• Les dilutions perdues: profil d’une exigence écologique
    Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für Philosophie. forthcoming.
  •  5
    L’amour courtois, origines et signification
    Revue de Théologie Et de Philosophie 154 (1): 105-121. 2022.
    Dans son œuvre L’Amour et L’Occident, Denis de Rougemont a pris pour thème l’amour courtois tel qu’il s’exprime dans la poésie des troubadours du XIIe siècle et dans le roman courtois du XIIIe siècle. Cette définition de l’amour, nouvelle et d’influence majeure, découle selon lui d’une dissidence religieuse, le catharisme, dont elle transpose les contours au vécu de l’amoureux face à sa Dame. Rougemont fait remonter à cette création médiévale beaucoup de facettes de la « passion » telle que la c…Read more
  •  1
    L’éthique est opérante dans la politique même si son rôle reste parfois difficile à percevoir. L’article relève la volonté des rédacteurs des constitutions de contraindre les détenteurs d’offices politiques à se montrer à la hauteur des exigences éthiques, par la mise en place des dispositifs institutionnels les plus divers poursuivant cette fin (comme les élections et les mandats de durée limitée). L’article met en évidence aussi le rôle d’une vision normative, « aristotélicienne » de la politi…Read more
  •  486
    Derrida degree: A question of honour
    with Barry Smith, Hans Albert, David M. Armstrong, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Keith Campbell, Richard Glauser, Rudolf Haller, Massimo Mugnai, Kevin Mulligan, Lorenzo Peña, Willard Van Orman Quine, Wolfgang Röd, Karl Schuhmann, Peter M. Simons, René Thom, Dallas Willard, and Jan Wolenski
    The Times 9 (May 9). 1992.
    A letter to The Times of London, May 9, 1992 protesting the Cambridge University proposal to award an honorary degree to M. Jacques Derrida.
  •  12
    L’éthique est opérante dans la politique même si son rôle reste parfois difficile à percevoir. L’article relève la volonté des rédacteurs des constitutions de contraindre les détenteurs d’offices politiques à se montrer à la hauteur des exigences éthiques, par la mise en place des dispositifs institutionnels les plus divers poursuivant cette fin (comme les élections et les mandats de durée limitée). L’article met en évidence aussi le rôle d’une vision normative, « aristotélicienne » de la politi…Read more
  •  24
    The question of whether the phenomenon of passionate love is a natural phenomenon, as for naturalist psychologists, or rather a cultural product of Western civilization, was asked already by Nietzsche. This article deals with Denis de Rougemont’s essay L’amour et l’occident, in which the Swiss French intellectual answers the question decidedly in the sense of the second alternative. According to Rougement, passionate love finds its source in the movement of Catharism, which developed in Southern…Read more
  •  16
    LES APPARENCES: ANALYSES PREALABLES L'ontologie des apparences I : questions terminologiques L'ontologie des apparences II : les entia apparentia La sémantique des apparences DES APPARENCES AUX FONDEMENTS Aspects catégoriels : la substance La simplicité comme condition de la substance L'activité comme condition de la substance DES FONDEMENTS AUX APPARENCES La production des apparences I : l'étendue La production des apparences II : la diffusion La production des qualités sensibles I BILAN Dire c…Read more
  •  8
    Table des Matières: Introduction; Chapitre Premier: La conception de la philosophie chez Thomas Reid; Chapitre 2: Le Rôle épistémologique du sens commun; Chapitre 3: La justification des principes du sens commun; Chapitre 4: La perception sensible; Chapitre 5: La perception sensible (suite); Chapitre 6: Les facultés intellectuelles autres que la perception sensible; Chapitre 7: Les facultés actives; Chapitre 8: Le "common sense" chez Reid et quelques conceptions antérieures de la raison naturell…Read more
  •  12
    Introduction aux Lettres morales de J.J. Rousseau
    In R. Trousson & F. Eigeldinger (eds.), Œuvres complètes de Jean Jacques Rousseau, t. XVII, Slatkine-champion. 2012.
    The text shortly introduces Rousseau’s Lettres Morales, which result from the conversations he had with Mme Houdetot in the years 1757-1758. It is interesting to notice that in contrast to other important philosophical works based on a love relationship (one can think of Plato’s Symposium and the role of Diotima, but also of Boethius’s Philosophia in the Consolatio or Dante’s Beatrice in the Divine Comedy), in Rousseau’s letters it is the man who has the leading role, whereas the woman figure, S…Read more
  •  12
    The article sketches the biographies of the professors for Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Neuchâtel since its foundation in the year 1909, against the background of the intellectual climate in protestant French Switzerland.
  •  7
    La nature: thèmes philosophiques, thèmes d'actualité - Actes du XXVe Congrès de l'ASPLF, Lausanne, 25-28 août 1994 (edited book)
    Cahiers de la Revue de théologie et de philosophie, no.18. 1996.
    Conference Proceedings (ASPLF Conference “la Nature” in Lausanne, August 25-28, 1994). Conference sections: 1. La nature; 2. Nature, pouvoir, société; 3. Attitudes culturelles, artistiques, esthétiques et religieuses face à la nature; 4. La nature dans les sciences; 5. Nature et société; 6. Nature, éthique et droit; 7. La nature dans la philosophie antique et médiévale; 8. La nature dans la philosophie moderne et contemporaine; 9. La nature et les théorisations de l’humain.
  •  5
    Did Reid Hold Coherentist Views ?
    In M. Dalgarno & Eva Matthews (eds.), The Philosophy of Thomas Reid, Reidel. 1989.
    The article criticizes the interpretation of Thomas Reid’s philosophy as a form of coherentism put forward by Lehrer and Smith. In the author’s view Reid’s “first principles”, which govern the activities of our faculties, rely on a correspondence theory of truth. At the same time the rightness of our first principles in conjunction with the fact that the world is structured in such a way that true judgements about it do not lead to contradiction entails that our “doxastic system” (i.e. the syste…Read more
  •  4
    The article deals with the problem of how works indexical reference to temporal moments (especially to the present) in the philosophy of Leibniz. Leibniz refutes Newton's and Clarke’s theory of absolute time: since there is no sufficient reason to consider the universe as having being created at one absolute moment rather than at another, temporal moments can be individuated only through their reciprocal relation. What then distinguishes reference to the present from reference to the past and to…Read more
  •  13
    Alphonse Guillebert (1792-1861), pastor, teacher and politician, was one of the leading figures of the Academy of Neuchâtel, founded in 1838 and opened to students in the autumn of 1840. In this article, we will first offer a brief biography, then indications on the various facets of the written work of our author. We have used only a part of the available sources and we are therefore aware that further study would be worthwhile. In the following, we describe the philosophy course of Guillebert,…Read more
  •  9
    De soi aux choses: la référence selon R. Chisholm
    Travaux du Centre de Recherches Sémiologiques (Université de Neuchâtel). 1987.
    The article provides a critical overview of the main theses contained in the book The First Person by Roderick Chisholm. Chisholm's main thesis is that of the priority of the reference de se over reference de re. Chisholm develops firstly a theory of properties according to which these must be able to remain unexemplified. This excludes from the outset that we can reinterpret the indexical term “I” (the first person) in the sense of a property, since an indexical term always refers to an existin…Read more
  •  10
    The author focuses on the role that the epistemic practice of questioning, as it is presented in the Platonic dialogues, plays by Socrates. A comparison with Hintikka’s theory of questioning in proposed: in Hintikka’s account it is the questioner who endeavours to obtain new knowledge by asking someone who presumptively possesses that knowledge, whereas Socrates questions his interlocutors to wake in them the awareness of a knowledge they don’t know to possess. The origin of this knowledge is to…Read more
  •  4
    Une conception de l'objectivité du mal
    In J. Hainard & Rudolf Kaehr (eds.), Le mal et la douleur, Musée D'ethnographie. 1986.
    The article sketches a possible argument for the objectivity of the evil. In a first stage the author deals with the emotivist thesis according to which evaluative judgments are nothing other than the expression of our positive or negative emotions toward an object. Although this thesis is rejected, the idea that emotions play a central role by the uttering of an evaluative judgement is retained. It is only by critically examining such judgments that one can eviscerate the objective core they co…Read more
  •  11
    The article discusses in detail Nicholas Rescher’s book Scientific Progess: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science (1978). Rescher discusses the possibilities of further progress for science. According to Rescher there are no limits by principles to scientific progress. Among the positions which postulate an end of scientific progress there are some which see the reason in the finiteness of nature, others in the finitude of our intellectual resources. According to …Read more
  •  9
    Le concept d'identité en sociologie politique
    Actes de la Société Jurassienne d'Emulation 94. 1991.
    When we deal with the concept of identity in political sociology (e.g. national identity, regional identity, etc.) we have first to ask some general question about the concept of identity and distinguish between numerical identity (which encompasses identity through time) and specific or type identity. Some theses can be advanced about identity in political sociology: 1) The identity in question is type identity; 2) This type identity is an artefact; 3) This artefactual identity concerns only th…Read more
  •  10
    Troubles with Common Sense
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 75. 1993.
    The articles critically discusses K. Lehrer’s book Thomas Reid (1989). In particular, the author criticizes some central aspects of Reid’s epistemology of common sense. Two points are particularly problematic: 1) the identification of common sense beliefs: how are the contents of common sense beliefs specified or individuated? The author shows that there are two possibilities for the identification of common sense beliefs – on one understandings these beliefs are explicit, on the other they are …Read more
  •  10
    Is the classical model of action, damage, and responsibility, which is based on the idea that it is always possible to individuate the direct or indirect damages resulting from a certain individual or collective action, still valid in the case of the environmental consequences of industrial production and mass consumption? We argue that the absence of a classical plaintiff in these cases implies that we have to conceive of the consequences of our individual actions (as consumers of industrial go…Read more
  •  11
    The author, referring in particular to Jonas Cohn’s Theorie der Dialektik, interprets Hegel’s dialectic in the light of the Aristotelian principle of the priority of actuality over potentiality. The principle finds application especially in the field of the Hegelian conception of the history of philosophy, which is thought from the point of view of Absolute Knowledge as actuality of the Spirit. In this regard the main issue is to understand the nature of the limitations that Spirit encounters on…Read more
  •  4
    Although our moral intuitions lead us to distinguish, with regard to euthanasia, between the omission to treat a terminal patient and the act of actively kill him, consequentialists deny that there is such a distinction. The article considers a logico-mathemtical difficulty following from the consequentialist approach to moral problems, arguing thus for the necessity to take into consideration also other philosophical resources to deal with the issue of euthanasia. Indeed, as soon as one conside…Read more
  •  12
    The article compares Descartes’ and Leibniz’ use of the concept of a machine. For Descartes, the activity of the engineers rises to become the model for the scientific enterprise: one proceeds from the simple and the familiar to explain the complex. In this way one can escape the sheer astonishment about the complexity of the machines and their effects. This mechanical model is extended also to the explanation of the living beings. Also Leibniz regards living beings as machines. The difference b…Read more
  •  10
    Réflexions sur la motivation économique
    In Robert Damien & André Tosel (eds.), L'action collective: coordination, conseil, planification, Vol.12 de la série AGON, Annales Littéraires De L'université De Franche-comté. 1998.
    Although, according to the Austrian school, economic competition, since it pushes entrepreneurs to innovations that benefit not only themselves but consumers as well, is supposed to lead to the public good, it is essential to consider also the possibility of cartel formation. In this case a mechanism is set up whereby the prices of goods and services are kept artificially high. The article shows that it is the same entrepreneurial spirit celebrated by the Austrian school that makes that in certa…Read more
  •  14
    Reid in Europe
    Reid Studies 2 (2). 1999.
    Thomas Reid’s influence on continental and especially on French philosophy at the beginning of the 19th century has to be considered against the background of the crisis of the philosophical project of the moderns. This project, which is intimately related to the rise of the modern scientific world image, has one of its major tenets in the so called “theory of ideas” introduced by Descartes and developed further by Locke. By emphasizing the role of our active faculties in the formulation of judg…Read more
  •  7
    The article develops the conception that Leibniz has of organisms as machines of a particular type, differing from artificial machines because 1. all the parts of an organic machine are in turn composed by smaller machines and thus to infinity; and 2. the maintenance of the individual identity in living machines is provided by the fact that they have folds going to infinity which can unfold and fold back, thus allowing infinite transformations of the body. The author then discusses these two the…Read more
  •  6
    Our aim is to show how the well-known tale of Charles Perrault, Le Petit Poucet, contains the illustration of two principles of rational choice in a situation of uncertainty, the maximin ("to limit the breakage") and the maximax ("to target the best"). It builds in a targeted and economical way highly fluctuating situations which make inapplicable the first while showing the virtualities of the second principle. As such, this children's story has a new reading, which is not without connection to…Read more
  •  10
    Impacts agrégés et politique du risque environnemental
    In Jean-Paul Harpes & Lukas K. Sosoe (eds.), La démocratie en discussion, Lit. 2001.
    The causal texture of environmental problems is very different from the causal aspects which are relevant in other cases of moral or legal significance. The author suggest to take account of this in environmental matters. He takes the various instruments of environmental policy Under scrutiny: regulations, taxes and labels. He argues that labels have strong advantages over the two others instruments: they somehow map the texture of environmental problems and have interesting motivational propert…Read more