Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. (...) Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead called Isabel Scribner Stearns the most talented female philosopher in America. Drawing on Whitehead and her other teachers, Paul Weiss, C.I. Lewis, H.H. Price, and Grace de Laguna, as well as the traditions of ancient Greek philosophy, Continental Rationalism, German Idealism, and American Pragmatism, Stearns has created an epistemologically and logically sound systematic account of the ontology of individuation and the relational genesis and endurance of individual beings.

(2005). Deleuze and Guattari's Last Enigmatic Message. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the french tradition issue editor: andrew aitken, pp. 151-167.

Idealism is the core of the Pratyabhijñã philosophy: the main goal of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–950 AD) and of his commentator Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025 AD) is to establish that nothing exists outside of consciousness. In the course of their demonstration, these Śaiva philosophers endeavour to distinguish their idealism from that of a rival system, the Buddhist Vijñānavāda. This article aims at examining the concept of otherness (paratva) as it is presented in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy in contrast with that of (...) the Vijñānavādins’. Although, according to the Pratyabhijñā, the other subjects are not ultimately real since all subjects are nothing but limited manifestations of a single absolute subject, the fact that we are aware of their existence in the practical world has to be accounted for. The Vijñānavādins explain it by arguing the we infer the others’ existence. The Pratyabhijñā philosophers, while refuting their opponents’ reasoning as it is expounded in Dharmakīrti’s Santānāntarasiddhi, develop a particulary original analysis of our awareness of the others, stating that this awareness is neither a perception (pratyakṣa) nor an inference (anumāna), but rather a guess (ūha) in which we sense the others’ freedom (svātantrya). (shrink)

Dans ce livre, l’auteur élabore une critique de la notion de « banalité du mal » forgée par Hannah Arendt à partir du procès Eichmann en vue d’expliquer les crimes de masse. En reconnaissant, certes, que la banalité du mal est une formule qui a le mérite d’affirmer la dimension humaine du mal extrême « par opposition à l’idée de l’indicible d’un mal absolu et transcendant » (p. 117), Isabelle Delpla la qualifie néanmoins de « faux concept ». Del..

At the end of his life, Michel Foucault wrote of ‘problematization’ as what he had done all along. Yet some commentators see a ‘new’ Foucault emerging together with this term. This essay accepts the last hypothesis and connects it with the French scene, where problematization was already familiar, and its use under tension. Starting with Bachelard, problematization was related with a polemic epistemological stance, but its reprise by Gilles Deleuze turned it into an affirmative theme dramatizing the creation of problems. (...) Situating Foucault’s problematization in this philosophical line permits us to develop the relation he proposed between problematization and the test of contemporary reality on the thinker. This paper will put problematization itself to the test of our present, that is, to the prospect of the social-ecological devastation associated with climate disorder. Both following and betraying Foucault with the help of Whitehead and Haraway, problematization will then be related to the power of sensible events, a power which requires allowing oneself to be touched, and allowing what touches us the power to modify the relation we entertain to our own reasons. (shrink)

Dans cet article nous analysons des écrits réflexifs de fin de formation de mentors, afin d’identifier les marques de transformation de l’identité professionnelle et de l’agir professionnel. Nous proposons une analyse thématique et langagière des textes en tant que porteurs d’un rapport au monde professionnel en cours d’élaboration. Nous mettons en évidence que ces textes contiennent des traces de renormalisations issues des apprentissages conceptuels et formels autant que des apprentissages expérientiels réalisés durant la formation. Cette analyse interroge au bout du (...) compte la formation elle-même avec ses multiples attendus. (shrink)

In this interview with Andrée Bergeron, Isabelle Stengers casts fresh light on the question of expertise, with which the movement of the intermittents - like other movements both yesterday and today - is now confronted. She recalls that the figure of the expert is not a contemporary « invention » and that it includes multiple realities which are rarely free of political consequences. On the contrary, the choice of the expert, the definition of acceptable questions and the degree of (...) « deafness » to « democratic events », are all eminently political problems. By acquiring the tools to ask the questions that matter to them the collective of intermittents and precarious workers has already created a « democratic event ». Now it is a matter of rising to a double challenge: for the movement, that of fabricating a collective intelligence that can transform the knowledge produced into interventions capable of making people think and feel; and for the researchers in the social science, that of succeeding in considering this event as the experimental science consider the laboratory, namely, as that which makes innovation and learning possible. Constructing the choice of a counter-expertise therefore means learning to double the struggle around what Deleuze and Guattari call axioms with a practical invention of a quite different sort, involving a minority becoming - a collective intelligence that does not contradict but creates. (shrink)

Este libro es un homenaje a la trayectoria intelectual y académica de la profesora María Teresa López de la Vieja, Catedrática emérita de la Universidad de Salamanca. En él se trazan algunos de los caminos que, con su obra, nos invita a transitar. El volumen recoge contribuciones de colegas de varias nacionalidades y procedentes de diversos ámbitos de reflexión que le son afines: la filosofía moral y política, la literatura, la teoría de la argumentación, los estudios feministas, las éticas aplicadas, (...) la bioética. Los capítulos que componen este libro dan voz a varias generaciones de investigadoras e investigadores que han acompañado y acompañan su andadura académica y que aquí dialogan con ella haciendo propias sus preocupaciones intelectuales. Con su participación contribuyen al justo reconocimiento de su dedicación a la labor docente e investigadora. (shrink)

Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves the Lisbon strategic goal: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world . Rather than framing the issue in utilitarian terms, it focuses attention on quantified indicators, comparable statistics and common targets resulting from the increasing practice of intergovernmental benchmarking, in order to tackle the following questions: how does (...) the OMC go about co-ordinating Member States through the benchmarking of national policies? And to what extent does this managerial device impact the path of European construction? Beyond the ideological and discursive construction of the competitive imperative, this technology of government transforms it into an indefinite discipline (Foucault) which constantly urges decision-makers to hit the top of the charts. This contribution thus argues that the practice of intergovernmental benchmarking is far from being neutral in purpose and effect. On the contrary, it lays the foundation for building a competitive Europe which unites Member States through competition. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

Virginia Woolf, to whom university admittance had been forbidden, watched the universities open their doors. Though she was happy that her sisters could study in university libraries, she cautioned women against joining the procession of educated men and being co-opted into protecting a “civilization” with values alien to women. Now, as Woolf's disloyal daughters, who have professional positions in Belgian universities, Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars in Belgium and France, question their academic (...) careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university. They urge women to heed Woolf's cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance. (shrink)

Experimental activity is traditionally identified with testing the empirical implications or numerical simulations of models against data. In critical reaction to the ‘tribunal view’ on experiments, this essay will show the constructive contribution of experimental activity to the processes of modeling and simulating. Based on the analysis of a case in fluid mechanics, it will focus specifically on two aspects. The first is the controversial specification of the conditions in which the data are to be obtained. The second is conceptual (...) clarification, with a redefinition of concepts central to the understanding of the phenomenon and the conditions of its occurrence. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève’s dialogue with proponents of Hegelianism and phenomenology in Soviet Russia of the 1920–30s. Considering works by Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Ivan Ilyin, Gustav Shpet, and Alexandre Koyré, I retrace Hegelian themes in Kojève, focusing on the relation between method and time. I argue that original reflections on method played a key role in both Russian Hegelianism and Kojève’s work, from his famous Hegel lectures to the late fragments of a system. As I demonstrate, Kojève’s Hegelianism (...) was significantly shaped by his encounter with Ilyin’s 1918 commentary on Hegel, a detailed study of the relation between method and the experience of time. However, in Kojève’s hands, Ilyin’s ideas were transformed, some radicalized, others abandoned. Comparatively reading texts by these thinkers in their respective contexts, I resituate and evaluate claims that Hegel’s method was less dialectical than phenomenological. I finally argue that early Soviet Hegelian discourses not only shaped the trajectory of Kojève’s Hegelianism but also radically anticipated concepts of time in French post-structuralism. (shrink)

According to Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, a subject who has freed himself from the bondage of individuality is necessarily compassionate, and his action, necessarily altruistic. This article explores the paradoxical aspects of this statement; for not only does it seem contradictory with the Pratyabhijñā’s non-dualism (how can compassion and altruism have any meaning if the various subjects are in fact a single, all-encompassing Self?)—it also implies a subtle shift in meaning as regards the very notion of compassion ( karuṇā, kr̥pā ), (...) since according to the two Śaivas, compassion does not result from the awareness of the others’ pain ( duḥkha )—as in Buddhism—but from the awareness of one’s own bliss ( ānanda ). The article thus shows that in spite of their radical criticism of traditional ethical categories such as merit ( dharma ) and demerit ( adharma ), the two Śaiva philosophers still make use of ethical categories, but not without pro- foundly transforming them. (shrink)

This paper aims 1) to introduce the notion of theoretical story as a resource and source of constraint for the construction and assessment of models of phenomena; 2) to show the relevance of this notion for a better understanding of the role and nature of values in scientific activity. The reflection on the role of values and value judgments in scientific activity should be attentive, I will argue, to the distinction between models and the theoretical story that guides and constrains (...) their construction. The aim of scientific activity is to develop understanding of phenomena, and something that serves this aim and contributes to the development of understanding has a cognitive value. Cognitive values are the features that something that plays a role in scientific activity should have so that it can serve its aim. I will focus my attention on the features of the theoretical story and of the models. (shrink)

Based on a consumer survey conducted in France, Germany, and the U.S., the study investigates consumers'' readiness to support socially responsible organizations and examines their evaluations of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of the firm. French and German consumers appear more willing to actively support responsible businesses than their U.S. counterparts. While U.S. consumers value highly corporate eco-nomic responsibilities, French and German consumers are most concerned about businesses conforming with legal and ethical standards. These findings provide useful guidance (...) for the efficient management of social responsibility initiatives across borders and for further academic inquiries. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la transexualidad y la intersexualidad como dos fenómenos que desafían las concepciones dimórficas de la anatomía corporal, así como las concepciones binarias del sexo y del género. En este desafío de la norma cultural y médica, los sujetos transexuales e intersexuales construyen un lugar de resistencia, proponiendo, en un movimiento de autodesignación, la concepción de un nuevo sujeto transgenérico. Por último, se reseñan algunas cuestiones éticas vinculadas a los tratamientos médicos de la asignación de sexo (...) a los intersexuales y a la reasignación de los transexuales, relativas a la autonomía y dignidad de estos sujetos transgenéricos. (shrink)

In Book VI of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius presents Cynicism as a philosophical school with origins in Socrates and prefiguring Stoicism, through the sequence: Socrates–Antisthenes–Diogenes–Crates–Zeno. However, the part of the sequence linking Diogenes to Crates is not unanimously accepted. Diogenes Laertius himself mentions that Crates had two other teachers: Bryson of Achaea and Stilpo. The first is unknown, but the sources tell us enough about the second to discern certain similarities between his philosophy and that (...) of Crates. When he wrote Book VI, Diogenes Laertius dismissed this parallel tradition connecting Crates to the Megarian school, preferring to link Stoicism to Socrates via Cynicism exclusively. Although Crates is unquestionably the philosophical heir of Diogenes, it is quite possible that he may have been influenced by both the Cynics and the Megarians. (shrink)

The global demand for information has brought in new developments in the publicity of discursive practices of many professional areas. This study takes the professional practice of International Commercial Arbitration, a mechanism to resolve business disputes outside the courts and traditionally considered as private, to explore the process of resemiotization of information, from the strategies used by corporations in their press releases to the news reports published by national and international media. It takes the theoretical concept of interdiscursivity in critical (...) genre analysis to show that texts are the result of a combination of a very complex range of resources brought about by genres, professional practices and professional cultures, which derive not only from the ‘local’ representation of the transnational arbitration process, but also from the different corporate identities and their ways of coping with the increasing publicity of the facts of arbitration. (shrink)

An experiment teacher of elementary school try te become an educational adviser. He accepts the collaboration with the researchers, the first one in didactics of history and the second in professional didactics, to get success with examination necessary to become an educational adviser. The didactic experiment concerns an historical debate with pupils to orient them in an historic investigation from an engraving dating from 1787. The analyse shows that the didactic experiment was abandoned for the benefit of institutional prescriptions in (...) which this teacher aims to conforms, its principles of actions and the significantly associations with his future job. It’s in contradiction with the sens of the activity proposed by the researcher in didactics of history. Our longitudinal analysis concerns, first, the teacher analyses the activity of a beginner, second, the experimentation of the debate in his classroom and finally his theorization about the driving of this type of debate in a document required in the examination. (shrink)

In this article I shall propose María Zambrano's poetic reason as a suitable method for developing a knowledge of animal being. To do so, I will follow the analyses (Derrida, Coetzee) that place animal thinking in the poetic sphere, thus showing the need for a poetic/literary knowledge to make a philosophical knowledge of the animal possible. Animal writing expresses our nature in relation to animal nature; it discloses our animal interbeingness. Finally, I will point to some of the principles of (...) ecofeminist/animal ethics, like care and empathy, which arise both in what I propose to call animal writing and in Zambranian poetic reason. (shrink)

Prepared for an ANU Humanities Research Centre Symposium in early August 2003, these notes may be considered as a comment on Brian Massumi’s proposition that ‘a political ecology would be a social technology of belonging, assuming coexistence and co-becoming as the habitat of practices’.

Pregnancy and motherhood bring enormous change to one’s life. As a student of philosophy, I have struggled to find a place for myself, as a new mother, in academic life. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness examines human consciousness -- it places human experience as the starting point of philosophical inquiry. This approaches the sort of place I think human experience should rest in philosophy. If I am to claim that motherhood is academically significant, surely, this examination must begin with an (...) examination of human experience. This paper tries to root my experience of pregnancy as something that I think is academically interesting. It was through writing this paper that I found myself hopeful that my becoming a mother was not the end of my academic career, but rather presents an interesting and important new path in my philosophical journey. (shrink)

En este artículo el objetivo es leer desde las premisas de la teoría tridimensional de la justicia de Nancy Fraser, que comprende distribución, reconocimiento y paridad política, la jurisprudencia más relevante de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en materia de pueblos originarios. Para llevar a cabo esta tarea el texto se divide en dos partes. En la primera, se exponen los lineamientos del planteamiento de Nancy Fraser sobre la justicia y, en la segunda, se analiza con base en las (...) herramientas teórico políticas ofrecidas por esta pensadora, un conjunto de sentencias. Se concluye que la Corte IDH ha incorporado, en parte, esta perspectiva, aun cuando falta vigilar su implementación por parte de los Estados. (shrink)

Cette etude est une analyse des uvres de Nietzsche (1878-1885) ayant trait non seulement a sa critique du christianisme en general et a son interpretation de la Mort de Dieu en particulier, mais aussi a l'elaboration de ses anti-ideals.