We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions that presided over the modern invention of nature still claim any cogency? In _Nature as Event_, Didier Debaise shows how new narratives and cosmologies are necessary to rearticulate that which until now had been separated. Following William (...) James and Alfred North Whitehead, Debaise presents a pluralistic approach to nature. What would happen if we attributed subjectivity and potential to all beings, human and nonhuman? Why should we not consider aesthetics and affect as the fabric that binds all existence? And what if the senses of importance and value were no longer understood to be exclusively limited to the human? (shrink)

The thought of Isabelle Stengers undeniably holds a very particular place in the field of contemporary philosophy. For anyone attempting to situate it, the difficulties are innumerable. These not only concern the multiplicity of objects that she has explored, or the novel articulation between practices that she has effected, but also the philosophical lines of filiation within which she has inscribed her work. It would be in vain to establish orders of priority or seek to establish a hierarchy of the (...) set of objects that punctuate the development of her work with the aim of giving coherence to what nevertheless presents itself in a dispersed manner. Would one find in The Invention of Modern Science a book capable of... (shrink)

After a few general remarks on the theoretical stakes of Simondon’s lexicological inventions, a lexicon is offered to help the reader enter fully into his philosophy. Quotations are used to discuss and define six key notions: metastability, transduction, hylemorphism, « disparation », singularity and the transindividual.

Modernity, in Simondon’s view, is constituted on the basis of a paradigm that runs through all the realms of experience: being individual. It could thus be defined as a set of operations, techniques, and forms of knowledge that seek to extract the individual dimensions of that which, in reality, appears as essentially attached, intertwined and mutable. Therefore one of the possibilities to overcome certain problems that have accompanied modern thinking could be found in what we call « relational thinking,,) where (...) the relation holds a central position. (shrink)

Deleuze's text on dramatization has a peculiar place in his philosophy. In this text, he attributes, for the first time in his own name, a singular function to philosophy. I aim to show that all the notions developed in ‘The Method of Dramatization’ – such as the transformation of the status of Ideas, the first development of a theory of individuation, the decentring of subjectivity, the critique of representation – are part of one general function: to grant events the importance (...) they call for. If a method is required for such an endeavour, it is because thought must become the site of the maximal intensification of what – beyond a psychological or an anthropological point of view – is of importance. (shrink)

Pragmatism presents itself as a technical reflection upon experimentation. This technique takes two forms : the evaluation of the propositions, utterances, and ideas through their effects ; the construction and invention of new propositions in charge of accounting for experimentation as a continuous movement of changes and transformations. This article attempts to reclaim this technical approach and to build on its basis a reflection on power . Such a reflection must break free from any definition which would link power to (...) conservation, domination or mastery, and favour an approach attentive to effects and transformations. (shrink)

Haim Callev _The Stream of Consciousness in the Films of Alain Resnais_ New York: McGruer Publishing, 1997 ISBN 965-90162-0-4 250 pp.

In this article, I claim that Stengers’ interpretation of Whitehead’s speculative philosophy is organized around the concept of “infection.” In focusing on thisconcept it becomes possible to link process concepts such as “societies,” “environment,” and “historical trajectories” in a real philosophy of life. I have analyzedthe singularity of such a philosophy that Stengers calls a “culture of interstices” and its epistemological dimensions.

Le livre de Jean-Luc Gouin se présente comme une introduction à la philosophie de Hegel. Il cherche à retrouver ce qu'il y a de vivant dans cette pensée, à retrouver les débats et les nécessités qui l'animent. L'ambition de l'ouvrage est de mettre en perspective ce qui, en deçà des différentes propositions ou domaines, constitue la pensée hégélienne, ce qui en est le véritable moteur, de «déceler une certaine structure mouvante dans l'ensemble de l'œuvre du penseur». Dès lors, il s'écarte (...) à la fois d'une recherche sur un domaine particulier, comme la conception hégélienne de l'État ou du Droit, et d'une présentation générale de l'œuvre. Il vise plutôt à s'installer dans le mouvement même de la pensée hégélienne, dans cet élément «vivant» qui structure et traverse l'ensemble des domaines. L'auteur revient à plusieurs reprises sur sa volonté de «présenter dialectiquement la dialectique. Mieux: hégéliennement l'hégélianisme». La dialectique a souvent été posée, à juste titre, comme cet élément du mouvement hégélien, comme ce qui traverse et donne sens à l'ensemble de l'œuvre. Mais il faut alors ajouter, pour J.-L. Gouin, que c'est à partir d'un ensemble de concepts que la dialectique peut jouer ce rôle et c'est donc plutôt à une «constellation», à une «structure» qu'il faut se référer. «Cette structure se cristallise autour de quatre notions fondamentales. Il s'agit des notions de Sujet, de Négativité, de Résultat et de Réconciliation». (shrink)