[pt] Esta dissertação tem como tema o conceito de imaginação no Livro I do Tratado da Natureza Humana, de David Hume. A plena compreensão desse conceito é fundamental para a análise do modelo de mente presente na teoria humeana sobre o entendimento humano, em virtude do papel fundamental ali desempenhado por essa faculdade. Sempre restringindo-se àquela obra, o presente trabalho discute os vários sentidos do termo imaginação, por meio de uma análise das diversas funções exercidas por essa faculdade, e, ainda, por uma comparação com outras faculdades da mente, como a memória e a razão. / [en] This thesis is about the concept of imagination in Book I of David Hume s Treatise of Human Nature. A full understanding of this concept is of fundamental importance to the analysis of the mind model contained in Hume´s theory of human understanding, due to the central role there played by that faculty. While restricting ourselves to that text, we discuss the several senses of the term imagination, by analysing the different functions of that faculty, and by comparing it with other faculties of the mind, such as memory and reason.

This essay tries to lay the transcendental foundations to a notion of “pure evil”, pure in the Kantian sense of the term, which means to find the necessary conditions for the concept and establish which criteria must be in place for such a concept to be justified. This essay tries to show the importance of thinking evil on its own terms instead as a secondary concept derived from ”the Good”. The prevailing philosophical stance from Platon until Kant has been to treat evil as either privation or unreason; this paper instead seeks to formulate a substantive notion of evil as pure evil, showing how it can be thought in its own right as an independent and self-sufficient concept. From a Kantian perspective it is only practical reason that can ground a moral action or maxim as free and self-determined, therefore a true concept of evil is only possible at level of the moral law i.e. the source of reason itself. Hence this paper argues that pure evil is intimately linked to the functioning of pure reason itself. In contrast to the traditional thinking regarding the issue of evil, I argue that reason is the sole source of pure evil and that no other factors such as pathology, affect or bad faith can account for events or actions that demonstrates the characteristics of pure evil. With help from the groundbreaking work of Kant, Arendt, Lacan and Sade I hope to point towards a new understanding of the concept of evil as a product of reason itself. Hopefully this work manages to show how and why such a perspective is needed and makes clear what we might gain from such an analysis.

De quels critères disposons-nous pour évaluer la validité d’une opinion ?La<p>première partie de la thèse revient sur les tentatives des approches contemporaines<p>de l’argumentation de répondre à cette question. Les approches normatives<p>(pragma-dialectique et logique informelle) évaluent la construction des preuves à<p>l’aune d’un idéal de rationalité, lui-même garanti par un ensemble de règles quant à<p>la construction et la formulation publique des arguments. Les approches descriptives<p>(travaux de Plantin et Doury en particulier) se fondent sur une critique de cette<p>méthode :en prétendant fournir des évaluations objectives des arguments, les<p>théoriciens normatifs s’engagent dans le processus argumentatif et, en définitive,<p>produisent des contre-argumentations et non des évaluations. C’est à l’aune du<p>problème du statut épistémologique de la preuve en histoire que j’ai choisi d’illustrer<p>les limites de l’approche descriptive. En particulier, l’oeuvre du critique littéraire<p>Hayden White se caractérise par une même relation entre (1) un scepticisme sur la<p>possibilité d’établir des critères de rationalité et (2) un parti-pris descriptif :les<p>explications historiques pourraient être décrites comme autant de figures rhétoriques,<p>mais on ne saurait définir un critère permettant d’en évaluer la validité. Comme l’a<p>bien montré Carlo Ginzburg, le scepticisme de White ouvre la porte à toutes les<p>dérives négationnistes.<p>Partant, dans une seconde partie, je propose un modèle d’analyse alternatif. Ce<p>modèle s’appuie sur la définition de la rhétorique comme une dunamis par Aristote :<p>une capacité perfectible à porter un regard technique sur les preuves. Il s’agit,<p>concrètement, de prendre en compte trois points de vues sur la preuve :(1) le point<p>de vue de l’orateur qui invente ses preuves face à un problème concret ;(2) le point<p>de vue de l’artisan qui façonne la matière persuasive; (3) le point de vue de<p>l’auditoire qui reçoit les preuves. L’exercice de ces trois points de vues permet à<p>l’analyste de juger les choix rhétoriques d’un orateur à l’aune de sa propre<p>conscience, perfectible par l’exercice, des alternatives possibles et de leur pertinence<p>en fonction des auditoires concernés. Le critère de rationalité n’est alors pas idéaliste<p>ou transcendant, il est humaniste (Chaïm Perelman, Emmanuelle Danblon) :il est de<p>l’ordre de l’expérience acquise.<p>Dans une troisième partie, j’applique mon modèle à trois ouvrages d’histoire :<p>(1) Les traites négrières d’Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau ;(2) La vie fragile d’Arlette<p>Farge ;(3) The Ascent of Money de Niall Ferguson. Dans chaque cas, j’évalue les<p>choix rhétoriques des historiens (quant aux usages des preuves extra-techniques et<p>à la construction des trois preuves techniques) au regard des problèmes<p>épistémologiques qu’ils affrontent* et des auditoires potentiels auxquels ils<p>s’adressent. Dans chaque cas, je consacre une partie de l’analyse aux réactions<p>suscitées par leurs ouvrages. Ce faisant, je peux mesurer le caractère anti-rhétorique<p>des pratiques actuelles de la critique :le repérage d’une figure de rhétorique<p>(analogie ou métaphore), d’une forte personnalité ou d’un appel aux émotions<p>suffisent à disqualifier un argument aux yeux des critiques. En d’autres termes, notre<p>tradition critique est pétrie d’illusions normatives et, en premier lieu, l’illusion selon<p>laquelle une preuve pourrait être administrée sans technique. Je conclus en montrant<p>que ces illusions, entretenues par notre tradition philosophique, nous ont fait perdre<p>beaucoup de temps dans le développement d’une formation à l’argumentation qui<p>soit de nature à exercer la dunamis critique des étudiants.<p><p>*<p>(1) établir la vérité historique sur un sujet à fort potentiel polémique ;(2) exprimer les intuitions de la<p>phase de découverte ;(3) formuler et justifier une prédiction. / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present dissertation has the purpose of exploring the conflict between natural causality and causality through freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason. More specifically from the Transcendental Dialectic, where the conflict is presented as an Antinomy of Reason, and from the Transcendental Doctrine of Method, where the notion of freedom is regarded as the nucleus of his moral thinking. Kant s critical reflection points out to a distinction which is essential for this work: the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, that is, the distinction between things as existing by themselves, independently from our faculty of knowing, and things such as they present themselves in the exercise of this faculty. Such distinction is the central thesis of the doctrine of Kantian Transcendental Idealism and provides a solution to the impasse of reason in the trial of making compatible the natural necessity (without which Science is not possible), with the possibility of an spontaneous causality, which would provide the genesis of the transcendental idea of freedom, and under which is founded freedom in a practical sense (without which moral is not possible). The central point of the present analysis indicates what Kant claims in the preface to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that conflict between nature and freedom does not exist, as the natural necessity belongs to the phenomenical ambit and the freedom (belongs) to the noumenal ambit. / A presente dissertação tem como proposta explorar o conflito entre causalidade natural e causalidade por liberdade na Crítica da Razão Pura. Mais precisamente a partir da Dialética Transcendental, onde o conflito é apresentado como uma Antinomia da Razão, e da Doutrina Transcendental do Método, onde a noção de liberdade é anunciada como núcleo do seu pensamento moral. A reflexão crítica de Kant aponta para uma distinção fundamental, que é essencial expor neste trabalho: a distinção entre númeno e fenômeno, isto é, entre os entes tal como existem por si mesmos, independentemente de nossa faculdade de conhecer, e os entes tal como se apresentam no exercício dessa faculdade. Tal distinção é a tese central da doutrina do idealismo transcendental kantiano e proporciona a solução para o impasse da razão na tentativa de compatibilizar a necessidade natural (sem a qual não é possível ciência), com a possibilidade de uma causalidade espontânea, que proporcionaria a gênese da idéia transcendental de liberdade e sob a qual estaria fundada a liberdade em sentido prático (sem a qual não é possível a moral). O núcleo da presente análise indica o que Kant postula no prefácio à segunda edição da CRP, de que o conflito entre natureza e liberdade é inexistente, já que a necessidade natural (antítese) pertence ao âmbito fenomênico e a liberdade (tese) ao campo numênico.

Some contemporary anarchist scholarship has rejected the Enlightenment-inspired reliance on reason that was supposedly central to classical anarchist thought and expanded the anarchist critique to address issues ignored by their classical predecessors. In making reason the object of critique, some contemporary anarchists expanded the anarchist framework to include critiques of domination residing outside the traditional power centers of the state, the capitalist firm, and the church thereby shedding light on the authoritarian tendencies inherent in the intellect itself. Though contemporary anarchist scholarship has sought to apply this anti-authoritarian ethos to the realms of epistemology and ontology (by employing Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and other postfoundational thinkers), their own framework of analysis is glaringly susceptible to what Habermas called a “performative contradiction.” In questioning the authority of aspects of even our own intellect (and the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that accompany it) we call into question even the authority of our own argumentation. I answer this “contradiction” by interrogating two intellectual traditions. Firstly, I question a key postfoundational anarchist premise. Namely, I assess whether an understanding of classical anarchist thinkers as quintessential children of the Enlightenment is justified. Secondly, I offer an alternative path to reconciliation between the anti-authoritarian values of the anarchists and the anti-metaphysical values of the postfoundationalists (that I think mirrors anarchist anti-authoritarian concerns) by suggesting we are better served to think of an anti-authoritarianism of the intellect by employing three key twentieth century thinkers: Richard Rorty, Paul Feyerabend, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I do so while anchoring Rorty’s, Feyerabend’s, and Wittgenstein’s philosophies in the 19th century anti-metaphysical thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and the philosophical anarchism of Max Stirner.

Relying mainly on R. B. Pippin’s and D. Moggach’s interpretative works on Kant and Hegel, the thesis tackles the problem of the reception of Kant by Hegel. It does so by looking into the impact of Kant’s first critique on the Preface, the Introduction and the first part of the section Self-consciousness of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Three Kantian conditions for there to be freedom are identified and shown to be reinterpreted by Hegel in a continuist perspective. These three conditions are spontaneity, reflectivity and negativity which propels and retains the free Kantian subject in the Hegelian becoming of reality.

Étude la pensée de Heidegger autour de la thématique du sol ou raison et de son rapport ou identité avec l'animalité, singulièrement pour ce qui touche à la question de l'achèvement de la métaphysique / Investigating into the thought of Heidegger about the thematic of earth and its relationships with animality, particulary concerning the question of metaphysical consummation

This essay analyses the imagined and possible connections that reason has in the novel “El siglo de las Luces” by Alejo Carpentier. This is investigated both as our capacity to make conclusions, and by the way myth is pictured in the novel. The analysis is made in the framework of the ideas of reason during the Age of Enlightenment, and from thirteen engravings by Francisco de Goya that are included in a larger series named “Los desastres de la Guerra Independencia española”. These thirteen engravings are represented in Carpentier’s novel through the same number of epigraphs that introduce chapters or sections. The purpose of this essay is to explore the images and words in the novel, and their connection to reason. This study also examines how the myth of reason functions in the novel. The results show that images and words are related, and that there is a link to reason. Further findings demonstrate that the myth of reason connects the reality and illusory (rationality and irrationality), which Carpentier uses in his novel to create contrasts.

La liberté et l'universalité sont des critères de la moralité fondés en raison et qui n'admettentrien de relatif. Dans cette étude, nous soupçonnons le relativisme d’être à l’origine de la crisemorale d’aujourd’hui. Ensuite, parce ce que ce courant de pensée soulève un doute sur l’unitéde la raison, et donc de la liberté et de l’universalité pour le genre humain. Pour cela, nousvoulons opposer au relativisme la philosophie kantienne, laquelle pose la liberté etl’universalité comme étant deux concepts fondamentaux dans la conception kantienne de lamoralité, atemporels et dépassant le champ de toute expérience. De fait, nous comprenonsmieux l’effort de Kant qui consiste à poser l’autonomie de la volonté comme le principeunique et universel de la morale (pour le genre humain) et à désapprouver toutes les doctrinesmorales qui sont fondées par exemple sur la culture, la religion ou le bonheur personnel. AvecKant, on ne peut donc dériver la morale de tout cela. / Liberty and universality are criteria of morality ; they are grounded in reason and admitnothing relative. In this study, relativism is put into question as being at the origin of today’smoral crisis. More to the point, this school of thought raises a doubt about the unity ofreason, and therefore the liberty and universality for mankind. In this perspective, the thesisconfronts relativism to the Kantian philosophy, which puts forward the concepts of ‘freedom’and ‘universality’ as fundamental in understanding morality that is timeless and goes beyondthe scope of any experience. In fact, we understand better Kant's premise which consists inputting forward the principle of party autonomy as the unique and universal criteria ofmorality (to mankind) and in disapproving all moral doctrines which are based, for example,on culture, religion or personal happiness. From a Kantian point of view, one cannot derivemorality from the latters.