Source: Author: Shima Peimanfard, Mohsen Hanif This essay sets out to study the function of hybridity and mimicry in Jean Rhy’s acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s theoretical framework in this regard. In this novel, Antoinette emerges as the “Other” who aims to prove herself to the “Centre”. Undergoing extreme sufferings, the heroine wistfully ponders mimicry as an impulse to break out of her mare’s nest and to establish herself within one culture. Indeed, unlike (...) what Bhabha believes mimicry cannot upset the total authority of the “Centre”. Meanwhile, Antoinette used it as a result of her longings for the position of the “Centre” which she is unable to attain because of her hybrid existence. Countering Homi K. Bhabha’s central argument, this essay contends that Antoinette’s mimicry of Englishness fails to fend off the norms of the superior power, but partakes in celebrating the very ideals that Bhabah’s theory is trying to keep at bay. ]]>. (shrink)

One of the strongest strands in Nancy's philosophy is an attempt to rethink community and the very idea of the social in a way that does not ground these ideas in some individual subject or subjectivity. The fundamental argument of this book is that being is always 'being with', that 'I' is not prior to 'we', that existence is essentially co-existence. He thinks this being together, not as a comfortable enclosure in a pre-existing group, but as a mutual abandonment and (...) exposure to each other, one that would preserve the 'I' and its freedom in a mode of imagining community as neither a 'society of spectacle' nor via some form of 'authenticity'. (shrink)

A collection of five essays of French philosopher Nancy, originally published in 1985-86: The Inoperative Community, Myth Interpreted, Literary Communism, Shattered Love, and Of Divine Places.

The Transcendence of the Ego may be regarded as a turning-point in the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre. Prior to the writing of this essay, published in France in 1937, Sartre had been intimately acquainted with the phenomenological movement which originated in Germany with Edmund Husserl. It is a fundamental tenet of Husserl, the notion of a transcendent ego, which is here attacked by Sartre. This disagreement with Husserl has great importance for Sartre and facilitated the transition from phenomenology (...) to the doctrine of Being and Nothingness. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it (...) accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes. Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

It is a popular thought that emotions play an important epistemic role. Thus, a considerable number of philosophers find it compelling to suppose that emotions apprehend the value of objects and events in our surroundings. I refer to this view as the Epistemic View of emotion. In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has so far received much less attention. On this account, emotions do not constitute a form of epistemic access to specific axiological (...) aspects of their objects. Instead it proposes that they are ways of taking a stand or position on the world. I refer to this as the Position-Taking View of emotion. Whilst some authors seem sympathetic to this view, this it has so far not been systematically motivated and elaborated. In this paper, I fill this gap and propose a more adequate account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm. I start by highlighting the specific way in which emotions are directed at something, which I contrast with the intentionality of perception and other forms of apprehension. I then go on to offer a specific account of the valence of emotion and show how this account and the directedness of emotions makes them intelligible as a way of taking a position on something. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophical and political thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked a revolution in post-war (...) thought and literature. In What is Literature? Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write. (shrink)

The last and most poignant of these essays is The Intruder, Nancys philosophical meditation on his heart transplant.

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, Notebooks for a Ethics is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to Being and Nothingness , Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his death in 1980. Presented (...) here for the first time in English, the Notebooks reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other--among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt--he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the Critique of Dialectical Reason . The Notebooks themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophical and political thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked a revolution in post-war (...) thought and literature. In _What is Literature?_ Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write. (shrink)

The central problem posed in these essays, collected from over a decade, is how in the wake of Western ontologies to conceive the coming, the birth that characterises being. The first part of this book, 'Existence' asks how, today, one can give sense or meaning to existence as such, arguing that existence itself, as it comes nude into the world, must now be our 'sense'. In examining what this birth to presence might be, we should not ask what presence 'is'; (...) rather, we should conceive presence as presence to someone, including to presence itself. The second section, 'Poetry', asks: What if art exposes this? In writing, in the voice, in painting? And what if art is exposed to it? How does it inscribe the coming of existence as such? The author's trajectory in this book crosses those of Hegel, Schlegel, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger, in their comments on art and politics, existence and corporeality, everyday life and its modes of existence, and ecstasy. An analysis that dares this crossing involves all the varied accounts of existence, political and philosophical, as well as all the realms of poetry. (shrink)

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Ego was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea . The Transcendence of the Ego is the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many subsequent (...) writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Ego offers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness : the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

This book is a profound and eagerly anticipated investigation into what is left of a monotheistic religious spirit—notably, a minimalist faith that is neither confessional nor credulous. Articulating this faith as works and as an objectless hope, Nancy deconstructs Christianity in search of the historical and reflective conditions that provided its initial energy. Working through Blanchot and Nietzsche, re-reading Heidegger and Derrida, Nancy turns to the Epistle of Saint James rather than those of Saint Paul, discerning in it the primitive (...) essence of Christianity as hope. -/- The “religion that provided the exit from religion,” as he terms Christianity, consists in the announcement of an end. It is the announcement that counts, however, rather than any finality. In this announcement there is a proximity to others and to what was once called parousia. But parousia is no longer presence; it is no longer the return of the Messiah. Rather, it is what is near us and does not cease to open and to close, a presence deferred yet imminent. -/- In a demystified age where we are left with a vision of a self-enclosed world—in which humans are no longer mortals facing an immortal being, but entities whose lives are accompanied by the time of their own decline—parousia stands as a question. Can we venture the risk of a decentered perspective, such that the meaning of the world can be found both inside and outside, within and without our so-immanent world? -/- The deconstruction of Christianity that Nancy proposes is neither a game nor a strategy. It is an invitation to imagine a strange faith that enacts the inadequation of life to itself. Our lives overflow the self-contained boundaries of their biological and sociological interpretations. Out of this excess, wells up a fragile, overlooked meaning that is beyond both confessionalism and humanism. (shrink)

This book is a rich collection of philosophical essays radically interrogating key notions and preoccupations of the phenomenological tradition. While using Heidegger’s Being and Time as its permanent point of reference and dispute, this collection also confronts other important philosophers, such as Kant, Nietzsche, and Derrida. The projects of these pivotal thinkers of finitude are relentlessly pushed to their extreme, with respect both to their unexpected horizons and to their as yet unexplored analytical potential. A Finite Thinking shows that, paradoxically, (...) where the thought of finitude comes into its own it frees itself, not only to reaffirm a certain transformed and transformative presence, but also for a non-religious reconsideration and reaffirmation of certain theologemes, as well as of the body, heart, and love. This book shows the literary dimension of philosophical discourse, providing important enabling ideas for scholars of literature, cultural theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

This is the most systematic, the most radical, and the most lucid treatise on freedom that has been written in contemporary Continental philosophy. Finding its guiding motives in Kant's second Critique and working its way up to and beyond Heidegger and Adorno, this book marks the most advanced position in the thinking of freedom that has been proposed after Sartre and Levinas. If we do not think being itself as a freedom, we are condemned to think of freedom as a (...) pure 'idea' or 'right', and being-in-the-world, in turn, as a blind and obtuse necessity. Since Kant, philosophy and our world have relentlessly confronted this schism. To combat this renunciation of freedom, one must think the experience of freedom in thought itself: what it is that, simply in order for there to be thinking, must partake of freedom. (shrink)

If anything marks the image, it is a deep ambivalence. Denounced as superficial, illusory, and groundless, images are at the same time attributed with exorbitant power and assigned a privileged relation to truth. In this collection of writings on images and visual art, the author explores this through an extraordinary range of references.

On the one hand, freedom is said to be the property of a subject. On the other, freedom only happens in the space of being-in-common. Freedom, then, is the place of a conflict between the “self” and the “with,” between independence or autonomy and dependence or sharing. Resolving this apparent antinomy requires showing how the with ontologically constitutes the self. This, in turn, allows for a rethinking of freedom beyond what liberal democracy and political economy have to offer, as the (...) renewed opening of existence onto nothing, or onto an “outside” that the opening itself constitutes. (shrink)

Written in a direct and accessible, almost manifesto-like style, The Truth of Democracy presents a forceful plea that we rethink democracy not as one political regime or form among others but as that which opens up the very experience of ...

‘No matter how long I may look at an image, I shall never find anything in it but what I put there. It is in this fact that we find the distinction between an image and a perception.' - Jean-Paul Sartre L’Imagination was published in 1936 when Jean-Paul Sartre was thirty years old. Long out of print, this is the first English translation in many years. The Imagination is Sartre’s first full philosophical work, presenting some of the basic (...) arguments concerning phenomenology, consciousness and intentionality that were to later appear in his master works and be so influential in the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Sartre begins by criticising philosophical theories of the imagination, particularly those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume, before establishing his central thesis. Imagination does not involve the perception of ‘mental images’ in any literal sense, Sartre argues, yet reveals some of the fundamental capacities of consciousness. He then reviews psychological theories of the imagination, including a fascinating discussion of the work of Henri Bergson. Sartre argues that the ‘classical conception’ is fundamentally flawed because it begins by conceiving of the imagination as being like perception and then seeks, in vain, to re-establish the difference between the two. Sartre concludes with an important chapter on Husserl’s theory of the imagination which, despite sharing the flaws of earlier approaches, signals a new phenomenological way forward in understanding the imagination. The Imagination is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. This new translation includes a helpful historical and philosophical introduction by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. Also included is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s important review of L’Imagination upon its publication in French in 1936. Translated by Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf. (shrink)

A generic analysis of research article abstracts can cover issues of different types; among them are linguistic features. An integral part of linguistic features of research article abstracts is interactive metadiscourse usage that can assist to make the text persuasive and unfolding to a discourse community. The main principle behind applying interactive metadiscourse is the view of writing as socially engaging; specifically, it indicates the ways writers project themselves into their arguments to declare their attitudes and commitments to the readers. (...) This study aimed to explore how interactive metadiscourse markers are deployed by research article abstract writers belonging to different disciplinary communities within the soft sciences, while trying to reach the audience by creating a well-organized discourse. Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted to analyze 60 research article abstracts written in Applied Linguistics and Economics. Based on the results, there were marked variations found across the two disciplines in terms of interactive metadiscourse markers. (shrink)

This collection, by one of the most challenging of contemporary thinkers, asks the question: why are there several arts and not just one? This question focuses on the point of maximal tension between the philosophical tradition and contemporary thinking about the arts: the relation between the plurality of the human senses and sense or meaning in general. Throughout the five essays, Nancy's argument hinges on the culminating formulation of this relation in Hegel's Aesthetics and The Phenomenology of Spirit - art (...) as the sensible presentation of the Idea. He considers the emergence of art as presentation rather than representation and looks at the contemporary situation of art, and the question of whether art today is still art. Other essays provide intricate and compelling readings of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin and an analysis of a traced hand in the grotto of Lascaux as the essential mimetic gesture. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Moschetta | Résumé : Phénoménologie de la transcendance, publié par Sophie Nordmann, propose une réflexion sur certains concepts classiques de la théologie : création, rédemption, transcendance, etc. La thèse principale de l’ouvrage est que le monde est insuffisant à rendre compte de lui-même et que cette incomplétude est elle-même indéductible du monde. D’où le caractère authentiquement créé du monde. La création du monde, entendue strictement sur le mode de « l’insuffisance ontologique à soi », apparaît alors comme un (...) concept délié du don originel et permet de faire l’économie d’un Dieu créateur. Cet article met en regard cette analyse et celle qui est issue de la tradition théologique. En particulier, même si la construction de la thèse principale de l’ouvrage est contestée sur la base des contre-exemples fournis par les sciences contemporaines de la nature, la conclusion de l’ouvrage qui proclame le lien entre création et rédemption d’un monde en voie d’achèvement peut être reçue comme une confirmation de la légitimité de la théologie naturelle contemporaine. |: Phénoménologie de la transcendance, published by Sophie Nordmann, offers a philosophical thought on some classical concepts of theology such as : creation, redemption, transcendence, etc. The main thesis of the book is that the world is insufficient to account for itself. Moreover, the world incompleteness cannot be inferred from the world. Hence the world as a genuine created entity. The creation of the world, strictly understood as the “ontological self-insufficiency” appears as a concept independent of the original gift and allows to consider God the Creator as unnecessary. The present article compares Ms. Nordmann’s analysis with the one inherited from the theological tradition. The main book thesis is disputed on the basis of counter-examples issued from contemporary natural sciences. Yet, the conclusion proclaims a connection between creation and redemption of a world in the process of accomplishment. That conclusion may be regarded as confirming the legitimacy of contemporary natural theology. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Mouillie : Le projet philosophique de L'Être et le néant -- Juliette Simont : Genèse du "Néant", genèse de L'Être et le néant (À propos de la morale et de l'ontologie de Sartre) -- Jean-Philippe Narboux : Intentionnalité et négation dans L'Être et le néant -- Timur Uçan : Le problème du solipsisme dans L'Être et le néant -- Kim Sang Ong-Van-Cung : Le corps et l'expérience d'autrui. Un aspect du problème de la négation dans L'Être et (...) le néant -- Laurent Husson : Le cercle de l'autre comme question de méthode. Sur les relations concrètes avec autrui, leur signification et leur portée -- Frédéric Worms : Une théorie radicale des relations humaines -- Jean Bourgault : Le propre de Sartre. Quelques remarques sur une phénoménologie de l'appropriation -- Hadi Rizk : Être et faire, la liberté comme principe d'individuation. (shrink)

Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic Wretched of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.

Background Many studies have investigated the adherence to professional codes of ethics by nurses. However, no study has explicitly examined the relationship between workload and adherence to professional codes of ethics among Iranian nurses. Objective This study aimed to explore the relationships between workload and adherence to professional codes of ethics among a sample of Iranian nurses. Materials and Methods A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 213 nurses who were randomly selected from the different wards of Shahid Beheshti Hospital (...) of Kashan, Iran. Data collection instruments included a personal characteristics questionnaire, the Nursing Ethics Questionnaire, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index. The Chi-square, the Spearman correlation coefficient, the Kruskal–Wallis, and Mann–Whitney U tests were used to analyze the data. Results A majority of nurses were females, married, and permanently employed. The mean of the overall perceived workload and adherence to professional codes of ethics were 76.36 ± 13.64 and 13.98 ± 2.58, that were at high and moderated level, respectively. Spearman correlation test showed no significant correlation between perceived workload and adherence to professional codes of ethics. A significant difference was found between the mean scores of adherence to professional codes of ethics in nurses working in different departments. Conclusion Participating nurses perceived high levels of workload but their mean adherence to professional codes of ethics was at a moderate level. The perceived workload was indirectly correlated with adherence to professional codes of ethics. (shrink)

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive (...) but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence. (shrink)

§13 of Principia Ethica contains G. E. Moore’s most famous open question arguments. Several of Moore’s contemporaries defended various forms of metaethical nonnaturalism—a doctrine Moore himself endorsed—by appeal to OQAs. Some contemporary cognitivists embrace the force of Moore’s OQAs against metaethical naturalism. And those who posit noncognitivist meaning components of ethical terms have traditionally used OQAs to fuel their own emotivist, prescriptivist, and expressivist metaethical programs. Despite this influence, Moore’s OQAs have been ridiculed in recent decades. Their deployment has been (...) labeled “accident prone,” “simple to dismiss,” and just plain invalid. Critics accuse Moore of begging the question. Others argue that his OQAs founder upon the paradox of analysis. And still others argue that Moore’s open question argumentation is incompatible with the Kripke–Putnam causal theory of reference and thus it “simply fails; it is bankrupt”. I aim to show that there is something of continuing value in Moore’s open question efforts. I present and criticize Nicholas Sturgeon’s influential interpretation of Moore’s OQAs as a means to motivate and explicate my own interpretation of Moore’s thoughts in §13 of Principia Ethica. I then articulate the role that OQAs are intended to play in Moore’s overall argumentative strategies to undermine metaethical naturalism and thereby provide some theoretical support for metaethical nonnaturalism. Finally, I attend to the most prominent objections to Moore’s theorizing and attempt to evaluate the extent to which Moore’s efforts are successful. My hope is to display both the promising portions of Moore’s metaethical argumentation in Principia Ethica as well as its limitations. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

That all subjunctive conditionals with true antecedents and trueconsequents are themselves also true is implied by every plausibleand popularly endorsed account. But I am wary of endorsing thisimplication. I argue that all presently endorsed accounts fail tocapture the nature of certain subjunctive conditionals in contextsof consequentialist reasoning. I attempt to show that we must allowfor the possibility that some subjunctive conditionals with trueantecedents and true consequents are false, if we are to believethat certain types of straightforward consequentialist reasoningare coherent. I (...) begin by evaluating a pair of morally releventcounterfactuals in a case via David Lewis's account. I then turnto a slight modification of the case, arguing that Lewis'ssemantics fails to generate the correct truth values of thesubjunctive conditionals in the modified case. Finally, I presenta modified version of Lewis's semantics that generates the correctresults in all of the cases. (shrink)

Jean-Michel Vienne; IX*—Locke on Real Essence and Internal Constitution1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 139–15.

A meditation on the changing role of philosophy in a postmodernist context, the two essays gathered here—The Forgetting of Philosophy and The Weight of a Thought—represent some of the themes that have recently occupied Nancy's thought.

It is a common experience that we talk to some animals, especially those with which we share our human lives, such as dogs or cats. From this communication, should one conclude that these animals participate in intersubjectivity? Though Husserl’s phenomenology has a “Cartesian” tendency, in his late reflections on the variations of “normal” consciousness and the “normal” body, he suggests that there are degrees of subjectivity, following a more “Leibnizian” path. Scheler, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas have also developed this thesis of (...) a “sympathy” with animals beyond the limits of the human species. (shrink)

Autonomous transposable elements, generally considered as junk and selfish, encode transposition proteins that can bind, copy, break, join or degrade nucleic acids as well as process or interact with other proteins. Such a repertoire of activities might be of interest for the host cell. There is indeed substantial evidence that mobile DNA can serve as a dynamic reservoir for new cellular functions. Transposable element genes encoding transposase, integrase, reverse transcriptase as well as structural and envelope proteins have been repeatedly recruited (...) by their host during evolution in most eukaryotic lineages. Such domesticated sequences protect us against infections, are necessary for our reproduction, allow the replication of our chromosomes and control cell proliferation and death; others are essential for plant development. Many new candidates for domesticated sequences have been revealed by sequencing projects. Their functional analysis will uncover new aspects of evolutionary alchemy, the turning of junk into gold within genomes. BioEssays 28: 913–922, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

La phrase de Lacan " il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel " a acquis la notoriété que méritait son caractère provocateur. Mais que signifie cette provocation en tant que telle? Une invitation à dissocier entièrement le rapport effectif d'une " impasse " fondamentale dans l'ordre symbolique - ou bien une incitation à penser plus radicalement ce " non-être ", non-savoir et non-rapport par lequel le rapport s'ouvre proprement, dans l'effectivité autant que dans le symbolique et dans l'imaginaire? A une (...) logique du " manque " constitutif on oppose ou plutôt on appose ici une éthique de la " brûlure du sens ". Il ne s'agit pas de " libération sexuelle ", mais de sexuation de la liberté, de l'égalité et de l'être-avec : comment l'amour, le désir et la finitude, le rapport en général, sont noués ensemble. (shrink)

This book is a close reading of Jacques Lacan's seminal essay, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud," selected for the particular light it casts on Lacan's complex relation to linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It clarifies the way Lacan renews or transforms the psychoanalytic field, through his diversion of Saussure's theory of the sign, his radicalization of Freud's fundamental concepts, and his subversion of dominant philosophical values. The authors argue, however, that Lacan's discourse is marked (...) by a deep ambiguity: while he invents a new "language," he nonetheless maintains the traditional metaphysical motifs of systemacity, foundation, and truth. (shrink)

Around people who were close to him, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe would sometimes cry out with anger: “Death is a scandal! It is intolerable!” When he died almost fourteen years ago, prematurely and af...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thus cast into the depths of skepticism. Because of his acquaintance with the skeptical literature Chilling-worth rejected the first alternative. Arguments concerning the fallibility of the senses and reason and the complexity of reality itself were too strong to be ignored. However, he was also unwilling to accept the second alternative. He developed instead a middle position. In his Religion of Protestants (London, 16S8) he (...) develops a position based on an appeal to common-sense and a doctrine of levels os evidence and certainty. Theological problems are to be solved in the same manner as problems of ordinary men in ordinary situations. Any claim to revelation, for example, is to be evaluated as any other problem, by examining the adequacy of the testimony and the reliability of witnesses. Hence the sense of mystery, of the revealedness of revelation is lost. Depending on whether one has good or poor evidence for a proposition one can be more or le~ certain of it. In most cases, one's certainty of religious propositions is of the same sort as that of the carpenter or pilot in their respective trades-not absolute certainty but certainty enough to assure good practical results. Hence religious belief is adequate if it serves to turn one from vice to virtue. Since religious truth is no longer unique, either with respect to evidence or certainty, it is available to all who are honest in their pursuit of it. Thus the epistemological justification for the democratization of religion of which Lichtenstein makes so much is provided a generation before More published his major works. My criticism of the book, then, is not that Lichtenstein attributes the de-emphasis of reason, loss of mystery, etc., of eighteenth-century thought solely to, More (though since he writes primarily on only one man one sometimes gets that impression) but that his account of the milieu from which More springs and of which he is only a part is inadequate. But for all that the book is well worth reading. HENRY G. VAN LEEUWs Hanover College Pascal. By Jean Steinmann. New edition revised and enlarged. ([Brus~ls]: Desclge De Brouwer [1962]. Pp. 378, illus. Bfr. 240.) Sorte de testament spirituel du critique tragiquement et prgmaturgment disparu, la seconde 6~dition du Pascal de Steinmann constitue sans doute la synth~se la plus agrgable et commode qui existe actuellement de la vie, de roeuvre et de la rgputation de Pascal. Entre les nombreux auteurs qui ont successivement attirg la plume rive et fgconde de Steinmann, Pascal est, en effet un de ceux avec qui il avait le plus de familiaritg. Ecrivain, th~logien, mais surtout exegete, Steinmann a d'ailleurs su mieux que presque tous ses pr~d~cesseurs, caractgriser la sensibilitg biblique de Pascal et en souligner l'importance. Inversement, il marque le caract~re peu philosophique de l'Apologi'e et voit (~t notre sens avec raison) la principale originalitg de son auteur dans le fair qu'il a cherch~ ~ mener au christianisme par la psychologie et par l'histoire, non par la metaphysique. Le chapitre le plus neuf de Steinmann est enfin celui que traite de l'histoire posthume de Pascal, sorte de bibliographie comrfientge qui sera certainment fort utile ~t celui qui abordera l'immense litt~rature publige ~ son sujet. Une rgaction en pattie l~gitime contre le clichg romantique de l'"inquigtude pascalienne " entra~ne Steinmann ~t trop insister apr~s B~guin, sur un,dogmatisme" (p. 308) d'ailleurs rattach6 ~ l'h6r6dit~ paternelle dont nous doutons qu'elle aft 6t6 dominante dans ]e cas de Pascal. On regrette aussi l'ignorance de l'article d'Et. Gilson sur "ab~tir" BOOK REVIEWS t05 (p. 254), des insuflisances au sujet du p~ht~ originel (p. 253), l'aflirmation erron~e du caract~re spontan~ de la confession au P. Beurrier (p. 207 n.) et surtout le lapsus Pinthard pour Pinthereau (pp. 363, $78). A c6t~ du petit Pascal de Jean Mesnard, cla~ique dans les universitY, le present ouvrage n'en contribuera pas moins ~ r~pondre dans un tr~s large cercle une connaissance de l'auteur des Pens~es enrichie par la sympathie. JZAN... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Desire is Mimetic: A Clinical Approach Jean-Michel Oughourlian Université de Besançon, American Hospital ofParis What is the clinical expression ofmimetic desire? Rivalry. What I see every day in my practice is not mimicking, nor copying, nor learning; it is rivalry. Rivalry is recurrent, it repeats itself. The repetition syndrome identified by psychoanalysis is mimetic for two reasons: 1) because it is always the clinical expression of a rivalry (...) and that rivalry is always mimetic; 2) because it reproduces itself, duplicates itself, imitating the circumstances of the first rivalry and always looking for an impossible victory. That victory is impossible, since it stems from a situation which mimics the circumstances of defeat. But those circumstances are the only ones of interest, since the only battle worth winning is the one that has every chance to be lost. Mimetic rivalry (as I have tried to show elsewhere1) is always rooted in one ofthe two following claims: the claim ofthe selffor the ownership of its own desire; and the claim of desire for its anteriority, its seniority over the other's desire, the other desire that has generated it, on which it is modeled. Clinically, the self and the desire are going to develop various strategies to ascertain those two claims. The interdividual psychotherapy has to diagnose the nodal points of the mimetic conflict. It has to see ' See Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Puppet ofDesire: The Psychology ofHysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis, trans. Eugene Webb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). Ed. 44Jean-Michel Oughourlian through the clinical variety of strategies and symptoms to the essential unity ofthe two claims underlying it. Let me give a few examples. Vengeance As we know, violence is mimetic. When violence cannot be immediately retaliated, imitated, duplicated, the energy for that retaliation is saved for later use. The more humiliating the violence, the greater the stored-up energy. Humiliation, in turn, stems from weakness: the humiliation of a child raped by an adult, ofa civilian beaten up by soldiers, ofa poor person insulted by a rich one, or, generally speaking, ofthe weak overpowered by the strong. Ifa weak person is the perpetrator ofthe first violence, it does not generate humiliation and, most ofthe time, does not entail vengeance. When an angered child kicks an adult, for example, this usually produces laughter rather than violence precisely because the child is smaller and weaker. As time goes by, the energy of postponed or deferred violence accumulates and increases. Clinically, it manifests itself in two ways: as a feeling ofhatred; and as a strength, a drive, a compulsive desire to destroy which will animate the offended and organize all his efforts in view ofthe vengeance that will set him free. The mimetic retaliation ofviolence will drive him until that retaliation is accomplished. In my experience, all the young girls who were raped by their fathers could not restore their mental health and psychological balance unless they were able, in one way or another, to avenge themselves. In the absence of such revenge, the enormous energy built up throughout their childhood and adolescence produced psychological symptoms which last for a lifetime. One such example is a patient, Miss L., 35 years old, who seeks treatment for alcoholism. It is a strange type ofalcoholism: each time, she must enter a meeting and speak before a group of people—and especially if her boss is in the group—she goes to the bathroom and drinks white rum from a hidden bottle. She has been in psychoanalysis for the past 12 years with no significant results. The history of her malady shows that she has wide mood swings, ups and downs often labeled as manic-depressive. Very quickly I see that she has stored within herself an enormous amount of violence which is fairly well controlled, but which manifests itselfthrough different types of aggressive behavior, especially towards men. A few sessions later, she finally tells me that she had been raped by her father and, as a consequence, that her parents had divorced. She was then obliged to remain with her father and take care ofhim. Psychoanalysis, of course, has Desire is Mimetic: A Clinical Approach45 commented extensively on the actual achievement ofher oedipal... (shrink)

_Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism_ is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic _Wretched_ _of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism _ had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.