Anselmo escribió su primer libro, el Monologion, forzado por los hermanos de su monasterio. El método también le fue impuesto: no decir nada desde la autoridad de la Escritura, profundizar todo desde la sola razón y, al mismo tiempo, presentar todo con claridad. El artículo estudia las tres partes del método. Se ve la importancia de los razonamientos dentro del peligro de no citar la Escritura, sobre todo en tiempo en que la dialéctica entusiasmaba a los jóvenes inexpertos. Las razones (...) necesarias son una marca indeleble del método anselmiano. La claridad de la verdad pone en marcha la búsqueda de una presentación clara de la doctrina cristiana y, al mismo tiempo, el drama del cristiano que no puede expresar totalmente esta verdad en palabras humanas porque la verdad nos sobrepasa. Además, la Verdad es Dios mismo, inefable. Este método y su estudio nos ayudan a entrar en el pensamiento anselmiano, especialmente en el Monologion. Nos introducen también en el método teológico actual. Por algo, Anselmo es el Padre de la escolástica. Anselm wrote his first book, the Monologion, forced by the brothers of his monastery. The method also was imposed: to say nothing from the authority of Scripture, to deep everything from reason alone and, at the same time, to present everything clearly. This article examines the three parts of the method. We see the importance of reasoning despite the danger of not quote the Scripture, especially in times when the dialectic excited young inexperienced. The reasons needed are an indelible mark of Anselm’s method. The clarity of truth starts the search for a clear presentation of Christian doctrine and at the same time, the drama of the Christian that cannot fully express this truth in human words because the truth is beyond us. In addition, Truth is God himself, ineffable. This method and its study help us to enter the Anselm's thought, especially in the Monologion. We also introduce in the current theological method. We all know that Anselm is the Father of scholasticism. (shrink)

Dans un roman d’anticipation qu’il situe en 19201, Alfred Jarry invente le personnage d’André Marcueuil, capable d’aller « au-delà des forces humaines », tant sexuelles que cyclistes. Durant la futuriste « course des dix mille milles »2, une quintuplette, sur laquelle pédalent cinq champions cyclistes, distance, grâce à un développement de « cinquante-sept mètres trente-quatre »,..

This issue of Mélusine pursues the research initiated in 1982 on the surrealist book, without giving the last word on such a complex subject. Demonstrating erudition worthy of La Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, the contributors propose new ideas and points of view. By the sheer abundance of technical terms, the articles would have astonished the avant-garde poets and artists in question, who were so very fond of entertainment. Some contributors examine the illustrated book, the artist's book and the (...) book-object in general as surrealist publications, while others focus on a single book or even on the non-book imagined by André Breton.In her introduction, editor Andrea Oberhuber describes the evolution of .. (shrink)

About three decades ago, AI theory underwent a sharp turn as a consequence of criticism that pointed out the problem of externalism in the cognitivist position. Hubert Dreyfus, undoubtedly the main exponent of this criticism, opened the possibility of a Heideggerian reading using the frame problem to bring to light obscurities that otherwise would have been very difficult to detect. However, the question still remains of whether or not Heidegger’s philosophy can serve as the source of a positive contribution (...) to AI. In this paper, we argue that in the small measure in which such a task has been attempted, its orientation has been hampered by the omission of what, for Heidegger, was the central issue to be pondered: the question for being and the ontological difference. To propose a possible direction in which AI can be headed as a consequence of this novel perspective, we undertake a brief and schematic review of two published projects suggesting that they both manage to avoid the frame problem and also bear this Heideggerian outlook. (shrink)

Ainsi donc parlaient les anciens philosophes. Leurs paroles ne sont point perdues dans les vestiges de temples morts, d'Athènes, d'Ephèse ou de Rome: recueillies, trancrites, commentées, elles ont engendré d'autres paroles qui elles-même en ont nourri d'autres. Ainsi d'âge en âge aura-t-on puisé dans ce trésor de mots, venu de si loin, où les siècles à venir trouveront de quoi se faire l'idée d'un bonheur et d'une sagesse. De ce cercle de penseurs disparus, Jean-Paul Dumont connaissait tout, et mieux que (...) personne: les premiers rôles et les comparses, les figures et les figurants. Il avait tout surpris, tout retenu de leurs conversations, de leurs empoignades, de leurs rognes et de leurs rires. Pour honorer sa mémoire et poursuivre ce dialogue ininterrompu avec les penseurs de l'aurore de la philosophie, vingt-trois de ses élèves, collègues et amis ont, à leur tour, voulu faire parler les Anciens, en particulier Platon et les philosophes du monde hellénistique. De Zénon d'Elée à Philodème, de Diogène de Babylone à Sextus Empiricus, de Platon à Saint Augustin, tous témoignent du bonheur du discours et de la fécondité d'une temps qui ne songeait pas à séparer la vie et la pensée. Outre une étude inédite sur "Le modèle parménidien de l'assimilation: pensée, sensation et vie", le volume comprend aussi la réédition de deux articles devenus introuvables de Jean-Paul Dumont "Diogène de Babylone et la preuve onthologique" et "L'âme et la main, signification du geste de Zénon", ainsi que la bibliographie complète de ses oeuvres. (shrink)

We argue that the asymmetry between diverging and converging electromagnetic waves is just one of many asymmetries in observed phenomena that can be explained by a past hypothesis and statistical postulate (together assigning probabilities to different states of matter and field in the early universe). The arrow of electromagnetic radiation is thus absorbed into a broader account of temporal asymmetries in nature. We give an accessible introduction to the problem of explaining the arrow of radiation and compare our preferred strategy (...) for explaining the arrow to three alternatives: (i) modifying the laws of electromagnetism by adding a radiation condition requiring that electromagnetic fields always be attributable to past sources, (ii) removing electromagnetic fields and having particles interact directly with one another through retarded action-at-a-distance, (iii) adopting the Wheeler-Feynman approach and having particles interact directly through half-retarded half-advanced action-at-a-distance. In addition to the asymmetry between diverging and converging waves, we also consider the related asymmetry of radiation reaction. (shrink)

La relation entre la métaphysique et le christianisme a fait l’objet, tout au long du XXe siècle jusqu’à aujourd’hui, de nombreux et puissants conflits d’interprétations, les unes tendant à régionaliser le christianisme dans les thèmes et les concepts de la métaphysique grecque, d’autres plaçant le discours théologique en position de science récapitulative de la quête métaphysique, d’autres encore estimant pouvoir déclarer l’hétérogénéité des deux traditions philosophique et théologique. Etienne Gilson avait certes montré tôt la part que le christianisme a effectivement (...) prise dès avant le Moyen Age dans le destin de la métaphysique et relevé les modalités par lesquelles la métaphysique avait pu favoriser l’auto-intelligibilité du christianisme. Sans doute ne suffit-il plus aujourd’hui de discuter les thèses contrastées d’une métaphysique «postchrétienne» ou d’un christianisme «postmétaphysique» ; il convient, en amont, de poser la question des conditions par lesquelles la métaphysique, surmontant ses apories théoriques et redéfinissant ses attendus, peut renouveler son interlocution avec le christianisme et réciproquement. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Jean-Luc Marion de l'Académie française, s'est progressivement imposée sur la scène philosophique française et internationale depuis plus de trois décennies. Successeur d'Emmanuel Levinas à la chaire de métaphysique de Paris-IV Sorbonne (1995-2011) et successeur de Paul Ricoeur à l'University of Chicago (2003-2011), il occupe aujourd'hui, succédant à David Tracy, la chaire de théologie fondamentale de cette même université américaine, ainsi que la Chaire Domi- nique Dubarle : "Philosophie et théologie" de l'Institut catholique de Paris. Lorsqu'il récapitule son itinéraire (...) de recherche, J-L Marion distingue trois "moments " : les études cartésiennes, la phénoménologie et la théologie. De nombreux travaux, plusieurs thèses de doctorat lui ont été déjà consacrés dans ces différents champs où elle continue cependant de s'élaborer, suscitant l'admiration, mais aussi, le plus souvent en raison de sa haute technicité conceptuelle, de lourdes incompréhensions. Le présent ouvrage, issu d'une séance publique de débats et intégrant les "réponses" du principal intéressé, n'a pas pour seule ambition de lever celles-ci ; en ouvrant les trois volets de l'oeuvre, il engage un dialogue direct avec l'auteur, interrogeant l'une des pensées philosophiques les plus fécondes de notre temps. (shrink)

La relation entre la philosophie et la théologie est coexistensive au mouvement du penser de Martin Heidegger. Elle n'a pas seulement fait l'objet d'une Conférence en 1927. Elle ne saurait constituer non plus un simple thème de relecture de son œuvre. Après la publication, ces deux dernières décennies, de plusieurs textes majeurs de l'auteur, restés longtemps inconnus, à l'heure du renouvellement des recherches sur ses origines sociales et intellectuelles, la question appelait un nouvel examen. Philippe Capelle met en relief les (...) trois topiques fondamentales de cette relation philosophie et théologie scripturaire, philosophie et ontothéologie, pensée de l'être et attente du dieu, ainsi que les différentes étapes de leur thématisation. Il analyse le rapport de Heidegger à la tradition théologique en faisant valoir un triple point de vue l'enracinement dans la culture catholique ; la dette vis-à-vis des schèmes fondamentaux des théologies catholique et (surtout) protestante, ainsi que de leurs principaux fondateurs : saint Paul, saint Augustin, la scolastique médiévale, Luther, Bultmann ; la provenance qui autorise paradoxalement la sortie jamais achevée de la théologie chrétienne. Rejetant toute interprétation théologique de la pensée heideggerienne, il interroge enfin le thème du " retrait " comme motif herméneutique central et comme pivot d'une approche renouvelée des rapports entre la philosophie et la théologie. (shrink)

Presenting a fascinating analysis of the idea of what can't be said, this book ascertains whether the notion of there being a truth, or a state of affairs, or knowledge that can't be expressed linguistically is a coherent notion. The author distinguishes different senses in which it might be said that something can't be said. The first part looks at the question of whether ineffability is a coherent idea. Part two evaluates two families of arguments regarding whether ineffable states of (...) affairs actually exist: the argument from mysticism and the argument from epistemic boundedness. Part three looks more closely at the relation between mystic and non-mystic stances. In the fourth and final part the author distinguishes five qualitatively different types of ineffability. _Ineffability and Philosophy_ is a significant contribution to this area of research and will be essential reading for philosophers and those researching and studying the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals? Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one (...) promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form—any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping. (shrink)

Deux penseurs entrent en dialogue. Pour relever ensemble un même pari. Afin de dire symphoniquement le pourquoi et le comment de l'embrasement de la violence religieuse à l'échelle planétaire. Qu'en est-il du christianisme et de l'islam, de leurs théologies et de leurs histoires au regard de la philosophie, née en Grèce? La rencontre, nouée au Moyen Âge, est-elle devenue impossible aujourd'hui? Comment peut-on et doit-on philosopher en islam et en christianisme pour le bénéfice d'une mutuelle compréhension? Une religion sans philosophie (...) ne risque-t-elle pas l'irrationalisme jusqu'au fanatisme? Une philosophie sans religion ne risque-t-elle pas le rationalisme jusqu'à l'aveuglement? Pour lutter contre ces deux écueils et transcender l'affrontement des croyances, ces deux philosophes de renom et de la même génération, l'un catholique, l'autre musulman, Philippe Capelle-Dumont et Souleymane Bachir Diagne, nous font partager ici leur science, leur passion et leur appel à la paix, sous la houlette de Damien Le Guay, lui-même philosophe, attentif aux signes du temps présent. Un livre pour apprendre et enfin savoir. Un vibrant plaidoyer contre la tentation identitaire et conflictuelle. Un ouvrage salutaire à lire, à méditer et à transmettre."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In this challenging study, André Gallois proposes and defends a thesis about the character of our knowledge of our own intentional states. Taking up issues at the centre of attention in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology, he examines accounts of self-knowledge by such philosophers as Donald Davidson, Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright, and advances his own view that, without relying on observation, we are able justifiably to attribute to ourselves propositional attitudes, such as belief, that we consciously (...) hold. His study will be of wide interest to philosophers concerned with questions about self-knowledge. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked (...) by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)

Lorenz proposed in his (1935) articulation of a theory of behavioral instincts that the objective of ethology is to distinguish behaviors that are “innate” from behaviors that are “learned” (or “acquired”). Lorenz’s motive was to open the investigation of certain “adaptive” behaviors to evolutionary theorizing. Accordingly, since innate behaviors are “genetic”, they are open to such investigation. By Lorenz’s light an innate/acquired or learned dichotomy rested on a familiar Darwinian distinction between genes and environments. Ever since Lorenz, ascriptions of innateness (...) have become widespread in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences. The trend continues despite decades of strong arguments that show, in particular, the dichotomy that Lorenz invoked in his theory of behavioral instincts is literally false: no biological trait is the product of genes alone. Some critics suggest that the failure of Lorenz’s account shows that innateness is not well-defined in biology and the practice of ascribing innateness to various biological traits should be dropped from respectable science. Elsewhere (Ariew 1996) I argued that despite the arguments of critics, there really is a biological phenomenon underlying the concept of innateness. On my view, innateness is best understood in terms of C.H. Waddington’s concept of “canalization”, i.e. the degree to which a trait is innate is the degree to which its developmental outcome is canalized. The degree to which a developmental outcome is canalized is the degree to which the developmental process is bound to produce a particular endstate despite environmental fluctuations both in the development’s initial state and during the course of development. The canalization account differs in many ways to the traditional ways that ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz originally understood the concept of innateness. Most importantly, on the canalization account the distinction between innate and acquired is not a dichotomy, as Konrad Lorenz had it, but rather a matter of degree difference that lies along a spectrum with highly canalized development outcomes on the one end and highly environmentally sensitive development outcomes on the other end. Nevertheless, I justified the canalization account on the basis of a set of desiderata or criteria that I suggested falls-out of what seemed uncontroversial about Lorenz’s account of innateness (briefly): innateness is a property of a developing individual, innateness denotes environmental stability, and innate-ascriptions are useful in certain natural selection explanations (more below). From that same set of desiderata I argued (in my 1996) that neither the concept of heritability nor of norms of reactions—two concepts from population genetics—suffice to ground innateness. In this essay, I wish to provide further support of the canalization account in two ways. First, I wish to better motivate the desiderata by revisiting a debate between Konrad Lorenz and Daniel Lehrman over the meaning and explanatory usefulness of innate ascriptions in ethology. Second, I wish to compare my canalization account of innateness with accounts proposed by contemporary philosophers, one by Stephen Stich (1975), another by Elliott Sober (forthcoming), and a third by William Wimsatt (1986). (shrink)

Le present ouvrage propose une etude systematique de la conception de la condition humaine contenue dans Condition de l'homme moderne de H. Arendt. Il en eclaire l'orientation, a la fois par rapport a la tradition ancienne et classique de la philosophie et par rapport au contexte immediat de la phenomenologie et de l'existentialisme contemporains. Il met en evidence une structure de la condition humaine, un agencement des differentes conditions qui la composent et l'accent mis par Arendt sur un pluriel de (...) conditions de base plus que sur les traits generaux habituellement mis en avant (la finitude, la mortalite). Outre la triade bien connue des trois activites fondamentales, le travail, l'oeuvre, l'action, il explicite une triade d'activites mentales, l'intelligence, la connaissance et la pensee. Il examine le statut de la pensee dans la condition humaine et le paradoxe de sa capacite de retrait par rapport a elle. La conception arendtienne de la condition humaine, non depassee a ce jour, est une reference capitale pour l'humanite, aujourd'hui inquiete de l'avenir de son monde. La version allemande du livre de Arendt, remaniee par rapport a l'edition anglaise originale, est prise en compte. (shrink)

Contemporary society needs the recognition of a moral middle ground, where human behavior can be evaluated as permissible, understandable, or even valuable. As a counterforce to polarization and divisive politics, an identity model is proposed in which individual and group identities are transcended by a human and ecological identity.