It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it (...) accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes. Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

Papers... "selected from a larger number of contributions most of them based on talks presented at the First World Congress on the Square of Opposition organized in Montreux in June 2007"--Preface, p. 12.

The paper challenges the assumption, common amongst philosophers, that the reality described in the fundamental theories of microphysics is all the reality we have. It will be argued that this assumption is in fact incompatible with the nature of such theories. It will be shown further that the macro-world of three-dimensional bodies and of such qualitative structures as colour and sound can be treated scientifically on its own terms, which is to say not only from the perspective of psychology but (...) also ontologically. A new sort of emergentist position will be defended, one which yields the basis of a method for describing the perceptually salient macroscopic world in mathematical terms. Broadly, it will be argued that the macroscopic world exists in virtue of certain specific sorts of boundary-patterns in the field of what is captured by the theories of microphysics. (shrink)

This review seeks to present a comprehensive picture of recent discussions in the social sciences of the anticipated impact of AI on the world of work. Issues covered include: technological unemployment, algorithmic management, platform work and the politics of AI work. The review identifies the major disciplinary and methodological perspectives on AI’s impact on work, and the obstacles they face in making predictions. Two parameters influencing the development and deployment of AI in the economy are highlighted: the capitalist imperative and (...) nationalistic pressures. (shrink)

The problem of the intensification and remission of qualities was a crux for philosophical, theological, and scientific thought in the Middle Ages. It was raised in Antiquity with this remark of Aristotle: some qualities, as accidental beings, admit the more and the less. Admitting more and less is not a trivial property, since it belongs neither to every category of being, nor to every quality. Rather it applies only to states and dispositions such as virtue, to affections of bodies such (...) as heat and sweetness, and to affections of soul such as anger. However, the property of admitting more and less was a matter of importance for the qualitative physics that had reigned up to about the time of Descartes, a physics which was concerned with concepts such as heat, coldness, lightness, heaviness, and so on. (shrink)

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: (...) “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 244-253, October 2022. This article is a précis of my 2019 monograph The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality. The book engages with a growing trend of philosophical thinking according to which the felt dimension and the intentionality of emotion are unified. While sympathetic to the general approach, I argue for a reconceptualization of the form of intentionality that emotional feelings are widely thought to possess and, accordingly, of the kind of (...) role they play in our mental lives. More specifically, I argue that the way we feel in having an emotion is not a perception-like awareness of evaluative properties of its object, but instead constitutes the taking of a stand or position on this object in light of its evaluative properties. (shrink)

Universal Logic is not a new logic, but a general theory of logics, considered as mathematical structures. The name was introduced about ten years ago, but the subject is as old as the beginning of modern logic: Alfred Tarski and other Polish logicians such as Adolf Lindenbaum developed a general theory of logics at the end of the 1920s based on consequence operations and logical matrices. The subject was revived after the flowering of thousands of new logics during the last (...) thirty years: there was a need for a systematic theory of logics to put some order in this chaotic multiplicity. This book contains recent works on universal logic by first-class researchers from all around the world. The book is full of new and challenging ideas that will guide the future of this exciting subject. It will be of interest for people who want to better understand what logic is. Tools and concepts are provided here for those who want to study classes of already existing logics or want to design and build new ones. (shrink)

Tests for hereditary predispositions to breast and ovarian cancer have figured among the first medical applications of the new knowledge gleaned from the Human Genome Project. These applications have set off heated debates on general issues such as intellectual property rights. The genetic diagnosis of breast cancer risks, and the management of women “at risk” has nevertheless developed following highly localized paths. There are major differences in the organization of testing, uses of genetic tests, and the follow up of patients. (...) This article studies testing practices and ways of managing breast cancer risk in France and compares them with those in the United States and United Kingdom. It shows how the complex interaction between global and local factors shapes the multiple meanings assumed by the phrase cancer risk. (shrink)

In seven essays that draw from metaphysics, phenomenology, literature, Christological theology, and Biblical exegesis,Marion sketches several prolegomena to a future fuller thinking and saying of love’s paradoxical reasons, exploring evil, freedom, bedazzlement, and the loving gaze; crisis, absence, and knowing.

Jacques Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at a time when it faced certain intellectual decline. Focusing on key terms in Lacan's often difficult, idiosyncratic development of psychoanalysis, this volume brings new perspectives to the work of an intimidating influential thinker.

In May 2000 a group of researchers, university teachers and publishers met to consider the impact of the new media for knowledge transmission on the intellectual world and listed the projects ongoing in France for publishing content electronically. Eighteen months later no one is able to say whether there will one day be a significant body of electronic publishing with French content. Such a transformation calls for a moment's consideration. So what has happened?

In the works of José Carlos Mariátegui, the analyses focus on the categories of praxis and class struggle. Mariátegui is then to be counted among the ranks of those Marxists who claim to belong to a historicist tradition. This article first provides an overview of the issues relating to this movement, and then examines Mariátegui’s reception of the term historicism. Lastly, it sets out to re-examine his revolutionary strategic proposition in the light of the use of the categories of tradition, (...) myth and history. (shrink)

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities (...) with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elective affinities. The latter evaluation includes exploring the connection between Saint Paul and what it means to be a Sandinista revolutionary. (shrink)

Para a maior parte dos filósofos o Ego é um “habitante” da consciência. Alguns afirmam sua presença formal no interior dos “Erlebnisse” como um princípio de unificação vazio. Outros – psicólogos na sua maior parte – pensam descobrir sua presença material, como centro de desejos e de atos, a cada momento de nossa vida psíquica. Pretendemos mostrar aqui que o Ego não está nem formalmente nem materialmente na consciência: ele está lá fora, no mundo, é um ser do mundo, como (...) o Ego do outro. (shrink)

Po II wojnie światowej Paul Ricoeur podjął sie nauczania filozofii w Collège Cévenol w wiosce Chambon-sur-Lignon, gdzie napisał swój doktorat poświęcony fenomenologicznej analizie woli. Przejęte od Milana Kundery paradoksalne pojęcie „mądrości niepewności”, zastosowane do dzieła Ricoeura jako całości naświetla specyfikę jego wkładu w rozwój hermeneutyki filozoficznej XX wieku.

Un entretien avec Jean-Luc Gleyze, président du Conseil départemental de la Gironde, qui porte avec une vingtaine de départements français un projet d’expérimentation d’un revenu de base d’un montant suffisant, d’au moins mille euros, automatique, inconditionnel, mais dégressif, c’est-à-dire dépendant des revenus de chacun.

Jean-Marie Straub – Sur Othon, je ne vous dirai qu’une chose. Avec des amis à Vienne, à l’époque, en travaillant, en répétant le texte, on rigolait en disant : voilà une lettre ouverte à Pompidou. Quant au Cézanne, je ne vous dirai pas un mot parce que c’est clair comme de l’eau de roche. J’ai deux choses à dire sur deux autres films différents. Il y en a un, par hasard qui s’appelle Le Fiancé, la Comédienne et le Maquereau. (...) Vous l’avez vu, certains d’entre vous l’ont vu. Mais je tiens à préc... (shrink)

The chapter begins by establishing the absence of organizations in the organization of philosophy as a specialist academic discipline. The second section highlights the reasons why this gap is detrimental to philosophical inquiries. The third section seeks to clarify how philosophy, as a type of theoretical inquiry, can contribute to the study of organizations. Three basic features are proposed as underpinning the philosophical method. Hegel’s social theory is then put forward as an exemplary model of what a philosophical account of (...) organizations might achieve. The fourth and final section shifts the perspective to focus on the life of individuals in organizations. Following a recent book combining post-Hegelian critical theory and Christophe Dejours’ psychodynamic approach, the paper highlights important aspects of individual and collective work that lead to a cooperative conception of management. (shrink)

The ambition and proposal for data modeling of myths presented in this paper is to link contemporary technical affordances to some canonical projects developed in structural anthropology. To articulate the theoretical promise and innovation of this proposal, we present a discrete-event system specification modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis and a dynamic visualization of selected narratives, aimed at validating and revitalizing the transformational and morphodynamic theory and methodology proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his structural analysis (...) of myth. After an analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s transformational methodology, we describe in detail how discrete-event system specification models are implemented and developed in the framework of a DEVSimPy software environment. The validation of the method involves a discrete-event system specification simulation based on the extension of discrete-event system specification models dedicated to provide a dynamic Google Earth visualization of the selected myth. Future work around the discrete-event system specification formalism in anthropology is described as well as future applications regarding the impact of computational models to new contemporary anthropological domains. (shrink)

La doctrine de Marx continue, alors même qu'elle n'a cessé d'être critiquée, de susciter l'intérêt voir l'adhésion d'un nombre croissant d'intellectuels. L'idée d'un "sens de l'Histoire", notamment, nourrit une littérature de recherche et un combat politique importants. Mais qu'en est-il réellement? A-t-on bien lu Marx? Jean Borella, qui cherche à tisser des liens entre philosophie et foi chrétienne, travaille dans cet ouvrage à sortir des sentiers battus du marxisme orthodoxe pour mettre en regard les conceptions matérialistes et christiques de (...) l'Histoire. (shrink)

Prenant pour fil conducteur les écrits de Jean-Marie Vaysse et de Bernard Mabille, l’article examine la manière dont le « retournement » heideggérien de l’hégélianisme a pu lui-même être « retourné » grâce à une lecture de Hegel libérée des préjugés qui l’affectent usuellement, et dont Heidegger lui-même ne s’est pas complètement libéré. De la sorte se dessine la voie d’une autre Kehre, plus radicale, en un sens, que celle de Heidegger.

Jean-Francois Lyotard is often considered to be the father of postmodernism. Here leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler, tackle many of the questions still being asked about this controversial figure.

À partir d’une analyse détaillée, y compris historique de la dynamique de nos systèmes de soins, la première partie de ce texte entend montrer à la fois que les succès, les difficultés ou les contre-performances de ces systèmes configurent largement les questions éthiques qui s’y posent aujourd’hui et rendent difficile la conception d’une éthique collective dans le domaine des soins de santé. Sur base de ce constat, la deuxième partie de ce texte plaide pour une conception globale de l’éthique de (...) l’accès aux soins, qui puisse réellement relever les défis actuels de cette question. Ce plaidoyer repose lui-même sur une analyse critique des différentes justifications éthiques de l’égalité d’accès aux soins et des discours en termes de limites et de rationnement, pour se terminer par le souhait d’une autre rationalisation des systèmes de soins, du développement d’une éthique contextuelle, notamment en milieu hospitalier, et d’un renforcement de la démocratie sanitaire. (shrink)

Le livre de Jean-Claude Terrier aborde l'histoire de la philosophie moderne, de Kant à Heidegger, sous l'angle de la question du corps et du désir, chemin buissonnier peu emprunté par les exégètes des grands systèmes totalitaires de la pensée - systèmes dont le souci essentiel fut de délimiter le champ théorique du savoir, ce qu'on désigne comme la critique de la connaissance. Prenant appui sur d'autres sources, tout particulièrement patristiques, Jean-Claude Terrier conteste l'ambition totalitaire des philosophies issues de (...) l'idéalisme allemand du XIXe siècle. En introduisant le thème du corps et du désir, propre à la tradition théologique et spirituelle du christianisme, il élargit l'horizon de la réflexion hégélienne et marxiste, il en marque les insuffisances et engage à son tour la voie de la pensée non vers la théorie de la totalité mais, par-delà la proclamation nietzschéenne de la mort de Dieu, vers l'expérience intérieure de la plénitude. Nous avons ici, d'une écriture puissante et transparente, le récit des aventures de la dialectique et l'ouverture d'une pensée en quête de la réconciliation de la chair et de l'esprit dans la transcendance de l'amour. Claude Louis Combet. (shrink)

This is a collection of new investigations and discoveries on the theory of opposition by the best specialists from all over the world. The papers range from historical considerations to new mathematical developments of the theory of opposition including applications to theology, theory of argumentation and metalogic.

I focus on exploitation from the point of view of those who suffer from it, and so I take exploitation as a category of subjective experience. Adopting a subjective perspective on exploitation highlights important conceptual aspects about it and suggests important methodological rules on how to critically discuss social forms of exploitation. I start by introducing some key conceptual distinctions in the first two sections. These distinctions lead me to formulate a first, general definition of exploitation as a subjective category, (...) in the third section of the paper. In the fourth section, I ask what relationship there is between the objective and subjective senses of exploitation, and I turn to the work of Marx. This is because, as I try to argue, Marx's approach is exemplary for tying together an objective and a subjective sense of exploitation. Based on a schematic rendition of Marx's use of a dual perspective on exploitation, in the last sections of the paper, I draw a number of conceptual and normative conclusions. (shrink)

Plutôt que de prendre le parti d’une critique – par ailleurs légitime – des usages, notamment managériaux, de la compétence éthique, ce texte propose de prendre le concept au sérieux et de tenter de l’éclairer en s’appuyant notamment sur les approches pragmatistes des émotions développées par James, Dewey et Peirce. Plutôt que de privilégier une accentuation délibérative et argumentative des compétences éthiques favorisée par l’efflorescence et la multiplication des « comités d’éthique », il cherche principalement à penser les émotions comme (...) compétences éthiques, tout en en revendiquant une conception cognitiviste. Les « compétences éthiques » sont tout d’abord déployées sous les accentuations possibles de la responsabilité, distinguées selon la grammaire des pronoms personnels, comme autonomie, comme sollicitude, comme souci du collectif, comme accusation... L’éclairage pragmatiste des émotions comme compétences éthiques permet ensuite d’ouvrir à une approche renouvelée de l’« engagement » pensé comme compétence, couvrant un large spectre allant des engagements volontaires, obéissant à des décisions, jusqu’à des engagements à dominante émotionnelle caractéristiques par exemple des « communautés esthétiques », du ressentir, du vibrer ensemble. (shrink)

La critique du dualisme cartésien, c’est-à-dire du mythe de l’intériorité, a été menée à partir de deux positions philosophiques. La première cherche à réduire l’état mental à l’état neuronal défini par ses propriétés neurologiques et l’autre, celle de Wittgenstein, tente de faire disparaître le mystère des relations entre la pensée et le cerveau par une critique grammaticale du langage. La notion de survol absolu, notion centrale de la philosophie de Ruyer, permet de développer une conception non matérialiste de l’identité entre (...) état cérébral et état mental. De plus, cette conception montre que l’intériorité de l’état mental ne saurait être réduite à une erreur de catégorie. Mais cette thèse de l’identité de la conscience et du corps nécessite de développer une perspective radicalement nouvelle permettant de concevoir une conscience « étendue ». (shrink)