Suchergebnisse

Résumé. Cet article prend pour matériau le dernier cycle de l'œuvre de Peter Sloterdijk, lequel s'est attelé au développement d'une analyse phénoménologique de la spatialité humaine. L'optique de notre contribution consiste à faire état de cette théorisation spatiale à l'égard des constructions politiques. Cette entreprise se présente comme une vaste histoire des traces cosmologiques et architecturales des lieux de production de l'humanité et elle vise une réappropriation de la réflexion anthropologique sur le topos de l'humanité qui a été longtemps subsumé par la métaphysique de l'au-delà et qui est aujourd'hui désagrégé par les processus de mobilisation totale du capital.Abstract. This paper proposes an account of the recent works of Peter Sloterdijk, an author that has developed a phenomenological analysis of human spaces. The aim of my contribution is to put this spatial theorization in relation with political constructions. Sloterdijk's enterprise presents itself as a long history of the cosmological and architectural elements that shape the very spaces of human-production. It is also described as a new path for the understanding of the human topos that has been for too long subsumed by metaphysics of the 'beyond' and liquefied nowadays by contemporary mobilization processes of the capital.

This article offers to analyze the working out of a prediction issued by a predictive software which foretells the end of the world for December 2012. Primarily aimed at an audience familiar with apocalyptic theories and so-called conspiracy theories, the narrative process of the software designers aim at the creation of a system of beliefs regarding the capacity of anticipation related to their hybrid technical system. Thus, all the while integrating their prediction into a broader eschatological imaginary field, they display their predictions as the result of an alternative knowledge, based upon the complementarity of science and metaphysics. Adapted from the source document.

In this review article, the author takes a closer look at the French journal Tiqqun (1999-2001) and the pamphlet The Coming Insurrection (originally published in 2007). In particular, the author consider the overarching political project advanced in these texts as 'sectarian reason', that is to say, as a form of bio-politics that is deeply rooted in anthropological and ethical assumptions. Moreover, the author identify the intrinsic deadlocks of these suppositions, in particular their latent voluntarism, which they claim to reject if not to have overcome. Adapted from the source document.

Georg Simmel in Strasbourg (1914-1918). Three interviews with a witness : Charles Hauter (1888-1981).
The article gives an account of three interviews with Charles Hauter, who was the student and assistant of Georg Simmel during his stay in Strasbourg. This witness account no doubt provides full and invaluable information on the character of Simmel, his life in Strasbourg, his death and his relationship with metaphysics. It contributes to the sources that help us understand Simmel's philosophy of life in his last years, by comparing it on the one hand to the war which was taking place just a few kilometres from there and on the other hand, his attitude to his own, foreshadowed death.

The object of this study is European cave art {extending roughly front the 30th to the 9th millenary B.C.). Avoiding a hasty assimilation with phenomena observed in contemporary nonliterate societies, the A. proposes an interpretation centred on the classification of the figures as masculine/feminine in connection with the themes of the hunt and death. In consequence, a revision of the classic hypotheses concerning Paleolithic art (totemism, magic of the hunt and fertility, mythology, metaphysics) becomes necessary.
In conclusion, Paleolithic art gives evidence of the existence of a complex metaphysical System. Even if we are unable to define its contents, the study of this primitive art shows that the thought of Upper Paleolithic man was just as rich and flexible as that observed in present-day societies.

Temira Pachmuss, From the archives of Z. N. Hippius.
The present article includes an original version of two of her early poems, two unpublished humoristic poems and an unpublished poem "To Theresa", filled with the meditations of the poet, on the essence of all-comprising love aimed at harmony, ideal, truth and union in the light of Godly Personnality, of Jesus-Christ. The "Metaphysics of Love" comprises also the meditation of the poet on the androgynous nature of God-the-Father and the-Mother in One; on the artistic creation as an act of Divine Principles in their fusion; on the organic union of the act of love and the artistic act and on the artist, returning to God by his creativity the love which served to create him in the semblance of God.

The prayers to copy out, so-called 'magic chains', for the most part placed under the patronage of St. Antoine, can be situated in between the legitimate forms of veneration of the saints and belief in chance or destiny detached, at least on first sight, from any reference to Christianity. The reception of these texts, particularly because of the misfortunes promised to whoever does not play the game, gives rise to a feeling of uneasiness which can be explained by the symbolical effectiveness of the very principle of the chain. The lottery gains which reward retransmission of the texts are related to the popular cult of St. Antoine of Padua, patron of lost objects and master, therefore, of uncertain processes. The ambiguity of the underlying metaphysics in these practices leads, in conclusion, to reflexion on the links existing between religion and superstition.

Among the numerous historians who expressed their fascination for natural sciences in the 19th century, Renan and Taine occupy a specific position. Deeply influenced by positivism, they refer to natural sciences as a model in order to define history as a positive science emancipating itself from metaphysics. Recurrent embryological and anatomical comparisons shape their historical narratives, and references to natural sciences more broadly sustain the claim that history has become a true science of general laws. But neither Renan' s nor Taine' s argument ends in the simplifying identification of history and natural sciences. On the contrary, both historians claim that specific objects draw a line between the two. Dealing with the moral more than with the physical dimension of man, history is defined mainly as a psychology, therefore belonging to the field of philosophy. This paper will focus on this complex, and even ambiguous use of natural metaphors in Renan' s and Taine' s works.

Part of Eminescu's political thought still needs to be elucidated. In this paper, I offer to strongly qualify the (received) opposition between his theory of "the natural State" and the concept of "the social contract", which he rejects. While Eminescu does not subscribe to the contract's democratic and liberal premises, the notion of "a social pact" -if not the word itself- is definitely one he resorts to when expounding his theory of the "social compensation". He puts it together by combining the most recent theoretical developments in economy (Malthus…) with philosophical theories taken from the works of Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, and last but not least, Schopenhauer. A comparative reading of the texts shows that Eminescu borrows whole passages from the German philosopher, whose influence on Eminescu's political philosophy should be strongly reassessed. The metaphysics of "the will to live" provided him with the foundation for his own original version of the social pact which he developed within the evolutionary framework of Junimea, after Maiorescu encouraged him to move in this direction.

Does the emergence of economic activity in the public sphere mean that it is possible to make a distinction between the private sphere and the public sphere ? For Hannah Arendt, the answer is no. What totalitarian regimes have homogenised is not the private sphere and the public sphere, but private life and public life. As she explains, the condition for the existence of a true public space, i.e. a political space, is freedom from worrying about the necessities of life, be it work or on a economic level. Simone Weil proposes another approach to the problem. While she agrees with Hannah Arendt on the causes and effects of totalitarianism, for Simone Weil the predominance of economic activity or work in modern society does not necessarily threaten the existence of a genuine political-public space. For both authors, the public sphere (political) and the private sphere (economic) must be rigorously defined, but while Arendtian metaphysics favour the public sphere, Weilian determinism enables us to reflect more on the private sphere. Thus, in spite of totally divergent metaphysical standpoints, both of them not only oppose Marx, but also another phenomenon -the socialisation of economic activity.

On roots and uprooting.

The themes of roots and uprooting have a long history in the political discourse on cultures and nations. The metaphor of the roots that tie people to places in a «national» or even nationalistic «metaphysics» contributes to «pathologizing» situations of exile, migration and movement as «uprootings» and situations of moral rupture. Bourdieu's and Sayad's appropriation of the figures of roots and uprooting, previously used in conservative discourse, enables them to sketch the portrait of a culturally unified Kabylia such as it was before the war. The conduct of the field study in exceptional conditions of wartime is accompanied by a disvaluing of the notion of «pure» Kabyle culture, which is made into and restricted to an object of «structural nostalgia» - a modern form of social memory widely shared by Bourdieu and his informants. After colonization, the Kabyle house thus became a sort of testimonial to a bygone feature of cultural identity even to the extent of fuelling nostalgia for «a time before time» in the Berber cultural movement. notion of «pure» Kabyle culture, which is made into and restricted to an object of «structural nostalgia» - a modern form of social memory widely shared by Bourdieu and his informants. After colonization, the Kabyle house thus became a sort of testimonial to a bygone feature of cultural identity even to the extent of fuelling nostalgia for «a time before time» in the Berber cultural movement.