In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Medieval Troubadour Mobilized in the French Resistance *Roy RosensteinIntroduction: The Place of Poetry under VichyRien ne semblait plus anachronique que d’interroger, inter arma, le silence des Muses médiévales....Frank 1In Chantons sous l’occupation André Halimi details how raucously the band played on in wartime Paris. 2 If Vercors in 1941 advocated the practice of silence and Sartre in 1945 maintained that Paris had been dead for the four years (...) of the Nazi occupation, Halimi and others have shown that Parisians [End Page 499] sang, danced, and laughed during the Occupation as never before. 3 Rarely had so many plays been staged, so many movies been produced. 4 While in other Nazi-occupied countries the theaters and restaurants remained closed, thus preserving a modicum of national dignity in defeat, in France the arts thrived and la vie mondaine accelerated its pace. Journalist Henri Amouroux rightly explains how cinema and theater provided more than entertainment and why they were periodically the target of curfews. In these wartime performances a seemingly insignificant phrase could take on a rich contemporary context. Thus a line like “toute la fleur du royaume se trouve en prison” in Montherlant’s La reine morte invariably provoked applause. Whether the text was classical or contemporary in origin, the audience “seized upon all the passages that could be linked to the current situation.” 5 In this broad sense, Resistance literature came to include any “poetry written and/or distributed in France during the Occupation, and which the reader sees as implicitly or explicitly conveying hostility to Nazism and Collaboration.” 6Between 1940 and 1944 French audiences escaped their national misfortunes more through literature than through film and drama combined. “Never, perhaps, had literature played such a momentous part in the daily life of French readers,” wrote the late Henri Peyre in 1945. 7 As is often noted, the intellectual Resistance “fut surtout poétique.” 8 Every page of poetry, past or present, seemed to remind wartime readers of their current circumstances. One young poète résistant is categorical: “Never before had poetry played such a decisive role in history.” 9 Pierre Brunel of the Sorbonne is just as emphatic in confirming [End Page 500] the judgment of contemporary scholars and Resistance fighters alike: “During the war years, French poetry found a singleness of purpose and an audience that it had never enjoyed before.” 10In anticipation of more comprehensive treatments of French Resistance poetry sens large, the present study proposes a necessarily modest and certainly partial approach to the role of poetry in the French Resistance. Following the general groundwork of Seghers, Gaucheron, Higgins, and others, it undertakes to track, if only schematically, the reaction to France’s fall as polarized across three territories—in American exile, in Vichy France, and in German camps—through a focus on one exemplary twelfth-century troubadour. Concurrently with the “nouvelle floraison poétique” hailed by André Rousseaux in 1941, 11 Jaufre Rudel was one earlier poet who enjoyed a resurgence of interest during the war. With respect to this troubadour, to date only Dietmar Rieger has mentioned in passing an oblique reference to Rudel’s trademark distant love in Aragon’s “Pour un chant (national)”: “Jaufre’s love from afar is set against a love for France.” 12 This particular troubadour’s legend and lyrics assumed new dimensions through their immediate relevance not only for Aragon but for all French nationals, both imprisoned at home and exiled abroad. Literary historian René Dumesnil observed as early as 1941 with respect to pre-war French classics: “Present circumstances give them new depth and extend their range.” 13 Regarding France’s medieval literature, a modern critic has noted how “the troubadours, just as much as Tristan, Roland, Lancelot, Perceval, or even Yseult..., emerge as agents of unity, even of unanimity, around whom it is still possible to muster the French people in 1940.” 14 [End Page 501]As has been observed for centuries, “Frenchmen abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or other.” 15 All French patriots and expatriates, wherever they found themselves after the Armistice in June 1940, whether... (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate how visual–spatial ability predicted academic achievement through arithmetic and reading abilities. Four hundred and ninety-nine Chinese children aged from 10.1 to 11.2 years were recruited and measured visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities. Their mathematical and Chinese language academic achievements were collected for two consecutive school years, respectively, during the same year as cognitive tests and 1 year after the cognitive tests. Correlation analysis indicated that visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities and academic achievements were significantly correlated (...) with each other. The structural equation modelling analyses showed that there were two paths from visual–spatial ability to academic achievement: a major path mediated by arithmetic ability and a minor serial mediation path from visual–spatial ability to arithmetic ability to reading ability, then to academic achievement. Results shed light on the importance of visual–spatial ability in education. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that math anxiety highly correlates with trait anxiety and that the emotional component elicited by math anxiety affects math performance. Yet few studies have examined the impact of “specific math anxiety” on math performance and the underlying physiological and affective mechanism. The present study examines the mediation effect of heart rate variability—an affective measurement indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia —in the relationship between specific math anxiety and arithmetic speed. A total of 386 junior high school (...) students completed a self-reported questionnaire to measure their anxiety level. Among this sample, 29 individuals with specific math anxiety, 29 with specific reading anxiety, 24 with specific trait anxiety, and 22 controls were selected to participate in an arithmetic task and a reading task while RSA was recorded when they performed the tasks. Results revealed that individuals with specific math anxiety showed lower RSA and longer reaction time than the other three groups in the arithmetic task. Regression and mediation analyses further revealed that RSA mediated the relation between specific math anxiety and arithmetic speed. The present study provides the first account of evidence for the affective hypothesis of specific math anxiety and suggests that affective responses may be an important mechanism underlying the detrimental effect of specific math anxiety on math performance. (shrink)

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he (...) chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo-Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid-1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time. (shrink)

A magisterial mappa mundi of the terrain that Pierre Hadot has so productively worked for decades, this ambitious work revises our view of ancient philosophy- ...

Certain authors, in speaking of their works, say: My book, my commentary, my history, etc. They smack of these bourgeois homeowners, with “my house” always on their lips. They should rather speak of: our book, our commentary, our history, etc., since, generally speaking, there is far more in them of others than of their own.

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

Letter to du Faur de Pibrac, 1621.--Exercises against the Aristotelians, 1624.--Letter to Diodati, 1634.--De motu, 1642.--The rebuttals against Descartes, 1644.--The syntagma, 1658.

Un dialogue est un logos (discours, propos, argument) qui va d'un interlocuteur a un autre. Cet echange d'idees, s'il veut etre fructueux, s'appuie sur un principe tres simple: comme le dialogue n'est pas un monologue, on dialogue avec quelqu'un; et on dialogue sur quelque chose. C'est le cas des travaux qui composent ce volume. L'interlocuteur privilegie est Pierre Aubenque. Ses travaux, son activite en tant qu'enseignant, ses prises de position sur des sujets tres divers ont suscite, de la part (...) de ses disciples, collegues et amis, une veritable envie de dialoguer avec lui, un desir de suivre son exemple (car Pierre Aubenque a toujours dialogue avec les Anciens, notamment avec Aristote). Les auteurs de ces reflexions ont ainsi voulu demontrer que le dialogue instaure pendant plus de vingt ans par le Directeur du centre Leon Robin (Universite de Paris IV), reste toujours ouvert. (shrink)

_Democracy Past and Future_ is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the (...) present. In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. _Democracy Past and Future_ begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought. (shrink)

Ways of Seeing is a unique collaboration between an eminent philosopher and a world famous neuroscientist. It focuses on one of the most basic human functions - vision. What does it mean to 'see'. It brings together electrophysiological studies, neuropsychology, psychophysics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind. The first truly interdisciplinary book devoted to the topic of vision, it will make a valuable contribution to the field of cognitive science.

Pierre Soulages : régulièrement j’élimine des toiles, inabouties ou qui ont “tourné mal ”, banales, sans rien qui m’excite et qui sont d’ailleurs des sortes d’aventures avortées… Alors qu’à un moment, il y avait quelque chose qui était apparu, qui me paraissait intéressant à pousser, à intensifier, et puis ça s’est détourné, ça s’est terminé par quelque chose de morne, pas vraiment inachevé parce que l’inachevé c’est par rapport à un modèle parfait ou… qui n’est pas du tout ce (...) que je poursuiv... (shrink)

Best known for his work in literary criticism, Pierre Macherey has, over the past two decades, produced a series of original philosophical works. This first collection of his philosophical writings to be published in English discloses the full range of Macherey's interventions, testifying to his signal status as one of France's leading philosophers. In a Materialist Way ranges over Macherey's writings on philosophy and theory, critiques of the work of major figures in contemporary French thought such as Lacan, Foucoult (...) and Canguilhem, and analyses of the work of Spinoza. It reveals to English-speaking audiences what has long been common knowlege in France: that Pierre Macherey is among the most fertile, imaginative and subtle of contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

L'actualite du kantisme n'est plus a demontrer. Que l'on songe a l'ethique de la discussion, a la theorie de la justice, a la philosophie des relations internationales, au probleme des arguments dits transcendantaux ou encore a la theorie de l'experience esthetique, la pensee de Kant temoigne aujourd'hui d'une incontestable vigueur et d'une etonnante jeunesse. Cette contemporaneite de Kant se traduit par de multiples tentatives de dialogue avec cette oeuvre afin d'en degager la pertinence pour le debat actuel. L'oeuvre de (...) class='Hi'>Pierre Laberge a su repondre de maniere exemplaire a ses ordres de preoccupations dans l'etude de Kant. Les auteurs sollicites ont eu l'occasion de collaborer avec Pierre Laberge et lui rendent ici un hommage posthume. Ce recueil reflete ainsi cette double exigence d'actualiser le kantisme et d'en analyser les textes. (shrink)

Interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, conducted by Javier Fernández Sebastián, in Madrid, September 28, 2006.

"This wonderfully eloquent and playful colloquy of two brilliant minds gives new life to the old notion of Dialogue, a sadly forgotten form now.... I "love" this book!

This work by Pierre Bourdieu develops the anthropological theory which has formed the basis of his scientific research. It discusses the problems posed by "structuralist" philosophers in order to solve or dissolve them.

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought--the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs--have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical discourse. Though Heidegger is (...) aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues, Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellectual dimensions--political thought and academic thought--intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the "conservative revolution," of which Nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

Résumé Le présent article analyse d’un point de vue sémiotique les rapports entre la /lumière/ et l’/obscurité/ et les catégories discursives au sein d’un corpus de quatre textes de la littérature du dix-neuvième et vingtième siècle. Il s’agit de montrer que les propriétés physiques et sensibles fondent les structures sémio-narratives et orientent les catégories axiologiques, thymiques, spatiales et temporelles. Autrement dit, on observe une primauté de la lumière et de l’obscurité en tant que catégories organisées en structure élémentaire qui génère, (...) par un système de conversion, les unités abstraites et concrètes aux niveaux successifs du parcours génératif. (shrink)

The tuning-fork model of human social cognition, based on the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys, involves the four following assumptions: (1) mirroring processes are processes of resonance or simulation. (2) They can be motor or non-motor. (3) Processes of motor mirroring (or action-mirroring), exemplified by the activity of MNs, constitute instances of third-person mindreading, whereby an observer represents the agent's intention. (4) Non-motor mirroring processes enable humans to represent others' emotions. After questioning all (...) four assumptions, I point out that MNs in an observer's brain could not synchronically resonate with MNs in an agent's brain unless they discharged in a single brain in two distinct tasks at different times. Finally, I sketch a conceptualist alternative to the resonance model according to which a brain mechanism active in both the execution and the perception of e.g., the act of grasping is the neural basis of the concept of e.g., grasping. (shrink)

Discusses the importance and development of analytical sociology, emphasizing the centrality of mechanisms in explaining social life.

The present volume consists of diverse individual texts, produced between 1980 and 1986, which take two forms: interviews in which Bourdieu confronts a series of probing and intelligent interviewers, and conference papers that clarify and extend specific areas of his research. Now that Bourdieu's work has achieved wide diffusion and celebrity, this is an appropriate time for this volume, a pause for retrospection and resynthesis, for corrections of misreadings and extension of previous insights, and for projection of the next stages (...) of his work. For this English edition, Bourdieu's celebrated inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Leçon sur la Leçon, has been added. The texts fall into two fundamental areas. The first area provides an overview of Bourdieu's central concepts, never before clearly explained. The second area clarifies the philosophical presuppositions of Bourdieu's studies and gives an account of his relations with the series of thinkers who formulated the problems in social and cultural theory that still preoccupy us: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Durkheim, Wittgenstein, Weber, Parsons, and Lévi-Strauss. Bourdieu's visions of these figures is personal and penetrating, and in his vivacious, spontaneous responses one sees at work a mode of thought that can in itself be a liberating tool of social analysis. Bourdieu applies to himself the method of analyzing cultural works that he expounds, evoking the space of theoretical possibilities presented to him at different moments of his intellectual itinerary. (shrink)