A survey of democratic institutions and republics reveals the aristocratic origins of democracy.

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived and skepticism that objective truth exists (...) at all. This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces.Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything. (shrink)

Nihilism -- Overcoming disorientation -- The will to power -- Overcoming despair -- The eternal recurrence -- Dionysian wisdom.

Current thinking and research on consciousness and the brain.

Highlights of this edition include: / Important new material addressing federal privacy regulations, disclosure of medical errors, limits on residents'...

This work considers the consequences for political philosophy of what contemporary philosophers have called the end, or closure, especially in the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Time is analyzed as being those processes by which a system notes the processes which comprise its own existence. The directionality of time is given by the concepts, past, present, and future. To understand the meaning of these concepts, a set of experiments was carried out with four male subjects in which areas of time were expanded or ablated by means of post-hypnotic suggestions. These operations were carried out singly or in combination. The data suggest that the present is primarily (...) associated with stimulus input, the past with the criteria for defining that input as well as the development of response inhibitions and the future with the directionality of that input. Marked personality changes which range from the occurence of catatonic-like states to obsessive types of reaction and manic-like reactions are associated with different combinations of time alterations. Some of the changes are in accord with the serialist position on time of J. W. Dunne. The concept of death is very important both with regard to one’s view of time and how one lives. While it is important to live in the present, the present has no meaning without at least a past or a future. Implications of these findings for psychopathology in general and schizophrenia in particular are considered. (shrink)

This paper explores a remarkable convergence of ideas and evidence, previously presented in separate places by its authors. That convergence has now become so persuasive that we believe we are working within substantially the same broad framework. Taylor's mathematical papers on neuronal systems involved in consciousness dovetail well with work by Newman and Baars on the thalamocortical system, suggesting a brain mechanism much like the global workspace architecture developed by Baars (see references below). This architecture is relational, in the sense (...) that it continuously mediates the interaction of input with memory. While our approaches overlap in a number of ways, each of us tends to focus on different areas of detail. What is most striking, and we believe significant, is the extent of consensus, which we believe to be consistent with other contemporary approaches by Weiskrantz, Gray, Crick and Koch, Edelman, Gazzaniga, Newell and colleagues, Posner, Baddeley, and a number of others. We suggest that cognitive neuroscience is moving toward a shared understanding of consciousness in the brain. (shrink)

Marqués par Descartes et Locke, les philosophes de ce siècle se sont notamment intéressés à l'épistémologie devenue alors discipline philosophique fondamentale.

Avant de s'inquiéter de la variété des perversions et même de la volonté perverse, l'auteur s'interroge sur l'énigme de la volonté, sur la lente émergence de sa reconnaissance explicite. Non pour opérer une réduction historienne, morale ou psychopathologique, mais pour mieux approcher la perversion comme intensité. La perversion n'est pas une simple perturbation de la finalité supposée du désir ni seulement l'expression d'une défaillance, mais d'abord une forme d'affirmation de la volonté libre, une intensification qui affecte aussi bien le rapport (...) au fini que celui à l'infini. Oui. la volonté perverse est révélatrice du dépassement que la liberté désire introduire dans les hasards et les nécessités de l'opinion, des lois et des sciences physiques, humaines ou théologiques ; elle est aspiration à toujours plus d'accomplissement de soi. l'impuissance à saisir le moment favorable est le coeur de la perversion : non pas avant tout une méprise d'objet. La perversion de la volonté libre est d'abord une intensité de fixation sur le bonheur voulu immédiatement et en soi, et non par égard à ce qui advient. Une réflexion qui vient à point nommé. (shrink)

Face au règne hégémonique d un capitalisme financier globalisé particulièrement brutal, la quête manifeste d une autre économie sociale, solidaire, alternative se développe aujourd hui. Quelles sont les limites de l exploitation tolérable et les contestations possibles? La légitimité de l accumulation et les conditions morales de la redistribution sont ici interrogées à travers différentes époques et en différents lieux.