The essay is a response to the papers written by Nancy Frankenberry and Charley Hardwick in the March 1987 issue of Zygon. Questions are raised about whether Wieman's theology is functionalist in the way described by Frankenberry and whether Hardwick's proposal to establish the logical possibility of naturalism as a framework for an existential interpretation of the Christian message is satisfactory. The most basic question raised by both papers is whether Wieman's theology is fully empirical when viewed from the point (...) of view of the radical empiricist. (shrink)

The transparency argument concludes that we're directly aware of external properties and not directly aware of the properties of experience. Focusing on the presentation used by Michael Tye (2002) I contend that the argument requires experience to have content that it cannot plausibly have. I attribute the failure to a faulty account of the transparency phenomenon and conclude by suggesting an alternative understanding that is independently plausible, is not an error-theory and yet renders the transparency of experience compatible with mental-paint (...) style views. (shrink)

How I became a philosopher -- To love, to love me, to love us.

Boucs émissaires, violences sacrificielles, désir mimétique, autant de thèmes que René Girard (1923-2015) n'a cessé d'explorer et qui sont devenus des ressources essentielles pour notre compréhension des sociétés. L'anthropologie mimétique, dont il a posé les bases, a en effet eu des échos multiples dans les sciences humaines et les religions. Avec ce livre, Bernard Perret offre une présentation éloquente de ce vaste chantier théorique. Il éclaire notamment la fonction et la signification de la violence dans les rapports humains, des (...) origines à nos jours, tout en explorant les liens et les différences entre la pensée de Girard et celle d'autres grands auteurs du XXe siècle (Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, Mauss...). Le lien particulier de Girard aux Écritures juives et chrétiennes, le sens à la fois novateur et controversé qu'il donne à la passion et à la mort du Christ, ne sont pas éludés, tout comme sa vision apocalyptique du politique. En exposant la cohérence profonde et la fécondité d'une pensée majeure de notre temps, ce livre permet de ressaisir tous les débats passionnants auxquels elle a donné et donne toujours lieu."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

I think of myself as an anti-philosopher, which is what a literary critic ought to be.For a number of years my work has been partly occupied with the examination of various points of contact between philosophy and literature. It involved, however, no more than marginal reference to the work of F. R. Leavis, certainly because of a culpable lack on my part of extended acquaintance with his work, but also to some extent, no doubt, because of Leavis’s own resolute denial (...) of the possibility of any useful interchange between philosophy and literary criticism as he conceived it.Recently, however, one or two readers, in particular Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, to whom I am much indebted for the tip, took me to task for this... (shrink)

Le pluriel, est celui de la race humaine vivante à travers ses cultures sur le dehors de la Raison la faculté du tout mondialisé mais qui n'en maîtrise pas l'existence alors que le multiple dans ce tout, est ce dont la Raison des sciences maîtrise l'objectivité. Cette double face de la Raison du tout mais charnelle est relative au Même qui se répète non identique à soi, mais solidaire de soi comme science et philosophie hors du cercle vicieux nietzschéen de (...) la vérité. Le vieux Logos, parler et penser est exemplaire de cette dualité que la mondialisation coupe en deux sans le disjoindre ; je ne parle qu'une langue singulière qui m'élève à l'Universel parmi la pluralité des langues. Et la Raison maîtrise par la linguistique la particularité de chaque langue dans leur multiplicité. Cette finitude du tout déplace celle du sujet vers sa naissance particulière pour les sciences, singulière pour le parler."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

En 1657, Nicolas Poussin peint une Fuite en Égypte au voyageur couché. La toile disparaît ensuite pendant plusieurs siècles. Dans les années 1980, plusieurs versions du tableau réapparaissent, de grands experts mondiaux s'opposent, des laboratoires d'analyse et des tribunaux s'en mêlent et nombreux sont ceux - galeristes, experts, directeurs de musée, conservateurs, etc. - à vouloir authentifier et s'approprier le chef-d'oeuvre. L'une des versions sera finalement acquise pour 17 millions d'euros par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. De quoi nous (...) parle cette histoire aux allures d'intrigue policière? Pourquoi une telle débauche d'énergie, de controverses et d'argent pendant autant d'années? Qu'est-ce qui fait la valeur - économique, esthétique - d'une oeuvre d'art? Et d'où vient cette aura attachée aux créateurs et aux oeuvres? (shrink)

Two luminaries of 20th century astrophysics were Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington. Both took seriously the view that there is more to reality than the physical universe and more to consciousness than simply brain activity. In his Science and the Unseen World Eddington speculated about a spiritual world and that "conscious is not wholly, nor even primarily a device for receiving sense impressions." Jeans also speculated on the existence of a universal mind and a non-mechanical reality, writing in (...) his The Mysterious Universe "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine." In his book QED Feynman discusses the situation of photons being partially transmitted and partially reflected by a sheet of glass: reflection amounting to four percent. In other words one out of every 25 photons will be reflected on average, and this holds true even for a "one at a time" flux. The four percent cannot be explained by statistical differences of the photons nor by random variations in the glass. Something is "telling" every 25th photon on average that it should be reflected back instead of being transmitted. Other quantum experiments lead to similar paradoxes. To explain how a single photon in the two-slit experiment can "know" whether there is one slit or two, Hawking and Mlodonow write: In the double-slit experiment Feynman's ideas mean the particles take paths that thread through the first slit, back out though the second slit, and then through the first again; paths that visit the restaurant that serves that great curried shrimp, and then circle Jupiter a few times before heading home; even paths that go across the universe and back. This, in Feynman's view, explains how the particle acquires the information about which slits are openŠ. It is hard to imagine a more absurd physical explanation. We can think of no way to hardwire the behavior of photons in the glass reflection or the two-slit experiments into a physical law. On the other hand, writing a software algorithm that would yield the desired result is really simple. A digital reality whose laws are software is an idea that has started to gain traction in large part thanks to an influential paper in Philosophical Quarterly by Oxford professor Nick Bostrom. Writing in the New York Times John Tierney had this to say: Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else's hobby. But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation. An alternate view is that there exists a great consciousness whose mind is the hardware, and whose thoughts are the software creating a virtual universe in which we as beings of consciousness live. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

This paper responds to Professor John McMurtry, primarily to his critique of my recent book, Economics as Moral Science. Although agreeing with my attribution of a "moral a priorism" to orthodox or neo-classical economics, McMurtry takes issue with my "conversion thesis", that an a priori, ethically committed theory can be transformed into a testable empirical science of actual behaviour through the application of institutional constraints to individual motivations. McMurtry views such a thesis as "logically possible but morally abhorrent". In so (...) doing, he ascribes a version of economic determinism to me which, he claims, leads me to mistakenly understand the neo-classical paradigm as circumscribing the "boundaries of reality itself" and thereby entrenching the life-destructive values presupposed by this paradigm. I reject such a reading of Economics as Moral Science and explain the manner in which it is inconsistent both with the theoretical substance and practical agenda of my work. I propose that the irreducible basis of disagreement remains one wherein I believe that a more radical reform of the capitalist market order is mandatory to establish more defensible moral ideals than does McMurtry. My reply closes by recommending a constitutional partitioning of material goods such that we may more securely act outside the ethical constraints of neo-classical theory. (shrink)

The problem of interdependence is crucial for understanding the climate, with its interactions between land, water and atmosphere, as well as with human activities, past and future. The concept of interdependence expresses two types of relationship, that of causality and that of responsibility. For the problems of climate governance as understood as a statistical average in the Conferences of the parties (COP), causal dependence is impossible to reconstruct precisely, notably because of the complexity of these phenomenons. However, dependence does not (...) only concern the domain of being, falling within the natural sciences and social sciences and human descriptivo-predictive. It also concerns the ought-to-be and therefore the normative sciences (ethics, political thery, law and normative economy). Here interdependence is much more problematic since it is opposed to freedom. The article discusses the various interdependencies and political solutions that are offered to take care of this needs, architectures for discussing climate change politically: systems (N. Luhmann) and deliberation (J. Habermas). He proposes then another solution, that of the moral and political consediration. (shrink)

The problem of interdependence is crucial for understanding the climate, with its interactions between land, water, and atmosphere, as well as with human activities, past and future. The concept of interdependence expresses two types of relationship, that of causality and that of responsibility. For the problems of climate governance as understood as a statistical average in the Conferences of the parties (COP), causal dependence is impossible to reconstruct precisely, notably because of the complexity of these phenomena. However, dependence does not (...) only concern the domain of being, falling within the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the human descriptive predictive. It also concerns the ought-to-be and therefore the normative sciences (ethics, political theory, law, and normative economy). Here interdependence is much more problematic since it is opposed to freedom. This article discusses the various interdependencies and political solutions that are offered to take care of this needs, architectures for discussing climate change politically: systems (N. Luhmann) and deliberation (J. Habermas). It then proposes another solution, that of moral and political consideration. (shrink)

To read into the mind of another person has for a long time been a fantasy—and sometimes a vague possibility. In science fiction, there are stories of aliens who are able to decipher the thoughts of other beings using some type of device. When I was a boy, I remember reading a cartoon of Bibi Fricotin, in which Bibi, a young boy like me, found some glasses that allowed him to read other people’s thoughts. For a time, I was afraid (...) when I came across adults wearing glasses. With such devices, privacy and childish innocence would be in jeopardy, but fortunately, this was only a remote possibility. The idea would be worrying for lay people, ethicists and lawyers, but it is only a fantasy. Recently, with the development... (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que la motivation en phénoménologie? Concept aux multiples visages, la motivation traverse la totalité des analyses d'Edmund Husserl, sans que jamais il ne soit parvenu à poser la question de son essence, de son unité et de sa fonction. La question sera restée, de son aveu même, une énigme. C'est à explorer cette béance que s'emploie le présent ouvrage. Dans chaque région de l'expérience : signe, corps, autrui, histoire..., l'enquête révèle que, loin d'être un concept subsidiaire, la motivation est (...) la condition de possibilité de l'exercice même de l'intentionnalité, redessinant ainsi toute la problématique phénoménologique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Ouvrage inédit de Bernard Charbonneau, qui pourtant l'affectionnait beaucoup, ce petit livre est l'ultime réflexion qu'il porta sur le concept de liberté, qui chez lui a toujours été central. Il y offre à son lecteur une méditation de tout premier ordre mais accessible et concise sur la liberté, prise en tant que concept et recherche incarnés dans un temps, dans un lieu, dans un individu. Plus importante encore que la réflexion philosophique est la volonté de Charbonneau de tenter de (...) communiquer au lecteur qui lui fait l'amitié de le lire son expérience de la liberté, en se basant sur des figures irréfutables comme Rousseau (à travers le Contrat social), Montaigne (à travers les Essais), Berdiaev (à travers De l'Esclavage et de la liberté de l'homme) et Dostoïevski (à travers la parabole du Grand Inquisiteur), utilisées comme autant de perspectives différentes et de témoins édifiants." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Self as Will Knowledge as the ‘Quieter of the Will’ Resignation Contemplation Two Conceptions of Contemplation: Diversion and Reflection The Paradox of Reflection References.

Whatever our profession we are all engulfed in daily life and in the obscurity and density of the mental world. Who is this “I” that finds expression in such a wide variety of societies, in the convictions of the group and temperament of the individual self, in all that I perceive imperfectly and that makes me me? What does this sometimes slippery, sometimes thorny “I” say about the various attitudes towards knowing: the things I desperately want to know, things I (...) believe myself capable of dispensing with, those I fear knowing? (shrink)

‘Moral Integrity’ has struck me for some time as one of those things that is more a matter of name-dropping than of real acquaintance. But when I undertook to say something about it, I soon discovered that I had bitten off far more than I – or perhaps anyone – could chew within the hour. In this I find myself in good company: for Professor Winch also chose this title for his Inaugural Lecture – I apologise for overlooking this when (...) I chose my own title – and in his first paragraph he explains that he will be saying nothing about Moral Integrity, though he expresses the hope that what he has said will be found to have a bearing on it. I shall not be discussing his lecture, except incidentally; but I commend his wisdom in not trying, as rashly as I am, to say something directly about the topic. (shrink)

Although Frederick Douglass disclaimed any patriotism or love of the United States in the years when he considered its constitution to be pro-slavery, I argue that he was in fact always a patriot and always a lover of his country. This conclusion leads me to argue further that patriotism is not as expressly political as many philosophers suppose. Patriots love their country despite its politics and often unreasonably, although in loving their country they are concerned with its politics. The greatest (...) among them freely dedicate themselves selflessly to the improvement of their country, partly because they love it, and partly because they are moved to take on great projects. (shrink)

Excerpt from Histoire Et Solution des Problèmes Métaphysique Les deux sortes d'évolution peuvent se concilier.; celle qui est une et indéfinie embrasse, pour cet effet., une infinité, en arrière et en avant, des évolutions multiples, finies et périodiques, construites hypothéti quement; mais c'est là le point de perfection du sys teme; et nous ne sommes plus alors aux époques pri mitives de la spéculation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at (...) www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Les auteurs réunis sous la direction de Bernard Mabille et Jean-François Kervegan appartiennent à la tradition « continentale » et à la tradition analytique (anglo-saxonne). Certes les rapports de Hegel à la métaphysique étaient ambigus. Ne prétendait-il pas à la fois rompre avec la métaphysique et la prolonger sous une figure rénovée? Mais dissocier les analyses hégéliennes de leur arrière-plan métaphysique, comme le tentent les tenants de la philosophie analytique, n’est-ce pas les priver de ce qu’elles ont de plus (...) tranchant, les priver de leur mordant, bref, les ramener au niveau de ce que Hegel nommait avec dédain la « pensée d’entendement ». A vouloir « actualiser » la philosophie de Hegel, ne la condamne-t-on pas à l’insignifiance? Une réflexion exigeante et une pièce majeure de la discussion contemporaine autour de la philosophie de Hegel. (shrink)

Excerpt from A Companion to Plato's Republic: For English Readers; Being a Commentary Adapted to Davies and Vaughan's Translation The idea of writing a 'Companion to Plato's Republic for English Readers' was suggested to me by the appearance of Mr. Walter Lea's Companion to the Iliad, combined with my own experience of the intense desire for a closer knowledge of Plato, felt by many students who could read him in a translation only. Philosophy loses sorely by translation, but less than (...) poetry; and perhaps a commentator can do more to restore its real meaning. And, indeed, as not all scholars have been trained in philosophy, "I may perhaps hope," to quote Mr. Leaf, 'that even those who have a knowledge of the language may find something to help them' in my work. Whether I have succeeded well or ill, I have at least spared no pains to ascertain and express the real import of Plato's ideas; and this I take to be the true duty of a commentator, especially in dealing with a philosophical genius of the first rank. I ought to say that I have made no attempt at textual criticism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Author, AuthorBernard KnoxThe title of this essay is not a reference to that enthusiastic but misguided shout from his friends in the audience at the St. James Theatre in 1895 that brought a reluctant Henry James to the stage at the end of his play Guy Domville, only to be greeted by whistles, shouts, and insults from the irate denizens of the gallery, one of whom had somewhat spoiled (...) the dramatic effect of the actor’s climactic line—“I am the last of the Domvilles”—by shouting: “And a bloody good thing y’are!” My title is the rubric of an infuriating competition that appears every week in the pages of the London Times Literary Supplement; it offers three quotations, all dealing more or less with the same subject, and defies the reader to identify the authors. Since the fiends who concoct these puzzles have carefully avoided passages likely to turn up in anthologies, having, in fact, ransacked their authors’ lesser-known works for texts innocent of such clues as proper names, dates, or allusions to historical events, the reader unwise enough to take a hand in the game has to rely on indications of the personality of the author.Not, obviously, the historical, biographical personality, but the literary personality: the characteristic attitudes and concerns, the rhythms, tones, and levels of discourse, the literary individuality that enables us to distinguish a paragraph of Jane Austen from one of Henry James, and either of them from one of Ernest Hemingway, or the epic blank verse of Milton from that of Keats or Tennyson. This literary identity is now the target of academic assaults from many quarters, of which I propose to single out two in particular—the Roland Barthes-Derrida denial of authors’ identity or even of their existence, and the New [End Page 76] Historicism, which confines that identity to the stringent limitations of the author’s time and place.The first aberration treats the author’s work as a “text,” material for the discovery of intertextuality, subtext, and—a word that I have not seen in print but that, if not yet born, is surely close to delivery from the womb of the goddess Terminologia—metatext, which, on the analogy of “metatheater,” would denote a text discussing its own textuality. In the deconstruction of the text the author disappears; Barthes in fact proclaimed the “death of the author.” But though such theories are usually thought of as French products of the Sixties and Seventies, their origins can be discerned in much earlier work done by Americans in the Forties, the years that saw the birth of that New Criticism which Norman Fruman recalls in his short history of our association, reasserting its basic principle: that “there should be a primary focus on literature as literature and not as something else.” I am myself a child—an aging child—of the New Criticism; the first article I ever published had a title that sounds like a parody of the typical New Critical title—“The Serpent and the Flame.” The editors of the American Journal of Philology, who reluctantly accepted the article after several unsuccessful attempts to get me to tone it down, felt constrained to add to the title: “Patterns of Imagery in the Second Book of the Aeneid.”But there was one aspect of the New Criticism that disturbed me: the influential idea, expounded by a formidable member of the Yale English department, William Wimsatt, called the Intentional Fallacy, which proclaimed that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.” Though this pronouncement was hedged about with many limitations and provisos it still seemed to me to give rein to freewheeling interpretations that eased the acceptance of the radical hijacking of the author’s work by Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, and hoc genus omne.I was especially disturbed by this doctrine because, as a classical scholar, I had been very much concerned, as is every member of our discipline, with authorial intention at the basic level—the often vexed question not of what impression the author sought to make on the... (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la Revue des Ressources, le 17 novembre 2014. Nous remercions Bernard Pasobrola de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Eadweard Muybridge – “Descending Stairs and Turning Around” Extrait de la série Animal Locomotion – 1884-1885 La notion de « rupture historique » ou de « dépassement » dialectique induit une conception du changement social dont la révolution française serait l'archétype. Il me paraît intéressant d'examiner à la lumière de la notion bergsonienne de (...) (...) - Philosophie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Speakers of English have available a set of terms dedicated to doing individual self-reference: `I' and its grammatical variants, `me', `my', `mine', etc. Speaker selection of other than these dedicated terms may invite special attention for what has prompted their use. This article draws on field recordings of talk-in-interaction in which speakers use `third-person' reference forms when speaking about themselves. We show that third-person forms are recurrently used for representing the views of someone else. We also show how — by (...) drawing on resources such as the distinction between recognitional and non-recognitional person reference forms, and on category bound attributes — the particular third-person term selected can be fitted to and thereby contribute to the action a speaker is implementing through their turn at talk. (shrink)

‘Moral Integrity’ has struck me for some time as one of those things that is more a matter of name-dropping than of real acquaintance. But when I undertook to say something about it, I soon discovered that I had bitten off far more than I – or perhaps anyone – could chew within the hour. In this I find myself in good company: for Professor Winch also chose this title for his Inaugural Lecture – I apologise for overlooking this when (...) I chose my own title – and in his first paragraph he explains that he will be saying nothing about Moral Integrity, though he expresses the hope that what he has said will be found to have a bearing on it. I shall not be discussing his lecture, except incidentally; but I commend his wisdom in not trying, as rashly as I am, to say something directly about the topic. (shrink)

« Je me joignis à Hegel sans nulle difficulté, ayant coutume d'être hégélien avant lui » : Alain retrouve, admiratif, en Hegel, l'exemplaire réunion méthodologique du concept et de l'expérience, et — quant au contenu, surtout de la philosophie de l'esprit — l'application non moins exemplaire du grand principe selon lequel l'inférieur porte et règle le supérieur, qui l'éclairé et l'explique. — A tel point que, en récusant la politique de Hegel, Alain va s'employer à sauver de lui-même un hégélianisme (...) auquel il a été et reste un incomparable éveilleur. « Sehr unbedenklich schloss ich mich an Hegel darum an, weil ich sonst vor Hegel hegelisch war » : höchst bewundernd findet Alain bei Hegel die musterhafte methodologische Vereinigung des Begriffs mit der Erfahrung, und — rücksichtlich des Inhaltes, vornehmlich der Geistesphilosophie — die ebenso musterhafte Anwendung des grossen Grundsatzes, nach welchem das Untere das Obere trägt und regelt, aber durch dasselbe erläutert und erklärt wird, wieder. — So sehr, dass Alain — indem er die Hegeische Staatstheorie ablehnt — sich darum bemüht, solch einen Hegelianismus von sich selbst zu retten, zu dessen Studium er unvergleichbarerweise noch heute den Sinn erweckt. (shrink)

Among Platonic images that have engaged John Sallis’s thought on Plato, the second voyage of Socrates, his deuteros plous, recurs often and provocatively. It is not too much to suggest that deuteros plous has occasioned many of Sallis’s own voyages, as well as suggesting a fruitful image of the philosopher as voyager that may be gleaned from these peculiar journeys. This essay will consist of four brief sections. The first will focus upon Sallis’s earliest reading of deuteros plous in Being (...) and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue (the title of its first edition, to me the best title), in which he provides a sustained reading of Phaedo 95e–102a, in the heart of which Socrates’s second voyage is brought .. (shrink)

In his article, Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules (Philosophia, Vol. 20, Nos. 1-2 (July 1990), pp. 195-207), Walter E. Schaller lists three theses that he characterizes as the Standard View of the connection between the virtues and the moral rules and criticizes me for holding two of them. I show that this claim ignores my distinction between moral rules and moral ideals and involves a widespread misunderstanding of what is meant by moral rules.

First, then, as to the current ideas of patriotism. I remember a distinguished naval officer observing to me : " Of course, patriotism should be taught in ...

Although Frederick Douglass disclaimed any patriotism or love of the United States in the years when he considered its constitution to be pro-slavery, I argue that he was in fact always a patriot and always a lover of his country. This conclusion leads me to argue further that patriotism is not as expressly political as many philosophers suppose. Patriots love their country despite its politics and often unreasonably, although in loving their country they are concerned with its politics. The greatest (...) among them freely dedicate themselves selflessly to the improvement of their country, partly because they love it, and partly because they are moved to take on great projects. (shrink)

Vouloir éclairer le " rapport de la pensée à l'action " oblige sans doute à suivre quelques détours. Mais il faut aussi, ultimement, revenir à ce reste : il y a ce qui est dit dans les mots, il y a ce qui se fait dans les actes, et " entre " les deux, autre chose parfois que l'évidence d'un gouffre incomblable. [ ] Ma visée n'est ni de système, ni d'innovation, mais simplement d'insistance : il me semble nécessaire de (...) reconduire la philosophie, et la politique elle-même, au point qu'elles ont illégitimement évacué, qui est celui de la nécessité de l'acte, en tant que cette nécessité pose problème à et pour la pensée. A un commencement correspond une rupture subjective, une conversion, un choix d'existence. Mais, comme y insistait Kierkegaard, le choix doit être constamment renouvelé. C'est dire que de nouveaux actes doivent venir opérer ce renouvellement, des actes qui sont à chaque fois la vérification de la tenue d'un commencement en même temps que la seule forme d'épreuve possible de l'existence même du futur. Le temps presse : il y a bien une pression, une précipitation du temps. Le choix politique s'accompagne de la perception de cette précipitation. Choisir la politique, c'est oeuvrer à l'accomplissement, au déblocage du temps révolutionnaire, de notre temps. (shrink)

I agree with Uzi Awret that Diego Velasquez's seminal painting, Las Meninas, is an expression of self-consciousness in many different ways. But my first response was to the feeling tone Velasquez evokes in his work, which felt dark and rather grim to me. I think this painting may be a meditation on the mortification of the flesh, a theme that was surely familiar to Velasquez. It is a contemplation of human vanity. Self-consciousness is not just a cognitive act. The so-called (...) 'self conscious emotions' include pride, vanity, shame and guilt; their cognitive components are self-aggrandizement, perfectionism, and self- criticism. The self-consciousness emotions are enormously powerful motivators in life. Pride and self-celebration can be seen in three-year olds. Starting in middle childhood, children can feel so intensely embarrassed at times that they want to sink into the ground. Mutual ridicule emerges in social play, a game of shaming others and avoiding self-shame. In adults, severe mental disorders like paranoia and depression are thought to be evoked by intense feelings of shame and constant self-criticism. Self-consciousness is a great force in human lives. (shrink)

Mes recherches actuelles tendent ä croiser l'analyse epistemologique avec l'esthetique pour degager le röle du sujet historique dans Velaboration des savoirs universels. II s'agit, pour moi, de deplacer le point de vue transcendantal, formel, afin de renouveler la perspective epistemologique par le concept de diathese. Deux questions se posent. Quel est l'apport du sujet 1) dans le processus de structuration formelle des savoirs? (construction, deconstruction, reconstruction de la connaissance), 2) dans la transmission - transformation des savoirs? (decontextualisation et actualisation historique (...) des paradigmes successifs).En diathese, la conscience de soi - chacun, chacune d'entre nous - ne s'envisage que traversee par la conscience d'autrui. II suffit de rompre avec le solipsisme identitaire des formalismes classiques, et leur determinisme problematique, pour constater avec stupefaction que l'autre tient, en soi, la part constitutive de notre biographic- de la langue de la mere ä la langue des autres. Langue etrangere, qui est pourtant le vehicule de la connaissance de soi. D'oü mon interet pour une reconsideration ä la fois epistemologique et esthetique du cogito cartesien, place ä la fois au coup d'envoi des theories de la conscience et du renouvellement de la pensee scientifique moderne et contemporaine.Dans cette perspective, l'indice de verite des analyses et des syntheses produites par le chercheur, ne saurait prendre forme et force que dans la diathese d'une communaute de recherche, ä la fois specifique et historique. De lä, irresistiblement, le logos devient dialogos. Ce qui signifie que, d'une part, chaque conscience se voit de facto qualifiee pour participer ä l'elaboration ou ä la transmission des connaissances et que, d'autre part, pour qu'un acte de conscience individuel devienne epistemologiquement significatif, i l s'avere necessaire qu'il soit formule ä l'interieur d'une communaute de recherche. Laquelle, seule, peut ä la fois l'actualiser (et done le limiter) comme savoir historique, tout en l'universalisant comme savoir formel. Evitant ainsi le piege de l'hypostasier comme savoir absolu. Le concept de diathese ouvre done ä une epistemologie genetique, preoccupee autant de structure et de construction que d'histoire des sciences. Car ce n'est pas tant (mais aussi) la formalisation des enonces scientifiques que le degre de conscience de leur contenu conceptuel, qui determine avec le plus de rigueur le degre de verite des savoirs d'un individu au sein d'une communaute de recherche, ou d'une communaute de recherche dans l'histoire de la connaissance. (shrink)