Si l'on peine à trouver chez les historiens une définition de la dignité car elle semble relever du domaine de la morale, voire du droit, l'honneur n'est devenu un concept que récemment. Pourtant ce sont deux notions qui font agir a priori les mêmes ressorts psychologiques, l'estime de soi et une forme d'orgueil. Les sciences sociales se sont emparées de la notion d'honneur et l'ont analysée au prisme des "sociétés méditerranéennes", lui donnant une définition anthropologique dont la compétition, l'obsession de (...) la pureté sexuelle féminine et la violence vengeresse sont les principaux aspects. En réponse à l'injure, à la violence, à la séduction et au viol de la femme, ce modèle exigeant un acte réparateur est-il applicable au monde antique gréco-romain? Y retrouve-t-on cette obsession du sang et du sexe qui est au cœur du "modèle anthropologique"? L'ouvrage vise à resituer dans leur contexte historique les deux notions d'honneur et de dignité depuis l'époque archaïque jusqu'à celle de l'Antiquité tardive. Il les envisage selon quatre points de vue : le rapport entre l'individu et sa communauté politique, la nature de l'honneur familial et féminin en particulier, la violence, enfin, les formes du déshonneur."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

What importance does “race” have as a meaningful category in the study of literature and the shaping of critical theory? If we attempt to answer this question by examining the history of Western literature and its criticism, our initial response would probably be “nothing” or, at the very least, “nothing explicitly.” Indeed, until the past decade or so, even the most subtle and sensitive literary critics would most likely have argued that, except for aberrant moments in the history of criticism, (...) race has not been brought to bear upon the study of literature in any apparent way. Since T. S. Eliot, after all, the canonical texts of the Western literary tradition have been defined as a more or less closed set of works that somehow speak to, or respond to, “the human condition” and to each other in formal patterns of repetition and revision. And while most critics acknowledge that judgment is not absolute and indeed reflects historically conditioned presuppositions, certain canonical works do seem to transcend value judgments of the moment, speaking irresistibly to the human condition. The question of the place of texts written by the Other in the proper study of “literature,” “Western literature,” or “comparative literature” has, until recently, remained an unasked question, suspended or silenced by a discourse in which the canonical and the noncanonical stand as the ultimate opposition. In much of the thinking about the proper study of literature in this century, race has been an invisible quantity, a persistent yet implicit presence.This was not always the case, we know. By mid-nineteenth century, “national spirit” and “historical period” had become widely accepted categories within theories of the nature and function of literature which argued that the principal value in a great work of literary art resided in the extent to which these categories were reflected in that work of art Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois considered a culture’s formal social institution as the repository of its “guiding spirit,” while Giambattista Vico’s principi di una scienza nuova read literature against a complex pattern of historical cycles. Friedrich and August von Schlegel managed rather deftly to bring “both national spirit and historical period” to bear upon the interpretation of literature, as W. Jackson Bate has shown. But it was Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine who made the implicit explicit by postulating “race, moment, and milieu” as positivistic criteria through which any work could be read and which, by definition, any work reflected. Taine’s History of English Literature was the great foundation upon which subsequent nineteenth-century notions of “national literatures” would be constructed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is professor of English, comparative literature, and African studies at Cornell University. He has edited several books and has written Figures in Blood and The Signifying Monkey. (shrink)

Perhaps only Tar Baby is as enigmatic and compelling a figure from Afro-American mythic discourse as is that oxymoron, the Signifying Monkey.3 The ironic reversal of a received racist image of the black as simianlike, the Signifying Monkey—he who dwells at the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying the ambiguities of language—is our trope for repetition and revision, indeed, is our trope of chiasmus itself, repeating and simultaneously reversing in one deft, discursive act. If Vico and Burke, (...) or Nietzsche, Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom, are correct in identifying “master tropes,” then we might think of these as the “master’s tropes,” and of signifying as the slave’s trope, the trope of tropes, as Bloom characterizes metalepsis, “a trope-reversing trope, a figure of a figure.” Signifying is a trope that subsumes other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, and also hyberbole, litotes, and metalepsis. To this list, we could easily add aporia, chiasmus, and catachresis, all of which are used in the ritual of signifying.The black tradition has its own subdivisions of signifying, which we could readily identify with the typology of figures received from classical and medieval rhetoric, as Bloom has done with his “maps of misprision.” In black discourse “signifying” means modes of figuration itself. When one signifies, as Kimberly W. Benston puns, one “tropes-a-dope.” The black rhetorical tropes subsumed under signifying would include “marking,” “loud-talking,” “specifying,” “testifying,” “calling out”, “sounding,” “rapping,” and “playing the dozens.”4 3. On Tar Baby, see Ralph Ellison, “Hidden Man and Complex Fate: A Writer’s Experience in the United States,” Shadow and Act, p. 147, and Toni Morrison, Tar Baby. On the black as quasi-simian, see Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds, p. 105; Aristotle Historia Animalium 606b; Thomas Herbert, Some Years Travels, pp. 16-17; and John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 8th ed., 2 vols., 2:53.4. Geneva Smitherman defines these and other black tropes and then traces their use in several black texts. Smitherman’s work, like that of Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and Abrahams, is especially significant for literary theory. See Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, pp. 101-66. See also nn. 13 and 14 below. (shrink)

MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics By LOUIS DE BROGLIE. Originally published in 1937. TRANSLATORS NOTE: THE Author has in certain places modified the original French text for the English translation, for the sake of greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order to bring them into accord with the results of later research. Occasional Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The chapter on The Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special historical interest of having (...) been delivered as a Lecture on the occasion of the Authors receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on Wave Mechanics and its Interpretations was given as an Address at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1928. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the University of Liver pool, for assistance with the translation and the proofs, and to Dr. C. Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted for valuable assistance in dealing with the equations and the more technical passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE: THE amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical point of view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole, and can be read by itself. A slight degree of repeti tion which the reader is asked to overlook has been the inevi table result for on more than one occasion I have been compelled to duplicate a summary of the great fundamental stages of con temporary Physics, such as the classification of simple substances, the investigation of the photo-electric effect and the origin of the Theory of Light Quanta and of Wave Mechanics the subjects are somewhat technical, and I cannot well assume that they are common knowledge. But though the same subject is outlined in several of these Studies, I have tried to take up a different point of view in each, and have endeavoured to throw light on different aspects of the essential problems of Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their importance. On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe that, while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure of modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the extreme delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists have succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts devised by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a degree the methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety during recent years, and how great has been the progress from the somewhat ingenuous Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of earlier thinkers. The more deeply we descend into the minutest structures of Matter, the more clearly we see that the concepts evolved by the mind in the course of everyday experience especially those of Time and Space must fail us in an endeavour to describe the new worlds which we are entering. One feels tempted to say that the outlines of our concepts must undergo a progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance of relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and Space, in other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary entities individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro cesses of interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an older generation of physicists, is forced to yield... (shrink)

The main point developed in this paper is the demonstration of the attitudes characterizing the major Belgian political parties. This is achieved through a factorial analysis applied to a set of data resulting from the answers given by the major parties leaders to various specific questions regarding bath the prevailing economie as well as institutional issues at the eve of the election of December 17th, 1978. From that point it has been possible to compare those results with the one obtained (...) from the data concerning the 1974 programmes.The results of the statistical analysis show that white in 1974 the strongest positive associations between parties corresponded to tht traditional ethical and socioeconomic cleavages, four years later the linguistic dimension was predominant with a stronger homogeneity characterizing the Dutchspeaking group than what could be observed for the Frenchspeaking one.The factorial analysis allows for a graphical representation of the respective positioning of the parties along the statistically significant factorial axes. Applied to two sets of data, the first one on purely institutional matters, the second one on both institutional and economic policies, the analysis reveals clearly through the various graphs presented the linguistic cleavage as well as the divergences about the extent of regional competences and minorities protection, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the degrees of regional economic autonomy and of public intervention in the business life. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage, relativement court comparé à d’autres de ses travaux (124 p.), le co-fondateur et rédacteur en chef honoraire de la revue Alter revient sur certaines de ses réflexions sur “la condition handicapée.” L’auteur fonde son propos sur sa grande érudition et sa “fréquentation, durant plusieurs décennies, des personnes et institutions concernées” (16), mais aussi sur la lecture d’ouvrages “à la première personne”: témoignages, mémoires ou autobiographies de personnes en situation de...

Certains commentateurs de Bergson ont estimé que sa pensée était d'emblée spiritualiste et teintée de religiosité. On peut comprendre ainsi le beau texte de Louis Lavelle, "La pensée religieuse d'Henri Bergson", ou l'interprétation que Péguy fait de cette philosophie rationaliste du temps. Cette compréhension de Bergson peut d'ailleurs s'appuyer sur un texte du philosophe lui-même, à savoir Principes de métaphysique et de psychologie où Bergson explique que sa pensée vise à constituer une "science relative de l'absolu". Le présent (...) volume tente d'examiner dans quelle mesure il est possible de soutenir, l'instar d'Henri Gouhier, que l'oeuvre d'observation intérieure de Bergson a posé les bases du spiritualisme moderne. (shrink)

1. De Genève à l'Hermitage, 1712-1757.--2. De Montmorency au Val de Travers, 1757-1765.--3. De l'île de Saint-Pierre à Ermenonville, 1765-1778.

Chenu, M.-D. Foi, certitude et recherche.--Gilson, É. Réponse à Louis-Marie Régis, On some difficulties of interpretation.--Dubarle, D. Logique et épistémologie du signe chez Aristote et chez les Stoïciens.--Geiger, L.-B. Ce qui est, se dit en plusiers sens.--Owens, J. "Diversificata in diversis."--Cauchy, V. Être et connaître, l'irréductibilité de l'aristotélisme au platonisme.--Joós, E. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, de l'intentio intellectus, à l'intentio rei.--Murin, C. Pour une démystification de la "mort-de-Dieu" nietzschéenne.--Joós, E. Post-scriptum, la nouvelle scolastique de Louis-Marie Régis.--Landry, A.-M. Louis-Marie Régis, (...) O.P., quelques dates et faits marquants de sa vie.--Lettre d'Henri-Irénée Marrou à Louis-Marie Régis. (shrink)

FROM VARIOUS THINKERS and in different languages we have been receiving an identical message: the philosophy of the subject initiated by Descartes' cogito has reached a definitive impasse. Critical reactions range from attempts to dispose of the subject altogether to efforts to restore pre-Cartesian theories. The authors here presented adopt positions different from either of those extremes. Fully aware of the modern predicament they advocate neither a return to a pre-Cartesian past nor do they dismiss outright the post-Cartesian subjective starting (...) point. Theoretical attitudes once adopted cannot simply be discarded: philosophy has to work its way through them. Still, the proposed answers vary substantially. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty advocates abandoning traditional truth claims in favor of a rational "conversation" carried on between incommensurable positions. Francis Jacques's Différence et subjectivité reverses the traditional priority of subject to relation. In Généalogie de la psychanalyse Michel Henry attempts to reclaim a theory of "pure" subjectivity from the wild growth of its objectivist deviations. Alasdair MacIntyre exposes the disastrous moral consequences that have resulted from the primacy of an autonomous, isolated subject and proposes a program for a socially and historically more integrated ethical reconstruction. No idea has of late more consistently come under fire than that of the subject as sole source of meaning and value. Heidegger attributed it to Descartes, and three of the studies show the direct impact of his reading. Yet similar tendencies had been at work in analytic philosophy. Rorty presents pragmatic anti-subjective interpretations of language going back to Wittgenstein; Francis Jacques supports his attack by Russell's theory of relations. (shrink)

During his lifetime, Henri Poincaré published three major philosophical books which achieved great success: "La science et l'hypothèse" (1902), "La valeur de la science" (1905) and "Science et méthode" (1908). After his death in 1913, a fourth volume of his philosophical works was published by his heirs as "Dernières pensées" (1913). The four books constitute the core of Poincaré's philosophic works and were given an ovation by scientific and general public. Around 1919, Gustave Le Bon wrote to Poincaré's widow. (...) As the director of the "Bibliothèque de Philosophie Scientifique at Flammarion", he asked her permission to publish a second posthumous volume. "L'Opportunisme scientifique" was intended to be the fifth and final volume of Poincaré's philosophical writings. Louis Rougier had elaborated the project, with the collaboration of Gustave Le Bon, and the approval of the philosopher Émile Boutroux and his son Pierre. Because of the reservations of the mathematician's heirs, this book was never published and Dernières pensées remained his last philosophical book. Nevertheless Poincaré's correspondence - which is kept in the Poincaré Archives at University Nancy 2 - contains a large amount of documents concerning the project, its justification and the discussions between Louis Rougier and the mathematician's heirs. The aim of this book is to restore this episode, which gives some crucial informations about editorial practices of Poincaré and about the posterity of his philosophic thinking. (shrink)

Le Traité de Psychopathologie d'Eugene Minkowski se distingue par son caractère très personnel, non moins que par l'ampleur de son information. Cet ouvrage résume l'œuvre d'une vie consacrée à la pratique de la psychothérapie, à la méditation philosophique, et à une active participation aux mouvements intellectuels de l'époque.L'origine de ce livre, nous confie l'auteur, remonte à une promesse faite à Louis Lavelle en 1939, mais il a été rédigé à intervalles irréguliers de 1948 à 1966. Minkowski y a incorporé (...) de nombreux travaux écrits à diverses périodes de sa vie et sur des sujets multiples. (shrink)

Le constat que fait Spinoza dans le Traité de la réforme de l ’ entendement selon lequel on ne connaît ses parents que par ouï-dire fournit l’occasion de développer, à partir de l’exemple de la famille, la conception originale qu’offre le point de vue spinoziste sur les institutions. En reprenant une distinction que fait Julie Henry, on peut dire que la famille n’existe pas par nature, mais qu’elle est un effet naturel. L’univocité de la causalité et la diversité des causes (...) qui président à sa constitution permettent d’échapper à l’opposition nature – culture comme à toute tentative de réduire les phénomènes sociaux à des principes biologiques ou environnementaux. (shrink)

Résumé L’article est consacré à l’histoire des chaires de philosophie du Collège entre 1921 et 1951, considérée à partir du double échec subi en 1941 par le médiéviste Etienne Gilson, au moment de repourvoir la chaire de « Philosophie » définie pour Édouard Le Roy en 1921 après le départ de Henri Bergson. Sur la base d’un arbre généalogique de la philosophie au Collège de France depuis 1542, l’article restitue les enjeux des deux phases du duel entre Gilson et (...) son principal opposant Mario Roques : a) le maintien de l’intitulé de Édouard Le Roy contre la proposition gilsonienne : Histoire des idées philosophiques dans la France moderne, b) l’élection du spiritualiste Louis Lavelle contre le philosophe psychologue Maurice Pradines, à la chaire de philosophie. L’article analyse les différents biais (statut de la philosophie à l’université, dans les lycées et collèges, laïcité, statut de la métaphysique, situation politique), affectant l’affrontement entre philosophie et histoire de la philosophie, lieu commun rhétorique des débats idéologiques depuis 1874. (shrink)

Un érudit: Phillippe Tamizey de Larroque.--Discussion avec un historien "historisant" (Louis Halphen)--Discussion avec un théoricien de l'histoire "historisante" (A.-D. Xénopol)--Un théoricien de l'histoire-science: Paul Lacombe.

Bergson est le plus grand philosophe français du XXe siècle. Sa philosophie de la durée et de la mobilité est en perpétuel dialogue avec les sciences de la nature (physique et biologie) et les sciences humaines (psychologie et sociologie). Cet ouvrage : reconstitue l'organisation progressive de l'œuvre à partir de l'intuition de la durée ; expose le riche contenu de la philosophie bergsonienne : l'esprit, la vie, l'élan créateur, l'héroïsme moral ; confronte la pensée de Bergson à ses contradicteurs, et (...) montre quel avenir elle offre aujourd'hui à la métaphysique pour penser l'âme et Dieu. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789Patrick HenryCitizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789, by Daniel Gordon; viii & 270 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, $39.50.Under examination here is the early modern period in France from Louis XIV to the French Revolution when kings ruled absolutely and citizens were without sovereignty. Discarding the traditional image of the Enlightenment as the (...) absolute enemy of absolutism, Gordon, in this sense, follows Norbert Elias and Robert Darnton who treat the Enlightenment as part of an elitist and hierarchical establishment. More specifically, as his subtitle indicates, Gordon portrays the invention of a “nonpolitical polis” (p. 6), an ideological social space where, despite political inequality, citizens could practice social equality in a hierarchical régime. The rise of this “nondemocratic egalitarian ethos” (p. 7) brought with it a new cult of sociabilité, a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe the idealization of the private sphere and the practice of social equality.The first chapter, then, ties sociability not to democracy, as in the Habermasian model, but to the absolutism that stimulated it and coexisted with it. A series of five ideal types of sociability depict how men and women, members of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, came together—in commerce, public welfare, scientific academies, salons, cafés, public libraries, and various other social situations not protorevolutionary in character—to create a bond among equals [End Page 279] under the ancien régime. In this framework, progress and modernity are born during the absolute monarchy where sociability suggests conviviality rather than class warfare. Every major French novel of the eighteenth century supports Gordon’s refutation of De Toqueville’s surprising statement that “noblemen and bourgeois never met except by chance in private life “in prerevolutionary France” (p. 27).In chapters two and three, Gordon examines the nature of the rules of sociability found in courtesy literature and their functioning as the imagined basis of the newly invented idealized space called société. In addition to analyzing in great detail the nature and frequency of the vocabulary invented to define and describe sociabilité, Gordon discusses sociabilité in the context of natural law theory in Hobbes, Bossuet, and among others, Pufendorf, who wanted to refute Hobbes by showing that self-interest leads humans to establish stable social relations even before government orders them to do so. Holbach surfaces here too for having amalgamated the older language of politeness and the newer language of natural law. In Holbach, as in the Encyclopédie, sociability, based on egalitarian premises of natural law, is nonetheless fully compatible with the hierarchical regime. Among other things, this shows clearly that the philosophes never preached the French Revolution. Striving to eliminate the abuses of despotism and establish equality in private life was not tantamount to working for political equality and the abolition of all rank. In this same vein, Gordon paints the apolitical essence of the private sphere and, by a rigorous study of the seventeenth-century manuals of polite living, shows convincingly (this time against Elias who saw the court as a model of refined behavior) that the salon was indeed a world unto itself, independent of preexisting social hierarchies. Rejecting Paul Hazard’s conception of absolute rupture between seventeenth-century culture and eighteenth-century thought, Gordon destroys the facile dichotomy between seventeenth-century hierarchy and eighteenth-century equality and, once again, admirably depicts the compatibility of Enlightenment and absolutism.If chapters one to three underscore a certain continuity between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, chapters four and five explain important changes. It is not, for example, the mere preservation of the idea of sociable communication but rather its new use that is germane in understanding the Enlightenment. Now “conversation” and “civility” no longer had meaning only for an urban elite but had in fact become ideals in all philosophical endeavors including the writing of universal history. Sociable communication had become the defining characteristic of modern nations. In the fourth chapter, by analyzing in detail the works of Jean-Baptiste Suard, Gordon demonstrates the meaning that the writing of universal history in Scotland acquired within the French... (shrink)

L’ouvrage, qui est la version remaniée d’une thèse soutenue à l’EHESS en 2017, porte sur l’étude de la faveur au féminin sous les règnes de Henri IV et de Louis XIV. L’autrice récuse le terme de favorite « qui s’il est souvent utilisé dans les biographies ne l’est que rarement dans les sources et recouvre alors des réalités souvent éloignées » du propos (p. 15). À travers l’analyse de la figure des maîtresses royales, c’est d’abord une histoire du (...) politique et du pouvoir royal qui est au cœur... (shrink)

Le Conseiller d'Etat ou Recueil général de la politique moderne est l'un des grands traités politiques du XVIIe siècle. Son auteur, Philippe de Béthune, diplomate réputé et fin connaisseur de la vie publique, a écrit un livre étonnant de philosophie politique, de stratégie, d'économie et d'urbanisme. Œuvre d 'un homme de cour, habitué à côtoyer les princes, il est le produit de la réflexion et de l'expérience d'un personnage singulier, mais aussi d'une époque insolite de mutation entre deux mondes, - (...) celui de la Renaissance, des guerres de religion et des troubles de la Ligue, et celui de l'absolutisme monarchique et de l'État moderne, - marquée par une transformation profonde des valeurs politiques et morales. Personnalité peu commune, qui a voyagé à travers toute l'Europe, qui par deux fois a été ambassadeur à Rome et qui a bénéficié d'une longévité remarquable, Philippe de Béthune est le frère puîné de Sully Il naît sous Charles IX, commence sa carrière comme mignon, dans l'entourage de Joyeuse, l'archi-favori d'Henri III, sert Henri lV Louis XIII, Richelieu et termine sa vie sous le ministériat de Mazarin. Publié en 1633, avec l'accord du cardinal ministre, Le Conseiller d'Etat n 'a jamais été réédité depuis 1684. Cette nouvelle édition est précédée d'une longue introduction sur l'art politique de la première moitié du XVlle siècle et le paysage mental de l'époque. (shrink)

Le constat que fait Spinoza dans le Traité de la réforme de l ’ entendement selon lequel on ne connaît ses parents que par ouï-dire fournit l’occasion de développer, à partir de l’exemple de la famille, la conception originale qu’offre le point de vue spinoziste sur les institutions. En reprenant une distinction que fait Julie Henry, on peut dire que la famille n’existe pas par nature, mais qu’elle est un effet naturel. L’univocité de la causalité et la diversité des causes (...) qui président à sa constitution permettent d’échapper à l’opposition nature – culture comme à toute tentative de réduire les phénomènes sociaux à des principes biologiques ou environnementaux. (shrink)

LA PHILOSOPHIE A L'ECOLE NATIONALE AVANT 1960 : LOUIS ALTHUSSER. Louis Althusser (1918-1990) : psychologie. Louis Althusser (1918-1990) : philosophie politique. LA PHILOSOPHIE A L'ECOLE NATIONALE AVANT 1960 : JEAN HYPPOLITE. Jean Hyppolite (1907-1968) : Aristote, Spinoza, Hume. Jean Hyppolite (1907-1968) : Aristote, Spinoza, Hume, Comte. Jean Hyppolite (1907-1968) : Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Comte, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, psychanalyse. AUTRES REPERES DE L'EPOQUE 1960-2000. Le dossier Althusser cinquante ans après. L'aventure de la philosophie française depuis les années 1960. (...) EXPLORATION DE DIVERS TYPES DIALECTIQUES. Alain lecteur et admirateur de Hegel et de Marx. L'encyclopédisme dialectique dans la psychologie d'Henri Wallon. Le style dialectique dans les travaux de Germaine Wallon. (shrink)