Si l'homme est un être doté de raison et se distingue des autres animaux par sa capacité à réfléchir sur ses actes tant avant de les poser qu'après, il lui arrive cependant d'être irrationnel. Tandis que certains s'en désolent, considérant les différentes formes d'irrationalité comme autant d'expressions de notre inaptitude à atteindre la sagesse, d'autres semblent plutôt s'en réjouir, estimant que la possibilité de ne pas se conformer à ce que dicte ou suggère la raison est une preuve de notre radicale liberté. Mais quel que soit le jugement moral, explicite ou implicite, porté sur ces phénomènes, la plupart des philosophes ne se contentent pas de les constater. Ils tentent de les cerner, d'en comprendre les mécanismes, parfois de les justifier. Comment et pourquoi? Telles sont les questions auxquelles voudrait répondre ce numéro portant sur la délibération et l'irrationalité dans l'histoire.

Deleuze calls Spinoza the “Prince” of philosophers. He devotes two books to him, Spinoza et le probleme de l'expression and Spinoza. Philosophie pratique But Deleuze's entire body of work also gives him an opportunity to work on Spinoza's conceptuality. Deleuze does not arrive at Spinoza by making a leap from the principle of reason to reconquer an original and forgotten past. The immanence of Spinoza is more like an arrow found inadvertently and shot again into the immensity of the universe. We propose to define this timelessness by highlighting the main points of convergence between Deleuze's thought and that of Spinoza. These convergences will be examined using excerpts selected from the five parts of the Ethics in which the following themes will be broached: the principle of reason, panpsychism, experimentation of the body, notion of power, and liberty. We will see how Deleuze gives a new and yet strangely faithful spin to Spinozist thought on which he establishes his notions of pluricosmism, non-human becomings, ethology, deterritorialization, and escape lines.

I argue that in order to solve the main difficulties confronted by the classical versions of the causal theory of action, it is necessary not just to make room for intentions, considered as irreducible to complexes of beliefs and desires, but also to distinguish among several types of intentions. I present a three-tiered theory of intentions that distinguishes among future-directed intentions, present-directed intentions, and motor intentions. I characterize each kind of intention in terms of its functions, its type of content, its dynamics, and the rationality and time constraints that bear on it. I then try to show how the difficulties encountered by the causal theory can be solved within this new framework.

This article aims to shed light on both the foundations and the consistency of the position regarding akrasia Xenophon attributes to Socrates in the Memorabilia. As does Plato's Socrates, Xenophon's Socrates maintains that akrasia is impossible in the presence of knowledge. On the other hand, he differs from the platonic Socrates by granting to enkrateia, instead of knowledge, the role of foundation for virtue. If enkrateia is the very condition for acquiring knowledge and virtue, consequently the responsibility for countering akrasia falls to enkrateia.

In this article, I study the extension which, according to Plato, the activity of aisthesis should receive. After a survey of the subject, I argue first that, if human aisthesis is antepredicative, it is nevertheless apparent in doxic judgement. Next, I study what distinguishing objects means for aisthesis, arguing that such a distinction involves the mysterious presence of those “common” somethings mentioned in the Theaetetus. I proceed to make the point that we are unable, in the light of the texts, to determine whether aisthesis can name its objects. Finally, I suggest translating “aesthetic experience” as “perceptual experience.”

Throughout the 1920s Heidegger's answer to the question of how to conceive of the phenomenon as a phenomenon has been the “formal indication,” that is a non-subsuming, non-generalizing type of discourse. Through a detailed interpretation of the sporadic explanations he gives on the matter, I try to point out some of the inconsistencies in his conception, and then work them out. I try to show in particular how Heidegger's emphasis on the method of phenomenology, which expresses his unrelenting desire to let the phenomenon be seen in itself, led him to overlook the essential role of language in phenomenological analysis.

Indifference in the choice, in the twofold sense found in Letter to Mesland, 9 February 1645, is similar to akrasia or incontinence. The aim in this article is to provide an explanation of the Cartesian analysis of the choice against better judgement which has different faces: “irresolution,” “extravagance,” “resolution grounded on false opinion,” the last two nowadays being called “megalomania.” Just as Descartes emphasizes the representative function of idea and the resolution to follow the better judgement, his conception of incontinence is to be understood on the basis of lack of representation, rather than on deliberation, in the Fifth Responses to Gassendi. Nevertheless, indifference is not deemed “irrational” by Descartes. I give an interpretation of this Cartesian abstention and conclude with a discussion of Davidson's conception of paradoxes of irrationality.

This article discusses several recent interpretations of Frege's philosophy of arithmetic, particularly those developed by C. Wright, M. Dummett, and G. Boolos. After proposing a new interpretation of § 10 of the Grundgesetze (about the indeterminacy of the referents of the names of the courses-of-values), and rejecting Dummett's analysis of Frege's failure in terms of impredicativity, I examine Boolos's objections to the analyticity of “Hume's Principle.” I wish to highlight the philosophical question: is the model-theoretical concept of validity adequate to the “intuitive notion” of the logically true?