Patrice Canivez

Este artigo trata da relação do pensamento político de Eric Weil com a Filosofia do Direito de Hegel, a partir de dois textos de Eric Weil: “Hegel e o Conceito de Revolução” e “A Filosofia do Direito e a Filosofia da História Hegeliana”, traduzidos e publicados no Brasil em um volume intitulado Hegel e nós. O artigo inicialmente analisa esses dois textos. O primeiro, mostra como o conceito hegeliano de revolução incide mais sobre a “situação revolucionária” - sua problemática - do que sobre a revolução como acontecimento. Isso permite apreender distinções fundamentais em Éric Weil, como a diferença entre revolta e revolução e as duas modalidades de revolução: uma baseada num movimento de massa, a outra que um governo responsável deve implementar para lidar com as mudanças necessárias antes que elas sejam impostas por uma revolta violenta. O segundo texto, situa a Filosofia do Direito na teoria hegeliana da história. Isso permite diferenciar entre a atitude teórica de Hegel, da qual procede uma compreensão essencialmente especulativa da história, e a abordagem de Eric Weil que enfatiza a ação. A partir da análise desses dois textos e sublinhando o contexto histórico em que Éric Weil desenvolve seu próprio pensamento, o artigo oferece elementos de comparação e diferenciação entre a Filosofia do Direito hegeliana e a Filosofia Política publicada por Eric Weil em 1956.

Segundo uma fórmula já consagrada, a filosofia de Eric Weil é um kantismo pós-hegeliano. Mas em que sentido se trata de um kantismo? Para responder a essa questão, devemos sublinhar dois aspectos: primeiro, que o projeto sistemático de Eric Weil reserva um lugar determinado à filosofia de Kant, revelando suas limitações. Depois, que, no seu conjunto, a sua filosofia é uma retomada do modo de pensar kantiano. Nas páginas que seguem, abordarei estes dois aspectos partindo do pensamento de Eric Weil para remontar à sua fonte kantiana. Mais precisamente, partirei da Lógica da filosofia para chegar à Crítica da faculdade de julgar e à interpretação que lhe dá Weil.

In Oneself as Another Paul Ricoeur develops a practical philosophy that articulates the Aristotelian and Kantian traditions, the pursuit of the “good life” and the moral imperative. What he proposes is a critical reconstruction of Aristotle’s ethics. Ricoeur does not merely seek to give a faithful rendering of Aristotle’s theory. Rather, he is interested in discussing the problems that are posed by this theory. In particular, there are two problems that deserve attention: The distinction between praxis and poiesis and the concept of happiness. On the one hand, Ricoeur gives an interesting account of the distinction between praxis and poiesis. However, he concludes by questioning the philosophical relevance of this distinction. On the other hand, Ricoeur interprets the human ergon – in the effectuation of which happiness consists – as the realization of a personal life project. In this paper, I discuss Ricoeur’s interpretation of Aristotle on both points. Firstly, I envisage a reformulation of Ricoeur’s solution to the problem of praxis that preserves the relevance of the distinction between praxis and poiesis. Secondly, I propose an alternative interpretation of the human ergon that relates happiness to a sort of “practical presence” rather than to the temporality of a life project.

Without society there is no nature. Paradoxically, this is what Rousseau’s texts teach us. The paradox lies in the fact that the Discourse on Inequality seems to say the exact opposite. In the second Discourse, the history of the human species appears to unfold within the framework of an immutable, ahistorical natural order. In this article, I will highlight two points. First, I will show that nature understood as a whole does not really exist for the human being in the state of nature. It only exists for the educated, cultured, and therefore socialized human being. Second, I will analyze a passage from Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages, which brings to the fore the “negentropic” function of human labor. Without human labor, the natural order disintegrates. This, I will argue, makes nature a political problem for both Rousseau and for us.

This article aims to make two points. First, seeking and granting recognition is an ambivalent process that may lead to results completely the opposite from what was intended. Certain social pathologies, including reification, develop because of the way the desire for recognition is expressed and satisfied. Nevertheless, the concept of recognition remains central to critical theory. A normative concept of recognition is needed in order to identify these pathologies. Second, a critical theory of society that understands itself as praxis must justify the possibility of its ‘reception’ by members of society. The theory’s addressees must ‘recognize themselves’ in the theory. They must recognize in it the conceptual expression of their own experience of society. Therefore, social theory must account for the emergence of a critical standpoint on society. These two main points are addressed by means of a ‘dialectical’ approach. The tensions and interactions between global society, states, and value-communities – the dialectic within and between these spheres – account for the diverse and conflicting meanings of the concept of recognition. At the same time, such a dialectic makes it possible to understand the emergence of a critical viewpoint on society.

A retomada é um conceito fundamental da filosofia de Eric Weil. Juntamente com o par atitude/categoria que podemos encontrar na Lógica da Filosofia, designa o próprio ato mediante o qual, para Weil, o discurso filosófico se constitui. É também um conceito operatório através do qual se torna possível aplicar as categorias filosóficas à análise histórica dos discursos humanos na sua complexidade. Assim, este conceito estabelece a ligação entre lógica e prática da filosofia, sob a forma de uma lógica aplicada e de uma prática do diálogo filosófico. Este artigo começa por situar a retomada em relação aos conceitos de atitude e de categoria. Em seguida, considera alguns dos usos possíveis do conceito de retomada. Em conclusão, avançam-se algumas das orientações possíveis da pesquisa sobre este conceito, sem qualquer pretensão de exaustividade.

In Rousseau’s political theory, the Legislator’s task is to draft the best possible Constitution for a given people. His goal is to maintain the public liberties and to ensure the preservation and prosperity of the State. However, the main problem is “to put law above men” – that is: above the citizens in general and the members of the executive in particular. This paper examines how the Legislator takes up the problem by educating the citizens. The process of education implies the development of reasonable thinking as well as the education of desire. Reasonable thinking is achieved through the formation of the general will. Education of human desire must be understood with respect to the distinction between amour-propre and amour-de-soi. The extension of amour-de-soi to a communityof fellow citizens plays a central role in the formation of the general will and contributes to the development of solidarity among the different social classes. Education of amour-propre plays a role in the development of a national identity. It plays also a role in the political governance of individual desires by means of an administration based on a hierarchy of functions, supervised by public opinion. However, the political governance of desire is challenged by the invisible power of money, which Rousseau tried to neutralize by limiting and slowing down the monetary circulation.

La relation entre privé et public est thématisée par Hannah Arendt et par Eric Weil sous des angles différents. Notre intérêt est de trouver dans la manière dont les auteurs élaborent les problèmes de la relation privé-public, quelques propositions pour comprendre la situation moderne de l’individu. La confrontation de la phénoménologie arendtienne et de la philosophie réflexive et formelle de Weil nous conduit à entrevoir le problème du rapport de la réflexion au concret, qui en l’occurrence est celui de la vie dans l’Etat : le problème méthodologique est lié au problème politique.

La question de la justice est partout présente dans l’oeuvre de Rousseau. S’il aborde tout d’abord la question du juste et de l’injuste en rapport avec la loi de nature, la justice n’est cependant pas seulement pour Rousseau un problème de droit. S’interroger sur la justice, c’est poser la question de l’homme et de son rapport au monde. Pour autant, l’idée rousseauiste de justice ne se déduit pas d’une philosophie « compréhensive » du monde et des affaires humaines. La théorie rousseauiste de la justice est en elle-même une théorie compréhensive. C’est une philosophie des rapports humains et de la manière dont ils s’inscrivent dans Tordre du monde. Ce chapitre s’efforce de rendre compte des différentes dimensions de cette théorie. Il commence par montrer comment Rousseau traite de la justice dans le cadre du droit naturel. Puis, il traite successivement du principe intersubjectif de la justice et de la justice comme principe d’un ordre « objectif » du monde, de la société et de l’État.

This volume explores the relation between legal reasoning and logic from both a historical and a systematic perspective. The topics addressed include, among others, conditional legal acts, disjunctions in legal acts, presumptions and conjectures, conflicts of values, Jørgensen´s Dilemma, the Rhetor´s Dilemma, the theory of legal fictions and the categorization of contracts. The unifying problematic of these contributions concerns the conditional structures and, more particularly, the relationship between legal theory and legal reasoning in the context of conditions.

This paper is the first outline of a reflection on the notion of moderation, which is at the center of contemporary debates: moderation in consumption, moderation in the exploitation of natural resources, ideological and political moderation, and so on. I first consider moderation as opposed to excess, then moderation as opposed to political radicalization. I then develop the idea that moderation has different meanings depending on the domains or “spheres” in which we use the word. In the socio-economic sphere, moderation involves rational calculation, while in historical-cultural communities it is a tradition-based ethical practice. A third sphere to consider when exploring the uses and meanings of the concept of moderation is the political sphere. To do this, I turn to Aristotle’s theories of ethical judgment and phronesis in relation to his conception of the political way of life.

Recognition is not only a response to social pathologies. It is also an unstable and often ambivalent relationship that has its own pathologies. Owing to the intertwining between recognition and power, certain forms of recognition turn out to be forms of alienation in or from the world. Such pathologies affect inter-individual recognition as well as the recognition between individuals and the socio-political institutions. The article proposes a joint reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right, which provide norms for identifying and dealing with these pathologies. The norm for inter-individual recognition is set out in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the norm for state/citizen recognition in the Philosophy of Right. The analysis envisages two other aspects of recognition: the interference of the ‘I–Me’ with the ‘I–You’ relationship and the incorporation of the ‘I–We’ into the ‘We–Us' dimension of recognition. As regards the interpretation of Hegel’s practical philosophy, the article analyses the link between Hegel’s concept of recognition and his theory of action. In this view, the highest form of recognition has more to do with reconciliation – reconciliation between human beings, reconciliation with the ‘finitude of action’ – than with the problematic of individual and collective identity.

Éric Weil (1904-1977), héritier de la tradition néo-kantienne, élève d'Ernst Cassirer, ami de Raymond Aron, fondateur de la revue Critique avec Georges Bataille en 1946, philosophe rigoureux de la Morale et du Politique, est plus connu en Allemagne, où il est né, aux États-Unis et en Italie qu'en France, pour laquelle il a combattu pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale... Son œuvre, réinterprétation de toute la tradition philosophique en fonction de l'homme historique, porte sur les conditions de possibilité d'un discours sensé dans un monde menacé par la violence radicale (celle dont les totalitarismes sont capables), sur les rapports entre liberté de l'individu et cohérence du discours, sur l'irréductible diversité des philosophies et le problème du choix d'un mode de penser. On essaie ici d'en montrer la forte actualité, de Logique de la philosophie (1950) qui fonde une pratique de la philosophie comme interrogation sur le sens et participation au monde de l'action, à Philosophie politique (1956), qui met en perspective les problèmes de toute société moderne (conflit entre État et société, nécessité de concilier justice sociale et efficacité économique, mondialisation et avenir des États-nations, difficulté d'édifier une légalité internationale garantissant la paix), en passant par Philosophie morale (1961), qui développe une morale de la vie agissante.

s political theory apparently leads us to choose between patriotism and cosmopolitism. The two major works published in 1762, On the Social Contract and Emile, would represent the two sides of the alternative. However, the opposition between patriotism and cosmopolitism is the ultimate development of an internal tension between two aspects of Rousseau’s political concept of people: the intersubjectivity that permits the formation of the general will; and the individual’s devotion to the state. On the one hand, the political community appears as a distributive totality. On the other hand, it is viewed as a collective totality. When generalized, intersubjectivity leads to the formation of both the social concept of people and the moral concept of humanity, while patriotism requires the individual’s loyalty to the nation. In order to maintain the coherence of the very political concept of people and to solve the main political problem - which is to reconcile security and liberty - it is necessary to overcome the dichotomy between cosmopolitism and patriotism. Emile and Rousseau’s original plan for On the Social Contract are consistent on that point. Key Words: cosmopolitism • general will • intersubjectivity • nation • patriotism • people.