À propos de : Jacques Bouveresse, La demande philosophique. Que veut la philosophie et que peut-on vouloir d’elle?, Paris, Édition de l’Éclat, coll. « Tiré à part », 1996, 176 pages [réédition l’Éclat poche, 2015]. Jacques Bouveresse est mort le 9 mai 2021. Figure atypique du paysage philosophique français, son influence n’en reste pas moins importante. Il n’est pas exagéré de dire que toute une partie de la philosophie française actuelle lui est redevable, voire n’existerait pas sans son (...) ef... (shrink)

Interviews met wijsgeren en andere wetenschapsmensen over de reden waarom zij zich met de persoon en het werk van de Oostenrijks-Engelse filosoof (1889-1951) bezighouden.

Jacques Bouveresse a examiné les pensées de Russell et Wittgenstein sur la religion. Elles sont bien évidemment très différentes comme il le montre très bien. A partir d’une discussion de ce que l’on peut attendre d’une épistémologie des croyances religieuses, je propose une critique de la thèse évidentialiste de Russell et des remarques sur la croyance religieuse de Wittgenstein. Les deux philosophes font des erreurs opposées mais finalement identiques quant à leur incompréhension des croyances religieuses et de leur dignité (...) épistémologique. (shrink)

This is the best collection of essays on Rorty’s philosophy that has been published in the last decade. It will be of great interest not only to Rorty specialists but to anyone concerned with the difficulties contemporary analytic philosophy faces in its search for a viable self-understanding. The contributors are Barry Allen, Akeel Bilgrami, Jacques Bouveresse, Robert Brandom, James Conant, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, Bjørn Ramberg, and Michael Williams. Rorty himself has also written (...) an essay, plus individual and fairly extensive replies to each of his critics. (shrink)

On considère souvent, à la suite des ouvrages classiques de J. Bouveresse, que Wittgenstein veut opérer un rejet ou une critique de la subjectivité. Il semble cependant que les derniers textes de Wittgenstein consacrés à la philosophie de la psychologie permettent de modifier partiellement ce point de vue, et défaire place à une conception spécifique de la subjectivité, redéfinissant un sujet dépsychologisé voire désubjectivé, qui n'est plus le point sans étendue du Tractatus, ni le sujet métaphysique, ni le sujet de (...) la psychologie, mais simplement une voix ordinaire. Wittgenstein's later work is often held by critics in France, following e.g. Jacques Bouveresse's insights, to be operating a criticism of both interiority and subjectivity. A reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on the philosophy of psychology might somehow change such a point of view, and redefine a specific view — as a de-psychologized species — of subjectivity in Wittgenstein's writing, thus redefining the wittgensteinian subject in terms of an ordinary voice. (shrink)

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was (...) first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book. (shrink)

This is the best collection of essays on Rorty’s philosophy that has been published in the last decade. It will be of great interest not only to Rorty specialists but to anyone concerned with the difficulties contemporary analytic philosophy faces in its search for a viable self-understanding. The contributors are Barry Allen, Akeel Bilgrami, Jacques Bouveresse, Robert Brandom, James Conant, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, Bjørn Ramberg, and Michael Williams. Rorty himself has also written (...) an essay, plus individual and fairly extensive replies to each of his critics. (shrink)

Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel puis Feuerbach, Marx, Freud ou, plus près de nous, Jacques Bouveresse et Régis Debray : la philosophie de la religion s'est instituée avec la modernité pour tâcher de définir quelle peut être l'essence du fait religieux. Dans le sillage des Lumières, ses principaux représentants ont considéré comme un préalable absolu à leurs travaux la négation de la Révélation. Rien n'est moins sûr qu'ils aient eu raison. A preuve, sous les feux de l'actualité, le besoin d'une herméneutique (...) intégrale est toujours plus pressant. C'est à cette tâche que, au bout d'une vie consacrée à penser, s'est attelé le cardinal Cottier qui a longtemps exercé le métier unique de "théologien du pape" qui consiste à être l'ultime interlocuteur de l'évêque de Rome pour tout ce qui relève de la doctrine. Revenant de manière innovante à l'épistémologie élaborée par Thomas d'Aquin, qui n'entend rien ignorer ni de la raison ni de la foi, le dernier grand témoin de Vatican II montre ici que cette disjonction est contingente et que cette discipline représente une branche féconde et prometteuse du savoir philosophique, qui attend d'être pleinement développée. Un essai décisif pour un début de siècle tourmenté par le retour du religieux que doivent lire d'urgence tous ceux qui sont soucieux de refonder la culture humaniste dans son universalité. (shrink)

The essays collected here provide English-speaking readers with a lucid and accessible introduction to the world of France's leading contemporary philosopher. A classic student textbook.

Speech and phenomena.--Form and meaning.--Differance.

Derrida analyzes Patocka's Heretical Essays on the History of Philosophy and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Levinas, and Kierkegaard.

Lorsque nous avons écrit notre petit livre dénonçant l’usage grossièrement abusif des concepts scientifiques par bon nombre d’intellectuels philosophico-littéraires français de premier plan 1, nous nous sentions comme des étrangers – et cela, à plus d’un titre– pénétrant dans un territoire neuf et parfois étrange, dont les habitants ne se sont pas tous montrés amicaux (c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire). Voilà pourquoi c’est avec grand plaisir que nous lisons aujourd’hui la défense vigoureuse – et le développement – de nos (...) idées, proposés dans Prodiges et vertiges de l’analogie par Jacques Bouveresse. En outre, étant régulièrement accusés d’être anti-français et anti-philosophie, il nous est particulièrement agréable de constater que cette défense émane d’un éminent philosophe enseignant au Collège de France. (shrink)

I argue for two theses: 1) An unconscious belief that p is not the same attitude as a conscious belief that p (here I am disagreeing with David Finkelstein and Richard Moran). 2) An unconscious belief that p is the attitude it is on account of its rational connection with the conscious belief that p (taking issue with Georges Rey). I defend parallel theses for emotions. I then argue that Wittgenstein can be understood as accepting both theses and that this (...) shows – contrary to the interpretations of Jacques Bouveresse and Donald Levy – that Wittgenstein can accept talk not only of descriptive but also dynamic unconscious states (in Freud's terminology). (shrink)

A rich exploration of the idea of friendship and its political consequences, past and future, by the most influential of contemporary philosophers. Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In (...) The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought—friendship and enmity, private and public life—have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

Ce livre est donc voué à la bizarrerie. Mais c'est qu'à accorder tout son soin à l'écriture, il la soumet à une réévaluation radicale. Et les voies sont nécessairement extravagantes lorsqu'il importe d'excéder, pour en penser la possibilité, ce qui se donne pour la logique elle-même - celle qui doit déterminer les rapports de la parole et de l'écriture en se rassurant dans l'évidence du sens commun, dans les catégories de 'représentation' ou 'd'image', dans l'opposition du dedans et du dehors, (...) du plus et du moins, de l'essence et de l'apparence, de l'originaire et du dérivé. Analysant les investissements dont notre culture a chargé le signe écrit, Jacques Derrida en démontre aussi les effets les plus actuels et parfois les plus inaperçus. Cela n'est possible que par un déplacement systématique des concepts - on ne saurait en effet répondre à la question 'qu'est-ce que l'écriture?' par un appel de style 'phénoménologique' à quelque expérience sauvage, immédiate, spontanée. L'interprétation occidentale de l'écriture commande tous les champs de l'expérience, de la pratique et du savoir, et jusqu'à la forme ultime de la question ('qu'est-ce que?') qu'on croit pouvoir libérer de cette prise. L'histoire de cette interprétation n'est pas celle d'un préjugé déterminé, d'une erreur localisée, d'une limite accidentelle. Elle forme une structure finie mais nécessaire dans le mouvement qui se trouve ici reconnu sous le nom de différance. (shrink)

An introduction to Derrida's contribution to literary studies, comprising much of Derrida's work on writers such as Shakespeare, Mallarme, Joyce and Kafka, with an introductory essay on deconstruction.

This volume discusses Wittgenstein’s work, as well as his oeuvre in general, and its implications for the nature of reason. Investigates the nature of reason which has always been a topic at the very heart of Western philosophy Analyses how Wittgenstein raised crucial questions about the subject - most notably in his critique of Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, his discussions of various philosophical aspects of religion, and the famous ‘rule-following considerations’ from his _Philosophical Investigations_ Contributors include prominent Wittgenstein scholars from the (...) UK and continental Europe including Hanjo Glock, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, Severin Schroeder Joachim Schulte and Crispin Wright Contains a translation of an important paper by the French Wittgenstein scholar Jacques Bouveresse, alongside six new papers by other contributors. (shrink)

L'idée de « progrès » en philosophie, ancrée dans la devise des Recherches Philosophiques, est à la fois grammaticale et autobiographique. Où se trouvait le progrès de Wittgenstein dans les années qui avaient suivi le Tractatus? Quelles leçons tirer de son parcours? Pour répondre à la question, il faut repenser la manière dont la grammaire du « progrès » doit être pesée et mesurée en philosophie. Nous nous appuyons sur l'essai de Jacques Bouveresse « Les ténèbres de notre temps (...) (1991)» et l'idée de Stanley Cavell selon laquelle la pratique philosophique de Wittgenstein dans le Tractatus et les Recherches Philosophiques s'appuient partout sur le fait de voir à travers les réalités les possibilités, traiter la « forme » comme une possibilité de la structure. Cela permet de retracer le destin de tournants de pensée apparaissant déjà dans le Tractatus : variations sur des lignes de pensée que Wittgenstein reprendra plus tard et qu’il réorchestrera d'une nouvelle manière. (shrink)

Did Freud present a scientific hypothesis about the unconscious, as he always maintained and as many of his disciples keep repeating? This question has long prompted debates concerning the legitimacy and usefulness of psychoanalysis, and it is of utmost importance to Lacanian analysts, whose main project has been to stress Freud's scientific grounding. Here Jacques Bouveresse, a noted authority on Ludwig Wittgenstein, contributes to the debate by turning to this Austrian-born philosopher and contemporary of Freud for a candid assessment (...) of the early issues surrounding psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein, who himself had delivered a devastating critique of traditional philosophy, sympathetically pondered Freud's claim to have produced a scientific theory in proposing a new model of the human psyche. What Wittgenstein recognized--and what Bouveresse so eloquently stresses for today's reader--is that psychoanalysis does not aim to produce a change limited to the intellect but rather seeks to provoke an authentic change of human attitudes. The beauty behind the theory of the unconscious for Wittgenstein is that it breaks away from scientific, causal explanations to offer new forms of thinking and speaking, or rather, a new mythology. Offering a critical view of all the texts in which Wittgenstein mentions Freud, Bouveresse immerses us in the intellectual climate of Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century. Although we come to see why Wittgenstein did not view psychoanalysis as a science proper, we are nonetheless made to feel the philosopher's sense of wonder and respect for the cultural task Freud took on as he found new ways meaningfully to discuss human concerns. Intertwined in this story of Wittgenstein's grappling with the theory of the unconscious is the story of how he came to question the authority of science and of philosophy itself. While aiming primarily at the clarification of Wittgenstein's opinion of Freud, Bouveresse's book can be read as a challenge to the French psychoanalytic school of Lacan and as a provocative commentary on cultural authority. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric on the Bleachers, or, The Rhetorician as MelancholiacPhilippe-Joseph SalazarThose who cannot remember rhetoric are condemned to repeat it.*French philosopher Jacques Bouveresse (2008) asks, in his most recent book, Why is it that we think we need literary works, in addition to science and philosophy, to help solve moral questions? As one reviewer notes, this comes as a surprise from a man “better known as a specialist of (...) Wittgenstein, who has always defended philosophy, often with scathing irony, against brainless realism, and, in any case, defended the prerogatives of a reason reasonably attentive to reality, a defense that led him to dismiss relativism and its mixing up of truth and verifiability with fallacy and verisimilitude” (Maggiori 2008). 1Bouveresse, who holds the chair of the philosophy of language and knowledge at Collège de France, and whose elevation to this hallowed professorship was portrayed as a revenge of sorts against Jacques Derrida, is not unimportant for those in rhetoric studies who have an interest in philosophy as well.2 He is the one who, with indeed scathing irony, unraveled the rhetorical stakes of the unrivaled Sokal truancy against Social Text (Bouveresse 1999), namely, how analogy provides a common ground for the literary and the scientific within public discourse.3Bouveresse (1999, 129) recalls, tongue in cheek, how that famed connoisseur in manipulations, [End Page 356] Alexander Zinoviev, explains, in The Yawning Heights (1979), that sciences produce their own “doubles” for the sake of public argument. The literary use of scientific analogy mimics the way in which ideology has to produce its own “doubles” in order to exist in public consciousness.For Bouveresse, literary intellectuals, and some philosophers, manufacture doubles of science because our life is lived under the shadow of science insofar as it has something to say about everything we do as moral agents or think in terms of practical reason. Analogy rules therefore by a popular demand for science. To question analogy in relation to ethics—belief and opinion, custom and habitus, temperament and character—under the gaze of the massive presence of science in public discourse (from campaign claims of “experience” to policy claims made on the basis of scientific knowledge) is at once to engage with rhetoric.4 It is to ask the question: Why do we feel that, alongside science, philosophy, and works of fiction, we need to listen to that double, “speeches,” to solve ethical problems?However, at this juncture, or crossroad where doubles point in various directions, rhetoricians have a choice among four attitudes, or four paths (to put it in Heideggerian fashion). Faced with the real, moral dangers inherent to analogy, one can (like Bouveresse) be combative and assert reason’s prerogative against the sophistry of doubles; one may defend analogy as morally grounded or even a means to resistance (hence, the moral incentive Bouveresse now attaches to fiction); one may argue for a culture replete with figurations (by and large, a matter of religious belief and faith as truth, which necessitates an analogical reading of this debased reality called “the world”); or one may, having already played on these teams, decide to stay on the bleachers, watch players of this three-cornered game, and fall into melancholy.Thomas Farrell was, I think, a melancholic rhetorician. I do not mean he was not here and there combative, or sanguine, or controversial, merely that from his writings emanates a stubborn melancholy regarding the destiny of rhetoric, or, to recall the epigram placed, ironically, at the top of this essay: “Those who cannot remember rhetoric are condemned to repeat it.” In essence, our public is a-rhetorical; it evolves in a world of instant communication, of short-lived prudence, of ever-disappearing persuasion, while, at the same time, it is made to cling to opinions raised to standards of absolute value and unnegotiable belief. The main reason why rhetoric is no longer a technē lies in this tension. It cannot be a technē because [End Page 357] its rules and artifacts are divorced from culture. It cannot be an epistēmē because its productions are singular constructions.Rhetoricians are not rhetors, and rhetors have long vanished. Indeed, there are eloquent... (shrink)

Dans l’entretien qu’il a accordé à ThéoRèmes, Jacques Bouveresse nous dit ceci, entre parenthèses, comme en passant : (Quoi que l’on puisse penser de la position de Wittgenstein sur la question de la religion, il est généralement plus subtil et l’est même, d’une certaine façon, presque trop.) Il est en effet délicat de présenter les idées de Wittgenstein sur les religions et sur les croyances religieuses. Il faut à la fois tenir compte d’une absence de prise de position nette (...) sur un certain... (shrink)

First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l’Analyse. Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l’Analyse (1966–69), the most ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure specific configurations of discourse, (...) from the psychological and ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary transformation. The first volume comprises English translations of some of the most important theoretical texts published in the journal, written by thinkers who would soon be counted among the most inventive and influential of their generation. The second volume collects newly commissioned essays on the journal, together with recent interviews with people who were either members of its editorial board or associated with its broader theoretical project. Contributors include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Edward Baring, Jacques Bouveresse, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Peter Hallward, Adrian Johnston, Serge Leclaire, Patrice Maniglier, Tracy McNulty, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Knox Peden, Jacques Rancière, François Regnault, and Slavoj Žižek. (shrink)

Stel dat een inbreker bij jou thuis alleen de lijsten van de kunstwerken zou wegnemen, en niet de werken zelf. Wat zou er veranderen in je omgang met de kunst? Met dat gedachte-experiment opent de Franse filosoof Jacques Derrida het essay Parergon. Parergon betekent bijzaak in het Grieks. Zoals bijvoorbeeld de lijst van het schilderij, of het kader van een opgehangen foto. Ze behoren niet tot het kunstwerk. En toch zijn ze van groot belang voor hoe het werk bekeken (...) wordt. De belangwekkende tekst van Derrida uit 1974 geeft een centrale rol aan de bijzaak van het kader. Met filosofische acrobatie maneuvreert de denker tussen de grote klassiekers van de kunstfilosofie: Plato, Kant, Hegel en Heidegger. Hij gaat op een speelse manier met hun erfenis om. Woorden worden omgedraaid. Passages die op het eerste gezicht bijzaak lijken, maakt hij tot hoofdrolspelers van zijn betoog. Dit boek presenteert Derridas belangrijkste tekst over beeldende kunst voor de eerste keer in Nederlandse vertaling. Het boek is vormgegeven door de spraakmakende ontwerpster Ines Cox. Vertaler Ben Overlaet schreef een nawoord dat de tekst van de nodige filosofische en historische context voorziet. (shrink)

Derrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , was originally written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'etudes superieures in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of genesis (...) in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and his own Speech and Phenomena that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. The Problem of Genesis complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology. "A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."--Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man.