“God does not algebra”: Simone Weil’s search for a supernatural reformulation of mathematics

The article offers an analysis of Simone Weil\u27s philosophy of mathematics. Weil\u27s reflection starts from a critique of Bourbaki\u27s programme, led by her brother André: the "mechanical attention" Bourbaki considered an advantage of their treatment of mathematics was for her responsible for the incomprehensibility of modern algebra, and even a cause of alien-ation and social oppression. On the contrary, she developed her pivotal concept of \u27atten-tion\u27 with the aim of approaching mathematical problems in order to make "progress in another more mysterious dimension". In the Pythagorean \u27crisis of incommensurables\u27, Weil saw the possibility of defining the relationships between things in terms that are not exclusively numerical. This implies drawing an analogy between mathematical relation-ships and God\u27s relationship with mankind (logos), the basis of a \u27supernatural\u27 reformu-lation of the entire scientific understanding of the world. The consequence is a critique of machinism and the possibility to contrast algorithmic reason with a "supernatural reason"

Behold the Man, again: What Nietzsche hopes his Readers will see in \u27Ecce Homo\u27

The title of Nietzsche\u27s autobiography, Ecce Homo, repeats (and echoes) the famous di-rective issued by Pilate, the provincial governor of Judea, to the crowd assembled outside the pretorium. While we know, more or less, what Pilate intended the crowd to behold—viz. the unremarkable humanity of the innocent prisoner Jesus—it is not entirely clear what Nietzsche expects his readers to behold in his autobiography. Despite imploring his read-ers not to mistake him for another, Nietzsche presents himself in Ecce Homo as nearly indistinguishable from the "moralists" whom he identifies as the targets of his criticism. The key to understanding how "one becomes what one is" lies in Nietzsche\u27s understanding that both he and Jesus have improbably emerged in excess of the disciplinary regimes that formed them. The defiance displayed by Jesus at John 19:5 thus alerts us to the corre-sponding emergence of Nietzsche—as the "first immoralist"—from the morality he has outgrown

From Inattentiveness Towards Moral Failures: Acknowledging Simone Weil in Iris Murdoch’s Literary Writings

Simone Weil\u27s ideas proved fundamental for Iris Murdoch, opening up a difficult path of thought for one rooted in the British philosophical tradition in the 1950s (Sim 1985, Bok 2005, Lovibond 2011a, Panizza 2022a, Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman 2022). Grasping the Weilian-inspired moral theory of attention sketched by Iris Murdoch is a prerequisite for comprehending the development of her moral ideas (Panizza 2015, Broackes 2012) and the form they may take in her literary writings (Griffin 1993, Morgan 2006). This paper argues that we can read an expression of Simone Weil in Iris Murdoch\u27s novels which articulate her notions of grace and gravity, but also convey the Weilian insights that shape Murdoch\u27s moral perfectionism. It investigates three of Murdoch\u27s well-known male protagonists, i.e., Bradley Pearson, Charles Arrowby and Hilary Burde, so as to comprehend how their moral failures relate to a defective implementation of the concepts of love and attention as theorised by Simone Weil as leading to goodness. Hence, it offers a new examination of the way in which the Murdochian literary staging of inattention as a cause of moral deficiency reveals its Weilian-based ethics of attention

La "dissolution" paradoxale du sujet dans la période nietzschéenne de la "maturité"

In Nietzsche\u27s "mature" texts, we are witnessing a complete dissolution of the subject. At first glance, however, this appears highly paradoxical (Wotling 2015), leading some commentators to suggest that there is a real contradiction in Nietzsche\u27s work (Gardner 2009), insofar as the author never ceases to speak of himself and at the same time invites his reader to become who he is. Are we to understand, then, that any self is illusory and constitutes a metaphysical illusion, i.e., that the becoming in which we are always caught according to Nietzsche must make any position of a self impossible, and at the very least diminishing? Following in the footsteps of Alexander Nehamas (1985), we believe that we can overcome the contradiction identified by S. Gardner by showing that Nietzsche\u27s conception of the self is not "realistic", but precisely also fictional and dynamically positive at the same time

Se transporter dans l\u27autre" : une théorie weilienne de l’empathie ?

Defined as the ability to understand and share others\u27 feelings and suffering, empathy seems to come naturally to mind when we consider Simone Weil\u27s life and works. If this concept doesn\u27t explicitly appear in her writings, "pity", "sympathy" and "compassion" are pervasive: the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how these notions converge on the contemporary understanding of "empathy". Since the turn of the century, this concept has known such a development that it has become difficult to clearly identify its object, and to appreciate its ethical value. To study Simone Weil\u27s works from the angle of empathy offers both a new approach of the concept, and a very relevant point of view to put in light the great continuity between all the fields of the philosopher\u27s thought. Our main hypothesis is that the weilian theory of empathy is based on the idea of "transposition", a process that allows someone to transport himself into another person, and from the natural to the supernatural dimension. It is in this last dimension that Simone Weil can found intersubjectivity, and solve the ethical problem of empathy: the right distance between the Self and the Other

Sortir du nihilisme : Nietzsche, Mill et l’individualité comme clé de transformation morale et civilisationnelle

Nietzsche’s criticism of the masses could have looked hackneyed at the end of the XIXth century, had it not the originality of moving onto psychological and biological levels what others previously elaborated only at a social scale: a "herd instinct" explaining both the lack of social cohesion and the loss of possible individual affirmation in democratic and egalitarian ages. As he sees the utilitarian promotion of happiness and empathy as part of the problem, he fiercely condemns John Stewart Mill’s philosophy – as he understands it. Our point is to throw into relief that Mill’s theory of individuality is but closer to Nietzsche’s views for regenerating life against the spreading of democratic "nihilism". Our cross-reading of Mill and Nietzsche therefore aims at offering a reassessment of their antagonism and at highlighting ways of overcoming "nihilism" via culture and cultivation of the "character" and the individual surpassing of oneself

Blood on the Leaves / Blood on the Roots: Nietzsche, Schürmann, and Wynter on Ressentiment, Bad Conscience, Doublesness, and Metaphysics at the Birth of the Human Being as Praxis at the End of Metaphysics

This paper sets out to investigate the Nietzschean connection between Sylvia Wynter and Reiner Schürmann through a reading of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche’s account of ‘bad conscience’ is read through the Wynterian and Fanonian concept of ‘sociogeny’ to demonstrate its necessity to Nietzsche’s project of the Great Redeemer. This paper, then, demonstrates a previously undiagnosed influence of Nietzsche on Wynter and the role that anarchy plays in her construction of the ‘human being as praxis’. The essay concludes with an amelioration of Schürmann’s epochal genealogy to account for a racialized lacunae present in his Western genealogy of thought. It is by bringing all three together that we understand anarchy as being firmly committed to anti-racist and anti-anti-Black enactments. It concludes by highlighting the possibility of metaphysics after the withering of epochal archē in what this paper calls ‘the multitude of metaphysics’

Friedrich Nietzsche, der "Meister des Verdachts". Über die Nietzsche-Lektüren von Michel Foucault und Paul Ricoeur

Friedrich Nietzsche, the "Master of Suspicion". On the Nietzsche Readings of Michel Foucault and Paul Ricoeur The term "masters of suspicion", which summarizes the critical views of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, has found its way into contemporary philosophy through Paul Ricoeur and is considered his kind of "patent". It is less well known that Michel Foucault also wrote a text on the subject of "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx" in which he speaks of suspicion. The author therefore asks herself where this thematic agreement comes from and undertakes a comparison of Foucault\u27s and Ricoeur\u27s readings of Nietzsche. In doing so, she puts forward two theses that she attempts to prove. The first thesis is that Ricoeur actually begins where Foucault left off and leads us in a direction that is opposite to that of Foucault. The second thesis is that Foucault stays closer to Nietzsche by trying to advance his "suspicion" instead of overcoming it, as Ricoeur does

\u27Ecce homo\u27 ou les labyrinthes de la lecture

The motif of reading is placed at the center of Ecce Homo as both a vital problem and a practice in action. Nietzsche undertakes to reread every one of his "so good books" except the one he is currently writing, placing his reader in a position identical to his own. Faced with this ultimate Nietzschean "Library of Babel," the reader will have to re-experience for himself what it means to read his works, and assess his own reading biases in light of the ascending or declining values associated with the text. Rarely noticed by its best commentators, Ecce Homo\u27s "abysmal" mirrored reading device is also that of a labyrinth, haunted by the figures of Ariane and Dionysus, and its singular composition combines the doctrine of eternal return with the selective experiment of reading.&nbsp