This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Colloque ‘Histoire des Mentalités, Histoire des résistances, ou les Prisons de longue durée’, Aix-La Baume, 20–21–22 septembre 1980.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.1 (2005) 77-92 [Access article in PDF] Art and the Teaching of Love Didier Maleuvre Art is rightly thought to be the domain of expression and illusion. It is expression because every work of art, however stone-faced or impersonal in aspect, is the product of human intention. And it is illusion because, however concrete, vivid, or raw, it holds up only images. These (...) two points — that art is expression and fiction — are deeply entrenched in the modern understanding of art. They are the twin pillars of our aesthetics.In the following I wish to argue that this focus on the expressive and the representative eclipse the most important dynamic of art — what I propose to call the communicative and the iconoclastic. By the former, I mean that art is primarily, not a subjectivity giving shape to a private vision, but a form of sanctifying the human conversation, that is, the encounter between subjectivities; by the latter, I mean to suggest that art is an image that paradoxically strives to go beyond the realm of images. On this account we will see that an image is artistic to the extent that it breaks through representation.Briefly put, art has a destination beyond itself. One should not imagine, as postmodernism ruled ex officio, that the essence of art is formal or social self-reflectivity. Certainly, self-mirroring occurs in art, but no more or less than in any act of intelligence. Moreover, it is not enough to affix tokens of self-consciousness onto an object to turn it into art. The aim of art is not art. Its destination is elsewhere; its aim is reality encountered and lived with.And the vehicle by which art travels into reality is not just skill, insight, knowledge, or intelligence. It is love. To defend these two propositions will be the gist of the following essay.The aim of education is rightly thought to be knowledge of the world. Knowledge, however, is of two kinds: one is concerned with storage of facts, the other with modes of relating to the world. The first is a technical pursuit; the second, moral practice. The sort of education fostered by art clearly belongs with the second sort. Art is less concerned with delivering [End Page 77] information about the world than teaching us about how to stand in relation to it, how to find our place in it, and live with it: through art we do not seek to master the world so much as become its denizens. It is a teaching of love. Art, Mind, and Reality Now, the idea that art is religious embrace of reality runs against a powerful philosophic doctrine: the idea, known as subjectivism — that the human mind is kept from reality by its own knowledge of reality. We perceive reality only through mental representations. I see a tree, I hear laughter, I taste tea. When my mind alights on these objects, they have already been retouched and recomposed by my senses. By the time I am aware of them, I have reordered the perceptual datum into the concepts of "tree," "laugher," "tea." So we really deal with conceptual images of things, even when those things fall on our head like rain, or trip us like an untied shoelace.Subjectivism takes art to be proof of its doctrine. No two artists have transposed the same landscape or object in exactly the same hues and forms. Monet may have wanted to put in his paintings only what the retina mirrored; still, in the end he painted like no other before him and an indisputable infusion of the Monet personality stamps his paintings. Likewise there is a Titian "take" on reality that is not Rubens's, a Constable way of painting gray watery skies that is not Corot's, or again a Twombly way of rendering the four seasons that is nothing like Vivaldi's. This, then, should be where art's commitment to reality expires — on the evidence that no two artworks have ever been able to... (shrink)

When he died in 1984, Michel Foucault was widely regarded as one of the most powerful minds of this century. Hailed by historians and lionized in America, he continues to provoke lively debate. This meticulously documented narrative debunks the many myths and rumors surrounding the brilliant philosopher to consider that all Foucault's books are "fragments of an autobiography".

We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions that presided over the modern invention of nature still claim any cogency? In _Nature as Event_, Didier Debaise shows how new narratives and cosmologies are necessary to rearticulate that which until now had been separated. Following (...) William James and Alfred North Whitehead, Debaise presents a pluralistic approach to nature. What would happen if we attributed subjectivity and potential to all beings, human and nonhuman? Why should we not consider aesthetics and affect as the fabric that binds all existence? And what if the senses of importance and value were no longer understood to be exclusively limited to the human? (shrink)

L'examen de la politique audiovisuelle extérieure de la France en matière de télévision, de 1984 à aujourd'hui, permet de constater que celle-ci a été relativement stable, notamment à travers le développement de la chaîne TV5. Après avoir souligné que la création de cette chaîne s'inscrit dans une vision très culturelle de la diffusion audiovisuelle, nous montrons qu'elle entretient des rapports ambigus avec la question francophone en matière de public, de programmes et de langue. Le cas de l'information, ensuite envisagé, est (...) d'autant plus intéressant que le gouvernement développe à l'heure actuelle un projet qui relève plus d'une stratégie politique que de la logique culturelle et francophone qui sous-tendait TV5.It can be noted that, since 1984, French audiovisual foreign policy has remained quite steady particularly regarding the development of the TV5 channel. We consider this channel particularly representative of a largely cultural vision of audiovisual broadcasting. We also show that TV5 has an ambiguous attitude to the francophone issue in terms of audience, TV schedules and the language itself. It also seems that in the field of news broadcasting, the French government is more interested in political strategy than in the cultural and francophone guiding principles that used to be TV5's mission. (shrink)

From the resurrection of body to eternal recurrence -- The shadow of God -- The guiding thread -- The logic of the body -- The system of identical cases -- From eternal recurrence to the resurrection of body.

The aim of this work is to revisit the proposal made by Dag Westerståhl a decade ago when he provided a modern reading of the traditional square of opposition and of related structures. We propose a formalization of this modern view and contrast it with the classical one. We discuss what may be a modern hexagon of opposition and a modern cube, and show their interest in particular for relating quantitative expressions.

A radically new philosophy of experience and speculation, based on a reading of Whitehead's Process and Reality. Can experience be thought systematically without transforming the richness of the world as it is lived into reductive philosophical generalities? Can the method of empiricism ever be reconciled with a method of systematic cosmological speculation? Didier Debaise's reading of Whitehead shows clearly what a philosophy that makes this possible looks like, how it works and what is at stake. He focuses in on (...) Whitehead's attempt to construct a metaphysical system of everything in the universe that exists whilst simultaneously claiming that it can account for every element of our experience: everything enjoyed and perceived, willed or thought. (shrink)

A phenomenological approach to questions of the body, ego, temporality and intersubjective relations with the 'other' by a leading French thinker and Husserl scholar.

A critical view of the alleged significance of Belnap four-valued logic for reasoning under inconsistent and incomplete information is provided. The difficulty lies in the confusion between truth-values and information states, when reasoning about Boolean propositions. So our critique is along the lines of previous debates on the relevance of many-valued logics and especially of the extension of the Boolean truth-tables to more than two values as a tool for reasoning about uncertainty. The critique also questions the significance of partial (...) logic. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the issue of the processes potentially underlying the emergence of emotional consciousness in the light of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. First, we argue that componential emotion models, and specifically the Component Process Model , may be better able to account for the emergence of feelings than basic emotion or dimensional models. Second, we advance the hypothesis that consciousness of emotional reactions emerges when lower levels of processing are not sufficient to cope with the event (...) and regulate the emotional process, particularly when the degree of synchronization between the components reaches a critical level and duration. Third, we review recent neuroscience evidence that bolsters our claim of the central importance of the synchronization of neuronal assemblies at different levels of processing. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction West African Conceptions of Person East and Southern African Conceptions of Person Concluding Remarks.

Facing the flood of contradictory interpretations of Nietzsche’s writings, is it still possible to assert anything positive about the political and intellectual stance of the author of « Zarathoustra »? In his massive study, Domenico Losurdo, Professor of Philosophy at the university of Urbino, argues that Nietzsche’s thoughts, even the most provocative, such as his defence of slavery or eugenics, should not be read as simple metaphors or innocent speculations aiming at the moral improvement of man, but constitute a specific, (...) agressively aristocratic, response to what, according to Nietzsche, is the main threat of his time : the rise of revolutionary ideals, and global democratisation of society. (shrink)

In political philosophy one often encounters claims on behalf of pluralism, yet there is anything but a consensus over the meaning of this fundamental concept. It is true that there is no single pluralist tradition; rather, there are different pluralist traditions within different domains of practical reason. No one would object, however, to the notion that Isaiah Berlin’s “value pluralism” is a genuine form of meta-ethical pluralism. Charles Taylor is another philosopher who is often called a pluralist, but I shall (...) argue that this is a mistake. One of the central goals of his philosophy is that of reconciling competing aims and ends and this is incompatible with pluralism. (shrink)

The commentary raises political questions about the ways in which data has been constituted as an object vested with certain powers, influence, and rationalities. We place the emergence and transformation of professional practices such as ‘data science’, ‘data journalism’, ‘data brokerage’, ‘data mining’, ‘data storage’, and ‘data analysis’ as part of the reconfiguration of a series of fields of power and knowledge in the public and private accumulation of data. Data politics asks questions about the ways in which data has (...) become such an object of power and explores how to critically intervene in its deployment as an object of knowledge. It is concerned with the conditions of possibility of data that involve things, language, and people that together create new worlds. We define ‘data politics’ as both the articulation of political questions about these worlds and the ways in which they provoke subjects to govern themselves and others by making rights claims. We contend that without understanding these conditions of possibility – of worlds, subjects and rights – it would be difficult to intervene in or shape data politics if by that it is meant the transformation of data subjects into data citizens. (shrink)

Didier Zúñiga | : Le présent article examine la façon dont Charles Taylor a entrepris de poser le problème politique de la sécularisation. Plus spécifiquement, nous voudrions montrer que, si son effort pour articuler une théorie de l’aménagement de la diversité morale et religieuse a certes contribué à critiquer les régimes rigides de la laïcité, Taylor accorde une prééminence incontestable à la liberté de conscience. Or, notre analyse entend démontrer que, selon cette vue, il n’y a pas de place (...) pour l’autonomie religieuse. Notre hypothèse est qu’en présentant les conflits moraux et religieux comme des enjeux de justice, Taylor néglige l’important clivage existant entre, d’une part, les questions de reconnaissance reliées à la différence culturelle et, d’autre part, les revendications d’autorité exprimées par des groupes — et pas simplement des membres individuels — au sein de la sphère publique. | : This paper aims to challenge the assumption that Charles Taylor’s conception of political secularism is pluralist. The article argues that, although Taylor’s work provides the basis for an important critique of the most rigid forms of secularism, his theory places a strong focus on individual conscience. Yet Taylor’s almost exclusive concern for individual conscience excludes the pluralist claim to religious institutional autonomy. In addition, this article argues that Taylor presents moral and religious conflicts as questions of justice, which can be resolved with a correct interpretation of freedom of conscience. Against Taylor’s conception of “laïcité,” the article attempts to show that these problems are best grasped as conflicts between the authority of different groups—not just individuals—and that of the state. (shrink)

Meteorology is not one of the most discussed topics in Paracelsus studies, although it is closely linked to both Paracelsus’ medicine and cosmology. Furthermore, it appears to be at the very core of Paracelsus’ famous matter theory of three chymical principles, mercury, sulphur and salt, known as the tria prima. By discussing prominent examples of Paracelsus’ explanations on how the tria prima operate within the stars, this article shows how the Swiss physician conceived meteorology within his own body of knowledge, (...) obviously constructed in opposition to the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition, how he based it on a peculiar interpretation of the Biblical creation story, and made it the proper laboratory of his chymical matter theory, applying it first systematically to the field of natural philosophy, especially to celestial phenomena, even before using it for his medical theory in his later writings. (shrink)

The paper first introduces a cube of opposition that associates the traditional square of opposition with the dual square obtained by Piaget’s reciprocation. It is then pointed out that Blanché’s extension of the square-of-opposition structure into an conceptual hexagonal structure always relies on an abstract tripartition. Considering quadripartitions leads to organize the 16 binary connectives into a regular tetrahedron. Lastly, the cube of opposition, once interpreted in modal terms, is shown to account for a recent generalization of formal concept analysis, (...) where noticeable hexagons are also laid bare. This generalization of formal concept analysis is motivated by a parallel with bipolar possibility theory. The latter, albeit graded, is indeed based on four graded set functions that can be organized in a similar structure. (shrink)

The processing of emotional nonlinguistic information in speech is defined as emotional prosody. This auditory nonlinguistic information is essential in the decoding of social interactions and in our capacity to adapt and react adequately by taking into account contextual information. An integrated model is proposed at the functional and brain levels, encompassing 5 main systems that involve cortical and subcortical neural networks relevant for the processing of emotional prosody in its major dimensions, including perception and sound organization; related action tendencies; (...) and associated values that integrate complex social contexts and ambiguous situations. (shrink)

Agency and representation are viewed as preconditions for democratic action. The dominant understanding of agency and representation is defined in terms of certain capacities and abilities that are considered to constitute the basis of personhood. The article will put into question this understanding and the assumptions that underpin it and argue that it rests on a mistaken conception of human animality – one that reduces the self to an autonomous and disembodied rational mind. The article will also suggest that it (...) is problematic because it marginalizes more than human forms of life – as well as those of us who are differently human – and excludes their points of view from the political processes of world making. In contrast, I will put forward an understanding of agency and representation that is attuned to the relational dimensions of all life on earth. By paying attention to the semiotic propensities that all forms of life share – which entails considering nonlinguistic forms of communication – this article responds to the need for more radically democratic ways of listening, giving voice, and caring for the earth’s beings and the relations that form the conditions for life to flourish. (shrink)

Pluralism and diversity are largely bound to a humancentric conception of difference, one which fails to consider the plurality of ontologies that constitute reality. The result has been the confinement of the subject of justice to social spaces, and hence the reinforcement of the dichotomous understanding of humanity and nature. This is in part because pluralist theories are largely concerned with one single manifestation of vulnerability: the vulnerability of minority groups. This essay begins by offering a distinctive definition of vulnerability, (...) one that is broad enough to incorporate both universal and dispositional accounts, while being narrow enough to rule out both vitalist and biocentric approaches. I use the notion to examine debates on political pluralism, and I argue that, as they currently stand, pluralist approaches are ill suited for understanding the struggles of Indigenous peoples against colonialism. I defend the view that the normative case for pluralism needs to be grounded in an ecologically aware ethics that can respond to the vulnerability of animate beings who sustain life. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’une recherche que je mène depuis une vingtaine d’années sur les rapports entre cinéma et pensée. En m’appuyant en particulier sur les réflexions de Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Edgar Morin, j’ai ainsi pu créer les concepts de « complexité esthétique », « noosphère filmique », « cinématographie des flux ». Suite à l’évocation de créateurs-penseurs du cinéma muet d’avant-garde, sont ici abordés des films d’Amos Gitaï, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais et Andreï Tarkovski. (...) L’intitulé, « Les métaphores filmiques du cerveau » indique que l’approche de la relation cinéma-cerveau est d’ordre philosophique, mais également d’ordre poétique. Si le cinéma est à même de donner forme à la pensée, il invente aussi des circuits cérébraux — sonores et visuels — qui lui permettent de devenir forme « pensante ». This paper is a continuation of my research over the past twenty years on the relationship between cinema and thought. By relying in particular on the reflections of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Edgar Morin, I was able to create the concepts of “aesthetic complexity”, “filmic noosphere” and “cinematography of flows”. Following the evocation of creative thinkers coming from avant-garde movies of the silent era, here I discuss films from Amos Gitaï, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Andreï Tarkovsky. My title, “The brain’s cinematic metaphors”, indicates that my approach to cinema-brain relationship is philosophical, but also of a poetic nature. If cinema is able to shape thought, it also invents metaphorical brain paths—audio and visual—that allow it to become a “thinking” form. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage entend montrer que si Durkheim a eu pour projet d'achever l'émancipation de la sociologie vis-à-vis de la tradition philosophique, les préoccupations proprement philosophiques et tout particulièrement morales et pédagogiques ne l'ont cependant pas quitté. C'est sans doute dans des présupposés d'ordre philosophique que s'enracine l'ambition sociologique elle-même. La (re)naissance du projet sociologique exprime la dette de Durkheim à l'égard de Saint-Simon et de Comte, avec lesquels, malgré les divergences, Durkheim n'a jamais rompu ses attaches."--Page 4 of cover.

Si aujourd'hui le pape François renonce à l'expression d'acte intrinsèquement mauvais, nombre de représentants officiels de l'Église catholique continuent à l'utiliser alors même que la crise des abus sexuels et de pouvoir en a montré les limites et les dérives possibles. Il fallait donc revenir sur l'ancrage historique de la formule (et de ses variantes associées) afin de la déconstruire et d'adapter sa formulation en la reliant à l'exercice de la raison pratique qui préside à tout agir. Tel est précisément (...) l'objet de cet ouvrage qui désire participer à l'effort du renouvellement du langage éthique. Mais cela devient l'occasion de revisiter tous les grands thèmes de la théologie morale constamment invoqués : liberté, nature et loi naturelle, Écriture, tradition, sciences et théologie, critères de moralité, épikie, loi de gradualité, proportionnalité, principe du double effet. Aujourd'hui, l'acte humain ne peut plus être abordé comme isolé de son contexte historique, de ses conditions subjectives, de la pensée complexe... Pour dissiper les ambigüités, la notion d'acte injustifiable à laquelle arrive l'auteur de cet ouvrage au terme de son raisonnement est proposée pour articuler au mieux l'altérité, la temporalité, la pluralité et la complexité systémique dans le discernement éthique. Avec une préface de Marie-JoTHIEL, Professeure à l'université de Strasbourg, Directrice du Centre européen d'enseignement et de recherche en éthique et Membre de l'Académie pontificale pour la vie, ainsi qu'une postface de Dominique JACQUEMIN, Professeur à l'UCLouvain. (shrink)

En 1975, Michelle Perrot s’interrogeait : « Refuser à la femme sa nature criminelle, n’est-ce pas encore une façon de la nier? ». Cette citation, rappelée en introduction (p. 5) puis en conclusion (p. 323), illustre bien la voie adoptée par Adrien Dubois. Le propos de cet ouvrage, en effet, est moins la violence faite aux femmes que celle qu’elles exercent. Il s’inscrit donc dans un champ historiographique très neuf. Des publications récentes ont montré combien les premières études féministe...

Theories of disagreement object to attempts to found normative primary principles of democracy, on the model of the famous Rawlsian principles of justice, that they misconceive the depth of moral disagreement. Along that line of reasoning, democracy is precisely the adequate procedure to decide on dispute, so that it cannot be constrained by a set of rights once and for all stated. However, a full-fledged procedural conception of democracy is impossible: the choice of democracy, rather than that of another procedure, (...) entails a minimal core of moral values. This study aims at specifying their nature. It is argued that individuals who commit themselves to democracy while disagreeing about justice share a minimal practical rationality, the concept of which, in spite of appearances, can be found in Rawlsian public reason. Indeed, public reason can be understood as a procedure carrying out the principle of equitable reciprocity, rather than a determined conception of justice. Since it constitutes a procedural concept of practical rationality, it makes it possible to outline a theory of democracy that takes into account disagreement about justice — and not only about the good. (shrink)

In the “history of the Aztecs” scholarship, recent debates reveal how work seemingly aligned with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist objectives can nevertheless reproduce the view that western science and technology are the primary means of improving human life. This corresponds to a type of performa- tive postcolonial analysis that remains caught up in the power dynamics it seeks to dismantle. The essay’s goal is to show that in order to understand, compare, and contrast the technological differences between Mesoamericans and early modern (...) Spaniards, it is necessary to attend to the different ontological configura- tions that undergird their respective sociocultural renderings of “nature.”. (shrink)