This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

Contemporary Perspectives on the History of Philosophy was first published in 1983. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The authors of the 27 appears in Volume 8, Midwest Studies in Philosophy,have established reputations as historians of philosophy, but their vantage point, here, is from "contemporary perspectives" - they use contemporary analytic skills to examine problems and issues considered by past philosophers. (...) The papers, arranged in historical order, fall into six groups: ancient philosophy (the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle); the seventeenth-century rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza); the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume); Kant; the nineteenth century (Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Mill); and, in conclusion, an essay on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and two broad, retrospective papers entitled "Old Analyses of the Physical World and new Philosophies of Language" and "Moral Crisis and the History of Ethics.". (shrink)

Athens in Paris explores the ways in which the writings of the ancient Greeks played a decisive part in shaping the intellectual projects of structuralism and post-structuralism - arguably the most significant currents of thought of the post-war era. Miriam Leonard argues that thinkers in post-war France turned to the example of Athenian democracy in their debates over the role of political subjectivity and ethical choice in the life of the modern citizen. The authors she investigates, who include Lacan, (...) Derrida, Foucault, and Vernant, have had an incalculable influence on the direction of classical studies over the last thirty years, but classicists have yet to give due attention to the crucial role of the ancient world in the development of their philosophy. (shrink)

Label mounted on title page: Distributed in U.S.A. by Humanities Press, New York. First ed., 1899, published under title: A short history of freethought. Bibliography: p. 995-1006.

There is a general sense that the philosophy of Descartes was a dominant force in early modern thought. Since the work in the nineteenth century of French historians of Cartesian philosophy, however, there has been no fully contextualized comparative examination of the various receptions of Descartes in different portions of early modern Europe. This study addresses the need for a more current understanding of these receptions by considering the different constructions of Descartes's thought that emerged in the Calvinist United (...) Provinces and Catholic France, the two main centers for early modern Cartesianism, during the period dating from the last decades of his life to the century or so following his death in 1650. It turns out that we must speak not of a single early modern Cartesianism rigidly defined in terms of Descartes's own authorial intentions, but rather of a loose collection of early modern Cartesianisms that involve a range of different positions on various sets of issues. Though more or less rooted in Descartes's somewhat open-ended views, these Cartesianisms evolved in different ways over time in response to different intellectual and social pressures. Chapters of this study are devoted to: the early modern Catholic and Calvinist condemnations of Descartes and the incompatible Cartesian responses to these; conflicting attitudes among early modern Cartesians toward ancient thought and modernity; competing early modern attempts to combine Descartes's views with those of Augustine; the different occasionalist accounts of causation within early modern Cartesianism; and the impact of various forms of early modern Cartesianism on both Dutch medicine and French physics. (shrink)

The practical aspect of ancient philosophy has been recently made a focus of renewed metaphilosophical investigation. After a brief presentation of three accounts of this kind developed by Martha Nussbaum, Pierre Hadot, and Michel Foucault, the model of the therapeutic argument developed by Nussbaum is called into question from the perspectives offered by her French colleagues, who emphasize spiritual exercise (Hadot) or the care of the self (Foucault). The ways in which the account of Nussbaum can be defended (...) are then discussed, including both a ‘negative’ defense, i.e. the indication of the weaknesses of Hadot and Foucault’s proposals, and a ‘positive’ one focused on the points in which Nussbaum can convincingly address doubts about her metaphilosophical account. In response to these analyses, some further remarks made by Hadot and Foucault are discussed in order to demonstrate that their accounts are not as distant from Nussbaum after all. Finally, a recent metaphilosophical study by John Sellars together with a therapeutic (medical) model developed by the author of the present article are suggested as providing a framework for potential reconciliation between all three accounts discussed and a resource for further metaphilosophical studies. (shrink)

In this paper I examine two theories of democracy that can be found in contemporary French philosophy. Both Cornelius Castoriadis and Jacques Rancière offer a critique of modern democracy with the purpose of refounding it. The ‘refoundation narratives’ they propose are both based on an account of the origins of democracy in ancient Greece. According to Castoriadis, ancient democracy is grounded in a ‘magma’ of ‘social imaginary significations’ in which ‘autonomy’ is considered the correct response to Being (...) defined as an insurmountable ‘Chaos’. On the contrary, modern democracy defines Being as a determinacy and consequently fails to grasp the notion of autonomy. According to Rancière, the origins of democracy are to be found in the invasion of the public space by ‘those without a part’ who consequently have no title to govern. The problem with the ‘domesticated’ modern democracy is that it denies the existence of Otherness; that is, of non-citizens excluded from the public space. Therefore it appears incapable of letting the ‘dis-agreement’ manifest itself and consequently incapable of transforming the ‘police’ order. After examining the meaning of both theories, I attempt to elucidate the difficulties encountered by each author in the attainment of his goal, which is that of refounding modern democracy. (shrink)

This essay attempts to describe the neo-Lamarckian atmosphere that was dominant in French biology for more than a century. Firstly, we demonstrate that there were not one but at least two French neo-Lamarckian traditions. This implies, therefore, that it is possible to propose a clear definition of a (neo)Lamarckian conception, and by using it, to distinguish these two traditions. We will see that these two conceptions were not dominant at the same time. The first French neo-Lamarckism (1879–1931) (...) was structured by a very mechanic view of natural processes. The main representatives of this first period were scientists such as Alfred Giard (1846–1908), Gaston Bonnier (1853–1922) and Félix Le Dantec (1869–1917). The second Lamarckism – much more vitalist in its inspiration – started to develop under the supervision of people such as Albert Vandel (1894–1980) and Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985). Secondly, this essay suggests that the philosophical inclinations of these neo-Lamarckisms reactivated a very ancient and strong dichotomy of French thought. One part of this dichotomy is a material, physicalist tradition, which started with René Descartes but developed extensively during the 18th and 19th centuries. The other is a spiritual and vitalist reaction to the first one, which also had a very long history, though it is most closely associated with the work of Henri Bergson. Through Claude Bernard, the first neo-Lamarckians tried to construct a mechanical and determinist form of evolutionary theory which was, in effect, a Cartesian theory. The second wave of neo-Lamarckians wanted to reconsider the autonomy and reactivity of life forms, in contrast to purely physical systems. (shrink)

Aucun manuel de philosophie ni aucune encyclopédie ne nous avait procuré jusqu'ici un dictionnaire exhaustif des philosophes de l'Antiquité. Exhaustivité dans la liste des auteurs, connus ou pas, mais aussi dans la présentation des sources, puisque Richard Goulet et son équipe mobilisent textes littéraires grecs, documents iconographiques, papyrologiques, épigraphiques, sources arméniennes, géorgiennes, hébraïques, syriaques et arabes. Des présocratiques aux néoplatoniciens du VIe siècle, d'Athènes à Byzance, de Rome à Alexandrie, ce chef-d'œuvre d'érudition offre un regard vraiment universel sur les auteurs (...) et les systèmes de pensée qui continuent d'irradier jusqu'à nous. Ce nouveau volume, particulièrement important, contient entre autres les notices Parménide, Philon d'Alexandrie, Philostrate, Photios, Platon... et analyse la survie de leurs œuvres philosophiques dans la littérature du christianisme ou de l'Islam. Un travail colossal et internationalement reconnu, qui honore la tradition scientifique française. (shrink)

This article concerns the ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’. With the guidance of Leo Strauss, and with reference to French cultural anthropology and the Hebrew Bible, I offer close readings of the origin myths told by the characters of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and Socrates in book 2 of the Republic. I contrast Aristophanes’ prudential and political esotericism with Socrates’ pedagogical esotericism, connecting the former with poetry’s affirmation of the primacy of chaos and the latter with philosophy’s (...) openness to the measures of nature or phusis. Aristophanes regards the political poetry of Olympianism as a necessary corrective of original human disorder, while Socrates traces the sickness of souls and cities to an excess of poiēsis, ‘poetry’ or ‘production’ in all of its cultural and material senses. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes illuminates fundamental questions that were of central concern to Strauss: What is the status of nature? Must we orient ourselves by the forceful impressions of culture, or can we make out natural standards of how to live? Is war the primary human condition, or peace? Are human beings essentially erotic, or thumotic? Is philosophy an expression of reckless boldness, or of saving moderation? (shrink)

From the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries, French writing is especially concerned with analysing human nature. The ancient ethical vision of man's nature and goal survives, even, to some extent, in Descartes. But it is put into question especially by the revival of St Augustine's thought, which focuses on the contradictions and disorders of human desires and aspirations. Analyses of behaviour display a powerful suspicion of appearances. Human beings are increasingly seen as motivated by self-love: they (...) are driven by the desire for their own advantage, and take a narcissistic delight in their own image. Moral and religious writers re-emphasize the traditional imperative of self-knowledge, but in such a way as to suggest the difficulties of knowing oneself. Operating with the Cartesian distinction between mind and body, they emphasize the imperceptible influence of bodily processes on our thought and attitudes. They analyse human beings' ignorance of their own motives and qualities, and the illusions under which they live their lives. Their critique of human behaviour is no less searching than that of writers who have broken with traditional religious morality, such as Hobbes and Spinoza. A wide range of authors is studied, some well-known, others much less so: the abstract and general analyses of philosophers and theologians are juxtaposed with the less systematic and more concrete investigations of writers like Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld, not to mention the theatre of Corneille, Molière, and Racine. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at the growing interest by classicists in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. My focus is on a less developed aspect of Bourdieu’s work; namely, ideology. Where Bourdieu’s project was, at least in part, to understand how ideas both generate and are generated in practice, his notion of ideology seems to be more an artifact of his earlier structural sympathies. My interest here is not to posit a wholly new conception of ideology, but to ask how (...) one might use Bourdieu to clarify Bourdieu. The focus on the ancient world is instructive, not only because it draws on Bourdieu’s ongoing interest in pre-capitalist societies, but because it provides an historical and empirical stance by which we can critically engage Bourdieu’s conception of ideology beyond its specifically French — and contemporary — context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 69 in pre-Socratic scholarship. But he does not do justice to the religious mood which pervades the whole poem (a mood which is set by the prologue which casts the whole work into the form of some kind of religious revelation). The prologue is considerably more than a mere literary device, and the poem is more than logic. Generally, Jaeger9 and Guthrie are surely correct in (...) their judgment that any adequate interpretation of Parmenides' work (as well as that of the other early Greek thinkers) must be willing to take into account its essentially theological character and religious inspirationl~ not always grasped through strict analysis and exegesis. g Theolooy of the Early C-reekPhilosophers, trans. Edward S. Robinson (Oxford, 1947), p. lff, 90ft. agCf. Guthrie's excellent statement: "...Parmenides was at one with Heraclitus in claiming a prophetic or apocalyptic authority for his teaching." And again, the Greeks believed in "an inspiration whereby-the poet is granted deeper insight into the truth than other men" (p. 6). ED. L. MILLER University of Colorado AN UNKNOWN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH TRANSLATION OF SEXTUS EMPIRICUS* I. Introduction Included in a collection of manuscripts and early printed books recently acquired by the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles, from the Paris bookdealer Paul Jammes ~ are three manuscripts attributed to a certain Nicolas de la Toison, Baron de Bussy. Two of the three volumes contain extensive Latin commentaries on the major writings of Aristotle.2 The third is a miscellaneous volume written in three different hands, which contains, among other things, a complete French translation of the extant writings of Sextus Empiricus (c. A.D. 160-210).3 I * I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Richard O'Brien, Western European Bibliographer of the UCLA Library, for his help in numerous ways, who made it possible for me to consult this material during my sojourn in Los Angeles, even before it had been officially catalogued by the Library. I would also like to thank Professors Donald Kalish and Robert Yost of the UCLA Department of Philosophy for their support in making it possible for the collection to be purchased. 1For a brief description of the collection as a whole see Charles B. Schmitt, "Acquisition of Early French Books and Manuscripts", UCLA Librarian, XIX (1966)~25. 2These two manuscripts are bound m red leather with gold tooling. Thear present shelf mark is Collection 968, Box 2. On the spines is written: (1) PHILOSOPHIA.TO.I, and (2) METAPHYSIC ET PHYSICA TO.2. They measure approximately 10 X 14 cm. and each contains about 600fois. At the beginning of Vol. I, in a later hand (19th century?), we read: "Nicolas de la Thoison, baron de Bussy, qui 6crivit ces m6moires, 6tait conseiller laic au Parlement de Bourgogne. Il fur pourru par la r6signation de Pierre Catherine le IV Ddcembre M.DC.XLV et regu le XXIX janvier M.DC.XLVI. I1portait: de queueles dune bands d'or charges en coeur d'une quints feuiUe d'azur--ainsi qu'on le volt dans le Parlement de Bourgogne [Dijon, 1649]de Pierre PaiUot, p. 326." There is also a drawing of the coat-of-arms which has been described. That the de la Toison coat-of-arms is a quintefeuille is verified by Theodore de Renesse, Dictionnaire des figures h$raldiques (Brussels, 1894-1903) III, 461. The passage cited above from the manuscript is directly quoted from Pierre Paillot, Le Parlement de Bouroongne [I], son origins, son $tablissemerit, et son progr~s (Dijon, 1649), p. 326. s A description of this manuscript will be found in the Appendix. 70 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY shall here only give a preliminary survey of this third manuscript, pointing out some of the more interesting features and mentioning some problems connected with it which should be investigated further in more detail. As is now well-known the writings of Sextus Empiricus, which form the major extant compendium of ancient skeptical philosophy, had quite a significant impact on sixteenth and seventeenth-eentury thought, after their reintroduction in the sixteenth century. ~ Sextus' works were available in printed Latin editions after 15695 and the Greek text was printed in... (shrink)

In her seminal book, Philosophy and the State in France, Nannerl O. Keohane uncovered something close to a paradox: French absolutism bred a peculiar form of individualism that manifested disregard for civic involvement, yet by the eighteenth century the passive member of the ancient corporations moved without hesitation into participatory politics. The aim of this article is to clarify this apparent paradox. In order to do so, I revive the medieval dialectic between forum internum and forum externum that (...) for more than a thousand years provided the foundation for individualism all across the Western world. One cannot understand the paradoxes that later will mark the French Revolution if one fails to take into consideration the almost obsessive focus on the forum internum and on the authenticity of the self coupled with a drive toward conformism and unity in the forum externum, which was already in place for more than a century before. Furthermore, one cannot understand why political representation as representation of individual wills was not at all appealing to the early modern Frenchmen. Given today's worrisome disaffection of the typical individual with the formalized political sphere, the dialectic of the two fora is worth reconsidering. (shrink)

According to François Laruelle, French thought has been unduly influenced by corpuscular or atomist thinking, yet Laruelle has himself employed key atomist terms—in particular, that of the clinamen or swerve—in framing his own style of thought. This essay looks at this tension between atomism and anti-atomism in Laruelle’s thought, taking the measure of his contribution to a larger stream of postwar French thinking about the relevance and stakes of ancient atomism. Its contention is that Laruelle subtly but (...) really outlines a quantum theoretical resumption of ancient atomist philosophy—one that deserves closer attention and comparative study in the larger context of French philosophical interest in the atomists. A first section of the paper briefly describes Laruelle’s general project, along with his claim that he differs from his contemporaries because he uniquely escapes the dangers of what he calls corpuscular thought. A second section addresses the apparent tension between Laruelle’s claim to produce a non-corpuscular thinking and his consistent recent use of the atomist image of the clinamen, ultimately arguing that Laruelle sides with the clinamen against two forms of corpuscularity supposedly avoided by the clinamen itself but nonetheless usefully embodied in atomist thought. The final section of the paper draws up in preliminary terms a comparison between Laruelle’s understanding of his relationship to atomism and that of his contemporaries, focusing in particular on Alain Badiou. (shrink)

In _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt (...) to deny or delimit it._ In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition. "William Franke is an articulate spokesman for what cannot be said not only with regards to modern European poetry but also with respect to contemporary theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable _is essential reading for everyone working in religion and literature and in modern theology." — Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia __ "By now, it would seem that there could be no more to say about not-saying. Apophatic language and negative theology have been accused of meaninglessness, nihilism, and even ill-concealed ontologies. In this lovely and surprising book, William Franke not only deftly undoes these criticisms but shows that apophasis underlies and strangely grounds all language and thought, even of those very discourses that most vigorously reject it. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ demonstrates with elegance that there is indeed more to say, and more that is both meaningful and important." — Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College__ "William Franke is an eminent scholar in comparative literature, who is schooled in philosophy and religion. He is recognized as one of the most creative contemporary thinkers working at the double intersection of philosophy and literature and philosophy and theology. _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_ shows an intellectual grasp of a dizzying array of discourses and sheds real light on all thinkers who are discussed." — Cyril O'Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame_. (shrink)

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country's plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu's focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain's decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years' War, the American (...) War of Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu's work. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 -1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

Philosophy and theology have long harboured contradictory views on spiritual practice. While philosophy advocates the therapeutic benefits of daily meditation, the theology of grace promotes an ideal of happiness bestowed with little effort. As such, the historical juxtaposition of effort and grace grounding modern spiritual exercise can be seen as the essential tension between the secular and sacred. In Effort and Grace, Simone Kotva explores an exciting new theory of spiritual endeavour from the tradition of French spiritualist philosophy. Spiritual (...) exercise has largely been studied in relation to ancient philosophy and the Ignatian tradition, yet Kotva's new engagement with its more recent forms has alerted her to an understanding of contemplative practice as rife with critical potential. Here, she offers an interdisciplinary text tracing the narrative of spiritual exertion through the work of seminal French thinkers such as Maine de Biran, Félix Ravaisson, Henri Bergson, Alain (Émile Chartier), Simone Weil and Gilles Deleuze. Her findings allow both secular philosophers and theologians to understand how the spiritual life can participate in the contemporary philosophical conversation. (shrink)

Schiller's political thought has been subject to conflicting interpretations. Taking Schiller's historical essay The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon as a point of departure, this article locates him more precisely within the context of eighteenth-century debates on republicanism and moral philosophy. One of Schiller's central criteria in the evaluation of different republics is the question of how they comply with man's sensual and passionate nature. By attacking Sparta's constitution as despotic and unfit to meet human self-realization, he dissociated himself from (...) Rousseau and repudiated classical republican models. Instead, Schiller sided with modest proponents of luxury and progress by defending Athens' abundant and polite lifestyle. In response to the French revolution, Schiller developed his own aesthetic model of cultivating senses and passions to achieve a free society. Despite significant liberal elements, he thereby remained true to the republican principle that freedom and self- realization can only be achieved in the political community. (shrink)

Classical scholar and historian of philosophy at France's Ecole Normale Superieure, Alfred Fouillee heralded the science of psychology as philosophers' sole path to social and political relevance in the modern age, and sought for French society the philosophically based morale that her polarized political tradition seemed unable to provide. His theory of idees-forces identified rationality with an irreducible yet conscious will, lent precision philosophical idealism's often vague exaltation of individual freedom, and promoted psychologically informed discussions about the proper ideals (...) for the French Third Republic. Examined here is the evolution of Fouillee's thought from his earliest writings until his death: the genesis and elaboration of his idealist psychology, its later extension to social and ethical thought, Fouillee's defense of the classical lycee curriculum, and his repudiation of both unphilosophical sociology and the "anti-intellectualism" of the early twentieth century. Alert to both science's potential and its limitations, Fouillee held that modernizing societies like France would adequately define social justice and individual dignity only by joining ancient philosophy's metaphysical impulse and public spiritedness with modernity's liberal precepts. (shrink)

This book contains seven essays devoted to various aspects of the continuity and survival of the theological tradition identified with such texts as the Corpus hermeticum and the Orphic hymns. Until the seventeenth century it was generally believed that these works pre-dated the Christian era, thereby supporting the claim of a perennial philosophy, identified with Platonism, as well as the presumed Judaic origins of Plato’s philosophy itself. Early modern scholarship exploded the myth of the antiquity of these writings, identifying the (...) majority of them with unknown early Christian authors, but their influence continued, as Walker demonstrates, even into the eighteenth century. Three of these essays have been published before, but those on Savonarola, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the French Jesuit missionaries in China, and the Chevalier Ramsay, have been prepared for this volume. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 459-460 [Access article in PDF] Reinhard Brandt. Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte. Hamburg: Dumont, 2000. Pp. 470. Paper, NP. Reinhard Brandt, professor for Philosophiegeschichte, offers in his latest book a multi-faceted history of philosophy and art through his detailed interpretations of major paintings in the European tradition, beginning with Giorgione's "The Three Philosophers" and a young Raphael's "The Dream (...) of the Knight,"and stretching to René Magritte's "La condition humaine." In these paintings, as Brandt claims, different philosophical positions are expounded, which he then, in the role of interpreter, attempts to elucidate.In the introduction Brandt explains how this paradoxical phenomenon of philosophizing paintings can even exist. That one can find not only philosophical themes but well-wrought positions in such paintings, and, most importantly, not read these positions into them, is shown in more than thirty short essays, spanning from ancient Greek philosophy and literature, through the Renaissance and on to present-day Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature/philosophy. In almost every interpretation, Brandt critically reviews previous research, exposing and correcting some deeply rooted mistakes and constantly providing new impulses; in light of his philosophical-philological method, some major paintings in the European tradition are interpreted anew.His detailed analysis of Raphael's "The School of Athens" forces a persuasive revision of previous interpretations; the sitting figure in the foreground is not, as previously assumed, Heraclitus, but Democritus. On account of this carefully proven and convincing allotment, an unnoticed field of vision is discovered between the materialist and solid-state physicist Democritus, who with the gestus melancholicus is concentrating on a problem, and Plato, standing perpendicularly over him. Could this problem be the stone cube, on which the philosopher is leaning? From this conjecture we now have a bridge leading to Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melancholia."Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" is interpreted anew on account of the surprising solution to the painting's puzzling construction. Brandt shows that the whole picture is viewed from the vantage point of the princess inside the painting, not of an observer outside it. The princess stands before a mirror and Velazquez paints everything exactly as the princess sees it. So the painting, which hangs in the Prado Museum, is the mirror image of a complete reflection of the Self; perhaps it is no coincidence that the painting belongs to the same historical period as Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum dictum. Or Jacques Louis David's "The Death of Socrates": although the painting has been correctly referred back to Plato's Phaidon, until now a Platonic ground position was falsely attributed to the painting. Brandt shows that the painting was conceived with Stoic philosophical positions in mind: death is portrayed as immanently present, coupled with the un-Socratic maxim mortem spernere. The virtuous stance that Socrates still shows on the threshold of death is decisive. And as an added bonus he includes his influential, previously published essay on the title-page emblem of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Brandt's technical know-how. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the European intellectual tradition with a [End Page 459] fluid, easy-to-read style, which not only instructs the reader, but entertains as well. At no time does this book approach mere philosophical pedantry; his treatment of some of the lesser known, albeit important, figures in the history of philosophy, e.g., Justus Lipsius and Diogenes of Sinope, is not a lesson in obscurity. The reader feels himself taken on a journey through a history of Western philosophy, always being provided with thought-provoking material. His style, however, is in no way used to mask the often shaky scholarship that has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with such interdisciplinary studies. In every essay Brandt exhausts all the sources; he works with razor-sharp exactness, proceeding with the meticulousness of an outstanding and seasoned scholar.A problem which always accompanies such books is the question: Cui bono? Are either the philosophers... (shrink)

"Sam Rocha's primer reminds me of a French adage: la philo descends dans la rue--philosophy comes to the street. Rocha's little book can be read and talked about, with profit, on the street, in the home, in the school, in the garden, anywhere the human heart beats and the human mind thinks." --David T. Hansen, Weinburg Professor in the History and Philosophy of Education, Teachers College Columbia University "Rocha gives us a compelling experience of first-hand philosophizing, in which the (...) ordinary is shown in its powerful features, and the discipline of philosophy of education reclaims its necessity." --Cristina Cammarano, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Salisbury University "Rocha's illustrated primer is an eye-opening introduction to the philosophy of education. And, unlike too many illustrated texts, its pen and ink drawings are a thought provoking complement to this highly readable introduction." --David Mosley, Professor of Philosophy, Bellarmine University "An elegantly written invitation to students and the general reader to a frame of mind where one is ready to learn from and think about philosophy and education. Sam Rocha calls us all back, in heart-felt yet precise prose, to philosophy's ancient role of dialogue, wonder, and reflection. A joy to read and treasure." --AG Rud, Distinguished Professor, Washington State University "A charming and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of education, inspired by the writings of William James." --Graham Harman, Associate Provost for Research Administration and Professor of Philosophy, The American University in Cairo.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; }.embed-container iframe,.embed-container object,.embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }. (shrink)

During a climate of strong disenchantment toward systematic thought, the French philosopher Martial Gueroult (1891–1976) applied the concept of a system to the field of history of philosophy. His ‘dianometics’ is, among other aspects, a philosophy of the history of philosophy that considers each philosophical work as an autonomous system. This article proposes a critical reading of Gueroult’s work (which is rarely discussed outside of the French–speaking community) and aims to demonstrate that his dianoematics offers a new insightful (...) method for approaching and understanding the history of philosophy. First, I will reconstruct Gueroult’s argument to demonstrate how he justifies the possibility of a philosophical history of philosophy. I will then present Gueroult’s conception of system and how it can be used as an analysis technique for the history of philosophy. However, Gueroult’s project sometimes betrays some of its promises. A critical account will be presented as well. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of dignity played an important role in the political thought of Edmund Burke. It seeks to show that, in contrast with the egalitarian and individual version of dignity associated with Immanuel Kant, Burke devised a conception of dignity that rested on reverence, grandeur and formality, to be manifested through institutions, customs, and social relations. Burkean dignity was thus closely linked with the ancient constitution. In his thought, dignity played an essential role in maintaining (...) social stability and ensuring wise governance. This conviction informed Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution, which he feared would destroy the conditions necessary for dignity to thrive. Unpicking Burke’s understanding of dignity thus gives us new insights into the intricacies of his political thought and another perspective on his opposition to the French Revolution. (shrink)

This essence is the philosophy of knowledge for personal and social well-being aspects of the contribution. In the Introduction to "What is philosophical counseling practice or philosophy?", I described the ancient philosophy has been caring for the soul and tradition of self, in the last twenty-five years has been the revitalization of philosophers and others up. "Philosophy of psychological analysis," "philosophical counseling hotline", and "personal well-being and Philosophy Cafe" is a contemporary German philosopher Gerd B. Achenbach, British theologian Chad (...) Varah, and the French philosopher Marc Sautet these ideas for specific application situation. In the "philosophy of charity", I argue, the possibility for all practical philosophy, the charity as a necessary test of suspicion. (shrink)

Written by leading scholars in the field, this collection analyses the notion of travel writing as a genre, while tracing significant examples of Mediterranean travel writing that return us to Ancient Greece, to Medieval pilgrimages, to Venetians diplomatic missions, to an Egyptian's account of Paris in the nineteenth century, to French artistic journeys in North Africa and to contemporary narratives of privileged resettlement, death and dislocation.

The subject of the study is the fundamental philosophical and aesthetic problems in the aesthetics of Pierre Simon Ballanche, who stood at the origins of French romanticism. Two layers of his creativity - explicit and implicit - have been identified and analyzed. It is shown that his ideas about the art of romanticism are verbalized in a strict academic style. The implicit layer, is associated with Ballanche’s artistic prose. It includes philosophical and aesthetic poems, testifying the originality of his (...) aesthetic position. Unlike most French romantics, who distance themselves from ancient culture as pagan in favor of Christianity and medieval art, Ballanche, in his talented paraphrases of mythological stories, romanticizes Antiquity, finding in it the beginnings of future Christian ideas of sublime love, mercy, sacrifice, beauty and goodness. The main conclusion of the study is the conclusion that art, according to Ballanche, plays a leading civilizational role in the cosmogonic-historical process. The core of Ballanche's implicit philosophical aesthetics is revealed - the original concept of palingenesis, interpreted by the author as a radical degeneration of the world for the sake of its future revival; it is precisely this stage of cultural and historical development that, in his opinion, marks romanticism. The author's special contribution lies in introducing into domestic scientific circulation, translated into Russian for the first time and analyzed the philosophical and aesthetic poems “Antigone”, “The Man with No Name”, “The Experience of Social Palingenesis. Orpheus". (shrink)

In After Parmenides, Tom Rockmore takes us all the way back to the beginning of philosophy. Parmenides held that thought and being are one: what we know is what is. For Rockmore, this established both the good view that we should think of the world in terms of what the mind constructs as knowable entities as well as the bad view that there is some non-mind-dependent "thing"-the world, the real-which we can know or fail to know. No, Rockmore says: what (...) we need to do is give up on the idea that there is any extra-mental "real" for us to know. We know and become acquainted with the objects of cognition that our mind constructs. After Parmenides illustrates the contest between variants of the "standard" view and variants of the "non-standard, constructivist view" in the history of philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, post-Kantians including Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, Marx, the early pragmatists, analytic philosophy, contemporary French speculative realism, and more. This ambitious but accessibly written book shows how new connections can be made in the history of philosophy when it is reread through a new lens. (shrink)

The project of this Précis de philosophie de la logique et des mathématiques (vol. 1 under the direction of F. Poggiolesi and P. Wagner, vol. 2 under the direction of A. Arana and M. Panza) aims to offer a rich, systematic and clear introduction to the main contemporary debates in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. The two volumes bring together the contributions of thirty researchers (twelve for the philosophy of logic and eighteen for the philosophy of mathematics), specialists in (...) the history or philosophy of logic or mathematics. Each volume consists of ten chapters; each chapter is about forty pages, is independent from the others and deals with a particular philosophical question about logic or mathematics. The objective is to offer to the French-speaking reader a reference book. On many of the issues addressed, this Précis offers the first clear and thorough synthesis that is available in French. -/- This book is intended for third year / master's students, but also for teachers of philosophy in secondary or higher education, for logicians and mathematicians willing to take a philosophical look at the fundamental concepts of their discipline, and for any reader interested in the basic issues discussed in the philosophy of logic and mathematics. Each chapter is self-contained, although some basic training in logic (or in mathematics, as the case may be) is required. The book should be looked at as a comprehensive framework for contemporary discussions in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, while also giving some guidance on the disciplinary content required by these discussions. -/- The first three chapters of the present volume (on the philosophy of mathematics) are devoted to the history of the philosophy of mathematics: from antiquity to the modern era, and from this period to the foundational crisis of the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century. Next, four chapters deal with the crucial questions for the philosophy of mathematics of the twentieth century: the opposition and/or comparison of set theory and category theory as foundational frameworks for mathematics; mathematical constructivism; the analysis of calculability; and Benaceraff's problem. The two following chapters are focused on the philosophy of mathematical practice, by treating the notion of ideals of proof, in particular explanation and purity, and the notion of informal proof and the use of visual artifacts in mathematical argumentation. Finally the last chapter deals with the applicability of mathematics, including the role of probability. -/- In Chapter 1, Sébastien Maronne and David Rabouin present the history of the philosophy of mathematics from antiquity to the modern era. The goal is to show that the philosophy of mathematics has a history as ancient as mathematics and philosophy itself, a history largely continuous with the latter, often by staying out of sync with respect to the former. In Chapter 2, Sébastien Gandon discusses the question of the foundations of mathematics from Kant to the end of the nineteenth century. By tying this question to Kant, he is able to show that the discussion of the foundations of mathematics that occupied a large part of these two centuries has much older roots. Accent is placed on the differences between the framework proposed by Kant for making sense of classical mathematics and the use made by Frege and then Russell of logical tools for giving a different reading of arithmetic and real analysis. The link between between these different conceptions and the evolution of mathematics itself is also underlined. -/- Chapter 3, written by Hourya Benis-Sinaceur and Mirna Džamonja, deals with the evolution of mathematics in the twentieth century, notably the structuralist turn of Dedekind, E. Noether, and Bourbaki, and certain more recent developments. They devote themselves, among other things, to explaining how these developments can be understood as responses to and extensions of questions posed during the foundational debate of the immediately preceding era. -/- In Chapter 4, Jean-Pierre Marquis and Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz discuss the different foundational options coming from set theory and category theory. They discuss, among other things, Lawvere's program to replace ZF with an axiomatization of the category of sets, the latter judged better adapted to the needs of contemporary mathematics. Different reactions, as much philosophical as technical, raised by this program are also taken into account. -/- Constructive mathematics are the object of Chapter 5, in which Gerhard Heinzmann and Mark van Atten examine in a critical and comparative manner a variety of constructivisms, including intuitionism, constructive type theory, predicativism, and finitism. -/- In Chapter 6, Guido Gherardi and Maël Pegny present computability theory, stressing its philosophical consequences. They discuss the basic concepts of this theory, for the computability of both the natural numbers and the real numbers. They then tackle the theory of computational complexity. -/- In Chapter 7, Andrea Sereni and Fabrice Pataut present Benacerraf's problem, opposing every possible account of mathematical knowledge to the availability of a theory of truth founded on an abstract ontology of mathematical objects. They give an overview of the original problem and its reformulation by Hartry Field, and reconstruct the debate that this problem has raised, by meeting at once the major opposing positions today of the analytic affiliation of the philosophy of mathematics, as much those on the platonist side as on that of nominalism. -/- In Chapter 8, Valeria Giardino and Yacin Hamami treat certain crucial aspects of the philosophy of mathematical practice. They deal in particular with the notion of an informal proof and on the role of artifacts in mathematical reasoning. They consider how such proofs, making use of these means, can contribute to the understanding of theorems and mathematical theories, thanks also to the role of visualisation and the aid of computer tools. -/- Why do mathematics often give several proofs of the same theorem? This is the question that Andrew Arana raises in Chapter 9, introducing the notion of an epistemic ideal and discuss two such ideals, the explanatoriness and purity of proof. -/- Chapter 10 is devoted to the applicability of mathematics in the study of empirical phenomena. After summarizing the history of this question, going back to Plato and Aristotle and passing by Mill and Kant, Daniele Molinini and Marco Panza reconstruct the contemporary debate, in relation, among other things, to questions raised in the philosophy of science. -/- Two appendices complete the volume. In the first Frédéric Patras treats the French tradition in philosophy of mathematics of the 20th century. In the second, Maria Carla Galavotti discusses the notion of probability and its use in science. (shrink)

This book consists of essays exploring aspects of a single theme, philosophy as an effort to transform our vision of, and being in, the world. The first and second essays show that the Christian tradition of "spiritual exercises" is inspired by a similar tradition in pagan philosophy. The first essay indeed argues that ancient philosophy is to be understood in the main, not as a variety of doctrinal systems, but as an attempt to transform the soul by means of (...) techniques which can properly be referred to as "spiritual exercises." For example, Stoicism teaches, not an abstract theory, but a new way of life achieved through training the logos in us. Epicureanism also aims at changing our lives through the use of various exercises. Hadot then points to Socrates' interest in "care of the soul" and to the function of Socratic and Platonic dialogue in training the soul of the participant/reader so as to "turn it around." Hadot concludes this first major essay by noting that to treat ancient philosophies as if they were attempts at system-building is to misunderstand their character. The third essay is an important study of the figure of Socrates as a transformer of souls. The themes of irony and eros in particular are explored and compared to their recurrence in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This is followed by another major essay, which shows that Marcus Aurelius' Meditations are not at all the sort of autobiographical journal that they are usually assumed to be. They are in fact a Stoic manual of spiritual exercises. One specific training technique is examined, that of "physical definition." This and two other techniques are shown in the next essay to constitute the organizational principle of Marcus Aurelius' apparently disorganized work and to derive from Epictetus. The following essay establishes the influence Marcus Aurelius' work had on the French historian Michelet. The book concludes with a very general survey of the theme of "conversion," considered from religious, philosophical, social, and psychological points-of-view, and with an essay on the limitations of language in Greek philosophy and in Wittgenstein. Hadot demonstrates in this book a deep and unusually comprehensive knowledge of ancient philosophy and an ability to throw new light on aspects not only of ancient philosophy but also of the Western cultural tradition and indeed of human nature.--Dominic J. O'Meara, Université de Fribourg. (shrink)

This is the fourth (and last) volume of Jonathan Barnes' collected essays on ancient philosophy. As its title suggests, the twenty-three papers which it contains cover a wide range of topics. The first paper discusses the size of the sun, and the last looks at Plato and Aristotle in Victorian Oxford. In between come pieces on--inter alia--the theory of just war and the definition of comedy, the nature of the soul according to Plato and Aristotle and Zeno and Tertullian, (...) atheism of Protagoras, Timaeus the Sophist (and his Platonic Lexicon) and the early history of Aristotle's writings, Nietzsche on Diogenes Laertius, the first Christian novel... One of the pieces is new. The others have all been retouched, and some of them revised. Half a dozen were written in French and have been translated into English. The volume is kitted out with a bibliography and with two rather good indexes. The papers are, in parts at least, well written, and some of them are mildly diverting: no-one with a nose for ancient philosophy will sniff at them. (shrink)

The paper presents an overview of critical approaches in contemporary French philosophy, focusing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s geophilosophy (What is Geophilosophy?) in the influential study on What is Philosophy?, as a possible new source for criticism and engaged philosophy. It starts with Alain Badiou’s well-known presentation of the three significant moments in philosophy’s history of philosophy, Ancient Greek philosophy, German idealism, and finally, the “Adventure of French philosophy”, presented in Badiou as Hegelian philosophical ‘concrete universals’. (...) The paper then relates them to more concrete, environmentally based, and socially constructed ‘geophilosophical’ questioning, as it could first appear in the Greek polis and its embeddedness in the material production of the time. The paper aims to proceed from the prevailing ‘Greek-German-French’ explanations – and exclusions – of geophilosophy to what Badiou himself called ‘the French-Slovene moment’ in contemporary philosophy and to shed new light on the development of Marxist philosophy in ex-Yugoslavia in its relation to the political situation before and after the fall of the Berlin wall. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s materialist questioning about ‘Why philosophy in Ancient Greece at that moment?’, also related to the question of ‘Why capitalism in England and not in China?’, etc., have been re-actualized by putting it in the context of what might be called ‘Yugoslav geophilosophy’ with the prominent role of Slavoj Žižek and his philosophical, psychoanalytic turn, along with its ‘discovery’ of sexual difference and its possibility to reach beyond the ‘arrogance’ of the established philosophy, as well as the presumably ‘engaged’ feminist philosophical critique. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of Epicurean atomism, and explicates his claim that it represents a problematic idea, similar to the idea exemplified in early, “barbaric” accounts of the differential calculus. Deleuzian problematic ideas are characterized by a mechanism through whose activity the components of the idea become determinate in relating reciprocally to one another, rather than in being determined exclusively in relation to an extrinsic paradigm or framework. In Epicurean atomism, as Deleuze reads it, such a mechanism of (...) determination can be found in the famous atomic “swerve”. It is necessary to bear this interpretation of Epicurean atomism in mind when understanding Deleuze and Guattari’s promulgation of a new image of thought in What is Philosophy? , which has an explicitly Epicurean inspiration. The paper argues that this inspiration is particularly evident to the extent that Deleuze and Guattari identify the sub-representative feature that lies at the heart of their new image of thought with “chaos”, defined as “infinite speed”. I claim that infinite speed, this otherwise puzzling feature of What is Philosophy? , ought to be understood in the light of Deleuze’s interpretation of Epicurus. Moreover, the Epicurean distinctions between different speeds must be read together with Deleuze’s appropriation of the metaphysics of the ancient Stoics, who, although widely recognized as Deleuze’s Hellenistic counterparts, lack important theoretical resources that the Epicureans provide for Deleuze. (shrink)

1.—In the early decades of the Eighteenth Century a French Jesuit, one Fr. Jean Hardouin, was engaged in propounding a startling theory concerning the credentials of ancient literature. He declared that nearly all the reputed writings of antiquity, secular and sacred alike, were in fact composed by a monkish group of literary forgers in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The only works he admitted as authentic were the Latin Scriptures, Homer, Herodotus, and a few others of minor import. (...) In defence of this thesis he argued that it was admitted on every hand that some of the reputed writings of antiquity were not authentic. He was but carrying out a more rigorous examination than had ever before been made. The result of this severely critical scrutiny was to strip away most of the picture we had commonly but erroneously accepted of the antique world and to leave behind what was, by comparison, but a skeleton. This skeleton, alone, could be taken as real; our former beliefs were but a systematic imposture. We had, all unknowing, built up an enchanted vision of the ancient world; at a wave of the critic’s hand the enchantment is banished. (shrink)

The article analyzes the features of understanding of the history of philosophical process by the leading representative of French Neo-Kantianism. The binary scheme, thoroughly substantiated by Renоuvier in the “Sketch of the Systematic Classification of Philosophical Doctrines”, was a certain result of his previous creative way. In the “Textbook of Philosophy of the New Age”, he, highlighting the pantheism–idealism dilemma, expresses his sympathies for eclecticism. In the “Textbook of Ancient Philosophy”, he advocates giving philosophy a scientific character by (...) combining the laws of reason and history. In “Experiences of General Criticism” he builds a system of neo-criticism, identifying phenomena with reality. Finally, the “Sketch” presents an attempt at an objective consideration of the history of philosophy. Renоuvier identifies six oppositions passing through the entire history of thought (thing–consciousness, infinite–finite, evolution–creation, necessity–freedom, happiness–duty, evidence–belief). The strength of his method is the desire to make a choice between opposing trends, taking into account intellectual motives, passions, practical inducements of varying degrees of community. But both elements of reductionism and unfounded optimism about the lack of influence of all kinds of systems on his own constructions are present in his approach. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, see the following excerpt: -/- Though his work has until now gone untranslated and been largely ignored in English scholarship, the historian of philosophy François Châtelet played a major role in the development of French thought that is on par with that of his more well-known contemporaries. Born in 1925, Châtelet was founding member of the University of Vincennes, Paris VIII’s experimental department of philosophy alongside Michel Foucault in the aftermath of the 1968 student (...) protests. In 1983, he would establish the Collège Internationale de Philosophie in Paris along with other prominent philosophers, an institution that in Alessandra Campana’s words, is at “the forefront of militant and engaged critical thinking,” in which it has sought to “relocate philosophy at the intersection of science, politics, psychoanalysis, art and literature, jurisprudence, and economy.” Châtelet’s association with radical educational institutions and the interdisciplinarity of research undertaken at the latter both point to what can be understood to be the essence of his philosophical project: that the history of philosophy is also a politics of philosophy. La Grèce Classique, La Raison, L’État, which was first published in 1978 and appears here in translation for the first time under the title Classical Greece, Reason, and the State, is exemplary in this regard, providing a powerful critique of the history of philosophy and its purported Greek origins. As Deleuze argues, Châtelet reveals that “Athens was not the advent of an eternal reason, but the singular event of a provisional rationalisation. In this view, the essence of classical philosophy cannot be extended to the contemporary era—neither in its original form, or in a revised form that has been modified and updated across the passage of time. Therefore, by politicising philosophy and its history, Châtelet’s work also shows philosophy to be indicative of a particular cultural moment, rather than as an the state, philosophy, and the tyranny of the logos · isolated discipline cut off from the influences of material life. He establishes a form of ‘rational empiricism’ for conducting a history of political philosophy that rejects universality for potentiality. Said otherwise, his work is indicative of what might be called the poststructuralist critique of historical narrative surrounding the canon of western thought, a critique that Michael Hardt rightfully argues “has problematised the foundations of philosophical and political thought.” However, Châtelet has made important contributions to the poststructuralist approach to theorising the western tradition that remain novel and insightful to a contemporary audience, rather than simply being one of many to problematise philosophy’s purported foundations. (shrink)

Light and darkness were central motives in the Bible and in the Platonic tradition . First and foremost light was the essential element and the basic principle of existence and cognition in the philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius Aeropagite. His metaphysics of light contained imagery that inspired builders of French cathedrals and provided Christian thought with rich presuppositions and themes. Th e main purpose of the article is to highlight the Gnostic aspect of the refl ection on light in the writings (...) of Pseudo-Dionysius. Th e author of the Divine names speaks of light in a fi gurative sense and compares its physical properties to the process of transmission of knowledge. He uses the term “light” to describe the actualizing powers of God or God’s sovereignty over the world that he identifi es with goodness. Th is goodness is also described as “supersubstantial light” which as a transcendent Unity permits divine intellects to partake of the supreme knowledge about themselves. Th us light is shown as essential to the transmission of knowledge. It constitutes the process of enlightenment and supports the hierarchical process of transmissionof knowledge. Assuming that this is a correct reading of Pseudo-Dionysius Aeropagite theauthors conclude that contrary to the predominant interpretation his philosophy Pseudo-Dionysius did not describe emanations of beings but transmission of knowledge. Which in turn indicates that he developed his theory as a part of Christian philosophy rather than neoplatonic thought. (shrink)

Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy's attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus's critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, reveals the metaphysical dimensions of Arcesilaus' arguments as essential to grasping (...) what is innovative about the so-called New Academy. Resisting the partiality for epistemology in the historical reconstructions of ancient philosophy, this book defends a new philosophical framework that re-positions Arcesilaus' attack on the early Stoa as key to his deviation from the metaphysical foundations of both Stoic and Academic virtue ethics. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy in French, Italian, and German, Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology builds bridges between analytical and continental approaches to the historiography of ancient philosophy, and makes an important and disruptive contribution to the literature. (shrink)

This book is quite simply the best study of the "young Marx" (pre-1848) and his immediate predecessors I have ever read. For supporters of the ancient régime in the first half of the nineteenth century, the failure of the French Revolution meant that everything could now go back to “normal.” But for the thinkers Kouvelakis examines — Kant, Hegel, Heine, Hess, Engels, and Marx — the Revolution’s promise of emancipation was merely deferred, not defeated. What exactly did that (...) mean? Answers differed greatly. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a new edition of Plotin's works, adapted for the modern age and with updated bibliographies, notes, and apparatus. It also contains an extensive introduction to Plotin's philosophy, demonstrating in particular its distance from the later phase of Neoplatonism. French text.

This collection of reprints contains twenty-four articles, whose original publication dates range from 1974 to 1997. It includes four essays on various themes in Plato and Aristotle, nine on Plotinus, six on later Greek Neoplatonism, and five on Eriugena. Fifteen are in English and nine are in French.

Steven French and Decio Krause examine the metaphysical foundations of quantum physics. They draw together historical, logical, and philosophical perspectives on the fundamental nature of quantum particles and offer new insights on a range of important issues. Focusing on the concepts of identity and individuality, the authors explore two alternative metaphysical views; according to one, quantum particles are no different from books, tables, and people in this respect; according to the other, they most certainly are. Each view comes with (...) certain costs attached and after describing their origins in the history of quantum theory, the authors carefully consider whether these costs are worth bearing. Recent contributions to these discussions are analyzed in detail and the authors present their own original perspective on the issues. The final chapter suggests how this perspective can be taken forward in the context of quantum field theory. (shrink)