Tesi sul tema "Stanley Cavell"

Mon objectif ici sera de montrer que Cavell fait de l’autobiographie un exercice d’investigation philosophique. Afin d’atteindre ce but, j’emprunte une approche chronologique. Analysant une par une ses publications les plus importantes, je démontre que l’autobiographie remplit cinq fonctions distinctes dans son œuvre à savoir, une fonction descriptive, une fonction anthropologique, une fonction révisionniste, une fonction morale et une fonction perfectionniste. Ensuite, j’analyse le rapport entre le perfectionnisme moral et le récit autobiographie de Cavell intitulé Si j’avais su. Ma thèse trouve son originalité dans le fait que les commentateurs accordent généralement une faible attention au rôle de l’autobiographie dans l’œuvre de ce penseur. D’ailleurs, ce n’est que tardivement que celui-ci indique que l’autobiographie a toujours joué un rôle important dans ses écrits. Mon intention était donc de relire l’œuvre de Cavell afin de mettre en évidence l’importance de l’autobiographie dans sa pensée.

With reference to the period immediately following the 1979 publication of The Claim of Reason, Stanley Cavell (1994: 58) once said, “if I had had then to give a one-clause sense of that book’s reason for existing it might have been: ‘to help bring the human voice back into philosophy.’” Appeals to the human voice; the theme of its philosophical suppression; and the call for its restoration are ever present in Cavell’s work. However, it is only in these later reflections that Cavell explicitly emphasises the extent to which a defence and attempted reclamation of the human voice in philosophy stands as a unifying impetus to almost all of his thought. Such reflections thus provide a crucial insight into Cavell’s methodological consistency across what might otherwise appear the disparate philosophical, political, aesthetic, cultural and literary paths that his work has followed. The distinct mode of criticism that Cavell has developed and practised throughout his career is, as Cavell himself often notes, inspired by the ordinary language investigations of Austin and Wittgenstein. In this thesis I argue that Cavell’s inheritance of the work of Austin and Wittgenstein is best understood in terms of his attempt to ‘bring the human voice back into philosophy’. One significant upshot of approaching Cavell’s work through the interpretive frame that I develop in this thesis is that such an approach facilitates a clearer understanding of Cavell’s unconventional approach to—and ultimate understanding of—the debate between ordinary language philosophy on the one hand, and various forms of (modern) philosophical skepticism on the other. Clarifying each of these notions and assessing the central place that they occupy in Cavell's critical lexicon is an essential step both in attempting to understand and assess Cavell’s critical perspective upon the tradition, and in evaluating his call for a restoration of the human voice in philosophy.

The thesis problematises education as a site of seriousness. It subjects notions of seriousness conventionally associated with education to critical scrutiny and subsequently goes beyond traditional distinctions of the serious and non-serious to reimagine seriousness in educational theory and practice. In liberal education, seriousness is understood in terms of developing rationality through theoretical activities that are underpinned by a concern for truth via the rigorous procedures of critical thinking. In progressive theory, seriousness is identified with purposeful, goal-oriented practices and procedures. Seriousness is thus associated with making earnest impersonal demands on the learner to which he or she responds accordingly. This, together with the view that what is personal is necessarily vulnerable to distortion and partiality, has placed limits on the first-person expression of seriousness within education. The thesis argues that seriousness is not only characterised by a responsiveness to demands for clarity but also the importance of having something to say. As such, we are already responsive in ourselves to demands for lucidity and coherence. Furthermore, seriousness emerges not only in our rational attention but in the play and possibilities of the human body. Our judgments and responses may take embodied rather than linguistic form. The key concept for elucidating this account of seriousness is Stanley Cavell’s theorisation of the human voice. Through critical readings of Cavell, as well as Raimond Gaita, J.L. Austin, Derrida and Wittgenstein, the thesis brings together ideas of seriousness and voice in terms of what is personal and impersonal. It draws on drama education for an understanding of how personal and impersonal notions of seriousness are located within artistic practice and aesthetic judgment, opening the way for a richer sense of first-person expression that gives weight to the playful and non-serious alongside the serious.

Le centre de ce travail part de la gémellité de Nietzsche et Emerson qu'il revient a Stanley Cavell d'avoir révélée. Toute une « politique de l’interprétation » pesant sur le nom de Nietzsche doit être revue. Pas plus que celle d'Emerson, la pensée de Nietzsche n'est ennemie de la liberté. Servirait-il pareillement une démocratie qui s'en honorerait? Mais cette question est-elle simplement possible étant donné le tour herméneutique et l'horizon d'une clôture de la métaphysique défendus par toute une partie influente de la philosophie contemporaine (qui prétend s'alimenter à Nietzsche) ici et là une prédominance de la théorie politique la plus aveugle (avec Nietzsche par contre comme contre-modèle) ? Rien ne permettrait un tel enthousiasme si n'était survenu au moment de ce travail le plus éclatant retour de l’ Amérique à sa voix emersonienne : l'élection de B. H Obama, « une différence nouvelle» qui nous regarde. Pour effectuer l'autre moitié du chemin, une reprise nous a semble nécessaire vers la critique de la valeur et de la culture autour de son moment« moderniste ». C'est la découverte d'un certain type d'autorité en philosophie. Si ce moment paraît bien révolu, restait à Cavell de penser un« dépassement de la théorie philosophique ». L'essence de ce qu'est un« texte », de ses pouvoirs et de ses places est changée. C'est une « auctorialité » nouvelle qui trouve ses données immédiates dans une culture délivrée. Peut-être est-cela d'ailleurs le fin mot du perfectionnisme : une pratique de la lecture (donc de la vie!) dérivant ses effets politiques de l'ordinaire; nous délivrant ainsi des illusions d’une décision qui ne relèverait que de la philosophie

Cette thèse propose une description du mouvement philosophique nord-américain contemporain couramment appelé « philosophie post-analytique ». La génération d'auteurs apparue après Wittgenstein est l'héritière directe de la pensée qu'il développa. En Amérique, les critiques wittgensteiniennes de l'analyse que l'on trouve dans les investigations philosophiques ont inspiré un mouvement qui dépasse largement les confins établis par la philosophie analytique. Ce dépassement est marqué par la réappropriation de l'histoire au sein de la philosophie et par une nouvelle importance accordée à l'éthique. Le mouvement post analytique est un mouvement de philosophies éthiques post-wittgensteiniennes. Une lecture des œuvres de trois auteurs de ce mouvement, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell et Charles Taylor, permet de mettre en lumière l'influence profonde que Wittgenstein a exercée sur leurs idées. On observe parallèlement un autre phénomène : de façon systématique, ces auteurs associent les idées de Wittgenstein à celles d'un ou de plusieurs autres penseurs. Rorty et Cavell s'appuient sur la tradition de la philosophie américaine, et Taylor remonte au "sturm und drang', pour effectuer ce que je suis amené à appeler le « greffage » d'idées fait autour de Wittgenstein.

There is no neutral generic epistemic state which it makes sense to ascribe to an inquirer in respect of each and every putative truth on which an inquirer relies. The term ‘belief’ does not signify such a state. Rather, such a state is an invention of epistemology itself. ‘Belief’ is a term used within our epistemic practice to mark epistemic positions evaluatively. More specifically, ‘belief’ is used to signal epistemic risk or a lack of demonstrability and is not a sub- category or more fundamental state than knowledge, but rather an alternative characterisation to it. In this thesis, I argue that this is a deep insight which has been overlooked in the epistemological thought of William James. I contend that it is of profound significance to our contemporary understanding of epistemic practice, which tends to remain beholden to the flawed conception of belief which this insight allows us to reject. It is powerfully expressed in what James describes as his sermon on the justification of faith – 'The Will to Believe'. The lecture has often been dismissed as an irresponsible licensing of wishful thinking. However, I argue that the account of inquiry which James offers provides a radically different and more illuminating picture of the character and extent of the possibility of a rational endorsement of our shared epistemic practice (in the face of our sceptical and dogmatic inclinations) from that which has held currency in traditional epistemology. This thesis examines the significance of James’ arguments in relation to his broader philosophy and his role, alongside Peirce and Dewey, in the birth of pragmatist thinking. I show how James’ approach reflects a commitment to understanding inquiry in terms of an embodied perspective and that the significance of this approach remains unappreciated. I argue that 'The Will to Believe' presents a unique insight into the concept of belief itself which the traditional view of belief in epistemology as a basic and generic epistemic state is incapable of accommodating. I further trace the implications of this insight through the development of pragmatically oriented philosophy of language in C20th, showing how it enhances our understanding of our epistemic language and practice. 'The Will to Believe' has been much maligned in its attempt to provide a defence of religious faith on the basis of the positive practical consequences of believing which may flow therefrom. I suspect that, at least in part, it is this subject matter which has made its deeper criticism of a flawed epistemological picture inaccessible to many readers. I will examine how the lecture represented the culmination of a line of thinking which James had developed for some time, which reflects a working out of his conviction that epistemology must represent the inquirer as an active participant in (and therefore as a part of) the world. In doing so, I will engage with certain misunderstandings and misinformation concerning the relation between James’ arguments there and his debates with other pragmatists and particularly Peirce. This will illuminate both a greater affinity between their positions than is often realised, but also the importance of James’ arguments to the potential for pragmatist thought to be applied outside of the rather narrow scope of application of the scientific method which Peirce emphasises and thereby to be of relevance to our everyday epistemic engagements. This will lead us to the questions of the extent to which a rational vindication of the bases of inquiry itself is possible and the relevance of that possibility to our understanding of our epistemic practice. I will compare Peirce’s account of inquiry with James’ arguments, understanding both of them as a response to scepticism conceived of in different ways. Where Peirce focuses on repudiating a Cartesian argument from the dubitability of the external world, rejecting the need for a foundational underpinning to our scientific understanding thereof, James perceives the greater threat as residing in Pyrrhonism and the spectre of a lack of rational justification more generally within our epistemic lives. In examining early pragmatist epistemological thought, I will also engage with a more contemporary Kantian inspired reading of the pragmatist understanding of inquiry which emphasises the extent to which the significance of our practices of inquiry is shaped by our responses to the possibilities of scepticism and dogmatism. I show how James’ concern with self-authorising our position in life as meaningful is a significant further development of this insight. Further, I argue that James’ insights have been misunderstood in contemporary literature, which has failed to engage with his discussion of scepticism, and I show that 'The Will to Believe' represents a significant development in thinking about a Pyrrhonist challenge to our epistemic practice. While James likewise recognises two different modes of responsiveness to the world, unlike Pyrrhonists he does not attempt to categorise these into two different levels or spheres of responsiveness and thus avoids positing an unrevisable ‘natural’ basis for action which is insensitive to reason. James provides a distinctive response to the threat of an equipollence of reasons which arises not as an abstract general phenomenon in respect of any attempt to support actions by reasons, but rather in particular practical contexts under the exigencies of needing to act immediately. I show how James’ identification of two different kinds of epistemic relation to a putative truth and the different modes of epistemic assessment associated therewith provides a unique understanding of our epistemic responsibilities which illuminates the relevance of scepticism as a threat to successful practical action in our lives. I then examine how 'The Will to Believe' relates to James’ broader pragmatism. I engage with the reading of James offered by Hilary Putnam, which I critique as representative of a common misunderstanding of James’ pragmatism. I show how a sensitive understanding of James’ pragmatic theory of truth and its conception of the relationship between meaning (construed both narrowly as linguistic meaning and broadly as the significance of action) and the practical outcomes of our worldly engagements enriches the arguments made in 'The Will to Believe'. I argue that James’ insistence that the normative claim which truths have on us is grounded in practical outcomes illuminates how the questions raised in 'The Will to Believe' reflect the significance of motivated perspectives on the concepts of truth and evidence and their normative hold over us, which James identifies as conflicting tendencies within human nature. In turn, this connection between motivation and truth lays the groundwork for the rejection of what I have described as the traditional conception of belief as a generic state. I consider and critique this traditional model and its significance through the lens of contemporary pragmatically minded work in the philosophy of language. I emphasise the importance of intersubjectivity in James’ thought and build upon more recent work on the notion of second personal space and normative relations therein. This concludes with an account of the term ‘belief’ which understands it as marking what I call ‘epistemic risk’ and hence playing an evaluative role within our epistemic practice, rather than designating a fundamental or neutral epistemic state which operates as a component or basis for knowledge. Thus, I conclude that James’ rejection of the notion that epistemic states exist on a single continuum of justification constitutes a crucial development in our understanding of epistemic practice by undercutting this false picture and opening the possibility of a rational consideration of the significance of the interested way we deploy these epistemic concepts. Rejecting the traditional epistemological picture allows for a deeper critique of our intersubjective epistemic behaviour by recognising the difficulties involved in the existence and apprehension of limits to rational determination. I argue that calling something a belief is not ordinarily a neutral epistemic ascription in the way epistemology has imagined. Rather, to call something a belief is in many cases to cast doubt on it implicitly, or to refuse to take full responsibility for it, or otherwise marks a lack of demonstrability. In all cases, this language is used in contrast to the language of knowledge, designating an alternative to knowledge marked by a different kind of evaluation of an epistemic situation. Consequently, belief should not be thought of as a component of knowledge, as it often has been in epistemology. I argue that this problem arises because epistemology attempts to attribute epistemic states neutrally but with full generality, such that an agent’s epistemic outlook can be described in terms of a set of beliefs which can then be evaluated in a disinterested way. Instead, I argue that it only makes sense to attribute epistemic states in terms of the distinction to which James draws our attention, which means that attributing them necessarily both involves and communicates evaluation on our part. Finally, I compare these insights and James’ arguments to the work of Stanley Cavell, whose understanding of scepticism evinces deep similarities to James’ thought. I examine the role of epistemology’s distorted notions of belief and knowledge in the production of scepticism itself. I thus compare Cavell’s understanding of the implicit constraints which exist upon our linguistic practice to the connection which James highlights between motivation and possibilities of meaning. I examine Cavell’s insights concerning the constraints on the sceptic’s ability to mean things by their non-standard use of the term ‘know’ and show how similar insights apply to the role of the concept of ‘belief’ in scepticism, which I argue also takes on a non- standard role in sceptical language. I suggest that both James' and Cavell’s perspectives can benefit from engagement with one another and illuminate this through a consideration of the role which the idea of a further or higher perspective which undercuts our practice has in external world scepticism. I suggest that the significance of this perspective is recognised by both James and Cavell in different ways, but that a fuller characterisation of it illuminates the significance of scepticism within our lives and is thus essential to understanding our response to it. Here I will suggest that James’ perspective may be more helpful to the treatment of this as a genuinely intersubjective problem to which we can respond collectively, whilst Cavell’s perspective is at times perhaps overly conservative in its view of such possibilities. Here, James’ pluralism reflects a concerted attempt to work out the possibilities for such a collective response and thus lays the groundwork for a social epistemological interrogation of our capacity for rational self-authorisation. I conclude by noting how, in this context, James’ rejection of a single continuum of justification for epistemic states offers a significant contribution to conceptual resources for non-ideal epistemological theory.

La littérature peut-elle dire quelque chose en éthique qui échappe à la philosophie ? Si c’est le cas, doit-on considérer que certains textes littéraires font partie de la philosophie ? Nous nous intéresserons dans cette thèse aux réponses que proposent Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond et Martha Nussbaum à ces questions. En critiquant la philosophie morale traditionnelle et en cherchant à défendre la pertinence morale de la littérature, ces trois philosophes américains développent des conceptions de la relation entre philosophie et littérature qui rapprochent les deux disciplines autour d’une tâche ou d’un travail commun. Nous tenterons de montrer que ces différentes conceptions, qui impliquent implicitement ou explicitement une redéfinition de la philosophie à partir d’un nouveau critère de reconnaissance, mènent à un affaiblissement de la distinction fondamentale entre philosophie et sophistique. En effet, les critères de reconnaissance de la philosophie proposés par Cavell, Diamond et Nussbaum sont soit trop partiaux et subjectifs pour permettre le maintien de cette distinction primordiale, soit trop restrictifs pour rendre compte de la diversité des visions du monde et des points de vue que l’on retrouve autant en littérature qu’en philosophie
Can literature say something in ethics that philosophy cannot ? If so, should we consider some literary texts as philosophy ? In this thesis, we will study the answers that Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond and Martha Nussbaum give to these questions. As they criticize traditional moral philosophy and defend literature’s moral relevance, these three American philosophers develop conceptions of the relationship between philosophy and literature that bring the two disciplines together on the basis of a common task or work. We will try to show that these different conceptions, which entail implicitly or explicitly a redefinition of philosophy based on a new criterion of recognition, lead to a weakening of the fundamental distinction between philosophy and sophistry. We will argue that the criterions of recognition put forward by Cavell, Diamond and Nussbaum are either too partial and subjective to allow the upholding of this primordial distinction, or too restrictive to reflect the diversity of moral visions and point of view in philosophy and in literature

Målet med denne bacheloroppgåva var å studere to bøker av Tomas Espedal og Kristian Lundberg for å sjå kva deira språklege grep kunne seie oss om synet på språk og røyndom i bøkene. Eg studerte bøkene imot kunsten og imot naturen av Espedal og Yarden og Och allt skall vara kärlek av Lundberg med vekt på dei språklege verkemidla dei har brukt. Alle bøkene går innunder omgrepet sjølvframstillande litteratur og eg har jamstilt formen med dei andre språklege verkemidla for å sjå kva også sjangeren dei har skrive i har hatt å seie for å kunne utrykkje eit syn på forholdet mellom språk og verd i bøkene. Eg tok utgangspunkt i teorien rundt språkfilosofi og underleggjering i litteraturen og brukte dette som grunnlag for min komparative analyse. Det eg til slutt kom fram til er at både formen og dei andre språklege verkemidla utrykkjer eit syn på språket som utilstrekkeleg og røyndommen som noko subjektivt som heile tida er i forandring. Ein konstruerer si eiga verd gjennom ein individuell bruk av språket. Dei litterære grepa utrykkjer dette på ulikt sett, som til dømes komposisjonen som vitnar om ei uoversikteleg verd og eit minne ein ikkje kan stole på. Prosainnslaga viser til ei verd utan klare grenser og med eit behov for eit språk som kan vise til noko meir enn dei språklege bileta vi allereie kjenner. Sjølvframstillinga i seg sjølv viser til ei subjektiv røynd, med eit subjektiv språk der grensene mellom fakta og fiksjon er utflytande. Dermed kan ein forstå desse fire bøkene som eit forsøk på å seie noko meir enn det språket kan utrykkje og som eit lite klapp på skuldra som fortel deg at det finst ei sanning så lenge du godtek at den er subjektiv og konstruert i språket.

京都大学
0048
新制・論文博士
博士(教育学)
乙第13298号
論教博第169号
新制||教||190(附属図書館)
京都大学大学院教育学研究科臨床教育学専攻
(主査)准教授 齋藤 直子, 教授 西平 直, 准教授 Jeremy Rappleye
学位規則第4条第2項該当
Doctor of Philosophy (Education)
Kyoto University
DGAM

Concept éminemment polysémique, le sens commun a été déprécié par un vaste pan de la philosophie occidentale, qui y a vu au mieux l’expression de croyances infondées, au pire la manifestation de croyances erronées et naïves. Là où bon nombre de commentateurs ont repéré dans les pensées mêmes d’Henri Bergson, Stanley Cavell et Gilles Deleuze, trois grandes figures de la philosophie du cinéma, des critiques adressées au sens commun, nous nous efforçons ici de tirer au clair la conception positive qu’ils développent de cette notion, en dépit des soupçons occasionnels qu’ils font peser sur elle. Plus précisément, nous tâchons d’expliquer jusqu’à quel point certaines acceptions du sens commun permettent de satisfaire l’ambition de connaître le réel lui-même. En premier lieu, nous passons en revue l’argumentation élaborée par certains réalistes spéculatifs (en particulier Quentin Meillassoux et Graham Harman) afin de clarifier d’une part des réflexions qui feront l’objet de discussions et de répliques dans les chapitres subséquents et, d’autre part, de montrer que la dépréciation philosophique du sens commun se prolonge jusque dans les débats les plus actuels sur l’objectivité. Nous faisons ressortir par la suite les angles sous lesquels le sens commun est susceptible de nous rapprocher du réel d’après Bergson, Cavell et Deleuze. En second lieu, nous entrons de plain-pied dans le domaine du cinéma et examinons en quoi différentes œuvres du renouveau du cinéma québécois (Denis Côté, Stéphane Lafleur, Sébastien Pilote, Rafaël Ouellet, Xavier Dolan, Anne Émond, Rodrigue Jean, le collectif Épopée, Mathieu Denis et Simon Lavoie) viennent à leur manière compléter, radicaliser ou critiquer les réflexions développées dans la première partie autour du sens commun et du réel. À l’encontre de ceux qui qualifient ces œuvres de « mimétiques », « peu songées » et « esthétisantes », nous mettons donc en évidence la façon dont ces films, attentifs à la profondeur de l’expérience ordinaire et à l’exigence de trouver un certain équilibre entre le devenir incessant et la stabilité constante, parviennent à nuancer et à raffiner la philosophie
The eminently polysemic concept of common sense was depreciated by a vast segment of Western philosophy, which saw at best in it the expression of unwarranted beliefs, at worst the manifestation of erroneous and naïve beliefs. Where many commentators have pinpointed critiques of common sense in the thoughts of Henri Bergson, Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze, three prominent figures of the philosophy of cinema, we strive here to bring out the positive conception they develop of that concept, notwithstanding the occasional suspicion they may cast on it. To put it in more precise terms, we seek to explain to what extent certain meanings of common sense are apt to satisfy the ambition of knowing reality itself. In the first place, we review the argument elaborated by certain speculative realists (specifically Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman) in order to clarify, on the one hand, reflections which will be the object of discussions and replies in the subsequent chapters, and, on the other hand, to show that the philosophical depreciation of common sense goes on even in the most contemporary debates on objectivity. We then bring out the angles under which, according to Bergson, Cavell and Deleuze, common sense is apt to bring us closer to reality itself. In the second place, we enter fully into the field of cinema and examine in what way different works associated with the revival of Quebec cinema (Denis Côté, Stéphane Lafleur, Sébastien Pilote, Rafaël Ouellet, Xavier Dolan, Anne Émond, Rodrigue Jean, the collective Épopée, Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie) end up completing, radicalizing or criticizing in their way the reflections developed in the first part around common sense and the real. In opposition to those who characterize those works as « mimetic », « thoughtless » and « aestheticizing », we thus bring to the fore the way in which those films, paying attention to the depth of ordinary experience and to the requirement of finding a certain balance between incessant becoming and constant stability, do succeed in nuancing and refining philosophy

Ce travail se fixe pour défi de reposer les problèmes de l’éthique professionnelle des enseignants à la lumière des approches qui visent la réalisation de soi et l’épanouissement de l’éducateur. Avant de nous pencher sur ces aspects, nous montrons certaines limites théoriques et pratiques qui détournent la réflexion au sujet de l’éthique de l’enseignant. Les limites que nous examinons sont, d’une part, les systèmes éducatifs qui prônent la nécessité de rendre des comptes, les tests standardisés, ainsi que l’efficacité, et d’autre part, les analyses de la morale des enseignants qui visent l’obligation, le devoir et l’altruisme en tant que principaux traits de la pratique de l’enseignement. Afin de dépasser ces perspectives, dans une deuxième partie, nous tournons notre regard vers Bernard Williams et Stanley Cavell. Ces deux philosophes nous permettront de comprendre l’éthique visant l’exercice incessant et actif du développement de la culture de soi de l’éducateur. Nous verrons également que, dans l’éthique, il n’est pas seulement question de devoirs, mais surtout de la construction d’un sujet. Ce souci ne présume pas l’existence d’un soi idéal donné par avance et que nous devrions atteindre. Il ne s’agit pas non plus d’un état final et définitif, mais il met l’accent sur l’inachèvement de la réalisation de soi. En ce sens, les idées précédentes essaient d’octroyer à l’enseignant un rôle plus actif par rapport à sa propre responsabilité envers lui-même et au fait qu’il puisse réfléchir par lui-même aux stratégies de résolution des problèmes qui émergent au cœur de sa pratique. Parallèlement, en recherchant sa propre croissance, l’enseignant demeure attaché à la question de savoir comment sa propre culture de lui-même peut favoriser le développement des autres et, inversement, comment ce développement soutient celui de l’éducateur
This research looks at the problems of teachers’ professional ethics in light of approaches that address teacher’s self-realization and growth. Before focusing on these aspects, we discuss two theoretical and practical limitations that obstruct the reflection on the teacher’s ethics: 1) limitations regarding the focus of education on accountability, standardized assessments and effectiveness and 2) limitations relating to analyses of teacher morale. These analyses defend obligation, duty and altruism as a central feature of educational practice. In order to overcome these perspectives, in the second part, we consider the philosophers Bernard Williams and Stanley Cavell, who demonstrate how ethics is not only a matter of duties, but above all the construction of a subject. According to this viewpoint, we show that it is much fairer to approach the problem of a teacher’s ethics by placing the educator’s capacity for self-cultivation in the foreground. One of our main concerns is to make it clear that self-cultivation does not presume the existence of a pre-determined ideal self that we should attain, nor does it presume a final and definitive state of the self. We see that self-realization implies a process that is always unfinished. In this sense, all of the above ideas attempt to give a more active role to teachers in terms of their own responsibility toward themselves and the search for solutions to the problems that arise in their educational practice. At the same time, a teacher continues to be linked to the question of how the teacher’s own self-cultivation can foster the development of others and, conversely, how this development supports the teacher’s own development
Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mirar los problemas de la ética profesional de los docentes a la luz de los planteamientos que abordan realización de sí mismo y el crecimiento del educador. Antes de focalizarnos en estos aspectos, mostramos algunos límites teóricos y prácticos que entraban la reflexión sobre la ética del profesor. Dos son los límites que examinamos. Por una parte, los sistemas educativos que centran su quehacer principalmente en la rendición de cuentas, las evaluaciones estandarizadas, así como en la eficacia. Por otra parte, aquellos contenidos en el análisis de la moral del docente que defienden la obligación, el deber y el altruismo como un rasgo central de la práctica educativa. Con la finalidad de superar estas perspectivas, en la segunda parte, tornamos nuestra mirada hacia Bernard Williams y Stanley Cavell. Estos dos filósofos nos permitirán comprender la ética del profesor desde el activo e incesante ejercicio del desarrollo de la capacidad de cultivarse a sí mismo del educador. Veremos igualmente que la ética no se trata solamente de un asunto de deberes, sino que, sobre todo, de la construcción de un sujeto. Esta preocupación no presume la existencia de un yo ideal dado de antemano que deberíamos alcanzar, tampoco un estado final y definitivo, sino que enfatiza el carácter inconcluso de la realización de sí mismo. En este sentido, las ideas anteriores intentan otorgar un rol más activo al docente en lo que respecta a su propia responsabilidad frente a sí mismo y a la búsqueda de soluciones a los problemas que surgen en su práctica educativa. Al mismo tiempo, el docente continúa vinculado a la pregunta de cómo el propio cultivo de sí mismo puede fomentar el desarrollo de los otro y, a la inversa, cómo este desarrollo sostiene al propio desarrollo del profesor

The aim of the dissertation is twofold: (i) analyzing the notion (well known by aestheticians, but not so intensively studied) of artistic medium; (ii) showing the relevance of such notion for aesthetics through the examination of some relevant aspects of Richard Wollheim’s philosophy of art, maybe the main figure in Anglo-American philosophy as for considering artistic medium central in art-theorizing. Artistic media, according to Wollheim, can develop only if properly connected to a cultural and social context, i.e. a form of life. Concordantly the research turns, in the first part, to an accurate examination of Wittgenstein’s aesthetical reflections – from the early to the mature period – particularly focusing on expression, intransitivity, aesthetic correctness, and artistic rules since these are the concepts fruitfully (though often implicitly) exploited by Wollheim in articulating his notion of artistic medium. In the second part, it is shown how Wollheim creatively applies media considerations to other important areas of aesthetic interest, such as artistic intention and the ontology of artworks. Through the case-study of artistic medium, then, the philosophical personality of Richard Wollheim is seen as one of the most original interpreter of Wittgenstein’s legacy.
Il lavoro ha sostanzialmente due scopi interconnessi. In primo luogo intende indagare la nozione di medium artistico e il ruolo che esso riveste nell’ambito dell’estetica analitica. A tal fine lo studio rileva nella figura di Richard Wollheim il maggior filosofo di ambiente angloamericano ad aver ritenuto, lungo l’intero arco della sua riflessione, centrale, sebbene in larga misura non del tutto esplicita, la specificità del medium artistico nella costruzione della propria estetica. Alla domanda “che cos’è l’arte?” Wollheim rimanda fin da Art and its objects alla possibile area di congiunzione dei singoli media artistici. Wollheim mette in luce come un medium (e l’arte ad esso relativa) possa sorgere solo quando esso è integrato ad un contesto culturale, in altre parole ad una forma di vita. Questo concetto non è il primo né l’unico che Wollheim mette a frutto in campo estetico a partire dall’opera di Wittgenstein: lo studio, questo il suo secondo obiettivo, mostra come l’eredità wittgensteiniana, in particolare le nozioni di espressione, intransitività, correttezza estetica e regole artistiche, abbia avuto un’influenza duratura e decisiva (anche se spesso sommersa) sull’estetica di Wollheim, che trova riflessi visibili e permanenti oltre che nell’idea stessa di medium artistico, anche negli ambiti – ad essa connessi – dell’intenzione artistica e, in senso più ampio, in campo ontologico. Il lavoro, quindi, attraverso il caso di studio fornito dal concetto di medium artistico, ricostruisce una vicenda della filosofia analitica dell’arte, ovvero come il pensiero di Wittgenstein abbia informato un’ampia corrente dell’estetica angloamericana che trova in Richard Wollheim uno dei suoi rappresentanti più emblematici.

O presente estudo é constituído de cinco ensaios relativamente autossuficientes, mas redigidos tendo em vista um objetivo comum, que será perseguido por várias vias—a saber, a exploração de um núcleo de problemas filosóficos relacionados com a possibilidade, e com a própria inteligibilidade, do solipsismo. Os resultados obtidos nesses ensaios, assim como os caminhos que levam a eles, pretendem servir como exemplos para a extração de lições mais gerais sobre o método filosófico, e sobre a própria natureza humana. O procedimento adotado para esse fim consiste na leitura de um conjunto de escritos de filósofos contemporâneos que refletiram profundamente sobre o solipsismo— sobretudo Peter Strawson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, e Stanley Cavell. A tese central à qual procuro fornecer suporte por meio dessas leituras é que o solipsismo é uma resposta intelectualizada, e radical, a um conjunto de dificuldades práticas ou existenciais relacionadas com a finitude da condição humana. (Essas mesmas dificuldades originam respostas menos radicais, que são manifestas por meio de outras “posições filosóficas”— ou, pelo menos, é isso que tentarei mostrar.) Estar sujeito a essas dificuldades implica estar permanentemente sujeito à ameaça da solidão, da privacidade e da perda de sintonia em relação ao mundo e aos demais sujeitos. Reconhecer e levar a sério a possibilidade dessa ameaça implica reconhecer que somos, individual e imprevisivelmente, responsáveis por superá-la (um ponto que é notado, mas superestimado, pelo cético, que interpreta nossos limites como limitações), bem como reconhecer a força da tentação (demasiado humana) de tentar reprimi-la (como faz o dogmático/realista metafísico) ou sublimá-la (como faz o idealista/solipsista). Buscar uma filosofia aberta ao reconhecimento de que nossa experiência é essencialmente limitada e condicionada—em especial, pelo fato de que temos corpos, e com eles vontades, desejos, temores, fixações e sentimentos que não escolhemos, e que informam nossa racionalidade e moldam nossas atitudes em relação ao mundo e aos demais sujeitos—é parte da tarefa contínua de aceitação de nossa finitude, em direção à qual o presente estudo pretende ter dado os primeiros passos.
This study consists of five essays which are nearly self-contained, yet written with a common goal, which will be pursued by various routes—namely, the exploration of a core of philosophical problems having to do with the possibility, and the very intelligibility, of solipsism. The results obtained in these essays, as well as the paths leading to them, are intended to serve as examples from which some general lessons about the philosophical method, and about human nature itself, are to be drawn. The procedure adopted for that end consists in reading a set of writings by contemporary philosophers who have thought deeply about solipsism—most notably Peter Strawson, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell. The central thesis to which I seek to provide support through those readings is that solipsism is an intellectualized response, and a radical one at that, to a set of practical or existential difficulties related to the finitude of the human condition. (Those same difficulties may as well promt less radical responses, which are expressed by other “philosophical positions”—or so I shall try to show.) Being subjected to those difficulties implies being permanently subjected to the threat of loneliness, of privacy, of loosing attunement with the world and others. To acknowledge and to take seriously the possibility of that threat means to acknowledge that we are responsible, individually and unpredictably, for coming to grips with it (a point which is noted, but overrated, by the skeptic, who takes our limits as limitations), as well as acknowledging the strength of the (all-too-human) temptation of trying to repress it (as does the dogmatic/metaphysical realist) or to sublimate it (as does the idealist / solipsist). To seek an attitude open to the acknowledgement that our experience is essentially limited and conditioned—in particular, by the fact that we have bodies, and with them wills, desires, fears, fixations and feelings that we do not choose, and which inform our rationality and shape our attitudes toward the world and others—is part of the continuous task of accepting our finitude, a goal toward which I claim to have taken some preliminary steps with this study.

La present tesi doctoral investiga fins a quin punt els plantejaments de Stanley Cavell sobre el cinema poden preservar la seua vigència en l'actual context de digitalització. Així, avaluem les condicions sota les quals la concepció ontològica del mitjà cinematogràfic que manté l'autor resulta aplicable en el nou escenari. Per altra banda, mitjançant l'estudi de Los idiotas (Dogme#2. Idioterne, Lars von Trier, 1998), posem a prova el procediment cavellià de lectura de pel·lícules i el complementem amb l'anàlisi formal i l'atenció al procés de realització. En última instància, la nostra tesi es proposa defensar que el film Los idiotas i el projecte creatiu en què queda emmarcat suposen un intent modernista de reivindicació de la base física del cinema que pretén la recuperació (cinematogràfica) de l'escepticisme en temps digitals i que reclama l'atenció als aspectes formals del film en tant que via fonamental per a articular la seua resposta.
The current doctoral thesis investigates to what extent Stanley Cavell's approach to cinema keeps its validity in the contemporary context of digitalization. In this sense, we evaluate the conditions under which the author's ontological conception of the medium happens to be applicable to the new stage. On the other hand, through the study of The Idiots (Dogme#2. Idioterne, Lars von Trier, 1998), we put Cavellian reading of films to the test and complement it with formal analysis and attention to the filmmaking process. Ultimately, our thesis tries to defend that The Idiots and the creative project in which it is framed constitute a modernist attempt to reclaim the cinema's physical basis which aspires to the recovery from (cinematographic) skepticism in the digital age and that calls for formal aspects of film as a key way to articulate its response.

Le 9 mars 1912, dans Ciné-Journal, Abel Gance publiait un manifeste sous le titre « Qu'est-ce que le Cinématographe? Un sixième art! » Cet intitulé est caractéristique de la démarche des premiers philosophes du cinéma qui cherchèrent à décrire l'essence du nouveau médium pour justifier son potentiel artistique contre le scepticisme qui dominait à l'époque les esprits. Quand le cinéma sut imposer ses chefs-d'œuvre, ce type d'enquête fut délaissé pour d'autres recherches. Néanmoins, après plusieurs décennies d'absence, le début des années 1990 a vu, dans les pays anglo-saxons, un retour des réflexions ontologiques sur le cinéma dans une littérature philosophique de style analytique de plus en plus fournie et injustement méconnue en France. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'abord de présenter et de contribuer aux débats analytiques contemporains sur l'ontologie du cinéma. Il est aussi de mettre en évidence l'importance de Ludwig Wittgenstein pour penser le cinéma. Il est enfin d'interroger la pertinence de la démarche analytique dominante en lui opposant l'approche wittgensteinienne de Stanley Cavell. Dans la première partie, la thèse examine donc le problème de l'essence du cinéma en présentant et en évaluant à l'aide d'arguments de Wittgenstein les critiques analytiques des conceptions antérieures et les contributions positives des philosophes analytiques du cinéma, avant de prôner, dans une deuxième partie, un changement d'approche qui s'inspire de la démarche de Stanley Cavell dans La Projection du monde et dans ses lectures philosophiques de films, démarche qui est pratiquée de façon expérimentale en troisième partie.

Notre travail concernant Disney s’inscrit dans le champ de la musique de film, et même si le studio a fait l’objet de nombreuses recherches tant sur des questions esthétiques que culturelles, il reste intéressant à étudier, car il peut ainsi devenir l’objet de recherche, non sur l’originalité d’un corpus, mais sur un déplacement de la méthode, nous permettant d’interroger l’idéologie à l’œuvre. Notre thèse concentre son attention sur La Petite Sirène (1989), La Belle et la Bête (1991) et Aladdin (1992) où il nous semble que, en recourant à la recomposition de la musique de certaines séquences des films, nous puissions faire jouer à la part de virtualité du texte filmique un rôle dans cette entreprise critique : retrouver la voix des héroïnes Ariel, Belle et Jasmine. Si un geste de recomposition musicale peut nous aider à penser ce rapport au personnage, c’est parce que nous pensons que la musique peut faire entendre la virtualité d’un film (et plus précisément de ses personnages), et devenir par cela un geste d’analyse critique de son idéologie. La recomposition musicale met en acte les allers-retours indispensables à la compréhension des séquences que nous travaillerons : elle redonne corps aux espaces de résonance du film et compose les affleurements d’une promesse initiale proposée par le film vis-à-vis de son héroïne. Ces allers-retours nous permettent de retrouver l’importance des numéros musicaux. En prolongeant notre analyse par le prisme de l’intermédialité, nous réfléchissons à la porosité avec la scène de Broadway (ou plus précisément ici avec le off-Broadway) qui permettent des doubles lectures issues des numéros musicaux
From aesthetics to cultural studies, Disney has been the subject of many studies. Thanks to this prolific research, it is possible de study it by another methodological angle to understand the ideology of and within the movies. Within the academic field of film music, our thesis will draw its attention on The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992). It seems that, thanks to an alternative version of the original score that we would compose, we may bring the potentiality inscribed in the movie to be a part of our critical study: find the heroines’ voice Ariel, Belle and Jasmine. We think that this method will enable us to take account of the character’s consistency for the music can be a way to hear the potentiality of a movie (and specifically here, the characters), so it will be an opportunity to discuss Disney ideology. The musical recomposition enact the back and forth inside the different moments of the movie to help us understand what is at stake: it enlightens the resonances between the sequences and compose the surfacing promise initially build-up by the movie towards the heroine. It also helps us thinking about the movie’s interactions while getting to the surface the aforementioned promise the movie was trying to stop from actualising. By extending our analysis through the prism of intermediality, we consider the porosity of theses musical numbers with the Broadway stage (and more accurately the off-Broadway) whose enable us to do dual readings of the movie. All the music in its connexion to the rest of the audio-visual complex enable us to think about the power relations which occurs in the movie

This thesis explores Herman Melville’s relationship to sceptical philosophy. By reading Melville’s fictions of the 1840s and 1850s alongside the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, I seek to show that they manifest by turns expression, rebuttal, and mitigated acceptance of philosophical doubt. Melville was an attentive reader of philosophical texts, and he refers specifically to concepts such as Berkeleyan immaterialism and the Kantian “noumenon”. But Melville does not simply dramatise pre-existing theories; rather, in works such as Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre he enacts sceptical and anti-sceptical ideas through his literary strategies, demonstrating their relevance in particular regions of human experience. In so doing he makes a substantive contribution to a philosophical discourse that has often been criticised – by commentators including Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift – for its tendency to abstraction. Melville’s interest in scepticism might be read as part of a wider cultural response to a period of unprecedented social and political change in antebellum America, and with this in mind I compare and contrast his work with that of Dickinson, Douglass, Emerson, and Thoreau. But in many respects Melville’s distinctive and original treatment of scepticism sets him apart from his contemporaries, and in order to fully make sense of it one must range more widely through the canons of philosophy and literature. His exploration of the ethical consequences of doubt in The Piazza Tales, for example, can be seen to anticipate with remarkable precision the theories of twentieth-century thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Stanley Cavell. I work chronologically though selected prose from the period 1849-1857, paying close attention to the textual effects and philosophical allusions in each work. In so doing I hope to offer fresh ways of looking at Melville’s handling of literary form and the wider shape of his career. I conclude with reflections on how Melville’s normative emphasis on the acknowledgement of epistemological limitation might inform the practice of literary criticism.

This thesis examines resistances to debt in the afterlives of financial crisis in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) in order to develop a novel account of democratic subjectivity for International Political Economy (IPE). The global financial crisis has transformed debt into a topic of heated public debate, giving rise to new social movements as well as individual political resistances. However, IPE scholars have yet to substantively conceptualise this new democratic politics of debt, despite considerable research on the problems of debt-based models of economic citizenship. I trace this blind spot to the pictures of agency animating the field, before developing a novel conceptual account of democratic subjectivity in finance based on an original application of Stanley Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy in IPE. I then use this account to show how ordinary democratic subjects of debt are opposing debt-based economic citizenship in the UK and the US. To this end, I offer a comparative examination of three prominent tactics of debt resistance: avoiding debt, auditing debt and refusing debt. My central argument is that although contemporary debt resistances are marked by conventional cultural-economic imaginaries of financial capability, transparency and liability, debt’s ‘ordinary democrats’ are reconstructing debt relations as a site of democratic selfhood, exchange and community in finance. In an era marked by an increasingly top-down, managerial politics of finance, I conclude, people’s resistances to debt represent important practices of civic freedom that improve the prospects for democratic financial governance.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation is the application of counterfactual criticism to Shakespearean tragedy—supposing we are to ask, for example, “what if” Hamlet had done the deed, or, “what if” we could somehow disinherit our knowledge of Lear’s madness before reading King Lear. Such readings, mirroring critical practices in history, will loosely be called “counterfactual” readings. The key question to ask is not why tragedies are no longer being written (by writers), but why tragedies are no longer being felt (by readers). Tragedy entails a certain urgency in wanting to imagine an outcome different from the one we are given. Since we cannot change events as they stand, we feel a critical helplessness in dealing with feelings of tragic loss; the critical imperative that follows usually accounts for how the tragedy unfolded. Fleshing out a cause is one way to deal with the trauma of tragedy. But such explanation, in a sense, merely explains tragedy away. The fact that everything turns out so poorly in tragedy suggests that the tragic protagonist was somehow doomed, that he (in the case of Shakespearean tragedy) was the victim of some “tragic flaw,” as though tragedy and necessity go hand in hand. Only by allowing ourselves to imagine other possibilities can we regain the tragic effect, which is to remind ourselves that other outcomes are indeed possible. Tragedy, then, is more readily understood, or felt, as the playing out of contingency. It takes some effort to convince others, even ourselves, that the tragic effect resonates best when accompanied by an understanding that the characters on the page are free individuals. No amount of foreknowledge, on our part or theirs, can save us (or them) from tragedy’s horror.

Siegfried Kracauer distingue deux tendances du cinéma: la «tendance réaliste» qui s'attache à montrer le monde dans sa réalité matérielle, et la « tendance formatrice» qui accorde une primauté absolue à une rêverie artistique détachée du monde alentour. Ces tendances répondent selon lui à deux postures éthiques contradictoires de l'homme qui, ou bien entretient un rapport d'immersion avec le monde ou bien, quand cette immersion s'avère impossible, se replie sur son intériorité. Ce clivage binaire peut être nuancé à l'aide du concept de dislocation qui, questionnant les rapports troubles qu'entretient l'homme avec un monde devenu difficilement habitable, permet de penser une posture éthique intermédiaire entre immersion et détachement, entre présence et absence au monde. Associé à la théorie du cinéma de Stanley Cavell, et interrogé à travers les filmographies de Wim Wenders, Théo Angelopoulos et Jean Cocteau, ce concept non seulement ouvre la voie à la conception d'une troisième tendance du cinéma que nous appelons la « tendance dislocatrice », mais permet aussi, à travers l'exploration des enjeux narratifs, esthétiques et « ontologiques» qu'il mobilise, de dessiner les traits d'un éventuel « cinéma de la dislocation »
Siegfried Kracauer identifies two main tendencies of cinema: the "realistic tendency" in which the images depict the world in its material reality, and the "formative tendency" which gives absolute priority to an artistic reverie that is fully detached from the surrounding world. For Kracaeur, these tendencies are derived from two contradictory ethical postures of man who either has an immersive relation with the world or, when the immersion is impossible, withdraws into his own self. This binary cleavage can be questioned through the concept of dislocation. Studying the troubled relation between man and a world that has become hardly habitable, dislocation suggests an intermediate ethical posture which falls between immersion and detachment, presence in and absence from the world. Following Stanley Cavell's film theory, and studied through the films of Wim Wenders, Theo Angelopoulos and Jean Cocteau, this concept not only paves the way for the conception of a third tendency that we call the "dislocative tendency" of cinema, but can also, through the exploration of the narrative, aesthetical and "ontological" issues that it mobilizes, draw the features of an eventual "cinema of dislocation"

Esta tesis se pregunta sobre las figuras, ideas y conceptos que envuelven y articulan los discursos sobre el “amor”, sobre los sentimientos, ideales y relaciones “de amor” en las sociedades occidentales en la “modernidad tardía”. El amor es pensado aquí como signo de un proceso cultural asociado a una crisis de valores morales y religiosos, al descentramiento del sujeto y en el contexto de las transformaciones sociales e ideológicas que han modificado paulatinamente los modos de vida de Occidente a lo largo del siglo veinte, y en particular desde los años sesenta. En primer lugar, la noción de “amor” es estudiada desde los argumentos que han desarrollado psicoanalistas, sociólogos, historiadores y filósofos descubriendo así la complejidad de un tema que adquiere diversos matices desde estas diferentes visiones. El enfoque sobre el amor privilegiado en esta tesis consiste en rescatarlo no sólo como un objeto de conocimiento, sino también como una experiencia que exhibe una lógica irreductible a la teoría. Por ello la segunda parte se centra en la interpretación de la vivencia amorosa en dos artistas: Nan Goldin y Sophie Calle. Con ello esa búsqueda de una moralidad y una historicidad se plasma en narrativas e imaginarios concretos y a la vez abiertos a la infinitud de lo singular.
This thesis questions the figures, ideas and concepts, which surround and create the discourses on the love, emotions, ideals and relationships of love in western societies of the “late modernity”. Love here is considered as a sign of a cultural process associated with moral and religious values crisis. The whole process is seen in the context of social and ideological transformations, which have gradually modified ways of life in the western world throughout the 20th century, especially since the sixties. In the first place the notion of love is explored from the point of view of psychoanalysts, sociologists, historians and philosophers discovering the complexity of the theme. The focus on the privileged love in this thesis consists of rediscovering it not only as an object of knowledge but also as an experience which can’t be reduced to theoretical concepts. Therefore the second part is focused on the interpretation of love experience in the work of two artists: Nan Goldin y Sophie Calle.

La tesi propone una lettura pedagogica di Stanley Cavell, un filosofo americano di tradizione analitica, attraverso un'analisi critica del suo lavoro complesso che si articola intorno ad alcuni punti chiave di interpretazione: la "figura" scettica del pedagogico, tra conquista e perdita di sé , tra solitudine e socializzazione; l' attenzione alla dimensione interpretativa della testualità e un modello di Bildung umana fortemente legato al paradigma estetico di educazione; una tensione autobiografica declinata sul fronte etico-politico, attraverso la rivitalizzazione della propria "voce" all'interno di un modello ispirato a Emerson e al suo individualismo democratico. Il risultato è una visione della filosofia come "educazione degli adulti", all'insegna di un socratico "autoesame" e di una discussione di se stessi" attraverso il linguaggio della "ordinario", come luogo di formazione intersoggettiva.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise porte sur le scepticisme inhérent au langage quotidien et la reproduction de ce scepticisme dans l'art cinématographique. Plus précisément, nous examinons les thèses du philosophe américain Stanley Cavell qui propose une analyse du scepticisme du langage -autant un scepticisme face au monde extérieur qu'un scepticisme face à autrui -par le cinéma. Nous cherchons à définir à la fois les scepticismes cavelliens et la reproduction particulière qu'en fait le cinéma. Ceci nous permettra d'établir l'utilité sociale du scepticisme quotidien, de même que le rôle indispensable du cinéma pour sa recouvrance. L'hypothèse générale tirée de cette étude est que la communication sociale est basée sur une reconnaissance mutuelle et un rapport au monde extérieur dont le scepticisme est une composante inhérente. Le cinéma peut jouer un important rôle dans notre perception de cette condition en nous fournissant des exemples d'individus outrepassant les risques du scepticisme qui nous empêchent de reconnaître autrui. Nous établissons l'utilité sociologique et philosophique du cinéma dans sa reproduction des formes de scepticisme traversant le langage quotidien et découvrons la signification et les impacts du scepticisme quotidien dans nos relations sociales et notre rapport au monde extérieur. Cette étude permet aussi de parfaire notre connaissance de philosophes peu abordés au Québec, des auteurs de tradition anglaise et américaine exerçant une philosophie proche des considérations communes et quotidiennes ; Cavell souhaite la renaissance d'une philosophie américaine accessible et traitant de conditions quotidiennes. Une philosophie proche de la sociologie: le scepticisme quotidien origine du partage social du langage, toutes les questions qui lui sont liées relèvent de la sociologie. Cavell aspire aussi à rectifier notre compréhension de la philosophie d'Austin et de Wittgenstein; des philosophes peu étudiés par la francophonie nord-américaine. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Stanley Cavell, Scepticisme, Langage, Wittgenstein, Cinéma, Art.

Tese de mestrado, Teoria da Literatura, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2009
Esta tese analisa a possibilidade de se considerar letras de música como poemas. Para defender esta possibilidade começa-se por tentar perceber como identificamos poesia e, apoiado na ideia de Stanley Fish de que um poema é criado pela sua interpretação, analisam-se alguns textos de Bob Dylan sob uma teoria particular, no caso a teoria da dicção pura , de Donald Davie. Consciente de que esta abordagem deixa de fora a questão central, nomeadamente a música, analisa-se a relação entre música e poesia e a forma como esta se estabeleceu historicamente, chegando à conclusão de que, na análise de uma letra de música, o objecto central não pode ser apenas o texto, mas sim a performance. Os dois capítulos finais analisam, respectivamente, os problemas decorrentes de considerar o objecto de análise a performance e a possibilidade de, através da aproximação a problemáticas levantadas por Stanley Cavell a propósito de análises de filmes, conceber uma nova abordagem crítica a estes textos.
This work analyses the possibility of looking at music lyrics as poems. In order to do so, we begin with considerations on how to recognise poetry and, based on Stanley Fish's idea that interpretations create the poem, we explore a corpus of Bob Dylan's works under Donald Davie's theory of pure diction . Aware that this does not account for the absence of the music in the analysis of the texts, we establish a study of the historical relation between music and poetry, from which we conclude that the central object of analysis cannot be the text alone but the performance itself. The last two chapters consider the problems that arise from analysing the performance of a song as such while aiming at a new critical approach to Dylan's texts, drawn from Stanley Cavell's philosophical queries, as far as film is concerned.

Ce mémoire vise à explorer le lien étroit unissant le scepticisme philosophique, le dispositif cinématographique et la tétralogie de Gus Van Sant : Gerry, Elephant, Last days et Paranoid Park. À partir de la philosophie de Stanley Cavell, il sera d’abord question de développer le scepticisme comme condition d’existence et non plus comme doctrine philosophique. Stanley Cavell fait bifurquer le problème sceptique de la cognition vers l’éthique et nous verrons comment Gus Van Sant, en proposant un cinéma du désoeuvrement et de la mélancolie où l’individu est en rupture avec le monde, rejoint cette dimension éthique du scepticisme par le cinéma. Ensuite, il s’agira de voir comment le dispositif cinématographique est l’expression même du scepticisme cavellien et comment il permet de tendre vers le perfectionnisme moral en imposant la reconnaissance de son existence à travers la décision morale. Enfin, nous verrons comment Gus Van Sant, en réinventant le plan-séquence et le ralenti, répond singulièrement au problème posé par le scepticisme en réintégrant l’individu dans le monde à force de manipulations formelles qui sont autant de réponses au désoeuvrement contemporain comme condition existentielle. Ces réponses trouvées par Gus Van Sant ne sont pas des solutions, mais une exploration des dimensions d’un problème qu’il renouvèle : le scepticisme.
This thesis aims to explore the close ties between philosophical skepticism, the cinematic apparatus and Gus Van Sant's tetralogy of films: Gerry, Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park. From Stanley Cavell’s philosophical perspective, we will first address the question of skepticism as a condition of existence rather than a philosophical doctrine. Stanley Cavell redirects the skepticism problem of cognition towards ethics and we will look at how Gus Van Sant meets the ethical dimension of skepticism by offering a cinema of idleness and melancholia in which individuals are at odds with the world. Furthermore, we will study how the cinematic apparatus is the very expression of Cavellian skepticism and how it moves toward moral perfectionism by forcing the recognition of our existence through moral decision-making. Finally, we will look at how Gus Van Sant, in a singular manner, addresses the problem raised by skepticism by reinventing the sequence shot and the slow motion, and therefore reinstates the individual to the world through formal manipulations that respond to modern idleness as an existential condition. The answers Gus Van Sant has found are not solutions, but rather the exploration of the dimensions of a problem he is restating: skepticism.

Cette recherche part d’un double intérêt. Pour la spiritualité, dont on entend beaucoup parler dans un 21e siècle inquiet et en quête de nouveaux repères. Et pour le cinéma, ou 7e art, phénomène culturel phare des temps modernes, qui reflète abondamment les problématiques et questionnements du monde. À une époque où on observe une tendance à l’homogénéisation culturelle, résultat de la mondialisation économique, cette thèse traite du « cinéma transnational ». Elles aussi, les œuvres de ce cinéma traversent l’espace planétaire, mais tout en conservant un solide ancrage local et une singularité artistique. Ce sont en bonne partie les films que l’on retrouve dans les festivals internationaux, tels Cannes, Venise et Berlin. Le cinéma traduisant toutes les interrogations possibles du présent, plusieurs films apparaissent donc porteurs d’un questionnement à portée spirituelle. Et ce, avec des moyens non discursifs, propres à l’art cinématographique. Ils invitent aussi à la rencontre de l’autre. L’objectif de la thèse consiste à décrire comment, par l’analyse d’une douzaine de films transnationaux, on peut dégager de nouveaux concepts sur la façon avec laquelle se vit la spiritualité à notre époque, en relation avec l’autre, et pourquoi cette spiritualité s’accompagne nécessairement de considérations éthiques. Pour accomplir cette tâche, la thèse s’appuie sur les travaux de deux philosophes, Gilles Deleuze (France) et Stanley Cavell (États-Unis), qui ont marqué les études cinématographiques au cours des dernières décennies, par des approches jugées complémentaires pour cette recherche. Le premier a développé sa pensée à partir de ce qui distingue le cinéma des autres arts, et le second, à partir de l’importance du cinéma pour les spectateurs et les spectatrices. Enfin, la thèse se veut une théologie, ou pensée théologico-philosophique, indépendante d’une tradition religieuse et au diapason des réalités du 21e siècle.
This research is based upon two fields of interest. For spirituality, a concept very much to the fore in this troubled 21st century in search of fresh yardsticks. And for cinema, aka the 7th Art, a beacon on the cultural scene, with its insights in today’s issues and questionings. In this era of cultural homogenization, itself the result of economic globalization, this thesis probes “transnational cinema” for fresh answers. Transnational films cross the global space while keeping their local roots and own artistic identity. Very often one will find these works featured in the big film festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin or Venice. Focusing on today’s questionings and issues, many of these movies appear to be bearing a spiritual imprint, with non-discursive methods. They promote openness to others. The goal of this thesis is to describe, through an analysis of a dozen transnational films, how new concepts defining ways to live a spiritual life today can be found. Further the thesis will underline why this spirituality is linked with ethics. To reach that goal, the thesis relies strongly on the works of philosophers Gilles Deleuze (France) and Stanley Cavell (USA). Both have been judged to have complementary approaches for this research, and have made a strong mark on cinematographic studies in the last decades. Deleuze has developed his philosophy on what distinguishes cinema from the other arts. Cavell has focused his thoughts on the importance of cinema for its viewers. Finally, this thesis is in the form of a theology, or theologic-philosophic thought, not linked to a religious tradition and in synchronicity with its times.

This study claims that formally experimental novels written in the early twentieth century place urgent, if often implicit, demands for acknowledgment upon their readers. Scholars have long held that the economic and cultural upheavals of the early twentieth century led novelists to doubt language’s referential capacities. But, even as signal modernist works by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and others move away from a view of language as a means of gaining knowledge, they also underscore its capacity to grant acknowledgment; they treat words as tools for recognizing and responding to the inner lives of others. Stanley Cavell finds such a vision of language in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953), a work Cavell describes as “modernist.” This dissertation demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s interest in acknowledgment emerges via his negotiation of the same historical forces with which literary modernism grapples: industrialization, World War, cross-cultural encounter. I argue that modernist representations of consciousness offer readers a way of hearing what Wittgenstein calls “the silent soliloquy of others,” giving us words by which we might adopt an attitude of acknowledgment toward the otherwise unvoiced inner lives of socially marginalized figures. Chapter One considers the crisis of reason that convulses early twentieth-century Britain and demonstrates how Forster’s Howards End (1910) and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) critique excessive commitments to rationality as counterproductive to the acknowledgment of politically disenfranchised citizens. Chapter Two discusses Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (1915), Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), and Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929): three texts that, I show, cast traditional Victorian marriage as an unsatisfying form of intimacy and depict speakers hesitant to acknowledge their desires for alternative, same-sex modes of intimate relation. Chapter Three examines Faulkner’s portrayal of capitalist modernization in The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930), arguing that characters in these novels insist on the immitigable privacy of their experiences and struggle accordingly to gain acknowledgment from family members. Chapter Four reads Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945) and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) as two texts that represent the psychological experience of having one’s humanity go brutally unacknowledged under Jim Crow.
2020-11-07T00:00:00Z

This dissertation studies a group of contemporary Anglo-American novelists who contribute to the development of a new humanism after the postmodern critique of Euro-American culture. As such, these writers respond to positions in twentieth-century philosophy that converge in a call for silence which has an ontological as well as ethical valence: as a way of rigorously thinking the ‘outside’ to language, it avoids charges of metaphysical inauthenticity; as an ethical stance in the wake of the Shoah, it eschews a complicity with the reifications of modern culture. How to reconcile this post-metaphysical promise with the politico-aesthetic inadequacy of speechlessness is the central question for this nexus of novelists—David Markson, Bret Easton Ellis, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith—at the center of which the study locates Wallace as a key figure of contemporary literature. By reconstructing the conversation among these authors, this dissertation argues that the nexus writers turn to indirect means of representation that do justice to the demand for silence in matters of metaphysics, but also gesture past it in the development of a neo-romantic aesthetics that invites the humanist category of the self back onto the scene after its dismissal by late postmodernism. The key to such indirection lies in an aporetic method that inspires explorations of metaphysical assumptions by seducing readers to an ambiguous site of aesthetic wonder; in conversation with a range of contemporary philosophers, the dissertation defines this affective site as a place of proximity, rather than absorption or detachment, which balances out the need for metaphysical distance with the productive desire for a fullness of experience. Such proximate aesthetic experiences continue the work of ‘doing metaphysics’ in post-metaphysical times by engaging our habitual responsiveness to the categories involved. Hence the novels discussed here stage limit cases of reason such as the unknowable world, the unreachable other, the absence of the self, and the unstable hierarchy between irony and sincerity: Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress imagines skepticism as literal abandonment and reminds us of our metaphysical indebtedness to a desired object/world; Ellis’s American Psycho shows the breakdown of communication due to a similarly skeptical vision of human interaction and presents a violence that tries to force a response from the desired subject/person; Wallace’s Infinite Jest creates a large canvas on which episodes of metaphysical and literal ‘stuckness’ afford possibilities for becoming human; Smith’s The Autograph Man, finally, pays attention to gestural language at the breaking point of materialism and theology, nature and culture, tragedy and comedy.
Graduate
2020-08-01

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos de Literatura e de Cultura (Teoria da Literatura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2016
A estranheza encontra-se geralmente associada a momentos de hesitação ou de confusão conceptual, em que o que seria à partida familiar e comum apresenta contornos imprecisos, pouco habituais, propensos a uma rejeição inicial, não só pela novidade que sugere como também por uma certa tendência para criar um afastamento perceptual. É também comum associar a estranheza (com o factor da novidade que lhe é inerente) a situações de desconforto intelectual e a inquietações expressivas, cuja manifestação é não raras vezes conducente a uma noção vincada de autenticidade, não só na forma de nos relacionarmos com os outros como também no modo como nos confrontamos com a criação de objectos artísticos e com o domínio da interpretação. A presente tese procura afastar estas associações e tornar explícita a ideia de que a estranheza parte sobretudo do confronto entre as sucessivas interpretações a que nos prestamos, sendo que estas dizem respeito não a um suposto carácter excepcional da experiência, mas ao hábito e a uma convivência continuada com os objectos da percepção. Em muitos casos, a novidade associada à estranheza decorre da natureza reactiva da interpretação, e essa natureza é o resultado da contingência da individualidade e do reconhecimento que fazemos das nossas alterações perceptivas. As aproximações à ideia de interpretação por parte de autores como Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein e Stanley Cavell ajudam-nos a entender como o que à partida nos parece uma estranheza intrínseca a um objecto ou experiência em particular é sobretudo uma estranheza que parte do reconhecimento sistemático que fazemos dos nossos hábitos, crenças, expectativas e convicções, manifestado através de movimentos retrospectivos e prospectivos, fundamentados na memória e na imaginação. Estes movimentos, longe de se relacionarem com sensações reveladoras de confusão, terror ou mal-estar intelectual, estão intimamente ligados às noções de convicção, redescrição e autocriação, e a uma posição autoral reconhecida nas nossas vidas que é indissociável da ideia de estranheza.
The uncanny is usually associated with moments of hesitation or conceptual confusion in which what should seem at first mostly familiar and ordinary displays vague, unusual shapes, prone to an initial rejection, not only for the novelty it suggests but also because of its tendency to create perceptual distance. It is also a common practice to associate the uncanny (and its inherent novelty factor) with situations of intellectual uneasiness and with expressive anxieties that usually manifest themselves in a sharp notion of authenticity, not only in the way we deal with others but also in the way we relate to interpretation and the creation of artistic objects. One of the purposes of this thesis is to reject these associations and to suggest the notion that the uncanny is mainly the product of confrontation between our successive interpretations. These interpretations do not involve a supposedly exceptional character pertaining to certain experiences. Instead, they relate to habit and familiarity with different objects of perception. In many cases, the novelty factor associated with the uncanny results from the reactive nature of interpretation; in its turn, this nature is a consequence of the contingency of selfhood and the kind of acknowledgement that we partake in accordance with our perceptive transformations. Approaches to interpretation advanced by authors such as Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell are important in order to understand what at first seems an uncanny element intrinsic to an object or certain experience and then proves to be a kind of uncanniness that results from the systematic acknowledgement of our habits, beliefs, expectations and convictions. This is manifested through retrospective and prospective movements based on memory and imagination. While not related to feelings of confusion, terror or intellectual uneasiness, these movements are intimately connected with the notions of conviction, redescription and self-creation, and also with an authorial position that we may acknowledge in our lives, which is inseparable from the idea of the uncanny.

American philosopher Hillary Putnam has said that Stanley Cavell is the only philosopher to have made writing about movies a part of his philosophical project. Since 1971, with the publication of The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film , Cavell has actively pursued questions concerning the physical medium of the movies - as well as its aesthetics, its history, and its criticism - as part of his reflections on our human experience of the world. This essay attempts to unearth some of the earliest of Cavell's insights into the movies through a study of certain short passages on Vertigo by framing Cavell's study with the examination of one of the most popular texts in Academic Film Studies, feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The conclusions of this analysis are offset by a survey of the recent psychoanalytic studies of Vertigo by Lacanian cultural critic Slajov ZiZek. The conjunction of these two excursions away from Cavell sets the stage for a discussion of his interpretation of the film, pieced together from sections of The World Viewed and Pursuits of Happiness . Themes of the screen creation of women, of the transformative powers of the camera, and of the role of the movie director, together forecast the most admired contribution this American philosopher has offered to Academic Film Studies: the definition of the related genres of the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and the Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman.