This essay explores Aristotle’s conception of the active intellect or nous poiētikos. The earliest, medieval, and most recent interpretations of this concept are discussed. It is argued that even Aristotle’s immediate disciples disagreed in their conception of the active intellect, nor was there any more unanimity in the Middle Ages. According to Trendelenburg, the difficulty of the Aristotelian doctrine lies in the fact that the nous is sometimes said to be so intimately connected with the other faculties of (...) the soul that it appears to be incapable of existing without them. When it is viewed the highest nous, as nous poiētikos, it is separated from the rest of human nature and contrasted with it as something higher and its ruler. (shrink)

DESPITE THE WELL-KNOWN historical significance of Aristotle’s doctrine of the productive or active intellect it is not unusual to find contemporary discussions treating the doctrine as an excrescence on the text of the De anima, a work, it is frequently nowadays supposed, in which an otherwise securely naturalistic epistemology and rational psychology are developed. Although the doctrine of the intellectus agens is found only in one place in Aristotle’s extant texts, the third book of the De anima, I shall nonetheless (...) maintain that an argument can be ferreted out of Aristotle’s discussion that establishes that the doctrine can be seen to follow from principles that are fundamental to Aristotle’s thought. I shall call this an “Aristotelian” argument for nous poiêtikos because of the fact that the argument obviously is not found, as I state it, on the surface of Aristotle’s text. I claim that there is a significant sense in which it is there, but that one must dig for it or, as I just put it, ferret it out. In a schematic form, the Aristotelian argument goes as follows. (shrink)

I lay out and examine two sharply conflicting interpretations of Aristotle's claims about nous in the De Anima (DA). On the human separability approach, Aristotle is taken to have identified reasons for thinking that the intellect can, in some way, exist on its own. On the naturalist approach, the soul, including intellectual soul, is inseparable from the body of which it is the form. I discuss how proponents of each approach deal with the key texts from the DA, focusing (...) on four of the most important and interesting topics in this area. Two of these topics concern the activity of understanding (noêsis): first, what does Aristotle mean when he claims that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ and, secondly, what role does Aristotle think phantasmata (“images” or “representations”) play in understanding something? Two of the topics concern DA 3.5, one of the most difficult passages in Aristotle's corpus: first, what is the nature and role of the productive intellect (nous poiêtikos) introduced there and, secondly, what are this chapter's implications for the question of whether the intellect or intellectual soul can exist apart from the body? I conclude by identifying areas where further research is necessary. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes Aristotle's teaching about human nature. It reviews passages about human beings from his treatises on logic, psychology, ethics, politics, and biology, and discusses his famous characterizations of man as a rational and political animal (zoon logon echon; zoon politikon). It is argued that while Aristotle insists on the distinctive methods and varying reliability of different disciplines, his teachings about human nature can integrate into a unified picture. The notorious disputes among his interpreters about his stand on the (...) immortality of the soul (or of one of its parts, the 'nous poietikos'), however, find their roots in the fact that Aristotle is vague and tentative in these more speculative bits of his anthropological thoughts. (shrink)

Das vorliegende Werk ist ein weiteres Zeugnis von Brentanos lebenslanger Auseinandersetzung mit Aristoteles, seinem philosophischen Lehrer par excellence. Auch die literarische Fehde mit dem bedeutenden Berliner Philosophiehistoriker Eduard Zeller (1814-1908) währte Jahrzehnte, ja über den Tod Zellers hinaus. In dieser Kontroverse ging es zunächst um Brentanos These vom Kreatianismus des Aristoteles, in der er Zellers Ansicht, der menschliche nous sei Teil des absoluten Denkens der aristotelischen Gottheit und somit ewig, zurückweist und darzulegen versucht, das der nous poietikos (...) von dieser unmittelbar erschaffen wird und somit nicht präexistieren kann. In dieser Auseinandersetzung kommen aber auch ganz unterschiedliche Ansichten über das Wesen der Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte zum Ausdruck. In den Augen Brentanos war Zellers Vorgehensweise ein verkehrter Historismus, während für ihn selbst die Geschichte der Philosophie nur dann eine Berechtigung hat, wenn sie in den Dienst der sachlichen Forschung tritt. (shrink)

Resumo: No capítulo 5 do Livro III De anima (430a10-19) Aristóteles distingue entre o νοῦς ποιητικός (nous poietikós), chamado pelos Latinos intellectus agens (intelecto agente), e νοῦς παθητικός (nous pathetikós), chamado pelos Latinos intellectus passivus, ou seja, intellectus possibilis (intelecto possível), termos técnicos e filosóficos mais comuns. O capítulo 5 é de grande importância não só para a filosofia antiga e para os comentadores das obras de Aristóteles, como os comentários de Teofrasto, de Alexander de Afrodisias, de Simplício (...) e Themístius entre outros, mas também para a filosofia do mundo árabe e da Europa latina. Sabe-se que Aristóteles não escreveu um tratado próprio sobre o intelecto, embora possam ser encontradas várias observações acerca do intelecto em suas obras. Os tratados do Intelecto começam com Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicena e sobretudo Averróis, e se refletem, num sentido crítico e afirmativo, (nos debates) dos tratados latinos, por exemplo, nos tratados de Alberto Magno, de Tomás de Aquino, de Sigério de Brabant entre outros. Este artigo apresenta observações preliminares e preparatórias ao projeto de traduções bilíngue (Latim-Português) dos tratados medievais sobre o intelecto ‘Teorias do Intelecto na Idade Média’ que está em desenvovlimento no Centro Internacional de Estudos Medievais da UFU. Palavras-chaves: Unidade do intelecto; Imaginação; Intencionalidade; Luz intelectual e cognição. Theories of the Intellect in the Latin Middle Ages. De anima III, cap. 5 of Aristotle and his Medieval Tradition Abstract: In the chapter 5 of the III. Book of De anima (430a10-19) Aristotle distinguishes between the νοῦς ποιητικός (nous poietikós) called by the Latins intellectus agens (agent intellect) and the νοῦς παθητικός (nous pathetikós) called by the Latins intellectus passivus, or intellectus possibilis (possible intellect), most common technical and philosophical terms. The chapter 5 is of great importance not only to ancient philosophy and to the commentators of Aristotle’s works such as the commentaries of Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, of Simplicius, and Themistius among others, but also to the philosophy of the Arabic World and the Latin Europe. One knows well that Aristotle does not have written a proper treatise on intellect; although there are several observations about the intellect in his works. Separate treatises begin with Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and especially Averroes, which Latin treatises as of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant among others reflect in a critical as well as an affirmative sense. This article can be read as preliminary and preparatory observations to a bilingual (Latin-Portuguese) translation project of treatises corresponding to ‘Theories of Intellect in the Middle Ages’ which is ongoing at the International Center for Medieval Studies at UFU. Key-words: Unity of the Intellect; Imagination; Intentionality; Intellectual Light; and Cognition. Theorien des Intellekts im Lateinischen Mittelalter. De anima III, 5 des Aristoteles und seine mittelalterliche Tradition Zusammenfassung: Im 5. Kapitel des III. Buchs von De anima (430a10-19) unterscheidet Aristoteles zwischen dem νοῦς ποιητικός (nous poietikós), von den Lateinern intellectus agens (tätiger Intellekt) genannt und dem νοῦς παθητικός (nous pathetikós), von den Lateinern intellectus passivus oder auch intellectus possibilis (möglicher Intellekt) genannt, gemeinhin bekannte technische und philosophische Begriffe. Dieses 5. Kapitel ist von grösster Bedeutung nicht nur für die antike Philosophie und die Kommentatoren der Werke des Aristoteles wie die Kommentare des Theophrastus, des Alexander von Aphrodisias, Simplicius und Themistius unter anderen, sondern auch für die Philosophie der arabischen Welt und des lateinischen Europas. Bekanntlich hat Aristoteles keinen eigenen Traktat über den Intellekt geschrieben, obgleich sich viele Beobachtungen zum Intellekt in seinem Werk antreffen. Selbständige Traktate über den Intellekt beginnen mit Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna und besonders Averroes, die sich in den lateinischen Traktaten, z.B. des Albertus Magnus, Thomas von Aquin, Siger von Brabant und anderen zustimmend wie kritisch widerspiegeln. Dieser Artikel kann als vorläufige und vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einem zweisprachigen (lateinisch-portugiesischen) Übersetzungsprojekt von Texten gelesen werden, welche „Theorien des Intellekts im Lateinischen Mittelalter“ betreffen. Dieses Projekt ist am Internationalen Zentrum für Mittelalterstudien der UFU in Arbeit genommen worden. Schlüsselwörter: Verstand; Vernunft; Intentionalität; Anschauung und Erkenntnis. Data de registro: 12/03/2020 Data de aceite: 21/10/2020. (shrink)

In one of the unpublished parts of his manuscript titled the Spicilegia, Arthur Schopenhauer presents an uncharacteristically sympathetic reading of an Aristotelian text. The text in question, De anima III. 5, happens to include the only occurrence of arguably the most controversial idea in Aristotle, namely the distinction between active and passive nous. Schopenhauer interprets these two notions as corresponding to his own notions of the ?will? and the ?intellect? or ?subject of knowledge?, respectively. The result is a unique (...) interpretation, according to which Aristotle's active nous is in fact non-intellectual: it is devoid of any interaction with intelligible objects, and hence lacks any intellectual activity. I show that this interpretation, though counterintuitive, is tenable, and that it may contribute to our understanding of Aristotle even if we do not adopt Schopenhauer's metaphysics. (shrink)

One of the most highly debated passages in Aristotle is his doctrine of the nous poiētikos of de Anima III.5. The interpretations of its precise nature and operation that were given by ancient and medieval commentators abound also today. With few exceptions, however, present-day interpretations disagree with the ancients and others on the logic of the passage. In particular, while most ancient and medieval commentators agree that there are three intellects or intellectual powers on scene in the passage, most (...) contemporary interpreters assume that there are only two, identifying the pathētikos nous at the end of III.5 with the intellect described in III.4. In this paper I argue that this assumption is wrong, and that although the text is underdetermined in several ways, it is not so in this respect. The text, taken with other relevant passages, demands that the pathētikos nous be different from the intellect described in III.4. (shrink)

The paper gives (I) a short introduction to Aristotle’s theory of the soul in distinction to Plato’s and tries again (II) to answer the question of whether the individual or the general active mind of human beings is immortal by interpreting “When separated (χωρισθεìς)” (de An. III, 5, 430a22) as the decisive argument for the latter view. This strategy of limiting the question has the advantage of avoiding the probably undecidable question of whether this active νοῦς is human or divine. (...) The paper closes with an outlook (III) on the Christian belief in the resurrection of body and soul in a spiritual body (σῶμα πνευματικóν) (1 Corinthians: 15, 44) by accentuating the ethical aspect of the belief in individual immortality as a “need of reason” (Vernunftbedürfnis) (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, A 256–258). (shrink)

Famously, Plato argues that the soul pre-exists the body, continues to exist after the body dies, and can come to exist afterwards in another body. Aristotle argues against the transmigration of souls in On Generation and Corruption and for the most part appears not to endorse these Platonic doctrines. But in De Anima III.5 Aristotle also seems to argue that a part of the soul, usually dubbed the nous poiētikos, is separable from the body and eternal. This has presented (...) interpreters of Aristotle with a problem: how can we reconcile Aristotle the naturalist philosopher with the apparently Platonist philosopher of De Anima III.5? Can we understand Aristotle’s position in De Anima III.5 in a way that does not conflict with the anti-Platonism he expresses in texts like On Generation and Corruption? I will argue that we can and offer an interpretation of De Anima III.5 that does not commit Aristotle to the position that the human soul is eternal. Even if Plato is right about the concept of the human soul, about what the human soul is in its own nature, he is wrong on ontological grounds. There are no eternal human souls. (shrink)

El presente artículo es una propuesta de una nueva lectura del capítulo quinto del libro tercero del De anima de Aristóteles. Por lectura se entiende no una interpretación, sino una cuidadosa atención al momento filológico: qué dice literalmente el texto, antes de las interpretaciones filosóficas. Para esto, se atiende minuciosamente a la semántica de los términos, al modo de adjetivación de la lengua griega, y al contexto general, gramatical y semántico de este capítulo quinto. El resultado de este análisis filológico (...) es una es una nueva comprensión del texto, que permite una nueva traducción, que se ofrece al final. (shrink)

Aristotle's theory of intellect is notoriously difficult, due basically to the scarcity of textual evidence. It has therefore always been controversial and often subject to the systematic biases of its interpretators. In order to provide a fresh and objective perspective on the text itself this book offers a detailed study of the fundamental text, Aristotle's De anima III 4-5, by giving an improved Greek text, extensive commentary, and discussion. An examination of several other important Aristotelian passages on the intellect is (...) also included. The analysis shows that Aristotle distinguishes clearly between the active and the passive intellect, but that the active intellect is not actively involved in cognitive processes, such as abstraction, but the pure principle of actuality in the soul. On this basis ancient and medieval commentators identified the human and divine intellects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’s Critique by Stephen R. OgdenLuis Xavier López-FarjeatStephen R. Ogden. Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’s Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 296. Hardback, $90.00.Stephen Ogden’s book is a remarkable contribution to one of the most controversial topics within the tradition of interpreters of Aristotle’s De anima. As is well known, Aristotle defines the intellect (nous) as (...) “the part of the soul by which it knows and thinks” (DA III.4, 429a9– 10). This doctrine of the intellect becomes rather obscure in DA III.5, where Aristotle states that there is a passive intellect that needs to be actualized through an active intellect. This passage contains, perhaps, the most debated statement in Aristotelian psychology. Aristotle argues that the passive or potential intellect is the part of the soul that, in a sense, becomes all things as it knows them. The intellect, however, has another aspect: in a sense, it makes all things. This is what Aristotle calls the “active” or “agent” intellect. This characterization is fairly ambiguous: it is separable (chôristos), separated (chôristheis), not passive (apathês), unmixed (amigês), and it is essentially an activity (têi ousiai energeia); furthermore, it is immortal (athanaton), eternal (aidion), and always thinking.According to Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation, Aristotle holds that since the human intellect is in potency, its actualization needs the intervention of an intellect that is always thinking, namely, the active intellect. Alexander associates the active or agent intellect (poiêtikos nous) with the divine intellect and divine intellection as it appears in Aristotle’s Metaphysics XII.9, 1074b33–35, another famous passage where Aristotle describes the first mover as thought thinking itself. A long tradition of interpreters and commentators, both ancient and medieval, discussed whether Aristotle held that the actualization of the potential intellect came from an external intellect—be it God (as Alexander thought) or another kind of separate intellect (as was the case for Islamic philosophers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes), or whether Aristotle was referring to two aspects within a single human intellect (as Thomas Aquinas held, for instance).As its title indicates, Ogden’s book focuses on Averroes, a Muslim philosopher who proposed one of the most puzzling interpretations of the Aristotelian doctrine of the intellect. It is puzzling, perhaps false, and even absurd, because it holds that “the intellect that understands intelligible concepts is a single, separate, eternal substance shared by [End Page 659] all humanity”(1). Strange as it may seem, this position—which Ogden calls the “unicity thesis” (1)—was among the most debated in the Jewish and Christian traditions throughout the medieval period and the Renaissance. But beyond detailing the mere reception and historical assimilation of Averroes’s doctrine, Ogden takes on the task of arguing for its philosophical coherence. It is not a simple task. One might think that, rather than helping to clarify Aristotle’s theory, Averroes made it more complicated. If it is already difficult to understand the Aristotelian definition of the active intellect and to decide whether it is a separate intellect or part of the soul, Averroes seems to make things worse by arguing that the active or agent intellect (in Latin, intellectus agens or intelligentia agens; in Arabic, ‘aql al-fa“āl) and the so-called material or possible intellect (intellectus materialis; ‘aql hayūlānī) are both single, separate, and eternal intellects.As is well known, and as Ogden himself explains, Thomas Aquinas criticized the idea of two separate intellects (passive and active) and provided an account that is in principle satisfactory, according to which the two intellects are intellectual powers of each person’s soul. There is an enormous amount of scholarly literature evaluating the merits of Thomas Aquinas’s refutation of Averroes and his followers. But as Ogden notices, few scholars— among them, Richard C. Taylor, Jean-Baptiste Brenet, Deborah Black, and Josep Puig—have pointed out that the two philosophers begin their discussions with different assumptions. In my view, one of the greatest merits of Ogden’s book is that, as far as I... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine what a philosophical approach, the one that Jacques Derrida uses on blindness in his Memoirs of the Blind, can bring to Cultural Disability Studies. Using some of the paintings and drawings reproduced in this 1990 work, the present study first intends to show that, for Derrida, it is a particular way of considering the mutism of visual art works that leads to seeing or imagining, in those that show blind people, representations of (...) blindness that have in common to make it a powerlessness. This paper then analyses how, for the philosopher, these same works can be approached by virtue of a second way of considering their mutism, and thus read as giving rise to the idea of a completely different kind of blindness, understood this time as a power that is highly resistant to the narratives that, in history, have made it an powerlessness. Finally, he proposes to complement this way of reading pictorial images of blindness with Stiker’s theorized “Reversal scheme” and the “neo-historicism” applied by Snyder and Mitchell to artistic representations of disability. (shrink)

Ce qu’on désigne du nom de « complotisme » mérite d’être considéré comme un symptôme – un symptôme de dynamiques et de désirs profondément ambivalents – bien davantage que comme un ennemi « inédit ». L’anti-conspirationnisme nous semble aussi dangereux et ridicule que ce qu’il dénonce sous la catégorie de « complotistes ». Comment nourrir les conspirations émancipatrices qui se tissent dans l’ombre sans se laisser aveugler par des fantasmes de complot embrasés par les élites réactionnaires et certaines viralités (...) toxiques? (shrink)

Cet article propose une spéculation à l’échelle géopolitique de la « réconciliation » entre les Premières nations et l’État colonial canadien, demandant à quoi pourrait bien ressembler une justice qui ne reproduirait pas le monde dont elle cherche à réparer les violences? Il suggère que les conceptions héritées de la justice du côté de l’Occident colonisateur ne sont pas assez bizarres, que les solutions proposées pour faire face à la violence n’ont pas assez d’humour, d’étrangeté, d’instabilité, pour proposer des bascules (...) significatives. C’est du côté de la rencontre avec les « inappropriées » que se jouent de telles bascules, capables de transformer nos rapports à la notion de justice. (shrink)

À l’aube de la Révolution française, alors que l’idée de sphère domestique et intime n’est pas finalisée, la famille est encore pensée comme une société politique : en conséquence, les bouleversements ouverts dans la sphère publique s’appliquent également à la sphère familiale. C’est le cas de la pensée de ces interruptions temporelles que sont la révolution comme rupture du contrat politique et le divorce comme rupture du contrat familial. L’article montre qu’une révolution soucieuse de stabilité a cherché, entre 1789 et (...) 1794, à instaurer et à justifier la possibilité de ces ruptures dans des contrats qui ne peuvent désormais plus tenir que sur le consentement renouvelé d’individus libres, mais s’est également montrée soucieuse d’en légiférer le cours et d’en limiter les possibles. En marge de ces processus où le temps de la rupture est contrôlé et limité par la loi, on trouve quelques individus et penseurs qui, dans un tout autre rapport au temps, se montrent soucieux d’en faire l’occasion d’une ouverture permanente des possibles. (shrink)

Our position is critical of the dominant method in psychology, and critical of the social use of psychological models. We assert that the scientific approach in psychology must break with modernist claim, but without sinking into post-modernist relativism. We consider that the epistemology associated with experimental psychology should be a specific epistemology associated with the particular objects studied. By calling on pragmatism and realism, psychology can find the resources to use quantitative studies as an action deployed within a complex, interactive (...) and dynamic social space, and thus break with its normative practice and function. (shrink)

Cet article propose de situer l’originalité de la justice transformatrice dans le paysage plus général des théories de la justice. Il suggère que la justice transformatrice est à découvrir dans sa spécificité, venue des mouvements anti-racistes africains-américains, mais qu’elle s’inscrit aussi dans toute une série de questions très anciennes, qui s’en trouvent relancées sur de nouvelles pistes. C’est désormais à l’échelle planétaire qu’il faut élever le slogan Pas de paix sans justice, et devant les impasses des politiques répressives, la justice (...) transformatrice fraie des voies qu’il est urgent d’expérimenter activement. (shrink)

La question qu’on nomme aujourd’hui des « genres naturels » en métaphysique porte sur les « jointures » du monde : quelles classes de choses constituent le monde et existent réellement? Si nominalistes et réalistes s’opposent depuis longtemps sur la possibilité même de répondre à cette question, les sciences modernes proposent des découpages en genres naturels qui contrastent souvent avec l’image naturelle du monde. Cet article se concentre sur les genres naturels en biologie. Après avoir présenté le principe de réponse (...) offert par la biologie évolutive, à savoir la systématique cladistique, j’expose le paradoxe du poisson, puisque « poisson » n’y est pas un nom de classe objectif, et semble donc aussi peu réel que « légume ». Je montre ensuite comment ce paradoxe est abordé différemment par des conceptions réalistes ou pragmatistes des genres naturels, et, en distinguant plusieurs sortes de pragmatismes en fonction des pratiques sociales auxquelles ils réfèrent la vérité des énoncés, je défendrai un pragmatisme modéré quant aux genres naturels en biologie. (shrink)

Cet article propose de situer l’originalité de la justice transformatrice dans le paysage plus général des théories de la justice. Il suggère que la justice transformatrice est à découvrir dans sa spécificité, venue des mouvements anti-racistes africains-américains, mais qu’elle s’inscrit aussi dans toute une série de questions très anciennes, qui s’en trouvent relancées sur de nouvelles pistes. C’est désormais à l’échelle planétaire qu’il faut élever le slogan Pas de paix sans justice, et devant les impasses des politiques répressives, la justice (...) transformatrice fraie des voies qu’il est urgent d’expérimenter activement. (shrink)

Ce texte passe en revue les caractéristiques principales d’une expérience de jardins ouvriers menée à Durham, en Caroline du Nord pour lutter contre les violences sexuelles et sexistes. Le jardin, l’acte de jardiner sont envisagés comme des techniques de justice transformatrice : se rassembler, entrer en contact les unes avec les autres, cultiver de quoi se nourrir, sentir la terre et les histoires de violence qui la précèdent, se donner les moyens d’y faire pousser autres choses. Toutes ces pratiques interrelient (...) l’histoire, la communauté et les conditions matérielles d’existence pour faire exister la justice sous la forme de plantes qui poussent, là même où, selon les mots d’Audre Lorde, « nous n’étions pas censées survivre ». (shrink)

Dans cette réflexion surgie des premières expériences de la pandémie du Covid-19, l’autrice met en écho nos peurs et nos réactions face aux dangers de la maladie et face aux actes de violence. Les condamnations sommaires et instantanées auxquelles les militant·es se livrent sur les réseaux sociaux reproduisent partiellement des dynamiques de lynchage dont il faut apprendre à davantage se méfier. Avec la distance de l’abstentiel, il est parfois plus facile de dénoncer ( call-out ) les mauvais comportements, que d’interpeler (...) et d’inclure ( call-in ) celleux qui ont fait du mal. Comment croire les survivant·es tout en restant abolitionnistes? Comment croire les survivant·es tout en pratiquant une justice transformatrice? (shrink)

Aristotle, pundits often say, has a 'nous'-body problem. The psychophysical account that succeeds in the case of other psychological faculties and activities, they charge, breaks down in the case of the intellect. One formulation of this difficulty claims that the definition of the soul given in 'De Anima' II.1 is incompatible with the account of 'nous' in 'De Anima' lll and elsewhere in the corpus. Indeed there are four psychological concepts that raise the 'nous'-body problem: the faculty (...) for thought as described in 'De Anima' III.4, the intellection of indivisible objects of thought in 'De Anima' III.6, the active intellect of 'De Anima' III.5 and the type of thinking likened to the activity of the divine mind in _Metaphysics<D> XII.6-8 and _Nicomachean Ethics<D> X.6-8. I consider each in turn and argue that Aristotle is on firmer ground here than is often believed. (shrink)

On pourrait croire que le thème de l’émancipation a disparu de la Théorie Critique dans sa version la plus récente, en particulier chez Habermas. Mais on devrait plutôt dire que l’intérêt à l’émancipation, notion que Habermas avait dans un premier temps reprise à Max Horkheimer, a émigré dans l’immanence de l’État de droit démocratique. Jusqu’où la reconstruction habermassienne de l’État de droit permet-elle tout à la fois de revitaliser et de conférer un sens nouveau aux visées pratiques, sociales et politiques, (...) émancipatrices? Telle est la question qui nous retiendra. (shrink)

This article reviews the notion of 'noûs' and the verb 'noein' in pre-Socratic philosophy: it brings together research carried out since Kurt von Fritz's famous articles of 1945-1946, taking into account 20th and 21th centuries studies, in particular the ones of James H. Lesher, Shirley D. Sullivan, Rossana Stefanelli and Favio Stella. This paper also focuses on the conception of 'noûs' in the thought of Xenophanes, who links it with divinity and thus anticipates the important contribution of Anaxagoras. Finally, it (...) examines the conception of 'noûs' and 'noein' in Parmenides, in whose Poem it is closely linked to his conception of Being. (shrink)

« Apprendre » ( xue 學) se trouve être le tout premier mot des Entretiens associés à Confucius dont la compilation date d’il y a deux mille ans. Avons-nous depuis lors appris, voire commencé à devenir plus humains? L’histoire des temps modernes, jusqu’aux atrocités dont nous sommes témoins aujourd’hui, pointent vers une réponse négative. Serait-ce donc que l’enseignement confucéen avait raison de se concentrer sur le processus d’apprendre à faire de soi un être humain? Et avait-il quelque justification (...) à placer au cœur de ce processus le continuum entre l’homme et le cosmos, ainsi que la transmission entre générations humaines (notamment à travers le culte des ancêtres, les rites funéraires et la piété filiale)? Enfin, une telle conception de l’humain est-elle en droit d’être au fondement d’un humanisme confucéen et d’une universalité chinoise? Telles sont les questions qui sous-tendent l’exploration de sources textuelles de la Chine ancienne proposée ici. (shrink)

L’étude de la notion de nous est un cas très intéressant pour saisir la différence entre l’épistémologie de Socrate et celle de Platon. En effet, le mot nous, au coeur de l’épistémologie du Phédon et de la République malgré des différences évidentes, n’apparaît que rarement dans les dialogues de jeunesse et dans les témoignages de la première génération de socratiques. Il est donc nécessaire de comprendre pourquoi le nous n’est pas central dans la méthode socratique, et une (...) des raisons de la différence entre les méthodes socratique et platonicienne se trouve dans la distinction entre noein et phronein. Si pour Platon la connaissance est d’ordre intellectuel, elle est pour Socrate d'ordre pratique; si la méthode dialectique conduit à la vision des idées, la méthode de définition socratique conduit à l’aporie; si la vision est au coeur du nous, la phronesis tient du sentir et de l’écoute. Malgré ces différences, qui doivent être soulignées pour saisir la spécificité des deux méthodes, le rôle de l'eros dans la connaissance met au jour une forme de continuité entre les deux épistémologies et, ainsi, entre la phronesis et le nous. (shrink)

In _Entre Nous_ Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships—the significantly different relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred's shifting modes (...) of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez's deep bond with Uruguay's national team coach Oscar Tabarez—demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other. (shrink)

I examine Aristotle’s reasons in DA I.3 for rejecting the claim that understanding (nous) is a magnitude (megethos), an idea Aristotle associates most explicitly with Plato, who describes nous as a self-moving circle in the Timaeus. Aristotle shows that his definition of soul, on which soul is not a magnitude or body of any kind, can explain perception, thought, and motion better than his predecessor’s materialist accounts. But unlike perception and motion, nous is not actualized through the (...) body nor does it have a bodily organ, which makes nous a very different kind of soul capacity. Earlier thinkers, including Plato, already maintain that nous does not have a bodily organ, but they cannot explain how nous could operate or be a mover without being some sort of body itself. Even in the Timaeus, nous is described as being a kind of magnitude. But if nous were a magnitude of any kind, Aristotle claims it would not be able to think or reason. There is something about being a magnitude qua magnitude that makes reason impossible. His critique of Plato in I.3 prepares the way for his account of nous in DA III.4. (shrink)

In a work entitled On the Generation of Animals, Aristotle remarks that “intellect (nous) alone enters from outside (thurathen)”. Interpretations of this passage as dualistic dominate the history of ideas and allow for a joining together of Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine on the soul. This, however, pulls against the well-known Aristotelian position that soul and body are intertwined and interdependent. The most influential interpretations thereby misrepresent Aristotle’s view on soul and lack any real engagement with his embryology. This paper (...) seeks to extract the account of intellect (nous) in Aristotelian embryology from this interpretative background and place it within the context of his mature biological thought. A clear account of the actual import of this statement in its relevant context is given before explaining how it has been misunderstood by various interpretative traditions. The paper finishes by touching on how early commentary by Christian writers, freed as it was from the imperative to synthesise Greek philosophy, differed from those that came after. While realising that Aristotle’s position would not aid them in their explanations of the soul’s survival after death, their engagement with Aristotle’s science allowed for other aspects of theology concerning the fittingness of soul to body. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important figures of twentieth-century philosophy. Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America. _Entre Nous_ (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, (...) it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness. Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death. Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. _Entre Nous_ is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives. (shrink)

Quoi que nous nous efforcions de penser, nous continuons d'appartenir à notre siècle par Les croyances les plus communes et, quand cela a lieu, par le fait tout aussi commun de ne plus croire - ou de ne pas donner notre confiance au monde. Nos pères se sont tant méfiés, ou ils ont été à ce point cyniques, que cette foi, entendue dans son sens large, semble nous être aujourd'hui interdite. À nous qui avons hérité (...) de cette perte sans l'avoir consommée, ne restent que les débris d'une tradition devenue muette. Or la foi est vitale, et pas seulement la croyance religieuse. Mais dans une époque désorientée, nous ne pourrons peut-être sauver que le désir de croire : rien ne nous dit que nous retrouverons la croyance. Le paradoxe veut que cette impuissance annonce un temps de dangereuse crédulité. Il nous faut donc tout réapprendre. C'est à cette tâche que la philosophie doit s'atteler en prenant le contrepied de son éternelle tendance : en se mettant en quête de croire aussi résolument qu'elle avait cherché à savoir. La traversée du nihilisme est à ce prix."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Pretendo com este artigo desenhar as linhas gerais da idéia de noûs em Aristóteles, sua adoção e desenvolvimento por Santo Tomás de Aquino, tomando a forma que chegou até nós, como intelecto ou inteligência, “modo de saber” que capta o universal. Apresento primeiramente os “modos de saber” pensados por Aristóteles em suas principais obras, culminando na idéia de noûs como modo próprio do conhecimento filosófico na sua busca pelo ser das coisas. Em seguida passo para a retomada deste conceito em (...) Santo Tomás de Aquino, como intelecto, e o seu desenvolvimento durante a controvérsia contra os averroístas. Minha intenção é, além de demonstrar o pensamento desses filósofos sobre este tema, mostrá-lo como um assunto ainda de extrema relevância para o pensamento filosófico. (shrink)

In disagreement with Claudia Baracchi’s controversial thesis that there is a “simultaneity and indissolubility” if not an “identity” of intelligence (nous) and perception (aisthēsis) at the core of Aristotle’s philosophy, I will argue that Aristotle maintains a fundamental distinction between these cognitive faculties. My goal in this paper is to examine specific parts of two central and complex passages, VI.8, 1142a12-30 and VI.11, 1143a33-b15, from the Nicomachean Ethics to show that Baracchi’s view is unpersuasive. I will show that Aristotle (...) considers nous to be a different capacity than mere perception and one through which particulars and indemonstrable principles become intelligible. Moreover, I will show that Aristotle considers that the objects of nous differ in kind from those that sensation (our senses) and perception (inference from our senses) grasp. After examining critically Baracchi’s thesis in light of a close reading of those two relevant passages, I will conclude the paper by showing the significance of Aristotle’s claim that a state is defined in terms of its objects of apprehension for understanding the distinction between nous and aisthēsis. (shrink)

Le but du présent article est d’examiner les relations entre les notions d’action et de subjectivité. Faut-il mettre ces relations au compte d’une expérience de l’action? Une telle hypothèse permet, à première vue, de distinguer ce qui nous arrive ou encore ce qui procède d’une simple réaction à une stimulation, d’une part, des actions que nous initions et dont nous sommes réellement les agents d’autre part. Mais cette vue, si elle a l’intérêt de faire entrer en scène (...) le sujet sous les trait... (shrink)

Aristotle in Physics I,1 says some strange-sounding things about how we come to know wholes and parts, universals and particulars. In explicating these, Simplicius distinguishes an initial rough cognition of a thing as a whole, an intermediate “cognition according to the definition and through the elements,” and a final cognition of how the thing's many elements are united: only this last is πιστήμη. Simplicius refers to the Theaetetus for the point about what is needed for πιστήμη and the ways that (...) cognition according to the definition and through the elements falls short. By unpacking this reference I try to reconstruct Simplicius' reading of “Socrates' Dream,” its place in the Theaetetus ' larger argument, and its harmony with other Platonic and Aristotelian texts. But this reconstruction depends on undoing some catastrophic emendations in Diels's text of Simplicius. Diels's emendations arise from his assumptions about definitions and elements, in Socrates' Dream and elsewhere, and rethinking the Simplicius passage may help us rethink those assumptions. (shrink)

Le débat entre Carl Schmitt et Hans Blumenberg a des implications considérables. Il porte en dernière analyse sur le statut et la valeur assignés à la modernité, sur l’intelligibilité de l’histoire , sur la nature de la « légitimité » et donc in fine sur la confrontation entre « théologie politique » et « philosophie politique ». Ce dernier aspect pourrait également nous éclairer sur la fascination exercée par la pensée de Schmitt sur la « radicalité » politique actuelle. (...) En définitive, le débat porte sur le sens et la validité de la « sécularisation » et de la « sécularité » entendues comme catégories interprétatives de la modernité.The issue between Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg has significant involvements. It turns ultimately on the statute and the value of modernity, on the intelligibility of history , on the nature of legitimity and at last on the collation between « political theology » and « political philosophy ». Seen from that side, it might to throw some light on the fascination exerted by Schmitt’s thought on political « radicality » today. That issue finally turns on meaning and validity of « secularisation » and « secularity » as interpretative categories for modernity. (shrink)

This book is the first sustained modern investigation of Plato’s theology. A central thesis of the book is that Plato _had _a theology—not just a mythology for the ideal city, not just the theory of forms or the theory of cosmic souls, but also, irreducible to any of these, an account of God as _Nous _, the source of rational order both to souls and the world of bodies. The understanding of God as Reason, and of the world as governed (...) directly or indirectly by Reason, is worked out in the dialogues of Plato’s last period, the _Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, _and _Laws. _These dialogues offer a strategy for explaining the physical world that goes beyond anything in the middle dialogues, and gives the best starting point for understanding the cosmologies and theologies of Aristotle, the Stoics, and later ancient thinkers. Menn focuses on the _Timaeus _as Plato’s most sustained effort to provide what _Anaxagoras had failed to deliver: an explanation of the world through Reason, showing that things are as they are because it is best, or because it best serves the order of the world as a whole. Anaxagoras was disappointed because he explained things through their material constituents, without explaining why the constituents are ordered as they are; but the theory of forms has the same defect, since it_ _cannot explain why different parts of the universe participate in different forms according to a particular order. The _Timaeus _and other late dialogues attempt to supply the missing explanation of the ordering of the physical world. These dialogues do not retreat from the middle dialogue theory of forms, nor do they escape into an esoteric theory of numbers; but they add to the middle dialogues an analysis of the principles necessary to account for the existence and partial intelligibility of the sensible world—not only forms and a material substance but also _Nous _and souls. Although the demiurge of the _Timaeus _ _is represented as a cause both to souls and bodies, most scholars have been reluctant to identify the demiurge as a being separate from and superior to souls, because they think that both the meaning of the Greek word _nous _and Plato’s own statements require that _Nous _is_ _either a kind of soul or something inseparable from souls. Reexamining the linguistic evidence and the Platonic texts, Menn argues that _nous _can mean something separate from souls, namely the virtue of rationality or intelligence that souls participate in. Menn argues that Anaxagoras’ _Nous _should be construed as such a virtue; then he examines what status this virtue has in the context of the Platonic theory of forms, and how it_ _is a cause both to souls and to bodies. Soul plays a crucial role in mediating the causality of _Nous _and introducing rational order into the world of bodies, but neither soul in general nor the world-soul in particular can be identified with _Nous. _ Menn stresses the pre-Socratic context for the cosmology and theology of Plato’s late dialogues; he argues for the importance of Diogenes of Appolonia in particular, and he reconstructs a possible new fragment of Diogenes from the _Timaeus _and from the Hippocratic treatise _On Breaths. _In the _Timaeus _and other late dialogues Plato attempts to do better than his predecessors by standards implicit in Socrates’ critique of Anaxagoras in the _Phaedo, _but what Plato offers remains consciously provisional. Aristotle argues that the _Timaeus _remains liable to some of the same criticisms that Socrates had leveled against Anaxagoras, and Aristotle’s own cosmology and theology take up Plato’s challenge to carry out Anaxagoras’ promise of an explanation of the world through _Nous, _and attempt to improve on the _Timaeus _as_ _Plato had improved on Anaxagoras. In this way the _Timaeus _serves as an essential starting point, not only_ _for those later ancient philosophers who took it as an authoritative statement on the world and on God but also for those who took it as a challenge to do better. (shrink)

[1] Il n’est pas sûr que ceux qui croient à la liberté agissent autrement que ceux qui n’y croient pas. L’incertitude est fâcheuse en un siècle où seules comptent les conséquences empiriques. Mais on ne se débarrasse pas si aisément de la métaphysique. Car a-t-on le droit de punir un criminel qui se croirait libre mais ne le serait pas? La détermination des actions humaines par l’éducation et la société est l’argument majeur de ceux, aujourd’hui nombreux et puissants, qui s’opposent (...) aux sanc... (shrink)