Nourrie des textes de la tradition philosophique, la pensée de Hannah Arendt vise à tirer les leçons des phénomènes totalitaires pour restaurer une conception de la politique propre à assurer l'existence et la permanence d'un monde à partager et à aimer. Dans ce monde, chaque homme, simplement parce qu'il est homme, serait considéré comme étant porteur d'une valeur inconditionnelle, lui garantissant sa place parmi les siens et une égale dignité. Construire un tel monde implique de rompre avec les travers de (...) la plupart des philosophes, qui depuis Platon se sont révélés résolument hostiles à la politique et à l'action, et se sont réfugiés dans le monde des idées pour se consacrer à la contemplation, laissant ainsi le champ libre aux idéologies mortifères. La plupart des grands philosophes ont ainsi manqué le sens du politique. Et en cela, ils sont en partie responsables et coupables du chaos qui a conduit à l'avènement du nazisme. C'est cette incapacité des philosophes à penser la politique qui poussa Hannah Arendt à refuser avec constance ce qualificatif au profit de celui de théoricienne politique. Le désir insatiable de comprendre les phénomènes, dont elle fut actrice ou spectatrice, amena Hannah Arendt à s'affranchir des catégories et des usages pour proposer une démarche audacieuse et inclassable. La volonté de construire un monde où aucun homme ne serait plus considéré comme superflu la conduisit à emprunter un long chemin semé d'embûches, que cet ouvrage tente de retracer, révélant ainsi une pensée puissante, humaniste et complexe, qui nous permet d'éclairer sous un jour différent notre présent."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This paper is a study of a pragmatic argument for belief in the existence of God constructed and criticized by Richard Gale. The argument’s conclusion is that religious belief is morally permissible under certain circumstances. Gale contends that this moral permission is defeated in the circumstances in question both because it violates the principle of universalizability and because belief produces an evil that outweighs the good it promotes. My counterargument tries to show that neither of the reasons invoked (...) by Gale suffices to defeat the moral permission established by the original argument. (shrink)

One of the more serious criticisms of the B-theory is that by denying the passage of time or maintaining that passage is a mind-dependent illusion or appearance, the B-theory gives rise to a static, block universe and thereby removes what is most distinctively timelike about time. The aim of this paper is to discuss the R-theory of time, after Russell, who Richard Gale calls “the father of the B-theory,” and explain how the R-theory can respond to the criticisms just (...) raised, and others. In the course of my discussion I shall clarify differences between versions of the A-, B- and R-theories of time, and argue that McTaggart’s conception of the B-series and more specifically, the B-relations that generate it, has been instrumental in misconstruing the A-/B-theory debate resulting in criticisms of the B-theory that can be seen to be fallacious when applied to the R-theory. (shrink)

This insightful and provocative discussion of John Dewey’s philosophy appears a decade after Richard Gale’s publication of his important book The Divided Self of William James (Cambridge University Press, 1999). In that earlier work, Gale exposed and explored the tension in James’s thought between the robust Promethean tendency to pursue a “morally strenuous life” and a passive mystical tendency toward unity with that which is greater than oneself. The present study is a kind of sequel to that work, (...) as Gale shows the same tendencies to be operative in Dewey’s philosophy, however, not remaining in tension (as with James) but finally integrated or synthesized, so that he can be accurately portrayed as a “Promethean .. (shrink)

The aim of this book, reflected in its title, is to clarify the theist's conception of God while supporting skepticism with respect to its instantiation. The first half of this task is carried out through an investigation of atheological arguments. These are arguments that seek to deduce a contradiction from properties traditionally ascribed to God--omnipotence, absoluteness, immutability, timelessness, benevolence, and so on--with the help of only necessarily true additional premises. Arguments of this sort, Gale claims, are "thought experiments that (...) probe the internal consistency of the theist's conception of God, often with the result that the theist must go back to the drawing board and redesign the particular divine attribute that is the focus of the argument". This, however, is a good result, according to Gale, for, as he attempts to show, the traditional conception entails that God is a "nonperson" and is religiously unavailable. (shrink)

Le jeu de l'Etre a une règle et un sens à tous commun, ceux de la créativité universelle depuis son origine. Faute de respecter leur radicale exigence, notre espèce mondialise les déséquilibres naturels et culturels causés par sa croissance au détriment des autres espèces comme de ses propres congénères, quitte à disparaître avant ravagé sa planète. Dans un univers en constante évolution, l'incessant rééquilibrage des déséquilibres est crucial. Tant qu'a tout moment, elle n'équilibrera pas l'un par l'autre, l'égoïste liberté et (...) l'amour altruiste, notre espèce, quels que soient ses progrès techniques, ne pourra affirmer par son verbe qu'elle préfère la vie à la mort et démontrer le contraire par ses actes, du fait que leur croissante incohérence est à la fois plus facile et plus rentable. (shrink)

"Je suis, moi, homme-femme du Congo-Zaïre et d'Afrique, comme toutes les autres personnes, un être humain authentique. J'ai un corps et un esprit, mes modes d'être et de penser, mes coutumes et ma culture propres, dont je suis fier, et que je tiens à protéger, à conserver et à faire progresser de moi-même et au contact des autres. De tous, mon coeur réclame reconnaissance, respect et égards. Mon corps de couleur a droit à être, droit à l'existence. Fermement, je le (...) crois. Qu'il me soit laissé être ce que je désire être. Je désire être ce que je suis, dans mon essence et ma différence, avec l'innocence de ma sauvagerie certaine et la modestie de mes qualités éventuelles, toutes inhérentes à la race humaine. Je désire être libre, différent des êtres esclaves. Je désire être un autre, autre que des êtres enchaînés. Je désire être pur, propre des gales de faces aliénées, de visages artificiels minaudés, d'âmes et esprits travestis. Je désire vivre, vivre heureux et longtemps, le plus longtemps possible, comme les autres êtres humains du monde fait de justice et de liberté, d'égalité et de dignité. Telle est l'exigence éthique et pathétique de mon Authenticité, exigence criée d'un être humain d'un peuple d'âmes sacrées, qui simplement désirent être."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In this unique work, Ken Gale and Jonathan Wyatt bring together three areas of scholarship: collaborative writing as method of inquiry, the philosophical approaches of the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, and the performativity of both writing and the "self". The book is a reflexive exploration into the theory and practice of collaborative writing, with their between-the-twos sequences of exchanged writings using a variety of forms and genres at the book's heart. Their collaboration offers an experimental, transgressive and nomadic inquiry (...) into subjectivity. Based upon the authors' joint doctoral dissertation, the book draws for its theoretical base primarily from the work of Deleuze, from both his philosophical "figures" and the insights that he offers into his collaborations with others. It also tells a story, conveying a sense of a relationship developing over time. This book will interest both academics and postgraduate students in the field of qualitative inquiry, including those involved in narrative inquiry, cultural, communication and performance studies, and autoethnography. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part I: Growth, inquiry, and unity -- Problems with inquiry -- Aesthetic inquiry -- Inquiry, inquiry, inquiry -- Why unification? -- Part II: The metaphysics of unity -- The quest for being QUA being -- Time and individuality -- The Humpty-Dumpty intuition -- The mystical.

Meta-analytic findings have suggested that individual differences are relatively weaker predictors of academic dishonesty than are situational factors. A robust literature on deviance correlates and workplace integrity testing, however, demonstrates that individual difference variables can be relatively strong predictors of a range of counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). To the extent that academic cheating represents a kind of counterproductive behavior in the work role of "student", employment-type integrity measures should be strong predictors of academic dishonesty. Our results with a college student (...) sample showed that integrity test scores were moderate to strong correlates of self-reported academic cheating and that these relationships persisted even after controlling for a variety of measurement concerns such as item format similarity, concurrent assessment, and socially desirable responding. Implications for institutional honor codes and the broader relations between educational and workplace dishonesty are discussed. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that reasoning, thought and judgement essentially involve action. It is sometimes said that they involve spontaneity, where spontaneity is taken to be connected in some constitutive way with action-intentional, voluntary and indeed free action. There is, however, a fundamental respect in which reason, thought and judgement neither are nor can be a matter of action; and any spontaneity they involve can be connected with freedom only when the word 'freedom' is used in the Spinozan-Kantian sense according (...) to which freedom is a matter of 'rational necessitation', determination by reason. (shrink)

Fiction has been of concern to both the aesthetician and the ontologist. The former is concerned with the criteria or standards by which we judge the aesthetic worth of a fictional work, the latter with whether our ontology must be enlarged to include possible or imaginary worlds in which are housed the characters and incidents referred to and depicted in such works. This is a paper on the ontology of fiction. It will attempt to answer these ontological questions concerning truth (...) and reference in fiction by clarifying the use of language. Our paradigm case of the fictive use of language will be one in which the story-teller orally relates the fictional story in the presence of his audience, rather than one in which he inscribes his story so that it may be read at a later date. The value of considering the use of language in a face-to-face situation is that it brings before us in their full explicitness all of the different facets of a speech act, many of which often lie dormant in non-face-to-face uses and therefore are hard to discover from a consideration of such uses. (shrink)

God -- On the cognitivity of mystical experiences -- The problem of evil -- God eternal and Paul helm -- A new cosmological argument, co-authored with Alexander Pruss -- A response to oppy and to Davey and Clifton -- Co-authored with Alexander Pruss -- The ecumenicalism of William James -- Time -- Is it now now? -- McTaggart's analysis of time -- The egocentric particular and token-reflexive analyses of tense -- The impossibility of backward causation -- An identity theory of (...) the A- and B-series -- Co-authored with Michelle Beer -- Disanalogies between space and time -- Nonbeing -- Negative statements -- On what there isn't -- Nonbeing and the receptacle -- Could logical space be empty? (shrink)

This volume brings together a distinguished, international list of scholars to explore the role of the learner's intention in knowledge change. Traditional views of knowledge reconstruction placed the impetus for thought change outside the learner's control. The teacher, instructional methods, materials, and activities were identified as the seat of change. Recent perspectives on learning, however, suggest that the learner can play an active, indeed, intentional role in the process of knowledge restructuring. This volume explores this new, innovative view of conceptual (...) change learning using original contributions drawn from renowned scholars in a variety of disciplines. The volume is intended for scholars or advanced students studying knowledge acquisition and change, including educational psychology, developmental psychology, science education, cognitive science, learning science, instructional psychology, and instructional and curriculum studies. (shrink)

In discussing Socrates's argument for Plato's principle of change in the Phaedo, Syrianus asks, To what kind of opposites is Socrates referring? I offer a new answer to Syrianus's question. I start from David Sedley's view that the opposites in question are converse contraries, which behave as converses in comparative contexts. I show that the quantitative pairs that Socrates cites fit Sedley's view because they are implicit comparatives. Nonetheless, I argue that Socrates's evaluative pairs are better understood as asymmetrical opposites (...) because the Phaedo and the Republic reveal that these pairs have independent, not relational, meanings. So my answer to Syrianus's question is that implicit comparatives and asymmetrical opposites are the kinds of opposites to which Socrates is referring. (shrink)

Narrative ambiguity is a deliberate stylistic device which engages the reader, seizes the imaginative processes, and creates an interaction with the characters of the story that a more explicitly detailed account does not allow to happen.

Three of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty are very much inter-related: ‘Promote gender equality and empower women,’ ‘Reduce child mortality,’ and ‘Improve maternal health.’ Although the biblical text has often been used to subordinate and oppress women, it can be a resource to empower women who live and give birth in conditions of grinding poverty. Put in the mouths of pregnant women, the Song of Hannah and Mary’s Magnificat envision a reversal of hierarchies, in which ‘The (...) Lord raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.’ Attention will be paid to the social pre-exilic and Palestinian contexts of exploitation to which these songs speak. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for interpreting the Lysis as a dialogue of definition, designed to answer the question of “What is a friend?” The main innovation of my interpretation is the contention – and this is argued for in the paper – that Socrates hints towards a definition of being a friend that applies equally to mutual friendship and one-way attraction – the two kinds of friend relation very clearly identified by Socrates in the dialogue. The key (...) to understanding how the two different kinds of friendship can have a common definition is to appreciate that the property of being a friend has a relational character. (shrink)

"This book gathers together eighteen of the most important and influential scholarly articles of the last 60-70 years (three of which are translated into..