Showing papers in "Philosophical Investigations in 1999"

Wittgenstein on art and aspects

Abstract: L'A. mesure l'importance de la notion de perception des aspects ou vision que (seeing-as) chez Wittgenstein au regard de l'esthetique philosophique, en general, et au regard du caractere perceptif de la valeur artistique d'une oeuvre, en particulier. Au-dela des processus de l'inference et de la description qui definissent l'approche traditionnelle de la vision, l'A. montre que Wittgenstein distingue la perception des aspects de la perception en tant que telle, en ce sens que la premiere requiert l'intervention de l'imagination. Examinant les criteres de continuite et de signification, l'A. conclut que la notion wittgensteinienne ne peut constituer un modele pour l'appreciation artistique

Shame, Guilt and Remorse

Abstract: Soulevant la question de l'origine egoiste ou altruiste du sentiment de honte, relevant de l'honneur personnel ou du regard d'autrui, l'A. etudie le theme de l'heteronomie de la honte developpe par B. Williams dans le chapitre 4 de son ouvrage intitule «Shame and necessity» (1993). Critiquant la morale kantienne fondee sur les notions de devoir et d'autonomie, Williams defend une conception de la honte synonyme d'authenticite morale, d'humilite et de modestie. Au-dela de tout egocentrisme, l'A. montre que meme les notions de culpabilite et de remords relevent de valeurs telles que la compassion et le bien

Other‐Worldliness in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love

Abstract: From early on, certain religions have been criticized for promoting an orientation of other-worldliness which implies and supports neglect of (or even contempt for) this-worldly needs. Marx voiced the modern criticism of ‘the other-world’: ‘The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly a struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.’ Thirty years later another angry critic of religion, Nietzsche, deplored the ‘concept of the “beyond,” the “true world” invented in order to devaluate the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality!’ and insisted that ‘If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out into the “Beyond” . . . one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity.’ Soren Kierkegaard’s various accounts of religiousness, with their emphases on inwardness and subjectivity, have seemed to some a paradigm example of such an irresponsible deflection of attention from, and devaluation of, this world. Two early twentieth-century interpretations of Kierkegaard’s thought focused decisive attention on this criticism and significantly contoured the subsequent reception of his thought. Martin Buber, in 1936, offered perhaps the most well-known criticism of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the relation to God as other-worldly or ‘acosmic.’ Addressing Kierkegaard’s preoccupation with the ‘individual’ or ‘single one’ (culminating his Point of View), Buber’s version of the charge of acosmic otherworldliness emphasized an either/or between God and creation: for Kierkegaard, the exclusivity of the relation to God (the chosen one)

Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour

Abstract: Contrairement aux interpretations fragmentaires des «Remarques sur les couleurs» de Wittgenstein, l'A. defend une approche systematique de l'ouvrage compris dans sa relation avec le traite sur les couleurs de Goethe. Considerant la question de l'opacite interne ou atemporelle du blanc et de l'impossibilite d'un blanc transparent comme l'idee qui structure l'ensemble du texte, l'A. montre que les «Remarques» de Wittgenstein: 1) font echo a certains passages du «Tractacus» concernant les proprietes relationnelles des objets; 2) repondent a la conception du blanc developpee par Lichtenberg; 3) proposent une explication de la nature simple ou composee (jaune et bleu) de la couleur verte; 4) reprennent le probleme de la transparence du blanc en reference a Runge; 5) et en reference a la representation picturale; 6) critiquent la «Theorie des couleurs» de Goethe en ce sens qu'elles substituent a l'idee de systeme la realite de l'experience des couleurs

Evading the issue : the strategy of kierkegaard's postscript

Abstract: Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a pseudonymous work written by Johannes Climacus which claims to raise and respond appropriately to the question ‘How do I become a Christian?’ Following Climacus’s text there is ‘A First and Last Explanation’ signed by Kierkegaard himself in which he says that ‘My pseudonymity . . . has . . . an essential basis in the production itself ’, that the pseudonymity of works like Postscript (hereafter CUP) is essential for the kinds of work they are. And in denying that one can attribute anything the pseudonyms say to him, Kierkegaard says that what ‘has been written, then, is mine, but only insofar as I, by means of audible lines, have placed the life-view of the creating, poetically actual individuality in his mouth’ (p. 625). At the end of the ‘Explanation’ he adds that the importance of the pseudonyms is ‘in wanting to have no importance, in wanting, at a remove that is the distance of doublereflection, once again to read through solo, if possible in a more inward way, the original text of individual human existencerelationships’ (pp. 629–30). These remarks invite us to ask in relation to CUP what the ‘life-view’ of the ‘poetically actual individuality’