This paper is a first attempt to study the problem of aggregation of individual ordinal probabilistic beliefs in an Arrowian framework. We exhibit some properties an aggregation rule must fulfil; in particular we prove the existence of a “quasi-dictator”.

Jean Ladrière. Les limitations internes des formalismes. Étude sur la signification du théorème de Gödel et des théorèmes apparentés dans la théorie des fondements des mathématiques. Collection de logique mathématique, B II. E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain, and Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1957, XV + 715 pp. - Volume 25 Issue 3.

In the commentaries to this book we try to understand d’Alembert thoughts and how he contrives to translate his ideas on mechanics to the fluid realm with a new and radical point of view; how he arrives at the first two fundamental differential equations among the velocity components; and how he tries to reduce the resistance of a moving body, which is a change of its momentum, to the hydrostatical pressure, which is related to the gravity. All this knowing that (...) his mechanics has no forces and no pressures as well, and that the fluids are aggregates of individual particles. The essay A New Theory of the Resistance of Fluids was a turning point in Fluid Mechanics because clearly, for the first time, the resistance is shown as the results of a fluid subjected to differential equations in a continuous mode instead of a set of impacts of individual particles. This contribution has been recognized by the scholars. However, only partial attention has been p aid to this work, which can be justified due to the difficulty in its reading and also because it was eclipsed by the publication, a few years later, of Euler’s three Memoirs that established modern hydrodynamics. (shrink)

Praise and blame are the two currents that wend their way through writings about women from antiquity to modern times. Is woman Eve or Mary, “virtue or venom”? This unresolvable question gave rise to a debate structure that governs many texts dealing with women. Indeed, as Monique Engel observed, this structure points to an ideological impasse, a fundamental contradiction within Christian doctrine on women and marriage. One late-fourteenth-century writer who inscribes himself into this structure is Jean le Fèvre de (...) Ressons, who translated the Lamentations by the misogynist Matheolus and wrote its counterpart, the Livre de Leesce which he designed as a refutation of Matheolus. The Livre de Leesce forms part of the tradition of the praise of women, represented in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by such texts as Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, Christine de Pizan's Epistre au dieu d'amours and Le livre de la cité des dames, and Martin le Franc's Champion des dames. (shrink)

Jean-Marie Vaysse (1950-2011) hat das philosophische Leben in Frankreich durch die Originalität seines Nachdenkens über die Geschichte der Philosophie dauerhaft geprägt. Spinoza, Heidegger und Deleuze waren seine wichtigsten Weggefährten, mit denen er versucht hat, Fluchtlinien zu entwerfen, um über das Schicksal des zeitgenössischen Denkens nachzusinnen. Seine der deutschen Philosophie von Kant bis Heidegger gewidmete Lehre hat bei seinen Studenten an der Universität Toulouse II - Le Mirail eine sehr lebendige Erinnerung hinterlassen. Dieses Buch ehrt sein Werk, indem es seine (...) außergewöhnliche Art, philosophische Texte zu lesen, und seine Schärfe in der Analyse einiger bevorzugter Lehren hervorhebt und den Geist seiner Methode mit originalen Beiträgen fortführt. Außerdem werden zwei Texte postum veröffentlicht, die den Schwung eines nun abgebrochenen Denkens bezeugen. Jean-Marie Vaysse (1950-2011) a marqué durablement la vie philosophique française, par l’originalité de sa réflexion sur l’histoire de la philosophie. Spinoza, Heidegger et Deleuze ont constitué les principaux compagnons de route avec lesquels il s’est efforcé de dessiner des lignes de fuite pour méditer la destinée de la pensée contemporaine. Son enseignement à l’Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail, consacré à la philosophie allemande, de Kant à Heidegger, a laissé un souvenir toujours vivant chez ses étudiants. Le présent volume rend hommage à son œuvre, en soulignant la singularité de sa pratique de lecture des textes philosophiques, l’acuité de son analyse de certaines doctrines privilégiées, et en perpétuant l’esprit de sa démarche par des contributions originales. Enfin, nous publions à titre posthume deux inédits, qui témoignent de l’élan d’une pensée interrompue. (shrink)