L’une des tâches centrales de la théorie politique normative est d’imaginer et de défendre des alternatives plus justes au système économique et social actuel. Dans ce but, les chercheurs et chercheuses doivent nécessairement spéculer sur la nature des scénarios alternatifs possibles, mais encore inexistants. Grâce à l’étude d’une branche relativement récente de la théorie politique contemporaine (la théorie politique de la finance), cet article vise à étudier une question générale : Quelle doit être l’attitude du chercheur ou de la chercheuse (...) face aux nécessaires incertitudes empiriques inhérentes à sa tâche? En chemin, l’article identifie trois problèmes principaux auxquels fait face la littérature : un manque de clarté et de rigueur dans la définition des alternatives étudiées, un niveau élevé d’incertitudes concernant les effets attendus de ces alternatives, et une relation problématique entre le choix de l’alternative défendue et l’évaluation normative du statu quo. L’article se conclut par plusieurs recommandations visant à remédier à ces problèmes. (shrink)

This paper reexamines Stebbing and Moore’s views about common sense. I first draw on overlooked textual evidence to argue that Moore’s common sense views are far less monolithic than has been traditionally assumed. I use this to show that Stebbing and Moore were largely aligned with respect to the extent to which the truths of common sense may be philosophically analyzed. I then develop an alternative reading of Stebbing’s common sense program, which I argue is decidedly distinct from Moore’s. For (...) Stebbing, unlike Moore, science and common sense form a unity. I trace how this idea is developed across several of her works, culminating in her view that commonsense knowledge constitutes a form of probable knowledge. (shrink)

Montesquieu: politics and history.--Rousseau: the social contract.--Marx's relation to Hegel.

It is widely assumed that G. E. Moore was either oblivious or indifferent to circularity worries surrounding his enigmatic proof of an external world. I argue that this assumption is false. Drawing on unpublished archival evidence and overlooked passages in Moore’s posthumously published lectures, I provide, for the first time, an account of Moore on circular proof. I show that, as early as 1928–29 and as late as 1938–39, Moore identified an “important” and “unimportant” sense of begging the question (epistemic (...) circularity and premise circularity, respectively) and maintained that a genuine proof should avoid both forms. Curiously, however, this standard is not upheld in his 1939 “Proof,” where this “important” sense is conspicuously absent from Moore’s discussion. This discrepancy raises an interpretative puzzle: Why does Moore’s standard for proof change? I provide an answer and explore its philosophical implications, clarifying the paradoxical nature of the proof and re-diagnosing the sense of intellectual dissatisfaction experienced by many commentators. (shrink)

This reference work is a reprint of the 1694 translation of Moreri's classic reference work . The two volumes contain a mixture of histiographical, geographical and poetical information. They chronicle the lives and actions of celebrated people from the time as well as offering invaluable information on various world-wide regions, empires and kingdoms. Containing over 25,000 entries, the English edition is generally considered superior to the French, as an additional section on the English, Scottish and Irish nobility was added.

1 – La première lettre du père Noël et la réponse de Pascal Parmi les lecteurs des Expériences nouvelles, un des moins intéressés ne fut pas le P. Noël, ancien professeur de Descartes au Collège des Jésuites de La Flèche, recteur du Collège de Clermont à Paris, alors dans sa soixante-dixième année. Homme de prudence et de transition, il s’efforçait de concilier les nouveautés du cartésianisme avec les axiomes traditionnels de l’École. La hardiesse avec laquelle Pascal soutenait le vid...

Elementi di autocritica.--Sull'evoluzione del giovane Marx.

A wide variety of new forms of money have been developed in recent decades as a challenge or complement to the official, dominant currencies. LETS, Local Currencies, Carbon Currencies and Bitcoins are all examples of this new trend. These currencies are at the heart of a larger movement that questions the present state of money and argues that new currencies might help to build resilient economies and “warmer” social relations. -/- This book focuses on radical alternative proposals as well as (...) on small-scale experiments, and makes use of the analytical tools of philosophy and of economics, with one main question in mind: Can alternative currencies constitute desirable alternatives to the present monetary system? Overall, the book will raise serious doubts regarding the capacity of such currencies to deliver on their promises. In part, it will show that several arguments in favour of alternative currencies are lacking in consistency and clarity, and are thus in need of thorough revision. More fundamentally, it will argue that these currencies either fail to fulfil their objectives or that their fulfilment would entail significant conflicts with justice and economic efficiency. -/- This book is addressed to researchers in economics, politics, and philosophy of money, especially those working on alternative monetary systems. (shrink)

Trois compréhensions du monde. Trois primats. Trois principes. Trois questions. Trois enjeux. Quatre registres discussifs. Quatre formes d’identité. Telle est la question dans laquelle s’investit le présent article. Il s’agit de situer d’un point de vue systématique les épiphanies par lesquelles s’éveillent les quatre formes de l’identité à travers les trois compréhensions du monde dans l’architectonique de Jean-Marc Ferry. En effet, il définit systématiquement d’une part les trois moments génétiques de la compréhension du monde. Il s’agit de trois moments qui (...) épousent la forme ontologique de la phrase grammaticale où l’Ancien correspond au moment de l’Objet, le Moderne au moment du Sujet et le Contemporain le moment du Verbe. D’autre part, il établit systématiquement les quatre formes génétiques de l’identité : narrative, interprétative, argumentative et reconstructive. (shrink)

Bec explores the significance of gestures in Flusser’s work, linking them to Flusser’s writing activity as well as to Flusser himself. Through his gestures, his gesticulating, he moved to move others. The world manifests itself in gestures. New gestures may appear, influencing and changing how we relate to reality. The new gestures of photographing, filming, and videotaping will alter our ways of existence in that they anticipate a new cybernetic form of life.

Althusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality at the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave rise to a new generation of Rousseau scholars, attentive not just to Rousseau's ideas, but also to those of his concepts that were buried beneath metaphors or fictional situations and characters. Second, we are now discovering that the "late Althusser's" theses about aleatory materialism and the need to break with the (...) strict determinism of theories of history in order to devise a new philosophy "for Marx" were being worked out well before 1985 in this reading of Rousseau dating from twelve years earlier, which introduces into Rousseau's text the ideas of the void, the accident, the take, and the necessity of contingency. (shrink)

Il existe plusieurs faisceaux de présomption qui témoigneraient de relation entre les Polynésiens et les Amérindiens d’Amérique du Sud : il est aujourd’hui admis que les Polynésiens ont atteint l’Amérique du Sud. Si la patate douce est un indice d’anciens contacts entre la Polynésie et l’Amérique du Sud, des archéologues ont aussi trouvé sur la façade pacifique de l’Amérique du Chili des ossements de poulets polynésiens. Quelles seraient les étoiles que les Polynésiens pourraient avoir suivies pour se pourvoir en patate (...) douce en Amérique du Sud et plus précisément au Chili, sous les latitudes où les chercheurs ont trouvé des poules polynésiennes? L’ethnoastronomie tentera de répondre à la question de l’itinéraire de la patate douce, en soulevant l’hypothèse du rôle des étoiles comme repère spatial. There are several bundles of presumption that would testify of relationship between Polynesians and Native Americans from South America: it is now accepted that the Polynesians have reached South America. If sweet potato is a sign of ancient contacts between Polynesia and South America, archaeologists have also found on the Pacific Ocean facade in Chile the bones of Polynesian chickens. What would be the stars possibly followed by the Polynesians to get sweet potato in South America and Chile, under the latitudes where researchers have found Polynesian chickens? The ethnoastronomy will attempt to respond to the issue of the route of the sweet potato, by raising the hypothesis of the role of the stars as spatial coordinate system. (shrink)

Mrs. Langer is to be warmly congratulated on this monumental work on the philosophy of aesthetics, a sequel to her Philosophy in a New Key. She brings all the equipment of her trained and firstrate philosophical mind to bear upon the fundamental problems of art and the arts. In Part I she speaks generally of aesthetics. In Part II she writes of the ways in which aesthetic symbolism works out in visual arts, in music, in song, and opera, in dance, (...) in poetry and other forms of literature, and in drama both comic and tragic. The book concludes (Part III) with a suggestive essay on ‘The Power of the Symbol’. (shrink)

The method of supervaluations offers an elegant procedure by which semantic theory can come to terms with sentences that, for one reason or another, lack truth-value. I argue, however, that this method rests on a fundamental mistake, and so is unsuitable for semantics. The method of supervaluations, I argue, assigns semantic values to sentences based not on the semantic values of their components, but on the values of other, perhaps homophonic, but nevertheless distinct, expressions. That is because supervaluations are generated (...) from classical valuations which necessarily require reinterpreting the component expressions, but the reinterpretation of an expression is tantamount to the introduction of a new expression, or alternatively, to a shift to an entirely new language. To confuse the expression of the language for which a semantic theory is developed with its reinterpreted counterpart, is to commit a fallacy of equivocation. That is the flaw within the method of supervaluations. We see it manifest in a number of examples. (shrink)