Ce texte a déjà paru dans la Revue européenne des sciences sociales – European Journal of Social Science, XLVII-143, 2009, p. 65-85. I. Introduction : Avec la publication en 1862 de l'ouvrage de Clément Juglar, Des crises commerciales et de leur retour périodique, la France devint l'un des lieux de naissance du concept de cycle d'affaires. L'Académie des sciences morales et politiques avait en effet organisé l'année précédente un concours destiné à « rechercher les causes et signaler les effets des (...) - Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Contra those proclaiming the end of philosophy, Badiou aims to restore philosophical thought to the complete space of the truths that condition it.

Badiou explores the exponentially rich and varied world of French philosophy in a number of groundbreaking essays, published her for the first time in English or in a revised translation. Included are the often-quoted review of Louis Althussers's canonical works For Marks and Reading Capital and the scathing critique of 'potato fascism' in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guttari's A Thousand Plateus. There are also talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, and reviews of the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Barbara (...) Cassin, notable points of interest on an expansive tour of modern French thought.Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, the argues for the persistence of Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea. (shrink)

Enigmatic relationship between philosophy and politics -- Figure of the soldier -- Politics as a nonexpressive dialectics.

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction -- Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism' -- 2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq -- 3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today? -- The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002 -- 5. The law on the Islamic headscarf -- 6. Daily humiliation -- (...) Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France -- 8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art -- Notes to part one -- PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction -- 1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews? -- 2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward) -- 3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus -- 4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier) -- 5. Against negationism -- 6. Local angel -- 7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz -- 8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter) -- 9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant -- Notes to part two -- PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics -- 2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution? -- A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels) -- Notes to part three. (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.

Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...) the number and its metrics. It is shown that while many-number systems involve a compositionality of units, sets and sets composed of units, few-number languages, such as Mundurucu, do not have access to sets composed of units in the usual way. The nonconfigurational character of the Mundurucu language, which is related to a property for which we coin the term 'low compositionality power', accounts for this and explains the curious fact that Mundurucus make use of marked one-to-one correspondence strategies in order to overcome the limitations of the core system at the perceptual/motor interface of the language faculty. We develop an analysis of a particular construction, parallel numbers, which has not been studied before, elucidating the whole system. This analysis, we argue, sheds new light on classical philosophical, psychological and linguistic debates about numbers and numerals and their relation to language, and more particularly, sheds light on few-number languages. (shrink)

Read this excellent collection of informative papers in the field to stimulate your ow the field and readers interested in the nature of the discipline of ...

The shift in Foucault’s work from genealogy to ethics finds consensus among Foucault scholars. However, the motivations behind this transition remain either misunderstood or understudied in large part. Foucault’s recently published or soon-to-be translated 1977/—9 lectures (published as Security, Territory, Population and as The Birth of Biopolitics) offer new elements for understanding this dense and uncharted period along Foucault’s itinerary. In this article, the author argues that Foucault’s interpretation of the liberal tradition, which is at the core of the 1977—9 (...) lectures, must be examined in combination with Foucault’s other major interests in the late 1970s, namely the Iranian Revolution and Kant. The discovery of spirituality (Iran), the valorization of an autonomous subject (Kant) and the call for a tolerant environment towards minority practices (liberalism) pave the way for the later Foucault’s ethics, which are grounded in spiritual exercises and means of liberating the subject. (shrink)

This article offers a tentative deconstruction of Heidegger’s account of the “modern,” that is, the “Cartesian,” “subject.” It argues that subjectivity, understood as the idea of some “thing” that is both the owner of certain mental states and the agent of certain activities, is a medieval theological construct, based on two conflicting models of the mind (nous, mens) inherited from ancient philosophy and theology: the Aristotelian and the Augustinian (or perichoretic) one, developed in connection with such problems as that of (...) the two wills in the incarnate Christ. Starting with Nietzsche’s criticism of the “superstition of logicians” (the belief that“the subject I is the condition of the predicate think”) and Peter Strawson’s question in Individuals (“Why are one’s states of consciousness ascribed to anything at all?”), the article discusses Peter Olivi’s and Thomas Aquinas’s treatments of the problem, as well as the principle invoked to resolve it: actiones sunt suppositorum, “actions belong to subjects.” Against this background, the discussion refers to Heidegger’s notion of “subjecticity” and Armstrong’s “attribute-theory” in order to reappraise the Hobbesian and Leibnizian contributions to the history of the Self. (shrink)

Existing studies have proposed that humans preferentially memorize buildings as a collection of floors. Yet this might stem from the fact that environments were also explored by floors. We have studied this potential bias with a learning and recognition experiment. We have detected a positive influence of the learning route on spatial memory performances.

Theoretical approach - Prejudice and science - Prejudice and politics - Science and sex - Medicine and prejudice - Prejudice and literature.

In order to address to the relation between philosophy and mathematics it is first necessary to distinguish the grand style and the little style. The little style painstakingly constructs mathematics as the object for philosophical scrutiny. It is called the little style for a precise reason, because it assigns mathematics to the subservient role of that which supports the definition and perpetuation of a philosophical specialisation. This specialisation is called the ‘philosophy of mathematics’, where the ‘of’ is objective. The philosophy (...) of mathematics can in turn be inscribed under the area of specialisation that supports the name ‘epistemology and history of science’, an area to which corresponds a specialised bureaucracy in the academic authorities and committees whose role it is to manage the personnel of researchers and teachers. But in philosophy, specialisation is invariably the means by which the little style insinuates itself. In Lacan terms, this occurs through the collapse of the discourse of the Master, which is rooted in the signifier of the same name, the S1 that gives rise to a signifying chain, onto the discourse of the University, that perpetual commentary which adequately represents the second moment of all speech, that is, the S2 which only exists by making the Master disappear under the commentary which exhausts it. The little style of the philosophy of mathematics, and of its epistemology, strives for such a disappearance of the ontological sovereignty of mathematics, its instituting aristocratism, its unrivalled mastery, by confining its dramatic and almost incomprehensible existence to a generally dusty compartment of academic specialisation. (shrink)

Profondément liées aux pratiques ascétiques et aux recherches spirituelles monastiques, les oeuvres mystiques syriaques ne se confondent cependant pas avec elles. Elles construisent des visions théologiques qui participent nécessairement aux débats dans les institutions ecclésiales, que ce soit chez les syriaques occidentaux ou les syriaques orientaux. Redevables de l'héritage philosophique grec, des auteurs syro-occidentaux ont élaboré des pensées mystiques et l'oeuvre du Pseudo-Denys a été déterminante dans la mystique sacramentaire de la théologie miaphysite. C'est du côté oriental que la tradition (...) mystique a été la plus riche et a fleuri, en Mésopotamie mais aussi sur les bords du golfe Arabo-Persique dans le Bet Qatraye, où l'on se souvient d'écrivains fameux comme Isaac de Ninive, Dadisho du Qatar, Martyrios Sandona, Jean de Dalyatha ; mais qui connaît Shubhalmaran, Hananisho de Bet Qoqa ou Beh Isho de Kamul? En privilégiant des analyses thématiques et l'étude de motifs mystiques essentiels, l'ouvrage vise à attirer l'attention sur des oeuvres et des auteurs qui, dans la formation et l'évolution des cultures syriaques, ont joué un rôle tout au long de l'histoire du Proche-Orient chrétien et musulman et qui se révèlent précieux pour l'historien. (shrink)

Les références à la pensée de Karl Popper, dans les ouvrages contemporains de didactique ou de pédagogie, sont rares et se bornent généralement au rappel convenu des thèses les plus connues de l'épistémologie faillibiliste. L'oeuvre poppérienne comporte pourtant de nombreux autres aspects, ordinairement négligés, par lesquels elle se rapporte de façon beaucoup plus directe et essentielle aux questions éducatives. L'intérêt de Popper pour ces dernières est manifeste dans les écrits de jeunesse, rédigés durant sa période de formation à l'Institut pédagogique (...) de Vienne dans les années 1920. Il se montre encore, quoique de façon plus souterraine, dans l'oeuvre de la maturité, à travers les nombreux développements que le philosophe consacre à l'analyse de la subjectivité et à la question de l'apprentissage. De là, le projet de ce livre. En prenant pour guide la double métaphore du "seau" (Bucket) et du "projecteur" (Searchlight), au moyen de laquelle Popper oppose la théorie erronée de "l'esprit-réceptacle" à sa propre conception de l'activité mentale, celui-ci se propose d'interroger l'oeuvre poppérienne dans son ensemble, les écrits de jeunesse comme les textes de la maturité, sous l'angle d'une théorie du sujet humain et de sa formation. Il s'agit par là, d'une part, de jeter un éclairage sur le lien trop souvent méconnu qui unit de l'intérieur la pensée de Popper aux préoccupations d'ordre psychologique et pédagogique ; d'autre part, de montrer en quoi la prise en compte des thèses poppériennes peut contribuer à renouveler en profondeur la réflexion contemporaine sur l'apprentissage et l'éducation. (shrink)

Sous l’apparence d’une exégèse du traité aristotélicien des Catégories, Harris, dans ses Philosophical arrangements, cherche à constituer une doctrine des concepts ultimes ou premiers, faisant ainsi endosser à l’aristotélisme un innéisme à rebours de ce qu’un Locke pouvait lui prêter. C’est, au-delà de l’enquête sur les catégories elles-mêmes, une métaphysique de l’esprit qu’insinue Harris, prolongeant ainsi sans le dire les polémiques de Shaftesbury à l’encontre de Locke. Il ne faut donc pas se laisser prendre à l’aspect « exégétique » de (...) ce traité harrisien. C’est une des rares tentatives connues d’étendre la considération des Catégories jusqu’aux confins d’un pré-transcendantalisme. (shrink)

La publication de l'Emile a produit une rupture épistémologique qui n'a pas échappé à Kant. Mais, rejetant toute assomption philosophique, l'ouvrage de 1762 met en récit une méthode qui prétend accomplir l'homme en ce qu'il est, tout en même temps qu'en ce qu'il doit être. Consacrant le pouvoir d'autoformation du sujet, Rousseau ouvre pourtant, à son corps défendant, une nouvelle brèche philosophique dans le rapport que ce sujet triomphant entretient avec ce que le Genevois s'obstine à présenter comme " la (...) bonté absolue du projet ". C'est à penser cette brèche, et le chemin pour la franchir, que se consacreront un certain nombre de penseurs et acteurs pédagogiques, qui peuvent ainsi s'inscrire dans la postérité éducative de l'Emile, et que présentent des spécialistes de chacun d'entre eux : Condorcet (A. Trouvé), Kant (B. Vandewalle), Pestalozzi (M. Soëtard), Fichte (J: M. Lamarre), Herbart (J: F. Goubet), Dilthey (D. Moreau), Dewey (M. Fabre), Freinet (R. Hétier). Ont-ils réussi? Il se pourrait que l'Emile, avec le noeud de questions qu'il tisse, soit encore devant nous. (shrink)

Through a case study, this paper contributes to answer the call to inquiries set by John Dewey in the conclusion of his Theory of Valuation. To move on to ethnography, some requirements explained by Alfred Schutz have also been followed: the study of choices, transactions, and evaluations must be confronted with real situations in real temporality, not with puppets set in motion by social scientists. The present case study is based upon a thorough ethnography of evaluation in a Spanish Moroccan (...) community milieu, conducted in Andalusia and Morocco from 2007 to 2010. The observation discipline, which leads to an original kind of ethnographic data, has been called ethno-accounting by the author, as the point is to take into account what people do actually take into account, instead of claiming to assess things and situations directly. (shrink)

In a lamellar TiAl alloy deformed at room temperature under an orientation that activates slip parallel to the interfaces, the n phase exhibits intralamellar dislocation networks parallel to the primary slip plane and entirely glissile in their habit plane. Their meshes are mainly rectangular with branches all coplanar, screw or near-screw in character and with Burgers vector of and types. Dislocation organization at and in the near-vicinity of these intralamellar networks suggests a reaction between a family of primary coplanar d (...) 011] dislocations that slip in the network habit plane and a family of dislocations that cross-slip from a plane inclined to the lamellae into the network. The reactions result in junctions with Burgers vector that subsequently transform into rectangular units. The presence of these networks is consistent with that of a residual elastic twist between adjacent n lamellae. (shrink)

S’il est vrai que la réception d’une œuvre en dit autant sur l’œuvre elle-même que sur l’époque qui la reçoit, la réception de l’œuvre de Michel Henry mérite une attention particulière : parce qu’elle se fait, de toute évidence, difficilement, et qu’elle déconcerte, parce qu’elle repose peut-être sur un malentendu, voire une série de malentendus ;...

L’œuvre de Schelling adresse à la modernité une question ignorée par Hegel et Heidegger, celle de la narrativité. Proust (dont le travail de Anne Henry a souligné sa dette à l’égard de Schelling) a mis en perspective cette question, la Recherche pouvant être lue alors comme une monumentale phénoménologie de l’inapparent dont l’enjeu, en écho à l’expression « un peu de temps à l’état pur », est le sujet : un sujet qui a radicalement suspendu la thèse du monde, autrement (...) dit pour lequel la mort, « être ou ne pas être », n’est plus la question. (shrink)