The Transcendence of the Ego may be regarded as a turning-point in the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre. Prior to the writing of this essay, published in France in 1937, Sartre had been intimately acquainted with the phenomenological movement which originated in Germany with Edmund Husserl. It is a fundamental tenet of Husserl, the notion of a transcendent ego, which is here attacked by Sartre. This disagreement with Husserl has great importance for Sartre and facilitated the transition from phenomenology (...) to the doctrine of Being and Nothingness. (shrink)

Political philosophy, perhaps even more than other branches of philosophy, calls for constant renewal to reflect not just re-readings of the tradition but also the demands of current events. In this lively and readable survey, Jean Hampton has created a text for our time that does justice both to the great traditions of the field and to the newest developments. In a marvelous feat of synthesis, she links the classical tradition, the giants of the modern period, the dominant topics (...) of the twentieth century, and the new questions and concerns that are just beginning to rewrite contemporary political philosophy.Hampton presents these traditions in an engaging and accessible manner, adding to them her own views and encouraging readers to critically examine a range of ideas and to reach their own conclusions. Of particular interest are the discussions of the contemporary liberalism-communitarianism debates, the revival of interest in issues of citizenship and nationality, and the way in which feminist concerns are integrated into all these discussions. Political Philosophy is the most modern text on the topic now available, the ideal guide to what is going on in the field. It will be welcomed by scholars and students in philosophy and political science, and it will serve as an introduction for readers from outside these fields. (shrink)

Appearing in English for the first time, Jean-Luc Nancy’s 2002 book reflects on globalization and its impact on our being-in-the-world. Developing a contrast in the French language between two terms that are usually synonymous, or that are used interchangeably, namely globalisation (globalization) and mondialisation (world-forming), Nancy undertakes a rethinking of what “world-forming” might mean. At stake in this distinction is for him nothing less than two possible destinies of our humanity, and of our time. On the one hand, with (...) globalization, there is the uniformity produced by a global economical and technological logic leading to the contrary of an inhabitable world, “the un-world” (l’im-monde)—as Nancy refers to it—an un-world that entails social disintegration, misery, and injustice. And, on the other hand, there is the possibility of an authentic world-forming, that is, of a making of the world and of a making sense that Nancy calls a “creation” of the world. Nancy understands such world-forming in terms of an inexhaustible struggle for justice. This book is an important contribution by Nancy to a philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of globalization and a further development on his earlier works on our being-in-common, justice, and a-theological existence. (shrink)

There are few philosophers today cool enough to be referenced in the Matrix , interesting enough to be mentioned on Six Feet Under , and popular enough to get over 606,000 hits on Google. Jean Baudrillard has succeeded in all of this and more. Now, in his latest book, Baudrillard presents his most popular themes--symbolic exchange, hyper-reality, technology and war--and applies them to the current global conflict between "the West and the Rest", including Islam. Ultimately, it is not simply (...) about the war against terror but about the bigger picture of capitalism versus everything else. This book serves as the summation of Baudrillard's work over the last twenty years and is the essential analysis of the fundamental conflict of our time. (shrink)

An essential exploration of sense and meaning. -/- Is there a “world” anymore, let alone any “sense” to it? Acknowledging the lack of meaning in our time, and the lack of a world at the center of meanings we try to impose, Jean-Luc Nancy presents a rigorous critique of the many discourses-from philosophy and political science to psychoanalysis and art history-that talk and write their way around these gaping absences in our lives. -/- In an original style befitting his (...) search for a new mode of thought, Nancy offers fragmentary readings of writers such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Lévinas, Lacan, Derrida, and Deleuze insofar as their work reflects his concern with sense and the world. Rather than celebrate or bemoan the loss of meaning or attempt to install a new one, his book seeks to reposition both sense and the world between the presence and absence of meaning, between objectivity and subjectivity. Nancy’s project entails a reconception of the field of philosophy itself, a rearticulation of philosophical practice. Neither recondite nor abstract, it is concerned with the existence and experience of freedom-the actuality of existence as experienced by contemporary communities of citizens, readers, and writers. -/- Combining aesthetic, political, and philosophical considerations to convey a sense of the world between meaning and reality, ideal content and material form, this book offers a new way of understanding-and responding to-“the end of the world.”. (shrink)

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who (...) wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways." "In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us defenseless (...) against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and personal (...) book with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, The Erotic Phenomenon is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

Aren't we actually sick of sex, of difference, of emancipation, of culture? With this provocative taunt, the indomitable sociologist Jean Baudrillard challenges us to face up to our deadly, technologically empowered renunciation of mortality and subjectivity as he grapples with the complex issues that define our postmillennial world. What does the advent and proliferation of cloning mean for our sense of ourselves as human beings? What does the turn of the millennium say about our relation to time and history? (...) What does the instantaneous, virtual realm of cyberspace do to reality? In _The Vital Illusion_--as always--Baudrillard leads his readers to some surprising conclusions. Baudrillard considers how human cloning--as well as the "cloning" of ideas and social identities--heralds an end to sex and death and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish, putting an end to our own species as we know it. Next, Baudrillard explores the "nonevent" that was and is the turn of the millennium. He provocatively puts forward the thesis that the arrival of the year 2000 could never take place because we could neither resolve nor leave behind our history, nor could we stop counting down toward our future. For Baudrillard, the millennial clock reading to the millionth of a second on its way to zero is the perfect symbol of our time: history decays rather than progresses. In closing, Baudrillard examines what he calls "the murder of the real" by the virtual. In a world of copies and clones in which everything can be made present in an instant by technology, we can no longer even speak of reality. Beyond Nietzsche's symbolic murder of God, our virtual world free of referents is in the process of exterminating reality, leaving no trace: "The corps(e) of the Real--if there is any--has not been recovered, is nowhere to be found." Peppered with Baudrillard's signature counterintuitive moves, prophetic visions, and dark humor, _The Vital Illusion_ exposes the contradictions that guide our contemporary culture and rule our lives. (shrink)

This new edition of "What is Literature?" also collects three other crucial essays of Sartre's for the first time in a volume of his.

The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as wide-ranging as film, painting, psychoanlaysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard's work means that it cannot be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise.

Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus--an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own (...) history of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Suarez) and his successors (Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel) clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions. (shrink)

Christian parables have retained their force well beyond the sphere of religion; indeed, they share with much of modern literature their status as a form of address: "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." There is no message without there first being--or, more subtly, without there also being in the message itself--an address to a capacity or an aptitude for listening. This is not an exhortation of the kind "Pay attention!" Rather, it is a warning: if you do not (...) understand, the message will go away.The scene in the Gospel of John in which the newly risen Christ enjoins the Magdalene, "Noli me tangere," a key moment in the general parable made up of his life, is a particularly good example of this sudden appearance in which a vanishing plays itself out. Resurrected, he speaks, makes an appeal, and leaves."Do not touch me." Beyond the Christ story, this everyday phrase says something important about touching in general. It points to the place where touching must not touch in order to carry out its touch (its art, its tact, its grace). The title essay of this volume is both a contribution to Nancy's project of a "deconstruction of Christianity" and an exemplum of his remarkable writings on art, in analyses of "Noli me tangere" paintings by such painters as Rembrandt, Dürer, Titian, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Correggio. It is also in tacit dialogue with Jacques Derrida's monumental tribute to Nancy's work in Le toucher--Jean-Luc Nancy.For the English-language edition, Nancy has added an unpublished essay on the Magdalene and the English translation of "In Heaven and on the Earth," a remarkable lecture he gave in a series designed to address children between six and twelve years of age. Closely aligned with his entire project of "the deconstruction of Christianity,'" this lecture may give the most accesible account of his ideas about God. (shrink)

This is the first English translation published of Jean-Luc Nancy's acclaimed consideration of the law's most pervasive principles in the context of actual systems and contemporary institutions, power, norms, laws.

In a series of highly publicized articles in 1952, Jean-Paul Sartre engaged Albert Camus in a bitter public confrontation over the ideas Camus articulated in his renowned work,. This volume contains English translations of the five texts constituting this famous philosophical quarrel. It also features a biographical and critical introduction plus two essays by contemporary scholars reflecting on the cultural and philosophical significance of this confrontation.

A travers une analyse des concepts d’affirmation originaire, d’attestation et de reconnaissance, cet article tente de reconstituer le sens et les motivations du cheminement réflexif qui conduit Ricœur de L’Homme faillible à Soi-même comme un autre et à Parcours de la reconnaissance . Pour ce faire, il s’efforce d’abord de montrer ce qui fait la continuité profonde, de problématique et de méthode, du projet anthropologique ricœurien; afin de dégager ensuite les difficultés centrales liées à l’idée d’une constitution poétique du soi, (...) qui conduisent Ricœur à réélaborer les concepts directeurs de son herméneutique du soi. A la lumière du dialogue constant de Ricœur avec la philosophie de Nabert, il tente enfin de montrer comment les concepts d’attestation et de reconnaissance trouvent, pour l’essentiel, leur genèse dans un approfondissement de la notion d’affirmation originaire, lui-même prolongé par une réflexion sur le témoignage.  . (shrink)

This view encouraged theorists to consider artistic geniuses the high-priests of humanity, creators of works that reveal the invisible essence of the world."--BOOK JACKET.

La philosophie, comme les sciences humaines et sociales, est traversée par une antinomie qui fonde la conception commune de l'être humain : d'un côté, comme espèce biologique, il fait partie des êtres vivants ; de l'autre, l'homme possède une dimension ontologique en vertu de laquelle il transcende sa propre réalité et celle des autres formes de vie.

Noli me tangere - Ne me touche pas : c'est une scène singulière de l'évangile de Jean, et c'est une parole emblématique pour des situations de violence ou de désir. C'est aussi, et d'abord, le rappel lapidaire d'un tabou majeur de toutes les cultures : celui du toucher. Or Marie-Madeleine, à qui cette parole est adressée par Jésus, a connu dans l'hagiographie un destin bien particulier : amante tantôt physique et tantôt mystique du Christ, double féminin et sensuel de (...) l'incarnation que son Seigneur est censé représenter, pécheresse dont le repentir poursuit la volupté, son personnage est fait pour troubler aux deux sens du mot la légende religieuse. Comment donc interpréter la scène, et la " résurrection " qu'elle veut annoncer? Comment les peintres l'ont-ils interprétée? Que nous font-ils voir entre ces deux corps levés l'un vers l'autre, qui se frôlent et qui s'écartent? (shrink)

Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community--a book outlining a critical response to Jean-Luc Nancy's early proposal for thinking an "inoperative community"--The Disavowed Community offers a close reading of Blanchot's text.

RESUME L’hypothèse que tente d’esquisser cet article est que l’idée ricœurienne d’une médiatisation dynamique des contradictions de l’imaginaire social présuppose une corrélation originaire de l’idéologie et de l’utopie qui ne peut elle-même être comprise qu’à partir de l’événement de l’institution d’un imaginaire social constituant. Dans un premier temps, l’article s’efforce de cerner ce qui fait la spécificité de la théorie ricœurienne de l’idéologie et de l’utopie comme « pratiques imaginatives », en soulignant à ce titre l’influence déterminante des thèses de (...) Jacques Ellul sur l’idéologie. Puis, dans un second temps, il s’engage dans une analyse régressive qui conduit de la réappropriation ricœurienne de la conception dialectique de l’idéologie et de l’utopie exposée par Mannheim à l’idée d’un fondement événementiel de ces deux formes opposées de l’imaginaire social. Mots-Clés : Evénement, idéologie, utopie, Ellul, Mannheim. ABSTRACT This paper attempts to sketch out the hypothesis that the Ricœurian conception of a dynamic mediatization of the contradictions of the social imaginary presupposes an original correlation between ideology and utopia, which can itself be understood only from the event that institutes a constitutive social imaginary. The first part of the paper marks out the specificity of the Ricœurian theory of ideology and utopia in terms of “imaginative practices”, underlining the determining influence of Jacques Ellul’s theses on ideology. The second part tries to develop a regressive argument, starting from the Ricœurian re-appropriation of Mannheim’s dialectical conception of ideology and utopia, and leading back to the idea of an event foundation for these two opposed forms of the social imaginary. Keywords : Event, Ideology, Utopia, Ellul, Mannheim. (shrink)

"An English translation of Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime, originally written in Latin in the sixteenth-century by Jean Bodin.

This brilliant and engaging critical encounter between Jean-Francois Lyotard and Eberhard Gruber has as its focus a single punctuation mark-the hyphen connecting "Jew" and "Christian" in the expression "Judeo-Christian." While focusing on the nature, meaning, and function of this hyphen, the authors are able to analyze many of the essential differences between Judaism and Christianity, as well as the most significant historical and political consequences of these differences from the Roman Empire to the Shoah. Beginning with a reading of (...) the Letters of Paul, they contrast the Jewish and Christian positions on a variety of issues ranging from emancipation, history, sacrifice, incarnation, faith, law, and sexual difference to the value that is accorded reading, writing, and interpretation within these two traditions. (shrink)

The history of the relations between Leibniz and Spinoza is a matter of philosophical and scholarly controversy. This chapter aims to refer to the first thesis as the Necessity of Actuality and to the second thesis as the Plenitude of Possibilities. It examines how Leibniz's stance with respect to these two theses, and more generally his views on modality, grew out as a response to Spinoza's views. Leibniz explicitly connects Spinoza's attributes with the concept of a world. As most commentators, (...) Leibniz reads Spinoza as a necessitarian, which is a natural interpretation. The difference between Leibniz's and Spinoza's views would reside in their conceptions of God and of the mechanism whereby the actual world comes to exist. Leibniz entertains the hypothesis of reality encompassing a plurality of actual worlds, which seems to achieve the Plenitude of Possibility. (shrink)

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. -/- Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the (...) negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. -/- In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. -/- The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que la réalité? Jamais un état de fait. C'est une oeuvre. Une oeuvre d'art qui ne correspond qu'à un moment d'une mise en oeuvre dont nous sommes de plus en plus les maîtres d'oeuvre. C'est à partir de ce constat que l'auteur démontre implacablement l'inanité du réalisme. Ce qu'illustre à ses yeux aussi bien la révolution impressionniste, qui fit exploser le réalisme pictural, que le dépassement nécessaire de la confrontation matérialisme-idéalisme ou que le flamboiement de l'utopisme gaullien de 1940 (...) confronté au réalisme pétainiste. À travers cette thèse singulière et stimulante qui débouche sur une nouvelle approche de la philosophie et de l'histoire de son rapport au réel, Jean-François Kahn incite à de salutaires remises en question qui ne manqueront pas de faire grincer quelques dents. (shrink)

Rising exclusion rates indicate the continuing marginalisation of many young people in education in the UK. Working-class boys, children living in poverty, and children with additional/special educational needs are among those experiencing a disproportionate rate of exclusion. This book traces the processes of exclusion and alienation from school and relates this to a changing social and economic context. Jean Kane argues that policy on schooling, including curricular reform, needs to be re-connected to the broad political pursuit of social justice, (...) and presents compelling case studies of excluded pupils, showing the multi-faceted identities of pupils, with a particular focus on masculine and feminine identities. This invaluable contribution to the literature offers an alternative analysis where the social identities of pupils are shown to be tied up with their exclusion from school. Themes investigated include: the meanings of school exclusions social class, gender and schooling social identities of excluded pupils negotiating identities in school: moving towards exclusion exclusions and young people’s lives improving participation in schooling. Providing fascinating reading for teachers, social workers, researchers and policy-makers this book considers how educational disadvantage might be addressed through recognition of the gender and class identities of pupils. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Barreau Cet article considère l’accompagnement spirituel à l’égard de ce que la littérature consacrée appelle le pré-deuil. Un accompagnement qui regarde le proche-aidant vivant ce pré-deuil. Pour conduire cette analyse, l’article regarde la manière dont les concepts de sollicitude (Ricoeur) et de visage (Lévinas) viennent répondre à la souffrance que le proche-aidant vit en de telles circonstances. Mettant en avant un type d’accompagnement spirituel dont le soubassement anthropologique est spécifiquement philosophique, il offre à ce type d’accompagnement une dimension (...) profondément humaine et de surplus avec une portée universelle. Un accompagnement qui ose offrir aux milieux des soins une praxie dont la sollicitude et la spiritualité assurent la pertinence. (shrink)

A focused exploration of Baudrillard's understanding and use of alterity and “otherness,” a crucial theme that appears and reappears throughout his work as a whole. Alterity is in danger. It is a masterpiece in peril, an object lost or missing from our system, from the system of artificial intelligence and the system of communication in general.—from Radical Alterity Where is the Other today? Can Otherness challenge our arrogant, insular cultural narcissism? From artificial intelligence to the streets of Venice, from early (...) explorers to contemporary photographers, Jean Baudrillard and Marc Guillaume discuss the traces of radical alterity in our world. These provocative seminars, held in 1990 and 1991, follow the multiple, intertwined trajectories first projected in Baudrillard's work and his reading of the “radical exoticism” posited by Victor Segalen—ideas Baudrillard extends into the realms of mass media, pseudonyms, technology, and that illusorily close yet radically foreign “primitive society of the future,” America. In a world where no corner is unexplored, the Other remains a challenge to thought, a crack in the shell of universal understanding, impossible to communicate but potentially the linchpin of communication itself. Together, Baudrillard and Guillaume explore the threatened and fatal figures of radical alterity. This collection is no longer available in French, and this English edition includes an additional essay by Baudrillard, “Because Illusion and Reality Are Not Opposed.”. (shrink)

Les femmes romaines sont exclues de tout pouvoir et confinées dans un rôle de subordination et de dépendance en matière religieuse comme dans les domaines de la vie privée et de la vie politique. Toutefois, en des moments essentiels de l’histoire de Rome (période primitive, deuxième guerre punique, guerres civiles), l’activité religieuse de certaines d’entre elles, parfois exercée de façon marginale ou suspecte, montre l’étendue de leurs capacités comme porteuses du sacré. Au coeur de la tradition civique et religieuse de (...) Rome, les Vestales apparaissent ainsi à la fois exceptionnelles et exemplaires. (shrink)

What is a singular object? An idea, a building, a color, a sentiment, a human being. Each in turn comes under scrutiny in this exhilarating dialogue between two of the most interesting thinkers working in philosophy and architecture today. From such singular objects, Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel move on to fundamental problems of politics, identity, and aesthetics as their exchange becomes an imaginative exploration of the possibilities of modern architecture and the future of modern life. Among the (...) topics the two speakers take up are the city of tomorrow and the ideal of transparency, the gentrification of New York City and Frank Gehry’s surprising Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As Nouvel prompts Baudrillard to reflect on some of his signature concepts, the confrontation between such philosophical concerns and the specificity of architecture gives rise to novel and striking formulations—and a new way of establishing and understanding the connections between the practitioner and the philosopher, the object and the idea. This wide-ranging conversation builds a bridge between the fields of architecture and philosophy. At the same time it offers readers an intimate view of the meeting of objects and ideas in which the imagined, constructed, and inhabited environment is endlessly changing, forever evolving. Jean Baudrillard is one of the most influential thinkers of his generation and author of _The Vital Illusion_. Jean Nouvel has designed buildings throughout the world, including the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and is a recipient of France’s Grand Prix d’Architecture. Robert Bononno, a translator and teacher, lives in New York City. (shrink)

Imagine an author living in the days of Kant, who influenced him, but at the same time followed his own path... Imagine that this author criticized some phases of Kantian thought, developing an original approach to issues as important as objectivity, or even the transcendental... Such an author should be considered an important protagonist in the history of philosophy, offering opportunities for original thought. He should enjoy a great reputation and be studied by many commentators. Such an author exists. He (...) is called Johann Nikolaus Tetens. However, only a few experts know his work. (shrink)

Jean-Yves Leloup nous propose ici deux lectures magistrales de deux géants de la culture occidentale : Nietzsche, l'athée et Maître Eckhart, le théologien-mystique. Il tente de remettre "à l'endroit" un texte de Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, souvent cité pour justifier tous les athéismes. Leloup montre que le Dieu en lequel Nietzsche voyait une "antithèse de la vie" n'a rien à voir avec le Dieu des Evangiles qui est au contraire une puissance de vie et de libération, une claire lumière par (...) laquelle le monde est vu. L'auteur, avec Maître Eckhart, nous entraîne ensuite au-delà des contraires, au-delà même de Dieu et de tous les Absolus que nous imaginons, vers notre essentielle et silencieuse liberté... Ce livre délicieux et audacieux nous montre, comme le disait Pascal, que "l'athéisme est une marque de force d'esprit, mais jusqu'à un certain degré seulement". (shrink)

La réflexion philosophique, dont l'ouverture à l'univers dans lequel nous nous découvrons - avec une acuité proportionnelle à un étonnement renouvelé - n'a pas de limites, n'en est que plus tributaire des sciences et des techniques, des arts et de multiples activités qui régissent plus ou moins fructueusement notre expérience. Or, au sein des sciences humaines, privilégiées pour éclairer une condition que nous ne saurions cesser d'interpréter, peu d'oeuvres du dernier siècle auront enrichi en le précisant notre être-au-monde, comme la (...) théorie linguistique de Gustave Guillaume, assez solitaire, et les recherches multiformes de Jean Piaget - où la psychologie de l'enfant a souvent occulté la visée épistémologique et son enracinement biologique (cf Biologie et connaissance, 1967) et ses prolongements pédagogiques, voire éthiques. Le Cinquantenaire et le Trentenaire de leur disparition appelaient un hommage d'autant plus impératif qu'ils sont restés marginaux ou ignorés dans les milieux philosophiques, malgré la centralité de leurs élucidations. Leur commune orientation génétique et structurale n'ayant suscité aucun échange, pendant la contemporanéité de publications d'un tiers de siècle (1923-1960), mesurer leur complémentarité s'impose d'autant plus. S'ils peuvent aider à repenser la condition humaine, c'est qu'ils auront contribué à dissiper le "mystère de la pensée". L'un cherchant à habiliter les caractères systématique et cinétique des langues, irremplaçables moyens de penser ; l'autre dans un vis-à-vis cognitif et opératoire de Freud, en relavant sur les plans épistémologique et logique, notamment, l'élan révolutionnaire de la seconde modernité, autour de l'évolutionnisme. Mais les thèmes majeurs du constructivisme, du schème et de la symbolisation - et plus largement du temps et du langage - auront sans doute aidé à spécifier les mutations autorisées par la révolution critique. Entre l'Instant du je parle et un décentrement exigible pratiquement (éthique) comme théoriquement (épistémique), c'est bien la condition humaine dans son ensemble qui est concernée. Si repenser cette Condition s'impose en permanence, il importe de ne pas manquer des oeuvres qui, par-delà toute mode, proposent à notre expérience des fondations résistant à d'inéluctables vicissitudes. (shrink)

Expectation is a major volume of Jean-Luc Nancy’s writings on literature, written across three decades but, for the most part, previously unavailable in English. More substantial than literary criticism, these essays collectively negotiate literature’s relation to philosophy. Nancy pursues such questions as literature’s claims to truth, the status of narrative, the relation of poetry and prose, and the unity of a book or of a text, and he addresses a number of major European writers, including Dante, Sterne, Rousseau, Hölderlin, (...) Proust, Joyce, and Blanchot. The final section offers a number of impressive pieces by Nancy that completely merge his concerns for philosophy and literature and philosophy-as-literature. These include a lengthy parody of Valéry’s “La Jeune Parque,” several original poems by Nancy, and a beautiful prose-poetic discourse on an installation by Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani that incorporates the Faust theme. Opening with a substantial Introduction by Jean-Michel Rabaté that elaborates Nancy’s importance as a literary thinker, this book constitutes the most substantial statement to date by one of today’s leading philosophers on a discipline that has been central to his work across his career. (shrink)

This book is a reevaluation and a reinterpretation of Pierre Charron (1541-1603)--in particular La Sagesse--and of the impact of his writings. Jean Daniel Charron sheds new light upon this great figure in French literature, and argues that he should be considered more important and original than previously thought.

Be Who You Are is one of the earliest published books of dialogues with Jean Klein. Written in the lucid and eloquent style which characterises his work, each chapter is composed of an introductory discourse followed by questions and answers. "The 'eternal present', our theme in these meetings, lies within the depth of ourselves. It is the eternal awareness of the Self. Seen from the Ultimate, the world projected by the mind appears and disappears, in other words, it "becomes". (...) When we talk of time and space, it must be thoroughly understood that their reality is relative, it is a reality in the world of becoming. But beyond space-time is that stillness which knows no becoming." This much sought after book, by one of the most important exponents of Advaita in recent years, is now available again from Non-Duality Press. (shrink)

Every aspect of having and raising a child leads to profound and challenging philosophical questions. The Philosophical Parent is a companion for parents and parents-to-be that explores the myriad worries that come with making and raising children. Kazez explores eighteen perplexities, arguing for a novel view of the parent-child relationship, with implications at every stage of parenthood.

There were three such assumptions required, one explicitly stated, and two not made explicit until Bayle. The explicit one was a certain commonly accepted double understanding of ‘destruction’: a ‘natural’ version, which made it no more than a change in a particular arrangement or ‘organization’ of particles through which an aggregate was destroyed by losing its identity, and a metaphysical version, which entailed the actual annihilation of a substance. It was assumed that the latter could be accomplished only by miraculous (...) supra-natural means available only to God. Thus, if it could be shown that the soul was ‘without parts,’ it followed that the soul was ‘naturally’ indestructible and thus immortal. Bayle summarized the Cartesian argument to immortality as follows. (shrink)

Ce que la science a transformé depuis plus d'un siècle, ce n'est pas la connaissance, mais la pensée elle-même et l'ensemble des représentations à partir desquelles nous construisons notre image du monde. Sans que l'on s'en rende toujours compte, une mutation s'est produite sous nos yeux, mutation intellectuelle qui doit beaucoup au renouvellement de la physique et dont ce livre parvient, dans un langage accessible, à dégager la structure. Jean Ullmo a écrit l'introduction d'un nouveau discours, qui est celui (...) de la science moderne. (shrink)