Chez Hegel, la liberté ne dépend pas seulement de conditions historiques, politiques ou géographiques, mais aussi de conditions anthropologiques comme celle de l'âge : le degré de liberté dépend de l'âge qu'on a, la liberté ne vient pas avant l'âge ou le bon âge. Hegel développe une analyse parallèle des âges des peuples. Pourquoi la liberté a-t-elle pour condition l'âge de l'homme fait ? Est-ce la liberté du puissant face au jeune homme qui n'a pas le pouvoir et au vieillard (...) qui est affaibli ? Foucault, en commentant l'Alcibiade de Platon, a pu soutenir lui aussi l'idée d'un âge de la liberté : l'accès à soi permis par un âge critique de la vie conditionne surtout, dans le dialogue et pour Foucault, l'action et la pensée politiques. Revenant à Hegel, nous pouvons alors mieux comprendre que sa thèse de la plus grande liberté de l'homme fait ne dépend pas de sa puissance mais de l'exigence pratique et politique qui caractérise l'âge qui est le sien. In Hegelian philosophy, freedom is dependent not only on historical, political and geographical conditions, but also on anthropological conditions such as age. Our degree of freedom depends on how old we are, as freedom does not come before the right age. Hegel develops a parallel analysis of the ages of peoples. Why does freedom require the age of maturity as a necessary condition? Is it the consecration of the freedom of the powerful man against the young man, who has no power, and the old man, whose strength has waned? Commenting on Plato's Akibiades, Foucault also supports the idea of an age of freedom. In the dialogue and for Foucault, the access to oneself permitted by that critical age of life is notably the condition for political action and thought. Returning to Hegel, we can then better understand his thesis that greater freedom is that of maturity: it does not come from man's power but from the practical and political necessity that characterizes that particular age. (shrink)

On se propose de présenter la lecture par Levinas de la notion d?intentionnalité. Cette discussion est prioritairement une discussion avec le concept husserlien d?intentionnalité 1 . Nous nous tiendrons à cette question sans engager la présentation de l?ensemble de la phénoménologie husserlienne chez Levinas 2 . Notre objet sera ici de retracer les lectures lévinassiennes de ce concept et non d?en évaluer la pertinence ou l?injustice à l?égard de Husserl. Nous sommes bien conscients néanmoins que certaines propositions engagées dans ces (...) lectures frappent par leur caractère hétérodoxe ou intem­pestif, voire même hérétique, à l?égard de la lettre husserlienne et ne peuvent de ce fait manquer de heurter qui connaît bien l??uvre de Husserl. Discutant le concept d?intentionnalité chez Husserl, il s?agit souvent pour Levinas de distinguer d?abord ce concept d?autres ententes, courantes, ordinaires, naturelles, du concept, mais aussi de dégager d?autres types d?intentionnalité qui ne seraient pas inscriptibles dans le modèle husserlien, et enfin de dégager des formes relationnelles non intentionnelles. On sera alors particulièrement sensible à ce travail de Levinas sur les formes de l?intentionnalité, travail qui constituera un des fils de notre exposition. Pourtant, l?objet principal de notre étude concernera la dualité de la lecture lévinassienne. Il faut plus exactement parler de deux lectures divergentes et. (shrink)

Partant de l’analyse anthropologique des âges de la vie par Hegel dans l’Encyclopédie, on présentera sa critique des idéaux. Hegel fustige chez le jeune homme cette tendance à opposer le réel et l’idéal. Il dégage les risques à la fois individuels et collectifs que cette vision du monde fait courir et considère « l’homme fait » comme celui qui sait vouloir ce qui est. De cette analyse, suit la conclusion qu’il n’y a pas de possible en dehors du réel, pas (...) de substantialité hors du monde. Autrement dit, et contre la première impression de la plupart des hommes, possible et réel, devoir être et être, s’identifient. Pourtant, si l’aversion du réel inspirée par l’attachement aux idéaux représente, selon Hegel, un danger, le procès du devoir-être par la philosophie spéculative n’est pas non plus sans risque. Ne signe-t-il pas, comme le dira Nietzsche, la défaite de la volonté face au poids des choses ? La lecture, dans la Doctrine de l’essence, du chapitre intitulé « L’effectivité » dans la section du même nom, peut nous préserver de conclusions si déprimantes, car celui-ci vient expliquer, non que le possible est une chimère, une vue de l’esprit, mais qu’il s’identifie à l’effectif. Or, la reconnaissance de cette intimité produit d’une part en retour une conception plus riche, plus haute, plus noble du possible – elle lui donne en somme des lettres de noblesse – et, d’autre part, elle conduit à y lire une affirmation de la contingence. Notre argumentaire vise à établir qu’en disant que l’effectif est possible et que le possible est effectif, Hegel ne les détruit pas en leur ôtant leurs déterminations propres, mais leur assure une plus grande consistance. En étant possible, l’effectif cesse de se confondre avec la réalité comprise comme simple existence ou simple phénomène, comme simple il y a. En étant effectif, le possible cesse de signifier un moindre-être, un en deçà, un simplement ou seulement possible, puisqu’il est alors inscrit dans l’être, dans le monde. (shrink)

Bien plus qu’une position relativiste ou nihiliste, on reproche parfois aujourd’hui à Lyotard d’avoir fait le lit de la « post-vérité » par la promotion de la multiplicité de jeux de langage sans au-delà et sans principes généraux de validation. Par un raccourci stupéfiant, on y lit l’affirmation que les discours sont tous également légitimes et ne doivent posséder comme autre principe de validation que le fait d’avoir été proférés. Si l’accusation d’un Lyotard inspirateur d’une forme de « post-vérité » (...) nous semble infondée, c’est que la pensée et la parole s’attachent toujours pour lui à « quelque chose » dont il faut avoir le souci ou qu’il faut chercher à entendre. Lyotard nous semble moins soucieux de relativiser ou, comme on l’en accuse aujourd’hui, d’abandonner l’exigence de vérité que de montrer, d’une part, que celle-ci peut se dire en plusieurs sens, et, d’autre part, qu’on ne vient pas à bout de cette dernière aux moyens de ce qu’il nomme « le discours ». Que ce soit par la pensée, la parole, la création ou l’action, on s’attache toujours à « quelque chose » dont on a souci, et la promotion de la multiplicité dans le champ de la vérité vise non à s’affranchir du vrai mais à se montrer à sa hauteur par un élargissement des perspectives qui ne le cantonne pas à un seul genre de lieu. (shrink)

La production désirante se trouve informée par le fait que le sujet affectif est inscrit dans une époque, une culture, un milieu social et tributaire de différentes formes de socialisation qui le disposent ou l’inclinent à désirer telle ou telle chose. Les trois théories que nous proposons de confronter font valoir l’origine principalement sociale des défenses suscitées par la vie pulsionnelle. Cette transformation affective est nommée par Freud refusement culturel ( Kulturversagung ), par Adorno et Horkheimer intégration totale ou répression (...) ( Repression ) et par Elias également répression et refoulement des pulsions ( Dämfung der Triebe ) mais au sens d’une capacité accrue d’autocontrôle ( Selbstkontrolle ) ou d’autocontrainte ( Selbstzwänge ). Qu’est-ce qui spécifie et distingue chacune de ces trois formes d’intégration de la norme sociale à la personne, pour reprendre une expression d’Elias dans La Société de cour? (shrink)

"How Jewish is modern Jewish philosophy? The question at first appears nonsensical, until we consider that the chief issues with which Jewish philosophers have engaged, from the Enlightenment through to the late 20th century, are the standard preoccupations of general philosophical inquiry. Questions about God, reality, language, and knowledge have been as much concern to Jewish thinkers as they have been to others. In this textbook, which surveys the most prominent thinkers of the last three centuries, Claire Katz situates (...) modern Jewish philosophy in the wider cultural and intellectual context of its day, indicating how broader currents of British, French and German thought influenced its practitioners. But she also addresses the unique ways in which being Jewish coloured their output, suggesting that a keen sense of particularity enabled the Jewish philosophers to help define the whole modern era."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology by Mattia RiccardiClaire KirwinMattia Riccardi, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xi + 249 pp. isbn: 9780198803287. Hardcover, $70.00.Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher. Indeed, it is probably fair to say, as many commentators have, that he was an anti-systematic philosopher. It is harder to say what this means, and harder still to know how to deal with it when we aim to (...) interpret his philosophy. For we wish to attribute to Nietzsche certain claims and positions, perhaps even arguments, and in doing so we generally prefer that these not contradict each other. And so as we attempt to understand “Nietzsche’s philosophy” as a coherent entity, we tend to find ourselves—for better or worse—heading down the path of systematizing that philosophy.Mattia Riccardi’s Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology is an impressive example of such a systematizing reading of Nietzsche. In developing his account of Nietzsche’s (mature) philosophy of mind, Riccardi acknowledges that Nietzsche’s own approach to this topic is “scattered” and “piecemeal” (5). What Riccardi aims to offer is a comprehensive reconstruction of the systematic account that Nietzsche, for whatever reason, did not explicitly give us. And what we are presented with here is a very systematic Nietzsche, one who offers a comprehensive and detailed account of the inner workings of the mind in terms of drives and affects and their relation (this is the topic of the book’s Part I, “Beneath the Surface”); consciousness—three different types of consciousness, to be precise—and the sense in which it is epiphenomenal (in Part II, “Mapping the Surface”); and the nature of the self, the possibility of self-knowledge, the nature of the will, and the relevance of all of this for the Nietzschean “ideal type” of human being (in Part III, “The Upshot”). [End Page 203]We might worry that such a systematic philosopher is no longer quite recognizable as Nietzsche—that in doing such comprehensive and systematic reconstructive work one is somehow leaving behind the Nietzsche who wrote not treatises but rather aphorisms, polemics, pseudo-biblical texts, and poetry. But Riccardi is upfront that what he is doing is reconstructive work of this kind and meticulous in showing how the positions he develops can plausibly be attributed to Nietzsche—or at the very least, that such positions can be constructed out of genuinely Nietzschean building blocks. These positions are fleshed out and given contemporary relevance through discussion of their relation to modern accounts of mindedness (the higher-order thought theory of consciousness, for example, a version of which—carefully modified—Riccardi attributes to Nietzsche), but at the same time Nietzsche’s thought is throughout set carefully within the relevant historical and biographical contexts. The seeds and impetus for Nietzsche’s ideas are located in authors he was known to have read (Schopenhauer, Leibniz, and Stendhal, of course, but also Schneider, Mayer, Fouillée, Espinas, and more). The development of these ideas over time is then traced through Nietzsche’s notes and published work. At each point, alternative readings of these texts that have been proposed in the secondary literature are considered and carefully, persuasively, refuted. For philosophers seeking to offer a systematic reconstruction of Nietzsche’s thought on some topic, this sort of approach should be seen as the gold standard. And for anyone interested in understanding what Nietzsche has to say about human psychology, this book will be essential reading.Riccardi’s Nietzsche offers us a serious and detailed philosophy of mind. It seems appropriate, then, to respond to it as such. Rather than giving a précis of each chapter, or debating the exegetical accuracy of the account, I shall instead offer some critical engagement with the detail of the account itself. I will focus on two key components of the system Riccardi elaborates: first, the account of reflective consciousness and, second, the sense in which he takes that form of consciousness to be epiphenomenal. These parts of the system, the topics of chapters 5 and 7, respectively, play crucial roles within the architecture of the book as a whole. For taken together, they show just how radically... (shrink)

'Toute philosophie existante est militante' (La Nature ou le monde du silence) - Loin de constituer un paradoxe pour Merleau-Ponty, philosophie et militantisme se conjuguent au sein de son projet intellectuel. Sans renoncer à l'exigence et la rigueur phénoménologiques, il développe une pensée originale du politique où le philosophe a un rôle à jouer. Philosophie et militantisme sont renvoyés à leur source commune et originaire, l'engagement immémorial en un monde par le corps et la foi qui l'accompagne. Considérant à parts (...) égales philosophie et politique, cet ouvrage entend redessiner les contours de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty à égale distance de l'idéologie de l'idéal militant et de la philosophie de survol désengagée du monde qui l'entoure. Intransigeant, l'effort merleau-pontien le conduit à élaborer une forme neuve d'expression dans ses essais politiques habituellement délaissés par ses commentateurs et ici resitués dans l'économie générale de l'œuvre. Déconstruisant les figures d'autorité symbolique, le philosophe dévoile les sources vives des institutions. L'empiètement de la philosophie et de la politique, dont Merleau-Ponty interroge le bon usage, fait ainsi de la philosophie un contre-pouvoir permanent. Corps-à-corps avec l'événement, inclassable, la philosophie militante de Merleau-Ponty s'avère riche d'instruction pour le présent de l'action et de la pensée."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 388-399, April 2022.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How I Hate You, CancerClaire YarMigraine. That’s what we thought. They run in my family, so why not? My beautiful, bright, extroverted ten–year–old daughter’s neurological exam was unremarkable, but she had a bad headache and was vomiting in the early morning hours. Migraine didn’t seem that much of a stretch. Our savvy pediatrician had a gut feeling that it was more than a migraine and sent her for an (...) MRI.We had not even left the children’s hospital before I received a voicemail to call our pediatrician. When I returned the call, on our way to pick up Ellie’s younger brother from school and already running late I heard the words that no parent wants to hear, “I have bad news. We found a brain tumor and it’s rather large”. This conversation would turn our lives into a frenzy of fear and leave unanswered (unanswerable?) questions. I was told to bring her to the ER where we would be met by a neurosurgeon and oncologist. I could not process this information. My initial fears were too scary to utter. Was she going to die? Do children survive brain surgery “intact”? Is it operable? Oncologist = scary cancer, doesn’t it? Did we do something to cause it? What if our insurance doesn’t cover the best treatment?Clinging to the life I knew before—needing to stay in the “before,” not even pulling the car over, I reached backwards, held Ellie’s leg and spoke the words out loud for the first time. That’s what a brain tumor diagnosis does to your family. It breaks up time into “before” and “after”. Her reaction was a terrified wail and then, oddly, hysterical laughter. Is that what shock looks like? My own reaction to the call was of stunned silence. The sound of my heartbeat and the blood rushing in my ears meant I could not ask the questions I had in that moment.Ellie has always been exceptional. She is a bright light in any room. At only ten–years–old, she spoke like a teenager; had the vocabulary of an adult. Never again would I be able to take this for granted. In every waking moment that our lives were unoccupied with the practicalities of a brain tumor diagnosis, the questions I couldn’t think of or say out loud during that terrible phone call continually flooded my thoughts. Your child’s brain is everything after all; it’s what makes them “them.”An avid horse rider, she had been off her favorite horse’s back for a few weeks saying that the bouncing hurt her neck. I had kept her off school for several days, but we had seen marked improvement in [End Page E12] the day or two leading up to that devastating D–Day of diagnosis, and she had been back at school doing well. Only a week before, Ellie had been dancing at a party with friends. How could she have a brain tumor?We rushed home and hurriedly packed our bags for “at least a week”—and I recall that life seemed to be both in slow motion and traveling at the speed of light. I desperately wanted to turn the clock back to the innocence we had known a few hours before. This was way too much news to hear in one day. Even when I heard the diagnosis, I was surprised that we would have to go to the hospital that day. Now! Don’t people get time to process or plan and get second opinions? We had no time to tell family and friends or ask for help. We didn’t have the luxury of time. Time is another thing I no longer take for granted.Upon arrival at the large children’s hospital we felt as if we were given so much information, but looking back, I now know that these angels are trained in giving parents only what they can handle—in tiny pieces, nibble by nibble. You don’t (can’t) hear half of it anyway. Our families live far from us, and trying to gather and figure out... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas—Between Philosophy and Rhetoric:The “Teaching” of Levinas’s Scriptural ReferencesClaire Elise KatzIn an interview titled "On Jewish Philosophy," Emmanuel Levinas illuminates the connection that he sees between philosophical discourse and the role of midrash in interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. His interviewer immediately expresses surprise at Levinas's comments that suggested he saw the traditions of philosophy and biblical theology as in some sense harmonious (quoted in Robbins 2001, 239). Levinas responds (...) by elaborating on this connection he sees. For him, the lived experience of Judaism is above all a sense of belonging to humanity and, in turn, to a supreme order of responsibility (240). Although his intellectual life focused on the sacred texts of Judaism, this life included non-Jewish books, which he believed expressed a similar concern or a similar responsibility—a concern for the meaning of life. This list of such books includes Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Miser, and The Misanthrope, in addition to the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.In Levinas's view, these novels are not exercises of philosophyper se; as mentioned above, they express the same concerns that occupy philosophy, but they express these concerns in a different idiom. They do not offer a philosophical argument; instead, they use figurative language and literary narrative to convey their messages. By drawing this distinction between philosophy and literature, Levinas appears to have divided the written word into two categories: philosophy, on the one hand, and literary texts, on the other. Yet readers of his philosophical work cannot help but notice his frequent references to literary sources, including the numerous citations taken from the Jewish holy texts. His use of these citations encourages us to ask how we are to classify these books in general and how to classify, in particular, the Scriptures and the holy texts in Judaism. With regard to the holy texts in Judaism, should we classify them as simply a [End Page 159] literary device? Or, do they constitute a third category that falls somewhere in between philosophy and rhetoric? If the latter, then what is their status relative to these larger categories?Although Levinas insists on separating his two bodies of work—his philosophical writings and his Jewish writings—the distinction between them becomes increasingly blurred with his frequent introduction of citations from the Hebrew texts into his philosophy and by inflecting his Jewish writings with philosophical interpretations.1 In what follows, I examine the unique and significant role of Scriptural references within Levinas's philosophical work. My claim is that the Scriptural references are in fact rhetorical, but not "simply" rhetorical; they do pedagogical work for Levinas that other literary devices cannot accomplish. They engage his readers such that they are invited to grapple with the Scriptures in a manner potentially unfamiliar to them, and this invitation, in turn, has the pedagogical effect of attuning his readers to his texts and to his ethical project—even, one might say, to the other—and inviting them into an experience of transcendence.In the interview mentioned above, Levinas tells his interlocutor that for the Jews the Scriptures do not exist apart from the interpretations that accompany them. These interpretations are found in the collections of midrashim and the Talmud. One need know only a little bit about Hebrew and the construction of the Hebrew texts in order to see why these interpretations are significant. There are three grammatical concerns with the Hebrew language: first, biblical Hebrew does not contain vowels, though it does employ vowel aspirations; second, it is a language based on root letter combinations, and the meaning of these combinations alters, depending on the vowel aspirations that are inserted. For example, "Kiddish," the Hebrew blessing over wine, is based on a combination of Hebrew letters that are transliterated into English as KDSH. The blessing changes if we insert different vowel aspirations: "Kaddish" is the blessing said for those who have died. Third, biblical Hebrew lacks punctuation. Owing to the absence of vowels and punctuation, interpretation difficulties immediately emerge. The rabbinic model of midrash addresses these problems by offering multiple explanations and interpretations.Levinas, however, is not concerned with this aspect of the written language. Rather, he emphasizes... (shrink)

Cette monographie présente une étude de l’infini dans la philosophie grecque, d’Anaximandre à l’ancien stoïcisme. Elle comporte une table des matières, une préface de deux pages, seize chapitres organisés de façon chronologique, un index des noms propres, et un index des sources anciennes. Il n’y a pas de bibliographie (les références aux auteurs modernes sont données en notes). Cinq chapitres sont des reprises (modifiées le cas échéant) d’articles publiés dans Hermes, Diálogos et Eos. Disons...

L’ouvrage, précédé d’une préface de Ph. Hoffmann, reprend la première partie de la thèse que Ph. Soulier a soutenue en 2010. Il présente une étude très précise des enjeux philosophiques des pages que Simplicius consacre au commentaire des chapitres 4 à 8 du livre III de la Physique d’Aristote (In Physicam, 451-517 Diels). Il contient également une annexe présentant un résumé analytique du texte de Simplicius, une bibliographie, trois index (noms anciens, auteurs modernes, passages cités) et u...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Epistemological Warfare and Hope in Critical Dystopia by Emrah AtasoyClaire P. CurtisEmrah Atasoy. Epistemological Warfare and Hope in Critical Dystopia. Ankara: Nobel Bilimsel Eserler, 2021. vii+ 167 pp. ISBN: 978-625-7589-04-8This book is an application of the idea of critical dystopia to three understudied novels and the beginning of an argument about utopian desire itself. Emrah Atasoy, a prolific author who reviewed Turkish speculative fiction in a well-received 2021 (...) Utopian Studies article, is modeling a search for hope in dystopian texts. In this book, derived from his dissertation, he examines three British novels written in three different eras of the twentieth century: Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night (1937), Anthony Burgess's The Wanting Seed (1962), and P. D. James's The Children of Men (1992). In each novel, Atasoy argues, the protagonists move from an ignorance that served the interest of the dystopian forces to a resistant knowledge that should be read as offering hope, both as resistance and as knowledge.The book is organized in a straightforward way, with an introduction, conclusion, and then three analytical chapters, one for each of the novels. The introduction is expansive, offering both brief surveys of the nature of utopia and dystopia and a recounting of a number of themes taken up by dystopian texts: education, politics, gender roles, family life, and more. Layered onto this is a discussion of theorizing around knowledge and power and the transition from ignorance to understanding. The chapters focused on the individual novels are all similarly expansive. Atasoy offers biographical information about the authors along with considerations of the primary social and political events to which the authors might be responding. The analyses of the novels focus primarily on the motivations of the protagonists, but interspersed in the plot summaries are narrative cul-de-sacs explaining particular textual details (for example, the discussion of Theo's choice of the Greek statue of Diadoumenos as allocation to leave a note for the Warden [James, 37]). These [End Page 519] little detours are often interesting but can be distracting from the primary analytic focus.The analyses themselves also cover a lot of territory. The middle section of the chapter on The Children of Men (118–34) includes discussions of power, eugenics, religion, sexuality, punishment, assisted suicide, and immigration. Each of these is used to elucidate modes of social and political control wielded by the Warden, but the sheer number of issues included in the fast-moving analysis left me wanting more. Atasoy's analysis of Quietus nicely captures the ways in which James has created a world where the elderly are both encouraged and manipulated to end their lives for the good of the whole. This discussion fits especially well with the larger focus of his analysis on modes of social engineering. Fewer themes and more close readings like this one would have deepened the reading experience. But for anyone beginning a project on one of these novels, this book is a good place to start.This book begins and ends with the interesting contention that times of catastrophe diminish the literary production of utopia, and potentially the capacity for hope itself. While the point of this book is not to defend this claim empirically, it is one worth considering for any scholar of utopia, or any person interested in the potential of future change for the better. The book may underplay the fact of twentieth-century literary utopias (there is a brief discussion of the feminist utopias written in the 1970s and 1980s), but it is surely correct that there is an imbalance in the production of utopia in favor of dystopia. Utopias are more challenging to construct and potentially (especially in this day and time) less formulaic than dystopia, which is an increasingly popular (and marketable) genre.Kim Stanley Robinson noted in a recent interview that "[utopias] shape people's conception of what's possible that could be good in the future."1 Atasoy's book offers the possibility that a close reading of dystopian texts might well help us uncover other ways of finding out what future good is possible. By extolling the value of finding the... (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 388-402, May 2022.

:In his famous book Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer articulates a thesis he calls the “Moral Equality of Soldiers,” namely, the principle that combatants have an equal right to kill other combatants in war, regardless of the justice of the cause for which they are fighting. The Moral Equality Thesis, as I shall call it, is an essential component of traditional Just War Theory, in that it provides the basis for distinguishing the jus in bello from the jus ad (...) bellum. It also plays a crucial role in identifying the nature of the difference between combatants and civilians. The Moral Equality Thesis has recently come under attack by scholars of Just War Theory, notably philosopher Jeff McMahan, on the grounds that killing for immoral purposes cannot be justified, and so it cannot be true that combatants all have an equal right to kill, regardless of the justice of their cause. In this essay, I defend the Moral Equality Thesis in its traditional formulation. Without it, I argue, the rule of law would not apply in war. The failure to recognize the equal right of combatants to kill in war, I suggest, creates an inconsistency between the rules of war and basic concepts in the law and morality of self-defense, an inconsistency that McMahan himself would think undesirable. I argue that McMahan’s argument applies more compellingly to armed conflict in asymmetrical warfare. Arguably, the Moral Equality Thesis does not apply in an armed conflict between combatants and unlawful combatants. In that context, the divergence from the law and morality of self-defense is less of a concern. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. KILLING IN WAR AND THE MORAL EQUALITY THESISVolume 32, Issue 2Claire Finkelstein DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000169Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage entreprend de retracer la vivacité des débats qui prirent place dans les pages de la célèbre revue Seitô (Les bas bleus), première revue littéraire japonaise exclusivement éditée par des femmes et créée en 1911 à Tôkyô. Il paraît peu ou prou au moment du centenaire de la revue, publiée de 1911 à 1916. Dirigé par Christine Lévy, maîtresse de conférences en études japonaises à l’Université Bordeaux 3, il réunit les articles et les traductions de huit chercheuses japonaises et (...) frança... (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qu'un enseignement? Une pensée? Qu'autorisent-ils? À la suite de Claire Brunet, Sandra Laugier et Frédérique Ildefonse qui dirigent ce volume, d'anciens étudiants, aujourd'hui chercheurs renommés ou plus discrets, creusent à travers le sillon de leur discipline ce que leur a permis l'enseignement de leur maître commune à l'École normale supérieure. Les amitiés intellectuelles s'y joignent. Ce que l'on appelle communément communication dans le monde académique devient texte. Tous, en creux, décrivent l'influence d'un enseignement, la liberté qu'il permet à (...) des esprits pour s'épanouir et nous laissent découvrir un portrait intellectuel d'une grande originalité. La pensée de Claude Imbert, philosophe, logicienne, longtemps directrice du département de philosophie de la rue d'Ulm, n'a pas les honneurs médiatiques français en sus des "académiques" d'usage. S'y prêterait-elle? Pourtant, la philosophe française est depuis plus de vingt ans lue, reçue et écoutée dans les universités du monde entier, des Etats-Unis à la Chine en passant par l'Amérique du Sud. Tous les textes rassemblés ici, comme autant de variations, sans jamais le dire, souhaitent contribuer à la reconnaissance de l'oeuvre. Un inédit "Ne rien oublier et tout apprendre" de la philosophe et un texte de Pascalle Monnier, écrivain, accompagnent le volume."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas—Between Philosophy and Rhetoric:The “Teaching” of Levinas’s Scriptural ReferencesClaire Elise KatzIn an interview titled "On Jewish Philosophy," Emmanuel Levinas illuminates the connection that he sees between philosophical discourse and the role of midrash in interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. His interviewer immediately expresses surprise at Levinas's comments that suggested he saw the traditions of philosophy and biblical theology as in some sense harmonious (quoted in Robbins 2001, 239). Levinas responds (...) by elaborating on this connection he sees. For him, the lived experience of Judaism is above all a sense of belonging to humanity and, in turn, to a supreme order of responsibility (240). Although his intellectual life focused on the sacred texts of Judaism, this life included non-Jewish books, which he believed expressed a similar concern or a similar responsibility—a concern for the meaning of life. This list of such books includes Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Miser, and The Misanthrope, in addition to the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.In Levinas's view, these novels are not exercises of philosophyper se; as mentioned above, they express the same concerns that occupy philosophy, but they express these concerns in a different idiom. They do not offer a philosophical argument; instead, they use figurative language and literary narrative to convey their messages. By drawing this distinction between philosophy and literature, Levinas appears to have divided the written word into two categories: philosophy, on the one hand, and literary texts, on the other. Yet readers of his philosophical work cannot help but notice his frequent references to literary sources, including the numerous citations taken from the Jewish holy texts. His use of these citations encourages us to ask how we are to classify these books in general and how to classify, in particular, the Scriptures and the holy texts in Judaism. With regard to the holy texts in Judaism, should we classify them as simply a [End Page 159] literary device? Or, do they constitute a third category that falls somewhere in between philosophy and rhetoric? If the latter, then what is their status relative to these larger categories?Although Levinas insists on separating his two bodies of work—his philosophical writings and his Jewish writings—the distinction between them becomes increasingly blurred with his frequent introduction of citations from the Hebrew texts into his philosophy and by inflecting his Jewish writings with philosophical interpretations.1 In what follows, I examine the unique and significant role of Scriptural references within Levinas's philosophical work. My claim is that the Scriptural references are in fact rhetorical, but not "simply" rhetorical; they do pedagogical work for Levinas that other literary devices cannot accomplish. They engage his readers such that they are invited to grapple with the Scriptures in a manner potentially unfamiliar to them, and this invitation, in turn, has the pedagogical effect of attuning his readers to his texts and to his ethical project—even, one might say, to the other—and inviting them into an experience of transcendence.In the interview mentioned above, Levinas tells his interlocutor that for the Jews the Scriptures do not exist apart from the interpretations that accompany them. These interpretations are found in the collections of midrashim and the Talmud. One need know only a little bit about Hebrew and the construction of the Hebrew texts in order to see why these interpretations are significant. There are three grammatical concerns with the Hebrew language: first, biblical Hebrew does not contain vowels, though it does employ vowel aspirations; second, it is a language based on root letter combinations, and the meaning of these combinations alters, depending on the vowel aspirations that are inserted. For example, "Kiddish," the Hebrew blessing over wine, is based on a combination of Hebrew letters that are transliterated into English as KDSH. The blessing changes if we insert different vowel aspirations: "Kaddish" is the blessing said for those who have died. Third, biblical Hebrew lacks punctuation. Owing to the absence of vowels and punctuation, interpretation difficulties immediately emerge. The rabbinic model of midrash addresses these problems by offering multiple explanations and interpretations.Levinas, however, is not concerned with this aspect of the written language. Rather, he emphasizes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionAnthropocene Feminisms: Rethinking the UnthinkableClaire Colebrook and Jami WeinsteinIn her recent lecture on the Anthropocene (to which she adds the Capitalocene and the Chthulucene), Donna Haraway expresses some alarm that after two major insights into what counts as thinkable, it was “anthropos” that became the term for the post-Holocene (Haraway 2014). Haraway declares, with emphasis, that it is “literally unthinkable” to work with the individual unit of “man” if (...) one is to do good intellectual work. For Haraway, the two knowledge events that ought to have precluded the use of the figure of the “anthropos” are: first, the acceptance that any seeming individual is the outcome of a series of complex relations and must be studied as such (so there would be no epoch with anything, let alone “man,” as its first cause), and, second, intellectual inquiry has acknowledged a general becoming-with, such that in order to be anything at all, “one” must be in a dynamic relation. Haraway’s work is exemplary of post-liberal feminist resistance to the figure of man—as subject, agent, and center of knowing. Terms like “Woman” or “the feminine” do not extend the field occupied by man; they instead create a different intensity. So when Haraway questions the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene she neither asks that women, too, be included in those who have scarred the planet, nor does she claim that “Woman” would occupy some innocent outside. Instead, she proposes that one think of the “anthropos” as untimely, as out of sync with an intellectual milieu that theorizes the death of the subject and the eclipse of the human, and has even begun to renounce the notion of life in itself. It is odd that in the face of this destruction of any possibility of thinking by [End Page 167] way of individualism, the epic gesture of the present deploys the figure of the “anthropos,” as it should be unthinkable today to return to the figure of man.When Haraway invokes what is literally unthinkable, and then gestures to the Anthropocene, she suggests that perhaps the figure of the Anthropocene is a form of unthinking, and that it is precisely when complexities, timescales, predictions, manageability, and any form of sustainability ought to disturb and trouble our logics that we cease to think and ask for a single cause for an entire epoch. If this is so, and the “anthropos” of the Anthropocene is a reaction formation, then we might see the skirmishes and turf wars that surround the golden spike1 as diversions. If we spend our time disputing just when it was that man started to change the planet, then we allow a contested point in time to pass itself off as thinking, all the while allowing the intensive multiplicity of what has come to be known as the Anthropocene to remain unthought. By asking when the Anthropocene began, we revive a modified version of the time of man; once again, man is placed as the agent of history, albeit unwittingly, and he can look back upon and assess the past of his own making. Haraway is not alone in suggesting that such conceptions of a single line of time, and a conception of first cause, are highly gendered and racialized. The figure of “man” who creates his own history and recognizes himself as having come into being through a time that is readable is bound up with hegemonic conceptions of modernity, and has long been the target of feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critique (e.g., Foucault 1970; Amin 1989; Grosz 2004). If it is literally unthinkable to do good work from the premises of a methodological individualism, then asking who or what caused the Anthropocene, or when it began, would amount to a form of un-thinking or not-thinking. At the same time, perhaps the Anthropocene is literally unthinkable in a sense that marks a more positive and profound absurdity. Let us accept, following Haraway, that all “good work” both acknowledges the impossibility of accounting for the complexity of life by way of bounded, individual singularity, and dispenses with the exceptional man of reason as its foundation. If we do, what the Anthropocene... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Inappropriate RegretClaire Pouncey (bio)Keywordsanxiety, inappropriate guilt, moral sentiments, supererogation, regretThis delightful and provocative vignette has many interesting clinical facets, and I thank Dr. Bailey for his candid introspection. For me, this essay calls attention to an asymmetry in our culture, in which women tend to feel more comfortable than men in expressing anxieties about our unpredictable and often dangerous world. Women's fears, however, often are dismissed or minimized, revealing (...) an overall social discomfort with expressed anxiety, and a sense that anxiety itself is, somehow, feminine. When I read Dr. Bailey's essay, I am struck that two self-aware men need the metaphors of war and heroism to address their own anxieties.The vignette builds around a soldier, Colin, who presents with guilt about having been deployed to Iraq, but not engaging in combat. Guilt is a moral sentiment, a feeling that one ought to have acted otherwise in a given situation. It is a self-imposed sanction for a moral failure. In mental health care, we use the term ‘inappropriate guilt’ to describe a clinical symptom commonly associated with depression. Clinicians understand inappropriate guilt as a manifestation of the self-criticism and low self-esteem often associated with depressive disorders. In Colin's case, it did fit with a constellation of symptoms that suggested depression. Dr. Bailey's essay explores the psychodynamics of Colin's guilt, and possible responses to it.As I understand the situation, Colin sees himself as having a moral obligation to exceed his contractual obligation to the military. In the terminology of ethics, he imposes upon himself a duty to be supererogatory, that is, a duty to go beyond the call of duty, which some moral philosophers have considered oxymoronic. For Colin to feel guilty about not engaging in combat, he must have understood a moral obligation to participate in combat that goes beyond his obligation to follow orders. It seems to me that soldiers have a nonmoral, contractual obligation to train, deploy, follow orders, and if circumstances so dictate, fight. But if the circumstances do not lead to combat (Nagel might call this good moral luck), it does not seem to me that a soldier has failed either a contractual or a moral obligation by not being sent into battle. Supererogation aside, to my mind, Colin's guilt is inappropriate: he is holding himself to an unreasonable moral standard, according to which he is required not only to do what the military demands, but also to sacrifice or suffer from the experience in some meaningful way.Although the notion of inappropriate guilt fits with the description of Colin's depression, it occurs to me that the word ‘guilt’ may be too strong here. Perhaps what Dr. Bailey is seeing is better characterized as ‘inappropriate regret’ that Colin missed “his last, best chance to be a hero.” ‘Regret’ is the sentiment that one could have (rather than should have) acted otherwise, perhaps to a better eventual end. Dr. Bailey agrees that Colin's guilt is inappropriate, that no one is ever required [End Page 233] to be a hero. But he seems to share, and even encourage, what I am calling Colin's ‘inappropriate regret,’ which suggests that if Colin had engaged in combat, he would not experience feelings of helplessness or insecurity in our uncertain world. What fascinates me is that Dr. Bailey accepts this premise, and even reflects on his own fears about self-protection in his own urban setting.Rather than challenging it, Dr. Bailey clearly shares Colin's concern that he may not be able to respond adequately should a real threat arise. Both therapist and patient seem to want reassurance that they can keep themselves and their families safe when danger strikes. But this is not a matter of achieving or going beyond the call of duty. Rather, it is an expression of familiar and diffuse anxiety that is unrelated to wartime. In the essay, heroism seems to serve as a metaphor, a filter that makes the expression of anxiety more palatable to both the patient and the therapist. I am fascinated that these two sensitive and introspective interlocutors need to filter their anxieties through... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Moments of Beating Addiction and Inscription in Virginia Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past”Barbara Claire Freeman (bio)My title, which alludes to the collection of autobiographical essays authored by Virginia Woolf and entitled Moments of Being, implies that being and beating are co-constitutive and that exploring their interdependence may shed light upon the logic that binds the one to the other. In particular, I want to examine the ways (...) in which Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past”—it is the longest essay in the collection and presumably incomplete, since Woolf wrote the last entry shortly before killing herself in 1941—sets up a complex relationship between beating, writing, and compulsion. For the text in which the phrase “moment of being” first occurs also reveals that the activity of writing, to which Woolf was addicted, has the symbolic valence of beating and functions at the level of language in the same ways that beating functions on the body. I will begin to unpack this perhaps obscure equation by focusing upon the relationship between being and beating in the experiences that define Woolf’s “moments of being.” 1In the opening pages of “A Sketch,” Woolf describes the routine, eminently forgettable aspects of daily life as “a kind of nondescript cotton wool”; the phrase is her “private shorthand” for the general and diffuse “moments of non-being” that predominate in daily life and in which, by contrast, “moments of being” are “embedded” [70]. “Every day,” Woolf notes, “includes much more non-being than being”; and although “the real novelist can somehow convey both sorts of being” [70], Woolf believes that “behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern” [72] and that her vocation as a writer is to discover and communicate it.Though occasionally “moments of being” produce the experience of rapture or ecstasy, an aspect of beating I will presently explore, most frequently they name moments that entail negation and self-shattering. “Moments of being” are moments of extreme violence that “remain interesting” [78] not because they lead to self-transcendence or discovery, but because they provoke a sense of utter helplessness and paralysis. With one exception, Woolf’s “moments” involve memories of being beaten up by life: “a sudden violent shock” occurs “when something happened so violently that I have remembered it all my life” [71]. Woolf’s submission to her brother Thoby’s beating remains in her memory as inaugural:The first: I was fighting with Thoby on the lawn. We were pommelling each other with our fists. Just as I raised my fist to hit him, I felt: why hurt another person? I dropped my hand instantly, and stood there, and let him beat me. I remember the feeling. It was a feeling of hopeless sadness. It was as if I became aware of [End Page 65] something terrible; and of my own powerlessness. I slunk off alone, feeling horribly depressed.[71]The shock of a beating occasions Woolf’s knowledge that rupture may function as a form of revelation; its reception initiates a drive to repeat in words the impact and imprint of the blows she has received. Being beaten not only provides her with a paradigm of being, but institutes a reciprocal and necessary relationship between beating and writing in which the one elicits and engenders the other. 2Another “moment” recounts the experience of being “dragged down, hopelessly, into some pit of absolute despair from which I could not escape” upon hearing about the suicide of a family friend, a certain Mr. Valpy:I overheard my father or mother say that Mr. Valpy had killed himself. The next thing I remember is being in the garden at night and walking on the path by the apple tree. It seemed to me that the apple tree was connected with the horror of Mr. Valpy’s suicide. I could not pass it. I stood there looking at the grey-green creases of the bark—it was a moonlit night—in a trance of horror.... My body seemed paralysed.[71]As Woolf’s body received her brother’s blows, her consciousness receives the shock of overhearing news of a suicide. The memory of Mr... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

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"L'usage substantivé du mot 'soi' est intriguant. Le pronom tonique 'soi' ne pose pas de problème particulier dans les expressions comme 'prendre soin de soi', 'compter sur soi' ou 'être hors de soi'. Mais parler d'un 'soi', c'est aller au-delà de la réalité grammaticale et supposer une identité personnelle à travers la diversité des expériences. Or, l'idée de soi et la croyance en l'identité personnelle ont été mises en question par David Hume, dont les arguments résonnent toujours dans la philosophie (...) contemporaine. Le but de ce livre est double : montrer, en historiens de la philosophie, de quelle façon le philosophe britannique a répondu à ces problèmes, et évaluer la fécondité de ces résultats pour les sciences de l'esprit."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Quiconque, au cours de ses recherches, s’est aventuré dans le domaine des correspondances, sait que, quel qu’en soit l’auteur et quel qu’en soit le moment, il aborde là un continent aux limites inconnues. Aussi, sonder en quelque 150 pages ̶ comme le fait Jürgen Siess dans son ouvrage Vers un nouveau mode de relations entre les sexes ̶ les correspondances de six épistolières qui ont compté parmi les plus prolixes et les plus célèbres de leur temps, semble relever du défi. (...) L’auteur s’en exp... (shrink)

Pour accompagner l’exposition Mélancolie, génie et folie en Occident, la Réunion des musées nationaux fait paraître une histoire de la mélancolie rédigée par l’historienne de l’art Hélène Prigent, sorte de catalogue condensé des œuvres présentées au public entre la fin de l’année 2005 et le début de 2006, qui reprend d’ailleurs le découpage thématique et chronologique retenu par Jean Clair. Le projet est ambitieux puisqu’il s’agit de rendre compte de la persistance de ce thème depuis l’Antiqu..

La question des conditions éthiques et juridiques de la pratique de l’expérimentation sur des êtres humains constitue un débat récurrent dans le champ de la bioéthique. Depuis la fin des années 1980 en France (loi Huriet-Sérusclat de décembre 1988), l’idée qu’il faut protéger les personnes qui sont les sujets de recherches biomédicales par le recueil d’un consentement « libre et éclairé », qu’il faut aussi procéder à une évaluation des risques et des avantages de ce type de recherche pour les..

Parmi les nombreuses publications qui ont accompagné l’exposition Mélancolie, génie et folie, soulignons la parution d’un large choix de textes extraits de l’Anatomie de la mélancolie de Robert Burton (1577-1640), sous la direction de Gisèle Venet. L’œuvre de ce « théologien de profession et médecin par inclination » n’a pas d’emblée trouvé son chemin dans la « langue de Molière » (Préface, p. 7-8). Cette méconnaissance a partiellement pris fin en l’an 2000 grâce au gigantesque travail de tra..

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 36-39.

Review of Claire Pagès, Lyotard et l'aliénation.

À l’origine de cet ouvrage, il y a le postulat que la conception historique de la laïcité « à la française » est un héritage problématique plus que dogmatique. C’est-à-dire un héritage, comme l’évoque la conclusion, « qui ne saurait être envisagé comme une question à clore, mais bien plutôt comme un champ susceptible de reconfiguration perpétuelle ». La spécificité de cet ouvrage dans ce champ repose alors quant à elle sur deux points. Il s’agit d’abord de prendre le temps (...) du recul, du suspen.. (shrink)

La publication de The Anatomy of Melancoly de Robert Burton en 1621 marque un tournant dans l’histoire de cette célèbre maladie, déjà analysée dans le Problème XXX du corpus aristotélicien. Burton, en effet, ne se contentait pas de construire une sorte d’encyclopédie du savoir philosophique et médical sur la mélancolie, qu’il considérait comme la quintessence de toutes les maladies ; il en proposait aussi de nouvelles interprétations, notamment en abordant la mélancolie sous l’angle de ses co..

René Descartes (1596-1650)?: un classique de la philosophie, père du rationalisme, disciple du dualisme platonicien et inventeur du cogito. 0Il existe pourtant un autre Descartes, méconnu?: l’observateur de ce qui, en l’homme, se situe à la limite du rationnel et de l’irrationnel. Bref, en cette partie qu’est, aux confins de l’âme et du corps, le non-rationnel?: la sensibilité ou, mieux, l’affectivité. D’où le sens du titre de ce livre?: le clair-obscur de la conscience, réunissant les idées claires et distinctes de (...) l’âme et les idées obscures et confuses du corps. 0C’est donc, chronologiquement, le troisième et dernier Descartes, le moins étudié mais le plus authentique, que l’on analysera ici?: après le savant du Discours de la Méthode, puis le métaphysicien des Méditations, le psychologue des Passions de l’âme. Ainsi est-ce un Descartes original et inédit, réévalué et actualisé à la lumière de la philosophie contemporaine, que le lecteur découvrira en ces pages. (shrink)

The Abbé de Saint-Pierre, best known for his 'Project for Perpetual Peace', in fact left a much larger and more coherent body of political and moral writing, but it has been only partially studied. This book, the first systematic exploration of his entire corpus, offers a complete re-evaluation of this important author's contributions to the Enlightenment. From the first decades of the eighteenth century, Saint-Pierre set forth a pioneering vision of politics as the harmonisation of interests, anticipating Bentham as a (...) utilitarian. He imagines replacing the system of inherited power and clientele networks, which structured Old Regime society and determined the exercise of power under absolutism, with a rationalised, meritocratic and dynamic organisation. He argued for the political values of social utility and public good to take the place of the Christian ideals of perfection and the aristocratic ideals of personal charisma. As a deist seeking to reconcile morality and religion, Saint-Pierre argued that the search for salvation through active piety must also promote social justice and beneficence--and that only the indivisible power of a rationalised monarch, informed by competent elites, could carry out the reforms necessary to yield a government which would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Saint-Pierre, thus, provided among the first arguments for an imposed welfare state, well before the sources more frequently associated with that idea--political economists, cameralists and the physiocrats."--Pages v-vi. (shrink)

Claire Strom: Making Catfish Bait Out of Government Boys: The Fight Against Cattle Ticks and the Transformation of the Yeoman South Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9236-8 Authors Mark V. Juhasz, University of Guelph Rural Studies Programme, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development Guelph Ontario N1G 2W1 Canada Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863 Journal Volume Volume Journal Issue Volume.

Incoherence is usually regarded as a bad thing. Incoherence suggests irrationality, confusion, paradox. Incoherentism disagrees: incoherence is not always a bad thing, sometimes we ought to be incoherent. If correct, Incoherentism has important and controversial implications. It implies that rationality does not always require coherence. Dilemmism and Incoherentism both embrace conflict in epistemology. After identifying some important differences between these two ways of embracing conflict, I offer some reasons to prefer Incoherentism over Dilemmism. Namely, that Incoherentism allows us to deliberate (...) about what we ought to believe using ordinary epistemology, and it does a better job of accommodating the positive features of incoherence. (shrink)