Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as (...) a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

This latest offering from one of the founding figures of postmodernism is a collection of fifteen "fables" that ask, in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live, and why?

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

A major figure in the contemporary critical world, Jean-Francois Lyotard originally introduced the term 'postmodern' into current discussions of philosophy. The Postmodern Explained is an engaging collection of letters addressed to young philosophers, including the actual children of some of Lyotard's colleagues, that inform the trajectory of his thinking in the period before The Postmodern Condition through The Differend.

A collection of 15 fables from a founding figure of postmodernism that ask in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live and why?" It provides attention to issues of justice and ethics, and aesthetics and judgement - unravelling and reconfiguring idealistic notions of subjects.

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

Les animaux ont-ils la vertu morale? À l'époque impériale, cette hypothèse est rejetée par les stoïciens, mais défendue par un groupe composite: les partisans de l'intelligence animale. Cet essai reconstitue l'arrière-plan philosophique du débat antique et ouvre des pistes de réflexion modernes.

Jean-Francois Lyotard's contribution to the debate, Heidegger and 'the Jews, ' is a marked departure from the standard fare. In the first of the two interrelated essays, 'the Jews, ' Leotard quickly establishes the theme of the entire text, placing 'the Jews' in lower case, plural, and in quotation marks to represent the outsiders, the nonconformists: the artists, anarchists, blacks, homeless, Arabs, etc. --and the Jews; as an alien and dangerous disruption, they represent an 'other' to be excised from (...) the West's dream of unbounded fulfillment and development. (shrink)

This article starts, on the one hand, with a consideration of the paradoxical way in which, namely when he wanted to evoke those intellectual figures that have decidedly contributed to the revelation of the "true Pascal", i. e., of the Pascal that had known the good usage of reason, Fortunat Strowski comes to the idea of putting side by side Pierre Duhem and Leon Brunschvicg. On the other, a reference is made to the fact that Duhem only published two articles (...) and a preface on Pascal while Brunschvicg is the author of a major work on the great figure of the XVIIth -Century. Hence, the question raised is about the consideration that shall be given to a paradoxical affirmation that seems to place on equal terms the few pages that Duhem has written on Pascal with the imposing contributions of Brunschvicg. For the author of the article, it would not be very consequent to take such affirmations as if they were unreflected ones, since it is clear that Strowski knew exactly what he was writing as we can see from the very good knowledge he had of the writings of both Blaise Pascal and Pierre Duhem. Indeed, and more than anyone else, Strowski was in a very good position to enlighten us about these two thinkers and to write about them in the terms he effectively did. The goal of the article, therefore, is to justify that assertion, which on its face is quite paradoxical, by showing in concrete terms the extent to which Pierre Duhem was truly influenced by Blaise Pascal. ––– O presente artigo começa por realçar o modo paradoxal como, uma vez que ele se dá ao trabalho de evocar aqueles autores que contribuíram para a revelação do verdadeiro Pascal, ou seja, daquele que conheceu o bom uso da razão, Fortunat Strowski não hesita em colocar o nome de Pierre Duhem lado a lado com o de Léon Brunschvicg. O facto, porém, é que Pierre Duhem não fez mais do que publicar dois artigos e um prefácio sobre Blaise Pascal, ao passo que Brunschvicg lhe dedicou uma obra que haveria de ficar famosa. O problema, portanto, consiste em saber qual o valor que se deve atribuir a uma tal afirmação desconcertante, a qual parece simplesmente equalizar as poucas páginas de Duhem sobre Pascal com as imponentes contribuições de Brunschvicg. Nesse sentido, a estratégia do autor do artigo consiste em não tomar de forma ligeira uma tal afirmação, como se Strowski não tivesse considerado bem as consequências e o alcance daquilo que escrevia, pois a verdade é que ele conhecia não só a obra de Pascal mas também a de Duhem. Ou seja, mais do que ninguém, ele estava perfeitamente à altura de nos comunicar algo de substancial acerca de cada um destes pensadores e de escrever a seu propósito aquilo que ele efectivamente escreveu. Em suma, o presente artigo não tem outra pretensão que não a de justificar essa afirmação aparentemente paradoxal segundo a qual Pierre Duhem foi um verdadeiro pascaliano. (shrink)

The political writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard, the prophet of the postmodern, are presented here as both the missing dimension of his work and the key to understanding his position within contemporary debate.

Si les interprétations de ce qu'il est convenu de nommer la « dernière philosophie » de Heidegger sont aujourd'hui monnaie courante, non sans risque d'inflation parfois quand on les lie sans précaution à l'engagement politique de l'auteur de Sein und Zeit, personne pourtant n'avait jusqu'ici pris le risque d'aborder la question controversée du « tournant » de front. Les différences évidentes entre un Heidegger I, parti de la phénoménologie pour revenir à une « ontologie fondamentale », et relevant encore à (...) ce titre de la philosophie, et un Heidegger II, voué désormais à une « autre pensée » réfractaire à l'élaboration conceptuelle, sinon à une sorte de mysticisme poétique, paraissent si tranchées à la plupart des commentateurs qu'ils entérinent sans plus attendre une telle division. Celle-ci a d'ailleurs été accréditée par l'auteur lui-même qui, le premier, mentionna l'existence d'un « tournant » de sa propre pensée, en termes réservés toutefois, sinon énigmatiques. (shrink)

This translation of Lyotard's first book, La phenomenologie (first publication in 1954; the translation is from the 10th edition of 1986, Presses Universitaires de France) supplies an important link to Lyotard's more recent work.

En el capitulo VII de Sobre la interpretación, Aristóteles mutila un sistema de tres pares de proposiciones contradictorias naturales. Aristóteles excluye el par de proposiciones universales naturales, los hombres son blancos, los hombres no son blancos, los cuales se contradicen mutuamente. Esta mutilación lleva consigo consecuencias indeseables. Los dos pares de proposiciones contradictorias naturales, consideradas exclusivamente por Aristóteles, Todos los hombres son blancos versus Algunos hombres no son blancos y Algunos hombres son blancos versus ningún hombre es blanco son ilegítimamente (...) identificadas con los dos pares de proposiciones contradictorias lógicas, las cuales constituyen el cuadrado lógico: A versus O y 1 versus E respectivamente. De este modo, se confunden el nivel del lenguaje natural y el de la lógica. Dicha mutilación aristotélica se ve disimulada por la traducción de las llamadas proposiciones indeterminadas. Para traducir estas últimas, semánticamente proposiciones particulares, los eruditos, excepto P.Gohlke utilizan las dos universales excluidas por el maestro! La obra de 1. Pollak, publicada en Leipzig en 1913, nos revela el origen de este desliz de traducción casi universal: la versión árabe utilizada, desafortunadamente, por Al-Farabi en su comentario. Añadiendo los vértices Y y U a los del cuadrado, el hexágono lógico de Robert Blanché nos permite distinguir claramente la relación existente entre el sistema lógico y el sistema natural. (shrink)

En apparence l'enjeu est clair, il s'agit de dépasser la métaphysique ou de la déconstruire pour retrouver la question primordiale du sens de l'être. Comment faut-il entendre la nécessité de ce " dépassement de la métaphysique "? Heidegger a répondu à ces questions en mentionnant, de manière explicite, le " tournant " (Kehre) propre de sa pensée, lequel permet moins d'effectuer le " dépassement " (Überwindung) que l' "appropriation " (Verwindung) de la métaphysique. Après cet épisode du " tournant " (...) que l'on peut faire remonter à 1930, Heidegger se dé-tournera de la métaphysique pour se consacrer à la pure pensée de l'être, dans laquelle la poésie, celle de Hölderlin en particulier, jouera désormais un rôle déterminant. Le poète précède toujours le penseur au cœur de cette forêt profonde qu'est l'Être. Pour Heidegger comme pour Dante, l'homme est un poème qui s'achève sous le regard scintillant d'une étoile. (shrink)

Dans un monde en quête de sens, l'urgence d'une réflexion éthique se fait de plus en plus sentir. Le " tout politique " des années 1960 s'est aujourd'hui transformé en un " tout éthique ". Pourtant, une véritable décision éthique est complexe. Elle doit intégrer les aléas de toute situation et accepter une part de risque. Dès lors, comment faire l'apprentissage d'une démarche où l'on va essayer de chercher le meilleur compromis pour le plus grand nombre? Les écrits du philosophe (...) Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), fondateur de la revue Esprit, donnent des ressources pour une meilleure compréhension de nous-même et de la société présente. Sa pensée de la personne et de la communauté, produite dans le contexte de crise des années 1930, place l'amour au cœur du monde. Mais cette éthique cherche aussi à éviter le piège du moralisme et de la systématisation. Elle se veut avant tout " perspective, méthode, exigence ". Dans bien des secteurs comme l'éducation, la politique, l'économie où nous sommes confrontés à des choix, le personnalisme d'Emmanuel Mounier nous incite à la réflexion pour mieux agir. Cet éveil à la pensée d'Emmanuel Mounier permettra donc d'entrer dans une démarche qui nous permet de voir comment, pourquoi, vers quoi et pour qui nous pouvons faire nos choix personnels et collectifs. Ce livre s'adresse donc à chacun d'entre nous, il veut d'abord être une rencontre. (shrink)

Schelling est le moins connu des " grands " philosophes : c'est que, sans doute, dans l'œuvre qu'il nous propose, il n'y a rien justement à connaître, aucun sens ultime et autonome qui puisse désormais se représenter, se résumer pour lui-même, se diffuser dans une quelconque postérité - rien d'autre que l'œuvre elle-même et le travail toujours recommencé de son impossible perfection. Pendant soixante années, de 1794 à 1854, qui sont les plus riches peut-être (parce que les dernières) de l'histoire (...) de la philosophie, une pensée a cherché à se clore, à se comprendre, à s'arrêter, sans cesser de se voir rouverte par l'effondrement (le retournement) des structures où elle avait cru s'équilibrer. Il a semblé à l'auteur de cette étude que ces ruines successives finissaient par présenter un tracé signifiant, comme si le véritable " système " de Schelling s'écrivait peu à peu, hors de la vue du philosophe, dans un autre espace qui est celui de l'histoire même de son œuvre, jusqu'au moment où, dans sa " dernière philosophie ", tout le passé contradictoire se récapitule et redevient contemporain au sein d'une construction qui se présente elle-même comme dédoublée et interminable. On trouvera ici l'histoire de cette formation, de ce destin que Schelling a patiemment enduré sans jamais chercher à l'interrompre de manière prématurée, et qui fait de lui une figure proprement exemplaire. Grâce à cette œuvre en effet, où la pensée apparaît perpétuellement replongée dans la profondeur parfois désespérante de son travail, il devient possible d'approcher d'un peu plus près " l'acte et le lieu " de la philosophie, partout ailleurs masqués par la perfection superficielle de son résultat ; par là même, au-delà de l'individu Schelling, c'est une question plus vaste qui se trouve posée - la question : Qu'est-ce qu'une œuvre philosophique? (shrink)

As we move our social institutions from paper and ink based operations to the electronic medium, we invisibly create a type of surveillance society, a panopticon society. It is not the traditional surveillance society in which government officials follow citizens around because they are concerned about threats to the political order. Instead it is piecemeal surveillance by public and private organizations. Piecemeal though it is, It creates the potential for the old kind of surveillance on an even grander scale. The (...) panopticon is the prison environment described by Foucault in which prison cells are arranged in a large circle with the side facing the inside of the circle open to view. The guard tower is placed in the middle of the circle so that guards can see everything that goes on in every cell. When we contemplate all the electronic data that is now gathered about each of us as we move through our everyday lives --- intelligent highway systems, consumer transactions, traffic patterns on the internet, medical records, financial records, and so on --- there seems little doubt that we are moving into a panopticon. The social issues that arise from this are too numerous to detail here, but data retention is an important part of it. In the paper-and-ink world, documents are filed, files are boxed, boxes are put away or thrown away. The capacity for data retrieval and manipulation is, thereby, limited by the sheer difficulty and cost of storing, finding, searching, and manipulating large numbers of paper files. This inconvenience functions as a mechanism whereby the system forgets past information, not unlike the way we ourselves forget. However, the story is very different in the digital world; digital information is easy to store, easy to search and manipulate, and inexpensive to keep over extensive periods of time. Digitalized information systems tend, therefore, to collect extensive ancillary information and to retain this information indefinitely. Such lack of forgetfulness is likely to hamper the ability of individuals to shed their past, and start over with a clean slate. Concerns about data retention were expressed in the early literature on the social impact of computing, but for the most part the issue has dropped from sight. Rarely, has the social good of discarding accumulated personal data been addressed. In this paper, we want to make the case by examining diverse cases in which retention of information by either business or governmental institutions hinders the ability of individuals to start over or to act autonomously. We hope our argument for the good of forgetfulness will challenge the standard framework in which such issues have traditionally been debated. The privacy debate exemplifies the traditional framework insofar as it has been characterized as involving an inherent tension between, on the one hand, the needs of organizations and institutions for more accurate and efficient information systems so as to further their goals and, on the other hand, the desire of individuals to have information about them kept private. Regan argues against this framing of the privacy issue in favor of one that recognizes the social importance of personal privacy. We will examine the non-forgetfulness of information systems as a problem threatening not just individual interests but social good as well. Cryptography is often cited as the technology that will give us privacy and mediate against surveillance. One of the uses of cryptography, encryption, will allow us, some hope, to create confidentiality and relationships of trust that will facilitate many of the social arrangements we now have and perhaps make them even more secure than they are now. Electronic cash, for example, could be created in such a form that it would have the anonymity associated now with hard cash Others are less optimistic of the potential for cryptography to re-create relationships of trust in the new medium. One important point that already seems clear is that even if encryption technology will protect the confidentiality and integrity of electronic transactions and data, it will NOT stop the observation of traffic patterns on networks. This seems an important distinction to put on the table. Our patterns of communication will continue to be available, no matter what is encrypted, and an amazing amount of information can be gleaned from this data. In a sense, it means content integrity but no anonymity. This will indubitably impact how we interact and with whom we interact. (shrink)

Summary At the beginning of the 1730s René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur published two long memoirs on a new type of thermometer equipped with a specially calibrated scale — known ever since as the Réaumur scale. It became one of the most common ‘standardized’ thermometers in Europe until the late nineteenth century. What made this thermometer so successful? What was it specifically? I will first argue that the real Réaumur thermometer as an instrument was a fiction, a ghost — an (...) idealized instrument. On paper, it was theoretically flawless. In reality, the standardized Réaumur thermometer was most likely never achieved. This article shows that its success was essentially due to a recontextualisation from theoretical natural philosophy — Réaumur's principle of uniformity — to: 1) the context of artisanal knowledge and practices and 2) the context of making and reporting in the Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences actual measurements done in the field (in Paris at the Observatory, in Provincial France, in the Colonies, and in the rest of Europe). Réaumur's thermometer was essentially a theoretical method to which was associated a particular scale. It was the instrument's reification for market consumption and fieldwork that gave this specific type of thermometer materiality and authority. Although most Réaumur thermometers ever made were strikingly different from one another, over time the thermomètre de Réaumur designation became a brand, a seal of approval born from customary artisanal practices and cultural habitudes. (shrink)

In his “Marxism and the Post-Modern Condition” Raulet examines the relation between modernity, post-modernity, and the aesthetics of the sublime. I would like to make a modest clarification. Raulet argues that I counterpose the Kantian sublime, which is based on incommensurability of powers [Vermögen], to the Hegelian dialectic which totalizes them. Thus I place myself in a position of being able to oppose totalitarianism only by means of a politics of terror. Both equations (speculative discourse = totalitarianism; and philosophy of (...) the sublime = terrorism) need to be dissolved. Let us briefly recall the objections to these equations. (shrink)