New class of therapies, including bipolar therapies (BPT) and paradoxical unipolar therapies (PUT) were firstly proposed in relation to a clinical insight and to some results of biological investigations, then they gave rise to mathematical modeling which brought a justification of these therapies, at least from a theoretical point of view. After recalling the mathematical model for the regulation of agonistic antagonistic couples, and reporting the fundamental types of control simulation by means of it, we point out the validity of (...) therapeutical applications inferred from this model. These therapy modalities, including BPT and PUT, now concern the following diseases: astrocytomas, epilepsia and trials on multiple sclerosis. Even if such attempts are in their early stage, noticeably for the last case where biological changes have mainly been studied, it seems that a large span of treatments is open to BPT and PUT. Improvement of these techniques in the future depends, in our opinion, on a parallel working on the dynamics of the mathematical model and the dynamics, perceived by clinical insight and confirmed by biological investigations, of the body reactions to such strategies. Justification of BPT and PUT was given, by resorting to the notion of pathological homeostasis which, too often, intervenes in order to nullify the effects of unilateral (not paradoxical) therapies. This research has elicited some therapies which use two agents with antagonistic effects or only an agent with effects similar to the agent already in excess in the body - in both cases at nearly physiological doses. (shrink)

The replicative bypass of lesions in DNA and the induction of mutations by agents which react with DNA to produce damaged bases can be understood on the basis of a simple kinetic model. Bypass can be analyzed by separately considering three processes: (a) addition of a base opposite a lesion, (b) a proofreading excision process, and (c) a rate limiting elongation step. Adenine nucleotides are preferentially added opposite many lesions making it possible to predict mutational specificity. Replicative bypass (translesion synthesis) (...) is dependent on modulation of proofreading exonuclease activity but loss of exonuclease activity alone is not sufficient to ensure bypass. Frameshift mutation is the result of the failure of translesion synthesis accompanied by rearrangement of the template, particularly at repetitive sites. (shrink)

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)

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)

My objective in the following study is to present and analyze the objections to the "classical argument" in the sociology of knowledge raised by Leo Strauss and Karl Popper. Building on this expository account, I will attempt to demonstrate (1) that the opposition of Strauss and Popper is more apparent and polemical than real, (2) that the position taken by Strauss and Popper on the viability of a sociology of knowledge is essentially no different from that taken (...) by the discipline's founders: Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and Georg Lukács, (3) that whatever the merits of Strauss and Popper's contentions, they become relevant only in the context of a radicalized version of the sociology of knowledge which developed subsequent to their formulation, and (4) that the sociology of knowledge has needlessly and deplorably become the battleground for meta?theoretical disputes that are irrelevant to its practice. (shrink)

L’étude des pratiques de nomination offre de précieux renseignements sur les rapports de pouvoir entre les sexes et le processus de leur différenciation symbolique. Hommes et femmes ont un pouvoir de nommer qui diffère selon les sociétés. Il vient renforcer ou contrebalancer l’effet de structuration exercé par le système de filiation sur les rapports intrafamiliaux et véhicule une image plus ou moins prestigieuse de l’homme et de la femme. On peut aussi étudier l’inégalité entre les sexes en observant les différences (...) qui existent parfois dans la construction, le contenu symbolique et l’usage des prénoms masculins et féminins. Mais le nom peut aussi être une arme redoutable, y compris aux mains des femmes de sociétés patrilinéaires, dans la lutte des sexes ou la rivalité entre personnes de même sexe. Le cas limite de sociétés où l’on peut prendre un nom du sexe opposé offre l’occasion de tester la théorie performative du nom pour qui le nom fait le genre et d’apercevoir certains des facteurs selon lesquels varient les effets de genre d’un nom. (shrink)

In a letter written to Gadamer after receiving a copy of Truth and Method, Leo Strauss offered many criticisms with which Gadamer took issue. However, he acknowledged the important hint cited in the title. Perhaps strangely, Gadamer never took up this hint and showed very little interest in comedy throughout his Gesammelte Schriften. In this essay, I show that there are ample resources within Gadamerian hermeneutics to answer Strauss positively, also for a rich philosophy of comedy along Gadamerian (...) lines. Toward that end, I use Gadamer’s Aristotelian view of tragedy as a clue; interpretations of play, excess and delight (Ergötzen) also weave into the analyses. (shrink)

Bernard Williams, who died in 2003, was one of the most influential moral philosophers of his generation. A lifelong opera lover, his articles and essays, talks for the BBC, contributions to the Grove Dictionary of Opera, and program notes for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the English National Opera, generated a devoted following. This elegant volume brings together these widely scattered and largely unobtainable pieces, including two that have not been previously published. It covers an engaging range (...) of topics from Mozart to Wagner, including sparkling essays on specific operas by those composers as well as Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, Debussy, Janacek, and Tippett. Reflecting Williams's brilliance, passion, and clarity of mind, these essays engage with, and illustrate, the enduring appeal of opera as an art form. (shrink)

L’étude des pratiques de nomination offre de précieux renseignements sur les rapports de pouvoir entre les sexes et le processus de leur différenciation symbolique. Hommes et femmes ont un pouvoir de nommer qui diffère selon les sociétés. Il vient renforcer ou contrebalancer l’effet de structuration exercé par le système de filiation sur les rapports intrafamiliaux et véhicule une image plus ou moins prestigieuse de l’homme et de la femme. On peut aussi étudier l’inégalité entre les sexes en observant les différences (...) qui existent parfois dans la construction, le contenu symbolique et l’usage des prénoms masculins et féminins. Mais le nom peut aussi être une arme redoutable, y compris aux mains des femmes de sociétés patrilinéaires, dans la lutte des sexes ou la rivalité entre personnes de même sexe. Le cas limite de sociétés où l’on peut prendre un nom du sexe opposé offre l’occasion de tester la théorie performative du nom pour qui le nom fait le genre et d’apercevoir certains des facteurs selon lesquels varient les effets de genre d’un nom. (shrink)

Assembling a distinctive genealogy of cybernetic thought situated in relation to Progressive Era technocracy, industrial capitalism, (de)colonial relations, and eugenic machinery, Code uncovers the vital interdependence of informatics, the humanities, and the human sciences in the 20th century. Rather than figuring cybernetics as emerging from Second World War military technologies and post-war digital computing, Code argues that liberal technocrats’ inter-war visions of social welfare delivered via ‘neutral’ communication techniques shaped the informatic interventions of both the Second World War and the (...) Cold War. Tracing how an organizing concept of code linked the work of diverse structurally-minded thinkers, such as Norbert Wiener, Warren Weaver, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan reconstructs the cybernetic apparatus that spawned new fields, including structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology – and grapples with the unfolding implications of such socio-technical dynamics for 21st-century critical theory, digital media, and data analytics. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler’s contributions to political philosophy in the presence of technology are honored and complemented by imagining an encounter with the thought of Leo Strauss. The concept of sovereignty is taken as pivotal. Notions of sovereignty find expression not only in nation state politics but also in engineering and technology. Pierre Manent calls attention to further roots in Christian theology. The complexities and challenges of this interweaving point suggest the need for a “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus.”.

In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

In Morality Bernard Williams confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page.

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for (...) his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for (...) his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

The Leo Strauss transcript project -- Editor's introduction: Strauss, Nietzsche, and the history of political philosophy -- Editorial headnote -- Introduction: Nietzsche's philosophy, existentialism, and the problem of our age -- Restoring nature as ethical principle: Zarathustra, prologue -- The creative self: Zarathustra, part 1, 1-8 -- The true individual as the highest goal: Zarathustra, part 1, 9-15 -- Postulated nature and final truth: Zarathustra, part 1, 16-22 -- Truth, interpretation, and intelligibility: Zarathustra, part 2, 1-12 -- Will (...) to power and self-overcoming: Zarathustra, part 2, 15-20 -- Summary and review: fusing Plato and the creative self -- Greek philosophy and the Bible; nature and history: Zarathustra, part 2, 20-22 -- Eternal recurrence: Zarathustra, part 2, 21; part 3, 1-13 -- Survey: Nietzsche and political philosophy -- The goodness of the whole, Socratic and Heideggerian critiques: Zarathustra, part 4-12 -- Creative contemplation: Zarathustra, part 3, 13 -- Restoring the sacred and the final question: Zarathustra, part 4. (shrink)

Natural right and the historical approach -- Natural right and the distinction between facts and values -- The origin of the idea of natural right -- Classic natural right -- Modern natural right : Hobbes ; Locke -- The crisis of modern natural right : Rousseau ; Burke.

Leo Strauss's introductions to ten writings of Moses Mendelssohn -- Preliminary remark by Alexander Altmann -- Introduction to Pope a metaphysician! -- Introduction to "Epistle to Mr. Lessing in Leipzig" -- Introduction to Commentary on Moses Maimonides' "Logical terms" -- Introduction to Treatise on evidence in metaphysical sciences -- Introduction to Phädon -- Introduction to Treatise on the incorporeality of the human soul -- Introduction to "On a handwritten essay of Mr. de Luc's" -- Introduction to The soul -- (...) Introduction to Morning hours and to the friends of Lessing -- Introduction to God's cause, or providence vindicated. (shrink)

This book presents the thought of the Kyoto School in comparison with continental philosophers better known in the West and addresses the affiliation of some of its members with the militarism of the 1930s and 1940s.

Einleitung.--Der streit der alten und der neueren in der philosophie des judentums (bemerkungen zu Julius Guttmann, Die philosophie des judentums)--Die gesetzliche begründung der philosophie (das gebot des philosophierens und die freiheit des philosophierens)--Die philosophische begründung des gesetzes (Maimunis lehre von der prophetie und ihre quellen).

'At last one of the most famous generalizing works in anthropology by the field's most stimulating and controversial contemporary figure has been translated, beautifully, and with the enlightening preface of the second French edition.

The _Maimonides Review_ is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles, which seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies.

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

Occasion and purpose of the study -- Hobbes's politics and the critique of revelation -- The different versions of Hobbes's critique of religion -- The critique of the tradition -- The principle of scripture -- Spirits and angels -- The kingdom of God and eternal life -- Temporal and spiritual power -- The kingdom of darkness -- Characteristics of the critique of the tradition -- The critique of scripture -- The knowability and the believability of revelation -- The knowability and (...) the possibility of revelation -- The knowability and the possibility of miracles -- Hobbes and Descartes -- The basis of Hobbes's critique of religion. (shrink)

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether (...) death is nothing to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality. (shrink)

_Explores Schelling’s Essay on Human Freedom, focusing on the themes of freedom, evil, and love, and the relationship between his ideas and those of Plato and Kant._.

Epistemic decolonization, in its various conceptual formulations and presentations, could be taken to hold promise for either the completion of the anti-colonial struggle or the self-re-discovery of the formerly colonized and oppressed. In Africa this project has had a long history as both a counter to hegemonic histories of claimed Western epistemological superiority as well as theories of racism and racist practices against black people of African descent. What is not entirely clear are the precise achievements of decolonial thought and (...) practice. I interrogate the relevance, use and continuation of decoloniality as a genre of thought and practice on the African continent against the background of the perennial problems of material underdevelopment and stifled political spaces that render the supposed beneficiaries of decolonization hopeless subjects who continue to be disempowered and oppressed in their own home. This interrogation is to be carried alongside another inquiry aimed at evaluating the achievements of African philosophy as a form of epistemic decolonization. If African philosophy is a form of decolonization, as it should be, it should be able to clearly demonstrate its achievements and how they have had an effect on broader goals of decolonizing and empowering inhabitants of the African continent. (shrink)

Originally published in 1910, Principia Mathematica led to the development of mathematical logic and computers and thus to information sciences. It became a model for modern analytic philosophy and remains an important work. In the late 1960s the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University in Canada obtained Russell's papers, letters and library. These archives contained the manuscripts for the new Introduction and three Appendices that Russell added to the second edition in 1925. Also included was another manuscript, 'The Hierarchy of (...) Propositions and Functions', which was divided up and re-used to create the final changes for the second edition. These documents provide fascinating insight, including Russell's attempts to work out the theorems in the flawed Appendix B, 'On Induction'. An extensive introduction describes the stages of the manuscript material on the way to print and analyzes the proposed changes in the context of the development of symbolic logic after 1910. (shrink)

The main idea -- The functioning of a neuron -- Brain structure and function -- The general structure of the neural network -- Instincts, emotions, free will -- The nature of mental objects -- The rise and essence of (self-)consciousness -- Artificial intelligence -- Cognitive limitations of man.

An examination of Leo Strauss's 1948 notebook and other writings on the Euthyphro, Plato's dialogue on piety, using close analysis and line-by-line commentary.

Part I. Phenomenology -- Phenomenology and the return to beginnings -- Delimitations: phenomenology and the end of metaphysics -- Part II. Sallis's Plato interpretation -- Being and logos: reading the Platonic dialogues -- Chorology: on beginning in Plato's Timaeus -- Platonic legacies -- Part III. Art/Sallis -- Stone -- Shades-of painting at the limit -- Topographies -- Part IV. Sallis and other thinkers -- The gathering of reason -- Spacings-of reason and imagination in texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel -- Echoes: (...) after Heidegger -- Crossings: Nietzsche and the space of tragedy -- Part V. Sallis speaks directly -- Double truth -- Force of imagination: the sense of the elemental -- On translation -- The Sallis/Derrida dialogue -- Derrida's "Tense" and Sallis's The verge of philosophy. (shrink)

Peu de philosophes contemporains choisissent de faire vivre leurs outils critiques grâce au terreau d'une association, d'un collectif. C'est le cas de Bernard Stiegler, qui a fondé Ars Industrialis en 2005. Le manifeste de l'association, Réenchanter le monde (Flammarion, 2005 ; 7400 ventes en Champs), devait connaître un grand retentissement. Depuis, les travaux et contributions fleurissent (de l'économiste André Gréau au comédien Robin Renucci, en passant par les spécialistes des digital studies), et Ars Industrialis franchit un cap en s'associant (...) à des collectivités locales (Nantes) ou en nouant des partenariats internationaux (Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne). Cet ouvrage fournit une synthèse de tous ces travaux en proposant un vocabulaire philosophique à la fois ambitieux et accessible. Qu'est-ce le marketing - le psychopouvoir - et pourquoi est-il un des dangers majeurs de notre époque? En quoi la technique influence-t-elle des fonctions aussi capitales que la mémoire ou l'écriture? Quelle nouvelle vision de l'éducation devons-nous mettre à jour depuis l'avènement du numérique? Que sont la bêtise et l'intelligence? Comment aider la transformation de citoyens passifs et débordés en amateurs, acteurs et membres d'une communauté de goûts et de savoirs? Faire attention propose, dans ces courts essais-définitions, le manifeste d'une époque charnière qui voit définitivement s'éloigner le monde ancien, tout en souhaitant mettre les outils de l'extrême contemporain au service d'un nouvel humanisme. (shrink)

Aujourd'hui nous vivons un nouveau stade de la longue histoire de l'évolution technique de l'humanité : le stade du capitalisme hyperindustriel. Depuis le XXe siècle, l'homme n'a cessé de vivre les bouleversements des conditions de la temporalité, c'est-à-dire aussi bien de son individuation. Ce nouveau stade induit déjà une profonde transformation de nos existences. Loin de disparaître, l'industrialisation se poursuit et se renforce, elle investit de nouveaux champs, invisibles, qui vont des nanostructures jusqu'aux fondements neurologiques de l'insconscient, en passant par (...) les biotechnologies : les champs de l'hypermatériel, où la matière est toujours déjà une forme, où la forme est toujours déjà une information et où l'" immatériel " apparaît pour ce qu'il est : une fable qui enfume les esprits. Bernard Stiegler formule à nouveaux frais les enjeux des technologies culturelles et cognitives, mais aussi des biotechnologies et des nanotechnologies. Elles ne vont pas sans péril pour l'humanité, pour le " devenir non inhumain " de l'espèce humaine, comme il l'écrit. Demain, l'homme sera-t-il désemparé de lui-même, de sa conscience et de sa libido, ou saura-t-il exister avec les technologies de l'hypermatériel? S'il se laisse subsumer, s'il laisse son désir être capté par les puissantes machines et réseaux qui cherchent déjà à instaurer un psychopouvoir, l'une des conséquences pourrait bien être l'auto-destruction du capitalisme, déjà bien engagé sur cette pente. Bernard Stiegler n'est pas un technophobe. Il n'en est que plus autorisé à nous alerter. (shrink)

The paper examines the view that Nietzsche's perspectivism about practical judgments, understood as a form of internalism about practical reasons, implies that any legitimate criticism of judgments emanating from a foreign perspective must be in terms that are internal to this perspective. Insofar as it is thought to be motivated by certain general theoretical strictures of perspectivism, this view is incoherent. The paper argues that, on the contrary Nietzsche's recourse to a strategy of internal criticism is motivated by his own (...) particular commitment to preserving the freedom of spirit of his interlocutors. The paper concludes with a discussion of how freedom of spirit is preserved by internal criticism, and how the nature of freedom of spirit affects the particular form such criticism will assume. (shrink)

In "Global Spencerism" the authors analyse the communication and appropriation of Herbert Spencer s ideas around the globe. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Spencer s distinctive theory of evolution, based on Lamarckianism, was almost as influential as Darwin s.".

Enth.: Race et histoire / Claude Lévi-Strauss. suivi de: L'oeuvre de Claude Lévi-Strauss / par Jean Pouillon.