Philosophy has never been and never will be a science. Nevertheless it is a body of knowledge, a field of autonomous being and the subject’s ontic foundation as knowledge of itself. This paper provides an analysis of the nature of philosophy as an autonomous form of Western spirit during its historical development. The dialectic between reason, knowledge and freedom is studied through multiple historical examples from the Antiquity to modern times.

It is said that all philosophy is nothing other than a commentary on Plato.Maybe.But was not Plato himself a commentary on Parmenides, Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and the Sophists, not to mention Socrates?And conversely, too, the Commentary on Aristotle composed by St Thomas was not the personal philosophy of Thomas Aquinas? Or then again, do Proclus’ Commentarii in primum Euclidis Elementorum librum not embody a new and original neoplatonic philosophy of mathematics?

In his collection of anecdotes, Lives, Opinions, and Remarkable Sayings of the Most Famous Ancient Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius devotes a chapter to the life of Zeno of Elea. Zeno's reputation is based on his celebrated paradoxes, amply discussed by Aristotle: a moving body will never reach its (pre-defined) telos, since it first has to cover half (or more than half) the remaining distance; the faster will never catch up with the slower, since it first has to get to the point (...) from which the slower has just left. Zeno's style is laconic, like that of an Aesop fable. Maxima e minimis: there is no superfluous word. Everything needed to arrive at the conclusion is explicitly stated. (shrink)

“Deus fons veritatis”: the Subject and its Freedom. The Ontic Foundation of Mathematical Truth is the title of Gaspare Polizzi’s long biographical-theoretical interview with Imre Toth. The interview is divided into eight parts. The first part describes the historical and cultural context in which Toth was formed. A Jew by birth, during the Second World War Toth became a communist and a partisan, enduring prison, torture, and internment in a concentration camp from 1940 until 6 June 1944. In the (...) second part Toth presents his mathematical training as a “vocation” that led him to rethink the whole tradition of mathematical thought critically, on the basis of non-Euclidean geometry. In the third part Toth describes his research in the history of mathematics, which begin with his studies on Aristotle and mathematical thought and on Plato and the negative ontology of the irrational recognizable in the theory of the infinite dyad and of the One. In the fourth part Toth criticizes the positions of Frege, who came to deny non-Euclidean geometry, viewing it as an expression of irrationality and mysticism. In the fifth part Toth maintains that mathesis and poiesis have similar ontological structures, and he speaks of his collages métaphysiques. In the sixth part Toth recalls how the birth of the idea of freedom made possible the highest political, social and artistic achievements, as well as the entire movement of human emancipation. And this was thanks to philosophy, which is not a science but a knowledge of the subject on the subject’s part. In the seventh and eighth parts Toth speaks of the value and the role of mathematics in the affirmation of the phenomenology of freedom, and remarks on his relations with French and Italian cultures. (shrink)

"C'est un palimpseste : une succession de textes tirés des oeuvres complètes des auteurs à peu près complets. Le choix effectué par la lecture se trouve incarné dans l'ordre de l'écriture. Et cet ordre est porteur d'un message, il véhicule une thèse, il articule une idée dont le sens ne devient transparent que par le tout. Désormais les fragments extraits des texte ne représentent que le maillons d'une unique chaîne connexe de paroles, segmentss d'un entier : le texte du Palimpseste. (...) Derrière ce choix un axiome est caché, une assertion qui stimule et justifie la composition et, en dernière instance, garantit l'existence et légitime la subsistance autonome du texte. C'est ce que, par un terme emprunté à la théorie des ensembles de Georg Cantor, on pourra appeler "axiome du choix" ou encore, en une formulation quelque peu différente mais peut-être plus adéquate pour le traitement des textes, "axiome de sélection". L'axiome du choix permet donc l'assemblage d'un texte uniquement constitué de citations. Il permet aussi de citer des textes inexistants : ce sont alors des textes écrits exprès et pour l'unique raison d'être cités.... Le parler, comme l'a fait remarquer à plusieurs reprises Platon, est une praxis et l'axiome du choix confère au sujet le privilège d'exercer la fonction de choix : de sélectionner, de découper et d'assembler en un polymère verbal des fragments hétérogènes appartenant initialement à des textes préexistants. Le choix qui a présidé et guidé la navigation dans la métagalaxie des textes préexistants relève de cette liberté : sélectionner des "Propos" concernant le "Triangle", euclidien ou non, et de les assembler en un unique lieu et dans le présent indivisible d'une unique écriture étalée sur la surface du papier.". (shrink)

La géométrie non euclidienne fut non seulement un bouleversement sans précédent dans l'histoire des mathématiques, mais également une bouffée d'air pur pour les partisans d'une "vérité sans les dogmes". Par ce "non" augmentatif, elle affirmait l'existence d'un en-dehors de l'Être, vingt-quatre siècles après le Parménide de Platon, et plaçait, more geometrico, la philosophie dans l'espace de la spiritualité occidentale, ouvrant la voie à la liberté dans le domaine des sciences rigoureuses. C'est aux implications philosophiques de cette révolution mathématique qu'est consacré (...) l'essai d'Imre Toth, qui étudie également certains aspects de la pensée de Gottlob Frege, farouche adversaire de la géométrie non euclidienne, pour en démontrer les impasses et les fourvoiements. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

La question au nombre irrationnel et de l'irrationnel mathématique en général, tient une part discrète dans l'oeuvre de Platon, mais elle est comme cette "pierre délaissée par les architectes" et qui est pourtant "la pierre angulaire". Elle concentre toutes les questions de l'être et du non-être, du possible et de l'impossible, du fini et de l'infini et ouvre la voie à la liberté pleine et entière de l'homme en quête de vérité. En elle, convergent pensée mathématique et spéculation philosophique, en (...) une harmonie riche de conséquences inestimables. C'est cette harmonie que révèle Imre Toth dans un essai brillant et rigoureux, le dernier qu'il ait écrit avant sa brusque disparition en mai 2010. "Les Editions de l'éclat viennent de contribuer à réparer ce qui apparaît comme une lacune de l'édition française en publiant deux textes récents d'Imre Toth" - Françoise Balibar (Critique). "Le livre de Toth est extrêmement séduisant, croisant la polémique politique la plus vive avec l'initiation limpide aux problèmes fondamentaux de la philosophie des mathématiques" - Jean-Paul Thomas (Le Monde). "Philosophes comme historiens des sciences pourront tirer profit de ce regard enflammé sur le processus mathématique, qui place la liberté au coeur de la création, mais va au-delà en cherchant à comprendre son fonctionnement, précisément en mathématique" - Jean-Michel Kantor (La Quinzaine littéraire). (shrink)

L'histoire répond à la volonté du matérialisme marxiste de se construire comme science en saisissant les principes constitutifs des sociétés humaines et de leur évolution. L'existence humaine est historique parce qu'elle évolue nécessairement en totalité en recouvrant toutes les dimensions de la vie sociale, matérielle et idéologique. Le marxisme rencontre donc l'histoire parce qu'il s'enracine dans une pensée dialectique du monde qui appréhende le réel en mouvement par les catégories de processus et de totalité. Dialectique et histoire sont ainsi essentiellement (...) liées dans la constitution du marxisme. Ce recueil souhaite renouer le fil, parfois occulté, mais jamais rompu, qui relie la dialectique au marxisme, et le marxisme à l'histoire. Il s'agit de souligner que l'adaptation de la pensée, et de l'historiographie marxiste, au mouvement de l'histoire, repose sur sa nature dialectique, et donc sur le rapport assumé à la philosophie idéaliste allemande (Hegel notamment). La position prise face à ce rapport détermine ici l'histoire de la dialectique, histoire de sa réception, dans le marxisme, ainsi que ries fractures structurant ce dernier, tant internes (Lukacs, et en un sens opposé, Althusser) qu'externe (Foucault). (shrink)

On connaît la problématique du cercle herméneutique : le tout n'est compréhensible qu'à partir du détail qui n'est compréhensible qu'à partir du tout. André Stanguennec cherche à tenir les deux exigences sans céder en rien sur la rigueur du détail ni sur le mouvement dialectique de la totalisation, à partir du sujet de l'action. Son oeuvre vise à se comprendre et à comprendre notre époque à travers ses totalisations éthiques, juridiques, politiques, esthétiques, scientifiques - et bien évidemment philosophiques. Or l'activité (...) critique possède l'ambition de comprendre le discours tout d'abord aussi bien, puis mieux que son auteur. Ce livre cherche donc à présenter cette philosophie herméneutique et dialectique qui se veut totalement compréhensive ; et à la comprendre avec et contre son auteur. Ce livre provient d'une journée d'étude, organisée en 2010 par J-M. Lardic et P. Billouet, à la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme de Nantes, sous la présidence de Bernard Bourgeois, Professeur émérite (Paris I), Membre de l'Institut (Académie des Sciences morales et politiques), en hommage à A Stanguennec, Professeur émérite à l'université de Nantes. (shrink)

A part of chapter 1, Book II of the Physics of the Šif¯ ' is dedicated to the aristotelian definition of motion . The developments to which the treatment of this question gives rise are distinctive of the Avicennian style in his Physics . By assuming the notion of double entelechy, Avicenna is following the most classical exegetical tradition. However, by setting a correspondence between the double entelechy and the double notion of motion: 1) motion as an intermediary state, which (...) can be ascribed to a moving object at any instant of its trajectory, and 2) motion as a traversal of a given distance, which cannot be ascribed to the moving object, but at the end-point of its trajectory, Avicenna gives a new content to a lieu commun of the exegetical tradition. (shrink)

Anne Devarieux | : En allant de Maine de Biran à Louis Lavelle, nous allons d’une métaphysique de l’expérience intérieure qui définit l’être du moi comme un volo donné dans le sentiment actuel de sa puissance propre, à une ontologie déclinant les puissances plurielles du moi, à l’intérieur d’une dialectique de la puissance et de l’acte (théorie de la participation). Mais tous deux ont pensé l’intériorité comme un mouvement absolu, secret et irréductible à toute représentation. Attentif à l’évolution de la (...) pensée de Maine de Biran, Louis Lavelle semble avoir développé toutes les potentialités cachées du moi biranien. Un tel mouvement permet d’éclairer la place de Maine de Biran dans l’histoire du spiritualisme français, et de ses héritiers, qu’il s’agisse d’Henri Bergson ou de Michel Henry. | : Going from Maine de Biran to Louis Lavelle, we can feel the distance between a metaphysics of inner experience which defines the being of the ego as a volo, given in the present sense of its own power, and an ontology asserting the plural virtual powers of the ego, within a dialectic of the power and the act (theory of participation). However, both have thought interiority as an absolute and secret motion, irreducible to any representation. Attentive to the evolution of Maine de Biran’s thought, Louis Lavelle seems to have developed all the hidden potential of the Biranian theory of the self. Such a movement can illuminate the place of Biran in the history of French spiritualism, and of his heirs, whether it be Henri Bergson or Michel Henry. (shrink)

The editors, Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, of Husserl's Aufsdtze und Vortri~ge (1922-1937) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989) have given us a fascinating present with quite a few surprises. I would like to take this occasion to thank them publicly for their able and selfless labors. Here we have Husserl attempting to address himself to a large philosophically untrained audience for funds of which he had dire need: he had two children getting married and the real value of his inflated German (...) annual income was worth $160.00. But, as he told a friend, what he was doing was as genuine philosophical work as what he would do for his Jahrbuch ffir Philosophie und phginomenologische Forschung. In many ways it is regrettable the work did not come to full fruition for the publication in the Jahrbuch because then the tensions and ambiguities we find here would have been perhaps less severe. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Leibniz' (L.) concept of entelechy, though L. himself believes to have derived it directly from Aristotle, does not correspond exactly to the Aristotelian concept. The main difference between the Aristotelian and the Leibnizian concept may be explained as follows: Whereas Aristotle uses "entelecheia" to designate a property possessed by living organisms, L. takes it to be a generic term for souls and other monads. It is further argued that Aristotle's somewhat intricate argument in De (...) Anima II 1 has contributed to the misunderstanding of the Aristotelian term, a misunderstanding starting already with the Aristotelian commentators Themistius, Philoponus and Simplicius. L. took his concept from the tradition of the commentators which he knew through the Italian humanist Ermolao Barbaro. (shrink)

Is life a simple result of a conjunction of physico-chemical processes? Can be reduced to a mere juxtaposition of spatially determined events? What epistemology or world-view allows us to comprehend it? Aristotle built a novel philosophical system in which nature is a dynamical totality which is in constant movement. Life is a manifestation of it, and is formed and governed by the psyche. Psyche is the organizational principle of the different biological levels: nutritive, perceptive and intelective. Driesch's crucial experiment provided (...) empirical proof of the principle of life, which he called entelechy. Entelechy is an intensive manifoldness and cannot be comprehended by the usual extensive parameters. The entelechian's own ambiance is duration. This allows the reintroduction of the concept of teleology in the sphere of the living, understood not as a final cause, but as an order born from desire and leading to action. (shrink)

Este texto objetiva desenvolver discussão sobre os fundamentos dialéticos do desenvolvimento profissional docente. Estrutura-se na revisão de literatura com base em ideias de autores que abordam estudos sobre o desenvolvimento profissional docente e no conceito de desenvolvimento fundamentado nas leis gerais do Materialismo Histórico Dialético. Dentre os resultados constatados com o estudo, destaca-se a compreensão de que os autores analisados realizam discussão do desenvolvimento profissional docente como processo de constituição do ser professor relacionado a aquisição de saberes e competências necessárias (...) à profissão. A partir da discussão dos fundamentos dialéticos do desenvolvimento profissional docente, concluiu-se que o mesmo é o movimento histórico e dialético de constituição das maneiras de pensar, sentir e agir do professor e se manifesta nas suas relações pessoais, profissionais e institucionais. Palavras-chave: Pesquisa; Educação; Desenvolvimento Profissional; Processo Dialético. Dialectical Foundations of Professional Teaching Development Abstract: This text aims to develop discussions on the dialectical foundations of professional teaching development. It is structured in the literature review based on ideas of authors that address studies about the professional teaching development and in the concept of the development grounded on the general laws of Dialectical Historical Materialism. Among the results found due the study, we highlight the comprehension that the analyzed authors hold discussion on the professional teaching development as a constitution process of being a teacher related to the knowledge acquisition and the necessary competences in the profession. From the discussion on dialectical foundations of professional teaching development, it was concluded that it is the historical and dialectical movement of constitution of ways of thinking, feeling, and acting as a teacher and it is manifested in its personal, professional, and institutional relations. Keywords: Research And Education; Professional Development; Dialectical Process. Fondements dialectiques du développement professionnel des enseignants Résumé: Ce texte vise à développer discussion sur les fondements dialectiques du développement professionnel des enseignants. On structure dans la révision de littérature basée sur les idées d'auteurs qui abordent études sur le développement professionnel des enseignants et dans le concept de développement fondé dans les lois générales du Matérialisme Historique Dialectique. Parmi les résultats constatés avec l'étude, on met en évidence la compréhension que les auteurs analysés réalisent discussion du développement professionnel des enseignants comme processus de constitution d’être professeur lié à l'acquisition de connaissances et compétences nécessaires à la profession. À partir de la discussion des fondements dialectiques du développement professionnel des enseignants, on a été conclu le même est le mouvement historique et dialectique de constitution des façons de penser, de sentir et d'agir du professeur et se manifeste dans ses relations personnelles, professionnelles et institutionnelles. Mots-clés: Recherche Et Education; Développement Professionnel; Processus Dialectique. Data de registro: 20/03/2021 Data de aceite: 15/03/2022. (shrink)

This article pursues Rahner’s idea that the Holy Spirit has the role of “Spirit of Christ” even before the Incarnation, namely as “entelechy” directed to the Christ event. In the article, particular use is made of a biblical text hitherto not invoked in this connection, namely 1 Peter 1:11, from which a biblical base for this theology is developed. The article also investigates Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of evolution encompassing the world religions and Christianity, the absolute religion. The idea of (...) the Spirit of Christ as entelechy is clarified and refined by application of the author’s construct of the “return” model of the Trinity, in which the Son does not just come forth from the Father, but returns to him in the power of the Spirit (see his newly published book, Deus Trinitas). Before, and in reparation for, the Son’s historical return to the Father, in Christ, the Spirit, precisely as entelechy, has to seek him in history, that is, through the creation and evolution of the cosmos, the arrival of humans, the consequent and new operation of the Spirit as grace, and the history of Israel culminating in the lives of Mary and, finally, Jesus, in whom this operation finds its final goal. Moreover, the role of the Spirit as entelechy complements and forms a unity with that of the same Spirit (again “Spirit of Christ”) as sent historically by the glorified Christ upon the Church, and continues even after the Incarnation, in leading to Christ (as “anonymous Christians”) men and women of goodwill, including those belonging to the world religions who have not yet had the gospel effectively preached to them. Finally, the paper notes that it covers some of the same ground as the Vatican Declaration Dominus Iesus, but in a different way, namely as instructed by the work of Teilhard and Rahner. (shrink)

Recent studies of power have become increasingly quantitative and normative and have shifted the focus of inquiry away from the examination of power itself. Without discarding those studies, this book reinjects the phenomenological dimension into them.

We have seen two recent Soviet interpretations of Zeno's paradoxes concerning motion. They have a common pecularity: both oppose the standard interpretation accepted by many followers of dialectical materialism. That standard view, interpreting the motion-paradoxes following Hegel and Engels, advances them to support the “contradiction-ontology” of dialectical materialism and to apply them as an argument to demonstrate that we need to restrict the logical law of non-contradiction and transcend traditional logic. While this argument is refuted by Vojšvilo concretely, its invalidity (...) follows indirectly form Janovskaja's essay too. At the same time, Janovskaja seeks for a deeper understanding of Zeno's paradoxes, not in the contradictory feature of reality but in the epistemological relation; thus, in this respect she breaks with the “contradiction-ontology” of dialectical materialism, which has a clearly metaphysical character. Though Vojšvilo's essay does not contain such an element, still — by analysing the formula given by him for the description of motion without logical contradiction — it permits the conjecture that one can speak correctly of the so-called contradictory nature of motion only in the context of the subject-object relation.We might also observe that both Vojšvilo and Janovskaja's interpretations are relevant not only from the point of view of the history of dialectical materialism, but also with regard to actual research in paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

Recent work on Imre Lakatos’s missing Hungarian dissertation on the historical sociology of science sheds new light on his mature philosophy of science. Remembered primarily as an “internalist” defender of the autonomy of science, and a Cold Warrior in poli­tics, commentators have mistaken his contribution as primarily a rearguard action against the followers of Thomas Kuhn and the “externalists” influenced by Boris Hessen. It comes as a surprise, then, to find that he developed and retained a fully general soci­ology (...) of scientific knowledge, with Marxist roots that articulated Lenin’s “inexhaustible atom.” He carried forward this emphasis on the fallible, changing, and incomplete nature of our engagement with the natural world by a dialectical account of how research programs advance and recede historically. In his effort to develop a synthesis of Popper and Kuhn, and via his engagement with Paul Feyerabend, he continued to develop a distinctly dialectical ap­proach to science. (shrink)

Dialectique négative est l'œuvre maîtresse de Theodor W. Adorno et l'un des grands textes philosophiques de notre temps. On en comprendra peut-être mieux l'intention si l'on sait qu'Adorno était fasciné par l'idée de la bouteille à la mer : transmettre une vérité au monde sans la lui livrer, sans s'y donner complètement, sans se laisser prendre par le processus historique de récupération et d'assimilation. " Ce qui a été pensé peut être réprimé, oublié, se perdre, écrivait ainsi Adorno. Mais on (...) ne peut nier qu'il en reste quelque chose. Car le penser comporte un moment d'universalité. Ce qui a été pensé de façon pertinente doit nécessairement [...] être pensé par d'autres. " Si donc Dialectique négative ne livre ni soutien ni résultats enregistrables, elle a le mérite de contraindre les individus à l'insistance. Dans le développement du contenu, ce qu'il faut découvrir avant tout, c'est une attitude, un geste de pensée formulé de façon abstraite : " La dialectique est la conscience rigoureuse de la non-identité. " Il s'ensuit le refus de l'intégration de l'individu à toutes les totalités donatrices de sens, et le sauvetage de la singularité dans ce qu'elle préserve d'irréductible. Celui qui, aujourd'hui, lit Dialectique négative fait une expérience proche de celle des Athéniens que Socrate arrêtait, il y a un peu plus de 2000 ans, sur la place du marché, pour les arracher à leur affairement et les faire s'ouvrir à une interrogation abyssale. (shrink)

It is a widespread view that Marx did not apply dialectics to nature, and that Engels’s writings on this subject are a distortion of his outlook. This paper examines Marx’s discussion of elliptical motion and some other physical phenomena, and shows that he did indeed find contradictions and oppositions in nature, and thus recognised a dialectics of nature. In addition to analysing relevant passages in Marx’s texts, his study of the physics and mathematics of elliptical motion is reviewed and compared (...) with Hegel’s position. Marx’s conception of how dialectical contradictions are resolved is reviewed in order to interpret his claim that the contradiction in elliptical motion is ‘solved’ but not ‘overcome’ by that motion. Textual evidence is presented that Marx regarded ‘real contradictions’ as resolved only by ‘development’, a process in which the conflict between the opposing sides of the contradiction becomes more intense. The consequences of this interpretation for Marx’s analysis of elliptical motion are explored, and some alternative interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

Since Aristotle the central question in biology was the origin of organic form; a question put in the backyard by neo-Darwinism that considers organic form as a side effect of the interactions between genes and their products. On the other hand, the fashionable notion of self-organization also fails to provide a true causal explanation for organic form. For Aristotle form is both a cause and the principle of intelligibility and this coupled to the classical concepts of potentiality and actuality provides (...) a rational framework,currently embodied in the contemporary concept of ‘attractor’, for understanding the origin of organic form. (shrink)