Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America. _Entre Nous_ (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his (...) death, it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness. Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death. Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. _Entre Nous_ is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives. (shrink)

The philosophy of Hitler is simplistic [primaire]. But the primitive powers that burn within it burst open its wretched phraseology under the pressure of an elementary force. They awaken the secret nostalgia within the German soul. Hitlerism is more than a contagion or a madness; it is an awakening of elementary feelings.But from this point on, this frighteningly dangerous phenomenon becomes philosophically interesting. For these elementary feelings harbor a philosophy. They express a soul's principal attitude towards the whole of reality (...) and its own destiny. They predetermine or prefigure the meaning of the adventure that the soul will face in the world.The philosophy of Hitlerism therefore goes beyond the philosophy of Hitlerians. It questions the very principles of a civilization. The conflict is played out not only between liberalism and Hitlerism. Christianity itself is threatened in spite of the careful attentions or Concordats that the Christian churches took advantage of when Hitler's regime came to power.But it is not enough to follow certain journalists in distinguishing between Christian universalism and racist particularism: a logical contradiction cannot judge a concrete event. The meaning of a logical contradiction that opposes two forms of ideas only shows up fully if we go back to their source, to intuition, to the original decision that makes them possible. It is in this spirit that we are going to set forth the following reflections. Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure Israelite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, and The Levinas Reader. His essay "As If Consenting to Horror" appeared in the Winter 1989 issue of Critical Inquiry. Sean Hand is lecturer in French at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the editor of The Levinas Reader and the translator of Levinas's Difficult Freedom . He is currently completing a book on Michel Leiris. (shrink)

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social (...) phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory. (shrink)

La 4ème de couv. indique : "Avec "Hors sujet", Emmanuel Levinas revient et approfondit sa réflexion sur le noyau dur de sa philosophie : la relation avec l’Autre. Méditation superbe qui entraîne vers l’analyse des "Droits de l’homme et droits d’autrui", une approche singulière du "Langage quotidien" et de la "rhétorique sans éloquence", ou encore de "La Transcendance des mots". En chemin, le philosophe retrouve la trace de ceux auprès desquels il a fortifié sa propre pensée – Merleau-Ponty, Jankélévitch, (...) Leiris, mais aussi Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig ou Jean Wahl. Une magistrale leçon de philosophie.". (shrink)

L’argument de base de cet article est que le débat consensuel n’a pas été une notion très significative jusqu’à présent parce que le consensus n’a pas été étudié de manière approfondie en tant que concept et que la délibération n’a pas été étudiée précisément en termes de sa propension à parvenir à un accord commun. En particulier, la délibération et les problèmes qui en découlent n’ont pas été classées en plusieurs niveaux afin d’exposer les différents défis qui se posent lorsque (...) l’on tente de parvenir à un accord et les types d’approches délibératives impliquées dans chaque catégorie. La présente recherche propose une telle catégorisation dans le but de clarifier davantage le débat. (shrink)

Given that Enlightenment rationality developed in Europe as European nations aggressively claimed other parts of the world for their own enrichment, scholars have made rationality the subject of postcolonial critique, questioning its universality and objectivity. In _On Reason_, the late philosopher Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze demonstrates that rationality, and by extension philosophy, need not be renounced as manifestations or tools of Western imperialism. Examining reason in connection to the politics of difference—the cluster of issues known variously as cultural diversity, political (...) correctness, the culture wars, and identity politics—Eze expounds a rigorous argument that reason is produced through and because of difference. In so doing, he preserves reason as a human property while at the same time showing that it cannot be thought outside the realities of cultural diversity. Advocating rationality in a multicultural world, he proposes new ways of affirming both identity and difference. Eze draws on an extraordinary command of Western philosophical thought and a deep knowledge of African philosophy and cultural traditions. He explores models of rationality in the thought of philosophers from Aristotle, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes to Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jacques Derrida, and he considers portrayals of reason in the work of the African thinkers and novelists Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka. Eze reflects on contemporary thought about genetics, race, and postcolonial historiography as well as on the interplay between reason and unreason in the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He contends that while rationality may have a foundational formality, any understanding of its foundation and form is dynamic, always based in historical and cultural circumstances. (shrink)

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings, who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be (...) available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both. (shrink)

Derrière un seul et même mot – l’« esthétisation » – se cachent des constats que tout ou presque sépare. Peu étonnant que les différents débats autour de cette notion, en France, en Allemagne ou aux États-Unis, aient souvent engendré des incompréhensions mutuelles. Avant même de savoir si l’esthétisation du monde est un phénomène désirable ou condamnable, il faut éclairer les arrière-plans conceptuels qui orientent ce diagnostic, et qui lui confèrent un sens parfois diamétralement opposé. En ouverture du dossier, l’article (...) entreprend de faire la généalogie de ces débats, avec trois moments-clés – le moment 1800, l’entre-deux-guerres (1919-1939), et enfin les années post -68 (1970-1990). Il propose ensuite une typologie pour s’orienter dans ces débats et comparer les quatre versions de ce qu’« esthétisation » peut vouloir dire. (shrink)

This paper examines critically the reconstruction of the ‘Sherlock Holmes sense of deduction’ proposed jointly by M.B. Hintikka and J. Hintikka in the 1980s, and its successor, the interrogative model of inquiry developed by J. Hintikka and his collaborators in the 1990s. The Hintikkas’ model explicitly used game theory in order to formalize a naturalistic approach to inquiry, but the imi abandoned both the game-theoretic formalism, and the naturalistic approach. It is argued that the latter better supports the claim that (...) the imi provides a ‘logic of discovery’, and safeguards its empirical adequacy. Technical changes necessary to this interpretation are presented, and examples are discussed, both formal and informal, that are better analyzed when these changes are in place. The informal examples are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s The Case of Silver Blaze, a favorite of M.B. and J. Hintikka. (shrink)

** This piece was originally titled "Beyond Borders: Exploring Ubuntu as a Lived Philosophy" but was later retitled "African thought can rescue Western philosophy" by the publisher. ** -/- Western philosophy is often abstract and disconnected from the real ethical problems we face today. Emmanuel Chiwetalu Ossai and Lloyd Strickland argue that the African philosophy of ubuntu, with its emphasis on community, interconnectedness, and practical application of ethical principles, offers a compelling alternative.

This is the first English-language translation of an important book that contributes to contemporary debates about social suffering in sociology, social psychology, political theory and philosophy. Renault provides a systematic account of the ways in which social suffering could be conceptualised.

This paper sketches a comprehensive methodology to analyse the elementary structures of prehistoric art. A formal analysis of art is proposed through the distinction between pictograms, ideograms and psychograms. The dynamic between these elements and the thematic contents of the represented scenes is related to the four main types of social organization: early hunters, early gatherers, late hunters, pastoralists and complex economy societies. Cultural patterns of these societies and formal elements of art may appear as sharing the same elementary structures.

Tout parcours est "semé d'embûches" - chacun le sait, ou à tout le moins le sent. Ce livre en est à nouveau la preuve. Non pas qu'on nous tende des pièges, mais en cela que les courses de 'sauts d'obstacles' sont toujours les plus prestigieuses, mais aussi les plus périlleuses. En réponse à Une analytique du passage (Claude-Brunier Coulin, éd.), ce volume de la plume de l'auteur reprend ainsi point par point les 'interrogations et objections' soulevées lors du colloque de (...) Chevilly-Larue (5-7 Juillet 2014), tout en proposant un véritable 'itinéraire' retraçant sa propre trajectoire. La source franciscaine, l'humanité commune, le sens de la catholicité, la racine ignacienne, l'héritage péguyste, le rapport à la finitude, le problème du surnaturel, le statut de l'apologétique, la relation au corps, le sens de la voix, la traversée du chaos, la question de la limite, le statut de l'Ecriture, le sens du style..., sont autant de thèmes et de questions abordées dans le présent essai. Faisant de la lutte de Jacob avec l'ange la figure de proue de cette grande traversée - "Je ne te lâcherai pas que tu m'aies béni" (Gn 32, 27) -, cet ouvrage accomplit le 'cycle méthodologique' initié par Passer le Rubicon (Lessius, 2013), relayé par Le combat amoureux (Hermann, 2014), et achevé par le Parcours d'embûches (Editions franciscaines, 2016). (shrink)

This paper was originally presented at a colloquium on Michel Henry’s book Incarnation at the Institut Catholique Paris. Michel Henry’s response to the present study can be found in “À Emmanuel Falque,” in Ph énoménologie et christianisme chez Michel Henry, ed. Ph. Capelle : 168-182. This response was reprinted recently in Michel Henry, La Ph énoménologie de la vie, vol. 5.

While deconstructionism, one of the cardinal features of postmodern philosophy, was not popular until the preceding century in Western intellectual circles, the traditional Yorùbá are not new to the practice. This claim is especially striking once an inquiry into the procedural and epistemic underpinning of Ifá divination is attempted. If this holds, it is not unwise to query: Who are the Yorùbá? What kind of practice in Ifá divination is redolent of deconstructionism? Does deconstructionism among the traditional Yorùbá validate not (...) only the persistence but also the practice of postmodern philosophy among these people? Through the method of analysis and interpretation, this study posits that the Ifá divination process reeks of deconstructionism even before the term and idea became ubiquitous in concurrent academic circles. In addition, this study highlights that deconstruction in Ifá divination is not only for the attainment of new meaning, but also serves as groundwork for the guidance, counsel and resolution of challenges both at personal and social levels. (shrink)

La pensée d'Emmanuel Lévinas a d'emblée été connue des philosophes et des universitaires, dès son premier ouvrage, La théorie de l'intuition chez Husserl, en 1930. Avec " Totalité et Infini " (en l963), il fut reconnu comme un innovateur puissant et originel pour son développement de la phénoménologie. Pourtant, plus récemment, l'immense intérêt du public pour Lévinas s'est déplacé, plutôt, vers les conséquences ou les marges de son projet initial. Ce déplacement a sa légitimité, prouvant au moins la pertinence (...) politique et religieuse de la parole la plus conceptuelle. Mais il nous a semblé aussi légitime, voire urgent, de restituer l'enjeu original de l'initiative de Lévinas : poursuivre la phénoménologie de Husserl, non pas en la déployant vers la question de l'être (comme le fit Heidegger), mais en lui assignant l'éthique comme philosophie enfin première. Bref, Lévinas fut d'abord un phénoménologue et apparaît aujourd'hui de plus en plus comme tel. Cinq textes inédits ou difficiles d'accès de Lévinas et treize études de phénoménologues ou d'historiens de la philosophie moderne permettent, ici, d'évaluer quel apport intime unit Lévinas au nouveau commencement que Husserl entreprit de donner à la philosophie. J.- L. M. (shrink)

La universidad ha sido siempre objeto de la crítica social. El propósito de este artículo es ofrecer un breve repaso histórico a las distintos discursos críticos con la institución universitaria en su relación con las funciones sociales de la educación superior y su capacidad para animar el movimiento estudiantil.

The motion of geographic poles, predicted by Euler, was discovered at the end of the 1880s, mainly by German and American astronomers. However, French astronomers were strongly reluctant to accept the reality of this phenomenon. Indeed, all observations at the Observatoire de Paris converged toward non-detection of the polar motion. Science, as most fields of public life, was extremely centralized in France, and the Observatoire de Paris was still living on past glory gained in the field of classical astronomy. However, (...) the directors who succeeded Urbain Le Verrier were doubtful about the accuracy of the observation in such an urban observatory, and were pushing for the construction of an observatory outside the city. At the same time, just after the French defeat of 1871, a wide decentralization of the universities started, and a few big regional cities were selected to host new observatories. In this paper we show how it is in one of these new observatories, in Lyon, that the polar motion was first observed in France, and how this was immediately recognized internationally. Although the weight of French Jacobinism kept the new observatories at an embryonic stage for many decades, this contribution to an internationally discussed problem shows how enthusiastically and efficiently work was carried out in the early years of French provincial observatories.Keywords: Polar motion; Observatoire de Lyon; François Gonnessiat; French decentralization. (shrink)

L'ethique à Nicomaque s'ouvre par une introduction qui fait problème. Et peut-être le fait-elle davantage de ce que nous sommes habitués d'entendre que pour correspondre à la distinction entre individu, société domestique et société civile, la philosophie morale doit se diviser en trois sciences distinctes qui, à transposer simplement les dénominations anciennes, sont: la Monastique, l'Economique et la Politique. Cette division des sciences morales aurait pour fondement de droit que si l'homme est animal sociable, toute société à laquelle il appartient (...) ne comporte pas plus qu'une unité d'ordre, c'est-à-dire que toutes les opérations que l'homme pose ne sont pas nécessairement des opérations de ces sociétés mêmes, des opérations de l'homme en tant qu'il est formellement partie de ces sociétés. On est ainsi conduit à présumer qu'il ne saurait y avoir de confusion possible entre ces trois sciences: chacune a son nom propre pour se tailler dans l'agir humain un domaine tout à fait spécifique. (shrink)

Les Fermenta cognitionis, mais surtout les Leçons de 1833, permettent de mesurer l’ampleur et la variété thématiques de la lecture de Boehme opérée par F. von Baader. En plein accomplissement de l’idéalisme allemand, Baader trouve chez le « cordonnier de Görlitz » les munitions spéculatives nécessaires pour lui opposer un « réalisme transcendantal » puissant et pleinement chrétien. C’est dans la compréhension, ardue mais salutaire, du juste rapport de la manifestation de l’être à sa médiation intérieure, que Baader pense découvrir (...) l’apport le plus excellent de Boehme à une philosophie théologique. (shrink)

This article offers a critical analysis of the text which initiated this review and of the notion of “stagification” then suggested by its author in 1975. The dated and orientated nature of this first document allows a reinterpretation of current developments in adult training. This article examines the theoretical implications that the idea of “stagification“ could entail nowadays. This rereading opens up to the possibility of an original interpretation of the “work placement” proliferation phenomenon in initial training, especially in higher (...) education. (shrink)