La conduite creatrice est reputee obscure. C'est pourquoi elle doit etre l'objet d'une etude scientifique et d'une reflexion philosophique. Telle est la poietique, ainsi nommee naguere par Valery. Dans tous les domaines ou l'homme se fait constructeur, Rene Passeron propose de remonter en amont de l'oeuvre, pour mettre en lumiere les conditions (de tous ordres) qui font de la creation une activite specifique de l'humain.

Ce livre fait suite à Exclamations philosophiques, suivi de Thèmes, publié en 2003, par les soins de l'Université de Paris-1. Fondée sur de nombreux récits, l'exclamation propose ici l'éthique d'un Amour-Refus dont la devise est : "Tu souffres donc je t'aime et je ne tolère pas que tu souffres, donc je prends les moyens de te libérer de ta souffrance". Attitude qui implique une liberté d'esprit, appelée par les problèmes de notre temps. C'est dire qu'allant du conflit entre la Cruauté (...) originelle et l'Aimance fondamentale, pour accéder enfin à la Raison ardente, ce livre développe l'expérience vécue d'un cheminement, - vers la "civilisation du corps", qu'un "érotisme du bien" assure dans le Droit, et magnifie dans l'éthique du respect. La leçon du Surréalisme, poursuivie dans le Surrationalisme de Gaston Bachelard, débouche sur "un parler-vrai" qui peut surprendre le lecteur, mais le respecte absolument. Pour preuve, l'abondance des notes, et le glossaire, situés en fin de volume. (shrink)

Ce texte fait d’abord l’histoire très méconnue de l’Institut d’Esthétique d’Étienne Souriau qui s’est prolongé dans les années soixante-dix avec les recherches poïétiques de René Passeron et aujourd’hui avec l’Institut ACTE dont l’acronyme illustre bien des préoccupations concernant à la fois l’art, la création, les sciences de l’art et l’esthétique. De fait, après Valéry, Souriau a fortement contribué à féconder la poïétique tout en restant fondamentalement du côté de l’ Aisthèsis. Aussi, Passeron, reprenant à son compte la terminologie (...) de Souriau, place t-il la notion d’ instauration (qui peut faire débat) au centre du dispositif poïétique. Par ailleurs Souriau procède aussi à une clarification des concepts aristotéliciens dont il montre qu’ils font système dans l’analyse de la création et de la réception des œuvres. Ses études des modes d’existence, de « la notion d’œuvre » et de la correspondance des arts demeurent des clefs indispensables pour l’analyse du faire créateur. (shrink)

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

Principles of Philosophy. Author’s Letter to the Translator (Preface).

In _Battling to the End _René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theoretician who wrote _On War_. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war. Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war's wake: the means of war have (...) become its ends. René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe. _Battling to the End _pushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet. (shrink)

At first glance such a title seems antinomic. Obviously we accept the fact that there exists a relation, frequently conflictual, between the press and public authority, without mentioning other media; but art continues to represent, at least in the mind of the public, a privileged domain which, though subject to frequently abrupt and brutal changes, benefits nevertheless from an “innocence” distinguishing it from other activities. Visiting the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence, or touring the Loire valley châteaux are (...) all so-called cultural activities pursued “simply to develop the personality.”. (shrink)

Degree-sentences, i.e. sentences that seem to refer to things that allow of degrees, are widely used both inside and outside of philosophy, even though the metaphysics of degrees is much of an untrodden field. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by addressing the following four questions: [A] Is there some one thing, such that it is degree sensitive? [B] Are there things x, y, and z that stand in a certain relation to each other, viz. the relation that x (...) has more y than z? [C] In those cases in which degree sentences do not refer to phenomena that are degree sensitive, what is responsible for their prima facie seeming to do so? [D] If there are degree sensitive things, to which ontological categories do they belong? We answer each of these questions by arguing that there are, metaphysically speaking, different phenomena that degree sentences refer to: some refer to determinates that emanate from a certain determinable, others to tokens that are instantiations of a certain type, and yet others to what we call ‘complex, resultant properties that are constituted by stereotypical properties’. Finally, we show the relevance of our answers by applying them to the notions of freedom and belief. (shrink)

Current perspectives on attractiveness-related prosocial biases emphasize the contribution of evolutionarily shaped mating drives. Here, we extend these concepts by highlighting the pivotal role of the hypothalamic peptide oxytocin in augmenting the salience and rewarding value of social stimuli, including the partner's face, thereby fostering social bonding in general and the stability of monogamous pair bonds and offspring care in particular.

A concise summary of Nicanor’s theory of punctuation that has recently been discovered in a codex mixtus of the 15th century throws precious new light on a topic of some complexity. The general picture that emerges from the new extract does not substantially differ from that of the other known summary, which has been the starting point for all modern reconstructions of Nicanor’s theory. Therefore, these reconstructions need not be rewritten on a larger scale. The two summaries nevertheless display some (...) telling differences in how they explain and present the details, not least when read against the backdrop of Nicanor’s actual practice that can be derived from the relevant scholia to Homer. The purpose of the present article is to assess the new discovery especially with regard to these differences and their effects on how Nicanor’s theory is to be reconstructed. (shrink)

The theologian Hugo Rahner argued that the homo ludens is a man of ‘Ernstheiterkeit’, a person who can smile under tears but also recognizes the gravity in all earthly cheerfulness. The primary aim of this study was to test the validity of this notion: Do homines ludentes exist? Two hundred sixty-three adult subjects were measured for seriousness and cheerfulness and playfulness. Results provided unequivocal support for Rahner's thesis. Numerous subjects scored high in both seriousness and cheerfulness thus confirming the existence (...) of homines ludentes. It was further found that these subjects were among those scoring highest in playfulness. Subjects scoring high in cheerfulness but low in seriousness were, however, even more closely associated with playfulness. The scores for homines ludentes did not differ from the rest of the subjects in the creative and dynamic facets of playfulness. The importance of developing empirical research to investigate hypotheses derived from non-scientific concepts is discussed. (shrink)

Après avoir lu les Méditations métaphysiques, la jeune Elisabeth de Bohême demande à s’entretenir avec Descartes pour obtenir des réponses. Ainsi naît, entre un philosophe déjà vieux et une princesse mélancolique, une conversation épistolaire qui durera sept ans, jusqu’à la mort de Descartes en 1650. Ils discuteront aussi bien de mathématiques et de géométrie que de l’union de l’âme et du corps, des passions, du bonheur et de Dieu. Sans jamais renier sa pensée – bien plutôt en la fortifiant –, (...) Descartes diagnostiquera à la jeune femme un excès de cartésianisme : pour la soigner, il valorisera les plaisirs de la vie courante, le repos de l’esprit et le manque de sérieux. Ce volume rassemble la correspondance intégrale entre Descartes et Elisabeth, ainsi que des lettres du philosophe à divers correspondants, dont le médecin Regius, Christine, reine de Suède, et Chanut, ambassadeur de France en Suède. (shrink)

According to the standard view on the issue, the habit of marking questions with a particular typographical sign in Greek and Latin script does not arise prior to the eighth or ninth century. This period is generally credited with the ‘invention’ of the question mark (excepting Syriac evidence, which points to the fifth and sixth centuries). The purpose of the present article is to correct this view. It argues that the first indication for the use of a typographical sign that (...) marks questions can actually be detected no later than during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (a.d. 117–38), that is, more than half a millennium before the traditional date of the invention. The chief witness is Nicanor of Alexandria, who does not seem to have used question marks himself, but criticizes the misappropriation of another punctuation mark to that purpose. He thus indirectly testifies to the existence of question marks. Comparable traces can also be found later in the exegetical works of some Christian commentators. (shrink)

Education as object of inquiry is susceptible to multiple interpretations, which -most of them- run the risk of falling only in the understanding of structural factors or in internalist aspects. Reason why one feels like exploring routes that do not engage in a determinist paradox of the type: soci..

Dans les Principia philosophiae, publies pour la premiere fois en latin en 1644, Descartes expose sous une forme synthetique ce que les analyses des Meditations et du Discours avaient mis a jour, a savoir l'articulation entre les principes generaux de la connaissance humaine, les principes des sciences et ses decouvertes sur la structure du monde physique. C'est dans la Lettre-preface a son traducteur francais, l'abbe Picot, qu'apparait aussi la celebre conception de la philosophie comme une arborescence, a partir des racines (...) metaphysiques, en un tronc de la physique puis trois branches principales que constituent la medecine, la mecanique et la morale. Filant la metaphore, Descartes vise le dernier degre de la sagesse comme le fruit ultime de cette croissance organique du savoir: Or comme ce n'est pas des racines, ni du tronc des arbres, qu'on cueille les fruits, mais seulement des extremites de leurs branches, ainsi la principale utilite de la philosophie depend de celles de ses parties qu'on ne peut apprendre que les dernieres. (shrink)

Hermeneutic philosophy. Part II: a nursing research example of the hermeneutic imperative to address forestructures/pre‐understandingsHermeneutic research requires that pre‐understandings are brought to consciousness in order to provide the phenomenon under investigation with the greatest opportunity to reveal itself. This hermeneutic imperative is dealt with in the present study. My research involved explicating the practice knowledge of nursing on residential adolescent mental health units, and as I had worked on such units I held pre‐understandings that would influence the research. I addressed (...) pre‐understandings in three ways: (i) by developing understandings of practice knowledge through a hermeneutic conceptualisation of it; (ii) by working out forestructures of the phenomenon under investigation. Using Heidegger’s writing on forestructures, 20 statements were generated, interpreted and reconceptualised as my forestructures of residential adolescent mental health nursing. I used this work to review participant interviews in an effort to prevent myself from only finding what I already assumed I would find in relation to practice knowledge; and (iii) by formulating pre‐understandings of the phenomenon of interest. Using Gadamer’s writing on reflection, seven stories were written and interpreted as my pre‐understandings of adolescent mental health nursing practice. I used this work to consider the presence of pre‐understandings during textual interpretation in an attempt to prevent premature interpretive closure. In these ways, I brought my forestructures/pre‐understandings to consciousness, reflected on them, questioned their origins, adequacy and legitimacy and thereby took account of their influence on myself and the research. (shrink)