The purpose of this thesis is to study Denis Diderot's two masterpieces, Le Neveu de Rameau and Jacques le Fataliste, from the point of view of human relations. The thesis seeks to show what Diderot feels are the bases for conduct between members of a given social class, as seen in examples from Le Neveu de Rameau and Jacques le Fataliste.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Jacques-Jules Bouffil was a prominent nineteenth-century French clarinetist and composer. Much of the existing biographical information for Bouffil is in French, it is often in obscure locations, and the sources available often contain discrepancies. This document provides the most comprehensive and accurate biography to date of clarinetist and composer Jacques-Jules Bouffil through examination of his studies at the Paris Conservatoire, as well as his performance career with the Paris Opéra-Comique orchestra, the Reicha Wind Quintet, and other organizations. The compositional contributions of Bouffil include a number of chamber music pieces, most notably, six trios for three B-flat clarinets, op. 7 nos. 1-3 and op. 8 nos. 1-3. These six trios comprise some of the most substantial works composed for the medium. They deserve to be better known because of their unusual concertant style writing and compositional rigor. This study offers a new performance edition with rehearsal score of Bouffil’s Trio no. 2, op. 7, a work that is not readily available to modern performers.

This is a study of the relationship between the works of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. It explains how the vantage point of Agamben's thought is achieved by rendering Derridean terminology inoperative. It is argued that this enactment of suspension with regards to Derrida is Agamben's way of undoing a theological structure of thought that philosophy has unknowingly appropriated. Agamben claims a position that is decidedly post-Derridean, and it is from this position that his sometimes baffling claims about philosophy and its tradition obtain their justification. The closure of the Derridean era and the inoperativity of Derridean terminology is sealed and traced by a messianic motif. Only Derrida can object to the naivety of Agamben's claims, as he did in his final seminar-series. For anyone else to make such objection would be to take the bait. This is because the apparently dizzying magisterial position that Agamben occupies makes sense only in a philosophical landscape wherein Derrida has become obsolete. However, this thesis will argue how Derrida's thought even in its desuetude continues to exert influence, now as a paradigm of language. As Agamben recalls in his essay “The Messiah and the Sovereign”: “[...] in the Jewish tradition the figure of the Messiah is double. Since the first century B.C.E.., the Messiah has been divided into Messiah ben Joseph and a Messiah ben David. The Messiah of the house of Joseph is a Messiah who dies, vanquished in the battle against the forces of evil; the Messiah of the house of David is the triumphant Messiah, who ultimately vanquishes Armilos and restores the kingdom” (Agamben 1999a, 173). The vanquished messianic force here represents Derrida's work that in its defeat releases its positive messianic twin, the thought of Agamben. In the first chapter of this thesis I will give an introduction to Agamben's thought specifically speaking to the motif of the messianic in its relation to infancy. In the second chapter the outline of the messianic exhaustion of the law of potentiality will be examined closely in the literary figure of Herman Melville's scribe Bartleby. In the third chapter it will be argued that in the philosophical constellation Bartleby's role as the paradigm of the self-capacity and passion of writing is fulfilled by Derrida. This is argument is presented against the background of the theme of life in philosophy. Furthermore, this chapter presents a close reading of Derrida's khōra essay as a counterpart to Agamben's text on Bartleby. Finally, in the fourth chapter, the positive gains of Agamben's thought are explored by looking at two messianic tableaus: life and writing. Life is explored the shape of a contingent “being”, a “creature” in the theological sense – yet one that has vanquished its theological condition of abandonment. In this sense, the modality of contingency is sought in a condition of being theologically disenchanted. Furthermore, passing beyond the Derridean paradigm of pharmacology, a new paradigm of writing is indicated.

Chance, in the sense of the incalculable, the indeterminable, names the limit of every estimation of the truth. Whereas traditional philosophical discourses aspire to transcend this limit, deconstruction affirms on the contrary its necessity; not as a higher principle that relativizes truth and renders all our calculations futile, as is commonly suggested by flippant appropriations of Derrida's work, but as a structural property within every event and every concept, every mark. Rather than a mere impediment to the pursuit of truth then, the incalculable forms a necessary correlative of the pursuit itself. Deconstruction effectively attests to and exemplifies the dependence of every philosophical discourse on its irreducible, inherent limitation. With reference to numerous commentaries on Derrida's work, Chapter 1 shows that the unconditional indeterminability of a deconstructive, methodological identity is indissociable from deconstruction's critical import. And as Chapter 2 verifies in turn, focusing now primarily on Derrida's lecture ‘My Chances/Mes Chances' and the performative aspects of his writing, deconstruction's appeal to the accidental and the idiomatic is not a call to irresponsibility and a turning away from theory; it is what ensures its remarkable theoretical consistency. Through close readings of Aristotle, Freud, Richard Rorty and William James, Chapter 3 demonstrates that any attempt to regulate chance cannot help but put chance to work instead. Not even fiction can arrest its contaminating force. Reading Derrida alongside Edgar Allan Poe, Chapter 4 posits that the commonsensical conception of chance as a deviation from the truth is bound up with an uncritical notion of literary writing as sheer untruthfulness, and hence as the site of pure chance. The constitutive pervasiveness of chance bears out, in the first place and above all, the instability of the limit that separates fiction from non-fiction, truth from non-truth.

A ética na educação: uma perspectiva psicanalítica é uma pesquisa teórica que pretende constituir um espaço de discussão entre psicanálise e educação no que diz respeito ao campo da ética, apresentando o que estes campos trazem de argumentação para sua ética. O diálogo entre estes saberes distintos é inspirado no horizonte da hermenêutica filosófica, já que a mesma, em sua base epistemológica, propicia condições para realizar tal intento. Tendo em vista que nossa realidade é marcada por fatos como a pluralidade das ações valorativas, a fragmentação dos sentidos frente a queda dos ideais e, conseqüentemente, a exacerbação do individualismo e do narcisismo que, de uma maneira ampla e específica, atinge a ação educativa é que trazemos a discussão sobre a ética na psicanálise, no sentido de contribuir para um alargamento da reflexão ética no campo da educação. Nosso referencial teórico parte da psicanálise freudo-lacaniana, centrando-se em dois grandes teóricos: Sigmund Freud e Jacques Lacan. Fizemos uso da hermenêutica filosófica de Gadamer como pano de fundo na pesquisa justamente por colocar a linguagem como solo, ou seja, que só pensamos dentro e a partir da linguagem, e que se relacionar com o mundo significa ter linguagem. A psicanálise, com a descoberta do inconsciente e sua aposta no desejo, permite uma articulação do estatuto do objeto que se caracteriza de uma forma distinta de outros saberes. A especificidade deste objeto está em retrair-se a qualquer objetivação exatamente por se tratar do objeto causa de desejo. Ao apontar para a questão do desejo no direcionamento na ação humana e seu correlato à falta produz-se uma abertura, não sem conseqüências na reflexão ética sobre a educação, já que esta tem nas suas bases a intenção de abrir possibilidades para o pensar e refletir sobre a problemática da formação.

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Filosofía / Autor no autoriza el acceso a texto completo de su documento. / La dimensión política de la enseñanza de la filosofía no es posterior a tal o cual disposición práctica o elección metodológica para su enseñanza. Ambas concurren, más bien, en el mismo momento. En gran medida se enseña filosofía así como se experimenta en la propia vida las relaciones y tensiones políticas. Se pone más o menos en riesgo una metodología, se restringe un enfoque o se enfatiza otro, de acuerdo al valor de la libertad individual que se esté dispuesto a garantizar o hipotecar cada profesor y profesora, o bien al valor de la igualdad que se quiera defender. Así llegamos al planteamiento de la problemática central y esta es que cuando hacemos referencia al trabajo al cual se consagran los profesionales de la filosofía, no sabemos con exactitud a lo que nos estamos refiriendo. Y no sabemos, no sólo porque bajo el nombre “filosofía” se acogen innumerables intereses, estilos y enfoques, sino que no sabemos porque los efectos que provoca asumir la filosofía de tal o cual modo, puede terminar destruyendo el espíritu mismo que se pretende defender. Mientras ese espíritu no se explicite en una práctica coherente con un discurso, no podemos saber si al hablar de filosofía estamos entendiendo lo mismo, y si, una vez entendido, nos seguirá pareciendo interesante dedicarse a ella o incluso apoyar o defender su existencia.

No description available.

Since the late seventies, the violence, speed and spectacle associated with the genres of war films, Westerns and the spectacular melodramas of early cinema have developed into a distinct genre of its own – the action film. With the development of the stylistic language at the core of this generic universe came derogatory generalisations and a tendency to categorise simplistically. To overcome these simplifications, this thesis explores the shifts in generic language to distinguish its subtleties and complexities of logic. Overwhelmingly the genre is considered masculine, but the purpose of this thesis is to explore the logic of this masculinity and analyse the effect of the feminine upon it. Beginning with overviews of the theoretical attempts to grasp the concept of genre that focus primarily on the limitations of the view of their having distinct boundaries, the theory that genre theory has failed is investigated. Leaving this view of boundaries through an exploration of symbolic universes that have translucent boundaries, the filmic movement of genre passes back and forth through the theoretical frameworks. The intention is not to analyse the overall concept of genre, but to focus on the symbolic universe and the language intrinsic to action films. The rules of action cannot be simply transposed onto other generic categories but stand-alone. Genre theory does not fail if approached from a perspective of discourse analysis focusing on the development of symbolic universes. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, and focusing primarily on the oppositions of the Master’s and the Analyst’s discourse, the question moves from the listing of conventions as the markers of the boundaries of genre, to exploring why the combination of certain conventions and signifiers coming together created the genre. Through Lacanian discourse analysis it becomes apparent that the generally acknowledged logic of masculine and feminine are limited. The masculine is the ‘norm’ that appears to need no explanation, but the feminine has transgressed the norm and shown the construction of fantasy inherent in the genre. This has led to post-action films that are ambiguous both in their generic structure and symbolic language.

Uppsatsen behandlar gudserfarenhet och språkbruk hos Jean-Jacques Rousseau och dess likheter med pietismen. Både Rousseau och pietismen betonade människans känslor framför förnuftet, i en för övrigt förnuftsorienterad tid. De menade att människans känslor måste tillåtas komma till uttryck i trosfrågor och när de talar om hur människan erfar Gud och det gudomliga använder de liknande ord och begrepp. Studiens syfte är således att studera dessa likheter, med fokus på Rousseaus språkbruk och bildvärld.