Contemporary French Philosophy

Deleuze opposes a Stoic-Cynic image of the philosopher of the surfaces, which descri- bes philosophy as movement of perversion, to the platonic image of the philosopher of altitudes, which describes philosophy as a manic-depres- sive movement. We aim to demonstrate that even though his interpretation reads Platonism from a contemporary point of view, this does not hinder its historical accuracy, which emphasizes novel aspects

Incomplete text prepared for a series of ten lectures given at Tongji University, Shanghai, November 2018, serving as a kind of introduction to the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler, mainly focused on aspects of the first volumes of Technics and Time.

Resumen: Durante las últimas décadas, filósofos de horizontes diferentes se han pro-nunciado contra el anti-realismo del siglo XX, mediante una forma de vuelta al realismo. Evidentemente, tal denominación es equívoca, ya que puede esconder posiciones bastante diferentes dependiendo de la definición de "realidad" que se utilice. Numerosos son los que se centran en la verdad y en la objetividad. Veremos por qué esto no es posible y por qué, como quieren los realistas metafísicos, es necesario volcarse más atrás, hasta la realidad, o más bien, hasta aquello que, queramos o no, está ya dado. Además, cuestionamos la figura de una ciencia de la realidad in abstracto, que quiere servir de vía rápida de "acceso direc-to" a la realidad que suprimiría el análisis de las normas en virtud de las cuales esta realidad significa algo. En contra de esto, situaremos la realidad, y no sólo la verdad, donde, de una manera u otra, se ha dado efectivamente los medios para determinarla. Lo cual, inevitable-mente, sólo puede hacerse en la realidad. Palabras clave: contextualismo, epistemología, objetividad, ontología, realismo. Abstract: During the last decades, philosophers of different horizonshave claimed against the anti-realism of the twentieth century, through a way to return to realism. Evidently, such philosophical label is equivocal. It may cover very different positions as defined based on the "reality" that is used. Many are those who would stop to truth or objectivity. We will 1 Conferencia del profesor Jocelyn Benoist del 20 de septiembre de 2014 titulada Le réal-isme sans la métaphysique que se desarrolló en el marco del seminario Le Réalisme en question organizado por el Centro de Filosofía Contemporánea de la Sorbona durante el curso 2014-2015.

L'intervento che segue necessita di una breve premessa metodologica. Si è scelto qui sviluppare una analisi preferendo, data la complessità del tema, la chiarezza concettuale alle ricostruzioni filologiche. Questo intervento esprime, da un lato, alcuni esiti di ricerche accademiche da me svolte in sede di Dottorato, delle quali qui riporto solo alcune considerazioni a “grandi linee” (i risultati globali della ricerca sono stati tematizzati nel mio elaborato finale con il necessario rigore scientifico); dall'altro, questo intervento ha la finalità didattica di chiarire alcuni concetti cardine dell'Ecosofia che, all'interno del laboratorio di didattica e ricerca ubi minor  presso l'Università di Bologna, sto tentando di tematizzare. Le analisi qui presentate devono essere dunque lette esclusivamente in relazione a tali premesse. Mi riservo di specificare in altra sede le connessioni filologiche nel rispetto degli standard scientifici.

This article tests the hypothesis that the history of life can be told only by assuming the ultra-transcendental conception of life as leaving a trace in the world. It draws together two moments in the work of Jacques Derrida that are chronologically distant and yet develop that hypothesis and its consequences: the deconstruction of the phenomenological concept of consciousness, and the deconstruction of the Cartesian narrative of life. The article demonstrates that the first moment allows us to elaborate the ultra-transcendental conception of life presupposed by phenomenological consciousness, which offers new ways to analyze biological questions of the origin and evolution of life, and ethico-political questions of responsibility.

A version of this text will be published in "Michel Foucault – Repenser les rapports entre les Anciens et Les Modernes", ed. Jean-Marc Narbonne, Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink & Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen. Vrin & Presses de l’Université Laval (Forthcoming). Please do not quote or cite without permission.

Using the work of French philosopher Henri Bergson, this chapter contributes towards understanding why and how states pursue homogenization, especially along economic, gendered, and racial lines (i.e., why do states oftentimes support white supremacy, patriarchy, and virulent forms of capitalism?) This chapter especially thinks about these issues in the context of Bergson's philosophy of language in relation to political philosophy.

In “The pleasure of drawing”, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to drawing as the true form of the thing. This ‘true’ form is not an already accomplished form but one that involes the gesture that traces it and brings it into appearance. In this context, mimesis is nothing other than the “rhythmics of appearance” through which the mystery of the rising or suspension of the form is recognised. This is where the pleasure of artistic creation lies. For J-L Nancy, drawing reveals, that what one calls “aesthetic” concerns a “feeling” [sentir] but a feeling that is not related to a sensory faculty that records information. It is rather a sensing [ressentir], a “making sense of” or of “letting it be formed”. The donation of form in perception and the aesthetic experience that this givenness entails are apprehended in terms of the encounter of an “outside” and an “inside”, an encounter that is initiated by feeling. In this context, the aesthetic pleasure occurs only insofar as this intertwining remains exposed as such, it is experienced and felt, it is not resolved in indistinction. It is through this opening and sharing between an inside and an outside referring incessantly to one another that the subject (as a relational force, active as much as passive] “affects” itself by distinguishing itself from its own self and by experiencing itself as distinct—“the other in itself, experiencing this alterity as its own, experiencing its self as other”. In “The eye and the mind”, Merleau-Ponty, with reference to the art of painting and the experiences of painters such a Cézanne and Klee describes how space and content merge in their coming-into-being through the visible, where “the body is no longer the means of vision and touch, but their depository”. Here, too, it is question of a sensibility that constitutes itself from within, while the artist finds himself “caught” in a phenomenalising process in which, nevertheless, he partakes. It is not, then, question of how to understand artistic creation but rather of how to make oneself open enough to perceive it as the manifestation of an ontological excess and an act of originating transcendence

Far from being merely "a show about nothing," this article argues that the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998) managed to develop a sophisticated theory of situations and events in modern life. The show explored a rich and humorous multiplicity of everyday situations and events that took its main characters and audience members alike to the very limits of their conventional lives. Yet Seinfeld consistently stopped short of raising larger political stakes in these explorations. In other words, Seinfeld never took its critique of everyday modern life to a structural level, that is, to the historical forces and social relations that shape contemporary situations and events. By bringing Seinfeld into an intellectual encounter with communist philosopher Alain Badiou's work on situations and events, I argue that we can gain a deeper appreciation of both sides and rethink the political and aesthetic potential of situation comedy. Pain is knowledge, rushing in to fill a gap.-Jerry Seinfeld (Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, episode no. 41) This question of a gap is the key to the analysis of being, of the typology of multiples-in-situation.-Alain Badiou (2013, 103)

Séminaire organisé en collaboration avec le Département de Philosophie de l'Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis ; le Laboratoire des Logiques Contemporaines de la Philosophie (LLCP, EA 4008) ; le Collège international de philosophie ; le Centre Michel Foucault et la revue materiali foucaultiani.
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