Dans les philosophies récentes du Sud, les marges sont valorisées comme une contrainte ontologique et existentielle. La latéralité, la liminalité et l’interstitiel y sont donnés de façon explicite comme des formes de résistance à l’un, au système ou à la totalité. Accusés d’être des abstractions en surplomb, ces concepts sont dénoncés comme véhiculant le non-vrai, car ils drainent le soupçon d’être la forme violente que prennent l’hégémonie et l’impérialisme culturels et politiques. Ce texte critique comme problématique le privilège accordé à (...) une entité reléguée ab initio dans les marges de l’être. Il y a là le risque de la réduire au rang de rebut, enfermée dans les marges ou les interstices du monde. On ratifie et assume de ce fait, spéculativement, sa marginalisation réelle. A l’arrière-plan de cette position se profile en dernière analyse le rejet de l’universel, de la raison et du concept. Or nombre de grandes philosophies de la libération du Sud mettent en avant l’appréhension rationnelle et conceptuelle de l’Un car c’est dans le cadre de l’universel qu’une place doit être assignée à chaque particulier par détermination progressive. (shrink)

Dans les philosophies récentes du Sud, les marges sont valorisées comme une contrainte ontologique et existentielle. La latéralité, la liminalité et l’interstitiel y sont donnés de façon explicite comme des formes de résistance à l’un, au système ou à la totalité. Accusés d’être des abstractions en surplomb, ces concepts sont dénoncés comme véhiculant le non-vrai, car ils drainent le soupçon d’être la forme violente que prennent l’hégémonie et l’impérialisme culturels et politiques. Ce texte critique comme problématique le privilège accordé à (...) une entité reléguée ab initio dans les marges de l’être. Il y a là le risque de la réduire au rang de rebut, enfermée dans les marges ou les interstices du monde. On ratifie et assume de ce fait, spéculativement, sa marginalisation réelle. A l’arrière-plan de cette position se profile en dernière analyse le rejet de l’universel, de la raison et du concept. Or nombre de grandes philosophies de la libération du Sud mettent en avant l’appréhension rationnelle et conceptuelle de l’Un car c’est dans le cadre de l’universel qu’une place doit être assignée à chaque particulier par détermination progressive. (shrink)

This article reports a study carried out in order to measure how semantic factors affect reductions in the difficulty of the Chinese Ring Puzzle (CRP) that involves removing five objects according to a recursive rule. We hypothesised that semantics would guide inferences about action decision making. The study involved a comparison of problem solving for two semantic isomorphic variants of the CRP ( fish and fleas ) with problem solving for the puzzle's classic variant (the Balls and Boxes problem; Kotovsky (...) learning involves generalising the relations within a coherent, interconnected whole that makes up the puzzle's rules. It seems that semantics make it easier for the puzzle's elements to be grouped together within coherent, meaningful wholes, which reduces relational complexity and facilitates problem solving. (shrink)

The question of a pragmatist justification of religious beliefs appeared in James’s writing in 1898, as an alternative to Royce’s theory of the absolute. This pragmatist justification was repeated in The Varieties of Religious Experiences in 1902 but it failed to give a proper account of the truth of religious beliefs based on private religious experiences and ultimately failed to answer Royce’s arguments. James knows that any possible pragmatist justification of religious belief based on the practical consequences of religious belief (...) must be completed by a metaphysical theory of the non-natural causality of religious experiences. But that would require going beyond the dualistic and naturalistic account of the Varieties. Nevertheless, the difficulties of the monistic theories of the Essays in Radical Empiricism pushed James to defend, in A Pluralistic Universe, a pantheistic theory in which the Absolute is accepted as a logical possibility, which in turn supposes to accept the composition theory of consciousness that he had rejected in The Principle of Psychology. Therefore, James’s final theory isn’t very different to Royce’s theory, since Royce’s theory is not a theory of the necessity of the Absolute but rather a theory of its possibility. (shrink)

In 1245 Canon Law reaches an apex. A Lawyer-Pope Innocent IV proclaims at the Œcumenical Council of Lyons the prestige of Canon Law and his professors. Canon Law is perceived as a new and sometimes controversial ecclesiastical science of power. This new status can be explained by the growth of the ius commune in Italian universities and the rivalries between Roman Law, Canon Law and theology. Innocent IV promotes the figure of the ecclesiastical judge. He also delineates an ecclesiology where (...) the world would be united by an universal religion of Natural Law. (shrink)

Après l’histoire de la folie et celle de la prison, Foucault a abordé l’histoire de la sexualité. Nous retracerons d’abord les trois moments de cette histoire: l’antiquité gréco-romaine, le christianisme et la société bourgeoise. Nous insisterons ensuite sur ce qui caractérise, en Occident, notre époque, à savoir l’extension de « l’aveu » dans tous les domaines investis par les sciences humaines. Ce qui nous amènera à mettre l’accent sur l’enjeu philosophique d’une telle histoire, à savoir la question de la vérité.

Les études modernes sur les jeux de hasard et d’argent dans le monde romain se concentrent principalement sur les joueurs masculins de l’élite, mais les sources écrites et iconographiques fournissent de nombreuses preuves de la présence de joueuses de tous horizons. Cette contribution rassemble les témoignages textuels et iconographiques qui, jusqu’à présent, ont été largement négligés quant aux informations qu’ils peuvent fournir sur les femmes et le jeu dans l’Antiquité romaine. Elle explore la relation entre le jeu et le (...) féminin, des déesses aux grands-mères, et met en lumière les implications sociales du jeu et des paris pour les joueuses. Le jeu féminin était très répandu et pouvait prendre des formes différentes dans des contextes variés. En analysant ces textes ensemble pour la première fois, nous pouvons saisir de manière plus riche et nuancée l’importance du jeu au féminin à Rome en révisant les modèles existants trop dépendants de quelques textes célèbres. (shrink)

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, mentions Niccolò Machiavelli by name in his extant works just a handful of times. That, however, he read him carefully and thoroughly time and again there can be no doubt, and it is also clear that he couches his argument both in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and in his Spirit of Laws as an appropriation and critique of the work (...) of the predecessor whom he termed ‘this great man’. In this paper I explore the manner in which the Frenchman redeployed the arguments advanced by the Florentine for the purpose of refuting the latter's conclusions. ☆ In citing Machiavelli, I employ N. Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. M. Martelli (Florence, 1971), and I refer to the divisions within each work provided by the author. To make my references to Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio more precise, I sometimes also employ the paragraph enumeration added by the editors of N. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, tr. H. C. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (Chicago, 1996). In citing Montesquieu, wherever possible, I have employed the splendid new critical edition being produced by the Société Montesquieu: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. J. Ehrard, C. Volpilhac-Auger, et al., 22 vols. (Oxford, 1998-), which I cite as VF. I cite Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734), ed. F. Weil and C. Courtney, as CR by chapter and, where appropriate, line from VF, ii, 89–285. I cite Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois (1757), as EL by part, book, chapter, and, where appropriate, page from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. R. Caillois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949–51), ii, 225–995, and Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Mes pensées as MP by number from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. A. Masson, 3 vols. (Paris, 1950–5), ii, 1–677. (shrink)

This is a major and comprehensive study of the philosophy of Hegel, his place in the history of ideas, and his continuing relevance and importance. Professor Taylor relates Hegel to the earlier history of philosophy and, more particularly, to the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time. He engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel's own terms and, as the subject demands, in detail. This important book is now reissued with a fresh new cover.

This book is concerned with `the problem of existence in mathematics'. It develops a mathematical system in which there are no existence assertions but only assertions of the constructibility of certain sorts of things. It explores the philosophical implications of such an approach through an examination of the writings of Field, Burgess, Maddy, Kitcher, and others.

Né en 1466, Erasme est fils d'un prêtre hollandais. Cette naissance devait marquer l'enfant pour toute sa vie. Elle explique les incertitudes concernant sa propre histoire et ses relations difficiles avec l'Eglise romaine à laquelle il reste pourtant fidèle jusqu'à la fin de sa vie. Devenu moine par obligation, Erasme demande des dérogations pour mener une vie indépendante, ce qui compte pour lui c'est l'acquisition de la culture, tant profane que religieuse, et une liberté d'expression littéraire qui passe par la (...) langue latine, alors langue des lettrés de toute l'Europe. Des protections efficaces lui permettent de découvrir Paris, l'Angleterre et l'Italie. Connu dès 1500 grâce aux "Adages", il atteint à la célébrité après 1511 et l'Eloge de la Folie, dont il parlera comme d'un divertissement réussi un peu par hasard. Conseiller de Charles Quint après 1516, il défend une conception évangélique du christianisme ainsi qu'un idéal de paix et de concorde entre les princes européens, gageure impossible au temps des guerres d'Italie. Erasme a fait très tôt figure de chef de file des humanistes. Ses critiques à l'égard du clergé et de la papauté sont aussi féroces que celles de Luther, à qui il oppose le refus du schisme et la notion de libre-arbitre. Son activité épistolière le place au coeur d'une "des lettres" qui a compté plus de 600 correspondants. (shrink)

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective (...) on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

Reviews the scope, nature, and applications of the philosophical discipline, focusing on methods for distinguishing between valid and fallacious arguments and inferences.

"A beautiful piece of work on the theory of altered states of consciousness ." "Stanislav Grof, M.D. author of Realms of the Human Unconsciousness".

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (...) (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’? (shrink)

Tradução do texto originalmente intitulado "Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion", de Charles-Louis de Secondat, barão de La Brède e de Montesquieu. Trata-se de trabalho apresentado no dia 18 de junho de 1716 à Academie Royale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux e somente publicado após a sua morte.

L’abbé de Nantes est plus connu comme prêtre traditionaliste, parmi les premiers opposants a Vatican II et a Paul VI, que comme fondateur en 1957 d’une congrégation de moines missionnaires, les Petits Frères du Sacre Coeur, qui se voulait directement inspirée par Charles de Foucauld. Pourtant, sa vocation religieuse vient du film à grand succès L’appel du silence (1936) qui présente le destin commun de l’ermite et de Laperrine, ≪ le soldat de la foi et le soldat de la (...) France ≫. Né dans une famille d’Action française, l’abbé pense Charles de Foucauld à travers l’autre Charles, Maurras. Il en fait l’icône d’un empire chrétien français, incarné par une Algérie française idéalisée, au moment ou la colonisation s’effondre et ou l’Église romaine accentue son détachement à l’égard du national catholicisme. (shrink)

Newton’s impact on Enlightenment natural philosophy has been studied at great length, in its experimental, methodological and ideological ramifications. One aspect that has received fairly little attention is the role Newtonian “analogies” played in the formulation of new conceptual schemes in physiology, medicine, and life science as a whole. So-called ‘medical Newtonians’ like Pitcairne and Keill have been studied; but they were engaged in a more literal project of directly transposing, or seeking to transpose, Newtonian laws into quantitative models of (...) the body. I am interested here in something different: neither the metaphysical reading of Newton, nor direct empirical transpositions, but rather, a more heuristic, empiricist construction of Newtonian analogies. Figures such as Haller, Barthez, and Blumenbach constructed analogies between the method of celestial mechanics and the method of physiology. In celestial mechanics, they held, an unknown entity such as gravity is posited and used to mathematically link sets of determinate physical phenomena (e.g., the phases of the moon and tides). This process allows one to remain agnostic about the ontological status of the unknown entity, as long as the two linked sets of phenomena are represented adequately. Haller et. al. held that the Newtonian physician and physiologist can similarly posit an unknown called ‘life’ and use it to link various other phenomena, from digestion to sensation and the functioning of the glands. These phenomena consequently appear as interconnected, goal-oriented processes which do not exist either in an inanimate mechanism or in a corpse. In keeping with the empiricist roots of the analogy, however, no ontological claims are made about the nature of this vital principle, and no attempts are made to directly causally connect such a principle and observable phenomena. The role of the “Newtonian analogy” thus brings together diverse schools of thought, and cuts across a surprising variety of programs, models and practices in natural philosophy. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Background: The bioethics literature contains speculation but little data about sociodemographic differences between patients for whom ethics committees (EC) are consulted for conflict about life-sustaining treatment (LST) and the broader hospital population that these committees serve. To provide an empirical context for this discussion, we examined differences in five sociodemographic factors between patients for whom an EC was consulted for conflict over LST and the general inpatient population, hypothesizing that nonwhite patients were most likely to be disproportionately represented. Methods: This (...) was a retrospective cohort study comparing self-reported race/ethnicity, household income, insurance status, primary language, and religious affiliation between patients involved in EC consultations for conflict over LST and the general adult inpatient population at a large academic hospital from January 1, 2007, through December 31, 2013. Results: There were 169 EC consultations involving conflict over LST and 243,197 adult inpatient admissions over the study period. On bivariate analysis, patients for whom the EC was consulted for conflict over LST were more likely to be nonwhite, low-income, and to speak a primary language other than English. They were not more likely to be underinsured or to report a religious affiliation. On multivariate analysis, patients for whom the EC was consulted for conflict over LST were more likely to be nonwhite (odds ratio [OR], 2.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7–3.7; p <.001). They were also more likely to be low income (OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.1–3.0; p =.02). They were not more likely to speak a primary language other than English (OR, 1.4; 95% CI, 0.9–2.1; p =.17). None of the assessed variables were associated with conflict over LST requiring additional meetings beyond the first EC consultation. Conclusions: Nonwhite and low-income status patients are disproportionately represented in EC committee consultation for conflict over LST compared to the general inpatient population. (shrink)

The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. Placing the Enlightenment contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions (...) to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, Charles W. J. Withers draws from the fields of art, science, history, geography, politics, and religion to explore the legacies of Enlightenment national identity, navigation, discovery, and knowledge. Ultimately, geography is revealed to be the source of much of the raw material from which philosophers fashioned theories of the human condition. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Placing the Enlightenment will interest Enlightenment specialists from across the disciplines as well as any scholar curious about the role geography has played in the making of the modern world. (shrink)

Few themes resonate as powerfully in Heidegger as those connected to homecoming, homeland, and Heimat. This emphasis plays out most powerfully in Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin and his turn towards language, art, and poetizing as a way of thinking through the poet's relevance in the epoch of homelessness and the abandonment of the gods. As the first book-length study in English of the Heidegger-Hölderlin relation, Of an Alien Homecoming addresses the tension within Heidegger's work between his disastrous political commitments during (...) the era of National Socialism and his attempts to open a path to a German future nurtured on Hölderlin's ideal of poetic dwelling. Charles Bambach reads this work on Hölderlin from 1934–1948 in conversation with the Black Notebooks and Heidegger's metapolitics, even as he uncovers an ethical dimension within Heidegger that pervades his reading of poetry. Throughout all of these various stages on Heidegger's thought path, Hölderlin remains the poet who poetizes the possibility of finding our lost home amidst the homelessness brought about in the epoch of technological thinking. (shrink)

In ‘Syntactical Treatments of Modality, with Corollaries on Reflexion Principles and Finite Axiomatizability’, Acta Philosophica Fennica16 (1963), 153–167, Richard Montague shows that the use of a single syntactic predicate (with a context-independent semantic value) to represent modalities of alethic necessity and idealized knowledge leads to inconsistency. In ‘A Note on Syntactical Treatments of Modality’, Synthese44 (1980), 391–395, Richmond Thomason obtains a similar impossibility result for idealized belief: under a syntactical treatment of belief, the assumption that idealized belief is deductively closed, (...) together with certain other plausible conditions on idealized belief, imply that an ideal believer with consistent beliefs cannot believe the truth of Robinson's Arithmetic. In this essay I show that an impossibility result similar to Thomason's can be obtained which does not assume that belief is deductively closed or ideal in any other way. (shrink)

Much current theorizing about literature involves efforts to renew our sense of aesthetic values in reading. Such is the case with new formalism as well as recent appeals to the notion of “surface reading.” While sympathetic to these efforts, Charles Altieri believes they ultimately fall short because too often they fail to account for the values that engage literary texts in the social world. In Reckoning with the Imagination, Altieri argues for a reconsideration of the Kantian tradition of Idealist (...) ethics, which he believes can restore much of the power of the arguments for the role of aesthetics in art. Altieri finds a perspective for that restoration in a reading of Wittgenstein’s later work that stresses Wittgenstein’s parallel criticisms of the spirit of empiricism. Altieri begins by offering a phenomenology of imagination, because we cannot fully honor art if we do not link it to a distinctive, socially productive force. That force emerges in two quite different but equally powerful realizations in his reading of John Ashbery’s “Instruction Manual,” which explicitly establishes a model for a postromantic view of imagination, and William Butler Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan.” He then turns to Wittgenstein with chapters on the role of display as critique of Enlightenment thinking, the honoring of qualities like sensitivity and the ability to attune to the actions of others, the role of expression in the building of models, and the contrast between ethical and confessional modes of judgment. Finally, Altieri produces his own model of aesthetic experience as participatory valuation and makes an extended argument for the social significance of appreciation as a way to escape the patterns of resentment fundamental to our current mode of politics. A masterful work by one of our foremost literary and philosophical theorists, Reckoning with the Imagination will breathe new life into ongoing debates over the value of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This article looks at the practice of educational questioning using the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer. It first looks at questions and statements from a hermeneutic perspective, demonstrating some of the differences and similarities between the two. It then details Gadamer's notion of the ‘true question’, asking whether it is possible for teachers to ask ‘true questions’. Then, it turns to some concrete ways to rethink educational questioning. Three themes are proposed, themes to keep in mind when educational questions are (...) used: non‐superficiality, humility, and circuitry. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)