The multiplicity of demands and claims in ultra-pluralistic societies complicates the search for justice. Furthermore, the normative force of competing ideals gives rise to an aporia at the heart of the idea of justice’s federating force. In this article, I argue that exemplary moral and political acts evince these ideals by reason of their fittingness with respect to the demands of the situations to which they respond. As such, these acts lay claim to their normative value by exemplifying the “rule” (...) that each act summons. Drawing upon aesthetic experience’s lateral transposition onto the planes of ethics and politics, I show how imagination is operative in practical judgments. Accordingly, I relate the search for justice to an eschatology of non-violence, which for Paul Ricœur takes the place of the critique of ideology in its opposition to an ontology of lingual understanding. (shrink)

Bien que la dichotomie classique homme/animal continue de sous-tendre la pensée scientifique occidentale, la génétique moléculaire prouve que les humains sont bien plus proches des chimpanzés et des bonobos que ne pouvaient le supposer les chercheurs en se fondant seulement sur l’évidence anatomique, il y a quelques décennies. Le degré de similitude de l’ADN entre humains, bonobos et chimpanzés autorise à nous classer tous trois comme espèces-sœurs. Ce qui signifie, aussi étrange que cela pui..

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual WomanCatharine Savage BrosmanSimone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, by Toril Moi; xii & 324 pp. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, $54.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.Eschewing linear patterns and other conventional ways of writing lives, feminist critic Toril Moi has undertaken instead to construct a “personal genealogy” of Beauvoir, using notions derived partly from Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu (Jacques (...) Lacan and Freud are cited likewise). This manner of understanding what the French existentialists called the human project seeks “to achieve a sense of emergence or production and to understand the complex play of different kinds of power involved in social phenomena” (p. 7). The human subject is viewed as a product of forces; individual choice—emphasized continually, and probably excessively, by existentialists—is secondary. All types of evidence, not only writing, are considered germane: social institutions and the subject herself are “text,” part of a “discursive network” (p. 5). The point is to illuminate Beauvoir’s “speaking position” (p. 9) and what it means, for herself and others, and concurrently to explain the rather low disregard in which she appears to be held in France presently.The chief social factor identified is, not surprisingly, what is called the patriarchal order, which Moi sees even today as powerful enough to threaten thinking women’s chances for fulfillment. “Displaying a pernicious imagery of ugly bluestockings and dried-up spinsters, patriarchal ideology seeks to enforce the split between body and mind with particular rigor in the case of intellectual women” (p. 256). Cited in this connection are novels by Germaine de Staël and George Eliot; but, although Eliot influenced the young Beauvoir, these nineteenth-century models pertain little to today’s situation in America and England, for instance (where Moi, a Norwegian, has resided). But Moi needs to believe that such strictures still operate, in order to argue for Beauvoir’s unique position as “a mythological figure, an imago that has made its presence felt in the thoughts and dreams of every intellectual woman in the Western world since the early 1950s” (p. 5)—a claim no less absurd for being unoriginal.The study investigates three “moments” or crucial questions. The first is Beauvoir’s discovery in 1929 (justified or not, and made chiefly perhaps through sexual desire) that she was intellectually inferior to Sartre, despite her stellar academic performance; this led to her positioning herself as second among equals. Moi explores this momentous choice in personal and sociological terms, examining the French academic establishment that formed her and asking what it meant to be a woman agrégée in philosophy, in love with a brilliant man.The second major topic is Beauvoir’s writing itself, as it springs from and refers to her self-image, especially in She Came to Stay and The Second Sex. The former provides telling evidence of what happens when an intelligent woman persuades herself that her lover considers her an equal, whereas actually the [End Page 417] authority remains his. Moi views this novel as more revealing, although oblique, because it is more affectively nuanced and apparently genuine, than direct accounts in Beauvoir’s memoirs of the triangle involving her, Olga Kosakiewicz, and Sartre. The Second Sex—said to be unrivaled in any field in this century, in terms of influence—is examined in light of Beauvoir’s tardy revelation in the 1940s (if one believes her) that being a woman meant something different from being a man. Beauvoir’s understanding of woman’s position is compared to Sartre’s (expressed in fiction and essays, and deduced from his behavior) and to Frantz Fanon’s concept of racial oppression.Lastly, Moi focuses on the bitter conclusion to Force of Circumstance, in which Beauvoir confesses, in her fifties, feeling cheated by life. The problematic quality of this admission can escape no one, in light of her repeated assertions elsewhere that her relationship with Sartre—central to her self-image—constituted an unreserved success, involving utter transparency and union of thought. Moi studies this in terms of other statements—some by Sartre—and Beauvoir’s true accomplishments, and shows how Beauvoir’s... (shrink)

The global education crisis is a complex problem that requires change from teachers, school managers, civil society, implementers, planners, governments and donors. Addressing the issues that lie beneath this crisis requires new ways of working. Systems thinking is a suite of approaches to grappling with complex problems that is beginning to gain traction in international education. This innovative book brings together new research in the nascent field of systems thinking in international education to exemplify how systems thinking offers the tools, (...) frameworks and concepts to improve outcomes in education systems. (shrink)

A partir do sistema político-filosófico de Jean-Jaques Rousseau, o objetivo desteartigo é iniciar uma possível compreensão genealógica acerca da relação entre o bemcomum e o bem de si mesmo. Através de uma análise parcial do arcabouço teóricoconceitualsobre a natureza humana e do modelo de soberania popular e deestruturação da sociedade civil proposto pelo filósofo, será posta em discussão arelação entre a vontade geral – que sempre quer o bem comum – e as vontadesparticulares – que sempre buscam o bem de (...) si. Concluí-se que, para Rousseau, saberconformar as vontades particulares à vontade geral é uma exigência da virtude moral,além de ser uma necessidade incontornável para a manutenção do pacto social de umpovo soberano.Based on Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s political and philosophical system, the goal of thisarticle is to begin a possible genealogical understanding about the relation betweencommon good and private good. Through a partial analysis of a theoretical andconceptual framework about human nature and of the model for popular sovereigntyand for the structure of civil society proposed by the philosopher, this work willbring into discussion the relation between the general will, which always seeks thecommon good, and the private will, which in turn seeks only the private good. ForRousseau, knowing how to conform the private wills for the general will is a requirement by moral virtue and an indispensable necessity to sustain the socialcontract of a sovereign people. (shrink)

This paper deals with the dialectic “nature/culture” in the thought of José Ortega y Gasset and related to the ideas of salvation and tragedy. Justify the elaboration of his article in the fact that this topic has not been studied in-depth through the complete works of the philosopher of the vital reason. The results/conclusions are the following ones: In a first period, it stands out the primate of culture in Ortega´s thought, who considers the last one as saviour and also (...) as something antagonistic in relation to the more instinctive and irrational nature of the individual human being as a member of humanity. We can say that submission to natural inclinations, that symbolize our barbarous, irrational and savage side, appears in Ortega’s early writings as a form of tragedy or “radical evil” ; on the other hand, in his latter thought those ones will be interpreted by Ortega not in negative terms, but as something in continuity with culture, which can became a form of tragedy. (shrink)

Should we preserve nature or revolt in order to protect “the living” (“le vivant”)? At first sight, this invites a comparison between two ways and means of protecting nature. However, this article will defend the thesis that these two methods of protecting nature do not rest upon the same conception of our position, as human beings, towards the living. Indeed, in the end, we find an underlying opposition between nature, conceived as savage or as radical alterity (often inspired by (...) the culturally loaded notion of wilderness, as found in the politics of preservation of vulnerable natural spaces) and the notion of “the living.” I intend to use the concept of the living in order to emphasize “ordinary nature” and our strong connection with all other living things. This reflection will enable me to defend the connection between the fight for environmental justice (namely revolt or resistance movements on the part of the poorest populations defending their living environment and their resources against an unequal production system) and the struggle for the protection of vulnerable living spaces and species. (shrink)

This article is a study of the trajectory of the contemporary French liberal philosopher Marcel Gauchet from his early, ‘anarchist’ commitments through the 1970s to his discovery and defense of liberalism, notably as expressed in his 1980 revival and interpretation of his 19th-century countryman Benjamin Constant’s post-revolutionary liberalism. Discussed in the article are Gauchet’s devotion to and revision of the portrait of primitive society he inherited from the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres, how his early political and theoretical concerns are transmuted (...) in Gauchet’s reading of Constant, and the relevance of this trajectory for comprehending even Gauchet’s most recent pronouncements about the nature and future of liberal society. (shrink)

I argue that (i) even though Adam Smith’s four stages theory has been criticized with good reasons as both vitiated by undue generalization from modern Europe to the first stage and made bottom-heavy by assumptions of modern episteme, yet, in his writings an alternative view emerges where the savage is not just crushed under the weight of want and isolation but is endowed with imagination and sympathy; (ii) his picture of the fourth stage is, far from a triumphal apology (...) of Capitalism, a tragic diagnosis of an inner tension between ambition and greed and their unintended beneficial effects; (iii) the tensions in the picture are not just a report of tensions out there, but also depend on Smith’s pre-comprehension of the phenomena he tries to account for; (iv) and yet, the tragic character of this picture is to be credited to his integrity; I summarize peculiarities of Smith’s peculiar outlook, post-empiricism, as well as its potentialities (sect 2). I then reconstruct his view of development of language and science, suggesting that his theory of association of ideas and imagination provides a consistent account of both science and lore, yielding a comparatively less ethnocentric evaluation of the savage mind (sect. 3). I reconstruct his virtually twofold reconstruction of subsistence in the rude and early state, arguing that he tends to ascribe inability to evolve to want and isolation and describes his own view of evolution as a necessary path but also that in several passages imagination and sympathy do play a role also for the savage (sect. 4). I compare Smith’s view of the first stage with his diagnosis of commercial society arguing that his reconstruction is burdened by eighteenth-century ideology as well as by modern episteme and I conclude with an ambivalent appraisal of Smith’s comparison between the polished man and the savage. -/- . (shrink)

In this article I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the “state of nature” should be understood as describing a thoroughly political situation. Hobbes’s exemplification of the state of nature by resorting to the “savages” of America should be taken in its ultimately paradoxical character, one that puts in question the stark opposition between a prepolitical natural state and the properly political state resulting from the “social contract.” Through the lenses of ethnographic studies and anthropological theory, I propose a reinterpretation (...) of Hobbes’s characterization of the state of nature as a state of war. In the first section, I present my interpretation of Hobbes’s understanding of war, arguing that war is characterized not by actual battle but by the uncertainty of conflict, already entailing a social dimension to it. In the second section, I engage with Pierre Clastres’s theory of the society against the State to discuss how, for Amerindian peoples, war not only has a social character but is itself the basis of sociality. In the last section, I discuss Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s theory of potential affinity to propose that Hobbes’s state of nature is also a form of schematization of alterity as enmity. I conclude by showing how this provides an understanding of peace as a precarious situation, one that is the outcome of ethical practices ultimately independent from the State. (shrink)

De Finetti's treatise on the theory of probability begins with the provocative statement PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST, meaning that probability does not exist in an objective sense. Rather, probability exists only subjectively within the minds of individuals. De Finetti defined subjective probabilities in terms of the rates at which individuals are willing to bet money on events, even though, in principle, such betting rates could depend on state-dependent marginal utility for money as well as on beliefs. Most later authors, from (...) Savage onward, have attempted to disentangle beliefs from values by introducing hypothetical bets whose payoffs are abstract consequences that are assumed to have state-independent utility. In this paper, I argue that de Finetti was right all along: PROBABILITY, considered as a numerical measure of pure belief uncontaminated by attitudes toward money, does not exist. Rather, what exist are de Finetti's `previsions', or betting rates for money, otherwise known in the literature as `risk neutral probabilities'. But the fact that previsions are not measures of pure belief turns out not to be problematic for statistical inference, decision analysis, or economic modeling. (shrink)

The article reconsiders a historical example of thinking about otherness. The example is the Essays by Michel de Montaigne, a piece of work from the early modern times which undermines the interpretation of the contemporary times as a modern age, i.e. supposedly more open, less dogmatic, and less hostile towards strangers. Four figures of otherness are taken into account: an infidel, a “savage,” a woman, and an animal, proving Montaigne’s particular openness. It turns out that the Essays induce a (...) contemporary man to revise his sense of historical superiority in regard to men from the previous centuries; they also let him develop a more just relationship with others of the present times. (shrink)

The text focuses on reflecting on the role of modern university in a man intellectual development, starting from Nietzsche’s ideas. By drawing up some of the main methodological and philosophical concepts of the German philosopher, the text highlights a series of aspects on the Humboldian nature of current universities – a state of tension under the political, economic and social factors. Thus, the classic concepts of Bildung and Kultur specific to the XIX-century University are analyzed in relation with the crisis (...) that marked the Prussian state of Bismarck period. Higher education being available to the masses is a current problem Nietzsche didn’t avoid to call „savageness” and „decline” of the higher educational system. The purpose of the text is to point out if Nietzsche’s ideas can be still applied nowadays. (shrink)

Les fondements de la théorie du choix rationnel, dans ses multiples déclinaisons (économie théorique, théorie de la décision, théorie des jeux, théorie de l'action que l'on trouve au cœur de la philosophie analytique, etc.), ne sont plus aussi assurés en cette fin du XXe siècle qu'ils semblaient l'être durant, ou immédiatement après, la Seconde Guerre mondiale, lorsqu'un John von Neumann ou un Leonard Savage en posaient les prolégomènes. A la source des difficultés présentes, on trouve l'ambition croissante de la (...) théorie du choix rationnel d'expliquer, et surtout de fonder, des phénomènes très éloignés du champ à l'intérieur duquel elle s'était d'abord confinée. Le défi le plus grand que le choix rationnel s'est fixé à lui-même est de rendre compte de la possibilité du jugement moral dans un monde d'individus isolés, autonomes et intéressés (et notamment de la promesse, de l'engagement, du contrat, de la parole donnée et tenue, de la menace, de la dissuasion crédible et efficace). C'est en tentant de relever ces défis que les théoriciens ont rencontré sur leur chemin, comme autant d'obstacles inattendus, des paradoxes redoutables. Ce livre présente les recherches les plus récentes dans le domaine. Il s'en dégage la thèse que le paradigme de la rationalité est radicalement incomplet. L'idéal de transparence qui est au cœur de la théorie du choix rationnel est incapable de venir à bout de l'extériorité et de l'opacité du collectif. Si elles ne prenaient appui sur des références extérieures qui les guident en les " poussant ", les interactions entre acteurs rationnels seraient en général incapables de produire à elles seules quoi que ce soit de déterminé. Les recherches ici présentées s'attachent à définir ce que sont ces dispositifs collectifs cognitifs qui encadrent et servent de support aux décisions individuelles. Elles s'inscrivent dans cette synergie entre sciences sociales, sciences cognitives et philosophie qui renouvelle aujourd'hui les sciences de l'homme. (shrink)

This paper aims to present and discuss Guy Debord and the Situationists' conception of culture. In doing so, it is necessary to clear up a few misconceptions from the outset: contrary to appearances, they do not advocate an anti-cultural attitude. Contrariwise, we are at the antipodes of “Neo‑primitivism". When Debord asserts his rejection of contemporary “Neo‑primitivism”, this is akin, in Schillerian language, to rejecting the position of the “savage”, as depicted by Rousseau in his canonical romantic portrait. In the (...) same language, we should also say that Debord rejects the opposite position, that of the "barbarian", who destroys life and sensibility in favour of abstractions. (shrink)

This paper has two aims: first, to present succinctly a variety of problems in the philosophy of culture that Nietzsche’s work deal with. To this end, the author will analyze several issues that arise when Nietzsche’s original terms are translated into Spanish. Moreover, the author will discuss the contributions of two major French scholars in this area: E. Blondel and P. Wotling. The second aim of this paper is to focus on the configuration of the myth of the savage (...) in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s opera prima, a complex and rich work. (shrink)

The state of nature is a fundamental concept of modern political philosophy. As such, it is particularly associated with Thomas Hobbes’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work. As the following article shows, the state of nature is not simply an auxiliary construction [Hilfskonstruktion] for a theory that aims to clarify the relation between the political order and its origins and normative principles. It is also a figure of thought that introduces colonial images into political philosophy. The following reading of Hobbes and Rousseau, (...) which also draws on image analysis, traces how their conceptions of the state of nature are constitutively linked to imaginations of the savage that emanate from contemporary colonial discourses. Moreover, by comparing the writings of Hobbes and Rousseau it becomes apparent that the colonial difference increasingly takes on a systematic relevance. This development further contains significant similarities with the changing use of gender differences in political philosophy. (shrink)

El artículo indaga acerca de la poética del movimiento mexicano “Infrarrealista”, así como sus principales influencias estéticas y literarias, tanto nacionales como internacionales. Para ello se analiza la novela de Roberto Bolaño: Los detectives salvajes, como una reescritura autocrítica que realiza el autor a su propio proyecto poético varios años después de que este fracasara en su intento por aliar arte y vida. This article investigates the poetry of the Mexican movement “Infrarealism”, as well as its main aesthetics and literary (...) influences, both national and international. In order to do so, Roberto Bolaño's novel, The savage detectives, is analyzed as an selfcritical rewriting realized by the author to his own poetic project, several years after its failure in his attempt to fuse art and life. (shrink)

Un fait divers, l'apparition en 1764 d'un homme prétendument sauvage dans les forêts de Königsberg, fournit à Kant et Hamann l'occasion d'une confrontation de leurs points de vue sur l'intelligibilité de la naturalité et de la f actualité humaines. Parue dans la Gazette politique et littéraire de Königsberg sous la forme de deux articles, cette confrontation dépasse vite l'anecdote pour conduire à la divergence de deux voies, celle implicite de Hamann, l'interprétation théologique, et celle encore « en germe » de (...) Kant, l'application de la méthode expérimentale à l'anthropologie. A singular event — the appearance in 1764 of a so-called “savage man” in the forests of Königsberg — gave Kant and Hamann the opportunity to taste their points of view concerning the intelligibility of both naturality, and human factuality. This confrontation, which appeared in the Political and Literary Gazette of Königsberg in the form of two articles, goes rapidly over the anecdote to arrive at a parting of the ways — that of Hamann : the theological interpretation; and that of Kant the application of experimental methodology to anthropology. (shrink)

This is the second volume of the author's ambitious attempt at outlining the history of the dogma of original sin from its beginning to our days. The reader of the first volume witnessed a concerted attack against the dogma and especially against its Augustinian formulation. The second volume deals with perhaps the most obscure period of this dogma's development: the one between the fifth and the eleventh centuries. In the West—thanks to Augustine's undisputed authority—the dogma became accepted as an integral (...) part of Christian theology, even though those theologians of the Dark Ages tried to "humanize" its original, savage formulation. The Christian East, however, would never have accepted it, and took a rather ambiguous position towards the meaning of the "curse of Adam." This is, briefly, the author's thesis, and to prove it he marshals an impressive array of quotes and references, fruits of a wide and often really impressive scholarship. Yet, the whole book is written in the same spirit of crusading, shallow rationalism as was the preceding volume. The speculative issues are not really treated and the whole work lacks that synthetical approach which is so indispensable for an enterprise of such magnitude.—M. J. V. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Men with Muskets, Women with Lyres: Nationality, Citizenship, and Gender in the Writings of Germaine de StaëlSusanne HillmanOn 23 May 1812 Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), Europe’s best-known enemy of Napoleon Bonaparte, set out from her estate on Lake Geneva to escape to England. In her reminiscences, she reflected on the pivotal event as follows:[A]fter ten years of ever-increasing persecutions [...] I was obliged to leave two homelands as a (...) fugitive, Switzerland and France, by order of a man less French than I. For I was born on the banks of the Seine, where his only claim to citizenship is his tyranny. He saw the light of day on the island of Corsica, practically within Africa’s savage sway. His father did not, like mine, devote his fortune and his sleepless nights to defending France from bankruptcy and famine; the air of this beautiful country is not his native air; how can he understand the pain of being exiled from it, when he considers this fertile land only as the instrument of his victories. [End Page 231] Where is his patrie? It is any country that accepts his domination. His fellow-citizens? They are whatever slaves obey his orders.1In this passage, de Staël deliberately links nationality and citizenship. In her view, citizenship status was acquired simply by being born on French soil. Her family’s tireless labors on behalf of the nation added another irrefutable proof of Frenchness. In addition, growing up in France and breathing the country’s invigorating air had created an emotional attachment that a person raised elsewhere simply could not fathom. We thus have a triad of birth/service/sentiment that connects the deserving individual to his or her nation (in this case la grande nation).In this essay I explore de Staël’s understanding of the twin concepts of nationality and citizenship through the lens of gender. Nationality and citizenship were of perennial concern to her thought, partly because of the turbulent times she lived in, partly because of her personal experience in exile. Influenced by history and literature, she early on admired the gallant men with muskets who heroically sacrificed their lives for the glory of the nation. But it was the exceptional women with lyres who were destined to act as the nation’s unifying agents by recreating the gallants’ deeds in writing. By imagining the nation these women fulfilled the supreme task of citizenship. In what follows I will argue that de Staël conceived of the ideal citizen as a woman writer or artist who served her nation by inspiring its members with enthusiasm and virtue.2 In elaborating her view of the superior woman as citoyenne and national muse she made an important contribution to the debate on the nation and the citizen.The only daughter of Louis XVI’s finance minister Jacques Necker and the salonnière Suzanne Curchod-Necker, of Genevan and Vaudois citizenship respectively, de Staël gained fame and notoriety through her brilliant conversational talents, political intrigues, and unconventional relationships with famous men. Though she considered herself a “true Frenchwoman” (véritable française),3 she was a citizen of Geneva and a Swedish subject by marriage, at least until 1803 when she took advantage of the Code Civil [End Page 232] and officially claimed French citizenship.4 Considering this multiplicity of conflicting loyalties, it is not surprising that her major writings reveal a sustained preoccupation with these issues.Despite their undeniable significance for early nineteenth-century European intellectual history, historians have so far devoted scant attention to de Staël’s writings. In fact, in the US, Staëlien studies have largely been dominated by literary criticism and theory.5 This has had the effect of prioritizing her novels over her non-fiction, downplaying the historical context of her oeuvre and, most grievously, ignoring de Staël’s historical contribution to socio-political thought.6 As a result of the complex ways in which her personal experience informed her writing, her oeuvre is best examined as a unified, though certainly inconsistent, whole. Her writings were rarely “products of intense deliberation, but rather reflections... (shrink)

This essay works to bridge conversations in philosophy of education with decolonial theory. The author considers Margonis’ ( 1999 , 2011a , b ) use of Rousseau ( 1979 ) and Heidegger ( 1962 ) in developing an ontological attitude that counters social hierarchies and promotes anti-colonial relations. While affirming this effort, the essay outlines a coloniality of being at work in Rousseau and Heidegger through thier reliance on the colonial conceptualization of African Americans and Native Americans as savage (...) and primitive. The essay turns to decolonial theory and the work of Maldenado-Torres (Cult Stud 21(2–3):240–270, 2007 , 2009 ) to highlight how a decolonial attitude complicates, yet enriches Margonis’ philosophical framework. (shrink)

We are in 1563, somewhere on a Brazilian beach about 100 kilometres north of what is now São Paulo. A young man in a cowled robe alone on the beach is writing a poem on the sand with the point of his stick. The hostage of a savage tribe for weeks, he struggles daily against manifold carnal temptations, personified in the voluptuous native women who come to visit him every evening in his hammock, and addresses his Latin verses to (...) the Virgin Mary in order to fortify his virtue. The threat of being killed and eaten by cannibals is nothing to him by comparison with the loss of his virginity. Recourse to his own original culture is the ultimate bulwark against contamination, the sign of resistance and strengthening of his identity. The definitive rejection of the Other is, in these circumstances, a survival reflex. (shrink)

Against the impression that Rousseau is an eclectic thinker, this paper is an attempt to reconstruct the systematic core of his anthropology. First, I discuss the methodological starting-point. Second, I develop the structural framework required to make the concept of nature operative as an ideal within social contexts. Finally, I interpret Rousseau's genetic account in terms of this framework. Such a procedure allows me to solve two interpretative problems, the aporia of the origin of wickedness and the question of man's (...) natural isolation. A twofold notion of logic is introduced to integrate the demands of history and structure, which overlap with those of freedom and necessity in Rousseau's thought. This organizes my argument in a mirror-like way. I call this undertaking an essay, for it is the endeavor to think what Rousseau must have thought in order to write what he wrote. Key Words: amour de soi • amour propre • bourgeois • ego sentio • human make-up • human nature • natural as ideal • other-centered • savage • self-centered • totalities of feeling • totalities of needs. (shrink)

Marc Richir ha mostrado en obras recientes la importancia de un análisis fenomenológico de las relaciones complejas entre fantasía, imaginación y afectividad, a fin de descifrar nuestra “demasiado humana” naturaleza. La terra incognita que se deja contemplar desde tal encrucijada de conceptos es difícil de analizar y plantea el reto de comprender que no podemos “medir” nuestra “condición humana” sin tomar en consideración las dimensiones imaginativas y afectivas, las fronteras de la razón, los puntales de la institución simbólica, la presencia (...) savage y no perceptible de la Stimmung. En este particular contexto no es un detalle, a nuestro parecer, la referencia hecha por Richir a Maine de Biran; pues él cree que Biran es el filósofo que “mejor que ningún otro, y mucho antes de Heidegger” comprendió y analizó con mayor rigor las singulares características de esta terra incognita (“continente perdido”, dice Biran) de la Stimmung, de las tonalidades, variaciones y erupciones, afectivas. Este ensayo pretende subrayar los puntos fundamentales de la posición de Richir al respecto, pero también, y sobre todo, mediar en la contribución de Maine de Biran a la comprensión de la tonalidad siempre bizarra que baña al mundo cuando nos aparece en su Jemeiningkeit. (shrink)

For Savage (1954) as for de Finetti (1974), the existence of subjective (personal) probability is a consequence of the normative theory of preference. (De Finetti achieves the reduction of belief to desire with his generalized Dutch-Book argument for Previsions.) Both Savage and de Finetti rebel against legislating countable additivity for subjective probability. They require merely that probability be finitely additive. Simultaneously, they insist that their theories of preference are weak, accommodating all but self-defeating desires. In this paper we (...) dispute these claims by showing that the following three cannot simultaneously hold: (i) Coherent belief is reducible to rational preference, i.e. the generalized Dutch-Book argument fixes standards of coherence. (ii) Finitely additive probability is coherent. (iii) Admissible preference structures may be free of consequences, i.e. they may lack prizes whose values are robust against all contingencies. (shrink)

Dans la deuxième moitié des années 1980 s’est développée, dans l’ensemble du champ de la culture, une véritable esthétique de la bêtise. Quelques jeunes critiques d’art se sont alors emparés du phénomène et ont tenté de le théoriser, entre 1994 et 1998, dans les revues les plus lues de l’époque : Flash Art International, Artpress, Frieze. L’étude de ce corpus d’articles (signés par Joshua Decter, Éric Troncy, Jon Savage, Andrew Hulktrans et Jean-Yves Jouannais) témoigne à la fois des mutations (...) de la critique d’art de l’époque et de l’enjeu que représente alors l’art délibérément bête. On remarquera que la critique d’art se fait alors critique culturelle : elle regarde peu les œuvres, réduites au statut d’illustrations et d’arguments visuels. On s’interrogera également sur la place que les revues d’art contemporain ont accordée à la culture populaire médiatique la plus régressive du temps. Beavis & Butt-Head, Melrose Place ou encore Alerte à Malibu ont été ainsi disséqués dans les colonnes d’ Artforum ou de Flash Art. Alors que les œuvres d’art estampillées « art contemporain » donnaient lieu à des analyses étonnamment sommaires, ce sont les séries télévisées et les dessins animés qui ont conduit aux analyses les plus stimulantes. Elles l’ont fait en recourant au paradigme de la méta-criticalité cher au modernisme, conférant aux œuvres les plus régressives le statut d’image spéculaire, à la fois duplice et critique, de la culture de la bêtise qui les générait. Pointe alors le paradoxe suivant : alternant entre l’enthousiasme forcené et la déploration, la critique d’art des années 1990 a intellectualisé l’anti-intellectualisme le plus radical. (shrink)

We extend de Finetti’s (1974) theory of coherence to apply also to unbounded random variables. We show that for random variables with mandated infinite prevision, such as for the St. Petersburg gamble, coherence precludes indifference between equivalent random quantities. That is, we demonstrate when the prevision of the difference between two such equivalent random variables must be positive. This result conflicts with the usual approach to theories of Subjective Expected Utility, where preference is defined over lotteries. In addition, we explore (...) similar results for unbounded variables when their previsions, though finite, exceed their expected values, as is permitted within de Finetti’s theory. In such cases, the decision maker’s coherent preferences over random quantities is not even a function of probability and utility. One upshot of these findings is to explain further the differences between Savage’s theory (1954), which requires bounded utility for non-simple acts, and de Finetti’s theory, which does not. And it raises a question whether there is a theory that fits between these two. (shrink)

In book 8 of his Naturalis historia, Pliny the Elder mentions the particularly savage character of some monkeys. Most editions and translations of Pliny’s text maintain that the reference to the fierce nature of these animals concerns both the cynocephali and the satyri. However, in the manuscript Riccardianus 488 (R in the transmission of Pliny), a second hand, contemporary to the period in which the text was copied, added supra lineam the obscure term *miarsima, which would refer to the (...) nature of the satyri in opposition to that of the cynocephali. By examining part of the ancient zoological and geographic traditions, in particular the De natura animalium by Aelian, this article defends editing the text of Pliny with the adjective mitissima, already present in the first printed editions of the Naturalis historia, as follows: Efferatior cynocephalis natura sicut mitissima satyris. (shrink)

Epistemic modals have peculiar logical features that are challenging to account for in a broadly classical framework. For instance, while a sentence of the form $$p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$ (‘p, but it might be that not p’) appears to be a contradiction, $$\Diamond \lnot p$$ does not entail $$\lnot p$$, which would follow in classical logic. Likewise, the classical laws of distributivity and disjunctive syllogism fail for epistemic modals. Existing attempts to account for these facts generally either under- or over-correct. (...) Some theories predict that $$ p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$, a so-called epistemic contradiction, is a contradiction only in an etiolated sense, under a notion of entailment that does not always allow us to replace $$p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$ with a contradiction; these theories underpredict the infelicity of embedded epistemic contradictions. Other theories savage classical logic, eliminating not just rules that intuitively fail, like distributivity and disjunctive syllogism, but also rules like non-contradiction, excluded middle, De Morgan’s laws, and disjunction introduction, which intuitively remain valid for epistemic modals. In this paper, we aim for a middle ground, developing a semantics and logic for epistemic modals that makes epistemic contradictions genuine contradictions and that invalidates distributivity and disjunctive syllogism but that otherwise preserves classical laws that intuitively remain valid. We start with an algebraic semantics, based on ortholattices instead of Boolean algebras, and then propose a possibility semantics, based on partial possibilities related by compatibility. Both semantics yield the same consequence relation, which we axiomatize. We then show how to lift an arbitrary possible worlds model for a non-modal language to a possibility model for a language with epistemic modals. The goal throughout is to retain what is desirable about classical logic while accounting for the non-classicality of epistemic vocabulary. (shrink)

A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems (1996) and Empire of Religion (2014), David Chidester has contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as ‘religion’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ by theorists of (...) religion in European imperial metropoles to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester’s project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis of ‘primitive mentality’ (particularly in De primitieve mensch en de religie, 1937) to Chidester’s analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester’s and Van der Leeuw’s works as example, it is argued that in spite of the latter’s decontextualised use of ethnological material, a fundamental shift occurred in the judgement of ‘primitive’ religion from Tylor’s evolutionary to Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis, which is contrary to claims according to which modern theories are unanimously denigratory of indigenous religions. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is the author of possibly the most notorious one-liner of twentieth-century philosophy: 'Hell is other people'. Albert Camus was The Outsider. The two men first came together in Occupied Paris in the middle of the Second World War, and quickly became friends, comrades, and mutual admirers. But the intellectual honeymoon was short-lived. In 1943, with Nazis patrolling the streets, Sartre and Camus sat in a café on the boulevard Saint-Germain with Simone de Beauvoir and began a discussion about (...) life and love and literature that would pull them all together and finally tear them apart. They ended up on opposite sides in a war of words over just about everything: women, philosophy, politics. Their fraught, fractured friendship culminated in a bitter and very public feud that was described as 'the end of a love-affair' but which never really finished. Sartre was a boxer and a drug-addict; Camus was a goalkeeper who subscribed to a degree-zero approach to style and ecstasy. Sartre, obsessed with his own ugliness, took up the challenge of accumulating women; Camus, part-Bogart, part-Samurai, was also a self-confessed Don Juan who aspired to chastity. Sartre and Camus play out an epic struggle between the symbolic and the savage. But what if the friction between these two unique individuals is also the source of our own inevitable conflicts? The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus reconstructs the intense and antagonistic relationship that was (in Sartre's terms) 'doomed to failure'. Weaving together the lives and ideas and writings of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Andy Martin relives the existential drama that still binds them inseparably together and remixes a philosophical dialogue that speaks to us now. (shrink)

The author aims to use Kuchipudi Indian classical Hindu dance to educate non-Hindus about Hinduism with postcolonialism in mind. This goal arises from her dance experiences and the historical era of imperialism. Colonization occurs when those in power believe there is a need to dominate in a manner that subjugates people. Colonizers created colonies as they moved into territory because they felt there was a need to “civilize” the so-called savages of the land. Postcolonialism is an intellectual discourse that confronts (...) the legacy of colonialism and attempts to de-colonize. With the legacy of colonialism and a postcolonial lens in mind, some research questions arise. How does she, as a Kuchipudi dancer, use Hindu dance to educate non-Hindus about the Eastern literature of Hinduism? For non-Hindus, she feels the power of the exoticizing gaze when she dances, which might very well block the educational intention of the dance. This exoticizing gaze prevents the understanding of the traditional nature of the dance and the introduction to Hinduism as a world religion. The author’s problem is moving the exotic gaze of non-Hindus to an educational gaze that seeks to learn about the ethics of Hinduism in a manner that takes into consideration the multiple perspectives of the complex society we live in today. (shrink)

A decision maker has to choose one of several random variables whose distributions are not known. As a Bayesian, she behaves as if she knew the distributions. In this paper we suggest an axiomatic derivation of these (subjective) distributions, which is more economical than the derivations by de Finetti or Savage. Whereas the latter derive the whole joint distribution of all the available random variables, our approach derives only the marginal distributions. Correspondingly, the preference questionnaire needed in our case (...) is less smaller. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Shimmering Maya and Other EssaysPatrick HenryThe Shimmering Maya and Other Essays, by Catharine Savage Brosman; 149 pp. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994, $24.94.When the author was fifteen, she held the rank of “prospector” at Girl Scout Camp. Now, over forty years later, she is “digging down through the layers, sifting through the running stream of memory” (p. 14). Her art of prospecting affords the (...) reader a linear impression of a journey that begins with “The Shimmering Maya,” a recountal of a family move in August 1944 from Colorado to South Texas. “Desert Silvery Blue” describes life in Alpine, Texas, while “Leaving for Good” narrates her experience of displacement as she departs Alpine in 1951 to attend Rice Institute, known then as “the atheist school” (p. 37). From Alpine to Houston, she experiences the greening of America and the shock of Gulf Coast humidity, “a sensation of being hit in the face and smothered” (p. 42). At Rice, she finishes her degrees, travels to France, her intellectual home, and returns, in “Cherry Time”—“Yes, Virginia, there is a Virginia” (p. 52)—to describe her life in full bloom during this relatively short but intense period, spent in and around the state of Virginia, before her permanent move to New Orleans. Two essays conclude the volume even as they bend back toward its beginning. “Winter Light” narrates the life of her grandfather, Edward Hill, newspaperman, teacher, doctor, writer, and formidable learner whom she knew only in the winter of his life but whose light illuminated her being and “whose heir I feel, or wish, myself to be” (p. 130). “Turn My Face Out to the West” recounts a recent camping trip in New Mexico but, more profoundly, a return to the Western land of her youth. Like the Anasazi and Pueblo Indians, she too was born there and, reclaiming their heritage as partly hers, extols their solar-based science, courage, sense of community, independent spirit, and love and respect for the land.Brosman paints being, however, as well as becoming. Essays six through eleven focus more centrally than the others on her habitual self: her self-portrait as teacher, scholar, poet, traveler, and traditional woman. As a teacher of language, she offers “at once an end and a means” (p. 86) and, as literature teacher, not “entertainment chiefly but the pursuit of truth” (p. 88), undogmatically attempting to elicit self-awareness without imposing a single view. [End Page 136] A traditional woman who has never felt uncomfortable around men and doesn’t consider them her enemies, Brosman thinks Women’s Studies are “regressive” (p. 84), deplores language “barbarisms” such as “chairperson” and “herstory” (p. 75), and holds for a “nongendered intellectual patrimony of arts, letters, and science” (p. 84). While she admits that it’s a miracle that all marriages don’t simply fall apart, the differences between the sexes, she argues, constitute “the whole basis for attraction” (p. 70), and she prefers her cigar-smoking husband “to men who boast about their Hollandaise sauce” (p. 70). Not interested “in valorizing only the male principle” (p. 70), she seeks “vigor of mind” in all persons and considers herself a “feminist in the cupboard,” one who operates within the family but travels freely and enjoys a rich professional life. She links herself to her Aunt Margaret and other “closet feminists” (p. 100) in her family’s history who demonstrated self-reliance and a sense of their own value, and argues, against de Beauvoir’s thesis in The Second Sex, that female work for American women of the nineteenth century did indeed, like male work, go beyond biology “to remake the world through invention (production)” (p. 102).Brosman demands a metaphysical self-consciousness that recognizes unhappiness, anguish, and disorder but concomitantly posits the good life as the synthetic unity of the mind, body, and heart. This metaphysical consciousness is deeply rooted in the physical world—we are not only in the world but of it—and in a shared sense of place and a commitment to communal enterprises. Her thought is perhaps above all characterized throughout by a sense of “grace” and the “intimation of... (shrink)

Neste artigo esboçaremos alguns vínculos conceituais entre palavra e imagem, que se evidenciam em uma obra literária de Alfredo Taunay e na produção pictórica de Hipólito Caron. Evidenciamos tais ligações recuperando um antigo paralelo entre a pintura e a literatura, cuja origem remonta à doutrina ut pictura poesis de Horácio no século I, que coloca a poesia em relação à pintura. Em seguida, demonstramos que o paralelo das artes está implicado na criação das Academias de Belas Artes e na valorização (...) do desenho mediante a noção de desígnio no Renascimento. Por último, chegamos à discussão quanto à verossimilhança no romance e na pintura do século XIX, ligando-a diretamente às características do romance de Taunay e às pinturas de Caron.Palavras-chave: Pintura de Paisagem. Hipólito Caron. Narrativa. Alfredo Taunay. Paralelo das Artes. (shrink)

Keith Jenkins es uno de los pensadores postmodernos más conocidos en el ámbito de la reflexión historiográfica occidental. Sin duda, junto con Hayden White y Frank R. Ankersmit, conforma el trío más influyente de la corriente historiográfica postmoderna. Vamos a exponer en este trabajo la evolución de la obra de Jenkins desde lo que llamamos una crítica radical a la historiografía académica hasta lo que podemos considerar una auténtica aversión a la forma de aprehensión del pasado, tal y como es (...) concebido, practicado y usado en la actualidad. Hemos dividido en dos apartados nuestra exposición para dar cabida así a estos dos momentos clave en el desarrollo de su teoría y de su obra: el momento difusor de la crítica postmoderna a la historiografía y el momento de la expulsión de la historiografía de cualquier proyecto político emancipador. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.4 (2000) 571-591 [Access article in PDF] The Aeneid Revisited: The Journey of Pompey in Lucan's Pharsalia Andreola Rossi Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve, Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit L'immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve, Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit, A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile, Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel. Le vieux Paris n'est (...) plus (la forme d'une ville Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel) --Baudelaire, "Le Cygne" THE AENEID MAY BE DEFINED, among many other things, as the tale of a journey from the East to the West that becomes, at the same time, a journey from capitulation to foundation. 1 This idea is well summarized in the structure of the proem of the poem: Arma uirumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Lauiniaque uenit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto ui superum, saeuae memorem Iunonis ob iram, multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem inferretque deos Latio; genus unde Latinum Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae. (Virg. Aen. 1.1-7) I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive; he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the Lavinian shores. Across the lands and waters he was battered beneath the violence of High Ones, for the savage Juno's unforgetting anger; [End Page 571] and many sufferings were his in war-- until he brought a city into being and carried in his gods to Latium; from this have come the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome. 2Troy, the point of departure for this journey, is in a conspicuous position in the opening hexameter of the proem; the city of Rome, the point of arrival, brings the proem to its closure. True enough, the foundation of the city of Rome lies outside the primary temporal setting of the poem. Its foundation, nevertheless, is anticipated in the various external prolepses that bring the narration beyond the limit of the temporal field of the first narrative. 3 Moreover, in the poem, Aeneas himself will be the founder of a new set of moenia in Latium, starting the process of city foundation that will culminate in the construction of the ramparts of high Rome. That Virgil's Aeneid is in its basic structure a poem of journey and foundation did not go unnoticed by the long line of his literary successors. As Hardie (1993, xi) has shown, Virgil's successors were all sharp and informed readers of the Aeneid, and their epic works should be read and interpreted as a creative rewriting and continuation, at once respectful and at times rebellious, of the Aeneid. Following this line of interpretation, I will argue that Lucan's Pharsalia, the so-called anti-Aeneid, 4 presents itself in the journey of Pompey as a critical, almost antiphrastic revisitation of Aeneas' journey. 5 The stages of Pompey's journey retrace some crucial stages of Aeneas' in the Aeneid, both [End Page 572] thematically and geographically. But Pompey's journey is "reversed"; it is turned "upside down." 6 It moves symmetrically backward, bringing the journey of the Aeneid back to its point of departure: from the West back to the East, from Rome back to Troy.In a comprehensive work on Lucan's Pharsalia, Ahl points out that among the many characters of the Pharsalia, Pompey is the one most closely modeled on Aeneas. 7 The first appearance of Pompey in the poem is symptomatic. At the beginning of the Pharsalia, Pompey is compared to an oak tree (like Aeneas in Aeneid 4). 8 But unlike Aeneas' firmly rooted mature tree, Pompey's tree is decayed and rootless. 9 Aeneas' roots are established in the very bowels of the earth, unshakable and immovable, and allow him to withstand the storm (Aen. 4.445- 46, ipsa haeret scopulis et quantum uertice ad auras / aetherias... (shrink)