Présentation de cinq grands intellectuels catholiques. Réflexion sur la foi et la raison. Essai engagé et sujet à débat.

« Tout être humain désire une vie de qualité, c’est même là un souci ultime et constant. Peu importe qu’on la dise “bonne”, “réussie” ou “authentique”, c’est toujours à partir d’une certaine perception de la qualité que nous entreprenons nos projets, organisons nos discours sur le monde et accomplissons nos moindres gestes. Mais quelles sont les conditions d’une telle vie? Existe-t-il des critères permettant de l’évaluer? C’est en réponse à de telles interrogations qu’ont émergé les grandes réflexions de l’humanité sur (...) le beau, le bien et le vrai, tout comme l’intuition d’une continuité subtile entre ces idéaux, de même que les préoccupations pratiques sur la façon de conduire sa vie. Et c’est à l’horizon de ces idéaux que nous formulons encore les débats et nos conceptions sur la nature de l’expérience esthétique et de l’art, de l’éthique et de la morale, de la science et de la connaissance en général. Ainsi comprise, l’idée selon laquelle il existe un lien profond entre expérience esthétique, requêtes de l’éthique et objectifs de la connaissance est à la fois la plus ancienne et la plus actuelle des intuitions, comme l’attestent ces contrées de l’expérience quotidienne où qualités esthétiques et éthiques interagissent et s’alimentent mutuellement, tantôt en concordance harmonieuse, tantôt en discordance créatrice, et où la connaissance retrouve ses plus nobles alliés dans l’art ou la poésie. »C’est cette intuition que l’auteur s’attache à redéployer en en suivant la permanence et la profondeur chez des témoins et des commentateurs aussi illustres que Paul Ricoeur, John Dewey, R. W. Emerson, Jean-Marie Guyau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Nishida Kitaro, Mikel Dufrenne et Martha C. (shrink)

Le Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, publie en 1921, est la premiere oeuvre de Wittgenstein. L'ouvrage, unique par sa forme et son contenu, a ete souvent traite de meteorite et tenu pour l'oeuvre d'un genie inclassable - maniere de le mettre a l'ecart a la fois de la pensee du second Wittgenstein et des grands courants philosophiques de l'epoque. Le present livre a pour ambition de retablir l'objet du Tractatus, celui d'une comparaison et d'une discussion attentive des travaux de Russell et de Frege. (...) Wittgenstein connait parfaitement les deux pensees. Il elabore sa propre reflexion a partir de leurs divergences. C'est ainsi en se fondant sur les differences et les oppositions entre les theories russellienne et fregeenne de la proposition, de l'objet, du symbole et de l'analyse, qu'il renouvelle profondement la philosophie de la logique et du langage. (shrink)

« Poétique du savoir): étude de l'ensemble des procédures littéraires par lesquelles un discours se soustrait à la littérature, se donne un statut de science et le signifie». C'est de cette façon, en apparence modeste, que Jacques Rancière débute Les noms de l'histoire. Mais comment comprendre cette affirmation a priori paradoxale selon laquelle une telle poétique utiliserait des «procédures littéraires» pour mieux se soustraire à la littérature)? Que penser, en outre, de cette idée selon laquelle l'historiographie telle qu'elle s'est pratiquée (...) jusqu'ici aurait eu tendance à occulter les conditions mêmes de toute historicité)? L'essai s'avère rapidement être une critique lucide et radicale des fondements mêmes du savoir historique, prenant appui sur certaines hypothèses majeures que le philosophe n'aura de cesse de développer durant tout son parcours): le nouage entre politique et esthétique, l'alliance entre littérature et démocratie caractérisée par un désordre salutaire de la parole. Pourtant, malgré le caractère familier de ces termes pour le lecteur de Jacques Rancière, l'essai conserve toute sa densité, et même une certaine part d'équivocité): c'est parfois entre les lignes qu'il convient de traquer la position de l'auteur, et surtout de cerner les contours de cette «histoire hérétique» vers laquelle il nous entraîne et qui conserve toute son actualité. Fruit d'un travail collectif consacré à cet essai, le présent ouvrage a pour ambition de rassembler des contributions dissensuelles): à l'image de la philosophie qui les inspire, celles-ci, en confrontant Rancière à ceux avec qui il entre en dialogue, visent à leur tour à éclairer la force, et parfois les zones d'ombre, de la poétique de cette pensée qui se veut elle-même «hérétique». (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : " Que signifie le « retour du confucianisme » dans une Chine redevenue puissance mondiale? Alors que les études existantes privilégient les discours idéologiques et les débats intellectuels, ce livre prend pour la première fois comme point de départ l’émergence, dans les années 2000, d’un « confucianisme populaire » qui se distingue des initiatives officielles. À partir d’enquêtes de terrain menées sur près d’une décennie, il étudie le développement de nouvelles pratiques – réappropriation des (...) textes classiques, culture du corps, création d’un néoritualisme... –, dans des contextes aussi variés que les écoles et les universités, les temples et les mouvements religieux, les entreprises et les administrations. En les analysant dans la perspective plus vaste d’une remise en cause en Chine des grands récits modernisateurs ayant dominé le xxe siècle, Le Sage et le peuple jette une lumière nouvelle sur l’articulation du politique et du religieux dans la Chine contemporaine. À travers l’observation des cultes d’État mis en place sur le continent et à Taïwan, c’est aussi la question du destin contemporain de la tradition cosmologique chinoise qui se trouve posée. ". (shrink)

Les développements de la logique et de la mathématique nous ont donné accès à une conception renouvelée du formel. Mais le formel se limite-t-il à la déduction? Y a-t-il au contraire une portée proprement ontologique de la forme? C'est ce qu'a soutenu Edmund Husserl au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles avec la notion d'ontologie formelle. Cette théorie de l'objet en général n'est toutefois pas sortie toute armée de la tête du futur fondateur de la phénoménologie. Le présent ouvrage a (...) pour but de montrer qu'un tel projet ontologique émerge d'un réseau conceptuel complexe, où se rencontrent l'ontologie moderne et médiévale, la logique formelle, les mathématiques abstraites ainsi que la psychologie scientifique. La rencontre de ces différents champs a donné naissance chez Husserl à une conception profondément originale de l'ontologie, qui nous enjoint de concevoir les relations qui structurent la réalité moins en termes de substance et d'accident qu'en termes de tout et de partie. La méréologie se voyait ainsi pourvue d'un rôle central au sein de l'ontologie, rôle qui est encore largement le sien dans la métaphysique analytique contemporaine. (shrink)

Il est commun, aujourd'hui, d'associer la démocratie au consensus, et ce d'une double manière : d'une part en admettant qu'elle est le meilleur régime politique possible, d'autre part en considérant que l'accord vaut intrinsèquement mieux que le désaccord, et l'entente que le conflit: La qualité de la démocratie tiendrait à ses débats publics, qui à la fois rendent possible la confrontation des points de vue, tout en y mettant fin par l'obtention de consensus éclairés et légitimés par la règle de (...) la majorité. Et si le conflit, au contraire, dans certaines conditions, devait servir de principe à la vie politique? Il ne suffit pas de vivre en démocratie pour rendre la démocratie vivante. La démocratie n'est pas un régime mais un questionnement. Elle exige des citoyens une interrogation continue sur le bien commun à suivre. Machiavel n'était pas un démocrate. Mais c'est étrangement en actualisant sa pensée, dans le sillage des travaux de Lefort, qu'il est possible d'associer le conflit civil avec l'imaginaire social pour redynamiser la démocratie par la tension conflictuelle entre l'idéologie et l'utopie. Penser la démocratie à partir de ce que donne à penser Machiavel : voilà ce que s'efforce de faire Sébastien Roman, pour proposer dans une perspective républicaine le modèle d'un espace public dissensuel."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

Is there such a thing as natural knowledge of God? C. Stephen Evans presents the case for understanding theistic arguments as expressions of natural signs in order to gain a new perspective both on their strengths and weaknesses. Three classical, much-discussed theistic arguments - cosmological, teleological, and moral - are examined for the natural signs they embody. At the heart of this book lie several relatively simple ideas. One is that if there is a God of the kind accepted by (...) Christians, Jews, and Muslims, then it is likely that a 'natural' knowledge of God is possible. Another is that this knowledge will have two characteristics: it will be both widely available to humans and yet easy to resist. If these principles are right, a new perspective on many of the classical arguments for God's existence becomes possible. We understand why these arguments have for many people a continued appeal but also why they do not constitute conclusive 'proofs' that settle the debate once and for all. Touching on the interplay between these ideas and contemporary scientific theories about the origins of religious belief, particularly the role of natural selection in predisposing humans to form beliefs in God or gods, Evans concludes that these scientific accounts of religious belief are fully consistent, even supportive, of the truth of religious convictions. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings. Although formulated as a study in the logic of norms, it provided the initial ideas for work on the logic of theory (or belief) change, developed by the authors in a series of papers by the authors and Peter Gardenfors beginning in 1985.

This article challenges conventional readings of Michel Foucault by examining his fascination with neoliberalism in the late 1970s. Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it. The necessary cause for this approval lies in the broader rehabilitation of economic liberalism in France during the 1970s. The sufficient cause lies in Foucault's own intellectual development: drawing on his long-standing critique of the state as a model for conceptualizing power, Foucault concluded, during the 1970s, that economic liberalism, (...) rather than “discipline,” was modernity's paradigmatic power form. Moreover, this article seeks to clarify the relationship between Foucault's philosophical antihumanism and his assessment of liberalism. Rather than arguing that Foucault's antihumanism precluded a positive appraisal of liberalism, or that the apparent reorientation of his politics in a more liberal direction in the late 1970s entailed a partial retreat from antihumanism, this article contends that Foucault's brief, strategic, and contingent endorsement of liberalism was possible precisely because he saw no incompatibility between antihumanism and liberalism—but only liberalism of the economic variety. Economic liberalism alone, and not its political iteration, was compatible with the philosophical antihumanism that is the hallmark of Foucault's thought. (shrink)

Should the existence of moral disagreement reduce one’s confidence in one’s moral judgments? Many have claimed that it should not. They claim that we should be morally self-sufficient: that one’s moral judgment and moral confidence ought to be determined entirely one’s own reasoning. Others’ moral beliefs ought not impact one’s own in any way. I claim that moral self-sufficiency is wrong. Moral self-sufficiency ignores the degree to which moral judgment is a fallible cognitive process like all the rest. In this (...) paper, I take up two possible routes to moral self-sufficiency.First, I consider Robert Paul Wolff’s argument that an autonomous being is required to act from his own reasoning. Does Wolff’s argument yield moral self-sufficiency? Wolff’s argument does forbid unthinking obedience. But it does not forbid guidance: the use of moral testimony to glean evidence about nonmoral states of affairs. An agent can use the existence of agreement or disagreement as evidence concerning the reliability of their own cognitive abilities, which is entirely nonmoral information. Corroboration and discorroboration yields nonmoral evidence, and no reasonable theory of autonomy can forbid the use of nonmoral evidence. In fact, by using others to check on my own cognitive functionality, an agent is reasoning better and is thereby more autonomous.Second, I consider Philip Nickel’s requirement that moral judgment proceed from personal understanding. I argue that the requirement of understanding does forbid unthinking obedience, but not discorroboration. When an agent reasons morally, and then reduces confidence in their judgments through discorroboration, they are in full contact with the moral reasons, and with the epistemic reasons. Discorroboration yields more understanding, not less. (shrink)

C W Evers, J C Walker; Knowledge, Partitioned Sets and Extensionality: a refutation of the forms of knowledge thesis, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume.

The theory of Gestalt qualities arose from the attempt to explain how a melody is distinct from the collection of the tones which it comprehends. In this essay from 1890 Christian von Ehrenfels coined the term 'Gestaltqualität' to capture the idea of a pattern which is comprehensible in a single experience. This idea can be applied not only to melodies and other occurrent patterns, but also to continuant patterns such as shapes and colour arrays such as the array of a (...) chess board. Ehrenfel's essay gave birth to the Gestalt movement in psychology. (shrink)

"As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life's inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is past."--C.G. Jung, commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower? Here collected for the first time are Jung's views on death and immortality, his writings often coinciding with the death of the (...) most significant people in his life. The book shows many of the major themes running throughout the writings, including the relativity of space and time surrounding death, the link between transference and death, and the archetypes shared among the world's religions at the depths of the Self. The book includes selections from "On Resurrection," "The Soul and Death," "Concerning Rebirth," "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead" from the Collected Works, "Letter to Pastor Pfafflin" from Letters, and "On Life after Death.". (shrink)

Recently, empirically minded philosophers have employed evidence of widespread, fundamental moral disagreement to argue against moral realism. I argue that the empirical evidence does not refute realism because the disagreement is consistent with certain pluralistic versions of moral realism that posit a set of pro tanto normative principles. Others have appealed to pluralism in defense of moral realism but have used pluralism to attack the empirically based approach to ethical theory. Although I argue that the empirical argument against moral realism (...) fails, I defend the approach and suggest better ways that (pluralist) moral realism could be tested empirically. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

The Holocaust marks a decisive moment in modern suffering in which it becomes almost impossible to find meaning or redemption in the experience. In this study, C. Fred Alford offers a new and thoughtful examination of the experience of suffering. Moving from the Book of Job, an account of meaningful suffering in a God-drenched world, to the work of Primo Levi, who attempted to find meaning in the Holocaust through absolute clarity of insight, he concludes that neither strategy works well (...) in today's world. More effective are the day-to-day coping practices of some survivors. Drawing on testimonies of survivors from the Fortunoff Video Archives, Alford also applies the work of Julia Kristeva and the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicot to his examination of a topic that has been and continues to be central to human experience. (shrink)

Most whistleblowers talk as if they never had a choice about whether to blow the whistle. This doesn't mean they acted suddenly, or impulsively, only that they believe they could not have done otherwise. Trying to make sense of this near universal answer to the question "Why did you do it?" the essay draws on narrative theory. Narrative theory distinguishes between actant and sender—that is, between actor and his or her values. This distinction helps to explain what it means to (...) face a difficult choice over something about which one feels one never had a choice. (shrink)

Rev. ed. of: Analytical psychology: notes of the seminar given in 1925 / by C.G. Jung; edited by William McGuire. c1989.

"Extracted from Freud and psychoanalysis, volume 4 of the Collected works of C.G. Jung, pages 83-226"--T.p. verso.

The ancient practice of alchemy, which thrived in Europe until the seventeenth century, dealt with the phenomenon of transformation--not only of materials but also of the human spirit. Through their work in the material realm, alchemists discovered personal rebirth as well as a linking between outer and inner dimensions. C. G. Jung first turned to alchemy for personal illumination in coping with trauma brought on by his break with Freud. Alchemical symbolism eventually suggested to Jung that there was a process (...) in the unconscious, one that had a goal beyond discharging tension and hiding pain. In this book, Nathan Schwartz-Salant, a leading Jungian analyst with an interest in alchemy, brings together a key selection of Jung's writings on the subject. These writings expose us to Jung's fascinating reflections on the symbols of alchemy--such as the three-headed Mercurial dragon, hermaphrodites, and lions devouring the sun--and brings us closer to the spirit of his approach to the unconscious, closer than his purely scientific concepts often allow. (shrink)

This book reveals the rational basis for historians' descriptions, interpretations and explanations of past events. C. Behan McCullagh defends the practice of history as more reliable than has recently been acknowledged. Historians, he argues, make their accounts of the past as fair as they can and avoid misleading their readers. He explains and discusses postmodern criticisms of history, providing students and teachers of history with a renewed validation of their practice. McCullagh takes the history debate to a new stage with (...) bold replies to the major questions historians face today. (shrink)

C. K. Grant; X*—On a Definition of Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 157–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/a.

The hermeneutic circle serves as a standard argument for all those who raise a claim to the autonomy of the human sciences. The proponents of an alternative methodology for the human sciences present the hermeneutic circle either as an ontological problem or as a specific methodological problem in the social sciences and the humanities. In this paper I would like to check the soundness of this argument. I will start with listing and shortly sketching out three variations of the problem. (...) I will then critically discuss these and appeal to alternative solutions and I will close with a short conclusion. (shrink)