In this paper, I set out to argue in favour of a philosophical posthumanist and Nietzschean reading of Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day while demonstrating how transhumanism isunbefitting of being called a Nietzschean theory. I will do this by establishing Chip, the protagonist, as a posthuman and being on the path of the ‘Overhuman’ whereas Wei, the antagonist, will be illustrated as Chip’s intended counterpart the Last Human. Through explaining ‘Transhumansim’ and connecting the field to Wei, I will showcase a (...) new way of reading transhumanist ideology, namely ‘Weiism’. The polar opposite in characters of ‘Overhuman’ and ‘Last Human’ will argue in favour of the Nietzschean paradoxical, as part of philosophical posthumanism. Amor fati and the eternal recurrence become posthumanist narrative tools through their weaving into the posthuman narrative of Chip. My argument is that by making philosophical posthumanism more existentialist in nature, it becomes simpler to argue against nihilistic and totalitarian tendencies of worshipping technology. Finally, it is the spiralling motion forward as a mix between the Nietzschean, eternally cyclical re-inventing of oneself and the posthumanist consideration for the future which makes for a literary combination of the two fields of study. (shrink)

Building on the thought and life of Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Simone Weil and Teresa of Calcutta, this article demonstrates that it is possible for Christians to find joy in the context of suffering. This joy is the joy of being intimate with Christ, of experiencing Christ’s redeeming power at work effectively transforming one’s whole person. In Christ, spiritual darkness and suffering can become a most effective manifestation of the recreating communion of the human with the divine. (...) Perfect discipleship identifies with the complete offer of Jesus Christ, the suffering God, received within one’s heart, so that invincible light might be brought into the night of the world. (shrink)

In this 1999 book Pierre Keller examines the distinctive contributions, and the respective limitations, of Husserl's and Heidegger's approach to fundamental elements of human experience. He shows how their accounts of time, meaning, and personal identity are embedded in important alternative conceptions of how experience may be significant for us, and discusses both how these conceptions are related to each other and how they fit into a wider philosophical context. His sophisticated and accessible account of the phenomenological philosophy of (...) Husserl and the existential phenomenology of Heidegger will be of wide interest to students and specialists in these areas, while analytic philosophers of mind will be interested by the detailed parallels which he draws with a number of concerns of the analytic philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Le philosophe doit fournir au législateur les moyens théoriques d'établir dans les cités des constitutions droites, seules à même de rendre les citoyens vertueux, et donc heureux, en les faisant obéir à de bonnes lois. Plutôt que d'instaurer une fois pour toutes une cité "parfaite", il faut, le plus souvent, réformer les institutions existantes et notamment mélanger les aspects positifs des différentes constitutions déviées. Même s'il entend promouvoir la concorde entre les citoyens, Aristote reconnaît le caractère à la fois naturel (...) et parfois bénéfique de la lutte des classes qui empêche une faction de devenir hégémonique. En permettant au législateur d'analyser la réalité sur laquelle il doit travailler, Les Politiques sont le premier traité de science politique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought--the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs--have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical discourse. Though Heidegger is (...) aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues, Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellectual dimensions--political thought and academic thought--intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the "conservative revolution," of which Nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

In multicellular organisms, cells are frequently programmed to die. This makes good sense: cells that fail to, or are no longer playing important roles are eliminated. From the cell’s perspective, this also makes sense, since somatic cells in multicellular organisms require the cooperation of clonal relatives. In unicellular organisms, however, programmed cell death poses a difficult and unresolved evolutionary problem. The empirical evidence for PCD in diverse microbial taxa has spurred debates about what precisely PCD means in the case of (...) unicellular organisms. In this article, we survey the concepts of PCD in the literature and the selective pressures associated with its evolution. We show that definitions of PCD have been almost entirely mechanistic and fail to separate questions concerning what PCD fundamentally is from questions about the kinds of mechanisms that realize PCD. We conclude that an evolutionary definition is best able to distinguish PCD from closely related phenomena. Specifically, we define “true” PCD as an adaptation for death triggered by abiotic or biotic environmental stresses. True PCD is thus not only an evolutionary product but must also have been a target of selection. Apparent PCD resulting from pleiotropy, genetic drift, or trade-offs is not true PCD. We call this “ersatz PCD.”. (shrink)

An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.

Several recent authors identify structural realism about scientific theories with the claim that the content of a scientific theory is expressible using its Ramsey sentence. Many of these authors have also argued that so understood, the view collapses into empiricist anti-realism, since an argument originally proposed by Max Newman in a review of Bertrand Russell’s The analysis of matter demonstrates that Ramsey sentences are trivially satisfied, and cannot make any significant claims about unobservables. In this paper I argue against both (...) of these claims. Structural realism and Ramsey sentence realism are, in their most defensible versions, importantly different doctrines, and neither is committed to the premises required to demonstrate that they collapse into anti-realism.Keywords: Ramsey sentence; Structural realism; Structuralism; Scientific realism. (shrink)

I present and defend here a thesis named vehicleless externalism for conceptual mental episodes. According to it, the constitutive relations there are between the production of conceptual mental episodes by an individual and the inclusion of this individual in social discursive practices make it non-necessary to equate, even partially, conceptual mental episodes with the occurrence of physical events inside of that individual. Conceptual mental episodes do not have subpersonal vehicles; they have owners: persons in interpretational practices. That thesis is grounded (...) on inferentialism and on the endorsement of the idea that "meaning is normative". After having recapitulated this heritage and after having presented that thesis, the paper especially attempts to articulate how, in that framework, we may then positively conceive the relations there are between conceptual mental episodes, intracranial events and inferential behaviour. (shrink)

The Theodotian Susanna has been studied by various scholars in various ways. Each attempt to give some meaning to this narrative has a different emphasis from a text, context or receiver based angle. This paper presents a mixture of text and context based angles. It focuses on the different spaces in Theodotian Susanna, that is, the house, garden, court and finally heaven. Each of these spaces is contested, but there can only be one victor.

This article revisits what has often been called the of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to in judging the past, and his extreme selectiveness in determining the relevance of past events to world history. Voltaire's historical practice is put in the context of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, and considered in a tradition of universal history going back (...) to Bossuet and leading up to nineteenth-century German historicism. Paradoxically, Voltaire is a major figure in the history of historiography not in spite of his presentism (as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have argued), but because of it. (shrink)

Depuis Aristote, on entend par catégories des concepts très généraux, dont la généralité ne dérive pas de l’expérience, mais en quelque sorte la précède, puisque c’est eux et eux seuls qui nous permettent de l’organiser et de la penser. Ces concepts – substance, quantité, relation, qualité, lieu, temps, action, passion, situation, avoir – sont-ils des structures universelles de toute pensée ou bien sont-ils liés aux particularités sémantiques ou syntaxiques d’un système linguistique particulier, en l’occurrence de la langue grecque, à l’intérieur (...) de laquelle ils ont été pour la première fois énoncés et rassemblés?Les études ici réunies, issues d’un séminaire qui s’est poursuivi durant plusieurs années au Centre de recherche sur la Pensée antique de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, associé au C.N.R.S. , s’efforcent d’apporter des éléments de réponse à cette grande question, qui demeure au centre des discussions contemporaines sur les rapports de la philosophie et du langage. Leur apport spécifique consiste dans une exégèse rigoureuse des analyses du traité aristotélicien des Catégories, éclairé par les développements ultérieurs de la doctrine, tels que nous les connaissons notamment à travers le Commentaire du Néoplatonicien Simplicius. Certaines de ces études examinent l’influence ou les transformations des catégories aristotéliciennes chez les Stoïciens, les grammairiens grecs de la fin de l’Antiquité, les Néoplatoniciens tardifs, les Pères de l’Église et dans la tradition latine antique et médiévale. (shrink)

Criticisms and rejections of representationalism are increasingly popular in 4E cognitive science, and especially in radical enactivism. But by overfocusing our attention on the debate between radical enactivism and classical representationalism, we might miss the woods for the trees, in at least two respects: first, by neglecting the relevance of other theoretical alternatives about representationalism in cognitive science; and second by not seeing how much REC and classical representationalism are in agreement concerning basic and problematic issues dealing with mental content (...) and intentionality. In order to expand and exemplify these ideas, this paper presents two heterodox positions on intentionality and on the relations between content and representation. Special attention is paid to the way REC is rejecting these positions: I argue that this rejection reveals common assumptions with classical representationalism, but also undermines the coherence of REC’s conception of intentionality. (shrink)

A new translation of Pierre Bayle's first great work, which undermines the influence of "superstition" in political life and laid the groundwork for the separation of church and state.

A fresh look at Aristotle's political theory with attention to the resonance of his thought for contemporary concerns.

Pierre Duhem , Physicien-Théoricien, Philosophe et Historien des Sciences, auteur de La Théorie Physique, son objet, sa structure et d’ouvrages d’histoire de la physique, est le promoteur de recherches originales et qui s’avèrent fécondes dans le domaine de la Thermodynamique. Duhem affirme des positions originales en matière philosophique, et Sozein ta Phainomena, écrit en 1908, demeure un témoignage brillant d’un courant ignoré, méconnu, voire méprisé. Les questions sur l’objet de la physique abordées dans ce petit ouvrage restent cependant d’une (...) actualité brûlante à une période où la science et les techniques prennent une place toujours plus importante dans la civilisation et la vie quotidienne. (shrink)

Dans cet article l’auteur définit sa notion de spaciogramme comme une représentation projective groupale de l’espace familial vécu. C’est une médiation thérapeutique favorisant un travail psychique de figurabilité. Il donne accès par un effet « squiggle » à une interfantasmatisation en thérapie psychanalytique. Le spaciogramme est décrit en analogie isomorphe avec l’image projective du génogramme, avec les contenants généalogiques, et avec l’image inconsciente du corps psychique groupal familial (le corps généalogique). Il traduit dans le transfert et la régression, une représentation (...) des mécanismes de défense groupaux, du maillage des liens de filiation et d’affiliation, de la transmission généalogique de l’héritage psychique de la famille. (shrink)

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition, this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism. Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, and they (...) should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition. (shrink)

Qu’en est-il de la transmission généalogique de la honte? Après avoir rappelé la différence entre avoir, être et porter la Honte, l’auteur présente la notion de scénario généalogique porte-la-Honte en particulier à propos de la conception d’un enfant. Il décrit, en l’illustrant à partir d’un exemple de thérapie familiale psychanalytique et de traumatisme catastrophique communautaire, l’importance de la figuration narrative dans la clinique de la honte dans une perspective psychanalytique des liens.

The break necessary to establish a rigorous science of cultural works is something more and something else than a simple methodological reversal.1 It implies a true conversion of the ordinary way of thinking and living the intellectual enterprise. It is a matter of breaking the narcissistic relationship inscribed in the representation of intellectual work as a “creation” and which excludes as the expression par excellence of “reductionist sociology” the effort to subject the artist and the work of art to a (...) way of thinking that is doubly objectionable since it is both genetic and generic.It would be easy to show what the most different kinds of analysis of the work of art owe to the norms that require treating works in and for themselves, with no reference to the social conditions of their production. Thus in the now-classic Theory of Literature, René Wellek and Austin Warren seem to advocate “an explanation in terms of the personality and the life of the writer.” In fact, because they accept the ideology of the “man of genius” they are committed, in their own terms, to “one of the oldest and best-established methods of literary study”—which seeks the explanatory principle of a work in the author taken in isolation .2 In fact, this explanatory principle resides in the relationship between the “space” of works in which each particular work is taken and the “space” of authors in which each cultural enterprise is constituted. Similarly, when Sartre takes on the project of specifying the meditations through which society determined Flaubert, the individual, he attributes to those factors that can be perceived from that point of view—that is, to social class as refracted through a family structure—what are instead the effects of generic factors influencing every writer in an artistic field that is itself in a subordinate position in the field of power and also the effects specific to all writers who occupy the same position as Flaubert within the artistic field. 1. See Pierre Bourdieu, “Intellectual Field and Creative Project,” trans. Sian France, Social Science Information 8 : 89-119; originally published as “Champ intellectual et projet créateur,” Les Temps moderns no. 246 : 865-906. See also Bourdieu, “Champ du pouvoir, champ intellectual et habitus de classe,” Scolies 1 : 7-26, and Bourdieu, “The Genesis of the Concepts of Habitus and Field,” trans. Channa Newman, Sociocriticism no. 2 : 11-24.2. René Welleck and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature p. 69. Pierre Bourdieu holds the chair of sociology at the Collège de France and is director of the Centre de Sociologie européenne at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Among his most recent works are Distinction , Homo Academicus , and Choses Dites. (shrink)

La formule célèbre d’Aristote « la nature ne fait rien en vain », telle qu’elle est utilisée dans le traité sur la Locomotion des animaux, invite à reformuler le problème général du finalisme en zoologie et de la conformité à la nature. Bien que cette formule, en première approche, semble aller dans le sens d’une téléologie cosmique ou globale, elle conduit en fait à privilégier une téléologie relative, c’est-à-dire locale, qui opère à l’échelle des êtres vivants. Elle s’applique en effet, (...) non pas de manière absolue, mais relativement aux possibilités définies par la nature de l’espèce (propriétés spécifiques et génériques). Toutefois, elle n’exprime pas seulement le rapport à la finalité organique stricto sensu, mais aussi les conditions nécessaires externes du mouvement animal, conditions qui définissent, pour les espèces et les genres, un régime commun d’organisation. (shrink)