L'ouvrage rassembles les actes des neuvièmes rencontres Ina-Sorbonne, qui se sont tenues le 27 novembre 2004.

Any historical reflection of the fête (or feast) must depart from the observation of its actual conditions of subsistence, in order to understand the veritable “festive explosion” that has marked historical production this last decade. Although it is not specifically historical, the emergence of the fête (and in particular of the ancient feast) as a preferential object of study, leads one in effect to wonder about the reasons that have brought about that, in a given moment, an entire scientific class, (...) in this case the French historians, has felt attracted by a theme which until then was treated only in folklorist collections. Seemingly, three reasons, that pertain as much to the recognized function of the historical discipline as to its internal evolution, may be cited. It is clear, above all, that the increased research into the ancient feast constitutes a sort of compensation, as a means of understanding, to the disappearing system of civilization in which the fête had, or rather, is considered as having had, a central role. The historical analysis is therefore charged to explain, in its idiom and with its technique, the nostalgia evoked by a present which has eliminated the fête defined as an act of community participation. On these grounds it then becomes possible to rediscover one of the major functions assigned—implicitly or explicitly—to history today: to restore to the sphere of knowledge a vanished world of which contemporary society feels the heritage, but as an unfaithful heir. That the operation of understanding is difficult to separate from the fabrication of an imaginary past collectively desired, is, in the end, insignificant, unless it is meant to underline those themes that, by being the most neglected by our present age, become the most symptomatic of a world we have lost. The fête, vidently, is one of these. (shrink)

The importance of history has been powerfully reaffirmed in recent years by the appearance of major new authors, pathbreaking works, and fresh interpretations of historical events, trends, and methods. Responding to these developments, Roger Chartier engages several of the most influential writers of cultural history whose works have spread far beyond academic audiences to become part of contemporary cultural argument. Challenging the assertion that history is no more than a "fiction-making operation" Chartier examines the relationships between history (...) and fiction and proposes new foundations for establishing history as a specific kind of knowledge. Michel de Certeau's description of Michel Foucault's writings as "on the edge of the cliff," provides Chartier with an image he finds appropriate not only for Foucault but for many other recent historians--including de Certeau. Exploring the relationships between discursive practices and nondiscursive practices, Chartier examines the "heterology" of de Certeau pursues the "chimera of origin" and the causes of the French Revolution in Foucault's work and raises four pertinent questions for the metahistory of Hayden White. He follows the work of Louis Marin into the distinctions between interpreting a painting and interpreting a text. And a trio of essays treats the historical sociology of Norbert Elias and his work on power and civility. Throughout, Chartier keeps his focus on historians who have stressed the relations between the products of discourse and social practices. (shrink)

Avtor ugotavlja, da so se zamajale stare gotovosti zgodovine in zgodovinopisja, da se je črv dvoma zalezel najprej v spoznavno-epistemološke kriterije vede, v kritiko tako strukturalnih kot kvantifikativnih metod, potem pa se še razširil z razpravo o ločnici med zgodovinsko in literarno pripovedjo. Po njegovem mnenju se zato na doslej neznanem križišču srečujejo tekstna kritika, zgodovina knjige in sociologija kulture. Izzive vidi tako na metodološki kot na teoretski ravni in ugotavlja, da so se nekateri avtorji že uspešno spoprijeli z njimi: (...) nastajajo predlogi novih paradigem, med katerimi se mu med najbolj obetavnimi kažejo postopki mikrozgodovine. Opozarja tudi na novo branje zgodovine žensk oziroma na študij te zgodovine z novimi metodološkimi prijemi, kar bo zgodovino zopet in dokončno vrnilo med družbene vede - teza, za katere pripadnika se ima tudi avtor. (shrink)

Any historical reflection of the fête (or feast) must depart from the observation of its actual conditions of subsistence, in order to understand the veritable “festive explosion” that has marked historical production this last decade. Although it is not specifically historical, the emergence of the fête (and in particular of the ancient feast) as a preferential object of study, leads one in effect to wonder about the reasons that have brought about that, in a given moment, an entire scientific class, (...) in this case the French historians, has felt attracted by a theme which until then was treated only in folklorist collections. Seemingly, three reasons, that pertain as much to the recognized function of the historical discipline as to its internal evolution, may be cited. It is clear, above all, that the increased research into the ancient feast constitutes a sort of compensation, as a means of understanding, to the disappearing system of civilization in which the fête had, or rather, is considered as having had, a central role. The historical analysis is therefore charged to explain, in its idiom and with its technique, the nostalgia evoked by a present which has eliminated the fête defined as an act of community participation. On these grounds it then becomes possible to rediscover one of the major functions assigned—implicitly or explicitly—to history today: to restore to the sphere of knowledge a vanished world of which contemporary society feels the heritage, but as an unfaithful heir. That the operation of understanding is difficult to separate from the fabrication of an imaginary past collectively desired, is, in the end, insignificant, unless it is meant to underline those themes that, by being the most neglected by our present age, become the most symptomatic of a world we have lost. The fête, vidently, is one of these. (shrink)

Comment Sortir de la Terreur. by Bronislaw Baczko The Kiss of Lamourette. by Robert Darnton Les Origines Culturelles de la Revolution Francaise. by Roger Chartier Naissance du Journal Revolutionnaire. by Claude Labrosse; Pierre Retat "Mere Words," The Journal of Modern History, June 1991. by Dorinda Outram Revolutionary News: The Press in France 1789-1799. by Jeremy D. Popkin.

Laying foundations -- Rejecting aggression -- Safeguarding cooperation -- Enforcing law -- Rectifying injury -- Liberating society -- Situating liberation.

Introduction: Conversion and the practice of transformation -- The philosophical structure of Jonathan Edwards's religious affections -- Habit, habit change, and conversion in C.S. Peirce -- Reconstructing faith : religious overcoming in Dewey's pragmatism -- Transforming obligation in William James -- Dwelling in absence: the reflective origin of conversion -- Creative transformation : the work of conversion -- The evasion of conversion in recent American philosophy.

While the incarnation is often invoked as part of a response to the problem of evil (as by the early Kenneth Surin), affirming something like an orthodox view of the incarnation also seems to accentuate the problem of evil by incorporating belief in miraculous divine action. I suggest a possible line of response that allows for the incarnation to be understood as historically particular but non-miraculous.

A collection of classical and contemporary sources highlighting the radical potential of the individualist anarchist tradition.

This paperback edition is fully updated with new chapters on the livestoick crisis, fishing and BSE and a layman's guide introduction to philosophical concepts, ...

What is philosophy of science? Numerous manuals, anthologies or essays provide carefully reconstructed vantage points on the discipline that have been gained through expert and piecemeal historical analyses. In this paper, we address the question from a complementary perspective: we target the content of one major journal of the field—Philosophy of Science—and apply unsupervised text-mining methods to its complete corpus, from its start in 1934 until 2015. By running topic-modeling algorithms over the full-text corpus, we identified 126 key research topics (...) that span across 82 years. We also tracked their evolution and fluctuating significance over time in the journal articles. Our results concur with and document known and lesser-known episodes of the philosophy of science, including the rise and fall of logic and language-related topics, the relative stability of a metaphysical and ontological questioning (space and time, causation, natural kinds, realism), the significance of epistemological issues about the nature of scientific knowledge as well as the rise of a recent philosophy of biology and other trends. These analyses exemplify how computational text-mining methods can be used to provide an empirical large-scale and data-driven perspective on the history of philosophy of science that is complementary to other current historical approaches. (shrink)

Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian 1728 is a treatise on musical eloquence in all its branches. Of its five parts, I and II, on the orthoepy, orthography and syntax of music, constitute a grammar; III and IV, on the arts of invention and communication, form a rhetoric; and V, on etymology, consists of a history. Two substantial chapters of commentary introduce the text, which is edited here for the first time in its entirety: Jamie Kassler places his treatise within (...) the broader context not only of North's musical and non-musical writings but also their relation to the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Mary Chan describes physical and textual aspects of the treatise as evidence for North's processes of thinking about musical thinking. (shrink)

Descartes and the last Scholastics: objections and replies -- Descartes and the Scotists -- Ideas, before and after Descartes -- The Cartesian destiny of form and matter -- Descartes, Basso, and Toletus: three kinds of Corpuscularians -- Scholastics and the new astronomy on the substance of the heavens -- Descartes and the Jesuits of La Fleche: the Eucharist -- Condemnations of Cartesianism: the extension and unity of the universe -- Cartesians, Gassendists, and censorship -- The cogito in the seventeenth century.

The concept of “life” certainly is of some use to distinguish birds and beavers from water and stones. This pragmatic usefulness has led to its construal as a categorical predicate that can sift out living entities from non-living ones depending on their possessing specific properties—reproduction, metabolism, evolvability etc. In this paper, we argue against this binary construal of life. Using text-mining methods across over 30,000 scientific articles, we defend instead a degrees-of-life view and show how these methods can contribute to (...) experimental philosophy of science and concept explication. We apply topic-modeling algorithms to identify which specific properties are attributed to a target set of entities (bacteria, archaea, viruses, prions, plasmids, phages and the molecule of adenine). Eight major clusters of properties were identified together with their relative relevance for each target entity (two that relate to metabolism and catalysis, one to genetics, one to evolvability, one to structure, and—rather unexpectedly—three that concern interactions with the environment broadly construed). While aligning with intuitions—for instance about viruses being less alive than bacteria—these quantitative results also reveal differential degrees of performance that have so far remained elusive or overlooked. Taken together, these analyses provide a conceptual “lifeness space” that makes it possible to move away from a categorical construal of life by empirically assessing the relative lifeness of more-or-less alive entities. (shrink)

Lodges a number of challenges to the threshold argument on the basis of which some consequentialists have objected to consumer meat purchases. Maintains that the argument misunderstands relevant market dynamics.

In this lucid and engaging introductory volume on the nature of society, Roger Trigg examines the scientific basis of social science and shows that philosophical presuppositions are a necessary starting point for the study of society.

This volume contains eighteen essays by established and younger historians that examine non-democratic alternative political systems and ideologies--oligarchies, monarchies, mixed constitutions--along with diverse forms of communal and regional associations such as ethnoi, amphiktyonies, and confederacies. The papers, which span the length and breadth of the Hellenic world highlight the immense political flexibility and diversity of ancient Greek civilization.

This Handbook offers an authoritative, up-to-date introduction to the rich scholarly conversation about anarchy--about the possibility, dynamics, and appeal of social order without the state. Drawing on resources from philosophy, economics, law, history, politics, and religious studies, it is designed to deepen understanding of anarchy and the development of anarchist ideas at a time when those ideas have attracted increasing attention. The popular identification of anarchy with chaos makes sophisticated interpretations--which recognize anarchy as a kind of social order rather than (...) an alternative to it--especially interesting. Strong, centralized governments have struggled to quell popular frustration even as doubts have continued to percolate about their legitimacy and long-term financial stability. Since the emergence of the modern state, concerns like these have driven scholars to wonder whether societies could flourish while abandoning monopolistic governance entirely. Standard treatments of political philosophy frequently assume the justifiability and desirability of states, focusing on such questions as, What is the best kind of state? and What laws and policies should states adopt?, without considering whether it is just or prudent for states to do anything at all. This Handbook encourages engagement with a provocative alternative that casts more conventional views in stark relief. Its 29 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of leading scholars, are organized into four main parts: I. Concept and Significance II. Figures and Traditions III. Legitimacy and Order IV. Anarchy and Critique In addition, a comprehensive index makes the volume easy to navigate and an annotated bibliography points readers to the most promising avenues of future research. (shrink)