For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most profound of (...) his age'. (shrink)

A entrevista concedida por Emmanuel de Saint Aubert a Silvana de Souza Ramos e a Iracy Ferreira dos Santos Junior aborda a história e o papel dos Arquivos Husserl de Paris para o fomento da pesquisa multidisciplinar em fenomenologia. O pensador esclarece qual foi o contato de Merleau-Ponty com os manuscritos de Husserl, e que tipo de leitura, situada e complicada, ele realizou não apenas desses manuscritos, mas da obra de Husserl como um todo. Esse aspecto é particularmente importante para (...) os estudos de filosofia francesa contemporânea porque Merleau-Ponty foi um dos grandes responsáveis pela introdução de Husserl no pensamento francês. Tal esclarecimento permite mostrar a originalidade da filosofia de Merleau-Ponty, pois revela que o autor não era um exegeta de Husserl, mas um pesquisador inquieto e multifacetado, engajado nos debates intelectuais e políticos de sua época. Se ele não pode ser reduzido à figura de um mero leitor de Husserl, tampouco sua ontologia tardia pode ser resumida à influência de Heidegger. Debruçado sobre os manuscritos deixados inacabados por Merleau-Ponty em função de sua morte prematura, os quais eram um esboço de um novo livro, Saint Aubert realizou um minucioso trabalho de pesquisa dos usos que Merleau-Ponty faz de termos centrais de sua ontologia – chair, Leib, empiétement, quiasma – mostrando que eles não traduzem ou expressam literalmente conceitos provenientes de Husserl ou de Heidegger, pelo contrário, esses termos ganham uma gama de sentido multifacetada nos escritos de Merleau-Ponty, alimentando-se de suas leituras e meditações filosóficas, mas também de sua cultura científica e literária, e de suas preocupações éticas e políticas. A pesquisa de Saint Aubert, dedicada à interpretação dos chamados “inéditos” de Merleau-Ponty, resultou na publicação de cinco livros, pelas edições Vrin, todos eles guiados por uma leitura genética transversal da obra merleau-pontiana. Além disso, Saint Aubert, com a ajuda de outros pesquisadores e pesquisadoras, publicou, com apurado cuidado editorial, vários volumes com os manuscritos de Merleau-Ponty. Esse material, disponível de modo organizado e situado, é de uma riqueza incomparável, e permite dimensionar de modo mais preciso o papel de Merleau-Ponty no pensamento contemporâneo, além de iluminar o sentido de seu projeto ontológico. (shrink)

Joint actions typically involve a sense of togetherness that has a distinctive phenomenological component. While it has been hypothesized that group size, hierarchical structure, division of labour, and expertise impact agents’ phenomenology during joint actions, the studies conducted so far have mostly involved dyads performing simple actions. We explore in this study the complex case of collectively improvised musical performances, focusing particularly on the way group size and interactional patterns modulate the phenomenology of joint action. We recorded two expert improvisation (...) ensembles of contrasting sizes (16 vs 4 musicians) and collected data about their musical behaviour, as well as reports about five aspects of their phenomenology (sense of agency, agentive identity, integration, dependence, reflexivity) and about their musical intentions. Our overall data enabled us to assess how those five phenomenological dimensions related to one another during jointly improvised performances. They also show how such phenomenology varied with the way improvisers dynamically related to one another throughout the performance. Finally, we observe that group size strongly altered the phenomenology of improvisers who otherwise shared many characteristics (high expertise, similar aesthetic preferences, etc.). Our study thus sheds light on the interactional and structural parameters that shape and modulate our felt experience when acting together, and thereby highlights the importance of pluralism for studying the phenomenology of joint action. (shrink)

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the (...) proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations. (shrink)

Le Tableau naturel des rapports qui existent entre Dieu, l'homme et l'univers est un ouvrage fondamental pour ceux qui cherchent à comprendre les mystères de la Création. Pour Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, l'homme porte en lui-même la clé de tous les mystères. Se connaître soi-même est donc la condition primordiale pour accéder à la Connaissance. Les textes sacrés nous enseignent que l'histoire de l'humanité est liée à un drame en trois actes. Le premier est celui de l'âge d'or ; le deuxième (...) celui d'une chute douloureuse dans la matière ; le troisième, qui reste à venir, sera marqué par une rédemption, une réintégration dans le Divin. L'auteur de ce livre s'efforce de percer le sens ésotérique de ces trois étapes. Il montre aussi que l'impasse dans laquelle se trouve l'homme résulte de la confusion qui règne dans ses pensées. S'il nourrissait sa volonté à la chaleur de l'Amour divin, il accéderait à la régénération d'une manière naturelle, et l'humanité trouverait la Connaissance menant à la Paix Profonde. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que l'action? Une rupture dans le cours du temps, une prise de risques, un commencement. L'agent, tel le plongeur quittant le bord, ne peut revenir en arrière ; l'exécution l'engage tout entier, corps et âme ; il doit faire confiance au monde, aux autres et à lui-même. C'est par l'action que la nouveauté entre dans la nature et dans l'histoire. Ces caractères de l'action sont-ils universels ou varient-ils selon les cultures et les époques? Bien qu'il existe différents styles d'action, (...) les modélisations dramatiques (par le récit) et mathématiques (par le calcul) du phénomène en font ressortir l'unité. En même temps, la dualité du dramatique et du mathématique est insurmontable, sans doute parce que l'histoire humaine est tragique et que la tragédie se prête mal au calcul mathématique. L'action nous révèle notre identité, y compris nos faiblesses, et commande notre destin. Cet essai fait le pari que les hommes peuvent faire prévaloir la raison pour régler les conflits. Il considère la notion chrétienne de communion des saints comme une source majeure des essais politiques et scientifiques pour nous faire prendre la mesure de l'unité du genre humain, malgré la tentation de nous enfermer dans des "sociétés closes". (shrink)

Au livre V de l'Éthique à Nicomaque, Aristote ne donne pas une définition unifiée de la justice. Tout en ne rejetant pas la définition traditionnelle qui identifie la véritable justice et la justice légale, ni celle qui repose sur la justice naturelle et fonde la notion d'équité, il cherche de nouvelles assises pour la justice institutionnelle et c'est la notion d'égalité qui sert à cette fin. Cet article vise à préciser les notions de stricte égalité et d'égalité proportionnelle et corrélativement (...) à analyser les définitions des justices distributive et directive qui constituent les branches de la justice particulière chez Aristote.In the Fifth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle does not give one unified definition of justice. He does not reject the traditional definition of legal justice nor the definition of natural justice which is necessary to dread the idea of equity. However, he wants to ground institutional justice on a new base and the idea of equality serves this end. In this paper, I want to make clear the difference between strict and proportional equality and correlatively to analyse the definitions of distributive and "directive" justices which form the two branches of the aristotelian particular justice. (shrink)

Lexical semantics has become a major research area within computational linguistics, drawing from psycholinguistics, knowledge representation, computer algorithms and architecture. Research programmes whose goal is the definition of large lexicons are asking what the appropriate representation structure is for different facets of lexical information. Among these facets, semantic information is probably the most complex and the least explored.Computational Lexical Semantics is one of the first volumes to provide models for the creation of various kinds of computerised lexicons for the automatic (...) treatment of natural language, with applications to machine translation, automatic indexing, and database front-ends, knowledge extraction, among other things. It focuses on semantic issues, as seen by linguists, psychologists, and computer scientists. Besides describing academic research, it also covers ongoing industrial projects. (shrink)

An accessible and solid entry into the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas.

This new English translation of St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law, found in Questions 90-108 of the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologiae, is the only free-standing English translation of the entire Treatise, which includes both a general account of law (Questions 90-92) and also specific treatments of what St. Thomas identifies as the five kinds of law: the eternal law (Question 93), the natural law (Question 94), human law (Questions 95-97), the Old Law (Questions 98-105), (...) and the New Law (Questions 106-108). According to St. Thomas, law, far from supplanting virtue as a basic principle of action, serves as an independent principle of action that complements virtue and is itself capable of being factored into practical deliberation. The reason is that all of God's precepts, prohibitions, and punishments are aimed at promoting the good of the whole universe and, more particularly, the good for human beings, both individually and within the various forms of social life. Because of this, law serves as both a restraint on bad actions and a spur to good action, i.e., a restraint on actions that take us away from virtue and genuine human flourishing and a spur to actions that promote virtue and flourishing. There are many benefits of having the whole treatise rather than just the first few questions, as has been the standard practice in previous editions of the Treatise on Law. To mention just a few of these benefits, the question on the moral precepts of the Old Law (question 100) helps to illuminate in many different ways the earlier questions on natural law and human law (questions 94-97). Again, the questions on the ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Old Law (questions 101-105) demon-strate in depth the symbiotic relationship that St. Thomas takes to obtain between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The questions on the New Law provide an introduction to the Christian way of life that will be described in incomparable detail in the Second Part of the Second Part, the bulk of which is structured around the treatment of the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues. Book jacket. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning attributed to the national group as an entry point into how boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are formed. To do so, it focuses on the representation of the past of the group, taken as a symbolic resource able to produce a raison d’être for national groups, and does so within a dialogical framework. Using the transcripts of the French parliamentary debates on immigration from 2006, it proposes a qualitative analysis of collective narratives of (...) the past along three axes: 1) what meaning do they give to the nation, 2) how is such a meaning produced, and 3) how do the stories told by different groups reply or relate to one another. By identifying the main narratives found in the data and how they relate to each other – within and between groups – it proposes to see collective memory as itself the product of symbolisation processes and, therefore, as a cultural tool especially powerful to produce meaning about the present. This paper also argues that collective memory is a situated construction negotiated with – or contested by – others, made possible by the presence of common historical benchmarks to which different meanings may however be attributed. Finally, it proposes to understand “immigration talk” as potentially the product of the identity questions faced by the national group, rather than the other way around. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s third work as a Christian convert__ "The 'Cassiciacum dialogues'... are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness."—_Credo__ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called (...) the “Cassiciacum dialogues,” these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. _On Order_ is the third work in this tetralogy, and it is Augustine’s only work explicitly devoted to theodicy, the reconciliation of Almighty God’s goodness with evil’s existence. In this dialogue, Augustine argues that a certain kind of self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the answers to theodicy’s vexing questions, and he devotes the latter half of the dialogue to an excursus on the liberal arts as disciplines that will help strengthen the mind to know itself and God. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis of an extract from a Collective Philosophical Inquiry. Through this case study, we show the possible misunderstandings linked to the duality of two « worlds » : that of the teacher who experiments with CPI in her classroom and that of the researcher who is responsible for the design of this type of session. The « world » is defined as « conceptual, axiological and praxical background ». The confrontation between these worlds therefore questions both (...) the modalities of their necessary collaboration and the conditions of the construction and use of a true « professional genesis. (shrink)

Based on a contrastive approach that compares the argumentative genre of editorial with the narrative genre of personal narrative across two production modes, single-authored data and data elicited...

Our evidential environments are reflections of our social contexts. This is important because the evidence we encounter influences the beliefs we form. But, traditional epistemologists have paid little attention to the generation of this evidential environment, assuming that it is irrelevant to epistemic normativity. This assumption, I argue, is dangerous. Idealizing away the evidential environment obscures the ways that our social contexts distort its contents. Such social distortion can lead to evidential oppression, an epistemic injustice arising from the ubiquity of (...) ideologically-inflected portrayals of oppressed social groups. In some cases, this distortion can be so pervasive as to create a skeptical pothole in agents' epistemic environments---a limited region in which a skeptical scenario obtains. The skeptical challenge of social distortion is important because it suggests that prejudice and irrationality alone may not be enough to explain many harmful beliefs. Where justified belief is merely a matter of responding well to one's evidence, the ubiquity of ideologically-inflected evidence may impel a matching doxastic state, even for exemplary epistemic agents. Nevertheless, there is an asymmetry in blameworthiness between the Cartesian victim and someone laboring under evidential oppression. This asymmetry reveals the need for distinctively non-ideal epistemic norms. I offer a characterization of one such norm: the internalist practice of self-stewardship. (shrink)

L’être humain est une manière singulière d’être corps, en rapport au monde, en relation avec autrui. Ce style qui constitue sa chair s’exprime dans certaines attitudes typiques marquées par une conjonction, parfois extrême, de passivité et d’activité – dès l’amplitude comme la profondeur de sa perception du monde, dans l’accueil et l’écoute qu’il peut accorder à autrui, dans une posture foncièrement interrogative intriquée avec des dimensions de consentement et de foi. Ces attitudes montrent...

Présente le parcours philosophique de Merleau-Ponty tant dans sa formation que dans ses objectifs. Ses références : Descartes, Leibniz, Gabriel Marcel. Ses concepts opératoires : le concret, l'incarnation, l'intentionnalité, les chiasmes.

Toute guerre se remporte avec des hommes et des munitions, y compris celle des idées. Aujourd'hui l'histoire, la politique, l'économie, la culture, le droit sont des champs de bataille. À nous d'y triompher de la pensée unique. Beaucoup ont déjà pris la plume, tels Jean Sévillia, Philippe de Villiers ou Mathieu Bock-Côté. Mais à cette aventure intellectuelle, le droit reste étranger. Chose curieuse, au regard de son immixtion dans nos vies, réglées comme des horloges suisses par ses rouages. Mal interprété, (...) il regorge d'idées fausses, parfois sciemment entretenues par nos législateurs à des fins politiques. Remettre le droit à l'endroit? C'est l'objet insolite de cet ouvrage. Les hommes naissent-ils réellement libres et égaux en droit? Nos élus nous coûtent-ils trop cher? La naissance d'un étranger en France le rend-elle nécessairement français? Le droit européen est-il vraiment supérieur au droit national? Trente questions pour y voir clair et combattre les idées reçues. (shrink)

L’histoire économique nous enseigne que si le progrès technique ne profite pas à tous les travailleurs lorsqu’il apparaît, à long terme il est le facteur principal de la hausse extraordinaire des salaires et du niveau de vie que l’économie mondiale a connue depuis la révolution industrielle. Pourtant, les progrès de la robotique pourraient bien remettre en question cet optimisme et donner raison aux Cassandre qui prophétisaient la fin du travail. En effet, le champ de ces technologies ne cesse de progresser, (...) au point où la totalité des tâches effectuées par les humains serait robotisable. Si c’est le cas, l’économie et la société en seraient profondément transformées. On considère six scénarios. Dans trois d’entre eux, une classe humaine quasi-oisive se maintient grâce à des transferts prélevés sur la production effectuée par les robots. Ces transferts peuvent s’effectuer à travers l’État-Providence, le clientélisme d’une oligarchie possédant les robots, ou le maintien néo-fordiste d’emplois tertiaires dont la fonction essentielle serait le versement d’un salaire qui permettrait le maintien du pouvoir d’achat. En l’absence de mécanismes redistributifs, on envisage trois autres scénarios. Selon le scénario des rentiers, une classe de propriétaires de robots émerge, suffisamment nombreuse pour s'opposer politiquement à des transferts redistributifs. Selon le scénario malthusien, le salaire tombe au niveau du salaire de subsistance et la population humaine diminue, ne laissant subsister qu’une classe de rentiers vivant de la possession de robots. Selon le scénario virtuel, le salaire de subsistance lui-même baisse considérablement sous l’effet des nouvelles technologies : la population se maintient en dépit des baisses de salaire. (shrink)

An important factor of argument mining in dialog or multilog data is the framing with which interlocutors put forth their arguments. By using rhetorical devices such as hedging or reference to the...

This book examines education and the aim of life through the ages; how the conception of progress is the primary driving force in the modern world; and how this limited understanding of progress has failed to satisfy the deepest aspirations of humanity, bringing modern civilisation to its present crisis and highlighting the limitations of today's education to meet this crisis. The author presents the free progress system at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education and explains how the views of (...) Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on integral education can prepare the children of today to consciously and luminously participate in the evolutionary destiny of the future. (shrink)

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...) literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology. (shrink)

‘Feminist logic’ may sound like an impossible, incoherent, or irrelevant project, but it is none of these. We begin by delineating three categories into which projects in feminist logic might fall: philosophical logic, philosophy of logic, and pedagogy. We then defuse two distinct objections to the very idea of feminist logic: the irrelevance argument and the independence argument. Having done so, we turn to a particular kind of project in feminist philosophy of logic: Valerie Plumwood's feminist argument for a relevance (...) logic. Plumwood's work serves as our primary case study as we turn to the project of considering three different ways we might understand her argument and revisionist arguments like it: as a priori theorizing, as ameliorative conceptual engineering, or as instances of anti-exceptionalist approaches to logic. After arguing that the anti-exceptionalist approach seems to provide the most promising means of understanding the kind of project undertaken in a feminist challenge to classical logic, we briefly address the consequences that this might have for logic instruction. Here, we argue for the perhaps unexpected conclusion that feminist programs ought to offer more, not less, instruction in logic for those who take interest. (shrink)

New translations of two treatises by the fourth-century Christian thinker dealing with the possibility and nature of knowledge. Intended specifically for philosophical readers and suitable as a text for a course in medieval philosophy, Augustine, or church history. No subject index. Paper edition, $12.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Since Bonaventure never wrote a treatise dedicated to the Eucharist, his extensive treatment in the fourth book of his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, which covers many of the topics that would have comprised such a work, stands as his most extensive discussion. In it the Seraphic Doctor considers, among other things, the symbolism of the Eucharist, its connection to the imagery of the Old Testament, the metaphysics of transubstantiation, and the efficacy of the sacrament in the heart of the (...) believer. The result is a treatment that in many ways parallels the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, yet is distinctively Bonaventurean. This volume presents a translation of this discussion in its entirety, together with the Latin text of the Quaracchi edition. Professor Johnson's introduction situates this text in the larger development of medieval Eucharistic doctrine and comments extensively on the theology of this set of questions. In addition to explaining dense technical and linguistic issues in the text, the notes key the reader to Bonaventure's rich inheritance of material in the Fathers and in earlier medieval theologians. (shrink)

Experimental science and the philosophy of nature, by R.A. Kocourek.--The problem of motion, by R.A. Kocourek.--The principles of nature, by St. Thomas Aquinas.--The Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on Books I-II of The physics of Aristotle.--The reason for an introduction to the philosophy of nature.--Outline of the physical works of Aristotle.--Outline of the Commentary on Book I.

Aquinas occupies an extremely important position in the western philosophical tradition. His work contains influential contributions in logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics and philosophy of religion, and his commentaries on Aristotle played a major role in the incorporation of the philosophy of Aristotle into the understanding of Christian doctrine and into western culture at large. Yet many people find it difficult to begin the study of Aquinas's work, daunted by its volume and by its being worked out within in (...) the context of Catholic doctrine, which must now be obscure to most readers. This book can help rectify this. (shrink)

How does being a woman affect one’s epistemic life? What about being Black? Or queer? Standpoint theorists argue that such social positions can give rise to otherwise unavailable epistemic privilege. “Epistemic privilege” is a murky concept, however. Critics of standpoint theory argue that the view is offered without a clear explanation of how standpoints confer their benefits, what those benefits are, or why social positions are particularly apt to produce them. For this reason, many regard standpoint theory as being out (...) of step with epistemology more broadly. But this need not be so. This article articulates a minimal version of standpoint epistemology that avoids these criticisms and supports the normative goals of its feminist forerunners. This account serves as the foundation for developing a formal model in which to explore standpoint epistemology using neighborhood semantics for modal logic. (shrink)