The phenomenological approach to schizophrenia has undergone something of a renaissance in Anglophone psychiatry in recent years. There has been a proliferation of works that focus on the nature of subjectivity in schizophrenia and related disorders, and that take inspiration from the work of such German and French philosophers as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, and such classical psychiatrists as Minkowski, Blankenburg, and Binswanger (Rulf 2003; Sass 2001a, 2001b). This trend includes predominantly theoretical articles, which typically incorporate clinical material as well (...) as reviews of empirical and experimental findings in psychopathology. Some very recent examples (since 2000) are studies of .. (shrink)

In his Treatise, Hume confronted the tensions between his project of uncovering the causal operations of the human mind and the extreme skeptical tendencies of his system. Louis Loeb argues that Hume overreaches, and he advances a controversial interpretation of Hume's epistemological framework that shows how Hume could have avoided the more destructive positions in his work.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections on the (Analytic) Philosophical Approach to Delusion Louis A. Sass There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 The peculiar, often problematic phenome na of psychopathology have been attract ing the attention of analytic philosophers in recent years. The topic of delusion (...) has been a particular draw, with a number of analytic philosophers attempting to use their conceptual tools, usually combined with ideas from cognitive neuroscience, to criticize the traditional understanding and to clarify the nature of this central psychiatric topic. It is useful to have this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Indeed, there is good reason to hope that concepts honed in the philosophy of mind and other philosophical subfields will help to sort out our understanding of a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) for which contemporary psychiatric definitions and conceptualizations are clearly inadequate and, in some respects, downright misleading (see Parnas and Sass 2001; Spitzer 1990).1Here, however, I would like to call attention to some weaknesses that, it seems to me, are rather common (I do not say universal) in many analytic philosophical approaches to psychopathology. In my opinion, there is a tendency to formulate issues and arguments in overly polarized, even dichotomous terms, and then to rely too uncritically on these essentialistic formulations in exploring the domain of inquiry. Although this polarizing tendency sometimes has the salutary effect of clarifying conceptual domains, it can, when taken too far, actually hamper our understanding of phenomena that are often fraught with ambiguities and complexities that defy many standard conceptualizations.The relationship between philosophy and psychopathology is obviously a two-way street—we are familiar, for example, with disorders that challenge deep philosophical assumptions about self and mind (e.g., blindsight, split-brain phenomena, perhaps also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the first rank symptoms of schizophrenia). I am suggesting that, in their work on delusions, philosophers may need to put more emphasis on moving from the natural phenomena [End Page 71] of psychopathology and to the domain of philosophical analysis.I believe that a greater sensitivity to the modes of knowing associated with the phenomenological tradition, and to the forms of conceptual self-critique fostered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, are crucial ingredients for any adequate approach to delusion as well as many other topics in psychopathology. In my opinion, the work of many analytic philosophers interested in psychopathology would be enriched if they spent more time trying to discover and imagine what it might be like to experience certain kinds of abnormal psychiatric conditions, and also speculating about what implications such experiential modalities might have for action and verbal expression. I believe they would also be wise to spend more time questioning, and attempting to transcend, the philosophically derived conceptual distinctions and dichotomies that appear to organize their conceptual universes. Phenomenological imagination and Wittgensteinian critique can show how to move outside the conceptual capsule and into the rich and strange realms of actual experience, both normal and abnormal.So far I have offered only slogans. Let me use the articles by Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2004) and Robert Klee (2004) to flesh out the criticisms I have offered. There is much that is intelligent and much that is worthwhile in both their articles. (For example, I was largely convinced by the criticisms of John Campbell and of Donald Davidson that are central to the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee, respectively.) Here, however, I will focus only on issues that illustrate the above-mentioned tendencies—tendencies that, in my view, tend to infect even the best writings on the (analytic) philosophy of psychiatry. I will also make some remarks about the works of Campbell and Davidson, the two philosophers criticized in the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee. Because the article by Eugenie Georgaca (2004) is in a different tradition, I will say only a few words about it at the end. Bayne and Pacherie on the Preservation-Of-meaning... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 125-132 [Access article in PDF] Incomprehensibility and Understanding:On the Interpretation of Severe Mental Illness Louis A. Sass Keywords hermeneutics, psychopathology, paradox, Wittgenstein, solipsism, delusion, principle of charity, phenomenological psychopathology. I would like to begin by thanking Rupert Read for the care he has put into reading my work, and into thinking through its implications in the context of the "new-Wittgensteinian" interpretation of (...) the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This interpretation derives from an influential reading of this philosopher's early book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1961), that is not explicitly discussed in Read's article, yet that lies behind much of his argument. Read does allude to this reading of the Tractatus when he refers to the concept of "logically alien thought" (see Conant [1992]), and by citing, in his endnotes, the Diamond, Conant, and Cerbone articles that appear in Crary and Read's edited collection, The New Wittgenstein (2000). In an earlier paper that also addresses my work, "On approaching schizophrenia through Wittgenstein," Read (2001) explicitly discusses the relevance of the new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus.According to this new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein took absolutely seriously his own realization (explicitly stated at the end of the Tractatus) that his book was internally self-contradictory, and he therefore realized that all or nearly all the sentences of the Tractatus must be totally devoid of any meaning or semantic reference. According to this austere view, the vast bulk of the Tractatus only pretends to be making meaningful statements about the nature of logic and semantics; its real purpose is to give the reader the illusion of meaning, and this it does in order to lead the reader to the eventual realization that there can in fact be no meaningful statements or thoughts at the level of self-referential abstraction at which the Tractatus pretends to be operating. Further, when Wittgenstein (1961) writes (in the famous last line of the book), "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (p. 189), this statement should, supposedly, not be taken as any kind of mystical pointing toward some ineffable realm or truth, but, rather, as an austere recognition that there just are no ineffable truths—that, so to speak, there just is no mystical there there. [End Page 125]Rupert Read sees an analogy between, on the one hand, the (supposedly mistaken) readers of Wittgenstein's Tractatus who think that Wittgenstein is exploiting self-contradiction to allude to some higher, ineffable truth (i.e., something that can be pointed at even if it cannot be said), and, on the other hand, my own elucidation of Schreber's contradictions (see especially Chapter 2 of Paradoxes of Delusion [1994]) to argue that Schreber can be said to be having particular kinds of experiences, which I refer to as solipsistic or quasi-solipsistic in nature. Just as Wittgenstein's self-contradictions can (supposedly) point nowhere other than to their own failure to mean, so Schreber's self-contradictory and other nonstandard statements cannot (according to Read) be used to illuminate in any meaningful way the form of experience that supposedly lies behind them—as I, for example, have tried to do by offering a phenomenological account of Schreber and schizophrenia. Patients like Schreber and Renée cannot really be understood, just as we cannot really understand logically alien thought—which, in fact, is not really thought at all; in both cases, there is only the illusion of meaning, only the mirage of an alternative mode of thinking or of living. This, at least, is Read's new-Wittgensteinian claim.Few readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will, I suspect, be familiar with these discussions centering on Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which were introduced largely by the philosophers Cora Diamond and James Conant (see Crary and Read [2000]). (I myself have found their writings fascinating and inspiring in many ways, despite my ultimate disagreement on fundamental issues.) 1 Most readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will have no way of assessing the validity of this austere reading of the Tractatus... (shrink)

It is widely held that we can obtain beliefs and withhold believing propositions directly by performing an act of will. This thesis is sometimes identified with the view that believing is a basic act, an act which is under our direct control. Descartes holds that the will is limitless in relation to belief acquisition and that we must be directly responsible for our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, for otherwise we could draw the blasphemous conclusion that God is responsible for (...) them. For Descartes and his followers judgment and assent are acts of the will which may be made both when they ought and when they ought not to be made. They are expressions of freedom of the will and as such we are directly responsible for the beliefs we acquire. Other philosophers who seem to espouse volitionalism include Aquinas, Locke, Kierkegaard, Newman, James, Pieper, Chisholm and Meiland. (shrink)

It is widely held that we can obtain beliefs and withhold believing propositions directly by performing an act of will. This thesis is sometimes identified with the view that believing is a basic act, an act which is under our direct control. Descartes holds that the will is limitless in relation to belief acquisition and that we must be directly responsible for our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, for otherwise we could draw the blasphemous conclusion that God is responsible for (...) them. For Descartes and his followers judgment and assent are acts of the will which may be made both when they ought and when they ought not to be made. They are expressions of freedom of the will and as such we are directly responsible for the beliefs we acquire. Other philosophers who seem to espouse volitionalism include Aquinas, Locke, Kierkegaard, Newman, James, Pieper, Chisholm and Meiland. (shrink)

Before broaching our main subject, and exploring why, among all disorders of the mind, obsessive-compulsive disorders have a place apart, I would like to start from a dilemma that is well-known to historians interested in mental disorders. According to one approach, a mental illness X is considered as a bona fide or ‘genuine’ illness if, and only if, it originates from a disturbance of the brain. Its neurobiological form is in this case considered as invariant, whatever cultural veneer might give (...) it a different aspect in accord with historical and local settings. The assumption is that this veneer does not, properly speaking, have any deep grounding in reality... (shrink)

Hume's claim that a state is a belief is often intertwined—though without his remarking on this fact—with epistemic approval of the state. This requires explanation. Beliefs, in Hume's view, are steady dispositions (not lively ideas), nature's provision for a steady influence on the will and action. Hume's epistemic distinctions call attention to circumstances in which the presence of conflicting beliefs undermine a belief's influence and thereby its natural function. On one version of this interpretation, to say that a belief is (...) justified, ceteris paribus, is to say that for all that has been shown the belief would be steady in its influence under suitable reflection. On a second version, it is to say that prima facie justification is an intrinsic property of the state, in virtue of its steadiness. These versions generate different understandings of the relationship between Parts iii and iv of Book I of the Treatise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Moral Sentiments and the Structure of the Treatise LOUIS E. LOEB ACCORDING TO NORMAN KEMP SMITH and Thomas Hearn, Hume classified moral sentiments as direct passions.' According to Pb.II A,rdal, Hume classified the basic moral sentiments of approval and disapproval of persons as indirect passions. if either of these interpretations is correct, there is an intimate connection between Books II and 111 of Hume's Treatise. This is (...) because the direct and indirect passions (together with the will) are the subject of Book 11 and moral sentiments are discussed in Book 111. So if moral sentiments are special cases of either direct or indirect passions, the treatment of passions in Book Ii is central to the understanding of Book 111. 1 contend, on the contrary, that Hume's moral sentiments are neither direct nor indirect passions. Consequently, the connection between Books 11 and 111 of the Treatise is much less intimate than A,rdal and Hearn have recently suggested.' i. Hume's Classification of the Impressions of Reflection In the four paragraphs of II, i, I Hume provides an exhaustive "Division of the Subject"--the "subject" being "all the perceptions of the mind. ''4 Nowhere else in the Treatise is a complete "division" to be found. As A,rdal points out, such introductory chapters "are likely to be written after the bulk of the book has been completed, or at least to be carefully revised in the light of the main arguments in the book. ''~ For these reasons, there is a strong presumption that the "division" in!I, i, 1should be taken as canonical. Hume's "division" is straightforward. In the first paragraph, perceptions are divided into ideas and impressions; in the first and second paragraphs, impressions are divided into those of sensation and those of reflection; in the third paragraph, impressions of reflection are divided into the calm and the violent; in the fourth (as I am indebted to Wdham Frankena, Ronald Glossop, and Peter Jones for their most helpful comments. ' Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (New York: St. Martm'~ Press, 1966), pp. 167-168; and Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., "Ardal on the Moral Sentiments in Hume's rreattse," Phtlosophy 48 (1973):290. z Passton and Value m Hume's "Treatise" (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), pp. I 1, 109-133. For a discussion heavily influenced by Ardal, see Stewart R. Sutherland, "Hume on Morality and the Emotions," Phllosophwal Quarterly 26 (1976) : 14-19 especially. ' See Ardal, pp. I-5, 109-133; and Hearn, pp. 288, 292. 9 A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 275; hereafter cited as T followed by page number. 9 Ardal, p. 94. 13951 396 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY indicated by the last sentence of the third), the violent impressions of reflection are divided into the direct and the indirect. The structure is of a genus-species sort, and none of the distinctions cut across each other: J calm i sense of beauty and deformity (T, 276), moral sentiments impressions of reflection = emotions (secondary impressions) violent = passions direct indirect desire, aversion, grief, joy, pride, humility, love, hope, fear (T, 277, 439) hatred (T, 276-277) This classification is based upon the only natural reading of paragraph three and the first sentence of paragraph four of II, i, I. I quote this material, adding my own emphasis and deleting Hume's: The reflective impressions may be divided into two kinds, viz. the calm and the violent. Of the first kind is the sense of beauty and deformity in action, composition, and external objects. Of the second are the passions of love and hatred, grief and joy, pride and humility. This division is far from being exact. The raptures of poetry and music frequently rise to the greatest height; while those other impressions, properly called passions, may decay into so soft an emotion, as to become, in a manner, imperceptible. But as in general the passions are more violent than the emotions arising from beauty and deformity, these impressions have been commonly distinguish'd from each other. The subject of the human mind being so copious and various, I shall here take... (shrink)

How do we find what is clinically significant in the swarms of data being generated by today’s diagnostic technologies? As electronic records become ever more prevalent – and digital imaging and genomic, proteomic, salivaomics, metabalomics, pharmacogenomics, phenomics and transcriptomics techniques become commonplace – fdifferent clinical and biological disciplines are facing up to the need to put their data houses in order to avoid the consequences of an uncontrolled explosion of different ways of describing information. We describe a new strategy to (...) advance the consistency of data in the dental research community. The strategy is based on the idea that existing systems for data collection in dental research will continue to be used, but proposes a methodology in which past, present and future data will be described using a consensus-based controlled structured vocabulary called the Ontology for Dental Research (ODR). (shrink)

L’article se propose de présenter l’éthique philosophique de Jean Ladrière comme une recherche de croisement entre ces deux dimensions constitutives de l’expérience éthique que sont les points de vue universel et existentiel. On couvrira pour ce faire toute l’étendue de la démarche éthique, telle que Ladrière la déploie depuis l’expérience pré-réflexive jusqu’à la détermination effective de l’action en regard d’une situation particulière. Dans cette perspective, l’éthique philosophique apparaît arc-boutée à la fois à l’universalité de la normativité immanente à l’action et (...) à la singularité existentielle d’une destinée unique. (shrink)

This paper examines the ontological fragility from the perspective of the metaphysics of creation as interpreted by Jean Ladrière, in view of some contemporary philosophical developments concerning the status of the ontological ground of being and the concept of event. Starting with some clarifications about the meaning of the term “fragility”, it then shows that ontological fragility as a structural property of the created being is related to the fact that it does not coincide with the source of its being. (...) This means that the creating being does not have the capacity to secure its own being from the recurring possibility of its nonexistence. The created being is the one that is looking for its fulfillment in a definitive secure home. (shrink)

Au nombre des sources philosophiques majeures de l’oeuvre de Jean Ladrière se trouve celle de Thomas d’Aquin. La notion de création est l’un des lieux où cette influence se laisse voir de manière particulièrement prégnante. Le traitement ladriérien se présente comme une reprise herméneutique de la doctrine thomiste de la création à la lumière des développements contemporains de la science. Cet article se propose de manifester les axes directeurs de cette réinterprétation.

Ils sont suisse, canadien, belge, roumain ou encore français et se sont réunis à Montréal pour se pencher sur la notion de «limite» dans les travaux de Jean Ladrière. On le sait, l'oeuvre de Jean Ladrière se déploie, avec génie et originalité, dans bien des domaines: la physique, les mathématiques, la logique, les sciences du langage, la philosophie et la théologie. Les textes réunis dans ce volume tentent de penser les «articulations du sens» de cette notion de «limite», en prenant (...) la mesure des questionnements les plus contemporains, que ceux-ci émanent de perspectives scientiques, politiques, éthiques ou encore pratiques. (shrink)

This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the form of analysis outlined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness in relation to the theory of inten- tionality developed by Brentano and Husserl. The principal aim of the paper is to establish a suitable starting point for a dialogue between these two forms of analysis, whose respective terminologies with respect to consciousness and the unconscious appear to cancel one another out.

This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the form of analysis outlined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness in relation to the theory of intentionality developed by Brentano and Husserl. The principal aim of the paper is to establish a suitable starting point for a dialogue between these two forms of analysis, whose respective terminologies with respect to consciousness and the unconscious appear to cancel one another out.

This paper examines Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by Hume’s critique of the philosophy of the ego and the continuity of consciousness. The path taken here follows a continental and phenomenological approach. Husserl’s 1905 lecture course on the temporalization of immanent time-consciousness is a phenomenological-eidetic examination of how the continuity of consciousness and the consciousness of continuity are possible. It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led (...) to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but that escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him. In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its impressions. (shrink)

Preview: If we define “philosophy” simply as “love of knowledge,” then it is obviously a requirement for any serious scientific, scholarly, or professional pursuit – in whatever field. Philosophy’s relevance is also wide-ranging or even universal when we define it as the most basic or general discipline: the one that poses foundational questions regarding the nature and legitimacy of knowledge itself. Philosophy does seem, however, to have special pertinence for the human sciences, and perhaps especially for the mental-health-related disciplines and (...) professions of psychiatry and clinical psychology. Physics and the biological sciences run up against such problematic issues as the nature of causality, the impact of the observer on the observed, or the essence of life; yet these disciplines seem able to progress quite nicely on their own, with little demand for philosophers or for philosophizing of an explicit sort. Fields like psychiatry and clinical psychology appear, by contrast, to have a more profound need for such input; and indeed, without self-critical philosophical thinking, they often seem to run the risk of degenerating into one or another form of what philosopher of science Imre Lakatos called a “degenerating research program” – whether this take the form of reductionism, rigidification, or mere banality. (shrink)

De Reuchlin a Kleuker, Platon est interprete comme le grand philosophe heritier de la sagesse traditionnelle issue de la Kabbale ou des Chaldeens. Ce n'est qu'a partir de la seconde moitie du XVIIIe siecle que commence une interpretation plus rationaliste de Platon, avec Hegel et Schelling. Cette interpretation implique un platonisme de fait, c'est-a-dire une assimilation de Platon a l'interieur d'une demarche philosophique nouvelle. Elle s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une nostalgie de la Grece, a la base de la reflexion politique (...) et metaphysique du jeune Hegel. La derniere partie de l'ouvrage montre la persistance de grands philosophemes platoniciens a l'epoque moderne. A travers la question des correspondances et des harmoniques entre l'ame, le monde et Dieu, se revele la grande interrogation suivante: comment penser le platonisme selon la mobilite et sans reference a une philosophie de la substance et de l'immuabilite? (shrink)

With its thematic focus on “ecolacy,” the understanding of the natural environment and our relationship to it, Pojman’s text strikes a balance between theoretical and applied issues in environmental ethics.

The plan of this study is founded on a hypothesis that there is an overall argument in the Climacus writings : 1) There are two opposing ways to approach the truth: the objective and the subjective ways, 2) The objective way fails, 3) Hence the only appropriate way to the truth is the subjective way, 4) Christianity is the subjective way of life that meets all conditions for the highest subjectivity, 5) Hence Christianity is the appropriate way to reach the (...) truth. The present work is sympathetically critical - always appreciative of Kierkegaard's genius but not always endorsing his arguments. (shrink)

This paper is an essay about Harold Garfinkel's heritage. It outlines a response to Eric Livingston's proposal to say goodbye to ethnomethodology as pertaining to the sociological tradition; and it rejects part of Melvin Pollner's diagnosis about the changes occurred in ethnomethodological working. If it agrees with Pollner about the idea that something of the initial ethnomethodology's program has been left aside after the "work studies" turn, it asserts that such a turn has nonetheless made possible authentic discoveries. So the (...) paper speaks for a better integration of the two versions of ethnomethodology separated by Pollner. (shrink)

This paper considers John Dewey’s philosophy of religion, which it relates to the contemporary debate about the “post-secular”. Dewey’s view is completely secularist, but, at the same time, it appeals to the growth of the religious attitude in experience. The attitude in question has to be liberated from the supernaturalism and dogmatism of the traditional religions. Such a paradoxical religious secularism is based on a naturalist conception of human experience and social life. Having reconstituted Dewey’s view, the paper discusses two (...) objections which have been raised two it. (shrink)

Excerpt from Pasteur Et le Transformisme Il avait constaté que les racemates étaient formés d'un mélange de cristaux hémiédriques droits et gauches et, les ayant triés à la pince, il put isoler les hémiédriques gauches (qui étaient alors inconnus), et vérifier, ce qu'il prévoyait, qu'ils devaient dévier à gauche. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art (...) technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The multiplier is a central concept in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics. It is largely what justifies activist full-employment fiscal policy: an increase in fiscal expenditures contributing to multiple rounds of spending, thereby financing itself. Yet, while a copingstone of post-Keynesian theory, it is not universally accepted by all post-Keynesians, for reasons vastly different than the mainstream. This book explores both the pros and cons of the multiplier from a strictly post-Keynesian – and Kaleckian – approach. Anchored within the tradition of (...) endogenous money, this book offers a lively discussion from a number of well-known post-Keynesians from a variety of perspectives: history of thought, theory and economic policy. The book starts by analysing the historical foundations of the Keynesian Multiplier and it’s treatment throughout the history of economic thought. Moving through a critical debate about the limits of the multiplier, the contributions finish by offering cutting edge new views on this fascinating concept. (shrink)

This is a wide-ranging anthology that examines, in chronological order, several genres that have been prominent in the history of Western philosophy. The programmatic introduction outlines the diverse range of genres used by philosophers and explains how genre-based exegesis can enrich our analysis and interpretation of philosophical texts. The remaining essays examine individual texts from this perspective.

Popper has argued that the repetition of tests yields diminishing returns. His argument has been criticised by Musgrave for involving an inductive element. This paper argues that Musgrave's solution robs the concept of corroboration of it's force. An alternative solution is suggested on the basis of a differentiation between replication and repetition. It is argued that one then does receive diminishing returns in agreement with the structure of corroboration in general.

Le monde compte entre 6500 et 7000 langues dont on peut présenter les rapports hiérarchisés dans les termes du modèle gravitationnel. Les unes sont très parlées, les autres en voie de disparition, et l'urbanisation de la planète, en constante augmentation, laisse penser que la croissance du nombre de langues a atteint son point culminant. Face à cette tendance , la Francophonie a choisi de défendre la diversité en s'alliant à deux autres ensembles linguistiques . Pour être crédible et ne pas (...) se voir taxée de « Yalta linguistique », cette politique se devrait de prendre en compte le devenir des langues qui gravitent dans chacun de ces trois ensembles. Mais, en même temps, elle doit prendre conscience que la diversité traverse les langues elles-mêmes, et qu'elle est un facteur de changement qui pourrait mener à l'émergence de nouvelles langues.Today the world counts between 6500 and 7000 languages. Hierarchical relations between these languages have been presented in what is known as the gravitational model. While some are widely spoken, others are on the verge of disappearing, and the constantly increasing urbanisation of our planet suggests that that the constant growth of the world’s languages - following a logistic model - has reached a culminating point. Faced with this tendency - well illustrated by Internet, for instance - "La Francophonie" has chosen to defend language diversity and ally itself with two other linguistic areas . To increase credibility and avoid being identified as "a linguistic Yalta", such policies need to take into account the future of the languages that gravitate within each of these areas. Yet at the same time it should be aware that diversity concerns these very languages too, which in itself is a factor of change that might lead to the emergence of new languages. (shrink)

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron | : La recherche pour déterminer ce qu’est une spiritualité philosophique s’appuie sur les oeuvres de Bergson et de Lavelle. Il y a une sensibilité aux choses de l’âme dans cette spiritualité qui n’est pas spécifiquement religieuse. La réalisation personnelle d’une vocation est au coeur de toute spiritualité philosophique, en tant qu’elle est la vie spirituelle d’un homme parmi d’autres hommes. Le spiritualisme est la philosophie qui intègre en elle la demande d’une vie spirituelle. | : This (...) attempt to determine the nature of a philosophical spirituality is based on the works of Bergson and Lavelle. There is sensitiveness to matters of the soul in that spirituality which is not specifically religious. The personal realization of a vocation is at the heart of any philosophical spirituality in so far as it is the spiritual life of a man amongst other men. Spiritualism is the philosophy which integrates within itself the demand for a spiritual life. (shrink)

The notions of subjectivity, affect, emotion, and moral feelings today impregnate the whole of society, and they are becoming increasingly perceptible in the area of scientific knowledge as well.1 This preoccupation with emotions developed initially in the wake of the advent of a more permissive society in the 1970s, and then with changes in the organization of capitalism, where flexible work has replaced the Taylorist and Fordist models of divided labor, and also with the crisis of the social welfare system (...) in the 1980s. In both Europe and North America, mental suffering and mental health problems have gradually come to occupy a prominent position in daily life in developed societies. Indeed, a vast and varied.. (shrink)

Évaluer l’architecture populaire ramène invariablement au savant, quelle que soit la variété des regards (confrontation, imitation, altération, recours, fascination ou rejet), à l’extrême construction savante du populaire et construction populaire du savant. Mais le désir d’architecture renvoie rarement à un désir d’architecte : quand et comment une œuvre architecturale échappe-t-elle à son auteur pour devenir signe d’une culture que chacun se sera appropriée?

"Textes... prononces dans le cadre d'un colloque organise conjointement par le Departement de philosophie de l'Universite de Tours et par l'Association des Amis du Musee Descartes... octobre 1989"--Avant-propos.

Is it proper to call art (or the arts) in any sense 'true' or 'false'? reid suggests that though abstract arts like abstract painting and sculpture, or music, are not true to the independent world in the somewhat guarded sense in which the representative arts are; still the former reveal new aspects of the relationships of space, color and movement and the latter reveals a reality of the relationships of sounds in time. (staff).

During the afternoon of December 21, 1989, in Bucharest, a mass of demonstrators gather in a public square at the request of Nicolae Ceausescu, then president of Romania. In the previous days, students had shaken the country by taking to the streets in protest in the city of Timisoara. These mass protests had been preceded that year by a wave of other social movements that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Now in a broadcast from the (...) balcony of the square, Ceausescu tries to reassure the population while making distressed appeals to preserve the unity of the political regime in the country. In the front row of the assembled crowd... (shrink)

Portuguese translation. Presents a positive vision for reinventing globalization, that out of adversity we can create a better future.

Dans les traditions philosophiques occidentales, c'est à la critique développée par la pensée marxiste que l'on doit de pouvoir aborder l'oeuvre de Moses Hess (1812-1875). Pourtant, le "rabbin des communistes", comme on l'a appelé, fut l'un des penseurs du XIXe siècle qui questionna au plus près les conditions de la liberté et de l'égalité sociales, en même temps qu'il ouvrit la voie à l'idée d'un foyer juif en Palestine, où cette liberté et cette égalité se seraient pleinement épanouies. Dans les (...) études juives, la philosophie de Moses Hess est rarement évoquée, si l'on excepte quelques commentaires qui font de lui ce "communiste et sioniste, qui joua un rôle décisif dans le premier mouvement et inventa virtuellement le second". Le livre de Jean-Louis Bertocchi veut porter un éclairage nouveau sur cette oeuvre pionnière et singulière à bien des égards, dont le coeur est bel et bien la discussion serrée, "en accord divergeant", de la pensée de Spinoza, lu attentivement par Marx lui-même, et qui, dans le ciel d'un humanisme juif émancipé et émancipateur, dessine une constellation en perpétuel mouvement, où scintillent tour à tour philosophie, communisme et sionisme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Culinary traditions and food practices are at the center of our daily lives and therefore constitute an important part of culture. Whether they are part of significant rituals or simply routinely enacted, they tell us something about the way we relate to each other and to the non-human world. In other words, food practices have an ethical dimension. Our paper focuses on the possibility to make objective ethical assessments of problematic cultural practices rooted in culinary traditions as a reply to (...) arguments associated with an ethical relativism according to which cultures produce ethical systems that are self-validating and therefore that cannot be criticized objectively. Drawing from examples involving animal cruelty and production methods harmful to the environment, we argue that it is possible to judge ethically questionable food practices from an objectivist standpoint inspired by moral progress, in contrario to a relativist point of view. Following a short discussion of ethical relativism, we present the outline of an acceptability test for questionable food practices and use it to analyse the case of the dog meat industry in South Korea. (shrink)

Classics of Philosophy, 2/e, is the most comprehensive anthology of writings in Western philosophy in print. Spanning 2500 years of thought, it is ideal for introduction to philosophy and history of philosophy courses that are structured chronologically. More than seventy works by forty-two philosophers as well as fragments from the Pre-Socratics are included, offering students and general readers alike an extensive and economical collection of the major works of the Western tradition. This anthology contains the most important writings from Thales (...) to Rawls; seventeen of these are complete works, while the others are judiciously abridged so that little of value to the student is lost. Unabridged works include such classics as Plato's The Apology, Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, Leibniz's The Monadology, Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Kant's Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals, Mill's Utilitarianism, Russell's A Free Man's Worship, Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism, and Rawls's "Justice as Fairness." A lucid introduction, including a brief biographical sketch, accompanies each of the featured philosophers. Classics of Philosophy, 2/e, provides an extensive view of the most significant stages of growth in Western philosophy, including its birth with the Pre-Socratics as well as its contemporary developments. The second edition includes new selections by Augustine, Berkeley, Hume, Wollstonecraft, Nagel, and Foot. (shrink)

Classics of Philosophy: Volume II, Modern and Contemporary covers the works of philosophers from Descartes to Rawls. Ideal for courses in modern and contemporary philosophy, it includes forty-eight extensive selections--seventeen of them complete--from twenty-nine philosophers. This collection offers an unrivaled introduction to the major works of these periods. A lucid introduction, including a brief biographical sketch, accompanies each of the featured philosophers. Also look for Classics of Philosophy: Volume I, Ancient and Medieval, which covers the works of philosophers from Thales (...) to William of Ockham. In addition, there is a single-volume edition available that combines Volume I and Volume II, providing the most comprehensive anthology of writings in western philosophy in print. (shrink)