L? Esquisse d?une théorie des émotions est traduite en anglais une première fois en 1948 1 . Elle le sera une seconde fois en 1962. Ces traductions ont suscité de nombreux comptes rendus et ont donné lieu depuis lors à de nombreuses lectures du petit livre de Sartre, alors que l?ouvrage a longtemps été négligé par les travaux de langue française 2 . En 1950, deux articles de grande qualité scellent cet intérêt anglo-saxon pour l??uvre de Sartre en général, et (...) pour l? Esquisse d?une théorie des émotions en particulier, dans cette période d?immédiat après-guerre. Le premier est écrit par Günther Stern, le second par Frederik Jacobus Johannes Buytendijk 3 . Ils adressent des questions fondamentales au livre de Sartre, à propos du rapport de l?émotion à la réalité d?une part, du rapport de l?émotion au langage de l?autre. L?émo­tion chez Sartre semble en effet se définir comme une façon de fuir la réalité, devenue trop difficile . C?est ce que semble indiquer la définition de l?émo­tion comme conscience magique. L?émotion serait ainsi, pour Sartre, la manière dont la conscience tenue en échec, mise en impasse, prétend agir directement, sans médiation, sur le monde. Dans le cadre de cet article, je me limiterai à une discussion du premier article, qui adressait déjà, sans que les commentaires suivants aient pu égaler son acuité, les questions fondamentales. Dans un premier temps, je rappellerai de. (shrink)

Sartre’s attitude toward medicine has been neglected by researchers, insofar as his disinterest in sciences would justify the absence in his work of a thorough reflection on medicine or disease. The publication of some unpublished works on morals written between 1961 and 1965, when the war of Algeria was coming to an end, asks to reassess this issue. In these unpublished works, especially in Les racines de l’éthique, the issue of attitudes toward life and death draws significant attention. In this (...) article, we dwell upon Sartre’s reaction to the famous infanticide trial held in Liège in 1962, also known as the Softenon Trial. Taking a stand against the accusatory comments of leftist journals, Sartre pays scrupulous attention to the biopolitical transformations that Western societies are then experiencing. This attention should be understood in the background of Sartre’s family history as well as in an unnoticed dialogue with the School of Annales, with the history of attitudes towards life and death delineated by Philippe Ariès and also with the history of sensibilities outlined by Lucien Febvre. (shrink)

Les textes rassemblés ici constituent les « Actes » du cinquième séminaire annuel de l?Unité de recherches Phénoménologie s , qui s?est tenu à l?Université de Liège du 2 au 6 mai 2011 et avait pour intitulé Entre phéno­ménologie et psychologie. Le problème de la passivité . Sans doute le thème de la passivité n?est-il pas neuf en phénoméno­logie. Très souvent, notamment dans le monde francophone, il a été brandi pour nuancer, voire contrecarrer, une certaine conception de la phénoméno­logie qui (...) se revendique de l?idéalisme transcendantal et insiste fortement sur l?activité rationnelle du sujet connaissant. On le sait ; les « actes » psychiques qui faisaient l?intentionalité de la conscience dans la tradition brentanienne (dont héritent encore les Recherches logiques ) ont, après le tournant transcendantal, été réinterprétés par Husserl dans le cadre de l? activité noétique de l? ego , laquelle « informe » la matière sensorielle du vécu et la constitue en véritable connaissance d?objets. Or, à l?encontre de ce modèle résolument inspiré de Kant et des néo-kantiens, on a souvent fait valoir que ce qui faisait la spécificité de la phénoménologie, c?était au contraire d?avoir pu penser, dans les textes postérieurs aux Idées directrices et sous la problématique générale de la passivité, une subjectivité incarnée, ancrée dans son Lebenswelt , influencée par ses habitus. (shrink)

The study of the early manuscripts of the great authors most often becomes a process of monumentalising or (re)legitimising their work. The recent publication of two of Sartre's early manuscripts – first Empédocle (Empedocles) in 2016 and second, in 2018, his dissertation for his graduate diploma (diplôme d’études supérieures or DES), L'Image dans la vie psychologique (The Image in Psychological Life), both texts written in 1926–1927 – encourages us to propose another type of genetic reading that insists on the collective (...) conditions of the production of knowledge, including philosophical knowledge. Such a collective genetics, applied to Sartre's intellectual formation during the interwar years, allows us to highlight some of the little-known forms of Parisian intellectual societies (the activities of the International Information Group of the École Normale Supérieure, the critical logic of the psychology journals, the regular meetings of the cenacles, and the literary and philosophical research groups). It also reveals, at the same time, the original relationship between Sartre's thought and the German literature and philosophy mediated to him by Bernard Groethuysen, Stefan Zweig and Alexandre Koyré. (shrink)

Cette lecture du livre de Gregory Cormann, Sartre. Une anthropologie politique. 1920-1980, est centrée sur la relation de Sartre avec Lucien Lévy-Bruhl sur le thème des émotions, développée dans son dernier chapitre. Cela conduit aussi à suggérer, sous ce rapport, un lien entre Günther Anders Stern e Sartre.

Jonas, sixty-four, had never had a problem with the police and was reputed to be polite and calm. How then to explain the sudden outburst of violence when, on a given night, he shot a rifle at police officers? No one was harmed, but the perpetrator was arrested. It was in prison, a few hours after the incident, that Englebert, at the time a prison psychologist, met him. Englebert was also able to interview some of Jonas's family and friends, all (...) of whom were astonished by the event. This book, written by Englebert in collaboration with philosopher Grégory Cormann, analyzes the case not so much to find an ultimate explanation for Jonas's act as to show the variety of ways in which one can frame the man and his actions.The most common way of framing the event, the one most of Jonas's acquaintances have employed, is to link the violence with madness, but temporary insanity is not really an explanation. To say that Jonas went mad is no more than saying that his violence was incomprehensible. Still, to assert that he was mad when he fired the rifle qualifies as an interpretation in that it splits the act from the rest of the man's life. By insisting on that separation, kin and friends unburden themselves of any feelings of guilt they may experience at not having been able to prevent the act.Jonas's wife has another version of the event. She connects it with the recent death of his mother. Jonas was very close to his mother: he had dined with her every night of his life, even after his marriage thirty years before she died. Indeed even after her death, a month before the episode with the police, he had continued to go every night to her house. He wanted to carry on his lifelong habit, without change. A dispute about the house with his twenty-year-old son led to the encounter with the police: Jonas had added to his will a provision that his son would inherit the house but would be prohibited from ever selling it. The son found this prohibition unacceptable, and their argument came rapidly to blows. Out of fear, Jonas's wife called the police. Jonas went to the attic and brought down his late father's rifle. The son fled, but Jonas remained on the doorstep, waiting for the police.All the data presented in this book appear to confirm that Jonas suffered from a “major depressive disorder with melancholic features,” characterized by strong attachment to order and regularity. In this interpretation, the shot was a desperate act, aimed somehow at precluding change. Hence the act marked not a break in the man's life but signaled continuation of a long-term disorder.Englebert and Cormann, however, advance a third version—the most audacious, the most original. They compare the shot (a moment of high excitation) to the electroconvulsive therapy sometimes used to treat manic depression. It seems that electroshock produces a temporary disruption in the brain that is followed by a higher neuroplasticity that can help patients to recover. By putting himself in a perilous situation, Jonas produced an excitation that could disrupt his neural circuitry. In the authors’ interpretation, the act suggests neither temporary insanity nor the symptom of a long-term illness, but a first step toward recovery. The rifle was an improvised instrument for self-treatment.The book reflects Jean-Paul Sartre's claim according to which “it is perhaps sufficient to seek the explanation for a crime in the social situation and the criminal's psychopathic makeup, but only a poet can elucidate its human meaning.” Englebert and Cormann prove to be poets by showing how Jonas could free himself from self-bondage. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that part of what makes an event lucky concerns how probable that event is. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic probability account of luck successfully resists recent arguments that all theories of luck, including probability theories, are subject to counterexample (Hales 2016). I argue that an event is lucky if and only if it is significant and sufficiently improbable. An event is significant when, given some reflection, the subject would regard the event as significant, and (...) the event’s epistemic probability, determined by the subject’s evidence, is the only kind of probability that directly bears on whether or not the event is lucky. I conclude with some lessons that are applicable to probability theorists of luck generally, including those defending non-epistemic probability theories. (shrink)

From 1953 to 1959 Gödel worked on a response to Carnap’s philosophy of mathematics. The drafts display Gödel’s familiarity with Carnap’s position from The Logical Syntax of Language, but they received a dismissive reaction on their eventual, posthumous, publication. Gödel’s two principal points, however, will here be defended. Gödel, though, had wished simply to append a few paragraphs to show that the same arguments apply to Carnap’s later views. Carnap’s position, however, had changed significantly in the intervening years, and to (...) a significant extent, this mature position realizes much of what Gödel himself wanted out of a philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper will deal with three questions regarding Carnap's transition from the position he held at the time of writing Syntax to the doctrines he held during his semantic phase: (1) What was Carnap's attitude towards truth at the time of writing Syntax? (2) What was Carnap's position regarding questions of reference and ontology at the time of writing Syntax? (3) Was Carnap's acceptance of Tarski's analysis of truth and reference detrimental to his philosophical project? Section 1 of this paper (...) will deal with the first of these questions. Special attention will be paid to identifying what it was that prevented Carnap from defining a truth predicate for descriptive languages in Syntax. Section 2 of this paper will deal with the question of Carnap's attitude towards reference and ontology in Syntax. It will be shown that the attempt in Syntax to address ontological questions is seriously defective. Section 3 of this paper addresses the last of the questions posed above. It is argued that in the light of what is established in Sections 1 and 2, Carnap could not have retained the position of Syntax with respect to truth and reference. (shrink)

Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ is generally seen as overturning Carnap’s epistemological picture of mathematics and the sciences. However, I wish to stress how this paper grew out of arguments not having anything to do with large-scale epistemological concerns, but ones originally presented against quantified modal logic. Quine thought he could demonstrate the impossibility of adding anything like ordinary quantification to modal logic, but Barcan Marcus did exactly this. In fact, as I will argue, ‘Two Dogmas ...’ can be seen (...) as growing out of a 1947 paper of Quine’s where Barcan Marcus is the explicit target. Later, in certain exchanges with Quine, Barcan Marcus puts forward and defends a consistent and interesting position on matters of ontology and the philosophy of language. This chapter will examine Barcan Marcus’s role in both the debate over analyticity and the debate on (meta-)ontology. (shrink)

There is a curious letter of 24 April 1928, reproduced in Russell’s Autobiography. It is from Russell to Max Newman. It is my thesis that there is a crucial “not” missing from the text and interpretations of the letter. This small point, if it is correct, has a very large impact for clarifying how Russell saw Newman’s challenge to his structural realism according to which all of our empirical knowledge in physics concerns structure alone.

Abstract At the time of The Logical Syntax of Language (Syntax), Quine was, in his own words, a disciple of Carnap’s who read this work page by page as it issued from Ina Carnap’s typewriter. The present paper will show that there were serious problems with how Syntax dealt with ontological claims. These problems were especially pronounced when Carnap attempted to deal with higher order quantification. Carnap, at the time, viewed all talk of reference as being part of the misleading (...) material mode of speech, and as such dismissed, rather than addressed, ontological problems. Central to the analysis in the present paper is the concept of an explication, which was seen by both Carnap and Quine as being of great philosophical importance. It will be shown that the concept of explication played a significant role in how each formulated their mature position on ontology. Both these final positions on ontology can also be seen as a evolving in reaction to Carnap’s flawed handling of ontological matters at the time of Syntax. Carnap, influenced by Tarski’s work on semantics, comes to believe that the concept of reference can be given an acceptable explication, and that by doing so we can see reference to abstract objects as unobjectionable. As a result, Carnap develops a position very different from the one presented in Syntax. Quine strongly rejected the instrumentalism of Syntax, and sought to give an explication of ontological questions that was language independent. This paper closes with a discussion of each’s understanding of the other’s position. (shrink)

This essay contends that God created humanity as His co-creators to bring Him glory with one’s entire being, including imagination and creativity. Throughout Scripture, YHWH is depicted as the artistic Creator of all that is beautiful, true, and transcendent. The Bible attests the creation of humanity in the imago Dei--sharing God’s innate creativity--and divine gifting of Spirit-inspired artisans utilizing their talents for God’s glory. Yet, over the centuries, “art” was oft misunderstood and grossly neglected in Christ’s church. Philip Ryken explains (...) how medieval skeptics began removing and destroying art believed to violate the Decalogue. Imbalanced suspicions toward art in Christendom still persist, despite the positive, inspirational effects of icons in Catholic and Orthodox traditions and scientific research that shows the therapeutic value of art across a broad spectrum of mental and physical challenges, including isolation and depression. Makoto Fujimura posits that Christian creatives possess a common faith as “border-walkers,” and can affect phoenix-like positive cultural and ecclesial change by reintroducing beauty as a visible “sermon” into a fragmented, post-pandemic world. (shrink)

For many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins. In its most commonly cited form, scientism consists in claiming that science is the only source of real knowledge and, therefore, that what science does not discover does not exist. Because the charge of scientism is frequently levied, it is important to be clear about what exactly is being claimed in its name. I argue that scientism can best be understood as a fallacy, specifically as a kind (...) of category mistake. Being clear about this requires an examination of the relationship of scientism to the question of demarcation between science and nonscience, a question that has potential implications for theology. (shrink)

Starting in June 2012, a series of articles in the journal Nature and in the online journals of the Public Library of Science made public the first results of a massive, international collaborative scientific endeavor known as the “Human Microbiome Project” . This project, which is attempting to categorize the vast number of microbiological species and organisms that live in and on the “healthy” human body, raises important questions about what it means to be a whole individual organism, especially if (...) that individual involves a community of some hundreds of trillions of others. In this article, we will explore a handful of political, ethical, and philosophical issues that this new research raises .. (shrink)

There are many wonderful puzzles concerning Principia Mathematica, but none are more striking than those arising from the crisis that befell Whitehead in November of 1910. Volume 1 appeared in December of 1910. Volume 2 on cardinal numbers and Russell's relation arithmetic might have appeared in 1911 but for Whitehead's having halted the printing. He discovered that inferences involving the typically ambiguous notation ‘Nc‘α’ for the cardinal number of α might generate fallacies. When the volume appeared in 1912, it was (...) extensively emended by Whitehead and accompanied by a Prefatory Statement of Symbolic Conventions. This paper endeavors to recover from Whitehead's bad emendations—including his bewildering thesis that since ‘‘α’ is ‘true whenever significant,’ ‘α is to be accepted. It is supposedly a fallacy to apply Modus Ponens and infer Nc‘α from ‘α and‘‘α. (shrink)