Conclusion: "For Bergson, it will be remembered, there is a conclusion,...The conquest of death is implied metaphysically, not to be verified experimentally. Man is born at home in the world, a microcosm essentially at one with it. For James the difference of man from the world is the fundamental thing. He is not born at home in it, he makes a home of it.
Space, Difference, and Everyday Life merges these two schools of thought into a unified Lefebvrian approach to contemporary urban issues and the nature of our ...
: Henri Bergson's philosophy has attracted increasing feminist attention in recent years as a fruitful locus for re-theorizing temporality. Drawing on Luce Irigaray's well-known critical description of metaphysics as phallocentrism, Hill argues that Bergson's deduction of duration is predicated upon the disavowal of a sexed hierarchy. She concludes the article by proposing a way to move beyond Bergson's phallocentrism to articulate duration as a sensible and transcendental difference that articulates a nonhierarchical qualitative relation between the sexes.
This lecture offers a reading of the work of the French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, particularly focusing on his writings on the question of space. It suggests that this is a simultaneously political and philosophical project and that it needs to be understood as such. Accordingly we need to examine and work with both terms in Lefebvre’s book The Production of Space — thinking about the Marxist analysis of production and the question of space which goes beyond the resourcesMarxism can offer. (...) The paper concludes by offering some reflections on Lefebvre scholarship through the relation of space and history. (shrink)
Le but de cet article est de décrire le point de vue d?Henri Poincaré sur l'axiome du choix, dont 1?explication par Zermelo en 1904, déclencha une vive polémique. Agitant le monde mathématique de l'époque, cette polémique avait ses racines dans la diversité des conceptions philosophiques que les mathématiciens avaient sur les mathématiques. Poincaré avait une position originale; quelques lettres qu?il écrivit à Zermelo (1906?1907), ainsi que les articles publiés à la même époques dans la Revue de métaphysique et morale, éclairent (...) ce point de vue. The aim of this paper is to describe the views of Henri Poincaré concerning axiom of choice, of which the statement by Zermelo in 1904 launched a sharp polemic. Shaking the mathematical society of the time, this controversy had its roots into the diversity of philosophical conceptions that mathematicians held about mathematics. Poincaré had a particular point of view; a few letters from him to Zermelo (1906?1907), together with papers published in Revue de métaphysique et morale at the same time, throw light on this view. (shrink)
"The only way not to to make mistakes is to wait until history has passed you by," states Bernard-Henri Lévy. But he doesn't like to wait. And that's why 'BHL', armed with a cell phone and raybans, takes off for political hot spots.""Je t'embrasse." The philosopher ends the phone call and places the tiny Ericsson cell phone on the table next to his Ray Bans. He turns to his interviewers: "Where were we?"For a moment they are lost, distracted by the (...) question of who BHL may have been 'embracing'. His wife? His mistress? Perhaps a student of French picked up casually during his lightning visit to The Netherlands? (shrink)
Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a philosopher, translator, and prominent social figure of the French Enlightenment. In his philosophical writings Holbach developed a deterministic and materialistic metaphysics which grounded his polemics against organized religion and his utilitarian ethical and political theory. As a translator, Holbach made significant contributions to the European Enlightenment in science and religion. He translated German works on chemistry and geology into French, summarizing many of the German advances in these areas in his entries in Diderot's (...) Encyclopedia. Holbach also translated important English works on religion and political philosophy into French. Holbach remains best known, however, for his role in Parisian society. The close circle of intellectuals that Holbach hosted and, in various ways, sponsored produced the Encyclopedia and a number of revisionary religious, ethical, and political works that contributed to the ideological basis for the French Revolution. Despite the radical views of many members of his coterie, however, Holbach's broader visiting guest list included many of the most prominent intellectual and political figures in Europe. His salon, then, was at once a shelter for radical thought and a hub of mainstream culture. (shrink)
S. A. Mrozowski, « Temps, rythme et espace. L'influence d'Henri Lefebvre dans le champ de l'archéologie historique », in P. Cingolani (dir.), Henri Lefebvre, une pensée devenue monde ?, 2013, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2013, p. 119-132. - Brèves.
The twentieth century was a time of dramatic change in the structure, language, and aesthetic purpose of music. Numerous factors came together that led the musical avant-garde toward new artistic paths such as atonality and aleatoricism (use of chance elements) in music, and a shift in the idea of what music should portray away from beauty toward truth, or from idealized to actualized. If the arts are a reflection of the philosophical and aesthetic spirit of the times, then an examination (...) of prominent philosophical and aesthetic regimes of the time should reveal changes that facilitated the aesthetic and artistic innovations of the era. This article will examine the relationship between the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Henri Bergson and the affinities, and in some cases influences, they had on the development of two of the major musical innovations of the twentieth century. Specifically, Arnold Schoenberg's development of atonal compositional technique results partially from Bergson's focus on knowledge as a conveyor of truth, and John Cage's cultivation of aleatoricism as a compositional process arises out of Bergson's critique of nothingness as stated in Creative Evolution. (shrink)
The main goal of Henri Bergson’s philosophy of nature is to offer a dynamic understanding of living phenomena. It is in this context that we maintain that the author left us a “bio-philosophy,” that is, an interpretation which, by adopting a positive model of biology as a cognitive paradigm, describes the essential character of living activity as time or duration (durée). Bergson’s positive metaphysics, which brings science to the metaphysical field and provides an inner perspective of the vital principle, consolidated (...) itself in the study of evolutionary theories like Darwinism. However, the specificity of the perspective Bergson presents to us lies in the fact that he positions himself as a philosopher and not as a scientist: he does not seek a merely scientific explanation of reality, but an integral vision that allows us to give scientific evolution a metaphysical reading. Thus, when Bergson upholds the insufficiency of pure Darwinism, and proposes a true evolutionism, it is because he thinks that the only way to understand the evolutionary nature of life is by overcoming a strictly mechanistic perspective. For Bergson, such an interpretation results from the artificial way in which our intellectual functions deconstruct reality and lead to an incomplete and fragmented reading of the evolution of organisms. As a philosopher he seeks an explanatory level which, being scientifically based, is not restricted to the physico-chemical limits of reality. For that reason, Bergson claims that the inner cause of evolution is an activity where growth and division occur as a natural result of the divergence of life’s tendencies. (shrink)
Henri Lefebvre a développé une œuvre riche sur l'urbain et la ville. Dans les années 1980, il travaille à une rythmanalyse qui, par bien des aspects, complète cette réflexion. La rythmanalyse peut être définie comme une science devenue pratique, qui consiste en la saisie des modalités des temps et des espaces sociaux concrets par les rythmes. Cette saisie s'effectue par le corps dans sa sensibilité et vise à sa thérapie, à son rétablissement face à son mépris dans la modernité et (...) l'urbain. Le corps est le (...) - Urbanisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)
Introduction -- Henri Lefebvre : the production of theory -- Research : from practices of dwelling to the production of space -- Critique : space as concrete abstraction -- Project : urban society and its architecture -- Afterword : toward an architecture of jouissance.
Liang Shuming once applied the concept of intuition to characterize Chinese culture as a whole. Later, he not only replaced the theoretical position of intuition with the concept of reason, but discarded the term for intuition itself. This essay will answer three questions related to this academic riddle. (1) What does intuition mean to both Bergson and Liang? (2) What does the Chinese cultural heritage contribute to the formation of Liang's intuition? (3) What is the relationship between Liang's intuition and (...) reason? (shrink)
Hence arose the demand to which this book is a. response. 1 I shall, therefore, endeavor to do as I have been asked, and preserve in the written word the ...
Bergson never dared to entitle his own work in such a fashion. However, his philosophical contribution on the workings of intelligence deserves such a high title. This article seeks to elucidate Bergson's contribution to philosophy in terms of his anticipation of several developments in human understanding. The work begins by investigating the relation between thought and the world (reality) by reviewing a series of constructivist concepts. In many ways, constructivism is related to both structuralism and post-structuralism, however this work does (...) not seek to detail these interrelations in any overt way. Instead, these concepts lay the groundwork for a review of Bergson's discussion of intellect in relation to life, psyche, and modern physics. Central concepts include limitation, circularity, and complementarity. Ultimately, the article seeks to display how Bergson's work is not only a precursor to constructivism but lays the foundation for a modified constructivism that can achieve a rigorous philosophical level. The proposed ground for the intellect is in the organic. Such an epistemological foundationalism would ultimately justify an evolutionary epistemology, in that, the structuring of the organic is evolving and thus the structuring of intellect would likewise evolve. Clarifying such an epistemology may aid in developing Delueze's an-organic bergsonism. (shrink)
Le présent article montre que s’il est totalement réducteur de considérer Descartes comme un mécaniste radical (le corps humain n’est pas un corps comme un autre puisqu’il est uni à une âme) et Kant comme un finaliste radical (l’explication scientifique en biologie sera, en dernier ressort, mécaniste) dans leur tentative respective d’explication du vivant, il est tout aussi réducteur de voir en Bergson unsimple critique du mécanisme. En effet, Bergson fait le «rêve», dans L’évolution créatrice , d’un «mécanisme de la (...) transformation» qui représente une réforme du mécanisme dont la condition de possibilité repose non seulement sur le progrès de la chimie, mais également et surtout sur celui des mathématiques modernes, plus précisément du calcul infinitésimal, seule méthode capable de saisir bjectivement le mouvement.When it comes to explaining life and living organisms, it is as insufficient to see in Descartes a proponent of radical mechanicism (the human body is not any sort of body since it is united with a soul) and in Kant a proponent of radical finalism (in biology, scientific explanations are in the last resort mechanicist), as it is to see in Bergson nothing other than an opponent of mechanicism. In fact in Creative Evolution Bergson “dreams” of a “mechanism of transformation” that should consist of a reform of mechanicism, the conditions of possibility of which are based not only on the progress of chemistry, but first of all on the progress of mathematics, and more precisely of infinitesimal calculus, the only method able to objectively grasp movement. (shrink)
In his account of probable reasoning, Poincare used the concept, or at least the language, of conventions. In particular, he claimed that the prior probabilities essential for inverse probable reasoning are determined conventionally. This paper investigates, in the light of Poincare's well known claim about the conventionality of metric geometry, what this could mean, and how it is related to other views about the determination of prior probabilities. Particular attention is paid to the similarities and differences between Poincare's conventionalism as (...) it applies to probabilities and de Finetti's subjectivism. The aim of the paper is to suggest that in accounts of the development of ideas about probable reasoning, particularly those customarily described as Bayesian, Poincare's discussion deserves more attention than it has so far received. (shrink)
