Nous avons l'habitude de dire «le moi», «le soi». Nous utilisons l'article pour nominaliser le pronom personnel. Quel sens peut avoir l'expression nominale ainsi obtenue?

Elle paraît très ambiguë. Car en disant «le moi» nous transformons le mot indicateur en être indiqué, le signe en objet, le signifiant en signifié, comme si le geste de se désigner soi-même devenait à son tour un nouvel être. Il ne faut pas confondre la mention et l'usage du pronom personnel. Il peut être allégué par un tiers sans être assumé par le locuteur.

Philosophy, and especially metaphysics, today enjoys less respect and influence than at any time in the last 800 years, since Aristotle was rediscovered by the Medievals. Philosophy once was the realm of the controversies and upheavals that determine man's perspectives and attitudes; today that realm is the sciences and arts. Once “the queen of the sciences”, philosophy is rapidly becoming their handmaiden or stepchild. The very relevance of philosophy for life is seriously being questioned in many quarters. Today's “empiricists” are decreasingly concerned with philosophy in the traditional sense, and increasingly concerned rather with the methodology of certain disciplines, such as science, logic, grammar, etc.—if not with the outright destruction of philosophy itself. And even the speculative metaphysicians of today seem to find literature more conducive than philosophy to the quest and expression of their ideas. Sartre expresses himself philosophically in plays and novels and Heidegger's works become increasingly poetic; he has expressly called philosophy the “bad danger” to thought, as opposed to poetry, the “good danger”.

Between 1934 and 1942 Heidegger delivered three series of lectures on Hölderlin's poetry. The discussion of “Der Ister” was the last of these, although Heidegger continued to think and write about Hölderlin into the 1960s (see GA 4). William McNeill and Julia Davis's recent translation of the “Ister”—volume (GA 53)—is the first of the Hölderlin lectures to appear in English.

It is now over 15 years since Hilary Putnam first urged that we take the “narrow path” of internal realism as a way of navigating between “the swamps of metaphysics and the quicksands of cultural relativism and historicism” (1983, p. 226). In the opening lines of the Preface to Realism with a Human Face, a collection of Putnam's recent papers edited by James Conant, Putnam reaffirms his allegiance to this narrow path, unmoved by Realist murmurings from the swamps and laconic Rortian suggestions that only the quicksands are a proper metaphilosophical abode for those willing to confront our lack of epistemological and metaphysical foundations. If there are changes to be discerned in these writings, Putnam avers, they pertain only to the burden allotted to different considerations in the overall economy of his argument: “It might be said that the difference between the present volume and my work prior to The Many Faces of Realism is a shift in emphasis: a shift from emphasizing model-theoretic arguments against metaphysical realism to emphasizing conceptual relativity” (p. xi).

Dr. Desmond Paul Henry has recently published a systematic survey of his research on Anselm's logic which makes use of some of his previously published studies but includes much new material as well. Readers who know his earlier work will not be disappointed in this book. It evidences his usual combination of serious medieval scholarship, acumen in modern logic, and insight into the subtleties of logical problems new and old. It also demonstrates beyond doubt the remarkable skill exercised by St. Anselm in his discussions of a very wide range of logical problems involving such things as paronymy, modal arguments, moral reasoning, numerically definite reasoning, identity, forms of inference, and a variety of puzzles involving contrasts between real and apparent logical form. There is much here of very great interest to both the medievalist and the logician. Henry is also very careful and self-conscious about Anselm's methodology, and he attempts to locate Anselm's work within the general development of medieval logic. I hope that no one will feel excused from reading this book and will miss the rich results of Dr. Henry's studies from the fact that I intend here to argue that his view of the development of medieval logic is highly misleading and seems to involve the use of a distinction which, although it has twentieth-century analogues, is not applicable to medieval logic. First, I shall outline Henry's view; then I shall suggest some counter-evidence; finally I shall suggest that Henry's tools for bringing out and expounding Anselm's method have some problems of their own.

L'Examen de la participation de Pun au temps reprend, au sein de la seconde hypothèse du Parménide, sous une troisième forme (τò τρpèτoν). Platon a déjà étudié ce qui se passe pour l'un et pour les autres, lorsque l'un est dans le temps et lorsqu'il devient dans le temps. Il faut maintenant qu'il analyse la temporalité elle-même. Ce qui le ménera à la conclusion que le temps, n'ayant pas sa raison d'être en lui, trouve son fondement dans l'éternité par l'intermédiairé de l'instant qui est à fois la limite horizontale du passé et du futur, et le point de jonction vertical entre le temps et l'éternité.

Que la théorie de la « double vérité » n'a jamais été soutenue par les aristotéliciens radicaux du moyen âge est une certitude déjà acquise par les historiens. Le terme même d' « averroïstes » par lequel on les identifiait a été sérieusement mis en cause. Pourtant, il est évident que les maîtres és arts de Paris, dans la deuxième moitié du XIIIe siécle, ont éprouvé des difficultés considérables à mettre en harmonie les vérités de foi et les conclusions du raisonnement philosophique. Comment se posait ce conflit et quelle voie de réconciliation ont-ils cherchée ? Deux ouvrages récents nous donnent l'occasion de reprendre ce problème qui a fait déjà couler beaucoup d'encre dans l'historiographie du XXe siècle. Il s'agit de la monographie monumentale de M. Van Steenberghen sur Siger de Brabant et l'étude fondamentale de M.R. Hissette sur la condamnation de 1277.

In the standard English-language reference work, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards (New York and London, 1967), we find the following blunt statement on the subject of “orthodox Marxism's” theory of knowledge:

Its epistemology is naive representationism.

The use of the word “naive” will alert the reader to the unsurprising fact that the reference here is a definitely unfriendly one. More interesting is the way in which this characterization, based on an interpretation of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, has become generally accepted in English-speaking philosophical circles over the past forty years. The purpose of the present article is to explain the representationalist interpretation, challenge it in favour of an alternative reading of Lenin's text, and make some substantive comments on issues arising from the philosophical debate between the representationalist and anti-representationalist positions outlined.

Wittgenstein écrit dans les Recherches philosophiques: «Pour une large part des cas d'emploi du mot “signification” — bien que ce ne soit pas pour tous les cas — on peut l'expliquer ainsi: la signification d'un mot est son usage dans le langage» (PU, §43). Le slogan «La signification, c'est l'usage» a servi de signe de ralliement à toute une génération de philosophes (les praticiens de l'«analyse linguistique» ou de la «philosophie du langage ordinaire»), mais la question de savoir quel sens lui donne Wittgenstein — mise à part celle de savoir quel sens il avait pour ces philosophes — pose encore un problème aujourd'hui.

In treating of our subject three notions stand out prominently: the noumenon, the thing-in-itself and the transcendental object = X. In his commentary on The Transcendental Analytic, Robert P. Wolff has studied very carefully the question of the relationship between the notion of a transcendental object and that of the thing-in-itself. He noted and explained the passages of The Critique in which Kant means by the transcendental object simply the thing-in-itself and the passages in which he means by it something different such as “the concept of the ground of the unity of a manifold of representations in one consciousness.” There is little to be added, at this time, to Wolff's thorough investigations of this aspect of the problem.

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or define the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings (in the narrow sense of felt sensations) in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”.

Romantic love and its predecessor eros have both been characterized as forms of egoistic love. Part of this claim is concerned specifically with the relation between love and knowledge. Real love, it is claimed, is prior to knowledge and is not motivated by it. Romantic love and eros according to this view are egoistic in that they are motivated by a desire for knowledge. Agapic love characterized by bestowal represents a true form of love unmotivated by selfish desires. I argue that such an emphasis on bestowal at the expense of knowledge or appraisal of the beloved is problematic. The knowledge dimension of romantic love, rather than contributing to selfishness, can be a means of freeing us from egoism when we understand identity in its relational or social form.

Philosophers who discuss the emotions have usually treated amusement as a non-emotional mental state. Two prominent philosophers making this claim are Henri Bergson and John Morreall, who maintain that amusement is too abstract and intellectual to qualify as an emotion. Here, the merit of this claim is assessed. Through recent work in neuroanatomy there is reason to doubt the legitimacy of dichotomies that separate emotion and the intellect. Findings suggest that the neuroanatomical structure of amusement is similar to other commonly recognized emotion states. On the basis of these it is argued that amusement should be considered an emotion.

Using Jaegwon Kim’s framework of explanatory realism versus explanatory irrealism, in addition to some observations about the metaphysics and epistemology of explanation, I re-examine the disagreement between Robert Kane and Richard Double over the principle of rational explanation. I defend Kane’s account of dual rationality and argue that Double’s principle has a narrower range of application than he claims. I also show that, contrary to what Double assumes, Kane’s approach to action explanation does not lapse into a form of explanatory irrealism.

Many neo-Aristotelians argue that practical identities are normative, that is, they provide us with reasons for action and create binding obligations. Kantian constructivists agree with this insight but argue that contemporary Aristotelians fail to fully justify it. Practical identities are normative, Kantian constructivists contend, but their normativity necessarily derives from the normativity of humanity. In this paper, I shed light on this underexplored similarity between neo-Aristotelian and Kantian constructivist accounts of the normativity of practical identities, and argue that both ultimately fail. I end by suggesting an alternative justification of the claim that practical identities are normative.

People have inferred that our lives are absurd from the supposed fact that nothing we do will matter in a million years. In this article, I critically discuss this argument for absurdity. After explaining how two refutations in the literature fail to undermine the best version of the argument, I produce several considerations that together do take much of the force out of the argument. I conclude by suggesting that these considerations not only refute this argument for absurdity, but also constitute a motivation to be moral.

In Ecological Thinking, Lorraine Code argues that advocacy “often makes knowledge possible” and without it “certain kinds of knowing are impossible.” By acknowledging the value of subjectivity and testimony in knowledge creation, I argue that ecological thinking serves as an appropriate framework for engagement with individuals who are living with mental illnesses. Contrasted with the dominant Anglo-American epistemologies that involve excessive degrees of mastery and control (with the tendency to silence the voices of Others), I argue that ecological thinking facilitates healthy advocacy practices precisely because of its inclusivity and receptivity towards different perspectives in knowledge creation.