Merleau-Ponty, malgre ce que peut suggerer une lecture trop rapide, a refuse de placer son entreprise sous le signe de l'anti-metaphysique. Certes, il a tenu compte des critiques anterieures adressees a la metaphysique, cependant il occupe une position originale et singuliere dans le champ philosophique contemporain. Partant des travaux de la psychologie gestaltiste de la perception, encore largement ignores en France aujourd'hui, et sur lesquels le present ouvrage s'est largement appuye, Merleau-Ponty a ete conduit a renouveler l'ontologie traditionnelle, pour elargir (...) ensuite le domaine de la metaphysique a de nouveaux objets, jusqu'a remonter au mystere de l'espace et du temps. Un certain nombre de deplacements et de reagencements sont ainsi operes, qui temoignent d'une reappropriation vivante de la metaphysique, a partir d'une finitude que Merleau-Ponty dit non pas - bornee - mais - militante -.". (shrink)

Le présent dossier consacré à Raymond Ruyer s’inscrit dans le contexte d’une redécouverte de ce penseur français admiré en son temps par plusieurs de ses pairs, tels que Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem ou Deleuze, et dans la dynamique de ce qu’on peut désormais appeler les « études ruyériennes ». Plusieurs revues ont en effet consacré ces dernières années des numéros au philosophe nancéien : Les Études philosophiques, la Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger (n°1/...

Ruyer et Bachelard ont en commun de concevoir le travail de la philosophie comme essentiellement lié à la science. Toutefois, alors que Bachelard s’en tient à des positions épistémologiques, Ruyer entend tirer des conclusions métaphysiques des résultats de la physique contemporaine. Il expose ses vues à l’occasion de deux comptes rendus qu’il fait des écrits de Bachelard. Selon Ruyer, les activités structurantes originales qui caractérisent les atomes et les molécules autorisent à les comparer aux êtres biologiques des étages supérieurs et (...) à défendre une vision panpsychiste du réel. L’imagination métaphysique peut alors proposer ce que Ruyer appelle une « lecture du monde » qui en donne une vision unifiée et intensifiée. Les deux directions opposées de l’œuvre de Bachelard, le concept et l’image, ont ainsi la possibilité d’être réconciliées. (shrink)

Il est aisé de repérer dans la pensée de Ruyer la réactivation d'un motif philosophique ancien, celui de la « grande chaîne de l'être », dont Arthur Lovejoy avait donné une étude mémorable. On étudie ici comment un certain nombre de faits scientifiques contemporains, aussi bien dans la physique que dans la biologie, ainsi que la réflexion de Ruyer en théologie rationnelle, sont venus justifier sa réécriture. It is easy to locate in Ruyer's thought the reactivation of an old philosophical (...) idea, that of the "Great Chain of Being", which had been masterfully studied by Arthur Lovejoy. We study here how a few contemporary scientific facts, both in physics and biology, as well as Ruyer's thought on rational theology, came to justify its revival. (shrink)

La philosophie de Raymond Ruyer se présente comme une néo-monadologie autant que comme un néo-finalisme. Cet article revient sur ce que Ruyer retient du monadisme, à savoir avant tout l’idée de panpsychisme, ainsi que sur son rejet d’un certain nombre de présupposés de Leibniz concernant l’espace, le temps, et la substance, qu’il entend corriger. Ainsi se dessine un renouvellement de la monadologie, appuyé sur une interprétation des résultats de la science contemporaine.

L’intérêt de la réflexion de Ruyer sur l’homme vient de ce qu’elle s’intègre dans une cosmologie philosophique. Elle tient ainsi compte de l’ensemble des résultats des sciences contemporaines, et permet de renouveler toutes les questions classiques, en s’orientant dans les querelles de l’humanisme et de l’anti-humanisme. L’anthropologie ruyérienne, telle qu’on peut la reconstruire, procède en quatre temps : faire de l’éthologie comparée le préalable incontournable de la réflexion sur l’homme, déterminer la différence humaine par le biais de la fonction symbolique, (...) rechercher alors les facteurs naturels du passage au symbolique, réintégrer pour finir l’homme dans la vie et le cosmos, en éliminant toute forme d’idéalisme. Le naturalisme de Ruyer débouche sur une conception élargie de la nature, qui autorise une compréhension inédite de l’ « animalrationale ».The interest of Ruyer’s reflection on man results from the fact that it becomes integrated into a philosophical cosmology. In this way, it takes into account most of the results of contemporary sciences and enables him to renew all the classic questions involved in the problem, giving orientation in the quarrels about humanism and anti-humanism. Four stages can be distinguished in the ruyerian anthropology, when reconstructed : compared ethology is first considered as the unavoidable preliminary when thought about man is concerned ; then the difference of man is settled by means of the symbolic function ; it suggests that natural factors leading to symbolism have to be looked for ; at last man is reinstated in life and cosmos, idealism being entirely excluded. From Ruyer’s naturalism emerges a broadened idea of nature, allowing an original interpretation of the « animalrationale ». (shrink)

Ruyer et Bachelard ont en commun de concevoir le travail de la philosophie comme essentiellement lié à la science. Toutefois, alors que Bachelard s’en tient à des positions épistémologiques, Ruyer entend tirer des conclusions métaphysiques des résultats de la physique contemporaine. Il expose ses vues à l’occasion de deux comptes rendus qu’il fait des écrits de Bachelard. Selon Ruyer, les activités structurantes originales qui caractérisent les atomes et les molécules autorisent à les comparer aux êtres biologiques des étages supérieurs et (...) à défendre une vision panpsychiste du réel. L’imagination métaphysique peut alors proposer ce que Ruyer appelle une « lecture du monde » qui en donne une vision unifiée et intensifiée. Les deux directions opposées de l’œuvre de Bachelard, le concept et l’image, ont ainsi la possibilité d’être réconciliées. (shrink)

Heliodorus has been edited twice in the last thirty years, by Colonna and by Rattenbury and Lumb . Colonna's text is erratic, but in another respect his work on Heliodorus has been productive: he has put it beyond doubt that Book 9 of Aethiopica was written after the third siege of Nisibis, which took place in A.D. 350 . There is no point in repeating Colonna's arguments here; they merit mention because no one has taken any notice (...) of them. (shrink)

Heliodorus has been edited twice in the last thirty years, by Colonna and by Rattenbury and Lumb.Colonna's text is erratic, but in another respect his work on Heliodorus has been productive: he has put it beyond doubt that Book 9 ofAethiopicawas written after the third siege of Nisibis, which took place in A.D. 350. There is no point in repeating Colonna's arguments here; they merit mention because no one has taken any notice of them.

Introduction à la pensée de R. Ruyer, qui développa une philosophie générale de la biologie, à l'intersection des sciences et de la métaphysique. Interrogeant les fondements de cette science, il contestait le discours génétique comme la pertinence de l'approche darwinienne pour rendre compte de l'histoire de la vie.

The goal of this paper is to explore the presuppositionality of factive verbs, with special emphasis on the verbs know and regret. The hypothesis put forward here is that the factivity related to know and the factivity related to regret are two different phenomena, as the former is a semantic implication that is licensed by the conventional meaning of know, while the latter is a purely pragmatic phenomenon that arises conversationally. More specifically, it is argued that know is factive in (...) the sense that it both entails and presupposes p, while regret is factive in the sense that it only presupposes p. In a recent article, Hazlett, 497–522, 2010) shows with authentic examples how know is used non-factively in ordinary language, and he observes in these examples, as he says, “a threat to Factivity.” I argue that non-factive uses of factive verbs, such as know and regret, far from being a threat to factivity, show that, on the one hand, know is ambiguous between a factive and a non-factive sense; on the other hand, in the case of regret, the presupposition of factivity has to be intended as a merely pragmatic implication which can be suspended by the speaker herself. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Is it true that all conversational implicatures are cancellable? In some recent works (Weiner Analysis 66(2):127–130, 2004, followed by Blome-Tillmann Analysis 68(2):156–160, 2008 and, most recently, by Hazlett 2012), the property of cancellability that, according to Grice (1989), conversational implicatures must possess has been called into question. The aim of this article is to show that the cases on which Weiner builds his argument—the Train Case and the Sex Pistols Case— do not really suffice to endanger Grice’s Cancellability Hypothesis. What (...) Weiner has shown with his examples is that a conversational implicature cannot be cancelled if the speaker, whose utterance gives rise to the implicature, does not intend to cancel it. To implicate is an intentional speech act and, therefore, cancelling an implicature must also be intentional and must be performed by the same speaker whose utterance gives rise to the putative implicature. (shrink)

In “Ruyer’s Relation to Whitehead”, Fabrice Colonna seeks to establish the exact presence of Whitehead in the French philosopher’s work. The indisputable points of connection between the two thinkers, concerning the importance of metaphysics, the critics of the materialistic scheme, the relevance of a renewed platonism, should nevertheless not obscure certain differences in emphasis, which are apparent in the problem of the compounds beings and about certain principles of speculative theology, to which both of them have found deeply original (...) ways. (shrink)

Leopoldo Zea, one of the most important and original thinkers in contemporary Latin-American thinking, analyzed through his very long and fruitful career, the problem of cultural identity, focusing in particular on the complex relationship that has arisen between Latin-American culture and Western culture. This article presents, after a brief analysis of the most characteristic aspects of Zea’s thought, an interview, which I did with Zea in 2001. In this interview, probably the last that the Mexican philosopher was to give, some (...) of the fundamental passages of his philosophy are re-examined and explored in greater depth. (shrink)

Leopoldo Zea, one of the most important and original thinkers in contemporary Latin-American thinking, analyzed through his very long and fruitful career, the problem of cultural identity, focusing in particular on the complex relationship that has arisen between Latin-American culture and Western culture. This article presents, after a brief analysis of the most characteristic aspects of Zea’s thought, an interview, which I did with Zea in 2001. In this interview, probably the last that the Mexican philosopher was to give (Zea (...) died in June 2004), some of the fundamental passages of his philosophy are re-examined and explored in greater depth. (shrink)

Leopoldo Zea, one of the most important and original thinkers in contemporary Latin-American thinking, analyzed through his very long and fruitful career, the problem of cultural identity, focusing in particular on the complex relationship that has arisen between Latin-American culture and Western culture. This article presents, after a brief analysis of the most characteristic aspects of Zea’s thought, an interview, which I did with Zea in 2001. In this interview, probably the last that the Mexican philosopher was to give (Zea (...) died in June 2004), some of the fundamental passages of his philosophy are re-examined and explored in greater depth. (shrink)

Dopo l'affermazione nietzschiana per cui “non ci sono fatti ma solo interpretazioni” la filosofia giunge alla fase del postmoderno, difesa da Gianni Vattimo, in cui dialettica ed ermeneutica rendono “debole” il concetto di verità. Il suo allievo Maurizio Ferraris critica la visone del suo maestro col tentativo di instaurare un nuovo realismo, volendo riportare in auge un concetto di verità, che escluda da esso tutte le verità di tipo epistemologico e religiose. L’analisi e lo studio dell’attacco al postmoderno di Ferraris (...) che qui viene fatto mostra che sia nel pensiero del primo autore, con la difesa delle verità “soggettive”, sia nel secondo, che difende le verità “oggettive”, il concetto di verità resta slegato dalla morale, e che non avendo contenuti epistemologici su cui fondarsi non giunge all’effettivo ritorno di una nozione “forte” di verità. (shrink)