GJ: We've talked a lot about critics who are hostile toward you. Do you ever feel the need to make a stand against those who are favourably inclined toward your plays but whose comments seem to you to be stupid? EI: Well, for better or worse, that's what I've always done: I wrote Notes and Counter-Notes, had discussions with Claude Bonnefoy, I've written articles; and in each case what I've said, in short, is that critics who gave me their approval, (...) did so because they misunderstood me and were mistaken about my intentions. GJ: Finally, are you at all bitter about the critics? EI: No. Many have become good friends of mine. But it is a bit disheartening; when I began, a critic who, shall we say, is on the Right, a conservative critic who is very well-known and has since become a friend of mine, called me an impostor, a fraud, and a dummy; and now, twenty-five years later, the Leftists still call me an impostor, a fraud, and a dummy. GJ: But less often? EI: Well, I suppose so. Eugene Ionesco, renowned by playwright , recently was awarded the International Writer's Prize by the Welsh Arts Council. While in Wales, he was interviewed by Gabriel Jacobs, lecturer in French at University College of Swansea; the interview represents Ionesco's most concerted attempt yet to deal with his critics. He is completing a book on the subject which Gabriel Jacobs will translate into English. (shrink)

This article explores the world of theatre from within and beyond the stage and brings together Roland Barthes as a critic and Samuel Beckett as a playwright via a third character, the Romanian-born playwright Eugène Ionesco, who anathematized the former and admired the latter. The article starts from Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd (1961), which defined Beckett’s and Ionesco’s art, pointing out that whilst Esslin showed why their works produced ‘bewilderment’ in England and the US, (...) he ignored the Paris debates of the 1950s to early 1960s. It then covers the intricate history of Barthes’s polemical articles on avant-garde theatre and focuses on Barthes hailing Bertolt Brecht as an innovator who redefined theatre as belonging to a community. The next section engages with Beckett’s and Ionesco’s ideas on staging and their relation to Brecht and the Brechtians. The epilogue proposes a reading of Ionesco’s satirical play Improvisation or the Shepherd’s Chameleon (1955), which features Barthes and two other representatives of nouvelle critique as characters. (shrink)

In "The Clown in the Agora," William Kluback and Michael Finkenthal have put together a book of imagined conversations, encounters, and interviews based on the poetical and philosophical ideas of playwright Eugene Ionesco.".

The well-known label of “theater of the absurd” is based on the Aristotelian logic of the nonincluded middle, the common interpretation being that of the chaotic and irrational character of the universe, human destiny, and language. However, we propose another view on the subject, relying on the discoveries of quantum physics, the main principles of transdisciplinarity, and the literary theory of the possible worlds. We applied these ideas to some of Eugene Ionesco’s fa-mousplays, concluding that absurd becomes an irrelevant (...) notion if analyzed in this perspective. (shrink)

Marta Petreu, Ionescu în Tara tatãlui Biblioteca Apostrof, Cluj-Napoca, 2001. + Marie-France Ionesco, Portretul scriitorului în secol. Eugène Ionesco 1909-1994 Humanitas, Bucuresti, 2003, trad. rom. Mona Þepeneag.

Pour ceux qui s'interrogent sur le fascisme d'Emil Cioran ou plus encore de Mircea Eliade, ce livre dissipera les derniers doutes. Loin du péché de jeunesse, on y découvrira, à partir d'écrits politiques inédits en français et d'archives jusque-là inexploitées, l'ampleur du plaidoyer antisémite et ultranationaliste porté par ces deux intellectuels aujourd'hui mondialement célèbres... mais aussi leur obstination à camoufler, voire à recycler après 1945, une filiation idéologique pourtant indispensable à l'intelligence des œuvres de la maturité. De cet " oubli (...) du fascisme ", Eugène Ionesco fut-il le témoin consentant? Le jeune intellectuel de gauche connaissait parfaitement, pour l'avoir combattu dans les années 30, l'engagement de ses deux compatriotes d'origine roumaine. Comment comprendre dès lors l'étrange pacte du silence scellé après-guerre entre les trois hommes? Amnésie complice ou effet équivoque des solidarités anticommunistes de l'exil? Cet essai, dont le ton n'est jamais inquisitoire, vient lézarder des pans entiers de notre culture en montrant comment la pensée d'un Eliade ou d'un Cioran a pu justifier une des dérives les plus meurtrières du XXe siècle. Au fil d'une enquête historique minutieuse, qui nous mènera du Bucarest de la Garde de fer à Paris, en passant par les refuges diplomatiques de la Seconde Guerre mondiale - où, entre Vichy et le Portugal de Salazar, on suivra les trois écrivains en poste dans diverses ambassades d'un pays allié du Ille Reich -, Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine éclaire la face trop longtemps cachée de leurs trajectoires. D'où les deux versants de cette triple biographie intellectuelle qui analyse ensuite avec brio le succès des multiples stratégies sociales et littéraires mises en œuvre pour dissimuler un passé devenu soudain très encombrant. (shrink)

Camil Petrescu (1894-1957) was a Romanian novelist, dramatist, poet and philosopher. His PhD thesis in philosophy was entitled The Aesthetic Method of Theater, and wasinfluenced by Joseph Gregor, Julius Bab, Gordon Craig, Constantin Stanislavski, Adolphe Appia, and William Butler Yeats.. His thesis was published in 1937. In Romanian literature, he was the initiator of the modern novel, with the volume The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War (1930). As a philosopher he was influned by and continued to (...) studyPlato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, James, Bergson and Husserl. Petrescu is the first Romanian philosopher to write a micro-monograph about Husserl (1938). His main philosophical work, entitled The Doctrine of Substance (deposited in 1942 to the Library of Vatican), was published in 1988 (The Doctrine of Substance, volumes I-II). In this paper, I present a placement of the Romanian philosopher in his time and in the relationshe has with his contemporaries, some of them of world-class (Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionesco, Emil Cioran, inclusiv Constantin Noica). (shrink)

Ecrivain méconnu en France, Cioran a un parcours original tant sur le plan de son histoire que de ses idées. Ce livre retrace le cheminement intellectuel de cet écrivain hors du commun. La jeunesse du philosophe dans une Roumanie de l'entre-deux-guerres abrutie par le délire politique est d'abord abordée. L'idéologie de la génération de Cioran est ensuite présentée, ses liens avec Mircea Eliade, Eugene Ionesco, Constantin Noica.

La grande littérature française, de Marcel Proust à Michel Houellebecq, avec les chefs d'oeuvre d'André Gide, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Giraudoux, Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Yourcenar, Bernard-Marie Koltès, ou Enzo Cormann, reflète la condition humaine dans le monde des valeurs stables et celui de la modernité liquide décrite par Bauman. Ses interrogations concernent l'homme, confronté à l'Histoire, en proie au doute sur le Moi aussi bien que sur les religions.

This article deals with the mediality of empty chairs in the works by Vincent van Gogh, Richard Weiner, Egon Schiele, Joseph Kosuth and Eugène Ionesco. These empty chairs are explored as aisthetic-affective figures pervading historical periods and cultural boundaries that offer a specific portrait of absence, which is able to intensify the subject despite its physical non-presence. The argument is based on the dialectic process of dis/appearing, posthermeneutics and the theory of the supplement.

In his Fragments of a Journal, playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote: According to Freud, the three obstacles that prevent us from being are anxiety, pity and aversion. This is the threefold chain that binds us. But our chain is fourfold or even fivefold: hatred or aggressiveness are equal hindrances to freedom. Desire is the most serious obstacle to our deliverance. Freudianism can thus, to some extent, be reconciled with Buddhism... Ionesco goes on to suggest that the ultimate implications of (...) psychoanalysis are not far removed from those of Buddhism. In this book Anthony Molino teases out those implications in a collection of writings on the complex relationship between the two disciplines. (shrink)

"This article deals with the mediality of empty chairs in the works by Vincent van Gogh, Richard Weiner, Egon Schiele, Joseph Kosuth and Eugène Ionesco. These empty chairs are explored as aisthetic-affective figures pervading historical periods and cultural boundaries that offer a specific portrait of absence, which is able to intensify the subject despite its physical non-presence. The argument is based on the dialectic process of dis/appearing, posthermeneutics and the theory of the supplement. Der Beitrag behandelt die Medialität (...) leerer Stühle in den Werken von Vincent van Gogh, Richard Weiner, Egon Schiele, Joseph Kosuth und Eugène Ionesco. Leere Stühle werden als ästhetisch-affektive Figuren untersucht, die historische Perioden und kulturelle Grenzen durch- und überschreiten; dabei präsentieren sie ein spezifisches Porträt von Abwesenheit, das das Subjet trotz seiner physischen Nicht- Gegenwart intensiviert. Die Argumentation gründet in dem dialektischen Prozess von Er- scheinen und Verschwinden, Posthermeneutik und der Theorie des Supplements. ". (shrink)

This book examines the social and philosophical attitudes in Western culture that relate to the environment including aesthetics, wildlife, and land use. Both the historical significance and a framework for further discussions of environmental ethics are discussed in the book.

Professional environmental ethics arose directly out of the interest in the environment created by Earth Day in 1970. At that time many environmentalists, primarily because they had read Aldo Leopold’s essay, “The Land Ethic,” were convinced that the foundations of environmental problems were philosophical. Moreover, these environmentalists were dissatisfied with the instrumental arguments based on human use and benefit—which they felt compelled to invoke in defense of nature—because they thought these arguments were part of the problem. Wanting to counter instrumental (...) arguments in some way with non- or even anti-instrumental arguments, and unable to think of anything else to say, they began wistfully suggesting that perhaps nature had or ought to have rights. When professional environmental ethics came into its own in the early 1980s, rights for nature were one of the first subjects to be debated in detail. Unfortunately, however, no one could come up with a theory to support such rights attributions. Nevertheless, because rights had been invoked by environmentalists to challenge the preeminent role of instrumental value arguments, and because the field of environmental ethics developed in support of environmental concerns and arguments, environmental ethicists turned to an examination of noninstrumental or intrinsic value arguments for the preservation of nature. (shrink)

The concepts of self-interest and self-love feature prominently in both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Various notions of self-preservation, self-interest, and self-love are distinguished, and it is shown how self-love functions less as a motive than as an orientation. Although self-love may corrupt moral perception, the impartial spectator serves as an antidote. Smith’s conception of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations is a broad one and not inconsistent with the moral psychology of The Theory of (...) Moral Sentiments. That the virtue of benevolence features less in The Wealth of Nations than The Theory of Moral Sentiments is not surprising given Smith’s overall account of sympathetic interaction, as well as the threshold of knowledge required for benevolent action. The chapter closes with a summary consideration of prudence, a virtue grounded in self-interest, and an examination of the status of ambition. (shrink)

This study investigated students’ perceptions of ethical organizational climates, attitudes towards ethical issues, and the perceived relationship between ethical behavior and success in business organizations. Comparisons were made between the attitudes of these future managers with previously published studies of Russian managers’ attitudes. A survey of 100 business students in three Moscow universities showed that their attitudes toward ethical behavior were more negative than those of Russian managers. No significant differences were found in the perceptions or attitudes of students who (...) had attended an ethics course and those that did not. The implications for both managers and researchers were reported. (shrink)

Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This essay presents and analyzes the recent work of four prominent contemporary Jewish ethicists: Eugene Borowitz, David Novak, Byron Sherwin, and Walter Wurzburger. These authors are united in their affirmation of covenant as the central category of Jewish moral obligation and their concern to construct a Jewish ethic out of the classical sources of Judaism. Yet, as an individual analysis of their books will show, they adopt markedly different views of the authority of traditional Jewish law , the respective roles (...) of individual and community in moral deliberation, and the degree to which changing historical circumstances alter moral truths. (shrink)

In Knowledge and its Limits (KAIL), Timothy Williamson argues for the view that “only knowledge warrants assertion” (2000, 243). Call this the knowledge norm of assertion. Several philosophers including DeRose, Hawthorne, and Stanley, agree that if the knowledge norm is true, then knowledge itself depends on stakes, since warranted assertability seems to change with what is at stake if the proposition in question is true (1992; 2003; 2005). This brings us to the question: stakes for whom? DeRose maintains that knowledge (...) depends on the stakes for the speaker of the knowledge attribution, arguing for Epistemic Contextualism (2002, 187). However, Hawthorne and Stanley disagree, contending that it is the stakes for the subject of the knowledge attribution which is relevant, arguing for Subject Sensitive Invariantism (2003, 157; 2005, 85). While the Contextualist and the Invariantist are armed with responses against each other’s view, I suspect that Russell’s and Doris’ indifference cases might break the impasse in favor of the Contextualist (2008, 432). This paper will thus attempt to show that the knowledge norm of assertion leads us to Contextualism rather than Subject Sensitive Invariantism, by comparing how Contextualism and Subject Sensitive Invariantism fare against Russell’s and Doris’ Indifference Cases. (shrink)

Large-scale weapons systems have increasingly become part of a patronage system justified by claims about national defense. American politics tends to proceed by distribution, redistribution, and compromise. The disjunction between the "virtually" autonomous processes of worldwide weapons innovation and American incrementalism lead to a potentially disastrous situation. This situation is characterized by potential chaos in the integration of complex, interdependent combat and communication systems as well as a mindless arms race that seems to defy political control. A modest proposal is (...) made to suggest a potential bureaucratic change agent. (shrink)

Producing a properly philosophical theory of capitalism as an open axiomatic system requires adding intensive multiplicities to the mathematical account of set theory, which allows only extensive multiplicities. Doing so enables us to understand pricing as a process of transforming intensive quantities into metric quantities, and thereby develop a diagram of the dynamics of axiomatisation and of the market as the two-sided and asymmetrical recording surface of the capitalist socius whose slope represents the infinite debt owed to finance capital. The (...) capitalist market axiomatises four kinds of flows – flows of liquid capital and abstract labour, of course, but also flows of raw materials and energy and of human populations. At the same time that axiomatisation conjugates these flows in denumerable sets to extract surplus-value, it connects flows in minor, non-denumerable sets that escape axiomatisation and may become revolutionary. Such minor connections would constitute the fabric of a post-capitalist axiomatics. (shrink)

Preliminaries: Marx, Marxism and Ethics the relationship between Marxism and ethics is often alluded to and rarely explored. The disputes that surround it ...

John Passmore has claimed that American environmental attitudes are incompatible with Western traditions and Western civilization: they arose out of a Romantic transvaluation of values in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and today are defensible only in terms of antiscientific nature mysticism and Oriental religions. I argue that these attitudes developed out of an intricate interplay between Western science and art over the last three centuries, and are, therefore, of Western, not Eastern, origin. Moreover, they are apart of scientific and (...) aesthetic changes so broad and fundamental that, despite Passmore’s prediction that they are unlikely to survive into the twenty-first century, they cannot be regarded lightly as a passing fad, and probably have already found a permanent place in Western thought and values. (shrink)

Although Adam Ferguson is regarded typically as a secular thinker, the larger frame of this thought may reflect his theism. After recounting, in summary fashion, elements of Ferguson's life, the paper sets forth his embrace of standard doctrines of eighteenth-century natural theology, including the metaphysical basis between mind, activity, and moral happiness, as well as Ferguson's treatment of an important theme of Christian belief – human sinfulness. Turning to Ferguson's moral theory, it is argued that energetic and moralized activity, vigour, (...) may be less an expression of ‘civic humanism’ than of Ferguson's practical experience within the Scottish Church. More important, the very idea of vigorous exertion manifests, in Ferguson's own view, the human reflection of the Divine. Even if Ferguson remains a secular thinker, there is reason to regard him as a man whose thought bears the marks of religious belief and institutional practice. (shrink)

This volume demonstrates that their contributions to a material ethics of value are complementary: by supplementing the work of one with that of the other, we obtain a comprehensive and defensible axiological and moral theory.