Philosophy All books
Roger-Pol Droit
101 Experiences of Daily Philosophy
This highly original book consists of 101 short texts, each describing an experiment or something to do. Although the practical exercises are easy to accomplish, they are often disconcerting and will make the reader aware of how strange an apparently banal action can seem. Their purpose is philosophical: the goal being to experience the unexpected through simple actions and events. Roger-Pol Droit intends to shake up the certainties that underlie our identity, speech, relations to time and space, and memory, and enable us to feel issues that are generally regarded as abstract. In his highly readable, incisive style he has succeeded in transforming ideas into feelings. Roger-Pol Droit is a philosopher and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Roger-Pol Droit
Recent News of Ordinary Objects
"Can you learn anything from ordinary objects the things you use in your daily life? The answer is: yes, more than you can imagine. During the course of one year, I assigned myself a sort of adventure: I kept a diary of my encounter with objects, and I suggest you do the same. Briefly, my goal was to try to find the words that are hidden inside objects, to discover the questions that lie at the heart of things. My journey took place in four stages: surprise, groping, panicking, feeling soothed. This experience, touched with humour and a hint of folly, also follows the itinerary of an unexpected spiritual journey," Roger-Pol Droit is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Roger-Pol Droit
The Spirit of Childhood
Roger-Pol Droit applies practical philosophy, in which the reader learns to find hidden resources in himself, in which he is guided towards the path of a better-being, a better self-understanding.
Roger-Pol Droit
Michel Foucault, interviews
On 25 June 1984, Michel Foucault died of AIDS-related complications at a hospital in Paris. Since then, his reputation and influence - already great during his lifetime - have not ceased to grow. Whether his subject was asylums, prisons or the history of sexuality, Foucault always tried to understand the organising forces behind prevalent social attitudes, by which a society defines itself, so as to disrupt the existing order. A philosopher as well as a historian, Foucault was an unclassifiable, unpredictable, subversive thinker, and the inventor of a new style of intellectual investigation. He rarely spoke of himself, or of his goals, or of his relations to his own writing, experiences and intellectual development. He did, however, talk about himself in a series of interviews that he gave me in June 1975, a few weeks after the publication of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Wishing to pay homage to his memory, I have gathered here three of those interviews, which were previously published in the press, along with some of my memories and thoughts about him, writes Roger-Pol Droit. Roger-Pol Droit is a research fellow in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and a columnist for the French daily newspaper Le Monde. He is the author of La Compagnie des philosophes, La Compagnie des contemporains, 101 Expériences de philosophie quotidienne and Dernières nouvelles des choses.
Roger-Pol Droit
Living Today With Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca and All the Others
What have we lost by forgetting the teachings of Antiquity? And what can we find out for our own time by rediscovering the Classics?
Roger-Pol Droit
The Company of Philosophers
Roger-Pol Droit takes the reader on a voyage through time, spanning the centuries from Antiquity to the present, in a series of intellectual portraits of great and usual or remarkable thinkers, beginning with Socrates and Plato and ending with Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. A major part of this volume is devoted to modern philosophers, from Kant to Heidegger. The author's goal is to stimulate new thought and to bring to life for the reader the vital ideas of past thinkers.
Roger-Pol Droit
The Company of Contemporaries
In this book, Droit reviews the works of some major contemporary thinkers: Bourdieu, Foucault, Girard, Habermas, Lévi-Strauss, Serres, and Vernant, among others. The interviews included here allow the reader to encounter biologists and sociologists, as well as anthropologists and psychoanalysts. Philosophers are well represented, but all the humanities have been included, and practically all major contemporary issues are considered, from bio-ethics to the end of history, from the construction of Europe to the rise of violence, from globalisation to the environment, from the development of science to political and religious extremism. Roger-Pol Droit is a philosopher and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
François Dosse
Philosophical Friendships
A sensitive light shed on the philosophical subjects that the reader thus (re)discovers, from existentialism to event philosophy...
Philippe Desan
Montaigne Thinking about the Social
A study destined to become a work of reference, one that will be required for all courses on Montaigne.
Philippe Desan
Montaigne The Self, the Other and Time
A reference book by one of the best Montaigne specialists in the world.
Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained
What is it that transforms a small piece of matter into an animated being? What is it that gives to certain physical structures the enigmatic privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences? Conscience. But what do we know about conscience? Daniel C. Dennet proposes a new explicative model founded on the modern revelations of psychology, neurology, and artificial intelligence. Daniel C. Dennett directs the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is one of the leaders in the philosophy of the spirit in the United States.
Daniel C. Dennett
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
In this book, he confronts this approach with the ideas of Charles Darwin and Darwinism, and addresses the question of evolution. What are the implications of the theory of evolution by natural selection? Why is evolution such a disturbing idea, not only for religious believers but also for philosophers and even for some biologists? How does it affect the concept of mind? In the midst of the current neo-Darwinian wave, this book offers a timely dialogue between the ideas of an important contemporary philosopher and those of the greatest nineteenth-century biologist. Daniel C. Dennett teaches cognitive sciences at Tufts University.
Daniel C. Dennett
Evolutionist theory of freedom
Billions of years ago, there was no freedom on earth, for the simple reason that there was no life. What forms of freedom have evolved since the first stirrings of life? Can freedom and free will exist in a deterministic universe? If we are free, are we responsible for our freedom, or is it governed by chance? Drawing on evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences, Daniel Dennett provides a series of unorthodox replies to these traditional philosophical questions. It is generally held that what is determined is inevitable and that freedom can only exist in a non-deterministic universe. This is untrue, says Dennett. It is also held that in a pre-determined universe, we have no real choices: all we have is the illusion that we can choose. This too is false, argues Dennett. He then goes on to explain how, some day, we will be able to create robots endowed with free will. In this groundbreaking book, written in a striking, lively style, Dennett interweaves philosophical creativity with the latest scientific developments, and challenges a series of philosophical orthodoxies. Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Mass., U.S.A. He is the author of Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
Henry Delmar, Jean-François Mattéi
Philosophy of Aesthetic Surgery Surgery as Desire
What are the visible and hidden forces that drive personal transformation?
Christian Delacampagne
Of Indifference An Essay on the Banalization of Good and Evil
What can we forget, and what had we best remember? What is "good" and what is "bad" indifference? Christian Delacampagne proposes a re-evaluation of genocide and of crimes against humanity in the face of an intellectual confusion that leads, according to Hannah Arendt, to a real "banalization of evil." Christian Delacampagne is a philosopher and a journalist at Le Monde.
Patrice Debré
Revolutions in Biology and the Human Condition
A reflection on the prowess and the promises of biotechnologies, this text also casts a critical light on the transhumanist project.
Régis Debray, Jean Bricmont
In the Shadow of Lights A Debate between a Philisopher and a Scientist
What is the meaning for us today of the Enlightenment? Of positivism and of the social sciences? How should we envision the revolutions in physics, biology and the neorosciences? What are the future roles of ideology and politics, faced with the challenge of the present religious come-back? Is the notion of progress still relevant? Can a fundamental, universal anthropology be established? In their discussions, the authors Debray from a literary point of view, and Bricmont from a scientific one meet, confront and defy each other. In the course of their talks, they summon theory and practice, past and present, history and current events, facts and their own personal convictions, to give the reader a brilliant lesson against the dominant mood of nihilism. Régis Debray heads the European Institute of the History and Science of Religion. He is the author of numerous works, including God, An Itinerary. Jean Bricmont teaches theoretical physics at the University of Louvain. He is the co-author with Alan Sokal of Intellectual Impostures.
Régis Debray
Believe, See, Do Crossings
In this work, Régis Debray gives free rein to his thoughts and tackles the varied subject matter provided by daily events encountered " in the news, out of the blue, or through friendship or surprise, at a moments notice and without great forethought. " The subjects he writes about range from " the Gulf War to a photo exhibit, from Tatis Jour de Fête to copyright registration, from a daydream about water to a meditation on road travel. " Other works by Régis Debray published by Editions Odile Jacob include Que Vive la République!, Tous Azimuts, and Transmettre.
Régis Debray
God, An Itinerary
"If we can be said to have a goal, it is to reply as precisely and soberly as possible to a childish question, which has been frequently set aside as trivial: Why are these beliefs, which came to light in the desert three thousand years ago, still among us? And why is it that hundreds of millions of men and women still follow them? The study of God's minor aspects does not, in our opinion, lessen its significance. Instead, it gives new life to spiritual issues." Régis Debray Régis Debray teaches at the University of Lyon-III.
François Dagognet
Reflections on the Body
A philosophy for our times, devised through an understanding of modernity in all its forms: artistic, scientific and medical. This work is a rigorous and exacting treatment of the ethical and political choices facing mankind at a moment when the power over matter and living are coming to be declared unlimited. In short, the engaged and stimulating observations of François Dagognet, a professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris I, medical doctor, and heir worthy of Bachelard.
Marc Crépon
Inhuman Conditions Battling the Intolerable
a strong response to the omnipresent violence around us
Marc Crépon
The Desire to Resist A Critical Mind for Our Times
The struggle against all forms of authority, a critical mind, and the ability to think for ourselves, are the best weapons against those who want to convince us of our insignificance.
Marc Crépon
Violence Why do we consent to violence?
How philosophy allows us to understand violence and hatred, which are at the core of our world. Marc Crépon’s renown: he appeared frequently in the media over the course of the year 2015, because violence as a theme is at the heart of his philosophical thought. A year after the attack on the Bataclan, how have the major democracies reacted to hatred?
