Cet article propose une analyse de la bifurcation à partir d’un corpus d’une soixantaine de récits de vie recueillis auprès de personnes en réorientation professionnelle. La reconversion professionnelle volontaire appréhendée comme une situation choisie par l’individu montre des cassures dans les trajectoires biographiques marquées par des changements d’univers professionnels, des ruptures familiales, un éclatement de la sphère relationnelle, et une perte de repères du soi. La thèse soumise ici est que le sens de l’événement n’est interprétable qu’à l’intérieur d’une biographie (...) particulière, elle-même inscrite dans un plan de sens à géométrie variable défini par des conditions objectives de contexte où les événements surviennent et déclenchent la réinterprétation du sens, imprimant une direction au devenir de la trajectoire. Le sens semble révisable à l’infini, il est contingent dans la bifurcation du regard porté par les autruis significatifs tour à tour déclencheurs ou soutiens de la reconversion professionnelle volontaire.This article examines the biographical change of direction based on a corpus of about sixty life stories of people undergoing professional reorientation. The professional retraining is regarded as a situation chosen by the individual and shows fissures in the biographical course marked by changes in the professional environments, divorce, a break in the relational sphere and a loss of oneself. The thesis supported in the present article is that the events can be interpreted only in the light of one particular biography, inscribed in the interpretation framework of the variable geometry defined by contextual objective conditions. The events occur and start the reinterpretation of the meaning in an already defined direction. The sense seems always revisable and contingent upon the evaluation of significant others, who support or even trigger off the voluntary professional retraining. (shrink)

This book is one of the most important recent books on Hegel, a philosopher who has had a crucial impact on the shape of continental philosophy. Published here in English for the first time, it includes a substantial preface by Jacques Derrida in which he explores the themes and conclusions of Malabou's book. _The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic_ restores Hegel's rich and complex concepts of time and temporality to contemporary philosophy. It examines his concept of time, relating (...) it to perennial topics in philosophy such as substance, accident and the identity of the subject. Catherine Malabou's also contrasts her account of Hegelian temporality with the interpretation given by Heidegger in _Being and Time_, arguing that it is the concept of 'plasticity' that best describes Hegel's theory of temporality. The future is understood not simply as a moment in time, but as something malleable and constantly open to change through our interpretation. The book also develops Hegel's preoccupation with the history of Greek thought and Christianity and explores the role of theology in his thought. Essential reading for those interested in Hegel and contemporary continental philosophy, _The Future of Hegel _is also fascinating to those interested in the ideas of Heidegger and Derrida. (shrink)

In the matter of the body, even comparative language—the very use of English today—is soaked through and through with the Cartesian version of the intuition of dualism: the idea that we are fundamentally a mind and a body that must be either related ingeniously, or else reduced to one another. Instead, by deliberately looking at genres that pertain to other aspects of being human, I seek to go deeper into texts that simply start elsewhere than with intuitions of dualism, even (...) while being engrossed in the category of the experiential ‘body’. (shrink)

Reversing centuries of methodological caution and skepticism, philosophers have begun to explore the possibility that experience in some form is widely distributed in the universe. It has been proposed that consciousness may pertain to machines, rocks, elementary particles, and perhaps the universe itself. This paper shows why philosophers have good reason to suppose that experiences are widely distributed in living nature, including worms and insects, but why panpsychism extending to non-living nature is an implausible doctrine.

A collection of essays covering a range of topics related to Leibniz. The monads and the pre-established harmony make numerous appearances, and so do Leibniz's discussions of causality, relations, individuation, nature, freedom, consciousness, and divinity. In addition to sections on Leibniz's physics and his theory of substance, a number of papers are included on his philosophy of mind that draw heavily on the New Essays, along with several articles on metaphysical and theological issues, and a section on Leibniz's relationships with (...) his contemporaries and predecessors. (shrink)

Catherine Zuckert examines the work of five key philosophical figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the lens of their own decidedly postmodern readings of Plato. She argues that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, and Derrida, convinced that modern rationalism had exhausted its possibilities, all turned to Plato in order to rediscover the original character of philosophy and to reconceive the Western tradition as a whole. Zuckert's artful juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate bodies of thought furnishes a synoptic view, (...) not merely of these individual thinkers, but of the broad postmodern landscape as well. The result is a brilliantly conceived work that offers an innovative perspective on the relation between the Western philosophical tradition and the evolving postmodern enterprise. (shrink)

Analyse le lien entre le discours du philosophe E. Levinas et l'idée de Dieu qui sous-tend sa pensée. Parmi les thèmes abordés : la création, la prophétie, le temps, la sainteté.

While recently reading the 1914-1919 Congressional Record debates over woman suffrage, I was struck by the familiarity of the content. The concerns of the early 1900s mirror those of the early 2000s: concentration of wealth within a tiny percentage of the population, equal pay across sex and race lines, the risk of U.S. entanglement in foreign wars, food safety, workers' rights, potable water, taxation, and so on. I also was struck by the familiarity of the debate's form. Much like the (...) rebuttal speeches I was trained to deliver as an intercollegiate debater, the pro-suffrage speeches contain systematic, comprehensive, and specific refutation of anti-suffrage arguments.Yet, it took decades of activism outside of... (shrink)

ABSTRACTHume was not a philosopher famed for what are sometimes called ‘ontological commitments'. Nevertheless, few contemporary scholars doubt that Hume was an atheist, and the present essay tenders the view that Hume was favourably disposed to the 'vital materialism' of post-Newtonian natural philosophers in England, Scotland and France. Both internalist arguments, collating passages from a range of Hume's works, and externalist arguments, reviewing the likely sources of his knowledge of ancient materialism and his association with his materialistic contemporaries are employed.

In the United States, the decision of whether to withdraw or continue to provide artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) for patients in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) is placed largely in the hands of surrogate decision-makers, such as spouses and immediate family members. This practice would seem to be consistent with a strong national emphasis on autonomy and patient-centered healthcare. When there is ambiguity as to the patient's advanced wishes, the presumption has been that decisions should weigh in favor of (...) maintaining life, and therefore, that it is the withdrawal rather than the continuation of ANH that requires particular justification. I will argue that this default position should be reversed. Instead, I will argue that the burden of justification lies with those who would continue artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH), and in the absence of knowledge as to the patient's advanced wishes, it is better to discontinue ANH. In particular, I will argue that among patients in PVS, there is not a compelling interest in being kept alive; that in general, we commit a worse violation of autonomy by continuing ANH when the patient's wishes are unknown; and that more likely than not, the maintenance of ANH as a bridge to a theoretical future time of recovery goes against the best interests of the patient. (shrink)

Teaching is not testimony. Although both convey information, they have different uptake requirements. Testimony aims to impart information and typically succeeds if the recipient believes that informationon account of having been told by a reliable informant. Teaching aims to equip learners to go beyond the information given—to leverage that information to broaden, deepen, and critique their current understanding of a topic. Teaching fails if the recipients believe the information only because it is what they have been told.

Counterpath is a collaborative work by Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida that answers to the gamble inherent in the idea of “travelling with” the philosopher of deconstruction. Malabou's readerly text of quotations and commentary demonstrates how Derrida's work, while appearing to be anything but a travelogue, is nevertheless replete with references to geographical and topographical locations, and functions as a kind of counter-Odyssey through meaning, theorizing, and thematizing notions of arrival, drifting, derivation, and catastrophe. In fact, by going straight (...) to the heart of the Derridean idea of “spacing,” she finally makes it seem as though Derrida has never written about anything but travel. Malabou's text is punctuated by a series of postcards received by Derrida from destinations such as Istanbul and Porto, Laguna Beach and Athens, which are inspired by his reading of her evolving discussion. Writing in a familiar and unguarded manner, as if he were “on vacation” from his own writing, Derrida still remains totally faithful to that work and invites the reader to reflect on much of what haunts his texts as well as his daily life, questions of distance and death, the relation to the other, and exile. (shrink)

Yet many, though not all, moral claims are susceptible of confirmation to the extent that they command the agreement of well-informed inquirers." "With this foundation in place, Wilson turns to a defence of egalitarianism intended to address the objection that the importance of our nonmoral projects, our natural acquisitiveness and partiality, and our meritocratic commitments render social equality a mere abstract ideal. Employing the basic notion of a symmetrical division of the co-operative surplus, she argues that social justice with respect (...) to global disparities in well-being and in the condition of women relative to men depends on the relinquishment of natural and acquired advantage that is central to the concept of morality."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

In this essay, I argu e that Descartes considered his theory that the body is an inn ervated machine – in which the soul is situated – to be his most original contribution to philosophy. His ambition to prove the immortality of the soul was very poorly realized, a predictable outcome, insofar as his aims were ethical, not theological. His dualism accordingly requires reassessment.

L'étude des timbres de potiers italiques trouvés à Argos par l'École Française d'Archéologie permet quelques remarques. Leur petit nombre et leur caractère généralement tardif révèlent que la situation économique difficile de cette ville à la fin de l'époque hellénistique se prolongea pendant une partie du Ier siècle après J.-C. L'histoire des sigillées occidentales se trouve enrichie par la détermination d'un approvisionnement homogène, au moins du Sud de la Grèce, et l'appréhension d'un groupe de potiers tardifs qui a entretenu des liens, (...) dont la nature exacte nous échappe encore, à peu près exclusifs avec cette région, à une époque où l'on supposait cette production « asphyxiée ». Le processus d'extinction des sigillées italiques est donc à revoir. (shrink)