Kant is well known as the philosopher who spent his life hunting for a prioris, philosophically identifiable characteristics of the make-up of human beings. These characteristics are species-universal, and are necessary presuppositions of the possibility of the success of various kinds of cognitive and cultural strategies. Kant bagged some big game. Space, time and the categories are a priori conditions of the possibility of human cognition. God, freedom and immortality are a priori conditions of the possibility of morality. The sensus communis is the a priori condition of the possibility of the universalization of judgments of taste. The hard-won trophies are presuppositions of possibilities. Once they were thought to be properties of a universe well ordered by a substantive god. No longer. Now we must look upon them as entrenched contributions of what it is to be human, as preconditions of human potentialities.

One of the central features of Kant's moral theory is the sharp distinction he draws between the moral Tightness (legality) of actions and their moral worth or goodness (morality). As we know from the first pages of the Groundwork, the rightness of an action is determined by the conformity of the agent's maxim to the categorical imperative; the moral goodness or worth of an action is determined by the agent's motives, by whether the agent acted from the motive of duty or from some other (non-moral) empirical motive. Morally good actions must be morally right, according to Kant, whereas morally right actions are not necessarily morally good.

Peu de temps après la publication de ses Discours sur la religion (1799), et dans le contexte de sa discussion avec les systèmes de Fichte et de Schelling, Schleiermacher a pris conscience de la nécessité d'élaborer une «doctrine de la science», ayant pour tâche de thématiser la connexion des sciences et dé dégager la connaissance métaphysique suprême. Sous le nom de «Dialectique», notre auteur a présenté à plusieurs reprises cette science idéale, sous-jacente aux parties réelles du système philosophique — aux sciences qui ont pour domaine l'effectivité finie — et ayant pour mission de fonder l'unité de la physique et de l'éthique, les deux sciences réelles suprêmes. Le but du présent article est d'offrir une vue déensemble de cet ouvrage, encore peu connu du public francophone. Une premiére section situe le projet de Schleiermacher par rapport aux “triumvirs de l'Idéalisme allemand” (Fichte, Schelling et Hegel). Les deux sections suivantes présentent la partie «transcendantale» de la Dialektik, centrée sur la question métaphysique du fondement du savoir, de la possibilité d'une conformité entre la pensée et l'être. Une dernière section traite, plus sommairement, de la partie “technique” de l'ouvrage, axée sur le problème logique de la connexion et de la cohérence des divers domaines du savoir.

In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asserted that “it wasnot German idealism that collapsed; rather, the age was no longer strong enough to sustain the greatness, breadth, and originality of that spiritual world, i.e., truly to realize it” (1961, p. 37). He was at this point launchinginto one of the major themes of his later work: the “darkening of the world” in the form of the materialism and “demonism” typified by the antitheses of the USSR and the USA, a polarity of seeming opposites obscuring an underlying fundamental similarity. This was the modernist faith of both cultures in the power of science to solve all of the problems that have plagued humanity for untold centuries, a faith in the power of science to tell us the absolute truth about the nature of reality. In 1955 Heidegger also characterized science and technology in “The Question Concerning Technology” as an “enframing” (Gestell), a particular dominant interpretation of reality dependent on the interest of control and which conceals far more than it reveals. For one thing, “the essence of technology isin a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth” (1977a, p. 33). Although enframing “lets man endure,” only art (poiesis) as the successor of philosophy transcends techne by allowing us to see that “the essence of technologyis nothing technological” (1977a, p. 35). Much earlier, in Being and Time, he gave his first sustained account of science as the interpretationof reality driven by technological interests, and spoke of Being as the “transcendens” lying beyond “every possible character which an entity can possess” [p. 38]. It remains debatable whether this characterization of Being survived into Heidegger's later period, but despite his nostalgia for the spirituality of the early nineteenth century, the role of Beingin these earlier works might best be explained as some kind of realism.

La Grammaire (1660) et la Logique (1662) de Port-Royal ouvrirent une ère nouvelle dans l'histoire des sciences du langage. On a beau insister sur la dette des Messieurs de Port-Royal (Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot) envers Descartes, Augustin, Sanctius, ou meme Aristote, l'originalité de leur œuvre logico-grammaticale ne fait malgré tout aucun doute. Quant à l'influence de cette oeuvre sur les grammairiens philosophes des générations suivantes, elle est d'une remarquable persistance et demeure sensible pendant un bon siecle et demi, en dépit des critiques, corrections et innovations qu'elle a pu inspirer, et de la diversité des orientations philosophiques ou gnoséologiques des plus illustres grammairiens des Lumières. L'œuvre des Messieurs propose une vision unifiée des phénomènes langagiers et «l'appareil mis en place à Port-Royal continue à fonctionner pour l'essentiel» (cf. Dominicy, La naissance. …, p. 14), aussi bien chez les grammairiens philosophes de l'Encyclop'dic (Du Marsais, Beauzée), que chez Condillac et ses successeurs idéologues (en particulier Destutt de Tracy).

J'appelle empiriques ou a posteriori les probabilités déterminées par l'application de la théorie mathématique des probabilités à un domaine empirique, principalement la physique. La logique inductive ou la logique probabilitaire, les probabilités conditionnelles, etc. sont exclues de mon propos.

Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness is an ambitious, imaginative and wide-ranging study (from classical antiquity to contemporary moral theory), one which has understandably received considerable attention. It comprises studies of the five authors that are arguably the greatest interpretive thinkers of classical antiquity whose works have come down to us: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato and Aristotle. Nussbaum's project is to contrast what might be called the rational and pluralistic (the anachronism ‘existential’ would be appropriate) approaches to life and happiness.

Les Études sur Parménide viennent s'ajouter à cette liste déjà impressionnante d'ouvrages qui, dans la dernière décennie, ont été consacrés au texte et a l'interprétation du Poème de Parménide. Celui-ci contient les études issues du Centre de Recherches sur la Pensée Antique ou Centre L. Robin de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) que dirigeait le professeur P. Aubenque. Les spécialistes de Parménide de la nouvelle génération ne manqueront pas d'instruments de travail pour leur lecture du Poème. Mais ils risquent du même coup de pénétrer dans un véritable labyrinthe d'interprétations d'où ils auront vraisemblablement plus de difficultés à sortir que leurs devanciers. La somme de connaissances accumulées autour des quelques cent soixante vers de ce Poème au niveau des manuscrits, de la langue grecque et de la littérature de l'époque est considerable, la diversité des lectures codicologiques, philologiques et philosophiques qui touché chaque vers du Poème, pour ne pas dire chaque mot, est déroutantc puisque les arguments qui fondent chacune de ces lectures ne manquent pas de vraisemblance.

We all know that there are many different kinds of “thing”; and what we mean, when we say something to that effect, is usually that things behave differently from one another, or react differently in different circumstances. Among the things to which these generalizations apply, we normally count both ourselves and other people. It was natural enough, therefore, for the philosophers to develop a theory of human nature as made up of a variety of faculties and powers (or “passions”). For this provides a convenient way of classifying and comparing our behaviours and reactions.

We are a species addicted to conversation. In a remarkable book, Allan Gibbard argues that conversation is “far more than a carrier of information. In talk we work out not only what to believe about things and events and people, but how to live. We work out how to feel about things in our lives, and in the lives of others” (pp. 3–4). In discussion we arrive at the norms that govern our lives. We determine thus what is to count as morally right or permissible, or as rational, or simply what it makes sense to do or feel. The importance of conversation to our normative life is increasingly evident as Gibbard's tale unfolds.

Law's Empire is a bold and ambitious attempt to provide a philosophical framework which will serve to install the judicial perspective as the preferred perspective from which to think about theories of law. The heart of its argument is that judicial determination of what constitutes law is an exercise in constructive interpretation. Judges have the responsibility to seek that story of the law that both fits reasonably with its past political history and constitutes the best justification that can be given of the legal practices of the society as a whole. They are engaged in finding an account consistent with the history of the practice that displays the point, purpose(s) and values that the law serves to express and uphold, and so brings out most fully the law's claim to authority as a legitimate expression of governmental power in that society. Dworkin believes that the interpretation of law that best satisfies these conditions is law as integrity, which conceives of law as expressing a coherent set of principles embodying those substantive ideas of justice, fairness and procedural fairness that are respected in the community. Integrity tells judges to identify legal rights and duties as though they were all created by a single author, the community personified, as an embodiment of a coherent conception of justice and fairness to which the community subscribes. In this way, integrity requires judges to interpret the rules of law as having a principled justification in a network of values and moral principles that the society adopts.