Philosophy and the Darwinian legacy

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Jean Bardy

Que reste-t-il aujourd'hui de "l'évolution créatrice" de Bergson? Les progrès prodigieux accomplis par les sciences - biologie, physique, thermodynamique- semblent devoir marquer du sceau de la caducité un livre écrit alors que la théorie de la relativité vient de faire son apparition tandis que la biologie comme science n'en est encore qu'à ses débuts. Pourtant "l'évolution créatrice" surprend le lecteur à plus d'un titre. A l'heure où une "Réforme de la pensée" s'impose de plus en plus, la réconciliation de la science et de la philosophie est devenue urgente.

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Alain Badiou

Twenty years ago, Alain Badiou's first Manifesto for Philosophy rose up against the all-pervasive proclamation of the "end" of philosophy. In lieu of this problematic of the end, he put forward the watchword: "one more step". The situation has considerably changed since then. Philosophy was threatened with obliteration at the time, whereas today it finds itself under threat for the diametrically opposed reason: it is endowed with an excessive, artificial existence. "Philosophy" is everywhere. It serves as a trademark for various media pundits. It livens up cafe s and health clubs. It has its magazines and its gurus. It is universally called upon, by everything from banks to major state commissions, to pronounce on ethics, law and duty. In essence, "philosophy" has now come to stand for nothing other than its most ancient enemy: conservative ethics. Badiou's second manifesto therefore seeks to demoralize philosophy and to separate it from all those "philosophies" that are as servile as they are ubiquitous. It demonstrates the power of certain eternal truths to illuminate action and, as such, to transport philosophy far beyond the figure of "the human" and its "rights". There, well beyond all moralism, in the clear expanse of the idea, life becomes something radically other than survival. -- Cover.

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Mario Bunge

"This enlarged edition of Mario Bunge's Dictionary of Philosophy is a superb reference work for both students and professional philosophers. In one volume Bunge covers all the major branches of contemporary philosophy, logic, semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology, as well as practical and applied philosophies." "Most entries are brief and nontechnical in nature, highlighting useful philosophical terms rather than trendy ones. Placing his emphasis on living philosophy, Bunge deliberately excludes many of the archaic terms and philosophical curios of other dictionaries. He incorporates a number of minipapers or longer definitions of some terms, and critically analyzes such influential doctrines as existentialism, deconstructionism, phenomenology, idealism, pragmatism, materialism, utilitarianism, deontological ethics, and many others. Bunge offers constructive alternatives to all philosophical approaches he criticizes."--Jacket.

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Tom Sorell

"'Modern' philosophy in the West is said to have begun with Bacon and Descartes. Their methodological and metaphysical writings, in conjunction with the discoveries that marked the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, are supposed to have interred both Aristotelian and scholastic science and the philosophy that supported it. But did the new or 'modern' philosophy effect a complete break with what preceded it? Were Bacon and Descartes untainted by scholastic influences? The theme of this book is that the new and traditional philosophies have more in common than the orthodox account suggests." "In two survey articles and thirteen essays on individual philosophers, the contributors show that the rise of modern philosophy was much more complicated and much more interesting than is usually thought. They consider not only metaphysics and the sciences but also the claims of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza to have invented 'modern' ethics and politics. These two aspects of 'modernity' in philosophy are connected for the first time. The book offers a broad view of the early modern philosophers, covering not only the much-studied major figures but also relatively neglected writers: Mersenne, Gassendi, White, and Sergeant."--BOOK JACKET.