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Critique is a form of thinking and acting. Since the end of the 18th century, there has been a dynamization and fluidization of the understanding of form, as concepts such as the break, marginalization, tearing, and opening indicate. As a philosophical problem, the question of form arises in critical theory from Marx to Adorno. Since the 1960s, literary practices have proliferated that generate critical statements less through traditional argument and more through the programmatic use of formal means. At the same time, the writing self, along with its attitudes, reflections, affects, and instruments, visibly enters the critical scene. This volume examines how the interdependence of critique, object, and form translates into critical stances, understood as learnable, reproducible gestures, which bear witness to changing conditions and media of critical practice.

Die interdisziplinäre Forschungsgruppe »Poetik und Hermeneutik« und ihre Mitglieder haben die geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Landschaft der alten Bundesrepublik geprägt wie vielleicht sonst nur noch die Kritische Theorie.Zahlreiche Interviews mit den wichtigsten noch lebenden Akteuren erlauben einen ebenso erkenntnisreichen wie unterhaltsamen Blick hinter die Kulissen von Poetik & Hermeneutik. Unter welchen Bedingungen und mit welchen Absichten wurde die Gruppe von Hans Blumenberg, Clemens Heselhaus, Wolfgang Iser und Hans Robert Jauß ursprünglich gegründet? Wie entfalteten sich Diskussionen und Kontroversen? Wie kam P&H zur Blüte und warum scheiterte ein möglicher Generationenwechsel? Als Zeitzeugen gehört werden Aleida und Jan Assmann, Ferdinand Fellmann, Manfred Frank, Gerhart von Graevenitz, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Anselm Haverkamp, Dieter Henrich, Helga Jauß-Meyer, Renate Lachmann, Thomas Luckmann, Hermann Lübbe, Christian Meier, Jürgen Schlaeger, Gabriele Schwab, Wolf-Dieter Stempel, Karlheinz Stierle, Rainer Warning und Harald Weinrich.

Jacques Derrida e Michel Foucault hanno contribuito a ridefinire il significato che il termine'critica'ha assunto in molti campi del sapere, dalla filosofia alle scienze sociali, dagli studi postcoloniali alla letteratura, alla riflessione femminista e agli studi di genere. Seguendo i modi in cui i due pensatori francesi hanno concepito e praticato la critica del discorso filosofico e delle categorie politiche moderne di fronte alle trasformazioni del mondo contemporaneo, il volume ricostruisce e intreccia i loro percorsi divergenti per farne emergere nodi e polarità.

Title first published in 2003.'Weber is probably the only person in his generation who is equally at home in and directly informed about contemporary literary theory and its antecedents in Germany, France, and the US. His theoretical interest in psychoanalysis serves as a viewpoint from which a powerful combination of philosophical, linguistic, and political concerns are brought together in an uncommonly productive dialectical interplay'Paul de Man This book presents the first introductory text examining the work of the contemporary thinker, Samuel Weber. Accessible, compelling and challenging, Weber's writing offers a rewarding investigation into the connections between literary and cultural studies, media and technology, and philosophy and aesthetics, in the context of significant intellectual debates and developments linking Europe and North America. The critical practice of Weber's various texts is explored in detail, along with his studies in philosophy, aesthetics, deconstruction, media, technology, psychoanalysis and theatre.

Analyses of the dynamics of change present in Europe are not complete without taking into account the role and function of the critical approach as a founding element of European culture. An appreciation of critical thinking must go hand-in-hand with reflection on its essence, forms, and centuries-long tradition. The European philosophical tradition has thematized the problem of criticism since its appearance. This book contains articles on the history of philosophical criticism and ways that it has been understood in European thought. Individual chapters contain both historical-philosophical and problem-oriented analyses, indicating the relationships between philosophical criticism and rationalism, logic, scepticism, atheism, dialectic procedure, and philosophical counseling, among others. Philosophical reflection on critical thinking allows for an acknowledgment of its significance in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of politics, aesthetics, methodology, philosophy of language, and cultural theory. The book should interest not only humanities scholars, but also scholars in other fields, as the development of an anti-dogmatic critical approach is a lasting and indispensible challenge for all disciplines.

From The Essays of Aruthur Schopenhauer translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Essays include On Authorship, On Style, On the Study of Latin, On Men of Letters, On Thinking for Oneself, On Criticism, On Reputation, and On GeniusAccording to Wikipedia:'Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called'will'. Schopenhauer's analysis of'will'led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, Schopenhauer favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of Buddhism. Schopenhauer's metaphysical analysis of'will', his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Sigmund Freud.'

Engaging scholars from across humanistic fields grappling with the role and value of theory in our times, Theory's Autoimmunity argues for reclaiming theory's skepticism as a value. To cultivate theory's skeptical impulses is to embrace what Jacques Derrida has termed autoimmunity: a condition of openness to the outside—openness of the self, the community, democracy, or other ideals—that allows for change. Openness to change comes with risks, and the self-protective temptation to immunize oneself or one's community against these risks is strong. Yet without such risks, without openness to otherness, no encounter with the new, with difference, can ever take place. Without autoimmunity, theory becomes stagnant and programmatic, unable to receive and respond to the other or the event, to address, revise, and produce new meanings. Taking up the challenge of thinking theory as skepticism, with and against philosophy, this study turns to literature as an interlocutor, investigating the ways theory, like the literary works of Montaigne, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Morrison, or Duras, declines to put on the interpretive brakes, to stop reading at a point of understanding. Undoing and remaking itself, theory—those critical interpretive practices that revel in the creation and proliferation of meaning—becomes autoimmune.

Inventing Agency addresses some of the most central and pressing concerns in criticism, theory, and philosophy today. As new metaphysics of the realia of power and independently animated objects have replaced ancient conceptualizations of substance, being, and causation, the question of the “subject”-of the capability for just such conceptual change, for acting to any effect whatsoever-has reemerged with fresh critical urgency. Writing on theories and fictions of the subject from Aristotle to Althusser and Fielding to Flaubert, the contributors to Inventing Agency explore the unprecedented productions of the subject as agent-of cognition, aesthetic experience and judgment, imagination and representation, and moral and political action-that together define the “revolution” in reflection that Kant called “the Age of Critique.” Informed by expertise in such interrelated fields as continental and analytic philosophy and literary history, Marxian and utopian theory, poetics and cultural criticism, moral theory and theory of sensibility, and feminist and disability studies, Inventing Agency addresses the invention of subjecthood by philosophical and literary conceptions of the specifically human capacities that continue to reveal the prospect of social-individual and historical-agency in action. This collection on the productions of the subject is vital reading for anyone engaged in thinking about where the categories of contemporary theory come from, and where they might lead next.

Karl Popper's philosophy of science, with its focus on falsifiability and critical rationalism, provides a firm foundation for a theory of literary interpretation that avoids the pitfalls of many contemporary theories. Building on the work of Popper, John Eccles, Imre Lakatos, Ernst Gombrich, Louise DeSalvo and James Battersby, this study outlines the approach, sets it in a theoretical context, and applies the theory to challenging works by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, Jean Toomer, Shakespeare, Henry Fielding, J-M.G. LeClézio, J.M. Coetzee, Jonathan Littell, Patrick Modiano, Albert Schweitzer, Popper's protégé William Warren Bartley III and the Gospel of Mark. The book concludes with a set of general principles for understanding literature as a mode of investigation in what Popper called the unended quest.

Jacques Riviere knew how to accept art emotionally. No French critic was ever less a traditional pedagogue. Rivibre was an intelligent French writer, who knew that the summit of the intellect is to admit aff ective knowledge, instinct, and intuition. The'heart,'or taste, is always superior to raw intelligence.Reviere's supple metaphors are not easily rendered into English. Th e density of his thought, the complexity of his views, the moral and spiritual fervor that vibrates in these pages, further enhances the difficulties the skilled translator must overcome. Literary criticism is often ephemeral; it has served its purpose if it stimulates discussion about the work of art under scrutiny. Not so with essays like these. Th ey demand an active reading, as do the original works themselves. Th ey do not easily yield their signifi cance.Among the critics who came into the French literary scene in the years immediately preceding and following the First World War, Jacques Riviere has been least affected by the attrition of time. His studies of Proust and Rimbaud still rank among the two or three essential works to be read on these authors. Few other critics have gone further in a sensuous perception of these authors'work and the intellectual lucidity in analyzing it. Reviere had few pretensions to profundity and a great purity of style. In an age of slogans and judgments, this volume reminds the reader of the extraordinary role of European critical thought in the twentieth century.

Complaints about the decline of critical standards in literature and culture in general have been voiced for much of the twentieth century. These have extended from F.R. Leavis's laments for a'lost center of intelligence and urbane spirit,'to current opposition to the predominance of radical critical theory in contemporary literature departments. Humanist criticism, which has as its object the quality of life as well as works of art, may well lack authority in the contemporary world. Even amid the disruptions of the industrial revolution, nineteenth-century humanists such as Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and Thomas Carlyle could assume a positive order of value and shared habits of imaginative perception and understanding between writers and readers. Eugene Goodheart argues that, by contrast, contemporary criticism is infused with the skepticism of modernist aesthetics. It has willfully rejected the very idea of moral authority.Goodheart starts from the premise that questions about the moral authority of literature and criticism often turn upon a prior question of what happens when the sacred disappears or is subjected to the profane. He focuses on contending spiritual views, in particular the dialectic between the Protestant-inspired, largely English humanist tradition of Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, and D.H. Lawrence and the decay of Catholicism represented by James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. Goodheart argues that literary modernism, in distancing itself from natural and social vitality, tends to render suspect all privileged positions. It thereby undermines the critical act, which assumes the priority of a particular set of values. Goodheart makes his case by analyzing the work of a variety of novelists, poets, and critics, nineteenth century and contemporary. He blends literary theory and practical criticism.

Linguist, critic, poet, psychologist, I. A. Richards (1893-1979) was one of the great polymaths of the twentieth century. He is best known, however, as one of the founders of modern literary critical theory. Richards revolutionized criticism by turning away from biographical and historical readings as well as from the aesthetic impressionism. Seeking a more exacting approach, he analyzed literary texts as syntactical structures that could be broken down into smaller interacting verbal units of meaning. Practical Criticism, fi rst published in 1929, is a landmark volume in demonstrating this method.

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists. This use can be traced in the work of major cultural figures not just in Denmark and Scandinavia but also in the wider world. They have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables, and allegories. The present volume documents this influence in the different language groups and traditions. Tome V treats the work of a heterogeneous group of writers from the Romance languages and from Central and Eastern Europe. Kierkegaard has been particularly important for Spanish literature: the Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges, Leonardo Castellani, and Ernesto Sábato, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, and the Spanish essayist and philosopher María Zambrano were all inspired to varying degrees by him. The Dane also appears in the work of Romanian writer Max Blecher, while the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa was almost certainly inspired by Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms. Kierkegaard has also influenced diverse literary figures from Central and Eastern Europe. His influence appears in the novels of the contemporary Hungarian authors Péter Nadas and Péter Esterházy, the work of the Russian writer and literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and the Czech novelist Ivan Klíma. Tome V also examines how Kierkegaard's treatment of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling interested the Polish-born Israeli novelist Pinhas Sadeh.

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists worldwide who have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables, and allegories. The goal of the present volume is to document this influence in different language groups and traditions. Tome II is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan. The next generation of writers from the turn of the century and through the First World War also saw in Kierkegaard important points of inspiration. These included Ernesto Dalgas and Harald Kidde, who used elements of Kierkegaard's thought in their novels. Modern Danish writers such as Karen Blixen, Martin A. Hansen, and Villy Sørensen have continued to incorporate Kierkegaard into their works. There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard has indelibly stamped his name on Danish literature.

David Winters has quickly become a leading voice in the new landscape of online literary criticism. His widely-published work maps the furthest frontiers of contemporary fiction and theory. The essays in this book range from the American satirist Sam Lipsyte to the reclusive Australian genius Gerald Murnane; from the'distant reading'of Franco Moretti to the legacy of Gordon Lish. Meditations on style, form and fictional worlds sit side-by-side with overviews of the cult status of Oulipo, the aftermath of modernism, and the history of continental philosophy. Infinite Fictions is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the forefront of literary thought.

This is a collection of critical essays that integrate literature and ideas. Daniel Fuchs presents the writer's individuality as artist and thinker, focusing on the writer's interaction within a wide range of cultural, political, and historical periods and situations representative of the modern period. The essays reflect a progression that goes beyond chronology or historical survey in the consistency and interrelation of the literary and cultural themes explored and the references within them.The book is built around writers who are of central concern to the author. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive framework for analysing modernism. Fuchs first deals with high modernism, in discussions of Hemingway and Stevens, who in different ways critique tradition and collapsing values. The essays that follow deal with the'contemporary,'and here the focus is mainly on American Jewish writers and their cultural impact after modernism.The author's stance is in relation not only to these traditions but to others that might be thought antagonistic: the formalism of the New Critics and the deconstructionism that reduces the author to a replaceable variable in the dialects of cultural power relations. Fuchs pays tribute to the former, illustrating wider points in literary, socio-cultural, and political history. The overall emphasis on these'extrinsic'matters underscores the book's appeal to a wide audience.

While Kierkegaard is primarily known as a philosopher or religious thinker, his writings have also been used extensively by literary writers, critics and artists. This use can be traced in the work of major cultural figures not just in Denmark and Scandinavia but also in the wider world. They have been attracted to his creative mixing of genres, his complex use of pseudonyms, his rhetoric and literary style, and his rich images, parables, and allegories. The present volume documents this influence in the different language groups and traditions. Tome IV examines Kierkegaard's surprisingly extensive influence in the Anglophone world of literature and art, particularly in the United States. His thought appears in the work of the novelists Walker Percy, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, Don Delillo, and Louise Erdrich. He has also been used by the famous American literary critics, George Steiner and Harold Bloom. The American composer Samuel Barber made use of Kierkegaard in his musical works. Kierkegaard has also exercised an influence on British and Irish letters. W.H. Auden sought in Kierkegaard ideas for his poetic works, and the contemporary English novelist David Lodge has written a novel Therapy, in which Kierkegaard plays an important role. Cryptic traces of Kierkegaard can also be found in the work of the famous Irish writer James Joyce.

Literary Freedom: a Cultural Right to Literature is a non-fiction study of literary freedom from a political-philosophical perspective. It adds an original perspective on the issue of literary freedom as it synthesizes debates from human rights as well as providing a new way of addressing the question'How do we mitigate against the harm caused by hate speech?'by applying Amartya Sen's capability approach to this question.,

“…aspirations to perfection awaken us to our actual imperfection.” It is in the space between these aspirations and our inability to achieve them that Grant reflects upon imperfection. Grant argues that an awareness of imperfection, defined as both suffering and the need for justice, drives us to an unrelenting search for perfection, freedom, and self-determination. The twenty-one brief chapters of Imperfection develop this governing idea as it relates to the present situation of the God debate, modern ethnic conflicts, and the pursuit of freedom in relation to the uncertainties of personal identity and the quest for self-determination.Known for his exploration of the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka, as well as his contribution to the study of Northern Ireland and the complex relationships among religion, literature, and ethnicity, Grant provides the reader with an analysis of the widespread rise of religious extremism across the globe. Referencing Plato, Van Gogh, Jesus, and the Buddha, he enlightens the reader with both succinct and original insights into human society. Imperfection is the result of an important Canadian public intellectual at work.

Textual Imitation offers a new critique of the space between fiction and truth, poetry and philosophy. In a nimble, yet startlingly wide-ranging argument, esteemed scholar Jonathan Hart argues that recognition and misrecognition are the keys to understanding texts and contexts from the Old World to the New World.

Ce texte reprend en miroir le ton malicieux adopté par l'historien d'art Daniel Arasse dans On n'y voit rien, pour décrire La Leçon de musique de Vermeer : si l'écran des références occulte l'éclat de la peinture, il entraîne aussi la surdité... et on n'y entend rien de ce que la peinture laisse entendre! Le propos de ce livre,'avoir l'oreille aussi éveillée que les yeux', permet d'être attentif au sous-entendu et/ou à la double entente, de repérer la manifestation inouïe de la musique dans les tableaux.

Quelles sont les conditions de possibilité d'un humanisme chrétien? Pourquoi et comment rapatrier Pascal dans ladite sphère de l'humanisme chrétien? Rapportant les grands textes du philosophe de Port-Royal aux humanismes et aux anti-humanismes de la Renaissance et du Grand Siècle, l'auteur veut faire apparaître les spécificités de l'humanisme pascalien. Il convoque pour y parvenir les travaux de philosophes contemporains (Levinas, Ricœur, Mounier, Greisch).

This book assesses and contrasts the reading styles of two major French philosophers, Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze. Both men share a historical and intellectual tradition and worked alongside each other in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vincennes, Paris. Jean-Jacques Lecercle seeks to address the French critical corpus often neglected in English writing on Deleuze, as well as contributing to the critical account of Badiou which remains limited in both philosophical cultures. He examines the philosophy of literature that can be derived from their work, contrasting the analytic and the continental philosophies of literature: the difference between Deleuze and Badiou will involve a contrast between Deleuze's aesthetics and Badiou's inaesthetics; their common ground will be found in a politics of literature.

Kostas Mavrakis entreprend dans cet ouvrage de poursuivre son frère ennemi, Badiou, dans les domaines de la politique, de l'esthétique et de la religion. Il étudie ce faisant les grands problèmes qui se posent à la pensée contemporaine. Comment définir l'art et le non-art qui en tient lieu aujourd'hui? Peut-on encore envisager une politique volontariste de civilisation permettant au peuple de prendre en main son destin? Quel serait le rapport d'une telle politique au fondement ultime des valeurs? En quel sens notre survie en dépend-elle?

Les recherches présentées dans ce volume visent à analyser l'évènement comme le concept fondamental de la phénoménologie d'Emmanuel Lévinas. Cette phénoménologie elle-même se présente comme un évènement. Phénoménologie qui laisse à advenir la différence de l'autre : la venue de l'autre dans sa différence est un évènement, et la pensée qui tente de dire cette venue est aussi un évènement.

Depuis 1971, Nicolas Grimaldi s'attache à formuler, dans un style limpide au service d'une rare puissance spéculative, une ontologie de la vie doublée d'une éthique profondément novatrice. La synthèse critique de cette oeuvre majeure est donc en même temps une réflexion sur le sens et la valeur de la vie, dans ses dimensions biologique, éthique et spirituelle.

Ce livre est une tentative pour répondre, à travers l'étude des fondements logique et épistémologique du platonisme de Quine (1908-2000), à la question: qu'est-ce que le platonisme mathématique? Quine, à rebours des principales solutions formulées avant lui,'gonfle'l'ontologie de la science et propose au platonisme un ancrage naturaliste et réaliste inédit.

Le principe général de l'épistémologie comtienne est la nécessité du passage du concret à l'abstrait, représenté par l'analyse mathématique. Dans les mathématiques - et surtout dans l'analyse infinitésimale - Comte reconnaît des systèmes de signes qui détiennent leur force de l'emploi de signe généraux représentant des idées générales.

Le projet de constituer une science politique repose sur la notion d'Humanité, que Comte place au-dessus des peuples, des religions et des gouvernements. Il s'agit du résultat le plus original de sa philosophie : faire accéder à une'religion'dont l'essentiel est d'honorer l'humain, au-delà de toutes les divinités, pour proclamer l'altruisme valeur démocratique suprême.

Thème majeur de sa philosophie, l'auto-éveil représente aux yeux de Nishida (1870-1945) l'un des moyens de repenser le problème de la subjectivité moderne, en offrant la possibilité, à l'aide du concept de relation, de concevoir un soi plus vaste, plus englobant. Cette pensée passablement difficile a donné lieu ici à un travail de philosophie comparée qui met Nishida en relation avec Watsuji, Buber, Descartes et Augustin.

La réalisation libre de soi présuppose chez Ricœur une juste articulation des notions d'autonomie et de dépendance dans les registres multiples d'une existence fragile, vulnérable et mortelle. Pour fonder en raison cette affirmation, l'auteur s'emploie à reconstruire la compréhension particulière de l'être du soi présidant à la réflexion éthique de Paul Ricœur.

Même s'il n'y n'existe pas de'théorie leibnizienne du vivant'à proprement parler, il est possible de dégager chez Leibniz une conception de la vie comme système évolutif de forces actives animé par une dynamique d'optimisation, unité d'un'Désir'où être et comprendre sont indissociables, dans la mesure où mieux on comprend, plus on est.

Ce livre intéressera toute personne curieuse d'une pensée novatrice confrontant culture grecque et culture juive. Alors que l'invention de la démocratie est traditionnellement portée au crédit de la philosophie athénienne, il démontre que le statut de citoyen trouve également son origine dans la conception originale de la notion de roi chère au judaïsme.

La lecture de ces deux penseurs de la Renaissance peut nous servir de modèle heuristique pour, d'une part, comprendre la force de l'image dans nos sociétés, dont Machiavel inaugura l'analyse, et, d'autre part, saisir la permanence du millénarisme et de l'utopie, sur laquelle Campanella fonda une politique ancrée dans un imaginaire excédant la conscience humaine.

Aussi inventive soit-elle, la pensée française contemporaine relève d'un espace borné, dont cet ouvrage tente de déterminer la teneur et les limites. Aux frontières de la pensée française, l'auteur privilégie deux révélateurs : Emmanuel Levinas et François Laruelle. L'auteur éprouve et questionne l'élément même de la pensée française contemporaine : le pouvoir entendu comme autorité transcendante ou bien comme puissance immanente. Comment se délivrer aujourd'hui de cet élément et des figures qui le reconduisent?

L'auteur remet en question la perception traditionnelle du féminin à partir d'une nouvelle grille de lecture fondée sur la notion d'u-topie, de non-lieu, inspirée par la compréhension lévinassienne du sujet comme fragilité, passivité, vulnérabilité et faiblesse. Une voix spécifiquement féminine peut-elle s'élever par-delà la neutralité du discours philosophique?

Sans être une biographie, cette étude consacrée à l'actualité de l'itinéraire intellectuel de Michel Foucault retrace son parcours philosophique, qui tenta d'articuler rationnellement les notions d'actualité et d'expériences de la vérité. Avec cette esquisse d'une philosophie pratique comme lieu d'une éthique de la responsabilité s'ouvre un nouvel horizon initiatique.

Pour Deleuze, la philosophie est moins une entreprise de fondation que de problématisation : la puissance de l'indéterminé prime sur l'acte de la détermination. A ce titre, le problème fondamental, né de cette tension entre détermination et indéterminé, est selon lui l'irréductibilité de la pensée à l'acte de penser, c'est-à-dire à l'être. C'est le va-et-vient de l'une à l'autre qui engendre le fameux plan d'immanence, aussi nommé chaosmos, règne de la contingence et de l'inconscient.

Cette analyse des écrits ignatiens fait découvrir un Ignace de Loyola méconnu et inédit, révèlant, outre une irréductible singularité, des potentialités exceptionnelles, sans rapport avec les caractéristiques ascétiques, méthodologiques et spiritualistes classiques retenues par les jésuites, un mysticisme étouffé par ses tâches du généralat de la Compagnie de Jésus.

'L'approche de Jean-Luc Pouliquen se distingue par son originalité en révélant des aspects de la réflexion bachelardienne qui n'avaient pas encore été mis en lumière', écrit Marly Bulcao dans sa préface. S'appuyant sur des témoignages et des documents inédits, l'auteur s'emploie à faire revivre ces moments-clés où Bachelard a donné corps à sa conversion à l'imaginaire. Louis Guillaume, Jacques Audiberti, Jean Paulhan, les surréalistes, Roger Caillois sont des figures ici évoquées pour le rôle qu'elles ont joué dans l'épanouissement de la pensée bachelardienne.

Philosophe et moraliste, Louis Lavelle (1883-1951) a développé une philosophie de l'existence opposée à celle de Sartre. Il considère l'acte réflexif comme le point de jonction entre le moi et l'Etre : prendre conscience de soi, s'inventer soi-même, c'est alors, certes, se reconnaître à part entière, mais c'est aussi découvrir la présence fondamentale de l'Absolu.

Avec le Discours de la Servitude volontaire d'Etienne de La Boétie, nous sommes entraînés dans ces guerres fratricides entre catholiques et protestants, dans ces guerres de religion si mal nommées. Le Contr'Un fait partie d'une littérature clandestine, d'une littérature de combat, le combat contre un pouvoir injuste et despotique. Jamais pourtant La Boétie ne jette tout à fait le masque. L'ombre des gibets avait de quoi dissuader le plus généreux des pamphlétaires. Jamais La Boétie n'a renié ce texte qu'il sait hors la loi.

Ce livre est voué à l'élucidation de cette surprenante formule avancée par Jacques Derrida lors d'une conférence en 1989 :'la déconstruction est la justice'. Après l'analyse des concepts derridiens de'différance'et de'déconstruction', l'auteur met en scène la relation intime et complexe du penseur à sa discipline, en restituant bien son contexte intellectuel, notamment l'influence de Heidegger.

Loin de vouloir oblitérer l'aspect charnel de l'oeuvre de Sade, cet ouvrage veut en montrer la conciliation avec la constitution d'une pensée juridique et politique cohérente, exposée dans le pamphlet'Français, encore un effort si vous voulez être républicains'que l'on retrouve dans La Philosophie dans le boudoir. A la fois aristocrate, homme des Lumières, libertin et révolutionnaire, Sade est aussi animé d'une ambition fort généreuse - celle de réveiller la conscience politique de ses contemporains mais aussi de tous les lecteurs à venir.

La perception nous fait-elle véritablement connaître cette réalité en soi qui caractérise le monde extérieur? Le Moi se rapporte-t-il directement à un'Non-Moi'? Si une chose en soi existe, comment dépasser les limites du'cercle de l'esprit fini'et prouver qu'elle est telle que nous la percevons? Selon la lecture que nous aimerions proposer de la philosophie développée par Fichte de 1792 à 1799, seule'l'auto-affection sentimentale'constitue une synthèse du sujet et de l'objet qui soir capable de nous faire rejeter les conceptions réalistes du monde.

Les fameux cours de Nietzsche sur la rhétorique classique laissent d'abord deviner une fondation anthropologique du langage, formulée en partie grâce à G. Gerber et G. Humboldt, en partie au moyen de notions plus anciennes, tirées de la Rhétorique, des Lois et de Ion. De nombreuses études visent, depuis trente ans, à expliquer cette fondation dans le détail, afin de faire toute la lumière sur une mystérieuse métaphore décrite à partir de l'anthropologie. S'agit-il d'une métaphore non langagière, voire non-naturelle, qui imprimerait, par d'imperceptibles bonds, un mouvement à la signification transmettant aux apparences verbales des accents inouïs?

Depuis Platon, une métaphysique négatrice de la Vie hante la philosophie. Il nous faut, dit Nietzsche, dépasser cette métaphysique, afin de libérer le dire-Oui, la véritable affirmation de la Vie. Mais comment relever ce défi? Est-il possible de réfuter la métaphysique? Car celle-ci est omniprésente, y compris dans les outils que nous utilisons pour la contester : la raison, la logique, les concepts, le langage argumentatif semblent trouver dans la métaphysique leur justification dernière. Argumenter n'est-ce dès lors pas inévitablement'faire de la métaphysique'?

Cet ouvrage se penche sur l'évolution des attitudes anti-humanistes. A partir de ses commentaires sur le bourreau et la théorie des sacrifices, situerait-on Joseph de Maistre aux origines des doctrines totalitaires? Voici un ensemble de textes méconnus allant des premiers effrois suscités par l'image du bourreau jusqu'à l'enthousiasme des fascistes français séduits par la théorie des sacrifices sanglants en passant par l'appropriation des écrits de Joseph de Maistre par Charles Maurras ou Carl Schmitt.