Computational cell models appear as necessary tools for handling the complexity of intracellular cell dynamics, especially calcium dynamics. However, while oscillating intracellular calcium oscillations are well documented and modelled, a simple enough virtual cell taking into account the mechano-chemical coupling between calcium oscillations and cell mechanical properties is still lacking. Considering the spontaneous periodic contraction of isolated cardiac myocytes, we propose here a virtual cardiac cell model in which the cellular contraction is modelled using an hyperelastic description of the cell (...) mechanical behaviour. According to the experimental data, the oscillating cytosolic calcium concentrations trigger the spatio-temporal variation of the anisotropic intracellular stresses. The finite element simulations of the virtual cell deformations are compared to the self-sustained contractions of isolated rat cardiomyocytes recorded by time-lapse video-microscopy. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital (...) aspect of his thinking. In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential. (shrink)

The subtractive : preface by Francois Wahl -- Philosophy itself -- The (re)turn of philosophy itself -- Definition of philosophy -- What is a philosophical institution? -- Philosophy and poetry -- The philosophical recourse to the poem -- Mallarm's method : subtraction and isolation -- Rimbaud's method : interruption -- Philosophy and mathematics -- Conference on subtraction -- Truth : forcing and unnameable -- Philosophy and politics -- Philosophy and love -- What is love? -- Philosophy and psychoanalysis -- Subject (...) and infinite -- Antiphilosophy : Lacan and Plato -- Writing of the generic -- Writing of the generic : Samuel beckett. (shrink)

Published in 1973, "L'Etourdit" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship," which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality. In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, thinking "with" Lacan about his propositions and what (...) kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought. (shrink)

In this book a noted physiologist and neuroscientist introduces the concept of simplexity, the set of solutions living organisms find that enable them to deal with information and situations, while taking into account past experiences and anticipating future ones. Such solutions are new ways of addressing problems so that actions may be taken more quickly, more elegantly, and more efficiently. In a sense, the history of living organisms may be summed up by their remarkable ability to find solutions that avoid (...) the world's complexity by imposing on it their own rules and functions. Evolution has resolved the problem of complexity not by simplifying but by finding solutions whose processes--though they can sometimes be complex--allow us to act in the midst of complexity and of uncertainty. Nature can inspire us by making us realize that simplification is never simple and requires instead that we choose, refuse, connect, and imagine, in order to act in the best possible manner. Such solutions are already being applied in design and engineering and are significant in biology, medicine, economics, and the behavioral sciences. (shrink)

Uses the thoughts of such great minds as Kierkegaard, Plato, and Beckett to examine the concept of love and redefine it in the face of twenty-first century modernity.

Martin Heidegger was an ordinary Nazi and a loyal member of the provincial petty bourgeoisie. He was also a seminal thinker of the Continental tradition and one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. How are we to make sense of this dual life? Should we factor Heidegger's domestic and political associations into our understanding of his thought, or should we treat his intellectual work independently of his abhorrent politics? How does any thinker reconcile the mundane with the ideal or (...) the pursuit of philosophical inquiry with the demands of civic engagement? In Heidegger, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin immerse themselves in the philosopher's correspondence with his wife Elfride to answer these questions as they relate to Heidegger and all thinkers vulnerable to the politics of their times. They focus on Heidegger's tormented relationship with his wife, with Hannah Arendt, and with numerous other women, bringing an unusual level of intimacy to his personal and intellectual worlds. (shrink)

Plato's Republic is one of the best-known and most widely-discussed texts in the history of philosophy. But how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2,500 years after its original composition? Alain Badiou breathes life into Plato's landmark text and revives its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has instead worked closely on the original Greek and, through spectacular changes, adapted it to our times. In this innovative reimagining of Plato's work, Badiou has (...) removed all references specific to ancient Greek society—from lengthy exchanges about moral courage in archaic poetry to political considerations mainly of interest to the aristocratic elite—and has expanded the range of cultural references. Here, philosophy is firing on all cylinders: Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud, and Hegel, among others. Together these thinkers demonstrate that true philosophy endures, ready to absorb new horizons without changing its essence. Moreover, Badiou—who is also a dramatist—has transformed the Socratic dialogue into a genuine oratorial contest. In his version of the Republic, the interlocutors do much more than simply agree with Socrates. They argue, stand up to him, put him on the spot, and show thought in motion. In this work of dramatic scholarship and philosophy, we encounter a modern version of Plato's text that is alive, stimulating, and directly relevant to our own world. (shrink)

L'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau, multiple et dense, se deploie sur les quarante dernieres annees en abordant de nombreux domaines de l'histoire du Moyen Age et du christianisme latin. Elle suit les peregrinations personnelles et professionnelles d'un chercheur a travers un monde peuple de silhouettes incertaines : figures de l'hagiographie, faux-semblants de l'Etat moderne, anges, demons, cadavres et somnambules, vagues individus scolastiques qui eux-memes parlent de creatures etranges. Autant de fantomes d'un passe persistant qu'il a suivis avec tenacite tout au long (...) de sa carriere, et qui nous embarquent a leur tour a travers l'histoire. Ce volume entend garder la trace vivante des deux journees qui furent organisees a Paris en mai 2015 autour de l'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau. Ce Liber amicorum d'un genre un peu particulier, production scolastique en quelque sorte, donne a voir les membres d'un studium, ce qu'etait le seminaire d'Alain Boureau : les amis, les collegues, les proches, celles et ceux qui l'ont accompagne au cours de ses annees passees a l'EHESS. Les textes rassembles rendent compte de trajectoires et de realisations, ils en montrent les apports scientifiques et les enjeux intellectuels. Ils racontent, aussi. Ainsi se manifeste la richesse d'une oeuvre singuliere, construite aux croisements de differentes pratiques des sciences sociales dans une demarche souvent collective, toujours originale et novatrice. (shrink)

Overture -- Jacques Lacan -- Georges Canguilhem and Jean Cavaillès -- Jean-Paul Sartre -- Jean Hyppolite -- Louis Althusser -- Jean-François Lyotard -- Gilles Deleuze -- Michel Foucault -- Jacques Derrida -- Jean Borreil -- Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe -- Gilles Châtelet -- Françoise Proust -- A note on the texts.

The sociology of knowledge is faced with a problem of historical temporality that it has carefully avoided up until now. The subject has been avoided or ignored because a discussion of it in depth would run the risk of questioning all modern scientific thought. The problem is that of the concept of absolute time as it is used in evolutionist theory. In this category of theory I include not only social evolutionism, abused for a long time and recently reanimated by (...) the “socio-biologists,” but also biological, paleontological, geological and other types of evolutionism, that is, those qualified as “scientific.”. (shrink)

A leading historian opens up a new terrain for understanding the past: the history of ignorance.

Quels enseignements tirer de la crise pandémique mondiale de 2020? La violence extrême du risque sanitaire nous a évidemment rappelé que nous étions mortels - quels que soient nos systèmes de santé. Mais au-delà, ce sont nos équilibres sociaux, éthiques, économiques ou politiques qui ont été remis en cause. Comment justifier éthiquement le tri des patients? Quelles décisions politiques prendre au moment où la protection de la santé est mise en rivalité avec la nécessité de soutenir une activité économique également (...) vitale? La mondialisation est-elle responsable de nos vulnérabilités? Autant de questions épineuses abordées dans cet essai, qui revendique la pertinence d'une approche philosophique de terrain, loin d'une réflexion abstraite sur la fragilité écologique ou d'une critique convenue de nos systèmes mondialisés. Si le risque incite au repli sur soi, l'enjeu est ici de comprendre que la résilience ne passera que par une plus grande solidarité internationale et une redéfinition de la souveraineté."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Two eminent French philosophers discuss German philosophy—including the legacy of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Marx, and Heidegger—from a French perspective. In this book, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, the two most important living philosophers in France, discuss German philosophy from a French perspective. Written in the form of a dialogue, and revised and expanded from a 2016 conversation between the two philosophers at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the book offers not only Badiou's and Nancy's reinterpretations of German (...) philosophers and philosophical concepts, but also an accessible introduction to the greatest thinkers of German philosophy. Badiou and Nancy discuss and debate such topics as the legacies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, as well as Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Schelling, and the unavoidable problem of Heidegger and Nazism. The dialogue is contentious, friendly, and often quotable, with strong—at times passionate—positions taken by both Badiou and Nancy, who find themselves disagreeing over Kant, for example, and in unexpected agreement on Marx, for another. What does it mean, then, to conduct a dialogue on German philosophy from a French perspective? As volume editor Jan Völker observes, “German philosophy” and “French philosophy” describe complex constellations that, despite the reference to nation-states and languages, above all encompass shared concepts and problems—although these take a range of forms. Perhaps they can reveal their essential import only in translation. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s 1983–1984 lecture series on “the One” is the earliest of his seminars that he has chosen to publish. It focuses on the philosophical concept of oneness in the works of Descartes, Plato, and Kant—a crucial foil for his signature metaphysical concept, the multiple. Badiou declares that there is no “One”: there is no fundamental unit of being; being is inherently multiple. What is novel in Badiou’s view of multiplicity is his reliance on mathematics, and set theory in (...) particular. A set is a collection of things—yet, as he observes, it often is taken to “count as one” operationally for the purposes of mathematical transformations. In this seminar, distinguishing between “the One” and “counting as one” emerges as essential to Badiou’s ontological project. His analysis of reflections on oneness in Descartes, Plato, and Kant prefigures core arguments of his defining work, Being and Event. Showcasing the seeds of Badiou’s key ideas and later thought, The One features singular readings, breathtaking theorizations, and frequently astonishing offhand remarks. (shrink)

Pour Alain Cugno, la philosophie est à la fois une science de la vie et un art de la pensée. Dans ce témoignage d'une vie de philosophe et d'enseignant, l'auteur partage aussi bien les souvenirs d'enfance que le cheminement intellectuel d'un chercheur. Sur cet itinéraire, on croise évidemment Platon, Kant et saint Augustin mais aussi Proust ou Rantanplan. Les anecdotes vécues avec les étudiants ou encore les leçons reçues de la littérature donnent à Alain Cugno l'occasion d'un récit (...) enthousiaste et joyeux sur ce que la philosophie peut susciter dans l'existence. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to Badiou's key ideas In this brief conversational book, the French philosopher Alain Badiou provides readers with a unique introduction to his system of thought, summed up in the trilogy of Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The Immanence of Truths. Taking the form of an interview and two talks and keeping in mind a broad audience without any prior knowledge of his work, the book touches upon all the major concepts of Badiou's philosophy and (...) illustrates them with fitting examples. A veritable tour de force of pedagogical clarity, this is perhaps the single best general introduction to the work of this prolific and committed thinker. If, for Badiou, the task of philosophy consists in thinking through the truths of our time, the texts collected in this small volume could not be timelier. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extoling the virtues of politics today. Yet in this lively dialogue with journalist Aude Lancelin, leading French thinker Alain Badiou argues that it is precisely through politics that humanity can still achieve its most ambitious aims. As power becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of the state and global corporations, the role of the citizen is reduced to little more than (...) ritual. But Badiou emphasizes that politics is concerned not just with power and the state, but also with justice. So the central question of politics is “What is a just power?”, and the debate over politics is fundamentally about the norms to which power is subject and its relationship to a community – a community that is able to take control of its own destiny and provide its own direction, based on a shared standard of justice. This engaging dialogue, in which Badiou articulates his view of politics with exceptional clarity, will be of great value to anyone interested in radical politics today. (shrink)

- Ce seminaire de l annee 1984-1985, portant sur l Infini, est le frere de celui portant sur l Un, tenu en 1983-1984, et deja publie. Il s agit de passer au filtre de la grande histoire de la philosophie quelques concepts majeurs de L etre et l evenement, publie en 1988. L examen historique des concepts n a pas pour objectif direct leur incorporation dans ma propre entreprise metaphysique. Je cherche plutot a saisir la multiplicite des definitions et des (...) constructions, un peu comme qui regarde un objet sous differents angles et expose a differentes lumieres. Au fond, quand on cherche une idee dans l histoire, ce sont souvent les details qui importent et parfois unifient des pensees qu on aurait pu croire opposees. Cela donne a ce seminaire un tour exegetique et raffine. Mais que le lecteur ne soit pas effraye: la gymnastique intellectuelle est a la fin plus merveilleuse et plus feconde que l autre. Et puis, j ose le dire, je lui ai pas mal mache le travail! - A.B. Depuis 1966, une part importante de l enseignement du philosophe Alain Badiou, a pris la forme d un seminaire, lieu de libre parole et laboratoire de pensee. Les editions Fayard publient l ensemble de ces Seminaires de 1983 a aujourd hui, periode ou la documentation est abondante et continue. Ce volume est le huitieme de la serie. Alain Badiou est philosophe, dramaturge et romancier.". (shrink)

" Le présent séminaire est une véritable transition entre L'être et l'événement, publié en 1988, et sa suite, Logiques des mondes, publiée en 2006. De façon simple et centrale, on pourrait dire que le premier livre s'occupe de l'être, cependant que le second s'occupe de l'existence. Mais en quel sens un séminaire dont le titre est Théorie axiomatique du sujet peut-il porter sur le lien entre être et existence? En précisant autant que faire se peut la catégorie centrale de sujet. (...) Ce séminaire, plutôt qu'un produit fini, est une sorte de mine, dont je suis persuadé qu'on peut extraire des propositions encore inconnues. " A. B. Depuis 1966, une part importante de l'enseignement du philosophe Alain Badiou a pris la forme d'un séminaire, lieu de libre parole et laboratoire de pensée. Les éditions Fayard publient l'ensemble de ces Séminaires de 1983 à aujourd'hui, période où la documentation est abondante et continue. Ce volume est le treizième de la série. (shrink)

L'improbable est souvent considéré comme un vain exercice d'hypothèses oiseuses ou comme un supplément d'incertitude dans la culture occidentale, qui préfère le prévisible à l'incertain. Et pourtant... Que ce soit dans la recherche scientifique fondamentale ou dans l'invention artistique, dans la discussion philosophique ou dans l'évolution du vivant, l'improbable est cette source de liberté d'où peuvent jaillir idées, solutions ou événements nouveaux et imprévus. Autour d'Alain Berthoz et de Carlo Ossola, une dizaine de chercheurs d'envergure internationale abordent dans une (...) approche multidisciplinaire les mystères et les ressorts de l'improbable, puissant facteur de créativité aux frontières du possible et de l'impossible. L'improbable au coeur de la création dans les sciences, les arts et dans la vie sociale! (shrink)

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In The Gift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS - or, "Anti-Utilitarian (...) Movement in the Social Sciences," combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a "general social science" seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss - as vital now as ever. (shrink)

Contre Onfray est un essai critique écrit à la première personne du singulier. Publiant Contre Onfray, le philosophe qu'est Alain Jugnon n'écrit pas contre quelqu'un. Par contre, il déconstruit un mouvement général des idées qui, à l'époque du nihilisme et de la détresse de tous, cherche à ne plus analyser, ne plus comprendre et surtout ne plus savoir. Cet essai critique prend naissance dans le commentaire suivant de Guy Debord : " Le gouvernement du spectacle, qui à présent détient (...) tous les moyens de falsifier l'ensemble de la production aussi bien que de la perception, est maître absolu des souvenirs comme il est maître incontrôlé des projets qui façonnent le plus lointain avenir. Il règne partout seul ; il exécute ses jugements sommaires. " Contre Onfray démontre qu'il y a un homme seul au coeur du Spectacle ; ses jugements sont sommaires et grossiers, mais c'est comme toujours la pensée contemporaine qui est exécutée sur les plateaux de télévision. Dans cet essai polémique, ce qui est écrit et détaillé est fait pour refuser le personnage qui se nomme lui-même " le philosophe Michel Onfray ", pour dénoncer ce mensonge spectaculaire et cette tricherie bien intégrée. Mais ce n'est pas un livre contre un homme, car il sera d'abord fait pour que vive demain encore la philosophie et pour en finir avec ce passage à l'acte postmoderne qui veut rendre la pensée honteuse d'elle-même, et ce dans la posture maladive d'une critique bête de l'humanisme et de sa valeur juste humaine, très humaine. L'esprit du temps est à la confusion des esprits et à l'émotion des corps : Michel Onfray en oubliant qu'il fut philosophe est devenu (depuis son livre contre Freud, dans lequel il refusait à la psychanalyse le droit de savoir quoi que ce soit sur son Moi - ce fut sa thérapie) le penseur officiel et écrivain public de cette confusion générale et de cette mascarade adorée qui consiste à faire passer pour des pensées des idées multimédiatiques et d'abord idéologiquement dominantes. Onfray de fait n'est plus nietzschéen et c'est ce qu'il fallait à Alain Jugnon démontrer, ni " de gauche " comme il le croyait, ni un nietzschéen pour la droite comme il le voudrait, il est devenu le fossoyeur de la pensée critique contemporaine. C'est la démocratie et l'humanisme qui s'éclipsent ainsi avec son dernier livre, pris dans l'aspiration droitière et siphonnés avec l'eau du bain de ses mauvaises pensées d'intellectuel célèbre et à la sagesse publique : Onfray est le penseur nouveau de la future nouvelle droite française ; cette conversion se donne à voir dans Cosmos, son dernier livre, sous forme d'un jeu de rôles et de passages à l'acte de la pensée fort peu logiques mais totalement anarchiques (au sens bien sûr non politique du terme). Cet essai de généalogie de la non-pensée onfrayenne relit méthodiquement les écrits du philosophe en regardant de près le travail en négatif de cette conversion : les trahisons du lecteur Michel Onfray sont multiples et ce livre en repère la plupart. Ce sont les contresens de Michel Onfray : au sujet de Foucault, de Lacoue-Labarthe, des poètes en général et de Nietzsche, essentiellement. Ces trahisons sont à chaque occurrence un nihilisme politique à l'oeuvre, une fausse parole mise en actes de langage. Il y a au travail chez Onfray une fausse écriture philosophique (et écriture du faux en philosophie) qui renie tout en bloc, pour son propre plaisir, pour s'émouvoir de sa propre jouissance : ce qu'il nomme un hédonisme et qui a tout d'un dandysme assez pathétique. (shrink)

"French philosopher Alain Badiou (b. 1937) introduces the concept of democratic materialism to refer to the belief that there are only bodies and languages, then employs a fair amount of science in what he calls a somewhat fastidious examine of it. He covers formal theory on the subject (meta-physics); the greater logics: the transcendental, the object, and relation; the four forms of change; the theory of points; what a body is; and what it is to live."--Provided by publisher.

Haitian Creole is a unique language, as are all creole languages. Mother tongue of almost six million people—without counting those who have immigrated—it has its own particular ways of expressing in words, of making sentences and forming a discourse. However, for more than two centuries it has been excluded from many circuits of communication. The limits imposed on it have kept it from developing a creativity, at the vocabulary level as well as that of organizing a discourse that would assure (...) a function of plural communication, both oral and written. The present challenge of this long-throttled language has posed an important number of problems in linguistics, teaching, culture and politics because of new communication systems and especially because of education. (shrink)