Este estudio propone una hipótesis de lectura de la Scienza nuova fundada en una redefinición de la noción de razón en Vico. Radicalmente opuesta a la razón cartesiana, que se repliega sobre sí misma, la razón de Vico es movimiento, riesgo, apertura. Al salir de sí misma, la razón ha de metamorfosearse y, para ello, ha de adoptar nuevos instrumentos y nuevos criterios . Este nuevo status de la razón confiere un sentido particular a la empresa científica de Vico al (...) ligar exigencias prácticas con dificultades epistemológicas.This paper proposes an hypothesis to reading the Scienza Nuova based upon a re-definition of Vico's notion of reason. Radically opposed to that of Descartes's, which bends on itself, Vico's reason is movement, risk, aperture. When reason comes out from within, it has to metamorphoses and in doing so it has to employ new means and new criteria . This new status of reason provides Vico's scientific enterprise with a particular meaning since it links practical claims with epistemological difficulties. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage présente le destin de la métaphysique au siècle des Lumières. Derrière le schéma classique d'une substitution de l'anthropologie à la métaphysique caractérisant les Lumières, les études réunies dans ce volume montrent l'évolution du champ de la métaphysique, sa redéfinition, ses métamorphoses au sein d'une modernité en pleine évolution. L'intérêt est de dévoiler comment la métaphysique évolue, s'adapte à de nouvelles problématiques, et cela en tenant compte de la complexité des situations particulières propres aux Lumières européennes.

The current environmental crisis can be approached, through many perspectives, as a civilizational crisis. Alternatives of human transcendence are identified in the Inca civilization to compensate for the malaise that characterizes the actual crisis. There is a multicultural dimension to the manifestations of Hoasca occurring in Amazonian countries. As employed by the Beneficent Spiritist Center União do Vegetal in a religious context, it can contribute to the reconstruction of buen vivir, which served as the principle of the civilizations that preceded (...) the colonization of the Americas by Europeans. Today, the State openly confronts the manifestation of the constitutional principles of buen vivir, religious freedom, and the protection of this cultural heritage. Here, the implications of the civilizational crisis and ways of overcoming it are approached from the standpoint of deep ecology, but the implications also reflect the doctrinal vision of the UDV to which the authors are affiliated. (shrink)

Ce recueil de textes propose de contribuer à l’histoire des grandes académies scientifiques européennes. Plutôt que de vouloir tenter d’en dégager une homogénéité discutable, les études réunies tentent, au contraire, de montrer comment la pratique académique trouve son unité dans un ensemble de querelles.

Pierre Mathieu L’analyse des publications et des textes de conférences du cistercien québécois Yves Girard permet de dégager un thème majeur de sa théologie spirituelle : le désir de l’être, interprété par lui comme un désir de rencontre avec Dieu. C’est un désir inconscient, inscrit dans la structure de l’être par le Créateur qui désire être en relation avec ses créatures. Selon l’auteur, nous possédons déjà ce que nous désirons, une richesse intérieure à laquelle le silence nous donne (...) accès. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us defenseless (...) against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith. (shrink)

Le disciple de René Girard se penche ici sur la question du bien et du mal dans les sociétés occidentales. Complètement laissée de côté par la pensée sociale et politique, elle resurgit pourtant douloureusement lors des attentats du 11 septembre 2001, et enraye depuis la mécanique économique et sociale.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ON THE RATIONALITY OF SACRIFICE1 Jean-Pierre Dupuy Ecolepolytechnique, Paris, andStanford University i; "came to be interested in John Rawls'sy4 Theory ofJustice—an active.interest which led me to become the publisher ofthe French version ofthat book—in part for the following, apparently anecdotal reason: 1)On the one hand, as early as the first lines ofhis book, Rawls makes it clear that his major target is the critique ofutilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the (...) defendant, charged with vindicating sacrifice. As everyone knows, "justice does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum ofadvantages enjoyed by many (...) it denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others (Theory 3-4; my emphasis). 2)On the other hand, although the term "sacrifice" pops up again and again throughout the book, you may look up the index: it doesn't figure there. "Sacrifice" is not granted the dignity of a concept. I found that shocking and my curiosity was aroused. My own research is driven by a few anthropological convictions (see Dupuy, Le Sacrifice et l'envie). I am going to list them here, for the sake of clarity and honesty, without trying to vindicate them. The arguments I am going to present do not depend in the least on whether these convictions are valid or not; they should be assessed on their own merits. a) AU non-modern social and cultural institutions are rooted in the sacred. 1 I should like to thank John Rawls and the late Robert Nozick for their remarks on earlier versions of this paper. 24Jean-Pierre Dupuy b)Of the three dimensions of the sacred: myths, rituals, and prohibitions, the most fundamental is the ritual. c)The most primitive and fundamental ritual form is sacrifice. d)Sacrifice is the reenactment bythe social group ofa primordial event which took place spontaneously: a process of collective victimage which resulted in the murder of a member ofthe community. This elimination of a victim reestablished peace and order. There lies the origin ofthe sacred. The victim is taken to be the cause or the active principle both of the violent crisis and its violent resolution. It unites within itself opposite predicates: it is at the same time infinitely good and infinitely evil. It can only be of a divine nature. e)Christ's death on the cross is just one more occurrence of the primordial event. As far as facts are concerned, there is no difference between primitive religions and Christianity. The difference lies in interpretation. For the first time in the history of humankind, the story is told from the victim's viewpoint, not the persecutors.' The story (the Gospel) takes side with the victim and proclaims its innocence. When, in our modern languages, we say that the victim was scapegoated, we just say as much. f)Modern institutions embody a tension between two contradictory drives. On the one hand, the drive to resort to more ofthe same: the drive to scapegoating. On the other, the anti-sacrificial drive set in motion by the Christian Revelation. In totality or only partially, these points have been made by several anthropological traditions, in particular the French sociological school, with the works of Fustel de Coulanges, Durkheim and Mauss; and the British anthropological school, with Frazer and Robertson-Smith. Freud and the Belgo-British anthropologist Hocart gave them a new momentum and, more recently, René Girard has produced an impressive synthesis.2 As is well known, Nietzsche's philosophy relies on point e), for which the author of The Gay Science ("there are no facts, only interpretations") felt justified in bringing a radical indictment against Christianity, taken to be the morality ofthe slaves. In this light, Kantianism appears to be a secularized form of Christianity. ThequestionIwanttoraise is: towhatextentisthistrueofRawlsianism? 2 See, in particular, his Violence and the Sacred, and also The Scapegoat. On the Rationality ofSacrifice25 It might be retorted: these references to anthropology are irrelevant to modern political philosophy, and, at any rate, the word "sacrifice" has now acquired ameaning altogetherdisconnected from its alleged religious roots. I do not think the burden ofthe proof is on my... (shrink)

Le livre de Pierre Girard repose sur une connaissance profonde de l’œuvre de Giambattista Vico et de la bibliographie qui s’y attache. Quelle est son originalité ? Contrairement à l’interprétation de Michelet, pour qui Vico établissait une « philosophie de l’histoire », le titre de la Scienza nuova (Principes d’une science nouvelle relative à la nature commune des nations) ne laisse aucune ambiguïté : le point de vue méthodologique n’est pas celui d’un historien, mais celui d’un scientifique,..

In the year 2002, I came across a manuscript by Jean-Pierre Dupuy that linked the work of Ivan Illich with that of René Girard. I immediately set about translating the text, which was published in Spanish as part of the essay collection The Other Titan: Ivan Illich.1 The original “Detour and Sacrifice” can be found in two books that pay tribute to the authors. The first was compiled by Lee Hoinacki and Carl Mitcham, Illich’s disciples;2 the second is (...) a book edited by Sandor Goodhart, Jorgen Jorgensen, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams that celebrates Girard’s work.3The genesis of Dupuy’s text actually goes back to 1996 and was inspired by Ivan Illich’s seventieth birthday, which was celebrated with a series of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE PLACE OF RENE GIRARD IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY Guy Vanheeswijck University ofAntwerp and ofLeuven Iwould like to start by quoting a text which is likely to be recognized by everyone, who is even on a superficial level familiar with the work of René Girard: Desire that bears on a natural object is only human to the extent that it is mediated by the desire of another bearing (...) on the same object: it is human to desire what others desire, because they desire it. Thus an object that is perfectly useless from a biological point of view (such as a medal, or the enemy's flag) can be desired because it is the object of other desires. Such a human desire, and human reality as it differs from animal reality, is only created by the action that satisfies such desires. Human history is the history of desires that are desired [Désirs désirés]. Undoubtedly, these could be words written by Girard. However, they are not. These words are quoted from the famous lectures given by Alexandre Kojève on Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes at the Ecole pratique des hautes études between 1933 and 1939. They were followed by what would become the crème ofpost-war French philosophy: Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Alexandre Koyré, Pierre Klossowski, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre.' Kojève's interpretation ofHegel has, as generally known, become the point ofreference to the post-war twentieth ' Although Sartre himselfcould not attend the lectures (at that time he taught philosophy in Le Havre en Laon), he must have heard from it by way of Aron or Merleau-Ponty. 96Guy Vanheeswijck century philosophy in France. Before 1930 the word "dialectic" was burdened with an odium of sin, after 1930 it became a word—thanks to Kojève —radiant with prestige. Before 1930 there had been no talk of an Hegelian school whatsoever in France, after 1930 the situation changed so drastically that Merleau-Ponty was able to write these often quoted lines in 1946: Hegel is at the origin of everything that has been great in philosophy for over a century; for example Marxism, Nietzsche, phenomenology and German existentialism, psychoanalysis. He inaugurates the attempt to explore the irrational and to integrate it within a wider rationality that remains the philosophical task of our century. (Sens et non-sens 109-110) Half a century later, these words have lost their self-evident character. While the generation of French thinkers between 1930 and 1960 stresses its dependence on Hegel, the generation after 1960 heavily reacts against him. In 1970 Michel Foucault gave his inaugural speech at the Collège de France. On behalf of his generation he testified to a generalized antiHegelianism at that moment: "Our entire epoch, whether through logic or epistemology, whether through Marx or Nietzsche, seeks to evade Hegel's Imperium [échapper à Hegel] (L'Ordre du discours 74). Obviously, René Girard belongs to the second generation, which, on the one hand, embroiders on the theme ofdesire, borrowed from Kojève's interpretation ofHegel, but, on the other, in its search for answers precisely wishes to get rid of Hegel. But, is it correct to call René Girard a philosopher? His schooling was that of an historian. In 1947 he graduated in Paris as an archivistepal éographe at the Ecole de Chartres: his thesis was "La vie privée à Avignon dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle." Three years later—in the meantime he had emigrated to the United States—he received his Ph.D. at the faculty of history of the University of Indiana. The topic of his dissertation was "American opinion ofFrance, 1940-1943." However, he has never worked as a professional historian. He owes his reputation first and foremost to his literary analyses, subsequently to his research in anthropology, finally to his exegesis ofthe Bible. Time and again, Girard has expressed his preference for literature to both humanities and philosophy. Human behavior is, in his view, much less elucidated by the conceptual structures of discursive philosophy than by the evocative force of a Greek tragedy, the Biblical passion story or a modern novel. One might retort that René Girard... (shrink)

Bien des difficultés que nous éprouvons à comprendre les oeuvres philosophiques des Anciens proviennent souvent du fait que nous commmettons en les interprétant un double anachronisme: nous croyons que, comme beaucoup d'oeuvres modernes, elles sont destinées à communiquer des informations concernant un contenu conceptuel donné et que nous pouvons aussi en tirer directement des renseignements clairs sur la pensée et la psychologie de leur auteur. Mais en fait, elles sont très souvent des exercices spirituels que l'auteur pratique lui-même et fait (...) pratiquer à son lecteur. Elles sont destinées à former les âmes. Elles ont une valeur psychagogique. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably one of the twentieth century’s greatest socio-philosophical thinkers and his writings have much to offer anyone interested in the ways that people value, consume and produce architecture. Bourdieu spent much of his life attempting to understand cultural consumption and production through detailed empirical research that included studies of dwellings, art, museums, photography and aesthetics. This book introduces the architectural reader to Bourdieu’s key writings on culture and outlines the ways in which they offer powerful practical (...) tools and novel conceptual frameworks for understanding architectural value, taste, and practice. (shrink)

Individuals living with rare conditions are faced with important challenges derived from the rarity of their conditions and aggravated by the low priority given to rare disease research. However, current realities of rare disease research require consideration of the relationship between subjectivity and ‘traditional’ objectivity. Objectivity in research has traditionally been associated with processes and descriptions that are independent of the investigator. The need for researchers to provide unbiased knowledge and achieve a balance between objectivity and the underlying values in (...) nursing and scientific research requires an examination of how objectivity is conceptualized within the context of rare disease research. The aim of this paper is to examine scientific objectivity in rare disease research from a philosophical viewpoint and, in doing so, demonstrate the need to redefine it to reflect the current scientific environment. As such, healthcare providers working on this field need to redefine objectivity around ethical and moral obligation to advance science in an equitable manner with the end goal to produce knowledge that is trustworthy and beneficial to our patients. (shrink)

Religious pluralism (the view that all the great world religions are equally true) is largely motivated by the fear that religious exclusivism ( the view that there is just one correct religion) leads to intolerance and oppression of those holding differing religious views. I claim that this suggests a false dichotomy: either be a tolerant pluralist or an intolerant exclusivist. I argue, first, that the seventeenth-century doctrine of toleration supports the claim that exclusivists of differing sects can peacefully coexist and, (...) second, that religious pluralism has harmful consequences. Exclusivism (tempered by toleration) is the best solution to the challenge of religious diversity. (shrink)

This text is an outgrowth of notes prepared by J. Y. Girard for a course at the University of Paris VII. It deals with the mathematical background of the application to computer science of aspects of logic (namely the correspondence between proposition & types). Combined with the conceptual perspectives of Girard's ideas, this sheds light on both the traditional logic material & its prospective applications to computer science. The book covers a very active & exciting research area, & (...) it will be essential reading for all those working in logic & computer science. (shrink)

Synthesizing forty years' work by France's leading sociologist, this book exemplifies Bourdieu's unique ability to link sociological theory, historical information, and philosophical thought. It makes explicit the presuppositions of a state of 'scholasticism', a certain leisure liberated from the urgencies of the world. Philosophers have brought these presuppositions into the order of discourse, more to legitimate than analyze them, and this is the primary systematic, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic error that Bourdieu subjects to methodological critique. Pascalian because he, too, was (...) concerned with symbolic power, he refused the temptation of foundationalist thinking, attended to 'ordinary people', and was determined to seek the reason for seemingly illogical behavior rather than simply condemning it. Bourdieu charts a negative philosophy, whose intellectual debt to such other 'heretical' philosophers as Wittgenstein, Austin, Dewey, and Peirce, renews traditional questioning of concepts of violence, power, time, history, the universal, and the purpose and direction of existence. (shrink)

In the process of completing his critical edition of Marcus of Orvieto's Liber de Moralitatibus, Girard J. Etzkorn happened upon a set of questions attributed to Henry of Ghent at the end of Rome's Bibliotheca Angelica codex 750. These questions are edited in this volume under the proviso "attributed to" so that scholars may compare the texts with other works of the Ghentian master known to be authentic. Etzkorn concludes that the ten questions appear to be of two literary (...) genres. Moreover, the ten questions seem to be "selected" questions and were not likely disputed at the same time. Future investigations are essential to find out if the questions may indeed be attributed to Henry himself or whether they were written by one of Henry's disciples who was copying the thoughts and words of the master. (shrink)

After a brief interlude of legality ending in 1947, France and Italy faced violence fuelled by Communist organisations; the most important took place from the autumn of 1947 to the autumn of 1948 and greatly impressed governments and public opinion, sustaining fear of a Communist uprising. Facing this challenge to public order were resolute Ministers of the Interior Mario Scelba and Jules Moch. Their policy gained them the reputation of reso­lute anti-Communists going beyond the limits of democratic legality. This paper (...) questions this simple picture. In fact, for centre-right and centre-left govern­ments ruling these two countries, emergency powers were linked to the state of (civil) war and both ministries’ policies relied mainly on the application of the existing penal code and the mobilisation of existing forces. Moves to strengthen repressive laws depended on a long and uncertain parliamentary process and, without wide political consensus and solid parliamentary majorities, they often proved to be too little or too late. Judiciary repression was sometimes inefficient, leaving the Ministries infuriated by impunity. With the fear of world war peaking in 1950, there were legal efforts to thwart possible Communist support for a Soviet invasion; but those did not appear any more fruitful than prior attempts, and faded when internal matters seemed more urgent than the declining “Red Threat” in the 1950s. This study also highlights the fact that the repression by the Italian state, relying on former Fascist laws and sometimes infringing on civil liberties, was more violent than in France. Casualties caused by law enforcement persisted even after the decrease of Communist activism, underlying the histor­ically higher level of social and political confrontation in Italy. (shrink)

The authors develop an analysis of education. They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme which is actually based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social system.

ABSTRACTDo truth tables—the ordinary sort that we use in teaching and explaining basic propositional logic—require an assumption of consistency for their construction? In this essay we show that truth tables can be built in a consistency-independent paraconsistent setting, without any appeal to classical logic. This is evidence for a more general claim—that when we write down the orthodox semantic clauses for a logic, whatever logic we presuppose in the background will be the logic that appears in the foreground. Rather than (...) any one logic being privileged, then, on this count partisans across the logical spectrum are in relatively similar dialectical positions. (shrink)

The expression conditional fallacy identifies a family of arguments deemed to entail odd and false consequences for notions defined in terms of counterfactuals. The antirealist notion of truth is typically defined in terms of what a rational enquirer or a community of rational enquirers would believe if they were suitably informed. This notion is deemed to entail, via the conditional fallacy, odd and false propositions, for example that there necessarily exists a rational enquirer. If these consequences do indeed follow from (...) the antirealist notion of truth, alethic antirealism should probably be rejected. In this paper we analyse the conditional fallacy from a semantic (i.e. model-theoretic) point of view. This allows us to identify with precision the philosophical commitments that ground the validity of this type of argument. We show that the conditional fallacy arguments against alethic antirealism are valid only if controversial metaphysical assumptions are accepted. We suggest that the antirealist is not committed to the conditional fallacy because she is not committed to some of these assumptions. (shrink)

Cambrai, Bibl. munic. 940, ff. 1-59 [integralement reproduit]--Bibl. Vatic. Reg. Lat. 689 A, ff. 334-353.--Bibl. Vatic. Reg. Lat. 1653, ff, 1v-2v (feuilles de garde), ff. 3r, 29r-35r.--Pièces justificatives.

It has been an open question whether or not we can define a belief revision operation that is distinct from simple belief expansion using paraconsistent logic. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of meeting the challenge of defining a belief revision operation using the resources made available by the study of dynamic epistemic logic in the presence of paraconsistent logic. We will show that it is possible to define dynamic operations of belief revision in a paraconsistent setting.