Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics
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Imaginative Empathy in Literature: On the Theory of Presentification in Husserl and its Application in Literary Reading
Full text linkThis paper provides an account of the experience of empathizing with the fictional characters of literary works, through the lens of Husserl\u27s theory of presentification. Via a critical analysis of Husserl and other phenomenologists, I argue that fictional characters, though lacking embodied presence, can be presentified to the reader in the mode of "as if." Moreover, I claim that imaginative empathy is a guided creative reproduction of sedimented past bodily experiences. This explains why, motivated by imaginative empathetic presentification, not only aesthetic feelings, but also "as if" existential feelings come to the fore. Finally, it shows to what extent presentation and the different modes of presentification are interwoven and function together
Au croisement de la poésie et de la philosophie : Francis Ponge et Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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At the crossroads of poetry and philosophy:
Francis Ponge and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The aim of the present article is to clarify the place of the sensitive dictionary in the work of Francis Ponge and to show how it denotes human\u27s relationship to nature. To achieve that, we will use the body question as a measure of the human–nature relationship and apply the phenomenological method that Ponge took over from Merleau-Ponty. It should be noted that Merleau-Ponty rarely makes reference to Ponge\u27s poems, except for a few incisions in his Causeries. As for Ponge, he uses explicitly only the notion of phenomenological reduction to explain his project of sensitive dictionary. However, we will argue that there are many similarities of thought between the philosopher and the poet, which are still unexplored
Between Blindness and Touching. Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy on the Self-Portrait
Full text linkThe paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the self-portrait. It is argued that Nancy builds on Derrida’s approach but introduces two decisive modifications. Firstly, he develops the emergence of the painter on the canvas as constitution of the self – an aspect Derrida does not consider. Secondly, Nancy understands portraying – and thus images – on the basis of touching. In contrast, Derrida conceives portraying as coming from the invisible and two forms of blindness. In doing so, he remains ex negativo in a tradition which links images to vision, whereas Nancy tries to overcome it. Nancy’s alterations not only lead to a modified theory of the self-portrait but also refine Derrida’s influential concept of différance by highlighting its corporeal and ontological dimension
Le film de genre est-il comparable à une "expérience de pensée" ? Révisions des concepts de déterminisme et d\u27agentivité dans trois films noirs (1947-1949)
Full text linkIs genre film comparable to a thought experiment?Revising concepts of determinism and agency in three film noirs (1947-1949) The philosophical approach of film genres, first popularized by authors like Stanley Cavell, allows to consider genre films as narrative variations as pertinent to philosophical discourse as can be a traditional thought experiment, since every question on the essence of a genre (for example, what is a film noir?) and every discussion related to its inner functions, its mechanisms and its themes, generate naturally a philosophical discourse on the way a director uses filmic and narrative tools to transform his intentions into a specific system of meaning. This study adopts formalist and philosophical approaches to connect the narratives of the movies to the discourses it is prone to generate. The corpus draws on the ‘primitive scene\u27 in three films noirs, Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947), The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1947) et Criss Cross (Siodmak, 1949): the tragic meeting of an anti-hero with the woman who will be responsible of his fall. Indeed, the sequence showing this first meeting becomes an exercise in style where forerunning signs of the two protagonists\u27 fall organize the writing and the mise-en-scene, and explicitly shows how questions of agency and determinism are intimately articulated to the narrative and formal frame of the movies.
Le tropisme philosophique de Milan Kundera : Le roman à la recherche de la définition perdue
Full text linkThe Philosophical Tropism of Milan Kundera: The Novel in Search of the lost Definition
The philosophical tropism of Milan Kundera is manifested in particular by his novels in search of lost definition. The creation and the redefinition of concepts in his novels aiming at elucidating the essence show his ambition to " make philosophy in the way of a novelist". We examine his processes in the invention of concepts and the definition of words, as well as the similarity between his works and phenomenology, particularly Merleau-Ponty\u27s approach. Through the metaphoricity of language and the inseparability between definitions and characters in his novels, Kundera revives a missed rendezvous between philosophy and novel. The definition of concept is no longer the privilege of philosopher. By the tireless pursuit of defining "the indefinable", Kundera transforms the novel into a place of phenomenological description and a field of thought experimentation, despite his ambiguity about this rapprochement
Philosophy and Literature "In Situation"
Full text linkEditorial to the second issue of Labyrinth 2020, which is dedicated to the general theme "Philosophy, Art(theory), and Literature.
Textual Keys to Understand Socrates\u27 Profession of Ignorance in the Apology (21a-23c)
Full text linkIn the present paper I analyze some relevant textual keys of Plato\u27s Apology (21a-23c) to show the many strands underlying Socrates\u27 claims of ignorance. I advocate a position that seeks to reevaluate the use of epistemic lexica by considering other evidence, such as cultural and dramatic context, the use of hypothetical clauses, the comparative and the rhetoric of the pair real/apparent. From this approach, I hope to show that there are good reasons to interpret Socrates\u27 claims of ignorance in the light of amiable irony, whereby the use of language and other literary devices create layers of meaning to express the full sense of Socratic wisdom for the audience without resorting to the charge of contradiction or insincerity. Against a position that reduces Socrates\u27 message to the use of epistemic lexica to interpret it either by synonymy, equivocity or low/high cognitive grading, I propose to read Socrates\u27 claims of ignorance, always in comparison to others\u27 claim of wisdom, as a sort of cultural appropriation and revaluation of the traditional title σοφία/σοφός.
Roland Barthes : pour une écologie de l\u27écriture
No full textEven if the theoretical prestige of the notion of ecology is recent, an ecological writing has already been racticed, without receiving this name, by Roland Barthes. On several occasions, progressively after Writing Degree zero (1953), Roland Barthes envisaged writing as a multifaceted practice, the most suitable for overturning the only order worth to be revolutionized, the symbolic order. We will take a fresh look at Barthes\u27 writing as a theoretical concept in the early 1950s, along a shift that takes the term first to the name of a technique. Finally, in the mid-1970s, writing comes to be defined by Barthes as a practice that ignores the dichotomy between matter or body and mind or idea, and which arrives, in a spiral return movement, at an inclusive conception that recovers both the concept and the practice. This is where writing meets, in Barthes\u27 work, the act that Latour calls "greening" and which he defines above all as a new relationship between facts and values. In the light of the latest research in "Barthesian studies" we would like to show that the future of "theory", if it is ecology today, lies in the practice and ecological commitment of writing, as a mediator of meaning, a tool of "charitable fiction", at the confines of spirit and matter. 
A Speculative Poetics of Tammuz: Myth, Sentiment, and Modernism in Twentieth Century Arabic Poetry
Full text linkIn this paper, I attempt to read the poetic principle behind the Tammuzi movement of modern Arabic poetry through the lens of speculative poetics. While speculative-poetic accounts of modern poetry, such as those provided by Allen Grossman, blazed new paths connecting poetry to personhood in modernity, their application to the development of modern poetry outside of Europe remains limited by their self-avowed focus on European history. This paper will outline a critical corrective to speculative poetics which, I argue, can be of value in extending its domain of application to Arabic projects of poetic modernity, particularly the two tendencies of "free verse" and "commitment" poetry that emerged out of the Tammuzi movement
Oikeiôs as designating \u27familiarity\u27 and not \u27appropriateness\u27 in Aristotle\u27s creation of words
No full textThis article deals with the English translations of the adverb oikeiôs in Aristotle\u27s texts. In chapter 7 of the Categories, Aristotle advises speakers to create words if necessary (7a5-7), on the condition that the new word is given oikeiôs. However, the English translations does not render in an accurate way what Aristotle wants to express regarding name-giving, since the adverb oikeiôs, deriving from the adjective oikeios, denotes \u27property\u27 and \u27familiarity\u27, the second meaning obviously originating from the first. Oikeiôs is crucial for us to comprehend Aristotle\u27s concept of name-giving, since he combines it with forms of the verbs apodidômi (\u27to define\u27) or legô, more than eight times in this particular chapter, where he is concerned with correct linguistic rendition. In sense of \u27familiarity\u27, oikeiôs sheds more light on the philosopher\u27s semantic theory in On Interpretation, helping us to understand exactly how Aristotle conceived of conventionality, i.e., combined with familiarity.