On aurait du mal à trouver de la métaphysique dans la science moderne. Les théories scientifiques ne nous parlent pas de l'objet, du changement, du hasard, de la vie ou de la pensée en général. Et les données expérimentales ne renferment pas d'idées métaphysiques non plus. À première vue, donc, la science moderne est étrangère, voire hostile, à la métaphysique.

Cette conclusion repose sur la supposition tacite que la science est identique à la somme des produits de la recherche scientifique. Or, cette supposition est fausse: la recherche est une activité qui ne sauiait être confondue avec ses produits. Et l'échafaudage heuristique servant à la recherche, constitué d'idées de toutes sortes, pourrait contenir des composantes métaphysiques.

1. The problem: Here are three plausible but incompatible propositions:

(1) The answer to Locke's question (23):

Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night … I ask … whether the day and the night man would not be two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato ?

is yes.

(2) I am a human being. More generally, human persons are human beings.

(3) Identity is not relative.

On n'a jamais bien jugé l'empirisme, supposant d'emblée qu'il était l'opposé du rationalisme. En fait, qu'il s'agisse de l'empirisme ou du rationalisme, on déploie dans chaque cas une chaîne de séquences dont il s'agit de rendre les termes solidaires:

(a) rationalisme ═ a priorisme ═ principes généraux abstraits (i.e. pensée logique) ═ raison universelle ═ idéalisme ═ la vérité est raison pure

(b) empirisme ═ a postériorisme ═ pas de principes généraux abstraits ═ pas d'ordre rationnel (on renvoie à Bacon et à la chasse de Pan) ═ positivisme ═ réalisme (naïf).

In an attempt to “purify” logic of existential presuppositions, attention has recently focused on modal logics, where one usually assumes that at least one possible world exists. Systems very analogous to some of the standard modal systems have been developed which drop this presupposition. We will here treat the removal of the existential assumption from Brouwerian modal logic and discuss the relationship of the system so derived to other modal systems.

Genuine ethical subjectivism is a kind of logical autism, uncurable by distinctions. It is, roughly put, that attitude according to which duty is discoverable by introspection. What I wish to call pseudo-subjectivism is more akin to an anxiety neurosis. It is a more common disturbance than the genuine form of the disease, but, happily, is easily cured without recourse to clinical treatment, by therapy than can be self-administered in the privacy of one's study. Every man his own analyst. Pseudo-subjectivism is an anxiety syndrome associated with the view that one ought to do what one thinks one ought to do. The cure consists in becoming reassured that this need not be genuine subjectivism at all. The purpose of this paper is to provide that reassurance.

The Crito does not set out to provide a complete theory of what subjects owe their governments in obedience. It is particularly concerned with what Socrates should do. On the way, however, it reveals general commitments which bear implications for judging other situations with which the dialogue is not directly concerned.

The first section of this essay outlines Crito's reasons for urging escape as well as Socrates' general strategy for disarming Crito's case. It particularly draws attention to the rhetorical devices Socrates cleverly exploits to alter Crito's perspective in judging his proposed plan. The second section examines the dialogue's arguments which purport to show why Socrates must refuse Crito's offer. Its object is to distinguish, and exhibit the logical implications of, positions which in the dialogue form part of a continuous story.

In a recent paper on “The Theory of Forms, Relations and Infiinite Regress” (Dialogue, Vol. 8 [1969–70], 116 ff.), T. G. Smith claims to have trapped Plato's theory of Forms in a vicious regress. According to Smith, the regress is “the consequence of 1) Plato's view that there are Forms for relations; 2) The view that the exemplifications of Forms are derivative and owe their lesser degree of reality to their relationship to their Form; 3) the consequence that each relation between a set of particulars and their Form must be intelligibly distinct and different from the relation holding between all other sets of particulars and their respective forms [Forms ?]” (p. 121). I have no particular quarrel with (1) and (2), but I cannot agree with (3). In what follows I hope to show that (3) not only cannot be extracted from Plato but it is patently false. In section I I shall outline Smith's argument. I shall then present in section II my case against it. I shall make some general remarks in section III.

Cet article s'intitule « Le monde du vécu chez Edmund Husserl » mais ce qui a été traduit peut-être maladroitement par « monde du vécu » dans ce titre, c'est l'expression allemande Lebenswelt qui pourrait tout aussi bien être traduite en français par les termes « monde vécu », « monde de la vie » ou « monde concret ».

Cette notion est au cœur des problématiques du dernier Husserl, c'est-à-dire de l'auteur de « La crise des sciences européennes et la phénoménologie transcendantale » et des écrits connexes à cette œuvre magistrale qui date de 1935–1936, entre autres « L'origine de la géométrie » et « Expérience et jugement ».

In this paper I want to raise an extremely ancient philosophical problem: the problem of the nature of philosophy itself. But I do not want to answer this question in the abstract, since it is never asked in the abstract. ‘What is philosophy?’ always means ‘What is philosophy for us here and now?’ It is with philosophy ‘here and now’ that I am concerned. Now this ‘here and now’ can be defined in many different ways; the definition I have chosen, with some arbitrariness, is taken over from Heidegger and Ellul. Philosophy ‘here and now’, as I shall read this, means ‘philosophy in a technological age’. The question I want to raise, therefore, can be formulated as the question whether philosophy is possible in a technological age and, if so, under what conditions.

La publication récente d'Anthropologie Structurale Deux de Claude Lévi-Strauss réunit des communications, des discours et des articles de l'auteur. Présenté sous une forme quelque peu discontinue, cet ouvrage s'inscrit pourtant dans le prolongement d'Anthropologie Structurale de 1958. L'intérêt suscité par ce complément du « premier » Anthropologie Structurale vient surtout des précisions nouvelles qu'il apporte sur la méthode et les notions clefs de l'anthropologie structuraliste, en même temps qu'il nous révèle davantage l'enracinement historique et l'évolution de la pensée de Lévi-Strauss.