According to a philosophical tradition, it is trivial to speak about dissensus: the incompatibility of meaning and the dispute are charcteritics of the life of the philosopical reflection. In its most radical sense, though, the notion of dissensus is not only opposed to the possibility of reaching consensus, but concerns the possibility of discourse itself. As such, dissensus confronts philosophy with an impossibility that challenges its evidence. How to approach this impossibility? I argue that the problem of dissensus is not (...) just a question of language, but that it is necessary to take into consideration the relation between language and subjectivity. This relation is a central issue in the writings of Maurice Blanchot as well as in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas: for both of them, ‘language’ is in the phenomenological sense of the word an ‘experience’ in which the whole problem of subjectivity is involved. But at the same time, this experience is the origin of a profound difference between the two friends. Analysing the question of subjectivity in its relation to the other, Levinas is able to show why language plays a fundamental role in the promotion and the constitution of a subjectivity that is obliged to respond in the first person. Blanchot, however, approaches language in the experience of writing where subjectivity looses grip and cannot but disappear. The distinction between written language and oral discourse therefore seems to be crucial with regard to the problem of subjectivity. The explicitation of this distinction enables me to specify the condition of dissensus. (shrink)

Testimony and Engagement: Towards a Re-assessment of the Distinction between Fiction and Non-Fiction in Literary Narratives This article approaches the cognitive value of literary works from the perspective of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. This examination takes as a starting point the philosophy of Peter Lamarque who bases the distinction between fiction and non-fiction on the intention of the author. I question this position from the perspective of the reader’s experience of a literary text. I argue that the distinction (...) between fiction and non-fiction plays a major role in our appreciation of literary works, but that the intention of the author is not sufficient to account for it. In order to assess the relevance of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction in the reader’s experience of literary narratives, I introduce the notions of testimony and engagement. Testimony narratives are considered to be non-fiction, narratives of engagement are not. In analyzing some aspects of the stories If This Is a Man (Primo Levi), Nausea (Jean-Paul Sartre) and Identitti (Mithu Sanyal), I show that testimony and engagement are both involved, however in different ways, in the reader’s appreciation of these stories. (shrink)

En retracant l'histoire de cet ecart qui se dissimule dans le rapport entre Blanchot et Levinas, cette etude veut a la fois sonder son origine, interroger son insistance et en degager les termes qui exposent le differend comme une condition ...

This article examines in what way and to what extent phenomenological philosophy has given rise to a new understanding of the modern novel and to a transformation of its narrative techniques. The starting point for this examination is the claim, made by Merleau-Ponty in “Metaphysics and the Novel”, according to which, in phenomenological philosophy, the task of philosophy is inextricably bound to that of literature. I examine this claim in two ways. First, I situate it historically with regard to the (...) modern novel’s characteristic realism. Then, I show how the phenomenological attitude – formulated by Husserl as a methodological device in distinction with the natural attitude – transforms the novel’s narrative technics. Sartre’s first novel, La Nausée, constitutes an exemplary case to assess this transformation. Combining these two ways, I argue that the claim made by Merleau-Ponty is paradoxical: on the one hand, the intrinsic connection between phenomenological philosophy and literature promotes the cognitive value of the modern novel, but on the other hand, it breaks with the conventions of the novel form and initiates a fragmented writing. (shrink)

This book wants to open a contemporary philosophical perspective on the tragic. What is the locus of tragedy?

In this article I re-examine the well-known distinction between rootedness and uprootedness that Emmanuel Levinas draws in his short text “Heidegger, Gagarin and Us” (1961). This distinction addresses the relation between men and place either as an attachment to place (paganism, Heidegger) or as a freedom with regard to place (Judaism, Gagarin). I question this opposition from a contemporary perspective in environmental philosophy, namely from the growing awareness of the interconnectedness between place and Earth. I contend that this new perspective (...) changes the understanding of dwelling today because of Earth’s exteriority with regard to place. I argue that this exteriority is neither infinite nor a totality. (shrink)

The contributions of this volume discuss the legacy of Emmanuel Levinas philosophy. Examining critically the limits of his thinking, they also bear witness to its influence, thus demonstrating the significance of his groundbreaking project of establishing ethics as first philosophy".

The posthumous publication of Emmanuel Levinas’s wartime diaries, postwar lectures, and drafts for two novels afford new approaches to understanding the relationship between literature, philosophy, and religion. This volume gathers an international list of experts to examine new questions raised by Levinas’s deep and creative experiment in thinking at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and religion. Chapters address the role and significance of poetry, narrative, and metaphor in accessing the ethical sense of ordinary life; Levinas's critical engagement with authors such (...) as Leon Bloy, Paul Celan, Vassily Grossman, Marcel Proust, and Maurice Blanchot; analyses of Levinas’s draft novels Eros ou Triple opulence and La Dame de chez Wepler; and the application of Levinas's thought in reading contemporary authors such as Ian McEwen and Cormac McCarthy. Contributors include Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Kevin Hart, Eric Hoppenot, Vivian Liska, Jean-Luc Nancy and François-David Sebbah, among others. (shrink)

In het kader van de Leerstoel Rector Dhanis (UFSIA, Antwerpen) werd door een studiegroep bestaande uit artsen en verpleegkundigen, ethici en juristen, een interdisciplinaire studie ondernomen over 'klinische ethiek' en 'hoe recht en politiek omgaan met problemen die thuishoren in de klinische praktijk'. In deze bundel wordt het ethische denken in een aantal casussen betreffende neonatalen en dementerenden kritisch besproken. De adviezen van het Raadgevend Comite voor Bio-Ethiek over sterilisatie van mentaal gehandicapten en over klonering worden onderzocht op hun relevantie (...) voor de klinische praktijk. (shrink)

In this article, I examine whether the concept of testimony can be used in order to clarify the epistemological value of literary fiction. It seems that it cannot: a testimony can be wrong while it makes no sense to say that a literary fiction can be wrong. However, in the wake of a hermeneutic philosophy, the fictional story has often been qualified as a testimony of an experience, even in cases which are not merely autobiographical. I try to unravel this (...) paradoxical connection between literary fiction and testimony. Starting from an examination of Kafka’s short story “Metamorphosis”, I intend to articulate the distinction between literary fiction and testimony, on the one hand and on the other, to understand the importance of the perspective of the witness in literary fiction. The main argument for both statements is given by an analysis of the visibility in literary fiction. (shrink)

Different aspects of people's interactions with money are best conceptualized using the drug and tool theories. The key question is when these models of money are most likely to guide behavior. We suggest that the Drug Theory characterizes motivationally active uses of money and that the Tool Theory characterizes behavior in motivationally cool situations. (Published Online April 5 2006).

This paper supplies a structuralist reconstruction of the Modigliani-Miller theory and shows that the economic literature following their results reports on research with an implicit strategy to come "closer-to-the-truth" in the modern technical sense in philosophy of science.

Richard’s funeral Mass was celebrated in the Oratory Church, Oxford on 30 October 2024. A church Richard was thoroughly familiar with because of the Latin Masses he attended there. He would often d...

1m Studienjahr 1953/54 hielt ich an der Universitat Wien als Gast­ professor Vorlesungen und Seminare uber die gegenwartige analytische Philosophie in USA und England. Auf Grund einer Einladung durch die philosophische Fakultat, die hauptsachlich der Initiative von em. o. o. Professor Dr. VICTOR KRAFT zu verdanken war, wurde mir zu diesem Zweck yom amerikanischen State Department ein "Fulbright"­ Stipendium gewahrt. Das vorliegende Buch entsprang dieser Tatigkeit. Es ware jedoch ohne die sachverstandige und enthusiastische Mitarbeit von Dr. PAUL FEYERABEND, dem ich (...) hiermit meinen herzlichen Dank aussprechen will, kaum in so kurzer Zeit zustandegekommen. Fragmente eines Vorlesungsmanuskriptes lagen nur fUr die ersten drei Kapitel vor. Dr. FEYERABEND verfertigte die fehlenden Partien ex post facto auf Grund der N otizen, die er sich, als auBergewohnlich aktiver "Horer", bei den Vorlesungen und Seminaren machte. Ich unterzog sein Manuskript einer grundlichen Revision, hier und dort auch Erweiterungen anbringend; der groBte Teil des Buches entstand auf diese Weise. Auch die anregenden Diskussionen mit Dr. FEYERABEND, innerhalb und auBerhalb der Vor­ lesungen und Seminare, waren ein betrachtlicher Ansporn zum Schreiben dieses Buches. (shrink)

There seem to me, however, to be serious flaws in Goodman's intricate chain of argument, which I wish to examine in some detail.

One observes regulation at every biological level. Organisms, cells, and biochemical processes operate efficiently, normally wasting neither material nor energy, and adjusting their functions to external influences. Nature evidently has evolved mechanisms specifically dedicated to regulation at many levels. What is the molecular basis of this control?In the 1950s these molecular control mechanisms began to be explored seriously. The discoveries of feedback inhibition of enzyme activity were important because they gave an initial example of how regulation is achieved at the (...) molecular level. We showed that certain enzymes are composed of two parts, one for catalysis and another distinct part present only to regulate this catalysis. Catalytic activity can be either stimulated or inhibited when a small molecule in the environment combines with the enzyme's regulatory site. In particular, a final product of a metabolic pathway generates a feedback loop which automatically limits its own excessive production, by combining with the regulatory site of an early enzyme in that pathway. Later studies showed that catalytic and regulatory structures of some enzymes could be separated physically.The discovery of regulatory sites and their interaction with molecules unrelated to their substrates was the basis for the generalized allosteric concept. This concept extends the regulatory site idea to a wide variety of processes such as control of gene expression, hormone action, and cellular growth. (shrink)

The Pajama (Pardee, Jacob, Monod) experiment provided a breakthrough in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which gene expression is regulated. Today, twenty‐five years later it provides a paradigm for thinking about problems of gene expression, such as growth regulation and differentiation. From this experiment emerged entities such as repressors, regulatory genes, the operon as a group of jointly controlled genes, and messenger RNA.

We prove three theorems concerning Laver indestructibility, strong compactness, and measurability. We then state some related open questions.

Contents.--The pursuit of values.--Science and values.--Biological viewpoints.--Mental attitudes.--Ethics.--Religion.--The management of life.--The social mind social progress.--Government.--International relations.--Education.--Proportion in education.--The American college.--Objective experience.