At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, and (...) allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician. (shrink)

The word “grammatology” literally signifies the “science of writing.” One must acknowledge, however, that this science has never existed. Derrida's book Of Grammatology proposes to elaborate and to implement just such a project. Why has this grammatological project never been accomplished? For Derrida, “writing”1 can no longer simply designate a technique for the notation of speech. A distinction should be made, then, between “narrow” and “enlarged” meanings of writing. Indeed, is the extension of the concept of writing the work of (...) writing itself or must one suppose that the “modifiability” of the concept is not of the order of writing? This essay will propose that an original modifiability, not reducible to the single operation of writing, is initiated from the beginning as well. I call this modifiability “plasticity.” “Plasticity of writing” would then be the paradox inherent in the redefinition of writing itself that may explain the “failure” of any “grammatology.”. (shrink)

After defining plasticity in terms of its active embodiments, Malabou applies the notion to the work of Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and ...

In this classic text, Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues. This new edition and translation of Kant's work is designed especially for students. An extensive and comprehensive introduction explains the central concepts of Groundwork and looks at Kant's main lines of argument. Detailed notes aim to clarify Kant's thoughts and to correct some common (...) misunderstandings of his doctrines. (shrink)

This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.

Hegel's phenomenological method is meant to provide a pathway for a "finite consciousness" to the objective viewpoint of philosophical "science".

This collection of his later essays discusses the role played by ideological factors in determining the direction, if not the results, of scientific work.

Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how (...) each developed in response to the prior one and comparing their early versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and Korsgaard concludes with her own version of the Kantian account. Her discussion is followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by Korsgaard. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage, qui appartient à la décennie la plus brillante de la vie intellectuelle française au cours du siècle dernier, fit événement. Il consacrait de manière définitive la réputation de Georges Canguilhem maître théoricien de l'épistémologie historique, il articulait une lecture aujourd'hui canonique de la pensée bachelardienne et il offrait une série d'études bientôt tenues pour exemplaires. Aux spécialistes il proposait, dans des écrits appelés à devenir des références obligées, une réflexion sur l'objet et les exigences de la pratique de (...) l'histoire des sciences. Il leur soumettait aussi, requises par les progrès alors éclatants de la nouvelle biologie moléculaire, des méditations sur la nature du vivant et sur les ressorts de son activité. Acte intrépide, car s'y trouvaient mis en examen les fondements même de la philosophie biologique qui avait conféré à la pensée de Canguilhem son originalité propre. Ce livre offrait aussi une douzaine d'études accessibles à un public beaucoup plus large, illustrant les audaces, les difficultés et les accomplissements de grandes figures du passé de la science, Galilée, Claude Bernard, Auguste Comte ou Darwin. Aptes, du fait de leur parfaite lisibilité, à servir d'initiation au domaine de l'histoire des sciences et d'introduction à la pensée de leur auteur, ces études pourtant n'ont cessé d'alimenter aussi la réflexion de chercheurs chevronnés tant elles recèlent, sous leur simplicité d'approche, aperçus inattendus et profondeur de pensée. Pensée réflexive, la philosophie de Canguilhem s'affirme toujours militante, souvent polémique même. Plusieurs de ses écrits réunis ici, notamment des additions des années 1970 et 1980, voulues par lui, s'avèrent effectivement de véritables interventions philosophiques qui questionnent l'identité de la psychologie, la responsabilité du chercheur, de l'expérimentateur et, éminemment, les valeurs du médecin. Canguilhem, pour qui la méthode expérimentale elle-même est "une idée pour une éthique", n'attendait pas moins de l'histoire des sciences et de la philosophie. Comme il écrivait à propos de Galilée : le compromis n'est pas une méthode recevable; plutôt une source d'inquiétude. (shrink)

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

The normal and the pathological are terms used for structures, activities, individual or collective situations proper to living beings and especially to man. The relation of a fact and a norm is its positive or negative value. Can the assessment of behaviours be reduced to noting a necessity? Is a living being's disease a fact similar to universal attraction? The author maintains that diseases are not merely predetermined effects, but are revealing of a normative regulation proper to living beings and (...) man. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. Kant argues that every human being is an end in himself or herself, never to be used as a means by others, and that moral obligation is an expression of the (...) human capacity for autonomy or self-government. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument. (shrink)

This book is one of the most important recent books on Hegel, a philosopher who has had a crucial impact on the shape of continental philosophy. Published here in English for the first time, it includes a substantial preface by Jacques Derrida in which he explores the themes and conclusions of Malabou's book. _The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic_ restores Hegel's rich and complex concepts of time and temporality to contemporary philosophy. It examines his concept of time, relating (...) it to perennial topics in philosophy such as substance, accident and the identity of the subject. Catherine Malabou's also contrasts her account of Hegelian temporality with the interpretation given by Heidegger in _Being and Time_, arguing that it is the concept of 'plasticity' that best describes Hegel's theory of temporality. The future is understood not simply as a moment in time, but as something malleable and constantly open to change through our interpretation. The book also develops Hegel's preoccupation with the history of Greek thought and Christianity and explores the role of theology in his thought. Essential reading for those interested in Hegel and contemporary continental philosophy, _The Future of Hegel _is also fascinating to those interested in the ideas of Heidegger and Derrida. (shrink)