This collection of essays and interviews, some previously unpublished and almost all of which appear in English for the first time, encompasses the political and ethical thinking of Jacques Derrida over thirty years. Passionate, rigorous, beautifully argued, wide-ranging, the texts shed an entirely new light on his work and will be welcomed by scholars in many disciplines--politics, philosophy, history, cultural studies, literature, and a range of interdisciplinary programs. Derrida's arguments vary in their responsiveness to given political questions--sometimes they are (...) vivid polemics on behalf of a position or figure, sometimes they are reflective analyses of a philosophical problem. They are united by the recurrent question of political decision or responsibility and the insistence that the apparent simplicity or programmatic character of political decision is in fact a profound avoidance of the political. This volume testifies to the possibility and the necessity of a philosophical politics. Negotiations assembles some of the most telling examples of the intrinsic relationship, so often affirmed by Derrida in more abstract philosophical terms, between deconstructive reading practices and what is called the "political"--more precisely, politics in an almost down-to-earth, pragmatic, and commonsense use of the word. Among the many subjects covered in the book are: the death penalty in the United States, the civil war in Algeria, globalization and cosmopolitanism, the American Declaration of Independence, Jean-Paul Sartre, the value of objectivity, politics and friendship, and the relationship between deconstruction and actuality. (shrink)

This paper reports on an approach to model generalized implicatures using nonmonotonic logics. The approach, called compositional, is based on the idea of compositional semantics, where the implicatures carried by a sentence are constructed from the implicatures carried by its constituents, but it also includes some aspects nonmonotonic logics in order to model the defeasibility of generalized implicatures.

In this paper about Chile, Weber's taxonomy of rational behavior is used together with a genetic-structural approach to explain chilean political life, which can be understood by the following variables : a mean demography, an authoritarian and religious culture, a capitalistic, dependent and under-developed economy, an hybrid social stratification, a centralised state characterized by an higly developed burocracy.In such a context the «Popular Unity» results from a specific acculturationof antagonistic ideologies related to different social strata, to competitive political groups as (...) welt as to rival pressure groups. In the short term ; the confiicting interests might coexist thanks to a growing social support motivated by a superficial economie nationalism, emotional anti-capitalistic feelings and the rise in the income of the popular and middle classes strata.On the other hand, the left government, divided by social, political and ideological oppositions was unable to run the civil service, to structure a congruent economic policy and to face international or national subversion. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Le temps réel nous afflige, inaugurant traumatiquement le tragique de la perte irréversible de la présence. La philosophie, jusqu'à J. Derrida inclus, en a su quelque chose, mais a occulté ce savoir en remettant dans le sujet, comme intentionnalité et auto-affection, ce qui vient du dehors l'arracher à lui-même. Freud en a su quelque chose, mais a relégué ce savoir dans la sphère des pensées privées, se laissant par ailleurs fasciner par la monstrueuse et merveilleuse atemporalité que lui présentait son (...) objet, l'inconscient. Ce que Lacan a confirmé, l'identifiant à la structure du signifiant. Sa pratique clinique lui a pourtant aussi inspiré, à de rares mais précieux moments, une écoute psychanalytique du temps sur laquelle on a ici mis l'accent. Restait alors à marquer la juste place de la préoccupation ontologique dans un champ psychique commandé d'abord par la pulsion et le narcissisme. Pulsion, narcissisme, souci de l'être et du néant : c'est ce nœud qui fait sens, ce que confortent deux études cliniques : celle de la mise en œuvre du temps continu androgynique chez Wagner, et celle de la philosophie du devenir créateur chez Nietzsche. (shrink)

Cet article expose les linéaments d’une recherche en cours. Celle-ci se base sur l’hypothèse que certaines tendances de l’architecture contemporaine, malgré des formes a priori dissemblables, développent un espace architectural d’une profonde cohérence, nouvelle épistémè de la pratique architecturale. Autrement dit, nous nous posons la question de savoir quelles sont les conditions qui rendent possible une certaine architecture contemporaine. Mais pour nous, l’effort épistémologique n’est pas une fin en soi; notre recherche ne vise pas à opposer certaines formes à d’autres, (...) mais plutôt à montrer les nouvelles possibilités que recèlent les formes créées à l’aune du nouveau paradigme. Par nouvelles possibilités, nous entendons une évolution de l’habiter pouvant déterminer de nouveaux rapports entre les hommes, ainsi qu’une relation renouvelée à la nature. Est-ce trop demander à l’architecture? Si l’on considère que d’un côté bien des choses – la majorité de ce qui se construit – se bâtissent sans architectes et que de l’autre des bâtiments «signés» à l’originalité outrée servent à étancher la soif d’images publicitaires de la société du spectacle, non, il ne nous semble pas déplacé de chercher à savoir si certaines formes architecturales répondent à la question du vivre autrement. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The ‘Fading Qualia’ thought experiment of Chalmers purports to show that computationalism is very probably true even if dualism is true by considering a series of brains, with biological parts increasingly substituted for by artificial but functionally analagous parts in small steps, and arguing that consciousness would not plausibly vanish in either a gradual or sudden way. This defense of computationalism inspired an attack on computationalism by Bishop, who argued that a similar series of substitutions by parts that have the (...) correct physical activity but not the correct causal relationships must likewise preserve consciousness, purportedly showing that ‘Counterfactuals Cannot Count’ and if so ruining a necessary condition for computation to meaningfully distinguish between physical systems. In this paper, the case in which a series of parts are simply removed and substituted for only by imposing the correct boundary conditions to exactly preserve the functioning of the remaining partial brain is described. It is argued that consciousness must gradually vanish in this case, not by fading but by becoming more and more partial. This supports the non-centralized nature of consciousness, tends to support the plausibility of physicalism against dualism, and provides the proper counterargument to Bishop’s contention. It also provides an avenue of attack against the “Fading Qualia” argument for those who remain dualists. (shrink)

The freedom of the intellect.--The theory of the superman.--The intellect and the reign of the heart.--Christian humanism.--The theory of success.--The mathematical attenuation.--The myth of progress.--The myth of necessary progress.--The philosophy of revolution.--The progess of the spirit.--System of philosophic harmonies.--Notes (p. 189-200).