This volume contains a collection of fifteen essays on Jewish Philosophy. The essays deal with Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham J. Heschel, and Gershom G. Scholem. The book starts with a lucid overview of nineteenth-century Jewish Philosophy; it can be regarded as a companion volume to the author s Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times. Nathan Rotenstreich (1914-1993) was Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Vice-President of the Israeli Academy of Sciences (...) and Humanities. (shrink)

This essay examines the Kastner trial and the Eichmann trial as constitutive moments in the development of Israeli collective identity. This aspect of the trials is explored by comparing the intervention of two intellectuals, Nathan Alterman and Hannah Arendt, in the two trials respectively. Both social critics challenged the terms of the collective identity that was reinforced by the trials. During the Kastner trial, the Israeli poet Alterman set out to challenge the "two paths" conception of heroism (...) and cowardice that shaped the court's - and society's - understanding of the Holocaust. The first part of the essay examines Alterman's critical intervention and the public controversy that followed in its wake. In the second part, I examine Arendt's criticism of the Eichmann trial as an attempt to construct Israeli collective identity around opposition to the demonic Nazi In this context, I discuss the famous controversy between Arendt and Gershom Scholem over the terms of her criticism. The two episodes come together in the third part of the essay, where I discuss the surprising continuities and affinities between the controversies. The two controversies offer a fascinating tale about the role of the law in the construction of collective identities and the role of the social critic in the development of a liberal society. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that punishment is intentionally harmful and that this makes it especially hard to morally justify. Explanations for the latter intuition often say questionable things about the moral significance of the intent to harm. I argue that there’s a better way to explain this intuition.

Philosophers have recently come to focus on explaining the phenomenon of ​bad beliefs,​ beliefs that are apparently true and well-evidenced but nevertheless objectionable. Despite this recent focus, a consensus is already forming around a particular explanation of these beliefs’ badness called ​moral encroachment​, according to which, roughly, the moral stakes engendered by bad beliefs make them particularly difficult to justify. This paper advances an alternative account not just of bad beliefs but of bad attitudes more generally according to which bad (...) beliefs’ badness originates not in a failure of sufficient evidence but in a failure to respond adequately to reasons. I motivate this alternative account through an analogy to recent discussions of moral worth centered on the well-known grocer case from Kant’s ​Groundwork​, and by showing that this analogy permits the proposed account to generalize to bad attitudes beyond belief. The paper concludes by contrasting the implications of moral encroachment and of the proposed account for bad attitudes’ blameworthiness. (shrink)

The wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem is a problem for attempts to analyze normative properties using only facts about the balance of normative reasons, a style of analysis on which the ‘Reasons First’ programme depends. I argue that this problem cannot be solved if the orthodox view of reasons is true --- that is, if each normative reason is numerically identical with some fact, proposition, or state-of-affairs. That’s because solving the WKR problem requires completely distinguishing between the right- and (...) wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. I argue that some facts give both right- and wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. Consequently, no such distinction between the two types of reasons is complete if reasons are facts or the like. I conclude by suggesting that reasons and facts are related by constitution, not identity. (shrink)

An argument for pro-choice advocates engaging the ethical arguments about abortion, and more. Public philosophy on abortion and the value of philosophy. With Jonathan Dudley, MD.

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

Considered a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language. This award-winning book is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation.

This book argues that Hume is a radical epistemic skeptic who gives only practical reasons for retaining belief in sensory beliefs and the deliverances of reason. He advises us to take a moderate approach to the demands of philosophy, since they sometimes diverge from the demands of life.

There’s a long but relatively neglected tradition of attempting to explain why many researchers working on the nature of phenomenal consciousness think that it’s hard to explain.1 David Chalmers argues that this “meta-problem of consciousness” merits more attention than it has received. He also argues against several existing explanations of why we find consciousness hard to explain. Like Chalmers, we agree that the meta-problem is worthy of more attention. Contra Chalmers, however, we argue that there’s an existing explanation that is (...) more promising than his objections suggest. We argue that researchers find phenomenal consciousness hard to explain because phenomenal concepts are complex demonstratives that encode the impossibility of explaining consciousness as one of their application conditions. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218.

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary qualities are dispositional properties then objects (...) would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us. (shrink)

An introduction of the ethics of belief and application to current political debates, with the observation that people of all political persuasions have beliefs that are not based on strong evidence. -/- Also posted on Cardiff's "Open for Debate" blog.

In his recent article, Ben-Moshe offers an account of conscientious objection in terms of the truth of the underlying moral objections, as judged by the standards of an impartial spectator. He seems to advocate for the view that having a valid moral objection to X is the sole criteria for the instantiation of a right to conscientiously object to X, and seems indifferent to the moral status of the prevailing moral attitudes. I argue that the moral status of the prevailing (...) moral attitudes is relevant, and that a good faith disagreement between those who condone the relevant act and those who object to it is a criterion for CO. In this light, I suggest that CO is a sociopolitical device for managing differing ethical perspectives, particularly in the context of collective moral change. Thus, it is misguided to equate having a valid moral objection with the recognition of a CO. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial CultureSpencer Hawkins (bio)Mufti, Aamir. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 2007. xv + 325 pp.Mufti’s comparison of the Jewish question and the Indian Partition invites readers to join building projects that delineate and then endanger minorities within nations. Literature about minorities speaks a language deliberately (...) distant from the national one. Minority status has little to do with population numbers for Aamir Mufti; instead it signifies [End Page 61] tential victimization through disproportional rights, since “minority is always potentially exile” (Mufti 13). This definition of minority suits his two examples—Jews in Germany and Muslims in India—since in the twentieth century both fledgling nations adopted forms of nationalism that regarded the lives of these minorities as contaminants to the purity of the emergent national body. The prologue catalogues the brutality in India that prompted Mufti to write this book. Among the horrors listed were the destruction of Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the videotaped gang rapes of Muslim women that became a widespread form of entertainment in India. While Mufti reads violence toward minorities as correlative with the rise of nationstates, he considers similarities and differences between nation building in the West and in the subcontinent. In both cases, the new establishment of political equality for citizens came along with the desire to pare down the number of officially recognized citizens. Muslim and Jewish minorities migrated to “minority” nations in the collapsing British Empire, in present-day Pakistan and Israel, respectively, during the respective formations of India and Germany. By founding nations on formerly British-occupied territory, minorities potentially would enjoy the role of nationalist majorities. This solution strikes Mufti as spreading the nationalist contagion onto the minority.The whole book lets literature mark broad cultural attitudes and phenomena. The first chapter observes incipient Jewish nationalism in a work by a British author, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, who spent time in Germany and grew fascinated with the Jewish question while abroad. Her Britishness reinforces a pattern in Mufti’s schema: British powers facilitate the rise of nationalism among minorities in India and in Germany. Daniel Deronda comes at the tail end of a long discourse on Jews’ relation to Europe. The first of Mufti’s cases within canonical literature is the hope for tolerance and a dialogue of cultures, which G. E. Lessing allegorizes through a drama about Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria, who learns to trust the eponymous Jewish merchant in Nathan the Wise. “Muslim” stands in for “Christian” since Nathan’s alienation is allegorical for the alienation of Jews in Lutheran Germany. Heinrich Heine weighs in on the advantages to assimilation in this period with his fragmentary novel The Rabbi from Bacherach, where religiously raised Jewish children feel comforted when they hear the Tale of the Nibelungen from Father Rhein, the personification of a river that figures generally for German national myth and, in Heine’s story, as a possible source of comfort for partially assimilated minorities. If we read literature as a barometer of cultural pressures, then the appeal of assimilation for European Jews declines in the late colonial nineteenth century when George Eliot inscribed religion into the “secular” discourse of national citizenship.Since the Israeli state is outside of the range of his argument, we leave the Jewish Question with George Eliot’s philo-Semitism in Daniel Deronda, where the only hope for European Jews is to become a nation and to occupy the Palestinian territory. Mufti compares the concerns of early Zionism and Pakistani nationalism side by side in chapter 2. Pakistani issues dominate chapters 3 to 5. In chapter 2, he launches the comparison with the parallel between Hebrew’s development as a national language to identify [End Page 62] Jews secularly and culturally, not just religiously, and Urdu’s transition from a vernacular language to a national language with the secular goal of creating a Pakistani culture freed from Hindi’s erstwhile predominance. When he depicts language choice as mimetic of specific cultural trends, Mufti indicates the shape of... (shrink)

Este trabalho visa apresentar o pensamento ético de Simone de Beauvoir tal como é exposto em seu livro Por une morale de l'ambiguité. Neste livro, a autora retoma sua compreensão da existência humana dada em seu texto anterior, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, porém, desdobrando melhor sua análise e apresentando um princípio ético ambíguo posto que universal e singular simultaneamente, a partir do qual uma ética condizente ao existir humano seria esboçada. Assim, buscaremos aqui caracterizar propriamente como Simone de Beauvoir entende essa (...) ética da ambigüidade, fundamentalmente a partir da compreensão da afirmação de que "querer-se livre e querer-se moral é uma só e mesma decisão". (shrink)

In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.

The debate over whether the basic principles of Frege's philosophy of semantics committed him to the hierarchy of indirect senses is adjudicated. It is demonstrated by means of a simple device that Frege was indeed committed to the hierarchy.

This paper aims to further examine the relationship between self-awareness and agency by focusing on the role that emotional awareness plays in prominent conceptions of responsibility. One promising way of approaching this task is by focusing on individuals who display impairments in emotional awareness and then examining the effects that these impairments have on their apparent responsibility for the actions that they perform. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder as well as other clinical groups who evince high degrees of the personality (...) construct known as alexithymia, I will argue, do, in fact, display impairments in emotional self-awareness, and, so, may provide some insight into the relationship between this awareness and the capacity for responsible agency. More specifically, individuals with ASD may provide us with evidence that robust emotional self-awareness is not a necessary condition for responsible agency or that lacking such a capacity could undermine some otherwise plausible sufficient conditions for responsibility. The aim of the paper, then, is twofold. First, it will aim to show that ASD ought to be understood, in part, as a disorder of emotional self-awareness. Section 2 presents evidence relating to the emotional profile characteristic of individuals with ASD and argues that the most striking feature of this profile is the way in which the individual seems to be separated from his or her emotions in an important sense. Second, the paper aims to show that this distinctive feature of the emotions in ASD casts serious doubt on some prominent accounts of moral responsibility. To this end, section 3.1 presents a challenge to some widely accepted “subjective conditions” for responsibility, namely those articulated by John Martin Fischer and Ravizza and makes a case, based on the empirical data regarding autism, that these conditions actually are not necessary for one’s being a responsible agent. Section 3.2 then presents a challenge for theories of responsible agency which assign primary importance to the connection between an agent’s actions and her judgment-sensitive attitudes. I argue there that the evidence from autism suggests that these theories fail in their efforts to provide sufficient conditions for responsibility. (shrink)

According to our intuitions, certain generalizations are better confirmed by positive instances than others. In order to characterize the difference between these generalizations, I have proposed in [3] to investigate the generalizing behavior of living beings. Such an investigation makes it possible to classify into different categories the generalizations that are intuitively confirmed by their positive instances and those that are not intuitively confirmed by such instances. One important aspect of my treatment, however, has been shown to be unsatisfactory: sentences (...) that are logically equivalent may belong to different categories. In this paper, I shall first give a short summary of the relevant parts of my previous paper, and then I shall try to improve it in order to avoid the undesirable result. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between deliberative democracy, the Internet, and systems theory’s thoughts on diversity. After introducing Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy and how diversity fits into it, the article discusses various ideas about whether and how it could work on the Internet. Next, the article looks at research into diversity done in the field of complex adaptive systems, showing that diversity has both good and bad effects, but is clearly preferred for the purpose of survival. The article concludes (...) with an analysis of how the results of systems theory’s study of diversity can assist society in bringing democracy to the Web. (shrink)

This article examines Alain Badiou’s and Slavoj Žižek’s advocacy for fidelity to revolutionary truths in light of complex system theory’s understanding of resiliency. It begins with a discussion of how Badiou and Žižek describe truth. Next, it looks at the features that make a complex system resilient. The article argues that if we understand neoliberalism as a resilient system, then the fidelity to revolutionary truths that Badiou and Žižek advocate is not enough, for it doesn’t realize how truths come from (...) the system as a whole. The article concludes by describing how this viewpoint alters discussions of political change. (shrink)

One usually speaks of Hume's problem of induction in the singular, as if Hume had called our attention to only one problem which affects the justification of inductive inferences. But Hume shows that this justification depends on two assumptions which are not logically valid. In most studies about the justification of inductive inferences, Hume's approach to base the justification on two assumptions has not been discussed. This seems to have been a mistake, however. Not only do these assumptions play different (...) roles in the justification, but by distinguishing between them, one of them can be shown to be scientifically (though not logically) valid. (shrink)

Have you noticed people who think only one religion can be right always think it’s their own? Wouldn’t it be strange to hear a Reformed Christian assert only one is right, but it’s Daoism? That only one’s right seems based on a logical principle: two contradictory claims can’t both be true in the same sense at the same time. But we can detect here an implicit alliance between politics and logic. Religious institutions are in the business of winning hearts and (...) minds (and wallets!). If deploying “logic” buttresses institutional interests, all the better. (shrink)

We connect Bermúdez's arguments to previous theorizing about “leaky” rationality, emphasizing that the decision process (including decision frames) “leaks” into the experience of decision outcomes. We suggest that the implications of Bermúdez's analysis are broadly applicable to the study of virtually all real-world decision making, and that the field needs a substantive and not just a formal theory of rationality.

State capitalism has recently come to the fore as a transversal research object in the social sciences. Renewed interest in the notion is evident across several disciplines, in scholarship addressing government interventionism in economic life in major developing countries. This emergent field of study on state capitalism, however, consistently bypasses the remarkable conceptual trajectory of the notion from the end of the 19th century to the present. This article proposes an intellectual-historical survey of state capitalism’s many lives across different ensembles (...) of writing: early Marxist pronouncements on state capitalism at the time of the Second International; theories of state capitalism evolved in the first half of the 20th century in response to the European experience of war and fascism; dissident portrayals of the Soviet Union as state-capitalist; post-Second World War theories of state-monopoly capitalism in the Western Bloc; examinations of state capitalism as a development strategy in ‘Third World’ nations in the 1970s and 1980s; and finally, today’s scholarship on new patterns of state capitalism in emerging economies. Having contextualized each of these strands of writing, the article goes on to interrogate definitional and conceptual boundaries of state capitalism. It then maps out essential institutional features of state-capitalist configurations as construed in the literature. In sharp contrast to 20th-century theories of state capitalism, present-day scholarship on the topic tends to retreat from the integrated critique of political economy, shifting its problematics of state-market relations to meso- and micro-levels of analysis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Many ‘deep self’ theories of moral responsibility characterize the deep self as necessarily requiring that an agent be able to reflect on her own cognitive states in various ways. In this paper, I argue that these metacognitive abilities are not actually a necessary feature of the deep self. In order to show this, I appeal to empirical evidence from research on autism spectrum disorders that suggests that individuals with ASD have striking impairments in metacognitive abilities. I then argue that metacognitive (...) conceptions of the deep self are implausible insofar as they fail to give a satisfactory account of the responsibility of persons with autism. (shrink)

Drawing on a documentary analysis of two socioeconomic policy programs, one Flemish (“Vlaanderen in Actie”), the other Walloon (“Marshall Plans”), and a discourse analysis of how these programs are received in one Flemish and one Francophone quality newspaper, this article illustrates how Flanders and Wallonia both seek to become top-performing knowledge-based economies (KBEs). The article discerns a number of discursive repertoires, such as “Catching up,” which policy actors draw on to legitimize or question the transformation of Flanders and Wallonia into (...) KBEs. The “Catching up” repertoire places Flanders resolutely ahead of Wallonia in the global race toward knowledge, excellence, and growth, but suggests that Wallonia may, in due course, overtake Flanders as a top competitive region. Given the expectations and fears that “Catching up” evokes among Flemish and Walloon policy actors, the repertoire serves these actors as a flexible discursive resource to make sense of, and shape, their collective futures and their regional identities. The article’s findings underline the simultaneity of, and the interplay between, globalizing forces and particularizing tendencies, as Flanders and Wallonia develop with a global KBE in region-specific ways. (shrink)

It is now more than 50 years that the Goodman paradox has been discussed, and many different solutions have been proposed. But so far no agreement has been reached about which is the correct solution to the paradox. In this paper, I present the naturalistic solutions to the paradox that were proposed in Quine (1969, 1974), Quine and Ullian (1970/1978), and Stemmer (1971). At the same time, I introduce a number of modifications and improvements that are needed for overcoming shortcomings (...) of the solutions. The discussion of this improved version suggests that the Goodman paradox actually embodies three different problems; yet, one of them is not Goodman’s but Hume’s problem. The discussion also suggests that the naturalistic approach is probably the best for basing on it a theory of confirmation. Finally, I analyze one of Hume’s insights that seems to have been largely ignored. This insight shows a surprising similarity to a central feature of the naturalistic solutions. (shrink)

This book is one in a series of studies by the recently deceased Israeli philosopher Nathan Rotenstreich dedicated to the comparison of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. Reason and Its Manifestations is an attempt to make the best case possible for Kant’s notion of reason in light of Hegel’s critiques of various Kantian dualisms. Rotenstreich argues that the Kantian dualisms later integrated in Hegel—freedom and nature, theoretical reason and practical reason, will and reason, empirical and intelligible character— (...) are not as discontinuous as one might think. According to Rotenstreich, Kant meant “both to maintain dualities and to mitigate them”. Kant’s insistence on the conceptual dualities in his programmatic first and second Critiques is balanced by Rotenstreich’s examination of the third Critique and Kant’s writings on history, where one finds certain continuities between the very concepts Kant at one point distinguished quite sharply. (shrink)

The Goodman paradox presents us with the problem of selecting the hypotheses that are confirmed by their positive instances. In a recent paper, Stephen Hetherington proposes a criterion that enables us to specify the hypotheses that are subjectively confirmed by these instances. But there is also an objective aspect to be considered here because, as a matter of fact, the hypotheses selected by the criterion have often been highly reliable even if they were based on the observation of only a (...) few positive instances. In the present note, I examine this aspect and I point out that Hume not only dealt with the reliability phenomenon but also gave a plausible explanation of the phenomenon. I also point out that Hume's explanation is surprisingly similar to the explanation given lately by a number of naturalistic philosophers to the reliability phenomenon. (shrink)

According to Nicod's criterion of confirmation, a hypothesis of the form ‘All P are Q’ is confirmed by its positive instances, i.e. by entities that are P and Q. It is well known, however, that the criterion gives origin to counterintuitive results. For example, it sanctions the confirmation of ‘All nonblacks are nonravens’ by a nonblack nonraven. Since this hypothesis is logically equivalent to ‘All ravens are black,’ it follows that the criterion indirectly sanctions the counterintuitive confirmation of ‘All ravens (...) are black’ by a non black nonraven, e.g. by a white shoe. (shrink)

The notion of similarity plays a central role in Quine's theory of Universals and it is with the help of this notion that Quine intends to define the concept of kind which also plays a central role in the theory. But as Quine has admitted, his attempts to define kinds in terms of similarities were unsuccessful and it is mainly because of this shortcoming that Quine's theory has been ignored by several philosophers. Nominalism and realism: Universals and Scientific realism. Cambridge: (...) Cambridge University Press). In the present paper, I propose an alternative framework that accounts for the phenomena that Quine intends to explain with his resemblance theory. The framework agrees with Quine's austere ontology; in particular, it does not assume the existence of properties and of possible worlds.. Resemblance nominalism: A solution to the problem of Universals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.) Moreover, the framework is extensionalist since the abstract entities it assumes are classes and these can be individuated extensionally, for classes are identical if their members are identical. Finally, I will refute some of the objections to Quine's approach that have been raised by Armstrong and Oliver [. The metaphysics of properties. Mind, 105, 1-80.] and I will argue that, contrary to what has been claimed by Oliver in a comment on Lewis [. On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.], Quine is able to specify an important set of sparse properties. (shrink)

Introduction. Rest and motion. Stability and progress.--The meaning of justice. The science of values.--The equilibration of interests. Cause and effect. The individual and society. Liberty and government.--Liberty and government. Conclusion.

Meta-axiological distinctions introduced here introduced here include cognitivism and non-cognitivism on the status of evaluative discourse, as well as revisionary and non-revisionary positions. I argue that anti-realist and error-theoretical views of evaluative claims tend to be revisionary in ways that conflict with the realist orientation of much evaluative discourse, yet I contend that this does not provide a decisive reason in favor of cognitivism. While categorical aesthetic imperatives are hard to justify, some of these hypothetical imperatives have important implications in (...) arguments over literary value. Dispositional accounts of value and 'ideal judge' conditions are also canvassed. In what follows I shall take up some central issues in meta-axiology, the branch of philosophy that engages in second-order reflection over values and evaluative discourse. My highly selective survey will be conducted with an eye to the implications of key philosophical strategies for questions pertaining to the topic of literary value. I propose no systematic theory of the latter, but do schematically indicate what I take to be some cogent basic assumptions and lines of future enquiry. (shrink)

Les rapports entre parti et État en Chine aujourd’hui : une clé de lecture soviétique L’architecture politique chinoise actuelle a été héritée de l’URSS ; pourtant elle est rarement appréhendée à l’aune de ce précédent historique. Cette étude analyse la relation asymétrique entre le Parti communiste chinois et la puissance publique à la lumière des formes et des pratiques du Parti communiste de l’Union soviétique post-stalinien. On relève l’homologie des structures partidaires et étatiques en URSS et en Chine, ainsi que (...) la pénétration de l’État par le Parti dans ces deux configurations. Dans le cas chinois, cependant, des mécanismes institutionnels propres – tels que les groupes du Parti ( dangzu ) – constituent des moyens de contrôle sur l’appareil étatique inconnus en URSS. Le pouvoir chinois actuel se distingue par une conception absolutiste du rôle dirigeant du Parti, à rebours d’efforts entrepris par le passé pour circonscrire son périmètre d’intervention et pour le rapprocher du fonctionnement alors en vigueur en Union soviétique. (shrink)

This article examines the double account of the human in Friedrich Nietzsche's writings. Genealogically, Nietzsche insists that humanity is a tamed herd that attacks its own animality. Philologically, this human – through anthropomorphism – sunders itself from those aspects of language that are not representational. Read in relation to this double critique, the article argues that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an attempt to imagine an entirely different relation between politics and language, one that enables a thinking of a future without (...) dominion and responds to the crisis of human rights and the humanities today. (shrink)