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Derrida's writings on education, most of which are gathered in Du droit a la philosophie, form a rich and multifaceted body of work.1 In these writings Derrida covers a wide range of topics related to the teaching of philosophy, including the appropriate age at which philosophy should be learned, the relation between philosophical teaching, educational institutions, and the State, the links between philosophy and national languages, the position of philosophy both within and outside the University, and the role of means-ends thinking in philosophical research, to name just a few. Those of us interested in education in philosophy thus have much to learn from this resource, and I would advocate strongly for a closer engagement with it than is currently the case.2In this essay I pursue this engagement by following one thread of thinking in Derrida's education writings, namely his attempts to transform how philosophy is conceived, paying particular attention to the role played in this transformation by Derrida's rethinking of philosophy's relation to other disciplines. My task is complicated somewhat by the fact that philosophy has more than one referent in these writings. In texts related to Derrida's involvement in French education debates of the 1970s, "philosophy" refers for the most part to "philosophy in France" By contrast, in other texts, notably those associated with the College International de Philosophie, the term transcends this national boundary, signaling a broader European institution anchored in Kant. This duality means there is no single transformation of philosophy taking place in Derrida's work, and the content of these referents also poses challenges of translation for those, like myself, working in other institutional contexts, who still want to learn from what Derrida has to say. Nonetheless, these challenges are not insurmountable, and my wager is that Derrida's new understandings of philosophy, specifically as they developed through rethinking philosophy's relation to other modes of inquiry, can provide inspiration for our own attempts to defend and transform philosophical education.One constant across Derrida's work is that philosophy is never spoken of as eternal or unchanging, as something that transcends time. Rather, philosophy for Derrida always appears in institutional forms-with "institution" understood broadly, covering practices, traditions, and organizational bodies-and among these forms, one to which he refers frequently is the institution of philosophy in France. Now to speak of this institution in the singular is to some extent misleading. Philosophy in France is constituted by multiple institutions, in multiple areas of society, containing multiple divisions. Philosophy is taught in the lycees, in the universities, and in the grandes ecoles, and philosophical research is supported in many of these establishments, as well as at the College de France and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Philosophy also appears in the French public sphere at a level perhaps greater than in any other nation, with a presence across the media and a publishing industry that addresses a large public outside the academic world.Nonetheless, this complex multiplicity is given some measure of coherence due to its being organized around a focal point, the philosophy class in the lycee. Philosophy has long been a central feature of the baccalaureat, and, even as its presence has been reduced over time, it remains a required course across the general and the technical streams of the certificate today. This presence in the lycee curriculum has important practical consequences for philosophy everywhere else in France. The fact that studying philosophy in the grandes ecoles and universities might lead to a specific profession at the end-that of becoming a lycee philosophy professor-helps sustain enrollments in the subject. This in turn supports positions for those teaching in higher education. …

В статье рассматривается вопрос о природе понимания с точки зрения философии языка. Речь идет о понимании значения языковых выражений. Мы рассмотрели три аспекта значения предложения и соответствующие им три типа понимания значения предложения: понимание условий истинности предложения, понимание пресуппозиций, понимание импликатур. Все эти три типа понимания и значения могут изучаться формальными методами.

In recent years, philosophers influenced by Peirce's pragmatism have contributed to the democracy debate by offering not simply a justification of democracy that relies on epistemic as well as mora ...

What is the strength of anthropological fieldwork when we want to understand human technologies? In this article we argue that anthropological fieldwork can be understood as a process of gaining insight into different contextualisations in practiced places that will open up new understandings of technologies in use, e.g., technologies as multistable ontologies. The argument builds on an empirical study of robots at a Danish rehabilitation centre. Ethnographic methods combined with anthropological learning processes open up new way for exploring how robots enter into professional practices and change values, social relations and materialities. Though substantial funding has been invested in developing health service robots, few studies have been undertaken that explore human-robot interactions as they play out in everyday practice. We argue that the complex learning processes involve not only so-called end-users but also staff, management, doings and discourse in a complex amalgamation of materials and values.

The philosophy of science took shape as an autonomous discipline in the first decades of the Twentieth Century in connection with the movement known as logical positivism or logical empiricism. According to logical empiricists philosophy of science ought to perform a “rational reconstruction” aimed at exhibiting the logical structure of scientific theories and inferential processes involved in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. While focusing on the syntactical and semantical aspects of scientific language, logical empiricists left out of the realm of the philosophy of science the sociological and psychological aspects of theory formation, as well as all methodological aspects belonging to experimentation. Starting from the early Sixties this conception gradually changed, and philosophy of science underwent a radical transformation, leading to a significant broadening of its scope. New issues and problems were addressed, belonging to fields neglected by the traditional approach. This paper sketches the main features of the discipline as it is understood today as opposed to its traditional outlook, and suggests that the term “philosophy of the sciences” is better suited than “philosophy of science” to describe its present state.

Philosophy is often understood in terms of public benefit as being synonymous with its application to other domains of public life such as politics, economics, education etc. The question I would like to raise is of an altogether different nature—namely, it is the question of whether philosophy can be seen as having any public or social value per se, before there is any further thought of application or usage. In particular, it is the question of whether it contains anything universally significant, something that could make it of interest to anyone as seen in the context of one’s personal evolution. And in order to answer that question, first we have to find out what philosophy is to the philosophers themselves and how it benefits them.

Confucianism, since the time of Confucius, emphasizes “practical wisdom” as the realization of philosophy. This approach accentuates the practical aspects of wisdom rather than the analytical rationale of the intellect. Emphasis on practical wisdom persistently reinforces a moral foundation that is not differentiated from personal virtue. At the same time, practical wisdom in Confucianism stresses self-cultivation, or the complete transformation of the self, derived from the internal state of the heart/mind (xin 心). Finally, Confucian insists that practical wisdom must be transformed into practical action.

What is philosophy? And what good is it for? How are these questions related to what is studied in philosophy courses at university? I argue that doing philosophy - philosophizing - is both the origin and the heart of what philosophy is. As a result, the methodology involved in Philosophy for Children (P4C) counts as philosophy, and shares important similarities with what academic philosophers do. I go on to argue that doing philosophy aims at achieving truth, understanding and a good life, aims shared by P4C but not always by philosophy courses. I conclude by reflecting on what studying philosophy can and could achieve.

The relevance of Aristotle’s philosophy today is the survival of many Aristotelian concepts, definitions, distinctions, in the culture of many countries. In some cases, e. g. in the fields of logic and of metaphysics, the Aristotelian concepts survive as useful instruments for reasoning, like the concepts of category, contrariety, contradiction, or the distinctions between matter and form and between potency and act. But in other fields, like biology and psychology, some Aristotelian doctrines serve equally as examples of conceptual innovations, as was recognised by the biologist Max Delbrück about the discovery of DNA and by Anthony Kenny about the discussion of the “Mind-Body Problem.” Even in the fields of ethics and of politics, the revival of the practical philosophy of Aristotle has been an occasion for developing new models of social life and organisation of society, as is shown by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha C. Nussbaum, and by economists like Amartya Sen.

This essay presents the challenges facing those preparing to teach the history of modern philosophy and proposes some solutions. I first discuss the goals for such a course, as well as the particular methodological challenges of teaching a history of modern philosophy course. Next a standard set of thinkers, readings, and themes is presented, followed by some alternatives. I then argue that one ought to diversify one’s syllabus beyond the canoni­cal set of six or seven white men. As a first step toward that goal, I propose several ways to include women philosophers in the syllabus. I then lay out assignments and in-class activities that aid students toward the course goals. I conclude with a consideration of the challenges and rewards of teaching modern philosophy.