Synthesizing forty years' work by France's leading sociologist, this book exemplifies Bourdieu's unique ability to link sociological theory, historical information, and philosophical thought. It makes explicit the presuppositions of a state of 'scholasticism', a certain leisure liberated from the urgencies of the world. Philosophers have brought these presuppositions into the order of discourse, more to legitimate than analyze them, and this is the primary systematic, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic error that Bourdieu subjects to methodological critique. Pascalian because he, too, was (...) concerned with symbolic power, he refused the temptation of foundationalist thinking, attended to 'ordinary people', and was determined to seek the reason for seemingly illogical behavior rather than simply condemning it. Bourdieu charts a negative philosophy, whose intellectual debt to such other 'heretical' philosophers as Wittgenstein, Austin, Dewey, and Peirce, renews traditional questioning of concepts of violence, power, time, history, the universal, and the purpose and direction of existence. (shrink)

The present volume consists of diverse individual texts, produced between 1980 and 1986, which take two forms: interviews in which Bourdieu confronts a series of probing and intelligent interviewers, and conference papers that clarify and extend specific areas of his research. Now that Bourdieu's work has achieved wide diffusion and celebrity, this is an appropriate time for this volume, a pause for retrospection and resynthesis, for corrections of misreadings and extension of previous insights, and for projection of the next stages (...) of his work. For this English edition, Bourdieu's celebrated inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Leçon sur la Leçon, has been added. The texts fall into two fundamental areas. The first area provides an overview of Bourdieu's central concepts, never before clearly explained. The second area clarifies the philosophical presuppositions of Bourdieu's studies and gives an account of his relations with the series of thinkers who formulated the problems in social and cultural theory that still preoccupy us: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Durkheim, Wittgenstein, Weber, Parsons, and Lévi-Strauss. Bourdieu's visions of these figures is personal and penetrating, and in his vivacious, spontaneous responses one sees at work a mode of thought that can in itself be a liberating tool of social analysis. Bourdieu applies to himself the method of analyzing cultural works that he expounds, evoking the space of theoretical possibilities presented to him at different moments of his intellectual itinerary. (shrink)

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (...) . In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)

During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles. _The Field of Cultural Production_ brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study (...) of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary art and cultural criticism in the last twentieth century: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority. Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the publishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyzes the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power. The essays in his volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power. The Field of Cultural Porduction will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Ways of Seeing is a unique collaboration between an eminent philosopher and a world famous neuroscientist. It focuses on one of the most basic human functions - vision. What does it mean to 'see'. It brings together electrophysiological studies, neuropsychology, psychophysics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind. The first truly interdisciplinary book devoted to the topic of vision, it will make a valuable contribution to the field of cognitive science.

Duhem's 1908 essay questions the relation between physical theory and metaphysics and, more specifically, between astronomy and physics–an issue still of importance today. He critiques the answers given by Greek thought, Arabic science, medieval Christian scholasticism, and, finally, the astronomers of the Renaissance.

Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal (...) of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy.Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Discusses the importance and development of analytical sociology, emphasizing the centrality of mechanisms in explaining social life.

Written by a contemporary of Marx and one of the most influential subversive critics of modern European society, this work (1840) has become a classic of political thought through its critique of private property as the essential institution of Western culture as well as the root of its problems.

The term “social cognition” can be construed in different ways. On the one hand, it can refer to the cognitive faculties involved in social activities, defined simply as situations where two or more individuals interact. On this view, social systems would consist of interactions between autonomous individuals; these interactions form higher-level autonomous domains not reducible to individual actions. A contrasting, alternative view is based on a much stronger theoretical definition of a truly social domain, which is always defined by a (...) set of structural norms; moreover, these social structures are not only a set of constraints, but actually constitute the possibility of enacting worlds that would just not exist without them. This view emphasises the heteronomy of individuals who abide by norms that are impersonal, culturally inherited and to a large extent independent of the individuals. Human beings are socialised through and through; consequently, all human cognition is social cognition. The article argues for this second position. Finally, it appears that fully blown autonomy actually requires heteronomy. It is the acceptance of the constraints of social structures that enables individuals to enter new realms of common meaningfulness. The emergence of social life marks a crucial step in the evolution of cognition; so that at some evolutionary point human cognition cannot but be social cognition. (shrink)

Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on individual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations. E.g., “citizenship” typically implies membership in a state and an identity akin to national identity; but this connotation (...) of citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and political virtues (or vices) for corporations—topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustainability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in the language of citizenship. (shrink)

The tuning-fork model of human social cognition, based on the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys, involves the four following assumptions: (1) mirroring processes are processes of resonance or simulation. (2) They can be motor or non-motor. (3) Processes of motor mirroring (or action-mirroring), exemplified by the activity of MNs, constitute instances of third-person mindreading, whereby an observer represents the agent's intention. (4) Non-motor mirroring processes enable humans to represent others' emotions. After questioning all (...) four assumptions, I point out that MNs in an observer's brain could not synchronically resonate with MNs in an agent's brain unless they discharged in a single brain in two distinct tasks at different times. Finally, I sketch a conceptualist alternative to the resonance model according to which a brain mechanism active in both the execution and the perception of e.g., the act of grasping is the neural basis of the concept of e.g., grasping. (shrink)

In a paper published in Psychological Review, Tyler Burge has offered a unified non-mentalistic account of a wide range of social cognitive developmental findings. His proposal is that far from attributing mental states, young children attribute to humans the same kind of internal generic states of sensory registration that biologists attribute to e.g. snails and ticks. Burge’s proposal deserves close attention: it is especially challenging because it departs from both the mentalistic and all the non-mentalistic accounts of the data so (...) far. Moreover Burge has been one of the leading philosophers of mind of the past 40 years and some of his writings on the objectivity of perception display a deep understanding of the relevance of science for sharpening our understanding of the mind. After taking a close look at the developmental evidence, in particular at false-belief studies, I argue that Burge’s, 409–434, 2018) account faces severe obstacles. To give one telling example: if young children can only attribute to others sensory registrations, then it is hard to explain the evidence showing that they respond differently to an agent’s ignorance and to her false belief. (shrink)

(From Liberty Fund:) The topics of church and state, religious toleration, the legal enforcement of religious practices, and religiously motivated violence on the part of individuals have once again become burning issues. Pierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary was a major attempt to deal with very similar problems three centuries ago. His argument is that if the orthodox have the right and duty to persecute, then every sect will persecute, since every sect considers itself orthodox. The result will be mutual slaughter, (...) something God cannot have intended. -/- The Philosophical Commentary takes its starting point from the words attributed to Jesus Christ in Luke 14:23, “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” Bayle contends that the word compel cannot mean “force.” From this perspective, he constructs his doctrine of toleration based on the singular importance of conscience. His point is not that coercion usually is ineffective in matters of faith but that, even when effective, it is wrong because it ignores the indispensability of the free conscience. (shrink)

Tout au long de sa vie et dès sa naissance, chaque personne doit attribuer du sens à tour ce qui l’entoure : objets, individus, paysages … Cette construction d’une signification corresponde à un décodage de l’environnement humaine et matériel qui repose notamment sur la mise en jeu du corps et sur ses manifestations motrices. À ce titre, les jeux et les sports représentent un domaine privilégié ou cette mobilisation des conduites motrices est au centre de la construction d’un sens et (...) de la décision du pratiquent. Ce décodage subjectif s’appuie sur les sonnées objectives de la logique interne de chaque activité ludosportive et des universaux correspondants. Inspiré par les avances de la linguistique et de la sémiologie, mais tout en soulignant ses mécanismes spécifiques, l’analyse sémiotrice explore les codages originaux des interactions ludosportives. Des sèmes particulaires, tels les gestèmes, praxèmes et els écosèmes sont identifiés. On note que les encodages et les décodages praxiques son plus ou moins rigoureux et ne possèdent jamais la double articulation qui caractérise toute langue. L’approfondissement de cette sémiotricité éclaire d’une nouveau jour les conduites de chaque acteur social, non seulement au cours des activités physiques mais aussi tout au long de sa vie. (shrink)

Through a detailed study of Spinoza's concept of 'experience', Moreau shows how Spinoza extends the power of reason to capture the singularity of individuals: their lives, languages, passions and societies.

In order to account for how organisms can apprehend the contents of the external representations they manipulate in cognizing, the endorsement of representationalism fosters a situation of what I call cognitive overdetermination. I argue that this situation is problematic for the inclusion of these external representations in cognitive processing, as the hypothesis of extended cognition would like to have it. Since that situation arises from a commitment to representationalism (even minimal), it only affects the viability of representationalist versions of extended (...) cognition. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

La quatrième des Considérations inactuelles de Friedrich Nietzsche est emblématique en ce qu'elle présente la notion d'événement de façon dialectique. Participant au premier festival de Bayreuth durant l'été 1876, c'est à la fois en tant que spectateur, historien et philosophe, que Friedrich Nietzsche interprète l'événement comme un « cas » ou un symptôme, et saisit la volonté de Richard Wagner dans sa « chute », où le spectacle et la décadence sont les valeurs de la culture européenne et de l'Allemagne (...) moderne. De plus, d’une volonté analogue, et d’abord impressionné par la hauteur du compositeur et la puissance de son œuvre totale, c’est à partir d’un « pathos de la distance » que le philosophe va « transvaluer » le cas Wagner après Bayreuth et le faire advenir comme le nouvel événement d’une histoire critique dans laquelle il se comprend lui-même. Alors, c’est comme un « grand » événement que nous interprétons Friedrich Nietzsche à Bayreuth décrit comme la synthèse d’un processus à la fois civilisationnel et culturel. (shrink)

La quatrième des Considérations inactuelles de Friedrich Nietzsche (Richard Wagner à Bayreuth) est emblématique en ce qu'elle présente la notion d'événement de façon dialectique. Participant au premier festival de Bayreuth durant l'été 1876, c'est à la fois en tant que spectateur, historien et philosophe, que Friedrich Nietzsche interprète l'événement comme un « cas » (« Der Fall ») ou un symptôme (« Das Symptom »), et saisit la volonté de Richard Wagner dans sa « chute » (« Der Vorfall »), (...) où le spectacle et la décadence sont les valeurs de la culture européenne et de l'Allemagne moderne. De plus, d’une volonté analogue, et d’abord impressionné par la hauteur du compositeur et la puissance de son œuvre totale (Gesamtkunstwerk), c’est à partir d’un « pathos de la distance » que le philosophe va « transvaluer » le cas Wagner après Bayreuth et le faire advenir comme le nouvel événement d’une histoire critique dans laquelle il se comprend lui-même. Alors, c’est comme un « grand » événement que nous interprétons Friedrich Nietzsche à Bayreuth décrit comme la synthèse d’un processus à la fois civilisationnel et culturel. (shrink)

El universo literario de hoy, territorio conquistado a las burocracias de Estado y a sus academias, no se configura hasta el siglo XIX. Nadie se encuentra ya en situacin de decidir taxativamente lo que debe escribirse y cules son los cnones del buen gusto: los escritores, los crticos y los editores libran la batalla del reconocimiento y la consagracin.El proyecto esttico de Flaubert cuaja en el momento en que la conquista de la autonoma ingresa en su fase crtica. As, a (...) travs de la descripcin de la gnesis y estructura del campo literario, Pierre Bourdieu demuestra en primer lugar en qu medida la obra de Flaubert est en deuda con la constitucin del campo, del espacio de las posiciones y de las tomas de posicin de las diversas corrientes, movimientos, escuelas y autores de la poca: en otras palabras, cmo el Flaubert escritor se produce precisamente por lo que contribuye a producir.Aplicando las reglas del arte al da de hoy - esa lgica a la que obedecen escritores e instituciones literarias y que se expresa en forma sublimada en las obras -, Pierre Bourdieu hace volar en pedazos el espejismo del genio todopoderoso del creador y, al mismo tiempo, sienta los cimientos de una ciencia de las obras, cuyo objeto sera no slo la produccin material de la obra misma sino tambin la produccin de su valor. Sin embargo, en lugar de aplastar al creador bajo el peso de los determinantes sociales que pesan sobre l y reducir as la obra al medio que la vio nacer, la extraordinaria contundencia del anlisis desarrollado en este texto permite comprender por fin la tarea especfica que el artista (y especialmente el escritor) debe llevar a cabo - en contra y gracias a esos determinantes sociales - para llegar aproducirse como creador, es decir, sujeto de su propia creacin.Un gran libro, que compart. (shrink)

Radical views on cognition are generally defined by a cluster of features including non-representationalism and vehicle-externalism. In this paper, I concentrate on the way radical views on cognition define themselves as revolutionary theories in cognitive science. These theories often use the Kuhnian concepts of “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” for describing their ambitions and the current situation in cognitive science. I examine whether the use of Kuhn’s theory of science is appropriate here. There might be good reasons to think that cognitive (...) science is in a situation of foundational crisis, but that does not entail that the classical paradigm is currently displaced to the benefit of a new paradigm. Larry Laudan’s theory of research traditions is more enlightening than Kuhn’s theory for describing the scope and ambitions of radical views on cognition, and their relations with an anti-intellectualist tradition in philosophy. (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)

A widely accepted thesis in the philosophy of language is that natural language proper names are rigid designators, and that they are so de jure, or as a matter of the “semantic rules of the language.” This paper questions this claim, arguing that rigidity cannot be plausibly construed as a property of name types and that the alternative, rigidity construed as a property of tokens, means that they cannot be considered rigid de jure; rigidity in this case must be viewed (...) as a pragmatic and not a semantic property. (shrink)

The importance given by historian and philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem to the role of practice, techniques, and experimentation in concept-formation was largely overlooked by commentators. After placing Canguilhem’s contributions within the larger history of historical epistemology in France, and clarifying his views regarding this expression, I re-evaluate the relation between concepts and experimental practices in Canguilhem’s philosophy of science. Drawing on his early writings on the relations between science and technology in the 1930s, on the Essai sur quelques problèmes (...) concernant le normal et le pathologique, and on La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, I argue that the formation and rectification of concepts in Canguilhem’s sense are intrinsically bound with the experimental, material, technical, and cultural contexts in which concepts are operationalized. (shrink)

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

Building on two decades of work on Hegel and continental philosophy, John McCumber offers his distinctive take on the current state of the debate about Hegel’s critique of Kant. McCumber seems to agree with a popular picture of Kant as the proponent of a “thin, universalistic, and argumentatively purified style of philosophy” and of Hegel as the original source of the “historically embedded naturalists” whose work is then taken up by feminists, gender, and race theorists. This is a plausible, if (...) ultimately less than persuasive, conception of the contrast between Kant and Hegel; I take Kant’s works to be a refutation of the kind of position that McCumber ascribes to Kant. McCumber interprets... (shrink)

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature (...) is about. (shrink)

Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...) the number and its metrics. It is shown that while many-number systems involve a compositionality of units, sets and sets composed of units, few-number languages, such as Mundurucu, do not have access to sets composed of units in the usual way. The nonconfigurational character of the Mundurucu language, which is related to a property for which we coin the term 'low compositionality power', accounts for this and explains the curious fact that Mundurucus make use of marked one-to-one correspondence strategies in order to overcome the limitations of the core system at the perceptual/motor interface of the language faculty. We develop an analysis of a particular construction, parallel numbers, which has not been studied before, elucidating the whole system. This analysis, we argue, sheds new light on classical philosophical, psychological and linguistic debates about numbers and numerals and their relation to language, and more particularly, sheds light on few-number languages. (shrink)