Dans cette conférence faite à l’Association munichoise des libres-penseurs, en 1903, Raoul Francé s’emploie à démystifier le modèle des premières communautés chrétiennes. L’auteur dénonce des comportements provocants peu conformes à leur réputation de douceur et de pacifisme. Il évoque les divisions internes de ces communautés et la filiation probable entre les Esséniens et les premiers chrétiens. En s’appuyant sur des historiens, il cherche à prouver qu’on a exagéré l’importance de la persécution dont les chrétiens furent victimes sous l’empire romain. (...) La conclusion de cette conférence documentée mais polémique, est que l’histoire du christianisme est celle d’une secte ambitieuse qui a usé de stratégie non seulement pour se répandre mais aussi pour écrire sa propre légende. (shrink)

Nous avons tous retenu la leçon de la phénoménologie l'homme n'est pas le prisonnier de ses représentations subjectives, il est directement un "être-dans-le-monde". Toutefois, tout un chacun a, à chaque instant, à choisir le mende, c'est-à-dire à se choisir et à se fonder dans le monde comme une personne unique et singulière au sein de celui-ci. Cette idée implique l'élaboration d'une discipline complémentaire à la phénoménologie, capable de cerner l'homme dans la réalité et la singularité absolues de son projet dans (...) le monde. Méthode que Sartre nomme, en modifiant la pensée de Freud, psychanalyse existentielle. Que la singularité de notre épreuve personnelle du monde soit tout à la fois ce qui nous est le plus accessible, et ce qui, pourtant, échappe constamment à notre connaissance, constitue un paradoxe, un "mystère en pleine lumière", légitimant la formation d'une psychanalyse, non moins paradoxale, de la conscience. Psychanalyse d'un genre nouveau dont Sartre esquisse dans de nombreux textes théoriques la méthode, qu'il mettra lui-même en application dans ses essais biographiques sur Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet et Flaubert. Percer l'identité du monde singulier d'un écrivain afin d'enrichir la compréhension de son oeuvre par celle de son élan unique dans le monde, tels sont les résultats auxquels la méthode psychanalytique sartrienne, permet d'aboutir, par-delà la seule méthode héritée de la phénoménologie. C'est à en dégager le sens et à en comprendre la fécondité aussi bien philosophique que clinique et littéraire que se consacre le présent essai. (shrink)

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly by (...) returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

1. The rise and fall of logos -- 2. The way of negation, Christian and Greek.

The pandemic reminds us that, with the catastrophes to which biodiversity is subjected, with the disruption of ecosystems, much more dangerous and fatal viruses can appear. Also, disturbed in its quietude and reminded of its own mortality, the human being knows the same anguishes which were those of all the victims of the epidemics which formerly devastated the populations and of which the literature was able to account in multiple occasions. Daniel Defoe’s Diary of the Plague, which is very rich (...) in lessons, bears witness to the similarities in attitude between the centuries: disruption of the economy, unemployment, famine, rumors, the search for false remedies, confinement, transgressions. Conjuring up confinement through writing is a remedy that tempts some. With the sound diary of the writer Wajdi Mouawad it is from the inside that the experience of confinement is given to understand. (shrink)

Distinguer le rituel de la ritualisation, c'est opposer l'aspect statique du rituel, comme disposition collective mobilisée par un groupe ou une communauté pour gérer ses interactions entre ses membres et son contact avec d'autres groupes, d'avec l'aspect dynamique des processus d'instauration de règles de fonctionnement de nouvelles formes d'agir social. La ritualisation des processus d'apprentissage et de formation réclame l'instauration inaugurale d'un cadre. Celui-ci renvoie à l'explicitation volontaire, réitérée des règles de fonctionnement, par un animateur symboliquement garant de la loi. (...) En ce sens cette distinction postule, à côté d'une approche fonctionnelle du rite, une approche génétique des processus de ritualisation. Par ritualisation, j'entends la mise en place progressive d'habitus au moyen d'un cadre, édictant les règles de fonctionnement et les objectifs de l'activité. Au paradigme d'une causalité circulaire, qui présente les rituels à la fois comme résultats et comme producteurs d'habitus, on peut opposer le modèle d'une causalité linéaire qui pose le cadre comme induisant des processus d'apprentissage ritualisés. L'étude se focalise plus spécialement sur les rituels d'accueil et sur le démarrage des processus d'apprentissage et de formation ritualisés.Distinguish the ritual of ritual is to oppose the static aspect of the ritual, as collective provision mobilized by a group or a community to manage interactions between its members and contact with other groups, with the appearance dynamic process of establishing operating rules for new forms of social action. The ritualization of learning and training calls for the establishment of a framework inaugural. It refers to explaining voluntary repeated operating rules by a facilitator symbolic guarantor of the law. In this sense the distinction postulates next to a functional approach to the rite, a genetic process of ritualization. By ritual, I mean the gradual establishment of habitus through a frame, establishing the rules of operation and objectives of the activity. Paradigm of circular causality, which presents the rituals both as producers and as a result of habit, we can contrast the model of linear causality that arises as part of the learning process inducing ritualized. The study focuses especially on the rituals of home and starting the process of learning and training ritualized. (shrink)

The Voices of Silence resembles a long monologue proceeding from affirmation to affirmation. With this work, André Malraux has finally concluded a meditation of twenty years. The proud assurance of his intelligence, reinforced by an extraordinary array of works left in his memory from travels and from reading, and by a brilliant mastery of his style, expects neither contradiction nor reply. Caught in the enchantment of his phrases, convinced by the choice and the scholarly relevance of the photographs, the reader (...) has some difficulty in freeing himself from Malraux's reasoning. If anybody should nevertheless wish to answer, Bernard Berenson's last book offers the chance for a discussion. In a sort of impromptu conversation, in a tone at times lyric and at times peevish, Berenson challenges contemporary taste in those of its aspects which Malraux meant to justify: From a conviction formed by long familiarity with the works, he answers almost point by point Malraux's theses, which perhaps he does not know and which he does not mention. (shrink)

One does not have to be an ethnologist to know that fear of incest—a fear whose influence on modern man's behavior psychoanalysis has so ably demonstrated—is as ancient as human society. The overwhelming majority, if not all, of those primitive societies that it has been possible to study have revealed an organization governed by the law of exogamy —that is to say, by the obligation to marry solely outside the kinship group to which one belongs.

Par-dela les limites de la methode experimentale, tributaire des sens exterieurs, se deploie une experience toute spirituelle du monde suprasensible, royaume des choses morales et substances incorporelles, ainsi que du monde surnaturel, celui des arcanes de la grace et de la gloire. Meme dans le domaine des choses corporelles, ou l'experience sensible reste imparfaite, cette experience mystique qu'est l'illumination interieure est necessaire pour suppleer a l'insuffisance de l'experience des sens, simplement humaine et philosophique. Roger Bacon nous apparait a travers cet (...) ouvrage comme mystique, mais aussi comme humaniste et savant: cette harmonie dans sa personne n'est pas sans repondre a l'harmonie des choses ou le surnaturel s'ajoute a la nature pour la parfaire, puisque apres tout ces deux facons de connaitre le Createur et la creature peuvent bien eter la double manifestation d'un seul et meme gout imperieux pour l'experience. Roger Bacon peut bien s'eprnedre des donnees de la nature et des idees de la litterature profane sans pour autant se dejuger: s'il est vrai que c'est le meme Dieu qui a fait la Nature et l'Ecriture, c'est le meme Dieu qui nous illumine de l'illumination generale dans l'experience physique et de l'illumination interieure dans l'experience mystique. (shrink)

Analyse les conditions de la déconstruction complète de la métaphysique à partir de la philosophie du langage ordinaire développée par Jacques Derrida.

Versions of the “Idealist” position dominated twentieth century Continental Philosophy, although this position has recently come in for influential criticism from contemporary “Speculative Realists”. My paper shows, however, that the basis for a forceful critique of the Idealist position was already laid by two crucial but poorly understood figures in the twentieth century continental tradition: Levinas and Sartre. I propose to defend herea Neo-Realist view together with Levinas and Sartre based on a demonstration of a “transphenomenality of being” against the (...) Idealist option taken by the first phenomenologists. The goal of this work is to build arguments in favor of the Realist position against Husserl’s Idealism through a close reading of Levinas’ and Sartre’s ontological phenomenologies. (shrink)

La dénomination des âges, résultat d’un construit social, trace des frontières mobiles qui sont autant de marqueurs socioculturels. La frontière a un double statut : objectif et subjectif, externe et interne, elle est continuellement édifiée et reconstruite selon le contexte socio-historique et culturel et les interactions. C’est un mur ou un lieu de passage. Une série d’entretiens auprès de jeunes chômeurs en formation et auprès de personnes âgées confrontées aux bouleversements urbains montre que l’âge peut être vécu soit comme processus (...) dynamique de transformation dans son rapport à soi, aux autres et à son environnement, soit comme processus d’exclusion et de mort sociale.The ways in which we refer to ages in life, which stem from social constructs, point to shifting boundaries that are effectively socio-cultural demarcations. The nature of boundaries is inherently dual: they are objective and subjective, external and internal, and they are continually erected and reconstructed with shifting socio-historical and cultural contexts and interactions. They are barriers but also gateways. A series of interviews with young unemployed people in training and with elderly people trying to cope with urban transformations shows that one’s age can either be experienced as a dynamic process of change in one’s relationships with oneself, with others and with one’s environment, or as a process of exclusion and social death. (shrink)

Peter Maurin, a French, itinerant immigrant, known, if at all, as co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement plies his pedagogy from the margins of society, identifying with the poor of the Depression. He believes his vocation is to awaken the poor and professionals alike to reconstruct a personalist democracy and restore its spiritual foundation, Remarkably resonate with John Dewey’s experiential learning, Jane Addams’ Hull House initiative, and the Brazilian educator and theologian Paulo Freire’s theory of humankind’s vocation (...) to humanize the world, Maurin critiques education as “knowing more and more about less and less” and not relating knowledge to the real world. Today Dewey and Freire influence progressive experiential pedagogy, but most progressive educators are unacquainted with Maurin’s radical vision. Yet, Maurin speaks as trenchantly to our own time of socio-economic, ideological, and moral crisis as he did to the crises of the 1930s. This paper seeks to recover Maurin’s pedagogy for critical theory’s work of educating today’s students—and the world, in general—to a deep consciousness of the workings of society, for restructuring the social order, and for solidarity with those who suffer from structural injustice. For Maurin, solidarity with the impoverished and marginalized is the site of both deep knowing and transformative power. This solidarity is the bedrock of Maurin’s teaching—propagated among the cast-offs at Columbus Circle to academics on Boston Commons, to the storefront and tenement schools he established, to his outdoor university, to forums, symposia, and nightly round-table discussions. With poetic phrasing, he casts his thought as “points” in what becomes known as “easy essays.” While those from the academic mainstream publish in respected journals, Maurin, from the margins, tacks up his essays in public places and even mails them to reluctant listeners. Working out the practical implications of his vision, he offers a particular angle on the world, and a prophetic pedagogy for the gravitas of our time. (shrink)

Dans cet article de 1903 paru dans une revue positiviste, le naturaliste Raoul Francé (1874-1943) se réfère l’école critique d’exégèse biblique (de Strauss à Wrede) pour faire entendre la voix des libres penseurs qui remettent en question l’existence historique de Jésus. Francé considère le texte des Evangiles comme une des expressions du mouvement messianique juif, qu’il faut comprendre symboliquement et non comme un récit historique. La postface de l’éditeur de la revue, le positiviste Heinrich Molenaar, rappelle que Comte interprétait (...) déjà la figure de Jésus comme une extrapolation. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that in recent literature on mechanistic explanations, authors tend to conflate two distinct features that mechanistic models can have or fail to have: plausibility and richness. By plausibility, we mean the probability that a model is correct in the assertions it makes regarding the parts and operations of the mechanism, i.e., that the model is correct as a description of the actual mechanism. By richness, we mean the amount of detail the model gives about the (...) actual mechanism. First, we argue that there is at least a conceptual reason to keep these two features distinct, since they can vary independently from each other: models can be highly plausible while providing almost no details, while they can also be highly detailed but plainly wrong. Next, focusing on Craver's continuum of ?how-possibly,? to ?how-plausibly,? to ?how-actually? models, we argue that the conflation of plausibility and richness is harmful to the discussion because it leads to the view that both are necessary for a model to have explanatory power, while in fact, richness is only so with respect to a mechanism's activities, not its entities. This point is illustrated with two examples of functional models. (shrink)

In the literature on dynamical models in cognitive science, two issues have recently caused controversy. First, what is the relation between dynamical and mechanistic models? I will argue that dynamical models can be upgraded to be mechanistic as well, and that there are mechanistic and non-mechanistic dynamical models. Second, there is the issue of explanatory power. Since it is uncontested the mechanistic models can explain, I will focus on the non-mechanistic variety of dynamical models. It is often claimed by proponents (...) of mechanistic explanations that such models do not really explain cognitive phenomena . I will argue against this view. Although I agree that the three arguments usually offered to vindicate the explanatory power of non-mechanistic dynamical models are not enough, I consider a fourth argument, namely that such models provide understanding. The Voss strong anticipation model is used to illustrate this. (shrink)

This article provides a critical survey of the debate on intertheoretic relations, with particular emphasis on the cognitive sciences. I begin by distinguishing two opposing sides, reductionism and antireductionism, and proceed by tracking the changes these positions underwent in the twentieth century. It appears that these changes consist to a significant degree in smoothing out the rough edges of both, so that the original positions can be understood as crude extremes. The monistic accounts of intertheoretic relations were traded in for (...) more tolerant and nuanced approaches, a tendency that is chiefly inspired by an increasing focus on actual scientific practice. (shrink)

Explanations are supposed to provide us with understanding. It is common to make a distinction between genuine, scientific understanding, and the phenomenological, or ‘aha’ notion of understanding, where the former is considered epistemically relevant, the latter irrelevant. I argue that there is a variety of phenomenological understanding that does play a positive epistemic role. This phenomenological understanding involves a similarity between bodily sensations that is used as evidence for mechanistic hypotheses. As a case study, I will consider 17th and 18th (...) century research into the mechanism behind the electric eel’s power to shock. Se supone que las explicaciones nos dotan de comprensión. Es habitual hacer una distinción entre compresión cientifica, genuina, y la noción fenomenológica, o ‘ahá’, de comprensión, donde la primera se considera epistemológicamente relevante y esta última irrelevante. Argumento que hay un tipo de compresión fenomenológica que sí juega un papel positivo epistémico. Esta comprensión epistemológica conlleva cierta semejanza con las sensaciones corporales que se usan como evidencia de algunas hipótesis mecanicistas. Como caso de estudio, consideraré la investigación en los siglos xvii y xviii del mecanismo tras la capacidad de la anguila eléctrica para provocar un shock. (shrink)