The death of Roger Caillois was vividly felt by writers and intellectuals all over the world. Not only in France, where his work in sociology, surrealism, criticism and literature brought him into the Académie française, but also in Japan, Brazil (whose Academy elected him to the seat previously occupied by André Malraux), in Argentina (where he counted numerous friends whose works and thought he had made known in Europe) his passing profoundly saddened literary and intellectual circles. Struck to the heart (...) by his death also is the review Diogenes, which he founded and which has been formed by his perpetually needle-sharp curiosity, his creative imagination and his uncompromising precision. (shrink)

This is a transcription of Jean d’Ormesson’s speech at UNESCO at the 50th anniversary celebrations of Diogenes in 2003. He describes the journal’s origins, inspirations and editors, and the unique place it occupies in the promotion of international, interdisciplinary scholarship.

For more than forty years, Diogenes has been striving, with the limited resources at its disposal, to mark the progress of the human sciences around the world. The journal emerged from the encounter between an institution and a person. The institution was the Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines (CIPSH) that was founded under the auspices and on the initiative of UNESCO with the aim of regrouping a variety of different international associations in the field of Geisteswissenschaften; (...) the person was Roger Caillois, then an international civil servant with UNESCO. The CIPSH wanted to equip itself with an organ of international scholarly communication that was capable of serving as a bond and link between its various member associations. (shrink)

After several recent special issues, conceived and prepared successively by R. H. Robbins and E. M. Uhlenbeck (no. 153, ‘The Cultural Heritage: Languages in Peril”), Y. M. Coppens (no. 155, “From the Heavens to the Mind”), M. Matarasso (no. 158, “Shamans and Shamanism: On the Threshold of a New Millennium”), Diogenes turned to Julio Labastida, coordinator of the study of the social sciences at the National University of Mexico and contributing editor to Diogenes (he is in charge of the Spanish (...) edition), and asked him to gather together for the current issue a certain number of articles devoted to themes related to the five-hundredth anniversary of America's “discovery” and its entry into a unified world. (shrink)

Unesco's first Philosophical Encounters were held last year at Paris on the theme of “What Do We Not Know?” and they were a great success. Diogenes published some of the papers by participants in its No. 169. A second meeting was held from March 27-30, 1996, devoted to a question as simple and difficult as that of the first: “Who Are We?” Once again this journal will not be able to publish all contributions, but is fortunate enough to present at (...) least some of them to its readers. (shrink)

Where do we come from? Where are we going? In all ages, people have wondered about their destiny and their origins, and it seemed to them that knowing more about their past would allow them, at the same time, to know more about their future. The poetry of origins was intertwined with blind gropings, then with decisive steps forward in science. With the starry sky above them, the learned and the unlearned allowed themselves to be carried away by the same (...) metaphysical anguish in which space and time took the principal roles. We had to wait a very long time until science finally taught us a little more on the birth of the universe and of thought. Sometimes, on more than one point, science resembled primitive mythologies passed on through the darkness of time. (shrink)

Over many long years, whenever a modest and not quite disinterested emissary of a member Association of the International Council of Philosophy and the Humanistic Studies came to visit Jean d'Ormesson at his headquarters in the rue Miollis, patiently clearing his path through mountains of dossiers and brochures, he did not, unlike the title of this paper, associate Jean d'Ormesson with the CIPSH - he simply identified the man before him with the CIPSH itself. An equation (...) born of an admiration barely suppressed under a veneer of polite restraint, an identification perhaps suggested to them by the president or secretary of their home association. Nevertheless a quite unfair one for anyone able to perceive with a greater deal of clarity (the office was very dark in overcast weather) what the ‘Secretary-General’ was, as well and much more, outside of the rue Miollis: the writer, the chronicler of his time, soon to become the assiduously active Academician, or even, dare I suggest, the blue-eyed charmer who graced debates on television. But this summary judgement could readily be forgiven, for the host of the premises had the good taste, when welcoming one to CIPSH, to assume only his mantle as Secretary-General. Besides, for the delegates of member Associations - and it was in this capacity that I first met Jean d'Ormesson before becoming his collaborator on the executive Bureau of CIPSH, and then briefly his successor - he appeared as the effective intermediary with that far-off but richly resourced galaxy called UNESCO. He was the man of warmth and charm who could be relied on to safeguard the subsidies that helped support our conferences and fund our voluminous compilations, which were vital tools for our research. (shrink)

This article is a discourse analysis based on a theory of figures of speech advocated by Orecchionni that analyzes implicit not only as a mark of literality but also as trope of illocutionary type not lexical, lexical, metaphorical or semantic. It considers also the explicit information of the novel through four levels of competency: linguistic, encyclopedic, logical and pragmatic rhetorical and analyzes the romantic statement according to the maxims of quantity, quality, relation or relevance and modality. This study shows, through (...) verbal interactions of « Douane de mer » that the story is the heiress of the mnemonic representation than of historical representation. It sheds light on the dual role played by implicit as a mediator in relation to historical reality or an opaque screen over the truth of the world. (shrink)

For many years, M. Jean d'Ormesson has been doing me the honor of asking me to write for Diogenes. More recently, he suggested that I should coordinate an issue of this review that would be devoted to my extended discipline, History, but history in the way in which I understand it. It was certainly not for lack of interest that I did not reply to the first request but, no doubt, because of the sense of a chronic lack (...) of time - almost a pleonasm - from which I, like everyone else, suffer. It was not because I was cured that I accepted the second invitation but probably because I allowed myself, with full knowledge of the facts, to entertain the idea that editing an issue would take up less time than simply contributing. … In fact, as everyone knows, the opposite is true, especially when the occasional editor also volunteers to be one of the contributors. This issue is now completed and I sincerely thank M. Jean d'Ormesson for having wished to entrust me with this task that I have enjoyed very much. (shrink)

Le grand philosophe français Lucien Jerphagnon est décédé le 16 septembre 2011. Spécialiste de la pensé antique, disciple de Vladimir Jankélévitch, il avait su rendre son savoir populaire. Jean d’Ormesson l’a défini ainsi : «Un savant qui sait unir un style rapide et séduisant à l’érudition la plus rigoureuse.» Trois ans après sa mort, sa veuve lui adresse une série de lettres en forme de souvenirs. Emplies d’émotion, elles composent, par cette multiplicité de regards amoureux et nostalgiques, un (...) véritable hommage. Au-delà des réflexions sur la mort, le deuil, la solitude ou l’absence, cette soixantaine de courts chapitres, portés par un style sensible, constituent un portrait simple et touchant de celui qui fut aussi un homme remarquable. (shrink)

La foi et la raison. La foi, don de Dieu. La raison, don de l'homme ou don de Dieu? La foi et la raison eurent à combattre, comme si le ciel et la terre vivaient en conflit incessant. Le combat demeure, différent certes, parce que l'homme oublie ses origines sans en regarder la cause. Jean-Paul II s'est lancé dans cette épreuve, en rédigeant une encyclique, pour enfin tenter de sortir l'homme de son enfermement dialectique. Le magistère de l'Eglise catholique (...) lui en donne l'autorité et la lui demande, pour enfin réconcilier l'homme avec lui-même et avec Dieu"-- Back cover. (shrink)

Hypertext encompasses a particular aspect of the virtual book that is playing an increasingly important part with the expansion of the Internet and the web. The success of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) - attests to its dynamism. Nowadays it seems so natural and so usual that we manipulate it with ease and we discover its ancestors among medieval cabalists or among other commentators of sacred texts. Every indexation, every note and every comment suggests a potential rudimentary hypertext. However, before its (...) expansion over the entire planet, with the network of worldwide telecommunication, before being programmed on to every PC, hypertext took form in the minds of a few learned visionaries. We will refer to two of them. (shrink)

The Reveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme are one of the important books of the dawn of the nineteenth century. In this text, Senancour limns an image of the world in accordance with the scientific thought of his time. It is a disenchanted image, dominated by mechanical necessity, and in it the distinction between good and evil no longer holds. God is absent; the world is not his creation. And Senancour expresses no regret:Everything in nature is indifferent, for everything (...) is necessary: all is beautiful, for all is determined. The individual is nothing, as a being apart: his cause and his end lie beyond him. Only the whole exists absolutely, invincibly, with no other cause, with no other end beyond itself, with no laws but those of its nature, with no other product than its permanence…. The beautiful, the true, the just, evil, and disorder exist only for the weakness of mortals…. The same earth contains happy orchards and ruinous volcanoes. The villain triumphs, the hero dies; the orchard withers, the volcano is snuffed out; one and the same destruction devours both the animate and the inanimate, shrouded in the same oblivion; and in a world reborn, there remains not a trace of what was abhorred or deified in a bygone world. (shrink)

Using methods of abstract logic and the theory of valuation, we prove that there is no paraconsistent negation obeying the law of double negation and such that $\neg(a\wedge\neg a)$ is a theorem which can be algebraized by a technique similar to the Tarski-Lindenbaum technique.

Monograph on the sociology of economic systems, economic theory and economic doctrine - includes references.

The Tindemans report on the European union and the decision to organize direct elections for the European Parliament have been two important events in European afjairs in 1976. This article analyses the origins, developments and bearing of these two events.Although his mandate was initiated and encouraged at the highest level - that of the European heads of state -, Mr. Tindemans' attempt to propose concrete steps in order to achieve a real political union in Europe did not get through. It (...) received a rather cold reception from several states who opposed some of his proposals on different grounds.At the Conference of The Hague, Mr. Tindemans was able to get a formal support to his ideas, but no decision was taken to implement any of them.The decision to organize direct elections for the European Parliament, which can be seen as a concrete step toward the implementation of the long awaited European union, is facing the same kind of resistance at the national level. Although the Nine have all agreed to do everything possible to organize these elections in the spring of 1978, there are still unsolved problems which are both technical and political. Moreover, even if they are taking place, it is not at all sure that they will bring about substantive changes in the role and functions of the European Parliament. (shrink)

Jusqu’à présent l’adelphie a peu retenu l’attention des sciences sociales bien qu’il s’agisse d’un lien de parenté proche présent dans le quotidien des familles. Si les analyses de la parenté privilégient la filiation ou l’alliance, des enquêtes consacrées à l’adelphie ont vu le jour depuis quelques décennies. Elles montrent que ce lien est peu normé, « dérivé » car dépendant de son insertion dans la parentèle et marqué par des inégalités en partie déniées du fait d’un rapport ambigu à l’imaginaire (...) égalitaire. L’auteur, sociologue, montre que les transformations récentes du lien adelphique sont aussi le reflet des tensions croissantes entre parenté génétique et parenté intentionnelle qui caractérisent les mutations de la famille. (shrink)