Cette biographie du savant de la Renaissance s'attache à écrire son parcours. Né en 1548 à Nola (province de Naples), Giordano Bruno est ordonné prêtre et docteur en théologie en 1575. A Genève, il étudie à l'université, puis il en est chassé. A Oxford, il rédige les deux trilogies de dialogues italiens, ainsi que "L'infini", l'"Univers et les mondes", "L'expulsion de la bête triomphante.".

Il s’agit de repartir de la découverte et de l’acquisition, par John Toland, des principaux écrits de Giordano Bruno afin de déterminer l’impact de la philosophie nolaine sur la pensée du philosophe irlandais. Plus précisément, nous analyserons l’interprétation tolandienne de l’oeuvre de Bruno qui figure dans le mémoire qu’il adressa à ce sujet à son ami le baron Hohendorf. De là, nous dégagerons les grandes lignes de l’infinitisme panthéiste qui figurent dans les écrits ultérieurs de Toland pour tenter (...) d’identifier, d’une part, ses emprunts au philosophe italien et, de l’autre, sa façon d’intégrer ou d’incorporer à sa propre pensée ces divers philosophèmes bruniens, en versant ainsi du vin nouveau dans de vieilles outres. (shrink)

Cette recherche est une analyse rétrospective de la notion de vinculum chez Giordano Bruno, des derniers traités magiques jusqu’aux dialogues italiens. À partir de cette comparaison interne à la pensée brunienne, on peut observer la torsion à laquelle Bruno soumet la réflexion magique en la naturalisant et en la libérant de sa dimension occulte, pour la faire rentrer dans la structure ontologique et physique déjà élaborée dans les premiers ouvrages. Cette opération permet d’émanciper la notion brunienne de vinculum (...) d’une interprétation exclusivement magico-hermétique, ainsi que de clarifier son rapport avec cette tradition. On constate ainsi comment la notion de vinculum ne parvient pas à Bruno exclusivement par ses sources magiques, en particulier Ficin et Agrippa, mais aussi à travers les références à cette même notion dans la définition théologique thomiste du dogme trinitaire, dans sa réfutation du trinitarisme et du Saint-Esprit comme lien ou vinculum amoris entre le Père et le Fils. Cette relation est transposée du lien théologique entre Père et Fils au lien naturel qui unit le Dieu/Un à l’univers engendré et non plus créé. (shrink)

S'il est vrai que le XVIe siècle italien, ou Cinquecento, correspond à une affirmation extraordinaire des pouvoirs de l'image, il est également incontestable que cette profusion s'accompagne d'une stratification théorique réunissant, par exemple, la théologie et la philosophie, la magie naturelle et la morale, la médecine et la politique. Peut-on définir un fil directeur dans cette diversité thématique? Peut-on définir une "unité systématique" ou une homogénéité, permettant de mettre en évidence la spécificité de la notion et de la pratique de (...) l'image à la Renaissance, ou bien faut-il accepter l'hétérogénéité des perspectives? C'est de telles questions que part l'auteur pour interroger la pensée de Renaissance, en construisant une cartographie des images à partir d'un corpus d'auteurs précis : Nicolas de Cues, Marsile Ficin, Pic de la Mirandole, Le Tasse, Giordano Bruno. Au terme du parcours, qui implique un réexamen d'ouvrages majeurs comme les Essais d'iconologie de Panofsky, Devant l'image de Georges Didi-Huberman et Pouvoirs de l'image de Louis Marin, il apparaît que la différence des approches et des questions traitées n'empêche pas de déterminer une vision d'ensemble dans la pensée de la Renaissance. (shrink)

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to (...) confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. (shrink)

Political enunciation remains an enigma as long as it is considered from the standpoint of information transfer. It remains as unintelligible as religious talk. The paper explores the specificty of this regime and especially the strange link it has with the canonical definition of enunciation in linguistics and semiotics. The ‘political circle’ is reconstituted and thus also the reasons why a ‘transparent’ or ‘rational'political speech act destroys the very conditions of group formation.

The book outlines the historical development of Public Law and the state from ancient times to the modern day, offering an account of relevant events in parallel with a general historical background, establishing and explaining the relationships between political, religious, and economic events.

Neuropsychological studies suggest the existence of lateralized networks that represent categorical and coordinate types of spatial information. In addition, studies with neural networks have shown that they encode more effectively categorical spatial judgments or coordinate spatial judgments, if their input is based, respectively, on units with relatively small, nonoverlapping receptive fields, as opposed to units with relatively large, overlapping receptive fields. These findings leave open the question of whether interactive processes between spatial detectors and types of spatial relations can be (...) modulated by spatial attention. We hypothesized that spreading the attention window to encompass an area that includes two objects promotes coordinate spatial relations, based on coarse coding by large, overlapping, receptive fields. In contrast, narrowing attention to encompass an area that includes only one of the objects benefits categorical spatial relations, by effectively parsing space. By use of a cueing procedure, the spatial attention window was manipulated to select regions of differing areas. As predicted, when the attention window was large, coordinate spatial transformations were noticed faster than categorical transformations; in contrast, when the attention window was relatively smaller, categorical spatial transformations were noticed faster than coordinate transformations. Another novel finding was that coordinate changes were noticed faster when cueing an area that included both objects as well as the empty space between them than when simultaneously cueing both areas including the objects while leaving the gap between them uncued. (shrink)

The topic of liberty in Foucault becomes controversial when related to the objections, predicted by the author, for the subjects to be located outside the power networks. However, Foucault also points out potential for resistance and a notion of freedom involved by historical circumstances, which suggests original normative questions. In order to analyze the tension between domination and freedom in his work, and what is normatively reflected, two main directions are noted: the idea of freedom as something inherent in power (...) relations and as the foundation of the critical exercise of knowledge. It is argued that Foucault`s estimation of dimensions of freedom generates singular implications of evaluation of social conditions based on a normative temperance. (shrink)

Bruno Latour is best known for his work in the cultural study of science. In this pamphlet he turns his attention to another worthy pursuit: the project of peace. As one might expect, Latour gives us a radically different picture of this project than Kant or the philosophes, asserting that the West has been in a constant state of war both with other cultures and its own—although unwittingly so. Read through the lens of his trademark take on "the modern," (...) his arguments are original, thoughtful, and, as usual, provocative. (shrink)

Just War Theory is becoming increasingly important to nations when they contemplate and participate in war. This book recognizes the timeliness of the topic and so seeks, in concrete historical terms, to deal with the issue of constraining war on the basis of moral principles.

Este artigo propõe-se a expor as reflexões de dois filósofos contemporâneos, quais sejam, Michel Foucault e Giorgio Agamben, de modo a promover um paralelo,ou mesmo uma analogia, entre duas noções que permeiam as obras dos respectivos autores. Estas noções consistem no que Foucault chamou de Racismo de Estado, e no que Agamben nomeou de Tanatopolítica. O contexto, e tambémo objeto, no qual se efetiva este intento é, em uma palavra, a política totalitária do Estado nazista.Ambos os autores compreendem os fenômenos (...) totalitários a partir do ponto de vista da biopolítica, entretanto, ao tratar do Estado Nacional-socialista, Foucault identifica nele um paradoxo, sem, contudo desenvolver com maior profundidade a imbricação que ali se deu. Agamben, por sua vez, concebe semelhante paradoxo como pertencendo a uma forma de fazer política que já traz, desde a sua origem, os fundamentos que permitiram a emergência do fenômeno da forma como surgiu e que fora identificada pelos ditos autores, ou seja, trazendo em si tanto elementos antigos, como a glória e os ideais de sangue, quanto modernos, como a eugenia. A pesquisa bibliográfica que aqui se desenvolveu deu-se na leitura de, basicamente, três obras dos supraditos autores, quais sejam, Em defesa da sociedade, História da sexualidade I – A vontade de saber, de um lado, e Homo sacer – O poder soberano e a vida nua I, de outro. (shrink)

The texts of the book are concerned with G. Bergmann's open and new problems and their active role on issues in contemporary metaphysics, like the ontology of ties, connexions and relations, problems of exemplification, substrates and tropes theories, particulars, persistence and the metaphysics of space, time and existence. Papers deal with these themes by themselves, or discuss them in an associated way: some of them aim to clarify the complicated conceptual Relations Bergmann have enlarged with major themes of philosophers like (...) Aristotle, Brentano, Meinong and Sellars. The purpose of the book is to provide some light on his central interests, but also in regard of the evolution of the actual scope of his thought. (shrink)