly cosmological scope, it raises, in its own way, the question of the purpose of the natural world: had the latter been conceived based upon humankind, then it is normal, despite what this analogy advocates, that the Sun is at the service of something more important than itself by rotating, to the profit of humankind, around the Earth; conversely, since such an infringement of the rule of common sense, as illustrated by this analogy, can neither be justified nor tolerated, it is up to the Earth to move around the Sun. Tracing the vicissitudes of this analogy, over 6 centuries, is thus not only about reconstructing the largely forgotten history of a presently obsolete analogy, but also about discovering the deeper meaning, henceforth incomprehensible, behind it. In describing how this meaning became progressively lost, one can finally pro­vide an understanding of why, in the present day, we are no longer capable of more than an amused smile when happening upon it! (shrink)

Schelling est le moins connu des " grands " philosophes : c'est que, sans doute, dans l'œuvre qu'il nous propose, il n'y a rien justement à connaître, aucun sens ultime et autonome qui puisse désormais se représenter, se résumer pour lui-même, se diffuser dans une quelconque postérité - rien d'autre que l'œuvre elle-même et le travail toujours recommencé de son impossible perfection. Pendant soixante années, de 1794 à 1854, qui sont les plus riches peut-être (parce que les dernières) de l'histoire (...) de la philosophie, une pensée a cherché à se clore, à se comprendre, à s'arrêter, sans cesser de se voir rouverte par l'effondrement (le retournement) des structures où elle avait cru s'équilibrer. Il a semblé à l'auteur de cette étude que ces ruines successives finissaient par présenter un tracé signifiant, comme si le véritable " système " de Schelling s'écrivait peu à peu, hors de la vue du philosophe, dans un autre espace qui est celui de l'histoire même de son œuvre, jusqu'au moment où, dans sa " dernière philosophie ", tout le passé contradictoire se récapitule et redevient contemporain au sein d'une construction qui se présente elle-même comme dédoublée et interminable. On trouvera ici l'histoire de cette formation, de ce destin que Schelling a patiemment enduré sans jamais chercher à l'interrompre de manière prématurée, et qui fait de lui une figure proprement exemplaire. Grâce à cette œuvre en effet, où la pensée apparaît perpétuellement replongée dans la profondeur parfois désespérante de son travail, il devient possible d'approcher d'un peu plus près " l'acte et le lieu " de la philosophie, partout ailleurs masqués par la perfection superficielle de son résultat ; par là même, au-delà de l'individu Schelling, c'est une question plus vaste qui se trouve posée - la question : Qu'est-ce qu'une œuvre philosophique? (shrink)

Most instantiations of the inference ‘y; so if x, y’ seem intuitively odd, a phenomenon known as one of the paradoxes of the material conditional. A common explanation of the oddity, endorsed by Mental Model theory, is based on the intuition that the conclusion of the inference throws away semantic information. We build on this explanation to identify two joint conditions under which the inference becomes acceptable: (a) the truth of x has bearings on the relevance of asserting y; and (...) (b) the speaker can reasonably be expected not to be in a position to assume that x is false. We show that this dual pragmatic criterion makes accurate predictions, and contrast it with the criterion defined by the mental model theory of conditionals, which we show to be inadequate. (shrink)

Trois rapports de la déontologie et du droit sont proposés pour saisir les relations, toujours ambiguës, entre ces deux champs normatifs. Ces rapports sont ici baptisés déontologies personnelle, professionnelle et publique. La première correspond à une morale privée, dont l’objectif est de garantir le bien commun, tandis que la deuxième renvoie à un corpus normatif spontané produit par une profession pour ses propres besoins, et la troisième consiste en une appropriation des deux autres par la puissance publique. La déontologie se (...) trouve donc désormais confondue avec le droit qui en déforme la vision originelle indifférente à la question disciplinaire, révélant ainsi l’actuelle moralisation du corpus juridique, lequel incarne un repère moral pour les individus. (shrink)