Republicanism is a powerful resource for emancipatory struggles against domination. Its commitment to popular sovereignty subverts justifications of authority, locating power in the hands of the citizenry who hold the capacity to create, transform, and maintain their political institutions. Republicanism's conception of freedom rejects social, political, and economic structures subordinating citizens to any uncontrolled power - from capitalism and wage-labour to patriarchy and imperialism. It views any such domination as inimical to republican freedom. Moreover, it combines a revolutionary commitment to (...) overturning despotic and tyrannical regimes with the creation of political and economic institutions that realise the sovereignty of all citizens, institutions that are resilient to threats of oligarchical control. This volume is dedicated to retrieving and developing this radical potential, challenging the more conventional moderate conceptions of republicanism. It brings together scholars at the forefront of tracing this radical heritage of the republican tradition, and developing arguments, texts, and practices into a critical and emancipatory body of political and social thought. The volume spans historical discussions of the English Levellers, French and Ottoman revolutionaries, and American abolitionists and trade unionists; explorations of the radical republican aspects of the thought of Machiavelli, Marx, and Rousseau; and theoretical examinations of social domination and popular constitutionalism. It will appeal to political theorists, historians of political thought, and political activists interested in how republicanism provides a robust and successful radical transformation to existing social and political orders. (shrink)

This article argues that using Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority to reject philosophical anarchism can be affected by political anarchism. Whereas philosophical anarchism only denies the authority of the state, political anarchism claims that anarchism is a better alternative to the state. Raz’s theory holds that an institution has authority if it enables people to better conform with reason. I argue that there are cases where anarchism is an existing alternative to the state and better fulfils this condition. Consequently, (...) in these cases, anarchist groups and societies and not the state have legitimate authority. When anarchism is not an existing alternative to the state, the state will, under Raz’s theory, have some legitimate authority, but that authority will be limited because anarchism remains a better possible alternative to the state. To support the political anarchist claim I discuss the anarchist collectives during the Spanish civil war, which I argue are an example of anarchism as an existing alternative to the state that better fulfils Raz’s service conception and also provide suggestive evidence that anarchism is in general a better possible alternative. I also discuss the relationship between political anarchism and authority and I argue that despite some tension they are not irreconcilable. I conclude that the interesting anarchist challenge for political theorists is political not philosophical. (shrink)

When formulating the concept of the impulse-image, Deleuze never tires of asserting that these images are saturated with death and obsessed by degradation. They stand at a curious intersection in the taxonomy of images, a constitutively in-between space: they are formally inserted between affection-image and action-image in The Movement-Image, but produce a direct passage to the time-image. However, they do not reach the time-image due to obsession by the negative effects of time. This article introduces the concept of the impulse-image (...) in Deleuze's work on the impulse and death instinct, in his fundamental texts of the 1960s and 1970s, including his collaboration with Félix Guattari. The death instinct in the late 1960s was a transcendental principle that acquired the form of the groundless or crack-up essential for the production of difference. It is at this time that Deleuze publishes Zola and the Crack-up, an embryonic essay for what would later become the impulse-image. In the 1970s, Deleuze, along with Guattari, fought the need to include a groundless force in the mould of the death instinct. Speaking of cinema in the 1980s, which is when he returns to the impulse theme, one finds characteristics of both preceding periods, especially the structure conceived in the 1960s, associated with the criticism of the 1970s. However, Deleuze now stands apart, recognising a naturalistic image and admiring a practice of symptomatology, but pointing out that his own understanding of the world does not lie in it. With the impulse-images, Deleuze also plays a relevant role in studies of film naturalism, shaping a powerful concept for studies of contemporary naturalistic symptomatologies that emerge in situations of misery of civilisation. (shrink)

We propose a new theory based on the notions of marginal and large difference which has natural models in the context of nonstandard mathematics. We introduce the notion of finite marginality and show a representation result which ensures, for finitely marginal countable models, the existence of a homomorphism of the structure of marginal and large difference into a nonstandard model of the natural numbers, and show the extent to which any such homomorphism is unique. Finally, we show that our theory (...) constitutes part of the underlying abstract structure of three distinct philosophical theories of vagueness: Dean’s neofeasibilism, Itzhaki’s theory of nonstandard heuristics, and our own initial sketch of a nonstandard primitivism about vagueness. (shrink)

The term “race,” and the concept it refers to, namely genetically different human populations in the world, is one of the most intellectually and emotionally charged in society, and in science as well. This article focuses on how human beings recognize individual faces of their own versus another “racial group,” and the term “face race” is used in the context of visual recognition, as traditionally done in the scientific literature. The article reviews the well-known phenomenon that people have greater difficulty (...) distinguishing and recognizing individual faces from a different human population, or “race,” than their own. Experience-based holistic accounts encompass and extend most other proposals, such as a more densely clustered organization of other-race faces in an internal face-space centered on a “norm,” and it leads to a number of interesting predictions about the processing of same race and other-race faces. (shrink)

Both issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on ‘Art and the Brain’[ Vol.6, No.6/7; Vol.8, No.8/9] were enlightening yet seriously lacking. As a musician, it was disconcerting to read such a wide-ranging title and discover that there was nothing pertinent about music and hearing, the performing arts and other forms of art. I concur with most of the criticisms made here and there, including those on jcs-online, in particular the contributions by Amy Ione and Donnya Wheelwell in the second (...) issue. The following comments and observations explain why I find the overall treatment of art in these issues completely unsatisfactory. (shrink)

Bernardi, Bruno | : L’analyse d’un passage peu commenté du Contrat social montre que Rousseau aborde d’une façon singulière la problématique aussi classique qu’actuelle des rapports entre liberté et sécurité. La position de sujet et celle de citoyen découlent toutes deux de la nature du corps politique. Elles sont porteuses de deux types d’exigences : la protection des personnes et des biens dans un cas, celle de la liberté civile et politique dans l’autre. Rousseau n’oppose pas ces exigences entre (...) elles mais distingue les deux ordres de priorité qu’elles rendent possibles. La politique du citoyen consiste à faire de la liberté la condition de la sécurité. (shrink)

En posant la question de la nature vivante à partir des travaux hétérophénoménologiques de Daniel Dennett, il s?agira pour nous ici d?aborder deux problèmes philosophiques majeurs, à savoir, d?une part, celui de la naturalisation de propriétés émergentes de la matière comme la vie ou la conscience, et, d?autre part, celui des éventuels partages entre l?homme, l?animal et la machine et de la spécificité anthropologique. Le premier problème, qui est celui des philosophies de la vie puis des philosophies de l?esprit, concerne (...) donc la possibilité d?expliquer dans les termes des sciences de la nature certaines propriétés comme la vie ou la conscience, lesquelles « surviennent » dans certaines circonstances sur les propriétés universelles de la matière. Or, à cet égard, si les développements extraordinaires qu?a connus la biologie ces cent cinquante dernières années semblent aujourd?hui affaiblir l?affirmation antinaturaliste de l?irréductibilité de la « force vitale » aux propriétés physico-chimiques, le débat reste par contre très vif en ce qui concerne la réductibilité de la conscience, c?est-à-dire la possibilité pour les sciences cognitives et la neurophysiologie de rendre compte de la conscience dans ses aspects phénoménaux autant qu?intentionnels par des lois naturelles. Dans la mesure où certains de ceux qui s?opposent le plus radicalement à ce programme naturaliste au nom du caractère. (shrink)

This article examines the concept of ‘event’ and the manner in which it has been neglected in both ecocriticism and Hitchcock studies. Using The Birds (1963) to rethink the premises of ecocritics’ discussion of nature, animals, and disasters in cinema and Hitchcock scholars’ emphasis on representation and symbolism, the article argues that it has become imperative to philosophically foreground ‘events’ in light of the numerous contemporary films that revolve around them. Hitchcock’s film is shown to propose a renewed concept of (...) event, a concept that significantly departs from the two most influential conceptualisations of the event in post-1960 continental philosophy: those of Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Eschewing philosophical theories that equate the event with pure becoming or conceptualisations that characterise events as rupture and break, the film reveals a particular form of bird-event that posits relationality to address becoming and rupture simultaneously. Indeed, what distinguishes Hitchcock’s concept of event, contra Deleuze’s and Badiou’s, is that it emphasises relationality instead of pure continuity or radical rupture in the characterisation of corporeal or embodied individuation. Emphasising relationality helps understand the film’s deployment of a concept of event that departs from the aforementioned theorisations that exclude the human body (and therefore affect) from the event’s experiential import. Closely aligning bodies prior to and after the bird-events, The Birds ultimately discloses the paradox of body and event at the heart of contemporary event theory by way of linking or relating bodies and events, thus tapping into debates over embodiment and affect in cultural and media theory. Centering around modalities of evental experience rather than the controversial and endlessly debatable signification of the bird attacks, the analysis purports that the bird-event configures materiality only to reveal its relational and interstitial volatility. (shrink)

Das Verhaltnis von Sprache und Bewusstsein wird als das Verhaltnis der Verhaltnisse angesehen. Das erste Verhaltnis fungiert nicht tech nisch-praktisch oder mathematisch, nicht als Prinzip von Verhalt nissen. Es wird als Bedingung der Moglichkeit und Wirklichkeit eines logischen Ganges von der Substanz iiber die Stadien der Funktion, Refiexion bis zum Begriff angesehen. Der Funktionsbegriff lost nicht den Substanzbegriff ab, wie noch bei Ernst Cassirer. Substanz, Funk tion und Refiexion sind als Momente innerhalb des logischen Begriffs zu denken. Die Frage nach (...) dem Sein tritt nicht in den Vordergrund, obwohl sie das potenzierte Verhaltnis als Frage streift. Entgegen standlichung und Vergegenstandlichung treten innerhalb der Erkennt nis mit dem gleichen Anspruch auf. Die mich seit 1949 beschaftigende Frage nach einer Ubersetzung von Hegels Philosophie des Absoluten in die ihr eigene Dialektik war immer zugleich an die einzelnen Disziplinen der Philosophie gerichtet. Bald wurde klar, dass das zu allen Zeit en geiibte Umschreiben bestimmter philosophischer Disziplinen im Zeit alter des Nihilismus, das das Zeit alter der absoluten Herrschaft der exakten Wissenschaften ist, nur noch mit vorgespielter N aivitat vorgenommen werden konnte. Es dient weder der Stunde noch entspricht es ihrer Not. Philosophische Distanz ist heute im Anblick der Wissenschaften schwer durchzuhal ten. Sie scheint nicht in erster Linie durch Wissenschaftstheorien er reichbar, obwohl diese zur erwiinschten Klarung von Satzen beitragen und deshalb bei dem Versuch der Gewinnung einer Logik von der Sprache her herangezogen werden miissen. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Einleitung: Spannweite des Problems.--Bd. 2. Sprache.--Bd. 3. Wege zum Bewusstsein im Raum von Kant, Hegel und Marx.--Bd. 4/5. Zwei Revolutionen der Denkungsart. Bd. 4. Die erste Revolution der Denkungsart. Kant: Kritik der reiner Vernunft. Bd. 5. Die zweite Revolution der Denkungsart. Hegel: Phänomenologie des Geistes.

Historien du « catholicisme au féminin », Claude Langlois a magistralement étudié par la voie quantitative l’essor des congrégations féminines dans la France du XIXe siècle. Mais restait à comprendre l’indicible. Qu’est ce qui pousse ces milliers de femmes à entrer dans les ordres? Quels sont les ressorts profonds d’une vocation religieuse féminine? Claude Langlois va chercher la réponse chez Thérèse de Lisieux, entrée au carmel à 15 ans et décédée de la tuberculose à 24 ans, devenue l’une...

Issu d’une collection appartenant à un groupe de recherches sur l’écriture missionnaire (GRIEM), ce livre se fait l’écho de celui de Claude Langlois, paru en 1984 sous le titre Le catholicisme au féminin. Celui-ci prenait alors la mesure quantitative d’un aspect de la féminisation du catholicisme : la fondation de quatre cents nouvelles congrégations de religieuses des lendemains de la Révolution à 1880. Si le personnage de la « bonne sœur»s’impose dans la France du xixe siècle, celui du «...

Le regard croisé, pour la période contemporaine, sur l’histoire des femmes et l’histoire religieuse, deux champs de l’historiographie française qui se sont longtemps ignorés, permet de saisir les efforts récents d’ouverture et de collaboration qui contribuent, de part et d’autre, à une rénovation historiographique. Revisiter ces deux champs de recherches conduit, de manière plus générale, à une réflexion sur une « histoire sociale du religieux » qui s’élabore aux interfaces de plusieurs champs disciplinaires et peut contribuer, à plus long terme, (...) à leur renouvellement. (shrink)

Il y a un an, j’avais rendu compte d’un ouvrage dirigé par Chantal Paisant sur « la mission au féminin », rassemblant une anthologie de textes missionnaires écrits par des religieuses, dans un numéro de la revue Clio portant sur les colonisations. Ce livre offrait au public francophone des perspectives neuves sur les sources permettant d’envisager une autre histoire des congrégations féminines françaises au xixe siècle, complémentaire de celle entreprise magistralement par Claude Langlois sur...

This paper is devoted to discussing the topological structure of the arrow of time. In the literature, it is often accepted that its algebraic and topological structures are that of a one-dimensional Euclidean space \, although a critical review on the subject is not easy to be found. Hence, leveraging on an operational approach, we collect evidences to identify it structurally as a normed vector space \\), and take a leap of abstraction to complete it, up to isometries, to the (...) real line. During the development of the paper, the space-time is recognized as a fibration, with the fibers being the sets of simultaneous events. The corresponding topology is also exposed: open sets naturally arise within our construction, showing that the classical space-time is non-Hausdorff. The transition from relativistic to classical regimes is explored too. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno’s Cabala del cavallo pegaseo _ _grew out of the great Italian philosopher’s experiences lecturing and debating at Oxford in early 1584. Having received a cold reception there because of his viewpoints, Bruno went on in the Cabala to attack the narrow-mindedness of the university--and by extension, all universities that resisted his advocacy of intellectual freethinking. _The Cabala of Pegasus _consists_ _of vernacular dialogues that turn on the identification of the noble Pegasus and the humble ass. In (...) the interplay of these ideas, Bruno explores the nature of poetry, divine authority, secular learning, and Pythagorean metempsychosis, which had great influence on James Joyce and many other writers and artists from the Renaissance to the modern period. This book, the first English translation of _The Cabala of Pegasus, _contains both the English and Italian versions as well as helpful annotations. It will have particular appeal to all Renaissance scholars and those interested in the Renaissance cabalistic underpinnings of modern literature. (shrink)