Entretien réalisé à Lyon, le 10 mai 2012, avec Martine Villelongue, directrice de l’université de la Mode. Historienne de l’Art, Martine Villelongue a soutenu une thèse sur l’œuvre de Lucien Bégule (1848-1935), maître-verrier lyonnais, à l’université de Lyon 2 en 1983, publiée en 2005. Elle a ensuite travaillé pendant une quinzaine d’années au musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs de Lyon : montage d’expositions et création du service des publics de ce musée. Après avoir enseigné (...) comme maît... (shrink)

L’irruption de l’image animée dans l’espace de la scène, pour n’être pas récente, réactualise pourtant un vieux débat qui opposerait ceux qui comme Goethe plaident pour de strictes frontières à ceux qui, après Hegel, derrière Wagner et le chapitre V d’ Opéra et Drame (1851), constatent que chaque art, puisqu’il « tend à une extension indéfinie de sa puissance », est commandé par une sorte de loi du « passage à la limite ». La mise en scène de l’avenir est-elle (...) désormais tributaire d’une alliance avec les autres formes artistiques dont le cinéma et la vidéo, ou la vérité du théâtre ne saurait-elle outrepasser les limites de la scénographie « traditionnelle »? Quelques expériences récentes alimentent un débat qui opposait déjà au xviii e siècle les contempteurs de l’opéra face au théâtre : la parole proférée par l’acteur est-elle nécessaire et suffisante ou faut-il y ajouter le « merveilleux » spectaculaire? (shrink)

A comprehensive excursion, into anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, social and political science lead me to the conclusion that human societies are ruled by systems of shared concepts, and that these systems of thought function as a kind of public or external mind, which produces and maintain the social forms of life. Taking into account the fact that philosophy originally - in ancient Greece - was a ‘public affair’, I came up with the idea that philosophy should try to map the public (...) mind. In other words, the idea that philosophers should draw up a project for making what I call philosophical maps, i.e. maps of public thought. In what follows, I will give a brief account of this idea in the hope that other philosophers may draw inspiration from it. Of course, all this involves speculation, but it does not interfere with regular philosophy. It simply adds something to it from the outside as it were, that is from a descriptive point of view. As I will make clear, this idea is consistent with the efforts of Wittgenstein to achieve a radical descriptive philosophy. (shrink)

Evoquer l'univers de Rousseau est une entreprise ambitieuse qui peut aider à orienter la pensée contemporaine vers la valeur des moyens et des fins à entreprendre pour la formation de l'individu. Dans cet ouvrage les auteurs s'attachent à présenter un écrivain à hauteur d'homme et souhaitent faire partager leurs réflexions sur son oeuvre remarquable. Ils montrent notamment que les idées exprimées dans l'Emile présentent la synthèse des conceptions de Rousseau sur la société, sur l'enfance et sur ses principes d'éducation. Partagée (...) ou controversée, sa pensée constitue une approche moderne des savoirs et des pratiques tournées vers des questions qui importent en ce début de XXIe siècle. En confrontant leur regard à celui du penseur, les auteurs de ce livre invitent le lecteur à découvrir ou redécouvrir l'oeuvre de l'homme des Lumières dans des domaines aussi différents que la musique, le langage, la philosophie politique et l'éducation. Vous êtes donc conviés à un voyage au coeur de la pensée rousseauiste qui a inspiré et irrigué leur réflexion. (shrink)

Cet important ouvrage collectif est issu d’un colloque international pluridisciplinaire tenu à Rouen en mai 2005. Dans une chronologie, relativement, resserrée, de la fin du Moyen Age aux lendemains de la Révolution, il explore les différentes voies qu’ont pu emprunter des écrivaines francophones dans l’écriture de l’histoire. Mettre en visibilité des femmes illustres qui démontrent les qualités de leur sexe, écrire des mémoires, ou servir l’histoire à travers la fiction dans des nouvelles ou...

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the conference Mapping Parameters of Meaning, an event organized by the GReG (Groupe de Rèflexion sur les Grammaires) linguistics research group in the Language Department of the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre on November 19-20, 2010. The book addresses the description of meaning construction processes, and the necessity for new linguistic interface-tools to analyze it in its dynamic and multi-dimensional aspect. Syntax, grammar, prosody, discourse organization, subjective and situational filters are (...) not considered as autonomous systems; on the contrary, they are shown to systematically converge in the process of meaning construction and interpretation. The notion of context is discussed throughout the volume, a major concern being to try and define the precise nature of the link between variable contextual parameters and stable linguistic systems. The book will be of value to anyone interested in the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in the gradual construction and interpretation of meaning in natural languages, including researchers, students and scholars of formal linguistics, cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. (shrink)

E. Yakira voit dans l’ Éthique le fondement et l’aboutissement de l’entreprise iconoclaste de Spinoza en ce qu’elle fait du corps le pivot de l’existence humaine. C’est dans ce hic et nunc que résiderait le sérieux de l’existence humaine. Spinoza va penser le corps, dont l’âme est l’intelligibilité, comme source de l’évaluation éthique. L’existence humaine, loin de toute transcendance et de tout arrière-monde, trouve son sens et son sérieux en elle-même. S’est-on jamais approché de la formulation d’une éthique totalement sécularisée (...) qui prône la valeur, l’importance et la gravité du hic et nunc? (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

This book provides an elegant account of the nature of the individual, without reducing it to a cluster of universals or claiming that it is a bare particular that must be acknowledged but never articulated.

In ethics, the use of empirical data has become more and more popular, leading to a distinct form of applied ethics, namely empirical ethics. This 'empirical turn' is especially visible in bioethics. There are various ways of combining empirical research and ethical reflection. In this paper we discuss the use of empirical data in a special form of Reflective Equilibrium (RE), namely the Network Model with Third Person Moral Experiences. In this model, the empirical data consist of the moral experiences (...) of people in a practice. Although inclusion of these moral experiences in this specific model of RE can be well defended, their use in the application of the model still raises important questions. What precisely are moral experiences? How to determine relevance of experiences, in other words: should there be a selection of the moral experiences that are eventually used in the RE? How much weight should the empirical data have in the RE? And the key question: can the use of RE by empirical ethicists really produce answers to practical moral questions? In this paper we start to answer the above questions by giving examples taken from our research project on understanding the norm of informed consent in the field of pediatric oncology. We especially emphasize that incorporation of empirical data in a network model can reduce the risk of self-justification and bias and can increase the credibility of the RE reached. (shrink)

This article delineates the cosmopolitan praxis of Nietzsche’s imaginary figure of “the good European.” The good European is the child and creator of Nietzsche’s ideal, postmodern, and post-Christian Europe. As Ananta Kumar Giri justifiably argued, cosmopolitanism is, amongst others things, a matter of practical experimentation, a continuous process of self-critique and border-crossing. Nietzsche’s good European is the exemplary cosmopolitan practitioner, who deliberately and literally undertakes travels to transform himself from a “chainsick” person, who is tied to old moral chains, into (...) a rootless freethinker, “artist of life,” and creator of culture.It is argued that the good European represents the individual, who is indeed liberated from an old, obsolete morality, yet who simultaneously shows himself a highly ethical being in his praxis of freedom. The good European in the Nietzschean sense can further be regarded as quite the opposite of Kant’s cosmopolitan citizen, in the sense that selfishness, competition, and the violent edges of human nature are not so much annihilated in a natural and reasonable process towards “eternal peace,” but rather postulated as vital elements of the cosmopolitan spirit. They are indispensable features of the good European as a “citizen of the world” in the Nietzschean sense. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique :"Alors que le féminisme est plus que jamais nécessaire, il est malmené de toutes parts. D'un côté, des pseudo-radicalités instruisent le procès d'un " féminisme blanc " qui irait d'Olympe de Gouges à aujourd'hui. De l'autre, une mouvance de droite et d'extrême droite instrumentalise le féminisme dans une perspective identitaire, nationaliste et raciste. Face à ces entreprises de brouillage et de régression, il est urgent de réaffirmer la valeur de l'émancipation et de plaider pour un (...) féminisme universel, concret et pluriel. Ni décolonial, ni occidental, le féminisme se construit sans cesse, dans les luttes et la solidarité des combats quotidiens.". (shrink)

In the last two decades, Ralph Cudworth has been acknowledged as one of the paramount figures in the history of theories of consciousness. This paper discusses the interpretation defended by Udo Thiel and Vili Lähteenmäki. Both contend that, for Cudworth, the reflexivity defining consciousness does not constitute self-consciousness, which, they say, requires self-determination for practical ends. On the contrary, I argue that for Cudworth any degree of consciousness implies a species of self-perception that must be considered a degree of self-consciousness. (...) To do justice to Cudworth’s full position, I claim, we must take into account a kind of consciousness that I call ‘to-oneself ’ consciousness. Furthermore, I argue, the problem of the ethical self-formation of every human soul as one personality should be seen as going beyond the mere consideration of practical rationality. (shrink)

One's gender is merely an important subset of choosing one's form. By “form” I mean that which encloses our beingness – flesh for the life we are accustomed to, plastic for the robots of science fiction, mere data for the avatars taking over our computer screens.

Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises, of the Nature of Bodies and of the Nature of Mans Soule defends quite an idiosyncratic approach to mind-body dualism. In his use of the divisibility argument to prove that the human soul cannot be a material substance, Digby takes an uncompromising stand for merely potential material parts. In his Treatise of Bodies the present article focuses on the mode of construction of the definition of quantity as divisibility and on its links to two distinct fundamental (...) arguments against the actual material parts doctrine. The first, positive, argument consists of a semantic reason drawn from Digby’s general doctrine of meaning, whereas the second, negative, argument, addresses the traditional question of the composition of the continuum. The latter, the author contends, does not build on the medieval controversy itself, but on Digby’s opposition to Galileo’s claim of indivisibilism in his Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences. (shrink)

This article examines Grotius’ lifelong support for Dutch expansion overseas. As noted in other publications of mine, Grotius cooperated closely with the directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the years 1604–1615. Right up to his arrest for high treason in August 1618, he contributed towards Dutch government discussions about the establishment of a West India Company (WIC). Three years of imprisonment at Loevestein Castle and, following his escape, long years of exile could not weaken his dedication to (...) the cause. His relatives in Holland, in particular his brother Willem de Groot and his brother-in-law Nicolaas van Reigersberch, kept him up-to-date on the fortunes of the VOC and WIC. His expertise on maritime affairs was in high demand. For example, Cardinal Richelieu invited him in November 1626 to become actively involved in the establishment of a French East India Company. As itinerant ideologue of empire, Grotius sought to further his own career and those of his nearest family members, without damaging the interests of the United Provinces. Through Willem de Groot and Nicolaas van Reigersberch, he provided informal advice on Dutch imperial policy to the VOC directors and government officials in The Hague. He was rewarded with the appointment of his brother and his second son, Pieter de Groot, as VOC lawyers (ordinaris advocaten) in 1639 and 1644, respectively. They served as his proxies in diplomatic disputes involving the VOC, the States General and the Portuguese ambassador in autumn 1644, when Pieter and Willem de Groot wrote a defense of VOC claims to the cinnamon-producing areas of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), liberally citing De Jure Belli ac Pacis. Grotius’ vision of empire hardly changed in the course of 40 years. In his view, the Dutch had gone to the Indies as merchants, not conquerors, and should regulate themselves according to natural law and the law of nations. Thus he contributed to the creation of two political orders, one for Europe and one for the Indies. European diplomatic relations counted for little beyond the Line. VOC and WIC officials could act as judges and executioners in their own cause, without reference to indigenous rulers, other colonial powers, or even the political authorities back home. (shrink)

Le projet de l'Encyclopédic de Diderot et d'Alembert constitue un tournant dans l'histoire de la philosophic dans la mesure où d'Alembert a procédé à une pluralisation de la métaphysique. À la métaphysique traditionnelle et singulière se sont ajoutées des métaphysiques. Examinons plus particulièrement les trois métaphysiques que sont la métaphysique des corps, la métaphysique des propositions et la métaphysique des sciences exposées dans l'Encyclopédie : on s'aperçoit alors que la nouveauté est moins le progrès des sciences que le processus philosophique (...) comme herméneutique du génie de l'invention, dans les sciences comme dans les arts. Ce processus remplace désormais la méaphysique traditionnelle et ouvre la voie aux théories de la connaissance. The project of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie constitutes a turning point in the history of philosophy to the extent that d'Alembert achieved a pluralization of metaphysics. To traditional metaphysics, he added various other metaphysics. This paper focuses more specifically on the three following metaphysics, that of bodies, that of propositions and that of the sciences, as they were developed in the Encyclope'die. It thus appears that novelty does not so much lie in the advancement of the sciences than in the philosophical process understood as a hermeneutics of the genius of invention, both in the sciences and the arts. This process supersedes traditional metaphysics and paves the way for theories of knowledge. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager was sometimes viewed in the eighteenth-century as an argument conquering its whole demonstrative force not in the Pensées but in a passage of Locke’s Essay Concerning the Human Understanding (II, XXI, § 70) dealing with the preference to be given to a virtuous life when considering the possibility of another eternal life. In this paper, I intend to show that this interpretation is ill-founded. The argument of the wager highlights the discrepancy between the requirements of alethic reason on (...) the one side and of practical reason on the other side: the wager is to be seen not as a proposition, but as an act. When emphasizing the conditions on which this act can conform to rationality, the argument used of in the Pensées puts the comparison between a unity (my life ante mortem) and a multiplicity (other possible lives post mortem) on the front of the stage, in combination with a reckoning of the chances of winning or losing the bet on God’s existence. The reduction ad absurdum of the act of betting against God’s existence is deduced from a double infinitization, not only quantitative (an infinity of lives), but also qualitative (a reiterating infinity of happiness) of the second member in the comparison. Now, the case is different in Locke’s argumentation. Its reading is vitiated if we deem that the § 70 in the Essay II, XXI consists in a self-sufficient demonstration, understandable by itself. Through a close examination of the chapter XXI in its entire, it appears on the contrary that the thesis of an alleged improvement or even of a mere equivalent of Pascal’s wager in the Essay is defeated by the necessity to put back Locke’s own argument in its true place, actually as the result of a complex enquiry on the principle of the determination of the will. (shrink)

L'histoire critique des textes bibliques a été conçue par Richard Simon comme un art de juger, selon des règles strictes, des meilleures leçons à conserver. Cette méthode, qui impose dans la traduction de l'Écriture une règle d'uniformité textuelle, aurait fait défaut selon lui dans la version du Nouveau Testament donnée à Port-Royal « selon la Vulgate, avec les différences du grec ». La critique à la manière de Richard Simon n'est cependant pour Antoine Arnauld, qui préfère l'uniformité du sens à (...) celle du texte, qu'un art sans jugement : c'est de l'extension de l'art de penser à une logique pour le contingent, que dépend à ses yeux une définition véritablement générale de la critique. The critical history of biblical texts was conceived by Richard Simon as an ars judicandi, whose rules had to be applied to the discrimination between true and false lessons. Concerning translation, this method required in his view a principle of textual uniformity, so he thought defective the Port-Royal version of The New Testament . Antoine Arnauld, however, gave preference to the semantic uniformity over the literal one, and stated that a real definition of critique in its logical generality ought to be supplied by the extension of the art of thinking to the case of contingent truths. (shrink)

La sociología de la literatura da explicación de las condiciones de existencia de lo literario en Bélgica y de su rivalidad inevitable con la institución francesa. Es posible señalar, entre estos dos campos literarios, vínculos diacrónicos de connivencia, con particular relieve entre el Simbolismo y el Surrealismo desarrollado en ambos países: comparten el rechazo de las constricciones que tiranizan al individuo y la defensa de la escritura como vía de liberación hacia una vida más plena. A la vez, la sociología (...) de lo literario nos permite advertir las diferencias, cruciales, entre el Surrealismo de André Breton y el de Paul Nougé. (shrink)

In this article I compare the linguistic skepticism of Levinas to that of the early Daoist skepticism of the Zhuangzi. I will argue that both Levinas as the Zhuangzi use skepticism as a therapeutic tool to question the rigid use of language and to create an openness in the self in which the self is inspired by something more than itself. For Levinas, language is primarily a response-ability; language ultimately refers to the absolute responsibility to the Other. For the Zhuangzi, (...) words are simply too rigid to attune to the subtle differences and changes in the world. Through carefree wandering, the self becomes more receptive to the unfolding of the way (Dao). Both the Zhuangzi as Levinas see language not only as a system of references that is able to convey the world, but also see language as communication; as a response to the outside world. For Levinas, this response-ability is aimed at the Other and is primarily an ethical demand. For the Zhuangzi, genuine language is more a spontaneous receptivity; a wandering with words in which words are open to different interpretations and perspectives. In the end of this article I will argue that Levinas and the Zhuangzi see language as a communicative praxis that mirrors receptivity and passivity. (shrink)