Jean-Luc Marion, in his latest book, “Sur la pensée passive de Descartes,” recently published in an English translation, challenges something he refers to, in the English subtitle, as “the Myth of Cartesian Dualism” and counters it with his original interpretation of Descartes’ notion of meum corpus. This article explores the reasons he adduces for this purpose. The case is made that Marion fails to provide sufficiently solid argumentative and textual support for his construal in this respect and that (...) traditional substance dualistic interpretative resources allow for a more straightforward and systematic reading. It is argued that Marion’s central dualism-deflecting claim, that in the Meditations, “my body” is not an extended thing but a mode of thought, is undermined by an analysis that carefully considers the context of those Descartes’ statements to which Marion appeals. (shrink)

This essay shows that Jean-Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of corporeality in such texts as L'Intrus and Corpus can be an important ally to feminist theories of body. I introduce Nancy's ontology and argue that his rejection of the unified, integrated body of humanist discourses in favor of dis-integrated bodies constituted by multiple alterities and his consequent reinterpretation of body as a "being-exscribed" begin the task of thinking bodies beyond traditional dualisms and their ahistorical and rationalist frameworks. I then address three (...) potential criticisms of Nancy's work and suggest that though there may be reasons to move cautiously in adopting the framework he provides, his work harbors resources directly beneficial to critiques of prevailing forms of gender normativity. (shrink)

This essay shows that Jean-Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of corporeality in such texts as L'Intrus and Corpus can be an important ally to feminist theories of body. I introduce Nancy's ontology and argue that his rejection of the unified, integrated body of humanist discourses in favor of dis-integrated bodies constituted by multiple alterities and his consequent reinterpretation of body as a "being-exscribed" begin the task of thinking bodies beyond traditional dualisms and their ahistorical and rationalist frameworks. I then address three (...) potential criticisms of Nancy's work and suggest that though there may be reasons to move cautiously in adopting the framework he provides, his work harbors resources directly beneficial to critiques of prevailing forms of gender normativity. (shrink)

This article seeks to situate Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory of embodiment in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s description of the lived body, especially as it is found in The Phenomenology of Perception. It shows that while both Nancy and Merleau-Ponty develop their view of the body through an engagement with Descartes, Nancy’s reappropriation of the Cartesian partes extra partes leads him to blur the distinction between corpus meum and alia corpora. By contrasting the radical fragmentation of Nancy’s body with the kind (...) of unity Merleau-Ponty attributes to the lived body, I show that Nancy’s body should not be equated with the lived body or the body proper of phenomenology. This does not mean that the body is merely an object for Nancy. Bodies make sense, but this sense is inorganic rather than intentional. (shrink)

On Descartes’ Passive Thought is the culmination of a life-long reflection on the philosophy of Descartes by one of the most important living French philosophers. In it, Jean-Luc Marion examines anew some of the questions left unresolved in his previous books about Descartes, with a particular focus on Descartes’s theory of morals and the passions. Descartes has long been associated with mind-body dualism, but Marion argues here that this is a historical misattribution, popularized by Malebranche and popular ever since both (...) within the academy and with the general public. Actually, Marion shows, Descartes held a holistic conception of body and mind. He called it the meum corpus, a passive mode of thinking, which implies far more than just pure mind—rather, it signifies a mind directly connected to the body: the human being that I am. Understood in this new light, the Descartes Marion uncovers through close readings of works such as Passions of the Soul resists prominent criticisms leveled at him by twentieth-century figures like Husserl and Heidegger, and even anticipates the non-dualistic, phenomenological concepts of human being discussed today. This is a momentous book that no serious historian of philosophy will be able to ignore. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda la cuestión del ser humano en Descartes, entendido como unión de cuerpo y alma. Tras recorrer La pensée passive de Descartes de Marion, se propone la necesidad de reformular el concepto de sustancia, adecuándolo a la nueva filosofía, y se concluye que lo principal para Descartes consiste en presentar una concepción del ser humano acorde con la nueva modernidad científica y filosófica, y que se sitúe, también, dentro de la ortodoxia religiosa.

En este artículo se ensaya un análisis de los presupuestos, de las consecuencias, que entraña la concepción cartesiana del saber. Y se llega a la conclusión de que toda la reflexión de Descartes se puede leer también como una filosofía de la historia en la que está la raíz de la idea moderna (y contemporánea) de progreso.

Scholars have recently noted the interest of Guibert of Tournai’s sermons on Francis of Assisi. Nicole Bériou partially edited Guibert’s sermon Surrexit Helyas, focusing on the theme of prophecy, in 1994,1 and Sean Field edited two more, Inflammatum est cor meum and Veni columba mea, highlighting the theme of Francis as a perfected soul through annihilation, in 1999.2 The two yet unexamined works in Guibert’s corpus of sermons discussing Francis hold their own interest, as they discuss an important (...) topos in Franciscan literature of the mid-thirteenth century. The present article edits and analyzes these two previously unedited sermons for the first time.3 This topos is the Biblical quotation Vidi .. (shrink)

Emmanuel Falque’s The Wedding Feast of the Lamb represents a turning point in his thought. Here, Falque links philosophy and theology in an original fashion that allows us to see the full effect of theology’s “backlash” against philosophy. By attending closely to the incarnation and the eucharist, Falque develops a new concept of the body and of love: By avoiding the common mistake of “angelism”—consciousness without body—Falque considers the depths to which our humanity reflects animality, or body without consciousness. He (...) shows the continued relevance of the question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”, especially to philosophy. We need to question the meaning of “this is my body” in “a way that responds to the needs of our time”. Because of the ways that “Hoc est corpus meum” has shaped our culture and our modernity, this is a problem both for religious belief and for culture. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas says that the eucharistic words of consecration – ‘This is my body’ (‘Hoc est corpus meum’) – are uttered by the consecrating priest both ‘significatively’ (‘significative’) and ‘recitatively’ (‘recitative’). This allows him to simultaneously account for the reference of the indexicals ‘this’ and ‘my’, the first of which must apply to some present substance, and the second of which must refer not to the priest but to Christ. This joint significative and recitative use can be distinguished (...) from other semantic and pragmatic features that the words exhibit, which I call significative productivity and instrumental representation: the words produce what they signify, and the speaker acts as an instrument of another, whom the speaker represents. Other sacramental forms share these features. What’s distinctive about the words of consecration is how they exhibit them – as a recitation. This recitative use can be explained by distinguishing between the sacramental gesture (such as the pouring of holy water or the anointing with oil) and the sacramental speech act (that is, the uttering of words that signify and produce the sacrament). In the eucharist, the sacramental gesture and sacramental speech act are one and the same. Despite identifying this intriguing linguistic phenomenon, Aquinas doesn’t fully explain. Puzzles linger, one of which concerns whether the recited words are also asserted. (shrink)

John Wyclif’s rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation has received a considerable amount of attention over the last six centuries. To this day scholars continue to reflect upon it, offering a variety of perspectives on Wyclif’s rationale. This study specifically considers the question in connection with Wyclif’s opposition to the more radical element in the fourteenth-century schools. Vehemently opposed to the reckless application of logical-grammatical methods which had led some to question of the truth of biblical propositions, Wyclif would insist (...) that within Scripture there exist no contradictions; its veracity can never be doubted. And most importantly, Christ himself is truthful; he cannot lie. Hence, when Christ spoke the words «Hoc est corpus meum», he was not positing a deception. (shrink)

Les structures attributives en tête d’énoncé sont courantes et variées en allemand. Si une projection d’éléments en fonction d’attribut n’est pas envisageable telle quelle en français, compte tenu des contraintes syntaxiques et positionnelles propres à cette langue, la comparaison entreprise nous a permis de constater que l’on peut malgré tout trouver en position initiale les mêmes contenus sémantiques remplissant des fonctions textuelles similaires, mais présentant d’importantes différences avec les structures allemandes – différences en termes de fréquence et surtout en termes (...) de fonction (syntaxique). (shrink)

Previous psycholinguistic studies have suggested that English and Spanish express temporal duration through different metaphors. English tends to use the time-as-length metaphor (e.g. I have been w...

Le corpus PhraséoRoChe se centre sur le roman de chevalerie de langue française écrit en prose. Il rassemble des textes issus d’œuvres produites entre le XIIIe siècle et le XVIIe siècle, période bornée par la naissance et la disparition de ce genre textuel. Pour permettre des interrogations par le lecteur d’aujourd’hui d’un corpus outillé embrassant une diachronie aussi longue, il faut faire des choix concernant l’évolution de la langue, non seulement en traitant le décalage entre le français contemporain (...) et la langue des textes retenus mais aussi en faisant face aux difficultés liées à l’hétérogénéité de l’ancien français, du moyen français et du français préclassique. Quels choix méthodologiques peuvent être pertinents en vue de l’objectif défini, à savoir une exploitation de type linguistique, stylistique ou littéraire? Les collaborateurs du projet se sont heurtés à la triple difficulté de rester fidèles aux textes, d’intégrer la diversité des pratiques éditoriales des chercheurs selon les étapes de l’histoire du français et d’unifier le plus possible les principes de traitement pour faciliter la réception actuelle. Le présent article rend compte des deux volets de l’opération : la sélection et la transcription d’un ensemble de 40 textes, d’abord, et l’annotation au moyen de balises structurelles, d’étiquettes lexicales et d’étiquettes morphosyntaxiques, ensuite. (shrink)

The experimental philosophy movement advocates the use of empirical methods in philosophy. The methods most often discussed and in fact employed in experimental philosophy are appropriated from the experimental paradigm in psychology. But there is a variety of other (at least partly) empirical methods from various disciplines that are and others that could be used in philosophy. The paper explores the application of corpus analysis to philosophical issues. Although the method is well established in linguistics, there are only a (...) few tentative attempts of philosophers to utilise it. Examples are introduced and the merit of corpus analysis is compared to that of using general internet search engines and questionnaires for similar purposes. (shrink)

In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably (...) less prevalent in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052-1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of (...) physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics. (shrink)

Un des enjeux actuels du traitement sémantique des corpus textuels concerne la nécessaire tentative de contrôle et d’objectivation de l’intertexte. Les corpus réflexifs, que nous définissons dans cet article, poursuivent cette exigence d’objectivation et de mise en forme des ressources sémantiques et interprétatives, en se proposant d’être, dans la mesure du possible, des tout-textuels sémantiquement auto-suffisants – c’est-à-dire des univers interprétatifs clos, définis parmi d’autres – pour une exploitation certes pas exhaustive, mais raisonnable et raisonnée du texte.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 329-332.

Corpus informatisés de français médiéval : contraintes sur leur constitution et spécificités de leurs apports Partant du constat que le linguiste médiéviste ne peut que travailler sur corpus, cet article envisage les contraintes spécifiques qui pèsent sur la constitution de ces corpus, désormais numériques, en particulier en ce qui concerne leur représentativité. La nature de l’étude et la perspective temporelle (synchronique ou diachronique) sont deux facteurs décisifs. Sont ensuite envisagés les apports des corpus, enrichis ou non, (...) tant du point de vue de la quantification des faits que de leur interprétation qualitative. (shrink)

Corpus informatisés de français médiéval : contraintes sur leur constitution et spécificités de leurs apports Partant du constat que le linguiste médiéviste ne peut que travailler sur corpus, cet article envisage les contraintes spécifiques qui pèsent sur la constitution de ces corpus, désormais numériques, en particulier en ce qui concerne leur représentativité. La nature de l’étude et la perspective temporelle (synchronique ou diachronique) sont deux facteurs décisifs. Sont ensuite envisagés les apports des corpus, enrichis ou non, (...) tant du point de vue de la quantification des faits que de leur interprétation qualitative. (shrink)

Corpus Paraensis Resumo: A condição de possibilidade primária para a existência de uma filosofia é que os seres humanos pensem e, pensando, transmitam suas memórias e reflexões em escritos, ou seja, que exista uma traditio philosophica – uma herança e uma transmissão – desse pensar. O que identifica, grosso modo, a experiência do pensamento é seu registro na palavra-texto (escrita) e não apenas na palavra-oral (discurso). A condição secundária, portanto, é a existência de textos ou escritos filosóficos e, neste (...) caso, a hipótese a se levantar refere-se aos escritos filosóficos coloniais do Pará, que nomeamos Corpus Paraensis. Provar a existência de uma filosofia colonial brasileira depende, por um lado, de reconhecermos o que resta daquela traditio philosophica colonial e, por outro, da análise desses escritos enquanto exercícios de pensar consignados em textos. Por isso, este artigo não só identificará alguns escritos filosóficos coloniais paraenses quanto exemplificaremos essa herança com a edição de dois inéditos: um texto de caso de consciência (ou filosofia moral) e um de filosofia transnatural ou teodiceia (metafísica teológica). Com isso, convencemo-nos de que existiu uma traditio philosophica colonial brasileira? Palavras-chave: Corpus Paraensis; segunda escolástica; filosofia moral; filosofia transnatural. Corpus Paraensis Abstract: The condition of primary possibility for the existence of a philosophy is that human beings think and, thinking, transmit their memories and reflections in writing, that is, that there is a traditio philosophica – an inheritance and a transmission – of this thinking. What roughly identifies the experience of thought is its registration in the text-word (written) and not just in the oral-word (discourse). The secondary condition, therefore, is the existence of philosophical texts or writings and, in this case, the hypothesis to be raised refers to the colonial philosophical writings of Pará, which we named Corpus Paraensis. Proving the existence of a Brazilian colonial philosophy depends, on the one hand, on recognizing what remains of that colonial traditio philosophica and, on the other, on analyzing these writings as exercises in thinking contained in texts. Therefore, this article will not only identify some colonial philosophical writings from Pará, but we will also exemplify this heritage with the edition of two unpublished papers: a text on a case of conscience (or moral philosophy) and one on transnatural philosophy or theodicy (theological metaphysics). With that, are we convinced that there was a Brazilian colonial traditio philosophica? Key words: Corpus Paraensis; second scholasticism; moral philosophy; transnatural philosophy. Corpus Paraensis Resumen: La condición de posibilidad primaria para la existencia de una filosofía es que el ser humano piense y, pensando, transmita sus recuerdos y reflexiones por escrito, es decir, que haya una traditio philosophica – una herencia y una transmisión – de este pensamiento. Lo que identifica a grandes rasgos la experiencia del pensamiento es su registro en la palabra-texto (escrita) y no solo en la palabra-oral (discurso). La condición secundaria, por tanto, es la existencia de textos o escritos filosóficos y, en este caso, la hipótesis a plantear se refiere a los escritos filosóficos coloniales de Pará, a los que denominamos Corpus Paraensis. Probar la existencia de una filosofía colonial brasileña depende, por un lado, de reconocer lo que queda de esa traditio philosophica colonial y, por otro, de analizar estos escritos como ejercicios de pensamiento contenidos en textos. Por tanto, este artículo no solo identificará algunos escritos filosóficos coloniales de Pará, sino que también ejemplificaremos esta herencia con la edición de dos artículos inéditos: un texto sobre un caso de conciencia (o filosofía moral) y otro sobre filosofía o teodicea transnatural (metafísica teológica). Con eso, ¿estamos convencidos de que hubo una tradicio philosophica colonial brasileña? Palavras clave: Corpus Paraensis; segunda escolasticismo; filosofía moral; filosofía transnatural. Data de registro: 16/09/2021 Data de aceite: 01/12/2021. (shrink)

This paper argues that neurolinguistics has the potential to yield insights that can feed back into corpus-based Cognitive Linguistics. It starts by discussing how far the cognitive realism of probabilistic statements derived from corpus data currently goes. Against this background, it argues that the cognitive realism of usage-based models could be further enhanced through deeper engagement with neurolinguistics, but also highlights a number of common misconceptions about what neurolinguistics can and cannot do for linguistic theorizing.