La principale source biographique sur Platon, selon le témoignage du néoplatonicien Simplicius, a été écrite par le disciple Xénocrate, mais malheureusement elle ne nous est pas parvenue. La première biographie de Platon à ce jour, De Platone et dogmate eius, est d'un auteur latin du IIe siècle, Apulée. Toutes les autres biographies de Platon ont été écrites plus de cinq cents ans après sa mort. L'historien grec Diogène (IIe et IIIe siècles) est l'auteur d'une série de biographies de philosophes grecs (...) (Les vies des philosophes) dans lesquelles il se réfère à la vie de Platon. Il a également écrit une louange funèbre pour Platon. D'autres premiers biographes de Platon sont Olympiodore le Jeune au VIe siècle et une source anonyme. Une source importante sur la vie de Platon est ses dialogues philosophiques, ses treize lettres (peut-être fausses, à l'exception peut-être des Lettres VII et VIII), les écrits d'Aristote, un extrait de l'épicurien Philodème dede Gadara, l'Histoire des philosophes (Syntaxis ton philosophon), Ier siècle av. J.-C., les écrits anonymes de Prolégomène sur la philosophie platonicienne traditionnellement attribués à Olympiodore, Suda, Xe siècle, et La vie de Dio de Plutarque, Ier-IIe siècle. -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18219.92969 . (shrink)

Platon s'est inspir? des travaux philosophiques de certains de ses pr?d?cesseurs, en particulier Socrate, mais aussi Parm?nide, H?raclite et Pythagore, pour d?velopper sa propre philosophie, qui explore les domaines les plus importants, notamment la m?taphysique, l'?thique, l'esth?tique et la politique. Avec son professeur Socrate et son ?l?ve Aristote, il pose les bases de la pens?e philosophique occidentale. Platon est consid?r? comme l'un des philosophes les plus importants et les plus influents de l'histoire humaine, ?tant l'un des fondateurs de la religion (...) et de la spiritualit? occidentales. La philosophie qu'il a d?velopp?e, connue sous le nom de platonisme, est bas?e sur la th?orie des Formes connues par la raison pure comme une solution au probl?me des universaux. La philosophie de Platon s'inscrit dans la lign?e des pr?socratiques, des sophistes et des traditions artistiques qui sous-tendent l'?ducation grecque, dans un cadre nouveau, d?fini par la dialectique et la th?orie des Id?es. Pour Platon, la connaissance est une activit? de l'?me, affect?e par des objets sensibles, et par des processus internes. Dans La R?publique de Platon, la forme la plus ?lev?e est consid?r?e comme la Forme du Bien, la source de toutes les autres Formes qui pourraient ?tre connues par la raison. Le th?me central du livre est la justice, argument?e ? l'aide de plusieurs th?ories platoniciennes, dont le mythe all?gorique de la caverne, la doctrine des Id?es, la dialectique, la th?orie de l'?me et la conception d'une cit? id?ale. Sa dialectique est un type de connaissance, ? r?le ontologique et m?taphysique, qui s'atteint par la confrontation de plusieurs positions pour d?passer l'opinion (doxa), un passage du monde des apparences (ou ? sensible ?) ? la connaissance intellectuelle (ou ? intelligible ? ) aux premiers principes. Le mod?le ?ducatif de Platon (paid?ia) diff?rencie le niveau d'?ducation selon les comp?tences des ?l?ves. Selon les principes socratiques, pour faire justice, il faut savoir ce qui est bien, et c'est ce que le philosophe sait le mieux. Platon a d?taill? ce concept en soulignant la distinction entre le philosophe (qui cherche les principes de v?rit? sans pr?tendre les poss?der) et le sophiste (qui se laisse guider par l'opinion comme seul param?tre valable de la connaissance). (shrink)

Este artículo presenta la interpretación de la Metafísica Hegeliana del Profesor Robert Stern por medio de un énfasis en su lectura holística característica: la tesis fundamental es que este tipo de lectura hace justicia a las propias ideas de Hegel sobre su obra y provee importantes conexiones con la filosofía contemporánea. La propuesta particular del autor es que algunos de los tópicos fundamentales de la interpretación hegeliana emergen con un entendimiento clarificado dada dicha lectura: el concepto de verdad y conocimiento (...) absoluto son reevaluados tras ser mostrada la conexión necesaria entre epistemología y metafísica en el pensamiento de Hegel. La metafísica hegeliana, en consecuencia, aparece como el principio último para una lectura de la filosofía de Hegel en su totalidad e ilumina la naturaleza de la investigación metafísica en general. (shrink)

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still are, or ought to (...) be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCartesian philosophy has had a profound influence on modern Chinese intellectuals since the mid 19th century. After the May Fourth Movement, there have been many Chinese scholars who worked immensely on Cartesian philosophy and conducted fruitful research including translations, biographies, monographs, and a large number of papers. The examination of mind/body has been one of the most important philosophic issues and also a fundamental truth-searching of the various great thinkers, from Confucius and Socrates to many later Eastern and Western philosophers. (...) There are certain similarities and distinctions between Confucian ‘mind/body’ and Cartesian ‘mind/body’. As a super country with the highest population in the world, the studies of Cartesian philosophy in China have been very inadequate; it should be more prosperous and successful. (shrink)

What is arguably the central criticism of Hegel’s philosophical system by the Continental tradition, a criticism which represents a unifying thread in the diverse work of Schelling, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Adorno, is that Hegel fails to adequately do justice to the notion of individuality. My aim in this paper is to counter the claim that Hegel’s idea of the concrete universal fails to properly explain the real uniqueness of individuals. In what follows, I argue that whilst the Continental critique (...) (as it is particularly expressed by Adorno) is prima facie attractive, it is ultimately misguided. This is because the critics of Hegel fail to correctly understand (i) his principal argument in Sense-Certainty; (ii) crucial features of his logico-metaphysics; and (iii) his notion of wholeness. I contend that carefully explicating these important parts of the Hegelian system not only shows that Hegel’s metaphysical commitments are not those which do not leave meaningful room for or make adequate sense of individuality, but that they also reveal a sophisticated treatment of the interdependency between the categories of individuality, particularity and universality in a way which conceives of individuality robustly. (shrink)

Since the late 1960s there has been a resurgence of interest in Spinozism in France: Gilles Deleuze was among the first who gave life to a ‘new Spinoza’ with his seminal book Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. While Deleuze was primarily interested in Spinoza’s ontology and ethics, the contemporary French philosopher Étienne Balibar focuses on the political writings. Despite their common fascination for Spinoza’s relational definition of the individual, both thinkers have drawn very different consequences from the Spinozist inspiration regarding the (...) relevance of his philosophy for a contemporary ethical and political thought. Deleuze draws from Spinoza an ethics of the encounter, an ‘ethology’ that is concerned with the composition of bodies on a plane of immanence. Balibar, on the contrary, deals with the modes of communication that we institute between one another and that are always effectuations on two levels at once: the real and the imaginary. Whereas Deleuze emphasizes the conception of a... (shrink)

In this article, I engage with what relevant literature addresses as the ‘paradox of democracy’ and trace it back to the dialectic between authorization and representation established by social contract theories. To make my argument, I take Rousseau’s Social Contract as a paradigmatic example of the paradox and analyse it in light of Hegel’s critical response. My aim is to show that, although Rousseau rejects the idea of representing the popular will, representation resurfaces in his Republic from top to bottom (...) and engenders a structural opposition between citizens and rulers: drawing on the Hegelian scrutiny of contractarianism, I focus on three key moments in Rousseau’s theory, namely the Lawgiver, the majority rule and the executive power. After illustrating how the social contract undermines democratic participation in deliberative processes, I suggest that Hegel’s philosophy of right overcomes the paradox by positively assuming it as a dialectical contradiction that requires a specific constitutional approach to democracy. In this sense, I argue, the Hegelian perspective on democratic deliberation helps us to better frame Rousseau’s ambition to conceive the Republic as a free community of equals and urges us to elaborate a more coherent understanding of participation in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

This article proposes that the foundations of Hegel’s contribution to social criticism are compatible with, and enriched by, his meta-theology. His social critique is grounded in his belief that normative ideas – and especially the idea of freedom – are necessarily experiential and historical. Often regarded as a recipe for an authoritarian reconciliation with the status quo, Hegel’s philosophy has been dismissed by some unsympathetic commentators from the left as inimical to the task of social criticism. Much of the reason (...) for this has been the opinion that his systematic approach to philosophy is one underpinned by either a highly unorthodox theism or, more commonly, pantheism. Even scholars who wish to defend Hegel as a social critic have tended to abandon or at least massively downplay his meta-theology. In this article, I argue that it is precisely the emphasis on his original theo-metaphysics that offers a powerful and relevant contribution to social criticism. Hegel then becomes an important contributor, from the tradition of social criticism, to the growing trend in academia and wider society of rethinking the relationship between the religious and the secular, known as post-secularism. The proposition at the centre of his system – that human history and society are necessary moments in the process of divine self-understanding – is not new. But the specifics of Hegel’s concept of God that I am proposing – and, moreover, their implications for his political thought – are new. I propose that Hegel was neither a theist nor a pantheist but, rather, a dialectical panentheist. According to panentheism, God is neither straightforwardly transcendent to nature and history nor immanently identifiable with nature and history, but rather is dynamically and dialectically immanent in the ongoing processes of self-transcendence that are nature and history. If such an interpretation of Hegel’s system is valid then the proposition that his political thought is an exercise in dialectical panentheistic theology is one that is worth making and defending because it has important things to say about his social critique. (shrink)

The recent turn to discursive psychology has prompted an increasing interest in the work of Michel Foucault, particularly with relation to debates on the possibility and nature of ‘discourse analysis’. This variant of discourse analysis has generally emphasized the utility of Foucauldian insights in critiquing existent psychological practices as a manifestation of the proliferation of disciplinary forms in Western society. This utility may have been dramatically over-stated. Key concepts such as discursive practices and power are inextricably linked to theoretical frameworks (...) that radically resist any ad hoc importation into critical practice. Furthermore, they may be antithetical to the kind of reflexive critique promulgated by critical psychology itself. However, the later Foucault’s partial retreat from the disciplinary containment of subjectivity only promises to trap critical psychology in the agency/structure hiatus that has so bedevilled 20th-century sociological theory. Foucauldian critical psychology may be a dead end. (shrink)

I propose taking the beautiful and the sublime in Edmund Burke not just as aesthetic but also as theoretical categories which can help us read his constitutional thought in dialectical terms. I suggest indeed that his usage of these categories in the Reflections on the Revolution in France points to a consistently held argument concerning the aporias of early-modern contractarian theories and their influence on the French Revolution. My hypothesis is that for Burke the Revolution is unable to think of (...) any concrete relation between beauty and sublimity, insofar as they can be associated, respectively, with particularity and universality. Furthermore, I underscore how Burke’s defence of partial representation against contractarian representation aims to overcome this impasse. My goal is to demonstrate that Burke raises decisive questions as to the intrinsically anti-democratic effects of the contractarian concept of democracy and is still useful to confront the contemporary crisis of democratic participation. (shrink)