Après Discours, figure (1971) qui montrait l’irréductibilité du visuel, Lyotard est saisi, en lisant Levinas, par une autre altérité à la logique du savoir : celle de l’obligation morale. Sa méditation rencontre le nouveau geste de sa philosophie ( Le Différend, 1983). En articulant l’obligation à la pensée du tort et du différend, dans un dialogue constant avec Levinas et Kant et leur épreuve réciproque, Lyotard achève le mouvement lévinasien de rupture avec toute philosophie de l’autonomie et procédure d’universalisation. Tandis (...) qu’il conduit la pensée lévinasienne à l’acuité de ses justesses et de ses impasses, il la décentre et inscrit le régime de l’obligation dans une configuration générale du différend constamment conflictuel entre plusieurs régimes de « phrases » jamais apaisées. L’éthique requiert l’aporie, l’absence de garantie, et, par là, la ressource du jugement. Il n’y a pas plus à chercher de relève dans un terme-refuge ou une autre instance et modalité de dernier recours : ni politique, ni esthétique. Le dénuement est le paradigme de la responsabilité. L’écriture, évasive par avance, en est « la trace toute vide ». (shrink)

Cette analyse des textes de Leo Strauss sur « l ' art d ' écrire » en situation de persécution cherche à en faire ressortir la cohérence et l ' intérêt. Sont examinés successivement la question du contexte, les modalités de la preuve, le caractère crypté de la vérité, la position d ' infériorité du censeur, la nécessité de mettre plusieurs textes en relation, les rapports de la philosophie et de la foi. L ' analyse freudienne du Moïse de Michel (...) - Ange fournit enfin un contre - exemple de la méthode straussienne. This analysis of Leo Strauss ' texts about « the art of writing » in a situation of persecution aims at stressing out their coherence and interest. One after the other, the author studies in depth the concept of context, the modalities of evidence, the encrypted character of truth, the inferiority position of the censor, the need to relate several texts one to another, the relationship between philosophy and faith. The freudian analysis of the Moses by Michaelangelo shows a counter - example of the Straussian method. (shrink)

La lecture de Kafka a grandement contribué à l’élaboration de la pensée de Lyotard. Dans son commentaire de Devant la loi, Derrida oppose à l’éthique lyotardienne de l’exercice libre et réfléchissant de la faculté de juger, la scène dramatisée et mélancolique de la Loi qui est différance, atermoiement indéfini, Loi du récit. Dans son propre commentaire de La Colonie pénitentiaire, Lyotard met l’accent sur la prescription comme préjudice fait à l’affect et au sensible et sur les opérations de détournement par (...) le politique de la Loi qui la transmuent en instance de commandement. La représentation kafkaïenne de la loi, terrifiante et sacrificielle, ne correspond guère, selon lui, à la loi juive qui est loi de vie. Dans son débat avec Hannah Arendt et en lisant Adorno, Lyotard se tourne ainsi vers un autre Kafka, au plus près de l’exister, exposé d’un seul tenant à la naissance et à la mort de l’improbable. Ici s’esquisse une autre figure de mélancolie plus proche de ce que représente le judaïsme : celle du Survivant, ressource intime, dans la solitude, du jugement comme de l’écriture. (shrink)

De la cruauté à la sévérité de la loi, en passant par les bienfaits de la discorde civile, "les usages du mal" sont le fil directeur de l'oeuvre de Machiavel. Ils concernent tout régime politique, qu'il s'agisse de la Principauté ou de la République. Cette dernière loin d'être le dénouement des apories du politique, constitue la forme de régime préférable parce qu'elle en incarne le déploiement à une échelle plus élargie, le "plus de vie" accordé au surcroît de la "virtu". (...) Ici la liberté et l'égalité républicaine ne relèvent pas de l'humanisme civique. Pensée du politique qui est celle d'un mode pariculier de spéculation, liée à la fois à la positivité de l'Histoire et à une écriture de la cohérence brisée, l'oeuvre machiavélienne perturbe toute philosophie politique en ouvrant à une réflexion tout autre sur l'essence de la vérité. "La vérité effective de la chose" se laisse ainsi saisir dans une pensée de l'essai pour laquelle les perspectives ne sont pas même multtiples mais incompatibles entre elles, sans espoir d'unification. L'agent politique, Prince ou République, s'il montre sa "viru" alors que la Forttune le harasse, n'en reste pas moins sujet à la foudre inexorable d'une chose qui ne le vise même pas. (shrink)

Après Discours, figure (1971) qui montrait l’irréductibilité du visuel, Lyotard est saisi, en lisant Levinas, par une autre altérité à la logique du savoir : celle de l’obligation morale. Sa méditation rencontre le nouveau geste de sa philosophie ( Le Différend, 1983). En articulant l’obligation à la pensée du tort et du différend, dans un dialogue constant avec Levinas et Kant et leur épreuve réciproque, Lyotard achève le mouvement lévinasien de rupture avec toute philosophie de l’autonomie et procédure d’universalisation. Tandis (...) qu’il conduit la pensée lévinasienne à l’acuité de ses justesses et de ses impasses, il la décentre et inscrit le régime de l’obligation dans une configuration générale du différend constamment conflictuel entre plusieurs régimes de « phrases » jamais apaisées. L’éthique requiert l’aporie, l’absence de garantie, et, par là, la ressource du jugement. Il n’y a pas plus à chercher de relève dans un terme-refuge ou une autre instance et modalité de dernier recours : ni politique, ni esthétique. Le dénuement est le paradigme de la responsabilité. L’écriture, évasive par avance, en est « la trace toute vide ». (shrink)

Ce dictionnaire encyclopédique embrasse, avec ses treize chapitres, la quasi-totalité du domaine, allant des problématiques à la communication politique en passant par les concepts transversaux, l'intelligence artificielle, les sciences cognitives, les mass media et le droit de la communication. Ordre alphabétique à l'intérieur des chapitres. [SDM].

Mortal and immortal DNA : Craig Venter and the lure of "lamia" -- Homeopathy : Holmes, hogwarts, and the Prince of Wales -- Citizen Pinel and the madman at Bellevue -- The experimental pathology of stress : Hans Selye to Paris Hilton -- Gore's fever and Dante's Inferno : Chikungunya reaches Ravenna -- Giving things their proper names : Carl Linnaeus and W.H. Auden -- Spinal irritation and fibromyalgia : Lincoln's surgeon general and the three graces -- Tithonus and the (...) fruit fly : new science and old myths -- Swiftboating "America the beautiful" : Katharine Lee Bates and a Boston marriage -- Nothing makes sense in medicine except in the light of biology -- Apply directly to the forehead : Holmes, Zola, and Hennapecia -- Elizabeth Blackwell breaks the bonds -- Chronic lyme disease and medically unexplained syndromes -- Eugenics and the immigrant : Rosalyn Yalow and Rita Levi-Montalcini -- Science in the Middle East : Robert Koch and the cholera war -- How to win a Nobel prize : thinking inside and outside the box -- Homer Smith and the lungfish : the last gasp of intelligent design -- DDT is back : let us spray! -- Academic boycotts and the Royal Society -- Teach evolution, learn science : John William Draper and the "bone bill" -- Diderot and the yeti crab : the encyclopedias of life -- Dengue fever in Rio : Macumba versus Voltaire. (shrink)

How does one arrive at a life in politics and policy? What happens to one's ideals when confronted with the reality that the only way to get things done in Washington is compromise? Who are the men and women who help shape our national agenda, and what drives their work? Dispatches From the Eastern Front provides fascinating, intensely personal, yet universal answers to these central questions. Recounting four decades inside Washington politics, Gerald Felix Warburg brings remarkable candor to a most (...) unusual memoir. An idealistic California baby boomer transported to the intimidating world of Capitol Hill policymaking at a young age, Warburg finds himself working to reform nuclear energy, strategic arms control, and foreign policy. As his access and power grow, greater challenges loom: how to maintain principles while cutting deals, and how to balance public purpose with private interests. An eclectic career reveals the slow and often painful development of emotional intelligence for work at the highest reaches of the public arena. (shrink)

Having laid the groundwork in his critically acclaimed books Neural Darwinism (Basic Books, 1987) and Topobiology (Basic Books, 1988), Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman now proposes a comprehensive theory of consciousness in The Remembered ...

The author takes the reader on a tour that covers such topics as computers, evolution, Descartes, Schrodinger, and the nature of perception, language, and invididuality. He argues that biology provides the key to understanding the brain. Underlying his argument is the evolutionary view that the mind arose at a definite time in history. This book ponders connections between psychology and physics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Frequently contentious, Edelman attacks cognitive and behavioral approaches, which leave biology out of the picture, as (...) well as the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer. (shrink)

This important new book develops a new concept of autonomy. The notion of autonomy has emerged as central to contemporary moral and political philosophy, particularly in the area of applied ethics. professor Dworkin examines the nature and value of autonomy and uses the concept to analyse various practical moral issues such as proxy consent in the medical context, paternalism, and entrapment by law enforcement officials.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience.

In this book G. A. Cohen examines the libertarian principle of self-ownership, which says that each person belongs to himself and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else. This principle is used to defend capitalist inequality, which is said to reflect each person's freedom to do as as he wishes with himself. The author argues that self-ownership cannot deliver the freedom it promises to secure, thereby undermining the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality (...) that comes with it. He goes on to show that the standard Marxist condemnation of exploitation implies an endorsement of self-ownership, since, in the Marxist conception, the employer steals from the worker what should belong to her, because she produced it. Thereby a deeply inegalitarian notion has penetrated what is in aspiration an egalitarian theory. Purging that notion from socialist thought, he argues, enables construction of a more consistent egalitarianism. (shrink)

Many people, including many egalitarian political philosophers, professa belief in equality while enjoying high incomes of which they devotevery little to egalitarian purposes. The article critically examinesways of resolving the putative inconsistency in the stance of thesepeople, in particular, that favouring an egalitarian society has noimplications for behaviour in an unequal one; that what''s bad aboutinequality is a social division that philanthropy cannot reduce; thatprivate action cannot ensure that others have good lives; that privateaction can only achieve a ``drop in (...) the ocean''''; that private effortis not called for, since justice is a matter for the state to enforce;that private effort cannot remove the fundamental injustice, whichis inequality of power; and that private effort involves an unreasonablylarge psychological burden. (shrink)

This contemporary, comprehensive, and practical text helps you discover and determine your own guidelines for helping within the broad limits of professional codes of ethics and divergent theoretical positions. This text is the relied-upon, essential text for students in any helping field-the book many students return to well into their professional careers. The authors raise what they consider to be central issues, present a range of diverse views on the issues, discuss their position, and present opportunities for you to refine (...) your own thinking and actively develop your own informed position. Questions explored include: What role do the therapist's personal values play in the counseling relationship? What ethical responsibilities and rights do clients and therapists have? What considerations are involved in adapting counseling practice to diverse client populations? And more... (shrink)

Concise and understandable, the book explains pertinent findings of modern neuroscience and describes how consciousness arises in complex brains.

This is the second of three volumes of posthumously collected writings of G. A. Cohen, who was one of the leading, and most progressive, figures in contemporary political philosophy. This volume brings together some of Cohen's most personal philosophical and nonphilosophical essays, many of them previously unpublished. Rich in first-person narration, insight, and humor, these pieces vividly demonstrate why Thomas Nagel described Cohen as a "wonderful raconteur." The nonphilosophical highlight of the book is Cohen's remarkable account of his first trip (...) to India, which includes unforgettable vignettes of encounters with strangers and reflections on poverty and begging. Other biographical pieces include his valedictory lecture at Oxford, in which he describes his philosophical development and offers his impressions of other philosophers, and "Isaiah's Marx, and Mine," a tribute to his mentor Isaiah Berlin. Other essays address such topics as the truth in "small-c conservatism," who can and can't condemn terrorists, and the essence of bullshit. A recurring theme is finding completion in relation to the world of other human beings. Engaging, perceptive, and empathetic, these writings reveal a more personal side of one of the most influential philosophers of our time. (shrink)

A theory is presented to explain how accurate, single-joint movements are controlled. The theory applies to movements across different distances, with different inertial loads, toward targets of different widths over a wide range of experimentally manipulated velocities. The theory is based on three propositions. (1) Movements are planned according to “strategies” of which there are at least two: a speed-insensitive (SI) and a speed-sensitive (SS) one. (2) These strategies can be equated with sets of rules for performing diverse movement tasks. (...) The choice between SI and SS depends on whether movement speed and/or movement time (and hence appropriate muscle forces) must be constrained to meet task requirements. (3) The electromyogram can be interpreted as a low-pass filtered version of the controlling signal to the motoneuron pools. This controlling signal can be modelled as a rectangular excitation pulse in which modulation occurs in either pulse amplitude or pulse width. Movements to different distances and with loads are controlled by the SI strategy, which modulates pulse width. Movements in which speed must be explicitly regulated are controlled by the SS strategy, which modulates pulse amplitude. The distinction between the two movement strategies reconciles many apparent conflicts in the motor control literature. (shrink)

Résumé Ce n’est pas seulement la théorie de la Décision qui permet de définir ce qu’on entend aujourd’hui par « évaluation », c’est aussi la théorie de l’Institution, chère à Maurice Hauriou, qui permet d’éclairer le concept d’« évaluer » ainsi que d’enrichir celui de « tiers partagé » de Nicolas Dodier.

Emotion regulation choices are known to be profoundly consequential across affective, cognitive, and social domains. Prior studies have identified two important external factors of emotion regulati...

If I utter the sentence: Hitler caused the outbreak of the second world war, some interested logician may translate my sentence into the words: Hitler necessitated the outbreak of the second world war, If that translation be made I do not accept it, unless the dragoman makes it clear to me that by the word “necessitate” he means nothing more than I mean by the word “cause.” In which case I can dispense with his services. But if he is embodying (...) in his translation the thought that the outbreak of war followed from the existence of Hitler at a given moment of time, as the equality of the angles in a triangle follows from the equality of the sides, then I repudiate his translation, because I do not agree that a statement or proposition such as event x caused event y is a hypothetical proposition of the type if x then y. A fortiori it cannot be regarded by me as a reciprocal hypothetical proposition: if x then y if y then x ; nor, to complete the possibilities, can I infer what I call the cause from the effect. (shrink)

From the psychic rat to the gorilla in the room, from British double-agent Kim Philby to comedian Steve Martin, The Incredible Shrinking Mind not only offers a provocative and entertaining critique, but also a profound and practical ...

The machine as a social movement of today's “precariat”—those whose labor and lives are precarious. In this “concise philosophy of the machine,” Gerald Raunig provides a historical and critical backdrop to a concept proposed forty years ago by the French philosophers Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze: the machine, not as a technical device and apparatus, but as a social composition and concatenation. This conception of the machine as an arrangement of technical, bodily, intellectual, and social components subverts the opposition between (...) man and machine, organism and mechanism, individual and community. Drawing from an unusual range of films, literature, and performance—from the role of bicycles in Flann O'Brien's fiction to Vittorio de Sica's Neorealist film The Bicycle Thieves, and from Karl Marx's “Fragment on Machines” to the deus ex machina of Greek drama—Raunig arrives at an enhanced conception of the machine as a social movement, finding its most apt and concrete manifestation in the Euromayday movement, which since 2001 has become a transnational activist and discursive practice focused upon the precarious nature of labor and lives. (shrink)

The Zofingia Club was a discussion group to which C.G. Jung belonged as a medical student: in 1897 he became Chairman, and gave five lectures. These have survived and are published here in a supplementary volume to the _Collected Works._ The lectures are of great interest to anyone concerned with Jung's early ideas, as a young medical student from a strongly Swiss Protestant background. The Lectures are: The Border Zones of Exact Science ; Some Thoughts on Psychology ; An Inaugural (...) Address on Becoming Chairman of the Zofingia Club; Thoughts on the Nature and Value of Speculative Inquiry ; and Thoughts on the Interpretation of Christianity with Reference to the Theory of Albrecht Ritschl. (shrink)