Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night. Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom's barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men's blood.Albert Camus wrote these words in August 1944, as Paris was being liberated from German occupation. Although best known for his novels including The Stranger and The Plague, it was his vivid descriptions of the horrors of the occupation (...) and his passionate defense of freedom that in fact launched his public fame. Now, for the first time in English, Camus at 'Combat' presents all of Camus' World War II resistance and early postwar writings published in Combat, the resistance newspaper where he served as editor-in-chief and editorial writer between 1944 and 1947. These 165 articles and editorials show how Camus' thinking evolved from support of a revolutionary transformation of postwar society to a wariness of the radical left alongside his longstanding strident opposition to the reactionary right. These are poignant depictions of issues ranging from the liberation, deportation, justice for collaborators, the return of POWs, and food and housing shortages, to the postwar role of international institutions, colonial injustices, and the situation of a free press in democracies. The ideas that shaped the vision of this Nobel-prize winning novelist and essayist are on abundant display. More than fifty years after the publication of these writings, they have lost none of their force. They still speak to us about freedom, justice, truth, and democracy. (shrink)

La 4e de couv. indique : "La destinée d'Éliane Amado Lévy-Valensi est unique. Cette philosophe, psychanalyste et intellectuelle juive a longtemps fait figure d'héroïne occultée d'une époque qu'elle a pourtant marquée de ses batailles avec ténacité, générosité et constance. Le cours de sa vie et ses engagements audacieux ont conditionné son œuvre et accompagné les soubresauts d'un XXe siècle fécond entre désespoir et espérances. Née en Provence au lendemain du Premier Conflit mondial dans une famille de Juifs séfarades assimilés, (...) elle subit la Shoah de plein fouet avant de céder au chant des sirènes du jeune Israël. Cet essai rend justice à la mémoire d'une femme libre et engagée, philosophe et psychanalyste, dont l'œuvre pluridisciplinaire mérite admiration et reconnaissance.". (shrink)

Isaac Levi's new book is concerned with how one can justify changing one's beliefs. The discussion is deeply informed by the belief-doubt model advocated by C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, of which the book provides a substantial analysis. Professor Levi then addresses the conceptual framework of potential changes available to an inquirer. A structural approach to propositional attitudes is proposed, which rejects the conventional view that a propositional attitude involves a relation between an agent and either a linguistic entity (...) or some other intentional object such as a proposition or set of possible worlds. The last two chapters offer an account of change in states of full belief understood as changes in commitments rather than changes in performance; one chapter deals with adding new information to a belief state, the other with giving up information. The book builds upon topics discussed in some of Levi's earlier work. It will be of particular interest to discussion theorists, epistemologists, philosophers of science, computer scientists, and cognitive psychologists. (shrink)

This comprehensive discussion of the problem of rational belief develops the subject on the pattern of Bayesian decision theory. The analogy with decision theory introduces philosophical issues not usually encountered in logical studies and suggests some promising new approaches to old problems."We owe Professor Levi a debt of gratitude for producing a book of such excellence. His own approach to inductive inference is not only original and profound, it also clarifies and transforms the work of his predecessors. In short, the (...) book deserves to become a classic....There is a great deal of interest in the book besides these basic matters [forumlating rules of acceptance]. Some of the most interesting chapters are those that examine the implications of such rules. The discussions of probability, generalization, and various forms of inference are brilliant and enlightening. Indeed, the problems and methods elaborated by Professor Levi in his book serve as a new foundation for the study of inductive inference."--Keith Lehrer, Nous"Levi's book is an extremely interesting report on 'tentative and speculative first steps' toward a decision-theoretic approach to inductive inference....Professor Levi is to be congratulated on his ingenious development and application of this approach...."--Richard C. Jeffrey, The Journal of Philosophy. (shrink)

Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the leaders of the established generation, this new focus takes numerous forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the (...) writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Žižek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the centre of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come. (shrink)

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that (...) he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. By way of systems theory and cybernetics, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he integrates the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. This work will be of great interest to Continental philosophers, ecologists, cultural theorists, media theorists, and those following recent developments in the thought of speculative realists. (shrink)

From one end of his philosophical work to the other, Gilles Deleuze consistently described his position as a transcendental empiricism. But just what is transcendental about Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism? And how does his position fit with the traditional empiricism articulated by Hume? In Difference and Givenness , Levi Bryant addresses these long-neglected questions so critical to an understanding of Deleuze’s thinking. Through a close examination of Deleuze’s independent work--focusing especially on Difference and Repetition-- as well as his engagement with thinkers (...) such as Kant, Mai;mon, Bergson, and Simondon, Bryant sets out to unearth Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and to show how it differs from transcendental idealism, absolute idealism, and traditional empiricism. What emerges from these efforts is a metaphysics that strives to articulate the conditions for real existence, capable of accounting for the individual itself without falling into conceptual or essentialist abstraction. In Bryant’s analysis, Deleuze’s metaphysics articulates an account of being as process or creative individuation based on difference, as well as a challenging critique--and explanation--of essentialist substance ontologies. A clear and powerful discussion of how Deleuze’s project relates to two of the most influential strains in the history of philosophy, this book will prove essential to anyone seeking to understand Deleuze’s thought and its specific contribution to metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Heirlooms and memorabilia are sometimes thought to be valuable for their own sakes even if they lack intrinsic value. They can have extrinsic final value, meaning that they can be valuable for their own sakes on account of their relation to other things. Yet if heirlooms and memorabilia can have this sort of value, then perhaps so can natural entities. If correct, this idea secures the claim that nature is valuable for its own sake without requiring that it have a (...) normative property just in itself. Additionally, it does not commit one to the contentious view that natural entities have a more foundational value than that of persons or sentient beings. Yet it remains to be shown how, precisely, natural entities can have this sort of value. As argued here, one such way is if the given natural entity is related to something else that people are justified in valuing in a partly passive manner. This account then sheds light on the values present in a world increasingly affected by humans. (shrink)

In The Enterprise of Knowledge, I proposed a general theory of rational choice which I intended as a characterization of a prescriptive theory of ideal rationality. A cardinal tenet of this theory is that assessments of expected value or expected utility in the Bayesian sense may not be representable by a numerical indicator or indeed induce an ordering of feasible options in a context of deliberation. My reasons for taking this position are related to my commitment to the inquiry-oriented approach (...) to human knowledge and valuation favored by the American pragmatists, Charles Peirce and John Dewey. A feature of any acceptable view of inquiry ought to be that during an inquiry points under dispute ought to be kept in suspense pending resolution through inquiry. (shrink)

This paper explores some consequences of Lewis’s (Australas J Philos 74(4):549–567, 1996) understanding of how knowledge is compartmentalized. It argues, first, that he underestimates how badly it impacts his view. When knowledge is compartmentalized, it lacks at least one of two essential features of Lewis’s account: (a) Elusiveness—familiar skeptical possibilities, when relevant, are incompatible with everyday knowledge. (b) Knowledge is a modality—when a thinker knows that p, there is no relevant possibility where p is false. Lewis proposes compartmentalized knowledge to (...) keep treating knowledge as a modality while mitigating one of its unrealistic epistemological implications: In normal modal epistemic logic (and standard possible world semantics), a thinker always counts as knowing the strongest proposition that follows from the set of all the individual propositions that this thinker knows. Lewis’s compartmentalization proposal is that thinkers merely know the conjunctions of propositions that are known in each of, but not across, their compartments. The irony is that in avoiding overblown knowledge the view now allows for thinkers to attend to skeptical error possibilities and yet knowledge is present. The account avoids inflation of knowledge in one sense only to acquire another type of knowledge the view denies subjects can have. This problem motivates an inspection of knowledge accounts whose intra-compartment closure principles are weaker than those that are valid in normal modal-logic. The conclusion is that some formulations of closure can avoid the challenge Lewis’s view faces. Nevertheless, even these closure principles pose a barrier—perhaps an implausible barrier—for knowledge of ignorance. Even when the reasoning supporting the lack of knowledge is sound, a subject cannot always know she doesn’t know. Interestingly, this obstacle is one that knowledge of knowledge doesn’t seem to face. (shrink)

These four volumes, reviewed together solely because of their respective publication dates and their vaguely related subject matter, represent, for the reader interested in myths and symbols, just so many exercises in style that are not equally commendable. In each we find a different lesson which, for the sake of simplification, we will designate respectively as a lesson in innocence, a lesson in impudence, a lesson in science, and a lesson in imagination. This is perhaps the proper order to follow, (...) although we feel a slight uncertainty in regard to the relative position of the first two. (shrink)

For three centuries, philosophers have mounted defenses against the melan genie with an obsessive intensity comparable to the Reaganite determination to squander American wealth on defenses against a Communist threat. And for three centuries, skeptics have argued for the futility of the expenditure of conceptual effort with no more success than critics of the Pentagon have had in stemming the flow of funds to the military and its industrial minions. My own sympathies are with the skeptics. However, their own intense (...) involvement with the obsessions of the epistemological fear mongers and their failure to address the analogue of the problem of conversion from military to civilian industry in an acceptable manner often deprive the skeptical position of the subversive force it ought to have. (shrink)

The arrival of the Sophists in Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C. was a major intellectual event, for they brought with them a new method of teaching founded on rhetoric and bold doctrines which broke away from tradition. In this book de Romilly investigates the reasons for the initial success of the Sophists and the reaction against them, in the context of the culture and civilization of classical Athens.

The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work has had a profound impact not only within anthropology but also linguistics, sociology and philosophy. In this short book he examines the nature and role of myth in human history, distilling a lifetime of writing into a few sharp insights. It is a crystalline overview of many of the basic ideas underlying his work, including the theory of structuralism and the difference between 'primitive' and (...) 'scientific' thought and shows why Levi-Strauss remains a hugely important intellectual figure. With a new foreword by Patrick Wilcken. (shrink)

Excerpt from Contributi Ad una Teoria Filosofica Dell' Ordine Giuridico Non vi è neppure una pagina di questo lavoro, che sia una semplice versione dal testo francese; non vi e' neppure un paragrafo, nella stesura del quale io abbia tenuto dinanzi agli occhi quel mio vecchio volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to (...) digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This essay aims to elucidate how multiple voices and traditions should interact with one another in the practice of ethics. First, it explores some of the major ways in which questions of bodily autonomy function in secular feminist and Jewish bioethical discourses. It then uses case studies to illuminate ways each discourse's concepts of bodily autonomy can be deeply problematic, and argues that the strengths in each discourse can serve as important correctives for the weaknesses in the other. It suggests (...) that some formal features of rabbinic texts can serve as a model for a discourse of constant and animated mutual correction. Finally, it examines two case studies in light of this model. (shrink)

This volume presents a series of essays which investigate the nature of intellectual inquiry: what its aims are and how it operates. The startingpoint is the work of the American pragmatists C.S. Peirce and John Dewey. Inquiry according to Peirce is a struggle to replace doubt by true belief. Dewey insisted that the transformation was from an indeterminate situation to a determinate or non-problematic one. So Isaac Levi's subject is changes in doxastic commitments, which may involve changes in attitudes or (...) changes in situations in which attitudes are entangled. The question of what justifies modification of doxastic commitments is a normative one, and so may not be understandable in purely naturalistic terms."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

This paper seeks to defend the following conclusions: The program advanced by Carnap and other necessarians for probability logic has little to recommend it except for one important point. Credal probability judgments ought to be adapted to changes in evidence or states of full belief in a principled manner in conformity with the inquirer’s confirmational commitments—except when the inquirer has good reason to modify his or her confirmational commitment. Probability logic ought to spell out the constraints on rationally coherent confirmational (...) commitments. In the case where credal judgments are numerically determinate confirmational commitments correspond to Carnap’s credibility functions mathematically represented by so—called confirmation functions. Serious investigation of the conditions under which confirmational commitments should be changed ought to be a prime target for critical reflection. The necessarians were mistaken in thinking that confirmational commitments are immune to legitimate modification altogether. But their personalist or subjectivist critics went too far in suggesting that we might dispense with confirmational commitments. There is room for serious reflection on conditions under which changes in confirmational commitments may be brought under critical control. Undertaking such reflection need not become embroiled in the anti inductivism that has characterized the work of Popper, Carnap and Jeffrey and narrowed the focus of students of logical and methodological issues pertaining to inquiry. (shrink)

In the 1706 third edition of her Reflections upon Marriage, Mary Astell alludes to John Locke’s definition of slavery in her descriptions of marriage. She describes the state of married women as being ‘subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man’ (Locke, Two Treatises, II.22). Recent scholars maintain that Astell does not seriously regard marriage as a form of slavery in the Lockean sense. In this paper, I defend the contrary position: I argue that Astell does seriously (...) regard marriage as a form of slavery for women and that she condemns this state of affairs as morally wrong. I also show that, far from criticizing Locke, Astell draws on key passages in his Thoughts concerning Education to urge that women be educated to retain their liberty. (shrink)

There are two uses of randomization in efforts to control systematic bias in experimental design: (a) Alchemical uses seek to convert unavoidable systematic errors into random errors. (b) Hygienic uses seek to reduce the prospect of the experimenter's involvement with the implementation of the experiment contributing to bias. A few remarks are made at the end of the paper about the hygienic use of randomization as a preventative against sticky fingers. The bulk of the discussion addresses the alchemical applications. The (...) thesis is that attitudes towards the cogency of Fisher's alchemical use of randomization ought to depend on views concerning statistical deduction or direct inference. (shrink)

The external world sceptic tells some familiar narratives involving massive deception. Perhaps we are brains in vats. Perhaps we are the victim of a deceitful demon. You know the drill. The sceptic proceeds by observing first that victims of such deceptions know nothing about their external environment and that second, since we cannot rule out being a victim of such deceptions our- selves, our own external world beliefs fail to attain the status of knowledge. Discussions of global external world scepticism (...) tend to focus on the second step, where a number of well-known lines of resistance have been offered. But there has been little attention to the first, seemingly innocuous step. That will be the focus of this paper. Part one – sections 1, 2, and 3 – will explain why these standard narratives are not convincing examples of cases where there is no knowledge of the external world. In part two – section 4 – we shall undertake a useful case study. David Lewis’s ‘Elusive Knowledge’ is often thought of as presenting an epistemological vision that is somewhat friendly to external world scepticism: as Lewis himself presents things, there are contexts where external world knowledge ascriptions are uniformly false, and where true knowledge ascriptions are limited to either axiomatic truths or truths about our inner life. We examine his discussion in the light of the preceding reflections and show that the framework he presents is not so concessionary to global external world scepticism after all. (shrink)

A sketch of a way of characterizing multidimensional value commitments and the way they can come into conflict derived from my book Hard Choices is presented and applied to the question of how to characterize the relevance of identity to value commitments and conflict. The views of A.K. Sen and A. Bilgrami are examined in the light of these ideas.