Cette thèse cherche à identifier le véritable point de litige du débat entre Alexandre Kojève et Leo Strauss, tel qu'on le retrouve dans l'ouvrage De la Tyrannie . Ce débat naît en premier lieu de leur désaccord sur l'implication politique du philosophe, mais il dépasse largement les termes de ce problème, ce qui rend ardu l'identification du coeur du débat. Nous soutenons que le point de litige fondamental n'est pas telle ou telle question philosophique particulière (comme la question de la relation entre la philosophie et la tyrannie), mais la hiérarchie des problèmes philosophiques. Pour Kojève, le lieu où doit se tenir le débat philosophique est celui du problème de la connaissance. Pour Strauss, c'est la question de la nature de l'âme et de sa fin qui doit faire l'objet premier du débat philosophique.

Karl Barth is the foremost Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. He is often derided as a fideist, and an enemy of reason, and, by implication, of truth. The burden of this thesis is to overturn this assumption concerning Barth's thought, by exhibiting the rationality which sustains his enormous body of published writing. I claim that for Barth reason is most powerful when it is about the theological task of finding the limits of reason's reach. Reason shows us its own limits in attempting to think the origin of all things, and thus of itself. I argue that Barth boldly affirms the necessity and integrity of empirical rationality, but that this mode of reasoning is limited from outside of itself in the effort to think the ground of both empirical reality and its own power to understand that reality. The reality of God, in Barth's Christian understanding God, shows the necessity and insufficiency of reason. Reason is necessary as the principle of unity in human experience, but it is insufficient in that it cannot comprehend, and so rationally integrate, the reality which God is. God transcends and is different from all acts in which we claim to know God. The recognition of this is not the end of reason, but its beginning as wisdom. I argue this thesis by a study of the two works which mark the fundamental turning points of Barth's intellectual development: his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1921) and his Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum (1931). I claim that the basic form of Barthian rationality is dialectical, and that the virtue of Barth's use of reason is in its power to transform external challenges to Christian belief into internal problems for its self understanding. Barth is not opposed to reason, but uses reason to fashion a coherent interpretation of reality.

In this thesis I present a reading of Hume's projectionism. Hume took very seriously our predicament of being in a position of making judgments about the external world, and about other minds, solely on the basis of our own beliefs. By "Hume's projectionism" I mean his answer to this predicament, namely, that our minds construct beliefs unaided by mind-independent events; that these beliefs are then projected upon the world; and that for us the world literally becomes the bearer of our notions. "Hume's projectionism" thus is an examination of the external world, or rather what we believe it to be, through the analysis of conceptual constructs that for us constitute its very nature. In my interpretation I place considerable emphasis upon the fact that Hume identifies three essentially different sets of conceptual tools that result in three theoretical standpoints---that of common sense, the theory of the false philosophy, and that of the true philosophy. Human beings are capable of constructing three incompatible and independent sets of beliefs. Hume believes that we have no independent and objective grounds that would warrant the evaluation of our projections. Consequently, our only hope to establish a normative evaluation of our beliefs lies in the analysis of the conceptual tools by which each of these projections is constructed. I develop three separate arguments to support my reading. First, I argue that Hume's arguments implicitly rely on his theory of theories, which I set out in chapter 2. This chapter considers the conceptual tools that Hume can use in normative evaluations of our beliefs. Secondly, in chapter 3 I seek to show that Hume should best be seen as attempting to reconcile the dispute between Locke's scientific realism and Berkeley's instrumentalism. By showing the historical roots of Hume's projectionism I hope to undermine any charge that my reading of Hume is anachronistic. Thirdly, in chapter 4 I examine Hume's account of probability, where I seek to illustrate Hume's attempt to assess the changes in philosophical problems that result from his considered belief that absolute truth and certainty are unattainable. In my thesis I hope to establish that Hume's philosophy is projectionism through and through. This is a highly controversial interpretation. By definition, if Hume is a projectionist, then his philosophical position cannot be defined solely as empiricism, or skepticism, or common-sense realism. I believe that if we focus upon Hume's implicit philosophical methodology, then we have no choice but to consider seriously the issue about the variety of his arguments. We then have to come to understand how it is possible for Hume to be an empiricist, a sceptic, and a realist---all at the same time? I argue that we can best understand this only if we view Hume's system as projectionism.

La thèse développe une interprétation critique de l'interprétation eschatologique de l'historicité de la raison proposée par Jean Ladrière. Selon cette théorie, l'historicité de la raison, en sa forme spécifique, est de type eschatologique et doit être rattachée à la structure eschatologique qui préside au devenir de la raison. Dans cette perspective, l'historicité est interprétée à partir du rapport constitutif que la raison entretient à l' eschaton . L'herméneutique eschatologique de la raison affirme que le déterminant du devenir de la raison est un événement ultime située hors de la concrétude historique mais qui détermine néanmoins de manière effective la marche historique de la raison. Cette approche permet de penser spéculativement l'historicité de la raison tout en évitant le piège de la totalisation effective lié aux approches rationalistes et idéalistes classiques. Par ce qu'elle postule une discontinuité radicale entre l'effectivité historique et l' eschaton , elle rend possible une thématisation hors totalisation de l'effectivité historique de la raison comme historicité ouverte; parce qu'elle affirme l'efficacité polarisante et attractive de l'eschaton sur la contemporanéité historique, elle permet de penser cette effectivité comme une événementialité créatrice ouverte sur l'avenir et le « pas encore » historique. La thèse montre la centralité de la notion d'eschatologie de la raison comme le fil d'Ariane de l'oeuvre entière. Après avoir, dans un premier temps, explicité la conception ladrièrienne du devenir de la raison comme autoconstitution de la raison, elle expose les sources philosophiques majeures qui sous-tendent la réflexion de Ladrière sur l'historicité de la raison (Kant, Blondel, Husserl). Un troisième chapitre précise la notion ladrièrienne d'historicité au sens d'un processus événementiel et créateur orienté vers l'avenir. Le quatrième chapitre montre comment la théorie eschatologique prolonge les intuitions de Kant et de Husserl tout en cherchant à les corriger et à les dépasser en remplaçant l'idée de téléologie par celle d'eschatologie. La partie d'exposition se double d'une conclusion critique dans laquelle est ébauchée, sous l'ange d'une critique de la surdétermination théologique présidant à l'élaboration philosophique du concept d' eschaton , une reprise critique de l'entreprise de Ladrière. Il y est suggéré que la thématisation ladrièrienne de l' eschaton ne parvient pas à rendre compte de manière suffisante de l'historicité événementielle affectant le devenir de la raison.

This thesis explores the problem of will in environmental education through an examination of 11 key references, and it identifies some implications for curriculum by applying a framework of curriculum questions derived from Tyler and Kliebard. The research question is: "How is the will to act in environmentally responsible ways affected by the human relationship to nature?" The tendency in environmental education is to focus on how human beings can affect the human-nature relationship. This study explores the neglected area of how the human-nature relationship affects people, and, ultimately, their will to act in environmentally responsible ways. This research builds on earlier environmental education models of how to achieve responsible environmental behavior. The two earlier models which seem to represent the best of environmental education understanding of how to achieve responsible environmental behavior are the Behavior Flow Chart: Major and Minor Variables Involved in Environmental Citizenship Behavior, by Hungerford and Volk, and the Hines Model of Responsible Environmental Behavior, by Hines and colleagues. These two models are integrated into the Eco-Will Model, which summarizes the thesis argument, creating a Refined Eco-Will Model. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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The thesis is divided into four Parts, each dealing with specific texts by Foucault, with the goal of drawing out the progressive development and refinement of his reflections on, and practice of, history. His work throughout is placed within the context of contemporary French historiography, the work of the new historians. The first Part will deal with early histories, specifically Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic. The focus of the discussion will be on how these works challenge what I will call the dominant 'picture' of history which finds its most vivid expression in Hegel's idea of the 'cunning of reason'. In other words, those works attack the view of history as the progressive realization of reason and knowledge by viewing them from the perspective of that which such histories exclude. The main focus of Foucault's critique is any view of the historical process as subject-centered and progressively unfolding. He challenges this by showing, especially in The Order of Things, that the history of knowledge displays less a progressive development than it does a discontinuous series of different epistemes that govern what it makes sense to say in any particular period. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, where he discusses his own archaeological approach to the past with specific reference to contemporary developments in historiography, Foucault insists on reading history in terms of the anonymous discursive formations that structure different periods as opposed to reading the whole course of history in terms of the progressive self-realization of subjectivity. This will be discussed in Part II. In the third Part, we will discuss how Foucault moves away from the general view of history altogether and seeks to find its basis not in theory but in practice. In Discipline and Punish, he show how 'things said' in the past and about the past are also indicative of 'thing done' both in the past and in terms of their genealogical link to the present. Providing a genealogical link between the past and the present 'opens up' the present to its past and possible histories by showing how the present is not necessarily linked to its past developments, but is, in fact, contingently related to its present structures. In The History of Sexuality, he tries to show how most progressive, developmental views of history have the ideological function of concealing that contingency and thereby help maintain the hold current structures of power have on the present. The fourth and final Part deals with the latter two volumes of The History of Sexuality and in effect show how the reflection on historical practice enables us to respond to our current historical situation by producing a sense of self-wariness of the kind of historical discourse which effectively conceals the openness and possibilities that the present has vis-a-vis both the future and, more specifically, its own past. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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Cette these se propose d'etudier la theorie metapsychologique de P. Aulagnier sur "l'originaire". L'originaire serait l'un des trois espaces psychiques que P. Aulagnier postule pour rendre compte du fonctionnement psychique au niveau de l'infans. L'activite principale que P. Aulagnier lui associe est une activite de representation, qui donne lieu a des representations pictographiques. Mais, forclos au pouvoir de connaissance du Je, seuls les effets de l'originaire produits sur le Je peuvent etre percus et ce, dans des moments de vecu psychotique. Nous nous proposons d'abord de faire l'expose des theories de l'originaire et de la representation de l'auteure, pour en decouvrir ensuite les points forts et les insuffisances. Nous ramenerons ensuite la discussion sur un plan plus philosophique en comparant la theorie de la connaissance de P. Aulagnier avec la theorie cartesienne de la connaissance, autour du problene de la relation ame-corps, et autour du probleme de la representation. Nous verrons ainsi, bien que de facon sommaire, comment ces deux domaines du savoir peuvent etre source d'un eclairage mutuel. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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