Hierdie boek is n inleiding tot moderne denkrigtings wat alle fasette van die staat betref. Dit verduidelik die verbintenis tussen die huidige proses van staatsvorming in Suid-Afrika en die tradisionele faktore wat dit elders in die w reld aangehelp het.

Du temps du confinement et de la dévastation qui affectent si profondément notre sens de la temporalité, la philosophie aurait-elle quelque chose à dire? L’occasion en tout cas de relire quelques textes d’Aristote et d’Augustin et d’essayer de nous orienter dans Être et temps de Heidegger en nous interrogeant sur l’expression avoir le temps au moment où, pour chacun, s’amenuise le temps qui reste.

This enlarged edition of Mario Bunge's Dictionary of Philosophy is a superb reference work for both students and professional philosophers.

Comment écrire sur Bataille sans s’épargner et se mettre soi-même hors jeu sinon en entrant dans le jeu de ce qu’on appellera, en un sens majeur, la parodie ? Dans ce retour, dans cet éternel retour des pensées et des mots – dans cette déconstruction créatrice qu’est la réécriture – Bataille n’y entra-t-il pas lui même en écrivant sur Nietzsche ?

Animal ethicists have been debating the morality of speciesism for over forty years. Despite rather persuasive arguments against this form of discrimination, many philosophers continue to assign humans a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. The primary source of evidence for this position is our intuition that humans’ interests matter more than the similar interests of other animals. And it must be acknowledged that this intuition is both powerful and widespread. But should we trust it for all that? The present (...) paper defends a negative answer to that question, based on a debunking argument. The intuitive belief that humans matter more than other animals is unjustified because it results from an epistemically defective process. It is largely shaped by tribalism, our tendency to favor ingroup members as opposed to outgroup members. And this influence is distortive for two reasons. First, tribalism evolved for reasons unrelated to moral truths; hence, it would at best produce true moral beliefs accidentally. Second, tribalism generates a vast quantity of false moral beliefs, starting with racist beliefs. Once this intuition is discarded, little evidence remains that speciesism is morally acceptable. (shrink)

In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Félix Guattari was a political militant and the director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was quite unlikely, yet the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including _Anti-Oedipus_, _What Is Philosophy?_ and _A Thousand Plateaus_. (...) François Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history—particularly the turbulent time of May 1968—play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles. (shrink)

SummaryIn this paper I discuss two influential views in the philosophy of mind: the two‐component picture draws a distinction between ‘narrow content’ and ‘broad content’, while radical externalism denies that there is such a thing as narrow content. I argue that ‘narrow content’ is ambiguous, and that the two views can be reconciled. Instead of considering that there is only one question and three possible answers corresponding to Cartesian internalism, the two‐component picture, and radical externalism respectively, I show that (...) there are two distinct questions: ‘Are mental contents internal to the individual?’ and, ‘Are mental contents analysable in two‐components?’ Both questions can be given a positive or a negative answer, in such a way that there are four, rather than three, possible views to be distinguished. The extra view whose possibility emerges in this framework is that which mixes radical externalism with the two‐component picture. It agrees with radical externalism that there cannot be ‘solipsistic’ contents: content is not an intrinsic property of the states of an individual organism, but a relational property. It also agrees with the two‐component picture, on a certain interpretation: the broad content of a psychological state depends upon what actually causes that state, but the narrow content depends only on what normally causes this type of state to occur. In the last section of the paper, I deal with internal representation which seem to be independent even of the normal environment. I show that such contents are themselves independent of the normal environment only in a relative sense: they are locally independent of the normal environment, yet still depend on it via the concepts to which they are connected in the concept system. (shrink)

SummaryIn this paper I discuss two influential views in the philosophy of mind: the two‐component picture draws a distinction between ‘narrow content’ and ‘broad content’, while radical externalism denies that there is such a thing as narrow content. I argue that ‘narrow content’ is ambiguous, and that the two views can be reconciled. Instead of considering that there is only one question and three possible answers corresponding to Cartesian internalism, the two‐component picture, and radical externalism respectively, I show that (...) there are two distinct questions: ‘Are mental contents internal to the individual?’ and, ‘Are mental contents analysable in two‐components?’ Both questions can be given a positive or a negative answer, in such a way that there are four, rather than three, possible views to be distinguished. The extra view whose possibility emerges in this framework is that which mixes radical externalism with the two‐component picture. It agrees with radical externalism that there cannot be ‘solipsistic’ contents: content is not an intrinsic property of the states of an individual organism, but a relational property. It also agrees with the two‐component picture, on a certain interpretation: the broad content of a psychological state depends upon what actually causes that state, but the narrow content depends only on what normally causes this type of state to occur. In the last section of the paper, I deal with internal representation which seem to be independent even of the normal environment. I show that such contents are themselves independent of the normal environment only in a relative sense: they are locally independent of the normal environment, yet still depend on it via the concepts to which they are connected in the concept system. (shrink)

-- t. 2. Origines médiévales de la science.

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, François Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese strategies work in several domains (the battlefield, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory (...) effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien’s brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, A Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West. (shrink)

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism, naturalism, and fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which they (...) are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be made to vary with the (...) values introduced by operators in the sentence. I show that Stanley's argument rests on a fallacy, and I provide alternative analyses of the data. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper considerations than its recent critics recognize, (...) and that much would be lost in opting for the explanation of normative disputes as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

Illusionists about phenomenal consciousness claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist but merely seems to exist. At the same time, it is quite intuitive for there to be some kind of link between phenomenality and value. For example, some situations seem good or bad in virtue of the conscious experiences they feature. Illusionist views of phenomenal consciousness then face what I call the normative challenge. They have to say where they stand regarding the idea that there is a link between (...) phenomenality and value. If they accept that there is such a link, they might be committed to revisionary normative consequences (and some of them may prove to be uncomfortable). If they deny that there is such link, they might avoid revisionary normative consequences (without being guaranteed against them) but then they have to give reasons to deny that such link obtains, which is not a trivial task. The existence of the normative challenge does not show that illusionism is false, but it shows that illusionism might have important consequences in the normative domain, which have to be clarified. (shrink)

In the first English translation of his work, Laruelle explores the major European thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida to define his own 'non-philosophical' ...

Many people believe that human interests matter much more than the like interests of non-human animals, and this “speciesist belief” plays a crucial role in the philosophical debate over the moral status of animals. In this paper, I develop a debunking argument against it. My contention is that this belief is unjustified because it is largely due to an off-track process: our attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance generated by the “meat paradox”. Most meat-eaters believe that it is wrong to (...) harm animals unnecessarily, yet they routinely and deliberately behave in ways that cause great unnecessary suffering to animals. As recent research suggests, this practical inconsistency puts them in an unpleasant state of dissonance, which they try to escape by resolving the paradox. And they do so in part by adopting the speciesist belief—if animal suffering matters much less than human suffering, then harming animals cannot be so wrong after all. Since this belief-forming process does not track moral truth, I conclude that we are not justified in believing that human interests matter more than the similar interests of non-humans. (shrink)

Common sense has it that animals matter considerably less than humans; the welfare and suffering of a cow, a chicken or a fish are important but not as much as the welfare and suffering of a human being. Most animal ethicists reject this “speciesist” view as mere prejudice. In their opinion, there is no difference between humans and other animals that could justify such unequal consideration. In the opposite camp, advocates of speciesism have long tried to identify a difference that (...) would fit the bill, but they have consistently seemed to fail. In light of this, some naturally began to appeal to Moorean arguments: the case against speciesism must be flawed somehow, these philosophers maintain, because speciesism is supported by a strong and widespread intuition. This chapter draws on recent findings in social psychology to criticize this defence of speciesism. It argues that the strong and widespread intuition that humans count more than animals is epistemically defective because it is causally shaped by a pair of irrelevant influences: cognitive dissonance and tribalism. Accordingly, it is no suitable basis for a Moorean argument. (shrink)

The variety-of-evidence thesis has been criticized by Bovens and Hartmann. This article points to two limitations of their Bayesian model: the conceptualization of unreliable evidential sources as randomizing and the restriction to comparing full independence to full dependence. It is shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis is rehabilitated when unreliable sources are reconceptualized as systematically biased. However, it turns out that allowing for degrees of independence leads to a qualification of the variety-of-evidence thesis: as Bovens and Hartmann claimed, more independence does (...) not always imply stronger confirmation. (shrink)

In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy,Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English usesthe Chinese concept of shi - meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential - as atouchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking.A Hegelian prejudice still haunts studies of ancient Chinese civilization:Chinese thought, never able to evolve beyond a cosmological point of view, with an indifference toany notion (...) of telos, sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself. In thisgroundbreaking study, prejudices toward the simplicity and "naiveté" of Chinese thought, Hegelianand otherwise, are dismantled one by one to reveal the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking and representing reality.Jullien begins with a single Chinese term, shi,whose very ambivalence and disconcerting polysemy, on the one hand, and simple efficacy, on theother, defy the order of a concept. Yet shi insinuates itself into the ordering and conditioning ofreality in all its manifold and complex representations. Because shi neither gave rise to anycoherent, general analysis nor figured as one of the major concepts among Chinese thinkers, Jullienfollows its appearance from one field to another: from military strategy to politics; from theaesthetics of calligraphy and painting to the theory of literature; and from reflection on historyto "first philosophy."At the point where these various domains intersect, a fundamental intuitionassumed self-evident for centuries emerges, namely, that reality - every kind of reality - may beperceived as a particular deployment or arrangement of things to be relied upon and worked to one'sadvantage. Art or wisdom, as conceived by the Chinese, lies in strategically exploiting thepropensity that emanates from this particular configuration of reality. (shrink)

A critique of the purely semantic, minimalist notion of 'what is said'.

This article maintains that an important class of scientific generalizations should be reinterpreted: they have typically been understood as ceteris paribus laws, but are, in fact, generics. Four arguments are presented to support this thesis. One argument is that the interpretation in terms of ceteris paribus laws is a historical accident. The other three arguments draw on similarities between these generalizations and archetypal generics: they come with similar inferential commitments, they share a syntactic form, and the existing theories to make (...) sense of them are alike. Once these generalizations are properly understood as generics, the recent cognitive approach to generics can be extended to the study of the relevant sciences. The last section indicates ways in which this extension is fruitful for the two strands of research that we combine: the philosophy of science literature on generalizations and the semantics literature on generics. (shrink)

L'auteur consacre sa réflexion à l'amplification et à l'achèvement de la non-philosophie, en combinant science et philosophie qui sont considérées comme des variables définissant un espace ondulatoire et particulaire de l'opération de penser.

This article examines two theses formulated by Russo and Williamson in their study of causal inference in the health sciences. The two theses are assessed against evidence from a specific case in the social sciences, i.e., research on the institutional determinants of the aggregate unemployment rate. The first Russo–Williamson Thesis is that a causal claim can only be established when it is jointly supported by difference-making and mechanistic evidence. This thesis is shown not to hold. While researchers in my case (...) study draw extensively on both types of evidence, one causal claim out of the three analyzed is established even though it is exclusively supported by mechanistic evidence. The second Russo–Williamson Thesis is that standard accounts of causality fail to handle the dualist epistemology highlighted in the first Thesis. I argue that a counterfactual-manipulationist account of causality—which is endorsed by many philosophers as well as many social scientists—can perfectly make sense of the typical strategy in my case study to draw on both difference-making and mechanistic evidence; it is just an instance of the common strategy of increasing evidential variety. (shrink)

The neutral theory of biodiversity assumes that coexisting organisms are equally able to survive, reproduce and disperse, but predicts that stochastic fluctuations of these abilities drive diversity dynamics. It predicts remarkably well many biodiversity patterns, although substantial evidence for the role of niche variation across organisms seems contradictory. Here, we discuss this apparent paradox by exploring the meaning and implications of ecological equivalence. We address the question whether neutral theory provides an explanation for biodiversity patterns and acknowledges causal processes. We (...) underline that ecological equivalence, although central to neutral theory, can emerge at local and regional scales from niche-based processes through equalizing and stabilizing mechanisms. Such emerging equivalence corresponds to a weak conception of neutral theory, as opposed to the assumption of strict equivalence at individual level in the strong conception. We show that this duality is related to diverging views on hypothesis-testing and modeling in ecology. In addition, the stochastic dynamics exposed in neutral theory are pervasive in ecological systems and, rather than a null hypothesis, ecological equivalence is best understood as a parsimonious baseline to address biodiversity dynamics at multiple scales. (shrink)

La philosophie bergsonnienne a rendu le monde de ses contemporains moins opaque, les aidant à lui trouver un sens. Si la France cartésienne coïncide avec les partisans de la démocratie parlementaire ancrée à gauche, celle de Bergson recrute ses plus gros bataillons dans la droite nationale, conservatrice, mais également dans une gauche antiparlementaire, révolutionnaire.

Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences (...) on the kind of physicalism we should embrace. (shrink)

Explores how the French theory of philosophy, which became popular during the last three decades of the twentieth century, spread to America and examines the critical practices that French theory inspired.

Etre citoyen en démocratie ne consiste pas seulement à exercer le droit de vote. C'est aussi être impliqué dans le devenir d'une société dont chacun est responsable. Celle-ci se construit quotidiennement à travers des actes et des comportements qui sont inséparables de nos convictions et de nos choix. Etre citoyen, c'est donc aussi agir avec soi et sur soi. C'est être souverain sur soi. Pour être citoyen, il faut donc le vouloir, le concevoir, et trouver la bonne mesure, car nous (...) ne sommes pas souverains de droit divin. Pour le dire autrement, nous devons apprendre à être libres, au cœur même de notre finitude. (shrink)

Today, Louis Althusser’s work knows a singular destiny. Relatively unknown until the 1992 publication of his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever, his work has since been enriched by several volumes of previously unpublished texts, and the re-edition of works that have long been unavailable. All the conditions therefore, as suggested by the numerous works, articles and conferences dedicated to Althusser, seem to be in place for a critical reexamination of his thought. For many reasons, however, this has not been the (...) result at all. Beyond the slightly sterile polemics concerning the respective status of the “legitimate work” and the posthumous work, beyond the particularly sensitive question of the relation between biography and theory, beyond the quarrels of inheritance and the resentment towards both the man and the master, beyond the detours of a psychiatric commentary as little indifferent to the reality of the texts as of the “case,” we must admit a well-established fact: today, the field of Althusserian studies has not yet been constituted. Within the field of French philosophy, one cannot find a single profound study on the place of Althusser in the history of Marxism, the history of philosophy or epistemology. This is because this type of study more or less implicitly supposes a certain global evaluation of the kind that the work of Althusser seems particularly designed to discourage. How do we evaluate works that have not ceased to destroy themselves? How do we evaluate works so heterogeneous, in which flashes of brilliance inhabit the same space as shocking theoretical indignities? How do we bring together texts as stimulating as the celebrated, “Ideology and the Ideological Apparatus of the State,” with the rather unsettling, “On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production,” of which it is in certain details but a fragment? If the form of academic commentary seems impossible from the start, perhaps one can say the same of the project of separating the wheat from the chaff, of distinguishing “what is living and what is dead” in the work of Louis Althusser. Difficult to inscribe within the continuity of history, Althusser’s work is, in fact, irremediably enigmatic. All that passes this way, behind such fiercely proclaimed revelations, has itself formed a profoundly aporetic structure marked by the general uncertainty of any attempt at reading. For Althusser progressively destroys the theories that he could have advanced. Already troubling by itself, this phenomenon hides another even more disturbing one: there is without a doubt not a single Althusserian concept that, in its foundation, is not immediately affected by its opposite. Here we seek to show, through several limited examples, that such is the fundamental gesture of Althusser, and that it is in principle indistinguishable from his grandeur and misery. (shrink)

Precisely as he was repoliticizing his philosophy and criticizing his “theorist deviation”, Althusser wrote in 1967 that he did not know, after all, what was politics. In 1978, in Marx in his limits, he wrote that the classic Marxism “has never yet provided the beginning of an analysis answering the question : what can politics be about ?”. This article attempts to reconstruct the positivity of such remarks, on the basis of a sketch devoted in 1961 to the “Marxist (...) conception of politics”. In asking the question of what politics would look like in a communist regime, the “mature” Althusser undermines all Marxist conceptions of politics, starting with that of class struggles aiming at seizing State power - and even of class struggle per se. Moreover, he shakes Althusserianism even as it is barely taking shape. In his mention of “a zone which is not located in theoretical concepts, and which will be precisely the zone liberated by the end of classically conceived politics”, Althusser shows that politics can only take place when it is not located in any predetermined space. This non-situationability of politics takes its positive dimension when Althusser studies the “strange shaking of theory” operated in Machiavelli’s work. (shrink)

la 4e de couverture indique : "Nietzsche demandait : pourquoi avons-nous voulu le vrai plutôt que le non-vrai (ou l'incertitude ou l'ignorance)? La question se voudrait radicale, et même la plus radicale, mais elle est encore conçue du dedans de la tradition européenne, bien que la prenant à revers : elle ose toucher à la valeur de la vérité, mais sans sortir de sa référence : elle ne remet pas en question le monopole que la vérité à fait à la (...) pensée. Du point de vue de la sagesse, la question deviendrait : comme a-t-on pu - et fallait-il? - faire une " fixation " sur la vérité? Et si, au lieu que ce soit la sagesse qui n'aurait pas accédé a la philosophie qui, en Grèce, en se braquant sur le vrai, avait dérapé hors de la sagesse? Car si le sage est " sans idée ", comme il est dit le Confucius, c'est que toute idée avancée est déjà un parti pris sur la réalité. Aussi, en partant sur les traces estompées de la sagesse, souhaité-je revenir sur ce qui a pu échapper à la philosophie ; comme redonner consistance à son autre enfoui, expliciter sa cohérence. Autrement dit, que faisons-nous aujourd'hui de la sagesse? Et que peut être une logique de la sagesse - une " logique " sans logos?". (shrink)

This paper is not an article in a regular sense. It is a dialogue between François-David Sebbah, one of the two editors of this topical collection, and Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the most eminent representatives of the contemporary French Thought. This dialogue took place in the first half of 2022 in a written form, because of the sanitary restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and because Nancy was heavily sick. Sebbah sent to Nancy a text, corresponding to Section 2.1, (...) and Nancy responded to it with another text, corresponding to Section 2.2. Unfortunately, Nancy died on August 23, 2022, and could not revise his own text nor pursue the dialogue, as it was originally planned. For this reason, an introductory clarification by Sebbah, corresponding to Section 1, has been added. The purpose of such clarification is to introduce the reader to Nancy’s philosophy of technology—although technology never had a central role in Nancy’s reflections. In Section 2.1, Sebbah proposes a distinction between “French Theory,” “French Thought,” and “French Philosophy.” He also proposes a list of twelve possible intersections between the French Thought and the philosophy of technology. In Section 2.2, Nancy criticizes the use of expressions such as “French Thought.” He also insists, in a Heideggerian vein, on the fact that Technology (with a capital “T”) does not depend on human ends but has its own ends. (shrink)