Actualité d’une philosophie des machines

On the mode of existence of technological objects (1958) remains a strange work on the philosophical horizon. Yet, all along his career, Gilbert Simondon has expressed himself on technique. The originality of his works is the analysis of machines as organised matter. This orientation sends us back to the divergence between French and German research on technique in the 20 ^th century. Simondon joins mecanology to a psycho-sociology of techniques. In view of an operational reactualisation these two approaches are put to the test of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and to the psychosocial “halo” of the nanotechnologies.     

La Carrière des Publications D’ettore Majorana une Étude Bibliométrique

This article analyzes the reception of Ettore Majorana’s articles by tracing all the references made to them since the beginning of the 1930s. This methodology allows me to show that Ettore Majorana’s 1937 piece on spin-1/2 particles was largely rediscovered during the 1960s, but also to identify the people who actively promoted Majorana’s work, which has loomed larger in scientific debates since the 1970s. Analyzing co-citations, this article shows the conceptual network in which Majorana’s work fits.     

Le cosmopolitisme entre chaos et république

Sans résumé PierreHassner est agrégé de philosophie. Directeur de recherche émérite au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, il a publiéLa Violence et la paix. De la bombe atomique au nettoyage ethnique (Paris, Esprit, 1995; 2^e éd. remaniée Paris, Seuil, 2000)La Terreur et l'Empire (Paris, Seuil, 2003) et a dirigéTotalitarismes (avec JacquesRupnik et GuyHermet, Paris, Economica, 1984) etVents d'Est. Vers l'Europe des états de droit? (avec PierreGrémion, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1990). Il a réalisé de nombreux travaux de philosophie politique (en particulier sur Kant et Hegel) et en relations internationales (surtout sur le nationalisme, le totalitarisme et la guerre). Ce texte a été écrit à l'occasion d'une conférence, présentée en anglais, à un colloque de l'Institut Nexus à Tilburg (Pays-Bas) en 1998, puis actualisé pour une conférence à la New School of Social Research de New York en 2000.     

Le génocide des Arméniens et l'opinion publique française durant la Première Guerre Mondiale

Durant la Première Guerre Mondiale, la presse parisienne de l'arrière évoque abondamment le génocide des Arméniens, tant pour dénoncer les massacres que pour alimenter un discours propagandiste visant à la mobilisation de guerre de la société civile. Les journaux voient en l'Allemagne l'instigatrice du génocide, plaçant la souffrance arménienne dans la continuité des exactions commises à l'encontre des Belges. Certains journaux parisiens se servent également du génocide des Arméniens pour opposer musulmans et chrétiens dans un discours aux accents de guerre de religion tandis que la presse de droite fait occasionnellement preuve de xénophobie à l'encontre des réfugiés et des victimes. La situation s'inverse même à la fin du conflit; le génocide des Arméniens étant dénoncé comme « bourrage de crâne » dans le but de promouvoir le rapprochement Franco-Turc.     

Le déplacement des pôles du théâtre francophone: Malcolm de Chazal et l’arrière-scène tibétaine

Acclaimed by the Parisian Surrealist circles in 1948, Malcolm de Chazal, the French-speaking Mauritian writer and painter, opted for unchartered literary territories in his subsequent works. In the 1950s, he wrote a collection of dramas that tended to decentre his writing practice towards Asian perspectives. References to Indo-Mauritian culture assuredly provided him with a major source of inspiration to deliver a culturally hybrid theatre. Yet Tibet may seem at first a rather unlikely referent in his work. One can nevertheless demonstrate by comparing the author’s numerous references to Tibet that it is not only meaningful in his entire work but also that it is a central and neglected aspect of his geo-literary agenda.     

Le Poète Évêque, Le Moine, Le Financier et L’Académicien

This article aims to analyze together several kinds of XVII ^th century correspondence which usually are studied separately: business letters, devotional letters, «literary» letters sent and received within a network of friends. In order to understand a strategy of epistolary writing, these letters and the various forms of their publication including scribal publication are here considered as tools used within the social world. This strategy implies, for every writer, an effort to gain social recognition for excellence in the art of writing. Literary institutions are indeed involved here, but put to use to further careers and various other operations. We see, for example, a conflict within a religious order settled, a man of letters recognized in the eyes of the law, a pious individual making his way in society, and the shaping of a bishop’s career grounded on influential social circles. These case studies allow us to grasp how social networks function, and to understand the specific role played by men of letters.     

Histoire des idées, sociologie des croyances et processus argumentatifs scepticisme et modernité d’après Richard H. Popkin

This paper claims to show the relevance of the classical book by Richard H. Popkin from the point of view of a sociological and anthropological analysis of the collective processes of doubt and assent. This examination implies, however, that we analyse the fine differences between the history of ideas, the sociology of knowledge, the ethnology of beliefs and epistemology. The examination deserves to be carried out as well for the understanding of the increase of scepticism in the 17th century as for the spread of the wave of contemporary relativism. The latter certainly has to be distinguished, as Popkin suggests, from a form of moderate scepticism close to critical rationalism.