Le mythe n'est pas un phénomène qui se nourrit en quelquesorte de sa propre substance. Le phénomène du mythe entretient, au contraire, des liens particulièrement étroits avec le double univers du langage et du sacré. Entre ces trois phéno-mènes, les rapports sont multiples, et, vous le devinez, extrême-ment complexes. Il ne saurait être question d'épuiser ici un aussi vaste sujet. J'aurai atteint mon but si je paryiens à circonscrire quelques-unes des données fondamentales du problème. J'essaierai d'être clair et bref.

La parole du mille-pattes Titre etrange pour un essai de philosophie politique qui convoque les auteurs qui, depuis Platon, s'efforcent de cerner ce qui fonde notre existence sociale. " C'est avec de bonnes paroles que le mille-pattes traverse un champ fleuri de fourmis. " Selon ce dicton de Cote-d'Ivoire, ce n'est qu'avec ces bonnes paroles, sinceres et raisonnables, que le mille-pattes a evite un conflit avec les fourmis. Noble ancienne tradition qui a souvent permis a la discussion collective de prevenir (...) la violence des vengeances. Au siecle des Lumieres, substituer le droit et le libre debat aux rapports de force fut une promesse liee a tout ideal democratique. Or les siecles qui ont suivi ont comme jamais deploye des violences massives, souvent au nom de la liberte et du droit. Ici et la, malgre tout, le debat public et le souci de reconciliation ont permis de depasser des contradictions qui paraissaient insurmontables. La metaphore du mille-pattes vient rappeler que ce fut longtemps une regle commune. Apres avoir depasse la logique des vengeances individuelles et collectives, la justice civile et internationale devient parfois une forme legale de vengeance des vainqueurs, qu'elle pretend pourtant remplacer. La popularite de Gandhi, Luther King et Mandela, qui ont triomphe par les vertus de la simple parole, est-elle un echo du passe de l'humanite ou la promesse d'une reinvention a venir de la politique? En reprenant ces questions a la lumiere de l'heritage de vingt-cinq siecles de pensee, tentons de tracer les contours de cette " philosophie du mille-pattes " que le monde actuel, plus violent et inegalitaire que jamais, laisse affleurer comme un avenir possible. (shrink)

Webber's perceptive new introduction helps to decipher this challenging, seminal work, placing it in the context of the author's work and the history of ...

Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth century. The principal founder of existentialism, a political thinker and famous novelist and dramatist, his work has exerted enormous influence in philosophy, literature, politics and cultural studies. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings is the first collection of Sartre's key philosophical writings and provides an indispensable resource for readers of his work. Stephen Priest's clear and helpful introductions make the volume an ideal companion to those coming (...) to Sartre's writing for the first time. (shrink)

Sartre explains the theory of existential psychoanalysis in this treatise on human reality.

La transcendance de l’ego signe à la fois l’entrée de Sartre en phénoménologie et la première mise en cause de l’idée de sujet au sein des philosophies du Cogito. En montrant que l’Ego se constitue comme illusion nécessaire, Sartre libère un champ transcendantal déshumanisé, allégé du moi et du psychique, polarisé par ses entours. C’est pourquoi son article sur l’intentionnalité précède cette réédition critique de la Transcendance : ce texte ne prépare pas L’être et le néant mais scelle la redéfinition (...) sartrienne du moi, du monde et de la conscience, puisée dans une lecture rigoureuse de Husserl, mais aussi dirigée contre lui. Le troisième texte de ce volume, Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi, une conférence devenue presque introuvable où se résume une bonne part de L’être et le néant approfondit la visée anti-humaniste de cette théorie inédite du Cogito, qui jette la conscience dans le monde sans jamais les réconcilier. (shrink)

_Being and Nothingness_ is without doubt one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The central work by one of the world's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture and literature was immediate and was felt worldwide, from the absurd drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat poets. (...) _Being and Nothingness_ is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mind-set of subsequent generations. Sixty years after its first publication, its message remains as potent as ever - challenging the reader to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, responsibility and action. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he (...) was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

The Transcendence of the Ego may be regarded as a turning-point in the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre. Prior to the writing of this essay, published in France in 1937, Sartre had been intimately acquainted with the phenomenological movement which originated in Germany with Edmund Husserl. It is a fundamental tenet of Husserl, the notion of a transcendent ego, which is here attacked by Sartre. This disagreement with Husserl has great importance for Sartre and facilitated the transition from (...) phenomenology to the doctrine of Being and Nothingness. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make (...) it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes. Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, Notebooks for a Ethics is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to Being and Nothingness , Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his death in 1980. (...) Presented here for the first time in English, the Notebooks reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other--among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt--he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the Critique of Dialectical Reason . The Notebooks themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished in two volumes with major original ...

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)

Essays culled from two former books by the leading French exponent of this philosophy.

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)

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)

The dynamic development of technology, as well as of AI’s, raises the fundamental question: can machines think? At the beginning of the 20th Century the Austrian philosopher wonders about this problem and analyses it from a logical-philosophical conception which conveys the need to recognize all the elements comprised in the thought-language relationship. An ethical-religious dimension is revealed in certain uses of language. This dimension, which shows the human’s attitude to the world, stems from the human tendency to search for explanations. (...) This attitude does not extend to machines. (shrink)

"A driving force in all Sartre's writing is his serious desire to change the life of his reader." -- Iris Murdoch.

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Ego was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea . The Transcendence of the Ego is the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many (...) subsequent writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Ego offers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness : the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (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)

'Search for a Method' is a separate and introductory essay published together with 'Critique of Dialectical Reason'.

“He devoured her with his eyes.” This expression and many other signs point to the illusion common to both realism and idealism: to know is to eat. After a hundred years of academicism, French philosophy remains at that point. We have all read Brunschvicg, Lalande, and Meyerson,2 we have all believed that the spidery mind trapped things in its web, covered them with a white spit and slowly swallowed them, reducing them to its own substance. What is a table, a (...) rock, a house? Answer: a certain assemblage of “contents of consciousness,” a class of such contents. Oh digestive philosophy! Yet nothing seemed more obvious: is not the table the actual content of my perception? Is not my perception the present state of my consciousness? Nutrition, assimilation! Assimilation, Lalande said, of things to ideas, of ideas by ideas, of minds by minds. The corpulent skeletons of the world were picked clean by these diligent diastases: assimilation, unification, identification. The simplest and plainest among us vainly looked for something solid, something not just mental, but would encounter everywhere only a soft and very genteel mist: themselves. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the way affect has featured in discussions of identity, focusing on ethnic and national identities. While affect features in most discussions of ethnicity it has mostly been dismissed as a testament to the irrationality and dangerous qualities of the identity in question. Such discussions adopt a simplistic model of human psychology, usually based on a hydraulic model of the emotions. After considering some recent and pioneering work that foregrounds the role of affectivity in group formations, (...) I proceed to outline the basis for a phenomenological psychology of affect and group identities incorporating insights from psychoanalysis and phenomenology. One cannot begin to discuss the proper role of identity in the public sphere without first considering the emotional dynamics that underlie such group formations. (shrink)

Philosopher, novelist, dramatist and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the greatest writers of all time. He was fascinated by the role played by the emotions in human life and placed them at the heart of his philosophy. This brilliant short work - which contains some of the principal ideas later to appear in his masterpiece Being and Nothingness - is Sartre at his best: insightful, engaging and controversial. Far from constraining one's freedom, as we often think, Sartre (...) argues that emotions are fundamental to it and that an emotion is nothing less than 'a transformation of the world'. With a new foreword by Sebastian Gardner. (shrink)

First published in 1972. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Philosopher, novelist, dramatist and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the greatest writers of all time. He was fascinated by the role played by the emotions in human life and placed them at the heart of his philosophy. This brilliant short work - which contains some of the principal ideas later to appear in his masterpiece Being and Nothingness - is Sartre at his best: insightful, engaging and controversial. Far from constraining one's freedom, as we often think, Sartre (...) argues that emotions are fundamental to it and that an emotion is nothing less than 'a transformation of the world'. With a new foreword by Sebastian Gardner. (shrink)

For Ockham and Wittgenstein the analysis of knowledge is based on language. Both authors uphold the conception of the world from a logical-philosophical dimension configured by the close thought-language relationship. This construct is developed on the basis of the following three aspects: first, concepts are signs of things; second, propositions describe “state of affairs”; and third, knowledge in terms of “habits” is expressed in propositions structured in terms of the “uses” of language. These propositions are established by the thought considered (...) as “activity” and “operation of signs”. By analyzing certain a priori propositions, we recognize the very boundaries of the thought-language relationship, wherein the existential problems of mankind are revealed, whether out of the human tendency of explaining the world as a whole or out of the human attitude in the face of it. (shrink)

For Ockham and Wittgenstein the analysis of knowledge is based on language. Both authors uphold the conception of the world from a logical-philosophical dimension configured by the close thought-language relationship. This construct is developed on the basis of the following three aspects: first, concepts are signs of things; second, propositions describe “state of affairs”; and third, knowledge in terms of “habits” is expressed in propositions structured in terms of the “uses” of language. These propositions are established by the thought considered (...) as “activity” and “operation of signs”. By analyzing certain a priori propositions, we recognize the very boundaries of the thought-language relationship, wherein the existential problems of mankind are revealed, whether out of the human tendency of explaining the world as a whole or out of the human attitude in the face of it. (shrink)

The article reconstructs Jean Cavaillès’s polemical engagement with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy of mathematics. I argue that Cavaillès’s encounter with Husserl clarifies the scope and ambition of Cavaillès’s philosophy of the concept by identifying three interrelated epistemological problems in Husserl’s phenomenological method: (1) Cavaillès claims that Husserl denies a proper content to mathematics by reducing mathematics to logic. (2) This reduction obliges Husserl, in turn, to mischaracterize the significance of the history of mathematics for the philosophy of mathematics. (3) (...) Finally, Husserl’s phenomenology distorts the nature of mathematical experience. Accordingly, Cavaillès’s philosophy of mathematics is premised on a threefold affirmation designed to overcome these inadequacies. Cavaillès claims that mathematics is an autonomous field of conceptual production that cannot be reduced to logical, psychological, or phenomenological descriptions of conceptual genesis. Two important corollaries follow: the history of mathematics must guide the philosophy of mathematics, and mathematical experience itself must be described according to the mechanisms of a novel theory of mathematical abstraction. In what follows, I demonstrate that Cavaillès’s encounter with Husserl does not merely describe a polemical engagement with a rival philosophical position; it allows us to reconstruct Cavaillès’s own highly original contributions to the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

L'anthropologie en l'absence de l'homme: le dernier ouvrage de Fer-nand Dumont nous apporte la réflexion d'un praticien des sciénces de l'homme, et notamment de la sociologie, autour de ce que l'auteur appelle, en un sens d'ailleurs trés large, l'anthropologie.C'est dire tout de suite qu'il s'agit essentiellement ici d'une pensée portée au second degré sur un premier « discours », ou un savoir déjà constitué: celui que pratique, ou auquel prétend l'anthropologue luimême. Critique d'une exploration qui, en un autre sens il (...) est vrai, se veut elle-même critique, l'entreprise de Fernand Dumont se meut ainsi en général dans une atmosphère plutôt raréfiée. (shrink)

La place de l’homme dans le monde ne s’épuise pas pour Vivès aux conséquences théologiques de la Chute. L’humanité a le pouvoir de combiner l’usage de la raison théorique et de la raison pratique et fait face, par là même, à sa condition initiale par l’éducation, le savoir et l’éthique. Dès lors, le devenir historique est indissociable du monde de la culture dont la finalité est la réalisation de la liberté et de la concorde.

The purposes of writing -- The itinerary of a thought -- Vietnam : imperialism and genocide -- Czechoslovakia : the socialism that came in from the cold -- France : masses, spontaneity, party -- Kierkegaard : the singular universal -- Mallarmé : the poetry of suicide -- Tintoretto : St. George and the dragon -- The man with the tape-recorder -- Psychoanalytic dialogue -- Reply to Sartre--Pontalis -- Reply to Sartre--Pingaud -- A plea for intellectuals -- A friend of the (...) people. (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)

This collection of essays, by Reding, in the emergent field of Sino-Hellenic studies, explores the neglected inchoative strains of rational thought in ancient China and compares them to similar themes in ancient Greek thought, right at the beginnings of philosophy in both cultures. Reding develops and defends the bold hypothesis that Greek and Chinese rational thinking are one and the same phenomenon. Rather than stressing the extreme differences between these two cultures - as most other writings on these subjects - (...) Reding looks for the parameters that have to be restored to see the similarities. Reding maintains that philosophy is like an unknown continent discovered simultaneously in both China and Greece, but from different starting-points. The book comprises seven essays moving thematically from conceptual analysis, logic and categories to epistemology and ontology, with an incursion in the field of comparative metaphorology. One of the book's main concerns is a systematic examination of the problem of linguistic relativism through many detailed examples. (shrink)