It is a commonly held assumption among cultural, social, and political psychologists that imagining the future of societies we live in has the potential to change how we think and act in the world. However little research has been devoted to whether this effect exists in collective imaginations, of social groups, communities and nations, for instance. This book explores the part that imagination and creativity play in the construction of collective futures, and the diversity of outlets in which these are (...) presented, from fiction and cultural symbols to science and technology. The authors discuss this effect in social phenomena such as in intergroup conflict and social change, and focus on several cases studies to illustrate how the imagination of collective futures can guide social and political action. This book brings together theoretical and empirical contributions from cultural, social, and political psychology to offer insight into our constant imagination of the societies in which we live. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning attributed to the national group as an entry point into how boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are formed. To do so, it focuses on the representation of the past of the group, taken as a symbolic resource able to produce a raison d’être for national groups, and does so within a dialogical framework. Using the transcripts of the French parliamentary debates on immigration from 2006, it proposes a qualitative analysis of collective narratives of (...) the past along three axes: 1) what meaning do they give to the nation, 2) how is such a meaning produced, and 3) how do the stories told by different groups reply or relate to one another. By identifying the main narratives found in the data and how they relate to each other – within and between groups – it proposes to see collective memory as itself the product of symbolisation processes and, therefore, as a cultural tool especially powerful to produce meaning about the present. This paper also argues that collective memory is a situated construction negotiated with – or contested by – others, made possible by the presence of common historical benchmarks to which different meanings may however be attributed. Finally, it proposes to understand “immigration talk” as potentially the product of the identity questions faced by the national group, rather than the other way around. (shrink)

The current pandemic and the measures taken to address it, on a global scale, are unprecedented. Times of crisis call for creative solutions, and these are not reduced to the work of scientists or politicians. In everyday life, both in online and offline spaces, people use their creativity to make sense of the current situation, to cope with it, and to learn its lessons. Social media is a privileged space for mundane and participative creativity through the production and sharing of (...) coronavirus Internet memes. In this article, we examine the creativity of such memes from a dedicated Reddit community. We ask, in particular, what makes a coronavirus meme creative and what this creativity tells us about the pandemic and popular understandings of it. To answer these questions, we use a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods by having 480 memes coded by three social media users for surprise, meaningfulness, elaboration, humor, and creativity and qualitatively analyzing those memes that score highly on each dimension. An interesting finding concerns the importance of elaboration and humor for the evaluation of creativity in the case of memes, above the more traditional criteria of surprise and meaningfulness, perhaps a feature unique for Internet spaces. The article ends with reflections on what these findings tell us about creativity on social media more generally and the creative processes involved in the generation and reception of coronavirus memes in particular. (shrink)

Two competitive models are alternatively present in plotinian metaphysics. In the first one, the intelligible ousia appears to be the substrate or matter of its different determinations. In the sec...

Le péché n’est rien : cette affirmation a pour conséquence que « faire le mal », c’est en un sens ne rien faire. Cette thèse éminemment paradoxale par rapport à notre expérience de la méchanceté et de l’injustice est au cœur de la morale de saint Augustin et s’explique en termes ontologiques : le Bien, c’est l’être, le Mal, c’est le néant. Sans examiner les conditions de possibilités humaines du péché (la liberté, le choix de la volonté), il s’agit (...) de préciser quel mode de connaissance du péché-néant la philosophie de saint Augustin propose. (shrink)

For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most profound (...) of his age'. (shrink)

Magic est de ces livres étonnants, bouleversant tout ce que nous croyions savoir sur un sujet. A partir d'une interrogation sur l'apparition du concept de "lien social" chez Rousseau ou Durkheim, Laurent de Sutter propose une surprenante remise en cause du consensus régnant autour de l'idée de lien. Plutôt que de poursuivre l'investigation du côté de la sociologie, il suggère, pour comprendre ce qui nous lie, de regarder du côté d'un droit qui aurait retrouvé celle qui lui a toujours (...) été consubstantielle et que l'on a pourtant tenté de refouler, à savoir sa magie. Que se passerait-il si, en effet, le droit était la dernière manifestation de la magie dans un monde qui croyait pouvoir s'en passer? Telle est la question au coeur de ce bref essai érudit, spectaculaire et fascinant, passant avec une grâce provocante de Montesquieu à Giordano Bruno, des juristes romains à Gabriel Tarde, de Marcel Mauss aux inspirateurs du Code civil, de Giorgio Agamben à Quentin Meillassoux. (shrink)

Présente le parcours philosophique de Merleau-Ponty tant dans sa formation que dans ses objectifs. Ses références : Descartes, Leibniz, Gabriel Marcel. Ses concepts opératoires : le concret, l'incarnation, l'intentionnalité, les chiasmes.

I examine the Lacanian concept of misrecognition by comparing it with the Sartrean notion of bad faith. I focus on Jacques Lacan’s 1946 article ‘Presentation on Psychical Causality’ in which Lacan criticises organicist psychology for misrecognising the cause of madness to be essentially organic and consequently failing to distinguish between ‘mad’ and ‘true’ ideas. I argue that bad faith, discussed by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness in 1943—and referred to six times in the Écrits by Lacan—has essential similarities with (...) misrecognition in the Lacanian sense. By juxtaposing these concepts, I argue that this early Lacanian text is marked by an existentialist attitude which views human reality—and madness—as meaningful and grounded in being. (shrink)

L’actualité du kantisme en philosophie morale et politique est illustrée par l’importance en son sein des approches formelles, notamment l’éthique de la discussion et le libéralisme politique. Ces approches estiment que le formalisme pratique implique une réduction de la sphère de la rationalité pratique à la seule réflexion morale sur l’impartialité des normes, au détriment du questionnement éthique sur la vie bonne renvoyé à la particularité subjective. Dans le présent article, nous contestons la nécessité d’une telle implication et nous voulons (...) montrer la possibilité de penser une éthique formelle : un jugement éthique a priori peut être fondé sur la seule nécessité de donner sens à la forme de la finitude.The actuality of Kantism in moral and political philosophy is mirrored in the importance of formal approaches, i.e. deliberative ethics and political liberalism. These approaches underline that practical formalism implies a reduction of the sphere of practical rationality to a moral reflection on impartiality of norms. This reflection is carried out at the expense of the ethical questioning on the « good life », which is reduced to the subjective particularity. In the present article, I contest the necessity of such an implication. Also, I want to show the possibility to conceive a formal ethic, namely an a priori ethical judgement can be founded on the necessity alone to give sense to the form of finitude. (shrink)

Sarah is a young deaf woman in revolt, refusing to speak. She marries James, an orthophonist who works in a special school for the deaf. However, what gradually emerges in the course of their relationship is the latent suffering caused by what each of the partners isn't getting. James, tired of acting as Sarah's interpreter, frustrated by the limits of what they can share, shouts out:You want to be independent of me, you want to be a person in your own (...) right, you want people not to pity you … then you [must] learn to read my lips and you [must] learn to use that little mouth of yours for something besides eating and showing me you're better than hearing girls in bed! Come on! Read my lips? What am I saying? Say what I'm saying … You always have to be dependent on someone, and you always will for the rest of your life until you learn to speak. Now come on! I want you to speak to me. Let me hear it. Speak! Speak! Speak! …. (shrink)

Le livre que le lecteur tient entre les mains est un bréviaire de l'indifférence à la politique. Ce bréviaire, toutefois, ne vise aucune fin édificatrice, ni prosélyte. Il se contente d'être l'exposé fragmentaire d'un soupçon vague : que la politique ne rend pas heureux. Plutôt qu'y dépenser une énergie que nous n'avons pas, ne vaut-il pas mieux nous tourner vers d'autres horizons? Déambulant le long d'une plage des Pouilles, assis à la terrasse d'un café parisien, ou goûtant, depuis le balcon (...) d'un hôtel, la nuit londonienne, nous n'avons que l'embarras du choix. II suffit qu'une jeune fille croise notre chemin pour que la politique s'évanouisse comme un rêve d'hiver. (shrink)

"Pop'philosophie" : si l'on en croit la morgue méprisante que ce simple mot provoque, il s'agirait du nom d'une étrange maladie. Celle d'une philosophie se prostituant aux industries culturelles ou, pire, aux sirènes du populisme. Avec la pop' philosophie, on assisterait à la ruine de la philosophie tout court, devenue tantôt gadget pédagogique, tantôt tentative pathétique de capitaliser sur le glamour frelaté de la pop culture. Et si c'était faux? Pour Gilles Deleuze, en tout cas, rien n'était plus important que (...) l'invention d'une pop'philosophie qui sauverait la pensée de la correction professorale et de la pontification esthétique. Inventer une pensée véritablement anarchiste, enterrant la philosophie pour l'ouvrir à des devenirs inédits : tel était l'objectif qu'il donna au concept de pop'philosophie. Rien n'était moins simple ni plus ambitieux. Il est temps de comprendre en quoi."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Is ecological anxiety—sometimes called eco-anxiety—just a paralyzing affect, or can it lead to an ethical and political commitment? At first glance, it seems that this anxiety implies, by definition, a lack of knowledge, and must therefore be overcome in order to live better and be able to act again. However, I wish to argue in this article that ecological anxiety, when it is a fear for the future, is not a pathology to be rid of, but a valuable awareness. Indeed, (...) in a period of social and environmental disasters on a global scale, this affect is above all indicative of a concern for the world. The question that then arises is that of the effectiveness of practical wisdom, in the sense of Aristotelian φρόνησις [phronesis], in deliberating on issues as complex as global warming. However, it seems necessary, to overcome the paralysing anxiety, to return to the sources of a collective practical wisdom that could enable citizens to reappropriate issues that concern them directly. (shrink)

Le voyage en boulet occupe une place importante dans _Durée et Simultanéité_. Les arguments avancés par Bergson – pour conclure à tort à la réciprocité des expériences des jumeaux – ne sont pas sans rappeler ceux de Herbert Dingle dans sa controverse avec McCrea. Les versions épurées du pseudo-paradoxe des jumeaux, avec accélération et sans différence d’âge et celles sans accélération et avec différence d’âge, montrent qu’il n’y a pas de sens à vouloir localiser en un point précis d’une ligne (...) d’univers – en l’occurrence au point de rebroussement – la discordance des âges. Si l’ouvrage de Bergson souffre indéniablement de maladresses et de contre-sens, parfois partagés par les physiciens de son époque, il n’en demeure pas moins notable que les tentatives contemporaines de construction d’une théorie quantique de la gravité sont traversées par d’inédits questionnements sur la nature du temps et résonnent tout particulièrement avec certaines intuitions bergsoniennes. (shrink)