Ce texte, auquel nous souscrivons entièrement, a déjà paru sur Médiapart le 7 juin 2014. Ils n'ont pas su voir le lent dépérissement du peuple de gauche, éduqué sous la Troisième République par les idées issues de la Révolution française, assumées et développées par le socialisme, réassumées après 1933 par les communistes, propagées par les instituteurs de campagne, les enseignants secondaires, les écoles de formation du PS et du PC. Ils n'ont pas perçu le vide que laissait la mort du (...) radical socialisme, la (...) - Débats. (shrink)

Sleepwalking may seem a plausibly deconstructive notion, and some commentators have adopted it as such. But, until quite late in Derrida’s writing, it figured as something against which deconstruct...

In terms of medical science and legal responsibility, the sleep disorder category of parasomnias, chiefly REM sleep behavior disorder and somnambulism, pose an enigmatic dilemma. During an episode of parasomnia, individuals are neither awake nor aware, but their actions appear conscious. As these actions move beyond the innocuous, such as eating and blurting out embarrassing information, and enter the realm of rape and homicide, their degree of importance and relevance increases exponentially. Parasomnias that result in illegal activity, particularly violence, (...) are puzzling phenomena for medicine and the law. Via a review of the pertinent medical literature, a general overview of the current scientific knowledge of parasomnias will be provided. Though this knowledge is far from complete, it can provide some neurobiological information about the nature of parasomnia, including conclusions about a sleepwalker’s level of intention as well as factors that predispose one to such episodes. Although a parasomniac’s complete lack of consciousness warrants acquittal from criminal liability, it does not exclude responsibility for subjecting oneself to exacerbating factors that result in these violent parasomnias. Individuals should be held accountable if they could be expected to control these factors. In addition, they should undergo appropriate treatment and management in order to prevent future parasomnia behaviors. Establishing a legal defense for parasomnia will prove difficult due to the strong potential for malingering, so specific criteria will be outlined in order to distinguish between true and fraudulent claims of crimes committed during parasomniac states. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Schopenhauer's Pessimism and the Unconditioned Good MARK MIGOTTI SCHOPENHAUERTOOK PESSIMISMtO be a profound doctrine that had long been accepted by the majority of humanity, albeit usually in the allegorical form given to it by one or another religious creed. Accordingly, he credited himself, not with the discovery of pessimism, but with the provision of a satisfactory philosophical exposition and defense of its claims. It was, he contended, only within (...) the context of his philosophy, animated by the "single thought" that "the world is the self-knowledge of the will,"' that the ultimate significance of pessimism and the arguments demonstrating its inescapability can be brought to light. If, nevertheless, he sometimes appears to protest too much, to defend pessimism as if it were a striking and novel affair, he would have attributed this to the fact that he was, unfortunately, writing in the midst of one of the most naively optimistic cultures known to world history. 2 The philosophical reception of Schopenhauer's pessimism since the publication of The World as Will and Representation in 1818 would, one suspects, have been taken by him as further evidence of modern Western philosophy's optimistic somnambulance. For while other, comparably fundamental aspects of his thought--for example, his theories of action, of the self, and his criticisms of Kant--have received a welcome amount of fruitful, critical attention, his I would like to thank John Atwell, David Schmidtz, Susan Haack, Rudolf Makkreel and, especially,two anonymous referees, for prompting me to make substantial improvements to an earlier draft of this paper. ' Arthur Schopenhauer, Der handschrifllicher Nachlass 1, ed. Arthur Hiibscher (Frankfurt-amMain : Kramer, 1967),462; Manuscript Remains 1, trans. E. F.J. Payne(NewYork: Berg Publishing, 1988), 512. 'See, for example, Arthur Schopenhauer, D/e Welt als Wille und VorsteUung II. In Arthur Schopenhauer. Ziircher Ausgabe, ed. Arthur Hiibscher et. al. (Zurich: DiogenesVerlag, 1977),w 4:721, 732-33; The World as Will and Representation II, trans. E. F. J. Payne(New York: Dover Press, 1969),615, 625-26. Future references to this work willbe made within the text, by the abbreviation WW followed by section number, German edition volume and page number and English translation page number. [643] 644 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER ~995 pessimism has not. Amongst enthusiastic followers it has sometimes been swallowed more or less whole, but from more independent-minded readers it has generally met with disdainful mockery or well-intentioned neglect.3 The aim of this paper is to help rectify' this imbalance. In the first of its four sections, I present an account of Schopenhauerian pessimism that can claim a good measure of textual support, and the essential features of which are found often enough in the secondary literature to warrant calling it the mainstream interpretation.4 In section 2 I show that, as critics have charged, the arguments for pessimism on this interpretation suffer from a pair of fatal ambiguities, and in section 3 I sketch an alternative argument for pessimism, one not so obviously open to the sort of knock-down refutation to which the first argument succumbs. In the paper's final section l explore further the philosophical consequences of this alternative argument for pessimism. 3Gyorg'yLukacs, "Schopenhauer," chapter ~,section 4 of The Destruction of Reason, trans. Peter Palmer (London: Merlin Press, 1979), 19~-243, isthe locusclassicusof an attitude of superior scorn. Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: "the Clarendon Press, 1983), z3-14, D. W. Hamlyn, Schopentmuer (London: Routledge, z98o), *43, Michael Fox, "Schopenhauer on Death, Suicide, and Renunciation." in Schopenhauer: His Philosophical Achievement, ed. Michael Fox (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 198o), ]47-7o, and David Cartwrigh*, "Schopenhauer on Suffering, Death, Guilt, and the Consolation of Metaphysics,"in Schopenhauer: New Essays in Hotwr ofHis 2ooth Birthday, ed. Eric yon der Luft (Lewiston,NY: Edwin Mellen Press, t988), 66, all incline to the viewthat it was temperament, not argument, that drove Schopenhauer to pessimism, while Patrick Gardiner, Schopenhatwr (London: Penguin Books, ]963), does not discuss pessimism by name. Not even Nietzsche, the deepest and most astute of Schopenhauer'scritics,can resistbarbs of the following sort: "Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, in ]act played the flute... (shrink)

« "...le mot qu'Aristote avoit tres-familier : 'O mes amis, il n'y a nul amy'." (Montaigne, De l'amitié.)Dernier mot, dernière volonté, cette sentence testamentaire nous vient du fond des temps. Sourdement soupirée, transmise et traduite, transférée aussi en tant de langues. Mais l'apostrophe appelle peut-être une science nouvelle, comme si elle ne consentait à se laisser aimer, au prix d'une philologie singulière, que pour une philosophie encore à venir.À méditer inlassablement l'aporie d'une telle adresse, on s'enfonce dans le labyrinthe de (...) sa provenance mais aussi de son avenir.Par provision, voici un fil d'Ariane, justement, un seul fil, tenu de main de femme, de fille, de sœur : où chemine la politique de ce "mot"? Ouvertement ou en secret, une architecture de la cité ou de l'État n'aurait-elle pas orienté cette provocation? Une généalogie du politique ne s'est-elle pas liée, dans notre tradition, au couple ami/ennemi et, en lui, au concept canonique et dominant de l'amitié?L'analyse ici proposée serait aussi une contre-généalogie. Elle inquiète en effet le motif généalogique lui-même, un certain ordre de la filiation, à savoir le schème familial et phallocentrique de la fraternité, la figure du frère (plutôt que de la sœur), la virilité de la vertu dont l'autorité reste si souvent incontestée dans notre culture de l'amitié et dans les modèles accrédités de la démocratie.À l'horizon de toutes ces questions, celle de la vertu, donc, dans une démocratie à venir. La vertu, est-ce une chose du passé? Oui et non.Le mot ainsi prêté à Aristote, qui ne l'a pas cité? Une fois infléchi ou orchestré, jusque dans sa grammaire, par un concert d'interprètes somnambules, vigilants et automatiques, voici qu'il traverse en rêvant, récitation psalmodiée d'une immense rumeur, le grand jour de notre mémoire : de Montaigne à Kant, par exemple, de Nietzsche à Blanchot, oui, Blanchot, l'ami de Bataille et des penseurs de ce temps, le penseur de L'Amitié ("...tandis que je me remémore la parole attribuée par Diogène Laërce à Aristote : 'O mes amis, il n'y a pas d'ami'", ce sont aussi les derniers mots d'un autre livre de Blanchot, Foucault tel que je l'imagine).Mais l'avenir de "ce mot qu'Aristote avoit tres-familier" vient encore sur nous. Déjà là, c'est comme s'il ne nous était pas encore arrivé, tenant en réserve, dans l'un de ses plis, une promesse de démocratie encore impensée, encore impossible, toujours à venir : la promesse même. »J. D.SOMMAIRE : Avant-proposOligarchies : nommer, énumérer, dénombrerAimer d'amitié : peut-être - le nom et l'adverbeCette « vérité » folle : le juste nom d'amitiéL'ami revenant (au nom de la « démocratie »)De l'hostilité absolue. La cause de la philosophie et le spectre du politiqueSerment, conjuration, fraternisation - ou la question « armée »Celui qui m'accompagneReplis« En langue d'homme, la fraternité »« Pour la première fois dans l'histoire de l'humanité »L'Oreille de HeideggerPhilopolémologie (Geschlecht IV)Portées de voix. Rhétorique de l'amitiéL'avoir, l'être et l'autre : tendre l'oreille, accorder ce qu'on n'a pasQuelques-uns (Le mariage du ciel et de l'enfer)Tautologie, monologie, otologie. Le sacrifice de Heidegger. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have long noted that automated behavior is the rule, while consciousness acts of self-regulation are the exception to the rule. On the face of it automated actions appear to be immune to moral appraisal because they are not subject to conscious control. Conventional wisdom suggests that sleepwalking exculpates, while the mere fact that a person is performing a well-versed task unthinkingly does not. However, our apparent lack of conscious control while we are undergoing automaticity challenges the idea that (...) there is a relevant moral difference between these two forms of unconscious behavior. In both cases the agent lacks access to information that might help them guide their actions so as to avoid harms. In response it is argued that the crucial distinction between the automatic agent and the agent undergoing an automatism, such as somnambulism or petit mal epilepsy, lies in the fact that the former can preprogram the activation and interruption of automatic behavior. Given that, it is argued that there is elbowroom for attributing responsibility to automated agents based on the quality of their will. (shrink)

Hegel’s account of the unconscious and his broader philosophy of mind offer us a well worked out form of non-dualist, non-reductionist, non-eliminativist, non-representationalist naturalism. Hegel describes the development of discursively structured thought (and responsiveness to norms) in ethological terms as emerging from initial somatic-sensory states, from states and processes of bodily activity on the part of a feeling soul, and from structured habituation in relation to other subjects. Importantly, earlier, less organized states of sensory awareness and feeling persist as residues (...) underneath cognitive development in “the pit of imagination.” Imagistic and sensory-somatic materials from this pit can burst out, among other things, in dreams, madness, somnambulism, witty conversation, and puns. In the face of the permanent possibility of regressions from cognitive development, a continual activity of self-formation (Bildung) through art and participation in second nature is essential to maturity. (shrink)

L'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau, multiple et dense, se deploie sur les quarante dernieres annees en abordant de nombreux domaines de l'histoire du Moyen Age et du christianisme latin. Elle suit les peregrinations personnelles et professionnelles d'un chercheur a travers un monde peuple de silhouettes incertaines : figures de l'hagiographie, faux-semblants de l'Etat moderne, anges, demons, cadavres et somnambules, vagues individus scolastiques qui eux-memes parlent de creatures etranges. Autant de fantomes d'un passe persistant qu'il a suivis avec tenacite tout au long de (...) sa carriere, et qui nous embarquent a leur tour a travers l'histoire. Ce volume entend garder la trace vivante des deux journees qui furent organisees a Paris en mai 2015 autour de l'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau. Ce Liber amicorum d'un genre un peu particulier, production scolastique en quelque sorte, donne a voir les membres d'un studium, ce qu'etait le seminaire d'Alain Boureau : les amis, les collegues, les proches, celles et ceux qui l'ont accompagne au cours de ses annees passees a l'EHESS. Les textes rassembles rendent compte de trajectoires et de realisations, ils en montrent les apports scientifiques et les enjeux intellectuels. Ils racontent, aussi. Ainsi se manifeste la richesse d'une oeuvre singuliere, construite aux croisements de differentes pratiques des sciences sociales dans une demarche souvent collective, toujours originale et novatrice. (shrink)

The conference where this article was originally presented solicited recommendations for the “right questions” to ask regarding education and technology. The author of this article suggests that we already know what the right questions are for illuminating technology and its social meaning. What the author wants to know is why those questions in fact are not being asked more widely—why is widespread disinclination to enter explicit deliberation on the proper place of technology so resilient? Langdon Winner uses the term “technological (...) somnambulism” to describe the predominant stance toward technology in our culture, that “we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence” via the adoption of new technologies. The basic institutional and ideological forces shaping the development and use of technology are not mysterious. But, scrutiny of those forces remains limited to a relative handful of academics and activists. How can technological somnambulism be countered? (shrink)

Interest in _dream_ and _madness_, conceived as the loss of a world shared with others, and the individual’s entry into a private world governed by a personal logic unrelated to the waking state and to common feeling, recurs in at least three of Kant’s works: _Essay on the Diseases of the Head,_ (1764), _Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_ (1766), and _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_ (1798). Hegel too, from an early age, showed a strong fascination and a precocious interest (...) in psychopathological matters (states of altered consciousness, prophetic dreams, somnambulism, catalepsy, witchcraft etc.) to which he devoted intriguing reflections in various works from different periods: from the Berne Ms _Philosophy of Subjective Spirit_ (1794/95) to the _Phenomenology _(1807), from the _Philosophical __Propaedeutics_ (1808ff.) to the _Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences_ (1830 3 ). Starting from the remarks of the two philosophers, this paper aims to underline the conceptual links between their thought and that of some renowned psychologists and psychiatrists of the 1800s-1900s (Pinel, Janet, Adler, James, Binswanger, Freud et al.). On the other hand, the paper also seeks to show – within the framework of an idea of _reason_ dating back to Heraclitus (about 544/483 B.C.) – some murky motifs, not always adequately emphasized in the past, found in the figurative and literary works of the late 1700s (e.g. Fuseli’s_ The Nightmare_, Coleridge’s _The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner_, and, in particular, plate Nr. 43 of the _Caprichos _by Goya, _El sueño de la razón produce monstruos_), where there emerges a «dark side» of psychic activity emblematically described as the cryptic relationship between _dream_ and_ madness._. (shrink)

The malfeasance and misfeasance crises within corporate America have prompted a tripartite response from policymakers. Stringent legislation targeting somnambulant boards has been introduced; enforcement departments have been strengthened at the federal, state and self-regulatory bodies charged with overseeing the markets; the Department of Justice and the New York District Attorney's Office have taken notably aggressive stances in the criminal prosecution of individual malefaction. This paper critically assesses the implications of the changes to the legislative, regulatory and criminal justice frameworks on (...) the governance of Wall Street. Specifically, I deconstruct the rationale governing a plea-agreement entered into by Merrill Lynch in return for the temporary abeyance of criminal charges. The paper argues that this intervention, if implemented, has far-reaching consequences, effectively criminalising standard Wall Street practice. (shrink)

This paper revisits the different notions of influence, persuasion and influencebound subjects. It illustrates and critiques the dominant prevailing concept of influence and its effects, which, though diversely denominated and presented through various theories, always comes down to reaffirming the relationship of dominance and the possibility of the nullification of the subject within the relationship with the other. With this aim, it studies the classical theories of interpersonal influence and brings to attention some of the bodies of information which have (...) been systematically neglected or set aside, particularly concerning suggestion, possession, mesmerism and somnambulism. (shrink)

In the spring of 1784 the Marquis of Puységur, a great landowner and colonel in an artillery regiment, was called to the bedside of Victor, the son of his steward, who was suffering from pneumonia. Puységur was a follower of the new holistic medicine taught in an atmosphere of intense enthusiasm and scandal by Franz-Anton Mesmer, an Austrian doctor who had been living in Paris for several years. As a disciple of Mesmer, he intended to direct his ‘vital fluid’ onto (...) the young patient, by means of ‘magnetic passes’, to provoke ‘spasms’ which would lead to a calm state and an improvement in health. But things did not go as anticipated. Instead of displaying the anticipated spasms, the young Victor sank into a strange state of unconsciousness which, at first sight, resembled a deep sleep. Then he revived once more and came to life with a new personality. Freed from his inhibitions, he no longer spoke his habitual dialect, but the French of aristocrats, and he had no hesitation in berating his school teacher, whose secret thoughts he appeared to be able to read. Finally, he forecast the stages by which he would be cured and the remedies which would be suitable for him. Puységur wrote down all these strange facts and the following year he published a report which caused a sensation. Soon, throughout France, somnambulists appeared and observations about their subjects gathered. From that time onwards, the incomprehensible facts apparently evident in ‘provoked’ or ‘artificial somnambulism’ and also in ‘magnetic sleep’ - such expressions were used by Puységur and his followers for the state that he had just discovered - were to give rise to huge controversy. The Marquis of Puységur triggered the development nineteenth century of a movement of reflections and practices which have generally been referred to by the expression ‘animal magnetism’, invented by Mesmer. On the eve of the Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century this movement held a real fascination for philosophers, writers, and scholars. But there has been a tendency to overlook this episode in European culture, which has ultimately become a “lost continent” in our own period. (shrink)

J. G. Fichte’s »Tagebuch über den [animalischen] Magnetismus« [»Diary of the [animal] Magnetism«] from 1813 consists largely of excerpts and comments on reports from patients who have been treated with applications of animal magnetism. As part of the preparations for the critical edition of Fichte’s „Tagebuch über den Magnetismus“ the central text on which Fichte founded his further philosophical considerations could be identified: It is Franz Anton Mesmer’s „Allgemeine Erläuterungen über den Magnetismus und den Somnambulismus. Als vorläufige Einleitung in das (...) Natursystem.“ [„General Explanations about magnetism and somnambulism. As a preliminary introduction to the system of nature.”] of 1812. The following article shows how Fichte came into touch with the subject of animal magnetism and how he specifically dealt with Mesmer’s text. Mesmer’s concern to develop a unified conception of nature that brings all the laws of nature into a closed system matches with Fichte’s intention to form a systematic unity of all knowledge. However, Fichte discovered in Mesmer’s project several problematic concepts such as the constitution of the organism and of man as a spiritual being, which Fichte criticizes and makes the starting point for his own ideas. His idea of a liberal-idealistic and thus dynamic system of nature always remains present. J. G. Fichtes „Tagebuch über den [animalischen] Magnetismus“ aus dem Jahr 1813 besteht zum großen Teil aus Exzerpten und Kommentaren zu Berichten von Kranken, die mit Anwendungen des animalischen Magnetismus behandelt worden sind. Im Rahmen der Vorbereitungen für die kritische Herausgabe von Fichtes „Tagebuch über den [animalischen] Magnetismus“ konnte der zentrale Text, dessen kritische Lektüre Fichte zu seinen weitergehenden philosophischen Überlegungen führt, identifiziert werden: Es handelt sich um Franz Anton Mesmers „Allgemeine Erläuterungen über den Magnetismus und den Somnambulismus. Als vorläufige Einleitung in das Natursystem.“ von 1812. Im folgenden Aufsatz wird gezeigt, wie Fichte mit der Thematik des animalischen Magnetismus in Berührung kam und wie er sich speziell mit Mesmers Text auseinandersetzte. Mesmers Anliegen, eine einheitliche Naturkonzeption zu entwickeln, die alle Naturgesetzlichkeiten in ein geschlossenes System bringt, kommt Fichtes Intention nach systematischer Einheit allen Wissens entgegen. Allerdings entdeckt Fichte bei Mesmer etliche problematische Konzepte, etwa zur Konstitution des Organismus und des Menschen als geistigem Wesen, die er kritisiert und zum Ausgangspunkt eigener Überlegungen macht. Die Idee eines freiheitlich-idealistischen und damit dynamischen Natursystems bleibt dabei stets präsent. (shrink)

Nietzsche pousse tout au long de son oeuvre un cri contre la paresse, la médiocrité, le confort, la sécurité de l’acquis, et invite à se risquer à chaque instant dans le contact nu avec la vie — au risque de s’y brûler. Toute réticence pour lui est négation de la vie. Sauter dans le feu, pour devenir dieu ou mourir. — Il en est mort... -/- Pourtant lorqu’on lit ses mots, n’a-t-on pas l’impression qu’il était tout prêt de déchirer le (...) voile? -/- «J’ai découvert pour moi que la vieille humanité, la vieille animalité, oui même tous les temps primitifs et le passé de toute existence sensible, continuent à vivre en moi, à écrire, à aimer, à haïr, à conclure, – je me suis réveillé soudain au milieu de ce rêve, mais seulement pour avoir conscience que je rêvais tout à l’heure et qu’il faut que je continue à rêver, pour ne pas périr: tout comme il faut que le somnambule continue à rêver pour ne pas tomber. Q’est désormais pour moi l’“apparence”? Ce n’est certainement pas l’opposé d’un “être” quelconque – que puis-je énoncer de cet être, si ce n’est les attributs de son apparence? Ce n’est certes pas un masque inanimé que l’on pourrait mettre, et peut-être même enlever, à un X inconnu! L’apparence est pour moi la vie et l’action elle-même qui, dans son ironie de soi-même, va jusqu’à me faire sentir qu’il y a là apparence et feu follet et danse des elfes et rien de plus – que, parmi ces rêveurs, moi aussi, moi “qui cherche la connaissance”, je danse le pas de tout le monde, que le “connaissant” est un moyen pour prolonger la danse terrestre, et qu’en raison de cela il fait partie de ces maîtres de cérémonie de la vie et que la sublime conséquence et le lien de toutes les connaissances sont et seront peut-être le moyen suprême d’assurer l’universalité de la rêverie et l’entente de tous ces rêveurs entre eux et, par cela même, de faire durer le rêve.» Ibid, par. 54. -/- N'est-ce pas dire, avec des mots sortis du fond des tripes, qu'il a découvert que la vie n'est qu'un jeu qui se joue de toute conscience qui s'illusionne "être", mais qu'il a pourtant décidé d'adhérer à ce jeu, parce que s'en détacher, ce serait retomber sous le charme d'une nouvelle illusion, l'illusion de se croire "être" celui qui aurait percé le jeu à jour, alors qu'y adhérer, tout en le perçant à jour, c'est enfin être vivant? Incandescence Nietzsche a mis dans sa recherche une intensité hors du commun. Et une honnêteté totale aussi. Lorsqu'on apporte une telle intensité et une telle honnêteté, on amène nécessairement son propre être à son point d'incandescence. Ce point d'incandescence, c'est la porte du néant. Mais selon que l'on s'agrippe alors à soi ou que l'on s'abandonne à ce qui vient, on bascule dans la lumière de l'éveil ou dans l'angoisse de sa propre solitude. Nietzsche a fait face au néant, mais autant que j'en aie compris, il ne s'est pas abandonné; il a au contraire adopté la position héroïque de celui qui tient bon, qui fait face et campe sur sa propre force. Cette position met en jeu des force intérieures considérables, qui donnent une clarté puissante à la conscience, mais qui oblige du même coup celle-ci à se supporter elle-même, à bouts de bras, sans possibilité de lâcher, sous peine de s'écrouler. Cette intensité reposant entièrement sur soi donne un sentiment de vertige, et si on insiste dans cette voie, on peut vraiment avoir l'impression de devenir fou. Car on se retrouve écartelé entre deux choix également impossibles: la surenchère infinie de sa propre puissance et l'anéantissement. Il me semble que Nietzsche a été extrêmement loin dans cette voie, jusqu'à ce que le fil casse. Dans ce sens – je le répète, ce n'est là que ma compréhension des choses – je partage l'avis de Jean-Marie et mushotoku-nad, en disant que Nietzsche n'aurait pas connu l'éveil tel qu'on l'entend ici. Il est resté sur le pas de la porte, refusant farouchement le lâcher-prise salvateur – qu'il aurait pris pour un aveu de faiblesse –, refusant de dire ces mots: "Que Ta volonté soit faite!", les mots par lesquels tout se trouve accompli, persistant au contraire à braver la tempête plutôt que d'accorder à Cela toute-puissance sur lui-même. Eternel retour Lorsqu’on vit un moment d’une totale intensité, on sent bien qu’on touche l’essence de l’être. A partir d’une certaine intensité, on débouche sur quelque chose de substantiel, quelque chose qui EST, et donc qui nécessairement dépasse le petit moi. Simplement, dans un cas comme celui-ci, on reste convaincu qu’il s’agit d’un état d’exception. On a touché l’éveil, la réalité de l’être, mais on n’y est pas entré. Y entrer, c’est réaliser que ce moment que l’on vit comme un état d’exception a en fait toujours été là, que ce n’est véritablement pas un moment d’exception, mais notre vraie nature, la nature de ce qui EST, et que l’état d’exception c’est celui d’en être séparé parce qu’on s’identifie à une illusion. Tant qu’on n’a pas réalisé cela, on croira nécessairement que les seuls instants vrais de notre vie sont ces instants d’exception durant lesquels on communie à l’être, et que tout le reste est sans valeur. C’est dans ce sens que je comprends la théorie de l’éternel retour de Nietzsche, qui pour moi a toujours eu un caractère angoissant. Revivre éternellement le retour du même. Ou plus précisément, car c’est cela qu’entendait Nietzsche, revivre éternellement le retour de ces moments d’exception, ces seuls moments réels. Car du moment qu’on pense qu’eux seuls sont réels, qu’eux seuls sont enracinés dans l’être éternel, l’évidence s’impose que d’une part ils ne sauraient disparaître, et que d’autre part tout le reste ne saurait avoir d'existence réelle. Et donc que l'éternité est faite de ces moments d'exceptions, qu'elle est faite de l'éternel retour de ceux-ci. (shrink)

David Shoemaker has claimed that a binary approach to moral responsibility leaves out something important, namely instances of marginal agency, cases where agents seem to be eligible for some responsibility responses but not others. In this paper we endorse and extend Shoemaker’s approach by presenting and discussing one more case of marginal agency not yet covered by Shoemaker or in the other literature on moral responsibility. Our case is that of Kenneth Parks, a Canadian man who drove a long way (...) to his mother-in-law’s and killed her in a state of somnambulism. We support our claim about Parks’ marginal responsibility in three steps: we first deny that Parks acts involuntarily as traditionally claimed in the legal literature; we then propose to extend Shoemaker’s analysis of marginal responsibility based on quality of will so as to include two other dimensions: the moral status of the agent and the actual causal effects of their actions; finally, we distinguish Parks’ marginal responsibility from four other existing concepts: “tracing”, diminished responsibility, causal responsibility, and moral disapproval without responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Matter and Spirit in the Age of Animal MagnetismEric G. WilsonDuring the Romantic period, writers on both sides of the Atlantic explored the sleepwalker as a merger of holiness and horror. Emerging when scientific thinkers for the first time were connecting spirit to electricity and magnetism, the somnambulist became to certain Romantics a disclosure of the difficulty of harmonizing unseen and seen, agency and necessity. This problem prominently arose (...) in Anton Mesmer's late eighteenth-century experiments in animal magnetism, in which the sleepwalker proved a paradox: an opaque revelation of transparent currents and an unconscious vehicle of sophisticated thought. Romantics such as Coleridge embraced the somnambulist as an embodiment of these troubles involved in relating motion and meaning. Coleridge and those who responded to him saw in the hypnotized human this sobering possibility: the invisible requires the visible to make itself manifest while the visible needs the invisible to become significant. 1 This is sublime and sinister: to elevate a material form to spiritual power is transcendence; to sink the boundless into a body is grotesque.Here I explore the philosophical implications of animal magnetism, the place of the sleepwalker in the history of ideas, and the role of the hypnotized human in Romantic writers, especially Coleridge. I also meditate on relationships between matter and spirit, machine and human, word and thing. Along the way, I place the history of ideas and the works of Romantic writers in mutually illuminating dialogues. The literary texts shed fresh light on philosophical problems while the ideas reveal hidden literary elements.The somnambulistic trance had been around long before Mesmer's magnetic sleeps. For centuries, shamans had used auto-hypnosis to sound [End Page 329] their souls and other-hypnosis to cure their tribe-members' ailments. However, somnambulism could not become a scientific phenomenon until Europeans in laboratories began to study electricity and magnetism. In the early modern period, Paracelsus argued that a vital fluid courses through the cosmos. The human being draws this flow like a magnet attracts force. When the body pulls to itself evil effluvia, it falls ill. To return patients to health, Paracelsus placed magnets on painful areas. He hoped to extract the unwanted current and return it to the cosmic swirl. 2 In "magnetizing" spirit, Paracelsus opened a door for empirical inquiry into the invisible world. In 1600, William Gilbert claimed that magnets correspond to the earth: both are animated by universal attraction and repulsion. 3 By the end of the seventeenth-century, Newton proposed that things are impelled by a force that draws and repels. Newton's theory of gravity inspired natural philosophers of the next centuries to search for a principle of which the magnet and the spark are manifestations. 4During the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, natural philosophers explored electricity and magnetism with unprecedented precision. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin revealed the mystery of lightning and perhaps the spark of life. 5 Inspired by Franklin, F. C. Oetinger, J. L. Fricker, and Prokop Divisch developed a theology of electricity, based on the belief that God is the electrical current. 6 Later in the century, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta debated over whether the galvanic flow might be the origin and principle of life itself. 7 A few years before Franklin harvested lightning, John Michell argued that the magnetic force is not constrained to lodestones but is possibly pervasive. Some years later, Franz Aepinus suggested that magnetism and electricity manifest a deep energy. Soon after, C. A. de Coulomb discovered the mathematical law by which electrical and magnetic forces operate (Whittaker, pp. 50–59).These findings led to the breakthroughs of the nineteenth century. 8 In 1807, Humphry Davy hypothesized that chemical elements interact through electromagnetic affinity or repulsion. 9 In 1820, H. C. Oersted demonstrated the correspondence between electricity and magnetism. The same year, A. M. Ampere formulated the laws by which electrical and magnetic currents interact (Whittaker, pp. 81–86). Michael Faraday in 1831 revealed electromagnetic induction and thus inaugurated a second Copernican revolution: he showed that matter is not solid and discrete but a field of electromagnetic energy. 10 The dreams of [End... (shrink)

Dream-enacting behaviors are behavioral expressions of forceful dream images often occurring during sleep-to-wakefulness transitions. We propose that DEBs reflect brain activity underlying social cognition, in particular, motor-affective resonance generated by the mirror neuron system. We developed a Mirror Behavior Questionnaire to assess some dimensions of mirror behaviors and investigated relationships between MBQ scores and DEBs in a large of university undergraduate cohort. MBQ scores were normally distributed and described by a four-factor structure . DEB scores correlated positively with MBQ total (...) and factor scores even with social desirability, somnambulism and somniloquy controlled. Emotion-specific DEB items correlated with corresponding emotion-specific MBQ items, especially crying and smiling. Results provide preliminary evidence for cross-state relationships between propensities for dream-enacting and mirror behaviors—especially behaviors involving motor-affective resonance—and our suggestion that motor-affective resonance mediates dream-enactment imagery during sleep and emotional empathy during waking. (shrink)

A definition of virtual or virtuality is not an easy task. Both words are of recent application in Philosophy, even if the concept of virtual comes from a respectable Latin tradition. Today’s meaning brings together the notions of potentiality, latency, imaginary representations, VR, and the forms of communication in digital media. This contagious, and spontaneous synonymy fails to identify a common vein and erases memory as a central notion. In the present essay, I’ll try to explain essential features of the (...) concept of virtual, taking the investigation of memory troubles in Pierre Janet’s work as an exemplification. Pierre Janet’s work represents a rare combination of medical observation and description of symptoms of mental illnesses, therapeutic guidance in hypnosis and philosophical writing about the main psychological themes of an epoch in transition from a Metaphysics of the Soul to the modern Experimental Psychology. Pierre Janet’s intellectual evolution since the 1880s until the end of his life is dominated by the philosophical project of a theory of the psychic system supported by three basic pillars: a concept of personality, a theory of memory and a sketch of a general theory of conduct. Such complex endeavour cannot be abstracted from the initial connections with Jean-Martin Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière which meant a turning point in the tradition of the “animal magnetism” concerning the treatment of epileptic-hysterical symptoms along with the contributions of Hyppolite Bernheim’s “Nancy School” of hypnotism. J.-M. Charcot’s or H. Bernheim’s theorising about the organic and psychological aspects of the hypnotic treatment of the hysterical symptoms was already aware of the difficulty in dealing with the extent of the dissimulation of the patients regarding the symptoms of the illness, under hypnotic suggestion, even if Charcot insisted in the identification and cataloguing of the organic expressions, such as contractures or the posture of the body in arc during the attacks. The precise location of the “great hysteria” in the organic-psychic corridor was itself a riddle. If a symptom is a special type of sign, in the case of the “great hysteria” nobody knew for sure what it stood for. The clinical symptom of the attack stood for an organic trouble with cerebral causes, a psychological interruption of the normal sensorial and muscular movements or a disguise of the female desire? Pierre Janet described many hysterical patients, somnambulism and multiple personality since his articles in La Revue Philosophique de la France et l’ Étranger, a Journal founded by the philosopher, experimental psychologist and his intellectual predecessor Théodule-Armand Ribot. The description of the case of the “great hysterical” Lucie, treated by him, is an example of a theoretical hypothesising on multiple personality and discontinuity of memories fragments. There are more cases revealing the same relation between hysteria, somnambulism, personality dissociation and “alternating memory”. Decisively inspired by and corroborating P. Janet’s ideas, S. Freud conceived also the essential of the hysterical sicknesses as disorders of memory. The theme of memory came even more to the foreground in the dissertation L’Automatisme Psychologique. Here, the strange world of somnambulism was scrutinised along with hysterical contractures and convulsions, anaesthesia, the compulsion to repetition, obsessions, “automatic writing” in hysterical patients, multiple personality and “alternating memories”. In the depicted cases memory could not be taken as a homogenous series of remembrances or as a stock of disposable information but as a variable of the depth of the personalities’ inner formation. The so-called “seconde existence” of some somnambulists referred not only unconscious representations and unconscious thoughts but complete or inceptive latent personalities provided with multiple virtual existences and multiple memories. Hypnosis was the privileged technique to access to such multiple memories ignored by the official personality. Later and after the writing of his M.D. Dissertation, Contribution à l’ Étude des Accidents Mentaux chez les Hystériques, P. Janet addressed again the themes of memory and alternating memories in a series of lectures at the Collège de France but now according to the larger framework of a general theory of conduct which included a description of the social actions participating in the narrative construction of personal memories, and the role of social memory. (shrink)

Une chute dans la banalité du "dire", une déchéance, est à l'horizon de possibilité du secret, le tient éveillé, comme la boule de bronze dans la main d'Alexandre qui a décidé de lire et de ne pas dormir. Bien qu'il s'agisse d'un acte, aucune intention singulière n'y est prise ; il n'est que pesanteur " naturelle ", relâchement du poids du secret, ou mauvaise foi somnambule, dont la psychanalyse a su dénombrer la menue monnaie, avec les lapsus verbaux, sans explorer (...) la situation ou forme ontologique qui la rend possible : cette matière d'un dire n'importe quoi, n'importe comment, cette potentialité cadavéreuse, indéfiniment décomposable, c'est l'ombre, le tissu d'ombre de l'être et du taire, également libérés par la maladie et par la cure ; ils triomphent, c'est-à-dire bassement et vaguement occupent tout espace, dès que le maître défaille, s'absente. La seule différence entre la maladie et la cure c'est qu'à l'occasion de la libération des esclaves ou fantômes intimes, dans celle-ci, un pouvoir provisoire est désigné ou suggéré par le psychiatre ; une fausse reconnaissance, favorisée surtout par la vague conscience chez le malade qu'il est nécessaire d'en finir, procure l'illusion l'être guéri. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Canti VI, Bruto Minore GIACOMO LEOPARDI (Translated by Steven J. Willett) To Peter Green After Italian Valor, lying in Thracian dust an immense ruin, had been uprooted, then in the valleys of green Hesperia, on Tiber’s shore, Fate prepares the tramp of barbarian horse, and from naked forests oppressed by the freezing Bear, calls forth the Gothic swords to overthrow Rome’s renowned walls; sitting alone, soaked in brothers’ (...) blood, through black night in a desolate site, Brutus is determined to die, and the implacable gods and Hell itself he accuses with savage cries and strikes the somnambulant air in vain. Fatuous Valor, the empty mists, the fields of unquiet phantoms are your schools, and behind you strides remorse. To you, marmoreal gods, (whether you reside in Phlegethon or the clouds), to you a laughingstock and mockery is the miserable race from whom you extort temples and a fraudulent law insulting to mortals. Is heaven’s wrath, then, so provoked by terrestrial piety? and do you then sit, Jove, impiety’s protector? and when storm clouds exult through the air, and when arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 you hurl the swift thunderbolt, do you cast the sacred fire on the just and faithful? Invincible destiny and iron necessity crush the sickly slaves of death: and if nothing avails to end their indignities, the common man takes comfort in their necessity. Is the evil without cure less harsh? Does he feel no grief who’s stripped naked of hope? War to the death, eternal, o ignoble fate, the valorous man wages, incapable of surrender; and your tyrannical right hand, victorious as it bears him down, indomitable he shrugs off with a valiant show, when in his noble side the bitter blade runs with blood, and malignly he smiles at the darkening shadows. He displeases the gods who violently breaks into Tartarus. No such courage could be found in their feeble, eternal breasts. Perhaps our torments, perhaps our bitter accidents and wretched passions heaven created as a pleasing spectacle for their idle hours? Not between calamities and crimes, but free in the forests and pure Nature appointed us, once our queen and goddess. But since on earth impious custom has destroyed the blessed realms and subjected our miserable life to other laws; when a virile soul rejects his luckless days does Nature return, and accuse the arrow that’s not hers? 166 CANTI VI, bruto minore Ignorant of guilt and their own misfortunes are the fortunate beasts; serene old age guides them to an unforeseen passage. But if they dash their foreheads on rough tree-trunks or from a mountain cliff cast bodies headlong to the winds, moved by their anguish, against that miserable desire would stand no arcane law or shadowy conception. You alone, among the numerous progeny that heaven created, alone among all, children of Prometheus, regret life. Alone o wretched ones, to you Jove bans, if sluggish fate delays, the shores of death. And you, from the sea stained by our blood, you rise bright moon, and explore the unquiet night and the deadly battlefield of Italian Valor. The victor tramples on kinsmen’s breasts, the hills shudder, from her highest summits ancient Rome collapses— and are you so placid? You saw the birth of Lavinia’s offspring, and their years of happiness, and the memorable victories; and on the mountain peaks you pour your immutable silent light when, in the wreck of the servile Italian name, this solitary place will echo beneath the barbarian tramp. Giacomo Leopardi 167 Here among naked rocks or on green boughs, beast and bird, breasts heavy with their habitual oblivion, ignore the profound ruin and the altered destiny of the world: and as the rooftop of the industrious peasant first glows red, with its morning song the one will wake the valleys, while through high slopes the other will startle the helpless multitude of smaller creatures. Oh destiny! oh insensate race! we are an abject part of things; neither the bloodstained soil nor the howling caves has our calamity ever perturbed, and no human cares stain the stars. Neither to Olympus’ or Cocytus’ deaf kings, or to the unworthy earth, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of FranceAndrew J. McKennaThe Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France, by Eugene Webb; ix & 268 pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993, $35.00.That psychology and sociology are one science is the fundamental premise guiding Eugene Webb’s The Self Between, which he defines early on as “a self constituted dynamically and continuously by (...) the relationships it finds itself involved i n.” The “new social psychology of France” designated by his subtitle is mostly the one inspired by René Girard’s mimetic model of human behavior, to which four of Webb’s seven chapters are specifically devoted.Girard’s idea, which he learned from our literary masterpieces, is that human desire is mimetic, that it imitates other desires in its choice of objects and in pursuit of their possession. As desires converge on a single object, the locus of conflict will be between subjects rather within their individual psyches, a consequence that motivates Girard’s ongoing critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.But Freud’s theories are everywhere disputed in this book, which reports reliably on the devastating critiques advanced by François Roustang, Marie Balmary, and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. Roustang has convincingly (and entertainingly) uncovered Freud’s blindness to the pathologies of transference and discipleship investing the foundation of psychoanalysis. A pattern of rivalry for recognition and preeminence guides Freud’s career in a way that is reenacted around Lacan. Balmary, somewhat a Lacanian her self, has turned psychoanalytic theory against Freud to explore his own family secrets, while severely questioning the master’s bid for a universal theory pursued via self-analysis amidst a period of emotional upheaval. And Borch-Jacobsen has shown how th e dynamics of hypnosis that Freud rejected early on were brought back as transference, while arguing for his own part that mimetic identification with the other, rather than any primordial drives, is what brings the subject into being. These informat ive chapters help bring us up to date on significant debates that have developed since Lacan drew the French intellectual world, and so many Americans after it, into the orbit of psychoanalysis.But by far the bulk of Webb’s attention goes to Girard’s work and to that of [End Page 191] scholars and practitioners who have sought to extend it further in the social sciences. Principle among them is Jean-Michel Oughourlian, whose Puppet of Desire (translated by Webb in 1991) demonstrates how the mimetic model plays out in psychotherapy, notably in the workings of hypnotism and somnambulism, in cases of demonic possession, and in obsessional neurosis. In each case, the subject is unwitt ingly captive of another’s desire in a way that produces behavioral anomalies and disorders that are nonetheless available to lucid, jargon-free diagnosis. What is appealing here is the deployment of a rational explanation for irrational behavior, once we grasp the paradoxical rationale of desire; equally appealing prospects of actual healing are outlined here and at the end of the book, where possibilities of freedom and responsibility are resurrected from a technical vocabulary that smothers them.Girard’s idea of the self as relation, as interdividuality, rather than as a discreet unit, has social and political dimensions to which we only find tantalizing allusions in his works. They have been pursued with acumen by such writers as André Orléan, Paul Dumouchel and especially Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who figures importantly among those aligning systems theory with theories of social and economic organization. Like Borch-Jacobsen and Roustang, Dupuy restores due attention to concep tions of crowd behavior outlined at the end of the last century by Tarde and Le Bon, whose best insights Freud studiously discarded.This is richly interdisciplinary work, strongly suggesting that we variously redraw and erase lines defining academic fields. Occam’s razor flicks often and decisively in these pages, which restore needed balance to the effects of some wild er French imports. Webb brings no new ideas of his own to this capable synthesis, but his accurate report will help guide researchers toward major recent developments in France around and mostly beyond Freudian psychoanalysis... (shrink)

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a physician who graduated from the University of Vienna, invented a therapy based on the concept of a universal fluid, similar to electricity, that flowed through all living things. By restoring the circulation of this fluid in the nerves of human bodies, he believed he could cure illness without resorting to medication. Few medical theories have enjoyed as great success as Mesmer's, first among French high society and then in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Russia, (...) Britain, and the US. Mesmerism was the circulatory phenomenon par excellence. Its success was founded not only on the hypothesis of the circulation of a fluid common to human physiology and the entire universe, but also on the scientific practices of the time—correspondence, translations, and periodicals—and some ardent and highly active supporters who ensured its spread. However, far from functioning along the lines of direct exportation–importation from one country to another, or a centre to the periphery, mesmerism's dissemination was the work of diffuse institutions and individual mobilities influenced by the modalities of communication. In seeking to reconstitute the wellsprings of these circulations, the first sources that come to mind are printed matter: the many pamphlets and especially the articles and reviews that appeared in periodicals, as well as the Romantic literature that flourished after 1810. Such documents are foundational for authoritative studies of mesmerism in Germany, which proceed from the thesis of successive “waves” of reception. Such sources, however, are somewhat misleading. Rather than taking them as our starting point, it would be better to reconstitute the channels of information by using many sources, both printed and handwritten. The complexity of the circulation of knowledge generated by mesmerism is implicitly testament to the difficulties arising from the institutionalization of this current. (shrink)