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503Derrida degree: A question of honourThe 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.
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445Bergson, truth-making, and the retrograde movement of the truePhilosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan. 2011.Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was one of the main exponents of evolutionary thinking in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. He gave that kind of thinking an unprecedented metaphysical turn. In consequence of his versatility he also encountered the notion of truth-making, which he connected with his ever-present concerns about time and duration. Eager to stress the dimension of radical change and of novelty in the nature of things, he rejected (in one form) what he called “the retrograd…Read more
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60L’Individuation selon BrentanoPhilosophiques 26 (2). 1999.Brentano, expert et continuateur de l’ontologie aristotélicienne, traite du problème métaphysique de l’individuation dans un petit nombre d’écrits . Il retient pour ce problème une solution ordinairement rejetée, l’individuation par le lieu . À ce titre, il occupe une position originale. La notion de lieu, cependant, tout comme plus généralement la notion de l’accident, ressort tout à fait transformée des analyses de Brentano : le lieu devient une détermination substantielle, non accidentelle, d…Read more
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39The article compares David Humes’ and John Searle’s positions concerning the relation between descriptive and evaluative statements. Although the two positions seem to be just opposite in that Hume denies the derivability of the ought from the is, while Seale accepts it, the author shows that Hume and Searle have many similarities, for for both obligations rely upon the institution of promising. The difference is that for Hume the speech act of promising as such does not have intrinsic evaluativ…Read more
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37L’ontologie du monde social chez Samuel Pufendorf et John R. SearleIn A. Chenoufi, T. Cherif & S. Mosbah (eds.), L’Universel et le devenir de l’humain – Actes du XXXIIe Congrès de l’Association des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française (ASPLF), Tunis-Carthage,28-1er septembre 2008, Association Tunisienne Des Etudes Philosophiques. 2010.The article proposes a comparison between certain aspects of Samuel Pufendorf's (1632-1694) conception of natural law and certain aspects of John Searle's social ontology. As in Pufendorf the entia moralia are superimposed on the entia physica, of which they constitute modes that ground systems of norms (natural or positive), so in Searle the institutional facts that are created by certain speech acts of the performative type are superimposed on the physical facts. The difference between Pufendo…Read more
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36Le mouvement rétrograde du vrai et du possible chez BergsonIn Jean Ferrari, Sophie Grapotte & Abdeljlil Lahjomri (eds.), Le possible et l’impossible – Actes du XXXVe Congrès de l’Association des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française (ASPLF), Rabat, 26-30 août 2014, Vrin. pp. 345-348. 2017.The article proposes a comparison between the “retrograde” conception that Bergson has of truth and his atypical interpretation of the concept of possibility. These conceptions are developed in two articles collected in La pensée et le mouvant. The “retrograde” conception of truth starts from the observation of the temporal gap between an event and the formulation of the judgment that relates it and finds its condition of truth in it. The retrograde movement consists in putting aside the tempora…Read more
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35L'idée d'une doctrine cohérentiste de la justification épistémiqueRevue de Théologie Et de Philosophie 129 (2): 127-139. 1997.In the philosophical tradition marked by Descartes and empiricism, the idea of epistemic justification was most often seen in terms of construction on foundations that would be as many immediately justified starting points. The article exposes a completely different approach to the question, due to the philosopher Keith Lehrer. In this approach the epistemic justification derives from a coherence relationship between beliefs that are never immediately justified starting points. What is then deci…Read more
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35Le 'cornu': Notes sur un problème de logique éristico-stoïcienneRecherches sur la Philosophie et le Language (Grenoble) 18 201-228. 1996.The article confronts one of the ἄποpοι λόγοι discussed in ancient Eristic-Stoic logic: the famous “cuckold” (κερατίνης), where an interrogator has his respondent to admit to have been or still be cuckolded. The source of the problem is a principle of dialectics related to the principle of the excluded-middle according to which a question admits only a positive or a negative answer. To the question “Have you ceased to be cuckolded?” both answers seem to presuppose that the respondent has been cu…Read more
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35L'école écossaise et la philosophie d'expression française: le rôle de Pierre Prevost (Genève, 1751-1839)Annales Benjamin Constant 18 97-105. 1996.The article reconstructs the diffusion of the ideas of the Scottish philosophical school (Reid, Smith, Stewart) in France in the early nineteenth century and the role played by the Geneva philosopher Pierre Prevost. Prevost emphasizes the originality of the Scottish school compared with the French and German school in his writing “Reflections after my translation of the posthumous works of Adam Smith” of 1797. From at least 1792 already Prevost had begun a correspondence with Dugald Stewart, whi…Read more
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32Éléments et parties des systèmes: Note sur l'interprétation temporelle des deux relationsDialectica 45 (2‐3): 181-189. 1991.The part‐whole and element‐system relations are usually not given a temporal interpretation. Taking a thesis of Father Bochenski as a starting point , the author first gives an adequate temporal interpretation of this thesis. Then, he shows that a divergence arises, in non‐static systems, between the system itself and the mereological sum corresponding to it at a certain instant. Therefore, any reductionism has to confront the generally neglected problem of this divergence. Résumé Les relations …Read more
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32"Ah ! comme c’est fin" : réflexions sur l’esthétique de l’humourIn Petru Bejan & Daniel Schulthess (eds.), Le Beau – Actes du XXXVIe Congrès de l’Association des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française (ASPLF), Iaşi, 23-27 août 2016, Editura Universităţii A. I. Cuza. pp. 391-397. 2018.The article deals with the aesthetic dimension of humour. The author starts with Hannah Arendt’s distinction between labour as a set of tasks necessary for the reproduction of biological life and praxis as an expression of freedom. In the same way the humour would be detached from the “working communication” of everyday life. Humour represents a “break” with ordinary modes of communication. This is done through “transpositions”, which can take the form of objectual transpositions (which play on …Read more
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31La transfiguration du sentiment selon Denis de RougementIn Nicole Hatem (ed.), Denis de Rougement et l'essai en philosophie (actes du colloque organisé à l'université Saint-Joseph en décembre 2017), Éditions De L'université Saint-joseph. pp. 81-93. 2018.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
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30Modes et modalités dans le système de droit naturel de Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694)In Julien Dutant, Davide Fassio & Anne Meylan (eds.), Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, Université De Genève. pp. 878-891. 2014.The article deals with the question of the relationship between physical modes and moral modes in Samuel Pufendorf’s theory of natural law. By distinguishing these two kinds of modes (which are both modes of natural substances) Pufendorf anticipates the “law of Hume”, according to which the is and the ought are incommensurable. According to Pufendorf, Grotius and Hobbes’ conception of the state of nature is at fault because these authors make natural law a fact that would not be accompanied by i…Read more
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30Maine de Biran, interprète et critique de Thomas ReidIn Elisabetta Arosio & Michel Malherbe (eds.), Philosophie française et philosophie écossaise, 1750-1850, Vrin. pp. 39-51. 2007.The article focuses on the relationship between the psychology of Maine de Biran and the work of Thomas Reid. Maine de Biran confronts especially with the Inquiry of Reid, by adopting some central aspects of it but by criticizing and radicalizing it. Continuity is to be found in the distinction, adopted by Maine de Biran, that Reid makes between sensations and perceptions, the latter being the basis of judgements of externality. But according to Maine de Biran Reid’s analysis of the notions of e…Read more
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28Une généalogie de l’imperfection : la situation de l’homme au physique et au moral selon Charles SecrétanIn Nicole Hatem (ed.), Charles Secrétan philosophe de la liberté, Publications L’université Saint-joseph-faculté Des Lettres Et Sciences Humaines. pp. 63-74. 2015.The article focuses on the Philosophy of Freedom of the Swiss philosopher Charles Secrétan (1815-1895) and on the attempt to reconcile freedom as the fundamental experience for the human being with the alleged necessitarianism that would result from the positive sciences. The notion of “fall” as it is found in the Christian tradition allows Secrétan to rediscover an original dimension from which we can conceive the laws of nature as contingent. It is space and time that impose their constraints …Read more
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28Hast Du aufgehoert, Deinen Vater zu schlagen? (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum II.135) - Was wir von einer Fangfrage lernen koennenIn Helmut Linneweber & Georg Mohr (eds.), Interpretation und Argument: Festschrift Gerhard Seel zum 60. Geburtstag, Koenigshausen Und Neumann. 2002.The article confronts one of the ἄποpοι λόγοι discussed in ancient Eristic-Stoic logic: the famous “cuckold” (κερατίνης), where an interrogator has his respondent to admit to have been or still be cuckolded. The source of the problem is a principle of dialectics related to the principle of the excluded-middle according to which a question admits only a positive or a negative answer. To the question “Have you ceased to be cuckolded?” both answers seem to presuppose that the respondent has been cu…Read more
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28The Context of the Stewart–Prevost CorrespondenceHistory of European Ideas 38 (1): 5-18. 2012.Summary The correspondence in this issue of History of European Ideas has not previously been published. It is the surviving part of the epistolary exchange between Dugald Stewart and the Genevan professor and man of letters Pierre Prevost (1751?1839) from the 1790s to the 1820s. To this are added several closely connected letters to and from their associates. This correspondence is striking evidence of the republic of letters continuing to flourish in the aftermath of the French Revolution, ill…Read more
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27Amiel et l’exigence de la justesseIn Nicole Hatem (ed.), Amiel et le Journal philosophique, Publications L’université Saint-joseph-faculté Des Lettres Et Sciences Humaines. pp. 47-61. 2017.The article deals with the concept of “justness” as it is treated by the Genevan psychologist Henri-Fréderic Amiel (1821-1881) in his Journal. Justness has its seat in the domain of “doing” rather than in the domain of “saying” or “thinking”: its non-propositional nature entails that one can “do just” while having false beliefs and vice-versa. The virtue of justness concerns the sphere of interpersonal interactions and goes hand in hand with moderation as virtue concerning the sphere of personal…Read more
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27Reid and LehrerGrazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 135-147. 1991.The contrast between Thomas Reid's epistemological concerns and a common core of the classical approach to epistemology is the following one: Reid abandons the classical use for criteria of knowledge and pushes the problem of the justification of beliefs to the level of the mental faculties from which the beliefs arise. A similar shift plays various roles in Keith Lehrer's coherentist epistemology. However, this shift raises several difficulties: (i) the impact of epistemological concerns on act…Read more
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24«S'oublier soi-même»?Revue Philosophique De Louvain 107 (4): 637-646. 2009.At the end of the XVIIth century Nicholas Malebranche intervened in the «quietist dispute» in his Treatise on the Love of God (1697). This short treatise presents an anti-quietist standpoint based on the philosopher’s systematic analyses in the fields of theology and of psychology of the feelings and of the will. This article shows how Malebranche takes up the challenge of quietism, the logical heart of which, here reconstituted rigorously, is found in other moral philosophies. The requirement o…Read more
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24Nietzsche métaéthicienRevue de Théologie Et de Philosophie 147 45-65. 2015.The author gives an account of how a set of themes that we nowadays call metaethics contributes to shaping Nietzsche’s approach to morality. Initially, moral judgement, or value judgement, in order to be acceptable for the philosopher, should be similar to a judgement made in the field of natural sciences. The impossibility of moral judgement to satisfy such a requirement precipitates the loss of morality, at least in Nietzsche’s “first way” (in Human too Human). The position thus joined comes w…Read more
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23La sémantique des déclarations concernant les items publics selon LeibnizIn Herbert Breger, Jürgen Herbst & Sven Erdner (eds.), Einheit in der Vielheit: VIII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress, Hannover, 24, 29 Juli 2006, G.w. Leibniz-gesellschaft. 2006.The article deals with the issue of public items (objects, processes, events) in the philosophy of Leibniz. Starting from the famous passage of the Monadology which illustrates his conception of the substance by the image of a city perceived from different perspectives, the author shows how Leibniz conceives the public character of certain items, i.e. the reality of the phenomena that express them, not only in disagreement with the causal model, according to which public items would be the causa…Read more
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20L'impact de la philosophie écossaise sur la dialectique enseignée à Genève: un cours latin inédit (1793-1794) de Pierre PrevostIn Denis Knoepfler (ed.), Nomen latinum: Mélanges offerts à André Schneider, Neuchâtel, Faculté des lettres, Droz. pp. 383-390. 1997.The article is about a course of dialectic in Latin language that Pierre Prevost (1751-1839) had prepared for the use of the students of the Académie de Genève. This document testifies to the reception of the Scottish philosophy, especially of Reid, by Prevost. On the model of the Logique de Port-Royal the course is articulated in a part on the art of exposing truths already reached (the dialectic properly speaking: ideas, judgements, reasoning) and in a part on the discovery of new truths (the …Read more
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20Leibniz et l'invention des phénomènesPUF. 2009.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
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20Le Beau – Actes du XXXVIe Congrès de l’Association des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française (ASPLF), Iaşi, 23-27 août 2016 (edited book)Editura Universităţii A. I. Cuza. 2018.Conference Proceedings (ASPLF Conference “Le Beau” in Iaşi, Romania, August 23-27, 2016). Sections: 1. Le beau dans l'histoire de la philosophie; 2. Le beau à travers les cultures; 3. Beauté de la pensée et beauté du langage; 4. Ontologie et métaphysique du beau; 5. Le beau dans la nature et dans la société; 6. Beauté, éthique, politique; 7. Les catégories esthétiques; 8. L'esthétique et la vie quotidienne; 9. Renouvellement et perspectives de l'esthétique. Conference sections: 1. The Beautiful …Read more
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19Antoine Arnauld et Thomas Reid, défenseurs des certitudes perceptives, communes et critiques des entités représentatives in Sens communRevue Internationale de Philosophie 40 (158): 276-291. 1986.The article proposes a comparison between the critique that Antoine Arnault (1612-1694) raises against Malebranche’s views on perception and the critique that Thomas Reid (1710-1796) moves against the theory of ideas defended by Berkeley and Hume. Both Arnault and Reid advocate a position according to which our perceptions allow us to have direct knowledge of material objects existing independently of us and not only of representations of them. Arnault proposes different arguments to refute Male…Read more
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19Arnauld, Antoine and Reid, Thomas, defenders of certainty, common perceptives and critics of representative entitiesRevue Internationale de Philosophie 40 (158): 276-291. 1986.The article proposes a comparison between the critique that Antoine Arnault (1612-1694) raises against Malebranche’s views on perception and the critique that Thomas Reid (1710-1796) moves against the theory of ideas defended by Berkeley and Hume. Both Arnault and Reid advocate a position according to which our perceptions allow us to have direct knowledge of material objects existing independently of us and not only of representations of them. Arnault proposes different arguments to refute Male…Read more
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18Adam Smith et le compte rendu (1756) du Discours sur l’inégalité parmi les hommes de RousseauIn Michel-E. Slatkine (ed.), Vitam Impendere Vero : Hommage à Raymond Trousson et Frédéric S. Eigeldinger, Slatkine-champion. pp. 263-274. 2012.The article is about Adam Smith’s short account of J. J. Rousseau’s Deuxième Discours in a Letter to the Edinburgh Review (1756). Special attention is payed to how the report deals with its subject. Smith proposes a surprising rapprochement between Rousseau and Mandeville. Both deny the natural sociability of man (while recognizing his aptitude to pity others) and show the biased nature of the principles of civil life. The difference would be only “stylistic”: whereas the “aristocrat” Mandeville…Read more
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18Dugald Stewart's Original Letter on James Beattie's Essay on Truth, 1805–1806History of European Ideas 38 (1): 103-121. 2012.The letters published here belong to the ‘Fonds Pierre Prevost’ held by the Library of Geneva. Our presentation of the letters is modelled on that of the published correspondences of Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Our aim in transcribing the letters that follow has been to establish a clean and reliable text with minimal editorial intervention. We have made no attempt to normalise the spellings, capitalisation, and apparently aberrant usage found in the letters or to modernise the punctuation, and …Read more
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18La raison pratique existe-t-elle? Examen critique de Hume, Treatise II.iii.3In Ali Benmakhlouf & Jean-François Lavigne (eds.), Avenir de la raison, Devenir des rationalités - Actes du XXXIXe Congrès de l'ASPLF, Nice, 27 août-1er septembre 2002, Vrin. 2004.The article proposes an interpretation of the role of practical reason in Hume. The starting point is the distinction between strong practical reason and weak practical reason. The distinction concerns the assignment of values to states of affairs: strong practical reason is itself involved in this assignment of values, whereas weak practical reason only deliberates on the basis of given assignments. According to the author of the article Hume, showing how our choices are produced from a mechani…Read more
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |