Estética e política: mal-estar na imagem. O trivial e sua representação.

Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, is in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix. Simulations never existed as a book before it was "translated" into English. Actually it came from two different bookCovers written at different times by Jean Baudrillard. The first part of Simulations, and most provocative because it made a fiction (...) of theory, was "The Procession of Simulacra." It had first been published in Simulacre et Simulations. The second part, written much earlier and in a more academic mode, came from L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort. It was a half-earnest, half-parodical attempt to "historicize" his own conceit by providing it with some kind of genealogy of the three orders of appearance: the Counterfeit attached to the classical period; Production for the industrial era; and Simulation, controlled by the code. It was Baudrillard's version of Foucault's Order of Things and his ironical commentary of the history of truth. The book opens on a quote from Ecclesiastes asserting flatly that "the simulacrum is true." It was certainly true in Baudrillard's book, but otherwise apocryphal.One of the most influential essays of the 20th century, Simulations was put together in 1983 in order to be published as the first little black book of Semiotext's new Foreign Agents Series. Baudrillard's bewildering thesis, a bold extrapolation on Ferdinand de Saussure's general theory of general linguistics, was in fact a clinical vision of contemporary consumer societies where signs don't refer anymore to anything except themselves. They all are generated by the matrix.In effect Baudrillard's essay was upholding the only reality there was in a world that keeps hiding the fact that it has none. Simulacrum is its own pure simulacrum and the simulacrum is true. In his celebrated analysis of Disneyland, Baudrillard demonstrates that its childish imaginary is neither true nor false, it is there to make us believe that the rest of America is real, when in fact America is a Disneyland. It is of the order of the hyper-real and of simulation. Few people at the time realized that Baudrillard's simulacrum itself wasn't a thing, but a "deterrence machine," just like Disneyland, meant to reveal the fact that the real is no longer real and illusion no longer possible. But the more impossible the illusion of reality becomes, the more impossible it is to separate true from false and the real from its artificial resurrection, the more panic-stricken the production of the real is. (shrink)

In Darwinism's Struggle for Survival Jean Gayon offers a philosophical interpretation of the history of theoretical Darwinism. He begins by examining the different forms taken by the hypothesis of natural selection in the nineteenth century and the major difficulties which it encountered, particularly with regard to its compatibility with the theory of heredity. He then shows how these difficulties were overcome during the seventy years which followed the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, and he concludes by analysing the (...) major features of the genetic theory of natural selection, as it developed from 1920 to 1960. This rich and wide-ranging study will appeal to philosophers and historians of science and to evolutionary biologists. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophical and political thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked a revolution in post-war (...) thought and literature. In _What is Literature?_ Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write. (shrink)

A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, _The Imaginary_ was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this background, _The Imaginary_ crystallized Sartre's worldview and artistic vision. The book is an extended examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to imagine objects both (...) as they are and as they are not – ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom. (shrink)

Appearing in English for the first time, Jean-Luc Nancy’s 2002 book reflects on globalization and its impact on our being-in-the-world. Developing a contrast in the French language between two terms that are usually synonymous, or that are used interchangeably, namely globalisation (globalization) and mondialisation (world-forming), Nancy undertakes a rethinking of what “world-forming” might mean. At stake in this distinction is for him nothing less than two possible destinies of our humanity, and of our time. On the one hand, with (...) globalization, there is the uniformity produced by a global economical and technological logic leading to the contrary of an inhabitable world, “the un-world” (l’im-monde)—as Nancy refers to it—an un-world that entails social disintegration, misery, and injustice. And, on the other hand, there is the possibility of an authentic world-forming, that is, of a making of the world and of a making sense that Nancy calls a “creation” of the world. Nancy understands such world-forming in terms of an inexhaustible struggle for justice. This book is an important contribution by Nancy to a philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of globalization and a further development on his earlier works on our being-in-common, justice, and a-theological existence. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece that takesus far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon, and reveals a culture ofslavery, of blood sacrifice, of perpetual and ritualized warfare, of ceremonial hunting andecstasies.In his provocative discussions of various institutions and practices including war,marriage, and the city state, Vernant unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection ofthe religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. He concludes with a genealogy ofthe study of (...) myth from antiquity to the present, and offers a critique of structuralism.Jean-PierreVernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France inParis. (shrink)

An essential exploration of sense and meaning. -/- Is there a “world” anymore, let alone any “sense” to it? Acknowledging the lack of meaning in our time, and the lack of a world at the center of meanings we try to impose, Jean-Luc Nancy presents a rigorous critique of the many discourses-from philosophy and political science to psychoanalysis and art history-that talk and write their way around these gaping absences in our lives. -/- In an original style befitting his (...) search for a new mode of thought, Nancy offers fragmentary readings of writers such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Lévinas, Lacan, Derrida, and Deleuze insofar as their work reflects his concern with sense and the world. Rather than celebrate or bemoan the loss of meaning or attempt to install a new one, his book seeks to reposition both sense and the world between the presence and absence of meaning, between objectivity and subjectivity. Nancy’s project entails a reconception of the field of philosophy itself, a rearticulation of philosophical practice. Neither recondite nor abstract, it is concerned with the existence and experience of freedom-the actuality of existence as experienced by contemporary communities of citizens, readers, and writers. -/- Combining aesthetic, political, and philosophical considerations to convey a sense of the world between meaning and reality, ideal content and material form, this book offers a new way of understanding-and responding to-“the end of the world.”. (shrink)

Baudrillard's remarkably prescient meditation on terrorism throws light on post-9/11 delusional fears and political simulations. Published one year after Forget Foucault, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities may be the most important sociopolitical manifesto of the twentieth century: it calls for nothing less than the end of both sociology and politics. Disenfranchised revolutionaries hoped to reach the masses directly through spectacular actions, but their message merely played into the hands of the media and the state. In a media society (...) meaning has no meaning anymore; communication merely communicates itself. Jean Baudrillard uses this last outburst of ideological terrorism in Europe to showcase the end of the "Social." Once invoked by Marx as the motor of history, the masses no longer have sociological reality. In the electronic media society, all the masses can do—and all they will do—is enjoy the spectacle. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities takes to its ultimate conclusion the "end of ideologies" experienced in Europe after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the death of revolutionary illusions after May 1968. Ideological terrorism doesn't represent anything anymore, writes Baudrillard, not even itself. It is just the last hysterical reaction to discredited political illusions. (shrink)

Characterizing it as a "mythic discourse," Jean Baudrillard proceeds, in this brilliant essay, to dismantle the powerful, seductive figure of Michel Foucault. In 1976, Jean Baudrillard sent this essay to the French magazine Critique, where Michel Foucault was an editor. Foucault was asked to reply, but remained silent. Forget Foucault made Baudrillard instantly infamous in France. It was a devastating revisitation of Foucault's recent History of Sexuality—and of his entire oeuvre—and also an attack on those philosophers, like Gilles (...) Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who believed that desire could be revolutionary. In Baudrillard's eyes, desire and power were interchangeable, so desire had no place in Foucault's work. There is no better introduction to Baudrillard's polemical approach to culture than these pages, in which Baudrillard dares Foucault to meet the challenge of his own thought. This Semiotext edition of Forget Foucault is accompanied by a dialogue with Sylvère Lotringer, "Forget Baudrillard," a reevaluation by Baudrillard of his lesser-known early works as a post-Marxian thinker. Lotringer presses Baudrillard to explain how he arrived at his infamous extrapolationist theories from his roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth century social and anthropological works of Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, and Emil Durkheim. (shrink)

On sait combien Jean Hyppolite a contribué à l'intelligence de la pensée de Hegel en France. La réédition de ce texte devenu classique restitue la philosophie hégélienne de l'histoire à sa vérité : d'abord dans ses origines, en la situant par rapport à celles de Fichte et de Schelling, mais aussi en rectifiant les faux sens qui pèsent sur des concepts comme celui de l'esprit ou du destin des peuples, ici ressaisis dans ce qu'ils ont de profondément incarné. On (...) voit comment le droit vient fixer, rationnellement, le " devoir-être " d'un peuple, comment, selon Hegel, le " destin est la conscience de soi-même mais comme d'un ennemi " : figure d'une contradiction toujours actuelle s'il est vrai qu'un peuple ne poursuit son " destin " qu'à le dénier comme tel. (shrink)

‘I should like to show here that the Ego is neither formally or materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world.’ _Jean-Paul Sartre _ _The Transcendence of the Ego_ is one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications and essential for understanding the trajectory of his work as a whole. When it first appeared in France in 1937 Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in a provincial French town. Attacking prevailing philosophical theories head on, Sartre (...) offers a brilliant and radical account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. He introduces many of the themes central to his major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, and anguish. This translation includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. _Jean-Paul Sartre_. The foremost French thinker and writer of the early post-war years. His books, which include _Being and Nothingness, Nausea, The Age of Reason _and _No Exit_ have exerted enormous influence in philosophy, literature, politics and drama. __. (shrink)

Un essai qui prend l'époque à revers pour répondre à la question de la faillite de la communauté.

An early work in which Baudrillard became Baudrillard. When Fatal Strategies was first published in French in 1983, it represented a turning point for Jean Baudrillard: an utterly original, and for many readers, utterly bizarre book that offered a theory as proliferative, ecstatic, and hallucinatory as the postmodern world it endeavored to describe. Arguing against the predetermined outcomes of dialectical thought with his renowned, wry, ambivalent passion, with this volume Jean Baudrillard mounted an attack against the “false problems” (...) posed by Western philosophy. If his Marxist days were firmly behind him, Baudrillard here indicated that metaphysics had also gone the way of sociology and politics: the contemporary world demanded nothing less than Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry's absurdist philosphy that described the laws of the universe supplementary to this one. In effect, with Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard became Baudrillard. In his extrapolationist manner, Baudrillard sought to replace Western philosophy's circular arguments with a ritualistic Theater of Cruelty. Using this line of thought developed in Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard went on, throughout the 1980s, to find new and shatteringly accurate ways of discussing American corporatocracy, arms build-up, and hostage taking. Fatal Strategies asserts a profound critique of American politics, and it is an important step towards his examination of evil.Jean Baudrillard was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellectual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century visionary, reporter, and provocateur. His Simulations instantly became a cult classic and made him a controversial voice in the world of politics and art. (shrink)

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social justice, (...) and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people’s lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils. (shrink)

This article was originally Lai drunk leaves professor in 1994 year March 12 to 27 at Fu Jen Catholic University Department of Philosophy lecture on "Philosophy of Science" theme when the speech of course, today is led by Professor Shen-ching translated into Chinese to satisfy the readers. Speeches, the Lai drunk leaves professor from the phenomenological approach explore and rebuild "it" concept formation of thought processes, and especially from the physics theory in future test volume of this issue, that the (...) physics of the novel is that it is in theory integrated into the transcendental appearance regardless above, and thus different concepts in general regardless of the theory described. For him, physics theory although the use of purely abstract terms, but it still gives the specific physical presentation, try The arguments are purely ideal state, reflecting the world to open the actual Field of obvious things. He eventually proposed and therefore, physics can be interpreted as a phenomenological manifestation of Planning and its integration of theoretical representation regardless transcendental state, to give a physical reality now. This is a speech on physical reality delivered by Jean Ladrière in a series of talks related to philosophy of science during his visit to the Department of Philosophy, Fu Jen Catholic University from March 12 to March 27, 1994. Here it is translated into Chinese by Prof. Vincent Shen to exemplify an aspect of his philosophy. This paper attempts to reconstitute the process of thought by which the concept of reality is constructed and to consider it under the perspective of physics. For Jean Ladrière, the originality of physics is to integrate the transcendental discourse into its theoretical representation. All in using abstract terms, physical theories show us what happens effectively in the field of world manifestation. He would suggest that physics can be interpreted as a phenomenological project to make effective physical reality by integrating a transcendental discourse into its theoretical representation. (shrink)

Since the death of Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche is now considered to be one of the worlds foremost psychoanalytic thinkers. In spite of the influence of his work over the last thirty years, remarkably little has been available in English. Essays On Otherness presents for the first time in English many of Laplanche's key essays and is the first book to provide an overview of his thinking. It offers an introduction to many of the key themes that characterise his (...) work: seduction, persecution, revelation, masochism, transference and mourning. Such themes have been increasingly both in psychoanalytic thought and in continental philosophy, social and cultural theory, and literature making Essays On Otherness indispensable reading for all those concerned with the implications of psychoanalytic theory today. (shrink)

A major figure in the contemporary critical world, Jean-Francois Lyotard originally introduced the term 'postmodern' into current discussions of philosophy. The Postmodern Explained is an engaging collection of letters addressed to young philosophers, including the actual children of some of Lyotard's colleagues, that inform the trajectory of his thinking in the period before The Postmodern Condition through The Differend.

‘No matter how long I may look at an image, I shall never find anything in it but what I put there. It is in this fact that we find the distinction between an image and a perception.' - Jean-Paul Sartre L’Imagination was published in 1936 when Jean-Paul Sartre was thirty years old. Long out of print, this is the first English translation in many years. The Imagination is Sartre’s first full philosophical work, presenting some of the basic (...) arguments concerning phenomenology, consciousness and intentionality that were to later appear in his master works and be so influential in the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Sartre begins by criticising philosophical theories of the imagination, particularly those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume, before establishing his central thesis. Imagination does not involve the perception of ‘mental images’ in any literal sense, Sartre argues, yet reveals some of the fundamental capacities of consciousness. He then reviews psychological theories of the imagination, including a fascinating discussion of the work of Henri Bergson. Sartre argues that the ‘classical conception’ is fundamentally flawed because it begins by conceiving of the imagination as being like perception and then seeks, in vain, to re-establish the difference between the two. Sartre concludes with an important chapter on Husserl’s theory of the imagination which, despite sharing the flaws of earlier approaches, signals a new phenomenological way forward in understanding the imagination. The Imagination is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. This new translation includes a helpful historical and philosophical introduction by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. Also included is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s important review of L’Imagination upon its publication in French in 1936. Translated by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. (shrink)

This collection, by one of the most challenging of contemporary thinkers, asks the question: why are there several arts and not just one? This question focuses on the point of maximal tension between the philosophical tradition and contemporary thinking about the arts: the relation between the plurality of the human senses and sense or meaning in general. Throughout the five essays, Nancy's argument hinges on the culminating formulation of this relation in Hegel's Aesthetics and The Phenomenology of Spirit - art (...) as the sensible presentation of the Idea. He considers the emergence of art as presentation rather than representation and looks at the contemporary situation of art, and the question of whether art today is still art. Other essays provide intricate and compelling readings of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin and an analysis of a traced hand in the grotto of Lascaux as the essential mimetic gesture. (shrink)

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. -/- Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the (...) negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. -/- In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. -/- The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion. (shrink)

Genèse et structure de la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel est le premier commentaire détaillé du célèbre ouvrage de Hegel, que Jean Hyppolite avait également traduit pour la première fois en français. Publié en 1946 par Aubier-Montaigne dans la collection ± Philosophie de l'esprit?, réédité à plusieurs reprises, il a aidé des générations d'étudiants et de chercheurs à aborder l?œuvre de Hegel, devenant un véritable classique. Depuis 1970, Genèse et structure avait cessé d'être imprimé. Restitué ici dans sa forme (...) originaire, le livre est précédé par une introduction de l'éditeur qui situe le contexte dans lequel il avait été élaboré, l'inscrit dans l'histoire de la réception de Hegel en France et en retrace la fortune. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Prior Analytics identifies deductions simpliciter with inferential necessity, so that a deduced conclusion is necessarily inferred from some premises. Modern logical reconstructions claim that inferential necessity in Aristotle corresponds to logical validity. However, this logical reconstruction fails on two accounts. First, logical validity does not highlight Aristotle’s distinction between inferential necessity and predicative necessity, meaning that the inferential necessity of a deduction is not of the same kind as the predicative necessity of a non‑deductive argument. Second, logical validity does (...) not explain the relevance of Aristotle’s distinction between complete and incomplete deductions. Logicians speak of complete deduction by adding the term “obvious” or “transparent” to logical validity, and then criticize Aristotle’s view for being unclear. However, Aristotle’s position is not confronted with this difficulty. There is nothing to add to inferential necessity, which already means complete deducibility, as opposed to incomplete deducibility, deemed to be potentially complete. Accordingly, the Prior Analytics reduces the incomplete deductions to the complete deductions in order to prove the potential, inferential necessity of the incomplete deductions. Logical validity would have been faithful to Aristotle’s text, if it had been possible to coin a notion of potential validity, distinct from both validity and invalidity. (shrink)

Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic Wretched of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.

The Postmodern explained to children : Correspondence 1982- 1985.

Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger's recently published Black Notebooks. Nancy refers to a philosophical or "historial" anti-Semitism marked, nonetheless, by the "banality" of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. Heidegger's thought is placed in the broader context of the European (especially Christian) impulse toward new beginnings.

This book proposes a review of important Western philosophies and their significance for managers, management academics, and management consultants. It argues that management is an applied philosophical endeavor.

Les douze etudes ici proposees jalonnent un parcours s'etalant sur une vingtaine d'annees et s'etant ordonne autour d'une question centrale: et si nous n'avions rien entendu de la difference introduite par le logos entre l'homme et l'animal ...

The first question we will try to answer is how did a Communist Party that rejected all forms of a market economy during its first 30 years in power succeed in establishing capitalism in China when so many attempts had failed after the mid-nineteenth century. Instead of relying on the traditional economic explanation based on labor, capital, and productivity that is favored by economists and that has been well discussed in the economic literature, we will focus more on the political (...) and social factors that explain this acceleration of history.The second question is related to the different problems that the Chinese economy faces today. China has registered one of the fastest economic growth rates in the history of capitalism, but this take-off still appears fragile in many analyses, potentially reversible. Again, if we consider what has been achieved during 25 years of reform, the question we can ask is whether the problems that create the concern with fragility represent a real threat to the economic modernization launched in 1978, and to the definitive establishment of a capitalism system in China.Finally, a third question that has been repeated like a mantra in foreign government circles and by reformers in China: Will the economic transformations that have taken place in the People’s Republic soon lead to the emergence of a democratic regime that will enable China to complete its cycle of modernization? (shrink)

Le syndrome de Kierkegaard est un essai libre de Jean- Luc Berlet, consacré à l'un de ses penseurs de prédilection, le Danois Seren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Ce syndrome dont il est question, tel que défini par l'auteur, pourrait être conçu comme la tension qui résulte de l'impossible choix entre l'amour de la femme et l'amour de Dieu. Kierkegaard renonça en effet à l'amour charnel de la femme au profit d'une vie ascétique consacrée à I écriture et à la réflexion sur (...) l'Amour. A plus grande échelle ce syndrome pourrait être compris comme l'abandon du temporel au profit d'un idéal spirituel Et les regrets qui en découlent. En effet, comme nombre de contemporains opérant ce type de choix, Kierkegaard connut bien des tourments. Ces affres permirent néanmoins à Kierkegaard de développer une conception de l'Amour et du Divin d'une grande originalité qu'il est bon de redécouvrir dans notre époque marquée par le consumérisme sentimental. Tout au long des quatorze chapitres qui jalonnent cet ouvrage, Jean-Luc Berlet retrace le parcours littéraire de ce philosophe danois considéré par beaucoup comme le père de l'existentialisme, brossant ici un tableau complet de son énigmatique personnalité. En outre, chaque chapitre est accompagné d'un code QR, donnant chacun actes à une vidéo en ligne où Jean - Luc Berlet approfondit son développement et fournit des clefs de lecture pour une meilleure compréhension de l'oeuvre de Kierkegaard. (shrink)

« Toute activité se laisse discerner et définir dans la mesure où elle prend forme, où elle inscrit sa courbe dans l’espace et le temps. La vie agit essentiellement comme créatrice de formes. La vie est forme, et la forme est le mode de la vie » (Henri Focillon). Formes de la géométrie et du cosmos, formes de la vie et de la pensée, formes architecturales, musicales et littéraires, formes fixes ou métamorphoses : le concept de forme est omniprésent dans (...) les sciences et dans les arts. C’est à une exploration de cette notion de forme que le Collège de France a consacré en octobre 2011 son colloque multidisciplinaire de rentrée : sa définition en philosophie chez Platon et Aristote, ses applications en mathématiques et en astrophysique, en chimie et en biologie, ses conséquences en psychologie et en linguistique, en anthropologie, en droit et dans les arts. Ces débats ont été aussi l’occasion de se tourner vers des pensées où elle joue un rôle particulièrement important, comme le structuralisme de Claude Lévi-Strauss ou l’histoire de l’art d’André Chastel. Jean-Pierre Changeux est professeur honoraire au Collège de France, chaire de Communications cellulaires. Il a dirigé la publication de trois colloques précédents du Collège de France : La Vérité dans les sciences (2003), Gènes et culture (2003) et L’Homme artificiel(2007). Contributions de Antoine Compagnon, Claude Debru, Stanislas Dehaene, Mireille Delmas-Marty, Philippe Descola, Anne Fagot-Largeault, Marcel Hénaff, Michel Hochmann, Jean-Jacques Hublin, François-Bernard Mâche, Jean-François Mangin, Jean-Claude Pecker, Jacques Reisse, John Scheid, Jesper Svenbro. (shrink)

Est-il possible de pratiquer encore la méthode phénoménologique? Le projet husserlien ne peut-il être repris et prolongé? Ne faut-il pas dire plutôt que cette tâche infinie d'éclaircissement et de réflexion que Husserl assignait au philosophe se perd dans les sables et qu'il importe alors d'aborder d'autres continents? En suivant le fil des Méditations cartésiennes, l'exposé le plus compact que Husserl ait consacré aux idées directrices de sa philosophie, Jean Toussaint Desanti s'efforce, dans le présent ouvrage, de répondre brièvement à (...) de telles questions. (shrink)

Dans cet essai bref et étincelant, Jean-Claude Guillebaud s’insurge contre la désespérance qui habite nos sociétés. Il nous convainc que, décidément, l’avenir a besoin de nous. Ce texte de combat est l’un des plus personnels qu’il ait écrit. "J’aimerais trouver les mots pour dire à quel point m’afflige la désespérance contemporaine. Elle est un gaz toxique que nous respirons chaque jour, sans réfléchir. Or, la réalité n’est jamais aussi sombre. Ombres et lumières y sont toujours mêlées. L’espérance n’implique donc (...) ni aveuglement ni sotte crédulité. Elle est lucide, mais têtue. J’y repense chaque matin à l’aube, quand je vois rosir le ciel au-dessus des toits de Paris ou monter la lumière derrière la forêt, chez moi, en Charente... L’espérance a partie liée avec cet infatigable recommencement du matin. Elle vise l’avenir mais se vit aujourd’hui, les yeux ouverts. Avec passion." [Source : 4e de couv.]. (shrink)

Philon d'Alexandrie, un philosophe juif contemporain de Jésus et de saint Paul et le principal témoin de la théologie de la Diaspora, éclaire les multiples visages de sa foi religieuse à l'aide de la philosophie grecque, au cours de ses abondants commentaires sur la Loi de Moïse. Il est très proche du monde de pensée de saint Paul, de l'Épître aux Hébreux et de saint Jean, c'est-à-dire du milieu où s'est développé le christianisme. L'auteur, Jean Laporte, élève de (...) l'Institut catholique de Paris et professeur à l'université Notre-Dame d'Indiana (USA), s'est fixé pour but d'étudier la doctrine eucharistique de Philon sous ses différents aspects : les termes et images qui l'expriment, son lien intime avec le culte du temple, les problèmes cosmologiques, anthropologiques et spirituels liés à l'œuvre de la création et de la restauration de l'homme. Le travail révèle la richesse de l'Eucharistie philonienne et contribue indirectement à éclairer les bases de l'Eucharistie chrétienne. (shrink)

« La liberté : ce singulier ne désigne pas ici une essence à laquelle rapporter toutes nos “libertés”. Il suspend au contraire toute détermination de ces “libertés”, qu’on sait bien “formelles”, sans pourtant vouloir le savoir… Il le fait au nom de l’expérience singulière de ce qui est sans essence : l’existence même. Cette expérience est un fait, lui aussi singulier, car il n’obéit pas à une logique du “fait” opposé à la “loi”. Ni fait, ni loi, mais l’être même (...) en tant que partage de l’existence. La pensée en provient, elle ne s’en empare pas. Quant elle s’ouvre à cette expérience, elle pense son possible hors d’elle-même, comme chose, force ou regard. La liberté est l’in-fini de la pensée. ». (shrink)