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Le présent travail vise à présenter la conception de l'intériorité que partagent Robert Musil et Ludwig Wittgenstein. Pour être en mesure d'apprécier à sa juste valeur l'originalité de leur pensée, il importe de comprendre que le sort du Moi, à Vienne, au début du vingtième siècle, était pour le moins incertain. À l'époque, on hésitait en effet entre deux tendances: soit rejeter complètement l'existence du Moi, soit le réifier et le recouvrir de concepts obscurs. La façon dont Musil et Wittgenstein conçoivent le rapport entre l'intérieur et l'extérieur se situe en marge de ces grands courants philosophiques, puisqu'elle n'endosse ni la thèse introspectionniste, ni la thèse comportementaliste. Pour bien faire comprendre le cadre conceptuel dans lequel s'inscrit leur pensée, nous avons mis en évidence la pensée de Ernst Mach qui a lui aussi cherché à circonscrire la vraie nature du Moi. Ne trouvant nul part une telle chose, il prononça son célèbre verdict: « Le Moi ne peut, en aucun cas, être sauvé». Musil et Wittgenstein ne vont pas aussi loin dans leur redéfinition du Moi, même s'ils présentent tous les deux une version minimale de l'intériorité. Le Moi, selon eux, doit être compris davantage comme un processus que comme une chose. Ce qui disparaît complètement chez Mach réapparaît ainsi sous une forme procédurale. Ainsi le Moi n'est pas un phénomène psychique, ni un sentiment interne, mais une capacité à transformer en pensée notre expérience du monde. Musil et Wittgenstein sont de ceux qui partagent la conviction qu'il existe bien quelque chose qui, dans l'expérience que nous avons du monde, dépasse le simple comportement, mais qu'il est difficile d'en parler directement sans s'empêtrer dans des confusions langagières. Le Moi dont parlent Musil et Wittgenstein est un Moi entièrement tourné vers l'extérieur, et pour le comprendre, il est vain de tenter de l'observer de l'intérieur. C'est plutôt par ses manifestations externes qu'il est possible de voir se profiler cette chose qui réagit d'une manière toute personnelle à ce qu'il trouve autour de lui. Nous ne prétendons pas, par ce travail, résoudre tous les problèmes philosophiques liés à la question de l'intériorité, mais plutôt exposer une conception qui tienne compte de la nature créatrice du Moi. Ce travail cherche aussi à montrer que la définition de l'intériorité que proposent Musil et Wittgenstein comporte une dimension éthique importante. En effet, cesser de concevoir l'intériorité comme quelque chose d'immuable, et la concevoir plutôt comme un processus, peut possiblement nous permettre, c'est du moins ce que croient Musil et Wittgenstein, de mieux vivre. Le pari qu'ils font est qu'une conception de l'intériorité qui nie l'existence matérielle du Moi, mais qui lui confère tout de même la fonction de donner un sens à l'expérience, oblige à se concevoir soi-même comme un processus qui évolue au fil de l'expérience. Aussi ne doit-on pas juger son Moi propre, de même que le Moi d'autrui, avec la sévérité des choses immuables, puisqu'il est toujours possible que le Moi et le monde prennent des formes différentes. Contre le pessimisme ambiant du début du vingtième siècle, et contre la nostalgie du monde d'hier, Musil et Wittgenstein proposent de retourner à la table de travail, et de faire de l'ordre dans nos conceptions du monde. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Intériorité, Moi, Éthique, Invention, Mach, Musil, Wittgenstein.

This thesis calls into question a currently orthodox view of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy. This view is that the social and political implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are conservative and relativist. That is, Wittgenstein's concepts such as 'forms of life', 'language-games' and 'rule-following' defend and promote: a rule-determined and context-determined rationality; or an incomparable community-determined human understanding; or a neutralist, nonrevisionary, private or uncritical social and political philosophy. / In order to challenge and correct this conventional understanding the thesis sets up as 'objects of comparison' a variety of very different examples of the use of Wittgenstein in social and political philosophy. These uses are neither relativist nor conservative and they situate understanding and critical reflection in the practices of comparison and dialogue. The examples of this 'comparative-dialogical' Wittgensteinian approach are found in the works of three contemporary philosophers: Thomas L. Kuhn, Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor. / This study employs the technique of a survey rather than undertaking a uniquely textual analysis because it is less convincing to suggest that Wittgenstein's concepts might be used in these unfamiliar ways than to show that they have been put to these unfamiliar uses. Therefore I turn not to a Wittgensteinian ideal but to examples of the 'comparative-dialogical' uses of Wittgenstein. In so doing I am following Wittgenstein's insight in section 208 of the Philosophical Investigations: "I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. And when I do this, I do not communicate less to him than I know myself." Thus it will be in a survey of various uses and applications of Wittgenstein's concepts and techniques that I will show that I and others understand them.

This work, the Nature and Value of Scepticism, shows that the metaphilosopby arising from what David Hume calls "true scepticism," is of use and value, refuting three standard objections to sceptical philosophy: the charges of unlivability, of idleness and of being dangerous and destructive. / The unlivability charge is refuted with an examination of the work of a self-proclaimed extreme sceptic, Sextus Empiricus. The idleness charge is answered by questioning its assumption that if scepticism does not lead to an extreme conclusion, it must be idle and without philosophical interest. The destructive charge, that the acceptance of scepticism would result in the death of rationality, is countered in reviewing the work of Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing that their outlook is not against philosophy but only a particular type of philosophy, namely dogmatic philosophy. / Chapter 1 argues that two reasonable interpretations of Sextus's writings yield a scepticism that is livable and philosophically important. Chapter 2 shows Hume's philosophy is livable and not destructive. Chapter 3 examines the connection between Hume's philosophy and his sceptical approach, arguing that his true scepticism informs his philosophical outlook. Chapter 4 argues that Wittgenstein shares much with Hume's "true scepticism," and that his work is not anti-philosophical as widely supposed. Chapter 5 provides examples of how a sceptically informed metaphilosophy can help address questions in epistemology and metaethics.

The rule-following problem can be condensed into the paradox that a rule cannot determine any course of action because every course of action can be made to accord with that rule. In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke sees this paradox as potentially leading to a radical semantic scepticism that renders meaning itself meaningless, and attributes a sceptical solution of the problem to Wittgenstein. After a critical examination of Kripke's work, I conclude that this solution fails on account of allowing neither for a normativity beyond the subjection of the individual to correction by others in her community, nor for a non-interpretive conception of the understanding. Finally, I propose an alternative solution that incorporates the notion of communal background understanding into that of a form of life and thus preserves the normativity of rule-following and of language.

Chapter one begins with a definition and exposition of the concept of theodicy, and a topology for characterizing comparative theodicies is suggested. It is argued that the basis on which theodicies might be compared is the foundational ontological principles on which they are built. Chapter two is a lengthy discussion regarding the meaning of terms such as omnipotence omniscience omnibenevolence, moral evil and natural evil. Chapter three begins with a critical analysis of a variety of theodicies found throughout the history of Christian theology. The final conclusion drawn in this chapter is that none of the proposed answers is acceptable. Acceptability is measured in three important ways: First, is the position logically consistent, second, does it conform, at least in a broad way, to the major tenents of the Christian form of life, and third, does this position take the individual sufferer seriously? In chapter four a foundation is laid for a response to the problem of evil which is to follow in chapter five. In this penultimate chapter an analysis of the Book of Job is offered which centers on the interpretation of Yahweh's speeches out of the whirlwind. It is suggested that the crux of Jobs repentance is to be understood in connection with Job "seeing God." In chapter five, an attempt is made, using the help of Karl Barth, D. M. Mackinnon, P. T. Forsyth, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Wisdom, as well as some insights gained from chapter four, to argue that there is a teleological response to the problem of evil that is logically consistent, true to the Christian form of life and sensitive to the needs of the individual sufferer.

This dissertation seeks to fill two lacunae in contemporary feminist discussions of essentialism: first, a lack of critical analysis of the term "essentialism" and its cognates, and second, a paucity of feminist work that aims to develop anti-essentialist methods rather than merely presenting anti-essentialist critiques of existing feminist theories. I propose a typology of feminist essentialisms, distinguishing metaphysical, biological, linguistic, and methodological variants. I argue that methodological essentialism---understood as the practice of making false generalisations about women based on the experiences and identities only of a particular group---is the most pressing political issue for feminists, and defend Elizabeth Spelman's anti-essentialist critique against its opponents. Anti-essentialism should not, however, be interpreted as disavowing the category "women" altogether, and I use Ludwig Wittgenstein's arguments in his Philosophical Investigations to articulate a form of feminist anti-essentialism. that understands similarities between women as family resemblances. This approach enables feminists to make generalisations about women that neither obscure important differences nor deminise our political efficacy. This Wittgensteinian feminism rejects the a priori and urges us to "look and see" to justify generalisations about women. I interpret this as a call for a feminist anti-essentialism that is embedded in feminist practice, and ask what "look and see" might mean for feminist research and for feminist organising against sexual violence. In chapter four, I argue that Carol Gilligan's recent work on girls' psychology in the context of race and class differences successfully responds to long-standing charges that her research is essentialist. It does not, however, fully meet the methodological challenge of anti-essentialism as it fails to acknowledge power relations embedded in research processes, which in turn shape conclusions about female identi