In the years 1961-1972 Marie-Thirhse d'Alverny published in "Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littiraire du Moyen Age 11 fascicles of a study of the codicological tradition of the Latin Avicenna. In these she identifies and describes more than 150 Latin manuscripts of the Avicennan corpus preserved in European libraries, thus laying the foundation for work later published in the "Avicenna Latinus series. These fascicles are photomechanically reprinted here, together with hitherto unpublished material concerning another 30 manuscripts compiled from Professor d'Alverny's papers (...) by Simone van Riet and Pierre Jodogne. The compilers have also added a list of corrigenda as well as an index of manuscripts discussed and an index of names and works. (shrink)

Geometry defines entities that can be physically realized in space, and our knowledge of abstract geometry may therefore stem from our representations of the physical world. Here, we focus on Euclidean geometry, the geometry historically regarded as “natural”. We examine whether humans possess representations describing visual forms in the same way as Euclidean geometry – i.e., in terms of their shape and size. One hundred and twelve participants from the U.S. (age 3–34 years), and 25 participants from the Amazon (age (...) 5–67 years) were asked to locate geometric deviants in panels of 6 forms of variable orientation. Participants of all ages and from both cultures detected deviant forms defined in terms of shape or size, while only U.S. adults drew distinctions between mirror images (i.e. forms differing in “sense”). Moreover, irrelevant variations of sense did not disrupt the detection of a shape or size deviant, while irrelevant variations of shape or size did. At all ages and in both cultures, participants thus retained the same properties as Euclidean geometry in their analysis of visual forms, even in the absence of formal instruction in geometry. These findings show that representations of planar visual forms provide core intuitions on which humans’ knowledge in Euclidean geometry could possibly be grounded. (shrink)

Proponents of the “negative program” in experimental philosophy have argued that judgements in philosophical cases, also known as case judgements, are unreliable and that the method of cases should be either strongly constrained or even abandoned. Here we put one of the main proponent’s account of why philosophical cases may cause the unreliability of case judgements to the test. We conducted our test with thought experiments from physics, which exhibit the exact same supposedly “disturbing characteristics” of philosophical cases.

The five narratives identified by the DEEPEN-project are interpreted in terms of the ancient story of desire, evil, and the sacred, and the modern narratives of alienation and exploitation. The first three narratives of lay ethics do not take stock of what has radically changed in the modern world under the triple and joint evolution of science, religion, and philosophy. The modern narratives, in turn, are in serious need of a post-modern deconstruction. Both critiques express the limits of humanism. They (...) do not imply, however, that these narratives should not be taken seriously. In particular, the enduring presence of three ancient narratives in laypeople’s symbolic thought is highly significant in terms of the role that the logic of the sacred keeps playing in the workings of modern societies. Lay people’s implicit understanding of how modern technology tends towards catastrophe and apocalypse provides the strongest argument for taking these narratives seriously. (shrink)

This paper reviews Deleuze’s theory of language in Logic of Sense, and Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of language in A Thousand Plateaus. In the ontology informed by the Stoics described in those books, human being and language do not exist separately but in a mixture of words and things. The author argues that this flattened ontology of surfaces is incommensurable with the ontology of depth used in conventional humanist qualitative methodology and recommends beginning new empirical inquiry with a concept instead (...) of with method and methodology. (shrink)

This article concerns the ways in which authors from various fields conceptualise the ethical issues arising in the conduct of research. We reviewed critically and systematically the literature concerning the ethics of conducting research in order to engage in a reflection about the vocabulary and conceptual categories used in the publications reviewed. To understand better how the ethical issues involved in conducting research are conceptualised in the publications reviewed, we 1) established an inventory of the conceptualisations reviewed, and 2) we (...) critically assessed them. We found that the publications reviewed mostly showed examples of descriptive ethics, in that most authors describe ethical issues without reflecting much on them, which could be explained both by 1) a lack of ethical education in research contexts, and 2) by the fact that we do not know what researchers know (or do not) about ethical issues. Additionally, the definitions identified in the publications are scarce and at times imprecise, but this seems more to point out the ethical vocabulary’s difficulties in certain contexts. Further, very few authors offer proper conceptualisations of the ethical issues arising in conducting research. When dealing with vast arrays of ethical issues to conceptualise, perhaps one ought to remember that some typologies already exist that could guide further reflection and help understand other realities for which the current ethical vocabulary may be lacking. We believe that combining the reviewed typologies, both with other well-developed typologies and critical reflection, could help support better ethical practice in conducting research. (shrink)

L'" action " est aujourd'hui un concept clé de la philosophie et de la plupart des sciences humaines. Dans toutes ces disciplines (économie, psychologie, sociologie), la formulation d'une " théorie de l'action " constitue l'un des principaux centres d'intérêt de la réflexion théorique. Ce livre développe une idée centrale : aux deux modèles dominants de l'action rationnelle et de l'action à visée normative, il est possible d'en ajouter un troisième, qui insiste sur le caractère créatif de l'agir humain. Ce troisième (...) modèle doit avoir une position englobante par rapport aux deux premiers. Il s'agit de mettre au jour dans tout agir humain une dimension créative qui n'est pas suffisamment prise en compte dans les modèles théoriques de l'action rationnelle et de l'action à visée normative. Cette approche, en effet, n'oppose pas aux actes créatifs les actes non créatifs, mais cherche à préciser les conditions d'application des deux modèles courants, en mettant en évidence la dimension créatrice qui s'y trouve implicitement contenue. Les différentes parties de l'ouvrage (étude de l'histoire des idées, reconstruction théorique des concepts, leur application concrète) servent toutes un but commun : montrer qu'il est pertinent et nécessaire de prendre en considération le caractère créateur de l'agir humain. (shrink)

Michel Foucault est encensé pour avoir amené la philosophie hors de ses sentiers battus, dans les mondes interlopes de la folie, du crime et de la sexualité ; il est célébré pour avoir abordé la diversité des concepts du savoir, du pouvoir et du sujet sans avoir cherché à construire un système philosophique ; il est magnifié pour avoir fourni une "boîte à outils" dont on pourrait se servir à l'envi pour dynamiter toutes les évidences. Mais derrière cette apparence de (...) curiosité disparate se cache une constance philosophique qui vise à donner une image foncièrement nouvelle de ce que c'est que connaître en Occident : à quelles contraintes historiques la formation de nos savoirs a-t-elle été liée? De quels formidables asservissements au pouvoir l'accumulation de savoir se paye-t-elle? De quelles possibilités de transfiguration de notre être même de sujet le savoir peut-il s'accompagner? C'est cette perspective d'un matérialisme du savoir qu'aborde ce livre d'introduction qui propose une lecture approfondie des principaux ouvrages de Foucault : L'Histoire de la folie, Les Mots et les Choses, Surveiller et Punir et les trois volumes de l'Histoire de la sexualité. L'enquête philosophique sur la matérialité du savoir se découvre dans l'unité du concept d'expérience à travers trois axes : les conditions de formation de l'expérience, son processus de constitution et les transformations qui lui sont inhérentes. En nous faisant prendre part à cette expérience, Foucault invente l'attitude expérimentale en philosophie qui nous convie à une tâche insoupçonnée : nous mettre à distance de ce que nous sommes pour devenir un autre nous-mêmes. (shrink)

As a scientific discipline and profession, law has been for centuries at the heart of social and political power of many Western societies. Professors of law, as influential representatives of the profession, are important powerbrokers between academia, politics and the corporate world. Their influence is based on scientific reputation, institutional mandates inside and outside academia or privileged network connections with people in powerful positions. In this study, based on a full sample of all Swiss law professors in the years 1957, (...) 1980 and 2000, we contrast two theories of the distribution of power among law professors: Bourdieu’s thesis on the trade-off between scientific reputation and -academic institutional power vs. the thesis of an opposition between a group of established incumbents and socio-demographically marginal challengers who try to gain access to the profession. We show that among Swiss law professors the endowment with scientific capital is not opposed to the possession of institutional power within academia. Our findings reveal rather an opposition between a challenging group of professors devoid of resources and an incumbent fraction with a high amount of scientific, institutional and social capital alike. In the conclusion we discuss a series of explanations of this specific power structure, including the specific status scientific reputation and social capital can have for law professors. (shrink)

This paper draws from critical data studies and related fields to investigate police officer-involved homicide data for Los Angeles County. We frame police officer-involved homicide data as a rhetorical tool that can reify certain assumptions about the world and extend regimes of power. We highlight the possibility that this type of sensitive civic data can be investigated and employed within local communities through creative practice. Community involvement with data can create a countervailing force to powerful dominant narratives and supplement activist (...) projects that hold local officials accountable for their actions. Our analysis examines four Los Angeles County police officer-involved homicide data sets. First, we provide accounts of the semantics, granularity, scale and transparency of this local data. Then, we describe a “counter data action,” an event that invited members of the community to identify the limits and challenges present in police officer-involved homicide data and to propose new methods for deriving meaning from these indicators and statistics. (shrink)

On a souvent rendu hommage à Foucault parce qu’il avait vu que le pouvoir ne s’exerçait pas seulement à la façon verticale de la souveraineté politique, mais qu’il s’appliquait aussi horizontalement, en pénétrant tous les domaines de la société civile. En supposant qu’il s’agisse, quand elle concerne le pouvoir, d’une découverte, la même remarque, appliquée à l’autorité,..

For Suarès, Baudelaire was the first poet to take himself as an object of reflection : as an innovator in introspection, he was inevitably pessimistic. Bringing in light his history of misfortune and his guilt, Suarès sees him as a theologian, among other things, especially in his assertion : "What is natural is vile". Since nature is corrupt, art is purification. If Baudelaire is religious, it is in a strange way indeed. Nevertheless, one finds in him the presence of a (...) religious idea of "redemption", to which the poet aspires with all his might. "The flowers are not all 'of evil', as one might imagine. Sin insinuates its singular virtue there, prompting great remorse in the sinner and then leading him towards redemption". Starting from Suarès, as well as the reflections of Benjamin Fondane and Yves Bonnefoy, J.-P. Jossua attempts in these pages to understand what Baudelaire's religion was. (shrink)

Ce livre veut restituer la clarté de cette oeuvre difficile que sont les "Contributions à la philosophie" de Heidegger, non pas en en récusant l'obscurité, mais en reconnaissant l'obscur essentiel de l'Etre dans sa vérité d'événement : car penser signifie répondre à l'événement de l'Etre, suivant un questionnement rigoureux qui s'appelle ici Passion de la pensée.

The problem of lying to, or deceiving oneself is currently one of the most debated in analytical philosophy. Now, since analytical philosophers are aware that Sartre defined "bad faith" as lying to oneself, as self-deception, and since moreover they find relatively coherent arguments in Sartre's text, they do not hesitate to include these arguments in their debates, if only to contest them. "To be dead is to be a prey for the living," one reads in Being and Nothing- ness* (p. (...) 695). One imagines Sartre rolling over in his grave. For this philosophy of mind is truly the Other of Sartre's philosophy. Yet, at the price of a treacherous translation, this philosophy gets some thing from Sartre, and perhaps gives him something in return. In a slightly surreal, perhaps even monstrous way, I am going to make the two philosophies engage in a dialogue on the prob lem of lying to oneself. (shrink)

Notre propos est de donner des bases philosophiques à la réalité vis-à-vis d'une tradition de la pensée qui y serait passée à côté. La réalité étant ce qui est le plus direct pour nous, ce qui est vrai, demande aussi dans un second temps, l'élaboration d'un système de pensée qui puisse la rendre telle qu'elle est. Ce qui a été pendant longtemps perçu comme "naïf", à savoir le réalisme le plus pur, fut sans doute un solide préjugé à la fois (...) de l'antique et de la moderne étude sur l'être, et qui pour s'en défaire auraient dû saisir tous les enjeux d'un rapport plus concret à celui-ci. Cela aurait pu se faire en revenant à l'essentiel de l'expérience face aux divers objets réels du monde. C'est sur cette négligence que nous avons concentré nos réflexions, puisqu'il en va de la conception quotidienne sur la réalité qui nous entoure, et tout aussi bien de la validité de la science qui repose sur elle. Face à une pensée abstraite reposant sur le sujet et la psychologie, il nous a fallu revenir aux fondements des choses : les faits matériels qui anticipent toute connaissance. Ainsi, la connaissance théorique apporte des résultats positifs surtout quand elle vient appuyer les observations rigoureuses d'où elle part. En clair, nous avons voulu suivre la réalité comme condition de toute démonstration. (shrink)

The question of justice in Western philosophy finds its humble beginnings in the interplay of life and death. I am referring here to Plato’s Apology. The Apology is not only a text tracing the fate of the great philosopher Socrates by recounting his final speech before the judges of Athens, but it is also a text that, on a more subtle level, announces the advent of a promising justice that is birthed from death, or, to be more precise, from a (...) specific kind of death. Socrates, here, develops a justice that does not surge from the defence of one’s determination as a singular accused, or from the reconciliation of the criminal singularity into the ethical social body through pardon or punishment, but which rather derives from a negation, a radical annihilation of the category of pure singularity. Socrates does not defend himself as an accused who is determinately and definitively singular, but rather affirms the fact that, in some sense, there is no such singular to be defended, that he is not even one (οὐδείς), less than one, nothing. It is, precisely, in this affirmation of a negative, in this opening of a chasm, that a radically other conception of justice and its relation to the singular is subtly proposed. By pushing the singular to the margins of its possibility, by challenging, bending, pushing the question of the singular and its defence to its outmost limit, Socrates redeploys justice not as a remedying balance, but as the abysmal economy of the bottomless question, a fall into the void, in which life, death, the singular and justice co-incide to burst all definitive determination, substantial opposition and the possibility of establishing a firm ground for any such categories to hold as such. In gradually shedding off the substantial presuppositions of his singularity (knowledge, self-relation and relation to others), he unleashes a modality of the singular which deploys a kind of justice, a wholly other justice, which has shaken the tradition ever since, and, as this article will seek to show, reverberates again in what Jacques Derrida called deconstruction. (shrink)

C’est sur la scène tragique - dans les oeuvres d’Euripide, particulièrement -, face au public masculin de la cité, que les femmes grecques viennent crier la douleur de la maternité. Caisse de résonance de douleurs et de malheurs. De la douleur la plus féminine, celle d’enfanter, bien sûr, mais aussi du malheur le plus féminin : celui d’être apais. Certes, l’homme sans descendance souffre de cette vacuité, mais cette tare d’être sans enfant, c’est seulement pour la femme qu’elle s’étend à (...) tout ce qui n’est pas le statut de félicité, celui de femme eupais. En effet, la femme apais, c’est aussi bien celle dont l’enfant est mort que celle à laquelle on a vite fait d’attribuer la stérilité du couple. C’est aussi celle que son âge, le délaissement dont elle est l’objet, font classer dans la catégorie des femmes vides. Coeur de la vraie vie des femmes, image fortement corporelle, la maternité constitue le pôle d’excellence, le seul vrai but de l’existence. La vierge s’y prépare à remplacer sa mère qui souffre d’abandonner ce en quoi elle s’est réalisée. (shrink)

La question des productions agricoles à Délos a fait l'objet d'un intérêt renouvelé ces dernières années : les vestiges d'aménagements agricoles, les fermes et les inscriptions ont été réétudiés. Une des questions en suspens concernait la destination des pressoirs situés dans la ville : produisaient-ils du vin ou de l'huile? En 1997, la fouille d'une installation de pressurage située dans le Quartier du théâtre a permis de démontrer qu'il s'agissait d'une huilerie. Aménagée au début du Ier s. av. J.-G, elle (...) comportait deux pressoirs à levier, trois récipients de décantation et six pithoi de stockage. Elle était installée dans une maison dont les origines remontaient au Ve s. av. J.-C. et qui, depuis lors, avait connu plusieurs remaniements. Outre des données nouvelles sur l'histoire du quartier, cette fouille apporte des éclaircissements sur la végétation des îles proches, sur les variétés d'olives cultivées et sur l'économie de la fin de la période hellénistique. Ces realia rééquilibrent la documentation tirée des inscriptions en faisant une certaine place à l'oléiculture au moins aux IIe et Ier s. av. J.-C. (shrink)

In this essay, we argue that there exist obvious parallels between questions that inform philosophy of chemistry and the so-called hard problem of consciousness in philosophy of mind. These include questions regarding the emergence of higher-level phenomena from lower-level physical states, the reduction of higher-level phenomena to lower-level physical states, and 'downward causation'. We, therefore, propose that the 'hard problem' of consciousness should be approached in a manner similar to that used to address parallel problems in philosophy of chemistry. Thus, (...) our contribution begins by scrutinizing the ways chemists and quantum chemists think about and use different levels of organization and chemical relations and relata and then investigates the problem of 'downward causation' as it relates to the question of emergence. We demonstrate that the science of the transformation of 'substances', namely chemistry, enables us to go beyond substantialism and to develop, instead, a non-substantialist account of levels of reality. Similarly, the 'hard problem' of consciousness will require that we transcend traditional emergentism and its substantialist conception of mind. As with chemical phenomena, mental phenomena must be examined in terms of the relationality of wholes and parts, and this will require the development of a mereology that explains how parts and wholes may co-define each other. Like the non-classical and non-transitive mereology that has been proposed for quantum chemistry, an extended mereology for philosophy of mind must be one that entangles the whole, its parts, and the environment, thus rendering 'downward causation' into a relational concept. This proposal is neither a reductionist analysis that only needs the parts to define the whole, nor a merely holistic description within which the whole is necessary to define the parts. Rather, we propose that the parts, the whole, and the environment co-define each other so that our understanding of parts, wholes, and environment as independent concepts must itself be altered. (shrink)

University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on (...) the experience of an REB President and a bioethicist, this series of Frequently Asked Questions aims to demystify research ethics so that researchers and REBs can collaborate in the advancement of knowledge, while ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre: Mind and Body, Word and Deed celebrates Sartre's polyvalence with an examination of Sartrean philosophy, literature, and politics. In four distinct yet related sections, twelve scholars from three continents examine Sartre's thought, writing and action over his long career. "Sartre and the Body" reappraises Sartre's work in dialogue with other philosophers past and present, including Maine de Biran, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Didier Anzieu. "Sartre and Time" offers a first-hand account by Michel Contat of Sartre and Beauvoir working together, (...) and a "philosophy in practice" analysis by François Noudelmann. "Ideology and Politics" uses Sartrean notions of commitment and engagement to address modern and contemporary politics, including insights into Castro, De Gaulle, Sarkozy and Obama. Finally, an important but neglected episode of Sartre's life the visit that he and Beauvoir made to Japan in 1966 is narrated with verve and humour by Professor Suzuki Michihiko, who first met Sartre during that visit and remained in touch subsequently. Taken together, these twelve chapters make a strong case for the continued relevance of Sartre today. (shrink)

The infant prodigy (1905-1917) -- Violence and counter-violence (1917-1920) -- Intellectual and emotional mastery (1920-1929) -- Melancholia: masculinity challenges (1929-1939) -- The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940): stoicism/authenticity -- Sartre's war (June 1940-1945): the individual and the collective -- Sartre and Beauvoir -- Sartre's relationships: to be or not to be intimate.

Second volet de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler la derniere philosophie de Maine de Biran, ce volume consacre a l'anthropologie de 1823-1824 donne l'etat final d'un projet elabore dans ses grandes lignes une vingtaine d'annees auparavant, mais repense largement a partir de 1815-1818. A la vie animale et a la vie humaine, s'ajoute desormais une vie de l'esprit qui contraint le philosophe a reevaluer l'organisation de l'ensemble. Derniers efforts du philosophe pour fermer son cercle, la Note sir l'idee d'existence et (...) les Nouveaux essais d'anthropologie, edites ici sur de nouvelles bases, permettent de mesurer le champ parcouru par lui depuis l'epoque ou il se croyait disciple des Ideologues. (shrink)

Les textes rassembles ici marquent un tournant decisif de la philosophie biranienne: apres avoir developpe sa pensee dans les Memoires couronnes (tomes II, III, IV, VI), Maine de Biran, revenant sur ses pas, estime qu'il a laisse sans solution les problemes de la metaphysiques classiques. Il s'efforce d'y repondre a partir de son propre point de vue et elabore a cet effet ses theories de la croyance et de l'absolu: l'etre ne se reduit pas au phenomene qui le manifeste; etre, (...) ce n'est pas etre percu. C'est dans les Rapports des sciences naturelles avec la psychologie que Biran traite pour la premiere fois ces questions de maniere detaillee, ce qui l'oblige a reprendre sa distinction du sujet et de l'objet, et a revoir sa critique de Condillac et des cartesiens. On trouvera aussi dans ce volume plusieurs opuscules de la meme epoque abordant ces questions, et notamment des discours prononces a la societe philosophique qu'il animait alors. (shrink)

Examines the methods by which man's determination and his cooperation with God can participate in the evolutionary destiny of the universe.

Examines recent changes in technology and social organization and shows how social theory can inform the construction of social organization and help provide avenues of future social development.

This paper looks at how the idea of pointless topology itself evolved during its pre-localic phase by analyzing the definitions of the concept of topological space of Menger and Nöbeling. Menger put forward a topology of lumps in order to generalize the definition of the real line. As to Nöbeling, he developed an abstract theory of posets so that a topological space becomes a particular case of topological poset. The analysis emphasizes two points. First, Menger's geometrical perspective was superseded by (...) an algebraic one, a lattice-theoretical one to be precise. Second, Menger's bottom–up approach was replaced by a top–down one. (shrink)

The idea of objectivity is primary in Gottlob Frege’s thought, not only for his conception of logic and mathematics, but also for his philosophy as a whole. He deals with the topic for the first time in 1884, in Grundlagen der Arithmetik, precisely in paragraph 26. He distinguishes the objective from the subjective, of course, but also from the real, what he calls the actual (wirklich in German). In order to be perfectly understood, he gives as example the colors but, (...) above all, to explain what is objective in geometry and space, he proceeds to a «thought-experiment», founded on the principle of duality. It is this aspect that I emphasize here, in the general framework ofparagraph 26 and in conjunction with Frege’s other works. (shrink)

University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on (...) the experience of an REB President and a bioethicist, this series of Frequently Asked Questions aims to demystify research ethics so that researchers and REBs can collaborate in the advancement of knowledge, while ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

This work presents a mathematical model describing the interactions between the cross-shore structure of small pelagic fish population an their exploitation by coastal and offshore fisheries. The complete model is a system of seven ODE’s governing three stocks of small pelagic fish population moving and growing between three zones. Two types of fishing fleets are inter-acting with the fish population, industrial boats, constrained to offshore area, and artisanal boats, operating from the shore. Two time scales were considered and we use (...) aggregation methods that allow us to reduce the dimension of the model and to obtain an aggregated model, which is a four dimension one. The analysis of the aggregated model is performed. We discuss the possible equilibriums and their meaning in terms of fishery management. An interesting equilibrium state can be obtained for which we can expect coexistence and a stable equilibrium state between fish stocks and fishing efforts. Some identification parameters are also given in the discussion part of the model. (shrink)

In traditional epistemology, psychological self-knowledge is taken to be the paradigm of privleged a priori knowledge. According to an influential incompatibilist line of thought, traditional epistemic features attributed to psychological self-knowledge are supposed to be inconsistent with content externalism. In this paper, I examine one prominent compatibilist response by an advocate of content externalism, i.e., Fred Dretske's answer tot he incompatibilist argument, based on the model of displaced perceptual knowledge. I discuss the costs and benefits of his answer.

Il s'agit de commenter les principaux écrits de Jean Cavaillès, d'expliciter son appareil conceptuel, mathématique et philosophique et de montrer la progression d'une réflexion originale qui, dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, voulait prendre la mesure des avancées et des controverses déterminant les mathématiques modernes.

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

The model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae is providing new insights into the molecular and cellular changes that are related to aging. The yeast protein Sir2p (Silent Information Regulator 2) is a histone deacetylase involved in transcriptional silencing and the control of genomic stability. Recent results have led to the identification of Sir2p as a crucial determinant of yeast life span. Dosage, intracellular localization, and activity of Sir2p all have important effects on yeast longevity. For instance, calorie restriction apparently increases yeast life (...) span by increasing Sir2p activity. Since Sir2p‐related proteins have been identified in many prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, the fundamental principles derived from the studies in yeast may prove valuable in directing our future research toward an understanding of the mechanisms of aging in higher eukaryotes. BioEssays 23:327–332, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he (...) chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo-Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid-1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time. (shrink)

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre (...) Bayle. Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this debate, and will therefore be essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy and its intelletual context. All the texts are newly translated and extensively annotated; many appear in English for the first time. (shrink)