In this remarkable book Michel Foucault, one of the most influential thinkers of recent times, calls us to look critically at specific historical events in order to uncover new layers of significance.

According to a recent account of epistemic authority proposed by Linda Zagzebski (2012), it is rational for laypersons to believe on authority when they conscientiously judge that the authority is more likely to form true beliefs and avoid false ones than they are in some domain. Christoph Jäger (2016) has recently raised several objections to her view. By contrast, I argue that both theories fail to adequately capture what epistemic authority is, and I offer an alternative account grounded in the (...) abilities that different kinds of authorities are required to possess. (shrink)

This paper confronts Zagzebski’s exemplarism with the intertwined debates over the conditions of exemplarity and the unity-disunity of the virtues, to show the advantages of a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education (PEBAME). PEBAME is based on a prima facie disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which amounts to admitting both exemplarity in all respects and single-virtue exemplarity. First, we account for the advantages of PEBAME, and we show how two figures in recent Italian history (Giorgio Perlasca and Gino Bartali) satisfy (...) Blum’s definitions of ‘moral hero’ and ‘moral saint’ (1988). Then, we offer a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of heroes and saints with respect to character education, according to four criteria derived from PEBAME: admirability, virtuousness, transparency, and imitability. Finally, we conclude that both unitarist and disunitarist exemplars are fundamental to character education; this is because of the hero's superiority to the saint with respect to imitability, a fundamental feature of the exemplar for character education. (shrink)

This chapter presents the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness. It holds that consciousness involves monitoring the reliability of one’s own sensory signals. I explain how a perceptual reality monitoring mechanism computes the higher order representations that are crucial for consciousness. While PRM accounts for the difference between conscious and unconscious states, it does not explain, on its own, why experiences feel the way they do—the phenomenal character of experience. PRM is compatible (...) with multiple theories of phenomenal character. Here, I show how to combine it with ‘Mental Quality Space’ theory. I finish by presenting empirical evidence for PRM, as well as some of its predictions. (shrink)

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an (...) intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls "exotic charm". Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault. (shrink)

Por Laura Fraga de Almeida Sampaio, tradutora do livro A aula inaugural, que Foucault pronunciou ao assumir a cátedra vacante no Collège de France pela morte de Hyppolite, pode ser considerada um texto de ligação entre suas obras, datadas dos anos 60, como História da loucura, As palavras e as coisas, A arqueologia do saber, centradas predominantemente na análise das condições de possibilidade das ciências humanas, e as que se seguiram a maio de 68, como Vigiar e punir, voltados ao (...) exame da microfisica do poder. Foucault desvenda a relação entre as práticas discursivas e os poderes que as permeiam. Ao perceber os diversos procedimentos que cerceiam e controlam os discursos da sociedade, o autor comprova que "o discurso não é simplesmente aquilo que traduz as lutas ou os sistemas de dominação, mas aquilo pelo que se luta, o poder de queremos nos apoderar". Na segunda parte do texto, Foucault anuncia a direção em que prosseguirá suas investigações no decorrer dos cursos no Collège de France, apontando para o que denomina o "conjunto crítico" e o "conjunto genealógico" e lança o projeto de estudo das interdições que atingem o discurso da sexualidade. A este trabalho dedicará muitos anos, após a publicação do primeiro volume da História da sexualidade, em 1976: A vontade de saber (uso dos prazeres, vol.2, O cuidado de si, vol, 3, ambos de 1984). (shrink)

A part of the “return to religion” now evident in European philosophy, this book represents the culmination of the career of a leading phenomenological thinker whose earlier works trace a trajectory from Marx through a genealogy of psychoanalysis that interprets Descartes’s “I think, I am” as “I feel myself thinking, I am.” In this book, Henry does not ask whether Christianity is “true” or “false.” Rather, what is in question here is what Christianity considers as truth, what kind of truth (...) it offers to people, what it endeavors to communicate to them, not as a theoretical and indifferent truth, but as the essential truth that by some mysterious affinity is suitable for them, to the point that it alone is capable of ensuring them salvation. In the process, Henry inevitably argues against the concept of truth that dominates modern thought and determines, in its multiple implications, the world in which we live. Henry argues that Christ undoes “the truth of the world,” that He is an access to the infinity of self-love, to a radical subjectivity that admits no outside, to the immanence of affective life found beyond the despair fatally attached to all objectifying thought. The Kingdom of God accomplishes itself in the here and now through the love of Christ in what Henry calls “the auto-affection of Life.” In this condition, he argues, all problems of lack, ambivalence, and false projection are resolved. (shrink)

According to the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, consciousness results from the global broadcast of information throughout the brain. The global neuronal workspace is mainly constituted by a fronto-parietal network. The anterior insular cortex is part of this global neuronal workspace, but the function of this region has not yet been defined within the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness. In this review, I hypothesize that the anterior insular cortex implements a cross-modal priority map, the function of which is (...) to determine priorities for the processing of information and subsequent entrance in the global neuronal workspace. (shrink)

Auguste Comte's doctrine of positivism was both a philosophy of science and a political philosophy designed to organize a new, secular, stable society based on positive or scientific, ideas, rather than the theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations associated with the ancien regime. This volume offers the most comprehensive English-language overview of Auguste Comte's philosophy, the relation of his work to the sciences of his day, and the extensive, continuing impact of his thinking on philosophy and especially secular political movements in (...) Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Contributors consider Comte's reasons for establishing a Religion of Humanity as well as his views on domestic life and the arts in his positivist utopia. The volume further details Comte's attempt to apply his "positive method," first to social science and then to politics and morality, thereby defending the continuity of his career while also critically examining the limits of his approach. (shrink)

The works of the French essayist reflect his views of morality, society, and customs in the late sixteenth century.

The two major options on which the current debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics relies, namely realism and empiricism, are far from being exhaustive. There is at least one more position available, which is metaphysically as agnostic as empiricism, but which shares with realism a committment to considering the structure of theories as highly significant. The latter position has been named transcendentalism after Kant. In this paper, a generalized version of Kant's method is used. This yields a reasoning that (...) one is entitled to call a transcendental deduction of some major formal features of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that authors can make anything whatsoever true in their fictions by artistic fiat. Harry Deutsch originally called this position the Principle of Poetic License. If true, PPL sets an important constraint on accounts of fictional truth: they must be such as to allow that, for any x, one can write a story in which it is true that x. I argue that PPL is far too strong: it requires us to abandon the law of non-contradiction and (...) entails a radical revision of otherwise ordinary commitments about truth in fiction. (shrink)

Annoncé à grand fracas, le décryptage do génome humain devait nous révéler le secret ultime de la vie et ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles thérapies miracles. Espoirs déçus : à l'ère de la post-génomique, les secrets du vivant sont maintenant recherchés dans les théories de la complexité, dans la convergence des efforts des biologistes, des physiciens et des mathématiciens. Comment comprendre la signification de cette succession rapide d'objectifs apparemment différents, de cette alternance d'espoirs et de désillusions? Dans ce livre (...) novateur, Michel Morange propose une clé pour rendre compte de ces difficultés, et de beaucoup d'autres analogues touchant toutes les branches de la biologie. Les annonces sensationnelles reflètent l'espoir toujours déçu qu'une explication unique pourrait suffire. Or les faits biologiques - comme ceux relevant de bien d'autres disciplines scientifiques -ne peuvent être expliqués par un principe d'intelligibilité unique. Exemples à l'appui et de façon très pédagogique, Michel Morange montre pourquoi des explications différentes doivent être articulées pour décrire le fonctionnement des macromolécules aussi bien que l'évolution humaine ou le développement des cancers. Admettre une idée aussi simple n'est pas évident, car tout scientifique a été formé à privilégier un principe d'intelligibilité particulier. L'articulation entre explications différentes est pourtant indispensable pour le progrès des connaissances ; elle est aussi une exigence éthique ; elle est requise pour que la science conserve sa place dans nos sociétés. (shrink)

Under the pretense of defending an obscure treatise by a Catalan theologian, Sebond, Montaigne attacks the philosophers who attempt rational explanations of the universe and argues for a skeptical Christianity based squarely on faith rather than reason. The result is the _Apology for Raymond Sebond_, a classic of Counter-Reformation thought and a masterpiece of Renaissance literature. This new translation by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene achieves both accuracy and fluency, conveying at once the nuances of Montaigne’s arguments and his distinctive (...) literary style. (shrink)

This book’s basic argument is that the Freudian unconscious, far from constituting a radical break with the philosophy of consciousness, is merely the latest exemplar in a heritage of philosophical misunderstanding of the Cartesian cogito that interprets “I think, therefore I am” as “I represent myself, therefore I am” (in the classic interpretation of Heidegger, one of the targets of the book).

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

t. 1. De la phénoménologie -- t. 2. De la subjectivité -- t. 3. de l'art et du politique -- t. 4. Sur léthique et la religion.

L'interprétation de la Critique de la raison pure, dans son édition de 1781, est ici ordonnée à l'étude des textes publiés par Kant auparavant, ainsi que des nombreux textes non publiés que nous possédons (Nachlass). Ces textes kantiens ne peuvent être interprétés que dans la perspective d'une histoire de la philosophie wolffienne et "post-wolffienne", qui doit elle-même être mise en relation avec la naissance de la science physique aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles. La formation et le développement du problème de (...) la causalité (physique et métaphysique) au XVIIIème siècle permettent de suivre la ligne directrice de cette histoire : formation du problème de la causalité, naissance de l'idée de philosophie transcendantale comme solution de ce problème, construction de la critique de la raison pure. (shrink)

Nine leading scholars of ancient philosophy from Europe, the UK, and North America offer a systematic study of Book Beta of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The work takes the form of a series of aporiai or 'difficulties' which Aristotle presents as necessary points of engagement for those who wish to attain wisdom. The topics include causation, substance, constitution, properties, predicates, and generally the ontology of both the perishable and the imperishable world. Each contributor discusses one or two of these aporiai in sequence: (...) the result is a discursive commentary on this seminal text of Western philosophy. (shrink)

These thirteen lectures on the 'punitive society,' delivered at the Collège de France in the first three months of 1973, examine the way in which the relations between justice and truth that govern modern penal law were forged, and question what links them to the emergence of a new punitive regime that still dominates contemporary society. Praise for Foucault's Lectures at the Collège de France Series “Ideas spark off nearly every page...The words may have been spoken in [the 1970s], but (...) they seem as alive and relevant as if they had been written yesterday.”—Bookforum “Foucault is quite central to our sense of where we are...[He] is carrying out, in the noblest way, the promiscuous aim of true culture.”—The Nation “[Foucault] has an alert and sensitive mind that can ignore the familiar surfaces of established intellectual coded and ask new questions...[He] gives dramatic quality to the movement of culture.”—The New York Review of Books. (shrink)

Le sens de la mécanique quantique doit être interrogé en revenant au plus près de l'expérience incertaine, à partir de laquelle les possibilités futures sont évaluées. L'idée même d'une pluralité de mondes est reconduite aux situations élémentaires de la vie humaine où s'opposent l'actualité collectivement reconnue et les possibilités intellectuellement envisagées.

Une trentaine de communications célèbrent le 250e anniversaire de l'édition de ¤¤L'esprit des lois¤¤ chez l'imprimeur genevois Barrilot et fils. Le texte est replacé dans son contexte éditorial, historique, genevois et européen. La culture politique et juridique qui le nourrit est analysée, ainsi que la philosophie de l'histoire de son auteur afin de mieux comprendre la modernité des Lumières.

An ode to Schopenhauer by one of France's most famous living authors.

This article develops two figures of the social imagination: the stereotype and the emblem. To start with we explore the notion of social imagination, principally from Emile Durkheim, Gaston Bachelard and Maurine Godelier. Secondly, the article deepens the two notions of stereotypes and emblems supported by the works of the historian Bronislaw Baczko and the anthropologist Michael Herzfeld’s. Throughout the paper, the theoretical aims are illustrated with reference to coal-mining memory and heritage in the north of France.  .