René Girard and Philosophy: An Interview with Paul Dumouchel

What was René Girard’s attitude towards philosophy? What philosophers influenced him? What stance did he take in the philosophical debates of his time? What are the philosophical questions raised by René Girard’s anthropology? In this interview, Paul Dumouchel sheds light on these issues

Ethics and economics: of value and values

"In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, dass Ökonomie und Ethik nicht als zwei gegensätzliche und radikal unterschiedliche Dinge betrachtet werden sollten, sondern als zwei Versionen oder Aspekte eines gemeinsamen Vorhabens; nämlich der Einführung von Interaktionsregeln für Akteure, die nicht durch Reziprozitätsverpflichtungen aneinander gebunden sind. Die Besonderheit moderner Ökonomien, im Unterschied zu traditionellen Gabentauschgesellschaften, ist nicht, dass diese ohne ethische Inhalte wären, sondern dass sie eine Antwort geben wollen auf die Frage: Wie sollte ich mich verhalten gegenüber denjenigen, denen ich nichts schulde? Die einzige kohärente Antwort auf diese Frage, die nicht von außen auferlegt wird, impliziert Fairness als selbstregulierendes Charakteristikum von Austauschprozessen. Werte im Sinne einer Wertethik sind in dieses Vorhaben einbezogen als ein Weg das Problem zu lösen, dass Fairness in Austauschprozessen - und allgemeiner in reziproken Verpflichtungen, wenn Reziprozität verschwunden ist, - immer vorausgesetzt werden muss und somit niemals garantiert werden kann." (Autorenreferat)"This paper argues that economics and ethics should not be seen as opposed and radically different, but rather as two versions or aspects of the same enterprise, that of providing rules of interactions for agents who are not attached by obligations of reciprocity. The particularity of modern economics - as opposed to traditional gift exchange - is not that it is without any ethical content but that it proposes an answer to the question: how should the author behave towards those to whom he ows nothing. The only coherent answer to that question that is not imposed from the outside implies fairness as a self-regulating characteristic of exchange the author argues. Values in the sense of value ethics are related to this enterprise as a way of resolving the problem that fairness in exchange and more generally reciprocity (once reciprocal obligations have disappeared) must presuppose itself and thus cannot be guaranteed." (author's abstract

Qu’est-ce qu’une maladie ? Pinel, aliéniste et nosographe

Avant de répondre à la question : qu’est-ce qu’une maladie mentale pour Pinel ? il convient de se demander qu’est-ce qu’une maladie pour lui ? Or la réponse à cette question indique premièrement que pour Pinel, il n’y a pas sens à établir une distinction radicale entre maladie mentale et maladie physique. Malgré le fait que la tradition voit en lui un des fondateurs de la psychiatrie en tant que discipline autonome, pour Pinel, l’aliénation ne constitue pas un type d’affection radicalement différent de la maladie physique. Deuxièmement, elle montre que pour Pinel il n’y a pas de continuité entre le temps de la maladie et la temporalité subjective du patient. Ce qui veut dire que pour lui, contrairement à la tradition psychiatrique subséquente, il n’y a pas de lien explicatif entre le trouble mental et l’histoire du sujet.Before answering the question : what is mental illness according to Pinel, it is necessary to ask, what is a disease according to him ? The answer to that question indicates first of all that for Pinel there is no fundamental distinction between mental illness and physical disease. In spite of the fact that tradition sees in him one of the founders of modern psychiatry as an independent discipline, for him madness does not constitute a radically different type of disease. This inquiry also shows that for Pinel there is no continuity between the time in which the disease takes place and the subjective time of the patient’s history. Therefore for him, contrary to what is the case in the subsequent psychiatric tradition there is not relation of explanation between the history of the subject and mental illness

Introduction: Debates on Experience and Empiricism in Nineteenth Century France

The lasting effects of the debate over canon-formation during the 1980s affected the whole field of Humanities, which became increasingly engaged in interrogating the origin and function of the Western canon (Gorak 1991; Searle 1990). In philosophy, a great deal of criticism was, as a result, directed at the traditional narrative of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophies—a critique informed by postcolonialism (Park 2013) as well as feminist historiography (Shapiro 2016). D. F. Norton (1981), L. Loeb (1981) and many others1 attempted to demonstrate the weaknesses of the tripartite division between rationalism, empiricism and critical philosophy.2 As time went on, symptoms of dissatisfaction with what has been called the “standard narrative” ( Vanzo 2013) and the “epistemological par-adigm” (Haakonssen 2004, 2006) only increased. Indeed, at present, a consensus has been reached that the narrative of the antagonism between “Continental rationalism” and “British empiricism”, and the consequent Aufhebung provided by “German critical philosophy,” has been unable to make sense of the complexity, variety and dynamics of early modern.Fil: Antoine-Mahut, Delphine. Ecole Normale Supérieure; FranciaFil: Manzo, Silvia Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; Argentin