Dans la mesure où il achève l’histoire de la philosophie, Hegel se voit conférer un rôle tout à fait singulier dans la lecture heideggerienne d’une telle histoire. Penser après Hegel, c’est donc penser la fin de cette histoire, et par conséquent aussi son autre limite, à savoir son commencement. Or, la signification et la portée de celui-ci se voient bouleversés de part et d’autre de ce qu’il est convenu de nommer le tournant ( Kehre ) de la pensée heideggerienne. Dans (...) un premier temps, le dépassement de Hegel consiste à se recentrer pour mettre en lumière la temporalité constitutive de cet étant pour lequel il y a être, le Dasein, c’est-à-dire son écart fondamental. Dans un second temps, ce que Heidegger tâche, après Hegel, de rejoindre, répond à l’impensé du premier commencement grec, c’est-à-dire avant que la métaphysique, avec Platon, ne débute. Le chemin est alors paradoxalement celui qui, à travers le plus grand éloignement, tente de penser l’être-commençant. (shrink)

Si L’Étoile de la rédemption de Franz Rosenzweig se veut encore un « système de philosophie », c’est dans la pleine conscience de ce que la forme du système a trouvé, dans l’œuvre de Hegel, un accomplissement en lequel toute l’histoire de la philosophie se rassemble et s’achève. Une « pensée nouvelle » est‑elle dès lors possible, qui surmonte réellement la tradition qui la précède, sans qu’un tel dépassement la conduise hors de la philosophie? Cet article se penche sur la (...) manière dont Rosenzweig a conçu l’histoire de la philosophie et déterminé, depuis la Révélation, la position d’extériorité qui devait être la sienne. La voie rosenzweigienne est mise en regard de celle de Heidegger, l’un et l’autre penseur n’ayant pas seulement discerné dans leur temps l’achèvement des systèmes, mais conçu le renouveau de la philosophie comme un mouvement de traduction vers l’origine, grecque ou biblique, de la pensée. (shrink)

The author confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history. He focuses on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, & science.

The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life: Translated From The French By Joseph Ward Swain, M.A. This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, (...) high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING! (shrink)

This paper briefly summarizes Durkheim’s theory of the dual nature of man suggested earlier in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It is characteristic of human beings that two opposite principles confront each other within them: soul and body, concept and sensation, moral activity and sensory appetites. Although this inherent inconsistency of man has been long recognized by philosophical thought, no doctrine explanation to it has been provided to date. While empiricist monism has proved to be unable to explain how (...) concepts emerge from sensations and disinterestedness develops from self-interest, absolute idealism, on the contrary, cannot deduce sensations from concepts. Although theories suggested by Plato and Kant do not bypass the problem of dualism, they only rephrase it and make no progress in solving it. According to Durkheim, dualism of human nature stems from the fact that all religions are founded on dividing all things into the sacred and the profane. This division, in turn, is explained by coexistence of collective and individual origins in the human being. Sacred things arise out of the collective origin that enables individual consciousnesses to fuse into communion. Collective origin does not act with constant strength, but intensifies during the periods of effervescence, when it subdues the individual origin. Since the importance of the social aspect of man increases over time, there is no reason to believe that complete consent between individual and society is possible that would endow man with internal harmony. (shrink)

This paper does not present an advocacy of a passive education as opposed to an active education nor does it propose that passive education is in any way ‘better’ or more important than active education. Through readings of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and B.S. Johnson, and gentle critiques of Jacques Rancière and John Dewey, passive education is instead described and outlined as an education which occurs whether we attempt it or not. As such, the object of critique for this essay (...) are forms of educational thought which, through fate or design, exclude the passive dimension, either within or outside of formal educational settings. An underlying component of this argument is therefore also that education does occur outside of formal educational settings and that, contra Gert Biesta and his critique of ‘learnification’, we may gain rather than lose something by attending to it as education. (shrink)

In this influential work, first published in English in 1963, Durkheim and Mauss claim that the individual mind is capable of classification and they seek the origin of the ‘classificatory function’ in society. On the basis of an intensive examination of forms and principles of symbolic classification reported from the Australian aborigines, the Zuñi and traditional China, they try to establish a formal correspondence between social and symbolic classification. From this they argue that the mode of classification is determined by (...) the form of society and that the notions of space, time, hierarchy, number, class and other such cognitive categories are products of society. Dr Needham’s introduction assesses the validity of Durkhiem and Mauss’s argument, traces its continued influence in various disciplines, and indicates its analytical value for future researches in social anthropology. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reintegrate the concept of plasticity into educational philosophy. Although John Dewey used the concept in Democracy and Education it has not generated much of a critical or practical legacy in educational thought. French philosopher, Catherine Malabou, is the first to think plasticity rigorously and seriously in a contemporary philosophical context and this paper outlines her thinking on it as well as considering its applicability to education. My argument is that her definition not only successfully reintroduces the (...) concept in a way which is generative for contemporary educational philosophy and practice but that it also significantly extends the remit of educational plasticity as previously conceived by Dewey. This paper will examine the concept of educational plasticity as providing an opportunity as well as ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’ towards the plastic subject in philosophical approaches to education. (shrink)

D’une double formation de naturaliste et de philosophe, Émile Callot a consacré une partie de ses travaux à étudier les relations entre ces deux disciplines : à les définir d’abord, à les légitimer ensuite et, enfin, à les constater dans diverses œuvres de savants et de philosophes. Dans cet esprit, il commença par dresser un tableau de la Renaissance des sciences de la vie au XVIe siècle, où il fit apparaître le caractère novateur des premiers Naturalistes européens. Il s’attacha (...) ensuite à déterminer cet esprit et cet objet d’une façon théorique dans sa "Philosophie biologique", et d’une façon historique dans son "Histoire de la philosophie biologique par les textes". C’est également dans le contexte historique, qu’il décrivit la Philosophie de la vie au XVIIIe siècle, visant à dégager les idées biologiques chez des auteurs aussi différents que d’Holbach, Montesquieu et Linné. Dans cette voie, il mit en valeur Maupertuis, le savant et le philosophe, en donnant de cet auteur une étude où l’œuvre est analysée et illustrée par les extraits les plus significatifs. Enfin, il consacra à la Philosophie biologique de Cournot une monographie, où il souligna la part déterminante du vitalisme dans la pensée de cet auteur. C’est de la même façon que, dans sa Philosophie biologique de Gœthe, Émile Callot cherche, à partir des travaux scientifiques de Gœthe, à dégager les grandes lignes de sa méthode et les principes directeurs de sa conception du monde vivant. Mais ce monde prend place dans la Nature, dont le philosophe et l’artiste se sont fait également les interprètes. Il convenait donc, après l’analyse de ce domaine restreint, de montrer comment celui-ci se situe dans la vision globale et unificatrice de la pensée et de la sensibilité gœthéennes. Aussi, cet ouvrage apporte-t-il une contribution importante, non seulement à l’étude des idées biologiques qui eurent cours à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, mais encore à une compréhension mieux informée de cet esprit génial. (shrink)

[688/2197] In many economic matters there arises a paradox that may be related to what in logic courses is called the “sophism of the heap of wheat”. Among the sophisms bequeathed to us by the Greeks, none is worthier to have come down through the centuries than this “sophism of the heap of wheat”; indeed this no mere puzzle, but a topical example of a frequent difficulty, as much in practical life as in pure speculation.One grain of wheat does not (...) make a heap; neither do two grains; nor do three grains; \(\ldots \) on the other hand, if a million grains are gathered, we can agree that they constitute a heap. What is the exact limit? Should we say that 2,342 grains, for instance, do not make a heap, whereas 2,343 grains do? This is obviously ridiculous. There appears no logical way out of this dead-end; it is therefore not possible to know what a heap of wheat is.The expression of the sophism can be varied in many ways; a classification of these expressions will not be unhelpful. (shrink)