Les philosophes et les clowns se ressembleraient-ils? L'hypothèse est peut-être moins incongrue qu'il n'y paraît. Elle est même suggérée par... des philosophes, en particulier ceux qui, observant ce que devient l'individu humain depuis le début du terrible XXe siècle, interrogent sa foncière ambivalence. Le clown serait-il le modèle d'un sujet devenu bancal mais rusé, dépassé mais calculateur, égaré mais lucide, épuisé mais inventeur d'espérances? Le temps des clowns que décrivent les philosophes et écrivains ici invités (Ernst Bloch, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter (...) Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders) n'est pas celui des Lumières, et il n'est pas non plus celui des transports romantiques ou tragiques du XIXe. Il témoigne d'une expérience historique spécifique, qui pourrait bien être encore, pour une grande part, la nôtre."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

La philosophie d'Adorno est une critique de la domination politique et ideologique. Elle est aussi une meditation sur les devoirs de la pensee confrontee a la Shoah et aux totalitarismes du XXe siecle. Face a la Catastrophe, elle ne s'abime pas dans le defaitisme mais tente de retrouver, sous les mythes qui les etouffent, les raisons d'esperer sans lesquelles l'experience humaine ne serait pas viable. La notion d'utopie, qu'il herite d'Ernst Bloch et de Walter Benjamin, a d'abord chez Adorno ce (...) sens d'un degagement de possibles qui, enfouis dans l'Histoire et reprimes par la logique du capitalisme, peuvent cependant etre reconnus et liberes. Cela suppose que les singularites - l'individu dans le collectif, le detail dans l'ensemble, l'element dans la composition - ne soient pas annexees et liquidees, mais au contraire preservees dans leur expression propre. Adorno, avec Benjamin, nomme constellations les modes d'articulation qui y parviennent. Pour en degager les enjeux, il faut entrer dans le mouvement d'une pensee qui deconstruit les concepts d'identite et de totalite mais ne renonce pas a l'esperance. Les conceptions adorniennes de la dialectique et de la negativite sont traversees par cette tension feconde. Cette introduction a l'oeuvre d'Adorno l'interprete comme une reponse a ce que Miguel Abensour appelait la sommation utopique : sous l'opacite et la noirceur du monde, l'ecriture d'Adorno tente de reveiller un dire de verite, de sauvetage et d'emancipation. (shrink)

An insightful reading of Deleuze, from the point of view of a student, a reader and a fellow philosopher with whom Deleuze himself corresponded about his work.

Treatise on Mimamsa philosophy; critical edition.

The conception of “prospective potency” was defined by its author H.Driesch as “the sum of the possible modes of development of a given part of the embryo”. However, in the language of science the word “potency” usually means “power”, not “possibility”. Therefore this conception from the beginning possessed a certain ambiguity, that it retained up to the present. The distinction of “active” and “passive” potency, introduced by Roux, has found no general acceptance. It appeared necessary to submit the conception of (...) “potency” to a profound analysis. In the first place it is shown, that the ambiguity of this conception vanishes, if we understand by the word “potency” those fundamental properties of the embryonic material, that are responsible for its various developmental possibilities. We can distinguish among these properties the “reactive powers”, by which the embryonic material reacts to inductive stimulations, and its own “developmental tendencies”. These faculties only differ by their strength; a “reactive power” may change into a “tendency”, when its intensity increases during development; conversely, a “tendency” may change into a mere “reactive power” by a decrease of its strength. The determination of the material results from the conflict of its tendencies. The inductive actions interfere by strengthening or weakening different tendencies, and by activating new tendencies by reinforcement of the “reactive powers” of the embryonic material. (shrink)

This book raises in a new way a central question of Christology: what is the divine motive for the incarnation? Throughout Christian history a majority of Western theologians have agreed that God's decision to become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ was made necessary by "the Fall": if humans had not sinned, the incarnation would not have happened. This position is known as "infralapsarian." A minority of theologians however, including some major 19th- and 20th-century theological figures, championed a "supralapsarian" (...) Christology, arguing that God has always intended the incarnation, independent of "the Fall." Edwin Chr. van Driel offers the first scholarly monograph to map and analyze the full range of supralapsarian arguments. He gives a thick description of each argument and its theological consequences, and evaluates the theological gains and losses inherent in each approach. Van Driel shows that each of the three ways in which God is thought to relate to all that is not God -- in creation, in redemption, and in eschatological consummation -- can serve as the basis for a supralapsarian argument. He illustrates this thesis with detailed case studies of the Christologies of Schleiermacher, Dorner, and Barth. He concludes that the most fruitful supralapsarian strategy is rooted in the notion of eschatological consummation, taking interpersonal interaction with God to be the goal of the incarnation. He goes on to develop his own argument along these lines, concluding in an eschatological vision in which God is visually, audibly, and tangibly present in the midst of God's people. (shrink)