Cet article pointe certains rapprochements entre la pensée d’Emmanuel Levinas et celle de Svetlana Alexievitch, à qui fut décerné le prix Nobel de littérature en 2015, et tout particulièrement à mettre au jour leur hostilité à l’histoire entendue comme histoire officielle des vainqueurs et la « résistance éthique », au sens que Levinas donne à cette expression, c’est-à-dire à l’immense difficulté pour un être humain d’en tuer un autre, quelles que soient les conditions dans lesquelles s’effectue cet acte.

Here I interpret a central passage in Plato's Sophist by focusing on understudied elements that provide insight into the fit of the dialogue's parts and the Sophist-Statesman diptych as a whole. I argue that the Eleatic Stranger's account of what the dialectician "adequately views" at Sophist 253d1-e3 involves both division and the communion of ontological kinds, not just one or the other as has been typically argued. I also consider other key passages and the turn throughout the dialogue from imagistic (...) opining toward noetic understanding. (shrink)

In Plato’sStatesman, the Eleatic Stranger leads Socrates the Younger and their audience through an analysis of the statesman in the service of the interlocutors’ becoming “more capable in dialectic regarding all things” (285d7). In this way, the dialectical exercise in the text is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, as it yields a philosophically rigorous account of statesmanship and exhibits a method of dialectical inquiry. After the series of bifurcatory divisions in theSophistand earlyStatesman, the Stranger changes to a non-bifurcatory method of (...) dividing to account for the statesman, but does not explain the reason for this change. I argue that the change is prepared by the elements discussed in the digression from 277a2 to 287b2. Here the Stranger makes use of four concepts that are crucial for understanding this change: the notion ofparadigm, the paradigms ofcareandthe weaver, and the notion ofdue measure. I claim that the notion of paradigm clarifies the nature of dialectical inquiry, care and weaving act as paradigms appropriate to dialectical practice, and an account of due measure offers insight into the constitutive ratios that govern the structuring of kinds pursued through dialectical inquiry. I suggest that the non-bifurcatory method is intended to articulate knowledge in the strictest sense, or knowledge of the forms, presenting a method of inquiry into being and its structure that will foster the turning of the soul from things to forms that Socrates describes in theRepublic. (shrink)

So van Leeuwen prints the lines, following Cobet and Meineke in athetizing 16. Nor is it difficult to find grounds for the exclusion; τòν πο is repeated at 47; the following three words smell of the scholiast; the last three resemble the end of 13. The line taken as a whole seems to play little if any role, and indeed to lack meaning, even if line 47 is some way away and it is a little odd that the three separate (...) elements meld into a perfectly acceptable comic trimeter . Conjectures are not lacking for the replacement of κ τν ρνων by something which gives more sense; Köchly's νθρωποσ ποτ' ὢν may be taken as typical in both meaning and style. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLearning procedures such as mere exposure, evaluative conditioning, and approach/avoidance training have been used to establish evaluative responses as measured by the Implicit Association...

Providing a comprehensive introduction to political philosophy, this 2006 book combines discussion of historical and contemporary figures, together with numerous real-life examples. It ranges over an unusually broad range of topics in the field, including the just distribution of wealth, both within countries and globally; the nature and justification of political authority; the meaning and significance of freedom; arguments for and against democratic rule; the problem of war; and the grounds for toleration in public life. It also offers an accessible, (...) non-technical discussion of perfectionism, utilitarianism, theories of the social contract, and of recently popular forms of critical theory. Throughout, the book challenges readers to think critically about political arguments and institutions that they might otherwise take for granted. It will be a provocative text for any student of philosophy or political science. (shrink)

βριс φυτεει τραννον βριс κτλ. Thus the MSS, Schol. and Stobaeus 4.8. 11 . βριν φυτεει τυραννον βριс κτλ. Thus Blaydes, followed recently by R. P. Winnington-Ingram, JHS 91 , 126 = Sophocles. An interpretation , p. 192 ; R. D. Dawe, Sophoclis Tragoediae , i. 156 and Sophocles. Oedipus Rex , pp. 18, 61,182 f. ; R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies , p. 164 ; J. Diggle, CRn.s. 32, 14.

If α is a singular cardinal (either real or fake) in L, I exhibit many natural α-re subsets, defined uniformly from the ▵ 1 subsets of α. If α is a true cardinal this provides an uppersemilattice (usl) embedding from the lattice of ▵ 1 subsets of α into the usl of α-re-degrees. It will also be shown that this embedding cannot be extended to the Σ 1 subsets of α.

A notion of Education for Active Citizenship is identified in the pronouncements of certain politically influential individuals. Key elements in this are seen to include action, the citizen, appreciating the benefits of democracy and freedom, respect for the rule of law, a due balance between rights and duties, participation and service to the community. These are shown to be systematically ambiguous, simultaneously capable of evoking critical, independent-minded, socially effective citizens and docile conforming subjects. Clarification is held to be a necessary (...) precondition of translating the ideal of citizenship into specific curricular goals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the theory of sexuality, personality and politics developed by the literary critic John Addington Symonds. Sections 1 and 2 introduce Symonds’ changing reputation as a modernist theorist of ‘sexual inversion’. Section 3 examines his conceptualization of the processes whereby an individual can sublimate sexual urges to create a harmonious and unalienated personality which acknowledges the need to combine transgressive self-expression with social convention. Section 4 demonstrates how this theory led Symonds to endorse an eroticized form of democratic (...) socialism, while Section 5 explores the culmination of Symonds’ thought in a form of pantheistic idealism. This research is significant in that it extends our understanding of socialism and sexuality into areas that are marginalized and yet historically important. (shrink)

Scholars debate whether ‘apeiron’ (unlimited) is univocal or multivocal in Plato’s 'Philebus.' Offering a ‘middle path,’ I argue that the term is univocal, but used with respect to two senses of unlimited continua. The term appears early in two dense passages on ontological structure: the descriptions of the ‘god-given method’ (16b-18d) and ‘the fourfold division of beings’ (23c-27c). I consider each passage and argue that they respectively concern the eidetic continua of being that the knower comes to understand and the (...) fluxing continua of opposed and co-constitutive bodily elements from which spatiotemporal objects derive their natures. They also indicate two major influences on Plato, respectively the Pythagorean and Heraclitean as recorded in Aristotle’s 'Metaphysics,' and I draw on these resources to develop my account. I conclude by considering some important Platonic lessons that we learn from thinking through this distinction between the related senses of the unlimited. (shrink)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to the authors and publishers of the following books for permission to reproduce copyright material : JP Sartre— Words ...

Recently, the effort to counter Fake News faced a counter attack: academic »postmodernism « and »social constructivism« it was said—because they say that facts are soaked in prior interpretations—are either purveyors of Fake News or set the cultural context in which it flourishes. They do so by undermining confidence in inquiry governed by simple facts. That is erroneous, argues William E. Connolly, because postmodernism never said that facts or objectivity are ghostly, subjective or »fake«. However, that what was objective at (...) one time may become less so at a later date through the combination of a paradigm shift in theory, new powers of perception, new tests with refined instruments, and changes in natural processes such as species evolution. But the emergence of new theories and tests does not reduce objectivity to subjective opinion. Facts are real. Objectivity is important. But as you move up the scale of complexity with respect to facts and objectivity, it becomes clear that what was objective at one time may become subjective at another. Not because of Fake News or postmodernism. But because the complex relationships between theory, evidence and conduct periodically open up new thresholds. Colin Lang in turn rhetorically asks if »fake news« or »alternative facts« are a new carnival and Trump its dog and pony show? The idea of »fake news« and »alternative facts« as a carnival could not only help to see the constructedness of the media spectacle, but also provides a new perspective on Trump as an actor who is playing a particular role in this carnival, and that role is not one that any of us would describe as presidential. Many in the popular press have assumed it is just what it looks like, an infantilized narcissist, a parody of some Regan-era New York real estate tycoon straight out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The problem is that this description is all too obvious, and misses something fundamental about alternative facts, and the part that Trump is playing. A central assumption is, then, that the creation of alternative facts is one symptom of a more structural, paradigmatic shift in the persona of a president, one which has few correlates in the annals of political history. The closest analogy for his kind of performance is actually hinted at in the title of Trump’s greatest literary achievement: The Art of the Deal. Trump is playing the part of an artist, pilfering from the tactics of the avant-garde and putting them to very different ends. (shrink)

The strange and challenging stretch of dialectic with which Plato’s Sophist begins and ends has confused and frustrated readers for generations, and despite receiving a fair amount of attention, there is no consensus regarding even basic issues concerning this method. Here I offer a new account of bifurcatory division as neither joke nor naïve method, but instead a valuable, propaedeutic method that Plato offers to us readers as a means of embarking upon the kind of mental gymnastics that will stretch (...) us properly in preparation for further, more challenging dialectical work. Considering several interpretive issues, I argue that bifurcatory division is a process of collective inquiry into the common through which an account, both definitional and taxonomical, is discovered. Depending on the level of understanding exhibited by the inquirers, this account may or may not allow for noetic understanding of the object in the deepest sense. (shrink)

I here revive and support the hypothesis that Plato's Cratylus is set in 399 BCE, on the day of the Theaetetus and Euthyphro and before that of the Sophist and Statesman. To revive it, I suggest that the competing cases for other dramatic dates are weaker. To support it, I show that the connections between the Cratylus and Euthyphro warrant reconsideration, and I consider neglected dramatic details, the role of etymology in religious esotericism, and some missed connections between the philosophical (...) concerns of the two dialogues. I conclude by suggesting ways in which this hypothesis yields promising new horizons to explore. (shrink)

New essays on early Greek natural philosopher Parmenides, who is perhaps the originator of metaphysics.

Turbayne analyzes the significance of metaphor in human thought by exploring historical traditions of philosophy. Probing into the early philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, Turbayne traces the influence that Platonic metaphors have held for later important philosophers such as Berkeley and Kant. By showing how modern theories of human thought and language (including the substance and attribute theory) arose from the procreation model as presented in Plato's Timaeus, Turbayne makes a contribution to the current philosophical debates concerning relativist/realist. In the (...) discussion, the author restores the model to its original state in which the female and male hemispheres of the mind work as partners to create our world. (shrink)

Current approaches to contemporary political philosophy are disproportionately western, and the need for more diverse and global perspectives is urgent. To address this imbalance Colin J. Lewis and Jennifer Kling take up a series of contemporary topics in political philosophy and consider how the application of classical Chinese thought can engender new insights and enable progress on some of the thorniest sociopolitical issues. They argue that classical Chinese political theories and views have much to say that is relevant to (...) our contemporary life, and buttress their argument with case studies. Each chapter takes up a particular contemporary sociopolitical issue, describes standard Western approaches to it, and then applies classical Chinese thought to the task of either re-framing it, or suggesting a novel solution. -/- The book engages with and makes progress on several current sociopolitical issues, including the construction and deconstruction of political narratives, the legal standing of robots, the relationships between people, communities, and the environment, the funding (or defunding) of police, the status of private militias, and the question of justified revolution in liberal democracies, among others. While classical Chinese philosophy has been previously dismissed in some circles as inaccessible or banal, Lewis and Kling argue that, to the contrary, it is a powerful lens through which to view and dissect today's challenges. (shrink)