Cette premiere synthese integrale de la pensee politique d'Emile Chartier (1868-1951, plus connu sous le pseudonyme d'Alain) se propose, a nouveaux frais et de maniere soigneusement contextualisee, de redonner a Alain la place majeure et singuliere qui lui revient dans l'histoire recente des idees : celle d'un penseur citoyen, d'un liberal de gauche compagnon de route du radicalisme, dont l'anti-etatisme, l'individualisme democratique et le rationalisme laique entrent en resonance profonde avec les preoccupations contemporaines. Jerome Perrier entend ainsi rendre justice (...) a cet insatiable chroniqueur, dont l'oeuvre a pati d'avoir ete disseminee en plusieurs milliers de Propos dans la presse de son epoque. Contre le cliche de philosophe pour classes terminales qu'on a parfois cru devoir lui accoler en raison de son style sans jargon, il campe un Alain a la fois clair et profond, soucieux d'etre comprehensible par tous, qui s'inscrit aussi dans la tradition des moralistes francais allant de Montaigne a Camus. (shrink)

"Le national-socialisme est un principe barbare", écrit Martin Heidegger dans ses Cahiers noirs, ajoutant : "C'est ce qui lui est essentiel et sa possible grandeur." Révolutionnaire radical, ayant vu et approuvé le caractère destructeur du nazisme, le recteur de Fribourg a réservé d'autres surprises dans ses journaux philosophiques, dans lesquels il évoque par exemple l'"auto-anéantissement du "juif"". Alors que le philosophe est devenu un objet d'incompréhension et d'horreur, nombre de spécialistes en appellent désormais à l'histoire. C'est cette réhistoricisation que l'auteur (...) a entreprise dans ce livre. Refusant la polémique, l'adoration et la détestation, il s'emploie à comprendre l'homme et le penseur, de l'intérieur et en son temps, par le biais de toutes les sources disponibles : cours, lettres, textes de circonstance, de même que ces Cahiers noirs qui suscitent tant d'émoi. Excédant largement le IIIe Reich, le cheminement de Heidegger fut heurté : il commença par un catholicisme intransigeant, qui laissa la place, après la Première Guerre mondiale, à une volonté farouche de révolution philosophique, terreau dans lequel son nazisme vint jeter de profondes racines qui survécurent à l'effondrement du régime d'Adolf Hitler. De cette biographie se dégage un portrait fait d'ombres et de lumières : grand philosophe, maître, ami ou amant de juifs ou d'étrangers, Heidegger fut aussi un nationaliste antisémite, inquiet de l'"enjuivement" de son peuple et soucieux de son rôle historique prééminent. (shrink)

Le philosophe Alain est rarement considéré comme un penseur politique de premier plan. À tort. Ses réflexions en la matière, nombreuses, sont beaucoup plus profondes et autrement plus originales qu'on ne le croit généralement, et l'inventeur des Propos est bien davantage que le simple « philosophe du bonheur pour classe terminale » qu'on a coutume de présenter - et de citer, beaucoup plus que de lire. Circonstance aggravante, sa philosophie politique, quoiqu'authentiquement démocrate, apparaît dans le même temps viscéralement individualiste et (...) libérale ; ce qui s'avère être une tare rédhibitoire aux yeux de beaucoup d'intellectuels français, et ce qui a certainement joué un rôle non négligeable dans l'oubli presque complet dans lequel est tombé cet aspect de son oeuvre au XXe siècle, c'est-à-dire à l'époque tragique des totalitarismes et de l'État-roi. Or, c'est précisément cette dimension de la pensée d'Alain que nous entendons ici mettre en valeur, avec l'intime conviction que cette oeuvre politique a encore beaucoup de choses à nous apprendre et qu'elle mérite sans le moindre doute de figurer au panthéon des plus grands classiques de la pensée libérale. (shrink)

Background: Ethics support services are growing in Europe to help doctors in dealing with ethical difficulties. Currently, insufficient attention has been focused on the experiences of doctors who have faced ethical difficulties in these countries to provide an evidence base for the development of these services.Methods: A survey instrument was adapted to explore the types of ethical dilemma faced by European doctors, how they ranked the difficulty of these dilemmas, their satisfaction with the resolution of a recent ethically difficult case (...) and the types of help they would consider useful. The questionnaire was translated and given to general internists in Norway, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.Results: Survey respondents ranged in age from 28 to 82 years, and averaged 25 years in practice. Only a minority reported having access to ethics consultation in individual cases. The ethical difficulties most often reported as being encountered were uncertain or impaired decision-making capacity , disagreement among caregivers and limitation of treatment at the end of life . The frequency of most ethical difficulties varied among countries, as did the type of issue considered most difficult. The types of help most often identified as potentially useful were professional reassurance about the decision being correct , someone capable of providing specific advice , help in weighing outcomes and clarification of the issues . Few of the types of help expected to be useful varied among countries.Conclusion: Cultural differences may indeed influence how doctors perceive ethical difficulties. The type of help needed, however, did not vary markedly. The general structure of ethics support services would not have to be radically altered to suit cultural variations among the surveyed countries. (shrink)

Docteur en médecine et philosophe, Canguilhem n'élabore pas de système, contrairement à Bergson qui fait de l'intuition le seul moyen de connaissance de la durée et de la vie. Philosophie biologique, durée, temps, devenir sont les thèmes abordés par les deux hommes. Canguilhem, le corps humain. Bergson, l'élan vital.

_A portrait of Martin Heidegger as a man and a philosopher_ In this biography of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), now available in English, historian Guillaume Payen synthesizes the connections between the German philosopher’s life and work. Critically, but without polemics, he creates a portrait of Heidegger in his time, using all available sources—lectures, letters, and the notorious “black notebooks.” Payen chronicles Heidegger’s “changing destinies”: after the First World War, an uncompromising Catholicism gave way to a vigorous striving for a philosophical (...) revolution—fertile ground for National Socialism. The book reflects a life of light and shadow. Heidegger was a great philosopher and teacher who cultivated friendships and love affairs with Jews but also was an anti-Semitic nationalist who lamented the “Judaization of German intellectual life.”. (shrink)

Résumé David Chalmers maintient que la réalité virtuelle est une véritable réalité. Une version de ce « réalisme virtuel » affirme que les entités virtuelles dépendent ontologiquement d'entités numériques réelles. Nous explorons ici cette suggestion, en proposant un nouveau modèle pour décrire la dépendance du virtuel à l’égard du numérique. En nous appuyant sur la théorie de la constitution de Lynne Rudder Baker, nous défendons que les objets virtuels sont constitués par des objets numériques, lorsque ceux-ci se trouvent dans certaines (...) circonstances favorables. Nous explorons les motivations et les implications de cette approche, que nous considérons comme une forme prometteuse de réalisme virtuel. (shrink)

Brentano’s philosophy of perception has often been understood as a special chapter of his theory of intentionality. If all and only mental phenomena are constitutively intentional, and if perceptual experience is mental by definition, then all perceptual experiences are intentional experiences. I refer to this conception as the “standard view” of Brentano’s account of perception. Different options are available to support the standard view: a sense-data theory of perception; an adverbialist account; representationalism. I argue that none of them are real (...) options for the standard view. I suggest that Brentano’s conception of optical illusions introduces a presupposition that not only challenges the standard view - the distinction between the subjectively and objectively given - but that also makes his account more palatable for a naive understanding of perception as openness to and awareness of the world. (shrink)

Considers Deleuze's ideas on philosophical practice in relation to his work. This book presents analyses of, and aims to provide some context for, this relation in Deleuze's work, by focusing on Deleuze's conception of the relation between thought and practice, the brain and the hand (or mouth).

Les concepts dont les sciences font usage ne sont pas neutres, notamment lorsqu'ils s'appliquent au vivant. Ils se construisent suivant des déterminations spécifiques en fonction des époques, des idéologies humaines et possèdent l'originalité de porter un propos sur le vivant émanant du vivant lui-même. Ceci n'est pas sans incidence sur les différents champs d'application des sciences du vivant comme la médecine ou la thérapeutique. La présente étude s'intéresse au geste particulier auquel invite Georges Canguilhem dans son essai Le normal et (...) le pathologique. C'est sur ce geste, hautement philosophique, que s'appuient les prémisses d'une épistémologie des concepts. Toujours en acte, cette dernière ouvre la question des normes et de l'erreur rapportée au vivant. Elle est l'occasion d'une redécouverte de la richesse authentique de l'état pathologique permettant au vivant qui s'étudie de mieux se connaître. (shrink)

Ego et communauté. Au contraire de la position défendue par la plupart des interprètes de Husserl qui, au nom de l'intersubjectivité, lui reprochent de suivre une "voie cartésienne" et d'accorder un privilège à l'ego cogito, il s'agit de montrer que cette critique n'est pas fondée : le primat méthodologique de l'ego est au contraire une condition nécessaire pour constituer la communauté intersubjective, et éviter de subordonner l'individualité vivante à une "transcendance" anonyme. L'enjeu est de comprendre la crise des temps modernes (...) comme celle d'un monde aliéné qui s'est fondé sur l'oubli de la vie, mais aussi sur le déni du pouvoir constituant de l'ego et la répression de toute subjectivité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Unlike in physics, the category of thought experiment is not very common in biology. At least there are no classic examples that are as important and as well-known as the most famous thought experiments in physics, such as Galileo’s, Maxwell’s or Einstein’s. The reasons for this are far from obvious; maybe it has to do with the fact that modern biology for the most part sees itself as a thoroughly empirical discipline that engages either in real natural history or in (...) experimenting on real organisms rather than fictive ones. While theoretical biology does exist and is recognized as part of biology, its role within biology appears to be more marginal than the role of theoretical physics within physics. It could be that this marginality of theory also affects thought experiments as sources of theoretical knowledge. Of course, none of this provides a sufficient reason for thinking that thought experiments are really unimportant in biology. It is quite possible that the common perception of this matter is wrong and that there are important theoretical considerations in biology, past or present, that deserve the title of thought experiment just as much as the standard examples from physics. Some such considerations may even be widely known and considered to be important, but were not recognized as thought experiments. In fact, as we shall see, there are reasons for thinking that what is arguably the single most important biological work ever, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, contains a number of thought experiments. There are also more recent examples both in evolutionary and non-evolutionary biology, as we will show. Part of the problem in identifying positive examples in the history of biology is the lack of agreement as to what exactly a thought experiment is. Even worse, there may not be more than a family resemblance that unifies this epistemic category. We take it that classical thought experiments show the following characteristics: They serve directly or indirectly in the non-empirical epistemic evaluation of theoretical propositions, explanations or hypotheses. Thought experiments somehow appeal to the imagination. They involve hypothetical scenarios, which may or may not be fictive. In other words, thought experiments suppose that certain states of affairs hold and then try to intuit what would happen in a world where these suppositions are true. We want to examine in the following sections if there are episodes in the history of biology that satisfy these criteria. As we will show, there are a few episodes that might satisfy all three of these criteria, and many more if the imagination criterion is dropped or understood in a lose sense. In any case, this criterion is somewhat vague in the first place, unless a specific account of the imagination is presupposed. There will also be issues as to what exactly “non-empirical” means. In general, for the sake of discussion we propose to understand the term “thought experiment” here in a broad rather than a narrow sense here. We would rather be guilty of having too wide a conception of thought experiment than of missing a whole range of really interesting examples. (shrink)

Excerpt from La Morale: Fondements Psycho-Sociologiques d'une Conduite Rationnelle Parce qu'ils ont eu le sentiment de cette trans formation inéluctable du moraliste, qui de sage ou inspiré devient de plus en plus homme de science, M. Le Dr toulouse et ses collaborateurs en ont suscité une première manifestation et ont fait entrer dans le cadre cl'é tudes psychologiques, psy cho - pathologiques et psycho sociologiques, un ou vrage de morale. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare (...) and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Le spiritualisme ravaissonien ouvre l'horizon d'une refondation complète de la métaphysique au cœur du XIXe siècle français. À partir de la lecture d'Aristote, Ravaisson élabore une critique de ce que l'on peut nommer les 'métaphysiques de la séparation', dont le point de départ se trouve dans les écrits du stagirite. Il s'agira dès lors de déployer une philosophie qui affirme l'identité de l'être et de la pensée, par-delà toute transcendance et tout dualisme. C'est ainsi que le problème de la métaphysique (...) peut être posé peut-on surmonter la disjonction de l'être et de l'étant, de la nature et de l'esprit, ou encore de l'homme et de Dieu? Faut-il au contraire considérer que la séparation définit le geste inaugural de toute métaphysique? Ravaisson, en refusant cette dernière possibilité, élabore une philosophie qui s'inscrit contre l'idéalisme transcendantal de Kant ou le positivisme de Comte, et plus largement contre toute tendance matérialiste de la pensée. Ainsi, l'unité perdue de la métaphysique doit être recherchée en questionnant l'héritage d'Aristote, afin de déterminer s'il s'agit de penser avec, ou contre celui-ci."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Malgré l’important renouveau que connaît la théologie naturelle depuis environ un demi-siècle dans le champ de la philosophie de la religion, Charles Taylor soutient que celle-ci appartient à une époque désormais révolue. Cette étude propose de restituer de manière aussi fidèle et précise que possible les raisons de ce verdict. Une telle analyse vise à combler une lacune importante dans la littérature secondaire. Cette lacune tient, d’une part, au fait que Taylor lui-même ne développe jamais ces raisons de façon systématique (...) ; d’autre part, elle tient également au fait que plusieurs commentateurs semblent présupposer qu’un tel argument n’existe pas : Taylor récuserait la théologie naturelle simplement parce qu’elle ne correspond pas à la manière dont il est enclin à justifier ses propres convictions religieuses. (shrink)

In Burma, the rituals connected with the earth concern the relationship between the local communities of rice-growers and the political whole that encompasses them. The structure of this totality is a result of the history of the Burmese Buddhist monarchy which was, from the tenth century to the end of the nineteenth, the dominant political institution of the Irrawaddy valley. The Buddhist kings were viewed as the masters of the earth, a role symbolized by the ritual of the first furrow, (...) which they “traced” in the soil in order to inaugurate the work season. Moreover, the native Burmese religious system does not include a deity exclusively associated with the earth and who could, by this right, be the object of a systematic cult. This complex religious system, dominated by Buddhism, includes another cult, that of the thirty-seven nats, whose history is linked both to the Burmese monarchical system and the adoption of Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. The fall of the monarchy in 1886 did not bring about its disappearance. On the contrary, this cult is still quite alive and touches all levels of Burmese society. It is especially vibrant in those local communities that worship the thirty-seven nats of the national pantheon, viewed as the protector of their land. (shrink)

In this paper, we use an experimental design to compare the performance of elicitation rules for subjective beliefs. Contrary to previous works in which elicited beliefs are compared to an objective benchmark, we consider a purely subjective belief framework. The performance of different elicitation rules is assessed according to the accuracy of stated beliefs in predicting success. We measure this accuracy using two main factors: calibration and discrimination. For each of them, we propose two statistical indexes and we compare the (...) rules’ performances for each measurement. The matching probability method provides more accurate beliefs in terms of discrimination, while the quadratic scoring rule reduces overconfidence and the free rule, a simple rule with no incentives, which succeeds in eliciting accurate beliefs. Nevertheless, the matching probability appears to be the best mechanism for eliciting beliefs due to its performances in terms of calibration and discrimination, but also its ability to elicit consistent beliefs across measures and across tasks, as well as its empirical and theoretical properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and the interpretation of the temporal suffix -kue in Mbyá, a Guaraní language that is closely related to Paraguayan Guaraní. This suffix is attested both inside noun phrases and inside clauses. Interestingly, its nominal uses give rise to inferences that are unattested in its clausal uses. These inferences were first identified in Paraguayan Guaraní by Tonhauser, who called them the existence property and the change of state property. Tonhauser further argued that these properties (...) are built into the lexical entry of the nominal temporal marker -kue. By contrast, I argue that -kue denotes a relative past tense both in its nominal and clausal uses, and that the existence and change of state properties are pragmatic inferences that arise from the interaction of the literal meaning of -kue with general constraints on the interpretation of noun phrases, notably constraints on the topicality of the time of evaluation of noun phrases. This allows me to maintain a uniform analysis of -kue across its nominal uses and its clausal uses. The analysis of -kue in Mbyá is relevant to a number of current debates on the expression of tense crosslinguistically. Firstly, the existence of relative tenses has sometimes been called into question. Klein notably argues that relative tenses are actually combinations of tense with the perfect aspect. Others have argued that there exist true relative tenses in certain languages. I argue that facts of Mbyá support the latter view. Secondly, Klein famously defined tenses as relations between topic times and the time of utterance. I argue, on the other hand, that relative tenses only denote relations between times, and that the topicality or non-topicality of their temporal arguments depends on their context of use, including their syntactic environment. Thirdly, this paper contributes to debates on the nature and reality of nominal tenses The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 2012), by arguing that tense in Mbyá is a genuinely nominal category, in the sense that temporal functional projections are part of the extended projection of the noun phrase. (shrink)

Guillaume Collett questions to what extent we can locate Deleuze within the Lacanian School during the late-1960s, prior to Guattari. In so doing, he offers a new, integrated reading of Deleuze's The Logic of Sense by understanding it as a 'psychoanalysis of sense', and gives a new interpretation of Deleuze's conception of philosophy itself. The Psychoanalysis of Sense shows that Deleuze was not merely aware of the debates animating the Lacanian School during the 1960s: he sought to contribute to (...) them. Emphasising his appropriation of the work of post-Lacanian Serge Leclaire, Collett explains how Deleuze constructed a more singular and immanent theory of the linguistic structure of the unconscious - granting the erogenous body a larger structuring role. (shrink)

Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research. In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to (...) this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context. (shrink)