Die Untersuchung der wallonischen consolatio-Übersetzung führte zur Entdeckung und Neudatierung eines lateinischen consolatio-Kommentars, der auch von Jean de Meun benutzt wurde. Somit kann durch Gegenüberstellung von Vorlage und Übersetzung an einem konkreten Beispiel Einblick in die Übersetzungspraxis im Mittelalter gewonnen werden.

This article concentrates on manifestations of medieval political philosophy in the Roman de la Rose. In particular, it focuses on two themes, which are crucial for understanding the very foundations of political and social life of human beings: (1) the origins of political community, private property and other social institutions; and (2) the relationship between love and justice, and the political relevance of these two concepts. -/- The first part of the article discusses Jean de Meun’s view concerning (...) the origins of social institutions, and relates it to Ciceronian and Augustinian traditions, which had a deep influence on medieval political philosophy. However, the main focus of the article is on the relation between Jean de Meun’s political ideas and medieval understanding of Aristotle’s political philosophy and moral psychology. Aristotelian influences are traced especially in relation to the second theme, which occupies the latter part of the article. It is argued that the political role of love and justice cannot be understood without taking medieval Aristotelian philosophy seriously. -/- Instead of trying to find historical and textual connections between individual medieval philosophers and Jean de Meun’s poem, the article embraces a different methodological approach: it aims to understand the philosophy behind the poem. This aim is achieved by providing a detailed reading of certain relevant passages, which are analysed against medieval adaptations of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. By such means, the article charts possible connections between scholasticism and La Rose and aims to show that they can—and indeed, should—be understood against thirteenth century Aristotelian philosophy. The result will be a philosophically informed understanding of the political dimensions of the poem. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision, the Roman de la Rose, transformed how medieval literary texts engaged with philosophical ideas. Written in Old French, its influence dominated French, English and Italian literature for the next two centuries, serving in particular as a model for Chaucer and Dante. Jean de Meun's section of this extensive, complex and dazzling work is notable for its sophisticated responses to a whole host of contemporary philosophical debates. This collection brings together literary scholars and historians (...) of philosophy to produce the most thorough, interdisciplinary study to date of how the Rose uses poetry to articulate philosophical problems and positions. This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the importance of the poem for medieval intellectual history and offers new insights into the philosophical potential both of the Rose specifically and of medieval poetry as a whole. (shrink)

The past seven centuries of scholarly attention to and debate over the Roman de la Rose bear strong witness to the fact that the allegorical figure Faus Semblant presents us with an interpretive crux—one of many such in the poem—that we are not likely to resolve in the coming centuries. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a character who so embodies paradox—a profane friar who is openly honest about his intent to deceive—should be so difficult to pin down; (...) it is his singular talent, after all, to dissemble and confuse. The last century has seen a significant increase in criticism centered upon Faus Semblant that seeks to understand what he signifies within the larger allegory of the poem and how he relates to Jean de Meun's purported satire and antifraternalism. But this struggle to understand and explain the character began centuries earlier and, like him, has taken many forms. As early as the thirteenth century, the passage of Jean's poem in which Faus Semblant explains his craft and guile had begun to attract a diverse group of revisers: scribes, who added or deleted passages in order to shape a reading of the poem or avoid offending readers; remanieurs, such as Gui de Mori, who substantially rewrote the passage in efforts to reshape the poem into a more cohesive form; readers, whose marginal inscriptions and notae often accompany the passage; and illustrators , as images of Faus Semblant are frequently included in illuminated copies of Rose manuscripts. Even Jean himself seemed to feel the need to gloss and contain Faus Semblant, offering an apology and clarification in lines 15213–30. (shrink)

Omniprésente dans l'ensemble des sciences de la vie, la catégorie de fonction a les allures d'un scandale épistémologique : attribuer une fonction à une structure ou à un processus biologique, c'est en effet suggérer qu'on l'explique par ses effets. Cet ouvrage, sans précédent en langue française examine les débats philosophiques contemporains sur les fonctions depuis une trentaine d'années, et propose de nouvelles voies d'analyse. Il confronte ces débats à l'usage de la notion de fonction dans un large spectre de disciplines (...) biologiques, psychologiques et médicales. Il soulève aussi la question de savoir si cette notion, aussi ancienne dans l'histoire des techniques que dans celle des sciences de la vie, y a le même sens. (shrink)

Boethius composed the Consolatio Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture. He had been condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de (...) Meun, and Dante were inspired by it. In England it was rendered into Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the `Menippean' texture have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and of literature ever since. Professor Walsh has included an introduction and explanatory notes which combined with his new translation make the text accessible to general readers and scholars alike. (shrink)

Le lecteur ne trouvera pas ici de melanges; classees en quatre chapitres, les articles et les traductions rassembles illustrent l'unite et la diversite du propos qui les a inspires: histoire des traditions scientifiques et textuelles (d'Euclide au Timee latin), logique et philosophie du langage (d'Abelard a Guillaume d'Ockham), psychologie et noetique (autour d'Aristote, d'Avicenne et d'Averroes), exegese et theologie (de Boece a Buridan).

Le lecteur ne trouvera pas ici de melanges; classees en quatre chapitres, les articles et les traductions rassembles illustrent l'unite et la diversite du propos qui les a inspires: histoire des traditions scientifiques et textuelles (d'Euclide au Timee latin), logique et philosophie du langage (d'Abelard a Guillaume d'Ockham), psychologie et noetique (autour d'Aristote, d'Avicenne et d'Averroes), exegese et theologie (de Boece a Buridan).

This book, originally published in French, examines the philosophical debates on functions over the last forty years and proposes new ways of analysis. Pervasive throughout the life sciences, the concept of function has the air of an epistemological scandal: ascribing a function to a biological structure or process amounts to suggesting that it is explained by its effects. This book confronts the debates on function with the use of the notion in a wide range of disciplines, such as biology, psychology, (...) and medicine. It also raises the question of whether this notion, which is as old in the history of technology as it is in the life sciences, has the same meaning in these two domains. (shrink)

QUINE'S DOCTRINE of the indeterminacy of translation is made possible by the principle of substitution characteristic of extensional logic. The same characteristic makes it impossible, in philosophy of science, to choose among theoretical models no one of which is obviously best suited to explain the facts. Hilary Putnam achieved a sort of closure to the problem of reference in philosophy of science, when he pointed out the implications of the Skolem-Löwenheim theorem. He said that besides the facts a theory is (...) designed to explain, there are any number of unintended interpretations of the same theory that assign the correct truth values to all sentences of the theory. There can be no sound basis for deciding upon the sole interpretation for a theory. Following Putnam, some philosophers have abandoned the problem of reference in the context of axiomatic systems. Ian Hacking, for instance, prefers a notion of reference "that is not tied by any specific, binding theory about what is referred to." He has turned to the study of approximations and practical models, spurred on by the difficulty of reconciling axiomatic systems to scientific practice. (shrink)

Norris, McQueen & Cutler present a detailed account of the decision stage of the phoneme monitoring task. However, we question whether this contributes to our understanding of the speech recognition process itself, and we fail to see why phonotactic knowledge is playing a role in phoneme recognition.

Boethius composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture, condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, (...) and Dante were inspired by it. In England it was rendered in to Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the 'Menippean' texture of part prose, part verse have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and literature ever since. (shrink)

In a fifty-two–line interpolation appearing towards the end of many Romance of the Rose manuscripts, the narrator compares the female image over the entry to the tower of Jealousy—the one at which Venus fires her burning arrow—to the head of Medusa. This passage entered the Rose manuscript tradition in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, possibly within the lifetime of Jean de Meun; it recurs throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A reading of the Medusa interpolation raises (...) the important critical issue of significant variants in a manuscript tradition and the evidence they offer for a medieval reading of the text in question. A close examination of the Medusa passage expands our understanding of the reception of the Rose during the twenty or thirty years immediately following the completion of Jean de Meun's continuation. An inquiry into the relevance of Medusa to the Rose, and in particular to this moment in the Rose, helps us to appreciate something of what the poem may have meant for its first readers. As I will show, the Medusa passage participates in a larger mythographic program extending throughout the conjoined Rose, exploring the nature of feminine sexuality and its effects on men. (shrink)

Comme l’indique l’auteur lui‑même, ce livre vient conclure une série de quatre publications à caractère monographique, illustrant chacune son programme de « psychanalyse sociohistorique ». Il s’agit des Stigmates de l’hystérique et la peau de son évêque. Laurentine Billoquet (1862-1936), Paris, Anthropos, 1993 ; Une inconnue célèbre. Madeleine Lebouc / Pauline Lair Lamotte (1853‑1918), même éditeur, 1993 ; L’Autobiographie d’un paranoïaque. L’abbé Berry (1878‑1947) et le roman de Billy « Intr...

I. Logique, ontologie, cosmologie -- II, 1. Psychologie expérimentale -- II, 2. Psychologie raisonnée.

Rapport d'expériences portant sur la reconnaissance, dans des photogrammes, des photographies ou des dessins, d'une action humaine filmée. Les résultats sont analysés à la lumière de certaines interprétations psychologiques de ce que l'on appelle le mouvement dans l'image. La reconnaissance ne pouvant pleinement rendre compte du phénomène perceptif en question, il est proposé d'y voir une forme de perception dans laquelle la dimension temporelle serait dominante.

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas 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 Egois 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 Egooffers 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.t 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)

Foucault a souligné l’importance, pour la philosophie française du xx e siècle, des Méditations cartésiennes de Husserl, prononcées à la Sorbonne en 1929. Contrairement à Husserl, Foucault n’a pas réactivé le geste cartésien de l’auto-méditation et de la refondation du savoir philosophique sur des bases sûres. Mais il n’a cessé de revenir sur les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes comme moment décisif pour l’apparition du sujet moderne – d’abord dans la fameuse lecture du « Mais quoi! ce sont des fous » (...) dans l’ Histoire de la folie. Mais Foucault ne s’en est pas tenu à cette interprétation, discutée par Derrida, qui reliait la construction du sujet rationnel à l’exclusion des fous. On trouve dans L’Herméneutique du sujet une nouvelle approche des Méditations métaphysiques, cette fois démarquée de Heidegger, qui les restitue dans l’histoire des « techniques de soi » et situe la rupture décisive au plan même de la dissociation entre technique spirituelle, accès à la connaissance et transformation éthique de soi. Cet article suit ainsi « la méditation cartésienne de Foucault » en mettant en lumière le constant débat sous-jacent avec les lectures de Descartes produites par la phénoménologie et la déconstruction de la métaphysique. (shrink)