Derrida's introduction to his French translation of Husserl's essay "The Origin of Geometry," arguing that although Husserl privileges speech over writing in an account of meaning and the development of scientific knowledge, this privilege is in fact unstable.

There are many things that philosophy of biology might be. But, given the existence of a professional philosophy of biology that is arguably a progressive research program and, as such, unrivaled, it makes sense to define philosophy of biology more narrowly than the totality of intersecting concerns biologists and philosophers (let alone other scholars) might have. The reasons for the success of the “new” philosophy of biology remain poorly understood. I reflect on what Dutch and Flemish, and, more generally, European (...) philosophers of biology could do to improve the situation of their discipline locally, regionally, and internationally, paying particular attention to the lessons to be learned from the “Science Wars.”. (shrink)

In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

"A relire l'œuvre de Deleuze après sa mort, par une illusion rétrospective presque naturelle, ses textes se révèlent émaillés d'anticipations prophétiques de ce destin tragique. Lignes sombres faufilant régulièrement ses pages et leurs problèmes, les occurrences de la mort se réactivent sans cesse. La mort, ce mot, le plus concret, toujours abstraitement agencé dans l'économie d'un enchaînement ou d'un argument, toujours neutralisé par l'usage que la vie en opère. Ces occurrences nous rappellent par ce choix impossible et pourtant à l'évidence (...) nécessaire, que le grand choix de la pensée de Deleuze (et donc pour tous), est choix délibéré (donc éclairé) de lutter contre le chaos : pensée à ce titre toujours contrainte et forcée, " misosophie " bien plus que " philosophie ", création violente de vie et non montée diaphane à un quelconque ciel des idées. Faut-il à cet égard rappeler, contre les étonnements ou interrogations de certains, que le choix de mort lorsqu'il se prend, loin d'être le triomphe de la mort sur la vie constitue la poursuite de la même vie de la pensée par d'autres moyens... Non pas Œdipe à Colone tirant le bilan négatif de sa vie, mais bien la vie toujours affirmative ne cessant de nous éclairer comme à l'accoutumée sur les ressources de résistance face à l'inacceptable."--Quatrième de couverture. (shrink)

What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world's foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing recurrent critique of metaphysics, (...) and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. (shrink)

What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world’s foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, (...) and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion._ _Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy. (shrink)

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl's last great work, is important both for its content and for the influence it has had on other philosophers. In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism. Husserl provides not only a history of philosophy but a philosophy of history. As he says in Part I, "The genuine spiritual struggles of European humanity as such take the form of struggles between (...) the philosophies, that is, between the skeptical philosophies--or nonphilosophies, which retain the word but not the task--and the actual and still vital philosophies. But the vitality of the latter consists in the fact that they are struggling for their true and genuine meaning and thus for the meaning of a genuine humanity.". (shrink)