"The thesis is radical," writes Marshall Sahlins of this landmark text in anthropology and political science. "We conventionally define the state as the regulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres's thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society - which is to say, with the greater part of human history."Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive (...) state apparatuses? In this beautifully written book, Pierre Clastres offers examples of South American Indian groups that, although without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own Western state of power.Born in 1934, Pierre Clastres was educated at the Sorbonne; throughout the 1960s he lived with Indian groups in Paraguay and Venezuela. From 1971 until his death in 1979 he was Director of Studies at the fifth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and held the Chair of Religion and Societies of the South American Indians there.Robert Hurley is the translator of the History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. (shrink)

Summary This essay explores the place of natural philosophy among the patronage projects of Louis XIV, focusing on the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux (or Histoire des animaux) of the 1670s, one of a number of works of natural philosophy to issue from Louis XIV's printing house. Questions particular to the Histoire des animaux include the interaction between text and image, the credibility and authority of images of exotic animals, and the relationship between comparative anatomy (...) and natural history, and between human and animal anatomy. At the same time that the Histoire des animaux contributed to Jean-Baptiste Colbert's management of patronage and of Louis's image, it was a work of natural philosophy, representing the collaborative efforts of the new Paris Academy of Sciences. It examined natural history and comparative anatomy in new ways, and its illustrations broke new ground in their depiction of animals in a natural setting. However, the lavishly formatted books were presentation volumes and did not gain wide circulation until their republication in 1733. Sources consulted include Colbert's manuscript memoires on the royal printers and engravers. (shrink)

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should (...) add that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, (...) 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures. (shrink)

Bien sûr, «la philosophie des sciences sans l’histoire des scien­ces est vide et l’histoire des sciences sans la philosophie des sciences est aveugle» (Lakatos), mais cette formule célèbre ne méconnaît-elle pas l’importance dissymétrique de cette relation de dépendance réci­proque ? En effet, ne pourrait-on pas soute­nir que les philoso­phes des sciences désireux d’arriver à une juste et saine philosophie des sciences ont besoin, pour ce faire, des travaux des historiens des sciences, bien plus que ces der­­niers n’ont besoin, pour leurs (...) recons­tructions historiques, des écrits des philosophes des sciences ? Telle est la thèse, quelque peu provocatrice, que l’auteur tente de défendre : un séminaire ne doit-il pas être un lieu de débat ? ––– Of course, «the philosophy of science is empty without the history of science and the history of science is blind without the philosophy of science» (Lakatos). But does not this famous formula fail to recognize the importance of the dyssymetry of this relationship of mutual dependence ? Could it not be main­tained that the philos­ophers of science, in their search for a correct and healthy philos­ophy of science, need the works of the historians of science far more than the latter need the works of the philosophers of science for their historical work ? This is the somewhat provocative thesis we shall attempt to defend : should not a seminar be a forum for debate ? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 424-425 [Access article in PDF] Martin Beck Matustík. Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Pp. xxxvii + 341. Cloth, $85.00. Paper, $29.95.Martin Beck Matustík's Jürgen Habermas is arguably the most exciting contribution to critical theory debates and scholarship in the last decade. Not only does it provide an original and convincing portrayal of (...) Habermas's life and work to date, it shows Matustík as one of the pre-eminent twenty first-century critical theorists in his own right. And it confirms for radical social theorists that a confrontation with Habermas remains a productive encounter, for as with all of the greatest figures in the history of philosophy, we learn as much from his mistakes as from his successes.Matustík's brilliant innovation is to literally invent a new genre of philosophical biography. Studying the relationship between Habermas's life and his writings, Matustík distinguishes between authoring (the dramatic situations of one's life) and authorship (one's theoretical and political oeuvre). Taken separately, both Habermas's authoring and authorship demonstrate huge, sometimes culpable, blindnesses and aporias. Combined, they show him to be one of the most nuanced and provocative intellectuals of our age.Habermas's authorship is quite well known and academically influential, resulting recently in what some have called a critical theory industry. (Matustík previously explored this authorship in Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel [Guilford, 1993].) Through a fascinating account of his well-known major works combined with many lesser known (and untranslated) ones such as the Kleine Politische Schriften, Matustík convincingly describes Habermas's oeuvreas an integration of "the constitutional needs of 1945 with the revolutionary core of 1968, while searching for an audience and the procedurally supported life forms that would receive this historical integration" (91). Matustík's reconstruction of the existential dimension of Habermas's communicative turn continues to challenge more conservative third-generation critical theorists as well as those discontents who merely focus on his formalistic and legalistic turn since the publication of the monumental Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns. Left here, Jürgen Habermas would already constitute a major contribution.But all is not left here; the bulk of the text engages the dramatic, generational profiles that comprise Habermas's heretofore underthematized authoring, including:his "existentially motivated philosophical birthday," May 8, 1945;his 1953 public break with Heidegger, publishing "Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken";his participation in the anti-nuclear movement of the late 1950s;his "break" with the student movement after Benno Ohnesorg's murder by Berlin police in 1967;his involvement in the controversies around the German Autumn in 1977; andhis qualified support for the Gulf War in 1991, and then again for the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo/a.In the connection between authoring and authorship, Habermas's true richness as an intellectual emerges. For he has been involved in an intricate dance between what Matustík calls "learning by disaster" and "blindness by disaster" that captures the true heart of communicative ethics and critical social theory for a skeptical age. First his blindness: [Habermas] says yes only to those aspects of the student movement that fit within his horizon.... He misses the core of the worldwide student movements, the core inspired by the postcolonial turn and its constitutive liberation struggles by various oppressed gender, sex, race, and economic classes. His partial no to the student movement expresses his own blindness to this main student challenge. His no is born from his blindness by disaster—his blindness by the light of liberation in 1945. (252, italics in original) Still, from as early as 1945 Habermas's life is also marked by a constantly recurring struggle with "learning by disaster," for he is indeed cognizant of the possible invasion of communication by the "monstrously" or "traumatically" unspeakable (Auschwitz). Matustík sees Habermas's writings and profile as a form of witnessing to the disasters of the traumatic past... (shrink)

"The thesis is radical," writes Marshall Sahlins of this landmark text in anthropology and political science. "We conventionally define the state as the regulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres's thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society - which is to say, with the greater part of human history."Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive (...) state apparatuses? In this beautifully written book, Pierre Clastres offers examples of South American Indian groups that, although without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own Western state of power.Born in 1934, Pierre Clastres was educated at the Sorbonne; throughout the 1960s he lived with Indian groups in Paraguay and Venezuela. From 1971 until his death in 1979 he was Director of Studies at the fifth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and held the Chair of Religion and Societies of the South American Indians there.Robert Hurley is the translator of the History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. (shrink)

What makes political power legitimate? Without legitimation, subjects will not accept power, and, since religion permeated medieval society, religion became foundational to philosophical legitimations of political power. In 2013, the XIX Annual Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Philosophy took place in Alcalá de Henares, one of the medieval centers of political debate within and between Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. The members of these communities all shared the common belief that God constitutes (...) the remote or proximate cause of legitimation. Yet, beyond this common belief, they differed significantly in their points of departure and how their arguments evolved. For instance, the debate among Western Christians in the conflict between secular power and Papal authority sowed the seeds for a secular basis of legitimacy. The volume reflects the results of the colloquium. Many contributions focus on key Christian thinkers such as Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Aquinas, John Quidort of Paris, Giles of Rome, Dante, and William of Ockham; other studies focus on major authors from the Jewish and Muslim traditions, such as Maimonides and Alfarabi. Finally, several papers focus on lesser-known but no less important figures for the history of political thought: Manegold of Lautenbach, Ptolemy of Lucca, Guido Terrena, John of Viterbo, Pierre de Ceffons, John Wyclif and Pierre de Plaoul. The contributions rely on original texts, giving the readers a fresh insight into these issues. (shrink)

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should (...) add that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.1 (2004) 223-225 [Access article in PDF] Devoirs et Délices d'une vie de passeur: Entretiens avec Catherine Portevin, by Tzvetan Todorov; 395 pp. Paris: Les Éditions du Seuil, 2002, €22. Caveat lector. Let the reader beware: this is no leisurely, nostalgic stroll by another Parisian intellectual now ruminating and pontificating over issues and events outside his competence. True to his vocation as ferryman (passeur), (...) Todorov guides the reader over the vast expanses of historical, ideological, and intensely personal terrain that he has explored as an émigré of Bulgaria, a brilliant Structuralist, French citizen, father, spouse, and son caring for his aged father. The resulting mosaic composes a narrative itinerary rich in intellectual history.The exceptional range of Todorov's experience and research affords him a unique perspective. Having first lived and studied under Stalinism, he distinguished himself as a Parisian literary scholar stressing the primacy of the linguistic. Now internationally renowned, his books cover a broad spectrum of human experience, including the Holocaust, WWII, totalitarianism, the ethics of memory, the role and function of the intellectual, race and culture, ethnocentrism and conquest, and, most recently, human identity and a new humanism. Having immersed himself in numerous contexts, Todorov has acquired extensive firsthand knowledge from within. He is nevertheless adept at standing back and assessing them from without, revealing idiosyncrasies and limitations. His uncompromising scrutiny bows to no ideological a priori, nor spares any sacred cow.Some pronouncements will ruffle feathers in a number of intellectual aviaries. He values literature, for example, above philosophy, science, and the social sciences as a source of not only beauty, but meaning and truth. Contrary to the tendency to view literature as an arbitrary construction used to further an agenda of socio-economic domination and political repression, he contends that literary texts can best enrich our vision of the world and our personal sensibilities. Stressing art's essential humanity while challenging the obsession with science and technology, Todorov views language as neither estranged from reality nor subjugated by politics. Hence the impossibility of isolating literature from ethics and existence: writers legitimately seek to come to terms with the human condition, communicating experiences and sensibilities we would otherwise ignore. [End Page 223]Criticism, contends Todorov, should accordingly plunge back into the work's context or thought, as does Bénichou in studying French Classicism, or Joseph Frank in analyzing Dostoyevsky, or else it should explore anthropological perspectives, as does René Girard. Todorov's focus remains squarely on the literary work, not on the genius of theory: we have more to learn from texts of all ages than from contemporary critics who embed them in systems, reducing them to mere examples of theory.Beyond the "ethnocentrism" (p. 124) that he sees in the tendency to approach literary works through current preoccupations, Todorov delivers a severe verdict on the Marxist intellectuals so prominent throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s: "... the thirty years (1945-1975) that were so glorious for the French economy [were] disastrous for political thought. Ideologically, these are years of stagnation and of an intellectual straight jacket in which all discourse was judged by the measure of Marxist-Leninist dogma" (pp. 144-45, translation mine). Todorov thus deplores such irresponsibility: all while enjoying the many material comforts and civil freedoms of a free-market, democratic society, "bobos" (bourgeois bohèmes) advocated the instauration of a totalitarian regime whose economic failures and political repression Todorov had known only too well. Their actions thus were not in keeping with their discourse, for they made no effort to seriously weigh the concrete results of their ideology.Like Tony Judt, who voices similar criticisms in Past Imperfect and The Burden of Responsibility, Todorov prefers Raymond Aron's intellectual rigor and Camus's humane moderation to Sartre's knee-jerk radicalism and futile gesticulations. Given Todorov's experience and erudition, such criticisms can neither be brushed aside nor attributed to being a rear-guard action. He moreover distributes incisive criticisms to the Right, to the Left, and even to the Center. But... (shrink)

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should (...) add that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

I address options for providing scientific policy advice and explore the relation between scientific knowledge and political, economic and moral values. I argue that such nonepistemic values are essential for establishing the significance of questions and the relevance of evidence, while, on the other hand, such social choices are the prerogative of society. This tension can be resolved by recognizing social values and identifying them as separate premises or as commissions while withholding commitment to them, and by elaborating a (...) plurality of policy packages that envisage the implementation of different social goals. There are limits to upholding the value-free ideal in scientific research. But by following the mentioned strategy, science can give useful policy advice by leaving the value-free ideal largely intact. Such scientific restraint avoids the risk of appearing to illegitimately impose values on the public and could make the advice given more trustworthy. (shrink)

Ce sont cent intellectuels de France et des quatre coins du monde que Chantal Delsol et Giulio De Ligio ont réunis ici pour une enquête sans précédent sur l'état planétaire de la démocratie.00À l'heure des isolationnismes, des autocraties et des populismes, qu'en est-il de la théorie et de la pratique de ce qui semblait hier encore le bien politique absolu, et le premier critère progressiste de l'ère moderne?00Embrassant de Washington à Beijing, de Dublin à Bucarest, sans oublier Bruxelles et (...) class='Hi'>Paris, mais aussi l'Amérique du Sud ; détaillant les concepts et les idéologies ; décrivant les institutions et les pouvoirs, cette somme, savante, libre et engagée, répond à cette question cruciale.00Face à la tentation illibérale, un véritable ouvrage collectif de débat et un appel à la raison des peuples."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

PREFACE WORD The Tanzimat period, which was the starting point of reform movements in many areas such as social, political, economic, military, etc., in which steps were taken towards Westernization, is considered to be an important milestone in drawing the fate of the Ottoman Empire. In this longest century of the empire, when many things were rushed, education partially received its share of change and reform. However, since the field of education was under the control of religious institutions such as (...) the Şeyhülislâmlık and the Nezâresi Evkâf-ı Hümâyun, the changes and reforms in this field remained limited. Regarding philosophy, which is the subject of our study, we can say in advance that philosophical movements in the West, the ideas of philosophers and philosophical education in the Western sense began to enter our country in the post-Tanzimat period. It is noteworthy that during this period when the Ottoman Empire became acquainted with Western philosophy, philosophy in the West experienced a period of crisis. In the period preceding this acquaintance, philosophy education in our country was carried out in a style loyal to the tradition of Islamic philosophy, and the break in this tradition occurred with the Tanzimat. One of the most widely debated issues from the Tanzimat to the present day has been whether or not a philosophical tradition unique to us can be established. Issues such as whether a philosophy built on our own culture and values can provide us with the opportunity to raise philosophers who are considered philosophers in the Western sense, and the level of competence and proficiency of Turkish in terms of creating a philosophical language on the way to realizing this opportunity, and efforts to establish a deep-rooted tradition continue to stand before us. In this study, from a holistic perspective, the changes in philosophical paradigms in certain periods from Tanzimat to the present day have been tried to be determined chronologically and problematically. The fact that the movements that emerged with Tanzimat were broken in certain periods, such as 1915, 1933 and 1960, and left their place to different movements, and the changes in our country in parallel with the change in the perception of philosophy in the world have been tried to be revealed in this study, and as a result of the study, results that have not been expressed so far have been reached. Again, whether the perception of philosophy has changed in society along with the change in philosophy in higher education is among the topics investigated in this study. For example, the fact that professors such as Mehmet İzzet, Niyazi Berkes and Necati Öner, who studied philosophy, regretfully admitted that it was embarrassing to say "I am studying philosophy", and instead took refuge in evasive answers such as "I am studying at the Faculty of Literature, I am studying at the Faculty of Language and History", clearly shows how the difficulty of doing philosophy in Turkey is at a high level with these prejudices. From the times when philosophy was identified with irreligion and atheism, and philosophers were seen as useless people who only criticized and did not produce solutions, to the present situation, the paths taken and the obstacles overcome make us hopeful for the bright future of philosophy in Turkey. In the Dârülfünun, which was de facto established in 1863 and opened and closed many times, philosophy courses were able to find a wide place in the curriculum after 1900 and especially after 1916. However, the contribution of philosophy courses and departments, which have been a significant part of the academy since 1916 both as a field of research and education, to the establishment and development of the longed-for original philosophical thought is currently the subject of a separate discussion. Indeed, philosophy departments have never escaped the criticism that they teach Western thought, transfer Western intellectual currents, ignore social values, and provide an exclusively Western and unproductive education. Our study, which deals with the processes of change and transition in philosophy education in Turkey and the debates on these processes, consists of three chapters and three appendices. In the first part, the studies in the field of philosophy from Tanzimat to the Republic are discussed theoretically and a general framework is tried to be drawn about the establishment of philosophy in Turkey. The topics covered in this section are mainly philosophy education until the establishment of the first university in 1863 under the name Dârülfünun and its closure and reopening in 1900 under the name Dârülfünun-ı Şâhâne. As is known, after a long period of trial and error, Dârülfünun was reformed under the name "Dârülfünun-ı Osmânî" in 1908 during the Second Constitutional Monarchy. Reforms in the field of education continued unabated, and with the university reforms in 1915 and 1933, philosophy departments also underwent significant change and transformation. Especially German faculty members, who were influential in these reforms, played an active role in the restructuring of the philosophy department. Apart from universities, philosophical activities were also carried out in non-governmental organizations, newspapers and journals. In particular, the philosophers who tried to become an association under the name of the Turkish Philosophical Society are today actively working under the name of the Philosophical Society of Turkey and the Turkish Philosophical Association. In this part of our study, in addition to these issues, the philosophers of the Republican period, which we have identified as four generations, and their philosophical attitudes and behaviors are evaluated together with the aspects reflected and not reflected in their works, and the interaction between the similarities and differences between the general characteristics of the generations and the philosophical atmosphere in the country is tried to be analyzed. The similarities and differences between the generations are analyzed since they are the main factors that determine and govern the course of philosophy in Turkey. The second chapter is devoted to "Philosophical Disciplines in Purgatory in the Republican Era". In this section, the disciplines of history of science, logic, Islamic philosophy and philosophy of religion, which we characterize as disciplines in limbo because their place in philosophy departments has always been controversial, are analyzed. In the third and final chapter, under the title "Philosophical Problems and Movements in the Republican Era", the problem of establishing the practical implications of the philosophical issues discussed in the first two chapters on the theoretical level, the question of whether Turkish can be the language of philosophy, Western philosophical movements in Turkey and their representatives are discussed. This chapter concludes with the main purpose of the study, which is to discuss the problems of philosophy in Turkey, suggestions for solutions and future perspectives. We have tried to enrich our research with three appendices that are considered to be complementary to these three chapters. The first appendix contains interviews with twelve senior professors who retired after teaching philosophy in Turkey for many years. These senior professors were asked questions about the changes in the view of philosophy in Turkey, philosophy education in higher education, their perceptions of philosophy, etc., and an important historical note was made with their answers based on their experiences. In this respect, we believe that these interviews will serve as an important source and reference for future generations and the social sciences community. Although the speeches of these professors contain many important discourses, messages and references, we have chosen one motto phrase to carry in the title. On this occasion, we would like to express our gratitude to our esteemed professors for sharing their vast knowledge and experience in the field of philosophy with us. In the second appendix, the short life stories and works of about a hundred professors in the field of philosophy in the Republican period are included. Although this information is sometimes easily obtained through the internet, biographical books or the works of the professors themselves, sometimes, after a very long and laborious work, original information has been reached, which is expressed for the first time in this study. Sometimes the capture of a very small detail required great efforts. In the third and final appendix, the names and periods of the senior philosophers of the Republican period are listed chronologically. (shrink)

© © Cambridge University Press 2015. Long-term immigrants often have the option but not the obligation to acquire citizenship in their state of residence. Contrary to the received wisdom, this article defends the idea of mandatory citizenship for immigrants. It suggests that the current asymmetry in the distribution of political obligations between native-born citizens and immigrants is unfair. It also argues that mandatory citizenship is required by the principle that those who persistently affect others should share a democratic setting. Finally, (...) it claims that mandatory citizenship is more compatible with the ideal of democratic equality and more conducive to a stable society. (shrink)

An outdated geography supplies the bond among the thirty‐one articles in Sur les traces des Cassini. In the seventeenth century, when the Italians Gian Domenico Cassini and his nephew Giacomo Filippo Maraldi were born in Perinaldo, north of Genoa, their birthplace belonged to the County of Nice. Hence the rationale of building a set of papers on astronomy in the south of France around Cassini I and his family, which for four generations ran the Royal Observatory in Paris.Over half (...) the articles concern the Cassinis, mostly Cassini I and his great‐great‐grandson and namesake Cassini IV. There was also a Cassini V, Henri de Cassini, who countered the family genius and stamina by preferring botany and dying early, of the same outbreak of cholera that took the life of Sadi Carnot, without having created Cassini VI. He had already entered the Academy of Sciences with a push from his father. “I dare to beg of you [Cassini IV wrote to his fellow academician A. M. Ampère] to consider whether this unique situation in the history of letters, [a family's] devotion to the sciences for five successive generations and 170 years, ought not add some weight to the scientific credentials of my son.” It is hard to refuse the children of important alumni.The portion of Traces dealing more directly with astronomy in the south of France gets off to a distant start. Pytheas of Marseilles, who lived about 350 b.c., sailed to the Orkneys and the Baltic and earned himself the reputation of a liar back home for his stories of midnight suns and frozen lakes. He measured the latitude of Marseilles, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the size of the earth. Ptolemy praised him. Strabo did not: “Pytheas lied about everything and covered it up with his knowledge of astronomy and numbers.”No traces worth following up were laid down for just under two thousand years. Then, in 1580, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc first saw the light of day. He lived in Italy for four years as a very young man, deepening his knowledge of astronomy and human nature and meeting the main future actors in the Galileo affair: Galileo himself, Bellarmine, and Matteo Barberini . At his center in Aix‐la‐Provence, Peiresc made many useful astronomical observations, some in collaboration with Pierre Gassendi. He died in harness, worrying about the change of the obliquity since the days of Pytheas.There follow articles on Provençal astronomers who determined longitude and latitude at sea, on neglected observers in Languedoc who assisted the cause of the Enlightenment, and on modern observatories in the south of France. The political circumstances after the defeat of 1870–1871 favored decentralization of astronomy away from the Paris Observatory. In Italy, too, recent political events—the unification of 1870—made a restructuring of astronomical institutions desirable and possible. But whereas France had too few observatories, Italy had too many. Georges Rayet and Pietro Tacchini, both astrophysicists, compared the circumstances in their countries and made mutually reinforcing proposals to their colleagues and governments. Their respective proposals, most of which were enacted, called for reassigning some Italian observatories to meteorological work, building new observatories in Besançon, Bordeaux, and Lyon, and refurbishing older ones at Marseilles and Toulouse. Once again, as in the days of Cassini I, Italy made a decisive contribution to the practice of astronomy in France.Sur les traces des Cassini mixes slight and weighty work, admits antiquarian and broader approaches, offers new documentation, displays pertinent illustrations, and does it all at a high level of scholarship. Since, because of its title, the book's primary audience probably will be people interested in the Cassinis, its fullest articles about them may usefully be mentioned here: Anna Cassini on Cassini's brief return to Italy, 1694–1696; Claude Teillet on the provincial life and poetry of Cassini IV; Christiane Demeulenaere‐Douyère on the Cassinis and the Académie des Sciences; Fabrizio Bonoli and Alessandro Braccesi on Cassini I's astronomical work in Bologna, with full bibliography; and Monique Pelletier on the Cassini map of France, on which she has written a book . Pytheas and Peiresc are the subjects of collaborative articles by Simone Arzano and Yvon Georgelin. (shrink)

Dans la seconde moitié du me siècle britannique, le nombre de textes traitant des rapports entre l'esprit et le corps est particulièrement conséquent. Cette époque est caractérisée par la formulation de la théorie de l'évolution de Darwin, par l'émergence des sciences du cerveau, et par une lutte pour l'autorité intellectuelle entre les élites traditionnelles et certains hommes de science. Le problème des rapports de l'esprit et du corps constitue à nos yeux une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans les débats de cette (...) époque et nous a permis d'identifier un mouvement philosophique, la philosophie psychophysiologique victorienne. Les auteurs étudiés sont les suivants : T.H. Huxley, Tyndall, Clifford, Maudsley, Bain, Carpenter, Lewes et Romanes"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This volume studies a fundamental element of Montesquieu’s argumentative architecture that is most apparent in his De l’Esprit des Lois: the problem of giving order to, and establishing a network of consistent explanations of political, social and cultural diversity. Following a thorough and careful analysis of his writings, the volume approaches this subject by observing the use of the information sources available to Montesquieu, the relationships between them, and the judgments he expresses. The book examines some of Montesquieu’s essential theoretical (...) contributions, such as the idea of despotism, and the connection between politics, society and religion, on the basis of his reflections on the variety of mainly non-European societies and cultures. It demonstrates a number of possible inconsistencies and unresolved questions in Montesquieu’s argumentation. One of the main subjects of the book is the consideration of geographical context as an essential element for elaborating uniform criteria of political analysis. The book collects contributions concerning Montesquieu’s reflections on China, Tartary, Japan, India, America, Russia, and the Islamic world, and, building on this earlier research, it shows the importance of Montesquieu’s thought and explains the reason for his longstanding influence. (shrink)

The methodology of this paper is documentary, compiling textbooks and scientific articles related to Argentine scientific history, mainly referring to CONICET. The purpose is to show that a complete epistemological study cannot be done without giving an account of its sociological and historical context, in this case, specifically referred to the management of science. The perspective of this paper is more philosophical than historical, doing discourse analysis and interpretation. Management, a sociological element, has a close relationship with science, and (...) its study is part of epistemology. So, first, we must be careful to use the classification of basic and applied science in order to prioritize the latter with funding. Secondly, science should be autonomous but not independent from society and the market in which it is embedded, and the private sector should be harmonized with the public sector as regards scientific production. Third, betting on scientific production by Argentina helps demystify the classification of developed and underdeveloped countries, or the first and the third world. Fourth, in the management of science, university plays a key role, so management of university and the centralized management of the scientific bodies should be harmonized. Fifth, regarding the strengthening of the human component, subsidies offering should be balanced with the professionalization of research based on dedication. La metodología de este ensayo es documental, recopilando libros y artículos científicos que hacen referencia a la historia científica argentina, principalmente referida al CONICET. El propósito es mostrar que no puede realizarse un completo estudio epistemológico sin dar cuenta de su contexto sociológico e histórico, en este caso, precisamente referido a la gestión de la ciencia. La perspectiva del trabajo es más filosófica que histórica, realizando análisis del discurso e interpretación. La gestión, elemento sociológico, tiene una relación estrecha con la ciencia, y su estudio forma parte de la epistemología. Por lo que, en primer lugar, hay que cuidarse de utilizar la clasificación de ciencia básica y aplicada para priorizar con financiamiento a la última. En segundo lugar, hay que autonomizar pero no independizar la ciencia de la sociedad y el mercado en los que está inmersa, así como armonizar la iniciativa privada con la pública en el ámbito de la producción científica. En tercer lugar, apostar a la producción científica por Argentina contribuye a desmitificar la clasificación entre países desarrollados y subdesarrollados, o del primer o tercer mundo. En cuarto lugar, en la gestión de la ciencia, juega un papel clave la universidad, por lo que habría que armonizar la gestión de la universidad y de los organismos centralizados en la administración de la producción científica. En quinto lugar, en relación al fortalecimiento del componente humano, debería equilibrarse el ofrecimiento de subsidios con la profesionalización de la investigación en función de la dedicación. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86. THE HUME LITERATURE FOR 1977 In my recently-published book, Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship: A Bibliographical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 1978; ^ 5.50), the reader will find a thorough coverage of the Hume literature from 1925 to 1976, with lists of the main earlier writings on Hume, all indexed by author, language, and subject. What follows here will bring the record up to the end of 1977.· Readers (...) are invited to inform me of any omissions. The intention is to maintain a complete bibliographical record of critical work on Hume, by the regular publication in Hume Studies of an annual bibliography covering the previous year, with addenda consisting of items omitted through ignorance in previous years. The following abbreviations of journal titles are used here: APQ American Philosophical Quarterly JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy JP Journal of Philosophy PAS Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society PB Philosophical Books PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PQ Philosophical Quarterly PR Philosophical Review RIP Revue Internationale de Philosophie RM Review of Metaphysics TLS Times Literary Supplement Other abbreviations should be obvious enough, and mainly follow the British Standard. ÄRDAL, P. S. 'Convention and Value',in G. P. Morice, David Hume, Bicentenary Papers,51-68. Edinburgh. ÁRDAL, P. S. 'Another Look at Hume'sAccount of Moral Evaluation', JHP 15, 405-21. 87. BERK, E.? Note on Hume's Treatise I. iv. 1', Mind 86, 118-19. BERLIN, I. 'Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism', in Morice, op. cit., 95-116. BERRY, C. J. 'From Hume to Hegel: The Case of the Social Contract', JHI 38, 691-703. BOTWINICK, A.? Case for Hume's Nonutilitarianism', JHP 15, 423-35. BRADLEY, M. C. 'Stove on Hume', Australas. J. Phil. 55, 69-73. BRANDT, R. 'The Beginnings of Hume's Philosophy', in Morice, op. cit., 117-27. BRICKE, J. 'Hume on Self-Identity, Memory and Causality', in Morice, op. cit., 167-74. BRITTON, K. 'Hume on some Non-Natural Distinctions', in Morice, op. cit., 205-9. BURKS, A. W. Chance, Cause, Reason, esp. 128-42 ('Hume's thesis on the justification of induction'). Chicago. CASSIDY, J. 'The Nature of Hume's Inductive Scepticism: A Critical Notice', Ratio 19, 47-54. (on Stove 1973) COHEN, E. D. 'Hume's Fork', Sth. J. Phil. 15, 443-55. CONNON, R. W. 'The Textual and Philosophical Significance of Hume's MS Alterations to Treatise III ', in Morice, op. cit., 186-204. [PQ 28 (1978), 265-8] CONNON, R. W. & POLLARD, M. On the Authorship of "Hume's" Abstract', PQ 27, 60-6. CORSANO, A. 'Vico et Hume face au problème religieux', Archives de Phil. 40, 241-50. DAVIE, G. E. 'Edmund Husserl and "the as yet, in its most important respect, unrecognised greatness of Hume",' in Morice, op. cit., 69-76. DAVIS, J. W. 'Hume on Qualitative Content', in Morice, op. cit., 175-80. DELEULE, D. Hume, Lettre d'un Gentilhomme à son ami d'Edimbourg, présentation, traduction et notes. Paris. (French translation, with facing original, of A Letter from a Gentleman, Edinburgh, 1745) 88. DÉME", N. 'La Méthode Newtonienne et les Lois Empiriques de l'Anthropologie dans Traité II', in Morice, op. cit., 139-45. FORBES, D. 'Hume's Science of Polities', in Morice, op. cit., 39-50. FORCE, J. E. 'Hume in the Dialogues, the Dictates of Convention, and the Millennial Future State of Biblical Prophecy', S. -west. J. Phil. 8, 131-41. GAWLICK, G. 'Hume and the Deists: a Reconsideration', in Morice, op. cit., 128-38. GLOSSOP, R. J. 'In defence of David Hume', Australas. J. Phil. 55, 59-63. GLOUEERMAN, M. 'Hume on Modes', Hume Studies 3, 32-50. GUPTA, B. 'Buddha and Hume: A Popular Comparison Revisited ', Int. Phil. Q. 17 (1977), 135-46. HALL, R. 'The Hume Literature for 1976', Hume Studies 3, 94-102. HEALY,. M. 'Substance and Spiritual Substance - A criticism of David Hume', Alethe ia (Irving, Texas) 1 (1977), 159-83. HEDENIUS, I. Filosofien i ett föränderligt samhälle, 37-59 ( ' Värdeteorierna hos Hume': the value-theories in Hume). Stockholm. HINCKFUSS, I. 'Stove, Induction and the Irish', Australas. J. Phil. 55, 64-8. HISKES... (shrink)

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has influenced disciplines from history and philosophy to political theory, literature, art history, and film studies. His research into nineteenth-century workers’ archives, reflections on political equality, critique of the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, and analysis of the place of literature, film, and art in modern society have all constituted major contributions to contemporary thought. In this collection, leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, and cultural (...) criticism engage Rancière’s work, illuminating its originality, breadth, and rigor, as well as its place in current debates. They also explore the relationships between Rancière and the various authors and artists he has analyzed, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Flaubert, Rossellini, Auerbach, Bourdieu, and Deleuze. The contributors to this collection do not simply elucidate Rancière’s project; they also critically respond to it from their own perspectives. They consider the theorist’s engagement with the writing of history, with institutional and narrative constructions of time, and with the ways that individuals and communities can disturb or reconfigure what he has called the “distribution of the sensible.” They examine his unique conception of politics as the disruption of the established distribution of bodies and roles in the social order, and they elucidate his novel account of the relationship between aesthetics and politics by exploring his astute analyses of literature and the visual arts. In the collection’s final essay, Rancière addresses some of the questions raised by the other contributors and returns to his early work to provide a retrospective account of the fundamental stakes of his project. _Contributors_. Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Yves Citton, Tom Conley, Solange Guénoun, Peter Hallward, Todd May, Eric Méchoulan, Giuseppina Mecchia, Jean-Luc Nancy, Andrew Parker, Jacques Rancière, Gabriel Rockhill, Kristin Ross, James Swenson, Rajeshwari Vallury, Philip Watts. (shrink)

La biografía de Solana se ha reconstruido a partir de certificados y documentos originales, recopilando la bibliografía completa, que sobrepasa el centenar de obras. Partiendo de sus escritos se descubre su pensamiento filosófico, histórico, jurídico y teológico. Marcial Solana fue un polígrafo montañés ; Doctor en Filosofía y en Derecho, Alcalde de La Concha de Villaescusa, Diputado a Cortes por Santander, Académico correspondiente de la Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, Caballero de la Orden de Malta, miembro del CSIC (...) y de la Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, Presidente del Centro de Estudios Montañeses, Cronista del Real Valle de Villaescusa y ante todo, hispanista. Su obra más célebre es la "Historia de la Filosofía Española. Época del Renacimiento (Siglo XVI)", donde muestra la inmensa labor intelectual que realizaron los pensadores españoles de ese periodo. Las ideas fundamentales de este autor se pueden resumir así: Defiende con claridad la existencia de una Filosofía Española, que fueron los españoles del renacimiento los que elevaron esa filosofía a su nivel más alto, que estos filósofos cumplieron las condiciones necesarias para merecer ese título (buscaron la verdad, siguieron unos métodos rigurosos de trabajo, avanzaron en el conocimiento y aportaron originalidad en sus obras) Solana's biography has been reconstructed from original certificates and documents. The complete bibliography has been compiled, which exceeds one hundred works. Starting from his writings we have been able to discover his philosophical, historical, legal and theological thought. Marcial Solana was a polygraph, Doctor of Philosophy and Law, Mayor of La Concha de Villaescusa, Deputy to the Cortes for Santander, Corresponding Academician of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, Knight of the Order of Malta, member of the CSIC and of the Menéndez Pelayo Society, President of the Center for Mountain Studies, Chronicler of the Real Valle de Villaescusa and, above all, and Hispanic. His most famous work is the "History of Spanish Philosophy. Renaissance period (16th century)", where it shows the immense intellectual work carried out by Spanish thinkers of that period. The fundamental ideas of this author can be summarized as follows: He clearly defends the existence of a Spanish Philosophy, that it was the Spaniards of the Renaissance who raised that philosophy to its highest level, that these philosophers fulfilled the necessary conditions to deserve that title ( they sought the truth, followed rígorous working methods, advanced knowledge and contributed origínality in their works). (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was born into an aristocratic family with strong political connections. He served as a representative in the French Chamber of Deputies starting in 1839 and was briefly Minister of Foreign of Affairs in 1849. As an author, he attained instant fame after publishing the first part of Democracy in America in 1835 (the second part appeared in 1840). In 1838, he was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and, in 1841, to the even (...) more prestigious French Academy whose forty members were, in principle, the greatest living writers in the French language, known as 'the immortals.' In spite of these achievements, his was an anguished life. He was tormented by the depressing fluctuations of his country between revolution and Bonapartism, and by his own political ineffectiveness. Yet, it was not a failed life. Although he was unable to modify the course of history, he succeeded in articulating a new set of terms for the comprehension of political regimes and how they change. His cultivation of paradoxical theses (for example, that revolutions often occur when improving social conditions create rising expectations), his perception of how cultural values affect government and vice versa, and finally, his capacity to dramatize why the understanding of social institutions is an important part of our search for meaning in life, all this made him a profound historical and sociological thinker. The existential problem at the heart of Tocqueville's identity was that he was a democratically inclined aristocrat. (shrink)

Listen to the interview with Brian Kemple... and learn to appreciate the diachronic trajectory of semiotics. *** Live interview with Brian Kemple, Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, to discuss the legacy and influence of John Deely (1942-2017), the thinker most responsible for developing semiotics into the 21st century. This interview, conducted by William Passarini (Mansarda Acesa) and Tim Troutman (Lyceum Institute), is part of the preliminary activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely (...) on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. Brian Kemple holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX, where he wrote his dissertation under the inimitable John Deely. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute (https://lyceum.institute). Philosophical interests and areas of study include: Thomas Aquinas, John Poinsot, Charles Peirce, Martin Heidegger, the history and importance of semiotics, scholasticism, phenomenology; as well as ancillary interests in the liberal arts, technology, and education as a moral habit. He has published two scholarly books— 'Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition' (Brill: 2017) and 'The Intersections of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue' (De Gruyter: 2019), as well as a number of scholarly articles, popular articles, and his own 'Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person' (2019) and the forthcoming 'Linguistic Signification: A Classical Course in Grammar and Composition' (2021). In addition to being the Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, he is the Executive Editor of 'Reality: a Journal for Philosophical Discourse' (https://realityjournal.org/). *** Technical support was assured by Robert Junqueira and the cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

Silvana de Souza Ramos and Iracy Ferreira dos Santos Junior’s interview with Emmanuel de Saint Aubert explores the history and role of the Husserl Archives (Paris) in fostering multidisciplinary research in phenomenology. Saint Aubert clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Husserl’s manuscripts, describing the situated and complex reading he undertook not only of these manuscripts but also of Husserl’s work as a whole. This aspect is particularly significant for contemporary French philosophical studies, as Merleau-Ponty played a pivotal role in introducing (...) Husserl’s ideas into French thought. This clarification allows us to show the originality of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, as it reveals that he was not merely an exegete of Husserl, but a restless and multifaceted thinker, deeply involved in the intellectual and political debates of his time. If he cannot be reduced to a mere reader of Husserl, neither can his later ontology be simply attributed to Heidegger’s influence. Once engaged in a meticulous study of the unfinished manuscripts that Merleau-Ponty left behind due to his premature death, which were drafts for a new book, Saint Aubert conducted a thorough investigation of Merleau-Ponty’s use of key terms in his ontology – chair, Leib, empiétement, chiasmi – showing that these terms do not literally translate or express concepts derived from Husserl or Heidegger. On the contrary, these terms acquire a multifaceted range of meanings in Merleau-Ponty’s writings, nourished by his philosophical readings and meditations, by his scientific and literary refinement, as well as his ethical and political concerns. Saint Aubert’s research, dedicated to the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s so-called “unpublished” works, resulted in the publication of five books by Vrin, all guided by a transversal genetic reading of Merleau-Ponty’s work. Additionally, with the help of other researchers, Saint Aubert carefully edited and published several volumes of Merleau-Ponty’s manuscripts. This material, made available in an organized and contextualized manner, is of incomparable richness, allowing for a more precise understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s role in contemporary thought, while also illuminating the meaning of his ontological project. (shrink)

This book offers a model introduction to political philosophy, addressing philosophers from Plato to Rawls and Nozick, with each thinker treated as exploring perennial problems. These include ethical truth, free will, the common good, whether God exists, whether America could become a Hobbesian world sovereign, appeals to nature, free speech, the nature of rights, how one can argue with Nietzsche, whether history is predictable, whether the market can be humanized, and assumed genetic differences between races and genders. When (...) a thinker poses a problem not resolvable at that time, (such as racial equality) modern social science and economics are used to provide answers. There are two persistent themes in this book: namely, that a futile search for ethical truth has drained the original image of the good society (Plato and Aristotle) of its rich content, and that the market has replaced justice as the ordering principle of human society leaving philosophers helpless unless they learn economics. (shrink)

Game theory is the mathematical study of strategy and conflict. It has wide applications in economics, political science, sociology, and, to some extent, in philosophy. Where rational choice theory or decision theory is concerned with individual agents facing games against nature, game theory deals with games in which all players have preference orderings over the possible outcomes of the game. This paper gives an informal introduction to the theory and a survey of applications in diverse branches of philosophy. (...) No criticism is reviewed. Game theory is shown at work in discussions about epistemological dependence, liberalism and efficiency, Hume’s concept of convention, morality and rationality, and distributive justice and egalitarianism. A guide to the literature provides hints at applications in collective intentionality, epistemology, ethics, history of philosophy, logic, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) is one of the most important philosophical works of the early modern period. In it Spinoza discusses at length the historical circumstances of the composition and transmission of the Bible, demonstrating the fallibility of both its authors and its interpreters. He argues that free enquiry is not only consistent with the security and prosperity of a state but actually essential to them, and that such freedom flourishes best in a democratic and republican state in which individuals (...) are left free while religious organizations are subordinated to the secular power. His Treatise has profoundly influenced the subsequent history of political thought, Enlightenment 'clandestine' or radical philosophy, Bible hermeneutics, and textual criticism more generally. It is presented here in a translation of great clarity and accuracy by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel, with a substantial historical and philosophical introduction by Jonathan Israel. (shrink)

This work will examine the main issues generated in the discussion about social justice, freedom and equality from a Marxist and egalitarian liberalism perspective, which would require an answer if the search for a good society continues. Since the world’s economic, social, political and cultural situation has changed in the last decades, nowadays the necessary ethic-political foundations for a fair and free social order must be discussed. The problem is to clarify, in the light of political philosophy and (...) human sciences, the proposals made about such social order and for the current moment, and from the socialist and egalitarian liberal theories with thinkers such as Marx, Cohen and Roemer, for the first, and Rawls, Dworkin Nagel and Sen, for the second, among others. The purpose of this work is mainly didactic and deals with a description of situations such as poverty, exclusion and social inequality that the world lives in. It also deals with the authors’ proposals about such topics, analyzing if there is incompatibility between the capitalist institutions and the socialist project for the achievement of these ideals/values that give origin to the title. (shrink)

Bruno Latour is among the most important figures in contemporary philosophy and social science. His ethnographic studies have revolutionized our understanding of areas as diverse as science, law, politics and religion. To facilitate a more realistic understanding of the world, Latour has introduced a radically fresh philosophical terminology and a new approach to social science, ‘Actor-Network Theory’. In seminal works such as Laboratory Life, We Have Never Been Modern and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Latour has outlined (...) an alternative to the foundational categories of ‘modern’ western thought Ð particularly its distinction between society and nature Ð that has major consequences for our understanding of the ecological crisis and of the role of science in democratic societies. Latour’s ‘empirical philosophy’ has evolved considerably over the past four decades. In this lucid and compelling book, Gerard de Vries provides one of the first overviews of Latour’s work. He guides readers through Latour’s main publications, from his early ethnographies to his more recent philosophical works, showing with considerable skill how Latour’s ideas have developed. This book will be of great value to students and scholars attempting to come to terms with the immense challenge posed by Latour’s thought. It will be of interest to those studying philosophy, anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, and almost all other branches of the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:136 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 1 JANUARY 199 ~ to the principle of acting for the common good are played down by Grant in her discussion of Locke. Nevertheless, Grant advances the important proposition with respect to the tradition of liberalism as a political doctrine that "Locke's political theory contains two tendencies that are not entirely harmonious." That is, there is an uneasy blend (...) of radical and conservative elements in Lockean liberalism, and "this ambivalent attitude is an expression of the central axis of conflict within liberal theory generally" (204). For those who seek to understand Locke's role as a progenitor of liberalism and the persistence of certain types of arguments and problems which retain their significance for thinkers who identify themselves with that political theory, therefore, John Locke's Liberalism provides an excellent starting point. RICHARD ASHCRAFT Universityof California, Los Angeles Fabio Todesco. Riforma della metafisica e sapere scientifico. Saggio suJ. H. Lambert (z 7281777 ). CoUana di Filosofia, vol. x5. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1987. Pp. 348- L 3o,ooo. Voltaire expressed his view of Wolffian metaphysics in a letter to Prince Frederick of Prussia: "Ce sont des 6clairs au milieu d'une nuit profonde; c'est tout ce qu'on peut esp~rer, je crois, de la m~taphysique. "~ Voltaire's attitude towards metaphysics was not shared by Condillac, who in his Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines (1746) distinguishes two kinds of metaphysics: one, ambitious and obscure of itself, pretends to discuss the essences of beings and the inscrutable causes of things; the other, more circumspect, confines itself to the analysis of knowledge, and so provides the only possible basis for a clarification of mind; it is "la science qui contribue le plus ~ rendre l'esprit lumineux, precis et 6tendu, et qui, par cons6"quent, doit le preparer ~ l'6tude de toutes les autres." It started with Locke, and is to be treated with the same exactitude as geometry in order to give a clear and invariable meaning to the words used, and a simple and easy order to the propositions." Maupertuis, who in 1746 became the President of the newly re-founded Berlin Acad~mie Royale des Sciences, hoped for the application of mathematics to metaphysics; nevertheless, he didn't expect the same degree of certitude from the latter as from the former. 3 In 1761 the Berlin Academy proposed a prize question as to whether metaphysics were capable of the same degree of evidence as mathematics. Lambert answered the question by claiming that geometrical demonstrations might be applied to metaphysics. 4 Four years afterwards (January 1765) Lambert was enrolled as a merei Letter of 1 September 1736, in Voltaire'sCorrespondence,ed. Theodore Besterman (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1954), 5: 232. " Oeuw-esPhilosophiquesde Condillac,ed. Georges Le Roy (Paris: P.U.F., 19~7), 1:3. DesDevoirsde l'Acadg, micien, in Histoirede l'AcademieRoyaledesSciencesetBelles-Lettres,~5 vols. (Berlin, 1746-71), 1 (1746): 142-43. 4 "Llber die Methode, die Metaphysik, Theologie und Moral richtiger zu beweisen.... "ed. K. Bopp, Kantstud,en, suppl. 4~ (1918). BOOK REVIEWS a37 ber of the Berlin Academy; in the speech he delivered on that occasion he maintained that the simple concepts first formulated by Locke were the basis of human knowledge. From these simple concepts were drawn axiomata and postulata, the starting points of demonstrations that were necessarily and strictly to follow "l'ordre et le rigueur g~ometrique. ''~ In his own research, Lambert's point of departure was the philosophy of Christian Wolff, who had applied geometrical method to philosophy and provided demonstrations of its propositions, and definitions of all its constituent terms. The result Lambert obtained is very different from that of Wolff's metaphysics, which was constructed by deduction from the most general concept of ens, elaborated through a series of classifications per genera et species. Lambert abandoned this Wolffian system of classification in order to follow the anatomical method introduced by Locke, and by which the fundamental constituent elements of thought might be reached. The metaphysics of Lambert is a reversal of that of Wolff: it is built up from simple ideas derived immediately from sense perception: these simple ideas, being indivisible, are... (shrink)

Aujourd’hui délaissées, parfois devenues gênantes, les collections médicales furent pourtant à l’avant-garde du renouveau de la médecine au début du XIXe siècle, avant que celle-ci ne devienne la médecine telle que nous la connaissons aujourd’hui. Selon une vision courante de l’histoire de la médecine, les collections médicales auraient perdu de leur utilité lorsque la médecine a accédé au statut de science expérimentale, les musées d’anatomie faisant alors place aux laboratoires. Les collections d’anatomie-pathologie comme le musée Dupuytren ne seraient que le (...) reliquat de cette histoire, le témoignage d’un échec méthodologique à opposer aux succès de la physiologie expérimentale. Cette narration de l’histoire de la médecine est-elle cependant correcte ? Dans quels buts épistémologiques les médecins ont-ils créé ces collections ? Quelles connaissances cherchaient-ils à obtenir par ce biais ? Plus généralement, pourquoi collecter en médecine – et en science – et pourquoi collectionner ? Pour répondre à ces questions, je m’intéressai principalement dans cette contribution aux pratiques de collecte et de collection chez les médecins de la Société Anatomique de Paris au XIXe siècle et au rôle joué par ces pratiques dans la construction de la collection Dupuytren. (shrink)

Resumo: Vivendo os momentos contemporâneos da sociedade, da ciência,da tecnologia, da virtualidade e do quadro de giz; me ponho como uma sintomatologista desses tempos. Para isso, eventualmente, me desnudo do ser professora, para, assim, poder olhar o que não vejo quando estou nas vestes dessa identidade. Os sintomas fazem com que escreva e trace muitas linhas para transitar nesse cosmo da “didática no currículo”. Algumas dessas linhas são lisas, sinuosas, umas ainda não ditas, outras ainda têm que ser esfaceladas, porém (...) elas estão sendo experimentadas com as forças da vida. Ponho-me a escrever e a estudar as questões de didática e de currículo,fazendo interlocuções com outras áreas do conhecimento como a filosofia, a história da ciência, a história e a arte. É claro que não pretendo esgotar questões dessa temática nem que o quisesse, pois são estudos de muitas vertentes conceituais. O leitor vai encontrar duas forças que produzem e produziram as didáticas: as vertigens da modernidade e as da pós-modernidade. Essas forças vertiginosas traçaram territórios diferenciados nas propostas de currículos e de planejamentos. O que quero e faço são bricolagens teóricas para encaminhar algumas teses e descrições que trago a este ensaio. Palavras-chaves: Didática. Planejamento. Pós-currículo.: Surviving the contemporary moments of Society, Science, Technology, Virtuality and also the picture of a chalk, I describe myself as a symptomatologyst of this time, and to do so, I eventually undress myself of being a teacher in order to be able to see what I cannot when I am in the garments of this identity. The symptoms make me write and draw lines to go into the cosmos of “Didacticism in the curriculum”. Some of these lines are still smooth and winding, some have not been stated yet, and some need to be wrecked. However they are being tried by the strength of life. Issues about Education and Curriculum will go through inter-phrases with other areas of knowledge like Philosophy, History of Science, History and Art. I clearly do not intend to exhaust this issue, since these studies are conceptualized from a great variety of origins. The reader is going to find two strengths which have produced didacticism: the dizziness of Modernity and Pos-modernity. These dizzy strengths drew differentiated territories to curriculum and planning proposals. What I am going to do is a theoretical bricolage to direct some theories and descriptions. Keywords: Didacticism. Planning. Poscurriculum. (shrink)

Based on some materials from the A.V. Florovsky's Foundation in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author of the article reconstructs a little-known page from the history of academic and philosophical life of the Russian migr, that is the history of the Philosophical Society at the Russian Free University in the 1930s-1940s, including during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. It is justified that the reconstruction of the history of Russian philosophical institutions can set (...) a new research perspective that allows us to consider the history of Russian philosophy as a process of formation and development of institutionalized forms of production, reproduction and translation of philosophical knowledge, which would allow to create a new historical and philosophical cross-section of Russian thought, complementing traditional approaches to the historiography of Russian philosophy. The article reveals new aspects of the scientific activity of N.O. Lossky and I.I. Lapshin, who played a key role in the work of the Philosophical Society. In addition, the analysis of archival materials made it possible to identify and reconstruct new facts from the creative biography of such thinkers of Russian emigration as S.L. Frank, E.V. Spektorsky, B.P. Vysheslavtsev, G.V. Florovsky. Russian Free University's Philosophical Society report for 1941 is given as an appendix to the article, as well as the reconstruction of the problems of the circle for the study of the Russian national idea. It is concluded that scientific and philosophical activity at the RSU was carried out through an extensive network of scientific societies, associations, circles and seminars, which allowed developing a wide variety of issues - aesthetics, the history of Russian and Western philosophy, philosophical problems of Russian literature and history, the Russian national idea. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.2 (2002) 12-26 [Access article in PDF] Karen Warren's Ecofeminism Trish Glazebrook Karen Warren's Ecofeminism Ecofeminism has conceptual beginnings in the French tradition of feminist theory. In 1952, Simone de Beauvoir pointed out that in the logic of patriarchy, both women and nature appear as other (de Beauvoir 1952, 114). In 1974, Luce Irigaray diagnosed philosophically a phallic logic of the Same that precludes representation (...) of woman's alterity, so that it subjects women to man's domination (Irigaray 1974). In the same year, Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term, "l'eco-féminisme," to point to the necessity for women to bring about ecological revolution, and used the slogan, "Feminism or death [Le féminisme ou la mort]" (d'Eaubonne 1974, 221), to argue that the phallic order is the source of a double threat to human being: overpopulation, and the depletion of resources. Exploitation of female reproductive power has caused an excess of births, and hence overpopulation; while an excess of production has exploited natural resources to the point of their destruction. Though "feminism or death" was a battle cry, it was also a warning that human being cannot survive patriarchy's ecological consequences.In North America, the alliance between feminism and ecology likewise began in 1974, when Sandra Marburg and Lisa Watson hosted a conference at Berkeley entitled "Women and the Environment." The following [End Page 12] year, Rosemary Radford Ruether pointed out that "Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to ecologi- cal crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination" (Ruether 1975, 204). She called for a unification of feminist and ecological interests in the vision of a society transformed from values of possession, conquest, and accumulation to reciprocity, harmony, and mutual interdependence. In 1991, Karen Warren edited an issue of Hypatia devoted entirely to ecofeminism, which was later expanded and republished under the title Ecological Feminist Philosophies. This anthology was ground-breaking, because in it Warren consolidated a collection of diverse voices, not into an ecofeminist platform as such, but into a vision of the lay of the land, as it were, with respect to ecofeminism.Although Warren has been writing as an ecofeminist since 1987, it was not until 2000 that she published a sustained treatment in her own voice: Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters. This book is the culmination of her thinking for over a decade. Her perspective, very much in the spirit of d' Eaubonne and Ruether, is as political, social, and practical as it is philosophical, and constitutes a research program that extends beyond the walls of the Academy in its challenge to the social order. The book can be used to answer some of the criticisms that ecofeminism has received. I will use Warren's work to address in particular the validity of the foundational ecofeminist assumption that environmental issues are feminist issues; the charge against feminism in general that it reflects only the needs of white, middle-class, Western women; the claim, especially in reference to spirituality, that ecofeminism reinscribes gender essentialism; and the challenge ecofeminism offers to traditional philosophy, including how such an inclusivist movement can respond to the history of philosophy without simply reproducing its exclusionary politics. Feminism and Environmentalism Ecofeminists insist that feminism and environmentalism are inherently connected, but it is not always clear what the nature of that connection is. In general, ecofeminist work applies feminist analyses to environmental issues, so the claim is not so much that feminist worries are environmentally grounded, as that environmental issues warrant feminist analysis. Carolyn Merchant's (1980) analysis of the history of science, for example, [End Page 13] uncovers misogyny at the heart of the modern conquest of nature. Yet the ideology of Man's (sic) dominion over nature is not new with Bacon, and is evident in Christian teachings concerning the expulsion from the Garden of Eden at Genesis 3,17-24. Adam is sent from the garden with instructions to till the ground and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 167-187 [Access article in PDF] Amelot de La Houssaye (1634-1706) Annotates Tacitus Jacob Soll Thousands have worked on Tacitus. Some have translated him, others have commented on him. Some have put his text into paraphrases, because of his obscurity: Some others have sucked out the juice and marrow, which is to say, the Sentences, Aphorismes, Apophtegms, and the Political Axioms, (...) of which he is as fertile, as he is sterile in words. His Translators have made him speak every Language, well or badly, according to what they understood or did not. Of his Commentators, some, as if they were Grammarians, have only picked through his Latin, and his fashions of speaking, which are all extraordinary. The others, like students of Politics, neither stopping to look at his phrases, nor his diction, have studied to penetrate the mysteries, and the secrets of the Art-of-governing, of which he has been the Master, and universal Oracle, for more than five-hundred years. 1Thus wrote Nicolas-Abraham Amelot de La Houssaye in the preface of his book, Tibère: Discours politiques sur Tacite (Paris: chez Frédéric Léonard, 1684). He was describing what has become known as the Tacitist movement of political theory, based on the work of the Roman historian Tacitus, which began in the 1580s and lasted until the French Revolution. 2 The practice of translating, commenting [End Page 167] on, or writing like Tacitus began in earnest in the late sixteenth century. Authoritative Latin editions as well as vernacular translations flourished and great kings turned to these now accessible texts as manuals for ruling. 3 Tacitus provided examples from history which could be used to form the basis of a practical political "science." Alongside Machiavelli, practitioners of reason of state placed the works of Tacitus as the founding stones of their humanist canon of secular political philosophy. 4 Marc-Antoine Muret began teaching Tacitus at the University of Rome in 1580, and at the same time Justus Lipsius and Carolus Paschalius began a Latinist tradition of commenting on Tacitus's works. 5 Lipsius, by far the most influential of the sixteenth-century Tacitists, was not only a philologist interested in reestablishing Tacitus's original text but also a commentator who sought to extract moral and political sententiae from the Roman historian. 6 Thus humanist scholarly practices served as the basis of Tacitean political theory as historical exempla, verified by philology, became useful for practical politics. 7 Scholarship and secular political science were bound for the long journey into the modern age. 8 [End Page 168]If humanist scholarship formed the basis of Tacitean political theory, it is also the key for understanding how it worked. Tacitism was an editorial practice and thus scholarly editors became political theorists. Justus Lipsius did not attempt to write his own version of a Tacitean Annales. Instead, he chopped up Tacitus's text, making a commonplace notebook for absolutist princes with his Politicorum libri sex (Leiden: Plantin, 1589). 9 Understanding the Lipsian tradition--the process by which Tacitus was read, broken down and "represented" by scholarly editors--clarifies an unexplored yet essential element of the evolution of secular political theory from a tool of Absolutism to an arm of revolutionary republicanism. 10The most striking example of the Lipsian tradition can be found in the works of Amelot de La Houssaye, whose vision of Tacitean scholarship we have already seen. Between 1670 and his death in 1706 Amelot was the most prolific translator and commentator of Tacitus in France. Between 1676 and 1808, at least 107 editions of 23 different works by Amelot were published in French, almost all Tacitean in nature. 11 These books were widely read and inspired numerous foreign editions. The unifying thread of this extraordinarily large corpus of works is Amelot de La Houssaye's fascination with Tacitus. He not only translated and commented on Tacitus; he also represented the major works of secular political philosophy of his time as Tacitean in origin. Machiavelli, for example, was "proven... (shrink)

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original philosophers of our time, working throughout his life to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century, in an effort variously referred to as a philosophy of politics, history, or consciousness. Drawing from the University of Missouri Press's thirty-four-volume edition of his collected works, Charles Embry and Glenn Hughes have assembled a selection of Voegelin's representative writings, satisfying the need for a single volume that can serve (...) as a general introduction to his philosophy. The selection demonstrates the range and creativity of Voegelin's thought, including writings that show his thinking as it developed historically in his long search for order in human society. (shrink)

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers From 1971 until 1984 at the College de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended , Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within (...) society that could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern. (shrink)