This article discusses the ecological and cultural criteria underlying the management practices for protected areas in France. It examines the evolution of French conservation from its roots in the 19th century, when it focused on the protection of scenic landscapes, to current times when the focus is on the protection of biodiversity. However, biodiversity is often socially defined and may not represent an ecologically sound objective for conservation. In particular, we question the current approach to protecting a specific type of (...) biodiversity that is at the basis of traditional landscape but does not value systems that are left to develop naturally (i.e., without significant human intervention). We present several examples of current attempts in France and Europe to managing traditional ecosystems and then discuss the values that exist in systems that develop naturally. We feel the latter systems often have much to offer in terms of biodiversity as well as providing important sites for the study of dynamic ecological communities in an ever-changing world. (shrink)
Journalist, literary critic, novelist and essayist, Maurice Blanchot has always questioned the uncertain limit between philosophical and fictional languages. The purpose of this article is to underline his constant inquiry of the connection between his own writing activity and political participation, through which he managed to describe, theorize and realize a true dissolution of subject.
Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers, Husserl and Heidegger, to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, art and language. This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing and presents a cross-section of his work which shows the (...) historical progression of his ideas and influence. (shrink)
In this paper, we propose an examination of the shared connections between the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Austro-Hungarian movement theorist, Rudolf Laban.In many ways Merleau-Ponty''s philosophy demonstrates a synthesis of the best in existen-tialism and phenomenology. In like manner, Rudolf Laban was a synthesizer of experiences and theories of movement.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence. However, he never propounded quite the same extreme accounts of radical freedom, being-towards-death, anguished responsibility, and conflicting relations with others, for which existentialism became both famous and notorious in the 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps because of this, he did not initially receive the same amount of attention as his French (...) contemporaries and friends, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. These days though, his phenomenological analyses are arguably being given more attention than either, in both France and in the Anglo-American context, because they retain an ongoing relevance in fields as diverse as cognitive science, medical ethics, ecology, sociology and psychology. Although it is difficult to summarize Merleau-Ponty’s work into neat propositions, we can say that he sought to develop a radical re-description of embodied experience (with a primacy given to studies of perception), and argued that these phenomena could not be suitably understood b y the philosophical tradition because of its tendency to drift between two flawed and equally unsatisfactory alternatives: empiricism and, what he called, intellectualism. This article will seek to explain his understanding of perception, bodily movement, habit, ambiguity, and relations with others, as they were expressed in his key early work, Phenomenology of Perception, before exploring the enigmatic ontology of the chiasm and the flesh that is so evocatively described in his unfinished book, The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)
KEY TO FOOTNOTE ABBREVIATIONS MM-P. Structure Phenomenology Sense Praise Signs Visible Themes Humanism Primacy Maurice Merleau-Ponty The Structure of ...
Taking Maurice Natanson's posthumously published book, The Erotic Bird: Phenomenology in Literature, as its point of departure, the essay argues that "fictive reality" is the specific content of transcendental-phenomenological reflection. Elaborating this concept allows us to see how phenomenological concepts such as constitution, horizon, and the "transcendental" have a tropological, rather than a psychological, meaning. Specifically, the article considers the metonymical structure of reality's "spatial horizon" and the metaphorical structure of reality's "temporal horizon." This latter is demonstrated on Natanson's (...) analysis of Thomas Mann's concept of the "leitmotiv" in The Magic Mountain. The essay concludes by pointing toward the ontology of metaphor entailed by Natanson's analysis, while suggesting the difference between phenomenology, as the "poetic essence" of philosophy, and philosophy itself, as the categorial elaboration of what phenomenology uncovers. (shrink)
In this essay I explore the dynamic between Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it unfolds in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993). Irigaray's strategy of mimesis is a powerful feminist tool, both philosophically and politically. Regarding textual engagement as analogous for relations between self and other beyond the text, I deliver a cautionary message: mimetic strategy is powerful but runs the risk of silencing the voice of the other.
Maurice Hauriou (1856-1929) -- Methodology -- Hauriou's general methodology -- Legal methodology -- Sociological methodolgy -- Methodological interplay of law and social science -- Application of methodology to large groups -- Philosophical methodology -- The philosophical status of Hauriou's methodology.
Abstract The aim of this paper is to attain a philosophical evaluation of the ideas of the French author Maurice Bucaille. Bucaille formulated an influential discourse regarding the divinity of the Qur’an, which he tried to demonstrate through a comparison of some of its verses with what he defined as scientific data. With his works, which encompass a criticism of the Bible and a defense of creationism, Bucaille furthered the idea that Islam is in harmony with natural sciences, and (...) ensured himself long-lasting fame in the Muslim world. Such ideas have found numerous followers and the description of the “scientific miracles” of the Qur’an has turned into a popular genre. Several attempts have been made to criticize Bucaille about specific positions he holds. The thesis I develop here is that, even if Bucaille's work cannot be easily dismissed, a severe methodological shortcoming emerges through the analysis of the logic behind his claims regarding miraculous and supernatural events. Current attempts at defending the harmony between Islam and science should therefore credit Bucaille, but at the same time, be aware of the risk of inheriting his methodological flaws. In the first section, I briefly recall the works of Bucaille and his contribution to the debate on the harmony between Islam and science. In the second section, I reconstruct Bucaille's view of science and his analysis of the sacred scriptures. In the third section, I investigate how Bucaille characterizes the concept of supernatural. In the fourth section, I put forth a general evaluation of his reasoning. (shrink)
Levinas scholarship in English has come a long way since his major philosophical works were translated some 35 years ago. Almost all the writings appear in English, and it is not a great exaggeration to say that the major theses have been explained and the major problems exposed. The task now is to make this seeming point of arrival into a new beginning. For students interested in exploring new directions in Levinas studies, a reading of Maurice Blanchot could prove (...) immensely rewarding. Companions since they first encountered one another at Strasbourg when each was not yet 20 years old, Levinas and Blanchot remainedfriends until Levinas’s death in 1996 and Blanchot’s in 2003. While we can only imagine the significance the friendship had for each of them, for the rest of us it proved what Jacques Derrida called “a grace, a blessing for our times.”. (shrink)
This article—part of a larger project that examines the place of the human in contemporary thought after the critique of the subject—takes as its point of departure the problematic of the author in Maurice Blanchot. If the author is “sacrificed to language,” it is argued, this is not to be conceived as the mere negation of authorial subjectivity; rather, the author, as a sacrificial figure, answers to the exigency of a figuration that would enable the a priori condition of (...) signification in general to be exposed. In a word, the human is not dispensed with, for Blanchot, but engaged by language at its limits. On the basis of this analysis, La folie du jour is construed as a narrative of what is called “the narrative voice.”. (shrink)
In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way in which they refer to Henri Bergson’s time theory. Although Merleau-Ponty develops some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that although Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from Deleuze’s interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s “corrections” of Bergson’s theory fit Deleuze’s reading of Bergson very well. This indicates (...) a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Hence the critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of cinema and thus of movement is not justified, but is the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)
Le problème de la « légitimité » de la philosophie chinoise est lié à celui de la conception occidentale de la « philosophie » qui est apparue à l’époque moderne, et qui privilégie la forme spéculative de la pensée au détriment de l’autre, plus concrète et pratique, dans laquelle se reconnaissent les tendances spécifiques de la tradition chinoise. Selon les critères occidentaux, la « pensée » chinoise ne peut se voir accorder le statut de « philosophie ». Or, dès 1898, (...) class='Hi'>Maurice Blondel (1861-1949) a dénoncé comme « illégitime » une philosophie exclusivement spéculative et conceptuelle ; il a remis en cause la « suffisance » d’une philosophie privilégiant indûment la pensée discursive, en même temps qu’il a montré la nécessité d’un recours à l’autre forme de pensée, celle qui est liée à la pratique, à la vie. Dans cette perspective, la philosophie occidentale, pas plus que la philosophie chinoise, ne « se suffit » à elle-même ; c’est unenécessité pour toutes deux de se compléter par leur « opposition » même, dans un dialogue authentique. La « philosophie intégrale », encore à venir, devra faire une part égale aux deux « aspectséléments » de la pensée, que Blondel qualifie de « noétique » et de « pneumatique ». (shrink)
The article explores the striking coincidences in Heidegger's and Blanchot's account of the image as death mask. The analysis of the respective theories of the image brings forth two radically divergent conceptions of thinking as "laying patent" (Heidegger) and of thinking as "laying bare" (Blanchot).
This essay explains what Blanchot understands as writing and the space of literature. For Blanchot, writing is the place where the impossible interruption of the destiny of things is put into play, an interruption that world-formation needs but negates and conceals. Writing belongs to an excess outside of language, an otherness of language. The need to write is linked to the point at which nothing can be done with words. Writing is contrasted with dialectical language and the totalizing aim of (...) the Hegelian system. The essay explains the connection between the disaster of writing (after the holocaust), the neuter and fragmentary style of writing and the passivity of writing. (shrink)
Presents the basis of Merleau-Ponty's ontology, as presented in his book Phenomology of Perception, and shows how it can help provide humans with a foundation ...
Homi Bhabha attends to the figure of the postcolonial metropolitan subject-a racialized subject who is not representative of the first world, yet a symbol of the metropolitan sphere. Bhabha describes theirdaily lives as inextricably split or doubled. His analysis cannot account for the agonistic moments when one is caught in not knowing, in focusing attention, and in developing understanding. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with the openness in the horizon of the gestaltian framework better accounts for such splits as moments on (...) the horizon for becoming and grasping something new. (shrink)
This welcome volume offers a rich presentation of the ideas of Jane Addams (1860–1935), with emphases upon her contributions to the Pragmatic movement. It is divided into two parts. Chapters 1–4 “provide a historical and theoretical foundation for Addams’s social philosophy,” and chapters 5–9 “discuss how Addams applied her social theories to a variety of social issues” (p. 11) including pacifism, race and diversity, socialism, education broadly conceived, and religion. There is also an introduction, an afterword, and an extensive bibliography. (...) It is the author’s hope that his study will spur further work on the role of Addams, and other women, in the history of Pragmatism and American philosophy; and I anticipate .. (shrink)
