Paul Dablemont

This paper argues that the subject is not a stable substance, but a fragile fold stretched over the void, produced by a subjective meta-machine that constantly territorializes the flow of desire. By weaving together Deleuze (surface effect), Lacan (lack-of-being), Adorno (social wound), and Searle (Background), it shows that the subject is traversed by operators – desire, the unconscious, memory, identity – that give consistency to the void. The cure does not aim for illusory healing, but for an ethics of "sober lucidity": it deconstructs fixations through negative deterritorialization, then invents new forms of life through creative-critical reterritorialization, thus learning to "dance on the abyss" in the face of threats from war, authoritarian language, and digital colonization.

This paper explores the unexpected conceptual bridges between Evald Ilyenkov's Cosmology of Spirit and John Searle's philosophy of reality. While Ilyenkov develops a dialectical cosmology in which the ideal emerges as a latent potentiality of matter on a cosmic scale, Searle articulates a biological naturalism in which consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. Despite these ontological differences, both philosophers reject Cartesian dualism and reductive materialism, and both share the same fundamental question: how can meaning and significance arise from brute physical reality? The paper proposes a "weak" argument (grounded in collective practices – praxis in Ilyenkov, collective intentionality in Searle) and a "strong" argument (reading Searle's Background as a local biological instance of Ilyenkov's latent ideal). It concludes that these two frameworks can be read as complementary scales of a single stratified process, opening a fruitful dialogue between analytic philosophy and dialectical materialism.

This dossier presents the proceedings of a conference dedicated to the plural histories and new perspectives of Critical Theory. Returning to Max Horkheimer's foundational work of 1931, it explores the philosophical roots of the Frankfurt School, and examines its capacity to address contemporary challenges: neo-fascisms, algorithmic surveillance, ecological crisis, genocidal violence. The contributions show how active humanism, political aesthetics, improvised dance, or the critique of the disregard for the body make it possible to rethink an ever-open dialectic of reason, between tragic lucidity and obstinate hope.

Ce travail de recherche philosophique explore les concepts de différence et de comparaison à travers une approche pluridisciplinaire, mobilisant l'anthropologie, l'existentialisme, la philosophie du langage et la théorie de la connaissance. L'étude s'articule autour de quatre pôles principaux : l'essence de l'homme et son anthropogenèse, la différence et ses corollaires (répétition, simulacre, comparaison), l'image de la pensée, et la conceptualisation du penser. L'auteur examine d'abord les mécanismes d'hominisation (insulation, suppression des corps, néoténie, transposition) pour comprendre comment l'être humain advient au monde, avant d'aborder la question de l'essence et de l'existence à travers le prisme de l'existentialisme sartrien. La réflexion se concentre ensuite sur une redéfinition positive de la différence comme concept auto-réflexif d'espacement entre deux opposables visant à créer du sens, s'opposant à une conception transcendantale et exclusive. L'étude de la métaphore et de la comparaison chez Aristote et dans la rhétorique de la Renaissance révèle leur fonction créatrice de sens et leur rôle politique. Enfin, l'auteur propose un concept original, la "Sphère-Penser", comme tentative de conceptualisation du penser à travers un concept de différence positif, intégrant les processus de codage, décodage, stratification et sauvegarde qui constituent la pensée humaine.

A beginner reader might think that my title is senseless: aren't sense and nonsense supposed to be opposed? Why seeking continuity there? The Stoics and after them this line that goes from Leibniz to Deleuze via Nietzsche, have revealed an intrinsic relationship of continuity between these two entities that common sense sees as contradictory. Although this continuity exists at least from a Stoic-Deleuzian viewpoint, its functioning and nature remain problematic. My goal here is to study this continuity to understand and actualize it, focusing, of course, on Deleuze’s writings, but also on Ricœur’s and Wittgenstein’s which will help me get a better sense of the generation of meaning and the relationship between nonsense and sense.