Sait-on que la science-fiction américaine, du roman " cyberpunk " à la saga Matrix, se nourrit largement de Jean Baudrillard? Que Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari inspirent aux Etats-Unis les pionniers de l'Internet comme de la musique électronique? Que Michel Foucault y est la référence majeure des luttes communautaires, tandis que Jacques Derrida est une star sans égale dans l'université? Après avoir croisé à New York la contre-culture des années 1970, les œuvres des philosophes français de l 'après - structuralisme (...) sont entrées dans les départements de littérature de l'université américaine, où elles ont bouleversé de l'intérieur tout le champ intellectuel. Réinterprétées, réappropriées au service des combats identitaires de la fin de siècle américaine, elles ont fourni le socle théorique sur lequel ont pu s'épanouir, contre la régression des années Reagan, les cultural studies, les gender studies et les études multiculturelles. C'est cette histoire, mal connue, de la french theory que François Cusset retrace ici. Il décrit le succès de cette étrange " théorie française " - la déconstruction, le biopouvoir, les micropolitiques ou la simulation -jusque dans les tréfonds de la sous - culture américaine. Il restitue l'atmosphère particulière des années 1970 et raconte la formidable aventure américaine, et bientôt mondiale, d'intellectuels français marginalisés dans l'Hexagone. Car le plus surprenant est que, pendant que l'Amérique les célébrait, la France s'empressait d'inhumer ces dangereux échevelés de la " pensée 68 " pour louer à nouveau l'humanisme citoyen et son vieil universalisme abstrait. Ce livre éclaire ce paradoxe en explorant une modalité méconnue, mais cruciale, du malentendu franco - américain. Au-delà, il brosse un portrait passionnant des mutations de l'espace intellectuel, culturel et politique américain des dernières décennies. (shrink)

Sait-on que la science-fiction américaine, du roman " cyberpunk " à la saga Matrix, se nourrit largement de Jean Baudrillard? Que Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari inspirent aux Etats-Unis les pionniers de l'Internet comme de la musique électronique? Que Michel Foucault y est la référence majeure des luttes communautaires, tandis que Jacques Derrida est une star sans égale dans l'université? Après avoir croisé à New York la contre-culture des années 1970, les œuvres des philosophes français de l 'après - structuralisme (...) sont entrées dans les départements de littérature de l'université américaine, où elles ont bouleversé de l'intérieur tout le champ intellectuel. Réinterprétées, réappropriées au service des combats identitaires de la fin de siècle américaine, elles ont fourni le socle théorique sur lequel ont pu s'épanouir, contre la régression des années Reagan, les cultural studies, les gender studies et les études multiculturelles. C'est cette histoire, mal connue, de la french theory que François Cusset retrace ici. Il décrit le succès de cette étrange " théorie française " - la déconstruction, le biopouvoir, les micropolitiques ou la simulation -jusque dans les tréfonds de la sous - culture américaine. Il restitue l'atmosphère particulière des années 1970 et raconte la formidable aventure américaine, et bientôt mondiale, d'intellectuels français marginalisés dans l'Hexagone. Car le plus surprenant est que, pendant que l'Amérique les célébrait, la France s'empressait d'inhumer ces dangereux échevelés de la " pensée 68 " pour louer à nouveau l'humanisme citoyen et son vieil universalisme abstrait. Ce livre éclaire ce paradoxe en explorant une modalité méconnue, mais cruciale, du malentendu franco - américain. Au-delà, il brosse un portrait passionnant des mutations de l'espace intellectuel, culturel et politique américain des dernières décennies. (shrink)

Explores how the French theory of philosophy, which became popular during the last three decades of the twentieth century, spread to America and examines the critical practices that French theory inspired.

Responding to recent publications by Céline Lafontaine, François Cusset unties the illusions of the supposed knot between the US ideology of cybernetics and the “French Theory” represented by thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard or Deleuze. Those who denounce a historical complicity between these two “anti-Humanist” movements in the name of a few superficial analogies miss the profoundly critical nature of French Theory towards capitalism. It is rather on the side of those technophobic Humanists so eager to denounce the Pensée (...) 68 that one finds today the most active accomplices of the liberalisation of French society. (shrink)

Observed biological growth curves generally are sigmoid in appearance. It is common practice to fit such data with either a Verhulst logistic or a Gompertz curve. This paper critically considers the conceptual bases underlying these descriptive models.The logistic model was developed by Verhulst to accommodate the common sense observation that populations cannot keep growing indefinitely. A justification for using the same equation to describe the growth of individuals, based on considerations from chemical kinetics (autocatalysis of a monomolecular reaction), was put (...) forward by Richardson, but met with heavy criticism as a result of his erroneous derivation of the basic equation (Snell, 1929). It errs on the side of over-simplicity (Priestley & Pearsall, 1922). Von Bertalanffy (1957) subsequently based a justification on the assumption that, as a first approximation, the rates of catabolism and anabolism may be assumed to be proportional to weight and power (still vacant places, between the maximal possible and the already accumulated population sizes. This point of view was fiercely challenged by Nicholson (1933), Milne (1962), Smith (1954) and Rubinov (1973). And indeed, what is meant by vacant places has never become entirely clear. Finally Lotka (1925) devised a third leading approach by just truncating a Taylor expansion around zero of the differential law for autonomous growth after the second degree term. (shrink)

On pourrait croire que le thème de l’émancipation a disparu de la Théorie Critique dans sa version la plus récente, en particulier chez Habermas. Mais on devrait plutôt dire que l’intérêt à l’émancipation, notion que Habermas avait dans un premier temps reprise à Max Horkheimer, a émigré dans l’immanence de l’État de droit démocratique. Jusqu’où la reconstruction habermassienne de l’État de droit permet-elle tout à la fois de revitaliser et de conférer un sens nouveau aux visées pratiques, sociales et politiques, (...) émancipatrices? Telle est la question qui nous retiendra. (shrink)

"El amor en su singularidad erótica es tratado en esta obra desde el auspicio de la poesía y la filosofía, las cuales nos llevan de la mano a los desolados parajes del mundo biológico-psíquico para retener aquello de lo que "no se puede decir nada". Aun así, no es éste un intento de explicar fenomenológicamente el amor, sino una modesta evocación de los momentos y comportamientos humanos en su tránsito hacia el Eros y la experiencia que de ellos se ha (...) obtenido."-- Cubierta trasera. (shrink)

‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...) merely modes or states of God. Some of Spinoza’s readers understood these claims as committing him to the view that only God truly exists, and while this interpretation is not groundless, we will later see that this enticing and bold reading of Spinoza as an ‘acosmist’ comes at the expense of another audacious claim Spinoza advances, i.e., that God/Nature is absolutely and actually infinite. But before we reach this last conclusion, we have a long way to go. So, let me first provide an overview of our plan. In the first section of this paper we will examine Spinoza’s definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘God’ at the opening of his magnum opus, the Ethics. Following a preliminary clarification of these two terms and their relations to the other key terms defined at the beginning of the Ethics, we will briefly address the Aristotelian and Cartesian background of Spinoza’s discussion of substance. In the second section, we will study the properties of the fundamental binary relations pertaining to Spinoza’s substance: inherence, conception, and causation. The third section will be dedicated to a clarification of Spinoza’s claim that God, the unique substance, is absolutely infinite. This essential feature of Spinoza’s substance has been largely neglected in recent Anglo-American scholarship, a neglect which has brought about an unfortunate tendency to domesticate Spinoza’s metaphysics to more contemporary views. The fourth section will study the nature of Spinoza’s monism. It will discuss and criticize the interesting yet controversial views of the eminent Spinoza scholar, Martial Gueroult, about the plurality of substances in the beginning of the Ethics; address Spinoza’s claim in Letter 50 that, strictly speaking, it is improper to describe God as “one”; and, finally, evaluate Spinoza’s kind of monism against the distinction between existence and priority monism recently introduced into the contemporary philosophical literature. The fifth and final section will explain the nature, reality, and manner of existence of modes. We therefore have an ambitious plan; let’s get down to business. (shrink)

Maquiavelo y su tiempo.--Reacción de algunos escritores españoles de los siglos XVII y XVIII ante la doctrina de Maquiavelo.--El maquiavelismo y las prácticas de gobierno.

Planteamiento de la naturaleza, de la filosof a y de su raz n hist rica, al contemplar panor micamente la totalidad de su pasado e intentar reconstruir el dram tico suceso de su origen.

DICTIONARY OF SPANISH VERBS WITH THEIR ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS AND MODELS OF CONJUGATION/DICCIONARIO CON LOS VERBOS EN ESPAÑOL, SU TRADUCCIÓN AL INGLÉS Y CONJUGACIONES.

1. Escritos doctrinales -- 2. Escritos histórico-filosóficos.

Appearing in English for the first time, this book comprises two of Ortega’s most important works, ¿Qué es conocimiento? and the essay “Ideas y creencias.” This is Ortega’s attempt to systematically present the foundations of his metaphysics of human life and, on that basis, to provide a radical philosophical account of knowledge. In so doing, he criticizes idealism and overcomes it. Accordingly, this book goes well beyond a treatise on epistemology; in fact, as understood in modern philosophy, this discipline and (...) its questions are shown to be derivative and, in that sense, they are transcended here by Ortega’s systematic effort. -/- Written during the time of his maturity, these works are representative of his fruitful and radical period. Both ¿Qué es conocimiento? and “Ideas y creencias” are equally decisive not only for the understanding and radical completion of Ortega’s work, but also for their relevance to the work of continental philosophers during the same period and for years to come (e.g., Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and others). (shrink)

The renowned Sri Lankan scholar Y. Karunadasa examines the Abhidhamma perspective on the nature of phenomenal existence. He begins with a discussion of dhamma theory, which provides the ontological foundation for Abhidhamma philosophy. (The dhamma theory is an Abhidhammic innovation that gives an overview of the bare phenomenon that form this world; it's a theory of real existents.) He then explains the category of "the conceptual" as the Abhidhamma's answer to the objects of common-sense realism. Among the other topics discussed (...) are the theory of double truth (ultimate and conceptual truth), the analysis of mind, the theory of cognition, the analysis of matter, the nature of time and space, the theory of momentary being, and conditional relations. The volume concludes with an appendix that examines why the Theravāda came to be known as Vibhajjavāda, "the doctrine of analysis." Not limiting himself to abstract analysis, Karunadasa draws out the Abhidhamma's underlying premises and purposes--the Abhidhamma provides a detailed description of reality in order to identify all sources of suffering and thereby point to a complete cure for the problem of suffering. (shrink)

I. El hombre y la epoca.--II. Las doctrinas.--III. Notas. Apendices. Bibliografía.

I. El destino del normativismo en la ciencia jurídica contemporanea.--II. El fundamento de la seguridad social.