M. Dupréel est, avant tout, un moraliste et un sociologue, et sa théorie de la connaissance est, nettement, d'inspiration sociologique. En insérant les problèmes de la connaissance dans la trame de la vie sociale, en raisonnant sur une pensée complète, et non sur une pensée appauvrie et schématisée, M. Dupréel arrive à des conclusions qui sont souvent très proches de celles que le lecteur est habituéà lire dans Dialectica.Je fais précéder les extraits choisis d'indications bibliographiques qui concernent uniquement les travaux (...) dont ces fragments ont été tirés; il ne faudrait donc pas u voir la liste complète des œuvres de M. Dupréel. (shrink)

Cahier 1 : M. Vetö, Le passé selon Bergson ; F. Guibal, « E. Weil et nous ». Une philosophie à l’épreuve de la réalité ; O. Balaban, Intellectualisme et causalité chez Hegel, et les limites de la science moderne ; C. Poirel, Le matérialisme neuronal et la question de la transcendance ; B. D. Hercenberg, Le mythe de Déméter et la tension entre la séparation..

This collection contains studies on justice, juridical reasoning and argumenta tion which contributed to my ideas on the new rhetoric. My reflections on justice, from 1944 to the present day, have given rise to various studies. The ftrst of these was published in English as The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument. The others, of which several are out of print or have never previously been published, are reunited in the present volume. As justice is, for me, the (...) prime example of a "confused notion", of a notion which, like many philosophical concepts, cannot be reduced to clarity without being distorted, one cannot treat it without recourse to the methods of reasoning analyzed by the new rhetoric. In actuality, these methods have long been put into practice by jurists. Legal reasoning is fertile ground for the study of argumentation: it is to the new rhetoric what mathematics is to formal logic and to the theory of demonstrative proof. It is important, then, that philosophers should not limit their methodologi cal studies to mathematics and the natural sciences. They must not neglect law in the search for practical reason. I hope that these essays lead to be a better understanding of how law can enrich philosophical thought. CH. P. (shrink)

Modern logic has Wldergone some remarkable developments in the last hun dred years. These have contributed to the extraordinary use of formal logic which has become essentially the concern of mathematicians. This has led to attempts to identify logic with formal logic. The claim has even been made that all non-formal reasoning, to the extent that it cannot be formalized, no longer belongs to logic. This conception leads to a genuine impoverishment of logic as well as to a narrow conception (...) of reason. It means that as soon as demonstrative proofs are no longer available reason will no longer dominate. Even the idea of the 'reasonable' becomes foreign to logic and such expres sions as 'reasonable decisions', 'reasonable choice' or 'reasonable hypotheses' would be put aside as meaningless. The domain of action, including method ology and everything that is given over to deliberation or controversy - i.e., foreign to formal logic - would become a battleground where necessarily the reason of the strongest would always prevail. (shrink)

RésuméAprès avoir exposé les thèses de la théorie classique de 1'évidence et mis en relief les conséquences philosophiques de celle‐ci, l'auteur s'attaque aux deux présupposés, dont le caractère apparemment indiscutable obligeait ceux qui voulaient echapper au scepticisme à fonder toute preuve sur une intuition évidente; à savoir, qu'une conclusion n'est jamais plus certaine que la plus faible de ses prémises, et qu'une connaissance assuree doit être garantie, en fin de compte, par 1'évidence.Il rnontre qu'une théorie de la preuve qui répudierait (...) la conception classique de 1'évidence peut néanmoins s'élaborer grâce aux éléments que fournit l'analyse de l'argumentation, dont l'étude, contrairement à celle de la demonstration, été negligée depuis des siècles. (shrink)

Human rights, as legally understood, must be safeguarded. This presupposes a state of law. The safeguarding of human rights further presupposes an independent judiciary applying the law in a community with common values and aspirations. The foundation of human rights is an individualistic philosophy dependent on the respect for truth and the possibility for the individual to attain it. The respect for the dignity of the human person is the result of a long historical development from this starting point.