John Locke's educational program has long been considered to have two primary aims: to habituate children to reason and to raise children capable of meeting the demands of citizenship that he details in his Two Treatises of Government. Yet Locke's educational prescriptions undermine citizens’ capacity for honesty, a critical political virtue for Locke. To explain how Locke's educational prescriptions are self-undermining, we turn to Rousseau's extended critique of Locke's Some Thoughts on Education in his Émile. We argue that Rousseau explains (...) why such an education allows a natural desire to dominate to flourish, rendering children who receive it dishonest and incapable of self-government. Rousseau's critique exposes how a liberal education focused solely on autonomy cannot produce the kinds of citizens a Lockean politics requires. (shrink)

We typically think of resentment as an unjustifiable and volatile emotion, responsible for fostering the worst political divisions. Recognizing Resentment argues instead that sympathy with the resentment of victims of injustice is vital for upholding justice in liberal societies, as it entails recognition of the equal moral and political status of those with whom we sympathize. Sympathizing with the resentment of others makes us alive to injustice in a way no rational recognition of wrongs alone can, and it motivates us (...) to demand justice on others' behalves. This book rehabilitates arguments for the moral and political worth of resentment developed by three influential thinkers in the early liberal tradition - Joseph Butler, David Hume, and Adam Smith - and uses these to advance a theory of spectatorial resentment, discussing why we should be indignant about the injustice others face, and how such a shared sentiment can actually bring liberal citizens closer together. (shrink)

Additional Contributors Include John V. Walsh, Bruno De Solages, Aurel Kolnai, Gabriel Marcel, Michele Federico Sciacca, Henri De Lubac, Robert W. Gleason, And Jacques Albert Cuttat. The Orestes Brownson Series On Contemporary Thoughts And Affairs, No. 3.

Readers of this volume will notice that it contains only a few papers on general relativity. This is because most papers documenting the genesis and early development of general relativity were not published in Annalen der Physik . After Einstein took up his new prestigious position at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the spring of 1914, the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin academy almost by default became the main outlet for his scientific production. Two of the more important papers on (...) general relativity, however, did find their way into the pages of the Annalen [35,41]. Although I shall discuss both papers in this essay, the main focus will be on [35], the first systematic exposition of general relativity, submitted in March 1916 and published in May of that year. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that authors can make anything whatsoever true in their fictions by artistic fiat. Harry Deutsch originally called this position the Principle of Poetic License. If true, PPL sets an important constraint on accounts of fictional truth: they must be such as to allow that, for any x, one can write a story in which it is true that x. I argue that PPL is far too strong: it requires us to abandon the law of non-contradiction and (...) entails a radical revision of otherwise ordinary commitments about truth in fiction. (shrink)

There are two versions of the putative connection between consciousness and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics : consciousness as the cause of state vector reduction, and state vector reduction as the physical basis of consciousness. In this article, these controversial ideas are neither accepted uncritically, nor rejected from the outset in the name of some prejudice about objective knowledge. Instead, their origin is sought in our most cherished (but disputable) beliefs about the place of mind and consciousness in the (...) world. It is first pointed out that these common beliefs about mind and consciousness arise from reification of situated first-person experience. Then, situatedness is shown to be a constitutive part of any exhaustive treatment of quantum measurements. It turns out that the alleged connection between consciousness and the measurement problem is a symptom of (i) the ineliminability of our being situated from the end-product of science, and (ii) our difficulty to express correctly this being situated. (shrink)

These thirteen lectures on the 'punitive society,' delivered at the Collège de France in the first three months of 1973, examine the way in which the relations between justice and truth that govern modern penal law were forged, and question what links them to the emergence of a new punitive regime that still dominates contemporary society. Praise for Foucault's Lectures at the Collège de France Series “Ideas spark off nearly every page...The words may have been spoken in [the 1970s], but (...) they seem as alive and relevant as if they had been written yesterday.”—Bookforum “Foucault is quite central to our sense of where we are...[He] is carrying out, in the noblest way, the promiscuous aim of true culture.”—The Nation “[Foucault] has an alert and sensitive mind that can ignore the familiar surfaces of established intellectual coded and ask new questions...[He] gives dramatic quality to the movement of culture.”—The New York Review of Books. (shrink)

Derrida's work testifies to the problematic state of contemporary thought. Questioning Derrida offers new explorations into Derrida's contribution to philosophy. Presenting contributions from prominent philosophers worldwide, this book explores many aspects of Derrida's philosophical perspective. With contributors commenting on a particular topic or defending alternative viewpoints, this book examines the work of Plato, Hegel, Aristotle, Heidegger and also the philosophy of science. Focusing on 'problematology' - a conception of philosophy as questioning - the contributors explore this new way of 'doing' (...) philosophy. Including a concluding chapter from Derrida himself, this book presents Derrida in question and Derrida and his answers and opens new debate for readers across the fields of philosophy and literature, particularly those exploring the work of Derrida, issues in continental philosophy, and the theory of questioning. (shrink)

L'éthique n'a pas que des sources philosophiques ou religieuses-spirituelles. Elle peut aussi se nourrir des questionnements inscrits dans des oeuvres littéraires. La littérature est peut-être même le lieu privilégié où se donnent à voir et à comprendre doutes existentiels, dilemmes moraux, intuitions philosophiques. Si l'éthique consiste bien dans l'approfondissement de notre connaissance de la dimension morale de la conscience de soi, de la conscience du monde et de la conscience d'exister, elle trouvera dans l'oeuvre de l'écrivain un matériau riche et (...) complexe qui ouvrira la voie à son propre déploiement. C'est ce que propose cet ouvrage en puisant à l'oeuvre de cinq romanciers de la modernité classique allemande du début du vingtième siècle, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil et Stefan Zweig. (shrink)

"One of Michael Blay's many fine achievements in Reasoning with the Infinite is to make us realize how velocity, and later instantaneous velocity, came to play a vital part in the development of a rigorous mathematical science of motion. ...

Entre Michelangelo Antonioni et David Lynch, Gaspar Noé, Arnaud Desplechin et quelques autres réalisateurs, il existe un lien qui n'est pas celui d'une filiation artistique. Chacun éprouvant à sa manière une curiosité pour ce qui reste des grandes traditions dans le monde d'aujourd'hui. Vue par Angelina Jolie, la Seconde Guerre mondiale est une synthèse de tous les fratricides, où succombe l'idée du sacré. Un renouveau de la métaphysique s'annonce pourtant dans les films de certains de ces réalisateurs, à travers leur (...) vision critique de la violence humaine. Et jusqu'au terrorisme contemporain, qui hante l'imagination de cinéastes moins connus. (shrink)

« Rythmes et Croyances au Moyen-Âge » Journée d'études organisée par Marie Formarier et Jean-Claude Schmitt 23 juin 2012 – Paris Présentation : Cette journée d'études a eu pour objectif de faire dialoguer les diverses disciplines concernées par le rapport entre rythmes et croyances au Moyen-Âge. Elle a accueilli des historiens, des anthropologues, des sociologues, des philologues et des linguistes. Présents dans la langue latine et les langues vernaculaires, dans la rhétorique du sermon, la prière et (...) - Histoire – (...) NOUVELLE JOURNÉE d'ÉTUDES. (shrink)

La rencontre de Karl Barth permet à Henri Bouillard de manifester, d'une part, que la pensée barthienne évolue, et que, d'autre part, elle fait abstraction de l'expérience humaine et de son ouverture au surnaturel. Cela permet au théologien français d'établir que la relation de l'homme à Dieu est à la fois oeuvre de Dieu et oeuvre de l'homme, et en particulier que la connaissance de Dieu est une connaissance révélée et en même temps une connaissance naturelle, que l'analogie de la (...) foi ne va pas sans l'analogie de l'être, et que la morale et la politique sont hétéronomes dans leur inspiration et autonomes dans leur détermination. (shrink)

This is a short piece on literary literacy, in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure story. -/- The entire piece is spread across all three volumes: Volume 1 Chapter 12, Volume 2 Chapter 5, and Volume 3 Chapter 22.