tome 1. Mémoires ; Traité de la cause et des phénomènes de l'électricité ; Lettre à M. Nollet sur l'électricité ; avec l'Histoire d'Alexandre le Grand.

Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794), the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the future perfectibility of man. This volume contains a revised translation of 'The Sketch', written while in hiding from the Jacobin Terror, together with lesser-known writings (...) on the emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, the meanings of freedom and despotism and reflections on revolutionary violence. The introduction by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati sets these works in context and shows why Condorcet is of real interest today as we reinterpret the meaning of Enlightenment, the very idea of progress and the founding ideas of social democracy. (shrink)

v. 1. Cinq mémoires sur l'instruction publique -- v. 2. Rapport sur l'instruction publique.

Cuando comparamos la Revolución de Inglaterra de 1688 con la Revolución Francesa de 1792, encontramos semejanzas en lo que concierne a las causas de ambas, y a los principios que las dirigían. Tales semejanzas, pese a la diferencia de tiempos, de circunstancias y de luces, muestran que la causa del pueblo francés es la de la nación inglesa, y también la de todos los pueblos libres o que han concebido la esperanza de llegar a serlo.

De revolución hemos derivado revolucionario; y esta palabra, con carácter general, se refiere a todo lo atinente a una revolución. Pero el término fue creado específicamente para aplicarse a la nuestra, para la revolución que ha transformado en pocos años a uno de los países en los que el despotismo prevalecía desde más antiguo, en la única república donde la libertad ha tenido alguna vez por base una total igualdad de derechos. Así, la palabra revolucionario se aplica solo a las (...) revoluciones que tienen por objeto la libertad. (shrink)

We discuss models that attempt to provide an explanation for the violation of Bell inequalities at a distance in terms of hidden influences. These models reproduce the quantum correlations in most situations, but are restricted to produce local correlations in some configurations. The argument presented in (Bancal et al. Nat Phys 8:867, 2012) applies to all of these models, which can thus be proved to allow for faster-than-light communication. In other words, the signalling character of these models cannot remain hidden.

Publie en 1683 comme un preambule a la refutation du Traite de la nature et de la grace de Nicolas Malebranche, l'ouvrage Vraies et fausses idees d'Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) a connu un etonnant destin. Cette defense tres argumentee de la conception cartesienne des idees est peu a peu devenue un texte incontournable dans les debats de philosophie de la connaissance, cite et commente aussi bien par les auteurs classiques que dans les debats anglosaxons contemporains. Ce volume en propose (...) la premiere edition critique annotee en francais. Des annexes apportent en outre quelques outils pour se reperer dans l'important corpus de textes de philosophie de la connaissance rediges par Arnauld. (shrink)

This is a translation of Des Vraies et des Fausses Idees by Antoine Arnauld, in which Arnauld demolishes Malebranche's version of idealism. It allows the reader with only minimal French (or Latin) the ability to recognize Arnauld's technical terms.

This edited volume features 20 essays written by leading scholars that provide a detailed examination of L’Homme by René Descartes. It explores the way in which this work developed themes not just on questions such as the circulation of the blood, but also on central questions of perception and our knowledge of the world. Coverage first offers a critical discussion on the different versions of L'Homme, including the Latin, French, and English translations and the 1664 editions. Next, the authors examine (...) the early reception of the work, from the connection of L'Homme to early-modern Dutch Cartesianism to Nicolas Steno's criticism of the work and how Descartes' clock analogy is used to defend two different conceptions of the articulation between anatomical observations and functional hypotheses. The book then goes on to explore L'Homme and early-modern anthropology as well as the how the work has been understood and incorporated into the works of scientists, physicians, and philosophers over the last 150 years. Overall, readers will discover how the trend over the last few decades to understand human cognition in neuro-physiological terms can be seen to be not something unprecedented, but rather a revival of a way of dealing with these fundamental questions that was pioneered by Descartes. (shrink)

Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger, ingénieur, homme de lettres et philosophe français, fut admiré ou redouté par plusieurs de ses contemporains les plus illustres. Il a également fourni des articles de droit à l'Encyclopédie de Diderot et D'Alembert. Le présent ouvrage constitue la première étude d'ensemble de cet écrivain.

De 1683 a 1694, Antoine Arnauld et Nicolas Malebranche, anciens amis et pretres que leur interet pour Descartes, leur reverence pour Augustin et leur commune inquietude face au libertinage semblaient pourtant destiner a s'entendre, polemiquerent violemment. En insistant sur l'aspect philosophique de ces debats, cet ouvrage propose la premiere interpretation d'ensemble de cette celebre confrontation. Y a-t-il de serieuses raisons philosophiques au desaccord entre Arnauld et Malebranche? Leur determination permet-elle d'eclairer certains aspects du malebranchisme? Existe-t-il une philosophie d' (...) class='Hi'>Antoine Arnauld et peut-on en preciser les contenus? Ces trois questions centrales conduisent au point de fuite de ce travail: l'impuissance theologique du cartesianisme est-elle congenitale, ou bien peut-on tirer des dividendes theologiques de la philosophie cartesienne sans en faire jouer les structures et en modifier les concepts fondamentaux? (shrink)

L’ouvrage de Denis Moreau est passionnant et nous tient en haleine du commencement à la fin. Il sera très bien accueilli par le nombre croissant de spécialistes d’Arnauld, par les dix-septiémistes en général, ainsi que par les historiens de la pensée.

This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast (...) with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4–251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed. (shrink)

Nicolas Weill propose une lecture stimulante de ces textes qui constituent une des découvertes philosophiques les plus importantes de ces dernières années. La publication des "Cahiers" redonne une actualité brûlante à la question qui divise épigones et détracteurs du penseur allemand : comment continuer à philosopher avec Heidegger sans tenir compte d'une éventuelle contamination de cette philosophie par l'idéologie nazie? Par une analyse sans concession des "Cahiers", en se concentrant sur les Réflexions (tenues par Heidegger de 1931 à 1941) (...) mais tout en cherchant à en dégager les éléments proprement philosophiques, cet ouvrage invite à une approche équilibrée, quitte à "penser avec Heidegger, contre Heidegger", comme le suggérait Jürgen Habermas dès le début des années 1950. Il montre notamment comment l'auteur d'Etre et temps, en inventant une nouvelle forme de philosopher, a poursuivi et prolongé dans ces carnets la critique de la modernité telle qu'elle a été formulée par la "révolution conservatrice" allemande et par Oswald Spengler, le théoricien du déclin de l'Occident. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:L'autorité d'un canon philosophique. Le cas Descartes by Delphine Antoine-MahutFred AblondiDelphine Antoine-Mahut. L'autorité d'un canon philosophique. Le cas Descartes. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2021. Pp. 356. Paperback, €13.00.Henri Gouhier once asked, "Après le mort de Descartes, qu'est-ce que le cartésianisme?" to which he replied, "C'est la philosophie de Descartes vue par ses disciples" (La vocation de Malebranche [Paris: J. Vrin, 1926], 80). In L'autorité d'un (...) canon philosophique, Delphine Antoine-Mahut asks a similar question about who controls in just what a philosophical '-ism' consists, and she offers a nuanced and thoughtful answer. While "l'auctorialité du nom en question" is one part, she adds that we must also consider "l'auctorialité de celui ou de celle qui raconte cette histoire, dans un contexte et avec des enjeux très différent de ceux de l'individu d'origine auquel cette histoire est attachée" (10–11). The end result is that "un canon philosophique n'a rien de philosophiquement pur" (12). With this larger question in mind, she documents, as something of a case study, the genesis and development of the "impure" canon cartésien.The battle for authority over the content of canonical Cartesianism starts with the story of Descartes and his one-time devoted pupil and later disavowed outcast, Henricus Regius. Their relationship began in 1638, when Regius, a professor of theoretical medicine and botany at the University of Utrecht, wrote a letter of appreciation to Descartes. Over the next few years, Descartes offered both corrections to Regius's written work and advice on how best to handle the controversies that arose as a result of those writings. In 1645, however, Regius published his Fundamenta physices, in which he claimed that reason alone is not sufficient to prove either the existence of God or the real distinction between the human mind and body. In fact, he went on to speculate that the human mind is merely a mode of the body. [End Page 322] He also denied that we possess innate ideas, and the existence in us of a pure intellect. At the bottom of Regius's break with Descartes was his belief that Cartesian metaphysics is not needed to ground Cartesian physics. For Regius, consistency with empirical findings and simplicity are all that is required.At this point, as Antoine-Mahut puts it, "le sillon est creusé" (41). Descartes responded angrily, both in private letters and in his preface to the 1647 French edition of his Principles of Philosophy. He accused Regius of plagiarizing from his unpublished work and of confusing his views. Following the appearance of a broadsheet summarizing Regius's disagreements with Descartes (written by Regius's student, Peter Wassenaer), Descartes wrote Notae in programma quoddam, in which he reiterated his arguments for both God's existence and the real distinction. Regius and Wassenaer replied with their Brevis explicatio mentis humanae (1648). All of this is laid out clearly and in detail by Antoine-Mahut in part 1 of her book.Part 2 picks up with Descartes's literary executor Claude Clerselier and his campaign to disassociate Regius from what he believed to be "true" Cartesianism. In the preface to the publication of the first volume of Descartes's letters (1657), Clerselier revived the charge of plagiarism against Regius, who responded by publishing a second edition of the Brevis explicatio. This included a preface that attacked Clerselier for publishing Regius's private correspondence without his permission—in fact, because Regius had not made Descartes's letters to him available, Clerselier had had to reconstruct them from Descartes's notes— and claimed it was Descartes who plagiarized Regius. In Antoine-Mahut's narrative of these events, this "disassociation" was followed by a "combining" (her terms) of Cartesian thought with empiricist natural philosophy in the work of Louis de la Forge, for whom "le cartésianisme se spécifie comme une psychologie empiriste dans laquelle l'activité de l'âme joue un rôle essentiel" (175). There was then a subsequent "incorporating" (again borrowing Antoine-Mahut's terminology) by Nicolas Malebranche, who, she says, "occupe une place... (shrink)

The epistemology of models has to face a conundrum: models are often described as highly idealised, and yet they are considered to be vehicles for scientific explanations. Truth-oriented—veritist—conceptions of explanation seem thereby undermined by this contradiction. In this article, I will show how this apparent paradox can be avoided by appealing to the notion of fiction. If fictionalism is often thought to lead to various flavours of instrumentalism, thereby weakening the veritist hopes, the fiction view of models offers a framework (...) much richer than it seems at first sight. To do so, I will call upon the concepts of modality, counterfactual structure and credible worlds. In the end, veritism of explanation and fiction can indeed go hand in hand, but the scope of explanations we can hope to draw from models must be more precisely delineated. (shrink)

This book is the first extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for (...) other phenomenological themes: perceptual experience, the imagination, remembrance, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the consciousness of others. The result is an illuminating exploration of how and why Husserl considered the question of time-consciousness to be the most difficult, yet also the most central, of all the challenges facing his unique philosophical enterprise"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s invective is legendary among philosophers, and is unmatched in the historical canon. But these complaints are themselves worthy of careful consideration: they are rooted in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, which itself reflects the structure of his metaphysics. This short chapter argues that Schopenhauer’s vitriol rewards philosophical attention; not because it expresses his critical take on Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, but because it neatly illustrates his philosophy of language. Schopenhauer’s epithets are not merely spiteful slurs; instead, they reflect (...) deep-seated theoretical and methodological commitments to transparency of exposition. (shrink)

The paper presents a research programme for the neuroscience of consciousness called 'neurophenomenology' and illustrates it with a recent pilot study . At a theoretical level, neurophenomenology pursues an embodied and large-scale dynamical approach to the neurophysiology of consciousness . At a methodological level, the neurophenomenological strategy is to make rigorous and extensive use of first-person data about subjective experience as a heuristic to describe and quantify the large-scale neurodynamics of consciousness . The paper focuses on neurophenomenology in relation to (...) three challenging methodological issues about incorporating first-person data into cognitive neuroscience: first-person reports can be biased or inaccurate; the process of generating first-person reports about an experience can modify that experience; and there is an 'explanatory gap' in our understanding of how to relate first-person, phenomenological data to third-person, biobehavioural data. (shrink)

This paper analyzes an explicit instantiation of the program of “neurophenomenology” in a neuroscientific protocol. Neurophenomenology takes seriously the importance of linking the scientific study of consciousness to the careful examination of experience with a specific first-person methodology. My first claim is that such strategy is a fruitful heuristic because it produces new data and illuminates their relation to subjective experience. My second claim is that the approach could open the door to a natural account of the structure of human (...) experience as it is mobilized in itself in such methodology. In this view, generative passages define the type of circulation which explicitly roots the active and disciplined insight the subject has about his/her experience in a biological emergent process. (shrink)