Steven French articulates and defends the bold claim that there are no objects in the world. He draws on metaphysics and philosophy of science to argue for structural realism--the position that we live in a world of structures--and defends a form of eliminativism about objects that sets laws and symmetry principles at the heart of ontology.

Steven French and Decio Krause examine the metaphysical foundations of quantum physics. They draw together historical, logical, and philosophical perspectives on the fundamental nature of quantum particles and offer new insights on a range of important issues. Focusing on the concepts of identity and individuality, the authors explore two alternative metaphysical views; according to one, quantum particles are no different from books, tables, and people in this respect; according to the other, they most certainly are. Each view comes with (...) certain costs attached and after describing their origins in the history of quantum theory, the authors carefully consider whether these costs are worth bearing. Recent contributions to these discussions are analyzed in detail and the authors present their own original perspective on the issues. The final chapter suggests how this perspective can be taken forward in the context of quantum field theory. (shrink)

In addressing the question of what mental health is we might proceed as if there is a single phenomenon – mental health – denoted by a single overarching concept. The task, then, is to provide an informative analysis of this concept which applies to all and only instances of mental health, and which illuminates what it is to be mentally healthy. In contrast, mental health pluralism is the idea that there are multiple mental health phenomena denoted by multiple concepts of (...) mental health. Analysis and illumination of mental health may still be possible, but there isn’t a single phenomenon or concept to be analysed in addressing the question of what mental health is. The question of pluralism has been overlooked in the philosophy of mental health. The discussion to follow is an attempt to get us to take mental health pluralism seriously. To that end, in this essay I have three primary goals: (1) to give a precise account of what mental health pluralism is, (2) to show that the question of pluralism should not be neglected in debate about what mental health is, and (3) to argue for mental health pluralism. I also draw out some implications of this discussion for philosophy, science, and psychotherapy. (shrink)

In addressing the question of what mental health is we might proceed as if there is a single phenomenon—mental health—denoted by a single overarching concept. The task, then, is to provide an informative analysis of this concept which applies to all and only instances of mental health, and which illuminates what it is to be mentally healthy. In contrast, mental health pluralism is the idea that there are multiple mental health phenomena denoted by multiple concepts of mental health. Analysis and (...) illumination of mental health may still be possible, but there isn’t a single phenomenon or concept to be analysed in addressing the question of what mental health is. The question of pluralism has been overlooked in the philosophy of mental health. The discussion to follow is an attempt to get us to take mental health pluralism seriously. To that end, in this essay I have three primary goals: (1) to give a precise account of what mental health pluralism is, (2) to show that the question of pluralism should not be neglected in debate about what mental health is, and (3) to argue for mental health pluralism. I also draw out some implications of this discussion for philosophy, science, and psychotherapy. (shrink)

What is a scientific theory? This book considers this fundamental question by presenting a range of options and the issues they raise. It draws comparisons between theories and artworks and proposes that we should stop thinking of theories as things altogether.

The semantic, or model-theoretic, approach to theories has recently come under criticism on two fronts: (i) it is claimed that it cannot account for the wide diversity of models employed in scientific practice—a claim which has led some to propose a “deflationary” account of models; (ii) it is further contended that the sense of “model” used by the approach differs from that given in model theory. Our aim in the present work is to articulate a possible response to these claims, (...) drawing on recent developments within the semantic approach itself. Thus, the first is answered by utilizing the notion of a “partial structure”, first introduced in this context by da Costa and French in 1990. The second claim is undermined by consideration of van Fraassen's understanding of “model” which corresponds well with that evinced by modem mathematicians. This latter discussion, in particular, has an impact on the continuing debate regarding the relative merits of the semantic and syntactic views and the developments presented here can be taken to provide further support to the former. (shrink)

Despite widespread agreement that it would be ethical to use somatic cell gene therapy to correct serious diseases, there is still uneasiness on the part of the public about this procedure. The basis for this concern lies less with the procedure's clinical risks than with fear that genetic engineering could lead to changes in human nature. Legitimate concerns about the potential for misuse of gene transfer technology justify drawing a moral line that includes corrective germline therapy but excludes enhancement interventions (...) in both somatic and germline contexts. Keywords: somatic cell, germ line, genetic diseases, genetic engineering, humanness, enhancement, eugenics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Discussions of representation in science tend to draw on examples from art. However, such examples need to be handled with care given a) the differences between works of art and scientific theories and b) the accommodation of these examples within certain philosophies of art. I shall examine the claim that isomorphism is neither necessary nor sufficient for representation and I shall argue that there exist accounts of representation in both art and science involving isomorphism which accommodate the apparent counterexamples and, (...) moreover, allow us to understand how “impossible” artistic objects and inconsistent scientific theories can be said to represent. (shrink)

What is the role of the imagination in scientific practice? Here I focus on the nature and role of invitations to imagine in certain scientific texts as represented by the example of Einstein’s Special Relativity paper from 1905. Drawing on related discussions in aesthetics, I argue, on the one hand, that this role cannot be simply subsumed under ‘supposition’ but that, on the other, concerns about the impact of genre and symbolism can be dealt with, and hence present no obstacle (...) to regarding imagination as appropriately belief-like. By applying the framework of ‘semi- propositional representations’ and ‘quasi-truth’ to this case I thereby offer a new unitary framework for understanding the epistemology of scientific imagination. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, history, moral psychology, and ethics, this revised and expanded edition of French’s The Code of the Warrior examines historical and contemporary warrior cultures and their values, arguing that today’s warriors need a code, as their ancestors did, to prevent them from crossing the thin but critical line that separates warriors from murderers in the battle against global terrorism.

Cartwright and her collaborators have elaborated a provocative view of science which emphasises the independence from theory &unknown;in methods and aims&unknown; of phenomenological model building. This thesis has been supported in a recent paper by an analysis of the London and London model of superconductivity. In the present work we begin with a critique of Cartwright's account of the relationship between theoretical and phenomenological models before elaborating an alternative picture within the framework of the partial structures version of the semantic (...) approach to theories. Drawing on the recent histories of superconductivity by Dahl and Gavroglu, together with the original works by London and London and by F. London separately, and taking due consideration of the heuristic aspects, we argue that the historical details fail to support Cartwright et al.'s claims but that they fit comfortably within the partial structures framework. (shrink)

Warrior cultures throughout history have developed unique codes that restrict their behavior and set them apart from the rest of society. But what possible reason could a warrior have for accepting such restraints? Why should those whose profession can force them into hellish kill-or-be-killed conditions care about such lofty concepts as honor, courage, nobility, duty, and sacrifice? And why should it matter so much to the warriors themselves that they be something more than mere murderers? The Code of the Warrior (...) tackles these timely issues and takes the reader on a tour of warrior cultures and their values, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the 'barbaric' Vikings and Celts, from legendary chivalric knights to Native American tribesmen, from Chinese warrior monks pursuing enlightenment to Japanese samurai practicing death. Drawing these rich traditions up to the present, the author quests for a code for the warriors of today, as they do battle in asymmetric conflicts against unconventional forces and the scourge of global terrorism. (shrink)

In this paper I begin with a recent challenge to the Semantic Approach and identify an underlying assumption, namely that identity conditions for theories should be provided. Drawing on previous work, I suggest that this demand should be resisted and that the Semantic Approach should be seen as a philosophical device that we may use to represent certain features of scientific practice. Focussing on the partial structures variant of that approach, I then consider a further challenge that arises from a (...) concern with the role of idealisations in that practice. I argue that the partial structures approach is capable of meeting this challenge and I conclude with some broader observations about the role of such formal accounts within the philosophy of science. (shrink)

_The Scope of Morality _ was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The scope of morality, Peter A. French contends, is much narrower than many traditional and contemporary works in ethical theory suggest. We trivialize morality if we think it has something to say about everything we do; it touches us all, but not at all times. (...) This essay in philosophical ethics focuses upon the origin, purpose, and function of the various concepts to be found in a more or less mature morality. The author draws a distinction between moral concepts that arise from an individual's wish to live a worthwhile life and those directed towards the development of virtue in the moral community. Moral concepts, in his view, are subjective creations of human beings rather than laws with an objective basis in nature. The ethics of sociobiology, of the lifeboat and spaceship models, and of game theory all come under his critical eye in this useful and progressive work. _The Scope of Morality_, says Hector-Neri Castaneda, "represents a serious effort at discussing the nature of morality, taking into account the most important contributions of recent writers.". (shrink)

My dissertation explores the ways in which Rudolf Carnap sought to make philosophy scientific by further developing recent interpretive efforts to explain Carnap’s mature philosophical work as a form of engineering. It does this by looking in detail at his philosophical practice in his most sustained mature project, his work on pure and applied inductive logic. I, first, specify the sort of engineering Carnap is engaged in as involving an engineering design problem and then draw out the complications of design (...) problems from current work in history of engineering and technology studies. I then model Carnap’s practice based on those lessons and uncover ways in which Carnap’s technical work in inductive logic takes some of these lessons on board. This shows ways in which Carnap’s philosophical project subtly changes right through his late work on induction, providing an important corrective to interpretations that ignore the work on inductive logic. Specifically, I show that paying attention to the historical details of Carnap’s attempt to apply his work in inductive logic to decision theory and theoretical statistics in the 1950s and 1960s helps us understand how Carnap develops and rearticulates the philosophical point of the practical/theoretical distinction in his late work, offering thus a new interpretation of Carnap’s technical work within the broader context of philosophy of science and analytical philosophy in general. (shrink)

One way of explaining Rudolf Carnap’s mature philosophical view is by drawing an analogy between his technical projects—like his work on inductive logic—with a certain kind of conceptual engineering. After all, there are many mathematical similarities between Carnap’s work in inductive logic and a number of results from contemporary confirmation theory, statistics and mathematical probability theory. However, in stressing these similarities, the conceptual dependence of Carnap’s inductive logic on his work on semantics is downplayed. Yet it is precisely the conceptual (...) resources made available to Carnap from his work on semantics which allows him to understand his work on inductive logic as a kind of conceptual engineering project. The aim of this paper is to elucidate this engineering analogy in light of Carnap’s mature views through the lens of both inductive logic and semantics. (shrink)

The current state of the relationship between metaphysics and the philosophy of science might appear to be one best described as ‘hostility on both sides’. In an attempt to bridge this gap, French and McKenzie have suggested a two fold strategy: on the one hand, if metaphysics is to be taken to have something direct to say about reality, the implications of physics need to be properly appreciated; on the other, one does not have to agree with the claim (...) that a prioristic metaphysics should be dismissed or even discontinued, since we should value scientifically disinterested metaphysics as a ‘toolbox’ for philosophers of science. It is in the context of this strategy that I want to approach the issue of understanding the symmetry principles that feature in the Standard Model of modern physics. I shall suggest that the dispositional analysis of laws is incapable of accommodating such principles. However, there are other tools in the metaphysical toolbox that one can draw upon to help capture the nature of such symmetries corresponding to the second part of the above strategy. (shrink)

In a series of radio broadcasts, one of which is translated for the first time in this issue (pp. 21-34), Adorno and Becker claimed that modern education is profoundly inadequate. Their views on education draw heavily on Kant’s notion of Enlightenment as a process for the development of personal and social maturity and responsibility. As such, education cannot just be a training but must itself be a developmental process which takes into account not only social and political realities but also (...) the complex psychodynamics involved in learning. However, Adorno and Becker arrive at a position that is close to self-contradictory, unable to solve the paradox inherent in the idea of an education that is at once authoritative and non-conformist. This might arise from their failure to reflect on the nature of their own dialogue, and it is suggested that friendship offers the social model of a dynamic relationship of the type they sought to articulate. Despite the fact that the discussion took place in 1969, in a climate of educational debate radically different from today’s, their work raises issues and poses questions of the profoundest importance 30 years on. (shrink)

Batterman raises a number of concerns for the inferential conception of the applicability of mathematics advocated by Bueno and Colyvan. Here, we distinguish the various concerns, and indicate how they can be assuaged by paying attention to the nature of the mappings involved and emphasizing the significance of interpretation in this context. We also indicate how this conception can accommodate the examples that Batterman draws upon in his critique. Our conclusion is that ‘asymptotic reasoning’ can be straightforwardly accommodated within the (...) inferential conception. 1 Introduction2 Immersion, Inference and Partial Structures3 Idealization and Surplus Structure4 Renormalization and the Stability of Mathematical Representations5 Explanation and Eliminability6 Requirements for Explanation7 Interpretation and Idealization8 Explanation, Empirical Regularities and the Inferential Conception9 Conclusion. (shrink)

Although it is now widely recognised by business leaders that their companies need to accept a broader responsibility than short-term profits, recent research suggests that as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social reporting become more widespread, there is little empirical evidence of the range of stakeholders addressed through their CSR programmes and how such programmes are reported. Through a CSR framework which was developed in an exploratory study, we explore the nature of stakeholder relationships reported across leading FTSE companies and (...) the importance they attach to communicating both social and business outcomes. It is evident from the hypotheses tested that the bigger FTSE companies, particularly extraction companies and telecoms, are more adept at identifying and prioritising their stakeholders, and linking CSR programmes to business and social outcomes. However, we draw the general conclusion that building stronger stakeholder relationships through CSR programmes – other than with customers – is not currently a priority for most companies. We also conclude that a limited sophistication in managing multiple stakeholders may compromise the impact of CSR upon business and social results. Finally, the managerial implications and the contribution of our study are discussed before closing with an acknowledgement of the limitations of this work and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

_Thinking about Science, Reflecting on Art: Bringing Aesthetics and Philosophy of Science togethe_r is the first book to systematically examine the relationship between the philosophy of science and aesthetics. With contributions from leading figures from both fields this edited collection engages with such questions as: Does representation function in the same way in science and in art? What important characteristic do scientific models share with literary fictions? What is the difference between interpretation in the sciences and in the arts? Can (...) there be a science of aesthetics? In what ways can aesthetics and philosophy of science be integrated? Aiming to develop the interconnections between the philosophy of science and the philosophy of art more broadly and more deeply than ever before this volume not only explores scientific representation by comparison with fiction but extends the scope of interaction to include metaphysical and other questions around methodology in mainstream philosophy of science, including the aims of science, the characterisation of scientific understanding, and the nature of observation, as well as drawing detailed comparisons between specific examples in both art and the sciences. (shrink)

In the first section of the article, we examine some recent criticisms of the connectionist enterprise: first, that connectionist models are fundamentally behaviorist in nature (and, therefore, non-cognitive), and second that connectionist models are fundamentally associationist in nature (and, therefore, cognitively weak). We argue that, for a limited class of connectionist models (feed-forward, pattern-associator models), the first criticism is unavoidable. With respect to the second criticism, we propose that connectionist modelsare fundamentally associationist but that this is appropriate for building models (...) of human cognition. However, we do accept the point that there are cognitive capacities for which any purely associative model cannot provide a satisfactory account. The implication that we draw from is this is not that associationist models and mechanisms should be scrapped, but rather that they should be enhanced.In the next section of the article, we identify a set of connectionist approaches which are characterized by “active symbols” — recurrent circuits which are the basis of knowledge representation. We claim that such approaches avoid criticisms of behaviorism and are, in principle, capable of supporting full cognition. In the final section of the article, we speculate at some length about what we believe would be the characteristics of a fully realized active symbol system. This includes both potential problems and possible solutions (for example, mechanisms needed to control activity in a complex recurrent network) as well as the promise of such systems (in particular, the emergence of knowledge structures which would constitute genuine internal models). (shrink)

Any approach to the study of managerial situations undertaken without reflection on the underpinning philosophy is flawed because it limits our ability to question the validity of the knowledge claimed in the analysis. The paper considers this issue and presents a philosophical reflection on the use of a systems approach to the modelling of human enterprises. It draws on insights from systems thinking, cognitive science, autopoiesis, communication theory and non-linear dynamics. These are interpreted within the context of social systems as (...) networks of conversations that are generated in language. It is written to invite an exchange of ideas concerning the role of the generative dialogue. (shrink)

The issue of what consequences to draw from the existence of non-classical logical systems has been the subject of an interesting debate across a diversity of fields. In this paper the matter of alternative logics is considered with reference to a specific belief system and its propositions :the Azande are said to maintain beliefs about witchcraft which, when expressed propositionally, appear to be inconsistent. When the Azande have been presented with such inconsistencies, they either fail to see them as such (...) or else accept them as non-problematical. Is our knowledge of logical truths a relative and culturally determined phenomenon, or is there some (transcendent) criterion that allows us to adjudicate between alternative logical systems? The authors propose an approach for resolving disputes about the status of Azande reasoning which assumes a paraconsistent framework, thus providing a new perspective on this debate. (shrink)

This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

Evil remains a primary source of inquiry in contemporary literature of French expression, even among its most secular writers. In considering French-speaking authors from France, Belgium, the United States, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this collection delineates a rich international perspective on some of the most disturbing events of our time. Each essay testifies to the urgency expressed in works of fiction to give an account of human catastrophes, from the Shoah and the Rwandan genocide to the terrorist (...) attacks of September 11, and the ongoing oppression of women in Islamic nations. Themes underlying this volume include an investigation into the origins of evil, its representations in writing, and the ethical responsibilities of authors who write on human suffering. Contemporary fiction on evil confronts us with fundamental questions: Can evil be attributed to intentionality, is evil "subconscious," or is it the result of impersonal forces? Which styles of writing are ethically appropriate or effective for depicting evil? Can we speak of a veritable "poetics of evil" shared by contemporary authors? When does a literary text on evil become "evil"? In providing informed and nuanced answers to these important questions, the scholars engage in crucial theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, address a number of issues raised by trauma and genocide studies, and draw from critical frameworks in literary theory on testimony, the limits of representing the extreme, and "transgressive" writing. (shrink)

In a 1669 letter to his mentor Thomasius, Leibniz writes that "hardly any of the Cartesians have added anything to the discoveries of their master" insofar as they "have published only paraphrases of their leader."1 The book that is the focus of my remarks here—Roger Ariew's Descartes and the First Cartesians —shows that Leibniz was most certainly incorrect. In particular, Ariew draws attention to the fact that there was a concerted effort to present a new sort of Cartesianism that conforms (...) to the structure of the early modern French scholastic curriculum. Though this effort was inspired by Descartes's own attempt to present his views in this manner, the later "Cartesian scholasticism"... (shrink)

Drawing on the classical concept of rhetorical _dispositio_, this study gives new interpretations of a number of literary texts of the French Renaissance. The often problematic ordering of these texts is studied from a variety of perspectives, historical, theoretical and cultural.

In a recent case in the UK, six men stored their sperm before undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer in case they proved to be infertile after the treatment. The sperm was not properly stored and as a result was inadvertently destroyed. The men sued the NHS Trust that stored the sperm and were in the end successful. This paper questions the basis on which the judgement was made and the rationale behind it, namely that the men ‘had ownership’ of the (...) sperm, and that compensation was thus due on the grounds that the men’s property had been destroyed. We first argue that the claim is erroneous and enhances the tendency towards the commodification of body parts. We then suggest that the men could have been compensated for the harm done to them without granting property rights, and that this would, at least in philosophical and ethical terms, have been more appropriate. To help illustrate this, we draw on a parallel case in French law in which a couple whose embryos had been destroyed were overtly denied ownership rights in them. Finally, we suggest some possible ethical and practical problems if the proprietary view expressed in the UK ruling were to become dominant in law, with particular focus on the storing of genetic information in biobanks. We conclude that, although compensation claims should not necessarily be ruled out, a ‘no property in the body’ approach should be the default position in cases of detached bodily materials, the alternative being significantly ethically problematic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave TradeStephen Auerbach (bio)Christopher L. Miller. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2008. xvi + 571 pp.Over the last decade scholars have shown a new interest in reconstructing the history of the French slave trade and slaveholding Atlantic. A scholarly consensus is slowly emerging around the notion (...) that the history of French slavery and colonialism is central to any understanding of the larger themes in French and Francophone history from the seventeenth century to the present. Christopher Miller’s The French Atlantic Triangle is a welcome contribution to this important subject. Miller rightly argues that France, Africa, and the Caribbean are tied together in a shared history of colonialism, slavery, and the slave trade. His goal in The French Atlantic Triangle is to reconstruct this history and illuminate its impact on modern French and Francophone cultural life.The French Atlantic Triangle is a fascinating example of research that combines methods employed in history and Francophone literary studies in order to discuss the triangular slave trade that condemned 2 million Africans to slavery on France’s Caribbean sugar islands and an untold number to their deaths during the Middle Passage. Miller’s central interest here is exploring the ways in which the slave trade and its afterlife were represented in literature and in film from the eighteenth to the twentieth century in France, Africa, and the Caribbean. In the absence of any extant Francophone slave narratives, Miller persuasively argues that fiction and later film allowed writers and filmmakers to pour their “speculations and reflections” (92) into that void. French and Francophone writers separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years were united by the desire to construct slave narratives and stories that played on the reader’s sense of pity and shame, or desire for adventure, or to convey a powerful longing for home. The result is an ambitious and substantive work. Miller clearly succeeds in demonstrating a legacy of slavery and the slave trade in France and Francophone literature, yet the picture that emerges is a muddled one; the reader is left to make sense of competing, diverse, and sometimes divergent claims. In the end, The French Atlantic Triangle is more suggestive than persuasive.The book is organized into fourteen chapters, divided into four sections, arranged chronologically and geographically. Part 1 (chaps. 1–4) is largely synthesis. Drawing heavily on the work of historians of slavery and the slave trade, Miller outlines the details of the triangular trade from its inception in the mid-seventeenth century to its first abolition in 1794, and final suppression in 1848. Chapters 1 and 2 will be a review for anyone familiar with the history of this period. Chapter 3 focuses on the Enlightenment and the slave trade. Miller rightly notes that the Enlightenment coincided with the height of French slaving activity. Examining works by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and [End Page 59] Voltaire, Miller argues that the philosophes were never much interested in the plight of African slaves, and when they did speak out on the issue it was with heavy irony or wit that only diluted their message. Miller’s analysis is convincing, though he seems unjustified in suggesting that Voltaire remained mostly quiet on the issue because he was heavily invested in the slave trade. There is no evidence for that assertion.Part 2 (chaps. 5–8) covers the period from the French Revolution to the Bourbon Restoration during which time France experienced complete upheaval from the slave rebellions in Martinique in 1789 and Saint Domingue in 1791, to the abolition of slavery in 1794 and its reimposition under Napoleon. Focusing on the writings of Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Staël, and Claire de Duras, Miller labels the three as abolitionists because in their works they created sympathetic black characters, critiqued racial prejudice, and instilled pity in their readers. Miller brings a fresh analytical eye to well-known texts like Duras’ Ourika, and shines new light on little-known (or unknown) works like Gouge’s play Zamore et Mirza.Miller’s task here is not only to demonstrate the... (shrink)

Contemporary French philosophy is laying fresh claim to the human. Through a series of independent, simultaneous initiatives, arising in the writing of diverse current French thinkers, the figured of the human is being transformed and reworked. -/- Christopher Watkin draws out both the promises and perils inherent in these attempts to rethink humanity’s relation to ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and even to our own (...) brains. This comparative assessment makes visible for the first time one of the most important trends in French thought today. (shrink)

This book traces the contributions of the Lévy-Bruhl family to social and political thought and expertise in 20th-century France, shaping the anticipation of economic and health crises. How French Moderns Think tells the story of the French sociological tradition through four generations of the Lévy-Bruhl family: Lucien, who founded the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Paris; his son Henri, who founded the Institute of Roman Law; his grandson Raymond, who took part in the creation of the (...) National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies; and his great-grandson Daniel, a vaccine specialist at the Institute of Public Health. This family history casts a new light on the philosophical debates about “primitive mentality” and the “savage mind.” By drawing on the expert knowledge inherent in this family genealogy, the articulation between the logical and the “pre-logical” is not a cognitive question but rather a problem of anticipating unpredictable events. By relating Lévy-Bruhl’s engagements from the Dreyfus Affair to the Minister of Armaments during the First World War, Keck narrates the confrontation of the socialist ideal of justice and truth with the French colonial experience and its transformations in global technologies preparing for pandemics. (shrink)

Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking contributions more accessible to the international philosophical community. The first section, “Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,” presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures and intellectual movements that help shape philosophy of technology in the Francophone area, and feed into contemporary debates. The second section, “Coining and Reconfiguring Technoscience,” traces the genealogy of this controversial concept and discusses its meanings (...) and relevance. A third section, “Revisiting Anthropological Categories,” focuses on the relationships of technology with the natural and the human worlds from various perspectives that include anthropotechnology, Anthropocene, technological and vital norms and temporalities. The final section, “Innovating in Ethics, Design and Aesthetics,” brings together contributions that draw on various French traditions to afford fresh insights on ethics of technology, philosophy of design, techno-aesthetics and digital studies. The contributions in this volume are vivid and rich in original approaches that can spur exchanges and debates with other philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This reader is the first of its kind to present the work of leading French women philosophers to an English-speaking audience. Many of the articles appear for the first time in English and have been specially translated for the collection. Christina Howells draws on major areas of philosophical and theoretical debate including Ethics, Psychoanalysis, Law, Politics, History, Science and Rationality. Each section and article is clearly introduced and situated in its intellectual context. The book is necessarily feminist in inspiration (...) but draws on an unusually wide range of thinkers, chosen to represent the philosophy of women rather than feminist philosophy. It will be ideal for anyone coming to this area for the first time as well as those seeking to extend their understanding of French thought and Continental Philosophy. Articles by the following writers are included: Francoise Collin, Sylviane Agacinski, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Francoise Proust, Francoise Dastur, Barbara Cassin, Natalie Depraz, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Elisabeth Badinter, Francoise Heritier, Helene Cixous, Monique Schneider, Julia Kristeva, Sarah Kofman, Monique David Menard, Francoise d'Eaubonne, Genevieve Fraisse, Michele Le Doeuff, Natalie Charraud, Francoise Balibar, Anne Fagot-Largeault, Colette Guillaumin, Dominique Schnapper, Myriam Revault-D'Allonnes, Nicole Loraux, Mireille Delmas-Marty, Blandine Kriegel. (shrink)

In 2016, a law came into force in France granting terminally ill patients the right to continuous deep sedation until death. This right was proposed as an alternative to euthanasia and presented as the ‘French response’ to problems at the end of life. The law draws a distinction between CDS and euthanasia and other forms of sympton control at the end of life. France is the first country in the world to legislate on CDS. This short report describes the (...) particular context and underlying social values that led to this piece of legislation, and explores its meaning in the wider French context. (shrink)

In this powerful new study Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reading Derrida from a historical perspective and drawing on new archival sources, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy shows how Derrida's thought arose in the closely contested space of post-war French intellectual life, developing in response to Sartrian existentialism, religious philosophy and the structuralism that found its base at the École Normale Supe;rieure. In (...) a history of the philosophical movements and academic institutions of post-war France, Baring paints a portrait of a community caught between humanism and anti-humanism, providing a radically new interpretation of the genesis of deconstruction and of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times. (shrink)

French materialist feminists such as Christine Delphy and Monique Wittig maintain that the social fact of women’s exploitation by men within the family pre-exists and produces gender differences as well as the perception that men and women belong to different biological sexes. They take this position to be ‘materialist’ because it puts social facts prior to ideas and beliefs and so puts the ‘material’ prior to the ‘ideal’. However, I shall claim, drawing on arguments of Sebastiano Timpanaro’s, that this (...) is an incomplete form of materialism because it neglects the shaping of social facts by their interaction with biological facts, notably the biological difference between the sexes. Wittig, though, denies that there is any ‘fact’ of biological sexual difference. Wittig claims that we only believe in and perceive two biological sexes due to the influence of gender expectations. I will try to show that Wittig’s arguments for this claim undermine themselves and actually presuppose that there are two biological sexes. I will conclude that, given that there are two biological sexes, a fully materialist form of feminism must take account of sex difference in theorising gender inequalities. (shrink)

In July 1759 the French philosopher Andre´ Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764) published in Berlin a diatribe against the excessive and incorrect use of French in the Prussian capital. Far from being a mere guide to linguistic style, the Préservatif contre la corruption de la langue françoise generated a heated debate, attested by an official threat to ban its publication. The personal animosity between Prémontval and the perpetual secretary of the Berlin Academy, Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711-1797) (...) was amply demonstrated over the pages of the Préservatif, offering a rare insight into the complex web of social and intellectual tensions in mid eighteenth-century Berlin and its Academy of Sciences. At stake were the social status and the philosophical outlook of local Huguenots, compared to that of French philosophers who were granted asylum in Prussia by Frederick II. The debate also concerned the issues of academic freedom in an absolutist regime, the material production and distribution of texts, conduct and etiquette in the Republic of Letters and the formation of group identities in eighteenth-century Germany. Drawing on manuscripts preserved in Berlin, Göttingen and Krakow, this article traces the development of the controversy and the reception of Prémontval’s work by both French- and German- writing authors at the Berlin Academy and beyond its confines. (shrink)

This article investigates the ways in which discourses and experiences of health and healing have shaped the development of contemporary dance in France. It confronts the problem of how to situate contemporary dance in relation to other dance genres and suggests Robert Desjarlais’ concept of the ‘aesthetic of experience’ as a helpful framework for understanding the ways in which technique and virtuosity operate differently in contemporary dance than in other dance forms. The article is ethnographic and historical and attempts to (...) create a dialogue between dance studies and medical anthropology. The ethnographic and historical material has three parts. First, I offer an analysis of the cultural idiom of illness as blocageand argue that contemporary dancers in Aix-en-Provence experience their work as a form of healing or dÈblocage. Next, I show how two historical and political events in France led to the promotion of dance as a means of social reform: (1) the Situationist art movement of the 1960s and its idea of ‘awakening’ society through public art; and (2) the renovation of the French Ministry of Culture in 1982 and its subsequent promotion of contemporary dance in state-funded community outreach projects in the 1980s. Finally, drawing on rich narratives from fieldwork interviews, I define awareness, expression and presence as the primary technical elements of contemporary dance in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 2002, and explain their relationship to the notion of ‘dance as l'intervention’ that has grown out of the historical context of contemporary dance in France. (shrink)

Camille Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier is one of the best known newspapers of the French Revolution. Yet, despite this, there has long been uncertainty over the intellectual content of the newspaper and, in particular, over Desmoulins's use of Tacitean passages to support his views. This article seeks to shed light on this important newspaper by setting it not just in the context of the debates of the winter of 1793–1794, but also in that of the ideas and arguments of (...) the Cordelier Club. The article demonstrates that in drawing on English republican ideas in Le Vieux Cordelier, to assert classical democratic republicanism against the views upheld by the Hébertists and the Revolutionary Government, Desmoulins was writing firmly in the tradition of the Cordelier Club. ☆ This article is based on papers given at the BSECS Conference in January 2001 and at the History ‘Work in Progress’ seminar at Sussex University in February 2001. I am grateful to all who commented on the paper and also to those who have read subsequent drafts, particularly Blair Worden, Richard Whatmore, Brian Young, and Maurice Hutt. (shrink)

In Selfless Cinema?, Sarah Cooper maps out the power relations of making, and viewing, documentaries in ethical terms. The ethics of filmmaking are often examined in largely legalistic terms, dominated by issues of consent, responsibility, and participantse(tm) or film-makerse(tm) rights, but Cooper approaches four representative French film-makers e" Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Raymond Depardon, and Agns Varda e" in a far less juridical way, drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. She argues that, in spite of Levinase(tm)s iconoclastic, (...) anti-ocular thinking, his concept of visage is richly applicable to film, and especially to documentary. (shrink)

In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition that ‘philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts’ as a (...) reference point, it suggests that the corresponding philosophical practice is intimately connected to art and science. Studying the conceptual drawings in Deleuze’s texts, the article situates his philosophy in the French tradition of epistemology (Cavaillès, Bachelard and Canguilhem). As a result, the conceptual work of this philosophy can be seen as intensively responding to the creative problems posed by the dynamics of science in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Thinking through French Philosophy has two objectives. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the thought of Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze draw inspiration from the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Lawlor shows that Merleau-Ponty, residing somewhere between structuralism and poststructuralism, managed to articulate key ideas that helped Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze make the necessary breakthroughs that now come to mark their respective philosophies. Such ideas include Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh as developed in The Visible and the Invisible, the chiasm, and expression (...) as a sense-giving event. The second objective of the book is to read the “great French philosophies of the Sixties” as a philosophy of “interrogation.” Lawlor argues that Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze offer us a “point of diffraction” through which we can further elaborate our thinking on various aporias opened up by these thinkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers by Henry Somers-HallClayton CrockettSOMERS-HALL, Henry. Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 264 pp. Cloth, $99.99Henry Somers-Hall's book examines how French philosophers in the twentieth century develop a logic of thinking based on sense that is both influenced by but also (...) counters Kant's paradigm of thinking, which is based on judgment. Beginning with Kant and German idealism, including the German responses to Kant in the work of Hölderlin, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, this book then carefully draws out the ways that Bergson, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze all work against this understanding of thinking as judging by showing how our experience and our thought precede the categories of judgment.In chapter 1, Somers-Hall carefully sets out Kant's model of thinking and shows how the categories of philosophical thought are fundamentally based on how we judge our sensible intuitions. Judgment is at the center of Kant's thought, and this is apparent in the Critique of Pure Reason, including the famous Transcendental Deduction. Our knowledge has a legislative function in relation to objects, and conscious synthesis takes the form of a judgment. Despite their criticisms of Kant, later German idealists do not fundamentally depart from this modality of judgment that takes place at the center of their philosophy. Even though they put Kant's concepts in motion, it remains a structure of judgment that is understood as dynamic.Chapter 2 turns to Bergson, to show how his emphasis on immediate experience precedes categorical judgement. Bergson distinguishes between temporal and spatial multiplicities, and argues that temporal multiplicities that are expressed in terms of duration underlie the spatial ones that contribute to judgment. Duration is a deeper experience of time that is associated with life. Somers-Hall in chapter 3 examines Sartre's writings on imagination to show how consciousness is a pure relation and an affective mode of thinking that underlies the categorial mode of judgment.Most of these French philosophers develop their accounts of noncategorial sense in either explicit or implicit relation to Kant's philosophy. Merleau-Ponty is no exception, and in chapter 4 we see how it is the organization of perception that gives sense to the world, and this precedes and generates "our reflective categories of judgement." Judgment emerges out of perception, although Merleau-Ponty grounds perception in the embodied person. Derrida does not ground sense or [End Page 365] thinking in a body, but looks for noncategorial grounds that make possible "surface structures of thinking." In chapter 5, Somers-Hall elaborates Derrida's famous nonconcept of différance, which underlies and makes possible our concepts of voice and writing that appear to be oppositions but in fact are not because they rely on each other. Différance is not a concept; it is prior to conceptual determination, and it "operates as an 'origin' that has none of the traits of the structure of judgement."Foucault relies on Kant for his three epistemes of resemblance, representation, and the human being, modern man. Chapter 6 shows how Foucault is concerned in both his archaeology and his genealogy with opening up the structures of power that make any juridical ordering possible. Here a productive biopower works beneath what we recognize more explicitly as "juridico-discursive power" in both positive and negative ways that escape the grasp of a philosophy that is solely based on judgment.In chapter 7 Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze's concept of intensity underlies all forms of representational judgment. Intensity operates according to a process of differentiation that produces a logic of sense, which we miss when we grasp onto a "dogmatic image of thought" that "prevents a genuine encounter with the world [that] conditions us to understand it in terms of unified subjects who make sense of the world in terms of judgements." We think in response to a shock or an encounter with something in the world that forces us to think and to make sense. We form judgments retroactively, by reducing differences to... (shrink)

This article investigates related contexts and connections that both hide and display the coercion and sexual violence manifest in Western cultural and aesthetic artefacts during ancient Greek and Roman eras and the French imperialist epoch. Exploring ‘Pan and Syrinx’ from Ovid’s ‘Book I’ of the Metamorphoses and Claude Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute, I historicise the meanings of rape and sexual assault that informed Ovid’s epic and then revisit the genesis of Debussy’s Syrinx because of the uneasy elements surrounding (...) its creation. I show how its cultural production is complicit with the imperial in several ways. I consider how sexual violence impacts voice, subjectivity and the body, and finally, I draw on Luce Irigaray’s work to sketch an embodied Syrinx in relation with others and her environment. I suggest the desiring potential of sexual difference, with limitations, as a generative conception of figuring the feminine-maternal body beyond masculine appropriation. In this way I open the myth up to watery material-social relations. (shrink)

This paper introduces a hermeneutical approach to graphic novel representations of punishments inflicted on women accused of collaboration with the German occupant during the French purge in 1944- 1945. Since the study aims to determine to establish links between graphic novels and the evolutions of the historiography of the Occupation and Liberation of France, it includes a historiographical component. Drawing on other cultural medias who have dealt with this theme (novels, movies, poems, songs), the aim is also to identify (...) the meaning given by artists to their portrayals of shorn and assaulted women. The paper eventually introduces a broader philosophical reflection on the emancipation from authoritarianism. It is the study’s contention that graphic novelists are offering a feminist discourse and are using the theme of shorn and assaulted women during the liberation as a reminder of the late emancipation of women from male domination. (shrink)

This article examines the history of cybernetics in France, and the history of French cybernetics in the context of the emergent field of the history of cybernetics. Drawing upon an unfamiliar group of intellectuals and sources, I discuss the way in which French cybernetics was not primarily the hyper-philosophical strain we have come to associate with names such as Derrida and Lévi-Strauss, but an approach to thinking through political and social problems that some on the left would even (...) deign to call pragmatic. In particular, I follow a group of intellectuals known as the Groupe des dix, who, in the aftermath of the tumult of May ‘68, formed an interdisciplinary think tank to try to work out how to bridge the gap between science and society. In order to facilitate conversations between politicians, philosophers, biologists, and sociologists (to name just a few of the represented disciplines), the Groupe reached for a language that was supposed to be truly omnidisciplinary: that of cybernetics. And they did so in a country where cybernetics was not properly represented as a laboratory science. On this last point, this paper makes an addition to the history of cybernetics by offering a portrait not of cybernetics in action, but of cybernetics in vulgarization. Not that the Groupe would not make their own stamp on politics: Several of them still hold significant power in adjudicating the role of science and technology in the public sphere in the French state. (shrink)

The most important events of the immediately preceding period--1945-1954--were attempts at general readings of Descartes' thought by Jean Laporte, Fernand Alquié, and Martial Guéroult. In Le Rationalisme de Descartes Laporte struck sharply at stereotype by insisting that Descartes was not a rationalist. Deftly exploiting such issues as the soul-body union, the knowledge of the infinite and the faith-reason relationship, he draws the conclusion that "... if it were necessary to characterize Descartes' philosophy by one name, the name which would fit (...) it best, all paradox aside, would be empiricism, radical and integral empiricism." The readings of both Alquié and Gueroult are carefully attuned to the development in Descartes' thought. In La Découverte Métaphysique de l'Homme chez Descartes, the former maintains that this development is dominated by the progressive discovery of the meaning of man. Guéroult takes a remark from the Discourse on Method as key to the unfolding of Descartes' thought. The "long chains of reasons, so simple and easy, which geome- tricians use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations..." are the central inspiration of Descartes selon l'Ordre des Raisons. Cartesianism, it is maintained, developed primarily by deductive movement along these chains. (shrink)