Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

This collection of 15 essays on various aspects of the problem of evil brings together the opinions of well known authors from various disciplines (philosophy, theology, literary criticism, political science, etc).

Dans la production industrielle qui entoure actuellement l'œuvre de Hannah Arendt en France, certains ouvrages se distinguent tant par leur qualité que par leur originalité. C'est le cas de celui de Françoise Collin qui aborde la pensée de Hannah Arendt à travers le prisme de la natalité. Ce qui intéresse F. Collin dans l'œuvre arendtienne, qui irrigue ses propres travaux depuis une quinzaine d'années, c'est la capacité de préserver l'agir en commun dans un monde durablement marqué par...

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat of global (...) destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology...

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and (...) her own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)

Hannah More (1745–1833) was a White English poet, playwright, educator, and abolitionist. This chapter is an excerpt from her famous antislavery poem Slavery, A Poem, which she published in 1788. The poem describes liberty as a light originating in heaven and asks why this light shines on only some portions of the earth; More invokes optical laws to illustrate how unnatural it is to view liberty as appropriate for only some human beings. In the last two stanzas, which are (...) also reproduced here, she provides philosophical arguments for racial equality and the injustice of slavery. When arguing for equality, she stresses that Black and White people are the same in both intelligence and affections or feelings. (shrink)

A partir de uma análise comparativa entre a obra consagrada Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley, e a trilogia contemporânea Jogos Vorazes, de Suzanne Collins, este trabalho pretende assinalar a visão pessimista quanto ao progresso tecnológico e científico que ambas compartilham. Apoiamo-nos na teoria de Walter Benjamin e Hannah Arendt, pensadores que escreveram sobre a mesma visão pessimista. Ademais, nossa pesquisa investiga as faces da monstruosidade na trilogia Jogos Vorazes em contraste com a criatura gerada por Frankenstein, categorizada como monstro (...) clássico. Por fim, assinalamos a provável inclinação das mensagens finais para um pessimismo quanto ao progresso científico e tecnológico. Nosso objetivo é o de mostrar como essas histórias, separadas por quase duzentos anos, convergem para o mesmo questionamento sobre o futuro. (shrink)

The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) was the first philosophy conference I attended along with my graduate peers. I gave thanks to the universe that at least everyone dressed better than what I had seen at the American Philosophical Association (APA) as a terrified undergraduate guest during a hire—and that the maleness of the philosophical milieu called the APA would recede for a few days.As silly as these two factors may sound in engendering an increased comfort level with (...) philosophical spaces, it really made a difference. There was a uniform that appeared to pervade the philosophical milieu against which my presence in fashion, comportment, and body fell short. It was at SPEP that I found myself able to take up becoming a philosopher; it was among the feminist here that I could begin to think and take up the question of race. For me, it was always easier to talk about race among the Continental feminists than in the larger population of SPEP. But it was also during this time, as it seems to me now, that race as a relevant and important philosophical topic was beginning to flourish in Continental circles, and thus SPEP as a whole appeared much less hostile than the APA venue, though not wholly without hostility to the exploration of race.However, in the years as I moved out of graduate school research and into the reality of an academic career, I found myself extremely discouraged once faced with the “reality” that I fought so hard to obtain. The reality that any old town in the United States and thus any old job in the United States would not and could not satisfy quality of life concerned me. The way that race unwittingly factored in my colleagues' assistance in finding and determining good neighborhoods in which to live could no longer be obscured by my social network in graduate school. I found that my ivory tower sensibility in which junior academics could wear jeans and T-shirts didn't work in my small liberal arts institution because being a woman, more specifically, a black woman, required high heels and courage enough to take up space and authority in order to not be undermined in the classroom, especially when it came to grading. Indeed, I also came to realize that my presence in the Continental feminist circles, though pleasant, sustained the gaps in my life. As with the neighborhoods, restaurants, and institutional events that I attended with colleagues, everything was white.I became increasingly aware that my Continental feminist colleagues could talk about race but only in the abstract. I was living at the intersections of identities that were so easily discarded in theories rejecting the role of experience; that argued without nuance that identities, especially racialized ones, were burdensome; that railed against identity politics especially around the politics of race, even as their whiteness, straightness, and economic privilege stayed intact, leaving not only their identities intact but also their worlds, which to me seemed to change very little in the transitions of their academic careers. What I mean by this is that by virtue of the norms of heterosexuality, whiteness, and upper-middle-class values prevalent in most academic institutions, the difference and extent of intentional effort required to meet my needs for community, friendship, and love far exceeded the intention and effort of most of my colleagues and graduate school peers. In my own struggle to negotiate class, race, and sexuality in unfamiliar terrains proved emotionally and mentally tiring, making the vicissitudes of an uncertain career even more difficult.Depleted, isolated, lonely, and without the kind of support I needed, I noticed that Continental feminists did not utilize the work of women of color in ways that illuminated the histories of intellectual work of the women of color in the United States. Women whose political concerns mapped out and analyzed various positionalities and critiques in a country with an unabashed, if barely, concealed race, gender, and sexual hierarchy and whose collective historical work highlighted the strain, difficulties, and disagreements of living in and surviving at such visible intersections were lost to the general awareness and canon of Continental feminists. Yes, women of color were used in presentations. But they appear as they often do in feminist work as footnotes to what is wrong with “white” feminism, as if women of color offered no articulations of positions that were independent and aspiring to comprehend what it means to be woman on their own. Given the spare usage of women of color's intellectual work and specifically black feminist work, black women's intellectual work appeared to be merely the equivalent of a quick orgasm in order to go on about one's real business of thinking gender. On the streets, this is called being a “jump off.”It is incredibly difficult to write and think philosophy in a way that is not wholly attached to the historical men of philosophy, especially in Continental tradition, because the field is historically and figure driven. For many of us, even those who worked on race, we did not enjoy the benefit of engaging the real intersections of gender, class, sex, and race through the intellectual work of those most affected by these intersections, despite the sense that Continental philosophy had space for work in feminism and race. In the American context, Continental philosophy and Continental feminism's tie to Europe has meant overlooking the rich and diverse histories of women's intellectual work here in the United States. It is within this context and this landscape that I found myself wondering what it meant to be a philosopher. Straddled on what appeared as parallel lines of analysis of race and gender, only to be taken on a journey to problems as identified by Europeans, I needed to be educated in the intellectual work of black feminism and explicitly address the history of the United States with an eye to the question of what philosophy is and why these women's work did not count. Standing on a precipice wondering if there was any space for me here, I had stayed away from SPEP and Continental feminist circles for the last three years. The disappointment was that despite the apparent acceptance of race and gender as relevant topics in Continental feminism, I could not find resources there.Today, as we survey the landscape of feminist philosophy, and of Continental philosophy in general, as we survey the areas of development as well as the endurance of institutional and professional lacunas, the constancy of the marginalization of feminist philosophy in relation to the canon suggests that it is only with extreme intention that we, as feminist philosophers, actually begin the process of theorizing women in engaging dialogues with each other. Rather than Kristeva and Freud once again or Arendt and Heidegger once again, I look forward to odd dialogues and combinations of Kristeva and Audre Lorde or Ida B. Wells and Hannah Arendt, hooks and Anzaldúa. I look forward to more excavating, synthesizing, and cohering of women of color's work, which too easily gets dismissed as political without the additive of theory and is used in philosophical writing without being considered philosophical. I look forward to doing that work along with other women and extending similarities, tensions, and new insights into strands of solidarities between women. I look forward to showing how the responses of women of the past and the present to the practical realities of their lives can be articulated philosophically.As more women of color enter philosophy, it surely signifies that women of color have (and have had) an interest in philosophy, that philosophy holds a valued place for articulating a nexus of political, economic, educational, and human rights concerns. Academic institutions and the professional discipline of philosophy have witnessed a small mass of women of color claiming the value of philosophy as their own. Together we can push the boundaries of feminist philosophy by expanding the dialogic nature of philosophy to include conversations, convergences, and conflicts of feminist analyses across the past and into the present. We can surely say with confidence that Continental philosophy and SPEP have offered a place in the storm for those women to explore philosophy in ways that expand the boundaries of traditional argumentation. However, I am concerned that beyond the tropes of identity, subjectivity, and alterity, Continental feminism will have little to offer in terms of development other than rehashing male philosophers. As Sharon Meagher points out in her essay “Pushing the Boundaries of Philosophy,” women's writing continues to be discounted.1 The dismay is that we, feminists, may be complicit in our own marginalization. What is worse is that we may marginalize feminist philosophers who have worked with a variety of texts and issues such that their work is deemed not “real” Continental philosophy.Today, we are fortunate to have feminist philosophers including a small but surprisingly strong group of women of color to whom we owe our skill at using Foucault, Nietzsche, and yes, the dreaded Hegel and Freud in order to bring women's presence to the forefront of philosophy. I am overjoyed that Patricia Hill Collins, whose seminal book, Black Feminist Thought, which among other things provided a coherence and cohesion to the canon of black feminist intellectual work, has found a space here at SPEP. However, her very presence also highlights a real absence. Her presence highlights the fact that we did not have the resources, both bodies and tools, with which to write a cohesive framework that very well could expand the notion of feminist philosophy. Her presence also represents for me how few black senior women we have in philosophy who have been able to risk writing a whole book on black women and call it philosophy. Just as significantly, it was Patricia Hill Collins who offered me an example of what could be done, of what it would mean to write on black women, to acknowledge their activism and insights as intellectual work whether formally trained or not. Hill Collins enabled me to remove from its high position the highly stylized version of philosophy of Continental feminists and nonfeminist philosophers that helps to obfuscate the insights of many poor women and women of color and make it difficult to put them in literal dialogue or comprehend their expressions as worthy of philosophical exploration.We are at a juncture in which Continental feminism can play the role it should play, not as an addition, an aside, an additional take on the male philosophers, but as philosophy itself. It is our time to proliferate the voices we take seriously as philosophy and as philosophers. We must also be aware that proliferation of voices also means that we will be put in conflict with each other. But now we can begin the task of asking and answering the question of how we can engage in the reality of these conflicts and still keep open a space for the growing group of diverse women who will find philosophy and who are finding philosophy out of the closet, no longer a secret desire or an intellectual temptation withheld from them. (shrink)

The essence of the correspondence between Arendt and Scholem can be said to lie in three things. Above all it provides an intimate account of how two great intellectuals try to come to terms with being both German and Jewish, and how to think about Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. They also debate the issue of what it means to be Jewish in the post-Holocaust world whether in New York or in Jerusalem. Finally, the specter of Benjamin haunts (...) the work and in a sense the letters are as much about Benjamin as the other two questions since his life and tragic death epitomize them both. Arendt and Scholem's letters on these weighty questions are lightened by more routine exchanges: on travel itineraries, lunch or dinner parties where important people were present, and so forth. These daily details are woven throughout the correspondence and provide vivid biographical information about Arendt and Scholem that is unavailable in any other source. (shrink)

This fascinating study in the sociology of science explores the way scientists conduct, and draw conclusions from, their experiments. The book is organized around three case studies: replication of the TEA-laser, detecting gravitational rotation, and some experiments in the paranormal. "In his superb book, Collins shows why the quest for certainty is disappointed. He shows that standards of replication are, of course, social, and that there is consequently no outside standard, no Archimedean point beyond society from which we can (...) lever the intellects of our fellows. "- -Donald M. McCloskey, Journal of Economic Psychology "Collins is one of the genuine innovators of the sociology of scientific knowledge.... Changing Order is a rich and entertaining book. "- - Isis "The book gives a vivid sense of the contingent nature of research and is generally a good read. "- -Augustine Brannigan, Nature "This provocative book is a review of [Collins's] work, and an attempt to explain how scientists fit experimental results into pictures of the world.... A promising start for new explorations of our image of science, too often presented as infallibly authoritative. "- -Jon Turney, New Scientist. (shrink)

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der (...) Sorge um sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

Moral duties are regularly attributed to groups. Does this make conceptual sense or is this merely political rhetoric? And what are the implications for these individuals within groups? Collins outlines a Tripartite Model of group duties that can target political demands at the right entities, in the right way and for the right reasons.

Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 571 Moving through Cancer: An Interview with Carol Collins Artist Carol Collins spoke with Feminist Studies editorial collective member Stephanie Gilmore about her experience of cancer, treatment, and recovery and how it gave rise to an art series that examines what nature means in the midst of unnatural treatments. SG: Carol, thank you for the opportunity (...) to speak with you about your artwork. Having just lost my sister to cancer, your work reminds me of much pain and loss, but also of love and the desire to survive. Before we discuss the work itself, I would like to hear about your journey through cancer, treatment, and recovery. CC: The breast cancer patient’s journey is complex and perilous. When I was healthy, I was ignorant about the magnitude of suffering many cancer patients undergo. And, although I am a private person, I’m now publicly sharing my cancer experience in order to be a voice for those who have suffered through similar treatments—and worse—and those who sadly are no longer with us to tell their story. Being bald and nauseated are not the most awful possible side effects of the treatments, although they are the most well known. Some women survive the cancer but can die from the treatments, or others suffer through the treatments and die anyway. Often, it seems many believe patients can overcome their 572 Carol Collins adversity solely with positive thinking and persistence. However, not discussing the array of physical and psychological damage that even those with good prognoses incur propagates ignorance about this malady. I hope that my artwork and story will promote a deeper understanding of a breast cancer patient’s plight and will encourage more support for research for individualized therapies and prevention. My cancer journey began when I received a breast cancer diagnosis in January 2014. Life just before that point was good; the future was bright. Tendon pain, caused by my flat feet and a lot of exercising, was my only known ailment. But one day a routine mammogram revealed three tumors in my right breast. The radiology oncologist said the masses were highly likely to be cancerous, so he immediately did painful core biopsies at the sites of my three tumors. The next day, it became clear that we needed to act quickly. The biopsy results revealed I had a very aggressive invasive breast cancer with estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors. Breast cancer in premenopausal women grows quickly due to the high level of hormones present. The oncologists and surgeons said I would, at a minimum, need a mastectomy and possibly lymph node resection, and they warned that I would likely need chemotherapy, which would destroy my eggs and ovaries. After learning of my limited options, I approved the removal of one breast and my sterilization. I knew I needed to think rationally and face the giant raven before me head on. However, I did not realize the magnitude and multitude of physical and psychological pains, illnesses, and losses that were soon to come. The first year of cancer treatments inflicted much physical pain. I received three extremely painful injections into my right breast with a radiolabeled colloid just prior to the mastectomy. The pain came from the injected dye, not from the needle. The modified radical mastectomy was more excruciatingly painful than I anticipated, even with painkillers and overnight hospitalization. Breast reconstruction was an option that added more pain and discomfort from weekly fillings of the installed “expander” and additional surgeries. Extreme pain after the mastectomy prevented me from lying down for months. Foolishly, I did not get an injection port installed in my chest. Instead, I endured numerous deep (and often unsuccessful) needle pricks into the seemingly few veins of my left arm (which still had its lymph nodes) that were appropriate for infusions over the period of a year. Shooting pains across my chest and arm were the norm. Carol Collins 573 In addition to the surgically induced physical pain, the chemotherapy quickly caused a myriad of undesirable physical side effects. It is scary to realize that the medical community does not often fully understand... (shrink)

This paper argues that theism and related axiarchic hypotheses provide the only promising solution to the problems of cosmic coincidence and induction raised by necessitarians against the regularity view of the laws of nature. Hence, it is argued, the fundamental order of the world provides significant support for theism and these related hypotheses.

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers--not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists--violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view in Violence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule--regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations. Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and (...) ethnography to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen--and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord--from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder--and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that natural languages, construed as sets of sentences, contain denumerably many sentences. One argument for this claim is that the sentences of a language must be recursively enumerable by a grammar, if we are to understand how a speaker-hearer could exhibit unbounded competence in a language. The paper defends this reasoning by articulating and defending a principle that excludes the construction of a sentence non-denumerably many words long.

John Collins presents a new analysis of the problem of the unity of the proposition-how propositions can be both single things and complexes at the same time. He surveys previous investigations of the problem and offers his own novel and uniquely satisfying solution, which is defended from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives.

For nearly half a century, Quentin Skinner has been the world's foremost interpreter of Thomas Hobbes. When the contextualist mode of intellectual history now known as the “Cambridge School” was first asserting itself in the 1960s, the life and writings of John Locke were the primary topic for pioneers such as Peter Laslett and John Dunn. At that time, Hobbes was still the plaything of philosophers and political scientists, virtually all of whom wrote in an ahistorical, textual-analytic manner. Hobbes had (...) not been the subject of serious contextual research for decades, since the foundational writings of Ferdinand Tönnies. For Skinner, he was thus an ideal subject, providing a space for original research on a major figure, and an occasion for some polemically charged methodological manifestos. Both of these purposes animated his 1965 article “History and Ideology in the English Revolution,” and his 1966 article “The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought”. The latter of these remains to this day one of the most widely cited scholarly articles in the fifty-year run of Cambridge's Historical Journal. Among other results of these early efforts was the scholarly controversy during which Howard Warrender chided Skinner for having reduced the “classic texts in political philosophy” to mere “tracts for the times”. (shrink)