We study ultrafilters produced by forcing, obtaining different combinatorics and related Rudin-Keisler ordering; in particular we answer a question of Baumgartner and Taylor regarding tensor products of ultrafilters. Adapting a method of Blass and Mathias, we show that in most cases the combinatorics satisfied by the ultrafilters recapture the forcing notion in the Lévy model.

It is puzzling to notice that in his 1784 essay on Enlightenment, Kant addresses every human being with his watchword « Have the courage to use your own understanding! », while at the same time he seems to restrict the access to the public discussion of matters of common interest to the learned persons. This begs the question: Is the participation in the public debate part and parcel of Kant’s conception of Aufklärung? A positive answer to this question is given (...) by Katerina Deligiorgi in her Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment. A critical assessment of this book will lead us however to consider that Kant has a differentiated approach to enlightenment depending on whether someone is educated or uneducated. Following Rousseau, Kant has come to recognize as a matter of fact this inequality toward the products of culture. Now the two-level conception of enlightenment entailed by this inequality becomes explicit in the 1790s, especially in the very last work Kant has published: The Conflict of the Faculties. (shrink)

Découvert récemment, le premier cours de Paul Tillich sur la philosophie de la religion montre à quel point la philosophie critique de Kant fut une influence déterminante sur la genèse de la pensée tillichienne. Tillich applique la méthode critique de manière ingénieuse pour définir la fonction religieuse. Il voit également dans la notion kantienne de l’inconditionné l’amorce d’une saisie intuitive de la nature irréductiblement irrationnelle de la religion. Pour Tillich, ce noyau mystique du rationalisme kantien mène tout droit au mysterium (...) tremendum et fascinans de la phénoménologie religieuse de Rudolf Otto. Mais Tillich va plus loin en affirmant que notre orientation fondamentale vers l’inconditionné constitue le vrai point de départ du religieux, même lorsque cela se fait sous un déguisement profane. (shrink)

Reading Nietzsche, knowing humanism -- Nietzsche's humanist genealogy -- In the region of likeness: family resemblances -- A single web of meaning -- All in one: horizon, goal, and doctrine -- Nietzsche the terrible -- Reprise and ascent -- Nietzsche's works -- Bibliography -- Index.

In many species of reptiles, sex is determined at fertilization by zygotic sex chromosome composition. In other species, including all crocodilians, most turtles and some lizards, sex is determined by temperature during the earlier stages of gonadal differentiation. The effects of exogenous estrogens, antiestrogens and aromatase inhibitors at different temperatures have unambiguously demonstrated the involvement of estrogens in sexual differentiation of the gonads. Aromatase is the enzyme that converts androgens to estrogens. Gonadal aromatase activity is well correlated with gonadal structure. (...) It increases exponentially in differentiating ovaries, whereas it remains low in differentiating testes. Moreover, there is a high correlation between the thermosensitive periods for both ovary differentiation and increase in aromatase activity. We suggest that a thermosensitive factor intervenes, directly or indirectly, in the transcriptional regulation of the aromatase gene in reptiles with temperature‐dependent sex determination. (shrink)

We prove various results on the notion of ordinal ultrafilters introduced by J. Baumgartner. In particular, we show that this notion of ultrafilter complexity is independent of the more familiar Rudin-Keisler ordering.

On est porté à sous-estimer le rôle authentiquement productif de la raison dans la Dialectique transcendantale de la Critique de la raison pure. Cet article propose une illustration de ce rôle à l'occasion des Paralogismes de la raison pure, qui ne sont rendus possibles que sur la base d'une fiction négative opérée à partir du sens interne. Cette illustration s'inscrit dans la perspective plus large d'une interprétation de la Dialectique transcendantale en vertu d'une théorie du schématisme, laissée au second plan (...) par Kant en raison de la prépondérance des motivations critiques.We tend to underestimate the authentically productive role of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. This paper suggests an illustration of this role as it can be traced in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, which themselves became possible on the basis of a negative fiction exerted toward the inner sense. This illustration is part of a larger perspective aiming at an interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic on the ground of a theory of schematism, which is somehow overshadowed by Kant's critical intentions. (shrink)

When we reconstruct Fichte's philosophy of nature of the Jena period, we notice striking similarities between the conception of organism in theDoctrine of Scienceand Schelling's corresponding developments in his earlyNaturphilosophie.Even though both thinkers agree to consider organic nature within the framework of transcendental idealism, it is nevertheless possible at this stage to discover slight differences in their interpretation which announce their future disagreement on the status of a philosophy of nature. If, for instance, organism for both Fichte and Schelling can (...) be considered as ananalogonof the absolute, much depends on whether they conceive this analogy from a practical or theoretical point of view. (shrink)

»Als dies geschrieben wurde, war das Verständnis für Fichtes Bedeutung noch geringer als heute. Ganz allmählich bricht sich die Einsicht Bahn, wieviel von diesem großen Denker gerade für die Transzendentalphilosophie zu lernen ist., S. 95.«.

»Als dies geschrieben wurde, war das Verständnis für Fichtes Bedeutung noch geringer als heute. Ganz allmählich bricht sich die Einsicht Bahn, wieviel von diesem großen Denker gerade für die Transzendentalphilosophie zu lernen ist., S. 95.«.

The aim of this paper is to set out some features of Kant’s conception of transcendental philosophy. I would like to argue that this philosophy, although it is situated at a higher level of discourse than common knowledge, does not essentially transcend the limits that it sets to this knowledge. In order to achieve this, I stress the fact that Kant regards experience as a mere “possibility.” Now, the Critique of Pure Reason explains that the human understanding cannot conceive of (...) an absolute possibility, but only a relative one, namely a possibility that is tied to conditions. And possible experience as a whole is no exception here. Hence the expression “conditions of the possibility of experience” which designates the topic of the Transcendental Analytic. This also means that experience is “contingent”. It is not in itself necessary; rather, it is dependent upon certain conditions. But then we learn that the most important transcendental conditions for this experience, i.e., the dynamic principles, are themselves “contingent”. Consequently, these transcendental conditions are not unconditioned; they in turn depend on empirical conditions, over which they have no control. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that aesthetics had its place in Fichte’s early system of the WL, and that due to contingent circumstances he did not have the chance to expound it. But we can reconstruct the main lines of what his aesthetics would have looked like if we pay attention to the article sent to Schiller in 1795 on the “spirit” and the “letter” in philosophy, completing it with the courses he gave in the preceding months (...) on that topic and with other sources. We discover not only that aesthetics is an important part of the philosophical system but that art stands close the act of philosophising itself. In fact, both the philosopher and the artist draw from the same original source: “spirit” as defined in Kant’s third Critique. For the philosopher as well as for the artist the central faculty is then “imagination”, an imagination that relies on “feeling”. In the end Fichte sketches an aesthetics based on the creative genius of the artist, leaving little room for the faculty of judgment and for taste, that is: the receptive attitude toward beauty, that play a prominent role in Kant’s aesthetics. (shrink)

La première partie de la grande étude de Husserl sur le thème de la Krisis a pour titre «La crise des sciences comme expression de la crise radicale de la vie de l'humanité européenne». Par cette formulation, on pourrait être porté à croire que Husserl voit dans la crise de la science la simple conséquence secondaire d'une crise beaucoup plus profonde se situant à l'échelle de l'humanité européenne entière. Et pourtant il n'en est rien. Dans la suite du texte, Husserl (...) s'applique à démontrer que le rapport d'implication entre l'humanité en crise et les sciences doit plutôt être considéré à l'inverse. Le problème de l'humanité européenne réside au premier chef dans cette crise des sciences; si bien qu'il est sans doute possible, dans un premier temps, de voir dans la crise des sciences une simple «expression » de la détresse de l'Europe, mais à y regarder de plus près, c'est celle-là qui est cause de la crise radicale de la vie de l'humanité européenne. (shrink)

Schelling fait remarquer que la théorie kantienne du mal radical repose fondamentalement sur un acte de liberté, ce qui n’est pas le cas chez Fichte. Dans cet article, nous voulons examiner le bien-fondé de la thèse de Schelling selon laquelle les conceptions kantienne et fichtéenne du mal moral présentent d’importantes divergences. Pour I’essentiel, en effet, la position de Fichte s’éloigne de celle de Kanten ce qu’elle réhabilite une certaine forme d’humanisme en réduisant le mal à l’inertie de l’être raisonnable fini (...) et à l’ignorance dans laquelle il a tendance à se maintenir. Contrairement à Kant donc, jamais Fichte ne pourra admettre que la pleine conscience de la loi morale laisse encore. ouverte la possibilité de choisir délibérément le mal.Shelling contends that Kant’s theory of radical evil, unlike Fichte’s, is fundamentally based on liberty. In this article, we wish to examine the relevance of Schelling’s thesis according to which the Kantian and Fichtean conceptions of moral evil bear important differences. Essentially, in deed, Fichte’s position differs from that of Kant in that it restores a certain form of humanism by reducing evil to the inertia of a finite rational being and to the ignorance in which it tends to persist. Thus, unlike Kant, Fichte could never admit that full consciousness of the moral law allows the possibility to choose evil deliberately. (shrink)