A translation of selected correspondence between Jean Wahl and Karl Jaspers on Descartes and Kierkegaard.

Parues pour la premiere fois en 1938, les Etudes kierkegaardiennes de Jean Wahl constitutent a tous egards une somme incontournable pour comprendre le sens de la philosophie de Kierkegaard et la place si originale qu'elle occupe dans l'histoire de la philosophie. L'auteur s'efforce d'y faire apparaitre le lien existant entre les evenements qui marquerent la vie de Kierkegaard et la formation de ses concepts fondamentaux. Par ce biais, l'auteur montre comment la theorie des trois stades de l'existence fait appel a (...) une dialectique qualitative, opposee a la dialectique hegelienne. L'auteur montre enfin que la theorie des trois stades de la croyance et de l'existence qui lui sont liees sont inseparables d'une lutte entreprise contre les pensees qui contribuerent a la genese de la pensee de Kierkegaard et qu'il s'agit a present pour lui de depasser: il n'y a pas de chemin qui conduit de la pensee, du cogito, a l'etre, au sum, car l'existence est l'etre hors de toute pensee. (shrink)

Cette lettre, publiée ici pour la première fois en français, dans sa version originale, a été envoyée par Jean Wahl à Martin Heidegger le 12 décembre 1937. Elle répond à une lettre que Heidegger avait écrite à Wahl une semaine plus tôt au sujet des thèses de Wahl dans la célèbre conférence « Subjectivité et transcendance ». [1] Dans cette conférence, qui a été décrite comme « un tournant dans l’histoire intellectuelle du XXe siècle », [2] Wahl s’interrogeait, entre autres, (...) sur la mesure dans laquelle la philosophie pouvait fournir une théorie générale des intuitions d’existences particulières telles que Kierkegaard ou Nietzsche. En d’autres termes, une philosophie de l’existence était-elle possible, ou ces existences elles-mêmes n’étaient-elles pas « à la fois plus ‘existentielles’ et plus vraiment philosophiques que les philosophies de l’existence »? [3] Dans sa réponse, Heidegger déclarait que sa propre pensée ne pouvait être qualifiée de philosophie de l’existence, car elle ne s’occupait de l’être humain que dans la mesure où celui-ci pouvait éclairer l’être lui-même. Wahl, cependant, n’était pas convaincu, et dans la lettre publiée ici, il défend à la fois sa décision d’appeler Heidegger un philosophe de l’existence et propose plusieurs objections à la manière dont Heidegger essaie de répondre à la question de l’être. (shrink)

N Rennes le 10 janvier 1716, dom Deschamps entra dans les ordres le 8 septembre 1733. Il resta au prieur de Montreuil-Bellay, pr s de Saumur le 19 avril 1774. Il fut nomm procureur du couvent, c'est- -dire simplement conome. A partir de 1761, il r sida au ch teau des Ormes o le marquis d'Argenson lui donna asile. En 1774 il mourut au couvent muni des sacraments. Il entreprit une r futation du syst me de la nature du baron (...) d'Holbach et une r futation de Spinoza. Il tenta beaucoup de d marches, ce qu'il appelle ses tentatives, aupr s des principaux esprits de son temps, Helv tius, Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau; c'est surtout avec Robinet qu'il eut une longue correspondance. Dans cet uvre Jean Wahl montre que ce moine qui pr tend au titre d'ath e clair, cet homme qui tait en contact avec Voltaire et Rousseau et dont les id es ont gagn l'admiration de Diderot, m rite plus d'attention et d'int r t qu'il n'a re u jusqu'ici. (shrink)

Parues pour la premiere fois en 1938, les Etudes kierkegaardiennes de Jean Wahl constitutent a tous egards une somme incontournable pour comprendre le sens de la philosophie de Kierkegaard et la place si originale qu'elle occupe dans l'histoire de la philosophie. L'auteur s'efforce d'y faire apparaitre le lien existant entre les evenements qui marquerent la vie de Kierkegaard et la formation de ses concepts fondamentaux. Par ce biais, l'auteur montre comment la theorie des trois stades de l'existence fait appel a (...) une dialectique qualitative, opposee a la dialectique hegelienne. L'auteur montre enfin que la theorie des trois stades de la croyance et de l'existence qui lui sont liees sont inseparables d'une lutte entreprise contre les pensees qui contribuerent a la genese de la pensee de Kierkegaard et qu'il s'agit a present pour lui de depasser: il n'y a pas de chemin qui conduit de la pensee, du cogito, a l'etre, au sum, car l'existence est l'etre hors de toute pensee. (shrink)

Although hailing from cognate analytical schools, the contributors to Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter's edited volume Conversation and Cognition hold a remarkable diversity of views on the nature of "mental states" and their import for the purposes of analyzing naturally occurring interaction. I offer a critical analysis of some of the contributors' discussions of cognition in social interaction in an effort to clarify some obstinate issues with respect to the meanings of words in our cognitive vocabulary and their (...) identification in analyses of conversation. (shrink)

Cet article se demande pourquoi Kant évoque une preuve ontologique de l’existence de Dieu dans l’ Opus postumum après l’avoir abandonnée dans la Critique de la raison pure. Il met d’abord en lumière l’importance des critiques des Schwärmer pour qui la religion n’est pas une affaire de la raison. Puis il montre comment Kant y répond en posant un lien analytique entre Dieu et la loi morale dans la Critique de la raison pratique et en érigeant la théologie en « (...) principe suprême » de la philosophie transcendantale dans l’ Opus postumum. Il conclut que Dieu existe dans la reconnaissance du sujet dans le monde. (shrink)

A collection of essays in French or English on the reception of Cartesian philosphy.

While the philosopher Rosi Braidotti sees her own, new materialist work as opposed to the analysis of biopolitics from Heidegger to Agamben, the present contribution establishes a dialogue between these two lineages. Starting with Aristotle’s distinction between zōē and bíos politikos, it puts the analyses of biopolitics in immunitarian modernity in conversation with new materialism conceptualizations of affirmative difference and relationality. Replacing the negative logic of identity/alterity, life/death, dualism or dialectics and desire-as-lack of the Western philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions with (...) human and more-than-human post-individualistic subjectivity as part of a rhizomatic web, NM proposes a groundbreaking shift to post-anthropocentrism. The biopolitical fear of viral contamination cedes to viral contamination as the generative vanishing of borderlines between self and other. In this vital geocentrism marking a new kind of politics, the sym-poetic life force of zōē generates complex allegiances between heterogeneous entities in a shared world. (shrink)

Based upon a colloquium held in October 2006, this book comprises fourteen essays concerning Nietzsche’s concept, evaluation, and practice of philology. Jean-François Balaudé and Patrick Wotling’s introduction gives an idea of the complicated relation between philology and philosophy in Nietzsche’s oeuvre. They point out that, although philology and philosophy might be seen as two distinct professions, connected also to different phases in Nietzsche’s life, the two are intimately related from the beginning and remain that way. The ultimate concern of the (...) book, though, is Nietzsche’s notion of philosophy: can his understanding and practice of it be understood in terms of philology, namely, as the continuation... (shrink)

So far, animals in fables have almost exclusively been studied as symbolic representatives of human behaviour. New perspectives are opened up by Human-Animal Studies which focus on the animals themselves and human-animal relationships. Inspired by this approach, this article examines five fables of Graeco-Roman antiquity which are connected by the motif of the vicious dog. On the basis of philological interpretation it is shown to what extent and with which intention the dogs are anthropomorphised and at the same time represented (...) as real animals. Interestingly, the human protagonists usually don´t blame the dogs and draw a clear borderline between animals and humans. It seems that successful communication is possible only within the same species. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the representations of Black women in contrast to Black men found within Frantz Fanon’s philosophical work Black Skin, White Masks. I propose that while Fanon’s racial dialectical work is very significant, he often lacks acknowledgment of the multidimensionality of the Black woman’s lived experience specifically. Drawing on the theory of intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, I argue that Fanon does not recognize the different layers of oppression operating in Black women’s lives to the degree (...) that he fails to include them within his framework of both liberation and resistance from racial oppression. (shrink)

Previous conversation analytic studies of institutional interaction included analyses of empathy in interaction. These studies revealed that professionals may use empathy displays not only to validate the client’s worry, but also to perform actions oriented to other institutional goals and tasks such as closing off a troubles-telling sequence. In this article, we present an analysis of empathically designed responses in Dutch telephone counseling. The data consist of 36 calls from the Alcohol and Drugs Info Line. In some of the calls, (...) clients’ troubles-telling includes ‘emotion discourse’, that is, descriptions of their feelings/emotions. Counselors may respond to these descriptions using conventional empathy displays like ‘I can imagine that’ and ‘I understand that’ in a range of verbal and prosodic variations. The analysis reveals that these responses open up advice sequences that vary in the extent to which they treat the client’s articulated feelings as valid. Most are affiliating, treating the client’s feelings as the basis for advice, while some are less affiliative, putting the client’s feelings into perspective or implicitly questioning their legitimacy. Hence, empathically designed responses are pivots to advice-giving. (shrink)

Aims : The Modified Reasons for Smoking Scale (MRSS) is a widely accepted scale that measures psychological functions of smoking. The scale has been translated in Dutch and has been validated, in order to be used in clinical smoking cessation practice in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. This study examined the factorial structure, reliability and validity of the scale in a sample of smokers, who are characterized by a high level of dependence and an explicit motivation to stop smoking. Method (...) : The participants were 383 smokers, who volunteered at the stop-smoking clinic of a Belgian university hospital, and completed the translated scale. They were administered the translated MRSS, the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND). Through a clinical interview, smoking behaviour and smoking history was assessed (daily smoking consumption, years smoking, number of quit attempts, weeks stopped, alcohol and coffee consumption, CO level). Exploratory factor analysis was performed. Internal consistency was studied in order to examine the reliability. The concurrent validity was assessed by means of manova, anova and correlation analysis. Results : Factor analysis identified four factors, named stimulation, pleasure of smoking, social smoking and automatism of smoking. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.65 (automatism) to 0.72 (stimulation). manova indicated the influence of the variables age, sex, daily consumption and the FTND (the latter two variables showed a dose-dependent association with each subscale). Regression analysis revealed a relationship with dependence indicators, namely: the daily consumption, the number and duration of previous quit attempts, FTND, CO level and daily coffee intake. Conclusions : The Dutch translation of the MRSS identified four factors and revealed acceptable validity and reliability. The adapted version of the translated scale as a component of the psychological assessment procedure in a smoking cessation treatment in Dutch-speaking areas should be implemented. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur Frontex, l’Agence européenne pour la gestion de la coopération opérationnelle aux frontières extérieures des États membres de l’Union européenne et de l’espace Schengen, et plus précisément sur les nouveaux procédés utilisés afin de protéger les frontières extérieures de l’Union européenne. Ces procédés régis par de nouveaux médias technologiques amènent une dématérialisation des frontières extérieures et de nouveaux mécanismes d’exclusion.The subject of this article is Frontex, the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External (...) Borders of the Member States of the European Union and the Schengen area, and more specifically the new procedures applied to protect the European Union’s external borders. These procedures are managed through new technological media, which dematerialise external borders and bring in new mechanisms of exclusion. (shrink)

Im Ausgang vom historischen Scholastikbild Brentanos wird nach den Quellen und Interpretationshinsichten gefragt, die für Brentanos frühe und späte Fassung des Intentionalen leitend waren. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Voraussetzung der Intentionalität in der aristotelischen Sachproblematik der Wahrnehmung liegt (De an. 424 al7), die Brentano mit dem scholastischen Begriff obiective interpretiert, einem Terminus, den Brentano von der Neuscholastik, aber auch von Descartes und dem spätmittelalterlichen Konzeptualismus her kannte. Es ist nun entscheidend, daß in dieser Terminologie nur ein sehr eingeschränkter Aspekt (...) der scholastischen Intentionalität thematisch ist, der in seiner internen Problematik den Ansatzpunkt für alle späteren Reinterpretationen abgibt. (shrink)

This article explores the discursive uses of a self-quotation in adolescent talk. The self-quotation uses the quotative marker be + like to convey or project bold statements as part of a larger narrative. We will demonstrate how the preface leading up to the self-quotation is designed as hard to counter, and instructs the hearer how to understand what comes next. The self-quotation, on the other hand, constitutes the assessment as a `mere characterization' that provides the speaker with a number of (...) opportunities for testing the proposed view. Speakers are thus able to bolster potentially controversial views against refutation while also giving them a preliminary status. These features make for an interesting conversational resource that enables speakers and recipients to engage in a collaborative process of putting potentially bold statements to the test. (shrink)

Im Ausgang vom historischen Scholastikbild Brentanos wird nach den Quellen und Interpretationshinsichten gefragt, die für Brentanos frühe und späte Fassung des Intentionalen leitend waren. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Voraussetzung der Intentionalität in der aristotelischen Sachproblematik der Wahrnehmung liegt (De an. 424 al7), die Brentano mit dem scholastischen Begriff obiective interpretiert, einem Terminus, den Brentano von der Neuscholastik, aber auch von Descartes und dem spätmittelalterlichen Konzeptualismus her kannte. Es ist nun entscheidend, daß in dieser Terminologie nur ein sehr eingeschränkter Aspekt (...) der scholastischen Intentionalität thematisch ist, der in seiner internen Problematik den Ansatzpunkt für alle späteren Reinterpretationen abgibt. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)