Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology reveals two attitudes regarding the classification of phenomena. On the one hand, they are classified by type. On the other, the “banality of saturation” reduces these types topossibleinterpretations, in which case saturation isn’t a qualitative rupture anymore, but a possible hermeneutic attitude to any phenomenon. Hence, there is, in Marion’s phenomenology, a tension between a metaphysical attitude that maintains categorial discontinuities, and a hermeneutic temptation driven by the recovery of quantitative continuities between all phenomena. Yet, Marion does (...) not push this quantitative temptation to its limits; he steps back in front of a specifically saturated phenomenon: the icon. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a reductive account of intentions which I call a gate-based reductive account. In contrast with other reductive accounts, however, the reductive basis of this account is not limited to desires, beliefs and judgments. I suggest that an intention is a complex state in which a predominant desire toward a plan is not inhibited by a gate mechanism whose function is to assess the comparison of our desires given the stakes at hand. To vindicate this account, (...) I rely on several considerations: the similarity between epistemic feelings and the feeling of being decided that tells us that we have an intention, the necessity of postulating a gate mechanism to explain our hesitating behavior, and the tight link that exists between the realization of our actions and our desires. In agreement with non-reductivists, I nevertheless acknowledge that intentions encompass plans, although I emphasize that the planning capacity must also be dependent on our motivational life and the general evaluative mechanisms that explains our emotions. (shrink)

L'évolution de la clinique psychiatrique a mis au centre de ses recherches l'écoute et la parole du patient. Cependant le plus souvent la parole échoit dans les discours et l'écoute se décentre vers la vérification des a priori théo­riques. L'empathie ou les règlements qui incitent le clinicien à mettre le patient au centre de ses préoccupations apportent confort et sécurité mais ratent la rencontre clinique qui échoit dans le relationnel. Une relation n'est pas une rencontre. Le contexte de...

Pour la phénoménologie de Jean-Luc Marion, Descartes est le philosophe ayant achevé la métaphysique. Mais il faut entendre toute la polyphonie de ce terme. D’un côté, il l’a achevée au sens où il l’a parachevée, la portant à son sommet en fixant ses concepts et ses enjeux pour la modernité à venir. De l’autre, il l’a achevée en montrant ses brisures, la rendant caduque par la mise au jour de son dépassement possible selon deux concepts qui déterminent aussi deux moments (...) cartésiens : l’infini puis la chair. Cette ambivalence eu égard à la métaphysique (fixation puis dépassement), résonne dans la phénoménologie de la donation puisqu’elle détermine la mise en place de la distinction entre les phénomènes saturés et les phénomènes de droit commun. Ainsi, Descartes est utilisé comme le philosophe qui fixe les frontières, non seulement entre philosophie et métaphysique, mais aussi celles qui passent au cœur même de la phénoménologie. Pourtant, à de nombreuses reprises, Marion montre que cette fixation des frontières n’est pas aussi aisée à opérer qu’il n’y paraît, et qu’il y a un brouillage essentiel et originaire de celles-là. Pour la phénoménologie de la donation, Descartes est donc à la fois un repoussoir et un aimant, ce qu’il faut dépasser et ce à partir de quoi on le dépasse, ce qui disparaît dans la mort de la métaphysique, mais aussi ce qui s’attarde dans ce qui lui survit. (shrink)

Foucault’s Forgotten Marxism. This article tries to point out several methodological issues concerning Foucault’s Surveiller et punir, such as the equivocal status of some of Foucault’s main concepts, or the assumed homogeneity of the various disciplinary institutions analyzed in this book. And it aims at suggesting that such issues might find a solution, should one consider the Marxist background on which, as the Lectures at the Collège de France of the year 1973 clearly show, Foucault’s theories were dependant. In the (...) opinion of the author, only in as much as this heritage is accepted and seriously taken into account, shall Foucault’s concepts and theses regain their political and critical pertinence. (shrink)

En este artículo se desea mostrar la distinción que Jean-Luc Marion realiza entre fenómenos de derecho común y fenómenos saturados, se refleja de manera paradigmática su concepción de arte al presentar el ídolo como una modalidad saturada de los fenómenos; a su vez se presenta la diferencia entre los objetos construidos o los fenómenos constituidos por un sujeto que son presentados como principio y fundamento. Desde aquí se considera la pintura como una experiencia fenoménica de anamorfosis, donde la mirada del (...) espectador se somete al fenómeno, planteando la posibilidad de recibir aquello que se quiere ver. Además, busca mostrar cómo desde el arte, el proceso de la visibilidad es presentado como construcción del fenómeno que opera desde lo invisible. Se mostrará, entonces, cómo la reflexión artística de Jean-Luc Marion permite entrar en el corazón de su obra, observando cómo se puede modificar los conceptos de donación y de sujeto. (shrink)

This paper presents the hypothesis that concept possession is sufficient and necessary for self-consciousness. If this is true it provides a yardstick for gauging the validity of different research paradigms in which claims for self-consciousness in animals or human infants are made: a convincing demonstration of concept possession in a research subject, such as a display of inferential reasoning, may be taken as conclusive evidence of self-consciousness. Intuitively, there appears to be a correlation between intelligence in animals and the existence (...) of self-consciousness. I present three discussions to support the hypothesis: an analogy between perception and conception, where both are self-specifying; an argument that any web of concepts will always include the self-concept; and a fresh interpretation of Bermũdez showing how his theory of non-conceptual content provides strong support for the concept possession hypothesis. (shrink)

Two features are often assumed about emotions: they are intentional states and they are experiences. However, there are important reasons to consider some affective responses that are not experienced or only partly experienced as emotions. But the existence of these affective responses does not sit well with the intentionality of conscious emotions which are somehow geared towards their object. We therefore face a trilemma: either these latter affective responses do not have intentional objects and we should renounce intentionality as a (...) defining feature of emotions; or we have to explain how they actually have intentional, though unconscious, objects; or after all we must deny that they are really emotions. I suggest that the second option is the correct one: we can provide an account of the intentionality of unconscious emotions and its relation to the intentionality of conscious emotions. To do this, I rely on neuropsychological studies that distinguish two kinds of attention: salience as enriched treatment, and focus as a way of turning our attention. Then, given that only salience is always present in unconscious emotional phenomena, I suggest that emotions are intentional because they involve an object being made salient. I further argue that this feature of emotions explains why unconscious and conscious emotions can be taken as organized around their object. Finally, I defend this account against several objections, showing that the account can be applied whatever the cognitive base of the emotions may be and is not falsified by the fact that attentional aspects of emotions may vary in other dimensions. (shrink)

The 2005 Avignon Theatre Festival sparked a vast controversy about the insistent presence of bodies (whether wounded, broken, or humiliated) on stage. Without subscribing to the reactionary critical response to the Festival, it is legitimate to return to the debate in order to question the ubiquity of the “victim body” in contemporary theatre. Such representations, far from being heterodox, are in fact part of the massive ideology of “the ethical”, as diagnosed by Alain Badiou. The oppressed body thus tends to (...) be assimilated to the body of the victim. The result is the obliteration of the resistance of subjects to their oppression, or of their active response to it, theatre being reduced to the maxims of a democratic materialism: “there are only bodies and languages”. (shrink)

The basic premise of the host‐defense theory is that genomic imprinting, the parent‐of‐origin expression of a subset of mammalian genes, derives from mechanisms originally dedicated to silencing repeated and retroviral‐like sequences that deeply colonized mammalian genomes. We propose that large clusters of tandemly‐repeated C/D‐box small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) or microRNAs represent a novel category of sequences recognized as “genomic parasites”, contributing to the emergence of genomic imprinting in a subset of chromosomal regions that contain them. Such a view is supported (...) by evidence derived from studies of the imprinted snoRNA‐ and/or miRNA‐encoding Dlk1‐Dio3, Snurf‐Snrpn, Sfbmt2, and C19MC domains. While adding a new piece to the challenging puzzle of mammalian genome history, this hypothesis also reinforces the notion that dissecting the features and molecular mechanisms that discriminate between “foreign” and “endogenous” sequences is of crucial importance in the field of mammalian epigenetics. (shrink)

Que l’idéologie raciste nazie ait pu engendrer la Shoah relève de l’évidence, la plus effrayante sans aucun doute de toute l’histoire du XXe siècle. Que des juristes catholiques et patriotes aient pu se montrer les complices actifs de la persécution des Juifs ne s’explique que dans le contexte d’une IIIe République déchirée et agonisante, accouchant du régime de Vichy. Mais..

It is often suggested that emotions are intrinsically normative or that they have conditions of correctness that are intrinsic. In order to assess this thesis, I consider whether the main argument in favor of the normativity of belief can be transposed to emotions. In the case of belief, the argument is that when we wonder whether to believe that p, we acknowledge that we must abide by some norms. This is understood as showing that these norms are intrinsic to the (...) concept of belief. In contrast, it appears that no similar constraint applies when we deliberate about emotions. Indeed, I argue that extrinsic norms are suf ficient to understand thoroughly the normativity of emotions. Therefore, the postulation of intrinsic norms or correctness conditions seems unmotivated. Worse, if emotions had intrinsic norms or correctness conditions, they would manifest themselves when we wonder whether an emotion is appropriate in this or that context. But they don’t. (shrink)

Why is there a specific problem with biological individuality? Because the living realm contains a wide range of exotic particular concrete entities that do not easily match our ordinary concept of an individual. Slime moulds, dandelions, siphonophores are among the Odd Entities that excite the ontological zeal of the philosophers of biology. Most of these philosophers, however, seem to believe that these Odd Cases oblige us to refine or revise our common concept of an individual. They think, explicitly or tacitly, (...) that to be a living, evolutionary entity is to be a living individual. In this paper, we explore an alternative proposal: the variety and oddity of the forms of the living realm might be ontologically regimented through an increase in the categorial complexity of the living realm, by admitting, beside living individuals, living non-individuals or by acknowledging, more generally, that the evolutionary development of the living forms is not necessarily a process of building individuals, that life is not necessarily individuals-oriented. We claim that, from an ontological point of view, the spectacle of the living realm obliges us to take aggregativity seriously. (shrink)

Since at least the mid-1980s claims have been made for rationality in rats. For example, that rats are capable of inferential reasoning (Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, & Waldmann, 2006; Bunsey & Eichenbaum, 1996), or that they can make adaptive decisions about future behavior (Foote & Crystal, 2007), or that they are capable of knowledge in propositional-like form (Dickinson, 1985). The stakes are rather high, because these capacities imply concept possession and on some views (e.g., Rödl, 2007; Savanah, 2012) rationality indicates self-consciousness. (...) I evaluate the case for rat rationality by analyzing 5 key research paradigms: spatial navigation, metacognition, transitive inference, causal reasoning, and goal orientation. I conclude that the observed behaviors need not imply rationality by the subjects. Rather, the behavior can be accounted for by noncognitive processes such as hard-wired species typical predispositions or associative learning or (nonconceptual) affordance detection. These mechanisms do not necessarily require or implicate the capacity for rationality. As such there is as yet insufficient evidence that rats can reason. I end by proposing the ‘Staircase Test,’ an experiment designed to provide convincing evidence of rationality in rats. (shrink)

In various ways, Marx ascribes a central role to the body in his theoretical and political system. In both his philosophy of praxis and his critique of political economy, the body is presented as a site of forces and needs. This enables Marx to provide a naturalist ground for the dynamics of praxis. It also enables him to define a critical perspective in terms of the effects registered in the body of a structure of domination and exploitation. The aim of (...) the article is to present these themes and to discuss their subsequent treatment by authors such as Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu and Foucault, while reflecting on the way recent transformations of capitalism have led to their reformulation and to the emergence of two new critical tropes: the body as commodity and as an ideology. (shrink)

La catégorie des anormaux, dont Foucault fait la généalogie dans son cours de 1974-1975 au Collège de France, a complètement disparu au début du XXe siècle. Par l'extension illimitée de l'anormal qu'elle permettait et par la somatisation de toutes les pathologies physiques ou mentales qui la soutenait, cette catégorie peut cependant être rapprochée de notre notion actuelle de « handicap », et tout particulièrement des handicaps psychiques. Ce rapprochement permet d'apprécier ce qui a changé dans notre rapport aux normes. L'intégration (...) sociale et la modification des anormaux a remplacé leur exclusion et contention. Mais l'inquiétude des normes est toujours aussi forte, et s'articule désormais autour d'une recherche de sécurité dont le handicap est l'expression. La méthode généalogique permet ainsi l'étude des lignes de fracture de cette notion, révélatrice des problèmes que produisent notre volonté de prendre médicalement en charge de supposés incurables. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain the processes undergone by the producer of an awoval. The conditions of its possibility and its effects on the subjet itself through the effects on those to whom the avowal is addressed. I finally wonder to what extent it may be considered a moral transformation.

Our contribution concerns the continuous training of teachers that will be forming future teachers during their traineeship. It aims to describe how the professional development of the trainees’ coaches, both the training supervisors as well as the supervisors form the trainees’ schools, was used during a course proposed by a university and during meetings where practices were shared by the participants. In this manner, we identified the ideal moments for development of the trainees, as well as the most important levers (...) for the transformation of the coaches. We paid particular attention to the reflexive contract co-defined by the group, as well as to the principle of social moderation at the heart of the collaborative group’s dynamic. (shrink)

Will streaming have a “feedback effect” on musical creation, comparable to the one enforced by the precedent distribution modes of musical contents? In other words, could it be compared to the one generated by the invention of 45rpm vinyl record or 33rpm LP linked to the “concept albums” from the seventies, or even CD and DVD? I will use the description of “Apple Music”, the new Apple streaming site, to demonstrate that the innovations brought along with this site clearly evince (...) that this new mode of distribution has achieved its own end and will exert, if my predictions are true, an important effect on musical creation in the upcoming years. Since those optimistic conclusions far from being shared by all musicians, I will have to discuss their points of view in this article as well. (shrink)

Cette étude vise à montrer comment Synésios de Cyrène, ayant adopté deux doctrines vraisemblablement porphyriennes (touchant l’enkuklios paideia et le pneuma en tant qu’organe de l’imagination), les articule en fonction d’une double préoccupation: celle d’un progrès intérieur de l’âme qui soit une progression ordonnée via les logoi, et celle d’une communication intime avec la divinité (voire de salut personnel), via une phantasia purifiée. Ce double souci de conversion intérieure, manifesté dans le diptyque littéraire constitué par le Dion: ou du genre (...) de vie conforme à son modèle et le traité Des songes (publiés tous deux en 405), le conduit à concevoir une forme d’écriture intime qui serait une écriture philosophiquement adéquate au mode de vie auquel, idéalement, cet homme public et ce styliste hors pair envisage alors de se consacrer. Mais dans la réalité de son existence d’homme de lettres, et donc dans la pratique de son écriture, cette conversion à l’intime ne correspond qu’à un assez bref moment d’anachorèse vouée à l’étude et donc à soi-même – ultime refuge, plus rêvé que réalisé, de l’ethos platonicien, tel qu’il se le représentait. (shrink)

L’enseignement de la méthodologie scientifique en Psychologie confère un rôle paradigmatique à l’opérationnalisation des « hypothèses générales » : une idée sans rapport précis à l’observation concrète se traduit par la tentative de rejeter une hypothèse statistique nulle au profit d’une hypothèse alternative, dite de recherche, qui opérationnalise l’idée générale. Cette démarche s’avère particulièrement inadaptée à la découverte de lois empiriques. Une loi empirique est définie comme un trou nomothétique émergeant d’un référentiel de la forme Ω x M(X) x M(Y), (...) où Ω est un ensemble d’événements ou d’objets datés dont certains états dans l’ensemble M(Y) sont par hypothèse impossibles étant données certaines conditions initiales décrites dans l’ensemble M(X). Cette approche permet de préciser le regard que l’historien des connaissances peut porter sur les avancées descriptives et nomothétiques de la Psychologie empirique contemporaine. (shrink)

Nous jugeons les réponses émotionnelles comme plus ou moins raisonnables étant donné leur objet et le contexte. Je soutiens que la légitimité de ces jugements repose sur le caractère raisonnable des désirs ou des dispositions émotionnelles qui expliquent ces réponses émotionnelles. Il est déraisonnable d’être triste de ne pas satisfaire un désir déraisonnable. Mais comment un désir peut-il être déraisonnable ? Je rejette l’idée selon laquelle les désirs seraient raisonnables parce que cohérents. Je suggère que nos désirs et nos dispositions (...) émotionnelles sont raisonnables à deux conditions : premièrement, qu’ils contribuent à une vie subjectivement heureuse ; deuxièmement, qu’ils soient moralement justifiés. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Confronted with the “wrong kind of reason problem”, several proponents of the fitting attitude analysis of emotional values have argued in favor of an epistemic approach. In such a view, an emotion fits its object because the emotion is correct. However, I argue that we should reorient our search towards a practical approach because only practical considerations can provide a satisfying explanation of the fittingness of emotional responses. This practical approach is partially revisionist, particularly because it is no longer (...) an analysis of final value and because it is relativistic. (shrink)