During the influx of neurological research into France from across Europe that took place rapidly in the late 19th century, the philosophy course in lycées was mobilized by education reformers as a means of promulgating the emergent brain sciences and simultaneously steering their cultural resonance. I contend that these linked prongs of philosophy’s public mission under the Third Republic reconciled contradictory pressures to advance the nation’s scientific prowess following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 without dropping France’s distinct (...) tradition of 19th-century spiritualism, which extended from Maine de Biran’s philosophical psychology to Victor Cousin’s official eclectic spiritualism. Between 1874 and 1902, the French Ministry of Public Instruction transformed philosophy into a national project designed to guide the reception of experimental psychology generally and neurology in particular. This article features original archival research on philosophy textbooks and students’ course notes that illuminate the cultural and intellectual impact of these sciences in the fin de siècle from inside the classroom. I argue that the scientific turn in the psychology section of the lycée philosophy course reflected and brought about a distinct philosophical movement that I call ‘scientific spiritualism’. While historians have analysed philosophy instruction as a mechanism used by the Third Republic to secularize students, this article sheds new light on lycée philosophy professors’ campaign to promote scientific spiritualism as a means to advance incipient brain research and pare its reductionist implications. (shrink)

This article examines the reputation of John Henry Newman in France between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second. One effect of the controversy over Modernism was that Newman, despite his great popularity in France in the late nineteenth century as a convert to Catholicism, was not widely appreciated between the wars as an original thinker, either in the French Catholic Church or in the philosophical community. Henri Bremond's popular pre-war psychological biography of Newman (...) had been rather misleading. Jean Guitton's 1933 thesis was a rare attempt to show the importance of Newman's ideas about time and development, which offered a robust theology of history as a challenge to the increasing dominance of Hegelian views. Debates about Christian philosophy largely ignored Newman, as did the emerging disciplines of phenomenology and existentialism, at least in their French forms. No one really championed Newman consistently in France until Maurice Nédoncelle embarked on his long-term project of translating, editing and explaining the full range of his work for a new generation . People then began to discover, to their surprise, that these movements in philosophy, as well as the ‘nouvelle théologie’ movement in the Church, were all to some extent indebted to Newman, through some of his early French admirers such as Laberthonnière and Ollé-Laprune; and the relevance of his thought to the post-war world at last began to be acknowledged. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

In Deleuze, singularity replaces generality in the economy of thought. A Deleuzian singularity is an event, but the notion comprises the effectuation of the event into form. The triptych émission–distribution–répartition itself distributes the dimensions of the passage from form-giving event to topological morphology. The Deleuzian concept of intensity allows thinking both pre-individuality and the rhizomatic connection of singularities on the metaphysical surface of structure. Reflections upon the philosophy of differential calculus allow for a coherent scaffolding reaching from pre-individual intensity to (...) specific individuality, in the passage from transcendental genesis to empirical morphogenesis. But if singularity as event is intensive, singularity as determinant of morphology – and hence, of structural metastability – is not. Although the differential scaffolding covers both intensive difference and extensive equality, and so the two sides of the notion of singularity, the concept of intensity remains slightly displaced, rendering conceptually difficult not only the perception of intensity, but also the contemplation of individual duration, if viewed in the terms of genetic ‘indi-drama-different/ciation’. The essay concludes that it is art that may let us consciously contemplate our pre-individual differences. (shrink)

How to think a unique and determinative turn in analytic philosophy of mind? To answer this question this article first presents an attempt to render clear that analytic phenomenology, by contrast with conceptions of phenomenology of the XXth century, beneficially dispenses with several methodological and conceptual assumptions that were assumed to be compulsory, as phenomenological reduction, a notion of synthesis, and a philosophical notion of the a priori. It then presents some eventual difficulties to the achievement of a phenomenological turn (...) within analytic philosophy, which are, the neglect of historicity, abstractionism, the acknowledgement of the place of language in our lives, and solipsism. It finally presents several demands that concern the felicity of contemporary analytic phenomenologies, namely, anti-abstractionism, fallibilism, attention to polyadic relations, and the integration of ecological and decolonial concerns of our cultures. (shrink)

Philosophy becomes speculative when it raises questions about the ultimate nature of being and thought. What does it mean to be? What does it mean to think? How are being and thought related? What does it mean to ask these questions? These questions have occupied a central place in philosophy throughout history, but have led a shadow existence in twentieth-century thought, which has cut the tie between reason and these fundamental questions, leaving the questions in the twilight, and reason instrumentalised. (...) A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947), one of the founders of analytic philosophy and co-author (with Bertrand Russell) of Principia Mathematica, is one of the few contemporary thinkers to have developed an explicit speculative philosophy. Unsurprisingly, his philosophy has played a marginal role in academic debates. In this study, the methodological foundation of Whitehead’s speculative thought is reconstructed. On the basis of a systematic and historical examination of the nature of the question of being, Whiteheads ontology of the event as the passage into novelty emerges in its full scope, allowing the reader to understand why and to what extent Whitehead has walked a different path than other contemporary thinkers. His philosophy contains a conception of reason that is not alien to newness and creativity while being more than procedural or pragmatic, and a mode of understanding existence that brings out the acuteness of freedom, value and legitimacy, as well as the unity of things, of thought and nature. In order to show what is really happening in this philosophy, the received interpretation of Whitehead’s ontology is radically dismantled. The central thought, that to be means to happen, is explained in a process of reiteration and gradual clarification, examining traditional philosophical problems in metaphysics and epistemology (on topics like: nature and matter, knowledge, categorical structure, freedom and necessity, truth and meaning, modality) from its perspective. What emerges is a philosophy in which the temporality of being, when taken seriously, changes the status of familiar problems and dualisms and offers possibilities for thought, which previously did not exist. Whitehead “hears” the classical questions of philosophy in a new way. Beyond the trenches of twentieth-century philosophy, Whitehead’s speculative thinking contains many elements that will be of value to those studying the foundations of thought today and looking for new directions. In a time when the dualism of nature and man is maintained cynically in our economies and dismantled, but only in a biologistic fashion and therefore only seemingly, as a cover-up, in science and philosophy, Whitehead’s new and creative way of hearing, and answering, old questions about ultimate concerns, when understood properly, is more up to date than ever before. (shrink)

This thesis seeks to understand the nature of and relation between science and philosophy articulated in the early work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. It seeks to challenge the view that Deleuze’s metaphysical and metaphilosophical position is in important part an attempt to respond to twentieth century developments in the natural sciences, claiming that this is not a plausible interpretation of Deleuze’s early thought. The central problem identified with such readings is that they provide an insufficient explanation of the (...) nature of philosophy’s contribution to the encounter between philosophy and science that they discern in Deleuze’s work. The philosophical, as opposed to scientific, dimension of the position attributed to Deleuze remains obscure. In chapter 1, it is demonstrated that this question of philosophy’s contribution to intellectual life and of how to differentiate philosophy from the sciences is a live one in Deleuze’s early thought. An alternative, less anachronistic interpretation of the parameters of Deleuze’s early project is offered. The remaining chapters of the thesis examine the early Deleuze’s understanding of the divergence between philosophy and science. Chapter 2 gives an account of Deleuze’s metaphilosophy, alongside a reconstruction of his largely implicit early understanding of science. The divergent intellectual processes and motivating concerns that account for Deleuze’s understanding of the differentiation of science and philosophy are thus clarified. In chapter 3, Deleuze’s use of mathematical and physical concepts is examined. It is argued that these concepts are used metaphorically. In chapter 4, the association between modern science and the Deleuzian concept of immanence that has been proposed by some Deleuze scholars is examined and ultimately challenged. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the significance of Deleuze’s early work for contemporary debates concerning the future of continental philosophy and the nature of philosophy more generally. (shrink)