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)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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)

Le "livre-testament" de Jean-François Mattéi, préfacé par Raphaël Enthoven, qui défendra dans les médias la mémoire de son professeur et ami.

The objective of this study is to analyze the measurability and interfirm comparability of sustainability performance through the qualitative content analysis of 12 sustainability reports of mining firms using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The systematic comparison of information disclosed in 92 GRI indicators sheds light on the reasons underlying the impossibility of rigorously measuring and comparing the sustainability performance of firms from the same sector, which are supposed to be strictly following the same reporting guideline. These reasons include qualitative (...) aspects of sustainability, lack of compliance with GRI protocols, indicator contingency, ambiguous or incomplete information, data heterogeneity, and report opacity. The study makes it possible to return to the very notion of sustainability, its meaning, and flexible application by organizations. The results are discussed from three different theoretical perspectives, each of which proposes possible and complementary explanations of the main findings. (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?

Alors qu’il était précepteur en Suisse, le jeune Hegel traduisit minutieusement un libelle révolutionnaire dénonçant l’oppression que les autorités bernoises exerçaient sur le Pays de Vaud. Il publia ces Lettres de Jean-Jacques Cart à son retour en Allemagne, en 1798, sous le couvert d’un anonymat qu’il ne leva jamais. Derrière le caractère anecdotique de cette première publication, on peut déceler des enjeux qui conduisirent à l’instauration de l’idéalisme spéculatif. Le motif de la lutte pour la reconnaissance, en particulier, semble (...) y trouver sa première apparition. Plus fondamentalement cette première publication éclaire le travail d’élaboration stylistique conduisant progressivement au système, avec, à l’horizon, la question de la portée pratique de la philosophie. (shrink)

Durante la vida de Newton, su Óptica se publicó en sucesivas ediciones. En esta medida, fijar una versión definitiva del texto es problemático, por lo cual se hace necesario recurrir no sólo al texto sino también a los contextos y a la intertextualidad. El artículo plantea las dificultades de las lecturas tradicionales de la Óptica (como respuesta a teorías de la visión y la luz precedentes y como parte de la físico-teología inglesa) y argumenta a favor de una lectura teológica (...) del tratado, desde la epistemología de la Óptica y del entusiasmo religioso que Newton rechazó categóricamente. Consecuencia de esta lectura es una reformulación del texto, el contexto y la intertextualidad que hacen comprensible la Óptica de Newton. (shrink)

"In a wide-ranging discussion the author examines the philosophy of Kant, Heidegger, Adorno and Derrida and looks at the works of modernist and postmodernist artists such as Cezanne, Debussy and Boulez. Lyotard addresses issues such as time and memory, the sublime and the avant-garde, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Throughout his discussion he considers the close but problematic links between modernity, progress and humanity, and the transition to postmodernity. Lyotard claims that it is the task of literature, philosophy (...) and the arts to bear witness to and explain this difficult transition." "This important contribution to aesthetic and philosophical debates will be of great interest to students in philosophy, literary and cultural theory and politics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Comprendre l'acte de traduire suppose de l'analyser comme imbriqué dans des rapports de force entre des pays et leurs langues et de le situer dans la hiérarchie internationale. Ce qui oblige à rompre avec cette illusion du sens commun qui considère la traduction comme une opération supposée neutre et définie comme le déplacement d'un texte d'une langue à une autre dans le cadre d'un « échange linguistique égal », c'est-à-dire comme un transfert linéaire horizontal. La traduction pose le problème de (...) l'inégalité linguistique et constitue un enjeu essentiel des luttes pour la légitimité symbolique, culturelle et littéraire d'une langue et d'un pays: traduire, c'est penser la culture dans son rapport avec les autres cultures.Understand the act of translation involves analyzed as embedded in power relations between countries and languages ​​and to place in the international hierarchy. Forcing to break this illusion of common sense which sees translation as an operation supposedly neutral and defined as moving text from one language to another as part of a "language exchange equal 'c' is to say, as a horizontal linear transfer. Translation is the problem of linguistic inequality is a major issue and struggles for legitimacy symbolic, cultural and literary language and country: translating is thinking culture in its relationship with other cultures. (shrink)

L’œuvre du criminologue italien Cesare Lombroso illustre le fait que la médecine, au xixe siècle, n’est pas seulement une technique thérapeutique mais qu’elle propose bien plutôt une véritable « vision médicale du monde ». La médecine entend résoudre définitivement les problèmes philosophiques traditionnels. Pour Lombroso les références à la médecine ou à la mesure sont des moyens de valider des thèses matérialistes mais surtout ultra-déterministes, et d’en tirer des conséquences politiques et sociales.The works of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso illustrates (...) the fact that medicine, in the 19th century, is not only a therapeutic technique but, first and foremost, that it suggests a genuine « medical view of the world ». It is assumed that medicine would solve, once and for all, all the traditional philosophical problems. Lombroso’s references to medicine or measurement serve as evidence for materialistic and ultra-deterministic philosophical theses, and enable one to draw their political and social implications. (shrink)

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.

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.

Dominique Janicaud, qui nous a quittés brutalement en août 2002, à la veille de son départ à la retraite, était né le 14 novembre 1937 à Paris. Élève d’André Jacob en Terminale, puis de Jean Brun en khâgne au lycée Lakanal, il entre à l’ENS de la rue d’Ulm en 1958. Agrégé de philosophie en 1961, il est professeur à l’ENI de Caen et à l’École militaire de Saint-Cyr..

First recorded in the 14th century, the analogy of spit-roast meat argues that expecting the Sun to rotate around a strictly immobile Earth would be just as ludicrous as trying to move the fire around the roasting meat. On the contrary, it should be the Earth that spins upon itself in order to glean, from all possible angles, all the benefits of the Sun, just as it is the meat’s responsibility to turn on the spit before the motionless fire for (...) it to be perfectly cooked on all sides. Aimed at demonstrating, in geocentricism, the plausibility of the rotation of the Earth and, in heliocentrism, at supporting the physical reality of this terrestrial rotation, nowadays this analogy barely elicits more than an amused, or even condescending, smile. However, its continued long-term existence and its frequency of use — from the 14th to the 19th century, we found it mentioned by no less than 45 different authors — incited us to finally pay attention to it. We then noticed that beyond its explicitly cosmological scope, it raises, in its own way, the question of the purpose of the natural world: had the latter been conceived based upon humankind, then it is normal, despite what this analogy advocates, that the Sun is at the service of something more important than itself by rotating, to the profit of humankind, around the Earth; conversely, since such an infringement of the rule of common sense, as illustrated by this analogy, can neither be justified nor tolerated, it is up to the Earth to move around the Sun. Tracing the vicissitudes of this analogy, over 6 centuries, is thus not only about reconstructing the largely forgotten history of a presently obsolete analogy, but also about discovering the deeper meaning, henceforth incomprehensible, behind it. In describing how this meaning became progressively lost, one can finally pro­vide an understanding of why, in the present day, we are no longer capable of more than an amused smile when happening upon it! (shrink)

Traces the life and career of the French novelist, describing his participation in the Spanish Civil War, command of a World War II resistance brigade, and his position as a government minister.

Avant de quitter cet ouvrage, le dernier, sans doute, que nous proposerons au public, nous voudrions aussi remercier les lecteurs et les auditeurs qui, depuis plus d'un demi-siècle, ont bien voulu nous conserver leur attention et dont certains sont devenus des amis. Peut-être auront-ils remarqué, à travers tous ces textes, une orientation, d'abord tâtonnante, puis de plus en plus consciente vers une étoile unique que nous appelons Singularité. À défaut d'autre mérite, cette aimantation donne à notre humble vie un axe (...) et une certaine cohérence. Et nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine."."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

La mondialisation ne reste pas sans impact sur les religions. Mais elle n'efface pas leurs différences internes: l'appartenance religieuse est un facteur identitaire parmi d'autres. La mondialisation permet en revanche plus aisément une mobilisation autour de causes communes. Les modèles occidentaux restent forts, mais d'autres pôles et acteurs s'affirment. Un « marché » mondial des croyances se développe, même si ses implications varient selon les régions du globe. Dans ce contexte, diffusion des religions et prosélytisme peuvent être des facteurs de (...) tension. Dirigeants politiques et religieux se soucient donc d'examiner les contributions possibles des religions à la stabilité internationale. Mais ils se trouvent aussi confrontés à des réactions identitaires associées à certains courants religieux. Pour ceux-ci, la mondialisation présente à la fois des avantages et des risques.Globalization is not without impact on religion. But it does not erase their internal differences: the religious identity is a factor among others. Globalization can however more easily mobilize around common causes. Western models remain strong, but other players say and poles. A global "market" beliefs grows, even if its implications vary across the globe. In this context, dissemination of proselytizing religions and can be stressors. Political and religious leaders are concerned therefore to examine the possible contributions of religions to international stability. But they are also faced with identity reactions associated with certain religious movements. For them, globalization presents both opportunities and risks. (shrink)

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)

The Postmodern explained to children : Correspondence 1982- 1985.