Le point de depart global de ma recherche est la crise de la pensee sociale critique dans les societes dites avancees. Confronte a l'ampleur de ce probleme, j'ai choisi de considerer un theme particulier, a savoir le processus parallele d'uniformisation et de fragmentation sociales; et ce, grace a l'analyse de l'oeuvre d'un auteur contemporain, Michel Foucault. Cette analyse comporte quatre parties: dans la premiere, il est question du concept foucaldien de pouvoir; dans la deuxieme et la troisieme, des formes concretes du pouvoir moderne--ce que l'auteur appelait "des pratiques divisantes"--; enfin, dans la quatrieme partie, le morcellement du temps, de l'espace et des forces humaines opere par l'exercice du pouvoir est reinterprete dans le cadre centralisateur et homogeneisant de l'Etat. De cette maniere, l'oeuvre foucaldienne, en elucidant une situation devenue "paradoxale" pour les deux grands corpus ideologiques de notre temps--le liberalisme et le marxisme--, permet d'envisager certains elements pour une recreation de la pensee critique. L'un d'entre eux est justement d'exiger une activite intellectuelle exempte de tours de force comme celui-ci, un resume violent, forcement biaise, une facilite qui epargne l'effort d'une lecture soigneuse et d'une critique attentive.

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Carl Rogers, a leading figure in the Third Force Psychology, was keenly aware of the inadequacies of scientific psychology. He accurately observed that the main problem with psychology as a natural science is its approach, or philosophical presuppositions regarding the nature of the human being. For scientific psychology, persons are predetermined objects and human behaviour is nothing but causally determined reactions to external stimuli. In Persons or science: A philosophical question (1955) Rogers attempts to develop psychology into a human science. This science adopts a new approach, one which recognizes human freedom. From this new approach emerges his alternative view of the optimal human being, the fully functioning person. The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which the Rogerian view of human freedom, as it is expressed in the concept of the fully functioning person, adequately establishes the specific difference between persons as free subjects and the determined objects of the natural sciences. The method adopted for this study is philosophical analysis. We will first situate Rogers in the historical and philosophical context in which he was trained and educated and which led him to oppose scientific psychology (chapter I). Next, the analysis (chapter II) will focus on the distinctive features of Rogers' fully functioning person. The evaluation (chapter III) will confront Rogers' attempt to develop a science of persons with the work of researchers known for their contribution in making psychology into a human science. These researchers are: Giorgi (1970), Luijpen (1962), and Strasser (1963). (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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This thesis reformulates the philosophical problem of universals in view of an appropriation by psychology and, as a solution, identifies a fundamental distinction between two types of one-to-many relationships: the local-global relationship and the particular-general relationship. The argument is developed in two sequences. First, the epistemological, ontological and historical importance of the problem of universals is outlined through an uncritical review of some classic philosophical writings, followed by an overview of certain relevant facts in physiology and psychology. The second sequence establishes a rudimentary ontology and presents a psychological theory of universals using the notion of depth as a source of examples. The central element of the proposed theory is the local-global/particular-general distinction: local-global characterizes situations where many (local) events have as a common and necessary consequence only one other (global) event, such as when parts belong to a whole; particular-general concerns situations where many (particular) events share a resemblance that collects them into a (general) group, such as when elements belong to a class. The local-global and the particular-general are very different relationships, yet they complement each other and universals are presented as ultimate results of interactions between these two relational modes of events. Finally, the thesis concludes that there is an absence of evidence concerning singularity, but nevertheless proposes three ways to maintain its plausibility.

Le dogmatisme, entendu comme fermeture du discours theorique sur soi, est le risque central que courent ces pensees qui ne se resolvent pas a l'abandon de tout projet d'emancipation. La philosophie politique et sociale contemporaine semble d'ailleurs, legitimement, si preoccupee par ce risque que, le plus souvent, elle se detourne, ni plus ni moins, de la question meme du politique, des lors que l'on concoit celle-ci a l'echelle de la societe entiere. Cette etude se propose de demontrer que la theorie habermassienne de l'agir communicationnel peut ouvrir une voie vers une conciliation de l'exigence critique et du point de vue totaliste que requiert le discours politique. Cette conciliation prend la forme, chez Jurgen Habermas, d'une totalite radicalement ouverte. C'est ce que nous tentons de demontrer en proposant une reevaluation, a partir de l'oeuvre tardive de Theodor Adorno, de la notion de mimesis. Avec la critique communicationnelle, Jurgen Habermas reactive le rapport de l'alterite a l'identite et maintient, par la tension des deux termes, la possibilite du politique et le deploiement radical de la pensee critique.

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No description available.