These 17 essays covers all aspects of Bernard Stiegler's work, from poststructuralism, anthropology and psychoanalysis to his work on the politics of memory, 'libidinal economy', technoscience and aesthetics, keeping a focus on his key theory of technics throughout.

I argue that Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight are best seen as an example of memento mori art. Memento mori, the admonition to remember death, can take many forms, but the idea remains the same, namely that an awareness of our inevitable end should bear on how we live. I show how Richard Linklater’s warning works in each of the movies and argue that with the Before trilogy he makes a Frankfurt-style case that romantic love is life’s summum (...) bonum--i.e. "the ultimate ground of practical rationality.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality by Christina Van DykeAnn W. AstellA Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality. By Christina Van Dyke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xxv + 228. $41.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-886168-3.Building upon Étienne Gilson’s The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard (1940), which identified a systematic structure in the thought of (...) a great contemplative theologian, Jean Leclercq’s paradigm-shifting book, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (1960), won a place for medieval monastic theology alongside Scholastic theology, broadening the canon for scholars of medieval theology. That theological canon has long since been further broadened to include the books of women mystics.Van Dyke’s book similarly aims to widen the canon of texts studied under the rubric of medieval philosophy to include contemplative writings by women and men, some of whom are also regarded as mystics. This short, wise, and winning book is “perhaps the first book-length reintegration of the medieval contemplative tradition into discussions of medieval philosophy” (208).Van Dyke urges her fellow philosophers to engage seriously with meditative and mystical writings as a corrective of historically false claims: first, that “women didn’t do philosophy in the Middle Ages” (1); second, that mystical and contemplative writings, by definition, lack philosophical/rational content; third, that Scholastic disputations arose purely within the “isolated bubbles” of the universities and did not reflect ongoing societal and ecclesial “conversations that frequently included women” (2). Beyond this corrective [End Page 707] function, Van Dyke argues that the pairing of contemplative with Scholastic texts enriches the study of medieval philosophy through complementation by reinforcing philosophy’s status as a transformative pursuit of wisdom, highlighting its inherent variety as a field, engaging the historical voices of men and women alike in discussions of topics of common interest, and demonstrating the mutual complementarity of the Scholastic and contemplative philosophical traditions, which have distinctive emphases and provide different angles of approach to given questions and topics.What topics? The adjective “hidden” in the title has a double meaning. It gently points to the medieval contemplative tradition as “hidden” to presentday philosophers who, Van Dyke hopes, will discover its philosophical richness. The adjective also pairs with the adjectival noun “contemplatives” in the subtitle, suggesting the interplay in Van Dyke’s vocabulary, which treats “mystic” (a word often glossed as “hidden to the senses”) and “contemplative” as synonyms, but favors the latter as more directly indicative of willed and embodied cognition. In this choice, she draws encouragement both from Bernard McGinn’s broad definition of mysticism (namely, as a contemplative way of preparing one for the direct experience of God’s presence) and from Nicholas Watson’s description of mystical experience as “phenomenological” and “transcendent” (20); she distances herself from the purely psychological interests of William James and the homogenizing views of Evelyn Underhill.In chapter 1, “Mysticism, Methodology, and Epistemic Justice,” Van Dyke takes her fellow philosophers to task for defining “mysticism” narrowly in a way that excludes “embodied, non-unitive states... visions, auditions, and other somatic experiences” (4). This too-narrow definition, she argues, has worked “‘against the recognition of women’s experiences as properly mystical’” (10), excluded meditative practices belonging to the contemplative path practiced by medieval Christians, and effected “the exclusion of philosophers from most of the ongoing interand intradisciplinary conversations about mysticism” (20).The subtitle of Van Dyke’s book conveniently lists five topics—self-knowledge, reason, love, persons, and immortality—that reflect the major themes of chapters 2 through 6. These short chapters each have a similar arrangement, showcasing both the questions common to Scholastics and contemplatives and the differences in their approaches.Chapter 2, “Self-Knowledge” opens with the observation, “The importance of self-knowledge is a truth universally acknowledged in the contemplative philosophical tradition” (33). According to Van Dyke, university-based discussions about the self tend to inquire “about ‘what’ we are and how we come to know this, while contemplative and mystical discussions tend to focus on ‘who’ we are and to emphasize the significance of self... (shrink)

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

This edition includes, in addition to the most pertinent sections of The Fable's two volumes, a selection from Mandeville's An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor and selections from two of Mandeville's most important sources: Pierre Bayle and the Jansenist Pierre Nicole. Hundert's Introduction places Mandeville in a number of eighteenth-century debates--particularly that of the nature and morality of commercial modernity--and underscores the degree to which his work stood as a central problem, not only for his immediate English contemporaries, but (...) for such philosophers as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. The selections are substantive enough to faithfully represent Mandeville the social theorist, and compact enough to be used in courses that can afford to spend no more than a week on his work. (shrink)

Una terza collezione, preparata per i Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan dai curatori Robert M. Doran e John D. Dadosky, è un utile complemento ai volumi quattro e tredici della serie. Il volume contiene quindici scritti, redatti tra il 1974 e il 1982, e include alcuni dei suoi più importanti scritti brevi, come "Prolegomeni allo studio della coscienza religiosa emergente del nostro tempo" e "Diritto naturale e mentalità storica", di cui sono specificate le voci d'archivio, in modo che il (...) lettore possa consultarle. Gli interventi di questo volume ripropongono in chiave nuova i temi di una vita. Senza ritornare in alcun modo sulle principali enfasi dei primi lavori di Lonergan - la teoria cognitiva e poi l'esplorazione di un quarto livello esistenziale di coscienza - si concentrano maggiormente sull'amore e sul movimento dall'alto verso il basso della coscienza. La comunità è enfatizzata come contesto e frutto dell'emergere di soggetti autentici. (shrink)

Thirty-five years ago the editor of a collection entitled Philosophy of Mind could plausibly claim that his selection of a dozen articles was representative of the wide range and vitality of contemporary inquiries. There was no need to categorize; he had chosen articles on the basis of merit, whether or not, in the aggregate, they encompassed the major problems or topics that are the special province of the philosophical study of mind. A 1991 text, on the other hand, offers five (...) major categories, some requiring as many as four subdivisions—obviously in the interest of careful analysis. Yet it is not clear why, for example, “Consciousness, Self and Personhood” should constitute a subset of “The Nature of Mind,” when “Self and Other” occurs as a major category two hundred pages earlier. I am only pointing out the vicissitudes of classification, too little in one case, in the other seemingly too much of a good thing. With these and other collections in mind, one might well conclude that the subject matter of philosophy of mind is too diffuse to allow precise organization and definition. (shrink)

The technology of undersea communications, from stranded-wire telegraph cables in the 1850s to fiber-optic cables at the end of the twentieth century, and its social, political, and economic impact. By the end of the twentieth century, fiber-optic technology had made possible a worldwide communications system of breathtaking speed and capacity. This amazing network is the latest evolution of communications technologies that began with undersea telegraph cables in the 1850s and continued with coaxial telephone cables a hundred years later. Communications under (...) the Seas traces the development of these technologies and assesses their social, economic, and political effects. If we cannot predict the ultimate consequences of today's wired world--its impact on economic markets, free expression, and war and peace--or the outcome of the conflict between wired and wireless technology, we can examine how similar issues have been dealt with in the past. The expert contributors to this volume do just that, discussing technical developments in undersea cables, management of the cables by private and public interests, and the impact on military and political activities. Chapters cover such topics as the daring group of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who wove a network of copper wires around the world ; the opening of the telegraphic network to general public use; the government- and industry-forced merger of wireless and cable companies in Britain; and the impact of the cable network on diplomacy during the two world wars. (shrink)

The language theory of Mikhail Bakhtin does not fall neatly under any single rubric - 'dialogism,' 'marxism,' 'prosaics,' 'authorship' - because the philosophic foundation of his writing rests ambivalently between phenomenology and Marxism. The theoretical tension of these positions creates philosophical impasses in Bakhtin's work, which have been neglected or ignored partly because these impasses are themselves mirrored by the problems of antifoundationalist and materialist tendencies in literary scholarship. In Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism Michael Bernard-Donals examines various (...) incarnations of phenomenological and materialist theory - including the work of Jauss, Fish, Rorty, Althusser, and Pecheux - and places them beside Bakhtin's work, providing a contextualised study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary critics, and an original contribution to literary theory. (shrink)

Contemporary physics, especially quantum theory, has raised profound questions about the relationship between the methods of science and the reality these methods seek to investigate. D'Espagnat investigates these questions as well as how we should answer them. Part I examines the practices of contemporary physicists and addresses the criticism philosophers of science have made of these practices. The doctrine of physical realism, adopted by most physicists and many philosophers of science, comprises Part II. Part III explores the consequences of physical (...) realism for our understanding of what science can seek to know of reality, and concludes by outlining the position contemporary physics indicates we should take. (shrink)

Une métaphore puissante, signifiante à l’excès - un système solaire - commande la course de Nietzsche comme de Platon, ordonne la pensée de la naissance et du déclin, programme le lever de Zarathoustra. D’une telle héliologie, Platon, Hegel, Nietzsche sont les moments majeurs. Et parce qu’un soleil décrit révolutions et orbites, dans un mouvement renversant, parce qu’un soleil toujours chasse l’autre et prend sa relève, parce que la clarté de midi équivaut à la nuit pure, c’est la double question, philosophique, (...) du renversement de Platon et du rapport à Hegel que l’on voudrait poser en déclinant ces versions du soleil. Le travail où cette recherche s’effectue, se propose comme une « description » de Nietzsche. Description nécessairement orientée selon un axe double : d’une part, dresser — au sein d’une théorie du système signifiant explicitement articulée dès la Naissance de la Tragédie — un exact inventaire des règles et limites imposées au texte par la langue naturelle, et par la métaphysique (platonicienne) qui la soutient ; mais, d’autre part, il aura suffi d’éveiller ainsi la puissance rhétorique et métaphorique de la langue, pour que le texte de Nietzsche se trouve affecté d’une lecture instable, libérant et déployant les figures qui l’occupent et l’écrivent. Figures dont l’analyse emprunte inévitablement à Freud ses concepts et ses opérations. (shrink)

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.

This book sets out to present Kant as a theological thinker. His critical philosophy was not only destructive of "natural" theology, with its attempt to prove devine existence by logical argument, it also left no room for "revelation" in the traditional sense. Yet Kant himself, who was brought up in Lutheran pietism, certainly believed in God, and could fairly be described as a religious man. But he held that religion can be based only on the moral consciousness, and in his (...) last major work, "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone"ódiscussed here in detailóhe interpreted Christianity purely in terms of moral symbolism. (shrink)

Cet article examine les choix de traduction, exposés dans deux préfaces se répondant, de deux traducteurs vers le latin de l’Ethique à Nicomaque, Joachim Périon, dont la traduction paraît en 1540, et Denis Lambin, dont le texte paraît en 1572. L’un et l’autre de ces traducteurs, à travers leur polémique, semblent en fait continuer les thèses d’un autre traducteur d’Aristote, théoricien du style de la traduction, Leonardo Bruni, dont le De interpretatione recta date de 1424-1426. Si Périon pense que le (...) seul style possible pour traduire Aristote en latin est celui des ouvrages philosophiques de Cicéron, qui a créé le seul latin philosophique, Lambin, après avoir remis en cause le principe même d’une traduction du grec vers le latin, finit par en accepter la validité, le latin restant la langue la plus riche stylistiquement, et la plus à même de rendre la richesse du grec. (shrink)

Classic publishing of Eastern philosophy, religion, and poetry. This is a facsimile edition of the work originally published in London by John Murray in 1940.