The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical and is related to the general topic of this volume (Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism): I would like to draw attention to the fact that the issue of classical scientific determinism, despite being ‘metaphysical’ and thereby ‘nonsensical’ according to the Vienna Circle's ‘scientific world conception’, bothered philosophers, like William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. At the end of the paper I shall raise the (...) question of why it was so and what this fact may suggest about the relationship between science and metaphysics. The second main aim of this paper is historico-philosophical: in the time span between the late 1870s and by the turn of 1900 James (1842–1910) and Peirce (1839–1914) contributed repeatedly to the ongoing discussions about scientific determinism. In this paper I give a general overview of their positions based mainly on primary sources and I embed them into the broader context of the history of the concept of scientific determinism, dedicating special attention to their relationship with a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Poincaré, Boutroux and Bergson). (shrink)

Are African and African-American Studies, as defined and practiced in the USA, tools of US cultural imperialism? Are discussions of race, racial inequality or racial oppression in other societies, when carried out by North Americans, to be viewed as `brutal ethnocentric intrusions'? These are among the central propositions of a vigorous polemic by two French sociologists, Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, in a 1999 article entitled `On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason'. As proof, Bourdieu and Wacquant call attention to (...) the recent transnational scholarly dialogue regarding race in Brazil and denounce the `imposition' of an `American tradition', `model' and `dichotomy' of race on Brazil. In particular, they attack as `ethnocentric poison' a 1994 monograph by Michael Hanchard on Brazilian `Black Consciousness' movements, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988. This article dissects Bourdieu and Wacquant's mischaracterization of the current US-Brazilian dialogue on the African diaspora in the New World. It identifies their fundamental missteps and misjudgments, offers a critique of the schematic model of transnational intellectual circulation they offer in the article, and demonstrates their radical misrepresentation of Michael Hanchard's treatment of questions of race, color and nation in Brazil. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the relation between problems and the formation and development of concepts in Bergson’s work, as well as in Bachelard, Canguilhem and Deleuze. Building on work by Elie During, I argue that it is not only Bergson but also Deleuze who shares with the French epistemological tradition an “anti-positivist” conception of concept formation, founded upon the posing and solving of novel problems as opposed to the acquisition and verification of empirical facts. Contrary to During, (...) however, I argue that it is not Bergson but Deleuze who furnishes us with an “anti-positivist” conception of problems that is adequate to this anti-positivist conception of concept formation. Deleuze’s anti-positivist view of problems holds, firstly, that genuine problems require the creation of novel terms in which to state and solve them. He shares this view with Bergson, Bachelard and Canguilhem. Secondly, however, Deleuze holds that a problem’s “truth” is not to be evaluated with reference to its eventual solutions, nor with reference to some privileged and contentful experience of reality, but is rather a matter of its purely intrinsic productivity. (shrink)

This essay attempts to describe the neo-Lamarckian atmosphere that was dominant in French biology for more than a century. Firstly, we demonstrate that there were not one but at least two French neo-Lamarckian traditions. This implies, therefore, that it is possible to propose a clear definition of a (neo)Lamarckian conception, and by using it, to distinguish these two traditions. We will see that these two conceptions were not dominant at the same time. The first French neo-Lamarckism (1879–1931) (...) was structured by a very mechanic view of natural processes. The main representatives of this first period were scientists such as Alfred Giard (1846–1908), Gaston Bonnier (1853–1922) and Félix Le Dantec (1869–1917). The second Lamarckism – much more vitalist in its inspiration – started to develop under the supervision of people such as Albert Vandel (1894–1980) and Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985). Secondly, this essay suggests that the philosophical inclinations of these neo-Lamarckisms reactivated a very ancient and strong dichotomy of French thought. One part of this dichotomy is a material, physicalist tradition, which started with René Descartes but developed extensively during the 18th and 19th centuries. The other is a spiritual and vitalist reaction to the first one, which also had a very long history, though it is most closely associated with the work of Henri Bergson. Through Claude Bernard, the first neo-Lamarckians tried to construct a mechanical and determinist form of evolutionary theory which was, in effect, a Cartesian theory. The second wave of neo-Lamarckians wanted to reconsider the autonomy and reactivity of life forms, in contrast to purely physical systems. (shrink)

In this lively and provocative book, the author provides the first systematic and detailed analysis of the anti-democratic tradition in Western thought. His approach is both thematic and historical. The author highlights the fatalism and pessimism of anti-democratic thinkers and argues that they fail to understand the adaptability of democracy and its ability to co-exist with traditional and elitist values. At the same time, the author also acknowledges that some of the predictions and observations of anti-Democratic (...) thinkers have been confirmed by history. (shrink)

Gregor Moder’s Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity is a lively entry into current debates concerning Hegel, Spinoza, and their relation. Hegel and Spinoza are two of the most influential philosophers of the modern era, and the traditions of thought they inaugurated have been in continuous dialogue and conflict ever since Hegel first criticized Spinoza. Notably, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Idealists aimed to overcome the determinism of Spinoza’s system by securing a place for the freedom of the subject within it, (...) and twentieth-century French materialists such as Althusser and Deleuze rallied behind Spinoza as the ultimate champion of anti-Hegelian materialism. This conflict, or mutual rejection, lives on today in recent discussions about materialism. Contemporary thinkers either make a Hegelian case for the productiveness of concepts of the negative, nothingness, and death, or in a way that is inspired by Spinoza they abolish the concepts of the subject and negation and argue for pure affirmation and the vitalistic production of differences. Hegel and Spinoza traces the historical roots of these alternatives and shows how contemporary discussions between Heideggerians and Althusserians, Lacanians and Deleuzians are a variation of the disagreement between Hegel and Spinoza. Throughout, Moder persuasively demonstrates that the best way to read Hegel and Spinoza is not in opposition or contrast but together: as Hegel and Spinoza. (shrink)

How did intellectuals react to the economic crisis of 2007-2008 and its long-term backlash? What did they learn from the main twentieth-century political and social experiences, in order to make a new sense of the traditional cultures of the Left? In order to answer these crucial issues, this proposal will analyze the paths of the well-known historians E. Hobsbawm and T. Judt and their apparently similar, but actually different reactions to the crisis. First, I will focus on their respective books: (...) How to Change the World and Ill Fares the Land. On the one hand, Hobsbawm?s critical approach to the post-1991 world, shaped by his lifelong fidelity to Marxism and his persistent sympathy for the Russian Revolution, was connected to his catastrophic vision of the end of the both conflicting and collaborative dynamics between capitalism and socialism. On the other hand, Judt?s re-thinking of the social-democratic tradition, compelled by the global transformations of the social question, was inspired by his connections with the East Central European dissidents? anti-totalitarian liberalism and by his critical approach to the engagement of the French intellectuals. Second, I will investigate their different interpretations of the?Golden Age? of post-1945 Europe and of the causes of its crisis. Third, I will show how, in spite of their common reference to Marx, late Hobsbawm?s and Judt?s historical visions - respectively combined with determinism and moralism - provide opposite ways of coping with the legacies of the 20th century and of criticizing the language of neoliberal economy within the Left. nema. (shrink)

Lewis's history of the party produces a conceptual thread that helps one to understand Althusser's philosophy as an intervention into long-standing debates about the nature of knowledge with respect to social relations. His presentation of this history comprises a highly readable and lucid account that aptly summarizes and condenses an intellectual tradition, especially with respect to what might broadly be called its politico-epistemological inquiries. Most generally, he identifies a thread of intellectual contest, from the birth of French communism (...) until the 1960s, between Hegelianism and what ultimately became vulgar Stalinist theories of economic determinism. Althusser appears as someone who endeavors to find a third way and to articulate a far more complex, or "overdetermined," account of the relationship between subjectivity and its historical circumstances. (shrink)

In 1967, after a talk Deleuze gave to the Society of French Philosophy, Ferdinand Alquiéé expressed concern during the question and answer session that perhaps Deleuze was relying too heavily upon science and not giving adequate attention to questions and problems that Alquiéé took to be distinctively philosophical. Deleuze responded by agreeing with Alquiéé; moreover, he argued that his primary interest was precisely in the metaphysics science needs rather than in the science philosophy needs. This metaphysics, Deleuze argues, is (...) to be done ‘‘in the style of Whitehead’’ rather than the style of Kant, and in developing this metaphysics Deleuze draws heavily on Spinoza. The present essay examines this Deleuzian-Spinozist metaphysics done in the style of Whitehead, the ‘‘metaphysics science needs’’, drawing on the writings of David Hume and Bruno Latour in the process. This discussion will in turn enable us to situate Deleuze's metaphysics in relation to contemporary debates concerning speculative realism and correlationism, and especially Quentin Meillassoux's critique of the latter. Our conclusion will be that the kind of metaphysics Deleuze pursues is neither correlationist nor straightforwardly realist, but rather charts a course between realism and anti-realism. (shrink)

This paper examines Honderich's attempt to make sense of the widespread view that acceptance of determinism undermines reason and knowledge. Since I am largely in sympathy with Honderich's approach to these issues, the paper develops a theme suggested by his discussion and disagrees with some details of the focus of his argument rather than challenging the general principles he employs. After introducing the issue and sketching Honderich's version of the argument from determinism to scepticism, I present an alternative which is (...) closer to traditional patterns of sceptical argument. The concluding sections compare the two arguments and the anti?determinist assumptions about agency and the self which each employs: scepticism results from determinism against the background of a conception of rationality and justification which supports a Cartesian approach to epistemology and an internalist theory of justification. (shrink)

Isabelle Garo’s study,Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser & Marx: La politique dans la philosophie, presents a historical approach to the French philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s and its relationship to Marx and the Marxist tradition. In her view, these authors were captured by a largely mistaken understanding of the resources present in Marxist thought, and were overly affected by the prejudices instilled by the French Communist Party. Speaking from a perspective of practical commitment, she traces a path from (...) early French Marxism to an anti-totalitarian consensus. Her study renders Louis Althusser’s innovations the most pivotal in introducing a whole series of themes, with ambivalent effects on theoretical production today. Most significantly, she discerns a replacement of politics and political economy by philosophy and epistemology. She attends first to the mobilisation of psychoanalysis against humanism, which gave way to a vehement critique of the normative aspects of psychoanalysis itself. Re-reading Foucault and Deleuze as post-Althusserians, Garo suggests that this led to a championing of Friedrich Nietzsche’s viewpoints against Marx. Garo’s study is immensely valuable in contextualising the apparent innovations of poststructuralist thought. However, we can discern greater relevance for the insights of these thinkers for contemporary Marxist thought than Garo concedes, and her attempt to read them as a complete deviation from Marxist principles ultimately fails to convince. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellation of thinkers who developed partially divergent answers to shared themes or concerns. In order to avoid easy generalizations and artificial labels, this article aims to explore the many-voiced character of this tradition by focusing on a debate on the notion of ‘liberté morale’ that took place in 1903 at the Société française de philosophie. Given the number and the calibre of the participants, as well (...) as the centrality of the discussed notion, this episode sets the perfect stage for an in-situ assessment of the inner fault lines underlying any superficial unity in the French spiritualist tradition. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the relation between problems and the formation and development of concepts in Bergson’s work, as well as in Bachelard, Canguilhem and Deleuze. Building on work by Elie During, I argue that it is not only Bergson but also Deleuze who shares with the French epistemological tradition an “anti-positivist” conception of concept formation, founded upon the posing and solving of novel problems as opposed to the acquisition and verification of empirical facts. Contrary to During, (...) however, I argue that it is not Bergson but Deleuze who furnishes us with an “anti-positivist” conception of problems that is adequate to this anti-positivist conception of concept formation. Deleuze’s anti-positivist view of problems holds, firstly, that genuine problems require the creation of novel terms in which to state and solve them. He shares this view with Bergson, Bachelard and Canguilhem. Secondly, however, Deleuze holds that a problem’s “truth” is not to be evaluated with reference to its eventual solutions, nor with reference to some privileged and contentful experience of reality, but is rather a matter of its purely intrinsic productivity. (shrink)

This is an informative, well-written, spritely, and sympathetic survey of the development of Marxism in France from the late nineteenth century to Sève's An Introduction to Marxist Philosophy. Although Kelly does not characterize it this way, his work may be seen as a history of the dialectical evolution of French Marxism. By tracing the historical background of the variety of theoretical works on Marx's writings and on Marxism in general and sketching the systolic and diastolic movements of the (...) class='Hi'>French communist party as well, Kelly has produced an indispensable propaedeutic to a deeper study of the fertile writings of the leading French Marxist thinkers. He is careful and patient as he traces the twists and turns of theoretical perspectives. The relation between Hegel and Marx is a thread which runs through his exposition. Guterman and Henri Lefebvre's attempt to analyze the nature of the dialectic and the central idea of contradiction in the 1930's is discussed clearly, with emphasis upon Lefebvre's aim of attributing a non-materialistic dialectic to Marx, of characterizing historical materialism as "the unity of idealism and materialism." Stalin's exposition of dialectical and historical materialism is shown to have inaugurated an era of dogmatic Marxism. Kelly shows us how things picked up during the post-war years and how the theoretical richness of French Marxism gained momentum up to 1980. The influence of Lefebvre's Dialectical Materialism is traced up to the early anti-Hegelian standpoint of Althusser. In a later chapter, we are offered a fairly detailed exposition and commentary on Althusser's criticism of the view that Marx inverted Hegel, his analysis of the structure of the dialectic, and his belief that the issue of the exteriority of the dialectic to its possible objects is a "question of the application of a method" which "poses a pre-dialectical question... which... has no meaning for Marx." Among other things, Kelly traces the writings of, and career of, Garaudy, discusses the innovative notion of Godelier's cybernetic dialectic, briefly sketches the contributions of Tran Duc Thao, the responses to Sartre's Critique, examines Sève's original studies of contradiction and "negation of the negation," and probably introduces most non-French readers to Jaeglé's renovation of dialectics in relation to contemporary natural science. Finally, Labica's attempt to show that philosophy is jettisoned by Marx in favor of a "science of history," D'Hondt's analyses of difference and contradiction, and Mercier-Josa's circling back through Hegel for a fresh understanding of Marx are briefly discussed. It should be said that Kelly's running commentary is always informed, judicious and independent. His work serves as an excellent introduction to modern French Marxism.--George J. Stack, The State University of New York, College at Brockport. (shrink)

Despite the praise his writing garnered during his lifetime, e.g., from readers such as Einstein and de Broglie, Émile Meyerson has been largely forgotten. The rich tradition of French épistémologie has recently been taken up in some Anglo-American scholarship, but Meyerson—who popularized the term épistémologie through his historical method of analyzing science, and criticized positivism long before Quine and Kuhn—remains overlooked. If Meyerson is remembered at all, it is as a historian of classical science. This paper attempts to (...) rectify both states of affairs by explicating one of Meyerson׳s last and untranslated works, Réel et déterminisme dans la théorie quantique, an opuscule on quantum physics.I provide an overview of Meyerson׳s philosophy, his critique of Max Planck׳s interpretation of quantum physics, and then outline and evaluate Meyerson׳s neo-Kantian alternative. I then compare and contrast this interpretation with Cassirer׳s neo-Kantian program. Finally I show that, while Meyerson believes the revolutionary new physics requires "profoundly" modifying our conception of reality, ultimately, he thinks, it secures the legitimacy of his thesis: that science seeks explanations in the form of what he calls "identification." I hope my research will enable a more general and systematic engagement with Meyerson׳s work, especially with a view to assessing its viability as a philosophical method today. (shrink)

The influential French chemist Marcelin Berthelot spoke against the use of Dalton's atomic theory and Avogadro's hypothesis in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that Berthelot conceded that atomism might be acceptable as a system of conventions, but he feared the power of such conventions in constructing a realistic picture of atoms which was not warranted empirically. Equally, Berthelot's anti-atomism was a last-ditch effort to assert the place of chemistry within the tradition of (...) natural history and to deny the possible reduction of chemical science to the laws of nineteenth-century physics. (shrink)

Although much attention has been given to Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and to French women analysts in their deconstruction of traditional psychoanalysis, little has been available in the US on contemporary male French analysts and their treatment of women. She Speaks/He Listens illustrates the range of thought among some well-known French male psychoanalysts today--from Lacanians to anti-Lacanians to eclectics--with regard to women and sexual difference. Through the interview format, with its possibilities for surprise (...) and spontaneity, the book makes available the thought of Alain Didier-Weill, Bela Grunberger, Patrick Guyomard, Serge Lebovici, Rene Major, Gerard Pommier and Francois Roustang, as well as the internationally famed analyst Otto Kernberg, who gives a fascinating account of the French influences on his work. Other themes addressed include the place of Freud and Lacan in current theory and the relation of feminism to contemporary French male psychoanalysts. (shrink)

In focusing on the problem of evil from the viewpoint of theodicy, I argue that new conceptual regions are to be explored in order to get out of the permanent impasse. These possibilities respectively are: to reject the tenet that this world, if created by God, must be the best possible world; either to reject the tenet that human beings have had no previous existences to their present ones; or finally to reject causal determinism in the framework of the creation (...) of the world and accept the idea that God proceeds with a margin of randomness in a non-deterministic universe. Since these three tenets are all embedded in the philosophical tradition, and explicitly in Leibniz's Theodicy , my prospects are in this sense anti-leibnizian. (shrink)

SummaryThe French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and His Heirs, 1794–1854 is a monograph by Carolina Armenteros describing the historical thought of Joseph de Maistre and recounting its posterity among French traditionalist, socialist and positivist thinkers. This article presents Armenteros's reflections on some of her book's themes and on the place they occupy in current scholarly debates. She notes that commentators today tend to assume politics' primacy over spirituality as a human motivator. A product of the de-spiritualisation (...) of human experience in late modernity, this view is associated with the polarisation of the concepts of tradition and Enlightenment, and with ideas of liberty and reason ill-adapted to interpreting Maistre's thought. Armenteros shows how her portrait of an anti-absolutist, empiricist and reasonable Maistre disappointed with kings and bent on resolving the problem of violence through spiritual means is the necessary consequence of investigating his historical and political thought in context. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the Sonata for flute and piano "Pan's Flute" by J. Mouquet. The purpose of the study is to consider the traditional pastoral techniques that the composer uses in his composition. When writing the article, both general research methods (analytical, deductive, inductive, etc.) and musicological (holistic, intonation, harmonic, genre, structural and compositional) were used. Methodologically important in writing the article were the works of A. G. Korobova. Based on the works of the scientist in the (...) Sonata of J. Muke analyzed the pastoral topic of the composition, and also determined its pastoral model. The culturological approach was carried out on the basis of the research of V. V. Azarova, O. A. Gagarina, V. A. Zakharova. With the help of him, certain French traditions were derived in the article, which influenced the work of J. Flour. In the scientific article, for the first time, an attempt is made to analyze one of the most famous compositions of J. Mouquet – the Sonata "Pan's Flute". In this work, two aspects are considered in detail – verbal and actually musical. In both aspects, there are connections with the French pastoral musical and theatrical tradition, as well as a commonality in the symbolic interpretation of neoanticism and neobucolics with the works of C. Debussy. During the analysis, it was found that J. Muke applied an anti-politicized pastoral model. Pastoral topics are found at different levels of composition – intonation, tonal-harmonic, textural, timbre, formative, dramatic. This article can be used in the field of art criticism for further study of the work of J. Mouquet, French music of the turn of the XIX – XX centuries and in the study of pastoral musical works. Analysis of the Sonata by J. Muke will also be useful in performing practice for a better understanding of the composer's idea and the dramaturgy of the composition. (shrink)

Neo-Humanist Luc Ferry (1995) has compared deep ecology's declarations of intrinsic value in nature to the Third Reich's nature protection laws, which prohibit maltreatment of animals having "worth in themselves." Ferry's questionable approach fails to document the relationship between Nazi environmentalism and Nazi racism. German high art and mass media historically presented nature as dualistic, and portrayed Untermenschen as unnatural or inorganic. Nazi propaganda excluded Jews from nature, and identified traditional Jews as cruel to animals. Ferry's idealization of Humanism under (...) reports the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in European thought, including the French Enlightenment. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. (shrink)

For over a century, the Oxford English Dictionary has defined Enlightenment as “shallow and pretentious intellectualism, unreasonable contempt for tradition and authority.” But this definition misreads two passages from Stirling's Secret of Hegel (1865) and misrepresents how “enlightenment,” “illumination,” and “Aufklärung” were employed in the wake of the French Revolution. An examination of British critiques of the Revolution and early translations of texts by Kant, Mendelssohn, and Hegel shows that, prior to the close of the nineteenth century, “enlightenment” (...) designated a process, not a period, and had few negative connotations. (shrink)

In the face of new forms of popular radicalism in the 1790s, British Whigs turned increasingly hostile to the French Revolution and doctrines of radical social improvement. Yet, rather than turn to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France to frame their anti-radical arguments, Whiggism took up the claims of Thomas Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population. By eschewing the voluntarist idiom of Burke's Reflections in favour of a Newtonian rhetoric which resonated with the discursive traditions of (...) radicalism itself, Malthus provided a powerful anti-radical weapon which became a central pillar of the emerging ‘science’ of political economy. Debates in political economy thus moved to the forefront of the contest between Whigs and popular radicals. (shrink)

The paper aims to apply the epistemologies of ignorance framework to racial issues outside the Anglo-American world, the region where it is has been developed and which has been its almost exclusive focus. Centering on the French context, which is often considered as a unique or particularly acute example of the tension between a republican intellectual tradition of colorblindness, and a lived reality of racial discrimination, the paper identifies two renewed and opposed anti-racist positions in France: a (...) publicly dominant, republican colorblind race-eliminativist position on the one hand, and a critical approach on the other hand. The latter puts the emphasis on the significance of racial concepts as decisive epistemic tools, used to identify specific racial inequalities that tend to remain invisible, even taboo, in the dominant French public discourse. This paper analyzes French republican colorblind race-eliminativism as a distinctive form of epistemology of ignorance that enacts epistemic injustice, and argues that critical anti-racism is a form of epistemology of resistance, aiming at epistemically empowering racialized agents. (shrink)

The author of the article focuses on the matter of Wittgenstein's philosophy reception in France. The reception of Wittgenstein's philosophy was quite late and led to different, sometimes opposite interpretations of his thought, even among French analytical philosophers. Applying a sociological approach to the problem of reception, the author identifies factors that hindered the penetration of the ideas of analytical philosophy in France, including the powerful institutionalization of philosophy in France with its inherent traditionalism and conservatism, fully expressed national (...) character of French philosophy, as well as the extremely polemical character of French analytical philosophy, the transformation of the choice of this tradition of philosophizing into an ethical and political choice. These factors are illustrated by an analysis of Wittgenstein's conflicting interpretation of Jacques Bouveresse and Sandra Laugier. If the first creates an image of Wittgenstein as Anti-Husserl, blaming the phenomenologist for ignoring ordinary language, the second proposes a phenomenological reading of Wittgenstein's ideas using the philosophy of ordinary language. The article shows how opposing interpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophy reproduce the internal conflicts of the French philosophical field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950Eva L. CorredorA History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European Criticism, 1900–1950, by René Wellek; xvii & 458 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, $42.50.The seventh volume of René Wellek’s history of modern criticism may well be the most interesting of his eight-volume monumental oeuvre. Devoted to German, (...) Russian, and Eastern European criticism between 1900 and 1950, it exemplifies most strikingly Wellek’s personal battles with critics who were roughly his contemporaries and closest to his own European background. “I should like to think of my History as ‘elucidatory,’ as not ‘argumentative’ or ‘polemical’” (v, xxi), Wellek writes, but he does not shrink from expressing his own critical perspective usually in a gentlemanly humorous or ironical, but occasionally also quite harsh and stubborn fashion. He insists on the importance of individual value judgments in critical analysis, particularly when they are his own: “I do not believe that... my views and those of my contemporaries will be replaced by completely different assumptions” (“Reflections on my History,” The Attack on Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982, p. 145).Since Wellek rejects the idea of a historical determinism and thinks that “an evolutionary history of criticism must fail” (The Attack, p. 144), he provides less a history than a collection of essays in which he offers succinct appraisals of writers, thinkers and critics both as individuals and as participants in the broader literary movements of the century. He presents “portraits” (p. xv), which he also calls “doxographies” (The Attack, p. 143), containing a vast amount of quotations carefully selected to support the authority of his own views or to let them speak for themselves when he would rather not comment.More than any previous work, this volume embodies Wellek’s will and determination to carry on against all odds even when he can no longer do so on his own. An accident in 1986 left him bedridden and dependent on students and secretaries to help him with his research and writing. He was able to draw on a wealth of previously published essays, some of which had been written more than three decades ago. There are some arguable inaccuracies and shortcomings (his canon includes obscure writers but not Adorno and [End Page 259] again no women writers), and problems with his bibliographies and references. Yet Wellek’s unique talent to assemble in one volume half a century of critical commentary on the literatures of half a dozen different cultures appears intact. So do his well-known critical positions.Among his most interesting essays are those on Spitzer, Auerbach, Ingarden, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, highly erudite men in whose company Wellek enjoys moving. On the other hand, some extraordinarily fertile minds and their enormous influence on the post-1950 critical discourse are often quickly dismissed or treated with unnecessary condescension. Young Roman Jakobson “should be forgotten” (p. 372). Freud’s psychoanalysis “seems forced and mistaken” (p. 79). Heidegger “often ascribes a meaning which seems to me absent in the text itself” (p. 89). Wellek’s low tolerance of any but his own interpretation of Dostoevsky appears repeatedly in this volume: Thomas Mann’s views are called “strange” and “distorted” (p. 12), Freud’s “deeply flawed” (p. 79), Bakhtin’s “simply wrong” (p. 357), and Lukács’s “simply... [those] of Communism” (p. 232). Wellek’s anti-historicism is dramatized in essays on Auerbach and his “historical perspectivism” (p. 132), vs. Spitzer who “always saw that there is a point at which historicism must fail” (p. 144). The vacuum of German criticism during the Nazi period is hauntingly demonstrated. The essays on Walter Benjamin, Bertholt Brecht, and in particular György Lukács reveal best Wellek’s notorious feuds with Marxists. Wellek indulges in a sarcastic critique of the Marxist Lukács’s “doctrinaire limitations” (p. 245) and attempts, wrongfully, to “prove” the Hungarian philosopher’s “exaltation of Socialist Realism” (p. 244). When in the mid-eighties and after much encouragement Wellek finally writes an essay on the early Lukács, he... (shrink)

This article traces the French construction and demonization of American feminism by a segment of the women's movement and by public left-wing intellectuals. The joining of anti-American and anti-feminist traditions produces a new entity, dubbed French anti-amér-féminisme. The development is traced in the writings of one women's group, Psychanalyse et Politique, and in the debates around a so-called political correctness. Defending the image of a France distinguished by harmonious gender rapport and relations of seduction, this (...) entity is used as a mechanism to encourage French women to reject feminism or to define a different, homegrown heterosocial version. Using the examples of debates in women's studies, parity democracy and sexual harassment, the author demonstrates how anti-amér-féminisme has had material repercussions on French women's lives, such as limiting the scope of sexual harassment law. (shrink)

In 1790 the Count d'Antraigues, an eccentric eighteenth-century anti- revolutionary spy, claimed that he had been given a sequel to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract explaining how states could prevent wars by forming international associations but that he had destroyed the manuscript because it might pose a threat to the French monarchy. Recent Rousseau scholars have generally assumed that d'Antraigues was lying. I suggest that the manuscript in question was a copy of the summary that Rousseau wrote in 1760 (...) of the Project for Perpetual Peace published earlier in the century by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre. I then explore the significance of d'Antraigues' view that Rousseau's comments on the Project constituted an extension of the Social Contract and that they had revolutionary implications. The article ends with references to the ways that Rousseau's summary and critique of Saint-Pierre have recently opened up new thinking about democratic, non-hierarchical models of international organization. (shrink)

Lex necessitatis vel contingentiae Cet article se propose de reconsidérer de manière critique deux présupposés spécifiques à l’interprétation gilsonienne de Thomas d’Aquin : (i) le fait que, dans l’univers thomasien, tous les étants différents de Dieu soient marqués par une « contingence radicale » ; (ii) l’idée qu’en dernière analyse cette contingence est fondée sur la distinction entre être et essence – et, plus généralement, (iii) la conviction que la conception thomiste de la providence se présente comme une alternative radicale (...) au déterminisme et au nécessitarisme de la tradition gréco-arabe. À cette fin, nous examinerons successivement les points suivants : les significations les plus communes que Thomas confère aux notions de nécessité et de contingence ; le rapport entre fortune, sort et providence ; la réfutation conditionnée du déterminisme astral ; le mode sur lequel la providence dispose les événements nécessaires aussi bien que les événements contingents ; les réactions opposées de Siger de Brabant et de Jean Duns Scot au modèle par lequel Thomas tente de sauver la contingence au sein de l’ordre providentiel ; l’affirmation par Thomas de l’existence de créatures formellement nécessaires. En conclusion, on suggère que Thomas affaiblit certains présupposés fondamentaux de la stratégie anti-déterministe mise en œuvre par Aristote dans le livre VI de la Métaphysique, que l’alternative entre nécessité et contingence ne représente pas chez Thomas le véritable départ entre le créateur et la créature, et que, pour cette raison, la distinction entre être et essence n’a pas pour premier et principal objectif de rendre compte de la contingence de tous les étants créés. (shrink)

We investigate two different broad traditions in the abstract valuational model theory for nontransitive and nonreflexive logics. The first of these traditions makes heavy use of the natural Galois connection between sets of valuations and sets of arguments. The other, originating with work by Grzegorz Malinowski on nonreflexive logics, and best systematized in Blasio et al. : 233–262, 2017), lets sets of arguments determine a more restricted set of valuations. After giving a systematic discussion of these two different traditions in (...) the valuational model theory for substructural logics, we turn to looking at the ways in which we might try to compare two sets of valuations determining the same set of arguments. (shrink)

Michael Rosen; IX*—Kant's Anti-Determinism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 125–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/ari.

The traditional philosophical questions around human freedom are to do with how to square freedom for human organisms with increasingly scientific understandings of the universe itself. At the beginning of Western philosophical consciousness, Plato, unlike later philosophers eligible of the label rationalist, maintained that there are obstacles to free and rational agency, owing in no small measure to pressures exerted by the human psyche from what later were referred to as biological drives and drives for social status. In subsequent eras, (...) these obstacles came under the heading of “weakness of will”—a conception shared widely in popular and traditional culture. Today the realities of addiction, social stresses, forces of habit, culture, social position, and group identity, together with psychological findings about cognitive biases, have come to dominate the landscape of empirically-based obstacles to agency. Can the image of the human being under the microscope of contemporary science, including cognitive and social science, be reconciled with the “manifest image” of human beings as sources of their individual behaviors (and held responsible accordingly), particularly if the scientific image is best construed in terms of governance by laws of nature? (The phrases manifest image and scientific image were coined by the twentieth-century American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, see Sellars 1962.) How is it possible to square the idea of laws of nature with the manifest image in which humans exercise free agency as they play their various parts in the drama that is life? Does the manifest image thus square better with a theistic image of the world, as both seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes and eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant seem to have thought, and by contrast the scientific image square better with atheism? A deterministic universe, such as was proposed during the Enlightenment, was early on thought to pose a threat to the idea of human freedom. (It does not pose the same threat to the idea of a sovereign creator, however, because the notion of a creator of the universe already puts the entity who qualifies for the office outside the regime of those laws, ahead of them both in time and in ontological status.) One traditional answer to the threat has been the notion of compatibilism— which simply asserts that freedom and determinism are not incompatible. The devil, of course, has been in the details of explaining how this can be so, and many schools of thought on the matter exist. It is worthwhile noting that there are enormously compelling reasons, from the quantum regime so well described by quantum theory, to reject determinism: the laws governing the universe are simply not fully deterministic. This, of course, vitiates the need to confront the threat as originally posed. However, the trouble, if one follows along this line of thought, is to make sense of the nature of freedom in a world governed partly by deterministic laws and partly by nondeterministic ones that admit of an element of chance. Is such a world itself any more compatible with the idea of human freedom? In this section we grapple with the question of human freedom, what it could mean, and whether it is best accepted in the context of a form of theism. We find that theism has no more resources for addressing these difficulties than atheism does. (shrink)

The traditional characterization of Charles Darwin as a strong advocate of physiological experimentation on animals was posited in Richard French’s Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian England, where French portrayed him as a soldier in Thomas Huxley’s efforts to preserve anatomical experimentation on animals unfettered by government regulation. That interpretation relied too much on, inter alia, Huxley’s own description of the legislative battles of 1875, and shared many historians’ propensity to foster a legacy of Darwin as a leader (...) among a new wave of scientists, even where personal interests might indicate a conflicting story. Animal rights issues concerned more than mere science for Darwin, however, and where debates over other scientific issues failed to inspire Darwin to become publicly active, he readily joined the battle over vivisection, helping to draft legislation which, in many ways, was more protective of animal rights than even the bills proposed by his friend and anti-vivisectionist, Frances Power Cobbe. Darwin may not have officially joined Cobbe’s side in the fight, but personal correspondence of the period between 1870 and 1875 reveals a man whose first interest was to protect animals from inhumane treatment, and second to protect the reputations of those men and physiologists who were his friends, and who he believed incapable of inhumane acts. On this latter point he and Cobbe never did reach agreement, but they certainly agreed on the humane treatment of animals, and the need to proscribe various forms of animal experimentation. (shrink)

Narratives of Jihadi-Salafi operations are often filled with praise for what are considered exemplary acts of self-renunciation in the vein of early Islamic tradition. While many studies sift through the biographies of these so-called martyrs for evidence of social, psychological, political, or economic strain in an effort to rationalize what are often labeled "suicide bombings," Nathan French argues that, through their legal arguments, Jihadi-Salafis craft a theodicy that is meant to address the suffering and oppression of the global (...) Muslim community. (shrink)

Critical theory has historically assumed an undialectical either/or between reformist therapy and revolutionary politics. Frantz Fanon’s dialectical, psycho-social approach to recovery as disalienation offers us a way out. Lying at the intersection of critical theory, political strategy and the history of political thought, this article highlights a lesser-known French tradition of Freudo-Marxist psycho-politics contemporaneous with the first generation of the Frankfurt School, but which placed therapeutic imperatives front and centre of its psycho-political praxis. This article uses Fanonian institutional (...) psychotherapy to contest the anti-psychiatric conceit that madness is liberating and that therapy obstructs freedom. Fanon’s critical therapy speaks to the recent care-ethical turn of the contemporary organized left, whilst maintaining a structural critique of the aetiology and treatment of mental illness. This article concludes that recovery involves a permanent psycho-political revolution between the subjective and objective, which requires a radical transformation of both mental healthcare and the pathogenic social world to and within which it responds. (shrink)

Is genre film comparable to a thought experiment?Revising concepts of determinism and agency in three film noirs The philosophical approach of film genres, first popularized by authors like Stanley Cavell, allows to consider genre films as narrative variations as pertinent to philosophical discourse as can be a traditional thought experiment, since every question on the essence of a genre and every discussion related to its inner functions, its mechanisms and its themes, generate naturally a philosophical discourse on the way a (...) director uses filmic and narrative tools to transform his intentions into a specific system of meaning. This study adopts formalist and philosophical approaches to connect the narratives of the movies to the discourses it is prone to generate. The corpus draws on the ‘primitive scene' in three films noirs, Out of the Past, The Lady from Shanghai et Criss Cross : the tragic meeting of an anti-hero with the woman who will be responsible of his fall. Indeed, the sequence showing this first meeting becomes an exercise in style where forerunning signs of the two protagonists' fall organize the writing and the mise-en-scene, and explicitly shows how questions of agency and determinism are intimately articulated to the narrative and formal frame of the movies. (shrink)

The opposition of science and religion is a recent phenomenon; in the middle ages, and indeed until the middle of the nineteenth century, there was almost no conflict. In the Middle Ages the objective study of nature - the activity we now call science - was largely the province of religious men. This book looks at the origins of western science and the central role played by the Dominican and Franciscan friars. It explains why these two groups devoted so much (...) intellectual effort to the study of physical and biological phenomena, and distinguishes ’Natural Philosophy’ from ’science’ as presently understood. Though the friars were recognisably ’scientific’ in their approach their motives were religious - they wished to understand the mind of God and the beauty of God’s nature. Even so, as this study makes clear, the roots of western science lie in the monasteries and refuges of the medieval friars - the direct forebears of the anti-scientific Popes of the age of Copernicus and Galileo. Contents: Introduction 1. Philosophy and true philosophy 2. Town air 3. Sapienta and scientia: the cloister and the school 4. nature and the twelfth century 5. Heresy and Dominic 6. The evil and good world 7. Conquest and re-education 8. Dominican re-education 9. Fiat lux! Let there be light! 10. Et facta est lux! And there was light 11. Epilogue. (shrink)

Warrior cultures throughout history have developed unique codes that restrict their behavior and set them apart from the rest of society. But what possible reason could a warrior have for accepting such restraints? Why should those whose profession can force them into hellish kill-or-be-killed conditions care about such lofty concepts as honor, courage, nobility, duty, and sacrifice? And why should it matter so much to the warriors themselves that they be something more than mere murderers? The Code of the Warrior (...) tackles these timely issues and takes the reader on a tour of warrior cultures and their values, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the 'barbaric' Vikings and Celts, from legendary chivalric knights to Native American tribesmen, from Chinese warrior monks pursuing enlightenment to Japanese samurai practicing death. Drawing these rich traditions up to the present, the author quests for a code for the warriors of today, as they do battle in asymmetric conflicts against unconventional forces and the scourge of global terrorism. (shrink)

_The Scope of Morality _ was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The scope of morality, Peter A. French contends, is much narrower than many traditional and contemporary works in ethical theory suggest. We trivialize morality if we think it has something to say about everything we do; it touches us all, but not at all times. (...) This essay in philosophical ethics focuses upon the origin, purpose, and function of the various concepts to be found in a more or less mature morality. The author draws a distinction between moral concepts that arise from an individual's wish to live a worthwhile life and those directed towards the development of virtue in the moral community. Moral concepts, in his view, are subjective creations of human beings rather than laws with an objective basis in nature. The ethics of sociobiology, of the lifeboat and spaceship models, and of game theory all come under his critical eye in this useful and progressive work. _The Scope of Morality_, says Hector-Neri Castaneda, "represents a serious effort at discussing the nature of morality, taking into account the most important contributions of recent writers.". (shrink)

We present four classical theories of counterpossibles that combine modalities and counterfactuals. Two theories are anti-vacuist and forbid vacuously true counterfactuals, two are quasi-vacuist and allow counterfactuals to be vacuously true when their antecedent is not only impossible, but also inconceivable. The theories vary on how they restrict the interaction of modalities and counterfactuals. We provide a logical cartography with precise acceptable boundaries, illustrating to what extent nonvacuism about counterpossibles can be reconciled with classical logic.

Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct (...) the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (shrink)

This volume in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series contains 18 essays which discuss the range of of religious traditions which inform the discussion of contemporary issues.

The essays in this volume explore various issues pertaining to human agency, such as the relationship between free will and causal determinism, and the nature and conditions of moral responsibility. Builds on and extends some of the very best recent work in the field. Features lively and vigorous debate. Forges connections between abstract philosophical theorizing and applied work in neuroscience and even criminal law.

What new implications does the dynamical hypothesis have for cognitive science? The short answer is: None. The _Behavior and Brain Sciences _target article, “The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science” by Tim Van Gelder is basically an attack on traditional symbolic AI and differs very little from prior connectionist criticisms of it. For the past ten years, the connectionist community has been well aware of the necessity of using (and understanding) dynamically evolving, recurrent network models of cognition.

This article seeks a better understanding of how Rudolf Steiner envisioned his reform pedagogy as a site of spiritual learning (for example through art, seasonal festivals, ritual drama, etc.), but also as a specific site intended to resist the encroaching influence of capitalism, materialism, and corporatism spreading in Germany following the First World War. Steiner’s ideas about education did not emerge in a vacuum. He was inspired by and connected with other forms of communist, socialist, and Lebensreform movements in his (...) time. Yet Steiner more actively embraced and incorporated esotericism into his pedagogical project. How did his approach differ from the other anti-capitalist and anti-materialist-inspired schools that were spreading, and what role did esotericism play in terms of developing Waldorf students? This article explores these questions and contributes to a recontextualization of both Steiner and esotericism taking place in the academy. (shrink)

Peter French examines the world of the western, one in which death is annihilation, the culmination of life, and there is nothing else. In that world he finds alternatives to Judeo-Christian traditions that dominate our ethical theories, alternatives that also attack the views of the most prominent ethicists of the past three centuries.

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both (...) that metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces (...) of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects. (shrink)