Thought and Political Judgment

Hannah Arendt’s claim that thinking is the last defense against the moral outrages of criminal political regimes sets the problematic of good and evil in relief. Human freedom, Paul Ricœur reminds us, is responsible for evil. The avowal of the evil of violence is thus the condition of our consciousness of the freedom to act anew.Aesthetic experience’s lateral transposition onto the planes of ethics and politics highlights our capacity to respond to exigencies in apposite ways.  Exemplary representations of the good, the right, and the justexpress a desire for being. Eros is accordingly the law of every work, word, deed, or act that answers to a difficulty, challenge, or crisis. Bound to living experiences, thought attains its true height through interrogating, demystifying, and vacating frozen norms, standards, and mores. Judgment actualizes thought’s liberating effects in answer to the demands of the situations in which we find ourselves.L’affirmation d’Hannah Arendt selon laquelle la pensée est la dernière défense contre les outrages moraux des régimes politiques criminels met en relief la problématique du bien et du mal. La liberté humaine, nous rappelle Paul Ricœur, est responsable du mal. L’aveu du mal causé par la violence est donc la condition de la prise de conscience de notre liberté d’agir à nouveau.La transposition latérale de l’expérience esthétique sur les plans de l’éthique et de la politique met en évidence notre capacité à répondre aux exigences de manière appropriée. Les représentations exemplaires du bien, du droit et du juste expriment un désir d’être. Eros est donc la loi de toute œuvre, parole, action ou acte qui répond à une difficulté, un défi ou une crise. Liée aux expériences vécues, la pensée atteint sa véritable hauteur en interrogeant, démystifiant et rejetant les normes, les standards et les mœurs figés. Le jugement actualise les effets libérateurs de la pensée en réponse aux exigences des situations dans lesquelles nous nous trouvons

Space of Experience, Horizon of Expectation. Spatiotemporal Metaphors, Philosophical Anthropology, and the Flesh

Paul Ricœur’s recourse to the metahistorical categories, space of experience and horizon of expectation, invites an inquiry into geography’s role as the guarantor of history. The ontology of the flesh provides the first indication of how one’s body is implicated in the sense of one’s place in the world. In turn, narrative inscriptions of events on the landscape transform the physical topography of a place into an array of sites where memories of ancestral wisdom and historical traumas endure. By anchoring historians’ representations of the past in the places and locales in which events took place, geography constructs a third space analogous to the third time of history. The aporias engendered by the phenomenology of time, however, have no equivalent in the phenomenology of space. The dissymmetry between the dialectic that informs the discourse of space and the one that informs the discourse of time thus keeps in place the  reciprocal relation between geography and historiography.Le recours de Paul Ricœur aux catégories métahistoriques d’espace d’expérience et d’horizon d’attente invite à s’interroger sur le rôle de la géographie en tant que garante de l’histoire. L’ontologie de la chair fournit la première indication concernant la manière dont le corps de l’individu est impliqué à travers la place qu’il occupe dans le monde. À leur tour, les inscriptions narratives des événements dans le paysage transforment la topographie physique d’un lieu en un ensemble de sites où perdurent les souvenirs de la sagesse ancestrale et les traumatismes historiques. En ancrant les représentations du passé des historiens dans les lieux et localités où les événements prennent place, la géographie construit un troisième espace analogue au troisième temps de l’histoire. Les apories engendrées par la phénoménologie du temps n’ont cependant pas d’équivalent dans la phénoménologie de l’espace. La dissymétrie entre la dialectique que sous-tend le discours de l’espace et celle qui est sous-tendue par le discours du temps maintient ainsi en place la relation réciproque entre géographie et historiographie

Aesthetic Experience, Mimesis and Testimony

In this article, I relate the demand that Paul Ricoeur suggests mimesis places on the way we think about truth to the idea that the work of art is a model for thinking about testimony. By attributing a work’s epoché of reality to the work of imagination, I resolve the impasse that arises from attributing music, literature, and art’s distance from the real to their social emancipation. Examining the conjunction, in aesthetic experience, of the communicability and the exemplarity of a work reveals how Ricoeur’s definition of mimesis as refiguration relates to the “rule” that the work summons. This “rule” constitutes the solution to a problem or question for which the work is the answer. In conclusion, as a model for thinking about testimony, the claims that works make have a counterpart in the injunctions that issue from exemplary moral and political acts. Dans cet article, j’établis un lien entre l’exigence que, selon Paul Ricœur,la mimèsis place dans notre façon de penser la vérité, et l’idée que l’œuvre d’art est un modèle pour penser le témoignage. Appliquant l’époché de la réalité  à l’oeuvre d’imagination,  j’évite l’impasse qui se dresse lorsqu’on attribue la musique, la littérature et la distance artistique du réel à leur émancipation sociale. L’étude de la conjonction du caractère communicable et exemplaire d’une œuvre – dans l’expérience esthétique - met en lumière la relation que la définition par Ricœur de la mimésis comme refiguration établit avec la “règle” que l’œuvre convoque. Cette règle est la solution au problème auquel l’oeuvre apporte une réponse. Finalement, un  modèle pour penser le témoignage peut être trouvé dans des oeuvres qui trouvent leur contrepartie dans les injonctions  produites par les actions morales et politiques exemplaires.

Exemplarity and the “Law of Superabundance”

Paul Ricoeur’s critique of social emancipatory projects that claim to be absolutely radical sets the stage for my investigation into the exemplary value of esteemed moral and political acts. Like works of art, such acts reform or revolutionize praxis through refashioning the world from within. By placing textual hermeneutics under the theme of the increase in being evinced by the work of art, Ricoeur’s analysis on the way that metaphor as a work in miniature iconically augments reality forges a link between the imagination’s productive power and the “law of superabundance.” This law inheres in the logic of hope. The hope of the “not yet” and the “much more” thus draws support from exemplary acts that bear the mark of the future through testifying to the reign of goodness, generosity, courage and love. However, Ricoeur’s claim that an eschatology of nonviolence constitutes the critique of ideology’s ultimate philosophical horizon raises a question concerning this eschatology’s theological equivalent. Ricoeur maintains that the projection of the task of actualizing freedom is the philosophical equivalent of a theology of hope. This theology draws its meaning from the “hope of things to come” based on the eschatological event. Correlatively, this task’s ethico-political impulse takes root in hope’s practical and existential necessity, which inheres in the structure of action. The hope of as yet unfulfilled expectations and demands ignites the passion for the possible and fuels the will and the desire to intervene in the world’s course. In contrast to the contagion of violence and evil, moral and political acts’ exemplary value stands as a demonstration and proof of hope. The theme of the increase in being that rules over textual hermeneutics consequently has a practical counterpart in the task that an eschatology of nonviolence adopts as its own, namely, the task of actualizing freedom within the historical reality of humankind

Phase-field simulations of viscous fingering in shear-thinning fluids

A phase-field model for the Hele-Shaw flow of non-Newtonian fluids is developed. It extends a previous model for Newtonian fluids to a wide range of shear-dependent fluids. The model is applied to perform simulations of viscous fingering in shear- thinning fluids, and it is found to be capable of describing the complete crossover from the Newtonian regime at low shear rate to the strongly shear-thinning regime at high shear rate. The width selection of a single steady-state finger is studied in detail for a 2-plateaux shear-thinning law (Carreau law) in both its weakly and strongly shear-thinning limits, and the results are related to previous analyses. In the strongly shear-thinning regime a rescaling is found for power-law (Ostwald-de-Waehle) fluids that allows for a direct comparison between simulations and experiments without any adjustable parameters, and good agreement is obtained

Pyroelectric effect enhancement in laminate composites under short circuit condition

The pyroelectric coefficients of laminate composites under short circuit condition have been investigated by analytical modeling and numerical simulations. Indicators for various pyroelectric/non-pyroelectric material pairs that can be utilized to determine their pyroelectric coefficient enhancement credentials have been identified. Six pyroelectric materials were paired with six non-pyroelectric/elastic materials and their pyroelectric coefficient enhancement potential and figure of merit for efficiency were investigated. The best performing partnership out of the 36 pairs was lead zirconate titanate (PZT5H)-chlorinated polyvinyl chloride thermoplastic (CPVC) for thickness ratios (R) below 0.09 and PZT5H-zinc for R larger than 0.09 with both demonstrating total pyroelectric coefficient of approximately -20x10(-4) C m(-2) K(-1) at R=0.09, which corresponds to approximately 300% increase in the coefficient. PZT5H-CPVC also showed maximum of 800% rise in the pyroelectric coefficient while figure of merit for efficiency indicated up to twentyfold increase in its electrical response output per given thermal stimuli when compared to that of PZT5H by itself

Altitude Limits for Rotating Vector Model Fitting of Pulsar Polarization

Traditional pulsar polarization sweep analysis starts from the point dipole rotating vector model (RVM) approximation. If augmented by a measurement of the sweep phase shift, one obtains an estimate of the emission altitude (Blaskiewicz, Cordes, & Wasserman). However, a more realistic treatment of field line sweepback and finite altitude effects shows that this estimate breaks down at modest altitude ~ 0.1R_{LC}. Such radio emission altitudes turn out to be relevant to the young energetic and millisecond pulsars that dominate the \gamma-ray population. We quantify the breakdown height as a function of viewing geometry and provide simple fitting formulae that allow observers to correct RVM-based height estimates, preserving reasonable accuracy to R ~ 0.3R_{LC}. We discuss briefly other observables that can check and improve height estimates