La question de l’union entre sagesse et bonheur se situe au cœur même de la tradition morale. Dans la perspective la plus traditionnelle, croître en sagesse revient automatiquement à augmenter son bonheur. La philosophie est ainsi la voie royale pour parvenir à un bonheur plus durable que dans la conception vulgaire, en détachant l’esprit des choses inessentielles et en l’amenant à connaître les vérités qui lui fourniront l’aliment le plus approprié à sa nature réelle. Néanmoins, le lien analytique entre sagesse (...) et bonheur a également été critiqué par la démonstration que l’effondrement de l’un des deux termes n’entraînait pas nécessairement l’effondrement de l’autre. Au premier chef de ces critiques se situent les sceptiques, qui de l’Antiquité à la période moderne s’accordent à nier la possibilité d’une connaissance réelle, tout en maintenant généralement la possibilité d’être heureux. Inversement, cette accessibilité du bonheur a pu être critiquée sans que soit remise en question la connaissance elle-même : c’est ce que révèlent les philosophies tragiques, qui assimilent plutôt sagesse et souffrance. Par la diversité des contributions, qui puisent principalement dans les traditions ancienne et moderne, mais offrent également quelques perspectives contemporaines et non euro-centrées, le présent volume illustre l’affrontement de ces deux grands courants dans l’histoire de la philosophie, et permet de penser à nouveaux frais ce problème essentiel à la morale qu’est l’utilité ou l’inutilité de la connaissance pour être heureux. Sigmund Freud, et surtout Jacques Lacan, m’ont apporté l’éclairage théorique nécessaire. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to reveal the primal role played by “use” in Spinoza's Ethics. Contrary to appearances, the concept is not linked only to passivity; it is an essential feature of the reinforcement of virtue toward wisdom. Considering that Laurent Bove's analyses of habit within the realm of imagination leave aside the links with adequate knowledge, this article offers an extension of his interpretation in a completely new direction. The new elements are, above all, a demonstration of (...) the place of “use” in the texts where the shift from passivity to activity is concerned, and a new interpretation of intuition in the example of the discovery of the fourth proportional number. In this example, it is argued that intuition is simply a mechanical habituation to truth, thanks to the repetition of acts of reasoning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article evaluates the strategies used by Christian philosophers to counter the invasion of Spinozist ideas between 1680 and 1720. The analysis of these refutations reveals a significant evolution in the way they unfolded. I wish to show that the argument from finality, or Gods death to get organized and refute him directly.

Hegel attribue à l'art et à Ia philosophie une même tâche dans l'histoire de l'Esprit, celle de « réconcilier » les opposés. Nous expliquerons de quels éléments à médiatiser il s'agit, et une étude détaillée de textes de l'Introduction à l'Esthétique nous amènera à critiquer le moment de la transition vers la philosophie, celui de la poésie romantique. Nous suggérerons en particulier que l'emploi de deux critères différents pour établir la hiérarchie des arts et des formes empêche Hegel de justifier (...) réellement le dépassement de l'art par la philosophie ainsi que la supériorité de la réconciliation philosophique.Hegel assigns to art and philosophy one and the same task in the history of the Spirit, that of "reconciling" the opposites. I explain which elements are mediated, and rely on a detailed study of extracts from the Introduction to Aesthetics to criticize the moment of the transition to philosophy, viz. romantic poetry. In particular, I suggest that the use of two different criteria to establish a hierarchy of arts and forms prevents Hegel from giving a proper justification of how philosophy transcends art, and of why its reconciliation is superior. (shrink)

Depuis son important Hegel ou Spinoza publié en 1979, Pierre Macherey s'est progressivement imposé comme l'une des figures les plus importantes du renouveau spinoziste. La publication de cinq volumes d'Introduction à l'Éthique de Spinoza aux Presses Universitaires de France de 1994 à 1998, dont celui-ci est l'avant-dernier, confirme sa place désormais proéminente parmi les grands interprètes français. Or Macherey nous assure dans son introduction ne justement pas vouloir imposer une «interprétation», qui viendrait se superposer à la lettre de ce qu'écrit (...) Spinoza, mais bien au contraire ouvrir, à partir d'une étude littérale de l'Éthique, un champ d'interprétation dont il se contenterait d'indiquer les bornes. Et ces bornes, certes, apparaissent, car en mettant au clair ce que Spinoza a dit, il fait voir aussi ce qu'il n'a pas dit, et ruine ainsi systématiquement nombre d'interprétations erronées. De cette puissance de critique fondée sur une analyse lente et minutieuse du texte, Macherey tire finalement une assurance très grande qui donne à son commentaire un ton peut-être plus autoritaire qu'il ne l'aurait souhaité parfois, mais dont la cohérence d'ensemble renforce le pouvoir de persuasion. Et malgré l'impossibilité foncière de ne pas faire quelques choix d'interprétation dans un commentaire de ce type, ces tomes de Macherey ont réussi leur pari de rester des introductions à la lecture du texte lui-même, plutôt que des surtextes qui masqueraient leur source. Son commentaire du De Mente en particulier, la seconde partie de l'Éthique qui nous concerne ici, ouvre réellement à la lecture de ce qu'a écrit Spinoza, avec une rigueur remarquable. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage n’est pas un commentaire du Traité théologico-politique de Spinoza. Ce n’est pas une lecture suivie, pas même un ouvrage érudit d’interprétation, bien qu’il soit résolument question du rapport de Spinoza au judaïsme. Mieux: c’est une thèse. Une thèse forte, digne d’être controversée, et qui a de quoi intéresser tout philosophe; tout spécialiste de Spinoza aussi, mais, plus largement, tout penseur, éthique, religieux ou politique; et l’auteur nous précéderait sans doute pour dire: tout homme. C’est une thèse sur la (...) métaphysique, sur l’Occident, sur la trilogie Être-Dieu-Pouvoir, et sur la définition subséquente de l’homme. Car tout est lié, et ceux pour qui ce n’est pas évident n’auront qu’à lire l’ouvrage pour s’en persuader. De fait, ce sont tous les domaines de la pensée occidentale qui sont touchés, et souvent critiqués. Voilà une thèse qui ne peut laisser indifférent. (shrink)

L’auteur d’une introduction et d’une traduction de l’Abrégé de musique de Descartes aux éditions Méridiens-Klincksieck en 1990 revient sur la scène philosophique avec la publication d’un second ouvrage sur Descartes. «Le propos du présent ouvrage est de dégager la contribution proprement cartésienne à l’esthétique [...], de repartir du texte cartésien pour y saisir le statut de la dimension esthétique», peut-on lire sur la quatrième de couverture. Entreprise nouvelle s’il en est, et c’est pourquoi l’ouvrage se présente comme un essai philosophique, (...) au sens d’un livre à thèse, d’un livre à risques: «[...] l’absence d’une esthétique explicitement donnée par Descartes semble faire de notre propos une gageure», annonce d’emblée Pascal Dumont. L’essentiel consiste dès lors à savoir si cet ouvrage vient combler un manque cruel dans les études sur Descartes, en révélant une face trop peu connue de celui-ci jusqu’alors, ou à l’inverse si l’absence simple et nette d’intérêt de Descartes pour ce qu’on appelle aujourd’hui l’esthétique, ne fait pas de tout discours visant à «restituer au cartésianisme [...] sa potentialité esthétique» un bavardage vain. La publication de cet ouvrage dans une collection fort respectable semble indiquer à elle seule que Pascal Dumont ouvre la voie à un type d’étude qui en vaut la peine. Mais l’ouvrage lui-même nous en convainc-t-il? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy by John DeweyCharles A. HobbsJohn Dewey. Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, 351 pp., index.John Dewey’s latest publication marks a watershed moment for scholarship in American philosophy, and, in addition to Dewey himself, we have editor Phillip Deen to thank for discovering it (among the Dewey papers in Special Collections at Morris Library of Southern Illinois (...) University) and editing it. We see Dewey late in life (early 1940s) engaged mainly in a critique of the modern, ancient, and (fragmentarily) medieval philosophical periods, which Dewey argues, are eras not nearly as distinct as traditional understanding admits. In the Introduction, Deen helpfully explains how we are now bequeathed incomplete but in most [End Page 122] cases quite robust chapter drafts that amount to another substantial work by Dewey. While published by Southern Illinois University Press, this volume is not itself part of The Collected Works of John Dewey. Still, the careful editing (of what are actually a number of manuscripts) is comparable in its excellence. There is also a well-done Index.The scope is twofold: retrospective and prospective. Chapters one through seven trace the development of so-called modern philosophy along with its central epistemological problem, with the aim being to demonstrate how thoroughly “unmodern” such philosophy has been. Then, chapters eight through fourteen constitute a genuinely modern approach that naturalistically and functionally undercuts the epistemic problem of subject/object and points to a revolution in the process of knowing.We turn to the retrospective, beginning in the first chapter with the acknowledgement that Dewey comes to philosophy itself as a kind of anthropologist, something we note as consistent with the influence of Franz Boas on Dewey (with whom Dewey was a colleague and intellectual ally at Columbia for about thirty-five years). This is further underscored by a lengthy quotation of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski on the meaning of culture (p. 290). The ongoing history of philosophy is itself a cultural activity. Indeed, citing James, Dewey declares that “The sickliest way in which a student of philosophy can approach his subject-matter is that of a search for ultimate impersonal revelation of truth.” (p. 16) Rather, let the philosopher have the pragmatic attitude of openness “... to truth from whatever source it comes” (ibid).With that, Dewey once again turns to the Greeks, who initiated “The Discovery of Rational Discourse” (Ch. III) as underscored by the Socratic means of cooperative discourse, with the dialogues—not lectures—being evidence of the Athenian philosophical revolution in turning “from discussing nature and giving an account of it to the examination of the nature and procedure of discussion and report” (p. 38). Yet this project, despite its initial promise, failed for lack of a genuine logic of experimentation or inquiry. Then philosophy focused on going beyond the natural, beginning with the medieval “Search for Salvation” (Ch. IV, a significantly less developed and unified chapter draft). “Modern” philosophers then rightly replaced grand cosmic schemes with a focus on human nature (Ch. V), but they went too far with their introspective methods, gradually resulting in the same consequence supernaturalism had produced: a dualism of mind and nature, as if human nature is somehow not a part of nature. As we recall from Human Nature and Conduct (1922), human nature is not independent of but rather interdependent (or, using Dewey’s later term, transactional) with the rest of nature. The key is to avoid hypostatizing mind and better to talk of culture as nature. [End Page 123]With the Renaissance onward, humans have been “Wandering between Two Worlds” (Ch. VI), and endless arguments between “rationalists” and “empiricists” overlook what these camps share, namely a psychology assuming a fundamental split between subjective/objective and assumptions about certainty as founded upon various first principles or substances. The result is the stagnation of philosophy while science flourishes. Dewey cites Bertrand Russell as an example of continued insistence on such a priori principles (p. 106).We find ourselves in an epoch split between scientism and moral and religious fundamentalism, the result of a lingering tenacious investment in bad elements from ancient and medieval... (shrink)

Contents: John A. HALL and Ian JARVIE: Preface. John A. HALL and Ian JARVIE: The Life and Times of Ernest Gellner. PART 1 INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND. Ji_i MUSIL: The Prague Roots of Ernest Gellner's Thinking. Chris HANN: Gellner on Malinowski: Words and Things in Central Europe. Tamara DRAGADZE: Ernest Gellner in the Soviet East. PART 2 NATIONS AND NATIONALISM. Brendan O'LEARY: On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's Writings on Nationalism. Kenneth MINOGUE: Ernest Gellner and the Dangers (...) of Theorising Nationalism. Anthony D. SMITH: History and Modernity: Reflection on the Theory of Nationalism. Michael MANN: The Emergence of Modern European Nationalism. Nicholas STARGARDT: Gellner's Nationalism: The Spirit of Modernisation? PART 3 PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT. Peter BURKE: Reflections on the History of Encyclopaedias. Alan MACFARLANE: Ernest Gellner and the Escape to Modernity. Ronald DORE: Sovereign Individuals. Shmuel EISENSTADT: Japan: Non-Axial Modernity. Marc FERRO: l'Indépendance Telescopée: De la Décolonisation a l'Impérialisme Multinational. PART 4 ISLAM. Abdellah HAMMOUDI: Segmentarity, Social Stratification, Political Power and Sainthood: Reflections on Gellner's Theses. Henry MUNSON, Jr.: Rethinking Gellner's Segmentary Analysis of Morocco's Ait cAtta. Jean BAECHLER: Sur le charisme. Charles LINDHOLM: Despotism and Democracy: State and Society in the Premodern Middle East. Henry MUNSON, Jr.: Muslim and Jew in Morocco: Reflections on the Distinction between Belief and Behavior. Talal ASAD: The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. PART 5 SCIENCE AND DISENCHANTMENT. Perry ANDERSON: Science, Politics, Enchantment. Ralph SCHROEDER: From the Big Divide to the Rubber Cage: Gellner's Conception of Science and Technology. John DAVIS: Irrationality in Social Life. PART 6 RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSALS. John SKORUPSKI: The Post-Modern Hume: Ernest Gellner's 'Enlightenment Fundamentalism'. John WETTERSTEN: Ernest Gellner: A Wittgensteinian Rationalist. Ian JARVIE: Gellner's Positivism. Raymond BOUDON: Relativising Relativism: When Sociology Refutes the Sociology of Science. Rod AYA: The Devil in Social Anthropology; or, the Empiricist Exorcist; or, the Case Against Cultural Relativism. PART 7 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. William MCNEILL: A Swan Song for British Liberalism? Andrus PARK: Gellner and the Long Trends of History. Eero LOONE: Marx, Gellner, Power. Rosaire LANGLOIS: Coercion, Cognition and Production: Gellner's Challenge to Historical Materialism and Postmodernism. Ernest GELLNER: Reply to Critics. Ian JARVIE: Complete Bibliography of Gellner's Work. Name index. Subject index. (shrink)

Although Spinoza’s words about intuition, also called “the third kind of knowledge,” remain among the most difficult to grasp, I argue that he succeeds in providing an account of its distinctive character. Moreover, the special place that intuition holds in Spinoza’s philosophy is grounded not in its epistemological distinctiveness, but in its ethical promise. I will not go as far as one commentator to claim that the epistemological distinction is negligible (Malinowski-Charles 2003),but I do argue that its privileged (...) place in Spinoza’s system belongs primarily to its ethical importance, by which I mean that intuition’s value is prized by virtue of the agency it confers upon those who enjoy it. Spinoza often notes that what distinguishes the “wise man” is that he is more powerful, able to do more. That is,the wise and free person with whose description the Ethics culminates is set apart not, first and foremost, by virtue of possessing a scientific account of the true cosmological order. The Ethics is perhaps called an ethics, rather than a treatise on metaphysics or knowledge, because it concludes with a demonstration of how one comes to be able to do what is best and to live a more joyful life. Intuitive science is essential to the characterization of the power to think and live well. (shrink)

This is a major and comprehensive study of the philosophy of Hegel, his place in the history of ideas, and his continuing relevance and importance. Professor Taylor relates Hegel to the earlier history of philosophy and, more particularly, to the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time. He engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel's own terms and, as the subject demands, in detail. This important book is now reissued with a fresh new cover.

This book is concerned with `the problem of existence in mathematics'. It develops a mathematical system in which there are no existence assertions but only assertions of the constructibility of certain sorts of things. It explores the philosophical implications of such an approach through an examination of the writings of Field, Burgess, Maddy, Kitcher, and others.

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective (...) on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

Reviews the scope, nature, and applications of the philosophical discipline, focusing on methods for distinguishing between valid and fallacious arguments and inferences.

"A beautiful piece of work on the theory of altered states of consciousness ." "Stanislav Grof, M.D. author of Realms of the Human Unconsciousness".

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (...) (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’? (shrink)

Newton’s impact on Enlightenment natural philosophy has been studied at great length, in its experimental, methodological and ideological ramifications. One aspect that has received fairly little attention is the role Newtonian “analogies” played in the formulation of new conceptual schemes in physiology, medicine, and life science as a whole. So-called ‘medical Newtonians’ like Pitcairne and Keill have been studied; but they were engaged in a more literal project of directly transposing, or seeking to transpose, Newtonian laws into quantitative models of (...) the body. I am interested here in something different: neither the metaphysical reading of Newton, nor direct empirical transpositions, but rather, a more heuristic, empiricist construction of Newtonian analogies. Figures such as Haller, Barthez, and Blumenbach constructed analogies between the method of celestial mechanics and the method of physiology. In celestial mechanics, they held, an unknown entity such as gravity is posited and used to mathematically link sets of determinate physical phenomena (e.g., the phases of the moon and tides). This process allows one to remain agnostic about the ontological status of the unknown entity, as long as the two linked sets of phenomena are represented adequately. Haller et. al. held that the Newtonian physician and physiologist can similarly posit an unknown called ‘life’ and use it to link various other phenomena, from digestion to sensation and the functioning of the glands. These phenomena consequently appear as interconnected, goal-oriented processes which do not exist either in an inanimate mechanism or in a corpse. In keeping with the empiricist roots of the analogy, however, no ontological claims are made about the nature of this vital principle, and no attempts are made to directly causally connect such a principle and observable phenomena. The role of the “Newtonian analogy” thus brings together diverse schools of thought, and cuts across a surprising variety of programs, models and practices in natural philosophy. (shrink)