Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Sociologie politique, 1985. / Bibliogr. p. 293-297.

Cette étude tente d’apporter une analyse comparée et détaillée des réflexions d’Albert Camus et d’Arthur Koestler ayant un rapport avec cette volonté de défendre l’homme oppressé. Notre apport littéraire à travers cette analyse est de travailler en profondeur sur les textes de Koestler, d’en dégager les particularités lexiques et stylistiques, de les rapprocher de celles de Camus, d’en tirer une analyse subtile et minutieuse de la pensée de l’auteur hongrois, déplorablement méconnu, et de montrer comment deux intellectuels d’origines différentes et de langues d’expression différentes peuvent mener un même combat, avoir les mêmes influences littéraires, les mêmes « ennemis », les mêmes doutes et la même passion. / This study tries to bring a comparative and detailed analysis of the reflections of Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler having a relation with this will to defend the oppressed man. Our literary contribution through this analysis is to work in depth on Koestler 's texts, to identify its lexical and stylistic peculiarities, to bring them closer to those of Camus, to draw from them a subtle and minute analysis of the thought of the " A Hungarian author, deplorably misunderstood, and to show how two intellectuals of different origins and different languages of expression can lead the same struggle, have the same literary influences, the same "enemies", the same doubts and the same passion.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept of Comparative Literature, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This essay examines the role of metaphoric thought at the symposium Beyond reductionism: New perspectives in the life sciences organised by the Hungarian-born writer Arthur Koestler in 1968. The symposium can be interpreted in part as a protest against the metaphor of man as a machine, which was connected by the participants to reductionism in a broader, cosmological sense. Metaphors were widely utilised by the participants to communicate scientific and philosophical ideas, but the use of metaphors was also criticised for over-simplifying a complex reality. Different variants of general system theory were explored by some participants as a way of avoiding the limits of specific metaphoric imagery. Analogies based on modern linguistics were repeatedly used to explain biological and behavourial processes, as an alternative to the established mechanistic, reductionist models. Reductionism was also connected to existential concepts of meaning and alienation in connection with the concurrent student riots. Using Max Black's interactive theory of metaphor, this essay argues that the symposium produced a more coherent anti-reductionist position than is apparent at first sight, while also highlighting the importance of metaphors and analogies in the life sciences discourse of the late 1960's.

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