Le Père Ignace Carbonnelle, l'un des principaux fondateurs de la Société scientifique de Bruxelles en 1875 et son secrétaire général depuis cette époque, décède inopinément en 1889 après une quin­zaine d'années durant lesquelles il fut «l'homme fort» de ladite Société. Aussitôt, la Revue des questions scienti­fiques annonce la triste nouvelle, promettant, pour un prochain numéro, une étude détaillée de sa vie et de son œuvre. Elle ne paraîtra jamais, de sorte que sa mort ne fut pas saluée avec l'ampleur qu'on (...) était en droit d'attendre. Et pour cause ! Au ter­me d'une enquête digne d'un roman policier, cette étude révèle que Rome, agacée par l'atomisme de Carbonnelle, profita de sa mort pour rappeler à l'ordre la Société en l'invitant à marcher dans les pas de l'Aquinate. En réponse à cette pressante invi­tation et par un excès de zèle non requis, la Société élut comme président le célèbre thomiste français Edmond Domet de Vor­ges, cependant que le mathématicien Paul Mansion s'attacha d'établir, à partir des publications de Pierre Duhem prônant un retour à une physique des qualités, que la Société se conformait bien, mais à sa manière, aux injonctions romaines. ––– Fr. Ignace Carbonnelle, who founded the Brussels Scientific Society in 1875 and was from this date onwards her Secretary General, passed away suddenly in 1889, after fifteen years during which he was the leading figure of the aforementioned Society. “La Revue des Question scientifique” announced the sad news but promised that their next publication would include a detailed article on the great man and his works. Sadly this article never appeared, meaning that the passing of Fr. Carbonnelle was not marked with the importance which we might have otherwise expected. For what reason, you may well ask? After a detailed investigation, worthy of Agatha Christie herself, it would appear that Rome had been rather alarmed by the “atomism” present in Fr. Carbonnelle's reflections, and had taken the opportunity of his death to invite the Scientific Society to opinions more in line with those of St Thomas. In response to this firmly worded invitation, and with overzealous spontaneity, the Society elected the celebrated French Thomiste Edmond Domet de Vorges as their new President. At the same time the mathematician Paul Mansion relied on the publications of Pierre Duhem, which advocated a stronger adhesion to a physics of an object's qualities, to establish that the Society was, in fact, well aligned with the desires of Rome. (shrink)

Le cannabis est envisagé ici comme un instrument de la politique d’aménagement des territoires, au sens où R. Neuburger évoque les territoires de l’intime. Ceci permet la création de nouvelles narrations qui permettent de sortir de l’impasse où le cannabis est le problème pour les parents alors que c’est la solution pour le jeune. Deux vignettes cliniques illustrent cette métaphore et les opportunités qu’elle offre pour la thérapie.

In this paper published in Slovenian, i argue that Jean-François Lyotard could probably not have written his groundbraking book Le Différend in the eighties of the 20th century without having had his Algerian experience as a young teacher there. Lyotard was member of the group of leftist intellectuals "Socialisme ou barbarie" (also name of a journal they issued) around Cornelius Castoriadis. Understanding the "Other" and the relationship between the subject and the "Other" is essential to the line of thought (...) that Lyotard developped in Le Différend. See his book La guerre des Algériens. (shrink)

The term “biology” was introduced in 1802 by a German, Treviranus, and by a Frenchman whose name would remain well known to posterity, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

The posthumous Pourquoi Philosopher? collects Jean-Fran ç ois Lyotard’s previously unpublished four-part introductory course in philosophy, delivered to students of the Sorbonne in 1964. The interest of this text is both historical (appearing at an important juncture in French thought) and meta-philosophical (answering the question "why philosophize?" in such a way that a philosophy of philosophy - or rather several - is offered for consideration). The text will be of interest to readers of various levels of philosophical sophistication.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: D. (...) H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as (...) a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

Omhandler en række franske filosoffer : Jean Nabert, Gabriel Madinier, Amédée Ponceau, Paul Ricæur, Louis Lavelle, Alain (Émile Chartier), Ferdinand Alquié, Pierre Lachièze-Rey, Eric Weil, Henry Duméry, Nicolas Berdiaeff, Emmanuel Mounier, Maurice Nédoncelle, Emmanuel Levinas, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Henry, Jean Wahl, Alphonse de Waelhens, André Lalande, Gaston Bachelard, François Dagognet, Michel Faoucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maurice Pradines, Georges Gurvitch.

While there was a flurry of articles throughout the 1990s in philosophy of education on Lyotard, there are still several key concepts in his oeuvre that have import for but remain largely underdeveloped or absent in the field. One of the most interesting of these absent concepts is Lyotard’s notion of the figural. In this paper, I take the figural as an educational problematic and ask what new educational insights it can generate in regard to the existing literature. As such, (...) this article begins with a survey and synthesis of educational literature on Lyotard and the primary work on which most of it is based, exploring the relationship between knowledge, performativity, the differend, and “the system.” I then examine conceptions of education oriented toward defending the differend and disrupting the system and claim that, while helpful, these conceptions are limited in that they do not mention how educators and students might engage the alterity that the system seeks to repress. I believe that it is here that Lyotard’s notion of the figural can be productively engaged. The next section of the paper performs a partial and educationally partisan reading of Discourse, Figure. After this reading I move to formulate a figural education, which is composed of three educational processes and modes of engagement: reading, seeing, and blindness. A figural education, I argue, holds each of these practices in an uncertain and unsettling relation and, in so doing, can help educators defend the figural and the differend against the discursive demands of the system. (shrink)

In response to contagion, competing and contradictory movements emerge that engender openness to new modes of life and reactionary defenses of old ones, that acknowledge mutual dependency and vulnerability and that heighten the policing and surveillance of borders. Through reading the Empire project, this article articulates these as struggles over measure that unfold on the terrain of sovereignty and biopolitical economy. We show that the passage from modern to imperial sovereignty hinges on the former’s inability to adequately impose calculatory regimes, (...) to which the latter’s flexibility and fluidity responds. This accompanies the passage from industrial to biopolitical command, from regulation through the wage to rearbitration through extractivism. Having articulated the contemporary coordinates within which the multitude finds itself, we then propose an educational weapon for the struggle against sovereignty and capital: stupidity. Turning to Jean-François Lyotard, we demonstrate just how fundamentally the rule of Empire depends on the outside of measure for its continual reproduction, and how Empire frames the communicative networks of biopolitical labor, a framing from which Hardt and Negri haven’t adequately broken. As the other of thought, as that which can’t be articulated, commanded, or absorbed by capital, stupidity remains totally useless and unproductive for Empire, which is exactly where its potency lies for the multitude. By critically engaging stupidity, we can refrain from reducing the pandemic to a need for heightened immunity and enclosure achieved through articulation. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

This book offers even more than its title promises. Embarrassed with my translation of échec, I emphasize that its authors not only reflect on "Man and Failure," but design a vast anthropological fresco by approaching their topic from psychological, economical, medical, religious and philosophical points of view. Jean Lacroix published a book on Failure some years ago; in 1968 he asked thirteen outstanding French writing personalities for contributions to an interdisciplinary study on the same issue. The result is a (...) remarkable collection of insights into this basic experience in human life. Joseph Nuttin, professor in experimental psychology, presents his most recent researches on the transformation of a person's needs and energies into a "project" of life. Failure, the unsuccess of such a project, gives cognitive information useful for subsequent conduct. Raymond Carpentier sees failure in the area of communication: it reveals the ambiguity of any information. On the level of consciousness, he writes, reality only exists in so far as its own failure is contained in its very structure. "Ambiguous like life itself, communication is what has reality only when it does not succeed in its materializations." François Perroux, economist, both calmly and alarmingly sketches the perhaps imminent failure of our economic system. Three other articles deal with ethnological and medical problems. The philosopher and psychoanalyst Mrs. Eliane Amado Lévy-Valenski, author of L'humanisme psychanalytique, le mythe grec et la phénoménologie biblique, pursues her threefold investigation: "Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology or Ontology of Failure?" To fail in one's efforts is both a trial and a temptation, but it also points toward the emergence of infinity within finitude. The three religious contributions give the most personal penetration of the subject. They are the center of the book. The last section deals with three philosophies: the failing thought of Being, the critique of humanism, the restoration of motivations in action. The first of them is due to Rouven Gilead, professor at the University of Tel-Aviv and author of one of the best books on Heidegger. His paper suggests what radical Failure would mean: not of man, nor of given historical situations, nor even of metaphysics, although these three approaches are true. But the "truth of Being" in modern subjectivity, in sciences and in philosophy remains hidden. Our horizon of thought is the nihilism of Being. The fundamental Failure, then, is the history of Being itself.--R. S. (shrink)

This paper examines the conception of disinterested love, pur amour, advocated by the Archbishop of Cambrai, Francois Fenelon, and its role in the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau andWilliam Godwin.We argue that for Fenelon, Rousseau, and Godwin, virtue is, or follows directly from, a form of love stripped of self-interest. Hence, virtuous activity is performed without either hope of reward or fear of punishment and sometimes with no reference to the self at all. At the same time, this disinterested (...) love re-identifies the self with something beyond, whether this is friends, God, the common weal, or utility. We demonstrate that Rousseau and Godwin adopted a specifically Fenelonian conception of disinterested love by considering the particular use they make of Fenelon's works, and, indeed, their references to him as a person. Interestingly, the logic of disinterestedness propels quite disparate thoughts about political life: for Fenelon the virtue is preeminently religious, and lawgivers and monarchs should exemplify and perpetuate pur amour; Rousseau's version is reconceptualised psychologically and reoriented such that it demands democratic politics, while for Godwin disinterestedness becomes a personal moral issue, actually requiring the dissolution of politics and government. (shrink)

Revisionist just war scholarship employs the rigors of analytical philosophy to make arguments about the deep morality of war. Accepting the individual and cosmopolitan are paramount to making sense of war as many revisionists do, this essay looks outside the just war canon to Montaigne—a sixteenth century French humanist hailed for his exploration of the self and cosmopolitan musings—for alternative insights. It explores how Montaigne was read during the Second World War by three intellectuals to make sense of war: Stefan (...) Zweig, Jean Guéhenno, and François Mauriac. While Montaigne’s skepticism and turn to the self as an act of preservation was, in the 1930s, rejected as a strategy to combat rising authoritarianism in Europe by philosophers such as Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school, the thinkers studied here shed light on Montaigne as a source of active humanism based in reflective action that leads to Resistance. Building on trends in just war thinking that call for paying greater attention to the lived experience of war, the article identifies several psychological and moral processes—the inward turn, the cosmopolitan gaze, casting an existential anchor, and the humanist’s wager—to shed light on the doubt-laden process of making individual moral choices amidst the rising dogmatic forces that war tends to impose. (shrink)

This latest offering from one of the founding figures of postmodernism is a collection of fifteen "fables" that ask, in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live, and why?

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

The ambition and proposal for data modeling of myths presented in this paper is to link contemporary technical affordances to some canonical projects developed in structural anthropology. To articulate the theoretical promise and innovation of this proposal, we present a discrete-event system specification modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis and a dynamic visualization of selected narratives, aimed at validating and revitalizing the transformational and morphodynamic theory and methodology proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his structural analysis (...) of myth. After an analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s transformational methodology, we describe in detail how discrete-event system specification models are implemented and developed in the framework of a DEVSimPy software environment. The validation of the method involves a discrete-event system specification simulation based on the extension of discrete-event system specification models dedicated to provide a dynamic Google Earth visualization of the selected myth. Future work around the discrete-event system specification formalism in anthropology is described as well as future applications regarding the impact of computational models to new contemporary anthropological domains. (shrink)

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

We introduce nudges in order to incite investors to choose Socially Responsible Investment funds instead of traditional funds. We have set up two online experiments with a total of 713 US retail investors, using three types of nudges to elicit their effects on investors’ SRI investments level: making SRI the default investment, introducing a SRI explanation message, and priming ethical values by displaying shocking images. Making SRI the default option is the most efficient nudge to influence investors towards SRI. Its (...) effect is twofold. First, around 50% of investors do not opt-out of the default allocation. Second, even investors who opt-out of the default allocation invest more in SRI than those in the control group, an effect that appears driven by anchoring. Although investors subjected to both priming and message content marginally increase their SRI investment, priming or message content in isolation appears to have a non-significant influence. For choice architects who want to steer retail investors towards SRI funds, making them the default option appears to be the most powerful nudge. (shrink)

The political writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard, the prophet of the postmodern, are presented here as both the missing dimension of his work and the key to understanding his position within contemporary debate.

Cet article s'interroge sur l'origine des quatre causes d'Aristote (formelle, matérielle, efficiente, finale), c'est-à-dire sur le coeur de la métaphysique. En effet pourquoi y a-t-il quatre causes? Qu'est-ce qui fait leur communauté et leur « systématicité »? Dans un premier temps, l'auteur montre que le système des quatre causes est articulé par deux couples d'opposition formant deux schèmes de la causalité : d'une part le couple cause formelle/cause matérielle, statique, qui renvoie à une causalité analytique (schème rationnel) ; d'autre part (...) le couple cause finale/cause efficiente, dynamique, qui renvoie à une causalité synthétique (schème causal). Dans un deuxième temps, l'A. montre que ce « système étiologique tétrapolaire » est déjà présent dans l'oeuvre de Platon : plus particulièrement dans le Timée, avec les couples d'opposition démiurge/milieu matériel (chôra) et formes intelligibles/monde sensible, mais aussi dans le Philèbe et le Sophiste, où une double opposition systématique analogique à la précédente est à l'oeuvre. Une fois mises en évidence ces « deux souches de la métaphysique », l'auteur montre que le schème rationnel l'emporte sur le schème causal, aussi bien dans l'oeuvre d'Aristote que dans celle Platon. (shrink)

Delphica 6. Notes on the stairway of the theater at Delphi (SD 541) The stairway, made of limestone, by which one reached the theater at Delphi since its discovery (end of the 19th c.) was dismantled in 1974. Below it were discovered two earlier ones, made of poros, a third of the width and seemingly not related to the theater. The datings have varied according to time and author. The limestone stairway has even been considered a paleochristian construction. It is (...) true that its first narrow flight of steps resulted from a transformation of that date. But a trace still visible on the string wall permits documenting the original profile of this part and reconstituting a width equal to the rest of the structure, thus restoring a monumental aspect to the ensemble. The date must be that now attributed to the theater : 160-150. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive traditional plant medicine preparation used by the indigenous tribes of the Upper Amazon in their shamanic traditions. Its use has become popular amongst Westerners seeking alternative means of healing, and the medicine has now spread across the globe via syncretic spiritual healing traditions such as the Santo Daime Church. Despite the increased use of the medicine, little research exists on its effectiveness for healing depression. The existing literature does not contain a detailed self-reported phenomenological account of (...) ayahuasca healing a case of depression. The aim of this paper is to share a personal account of healing depression using ayahuasca in a Santo Daime ritual in Johannesburg, South Africa. This experience was unplanned and unexpected and resulted in a profoundly transformative healing process. Based on my experience, I describe ayahuasca’s ingestion as having created a powerful mind-body-spirit connection that resulted in what appeared and felt like a profound reconfiguration of the bio-electrical energy system in my body and a powerful anti-depressant action on my mind. These effects were catalyzed by a strong intention to heal and trust in and take responsibility for myself. Other South African Santo Daime members have reported healing of depression with ayahuasca, although in longer and different processes. It appears that the medicine engages the individual’s unique collective self (life-history, physical and mental disposition, beliefs and intents) resulting in different outcomes for different individuals. Thus, from my own and others’ experience, I describe ayahuasca as a spiritual medicine; one that promotes enhanced awareness and deeper connection to one’s core self, to others and the greater universe, while facilitating the manifestation of one’s intentions and beliefs. This encounter with ayahuasca provided me a first-hand experience of learning and healing from the medicine, making real to me the indigenous Amazonian description of plants as being teachers and doctors. (shrink)

This paper analyses Catherine Colliot-Thélène’s two books, La démocratie sans “demos” (2011) and Le commun de la liberté (2022), focusing on the “politics of subjective rights” they propose. It highlights their originality, particularly with regard to the reading of Marx, and the contribution they make to the critical theory of society.

Lucien BOSSY, «La physique d’Einstein» de Georges Lemaître, 1922 (pp. 9-22). Jean-Marc GÉRARD, Georges Lemaître et l’his­toire de notre Univers (pp. 23-55). Jean LADRIÈRE, La portée philo­sophique de l’hypothèse de l’atome primitif (pp. 57-80). Dominique LAMBERT, Pie XII et Georges Lemaître : deux visions distinctes des rapports sciences-foi (pp. 81-111). Marc LEC­LERC, La liberté intellectuelle de l’homme de sciences catho­lique (pp. 113-117). Alfonso PÉREZ DE LABORDA, Cosmologies et dogma­tiques : un problème d’interférence et de représen­tation (pp. 119-142). (...) class='Hi'>Jean-François STOFFEL, Mgr Georges Lemaître : bio-biblio­graphie (pp. 145-220). Jean-François STOFFEL, «La physique d’Einstein», texte inédit de Georges Lemaître (pp. 223-360). (shrink)