Nous assistons depuis quelques années à un retour de Vico à l'horizon de la pensée contemporaine. Plusieurs ouvrages savants et plusieurs rééditions critiques d'œuvres du philosophe napolitain ont marqué récemment ce regain d'intérêt. Ce retour en force s'explique tout naturellement par le recul de la pensée positiviste et néo-positiviste dans notre culture actuelle, depuis que feu le structuralisme, pensée dominante au cours des années soixante à quatre-vingt-dix du XXe siècle, a montré ses limites et n'est plus à la mode. Vico, (...) en effet, que nous pouvons considérer comme le fondateur non seulement de l'histoire moderne mais aussi de ta philosophie et de la culture romantiques, est par excellence le critique du cartésianisme du XVIIe et de ta pensée des Lumières du XVIIIe siècle, et surtout du positivisme historique à venir. Il est donc logique et naturel que, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, une nouvelle génération de penseurs retourne à Vico après avoir hérité des antipositivistes que sont, après Bergson, tes phénoménologues, Paul Ricoeur et Emmanuel Lévinas. C'est principalement la linguistique et la poétique et, plus généralement l'histoire et les sciences humaines dont Vico peut être considéré comme le fondateur, qui bénéficient actuellement de ce retour aux sources vichiennes de la science du langage, de la morale et de la politique. Autrement dit, à ta critique de la raison mythologique. D'où le titre du livre de Jacques Chabot : Giombattista Vico ou la raison du mythe. L'auteur s'attache à nous montrer que la contribution ta plus essentielle de Vico à ta science moderne de l'histoire et aux sciences humaines réside dans sa découverte des mythes conçus comme formes symboliques de la raison pratique qui informent à l'origine poétiquement et raisonnablement toutes les institutions de l'humanité et toute civilisation. Dans l'esprit même de ta collection "Les Ecritures du Sud", Jacques Chabot - il y a déjà publié en 2003 un Albert Camus, "la pensée de Midi" - entend mettre à la portée d'un public cultivé de non spécialistes la difficile pensée de Vico en faisant un travail d'honnête vulgarisation. Comme il s'agit d'un "écrivain du Sud", il souligne aussi le caractère propre de la pensée du philosophe napolitain en l'inscrivant dans la continuité de l'humanisme gréco-latin qui se perpétue après lui dans un humanisme romantique et méditerranéen, sensiblement différent du romantisme allemand qui l'a longtemps occulté. Et dans le même esprit de cette collection, à la différence des ouvrages scientifiques récents exclusivement consacrés à Vico lui-même, Jacques Chabot s'efforce de l'actualiser en mettant sa philosophie en relation avec les grands courant de la pensée contemporaine. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scholarly interest in technology, and have provoked new lines of thought in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. Gilbert Simondon (1924 - 1989) was one of Frances's most influential philosophers in this field, and an important influence on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler. His work is only now being translated into English. Chabot's introduction to Simondon's work was published in French in 2002 and is now available (...) in English for the first time. It is the most accessible guide to Simondon's important but often opaque work. Chabot provides an excellent introduction to Simondon, positioning him as a philosopher of technology, and he describes his theory of individuation including his crystalline ontology. He goes on to offer a bridge between these two concerns, exploring how they are related. (shrink)

Etude sur la philosophie de la technique et la pensée de l'individuation chez Gilbert Simondon qui interroge les notions de progrès, d'aliénation et de mémoire et leur devenir lors des grands changements de l'histoire des techniques (tradition, révolution industrielle, cybernétique). Met également en lumière son rapport à la psychologie des profondeurs, au sacré et à la technoesthétique.

Entre les postes et le mouvement analytique, le principe de plaisir et l'histoire des télécommunications, la carte postale et la lettre volée, bref le transfert de Socrate à Freud, et au-delà. Cette satire de la littérature épistolaire devait être farcie - d'adresses, de codes postaux, de missives cryptées, de lettres anonymes, le tout confié à tant de modes, de genres et de tons.

The era of Big Data comes with the omnipresent metaphor of the Cloud, a term suggesting an ephemeral and seemingly endless storage space, unhindered by time and place. Similar to the satellite image of the Whole Earth, which was the icon of technological progress in the late 60s, the Cloud as a metaphor breathes the promise of technology, whilst obfuscating the hardware reality of server farms and software infrastructure necessary to enable the proliferation of data. This article presents projects from (...) the fields of humanities, social sciences and the arts that formulate a response to Big Data and its human and automated practices, from data analytics dashboards to critical reflections on smart technologies and objects. (shrink)

Le soutien à la réflexion, pour promouvoir la dynamique de vie bouleversée par les angoisses que suscite l’annonce d’une séropositivité au virus du sida, chez une femme apprenant qu’elle est enceinte, nécessite une approche bienveillante. Nous constatons qu’à l’annonce de ce diagnostic mortel, à plus ou moins long terme, son caractère transmissible par voie maternofœtale est pris en compte par la femme à qui on annonce le résultat satisfaisant du protocole médical de réduction des risques de transmission de la mère (...) à l’enfant. En revanche, les risques de contamination par voie sexuelle avec son conjoint imposent au moins une fois à cette femme de penser à comment lui en parler, ou se taire par peur d’être mal jugées et rejetées. Il s’agit donc au-delà du sentiment de dangerosité lié à ce virus d’ouvrir une réflexion pour cette femme, sur ce qui lui est important : pour elle, pour son avenir, pour celui de son couple et celui de son futur enfant. (shrink)

" "Positions brings together three interviews with Derrida, outlining his central concerns and ideas.

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, 'Foreigner Question: Come from Abroad' and 'Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality', derive from a series of seminars on 'hospitality' conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. 'Invitation' by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left clarifying and inflecting Derrida's 'response' on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the 'hospitality' under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching. The book also characteristically combines (...) careful readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using 'hospitality' as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of François Mitterrand. (shrink)

"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty (...) years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage aurait pu s'intituler " matière et vie ". L'auteur nous guide sur le long chemin qui va des constituants élémentaires d'un jeune univers, dans lequel la vie est évidemment absente, jusqu'aux formes complexes de la matière. Il explique comment et pourquoi la matière se complexifie dans le coeur des étoiles de premières générations, dans la nébuleuse protosolaire, sur la jeune Terre envoie de différenciation, dans les premiers océans terrestres. Il décrit ce que l'on croit savoir, mais aussi passe (...) en revue tout ce que l'on ignore à propos de la génération spontanée des premières cellules vivantes. Lorsque la vie apparaît, l'histoire de la matière devient dépendante de l'évolution biologique. Après trois milliards d'années environ, celle-ci conduit à l'apparition de l'homme, seul être vivant capable de faire évoluer la matière. Ce livre propose ainsi une fresque d'une réelle ampleur, sans équivalent à ce jour, écrite pour être accessible à tous. Et pourtant, les questions abordées relèvent de nombreuses disciplines, comme l'astrophysique, la biologie, la chimie, le génie génétique et l'histoire des techniques. (shrink)

Is there, today," asks Jacques Derrida, "another 'question of religion'?" Derrida's writings on religion situate and raise anew questions of tradition, faith, and sacredness and their relation to philosophy and political culture. He has amply testified to his growing up in an Algerian Jewish, French-speaking family, to the complex impact of a certain Christianity on his surroundings and himself, and to his being deeply affected by religious persecution. Religion has made demands on Derrida, and, in turn, the study of (...) religion has benefited greatly from his extensive philosophical contributions to the field. Acts of Religion brings together for the first time Derrida's key writings on religion, along with two new essays translated by Gil Anidjar that appear here for the first time in any language. These texts are organized around the secret holding of links between the personal, the political, and the theological. In these texts, Derrida's reflections on religion span from negative theologyto the limits of reason and to hospitality. Acts of Religion will serve as an excellent introduction to Derrida's remarkable contribution to religious studies. (shrink)

In , Sartre elevates the premature death of his father to the rank of a providential event which, by depriving him of a Super-Ego and relieving him of any legacy, consigned him to contingency and condemned him to be free. In this way, Sartre derives his uniqueness from this happy lack, this salutary void, i.e. a negated father, and casts himself in the role of an Aeneas liberated from the weight of his Anchises. Fatherless son, Sartre was nonetheless condemned to (...) return incessantly to a father who was destined to remain imaginary. The omnipresence of paternal figures in his oeuvre, from “Childhood of a Leader” to by way of and , is the expression of a double project, as systematic as it is paradoxical: to incarnate the Father, interrogate him and place him centre-stage—as he does with Flaubert's father—in order to eliminate all the better, through an unrelenting prosecution, that of which the Father is, in Sartre's view, the crystallization: the past, inheritance, the temptation of inauthenticity, the alienation of freedom by a foreign power. The Sartrean Father reveals in a privileged way the heart-rending paradoxes of freedom. French Dans Les Mots , J.-P. Sartre hisse la mort précoce de son père à la hauteur d'un événement providentiel qui, le privant de Surmoi et le délestant de tout héritage, le livra à la contingence et le condamna à être libre. Ainsi Sartre tire sa singularité de ce manque heureux, de ce vide salutaire, un père nié, et se dépeint en Enée libéré du poids de son Anchise. Fils sans père, Sartre n'en fut pas moins condamné à revenir sans fin à ce père voué à demeurer imaginaire : l'omniprésence des figures paternelles dans son œuvre, de L'Enfance d'un chef à L'Idiot de la famille , en passant par Le Scénario Freud et Les Séquestrés d'Altona , est l'expression d'un double projet, aussi systématique que paradoxal : incarner le Père, l'interroger et le mettre en scène - ainsi du père de Flaubert -, pour mieux liquider, par une mise en procès permanente, ce dont la figure du Père est, à ses yeux, la cristallisation : le passé, l'héritage, la tentation de l'inauthenticité, l'aliénation de la liberté par une puissance étrangère. Le Père sartrien se révèle dès lors comme le révélateur privilégié des paradoxes déchirants de la liberté. (shrink)

(2005). The Philosophical August 4th. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the french tradition issue editor: andrew aitken, pp. 103-108.

"The four essays in this volume constitute Derrida's most explicit and sustained reflection on the art work as pictorial artifact, a reflection partly by way of philosophical aesthetics (Kant, Heidegger), partly by way of a commentary on art works and art scholarship (Van Gogh, Adami, Titus-Carmel). The illustrations are excellent, and the translators, who clearly see their work as both a rendering and a transformation, add yet another dimension to this richly layered composition. Indispensable to collections emphasizing art criticism and (...) aesthetics."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)

Men’s hunting has dominated the discourse on energy capture and flow in the past decade or so. We turn to women’s roles as critical to household formation, pair-bonding, and intergenerational bonds. Their pivotal contributions in food processing and distribution likely promoted kinship, both genetic and affinal, and appear to be the foundation from which households evolved. With conscious recognition of household social units, variable cultural constructions of human kinship systems that were sensitive to environmental and technological conditions could emerge. Kinship (...) dramatically altered the organization of resource access for our species, creating what we term “kinship ecologies.” We present simple mathematical models to show how hunting leads to dependence on women’s contributions, bonds men to women, and bonds generations together. Kinship, as it organized transfers of food and labor energy centered on women, also became integrated with the biological evolution of human reproduction and life history. (shrink)

In their book Spare Parts, published in 1992, Fox and Swazey criticized various aspects of organ transplantation, including the routinization of the procedure, ignorance regarding its inherent uncertainties, and the ethos of transplant professionals. Using this work as a frame of reference, we analyzed articles on organ transplantation published in internal medicine and transplantation journals between 1995 and 2008 to see whether Fox and Swazey’s critiques of organ transplantation were still relevant.

A rich exploration of the idea of friendship and its political consequences, past and future, by the most influential of contemporary philosophers. Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In (...) The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought—friendship and enmity, private and public life—have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

The animal that therefore I am (more to follow) -- But as for me, who am I (following)? -- And say the animal responded -- I don't know why we are doing this.

This volume reflects Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. While addressing specific contemporary political issues, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the 'teaching body', both the faculty corps and the strange interplay in (...) the French tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called 'natural languages' like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of “possible world”, that Husserl inherits from his study of logics, is capital for the understanding of his phenomenology. This concept is a fine tool that provides him a possibility to articulate the question of the physical and the cultural dimensions of some objects. A cultural object as a book or a painting has in fact two dimensions: a “material” one and a “spiritual” one. The author examines which are (...) the relationships between those two dimensions. This question leads him to an interrogation on the genesis of the ideality of the cultural world. Is there not a contradiction between the ideality of the meaning and his historical genesis? In order to provide an answer to this question, the author suggests that one may use the notion of a “linked ideality”, i.e. ideal but linked up to the earth. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of “possible world”, that Husserl inherits from his study of logics, is capital for the understanding of his phenomenology. This concept is a fine tool that provides him a possibility to articulate the question of the physical and the cultural dimensions of some objects. A cultural object as a book or a painting has in fact two dimensions: a “material” one and a “spiritual” one. The author examines which are (...) the relationships between those two dimensions. This question leads him to an interrogation on the genesis of the ideality of the cultural world. Is there not a contradiction between the ideality of the meaning and his historical genesis? In order to provide an answer to this question, the author suggests that one may use the notion of a “linked ideality”, i.e. ideal but linked up to the earth. (shrink)

Completing the translation of Derrida’s monumental work Right to Philosophy (the first part of which has already appeared under the title of Who’s Afraid of Philosophy?), Eyes of the University brings together many of the philosopher’s most important texts on the university and, more broadly, on the languages and institutions of philosophy. In addition to considerations of the implications for literature and philosophy of French becoming a state language, of Descartes’ writing of the Discourse on Method in French, and of (...) Kant’s and Schelling’s philosophies of the university, the volume reflects on the current state of research and teaching in philosophy and on the question of what Derrida calls a “university responsibility.” Examining the political and institutional conditions of philosophy, the essays collected here question the growing tendency to orient research and teaching towards a programmable and profitable end. The volume is therefore invaluable for the light it throws upon an underappreciated aspect of Derrida’s own engagement, both philosophical and political, in struggles against the stifling of philosophical research and teaching. As a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy and as one of the conveners of the Estates General of Philosophy, Derrida was at the forefront of the struggle to preserve and extend the teaching of philosophy as a distinct discipline, in secondary education and beyond, in the face of conservative government education reforms in France. As one of the founders of the Collège International de Philosophie, he worked to provide a space for research in and around philosophy that was not accepted or legitimated in other institutions. Documenting and reflecting upon these engagements, Eyes of the University brings together some of the most important and incisive of Derrida’s works. (shrink)

Le syndicalisme féminin chrétien représente un mouvement original dans le paysage syndical français de l’entre-deux-guerres. Pratiquant la non‑mixité, les organisations féminines ont favorisé l’émergence de militantes dont l’action a marqué le mouvement syndical chrétien. Leur engagement est vécu comme un apostolat social au service d’un idéal. Elles n’hésitent pas à proclamer haut et fort leur foi et à intégrer, dans l’action syndicale, les manifestations sensibles de la culture catholique. La mise en œuvre de ces discours et de ces pratiques forge (...) leur engagement autour de l’affirmation d’une foi militante, dans le cadre particulier de l’organisation syndicale. (shrink)

This volume contains the speech given by Derrida at Emmanuel Levinas’s funeral on December 27, 1995, and his contribution to a colloquium organized to mark the first anniversary of Levinas’s death.

This volume brings together four of Jacques Derrida's essays on Maurice Blanchot's fictions: "Pace Not(s)," "Living on," "Title To Be Specified," and "The Law of Genre.".

Responding to questions put to him at a Roundtable held at Villanova University in 1994, Jacques Derrida leads the reader through an illuminating discussion of the central themes of deconstruction. Speaking in English and extemporaneously, Derrida takes up with unusual clarity and great eloquence such topics as the task of philosophy, the Greeks, justice, responsibility, the gift, the community, the distinction between the messianic and the concrete messianisms, and his interpretation of James Joyce. Derrida convincingly refutes the charges of (...) relativism and nihilism that are often leveled at deconstruction by its critics and sets forth the profoundly affirmative and ethico-political thrust of his work. The “Roundtable” is marked by the unusual clarity of Derrida’s presentation and by the deep respect for the great works of the philosophical and literary tradition with which he characterizes his philosophical work. The Roundtable is annotated by John D. Caputo, the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, who has supplied cross references to Derrida’s writings where the reader may find further discussion on these topics. Professor Caputo has also supplied a commentary which elaborates the principal issues raised in the Roundtable. In all, this volume represents one of the most lucid, compact and reliable introductions to Derrida and deconstruction available in any language. An ideal volume for students approaching Derrida for the first time, Deconstruction in a Nutshell will prove instructive and illuminating as well for those already familiar with Derrida’s work. (shrink)

Telle qu’elle se décline dans la théorie de la pitié du livre IV de l’Émile, la philosophie morale de Rousseau réconcilie deux traditions : les morales dites de l’amour-propre et celles du sentiment moral. La présence de l’imagination, dans la morale dite égoïste, mêle le sentiment moral à l’intérêt et donc à l’amour-propre. A contrario, ne pas recourir à l’imagination dans les morales du sentiment moral doit permettre d’éviter cette perversion. L’originalité de la philosophie morale de Rousseau est de concilier (...) le recours à l’imagination, qui seule permet la mise en place de rapports affectifs entre soi-même et autrui, et l’existence d’un sentiment moral véritable non teinté d’égoïsme. (shrink)

Telle qu’elle se décline dans la théorie de la pitié du livre IV de l’Émile, la philosophie morale de Rousseau réconcilie deux traditions : les morales dites de l’amour-propre et celles du sentiment moral. La présence de l’imagination, dans la morale dite égoïste, mêle le sentiment moral à l’intérêt et donc à l’amour-propre. A contrario, ne pas recourir à l’imagination dans les morales du sentiment moral doit permettre d’éviter cette perversion. L’originalité de la philosophie morale de Rousseau est de concilier (...) le recours à l’imagination, qui seule permet la mise en place de rapports affectifs entre soi-même et autrui, et l’existence d’un sentiment moral véritable non teinté d’égoïsme. (shrink)