Differences and trends in the discourse of memory in France have been consistent since the publication by Henri Bergson of Matter and Memory in 1896. In History, Memory and Forgetting published in 2000, Ricœur’s approach goes further than Bergson, Durkheim and Halbwachs. The memory issue in Ricœur is closely linked to a “hermeneutics of the self” that he already introduced in Oneself as Another in 1990. It seems that the traditional paradigm between individual and collective memory has been replaced by (...) the affirmation of the dialogical nature of memory related to the dialogical nature of being a self and an other. (shrink)

Over recent years, various semantics have been proposed for dealing with updates in the setting of logic programs. The availability of different semantics naturally raises the question of which are most adequate to model updates. A systematic approach to face this question is to identify general principles against which such semantics could be evaluated. In this paper we motivate and introduce a new such principle the refined extension principle. Such principle is complied with by the stable model semantics for logic (...) programs. It turns out that none of the existing semantics for logic program updates, even though generalisations of the stable model semantics, comply with this principle. For this reason, we define a refinement of the dynamic stable model semantics for Dynamic Logic Programs that complies with the principle. (shrink)

This collection of six essays centers on Professor Koyre;'s great theme: the relative importance of metaphysics and observation, with controlled experiment a kind of marriage between the two. Professor Koyre;'s thesis might be summed up as a claim that when one is seeking to explain the scientific revolution, attention must be concentrated on the philosophical outlook of the scientist and away from speculative theories. At the time of his death, Alexandre Koyre; was a professor at the Ecole Pratique des (...) Hautes Études (Sorbonne) and a memeber of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. (shrink)

Les travaux d'Alexandre Matheron sur Spinoza et sur la philosophie de l'âge classique représentent un des points forts de l'école française d'histoire de la philosophie. Après Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza et Le Christ et le salut des ignorants, ces études complètent la vision du spinozisme et de son contexte, de ses racines et de sa signification historique. Elles traitent de tous les domaines du rationalisme classique : métaphysique, théorie de la connaissance, analyse des passions, éthique, politique et religion. (...) La méthode qui anime ces textes est celle d'une analyse structurale de la pensée philosophique : il s'agit de prendre au sérieux le caractère conceptuel des doctrines, leurs enchaînements argumentatifs, la rigueur et la cohérence de leurs catégories. Mais la considération de l'architecture d'un monument théorique ne se conçoit pas sans la biographie non de l'auteur mais de l'oeuvre : comment Spinoza est devenu Spinoza ; en d'autres termes, comment il a forgé sa pensée en traversant les arguments et les concepts de Machiavel, de Hobbes ou de Descartes pour arriver à des formulations de plus en plus spinozistes de son ontologie de la puissance. Le rationalisme absolu apparaît ainsi non seulement comme contenu des pensées étudiées mais aussi comme méthode d'histoire de la philosophie. Une démarche qui a donné des outils intellectuels à plusieurs générations de chercheurs et qui indique aujourd'hui le chemin pour pénétrer dans l'univers de la pensée classique. La seule façon rigoureuse de nous demander ce qui pour nous, de ces philosophies, est vrai. (shrink)

This is a review of Alexandre Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. This slim book is a translation of Kojève’s essay “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev,” which was first published in two installments in the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses in 1934. The French text was itself based on Kojève’s doctoral dissertation, Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews, defended in Heidelberg under the direction of Karl (...) Jaspers in 1926. The translation is accompanied by an introduction from the translators discussing translation issues. In this review, I summarize Kojève’s essay and editorialize on the issue of the principal influences on Solovyov’s metaphysics. Kojève claims that most of Solovyov’s metaphysics was in fact borrowed from Schelling and perhaps also to some extent from Jakob Böhme. If that is the case, then what is usually considered the prototypical Russian metaphysics is... not Russian. (shrink)

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss's classic reading of Xenophon's dialogue, Hiero or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. This edition includes a translation of the dialogue, a critique of the commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, Strauss's restatement of his position in light of Kojève's comments, and finally, the complete Strauss-Kojève correspondence. "Through [Strauss's] interpretation Xenophon appears to us as no longer the somewhat dull and flat (...) author we know, but as a brilliant and subtle writer, an original and profound thinker. What is more, in interpreting this forgotten dialogue, Strauss lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours." —Alexandre Kojève, Critique "On Tyranny is a complex and stimulating book with its 'parallel dialogue' made all the more striking since both participants take such unusual, highly provocative positions, and so force readers to face substantial problems in what are often wholly unfamiliar, even shocking ways." —Robert Pippin, History and Theory "Every political scientist who tries to disentangle himself from the contemporary confusion over the problems of tyranny will be much indebted to this study and inevitably use it as a starting point."—Eric Voegelin, The Review of Politics Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

"Alexandre Vanautgaerden's research shows that Erasmus never ceased to adapt, depending on each type of text, the layouts of his books to best control their reception. A reversal of the traditional countdown of the exegesis of Erasmus's works, which lends at times a blind faith to his correspondence, this present work focuses on the study of manuscripts and printed books. Erasmus would not settle for just writing his texts, but preoccupied himself, with a growing scrupulousness, with the manner in (...) which they would be read. In addition to this new biography of an Erasmus who we discover riveted to the material existence of his books, the reader will find a great number of unedited documents, in Latin or in translation, as well as a list of the humanist's first editions. This volume offers a new look on the status of authors and readers at the beginning of the 16th century. It will interest historians of books as much as of humanism"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

According to what we will call subjectivity theories of consciousness, there is a constitutive connection between phenomenal consciousness and subjectivity: there is something it is like for a subject to have mental state M only if M is characterized by a certain mine-ness or for-me-ness. Such theories appear to face certain psychopathological counterexamples: patients appear to report conscious experiences that lack this subjective element. A subsidiary goal of this chapter is to articulate with greater precision both subjectivity theories and the (...) psychopathological challenge they face. The chapter’s central goal is to present two new approaches to defending subjectivity theories in the face of this challenge. What distinguishes these two approaches is that they go to great lengths to interpret patients’ reports at face value – greater length, at any rate, than more widespread approaches in the extant literature. (shrink)

Alexandre Kojève: A Man of Influence offers a multifaceted approach to the work of Alexandre Kojève, in which eleven international scholars combine their perspectives on key aspects of the Russo-French thinker's work. The result: an original reappraisal of its significance that prompts a better understanding of the contemporary world.

Depersonalization is a pathological condition consisting in a deep modification of the way things appear to a subject, leading him to feel estranged from his body, his actions, his thoughts, his mind and even from himself. In this article, I argue that the study of depersonalization raises three challenges for recent theories of the sense of bodily ownership. These challenges—which I call the centrality challenge, the dissociation challenge and the grounding challenge— thwart most of these theories and suggest that the (...) sense of bodily ownership hinges on a phenomenal mark of mineness that can not be accounted for in terms of our sensory, interoceptive, agentive, cognitive or affective dispositions and that is psychologically primitive. In short: that mineness is first. (shrink)

Alexandre Koyré. of the fixed stars is infinite commit a contradiction in adjecto. In truth, an infinite body cannot be comprehended by thought. For the concepts of the mind concerning the infinite are either about the meaning oftheterm "infinite,"  ...

Alexandre Kojve (1902-1968) was Hegel's most famous interpreter, reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously. The result was a wild if not hypnotic mlange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on French postmodernists on the left (Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault) and American postmodernists on the right (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama). According to Drury, Kojve followed Hegel in thinking (...) that reason has triumphed in the course of history, but it is a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism that has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world. (shrink)

If I see, hear, or touch a sparrow, the sparrow seems real to me. Unlike Bigfoot or Santa Claus, it seems to exist; I will therefore judge that it does indeed exist. The “sense of existence” refers to the kind of awareness that typically grounds such ordinary judgments of existence or “reality.” The sense of existence has been invoked by Humeans, Kantians, Ideologists, and the phenomenological tradition to make substantial philosophical claims. However, it is extremely controversial; its very existence has (...) been called into question. This paper aims to clarify the nature and reality of the sense of existence by studying a psychiatric condition in which the sense appears to be disrupted: depersonalization disorder (DPD). (shrink)

The ArgumentAlexandre Koyré is one of the most important historians of philosophic and scientific though since the thirties. Research on the Scientific Revolution, on Galileo, Descartes, Newton, as well as on Paracelsus and Boehme has deeply changed under his influential method: it has been a model for Kuhn's methodology of paradigms and revolutions in the histroy of science. Whereas Koyré used to be considered opposed in his ideology and method to sociological approaches, he has recently been characterized by Yehuda Elkana (...) as a sociologist of knowledge. In fact, until now one of the main sources of his method had not been identified: it is only by acknowledging the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on Koyré that it is possible to explain how the latter wrote his thesis on Boehme's mystical thought just before his Etudes galiléennes. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl was teaching history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Koyré was strongly influenced by his idea of “prelogical thinking” as a universel phenomenon and in a general way by the sociological school of Durkheim. Conceptual analysis deriving from Husserl, collective representations and attitude mentale, came together in Alexandre Koyrè's method. (shrink)

The work of Henri Bergson, the foremost French philosopher of the early twentieth century, is not usually explored for its political dimensions. Indeed, Bergson is best known for his writings on time, evolution, and creativity. This book concentrates instead on his political philosophy—and especially on his late masterpiece, _The Two Sources of Morality and Religion_—from which Alexandre Lefebvre develops an original approach to human rights. We tend to think of human rights as the urgent international project of protecting all (...) people everywhere from harm. Bergson shows us that human rights can also serve as a medium of personal transformation and self-care. For Bergson, the main purpose of human rights is to initiate all human beings into love. Forging connections between human rights scholarship and philosophy as self-care, Lefebvre uses human rights to channel the whole of Bergson's philosophy. (shrink)

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–81) left a legacy of thought that increasingly commands the attention of American scholars and critics. His provocative essays and wide-ranging seminars and lectures attempted, with remarkable success, to bridge the supposedly unbridgeable gap between the humanities and modern science. For some time his influence has shadowed the theoretical work being done in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, women’s studies, and literature. In Lacan and the Human Sciences eight eminent scholars examine how ideas entered these fields, how well (...) they were understood and adapted, and what fruit they have produced. The editor, Alexandre Leupin, whose introduction reveals the underpinnings of Lacan’s thought, views the book as a blueprint for overcoming the present impasses of scientific and humanistic discourses and their imaginary contradictions. The essays demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The relevance of his work to epistemology is considered by Jean-Claude Milner, François Regnault, and Ellie Ragland-Sullivan; to anthropology, by Jean-Joseph Goux; to feminist studies, by Jane Gallop; and to literature, by Dennis Porter and Denis Hollier. The result is a book that points to a new and more pertinent way of dealing, on one hand, with the problems of epistemology and, on the other, with the question of literary theory in the humanities. (shrink)

The realisation of justice in the real world requires moral principles and political action. This book offers a roadmap for these two notions to connect.

Of the first six chapters of the Phenomenology of the spirit -- Summary of the course in 1937-1938 -- Philosophy and wisdom -- A note on eternity, time, and the concept -- Interpretation of the third part of chapter VIII -- A dialectic of the real and the phenomenological method in Hegel.

" Alexandre est la joie. Celui qui n'a pas rencontré la joie, n'a pas rencontré Alexandre ", écrit Bernard Campan en ouverture de ce livre. A travers des extraits d'entretiens radiophoniques menés avec notamment Albert Jacquard et d'une conférence sur le thème de la résilience, Alexandre Jollien, tel un Socrate du XXIe siècle, fait part de son approche de la philosophie et met en œuvre son talent de passeur. Exégète des textes anciens, amoureux de la dialectique et (...) pédagogue averti, il nous fait comprendre la pensée de Spinoza et nous interroger avec Boèce. En forme d'écho, le comédien et réalisateur Bernard Campan, ami du philosophe suisse, évoque le cheminement de cette amitié sprirituelle avec une infinie délicatesse et une profonde pudeur. (shrink)

This book is the first study of the ontological system of Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit c. 200 AD), famous for his commentaries on the works of Aristotle.

Cet ouvrage d'histoire des idées et de philosophie des sciences rassemble plusieurs études dont le point commun est d'analyser les conséquences majeures de la découverte scientifique de l'infini. Ainsi, Alexandre Koyré montre comment la révolution galiléenne ou la découverte du calcul infinitésimal par Leibniz et Newton ont profondément modifié la conscience qu'a l'homme de lui-même et de sa place dans l'univers.

Henri Bergson is primarily known for his work on time, memory, and creativity. His equally innovative interventions into politics and religion have, however, been neglected or dismissed until now. In the first book in English dedicated to Bergson as a political thinker, leading Bergson scholars illuminate his positions on core concerns within political philosophy: the significance of emotion in moral judgment, the relationship between biology and society, and the entanglement of politics and religion. Ranging across Bergson's writings but drawing mainly (...) on his last book, _The Two Sources of Morality and Religion_, the contributors consider Bergson's relevance to contemporary discussions of human rights, democratic pluralism, and environmental ethics. _Contributors._ Keith Ansell-Pearson, G. William Barnard, Claire Colebrook, Hisashi Fujita, Suzanne Guerlac, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Frédéric Keck, Leonard Lawlor, Alexandre Lefebvre, Paola Marrati, John Mullarkey, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Carl Power, Philippe Soulez, Jim Urpeth, Melanie White, Frédéric Worms. (shrink)

Alexandre Koj_ve offers a systematic discussion of key themes such as right, justice, law, equality, and autonomy in which he presages our contemporary world of economic globalization and international law. Edited and translated by Bryan-Paul Frost, this is the authoritative English language edition of a monumental work in political philosophy.

Computational reproducibility possesses its own dynamics and narratives of crisis. Alongside the difficulties of computing as an ubiquitous yet complex scientific activity, computational reproducibility suffers from a naive expectancy of total reproducibility and a moral imperative to embrace the principles of free software as a non-negotiable epistemic virtue. We argue that the epistemic issues at stake in actual practices of computational reproducibility are best unveiled by focusing on software as a pivotal concept, one that is surprisingly often overlooked in accounts (...) of reproducibility issues. Software is not only about designing and coding but also about maintaining, supporting, distributing, licensing, and governance; it is not only about developers but also about users. We focus on openness debates among computational chemists involved in molecular modeling software packages as empirical grounding for our argument. We then identify and analyse four epistemic characteristics as key to the role of software in computational reproducibility. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one particular case that connects climate justice and climate economics. Its contribution is twofold. First, it aims at providing a sound normative foundation for carbon pricing mechanisms around the notions of a ‘right to energy’, the ‘duty not-to-harm’ and an argument for ‘restricted compensation’. Second, it identifies the normative elements from theories of climate justice that should guide the design of market-based instruments for climate change mitigation. This will cast light on the particular moral relevance of (...) the act of internalizing a negative externality and of the funds generated by putting a price on carbon. (shrink)

Figure décisive et controversée de l'hégélianisme contemporain, repère pour tant de penseurs français d'avant et d'après-guerre au premier rang desquels Bataille, Lacan et Sartre, Alexandre Kojève apparaît avant tout comme un commentateur de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit, dont la lecture est le fruit d'un croisement hardi d'heideggerianisme et de marxisme. Demeurent pourtant largement insoupçonnés l'unité et l'enjeu de son projet global : la constitution d'une anthropologie philosophique radicale, finitiste et athée, nouant les catégories existentielle et logique du Désir, de (...) l'Action, du Discours et de l'Histoire. Cet ouvrage constitue donc la première analyse de fond du système philosophique de Kojève. Il ne se propose pas seulement d'approfondir la thèse centrale méconnue de l'Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, livre-somme du légendaire séminaire tenu à l'École pratique des hautes études, mais s'attaque également au vaste opus posthumum de Kojève, que ce soit le tentaculaire "Essai d'une Histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, le gémellaire et plus resserré " Le Concept, le Temps et le Discours", paru en 1990, l'énigmatique Kant, publié en 1973, ou l'essai inédit sur L'Athéisme de 1931. Une large palette d'approches permet d'éclairer les aspects les plus actuels de l'entreprise originale de Kojève - en particulier la portée du thème paradoxal de la " Fin de l'Histoire " - et ses implications dans le champ de la psychanalyse, des sciences humaines, de la déconstruction derridienne, de la théorie littéraire et de la philosophie politique. (shrink)

The concept of genidentity has been proposed as a way to better understand identity through time, especially in physics and biology. The genidentity view is utterly anti-substantialist in so far as it suggests that the identity of X through time does not presuppose whatsoever the existence of a permanent “core” or “substrate” of X. Yet applications of this concept to real science have been scarce and unsatisfying. In this paper, our aim is to show that a well-defined concept of functional (...) genidentity can be crucial to shed light on identity through time in classical physics and especially in biology. Finally, we show that understanding identity on the basis of continuity suggests a move towards an ontology of processes. (shrink)

Many philosophers regard the persistence of philosophical disputes as symptomatic of overly ambitious, ill-founded intellectual projects. There are indeed strong reasons to believe that persistent disputes in philosophy (and more generally in the discourse at large) are pointless. We call this the pessimistic view of the nature of philosophical disputes. In order to respond to the pessimistic view, we articulate the supporting reasons and provide a precise formulation in terms of the idea that the best explanation of persistent disputes entails (...) that they are pointless. We then show how to answer the pessimistic argument. Taking a well-known mathematical controversy as our paradigm example, we argue that some persistent disputes reflect substantive disagreements at the “meta-analytic” level, i.e., disagreements about the best way, among quite different candidates, to understand the topic at issue, and the best associated cluster of analytic truths one should accept concerning it. Moreover, our concrete example shows that such meta-analytic disagreements can in principle be settled and yield a genuine theoretical (as opposed to merely pragmatic) breakthrough. We conclude optimistically that persistent disputes can be an important means of fostering epistemic progress. (shrink)

Historien d'origine russe, Alexandre Koyré (1892-1964) est l'une de ces personnalités exceptionnelles dont les découvertes et les audaces ont profondément marqué l'évolution des idées au XXe siècle. Année par année, de 1922 à 1962, ce recueil nous fait suivre son itinéraire intellectuel à travers les enseignements qu'il donna à l'Ecole pratique des hautes études à Paris et aux Etats-Unis. Il nous permet de mieux comprendre le combat de Koyré pour faire de l'histoire des sciences le coeur même d'une histoire (...) de la pensée humaine, préfigurant aussi bien l'extraordinaire développement de cette discipline depuis un demi-siècle que l'anthropologie historique. Pietro Redondi a largement enrichi le contenu de ce livre à l'occasion de sa réédition, trente ans après sa première parution. Avec une nouvelle présentation, des textes inédits, un index et de nombreuses illustrations, ce volume offre ainsi la meilleure introduction à l'oeuvre de Koyré. (shrink)

Many philosophers have adopted epistemic expressivism in recent years. The core commitment of epistemic expressivism is that epistemic claims express conative states. This paper assesses the plausibility of this commitment. First, we raise a new type of problem for epistemic expressivism, the epistemic motivation problem. The problem arises because epistemic expressivists must provide an account of the motivational force of epistemic judgment (the mental state expressed by an epistemic claim), yet various features of our mental economy seem to show that (...) they can’t do so. Second, we develop what we take to be the most promising response to that problem for expressivists. We end by noting that this response faces an important challenge pertaining to the psychology of epistemic criticism and praise. (shrink)

Entry on "Neuroenhancement" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online.

Patients suffering from the Cotard syndrome can deny being alive, having guts, thinking or even existing. They can also complain that the world or time have ceased to exist. In this article, I argue that even though the leading neurocognitive accounts have difficulties meeting that task, we should, and we can, make sense of these bizarre delusions. To that effect, I draw on the close connection between the Cotard syndrome and a more common condition known as depersonalisation. Even though they (...) are not delusional, depersonalised patients seem to have experiences that are quite similar to those of Cotard patients. I argue that these experiences are essentially characterised by a lack of subjective character and of two other structural features of experience, which I call ‘the present character’ and ‘the actual character’. Cotard's nihilistic delusions simply consist in taking these anomalous experiences at face value. (shrink)

Depersonalization consists in a deep modification of the way things appear to a subject, leading him to feel estranged from his body, his actions, his thoughts, and his mind, and even from himself. Even though, when it was discovered at the end of the 19th century, this psychiatric condition was widely used to probe certain aspects of bodily awareness, and more specifically the sense of bodily ownership (SBO), it has been strangely neglected in contemporary debates. In this chapter, I argue (...) that because of three specific features, depersonalization raises some important challenges for current theories of the SBO. The first feature — call it “generality” — is that depersonalization does not only affect the sense of bodily ownership but also, typically, the sense of ``mental ownership’’ (SMO), the sense of agency or ``action ownership’’ (SOA), and the subject’s core sense of herself (CSS), that is, her awareness of herself as an I. The second feature is that except for the symptoms of depersonalization, depersonalized patients are hard to distinguish, psychologically, from normal subjects. This makes it hard to find psychological features that might explain their condition. The last feature, call it “fundamentality” is that the psychological features that do seem abnormal among depersonalized patients seem more likely to be explained by depersonalization than to explain it. These three features raise three challenges — the centrality challenge, the dissociation challenge, and the grounding challenge. Taken together, I will argue, these challenges suggest that the SBO depends on a form of phenomenal “mineness” that would mark my mental states as mine and that cannot be accounted for in sensorimotor, cognitive, or even affective terms. A phenomenal mineness that indeed seems to be psychologically primitive, and only accountable in neurophysiological terms. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the claim that, as new types of neurointervention get developed allowing us to enhance various aspects of our mental functioning, we should work to prevent the use of such interventions from ever becoming the “new normal,” that is, a practice expected—even if not directly required—by employers. The author’s response to that claim is that, unlike compulsion or most cases of direct coercion, indirect coercion to use such neurointerventions is, per se, no more problematic than the pressure people (...) all find themselves under to use modern technological devices like computers or mobile phones. Few people seem to believe that special protections should be introduced to protect contemporary Neo-Luddites from such pressures. That being said, the author acknowledges that separate factors, when present, can indeed render indirect coercion to enhance problematic. The factors in question include lack of safety, fostering adaptation to oppressive circumstances, and having negative side effects that go beyond health. Nonetheless, the chapter stresses that these factors do not seem to be necessary correlates of neuroenhancement. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende examinar las coincidencias y divergencias que, en el modo de analizar lógicamente la oración, presentan las teorías de Frege y Zadeh. Este estudio previo proporcionará algunas razones para responder a la pregunta de si la teoría de Zadeh representa una ruptura o una evolución respecto al modo de análisis clásico fregeano.