"It is a real joy to be guided by Francoise Dastur in a reading of Heidegger's Being and Time, one of the greatest books of this century. With an exceptional competence, rigorous analysis, and a great clarity of expression, she first undertakes to reconstruct the very meaning of the ontological question for which the investigation of temporality provides a preliminary answer." --Paul Ricoeur.

Comment vivre tout en sachant qu'on doit mourir? Ne faut-il pas, pour que l'existence humaine soit possible, situer la condition mortelle de l'homme par rapport à une éternité qui lui donne sens? A une telle conception, il s'agit d'opposer l'idée d'une assomption de la mortalité et parvenir ainsi à voir dans la mort non pas une limite mais bien une ressource. Au-delà de nos répulsions et de nos fascinations, Françoise Dastur nous propose un rapport authentique avec la vie.

Ce qui a fait naitre l'emerveillement des premiers penseurs grecs, c'est qu'il y a quelque chose plutot que rien, et c'est la ce qui a donne le coup d'envoi a cette pensee de l'etre qui s'est developpee de Parmenide a Aristote et qui constitue le fondement de la philosophie occidentale. On trouve cependant, deja dans la pensee grecque, une denegation de la possibilite d'un discours sur l'etre, d'abord chez Gorgias, contemporain de Socrate, puis chez le fondateur de l'ecole sceptique, Pyrrhon. (...) Et a l'epoque meme ou Parmenide ecrivait son poeme, une pensee de la vacuite et du neant commencait a se developper en Orient dans le cadre du bouddhisme, laquelle met profondement en question la notion meme d'ontologie. Or c'est precisement cette pensee du rien qui resurgit en Occident a la fin de l'age classique, avec ce premier philosophe veritablement moderne qu'est Kant, dans son Essai sur les grandeurs negatives et cette Table du Rien qui, dans La Critique de la raison pure, clot l'Analytique transcendantale. Et c'est le concept de negativite qui va former chez Hegel la matrice meme de la pensee dialectique, alors que celui du neant constituera le coeur de la critique du nihilisme qu'entreprendra Nietzsche, avant de redevenir, avec le Heidegger de Qu'est-ce que la metaphysique?, avec le Sartre de L'Etre et le neant, et avec le dernier Merleau-Ponty, auteur de ce livre inacheve qu'est Le Visible et l'Invisible, un theme fondamental de la pensee de l'apparaitre.Une telle pensee du neant et de la negation traversant la frontiere qui separe l'Orient de l'Occident, il s'agira donc, en prenant comme reference majeure la pensee heideggerienne, d'en interroger les diverses figures, d'abord chez Gorgias et Pyrrhon, puis chez Nagarjuna, le plus grand penseur du bouddhisme indien (ii-iiie siecle) et chez Nishida (1870-1945), representant fameux de l'ecole de Kyoto et du bouddhisme zen, avant d'en venir a l'idealisme allemand avec Kant et Hegel, a la question du nihilisme europeen avec Schopenhauer, Nietzsche et Heidegger, puis a la phenomenologie avec Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty et Maldiney. (shrink)

Dastur is well respected in France and Europe for her mastery of phenomenology as a movement and her clear and cogent explications of phenomenology in movement. These qualities are on display in this remarkable set of essays. The book is organized into four areas of inquiry: Language and Logic, Ego and Other, Temporality and History,and Finitude and Mortality. In each, Dastur guides the reader through a series of phenomenological questions that also serve to call phenomenology itself into question, (...) testing its limits and pushing it in newdirections. Taking a cue from Merleau-Ponty, Dastur sees phenomenology not as a doctrine, a catalogue of concepts and catchphrases authored by a single thinker, but rather as a movement in which several thinkers participate, each one contributing to and inflecting the development of the movement in unique ways. She thus draws inspiration from Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Fink, and Patocka, moving with ease from one thinker's conceptual vocabulary and outlook to the next's, feeling at home in each, and communicating their central ideas with clarity.Through her critical and productive dialogue with multiple phenomenological thinkers, Dastur concisely shows one thinker's debts to and departures from another and reveals the limits of one's approach while highlighting the innovation of another's. She does this judiciously, without choosing sides, because for her, phenomenology is above all a way of thinking through a problem and practicing a method. The fecundity of the movement is appreciated only by participating in it--it has always thought of itself as philosophical research undertaken by and through a community of thinkers who share certain fundamental questions and ways of approaching those questions, even if their responses to these questions often differ. In this regard, Dastur is both one of the clearest guides to phenomenology and one of France's most able practitioners of phenomenology. (shrink)

Les travaux de Françoise Dastur portent sur la phénoménologie et l'herméneutique ainsi que sur l'idéalisme allemand. Tout en privilégiant la question du langage et de la poésie, notamment dans l'oeuvre de Hiilderlin, elle s'attache à élucider le sens de notre expérience mondaine, par-delà tout positivisme et tout théologisme. Il s'agit, dans le prolongement de la pensée de Heidegger, de s'ouvrir à ce qui advient et de tenter de dire cette entrée en présence de l'apparaître qui se dérobe sans cesse (...) à la prise de nos concepts. Dans cette perspective, la philosophe ne manque pas d'interroger la pensée orientale : comment ne pas tenter d'entrer en dialogue avec d'autres formes de pensée, qui peuvent peut-être rendre compte de manière plus adéquate de cet événement qu'est l'apparaître? (shrink)

: Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Translated by David Farrell Krell. This essay continues the project, also found in "Qui est le Zarathoustra de Nietzsche?" published in first issue of this journal, of discerning the importance of Asian sources for emergent modern European thought. It explores Novalis's relation to the now mostly neglected Sanskrit myth (and play by Kālidāsa) of Shakuntala, clarifying its importance for Novalis's view of the interpenetration of the visible and the invisible and the need for a visual symbol, such as the ring, (...) as pointer and reminder of the invisible's fullness and pervasiveness, in this world, as Love. (shrink)

Donner une idée plus dynamique de l'enchevêtrement des voies de la réflexion de Husserl en s'attachant aux problèmes cruciaux rencontrés dans son entreprise de fondation de la phénoménologie comme science rigoureuse, tel est le choix de l'auteur.

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality. In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes. Science has thus exacerbated our reciprocal habits of blaming nature when we act badly and labeling the (...) good things we do as "humane." Seeking the origin of human morality not in evolution but in human culture, science insists that we are moral by choice, not by nature. Citing remarkable evidence based on his extensive research of primate behavior, de Waal attacks "Veneer Theory," which posits morality as a thin overlay on an otherwise nasty nature. He explains how we evolved from a long line of animals that care for the weak and build cooperation with reciprocal transactions. Drawing on both Darwin and recent scientific advances, de Waal demonstrates a strong continuity between human and animal behavior. In the process, he also probes issues such as anthropomorphism and human responsibilities toward animals. Based on the Tanner Lectures de Waal delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2004, Primates and Philosophers includes responses by the philosophers Peter Singer, Christine M. Korsgaard, and Philip Kitcher and the science writer Robert Wright. They press de Waal to clarify the differences between humans and other animals, yielding a lively debate that will fascinate all those who wonder about the origins and reach of human goodness. (shrink)

In this book two of the leading figures in argumentation theory present a view of argumentation as a means of resolving differences of opinion by testing the acceptability of the disputed positions. Their model of a 'critical discussion' serves as a theoretical tool for analysing, evaluating and producing argumentative discourse. They develop a method for the reconstruction of argumentative discourse that takes into account all aspects that are relevant to a critical assessment. They also propose a practical code of behaviour (...) for discussants who want to resolve their differences in a reasonable way. This is a major contribution to the study of argumentation and will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy. (shrink)

On sait que, depuis la parution des Recherches logiques de Husserl, le terme de phenomenologie ne designe plus, comme c'etait encore le cas chez Hegel, une discipline particuliere, mais une nouvelle conception de ce que doit etre la philosophie. Ce qui a en effet donne a l'entreprise husserlienne sa fecondite, c'est l'idee, reprise aux anciens, que le travail philosophique doit etre mene en commun et exige par consequent le concours de plusieurs penseurs. Mais ce qui rassemble ceux-ci, c'est moins l'unite (...) d'une doctrine et l'appartenance a une ecole de pensee que la pratique d'une methode. De ce mouvement phenomenologique, auquel appartiennent tant de philosophes du siecle dernier, il n'est certes pas question de dresser un iventaire exhaustif. Ce que l'on se propose simplement ici, c'est d'en donner un apercu qui mette d'ailleurs moins l'accent sur les noms propres des penseurs que sur les problemes qu'ils ont partages. Les essais reunis dans ce volume sont en effet tous consacres a un petit nombre de questions fondamentales - celles du langage et de la logique, du moi et de l'autre, de la temporalite et de l'histoire, de la finitude et de la mortalite -, au sujet desquelles un dialogue a paru se nouer entre certaines des figures les plus eminentes de la nebuleuse phenomenologique: Husserl et Heidegger surtout, mais aussi Fink, Patocka, Merleau-Ponty, et plus pres encore de nous, Gadamer, Levinas, Ricoeur. (shrink)

The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call 'closed quotation'. The other main type, 'open quotation', is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotation has been (...) drawn and properly appreciated, it is tempting to consider that only closed quotation is relevant to semantics. Open quotation is more a matter of pragmatics: it is a matter of what people do with words, rather than a matter of content and truth-conditions. In this way one can provide the beginning of a justification for the neglect of open quotation in current semantic theorizing. There is some truth in this view, yet the phenomenon of 'mixed quotation', investigated at length in this paper, is interesting precisely because it shows that things are not so simple. Important issues concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics will thus be raised. (shrink)

L'auteure démontre que Heidegger ne dissout pas l'ontologie dans le logique mais rend philosophique la logique, comme logos à la fois poétique et raison.

In Waartoe Wetenschap? onderzoekt Frans W. Saris de wetenschap in evolutionair perspectief en hij bepleit een radical enlightenment in een dertiental essays en een toneeltekst waarin zulke uiteenlopende wetenschappers verschijnen als ...

Leading scholars address the ethical and practical dimensions of Heidegger's thought.

De la pensee qui n'est plus metaphysique, Heidegger dit qu'elle est moindre que la philosophie, plus pauvre que celle-ci, precisement parce qu'elle ne se tient plus a la hauteur d'une pensee de la fondation et que, loin de pouvoir rendre compte d'elle-meme, elle est, dans sa finitude et son essence provisoire, tout entiere au service de ce a quoi elle repond, a savoir l'evenement meme de l'etre. Ce a quoi une telle pensee donne conge, c'est en effet a la structure (...) onto-theo-logique du discours metaphysique de la fondation, au profit de ce que Heidegger nomme, dans son dernier seminaire, une phenomenologie de l'inapparent. On ne peut guere s'autoriser de cette expression pour arguer, comme on l'a fait deja bien des fois, d'une derive vers la poetique ou la mystique de la pensee heideggerienne. Car cet inapparent ne renvoie a aucun arriere-monde, mais seulement a cette inapparence qui reside en tout apparaitre, a cet etre de l'etant que la philosophie au sens traditionnel de ce terme n'est parvenu a penser que sous la figure etante du fondement. C'est dire que ce que Heidegger nomme fin de la philosophie ne signifie nullement son aneantissement, mais ouvre au contraire la possibilite d'une appropriation plus authentique de ce qui a ete en question depuis le depart en elle. A la fin de la Lettre sur l'humanisme, Heidegger declarait: La pensee a venir ne sera plus philosophie, parce qu'elle pensera plus originellement que la metaphysique, mot qui designe la meme chose. C'est de cette pensee plus originelle, telle que Heidegger n'a cesse d'en preparer la venue depuis les annees trente, dont il est question dans les essais reunis dans ce recueil. (shrink)

BackgroundThe emphasis on impact factors and the quantity of publications intensifies competition between researchers. This competition was traditionally considered an incentive to produce high-quality work, but there are unwanted side-effects of this competition like publication pressure. To measure the effect of publication pressure on researchers, the Publication Pressure Questionnaire (PPQ) was developed. Upon using the PPQ, some issues came to light that motivated a revision.MethodWe constructed two new subscales based on work stress models using the facet method. We administered the (...) revised PPQ (PPQr) to a convenience sample together with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ). To assess which items best measured publication pressure, we carried out a principal component analysis (PCA). Reliability was sufficient when Cronbach’s alpha > 0.7. Finally, we administered the PPQr in a larger, independent sample of researchers to check the reliability of the revised version.ResultsThree components were identified as ‘stress’, ‘attitude’, and ‘resources’. We selected 3 × 6 = 18 items with high loadings in the three-component solution. Based on the convenience sample, Cronbach’s alphas were 0.83 for stress, 0.80 for attitude, and 0.76 for resources. We checked the validity of the PPQr by inspecting the correlations with the MBI and the WDQ. Stress correlated 0.62 with MBI’s emotional exhaustion. Resources correlated 0.50 with relevant WDQ subscales. To assess the internal structure of the PPQr in the independent reliability sample, we conducted the principal component analysis. The three-component solution explains 50% of the variance. Cronbach’s alphas were 0.80, 0.78, and 0.75 for stress, attitude, and resources, respectively.ConclusionWe conclude that the PPQr is a valid and reliable instrument to measure publication pressure in academic researchers from all disciplinary fields. The PPQr strongly relates to burnout and could also be beneficial for policy makers and research institutions to assess the degree of publication pressure in their institute. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the exceptional severity of the Spanish flu, one of the most deadly events in recorded human history, is an unsolved mystery. However, even detailed aspects such as its W-shaped mortality curve are well explained by Paul Ewald’s theory of the evolution of virulence. Understanding the causes of the Spanish flu will help to prevent future epidemics.

Ce troisième numéro des Cahiers de philosophie de Paris XII Val-de-Marne comporte deux parties bien distinctes qui correspondent aux activités du Centre de recherches sur la philosophie hellénistique et romaine que dirige Carlos Lévy et du Centre d'études phénoménologiques que dirige Françoise Dastur. La partie antique est consacrée à la philosophie hellénistique (épicurisme et scepticisme néopyrrhonien) ainsi qu'au moyen et néo-platonisme. L'association de ces périodes que l'histoire de la philosophie ancienne a trop tendance à étudier séparément permet une perception (...) diachronique qui met mieux en valeur les éléments de continuité et les différences entre ces textes. La partie phénoménologique rassemble les actes d'un séminaire et d'un colloque auquel ont collaboré de nombreux chercheurs. Elle atteste avec éclat la très grande vigueur et l'extraordinaire diversité des recherches actuelles dans ce domaine, en France comme dans la plupart des pays européens. (shrink)

The use of biotechnology in food productiongives rise to consumer concerns. The term ``consumerconcern'' is often used as a container notion. Itincludes concerns about food safety, environmental andanimal welfare consequences of food productionsystems, and intrinsic moral objections againstgenetic modification. In order to create clarity adistinction between three different kinds of consumerconcern is proposed. Consumer concerns can be seen assigns of loss of trust. Maintaining consumer trustasks for governmental action. Towards consumerconcerns, governments seem to have limitedpossibilities for public policy. Under current (...) WTOregulations designed to prevent trade disputes,governments can only limit their policies to 1) safetyregulation based upon sound scientific evidence and 2)the stimulation of a system of product labeling. Ananalysis of trust, however, can show that ifgovernments limit their efforts in this way, they willnot do enough to avoid the types of consumer concernsthat diminish trust. The establishment of a technicalbody for food safety – although perhaps necessary –is in itself not enough, because concerns that relatedirectly to food safety cannot be solved by ``pure''science alone. And labeling can only be a good way totake consumer concerns seriously if these concerns arerelated to consumer autonomy. For consumer concernsthat are linked to ideas about a good society,labeling can only provide a solution if it is seen asan addition to political action rather than as itssubstitution. Labeling can help consumers take uptheir political responsibility. As citizens, consumershave certain reasonable concerns that can justifiableinfluence the market. In a free-market society, theyare, as buyers, co-creators of the market, andsocietal steering is partly done by the market.Therefore, they need the information to co-create thatmarket. The basis of labeling in these cases, however,is not the good life of the individual but thepolitical responsibility people have in their role asparticipants in a free-market. Then, public concernsare taken seriously. Labeling in that case does nottake away the possibilities of reaching politicalgoals, but it adds a possibility. (shrink)

Frans van Eemeren, Bart Garssen, & Bert Meuffels: Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules Content Type Journal Article Pages 375-381 DOI 10.1007/s10503-010-9183-6 Authors Dale Hample, University of Maryland College Park MD 20742 USA Journal Argumentation Online ISSN 1572-8374 Print ISSN 0920-427X Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 3.

BackgroundConcerns about research misbehavior in academic science have sparked interest in the factors that may explain research misbehavior. Often three clusters of factors are distinguished: individual factors, climate factors and publication factors. Our research question was: to what extent can individual, climate and publication factors explain the variance in frequently perceived research misbehaviors?MethodsFrom May 2017 until July 2017, we conducted a survey study among academic researchers in Amsterdam. The survey included three measurement instruments that we previously reported individual results of (...) and here we integrate these findings.ResultsOne thousand two hundred ninety-eight researchers completed the survey. Results showed that individual, climate and publication factors combined explained 34% of variance in perceived frequency of research misbehavior. Individual factors explained 7%, climate factors explained 22% and publication factors 16%.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the perceptions of the research climate play a substantial role in explaining variance in research misbehavior. This suggests that efforts to improve departmental norms might have a salutary effect on behavior. (shrink)

How, asks Françoise Dastur, can philosophy account for the sudden happening and the factuality of the event? Dastur asks how phenomenology, in particular the work of Heidegger, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, may be interpreted as offering such an account. She argues that the "paradoxical capacity of expecting surprise is always in question in phenomenology," and for this reason, she concludes, "We should not oppose phenomenology and the thinking of the event. We should connect them; openness to phenomena must be (...) identified with openness to unpredictability." The article offers reflections in these terms on a phenomenology of birth. (shrink)

In the pragma-dialectical approach, fallacies are considered incorrect moves in a discussion for which the goal is successful resolution of a dispute. Ten rules are given for effective conduct at the various stages of such a critical discussion (confrontation, opening, argumentation, concluding). Fallacies are discussed as violations of these rules, taking into account all speech acts which are traditionally recognized as fallacies. Special attention is paid to the role played by implicitness in fallacies in everyday language use. It is stressed (...) that identifying and acknowledging fallacies in ordinary discussions always has a conditional character. Differences between the pragma-dialectical perspective, the Standard Treatment, and the formal logic approach to fallacy analysis are discussed. (shrink)

The central notion in this article is ‘pluriform accommodation,’ a term that we have coined to defend two lines of thought. The first is a plea for inclusive and consequential neutrality; the second is a closely linked plea for reasonable accommodation. With ‘pluriform accommodation’ we emphasize that the multicultural recognition scope should be expanded. The need for inclusive and accommodative rules, laws, and practices is a matter of principle and as such cannot be reduced to the inclusion of people with (...) an immigration background who bring with them all kinds of ethnocultural and religious practices, convictions, and traditions. Furthermore, the enshrined freedom of religion does not provide the needed protection for the multiplicity of conscientious identifications, convictions, and strong allegiances that might be central to one’s sense of self. We argue that we should not engage in (top down) debates about the rights of individuals and groups of different types and think in terms of identity hierarchies, but instead should consider the various claims being made (bottom up), aiming for common standards and criteria to assess the validity of these claims and the reasonableness of the associated accommodations. (shrink)

This theoretical expose explores the complex notion of argumentative style, which has so far been largely neglected in argumentation theory. After an introduction of the problems involved, the theoretical tools for identifying the properties of the discourse in which an argumentative style manifests itself are explained from a pragma-dialectical perspective and a theoretical definition of argumentative style is provided that does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The article concludes with a short reflection upon the next steps that (...) need to be taken in argumentation theory in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style. (shrink)

Although there is a consensus among philosophers of mathematics and mathematicians that mathematical explanations exist, only a few authors have proposed accounts of explanation in mathematics. These accounts fit into the unificationist or top-down approach to explanation. We argue that these models can be complemented by a bottom-up approach to explanation in mathematics. We introduce the mechanistic model of explanation in science and discuss the possibility of using this model in mathematics, arguing that using it does not presuppose a Platonist (...) view of mathematics and allows one to gain insight into why a theorem is true by answering what-if-things-had-been-different questions. (shrink)