Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics
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“God does not algebra”: Simone Weil’s search for a supernatural reformulation of mathematics
Full text linkThe article offers an analysis of Simone Weil\u27s philosophy of mathematics. Weil\u27s reflection starts from a critique of Bourbaki\u27s programme, led by her brother André: the "mechanical attention" Bourbaki considered an advantage of their treatment of mathematics was for her responsible for the incomprehensibility of modern algebra, and even a cause of alien-ation and social oppression. On the contrary, she developed her pivotal concept of \u27atten-tion\u27 with the aim of approaching mathematical problems in order to make "progress in another more mysterious dimension". In the Pythagorean \u27crisis of incommensurables\u27, Weil saw the possibility of defining the relationships between things in terms that are not exclusively numerical. This implies drawing an analogy between mathematical relation-ships and God\u27s relationship with mankind (logos), the basis of a \u27supernatural\u27 reformu-lation of the entire scientific understanding of the world. The consequence is a critique of machinism and the possibility to contrast algorithmic reason with a "supernatural reason"
Par-delà Nietzsche
Full text linkThis article presents Nietzsche\u27s notion of the Übermensch (le surhomme in French) as a development of romanticism conceived of as a quest to reveal the sentiment that defines or characterizes each individual as an individual. This approach reveals the affinities between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, notably with respect to Schopenhauer\u27s notion of Will that Nietzsche transforms into that of the Will to power, thereby underscoring what can be considered as Nietzsche\u27s individualism. We argue that as a romantic notion, the notion of Übermensch fashions an ideal of what life could be but overlooks the importance of otherness and the role that otherness plays in defining the individual. Going beyond Nietzsche implies that the Übermensch, as a logical construct neglects the desire to please that constitutes an important part of an individual\u27s relation with otherness
Une idée du miracle : Approche et définition chez Simone Weil, continuité et expression artistique chez Godard
Full text linkNietzsche\u27s Labyrinth(s)
No full textEditorial for the Special Issue on Nietzsche by Yvanka B. Raynov
Nietzsche\u27s Poethics: Poetry as a Way of Life in \u27The Gay Science\u27
No full textThe notion of poethics has been used to approach the way in which forms of language and forms of life are interdependent and to reveal the ethical dimension of poetics. However, the interaction must go both ways; there must not only be an ethical dimension to poetics, but also a poetic dimension to ethics. To what extent is ethics dependent on poetics? In this essay, I argue that Nietzsche’s life-affirming ethics can be understood only in this poethical framework. The specificity of Nietzsche’s ethics, and why it is so difficult to locate on the spectrum of ethical theories, lies in the fact that his ethics is a poetics. By focusing mainly on The Gay Science, I explore the interaction between ethics and poetics that lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s ethical thought. Both poetics and ethics involve the question of value, and a poetic ethics (a poethics) reveals that the creation of ethical value is something necessarily poetic. Nietzsche’s ethics of creation is not a mere theory, but a poetic way of life
Zwischen Verdacht und Vertrauen: Das "dialektische Spiel" von Paul Ricœurs Hermeneutik
Full text linkToo often associated with suspicion rather than trust, Ricœur\u27s hermeneutics is understood by many primarily as a critical endeavor. In this way, the fragile balance that he is trying to maintain between the two approaches is ignored. The objective of the following study is, by means of Ricoeur\u27s "dialectical game of suspicion and trust", to elucidate the complexity of his hermeneutics and to demonstrate that trust is as pivotal as suspicion. At the difference of some authors who maintain that trust and suspicion are opposed, even mutually exclusive approaches of two kinds of hermeneutics, it will be shown that Ricoeur has developed a single hermeneutics which encompasses both approaches and explores them on different levels (epistemological, anthropological, ethical, sociopolitical). In the limited number of contributions dedicated to Ricoeur\u27s concept of trust, these different levels are frequently conflated, whereby the relationship between religious belief and trust/mistrust is completely ignored. Consequently, the divergent perspectives of his early and late philosophical work, as well as certain discontinuities, are overlooked. Therefore, this study places a central emphasis on the neglected religious level of suspicion and trust. 
Behold the Man, again: What Nietzsche hopes his Readers will see in \u27Ecce Homo\u27
No full textThe title of Nietzsche\u27s autobiography, Ecce Homo, repeats (and echoes) the famous di-rective issued by Pilate, the provincial governor of Judea, to the crowd assembled outside the pretorium. While we know, more or less, what Pilate intended the crowd to behold—viz. the unremarkable humanity of the innocent prisoner Jesus—it is not entirely clear what Nietzsche expects his readers to behold in his autobiography. Despite imploring his read-ers not to mistake him for another, Nietzsche presents himself in Ecce Homo as nearly indistinguishable from the "moralists" whom he identifies as the targets of his criticism. The key to understanding how "one becomes what one is" lies in Nietzsche\u27s understanding that both he and Jesus have improbably emerged in excess of the disciplinary regimes that formed them. The defiance displayed by Jesus at John 19:5 thus alerts us to the corre-sponding emergence of Nietzsche—as the "first immoralist"—from the morality he has outgrown
The Importance of Being Honest: Free Spirits and Idiosyncrasy in Nietzsche
Full text linkThe main argument of this paper is that the debate on whether Nietzsche is communitarian or individualist is wrongheaded, failing to distinguish the conception of community and individual Nietzsche critiques, the \u27mob\u27 and the \u27Higher Man\u27, from the conceptions Nietzsche envisions and hopes for, his \u27free spirits\u27 and – what I call, based on the critique of indivisible subjects in the Genealogy of Morality – the idiosyncrasy. I propose a reading of Nietzsche which elaborates his novel conception of a non-ascetic will to truth, based in courageous honesty and self-overcoming, rather than self-preservation, in order to conceive these individuals and communities. The coupling of Dionysus and Apollo has to be replaced with Dionysus and Ariadne because, using key terms from Deleuze\u27s Nietzsche, the sense and value of critique is generated from a labyrinthine, Dionysian meaning as will to power and Ariadne\u27s thread as evaluation based on the eternal recurrence, constituting the idiosyncrasy and the free spirits, respectively
Like a Fly against a Pane of Glass: Simone Weil in the Context of Contemporary Theories of Suffering
Full text linkThe last five years have seen a welcome rise in philosophical research on suffering. In this paper I will introduce the main new proposals and point out their respective weak-nesses. All accounts focus on an important aspect of suffering, but each one is too nar-row. I will sketch an account of suffering as being forced to endure the unendurable, based on Simone Weil\u27s writings. I will argue that not only does this account manage to encompass the important aspects of suffering emphasised by current research, but that it much more plausibly brings out the ethical dangers, such as seeking consolations in fabricated narratives of meaning, and the value of suffering, such as enabling the mind to make unfiltered contact with reality
Simone Weil and the dangerous Myths of Science and Technology
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In this article I aim to clarify the role of science and technology in Weil\u27s account of the formation and maintenance of the bureaucratic state as a totalitarian form of State, which allows to identify the similarities between capitalist, fascist and communist regimes. In the first section I characterize Weil\u27s conception of modernity. Having The Need for Roots as my main reference, first, I reconstruct Weil\u27s conceptualization of human nature, after I explore the meanings and signs of uprootedness and Weil\u27s critique of Marxism. In the second section, I analyze the relationship between Revolution, Totalitarianism and the invention of the bureaucratic State. I retake Weil\u27s critique of Marx and the Marxists arguing that science and technology must be subjected to a new criticism today, for they have been reduced to mere means of a totalitarian logic, which ultimately reinforces social oppression. I conclude by rescuing Weil\u27s defense of the fundamental value of individual freedom and of thought, for our humanity lies in it