Symposium (Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy / Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale)

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:30:02 PST

After Hermeneutics?

L. Sebastian Purcell — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:30:01 PST

Recently Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux have attacked the core of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition: its commitment to the finitude of human understanding. If accurate, this critique threatens to render the whole tradition a topic of merely historical interest. Given the depth of the criticism, this essay aims to establish a provisional defense of hermeneutics. After briefly reviewing each critique, it is argued that Badiou and Meillassoux themselves face rather intractable difficulties. These difficulties, then, open the space for a hermeneutic response, which is accomplished largely by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. We close with a suggested program for hermeneutic thought.

“A Thought in Which Everything Has Been Thought”: On the Messianic Idea in Levinas

Dana Hollander — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:30:00 PST

De l’industrialisation du mal-être à la renaissance du politique. Un entretien avec Bernard Stiegler

Jean-François Bissonnette et al. — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:59 PST

Revisiting the Sokal Hoax: The Paradoxical Gravity of Boundary Issues

Ronald J. McKinney SJ — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:59 PST

In the first section of my paper, I want to consider the “paradoxes of complementarity” between polarised notions such as the quantum concepts of “wave” and “particle.” I will argue that if we treat this topic with all the “gravity” it deserves, we will be able to understand once and for all why this debate (and others like it) can never be completely resolved (paradox intended). In the second section, I want to consider the notion of “parody.” At the end, astute readers must determine for themselves whether I can be trusted to mean what I say, or whether this is all merely ironic, a post-modern hoax, one that undercuts the very boundaries it installs.

La philosophie de la chair de Michel Henry : Vers une onto-phénoménologie de l’individualité

Rémy Gagnon — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:58 PST

Cet article souhaite élucider la philosophie de la chair développée par Michel Henry. Il s’agit de voir comment Henry parvient à penser la chair comme la possibilité principielle de l’individualité. Nous voulons montrer que la démarche henryenne repose non seulement sur une mise en question des canons de l’apparaître, mais également sur la conviction que le problème de l’individualité trouve sa solution dans une expérience charnelle radicale de soi-même permettant d’opérer un repli en-deçà du corps chosifié de la phénoménologie husserlienne. C’est ce double mécanisme conceptuel qui permet à Henry de rejoindre l’individualité et de l’établir comme fondement de la vie in-ek-statique.

Ugo Perone’s Philosophy at the Threshold: Space, Time and (Simulated) Political Life

Robert T. Valgenti — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:57 PST

Adorno’s Dialectical Realism

Linda Martín Alcoff et al. — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:57 PST

The idea that Adorno should be read as a “realist” of any sort may indeed sound odd. And unpacking from Adorno’ s elusive prose a credible and useful normative reconstruction of epistemology and metaphysics will take some work. But we argue that he should be added to the growing group of epistemologists and metaphysicians who have been developing post-positivist versions of realism such as contextual, internal, pragmatic and critical realisms. These latter realisms, however, while helpfully showing how realism can coexist with ontological pluralism, for example, as well as a highly contextualised account of knowledge, have not developed a political reflexivity about how the object of knowledge—the real—is constructed. As a field, then, post-positivist realisms have been politically naïve, which is perhaps why they have not enjoyed more influence among Continental philosophers.

The Risk of the Present: Benjamin, Bonhoeffer and Celan

Ugo Perone — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:56 PST

The following remarks try to trace a scenario of twentieth-century philosophy, which in my opinion shows a new interest in the issue of time. Many have underscored that nineteenth-century philosophy replaces the paradigm of Nature with that of History as an historical a priori in Foucault’s sense, that is, as the horizon within which the problems are to be located and solved. The issue of identifying the dominant nineteenth-century paradigm—further complicated by the declining resort to the great narratives of this “short century”—is still open, so I do not believe it improper to point out that many twentieth-century philosophers suddenly reconsidered the issue of time as a way of defining the nineteenth-century paradigm of time in a new manner.

Public Space and Its Metaphors

Ugo Perone — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:29:55 PST

The political does not exist. What exists is individual and collective life; there is nature, with its inexhaustible cycles; there is the world, the (blind and astute) interlacement of the actions, conflicts and visions that will become history. The political exists only as an invention: the invention of a specific space of the relation that intercepts life, modifies nature, and is a curvature of the world. I would like to dwell on this invention, not without warning that the political of which one speaks precedes and constitutes specific kinds of politics, since it is the condition of their possibility.

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:51 PDT

Autobiography-Heterobiography, Philosophy and Religion in Derrida

Francesco Tampoia — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:50 PDT

In this paper, I would like to show how the movements of never stable meanings that link biography and religion are figured and interwoven throughout a kind of ineffable literary and philosophical notion of religion. Religion is a notion that can be understood through a cluster of topics such as origin, promise, dissociation, the unconditional, forgiveness, the undeconstructable and the possibility of the impossible—terms and expressions that Derrida suggests describe God.

De l’“inter-attention” à l’attention inter-relationnelle. Le croisement de l’attention et de l’intersubjectivité à la lumière de l’attention conjointe

Natalie Depraz — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:49 PDT

Mon objectif ici est de tenter de mettre en relation des problématiques qui se sont construites sans lien systématique ni historique, à savoir, d’une part, celle de l’attention conjointe (joint attention) travaillé depuis plusieurs décennies en philosophie de l’esprit en relation avec des recherches empiriques en psychologie de l’enfant ou en psychologie de l’apprentissage (developmental psychology), et d’autre part, celles de l’attention et de l’intersubjectivité dans la phénoménologie pour l’essentiel husserlienne.

Les vestiges du donné (Apparaître, apparences, aspects)

Jocelyn Benoist — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:48 PDT

Le paradigme classique de la phénoménologie a reposé sur une absolutisation de « l’apparaître », traité comme un règne autonome et clos en lui-même. Cet article met en question les présupposés d’une telle approche. Après une analyse de la grammaire de l’apparaître, qui souligne son caractère ontologiquement engagé, l’auteur s’intéresse particulièrement à l’apparaître soi-disant « véridique », c’est-à-dire : la perception. Il argumente en faveur de la « diaphanéité » de la perception et, en conséquence, la transparence de l’apparaître. Il rejette toute conception de l’apparaître qui le fait paraître « substantiel » ; là-contre, il dégage la place qu’il faut faire au concept d’aspect, comme apparaître situé.

Moralité et affectivité

Marie-Andrée Ricard — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:47 PDT

Le rapport qui existe entre la moralité et l’affectivité est controversé. Mon objectif est de montrer ici que les deux se rejoignent dans une épreuve d’humanité, que cette épreuve consiste en une solidarité avec celui qui souffre et que, en outre, elle est fondatrice pour la morale. Pour y arriver, je me baserai principalement sur l’examen de deux morales dans lesquelles cette question devient brûlante et qui sont opposées l’une à l’autre, soit la morale kantienne et la morale adornienne.

Review Essay: A Metaphysical History of Atheism

Vittorio Hösle — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:46 PDT

The European Union and the U.S.A.: Two Complementary Versions of Western “Empires”?

Vittorio Hösle — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:45 PDT

In the following paper, I want, first, to clarify different concepts of empire. Second, I wish to compare two polities, namely, the U.S.A. and the European Union, and discuss their future prospects. I am particularly interested in the tension between the universalist value system of the two polities and the way they organise their foreign policy.

Introducing… Vittorio Hösle

Pamela J. Reeve et al. — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:05:44 PDT

An interview conducted by Pamela J. Reeve (St. Augustine’s Seminary, Toronto School of Theology) and Antonio Calcagno (King’s University College at UWO, Editor of Symposium)

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:52:47 PST

Michel Foucault : Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres et Le Courage de la vérité

Alain Beaulieu — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:52:47 PST