Esercizio, tensione e "fonction du réel". L'analisi psicologica di Pierre Janet

(1) IF a layman may presume to criticise the professional metaphysician, one may say that the merit of M. Bergson is to have freshened up philosophy. His point of view is nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, and he has successfully cast off all the trammels not only of the old cut and dried philosophy of the schools, hut even the gaseous mysticism of NeoHegelianism. Yet some style him a NeoHegelian. Philosophy, he says, should be moulded on experience, and experience both changes and grows with human development. There is something of most philosophies in M. Bergson's attitude to the universe, for his philosophy is simply this: it is everything but a system. He is neither monist nor pantheist, but, as it were, a layman trying to understand. This attitude of his is optimistic; he has confidence in the universe. It may seem that he, like other exponents of “the new philosophy,” has a quarrel with monism and materialism, but he himself has deprecated all philosophical quarrels, for after all philosophy is only our attitude to and conception of the Absolute, and the wise man simply absorbs the positive results of all philosophies. (1) Henri Bergson: An Account of his Life and Philosophy. By A. Ruhe N. M. Paul. Pp. vii + 245. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 5s. net. (2) The Idealistic Reaction against Science. By Prof. Aliotta. Translated by A. McCaskill. Pp. xxii + 483. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 12s. net. (3) Berkeley and Percival. By Benjamin Rand. The Correspondence of George Berkeley afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, and Sir John Percival afterwards Earl of Egmont. Pp. x + 302.(Cambridge University Press, 1914.) Price 9s. net.

Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. —Marshall McLuhan. What is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action upon them. —Henri Bergson. Introduction: Subjective Maps as ‘Contact Zones’ Maps feature heavily in a variety of media; they appear in textbooks, on television, in print, and on the screens of our handheld devices. The production of cartographic texts is a process that is imbued with power relations and bound up with the production and reproduction of social life (Pinder 405). Mapping involves choices as to what information is and is not included. In their organisation, categorisation, modeling, and representation maps show and they hide. Thus “the idea that a small number of maps or even a single (and singular) map might be sufficient can only apply in a spatialised area of study whose own self-affirmation depends on isolation from its context” (Lefebvre 85–86). These isolations determine the way we interpret the physical, biological, and social worlds. The map can be thought of as a schematic for political systems within a confined set of spatial relations, or as a container for political discourse. Mapping contributes equally to the construction of experiential realities as to the representation of physical space, which also contains the potential to incorporate representations of temporality and rhythm to spatial schemata. Thus maps construct realities as much as they represent them and coproduce space as much as the political identities of people who inhabit them. Maps are active texts and have the ability to promote social change (Pickles 146). It is no wonder, then, that artists, theorists and activists alike readily engage in the conflicted praxis of mapping. This critical engagement “becomes a method to track the past, embody memories, explain the unexplainable” and manifest the latent (Ibarra 66). In this paper I present a short case study of Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies a new media art project that aims to model a citizen driven effort to participate in a critical form of cartography, which challenges dominant representations of the city-space. I present a critical textual analysis of the maps produced in the workshops, the artist statements relating to these works used in the exhibition setting, and statements made by the participants on the project’s blog. This “praxis-logical” approach allows for a focus on the project as a space of aggregation and the communicative processes set in motion within them. In analysing such projects we could (and should) be asking questions about the functions served by the experimental concepts under study—who has put it forward? Who is utilising it and under what circumstances? Where and how has it come into being? How does discourse circulate within it? How do these spaces as sites of emergent forms of resistance within global capitalism challenge traditional social movements? How do they create self-reflexive systems?—as opposed to focusing on ontological and technical aspects of digital mapping (Renzi 73). In de-emphasising the technology of digital cartography and honing in on social relations embedded within the text(s), this study attempts to complement other studies on digital mapping (see Strom) by presenting a case from the field of politically oriented tactical media. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has been selected for analysis, in this exploration of media as “zone.” It goes some way to incorporating subjective narratives into spatial texts. This is a three-step process where participants tapped into spatial subjectivities by data collection or environmental sensing led by personal reflection or ethnographic enquiry, documenting and geo-tagging their findings in the map. Finally they engaged an imaginative or ludic process of synthesising their data in ways not inherent within the traditional conventions of cartography, such as the use of sound and distortion to explicate the intensity of invisible phenomena at various coordinates in the city-space. In what follows I address the “zone” theme by suggesting that if we apply McLuhan’s notion of media as environment together with Henri Bergson’s assertion that visibility and tangibility constitutes the potential for action to digital maps, projects such as Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies constitute a “contact zone.” A type of zone where groups come together at the local level and flows of discourse about art, information communication, media, technology, and environment intersect with local histories and cultures within the cartographic text. A “contact zone,” then, is a site where latent subjectivities are manifested and made potentially politically potent. “Contact zones,” however, need not be spaces for the aggrieved or excluded (Renzi 82), as they may well foster the ongoing cumulative politics of the mundane capable of developing into liminal spaces where dominant orders may be perforated. A “contact zone” is also not limitless and it must be made clear that the breaking of cartographic convention, as is the case with the project under study here, need not be viewed as resistances per se. It could equally represent thresholds for public versus private life, the city-as-text and the city-as-social space, or the zone where representations of space and representational spaces interface (Lefebvre 233), and culture flows between the mediated and ideated (Appadurai 33–36). I argue that a project like Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies demonstrates that maps as urban text form said “contact zones,” where not only are media forms such as image, text, sound, and video are juxtaposed in a singular spatial schematic, but narratives of individual and collective subjectivities (which challenge dominant orders of space and time, and city-rhythm) are contested. Such a “contact zone” in turn may not only act as a resource for citizens in the struggle of urban design reform and a democratisation of the facilities it produces, but may also serve as a heuristic device for researchers of new media spatiotemporalities and their social implications. Critical Cartography and Media Tactility Before presenting this brief illustrative study something needs to be said of the context from which Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has arisen. Although a number of Web 2.0 applications have come into existence since the introduction of Google Maps and map application program interfaces, which generate a great deal of geo-tagged user generated content aimed at reconceptualising the mapped city-space (see historypin for example), few have exhibited great significance for researchers of media and communications from the perspective of building critical theories relating to political potential in mediated spaces. The expression of power through mapping can be understood from two perspectives. The first—attributed largely to the Frankfurt School—seeks to uncover the potential of a society that is repressed by capitalist co-opting of the cultural realm. This perspective sees maps as a potential challenge to, and means of providing emancipation from, existing power structures. The second, less concerned with dispelling false ideologies, deals with the politics of epistemology (Crampton and Krygier 14). According to Foucault, power was not applied from the top down but manifested laterally in a highly diffused manner (Foucault 117; Crampton and Krygier 14). Foucault’s privileging of the spatial and epistemological aspects of power and resistance complements the Frankfurt School’s resistance to oppression in the local. Together the two perspectives orient power relative to spatial and temporal subjectivities, and thus fit congruently into cartographic conventions. In order to make sense of these practices the post-oppositional character of tactical media maps should be located within an economy of power relations where resistance is never outside of the field of forces but rather is its indispensable element (Renzi 72). Such exercises in critical cartography are strongly informed by the critical politico-aesthetic praxis of political/art collective The Situationist International, whose maps of Paris were inherently political. The Situationist International incorporated appropriated texts into, and manipulated, existing maps to explicate city-rhythms and intensities to construct imaginative and alternate representations of the city. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies adopts a similar approach. The artists’ statement reads: We build our subjective maps by combining different methods: photography, film, and sound recording; […] to explore the visible and invisible […] city; […] we adopt psycho-geographical approaches in exploring territory, defined as the study of the precise effects of the geographical environment, consciously developed or not, acting directly on the emotional behaviour of individuals. The project proposals put forth by workshop participants also draw heavily from the Situationists’s A New Theatre of Operations for Culture. A number of Situationist theories and practices feature in the rationale for the maps created in the Bangalore Subjective Cartographies workshop. For example, the Situationists took as their base a general notion of experimental behaviour and permanent play where rationality was approached on the basis of whether or not something interesting could be created out of it (Wark 12). The dérive is the rapid passage through various ambiences with a playful-constructive awareness of the psychographic contours of a specific section of space-time (Debord). The dérive can be thought of as an exploration of an environment without preconceptions about the contours of its geography, but rather a focus on the reality of inhabiting a place. Détournement involves the re-use of elements from recognised media to create a new work with meaning often opposed

Manuel Delgado's Urban Anthropology:From Multidimensional Space to Interdisciplinary Spatial Theory Benjamin R. Fraser (bio) "Una antropología urbana, en el sentido de lo urbano, sería, pues, una antropología de configuraciones sociales escasamente orgánicas, poco o nada solidificadas, sometidas a la oscilación constante y destinadas a desvanecerse enseguida […] una antropología de lo inestable, de lo no estructurado, no porque esté desestructurado, sino por estar estructurándose […]." —(Manuel Delgado, El animal público 12, original emphasis) "Though all the photographs of a city taken from all possible points of view indefinitely complete one another, they will never equal in value that dimensional object, the city along whose streets one walks." —(Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind 160-61) As spatial theory spreads from the social sciences into the humanities—from geography into literary circles—it becomes important to recognize spatial theory itself as an interdisciplinary area of investigation, one that shares significant methodological concerns with literary analysis and philosophical inquiry. Through the articulation of urban anthropologist Manuel Delgado's texts with key problems from the writings of Jane Jacobs, Susan Sontag, Juan Benet, Henri Bergson, and Henri Lefebvre, this essay argues that urban criticism depends on the humanities as much as the humanities need spatial theory. The result is stronger support for the Lefebvrian argument that to change the quality of urban life it is necessary to change the process through which space is perceived, conceived, and produced and, ultimately, to change the movement of thought itself. [End Page 57] Taken as a whole, Manuel Delgado's El animal público and his two conferences (edited for publication) "Memoria y lugar: El espacio público como crisis de significado" and "Tránsitos: Espacio público y masas corpóreas" are important contributions to the contemporary study of urban spaces.1 In these works, Delgado builds upon the fundamentally multidimensional view of space articulated by Henri Lefebvre (The Production of Space) while emphasizing space as a process over the reification of given spaces. Moreover, throughout Lefebvre's and Delgado's works there is a strong Bergsonian undercurrent that points to the differential unity of memory (representative of consciousness) and space (understood as matter) and consequently to the interconnection of philosophical, anthropological, and geographical concerns. This interconnection is just as crucial in approaching the complexity of 'public' and 'private' city-spaces as it is in restructuring the hard lines of disciplinary borders and in renovating the aims of traditional scholarship. Delgado's contribution to studies of space is in fact an enfolding of Lefebvre's triadic model of spatial productions and Bergson's non-dualistic spatial and temporal philosophy. This amalgam of paradigm shifts, digested as they are from the realms of geography and philosophy, suggests as much for the study of space as it does for the re-conceptualization of the very idea of 'space' itself. Incorporating the phenomenological questioning of perceiver and perceived into a superb materialist critique of capitalist spatial practices, Delgado draws together the imagined and physical aspects of our spatial production. The consequences of this type of scholarship cannot be overemphasized given the contemporary accelerated drive for capital accumulation through the production and reproduction of city-space (Harvey, Condition; Justice; Spaces). Urbanism suffers, in Delgado's (2001) words, from the need to "architecturalize everything"/ "arquitecturizarlo todo," [c]omo si la tarea en última instancia colonizadora del urbanista tuviera como su peor enemigo la tendencia que todo espacio socializado experimenta hacia la ambigüedad, hacia la indefinición, como consecuencia de la propia naturaleza indeterminada de los usos que registra. (Memoria 8) In what follows, I want to emphasize the above premise of Delgado, one that he shares with Lefebvre and Bergson, that process enfolds and includes the particular—that immaterial forces enfold and include material forces. I will first show how Delgado's urban anthropology, one that poses the question of public space as a central one, unites immaterial and material forces in a non-dualistic relation. I argue that this special theory of geographical processes is not far at all from the way innovative critics of art and literature, such as Susan Sontag and Juan Benet, have dissolved the clear distinction between...

In this paper, I would simply like to sketch out what I take to be the component elements of Deleuze's concept of the virtual. (1) My thesis is this: Deleuze's philosophy can accurately be described as a transcendental philosophy--a transcendental empiricism, as he himself puts it--although Deleuze defines the transcendental field in a completely different manner than does Kant, who invented the term. Kant's genius, according to Deleuze, was to have conceived of a purely immanent critique of reason, a critique that did not seek, within reason, errors produced by external causes, but rather illusions that arise internally and inevitably from within reason itself by the illegitimate (that is, transcendent) uses of the syntheses. (2) Insofar as Deleuze conceives of philosophy as the construction of a plane of immanence, he aligns himself squarely with Kant's critical philosophy. (3) But he also criticizes Kant for having failed to fulfill the immanent ambitions of his critique, for reasons that we shall see in a moment. The difference does not lie simply in the fact that Deleuze purges the transcendental of any reference to consciousness or to a transcendental subject. The more important difference lies precisely in the distinction he makes between the possible and the virtual. For Deleuze, the transcendental does not serve to define the of possible experience for a subject; on the contrary, is a virtual field that serves as the genetic or productive condition of real experience, and that exists prior to the constitution of the subject. In what follows, I would like to draw out this difference between the possible and the virtual (as two conceptions of the transcendental) from the point of view of the history of philosophy: first, by examining two figures who seem to have influenced Deleuze most in this regard--Henri Bergson and Salomon Maimon; second, by examining the reading of Kant that Deleuze provides in Difference and Repetition; and finally, by briefly examining, as examples, Deleuze's analysis of three virtual structures, namely those of language, society, and the body. 1. Bergson's Problematization of the Possible. I turn first to Bergson. Deleuze derives the concept of the virtual directly from Bergson, and in a number of early articles (1956) he argues that Bergson forged the concept of the virtual by problematizing the notion of the possible. More precisely, the virtual is by nature problematizing; expresses a problematic. What does he mean by this? The activity of thought is frequently conceived of as the search for solutions to problems, a prejudice whose roots, Deleuze suggests, are both social and pedagogical. In the classroom, is the school teacher who poses ready-made problems, the pupil's task being to discover the correct solution, and what the notions of and serve to qualify are precisely these responses or solutions. Yet everyone recognizes that problems are never given ready-made but must themselves be constructed or constituted--hence the scandal when a or badly-formulated problem is set in an examination. This is not to imply that solutions are unimportant; on the contrary, is the solution that counts, but, as Deleuze says at several points through his work, a problem always has the solution merits in terms of the way in which is and the means and terms we have at our disposal for stating it, i.e., in terms of the conditions under which is determined as a problem. To problematize a concept thus does not only mean that one places in question; means that one seeks to determine the nature of the problem to which serves as a solution. This is why the process of problematization is so complex. While is relatively easy to define the true and the false in relation to solutions whose problems are already stated, writes Deleuze, it is much more difficult to say what the true and false consist of when they are applied directly to problems themselves. …

In her remarkable book Emmanuel Levinas: Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, Edith Wyschogrod clearly stressed contribution of Levinas to philosophy, defining it as a in relationships between ethics and metaphysics. She writes, The thought of Emmanuel Levinas is no less than an attempt to accomplish a radical reversal of traditional procedures by grounding metaphysics in ethics rather than in constructing an ethic upon pre-established metaphysical ' Wyschogrod's purpose, as she stated it herself, was mainly to evaluate feasibility of Levinas's effort to reconstruct metaphysics on ethical foundations. As we know, these ethical foundations can be summed up as altruism, a altruism as Wyschogrod said so well, that is grounded on transcendence of human face.2 Wyschogrod, through impressive and rigorous analyses, successively encounters problem of phenomenological method, break with Husserl, self, temporality, language, and Judaism in order to reach some enlightening conclusions that do not avoid problems and objections that could be raised about an ethical foundation of metaphysics. I will come back to some of these important objections later, but before examining these objections, I would like to begin by outlining my own approach to Levinas's philosophy. We can situate enterprise of Levinas in relation to larger movement that preceded him: namely, rebellion of singular and individual against claims of universal. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Bergson all have their place in movement. Each of these thinkers, in his own way, presents a recrimination against powers, both philosophical and practical, that are exercised by a despotic universality, a universality that institutionalizes itself in form of conceptual language, social devices, and laws of State. In a sense, whole of philosophy, especially since Aristotle, is put on trial by these thinkers. Aristotle wanted to make universal only path of science, and he insisted on common measure as means of social exchange and of law. In larger scheme, humans would live under reign of theoretical and practical universale that govern sociality, especially in form of concepts conveyed by language, and more generally in form of abstract - and alienating - laws, which reduce all things to anonymity and impersonality, erasing their singularity and leveling their differences into same neutralizing homogeneity. For some of these thinkers, Nietzsche for example, it is clearly specter of equality, democratic nightmare of a unified and uniform world where everyone is worthy of everyone, which disturbs. Nietzsche opposes to risk of the herd morality creation by individual of his own values and affirmation of individual perspective beyond all common measure and beyond all transcendent or established values. For others, like Henri Bergson, it is primarily limitations of science and philosophy when submitted to straitjacket of language, to common measure of pre-established concepts, which is targeted. For Bergson, general notions stored in language through process of socialization of truth do not permit one to grasp what is incomparable or incommensurable in individual intuition? It is necessary to free oneself from words, to go beyond constraints of language, in order to grasp things by an immediate intuition. For Bergson, intuition is this sympathy by which one carries oneself in interior of an object in order to coincide with what it has as unique and, by consequence, inexpressible.4 It is direct intuition, without any point of view or symbols, that enables us to reach absolute, and it is here, according to Bergson, path which must be chosen by philosopher. However, approach leaves untouched question of communicating to others direct intuition as experienced. …

One avenue for exploring a concept such as 𠇄politeness” is to look at it relationally: to investigate contrasts and co-occurrences, and to situate usages in time and place. La Politesse, the essay by Henri Bergson that serves as stimulus for this panel, offers a set of contrasts among different possible senses of the term—different possible definitions of “politeness”—rather than with forms of impoliteness (although those are mentioned too). Which is “true” politeness, for him, and why? After a brief look at Bergson’s three types, there follows a discussion of his audience and his historical moment. Then his three types are compared with discourse in some other times and places, such as: European royal courts and a rising bourgeoisie, rural communities in Senegal, an encounter in early nineteenth-century America, seventeenth-century Quakers, youth movements in the 1960’s. What these cases show is the importance of social positioning and differences in point of view, such that “politeness” is entangled in a clash of values. At issue is the relationship among politeness as conventions of manners, sincerity and truth, and the possibilities of critique and social change.

In this paper I focus on the ideas and efforts of Patrick Geddes, which are well known but not often discussed, by which he attempted to elevate the status of Indian sweepers and sewage collectors into gardeners by transforming sewage into fertilizer for gardens. Geddes transmitted his vision by means of religious performances, and through these efforts he attempted to produce change in Indian society in the register of human evolution. In this paper I take seriously the triangulation of waste, gardens, and performance as a reasoned means by which Geddes attempted to aid evolution. I suggest that by ‘evolution’ Geddes had in mind less an abstract process and more a state of awareness of one's capacities for self-transformation and relationship with one's environment. Furthermore, this awareness would largely be inculcated by taking into consideration the environment from the plant's point of view. In other words, expanding one's consciousness to be able to sense plant presence would not so much ready one for evolution as it would indicate that one had already evolved. This was town planning toward evolution. To make my arguments, I draw on Geddes's 1918 town planning reports for the Princely State of Indore, India, and draw out his intellectual engagements with William James, Henri Bergson, and Jagadis Chandra Bose implicit in these reports and elsewhere in his writings.

Reviewed by: Ontology after Philosophical Psychology: The Continuity of Consciousness in William James’s Philosophy of Mind by Michela Bella Russell J. Duvernoy Michela Bella Ontology after Philosophical Psychology: The Continuity of Consciousness in William James’s Philosophy of Mind Lexington Books: Lanham, Maryland 2019. xiv + 255 pp. (incl. index). Michela Bella’s Ontology after Philosophical Psychology: The Continuity of Consciousness in William James’s Philosophy of Mind offers a detailed survey of James’s thought using “continuity” as its focal lens. Because the book presumes significant familiarity with James and frequently includes dense exegesis of his work’s most technical aspects, it is primarily for specialists. It will particularly interest James scholars studying the entanglement of the metaphysical with the psychological and epistemological. Combining “historical” and “theoretical” points of view, Bella tracks “James’s gradual translation of psychological experimental observations of the continuity of thought into an ontological perspective according to which continuity constitutes a feature of reality” (ix). Bella writes: “one of the aims of this book is to show to what extent the issue of continuity is interconnected and multifaceted” (123). As such, I count at least seven different senses of continuity at play.1 Most prominent is James’s notion of the continuity of consciousness as a “stream” first advanced in the Principles. Bella reads latter innovations as efforts to think through this stream’s implications: how do we reconcile it with a discrete sense of self?; how is the stream of consciousness related to the external world?; what are the epistemic implications of this relation?; ultimately, what are the implications for the nature of reality? As Bella puts it, “[James] was looking for a way of integrating continuity— which he first discovered as the synthetic unity of consciousness—while still remaining loyal to his natural realism” (100). [End Page 105] The book is divided into four chapters, the first two more historical and the latter two more theoretical. Chapter One (“The Activity of Mind: Experimental Psychology and the Reception of Darwinism”) situates James’ seminal psychological work in relation to the influence of Darwin. Contending that from an early date James’s inclination towards “naturalistic realism” made him an “evolutionist”, Bella shows how James nevertheless challenges then orthodox interpretations, in particular that of Herbert Spencer, for being overly deterministic. She then unpacks different implications of continuity within the “stream” of consciousness. Most obviously, there is the continuity of consciousness in denying the discrete sense impressions of atomistic empiricisms. But there is also “the continuity existing between our psychological functions and the world” (52). This latter sense follows James’ claim that “our relations to the world are sensibly felt” such that “we do not need to postulate any noumenic entity to justify this natural process” (52). In denying the need for a transcendental ordering agent, James claims that sensations are “rich enough to be organized in themselves and to form an orderly world” (45). This explains why he maintains “it is possible to detect an element of voluminousness in every sensation [as the] ‘original sensation of space’” (49). Chapter Two (“Pluralistic Synechists”) continues historical work in studying relationships with three prominent interlocutors: Charles S. Peirce, Henri Bergson, and Ernst Mach. The chapter impressively modulates between exegesis of each interlocutor’s complex work and surveying similarities and differences with James. Detailing Peirce’s investigations into the logic of continuity, Bella complicates reductive caricatures of the James/Peirce relation while nevertheless identifying important differences. Most acute is the question of the mediate or immediate character of sensation. From Peirce’s perspective, James does not properly distinguish between feeling (as firstness) and thought (as thirdness). But James thinks the distinction between sensation (as immediate) and perception (as cognitive) allows him to admit the inferential and indirect function of perception while nevertheless not denying the continuity of processes of sensation between organism and world. In relation to Bergson, Bella shows how, despite their mutual regard and stated affinities, the two are oriented around different problems. Bergson is always most interested in metaphysics, whereas James begins in psychology: “This is the reason why James seems to have stumbled in the direction of the mind-world continuity, whereas Bergson was looking...

The famous essay Le Rire (1900) by Henri Bergson should not be considered as a deviation in his thought or as an isolated work. In fact, he began to deal with the study of laughter when he was a young school teacher in the French province, and he continued to theorize on it also after the publication of his famous book. In the present article we will try to give an overview of the interpretation of the laughter and humour by the French philosopher. We will put it in relation with the central idea of durée, and we will analyse what he meant by mécanisation de la vie along with the idea of the comic as an adult prosecution of children games. Furthermore, is laughter the other face of crying? Probably it is, and certainly it reflects the human need to escape from the constraints, as stated by Freud, the other great explorer of the unconscious, who absorbed many suggestions from both Darwin’s and Bergson’s works.

The development of Simmel’s “life philosophy” characterizing the late phase of his work is ordinarily presented as the product of the reception of his contemporaries, above all Henri Bergson, whom he contributed to translate and introduce in Germany. The present essay shows, however, that Simmel’s life-forms paradigm has a completely different origin. It emerges from the essential core of Simmel’s theory of modern society, i.e. from his theory of social conflict. By showing that conflict is not simply a dividing factor but a process of sociation that integrates societies, Simmel realized that the epistemological dichotomy between process and substance had to be overcome in and open-ended conception of their dialectics going beyond Hegel’s teleological conception of historical development. Simmel found the semantics to express his conception in the examination of the life philosophy of his time, but he radically transformed it to point out the problem he wanted to address. To understand the particular nature of his question, it is important to trace its origins within his sociology.

This paper examined the language, style and other narrative devices in Chukwuemeka Ike’s novels. The diagnostic objective of the paper is based on the interpretative analysis of Ike’s linguistic medium to determine how they aide in giving expressions to his vision as a writer. It reveals that colloquial and evocative language layered with oral resources provides the fertile medium through which Ike portrays the absurdities and decadence inherent in his society. His craftsmanship and talent glistens from effective and efficient deployment of literary style like the third person narrative point of view, dream motif, flashback, songs, metaphor, proverbs, adjectival density in which Ike piles up superlative and superficial adjectives while describing his characters which often make his language genial and turgid, etc. The paper explored some aspects of language in Henri Bergson’s theory of humour which sheds some light on Ike’s use of language. It concludes that contrary to the popularly held view that Ike belongs to the popular tradition in African literature; Ike is a consummate writer whose utmost concern is the propagation of a healthy society.

At the start of the 20th century, journalism (perceived as public oral and verbal expression, aimed at the public at large and relying on publishing institutions of newspapers and journals or the first broadcasters of radio shows) as a new professional activity was not yet defined from a scientific point of view in Lithuania. The network of journalism and media was created by those who had a talent and ability to develop this particular sphere. Among the practitioners of journalistic expression in Lithuania was Juozas Keliuotis (1902–1983), publisher and editor-in-chief of the journal “Naujoji Romuva”. Alongside intensive editorial activities he was the first to start deve­loping a theoretical basis for journalism in Lithuania, thus standing out from the other publishers. The founders of communication and information sciences at the start of the 20th century, J. Keliu­otis among them, had to face the following challenge: could journalism be clad in scientific clothes? J. Keliuotis’ way of addressing this challenge was formulating theoretical fundamentals of journalism. Being a practitioner, he basically took the standpoint, which clearly declared an attitude towards the theory and practice of journalism as an interdisciplinary field of scien­ce. This resulted in the theory of journalism developed by J. Keliuotis.The article aims at presenting the theoretical grounds, which served as a reference point for J. Keliuotis, the founder of the theory of journalism first recorded in Lithuania. The theoretical work of this thinker and publicist is analysed from the perspective of philosophical theory developed by Henry Bergson (1859–1941). The article presents sufficient proof that the theoretical model develo­ped by J. Keliuotis must have been influenced by H. Bergson’s philosophy. In order to reveal it, the text “Lectures on Journalism“ by J. Keliuotis is brought to the fore. This text, published in 2000, takes us back to the very origins of the formation of the theory of journalism and media. Thus, the ar­ticle analyses the first theory of journalism and media created in Lithuania in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This theory was not destined to grow and develop in the usual academic and publishing sense after World War II. Due to historical-political circumstances the intellectual thought developed by J. Ke­liuotis was eliminated from public discourse. However, the ideas embodied in J. Keliuotis’ democra­tic journalistic worldview found echoes in the national consciousness, characterised by resistance manifestations. The echo of these thoughts and the reviving academic tradition can be traced to this day – the current majors in journalism start their Bachelor’s studies at Vilnius university namely with the definition of the mission and functions of journalism as described by J. Keliuotis.The following conclusion is drawn in the article: J.Keliuotis elaborated his theory of ‚journalism making consistent and methodological references to H. Bergson’s philosophy and modeling materia­lism with the spiritual sphere. He was convinced that the spiritual plane is a source of inspiration and aspirations. J. Keliuotis claimed that any materialism and pragmatic calculations in journalism-related activities such as ideological manifestations, surrender to the appeal of business and diplo­matic rhetoric – all this, according to J. Keliuotis, merely distracts from the pursuit of truth, which a journalist is constantly looking for. However, a journalist is neither a fanatic nor a clerical, he needs to have a sense of proportion. The fundamental and final purpose of journalism is a pursuit of and search for true eternal values. Thus, J. Keliuotis saw the correlation between concreteness (practice, experience and experiment) with the whole metaphysical world. He cherished ambitions and aspi­rations to develop the great theory of Lithuanian journalism and media. Within the context of the respective historical period J. Keliuotis did accomplish this task.

A impressão de que o tempo flui no meio da noite é constante ao lermos O som e a fúria de William Faulkner, principalmente nos dois primeiros capítulos. O primeiro apresenta o ponto de vista de um deficiente mental, Benjy Compson, o qual não tem noção de tempo e narra passado e presente simultaneamente, o que leva o leitor a se sentir no escuro. O segundo apresenta a narrativa do ponto de vista de Quentin Compson, personagem que vive na escuridão do passado em um pessimismo que beira o niilismo. Com base nos conceitos de simultaneidade do filósofo Henri Bergson e de niilismo de Friedrich Nietzsche, discutiremos a questão do tempo para Faulkner.

Reviewed by: Maurice Blondel: Transforming Catholic Tradition by Robert C. Koerpel Jude P. Dougherty KOERPEL, Robert C. Maurice Blondel: Transforming Catholic Tradition. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. xi + 265 pp. Cloth, $55.00 In the opening pages of his book, Koerpel reminds the reader that all Christian denominations proclaim scripture to be the Divine Word of God. In addition to sacred scripture itself, Roman Catholicism places a significant role on tradition in the interpretation of that Word. "Tradition," as a term used in the present treatise, includes the many doctrines, teachings, customs, practices, actions, persons, writings, events, places, and happenings that have occurred in the life of the Church, some of them great, such that Yves Congar may rightly speak of "the monuments of tradition." Maurice Blondel was born 1861 into a prominent family in Dijon, France. At age 20, he left his paternal home to study philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Twelve years later in 1893 he published Action, a version of his doctoral dissertation, which may be broadly characterized as an interpretation of Christianity from a point of view integrating Neoplatonism with modern pragmatism. Upon completion of his degree, he was at first denied a teaching post to which he would have been entitled, because his book was considered a work of Catholic apologetics, far too theological to be considered a work of philosophy. In fact, it was a philosophical attempt to define the relationship between philosophical reasoning and Christianity. He subsequently completed a second dissertation on the Vinculum Substantiale of Leibniz, and with the help of Edmund Boutroux and Raymond Poincare he was able to secure a position at the University of Lille. He later accepted a position at the University of Aix-Marseille, where he would teach the rest of his career until his death in 1949. Blondel lived in a period when the positivism of August Comte was taking hold. He entered the Ecole Normale Superieure one a year after Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim had finished. Pierre Duhem and Edouard Le Roy were also among his notable similarly engaged contemporaries. In spite of the ascendency of the positive sciences, there was a sense that Europe had lost something in the secularization that followed the French Revolution. Positivism had robbed religion of its rational foundation, a cornerstone of scholastic teaching since the Council of Trent. Durkheim, like Blondel, began the study of religion from a philosophical perspective, but from the negative point of his ingrained atheism. Action begins with a discussion of freedom and necessity. Blondel maintains that freedom is never absolute but is real only when exercised in deliberation, that is, in choosing among alternatives. If the human person is to be fully free, its perfection depends on its conforming its "willed-will" to the source of its liberation. The totally free gift of God is absolutely necessary for human freedom. [End Page 798] Koerpel believes that "Blondel's form of thought allowed Christian thinkers to rediscover the sublime syntheses between nature and grace, faith and reason, and theology and history, a synthesis capable of rendering an account of hope open to the practice of charity." And further, to his credit, "Blondel succeeded in reintroducing the notion of transcendence into French philosophical discourse." Other important works followed Action. In 1904 Blondel published History and Dogma, in which he addresses the mode in which revelation appears in history. He speaks of reason's capacity to examine the immanent affirmation of the transcendent absolute implicit in human action. In 1934 he published the two-volume La Pensee. Nearly two decades later, an essay, Exigences philosophiques du christianisme, written shortly before his death, was published posthumously in 1950. Koerpel does justice to each in his exposition and insightful commentary, impossible to recapitulate here. Koerpel finds that what set Blondel's approach apart from his coreligionists' is that he begins with the absence of the supernatural instead of with its presence. It is through the unfolding of the logic of action that we see the necessity of God's self-giving for the fulfillment of human destiny. It is obvious Blondel's neo-Kantianism destroys the rational basis for belief. The...

The aim of this paper is to develop a new understanding of what the “problem of consciousness” is and to indicate why it cannot be solved conclusively. It is argued that the problem cannot be captured by a single question, such as the currently popular “How does the brain produce consciousness?” From a broader point of view, the problem of consciousness is a “problem-in-repetition” in the sense of Gilles Deleuze: that is, a series of questions that replace each other in different theoretical frameworks. The problem will shift when the theory changes, but it will not go away. A brief survey of mind–body theories given in this paper includes property dualism, materialism, substance dualism, eliminativism, idealism, panpsychism, and dual-aspect theory. We will probably never have a final theory of consciousness. But as a final theory would have to describe some kind of “reality,” this issue also depends on general ontological assumptions. Drawing on Henri Bergson, Deleuze suggests an ontology of “actuality” and “virtuality” that helps to explain why any reality and hence any theory of consciousness will leave room for further questions.