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First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper briefly summarizes Durkheim’s theory of the dual nature of man suggested earlier in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It is characteristic of human beings that two opposite principles confront each other within them: soul and body, concept and sensation, moral activity and sensory appetites. Although this inherent inconsistency of man has been long recognized by philosophical thought, no doctrine explanation to it has been provided to date. While empiricist monism has proved to be unable to explain how (...) concepts emerge from sensations and disinterestedness develops from self-interest, absolute idealism, on the contrary, cannot deduce sensations from concepts. Although theories suggested by Plato and Kant do not bypass the problem of dualism, they only rephrase it and make no progress in solving it. According to Durkheim, dualism of human nature stems from the fact that all religions are founded on dividing all things into the sacred and the profane. This division, in turn, is explained by coexistence of collective and individual origins in the human being. Sacred things arise out of the collective origin that enables individual consciousnesses to fuse into communion. Collective origin does not act with constant strength, but intensifies during the periods of effervescence, when it subdues the individual origin. Since the importance of the social aspect of man increases over time, there is no reason to believe that complete consent between individual and society is possible that would endow man with internal harmony. (shrink)

The author confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history. He focuses on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, & science.

This article proceeds from a consideration of what John Baldacchino calls ‘viable ignorance’, attempting to take leave from the critical and pedagogical obligations of certain elements of Barbara Johnson's ‘positive ignorance’. It considers Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard and the composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen's reflections on modes of experience, and the cultivation of complementary dispositions, where the knowing, egocentric subject is transformed into, or undermined as, what Nietzsche calls ‘a medium of overpowering forces’. The disposition itself is outlined through close readings of (...) key elements of Nietzsche's notebooks, Lyotard's final chapter of Libidinal Economy (1993), and Stockhausen's lecture, ‘Intuitive Music’ (1971) and developed through supplemental practice-as-research activity in sound. The intention of this paper is to explore the space of aesthetic ignorance as committedly as possible, without reverting constantly to positive ignorance. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reintegrate the concept of plasticity into educational philosophy. Although John Dewey used the concept in Democracy and Education it has not generated much of a critical or practical legacy in educational thought. French philosopher, Catherine Malabou, is the first to think plasticity rigorously and seriously in a contemporary philosophical context and this paper outlines her thinking on it as well as considering its applicability to education. My argument is that her definition not only successfully reintroduces the (...) concept in a way which is generative for contemporary educational philosophy and practice but that it also significantly extends the remit of educational plasticity as previously conceived by Dewey. This paper will examine the concept of educational plasticity as providing an opportunity as well as ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’ towards the plastic subject in philosophical approaches to education. (shrink)

ldquo;Archaeology has revolutionized the study of history. It has broadened the horizons almost as much as the telescope did for the vision of astronomy in space; just as the microscope revealed to biology that under the form of large organisms is hidden the life of infinitesimal cells. Finally it has modified historic study in the same manner that radioactivity altered chemistry.”V. Gordon Childe,Progress and Archaeology,London, 1945, p. 2.Fifteen years ago, at the XII International Congress of Historic Sciences (Vienna, 1965), when (...) historians finally decided to address the problem of “acculturation” (a concept and term first formulated and defined by sociologists), their reaction, with few exceptions, proved to be rather hesitant. (shrink)

S'il est vrai qu'aucune passion, aucun souci ne résistent à la sérénité qu'apporte à l'esprit la discipline mathématique, c'est faire une cure de sérénité que lire le nouvel ouvrage d'Émile Borel, qui s'est proposé de raconter, dans ses traits essentiels, l'histoire des relations entre les mathématiciens et la notion d'infini. La première partie du livre relate les circonstances où s'est produite la rencontre des mathématiciens et de l'infini, en Grèce, quelques siècles avant l'ère chrétienne (Zénon, cruel Zénon!). La deuxième (...) partie expose la conquête et l'organisation de l'infini par les mathématiciens modernes, du XVIe au XIXe siècle. La troisième partie, enfin, étudie les plus importantes des difficultés et les divergences de vues qui se sont présentées dans les temps actuels lorsqu'on a cherché à préciser et à approfondir les résultats acquis sur l'infini mathématique. (shrink)

Résumé – Dans l'œuvre de Ferdinand Gonseth, on voit culminer le désir de rapprocher, dans leurs objectifs et dans leurs méthodes, le philosophe et le savant.Cette idée méme a guidé, compte tenu des exigences historiques, les développements qui précèdent.Après un parcours rapide, évoquant les vingt premières années de Dialectics, le rôle scientifique joué dans cet imposant répertoire par son fondateur, rôle fortement accru par ses livres, on trouvera done une enquête sur des thèmes favoris dont l'intérêt s'est confirmé, et dont (...) les objets ont une haute valeur, pour qui voudrait analyser les courants de pensée capables d'enrichir la philosophie scientifique et d'affecter utilement le proche avenir de Dialectica. (shrink)