In this paper, I will attempt to interpret Plato's concept of knowledge as he presents it in the very end of Book V of the Republic. An adequate interpretation of Plato's concept of knowledge must be able to account coherently for the following, (I) According to Plato, knowledge is not a state of mind, but an ability or power of the mind (δύναμις) and is therefore, formally analogous to sight (477C ff.). This analogy is presented explicitly and in great detail in the famous ‘similes of light,’ the Sun, Divided Line, and Cave passages of Books VI and VII. (2) Cognition, for Plato, comes in degrees from clearer to less clear (478C, 509D, 511 E). (3) Finally, knowledge is related in a special way to being (thus, it is said to be ἐπἱ τᾦὂντι 477A, B, 478A).

The Principle that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility (hereafter referred to as “the freedom principle”) has received a variety of explications, but few philosophers have doubted that in some plausible sense it is true. However, two philosophers have recently challenged it using very different but equally ingenious arguments. J.F.M. Hunter has provided the more obviously direct attack in arguing that considerations of freedom as such are in no way relevant to assessments of moral responsibility. Harry Frankfurt has directed his fire at the version of the freedom principle which says that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Both Frankfurt and Hunter point out the significance of their arguments for the determinism/moral responsibility debate: if there is no freedom requirement for moral responsibility, then even if determinism threatens freedom, it does not follow that determinism threatens moral responsibility.

Malgré les critiques de toutes sortes dont elle fut et dont elle est encore l'objet, la grammaire transformationnelle est devenue en vingt ans, sous l'impulsion de Noam Chomsky, le paradigme dominant de la linguistique contemporaine. Et, bien sûr, l'incroyable rapidité de cette ascension s'est accompagnée de nombreuses crises de croissance. Linguistes, philosophes et psychologues, ainsi amenés à s'interroger sur les fondements épistémologiques de cette étrange discipline, se sont heurtés à de redoutables énigmes métathéoriques: de quel domaine factuel la linguistique est-elle la science? les grammaires sont-elles empiriquement falsifiables? quel rôle l'intuition du locuteur – et singulièrement celle du linguiste – joue-t-elle dans l'élaboration et la confirmation de la théorie? quelle relation y a-t-il entre règles et lois? quel est le rapport théorique de la linguistique à la psychologie, à la sociologie, à la neurophysiologie? … Ces questions et d'autres semblables ont donné lieu ces dernières années à une étonnante profusion de livres et d'articles, où, à propos d'une discipline particulière et d'exemples précis, sont discutés, souvent en profondeur, tous les principaux problemes de l'épistémologie contemporaine.

L'Utopie est le «negro spiritual» des intellectuels de l'Occident moderne. J. Ellul.

Je me propose de brosser ici, à grands traits, une sorte de petite histoire raisonnée de l'utopie. Bien entendu, elle ne peut être que trop rapide. Néanmoins, les quelques jalons que je pose peuvent, je crois, guider un itinéraire jusqu'au renouveau actuel de Futopisme par delà la mort de l'utopie.

Consider the following argument.

(i) ‘Fa’ and ‘a’ (or ‘-Fa’) are contradictories.

(ii) So one or other of ‘Fa’ and ‘a’ must be true.

(iii) Now ‘Fa’ entails ‘(x)Fx’,

(iv) And ‘a’ entails ‘(x)x’,

(v) So one or other of ‘(x)Fx’ and ‘(x)x’ must be true.

(vi) But both of ‘(x)Fx’ and ‘(x)x’ say there is something.

(vii) So, either way, there is something, i.e. something exists.

In the first Critique Kant introduced the analytic/synthetic distinction and illustrated it with theoretical propositions. As his main aim in that work was to justify synthetic a priori propositions, Kant was able to bring his central questions into relief and discuss the methodology of their solution by contrasting synthetic propositions, such as: “Every event has a cause” with analytic propositions, such as: “Every effect has a cause.” Consequently, few commentators have any difficulty in stating as propositions the propositions Kant is justifying in the first Critique or in pointing out the difficulty of justifying such propositions.

John Locke, in his Essay, poses the following problem:

It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion? How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?