La question du phénomène précède de beaucoup la phénoménologie, elle s'ouvre avec la philosophie et l'accompagne tout au long de son histoire. Mais ce préalable incontournable - car être veut dire apparaître - est surdéterminé par une présupposition irréfléchie. De la Grèce à Heidegger, dans les problématiques classiques de la conscience et de la représentation, dans leurs critiques, dans la phénoménologie de l'intentionnalité et dans ses prolongements, "phénomène" désigne ce qui se montre à l'intérieur d'un horizon de visihilisation, l'Ek-stase d'un (...) Dehors. La mise en cause de ce monisme ontologique établit que l'Ekstase ne subsiste que sur le Fond de son anti-essence : immanence si radicale qu'elle ne se tient jamais à distance, incapable de se voix, âme sans Idée, vie dépourvue d'archétype mais liée à soi invinciblement, s'éprouvant dans le subir, le souffrir et le jouir de son propre pathos. Parce que, avant que ne se lève le monde, une Affectivité transcendantale accomplit en nous son Archi-Révélation en même temps qu'elle engendre notre ipséité, ce sont d'autres catégories, d'autres penseurs, une nouvelle phénoménologie qui sont requis si nous voulons parvenir, enfin, à l'intelligence de ce que nous sommes. (shrink)

In his book, Physical Relativity, Harvey Brown challenges the orthodox view that special relativity is preferable to those parts of Lorentz's classical ether theory it replaced because it revealed various phenomena that were given a dynamical explanation in Lorentz's theory to be purely kinematical. I want to defend this orthodoxy. The phenomena most commonly discussed in this context in the philosophical literature are length contraction and time dilation. I consider three other phenomena of this kind that played a role in (...) the early reception of special relativity in the physics literature: the Fresnel drag effect in the Fizeau experiment, the velocity dependence of electron mass in beta-ray deflection experiments by Kaufmann and others, and the delicately balanced torques on a moving charged capacitor in the Trouton-Noble experiment. I offer historical sketches of how Lorentz's dynamical explanations of these phenomena came to be replaced by their now standard kinematical explanations. I then take up the philosophical challenge posed by the work of Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley and clarify how those kinematical explanations work. (shrink)

This book is an English-language translation of a bestselling book in France that explores the relationship between humans and new technologies.

If we are to understand Marx's thought, argues French philosopher Michel Henry, we must cast aside Marxism. In his original and richly detailed study of Marx's philosophy, Henry emphasizes the importance of approaching Marx's writings directly, rather than through the intermediary of subsequent interpretations, which often have been politically motivated. In contrast to the usual depiction of Marxian thought as an economically oriented analysis of social reality, Henry contends that in Marx's theory philosophy is primary. Therefore, Marx's writings must (...) properly be viewed—and judged—within the context of the modern philosophical tradition. Marx's basic concern, Henry demonstrates, is with the nature of the human being, the real conditions of human individuality. Central to Henry's reading of Marx, and elaborated here with unprecedented thoroughness, is the theory of praxis, a conception of the individual not as a thinking being, in the Cartesian tradition, but as a laboring being, a producer and consumer situated in a concrete social world. This novel and provocative contribution to the current debate about the nature and meaning of Marx's thought is essential for students of philosophy, Marxism, and political theory. Kathleen McLaughlin's excellent translation of Henry's abridgement of his two-volume work preserves the power and freshness of the French original. (shrink)

En reposant la question fondamentale de la phénoménologie, et de la philosophie — la question de la donation —, en interprétant celle-ci non plus seulement, selon la pensée traditionnelle de l'Occident, comme apparition dans un monde mais comme l'étreinte invisible de la vie en son propre pathos, la phénoménologie matérielle soulève des problèmes nouveaux et paradoxaux. Trois d'entre eux font l'objet des présentes études : 1 / La matière de la conscience, l'Impression, n'est plus un contenu opaque attendant l'éclaircissement de (...) la forme intentionnelle, ne s'exhibant que dans l'Ek-stase du Temps : elle accomplit la Révélation en elle-même, dans sa chair affective. Au lieu de définir une discipline mineure, vite oubliée, la phénoménologie hylétique — matérielle — dessine la tâche de l'avenir. 2 / La possibilité de connaître la vie invisible donne son sens au problème de la méthode phénoménologique et exige que celle-ci soit repensée entièrement. 3 / La relation à autrui change elle-même de nature si, avant de pouvoir être reconnue au milieu du monde, elle prend corps dans la vie où naissent tous les vivants, l'autre aussi bien que moi-même — si elle est un « pathos-avec ». — Michel Henry —. (shrink)

Technology is even more than our world, our form of life, our civilization. Technology interacts with the world to change it. Philosophers need to seriously address the fluidity of a smartphone interface, the efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or the familiar noise of an antique vacuum cleaner. Beyond their phenomenological description, the emotional experience acquires moral significance and in some cases even supplies ethical resources for the self. If we leave this dimension of modern experience unaddressed, we may miss (...) something of value in contemporary life. Combining European humanism, Anglophone pragmatism, and Asian traditions, Michel Puech pleads for an "ethical turn" in the way we understand and address technological issues in modern day society. Puech argues that the question of "power" is what needs to be reconsidered today. In doing so, he provides a three-tier distinction of power: power to modify the outer world ; power over other humans ; power over oneself. (shrink)

Ce livre de Michel Freitag interpelle "tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la place qu'ils tiennent ou le rôle qu'ils jouent dans l'aventure de l'Université contemporaine." (Georges Leroux, Spirale) Une des constantes des écrits contenus dans ce livre "réside dans la comparaison systématique que Michel Freitag établit entre les caractéristiques de la modernité et celles de la postmodernité et les conséquences de celle-ci sur le traitement des enjeux et des problèmes actuels." (Louis Guay, Anthropologie et société) "Dans une société (...) réduite au bavardage, à l'insignifiance, à la poursuite de petits bonheurs mesquins, le tout sous contrôle bureaucratique de plus en plus envahissant, une telle réflexion est devenue essentielle. Voici un livre de bonne foi qui n'attend que ses lecteurs, qu'on souhaite nombreux." (Robert Major, Voix et images). (shrink)

It is commonly thought that authors can make anything whatsoever true in their fictions by artistic fiat. Harry Deutsch originally called this position the Principle of Poetic License. If true, PPL sets an important constraint on accounts of fictional truth: they must be such as to allow that, for any x, one can write a story in which it is true that x. I argue that PPL is far too strong: it requires us to abandon the law of non-contradiction and (...) entails a radical revision of otherwise ordinary commitments about truth in fiction. (shrink)

When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the hard problem of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela's revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side effect of a recent controversy between hermeneutists and eliminativists. Finally, I emphasize a structural parallel between the science of consciousness and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics. (...) This parallel, together with the former convergences, point towards the common origin of the main puzzles of both quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind: neglect of the constitutive blindspot of objective knowledge. (shrink)

Annoncé à grand fracas, le décryptage do génome humain devait nous révéler le secret ultime de la vie et ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles thérapies miracles. Espoirs déçus : à l'ère de la post-génomique, les secrets du vivant sont maintenant recherchés dans les théories de la complexité, dans la convergence des efforts des biologistes, des physiciens et des mathématiciens. Comment comprendre la signification de cette succession rapide d'objectifs apparemment différents, de cette alternance d'espoirs et de désillusions? Dans ce livre (...) novateur, Michel Morange propose une clé pour rendre compte de ces difficultés, et de beaucoup d'autres analogues touchant toutes les branches de la biologie. Les annonces sensationnelles reflètent l'espoir toujours déçu qu'une explication unique pourrait suffire. Or les faits biologiques - comme ceux relevant de bien d'autres disciplines scientifiques -ne peuvent être expliqués par un principe d'intelligibilité unique. Exemples à l'appui et de façon très pédagogique, Michel Morange montre pourquoi des explications différentes doivent être articulées pour décrire le fonctionnement des macromolécules aussi bien que l'évolution humaine ou le développement des cancers. Admettre une idée aussi simple n'est pas évident, car tout scientifique a été formé à privilégier un principe d'intelligibilité particulier. L'articulation entre explications différentes est pourtant indispensable pour le progrès des connaissances ; elle est aussi une exigence éthique ; elle est requise pour que la science conserve sa place dans nos sociétés. (shrink)

Biogea is a mixture of poetry, philosophy, science, and biography exemplary of the style that has made Michel Serres one of the most extraordinary thinkers of his age. His philosophical and poetic inquiry sings in praise of earth and life, what he names singularly as Biogea. In these times when species are disappearing, when catastrophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis impale the earth, Serres wonders if anyone “worries about the death pangs of the rivers.” And for Serres, one (...) can ask the same question of philosophy as the humanities increasingly find themselves in need of defenders. Today, all living organisms discover themselves part of this Biogea. “Today we have other neighbors, constituents of the Biogea: the sea, my lover; our mother, the Earth, becomes our daughter; this beautiful breeze which inspires the spirit, a spiritual mistress; our light friends, the fresh and flowing waters.”. (shrink)

“Special relativity killed the classical dream of using the energy-momentumvelocity relations as a means of probing the dynamical origins of [the mass of the electron]. The relations are purely kinematical” (Pais, 1982, 159). This perceptive comment comes from a section on the pre-relativistic notion of electromagnetic mass in ‘Subtle is the Lord . . . ’, Abraham Pais’ highly acclaimed biography of Albert Einstein. ‘Kinematical’ in this context means ‘independent of the details of the dynamics’. In this paper we examine (...) the classical dream referred to by Pais from the vantage point of relativistic continuum mechanics. (shrink)

There is a striking difference between the methodology of the young Einstein and that of the old. I argue that Einstein’s switch in the late 1910s from a moderate empiricism to an extreme rationalism should at least in part be understood against the background of his crushing personal and political experiences during the war years in Berlin. As a result of these experiences, Einstein started to put into practice what, drawing on Schopenhauer, he had preached for years, namely to use (...) science as his means of escaping from “the merely personal.” Whatever the exact sources of Einstein’s about-face, the older man has left us with a highly misleading picture of how the younger man achieved the successes that we still celebrate today. This has had a harmful influence on theoretical physics. If the young Einstein’s successes are any guide as to how successful theoretical physics is done, close adherence to general features of the empirical data is much more and mathematical elegance is much less important than the old Einstein wanted us to believe. (shrink)

In this critical notice we argue against William Craig’s recent attempt to reconcile presentism (roughly, the view that only the present is real) with relativity theory. Craig’s defense of his position boils down to endorsing a ‘neo-Lorentzian interpretation’ of special relativity. We contend that his reconstruction of Lorentz’s theory and its historical development is fatally flawed and that his arguments for reviving this theory fail on many counts.

. This paper takes as its point of departure two striking incongruities between scientific practice and trends in modern history and philosophy of science. Many modern historians of science are so preoccupied with local scientific practices that they fail to recognize important non-local elements. Many modern philosophers of science make a sharp distinction between explanation and evidence, whereas in scientific practice explanatory power is routinely used as evidence for scientific claims. I draw attention to one specific way in.

We give two proofs of strong normalisation for second order classical natural deduction. The first one is an adaptation of the method of reducibility candidates introduced in [9] for second order intuitionistic natural deduction; the extension to the classical case requires in particular a simplification of the notion of reducibility candidate. The second one is a reduction to the intuitionistic case, using a Kolmogorov translation.

Should governments accept the principle of devoting a proportion of their resources to funding basic research? From the standpoint of economics, science should be considered as a public good and for that reason it should be protected from market forces. This article tries to show that this result can only be maintained at the price of abandoning arguments traditionally deployed by economists themselves. It entails a complete reversal of our habitual ways of thinking about public goods. In order to bring (...) this reversal about, this article draws on the central results obtained by the anthropology and sociology of science and technology over the past several years. Science is a public good, not because of its intrinsic properties but because it is a source of diversity and flexibility. (shrink)

Les entretiens ici réunis portent sur les conséquences de cette révolution méthodologique qui permet la compréhension des grands aspects de l'existence, thème de nombreux essais de Michel Henry à partir des années 80 : action, ...

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding principle. (...) What the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around. Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known. (shrink)

In October 1924, The Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Using Bohr’s correspondence principle and Einstein’s quantum theory of radiation along with advanced techniques from classical mechanics, Van Vleck showed that quantum formulae for emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation merge with their classical counterparts in the limit of high quantum numbers. For modern readers Van Vleck’s paper is (...) much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. This makes Van Vleck’s paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself. (shrink)

This article explains how strong sustainability ethics has emerged and developed as a new field over the last two decades as a critical response to influential conceptions of weak sustainability. It investigates three competing, normative approaches to strong sustainability: the communitarian approach, the Rawlsian approach, and the capabilities approach. Although these approaches converge around the idea that there are critical, non-substitutable natural resources and services, they diverge on how to reconcile human development and environmental protection. The aim of the paper (...) is to provide a critical overview of these three perspectives, but also and mostly to show that when we put them into dialogue with each other, we can clarify the demands of sustainability. The paper concludes that the capabilities approach is the most suitable way to think about sustainability, but only if it goes beyond its dominantly anthropocentric view. (shrink)

Les Leçons d'histoire de la philosophie du droit sont un jalon fondamental de la philosophie du droit de Michel Villey. Elles ambitionnent de construire une synthèse des apports nécessaires et successifs de l'histoire de la philosophie : " Il ne suffit plus de s'installer dans le sillage du seul Thomas, celui de Kant ou celui de Comte ; mais toutes ces doctrines ensemble sont les données de notre problème. Seule aura chance d'être acceptée par le corps social, seule pourra (...) devenir efficace, seule sera vraie la philosophie qui aura su réunir et réconcilier, sans en sacrifier aucun, ces aspects encore dispersés de la tradition. " A l'heure en particulier où les juges retrouvent progressivement leur rôle social fondamental, les juristes doivent relire ces développements qui leur confèrent collectivement le lourd privilège de réaliser la Justice, non pas idéale, mais simplement possible et concrète. (shrink)

In The Contemplation of the World, eminent French theorist Michel Maffesoli pursues and extends his project of decoding contemporary societies.

This paper deals with the question whether Seneca’s dramas contain a concept of the tragic. Examining this question this contribution first discusses the studies that have supported the thesis that Seneca’s dramas are anti-tragic. Then it tries by means of the method of the interpretatio stoica to advance a hypothesis how a concept of tragic could be grasped at the background of Seneca’s philosophical thinking. Finally the paper examines this hypothesis at the example of the „Troades“.

It is frequently said that biology is emerging from a long phase of reductionism. It would be certainly more correct to say that biologists are abandoning a certain form of reductionism. We describe this past form, and the experiments which challenged the previous vision. To face the difficulties which were met, biologists use a series of concepts and metaphors - pleiotropy, tinkering, epigenetics - the ambiguity of which masks the difficulties, instead of solving them. In a similar way, the word (...) “post-genomics” has different meanings, depending upon who uses it. Which of these meanings will become dominant in the future is an open question. (shrink)

According to the traditional view, meaning presents itself under the form of some kind of identity.

This paper draws on the emerging field of innovation ethics to complement the more established field of responsible innovation by focusing on key ethical issues raised by technological innovations. One key limitation of influential frameworks of RI is that they tend to neglect some key ethical issues raised by innovation, as well as major normative dimensions of the notion of responsibility. We explain how IE could enrich RI by stressing the more important role that ethical analysis should play in RI. (...) We focus on two transversal issues of IE: the issue of redrawing conceptual boundaries, especially the topic of the artificialization of the world, and the issue of responsibility, especially the notion of total responsibility. We address these two issues from the thematic perspective of IE, thereby generating lessons learnt for RI. These two examples are taken as illustrations and blueprint of the dialogue that should take place between the two fields. (shrink)

La question du sacerdoce des femmes dans l'Occident chrétien doit être examinée à la lumière des catégories sociales (masculin/féminin, laïc/ecclésiastique) imaginées par l'Église durant le Moyen Age. C'est en forgeant, entre le IIIe et le XIIe siècle, des systèmes de classification adaptés à leur insertion croissante dans la société que les clercs en vinrent à exclure catégoriquement les femmes du ministère sacerdotal, tout en définissant des fonctions socio-religieuses spécifiquement féminines. Au cours du XIIIe siècle, alors que l'ordre social défini par (...) les clercs était ébranlé par des expériences religieuses originales, qui furent le fait de femmes contestant (plus ou moins explicitement) leur état de subordination au sein de l'Église, l'institution ecclésiale surmonta l'épreuve en éradiquant toute forme de contestation et en réaffirmant de manière nouvelle les classifications qu'elle avait élaborées durant les siècles précédents. (shrink)

This is the second installment of a two-part paper on developments in quantum dispersion theory leading up to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. In telling this story, we have taken a 1924 paper by John H. Van Vleck in The Physical Review as our main guide. In this second part we present the detailed derivations on which our narrative in the first part rests. The central result that we derive is the Kramers dispersion formula, which played a key role in the thinking (...) that led to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. We derive classical formulae for the dispersion, emission, and absorption of radiation and use Bohr’s correspondence principle to construct their quantum counterparts both for the special case of a charged harmonic oscillator (Sect. 5) and for arbitrary non-degenerate multiply-periodic systems (Sect. 6). We then rederive these results in modern quantum mechanics (Sect. 7). (shrink)

L'ONTOLOGIE comme question de l'Etre aura dominé le XXe siècle, avec L'Etre et le Temps de Heidegger et l'Etre et le Néant de Sartre. Mais que dire sur l'Etre sans le présupposer, sans dire qu'il est ceci ou cela alors que c'est ce dire même qui fait problème? L'Etre se présente ainsi comme la problématicité de la philosophie, et c'est du même coup cette problématicité qui pose question avant tel ou tel objet, aussi éminent soit-il. En se voulant interrogation sur (...) l'Etre, la philosophie néglige de prendre en compte l'être de sa propre interrogation, et de s'interroger non seulement sur son questionnement, mais sur le questionnement en général, qu'elle met cependant en œuvre comme une évidence. Le but de cet ouvrage est d'analyser, de Platon à Heidegger, en passant par Kant, Sartre, Bergson et Wittgenstein, les apories de l'ontologie et leur dépassement par la thématisation du questionnement, la problématologie. Car qu'est-ce que la philosophie sinon un questionnement radical, à questionner enfin comme tel, et non plus au travers de l'Etre ou du sujet? MICHEL MEYER. (shrink)