In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ManifestsRachel Blau Duplessis (bio)O great classic cadences of English poetry We blush to hear thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless.—Denise Riley, Mop Mop GeorgetteThat tall white pasture clump that we call cow parsnip, Queen Anne’s lace magnified, are, in Latin, umbellifers, a flat-topped or rounded flower cluster. But sometimes people call them “umbrella flowers.” This work is closer to umbrella flowers than to umbellifers, down there on the (...) ground with bricolaged theorizing practices, folk etymologies, my poetry, and intransigent details. That was a tribute to the essay as woodsy ramble [Good xii and x].And to the essay as personal—a way of marking and mocking the professional codes and impersonal solemnities of the representation of thought. If saying “I” like a heroine will adequately undermine unsituated false universals, I’ll say “I” yes I will. “I” will report that in 1966 or so I diminished all the way down to a scant handful of one-line poems, and to gnomic statements, barely effective. The kind of development they needed was not rhetorical but historical.I, Lady, you are my true love’s lady. You stand in the middle of the room, Sunlight streaming around you. Sunlight takes hold of the seeds in you And wets them. I want to hold myself to you, But you are myself. Can I?This 1966 fragment issues directly from, and is a preternatural reminder of a passionate problematic—questions of gender, in relation to an engagement with poetry, poetry figured as a set of psychosocial and intellectual institutions imbuing a practice of writing in lines. This fragment knew and represented issues, points of political and cultural contradiction about the construction of authorship and the poetic career before their maker could see them as such. The fragment was a cognitive act, not just in autobiography. It functioned as a probe of a situation then almost invisible and always underacknowledged; to have understood it then, one would have needed the cultural apparatus precipitated (though not elaborated) by a social movement—second wave feminism, something that had not yet occurred.Despite mirroring each other in a dramatic hinged appositive, with Lady as hinge (“I, Lady, you”), the female “I” is separated by the very concept “Lady” from her addressee, one traditional addressee of poems, the female “you.” “Lady” is both hinge and barrier; she belongs to “my true love”—a charming and smug ballad turn, filled with idealizations of class and sexuality. Yet the “I” wants to hold this “you” figure to herself, actualizing in female-to-female attraction the long half-life of a Petrarchan structure of feeling in order to create female authorship. Now that gesture could be interpreted as desire (in a [End Page 31] lesbian, matrifocal, or preoedipal plot), or as self-aggrandizing forms of egoistic desire. Is the desired embrace regressive? immature? narcissistic? self-serving? greedy? masturbatory? (all these having been thought of as bad attitudes with a bad press—one might now wonder). Fueled by an ambisexual or polysexual suggestiveness, the poem makes a wobbly declaration of vocation in its desire to embrace singular, hieratic woman herself, yourself, myself. Yet as pronouns multiply, a serious problem is accosted. “But you are myself. Can I?”The fragment stops, startled, where the cultural problem began. Authorship was compromised and almost aborted; in any event, these issues, which seemed to me, in my (then commonplace) ignorance of female cultural production, to have no analogues, pointed me toward total blockage. The “can I” is not simply a personal questioning of my own powers, but concerns general contingencies of gender and female place in culture, a then invisible social horizon. Am “I” forbidden to poetry by one—but one key—law of poetry—the cult of the idealized female? Should “Lady” be ditched totally? or examined? both? and how to poke at a Petrarchanism that seems utterly belated, never uniformly hegemonic, and not, after all, the whole content of poetry? (As I bear down upon it, it recedes, is evasive.) Yet any number of writers do take “Lady” for granted as one of the institutional assumptions of poetry. Many male writers get to say Lady early and often... (shrink)

This article argues for the significance of Euripides’ Bacchae to what Socrates, in Book X of the Republic, refers to as the ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’. I argue that the play’s presentation of Dionysus – the god of tragic theatre – amounts to a metapoetic treatment of tragic poetry; it is a tragedy about tragedy. The Bacchae can thus be read as a statement of tragic poetry’s self-understanding of its pedagogical and political goals as well as of its (...) possible limitations. I conclude by arguing that there is in fact a deep kinship between tragic poetry (as presented by Euripides) and Socratic political philosophy (as presented by Plato), especially with respect to their relation to, and understanding of, the polis. Ultimately, through analyzing the Bacchae’s presentation of Dionysus, I aim to allow tragic poetry to speak for itself as well as to clarify its relation to Platonic/Socratic political philosophy. (shrink)

In his original and illuminating essay, Tushar Irani offers a re-reading of Adeimantus’s and Glaucon’s challenges to Socrates in book 2 of Plato’s Republic. If correct, his interpretation has far-reaching implications for how we are to understand the dialogue as a whole. At the core of this re-reading is an attempt to rehabilitate Adeimantus’s reputation by demonstrating his central role in determining the trajectory of the dialogue’s argument. In my response I question Irani’s suggestion that Adeimantus’s challenge to Socrates is (...) as distinct from Glaucon’s as Irani suggests it is and, even if so, whether it is distinct in the precise way he suggests it is. Furthermore, I raise possible objections to his claim that large parts of the Republic—and, especially, its political project—are intended to meet Adeimantus’s challenge, not Glaucon’s. (shrink)

This article offers a novel account of a key concept in Hannah Arendt’s political thought: amor mundi. In political theory’s ethical turn, theorists have increasingly turned to amor mundi as a source of ethical guidance and inspiration for politics. However, in doing so, they have elided Arendt’s distinct understanding of care. This article recovers Arendt’s understanding of amor mundi as care for the world by reconstructing the central concerns of her dissertation, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, and tracing them to the (...) “Crisis” essays of Between Past and Future. It shows that amor mundi emerges in the dissertation as part of a question: if love is our fundamental orientation toward the world, how can we love the world without instrumentalizing it? The two “Crisis” essays provide the following answer: if love is to avoid—and perhaps militate against—the instrumentalization of the world, it must take the form of care. Following this analysis, this article contends that the contribution of amor mundi to the ethical turn is best understood, not as the ethos needed to guide action in the political realm, but as a key pre- or nonpolitical ethos needed to conserve the world where politics takes place—and thus the very possibility of politics. (shrink)

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. "America," Jaume says, "was merely a pretext for studying (...) modern society and the woes of France." For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism. (shrink)

In this landmark work of economic sociology, Lucien Karpik introduces the theory and practical tools needed to analyze markets for singularities. Singularities are goods and services that cannot be studied by standard methods because they are multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. Examples include movies, novels, music, artwork, fine wine, lawyers, and doctors. Valuing the Unique provides a theoretical framework to explain this important class of products and markets that for so long have eluded neoclassical economics. With this innovative (...) theory--called the economics of singularities--Karpik shows that, because of the uncertainty and the highly subjective valuation of singularities, these markets are necessarily equipped with what he calls "judgment devices"--such as labels, brands, guides, critics, and rankings--which provide consumers with the credible knowledge needed to make reasonable choices. He explains why these markets are characterized by the primacy of competition by qualities over competition by prices, and he identifies the conditions under which singularities are constructed or are in danger of losing their uniqueness. After demonstrating how combinations of the numerous and multiform judgment devices can be used to identify different market models, Karpik applies his analytical tools to the functioning of a large number of actual markets, including fine wines, movies, luxury goods, pop music, and legal services. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation (RI) focus (...) on how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

L’alpinisme, pour Pierre-Henri Frangne, est d’abord une expérience. Spécialiste de philosophie de l’art, professeur à l’université de Rennes, auteur d’ouvrages sur la photographie et le cinéma, Monteverdi et Mallarmé, il pratique cette activité tous les étés depuis près d’une vingtaine d’années. Ses domaines de recherche l’ont déjà amené à écrire sur la montagne comme objet esthétique et sur la photographie de montagne. Mais ce nouvel ouvrage est cette fois d’abord une interrogation, à la pre...

Recent research on thick terms like “rude” and “friendly” has revealed a polarity effect, according to which the evaluative content of positive thick terms like “friendly” and “courageous” can be more easily canceled than the evaluative content of negative terms like “rude” and “selfish”. In this paper, we study the polarity effect in greater detail. We first demonstrate that the polarity effect is insensitive to manipulations of embeddings (Study 1). Second, we show that the effect occurs not only for thick (...) terms but also for thin terms such as “good” or “bad” (Study 2). We conclude that the polarity effect indicates a pervasive asymmetry between positive and negative evaluative terms. (shrink)

La référence au Fichte du Discours à la nation allemande est présente dans la double genèse de la social-démocratie allemande, chez Marx-Engels, et chez Lassalle. Cet article revient d’abord sur un débat trop peu connu sur la consubstantialité entre idéalisme fichtéen, unification et renforcement de l’Allemagne impériale, et social-démocratie. Celle-ci, plutôt louée par Jaurès dès 1891, est critiquée par Andler pour qui l’Allemagne, en 1918 comme après, demeure un Reich (et non une république) où la révolution, qu’elle soit bourgeoise ou (...) prolétarienne, est impossible. On examine ensuite la différence, chez Engels puis chez Kautsky, entre leur appréciation du nationalisme tchèque (perçu comme opposition à la domination austro-germanique) et celle du nationalisme polonais (confronté à la Russie), pour mettre en question qu’y soit en jeu « le seul intérêt de la révolution » (Engels), sans égard à celui des puissances « centrales » de 1914. On suit enfin les traces du débat Andler-Jaurès dans un clivage récurrent parmi les socialistes français sur la question allemande et européenne : Guerre d’Espagne, Munich, Collaboration et Résistance, CED, Traité de Maastricht et Constitution européenne. En 1989-1990, la « chute du Mur » et l’unification allemande résultent d’une poussée nationaliste qui, jointe à la dislocation du système soviétique, s’est particulièrement répercutée sur une Yougoslavie détruite sous l’effet d’une politique européenne d’inspiration largement allemande. (shrink)

This volume develops new conceptual and theoretical directions in the study of religion, conflict, and violence through a sharp focus on materiality, drawing upon two previously unrelated fields of scholarship: research on religion and conflict and the material turn within religious studies.

Cet essai dénonce comme fascisantes certaines tendances de la pensée des philosophes déconstructivistes. Selon l'auteur, ils ont fait l'apologie d'un nouveau nihilisme qui a eu pour résultat des phénomènes paradoxaux tels que la sympathie envers l'islamisme radical, le détournement des arts ou la naturalisation de la crise des institutions.

The concept of ‘world visions’, first elaborated in the early work of Georg Lukàcs, is used here as a tool whereby the similarities between Pascal’s Pensées and Kant’s critical philosophy are contrasted with the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. For Lucien Goldmann, a leading exponent of the most fruitful method of applying Marxist ideas to literary and philosophical problems, the ‘tragic vision’ marked an important phase in the development of European thought from rationalism and empiricism to (...) the dialectical philosophy of Hegel, Marx and Lukàcs. The book is not a collection of isolated essays on Kant, Pascal, Racine, the status of the legal nobility in seventeenth-century France and the exact nature of the religious movement known as Jansenism, but an attempt to formulate, by an examination of these different topics, a general approach to the problems of philosophy, of literary criticism, and of the relationship between thought and action in human society. (shrink)

La théorie lockienne de la perception a été lue tantôt comme une forme de représentationnalisme, tantôt comme relevant d'un réalisme direct n'impliquant pas d'entité intermédiaire entre l'esprit et les choses. Cet article entreprend de clarifier cette question à partir des analyses de l'Essai sur la distinction et la confusion des idées. Celles-ci interrogent à la fois la nature de l'idée comme image et le fait qu'elle n'est déterminée que lorsque l'esprit lui donne un nom. Pour faire comprendre ce dernier point, (...) Locke utilise la métaphore de l'anamorphose en peinture, et plus particulièrement de l'anamorphose cylindrique. En reliant cette métaphore aux théories de la perspective du XVIIe siècle, à la camera obscura de l'esprit, et enfin à l'optique du XVIIe siècle, l'article parvient à plusieurs conclusions. Faire de l'idée une image ne conduit jamais Locke à voir en elle un objet qui s'interpose entre l'esprit et les choses. Une idée comme celle de sense data est étrangère à sa pensée. Si Locke ne met jamais en doute la réalité du monde extérieur, c'est que pour lui l'idée nous donne d'emblée accès à une extériorité, qu'il s'agit de déterminer. Enfin, la perception lockienne ne relève pas d'un modèle sémantique dont l'origine serait à trouver dans Descartes et qui préparerait celui de l'empirisme du XVIIIe siècle, faisant de l'idée un signe. Elle se rapprocherait plutôt, paradoxalement, de l'idée austinienne du silence des sens. (shrink)

This article features a comprehensive interview with Vincent Blok, renowned author of “The Critique of Management: Towards a Philosophy and Ethics of Business Management”, published in 2022. The interview is structured around four core themes: (1) Philosophical Context, (2) Methodology, (3) Theory and Application, and (4) Future of Management. Firstly, we explore the contextual significance and urgency for a philosophical investigation on the essence of management. Secondly, we delve into Blok’s distinctive philosophical method. Thirdly, we examine the theoretical foundations and (...) practical applications of his work. Finally, we engage in a broader discussion on how Blok’s insights resonate with the future landscape of management, addressing topics ranging from business education to the rise of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

L'idée de science avant Malebranche.--L'idée de science selon Malebranche.--L'idée de science chez les modernes.

Ce dictionnaire encyclopédique embrasse, avec ses treize chapitres, la quasi-totalité du domaine, allant des problématiques à la communication politique en passant par les concepts transversaux, l'intelligence artificielle, les sciences cognitives, les mass media et le droit de la communication. Ordre alphabétique à l'intérieur des chapitres. [SDM].