20th Century French Philosophy, Misc

This paper follows Francois Laruelle’s non-philosophy and his non-religion and non-theology to suggest anon-philosophical approach to the sociology of religious pluralism. The entanglements of experiences of the religious end-user are analysed vis-a-vis Laruelle’s thought and a dogma free inclusive approach to religion is envisaged.

Massimiliano Simons provides the first systematic study of Serres' work in the context of late 20th-century French philosophy of science. By proposing new readings of Serres' philosophy, Simons creates a synthesis between his predecessors, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Louis Althusser as well as contemporary Francophone philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Simons situates Serres' unique contribution through his notion of the quasi-object, a concept, he argues, organizes great parts of Serres' work into a promising philosophy (...) of science as well as a challenge to the narrower field of French epistemology, to which it has often been limited. Simons highlights how the concept encompasses Serres' commitment to positive relations between science and culture and his rejection of pleas to purify the scientific self from imaginative and cultural elements. It helps to situate Serres between the distinct traditions of Bachelard and Latour as well as progressing the innovative aspects of Serres' philosophy for current debates in the philosophy, history, and sociology of science. Showing how Serres' philosophy can serve as a normative approach to science and technology, Michel Serres and French Philosophy of Science takes in themes of materiality, religiosity, modernity and ecology to advance a timely alternative to philosophy of science for contemporary life. (shrink)

25 years after the publication of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship (Politiques de l’amitié, 1994), this edited collection gathers 23 critical chapters that revisit this underappreciated text. Engaging closely with Derrida’s text, the contributors analyse, extend and critique the work. They reconsider the place this book occupies in Derrida’s political philosophy and its potential for contemporary politics, when the promises and perils of political friendship have reappeared.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the French philosopher of science Edmond Goblot wrote three prescient papers on function and teleology. He advanced the remarkable thesis that functions are, as a matter of conceptual analysis, selected effects. He also argued that “selection” must be understood broadly to include both evolutionary natural selection and intelligent design. Here, I do three things. First, I give an overview of Goblot’s thought. Second, I identify his core thesis about function. Third, I argue that, (...) despite its ingenuity, Goblot’s expansive construal of function cannot be right. Still, Goblot deserves long-overdue credit for his work. (shrink)

William S. Lewis examines the contribution to philosophy of science made by Lefebvre, in the context of his membership of the French Communist Party.

Verrassend misschien voor filosofen buiten Frankrijk, maar in Parijs is wetenschap altijd een object van filosofische reflectie geweest – niet in de vorm van de analytische wetenschapsfilosofie zoals die buiten Frankrijk wordt onderwezen, maar onder de noemer van historische epistemologie, of soms ook wel kortweg épistémologie genoemd. Dit themanummer wil een inleiding zijn op deze traditie in haar denkers.

Emil Cioran offers novel arguments against suicide. He assumes a meaningless world. But in such a world, he argues, suicide and death would be equally as meaningless as life or anything else. Suicide and death are as cumbersome and useless as meaning and life. Yet Cioran also argues that we should contemplate suicide to live better lives. By contemplating suicide, we confront the deep suffering inherent in existence. This humbles us enough to allow us to change even the deepest aspects (...) of ourselves. Yet it also reminds us that our peculiar human ability—being able to contemplate suicide—sets us above anything else in nature or in the heavens. This paper assembles and defends a view of suicide written about in Cioran’s aphorisms and essays. (shrink)

Autogestão, autoempreendedorismo, infotrabalho, trabalho intermitente, criptomoeda, uberização, proletariado de serviços e servidão digital delineiam uma série de designações indicativas das mudanças das condições de (re)produção do Capital nas suas formas contemporâneas. Grandes corporações como Google, Facebook e Amazon participam desse processo tanto no eixo da infraestrutura econômica, quanto na produção discursiva que sustenta ideologicamente as relações de trabalho determinadas pelo Aparelho Digital. Essa pesquisa elege como material específico de análise uma sequência de cursos oferecidos pelo “YouTube Academy” para a criação, (...) gerenciamento e divulgação de uma empresa associada à plataforma de vídeos do YouTube. O objetivo é investigar os modos de imbricação e/ou separação entre o sujeito e a empresa. Para construir os procedimentos analíticos, delimitamos as seguintes perguntas: Como as formas imaginárias do sujeito (o “eu”, a identidade e a individualidade) estão relacionadas com a criação e o funcionamento de uma empresa no YouTube? Como o trabalho e as relações de trabalho são significados nessa discursividade? O olhar discursivo é ainda guiado por compreensões de pesquisas anteriores: o modo como o “eu” é discursivizado em produto, o funcionamento da “empresa de si” como modelo de identificação e a empresarialidade. As referências passam por Michel Pêcheux, Eni Orlandi, Suzy Lagazzi, Luciana Nogueira, Guilherme Adorno, Joel Bombardelli, Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval e Ricardo Antunes. O conceito de político, compreendido discursivamente como conflito e disputa pelos sentidos - e seus efeitos de deslocamento, assim como o apagamento do político do lugar que lhe seria próprio - e o conceito de exterioridade discursiva são mais enfaticamente mobilizados na pesquisa, além das discussões em torno do discurso neoliberal e da psicologização do sujeito pelos efeitos discursivos de liberdade e autonomia. Um trabalho de análise da constituição da discursividade que tem o “sentido (já) lá” como resultado do efeito de exterioridade. Esperamos mostrar, assim, como, nas condições de produção sócio-históricas de um “Imperialismo Digital”, uma mudança da “economia política do poder-dizer” afeta os modos de circulação não só dos discursos, mas do próprio Capital. (shrink)

This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss’s failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of communications research in connection with the Centre d’Études des Communications de Masse (CECMAS). Although semioticians and poststructuralists used cybernetic discourse (...) critically and ironically, I argue that their embrace of a ‘textocratic’ perspective – that is, a theory of power and epistemology as tied to technical inscription – sustained elements of the technocratic reasoning dating back to these 1920s efforts to reform French universities. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism is a complex phenomenon that arises from human interaction with other entities and the environment. The phenomenon is thought to be desirable in social robots, enhancing their functionality and sociality. On the other hand, strict anthropomorphism can limit the possible capabilities of robots. Following Gilbert Simondon’s analysis of technology as inherently human, we can create a philosophical description of the foundation on which to begin studying anthropomorphism and, on the other hand, frame practical research in light of this description, (...) thus leading to a more robust understanding of anthropomorphism as a phenomenon. (shrink)

Em Na dança das imbricações ou uma coreografia materialista: o discurso nas fronteiras, presto minha homenagem à Suzy Lagazzi a partir de um gesto que me fez retornar a diferentes textos da homenageada. Nesse retorno, chamo atenção para o batimento entre o direito e a análise de diferentes materialidades significantes que permeia a obra de Lagazzi, e se detém no modo como o significante “imbricação” marca o percurso teórico analisado, de maneira especial no que concerne à “imbricação do político junto (...) ao jurídico”. Duas perguntas sustentam o empreendimento neste texto: como o significante "imbricação" materializa relações entre dois momentos de uma teoria? Que relações parafrásticas são possíveis entre essas repetições? Referências: Suzy Lagazzi; Louis Althusser; Michel Pêcheux, Eni Orlandi e Guilherme Adorno. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The recent publication of his lecture courses and posthumous working notes has opened new avenues for both the interpretation of his thought and philosophy in general. These works confirm that, with a surprising premonition, Merleau-Ponty addressed many of the issues that concern philosophy today. With the benefit of this fuller picture of his thought, Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy undertakes an assessment of the philosopher's relevance for contemporary (...) thinking. Covering a diverse range of topics, including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art, the editors gather representative voices from North America and Europe, including both Merleau-Ponty specialists and thinkers who have come to the philosopher's work through their own thematic interest. (shrink)

Conceived as a fundamentally critical quantity, (the) deviation (clinamen, Abweichung) does not mark mere variation or a purely additional factor. To see it and to acknowledge it therefore means a political work and repeated effort that must be started again and again. -/- Once more, voices are being raised for a final claim to truth and power that in no way correspond to the growing complexity of social conditions. In view of this problem, a figure of thought is needed which (...) can oppose identity-based thinking with an uninterrupted shift. In this sense, Maja Bogumila Hoffmann develops the concept of deviation - by means of reconstructing certain historical philosophies - into a figure that creates difference and is relevant to the present, one that allows the articulation of the unanticipated events of alteration, without drawing from nothing or anticipating teleologically. Additionally supplemented by the absurd play "Meta-Pipton" the philosophical text is both complemented and interrupted by the drama, in order to interrupt it itself, so that something can become something new. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to show how Francophone PS, or what is called French (historical) epistemology, embodies this interconnectedness. Moreover, a novel approach to what constitutes French epistemology will be developed here, going beyond a purely historical survey or a reevaluation of a range of concepts found in this tradition.7 The aim is instead to highlight two methodological principles at work in French epistemology that are often in tension with one another, but are not recognized as such in (...) the literature. (shrink)

In Capitalism, Alienation and Critique Asger Sørensen offers a wide-ranging argument for the classical Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, thus endorsing the dialectical approach of the original founders (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) and criticizing suggested revisions of later generations (Habermas, Honneth). Being situated within the horizon of the late 20th century Cultural Marxism, the main issue is the critique of capitalism, emphasizing experiences of injustice, ideology and alienation, and in particular exploring two fundamental subject matters within this horizon, namely economy (...) and dialectics. Apart from in-depth discussions of classical political economy and Hegelian dialectics, the explorative and inclusive argument also takes issues with Émile Durkheim’s theory of value, the general economy of Georges Bataille and the dialectics of Mao Zedong. -/- - See below External Links to the book's homepage at the publisher Brill and to the Introduction. - See also External Links to a Youtubevideo from a seminar on the book in Belgrade, November 2019 and two Author Meet Critics sections from 2020 and 2021. (shrink)

This response focuses on Balibar’s method of thinking transindividuality through multiple figures, in their similarities as well as their productive differences. His essay ‘Philosophies of the Transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud’ combines the three titular figures in order to better think the multifaceted idea of ‘classical’ transindividuality. Balibar’s method combines the three but nonetheless maintains their dissimilarities as real differences. This response attempts to test or apply that method in two ways. The first application links Balibar’s analysis of Freud’s hypnotic leader (...) with a theme Balibar does not here discuss: wonder’s connection to superstition in Spinoza. At the level of their effects, superstitious wonder and hypnosis are nearly identical transindividual processes which lead to affective mass formation. However, their causes are quite distinct. This response details the similar effects and different causes, then asks the question: does their difference render them irreconcilable or complementary? Given the prominent role Spinoza plays in Balibar’s work, and the strong overall equivalence of wonder and hypnosis, this first application of Balibar’s method of multiple combination likely presents a complementarity rather than a conflict. This response’s second application, attempting to integrate another figure into the transindividual multiple, presents greater difficulties: what role, if any, could Foucault play in Balibar’s transindividuality? With Foucault, the tensions or differences perhaps amount to fundamental and thoroughgoing incompatibilities. However, combining Foucault with ‘classical’ transindividuality potentially extends and deepens each. This response concludes with examples of these problematic tensions as well as possibly fruitful combinations. (shrink)

In Georges Bataille’s view, the Hegelian interpretation of kenotic sacrifice as passage from Spirit to the Speculative Idea effaces the necessarily representational character of sacrifice and the irreducible non-presence of death. But Hegel identifies these aspects of death in the fragments of the 1800 System. In sacrificial acts, subjectivity represents its disappearance via the sacrificed other, and hence is negated and conserved. Sacrifice thus provides the representational model of sublation pursued in the Phenomenology as a propaedeutic to Science. Bataille’s critique (...) clarifies the fragments of the 1800 System, contextualizing Hegel’s rehabilitation of kenotic sacrifice in the Phenomenology. Bataille’s poetics parodies Hegelian kenosis via repetition of material difference, enacting an ecstatic temporality which Hegel perhaps suppresses as the condition of his system. Finally—if Bataille is correct in his assessment—the system would be subjected to a reversal, with radical implications for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre's moving eulogy for Merleau-Ponty on his death was entitled "Merleau-Ponty vivant" – Merleau-Ponty lives. And it is indeed difficult to deny that Merleau-Ponty’s thought remains a live and enduring part of the contemporary philosophical scene, in a manner that could not be said for his more famous contemporary. Despite the enduring significance of Merleau-Ponty and the voluminous writings about his work, the book that was intended to be his magnum opus, The Visible and the Invisible, remains an unfinished (...) project and one that has not had the sustained attention it merits. This may seem like a strange claim, given that many of its key concepts (chiasm, flesh, reversibility, etc.) have often been addressed. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which the strengths and weaknesses of this incipient ontology are not themselves particularly well-known or discussed, especially in English. In this chapter we examine this "indirect ontology," before considering some of the criticisms made by his contemporaries and 'successors': Lacan; Irigaray; Levinas; Derrida; Deleuze. (shrink)

For a long time, Gilbert Simondon’s work was known only as either a philosophy restricted to the problem of technology or as an inspirational source for Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. As Simondon’s thinking is now finally in the process of being recognized in its own right as one of the most original philosophies of the twentieth century, this also entails that some critical work needs to be done to disentangle it from an all too hasty identification with Deleuzian categories. (...) While both Simondon and Deleuze have made crucial contributions towards a theory of differential individuation that significantly diverges from other authors associated with French poststructuralism insofar as they insist on the dynamic and vital dimension of difference, they also differ on crucial points. Whereas Simondon sees the process of becoming as transductive amplification, Deleuze theorizes it as intensifying involution, leading to two notably distinct concepts of difference. (shrink)

The problem of forgiveness may rightly be regarded as a perennial philosophical problem. But of what sort? Introducing his 1973 contribution to the discussion, entitled simply "Forgiveness"—an essay that remains the standard reference for contemporary discussions of the problem, especially in the Anglo-American philosophical community—Aurel Kolnai writes that while the ethical nature of the problem is indisputable, he intends his argument "to be chiefly logical in nature: the central question I wish to discuss is … whether, and if so in (...) what manner, [forgiveness] is logically possible at all."1 The problem, as Kolnai develops it in the first two sections of his essay, is that forgiveness seems to be either... (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’ characterization of Adorno’s project as an aestheticization of philosophy continues to influence our reading of his work. In contradiction to Lambert Zuidervaart, who suggests that in order to be understood as politically relevant, Adorno’s philosophy must be supplemented with empirical research, I argue in this article that Adorno’s work contains many of the resources we would need to theorize an ethical politics. First, it both identifies the moral debt carried by the subject and addresses the need for social (...) transformation in order to change this situation. Second, it proposes an ethical comportment of self-relinquishment as a first step towards this reorganization of the social. The self-relinquishment of philosophy to its object is modeled upon aesthetic experience, which, according to Adorno, we must regard as a remorseful atonement for the subject’s domination of the object in its attempt to ‘wrest itself free’ of undifferentiated being. By incorporating into philosophical thought the mimetic bodily impulses tamed by aesthetic form, we may engender within ourselves a solidarity with objectivity. Rather than the self-possessing and conservative subject that constitutes its world mentally, Adorno theorizes a subject for whom thinking is a temporalization or a becoming. Thinking produces otherness within the subject itself. In this thinking-as-becoming, we see the beginnings of a highly individuated political subjectivity capable of acting in solidarity with the other. This brings us to the third element within Adorno’s philosophy that can serve us in formulating an ethical politics: the non-violent organizational principle of the modern work of art. In mobilizing the logic of the modern work of art, the autonomous individual is empowered to forge a politics that preserves contradiction in the facilitation of a non-violent relation with others. (shrink)

Balibar presents Spinoza as a profound critic of " the anthropomorphic illusion. " Spinoza famously derides the tendency of humans to project their own imagined traits and tendencies onto the rest of nature. The anthropomorphic illusion yields a gross overestimation our own agency. I argue in this essay that the flip side of this illusion is our refusal to extend certain properties we reserve exclusively to ourselves. The result is that we disregard the power of social and political institutions because (...) they do not resemble us. The anthropomorphic illusion therefore causes us both to overestimate our power as singular individuals and to underestimate the power of social and political institutions. If we understand ourselves and institutions as " transindividuals " rather than on the illusory model of substantial individuality, it is unproblematic to attribute individuality to collective powers, like the commonwealth, and makes better sense of how we are determined by external forces. (shrink)

Le solidarisme de Léon Bourgeois constitue une tentative convaincante de surmonter l’opposition traditionnelle entre libertés individuelles et justice sociale. Bourgeois tente de relever ce défi en faisant appel aux nouvelles découvertes scientifiques en sociologie comme en biologie. En bref, l’observation de la nature nous montrerait que les humains sont en rapport de solidarité les uns avec les autres. De ce fait, on pourrait tirer un devoir de solidarité que l’État serait à même d’imposer aux individus. Fonder une théorie politique sur (...) des théories scientifiques présente un double risque : d’une part, subir l’influence des biologistes collectivistes et de leur vision organiciste de la société ; d’autre part et surtout, se rendre coupable du sophisme naturaliste. Nous exposerons comment Bourgeois tombe initialement dans le piège du sophisme naturaliste avant de s’en extirper. Entre son texte Solidarité (1987) et son Essai d’une philosophie de la solidarité (1907), la progression est frappante. Au final, donc, Bourgeois nous semble présenter une théorie politique qui, tout en s’inspirant des sciences, ne s’y assujettit pas. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 46, Issue 1, pp 54 - 69 In this essay, I reconstruct Merleau-Ponty’s implicit critique of Husserl in his lectures on Husserl’s concept of the earth as _Boden_ or ground. Against Husserl, Merleau-Ponty regards the earth seen as pure _Boden_ as an idealization. He emphasizes the ontological necessity for the earth as _Boden_ to always hypostasize itself into the Copernican concept of earth as object. In turn, Merleau-Ponty builds this necessity into an essential feature of being, allowing (...) himself to retrieve ontology itself from its status as external to being, and to make room for it within the structure of being: ontology is one of the ways in which experiences become objectified, thereby allowing being to achieve its essential movement of hypostatization. (shrink)

The main goal of part 1 is to challenge the widely held view that Poincaré orders the sciences in a hierarchy of dependence, such that all others presuppose arithmetic. Commentators have suggested that the intuition that grounds the use of induction in arithmetic also underlies the conception of a continuum, that the consistency of geometrical axioms must be proved through arithmetical induction, and that arithmetical induction licenses the supposition that certain operations form a group. I criticize each of these readings. (...) More fully, I argue that the justification Poincaré offers for the use of the group notion in geometry appears to extend to set-theoretic notions that would suffice to put arithmetic on a logical foundation, thus undermining his own case for the necessity of intuition in arithmetic. In part 2, I offer an interpretation of intuition’s role on which it justifies the use of group-theoretic, but not set-theoretic, notions. (shrink)

Throughout the history of analytic philosophy the notion of the ‘phenomenological fallacy’ originally formulated by Place, has been used to criticize reification of the mental. Although this fallacy was originally not used to criticize the phenomenological tradition, it has popped up recently in debates between analytic philosophers and phenomenologists. However, a study of the history of both traditions reveals that a polemical notion similar, if not identical, to the phenomenological fallacy can be found within the phenomenological tradition, namely Sartre’s ‘illusion (...) of immanence’. In this article, I will explicate these two polemical notions and place them in the context of their respective traditions. This will reveal that both notions must be understood as a criticism of a certain form of representationalism I will call ‘dual-world representationalism’. This deep-rooted similarity between the analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology, in turn, sheds a new light on current discussions between the two traditions. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to compare the ideas of Herbert Marcuse and Michel Foucault. In his works Marcuse focused on the excluded social circles. Their revolt against the establishment shook up the normative foundations of the social order in the 1960s and the 1970s, which finally led to a cultural revolution. Inspired by these social changes, Foucault was interested in the effects of this revolution at the epistemological and moral level. He recognized that the actions of the excluded (...) circles weakened the institutional order which hitherto tempered the development of the alternative forms of knowledge and lifestyle in the western culture. Hence the contemporary western culture is a place of relentless conflicts between different values and conceptions of truth, but also a place of unique tolerance and a variety of lifestyles. (shrink)

This book aims to see how the victim and the ‘identity of the Real’ are wedded to philosophers and intellectuals. Towards this aim Laruelle does not ‘leave philosophy to its own authority’ just as he does not ‘leave theology or religious beliefs to their own authorities’ (119).

In 1939 Gaston Bachelard published a book Lautréamont on the poem The Songs of Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse. Bachelard’s Lautréamont was inspired by the method of psychoanalysis. The purpose of this article is to analyze Bachelard’s interpretation of the Chants, to compare his version of psychoanalysis with the versions of Freud and Jung, and to show its meaning in the historical and philosophical context.

After introductory surveys of Poincaré’s role in the Dreyfus case and of his “Fourth Geometry,” I turn to the main question. The problem confronting both Poincaré and Einstein was how to reconcile the phenomena of electrodynamics, notably the optical principle of relativity, with the principles of Newtonian mechanics. I show that, on such questions as the existence and role of the ether and the relation between kinematics and dynamics, Poincaré and Einstein held diametrically opposed views. Poincaré did everything to preserve (...) the old viewpoint, while Einstein abandoned the absolute time and proposed a new mechanics. (shrink)

The article analyses Alain Badiou`s philosophy from the point of view of his relation to postmodernity. Alain Badiou is a political activist, mathematician, writer, playwright and literary critic. However, above all, he is a philosopher of the totality who attempts to give a thoroughgoing explanation of the world. This is the sense in which he is an anti-postmodernist. His whole philosophy is directed against sophistry. Badiou consistently builds his own system in order to oppose it to the philosophy of the (...) twentieth century. He does not engage in dogmatic criticism. He goes further and repeatedly finds inspiration in the postmodern thought. Although his philosophy is evidently opposed to it, his anti-postmodernity should be considered a synthetic attempt to exceed two competing traditions. (shrink)

Problématisation, individuation, (dés)adaptation L’inventivité du vivant : la « disparation » Mouvements à vide. La spontanéité selon Simondon La prégnance des images Ontogenèse, phylogenèse, eikogenèse. L’image comme médiation .

Foucault’s disciplinary society and his notion of panopticism are often invoked in discussions regarding electronic surveillance. Against this use of Foucault, I argue that contemporary trends in surveillance technology abstract human bodies from their territorial settings, separating them into a series of discrete flows through what Deleuze will term, the surveillant assemblage. The surveillant assemblage and its product, the socially sorted body, aim less at molding, punishing and controlling the body and more at triggering events of in- and ex-clusion from (...) life opportunities. The meaning of the body as monitored by latest generation vision technologies formed from machine only surveillance has been transformed. Such a body is no longer disciplinary in the Foucauldian sense. It is a virtual/flesh interface broken into discrete data flows whose comparison and breakage generate bodies as both legible and eligible (or illegible). (shrink)

Roland Barthes was a twentieth-century French literary critic, philosopher, and cultural theorist important in the trajectories of structuralism and poststructuralism. This article begins by examining Barthes' formative years and influences, and highlights his contributions made to structuralism and poststructuralism in France and beyond. The article then discusses the role that Barthes' work has played in the social and behavioral sciences, including how his writings have been appropriated by disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. Barthes' writings on history are also examined (...) in a disciplinary context. (shrink)

This paper examines the notion of the biopolitical body from the standpoint of Foucault’s logic of the security mechanism and the history he tells of vaccine technology. It then investigates how the increasing importance of the genetic code for determining the meaning and limits of the human in the field of 20th century cell biology has been a cause for ongoing transformation in the practices that currently extend vaccine research and development. I argue that these transformations mark the emergence of (...) a new kind of medical subject – the stabilized and infinitely reproducible human cell line – and that the practices and markets exploiting this new form of organism have had a destabilizing effect on the very biopolitical structures that engendered them and, in fact, mark a new way of conceiving the possibilities of cellular life. I call these new ways of organizing power that intervene in the logic of the security measure by mediating the relationship between populations and persons the microbiopolitical. (shrink)

Je montre dans ce texte que la thèse de Jean Wahl sur les Pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique n'est pas tant un tableau des pensées pluralistes qu'une problématisation du pluralisme. La révélation que Wahl va trouver à rebours de certains textes de William James, c'est celle d'un restant moniste, attentif au fond non relationnel de l'expérience, ce qui va le conduire à explorer, beaucoup plus hardiment que nombre de ses contempo- rains, les proximités entre James et Bradley. Cette voix moniste, que (...) l'on retrouverait derrière la lettre des «philosophies pluralistes», est le véritable enjeu de la thèse de 1920 qui, après un inventaire des critiques de l'unité abstraite, propose dans sa méditation conclusive une vision du monde dans laquelle, une fois la critique des abstractions du pluralisme opérée, subsiste ce sens du « particulier concret » qui en est la marque propre. Ce sera l'objet de la deuxième section. Alors qu'une partie du public français lit l'empirisme radical à travers la «volonté de croire», les derniers textes à partir des premiers, traduits et présentés dès leur parution par Renouvier dans La Critique, Wahl semble au contraire retrouver, dans les premiers textes l'accent des derniers, à travers l'insistance sur le fait brut de l'existence, hypothèse qui sera éclairée dans la troisième section. (shrink)

Examines Sartre's reception and legacy, both within France and beyond.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to discern the subtitle on 2004 Marc Richir’s book, Phantasia, imagination, affectivité. Phénoménologie et anthropologie phénoménologique. Traditionally, Phenomenology has been elusive to link to Anthropology. However, Richir gives its importance including it into the title of his book. Husserl first, and then Richir, facing the Cartesian solipsist subjectivity outline, propose the concept of intersubjectivity. Community prevails over an individual and generalizing self. The other, then, becomes our incarnation, a live-­‐‑incarnation, it defines our own (...) self, as long as it is done from a de-­‐‑anchoring, that is to say, there is a union in distance, it is the intersubjectivity tissue. The community, therefore, shapes up, but it is not uniform yet it is always a whole. The concept of Phantasieleib plays a significant role in this community, this Richirianne concept is very important to grasp the movement between fantasy and language, also, it is very influential in actual phenomenologists as Murakami. This movement is also key in language and phenomena language, furthermore, is also relevant in the Inter-­‐‑subjectivity Foundation. Resumen El objetivo de este artículo es discernir el subtítulo de Marc Richir, del 2004, a saber, Phantasia, imagination, affectivité. Phénoménologie et anthropologie phénoménologique. Tradicionalmente, la fenomenología se ha mostrado reticente a vincularse a la antropología. Por el contrario, Richir le confiere una importancia al incluirlo en dicho título. Frente al planteamiento cartesiano de una subjetividad solipsista, primero Husserl y después Richir, proponen la intersubjetividad. La comunidad prevalece ante la individualidad de un yo generalizador. El otro se convierte en nuestra encarnación, una encarnación viva, define nuestro propio yo, siempre que se haga en un des-­‐‑anclaje, es decir, se produce una unión en la distancia, es el tejido de la intersubjetividad. La comunidad, por tanto, toma forma, pero, no es uniforme, aunque está siempre unida. El concepto de Phantasieleib juega un papel fundamental en dicha comunidad, este concepto richiriano es muy importante para comprender el movimiento entre phantasia y pensamiento, además, de suponer una gran influencia en los fenomenólogos actuales como Murakami. Este movimiento es también importante en el lenguaje y los fenómenos del lenguaje, a su vez, relevante también en la fundamentación de la intersubjetividad. (shrink)

This research aims to examine the concept of haecceity conceived by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - which has started from the notion given to the concept in A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2 (Mille Plateau: capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, 1980). To illustrate this concept the philosophers turned to literature, and more specifically the Proustian literature. They affirm that the haecceity concept has found in the episode with the small group (la petite bande) of girls in the seaside (...) town of Balbec - the novel by Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, 1913-1927) ¬- its best translation: "What's a girl, what is a group of girls? Proust at least show us and for all that their individuation, collective or singular, proceeds not by subjectivity but by haecceity, pure haecceity" (A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2. Translation and foreword by Brian Massumi, Minnesota Press, 1987: 271). According to the Deleuzian thought, the fundamental question of haecceity concept is concentrated in its own definition: an individuation devoid of subjectivity, foreshadowing an individual who doesn't belong to individuation anymore, but it does to singularization. This non-subjectivated affirmation is part of an innovative philosophical proposal which has its own conceptual vocabulary: haecceity will exist in a new space (not extensive), where there's no distinction between the beginning or the end; the middle is where haecceity (formed by lines and not by points) will present itself as a rhizome. This mode of impersonal individuation reveals itself as a cartography that is made by forces - longitude - and intensities - latitude. Taking the group of girls as such a composition of forces moving, we will extract Albertine Simonet from it. She has the synonym of a group, and being adopted as an intercessor, she will leave the "group by group". The trajectory of this poetic and psychosocial entity (where the concept of haecceity originates from), will support us in the examination of the mode of existence of haecceity. (shrink)

The importance given by historian and philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem to the role of practice, techniques, and experimentation in concept-formation was largely overlooked by commentators. After placing Canguilhem’s contributions within the larger history of historical epistemology in France, and clarifying his views regarding this expression, I re-evaluate the relation between concepts and experimental practices in Canguilhem’s philosophy of science. Drawing on his early writings on the relations between science and technology in the 1930s, on the Essai sur quelques problèmes (...) concernant le normal et le pathologique , and on La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles , I argue that the formation and rectification of concepts in Canguilhem’s sense are intrinsically bound with the experimental, material, technical, and cultural contexts in which concepts are operationalized. (shrink)

Michel Surya publie cette année un nouveau livre sur Georges Bataille : Sainteté de Bataille . Dans cet entretien, nous revenons sur certains des points abordés dans cet ouvrage : le rapport de Bataille à la politique, à la religion ou encore à la philosophie.

In den Diskussionen um die Rolle der Bildwissenschaft und den iconic bzw. pictorial turn stellen die Bildtheorien des französischen Gegenwartsdenkens eine entscheidende Ressource der Auseinandersetzung dar. Während einige Texte mittlerweile kanonisch geworden sind, sind zahlreiche andere nach wie vor schwer zugänglich bzw. noch immer unübersetzt. Die Anthologie erschließt erstmals zentrale Quellen für ein Verständnis der bildlichen Wende und kartographiert, indem sie die Konsistenz der Bildfrage in theoretischen Entwürfen von Bergson bis heute sichtbar werden lässt, das französische Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts (...) auf unvermutete Weise neu. (shrink)