The author argues the following hypothesis: the medical clinic is an experimental practice, in the sense given to this term by Claude Bernard, and the clinic is its specific laboratory. Its object is not the disease, but the patient. Careful examination of the clinic attests to its very close proximity to the experimental method, and the comparison also raises a number of difficulties. The main obstacle arises from the specificity of medicine, which involves treating individual human subjects whose words cannot (...) be suppressed. Its main challenge is to combine a linguistic practice with an experimental method. (shrink)

It is time to challenge the issue of pleasure associated with the core of medical practice. Its importance is made clear through its opposite: unhappiness—something which affects doctors in a rather worrying way. The paper aims to provide a discussion on pleasure on reliable grounds. Plato’s conception of techne is a convenient model that offers insights into the unique practice of medicine, which embraces in a single purposive action several heterogeneous dimensions. In Aristotle’s Ethics, pleasure appears to play a central (...) role for action’s assessment and intensification. Pleasure is also tightly associated with the Kantian faculty of reflective judgment, which operates at the heart of clinical reasoning. Indeed, practicing medicine means to deal with the particular and the manifold, requiring clinical judgment, but also relying on embodied habitus . With Bourdieu’s notion of habitus , pleasure is the mark of a happy practice, which presupposes a deep involvement in one’s field. Throughout our inquiry, the question of pleasure comes to offer a critical reappraisal of real medical practice and leads to consider ethics more as a component of techne than as a separate realm of concern. (shrink)

À l’heure où l’essence de la médecine cherche à être ressaisie pour repenser une pratique en crise d’identité, la notion de personne peut apparaître comme un point d’ancrage possible. L’auteur examine l’usage qui en est fait dans la littérature professionnelle et dans les avis du Comité consultatif national d’éthique (CCNE) entre 2005 et 2010. La notion de personne apparaît complexe et sert des idéologies qui s’affrontent. Les traditions juridique, théologique et philosophique qui la sous-tendent ont cédé en partie à une (...) nouvelle conception affirmée par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Homme de 1948. Celle-ci n’évite pas deux écueils : l’exaltation de l’individu autonome et responsable de la modernité laisse un nombre croissant d’êtres parlants sur le bord du chemin ; l’attention portée au vivant minore le souci des conditions politiques et sociales de l’existence. Faisant retour sur l’éthique de la pratique, l’auteur suggère qu’elle n’a pas besoin, pour consister, de recourir à la notion polémique, complexe et problématique de la personne. (shrink)

« La médecine reste en quête d’une épistémologie propre, car l’opposition entre science des maladies et art de soigner ne parvient pas à rendre compte de l’unité d’une pratique. Cette épistémologie peut être dégagée en ressaisissant ce qui se produit dans la clinique, véritable laboratoire de la médecine : lieu de son effectuation et lieu de son élaboration, où l’expérience vécue et l’expérience acquise fournissent les coordonnées d’une expérimentation. La clinique a un point de départ : la demande d’un malade (...) en proie à une intrication symptomatique maladive qui convoque le corps mais aussi le langage, et dont le médecin fait cas. La complexion symptomatique fait l’objet d’une analyse critique (diagnostic) qui débouche sur la détermination d’une thérapie. La clinique est alors une technique productive de remédiations diverses qui mobilise un ensemble hétéroclite de savoirs et de facultés pour trouver des solutions aux problèmes concrets des individus qui s’adressent à elle. Quand bien même la clinique importe pour son usage des biotechnologies et des algorithmes, elle reste incertaine et conjecturale car individuée. Si bien qu’en son cœur, la pratique médicale garde des allures infra-techniques, mobilisant des esthésies, une praxis, une sagacité pratique. Cette hétérogénéité épistémologique est la seule qui soit adéquate à son objet. ». (shrink)

Nul ne disconvient de l’existence d’un malaise dans la médecine contemporaine, mais les points de vue divergent concernant ses causes. Notre analyse prend comme point de départ le discord entre l’expérience vécue du malade et le statut de patient inauguré par la rencontre médicale, pour suggérer l’existence d’un motif de basse continue à une dysharmonie qui n’est pas la seule conséquence du contexte actuel, mais qui tient à un hiatus irréductible. Les mouvements tendanciels destinés à « corriger le tir » (...) risquent de manquer leur but, faute d’avoir pris en considération le caractère inévitablement bancal de la pratique médicale. Faisant retour sur ce qui « a lieu » dans la consultation, la question initiale en vient à être déplacée : conviendrait-il, tout bien considéré, de ne pas trop (chercher à) comprendre le malade? (shrink)

Nous faisons usage de machines, de chaussures, de cartes, en vue de notre vie, de sa conservation et de son développement. Mais c’est la vie elle-même qui est avant tout « usable », et pour laquelle machines, chaussures, cartes sont utilisées. L’ usage de soi, de son existence, est le présupposé et la poutre maîtresse de tous les autres usages. Or l’usage de soi se fonde sur le détachement de soi. Est utilisée une existence à laquelle on ne peut pas (...) toujours s’identifier, qui ne se possède pas entièrement et qui, sans être vraiment étrangère, n’est pas non plus complètement familière. Autrement dit, l’usage de la vie concerne l’espèce qui, en plus de vivre, doit rendre sa vie possible. Le jeu de scène théâtral récapitule et amplifie les procédés par lesquels l’être humain se sert de son existence. L’activité de l’acteur est un modèle incomparable de l’usage de la vie et du souci de soi. Pour reconstituer avec précision les « technologies du soi », il convient de regarder de près les écrits de Stanislavski, Mejerchol’d, Brecht et Grotowski. (shrink)

The particular situation of the French administrative detention center medical units appears to be an exemplary case to study the difficulties facing medical practice. Indeed, the starting point of our inquiry was an amazing observation that needed to be addressed and understood: why are professional interpreters so seldom requested in ADC medical units, where one would expect that they would be “naturally” present? Aiming to fully explore the meanings of the “absent interpreter”, this article takes into account the possible meanings (...) of this situation: the recourse to professional interpreters in France is far from expected given cumulative evidence of its benefits; perceptions of illegal immigrants and medical habitus itself may both hamper the use of a third party; the ADCs are a very stressful place for healthcare professionals, with conflicting missions, political issues enmeshed with medical goals, and heavy affective burden that may lead to self-protection. Silencing voices of suffering others might be seen as the hidden indecent truth of the “absent interpreter”. These reflections open a window to a larger issue with regard to the full range of medicine: what are the place, the role and the function of patient’s words and narratives in contemporary medicine? The highly invested somatic perspective and its political corollary giving primacy to bare life harbor potential risks of obscuring speeches and undervaluing narratives. (shrink)

Frontmatter -- Inhalt -- Formen und Inhalte der Bedeutungsbeschreibung: Definition, Explikation, Repräsentation, Simulation / Weber, Nico -- Zeichen, Bedeutung, Objekt aus kommunikationssemantischer Sicht / Juchem, Johann G. -- Was ist philosophische Logik der Zeit? / Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Rainer -- Zum Kompositionalitätsprinzip in der Semantik / Schröder, Bernhard -- Kognitiv orientierte Lexikographie / Figge, Udo L. -- Wortbedeutungen in Wörterbüchern, Wortbedeutungen in Texten / Seewald, Uta -- Lexikon und Universalgrammatik / Bierwisch, Manfred -- Enzyklopädische Informationen in Wörterbüchern / Bergenholtz, Henning / (...) Kaufmann, Uwe -- Ansichten von Bedeutung: fachsprachliche vs. gemeinsprachliche Semantik / Schaeder, Burkhard -- On Compound Explication in a Byzantine Greek Dictionary / Steiner-Weber, Astrid -- Lexikographische Erschließung des Wendekorpus / Hellmann, Manfred W. -- Les temps d'un dictionnaire de TAO sont-ils venus? / Zemb, Jean-Marie -- Semantische Relatoren / Engel, Ulrich -- Die Beschreibung von Sätzen ohne Subjektsphrase in der kopfgesteuerten Phrasenstrukturgrammatik / Klenk, Ursula -- Representation of Verb-alternations in an Inheritance-based Lexicon / Wolting, Suzanne -- Probleme der Extraktion semantischer Relationen aus maschinenlesbaren Wörterbüchern / Mehl, Stephan -- Können Verben semantische Relationen markieren? / Büchel, Gregor -- On the Verification of Lexical Descriptions in Text Corpora / Heid, Ulrich -- Automatische Generierung natürlichsprachlicher Paraphrasen formaler Bedeutungsbeschreibungen / Küstner, Herbert -- Verb Semantics in Multilingual Sentence Generation / Stede, Manfred -- ADRESSEN DER AUTOREN. (shrink)

The improvement of ultrasound scan techniques is enabling ever earlier prenatal diagnosis of developmental anomalies. In France, apart from cases where the mother’s life is endangered, the detection of “particularly serious” conditions, and conditions that are “incurable at the time of diagnosis” are the only instances in which a therapeutic abortion can be performed, this applying up to the 9th month of pregnancy. Thus numerous conditions, despite the fact that they cause distress or pain or are socially disabling, do not (...) qualify for therapeutic abortion, despite sometimes pressing demands from parents aware of the difficulties in store for their child and themselves, in a society that is not very favourable towards the integration and self-fulfilment of people with a disability. Cleft lip and palate (CLP), although it can be completely treated, is one of the conditions that considerably complicates the lives of child and parents. Nevertheless, the recent scope for making very early diagnosis of CLP, before the deadline for legal voluntary abortion, has not led to any wave of abortions. CLP in France has the benefit of a exceptional care plan, targeting both the health and the integration of the individuals affected. This article sets out, via the emblematic instance of CLP, to show how present fears of an emerging “domestic” or liberal eugenic trend could become redundant if disability is addressed politically and medically, so that individuals with a disability have the same social rights as any other citizen. (shrink)

Ces dernières années, la philosophie politique a trouvé un second souffle. Depuis la parution de la Théorie de la justice, au début des années 1970, et sous le double mouvement du déclin des idéologies et de l'écroulement du système communiste, de nouveaux débats sont apparus. Comment combiner le respect des droits individuels et le maintien d'une ambition collective? Comment intégrer au libéralisme politique un projet communautaire? Quelles doivent être les relations entre l'individu, l'Etat et la société? Comment répondre au malaise (...) et au déficit de légitimité que connaissent les démocraties occidentales? Ces interrogations ont permis d'imposer des voix nouvelles - celles de John Rawls ou de Jürgen Habermas -, mais aussi, plus récemment, celles des auteurs dits " communautariens " : Michaël Sandel, Michaël Walzer et Charles Taylor. Ces discussions sont également l'occasion d'en revenir aux fondateurs de la pensée politique contemporaine et de vérifier ainsi l'actualité de la réflexion d'Emmanuel Kant, de Friedrich Hegel, de Karl Marx, d'Alexis de Tocqueville, de John Stuart Mill ou, plus près de nous, de Sigmund Freud et de Max Weber pour penser les problèmes politiques et spirituels de notre temps. Cet ouvrage aimerait donner un aperçu des problématiques actuelles de la théorie politique. Pour la sélection des auteurs étudiés, la question de la liberté a servi de fil conducteur. (shrink)

The article proposes a systematic reconstruction of Joas’ theory of the sacred. After having characterized the disciplinary profile of Joas, who is a specialist in social theory and historical sociology, and presenting his approach, which ties together pragmatism and hermeneutics, it will be seen how Joas’ theory of the sacred is rooted in his theory of the genesis of values. For Joas, this genesis is closely tied up with the experiences of self-formation and self-transcendence, which can be collective (Durkheim) as (...) well as individual (James). Joas qualifies them as experiences of the sacred, which are susceptible to religious articulation. Therefore, religion is a possibility for interpreting the sacred. This mode, however, may itself assume a variety of forms, not necessarily making recourse to the category of the transcendental, which represents the major discovery of what Karl Jaspers named the axial age – a central topic of Joas’ work for about 15 years. As an alternative to the Weberian notion of disenchantment, Joas develops his history of sacralization and desacralization on this ground. (shrink)

This paper introduces the special issue on Logic and Religion of the journal Logica Universalis (Springer). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and Religion, by Jean-Yves Beziau and Ricardo Silvestre; Thinking Negation in Early Hinduism and Classical Indian Philosophy, by Purushottama Bilimoria; Karma Theory, Determinism, Fatalism and Freedom of Will, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre; From Logic in Islam to Islamic Logic, by Musa Akrami; Leibniz’s Ontological Proof of the Existence of God and the Problem of Impossible Objects, by (...) Wolfgang Lenzen; A Logical Analysis of the Anselm’s Unum Argumentum (from Proslogion), by Jean-Pierre Desclés; Monotonic and Non-monotonic Embeddings of Anselm’s Proof, by Jacob Archambault; Computer-Assisted Analysis of the Anderson–Hájek Ontological Controversy, by C. Benzmüller, L. Weber and B. Woltzenlogel Paleo. (shrink)

On a l’habitude de lire dans Antigone l’histoire d’un conflit entre d’un côté l’expression des liens affectifs et de la piété, et de l’autre les prérogatives de l’État dont le but premier serait le maintien des institutions. D’un côté Antigone fidèle à son frère, de l’autre Créon attaché à sa Cité. D’un côté la morale de l’affectivité ou de la conviction (Gesinnungsethik), de l’autre la morale de la responsabilité (Verantwortungsethik), pour parler comme Max Weber. Cette lecture classique de la (...) tragédie demeure sans doute pertinente à bien des égards, mais traduit-elle l’essentiel? Et si l’intention du poète n’avait pas été d’en rester à cette confrontation mais de suggérer, par-delà l’affrontement ruineux, une troisième voie possible? Il n’y aurait plus alors deux termes seulement, le privé et le public que tout sépare, mais deux manières pour l’ordre public lui-même de se rapporter au privé, l’une conflictuelle et tyrannique, celle de Créon, l’autre conciliatrice et délibérative – démocratique en ce sens –, celle défendue par Hémon, par Tirésias, et finalement peut-être par Sophocle lui-même qui, par l’emploi d’un vocabulaire tiré de l’expérience politique athénienne, dénoue d’une main l’intrigue qu’il noue de l’autre. Éclairée entre autres par Aristote, une interprétation nouvelle de la pièce en découle, celle d’un poète qui surjoue les conflits pour mieux insinuer les moyens politiques de les résoudre ou de les atténuer. (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)

Dans cet article, l'auteur se demande comment nous apparaît aujourd'hui le programme de recherche esquissé par Weber au début des années 1910, mais aussi comment il se présenterait si on voulait, cent ans plus tard, le reprendre en modifiant ce qui devrait l'être tout en restant fidèle à son esprit. Pour ce faire, l'auteur envisage successivement chacune des trois composantes fondamentales du programme de Weber (l'évolution particulière de la musique occidentale, l'accent mis par Weber sur les « (...) techniques » musicales et le fait que pour Weber, le moteur du changement est la rationalisation) et les replace aussi bien dans le contexte de l'oeuvre de Weber que dans celui d'aujourd'hui. (shrink)

Dans Les aventures de la dialectique, Merleau-Ponty s’appuie sur Weber pour se défaire du marxisme et juger la réalité du communisme. Mais le parcours qu’il effectue est complexe et sinueux, comme le montre notamment le chapitre sur Lukács : la volonté de Merleau-Ponty de rétablir une critique sans restriction et la netteté de sa rupture politique avec le communisme font contraste avec sa difficulté à rompre avec la dialectique.In Les Aventures de la dialectique, Merleau-Ponty uses Weber to break (...) with Marxism and to judge the reality of communism. But he follows a complex and sinuous path, as shown in the chapter about Lukacs : Merleau-Ponty’s will to restaure a free criticism and the clearness of his political rupture with communism contrast with his difficulty in renouncing dialectic. (shrink)

This volume celebrates the life achievements of Jason W. Brown, who, along with Jean Piaget, Heinz Werner, Alexander Luria and the Wurzburg school, has significantly contributed to the development of a process-based theory of brain/mind capable of challenging the currently fashionable modularist or cybernetic approaches to understanding human thought and feeling. As a paradigm, Brown's microgenetic theory is thus applicable in both brain science (where Brown was inspired by the pioneering work of Schilder and Pick) and the philosophy of (...) mind (where the influence of Bergson, Whitehead, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty can be seen). Essays with a range of focus as wide as Brown's expertise have been collected in such diverse areas as neuropsychology (microstructure of action, symptomatology, neuro-rehabilitation, neurolinguistics, locationism), theoretical psychology (consciousness, hypnosis, morphogenesis, personality development, psychoanalysis, Buddhist psychology, mysticism), and philosophy of mind (evolutionary epistemology, emergence/novelty/creativity, subjectivity, will and action, Whiteheadian process philosophy).". (shrink)

This special issue of Logica Universalis (Springer) deals with the relations between logic and religion, broadly conceived. It contains the following articles: Logic and Religion, by Jean-Yves Beziau and Ricardo Silvestre; Thinking Negation in Early Hinduism and Classical Indian Philosophy, by Purushottama Bilimoria; Karma Theory, Determinism, Fatalism and Freedom of Will, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre; From Logic in Islam to Islamic Logic, by Musa Akrami; Leibniz’s Ontological Proof of the Existence of God and the Problem of Impossible Objects, by (...) Wolfgang Lenzen; A Logical Analysis of the Anselm’s Unum Argumentum (from Proslogion), by Jean-Pierre Desclés; Monotonic and Non-monotonic Embeddings of Anselm’s Proof, by Jacob Archambault; Computer-Assisted Analysis of the Anderson–Hájek Ontological Controversy, by C. Benzmüller, L. Weber and B. Woltzenlogel Paleo. (shrink)

Terme renvoyant à un âge immémorial, moins politique que religieux, moins religieux que superstitieux, le charisme reste pourtant un élément incontournable de l’histoire politique contemporaine, au point que son rôle dans l’accession de Hitler au pouvoir ou le succès du culte de la personnalité de Staline semble, aujourd’hui encore, bien plus flagrant que n’importe quelle explication d’ordre socio-économique ou culturel. Reliquat religieux au sein d’un monde sans foi? Pathologie dans le cours « normal » de l’histoire de la démocratie en (...) Occident? Mais comment séparer le bon grain de l’ivraie, et est-on même certain que le charisme soit toujours l’ivraie, à l’heure où l’on accuse l’Union européenne d’être devenue une structure technocratique tentaculaire, confirmant les craintes de Max Weber à l’égard d’une « démocratie acéphale » totalement dépourvue de charisme? Quitte à renouer avec le paradoxe d’un « éloge de la folie », Jean-Claude Monod, fort d’une analyse historique rigoureuse des pensées charismatiques du XXe siècle, se risque à faire la part du feu, à imaginer une forme originale de « charisme progressiste », nécessaire supplément d’âme à la machine démocratique. (shrink)

This edited volume takes a close look at Nicos Poulantzas’s thought as a means of understanding the dynamics of the capitalist, neoliberal state in the 21st century. Nicos Poulantzas has left us with one of the most sophisticated theories of the state in the second half of the 20th century. Poulantzas’s influential theory draws inspiration from Marx, Lenin, Weber, and Foucault, among other thinkers, conceiving of the relationship between capitalism and the state as particularly original. This book aims to (...) use Poulantzas’s theory of the capitalist state in order to understand important political and economic trends that have taken place since Poulantzas’s death in 1979. By entering into a dialogue with current Marxist and critical research in diverse fields such as political science, philosophy, sociology, history, and geography, this volume purports to evaluate the actuality of Poulantzas’s thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What about the Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It about? A Response to Thorsten Botz-BornsteinRalph WeberNo doubt Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is right to highlight that the debate of 2006 and 2007 (if indeed it can be called a debate1) between Jean François Billeter and François Jullien was particularly heated. It was to some extent a personal affair in that both protagonists overstepped the scholarly bounds set for an exchange (...) of arguments, the heat at times reaching the boiling point. Billeter reproached Jullien for no less than instrumentalizing China, fashioned as the absolute Other and instrumentalized for almost no other purpose than to continue a philosophical discourse established by Jullien himself, a discourse that became ever more auto-referential, furthering only the most dubious of ideological interests. In one passage, Billeter goes so far as to claim that, rather than allowing the “Chinese authors” their own voice and letting them develop their own arguments, in the end “it is always him [i.e. Jullien] who talks” (Billeter 2006a, p. 45). Regardless of just how personal Billeter’s opposition to Jullien was meant to be—and at least one commentator claims that beyond the polemical title the text offers a “rigorous argumentation” (Danjou 2006; cf. also Zufferey 2006)—Jullien certainly took it personally, asking himself in his riposte, Chemin faisant, just why Billeter was so angry at him (Jullien 2007, p. 137).His riposte is marketed on the title page in big letters as a “Réplique à ***,” which is explained by the series editors, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, in terms of the reaction to a splinter that more often than not swiftly removed is quickly forgotten but that occasionally provokes a considerable reflexive gesture, of just the kind that Jullien offers, thanks to ***. A quote by Foucault precedes the text itself, reading: “There are critiques to which one responds and others to which one gives a riposte. [End Page 228] Perhaps wrongly so, for why not similarly lend an ear that is attentive to incomprehension, to banality, to ignorance or to insincerity?” Only once, at the very beginning of the text, is Billeter’s name (by implication the subject either of incomprehension, banality, ignorance, insincerity, or a combination of all four) fully mentioned; thereafter only his initials, JFB, are used. Even until recently the practice of giving the silent treatment has persisted, as when Jullien in the interview with Martin and Spire simply observes “that the sinologists who criticize me … have themselves produced nothing since that critique—do you need names?” (Martin and Spire 2011, p. 209; italics in original), before referring the reader to the many books he has written since Chemin faisant. Needless to add, this point is premised on quantity trumping quality, which is at least slightly disconcerting given that Jullien’s works have been found as early as 1996 to be marked by “a great deal of overlapping if not outright repetition (or at least rewriting)” (Reding 1996, p. 162)—something that apparently still is the case in his many books “produced” since then.From one standpoint, Botz-Bornstein is also right in referring to the affair as mainly a French debate, involving a sizable number of participants and spanning a considerable period of time, from Billeter and Jullien’s 1989 and 1990 exchange in the pages of Études chinoises over how to read Wang Fuzhi (see Billeter 2006a, p. 37 n. 1); to several volumes on and in co-operative works with Jullien (Jullien and Marchaisse 2000, Marchaisse 2003, Cornaz and Marchaisse 2004, Chartier and Marchaisse 2005, Jousset 2006, and Serrurier and Bricout 2011); to the publication of the partisan Oser Construire: Pour Jullien (Chartier 2007) and Billeter’s answer to it (Billeter 2007); to the many discussions of Jullien that continue to take as their starting point the exchange with Billeter (cf. Keck 2009). The text by Martin and Spire, for instance, makes ample reference to the debate, as Botz-Bornstein mentions, and speaks out in favor of Jullien (Martin and Spire 2011, pp. 77–97). Yet, the debate is also the starting point for Jean Levi’s (2011) recent criticism of Jullien. Beyond the borders of France... (shrink)

Abstract:This essay explores key values of John Lachs's work, especially freedom, diversity, and human flourishing, when applied to the history of the philosophy of education as well as to the practical problems of policy and implementation today in American schools. I consider the importance and tensions involved in these values in the thinking of Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Dewey. Next, I examine necessary and then avoidable challenges of operationalizing freedom and diversity in schools, especially in tensions with recent (...) policy initiatives that threaten freedom and diversity for human flourishing. The aim here is to note the central importance of the values that Lachs has long championed, while attending also to the risks and dangers that misunderstanding and narrow thinking pose about them when applied to American public schools. Ultimately, I argue that while advocacy for liberty sometimes raises profound problems in the sphere of public education, democratic education is enriched immeasurably when it enables and empowers freedom to pursue diverse forms of flourishing. (shrink)

Jean-Claude Dumoncel et Michel Weber, Whitehead ou Le Cosmos torrentiel. Introductions à Procès et réalité, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2010. (978-2-930517-05-6 ; 193 p. ; 20 € ; ) Les études whiteheadiennes françaises — et tout particulièrement la diffusion et l’interprétation de Process and Reality (1929) — ont beaucoup souffert de l’absence d’introductions globales et systématiques évitant à la fois le jargon et les interprétations de l’auteur à partir d’un point de vue qui lui est étranger. La présente (...) duographie vise à combler ce vide. Les deux études qui la composent, dont l’une devait trouver un écho dans Le Pli (1988) de Deleuze, cherchent à extraire la vision whiteheadienne de l'expérience, intégralement comprise. Jean-Claude Dumoncel enseigne la logique et la philosophie de la nature à Caen. Après sa thèse de doctorat sur Le Système de Whitehead et la philosophie analytique (1987), il a publié, e.g., Le Jeu de Wittgenstein (1991), Les Sept mots de Whitehead (1998), La Philosophie telle quelle (2004) et Deleuze face à face (2009). Michel Weber dirige le Centre de philosophie pratique « Chromatiques whiteheadiennes » à Bruxelles. Après sa thèse de doctorat sur l’Euristique du pancréativisme de l’époque de Harvard (1997), il a publié, e.g., La Dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead (2005), Whitehead’s Pancreativism (2006), L'Épreuve de la philosophie (2008) et Éduquer (à) l’anarchie (2008). (shrink)

This article is about François Jullien and a controversy that arose over the publication of a pamphlet by Jean François Billeter entitled Against François Jullien, replied by Jullien in a volume subtitled Reply to *** and followed by collections of essays by French intellectuals—one of them entitled For Jullien. The controversy assumed a weight that went beyond Jullien and the French debate to the heart of sinology and also of philosophy. The question, what and where China is philosophically speaking, (...) is discussed with regard to the role of context, the notion of heterotopy, and the political side of talk about China. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What about the Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It about? A Response to Thorsten Botz-BornsteinRalph WeberNo doubt Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is right to highlight that the debate of 2006 and 2007 (if indeed it can be called a debate1) between Jean François Billeter and François Jullien was particularly heated. It was to some extent a personal affair in that both protagonists overstepped the scholarly bounds set for an exchange (...) of arguments, the heat at times reaching the boiling point. Billeter reproached Jullien for no less than instrumentalizing China, fashioned as the absolute Other and instrumentalized for almost no other purpose than to continue a philosophical discourse established by Jullien himself, a discourse that became ever more auto-referential, furthering only the most dubious of ideological interests. In one passage, Billeter goes so far as to claim that, rather than allowing the “Chinese authors” their own voice and letting them develop their own arguments, in the end “it is always him [i.e. Jullien] who talks” (Billeter 2006a, p. 45). Regardless of just how personal Billeter’s opposition to Jullien was meant to be—and at least one commentator claims that beyond the polemical title the text offers a “rigorous argumentation” (Danjou 2006; cf. also Zufferey 2006)—Jullien certainly took it personally, asking himself in his riposte, Chemin faisant, just why Billeter was so angry at him (Jullien 2007, p. 137).His riposte is marketed on the title page in big letters as a “Réplique à ***,” which is explained by the series editors, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, in terms of the reaction to a splinter that more often than not swiftly removed is quickly forgotten but that occasionally provokes a considerable reflexive gesture, of just the kind that Jullien offers, thanks to ***. A quote by Foucault precedes the text itself, reading: “There are critiques to which one responds and others to which one gives a riposte. [End Page 228] Perhaps wrongly so, for why not similarly lend an ear that is attentive to incomprehension, to banality, to ignorance or to insincerity?” Only once, at the very beginning of the text, is Billeter’s name (by implication the subject either of incomprehension, banality, ignorance, insincerity, or a combination of all four) fully mentioned; thereafter only his initials, JFB, are used. Even until recently the practice of giving the silent treatment has persisted, as when Jullien in the interview with Martin and Spire simply observes “that the sinologists who criticize me … have themselves produced nothing since that critique—do you need names?” (Martin and Spire 2011, p. 209; italics in original), before referring the reader to the many books he has written since Chemin faisant. Needless to add, this point is premised on quantity trumping quality, which is at least slightly disconcerting given that Jullien’s works have been found as early as 1996 to be marked by “a great deal of overlapping if not outright repetition (or at least rewriting)” (Reding 1996, p. 162)—something that apparently still is the case in his many books “produced” since then.From one standpoint, Botz-Bornstein is also right in referring to the affair as mainly a French debate, involving a sizable number of participants and spanning a considerable period of time, from Billeter and Jullien’s 1989 and 1990 exchange in the pages of Études chinoises over how to read Wang Fuzhi (see Billeter 2006a, p. 37 n. 1); to several volumes on and in co-operative works with Jullien (Jullien and Marchaisse 2000, Marchaisse 2003, Cornaz and Marchaisse 2004, Chartier and Marchaisse 2005, Jousset 2006, and Serrurier and Bricout 2011); to the publication of the partisan Oser Construire: Pour Jullien (Chartier 2007) and Billeter’s answer to it (Billeter 2007); to the many discussions of Jullien that continue to take as their starting point the exchange with Billeter (cf. Keck 2009). The text by Martin and Spire, for instance, makes ample reference to the debate, as Botz-Bornstein mentions, and speaks out in favor of Jullien (Martin and Spire 2011, pp. 77–97). Yet, the debate is also the starting point for Jean Levi’s (2011) recent criticism of Jullien. Beyond the borders of France... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 397-404 [Access article in PDF] The Sexist Sublime in Sade and Lyotard Caroline Weber In this case the masculine returns to haunt the place of the feminine like a ghost...., bloody and inhuman, in order to manifest and to root unforgettably in us the idea of a perpetual conflict and a spasm in which life is constantly being cut short. Antonin Artaud, The (...) Theater and Its Double"VIOLENCE," JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD ASSERTS in a recent article on Kantian aesthetics, "is necessary to the sublime." 1 More precisely, the sublime, held to transport an individual beyond his or her "ordinary" register of aesthetic responses, may do violence to a person's faculty of imagination, by shattering the accepted limits of sensory experience. Lyotard explains: In the sublime, the imagination must be subjected to violence, because it is by way of its suffering, the mediation of its violation, that the joy of seeing—or almost seeing—the law can be obtained.... This "joy" [here Lyotard cites The Critique of Judgment] "is only possible by the mediation of pain." 2Indeed, students of Kant's work have long been familiar with the exclusion of sentiment, pathos, and personal interest that he posits as a requirement for exalted status in the aesthetic and the moral sphere. For Kant, the law is precisely about the painful suppression of pleasure-seeking impulses for the sake of a disinterested, higher good. To achieve the transcendental perfection of the law, typically understood to be the domain of God alone, one must, godlike, overcome the [End Page 397] limitations of human nature and human feeling. And this effort—of which the Passion is just one vivid example—can be extraordinarily painful. In this context, Lyotard's formulation of the problem may not strike us as particularly startling. In contending that the Kantian experience of the sublime requires the mediation of pain, the French poststructuralist appears simply to be reminding us that the law, whether aesthetic or moral in nature, always demands some sort of discomfort, some kind of sacrifice.We might be more inclined to accept this last statement if Lyotard's own work hadn't already taught us to think otherwise. For as he demonstrates admirably in The Differend, his 1983 meditation on testimony and the Holocaust, there is always a winner and a loser under the law; its attendant pains are always selectively applied. From a discursive point of view, this asymmetrical relationship manifests itself in a differend, a situation where two parties find themselves in dispute, and "the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties, while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom." 3 According to Lyotard, the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis exemplifies this pattern. In a strict juridical sense, any attempted protests by concentration camp prisoners had no meaning, and no right to mean anything, in Third Reich Germany: In the differend, something "asks" to be put into phrases, and suffers from the wrong (tort) of not being able to be put into phrases right away. This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain... to recognize that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can presently phrase.... 4Here Lyotard reveals that an encounter with the law, mediated by pain, inevitably creates injustices and wronged parties. In this paper, I will draw on this insight from The Differend to point up the ethical deficiencies or torts inherent in his own ruminations on the Kantian sublime—and in those of another philosopher whose thinking closely resembles Lyotard's on the subject, the notorious Marquis de Sade. To limit the scope of my inquiry, I shall focus in this brief essay on the differend to which each thinker's writings subject the figure of the mother.For Lyotard and Sade alike, the mother represents first and foremost the capacity to reproduce. With this capacity... (shrink)

Comment repenser la sexualité et le « genre »? Relire la Genèse et le Prologue de l'évangile de Jean à partir de prémisses féministes donne une idée très vive de la chape idéologique et conceptuelle qui a été coulée sur l’inconscient collectif par les monothéismes, finalement assistés par les catégories philosophiques platoniciennes.