Une impossibilité en or: la lecture émersonienne de Kant

in Burks, Deven; Grapotte, Sophie; Lequan, Mai (Eds.) et al Kant et les penseurs de langue anglaise (2017, May)

The idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson as Kant's interlocutor may surprise philosophers. Yet Emerson's work has undergone rehabilitation since 1950, showing engagement with philosophical issues of his time. Of ... [more ▼]

The idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson as Kant's interlocutor may surprise philosophers. Yet Emerson's work has undergone rehabilitation since 1950, showing engagement with philosophical issues of his time. Of importance are Emerson's contributions in ethics and epistemology, notably the struggle between skepticism and idealism. Therein, commentators like David Van Leer have found an “essentially Kantian orientation”, where others see engagement with broader idealist themes. This lack of consensus owes to Emerson's argumentative brushwork and few references to Kant, complicating the attempt “to delineate precisely the influence of philosophical idealism on any of the major texts”. Such complications do not prevent Van Leer from laying out a hypothetical, Kantian rereading of Emerson by “treat[ing] the essays as if they were both philosophical and organized” and “translat[ing] Emerson's private vocabulary into the more public one of traditional philosophy”. If Van Leer “tend[s] to be less concerned than most with identifying the sources of Emerson's ideas”, this holds because his “hypothetical account means only to disprove the claim that Emerson cannot be read seriously as a philosopher”. An assessment of whether this hypothesis holds water must acknowledge that “what we want to know is not Emerson's 'familiarity' with Kantian concepts, or even his 'knowledge' of them, but only his 'understanding' of those concepts”, for which “any study of the genesis of thought is irrelevant”. If, by Van Leer's own lights, his hypothesis' validity stands or falls with Emerson's understanding of Kantian concepts, one must first identify that understanding. To that end, this study shall accept Van Leer's terms by bracketing considerations of Emerson's style and sources and by charitably upholding Van Leer's replies thereto. So can attention shift to Emerson's engagement with two Kantian innovations mentioned in his work: transcendental idealism and the faculties. It will be necessary to set limits for this study, given the breadth of the authors' works. It shall thus focus on Emerson's treatment of idealism and faculties in his 1836 Nature. If this study judges Emerson's understanding of idealism at several removes from Kant's transcendental idealism, notably on the status of objective reality, it finds his understanding of the faculties more closely aligned on the function of understanding, reason and intuition, albeit with an important amendment to the latter. Accordingly, this study holds, with Winkler, Van Leer's hypothetical account to be both interpretively incomplete and constitutively unverifiable. [less ▲]

Positivisme juridique, relativisme axiologique et démocratie : humanisme et unité dans la pensée de Hans Kelsen

Doctoral thesis (2015)

The work of Hans Kelsen has been largely discussed without the unity between its different questions has been plainly revealed. This unity is what we aim to demonstrate. In our opinion, an attentive and ... [more ▼]

The work of Hans Kelsen has been largely discussed without the unity between its different questions has been plainly revealed. This unity is what we aim to demonstrate. In our opinion, an attentive and critical reading of Kelsen’s late works allows such a possibility since it is in these works that the scholar himself tries to achieve this unification. To be able to understand this try and its sense, one must read Kelsen’s late works with the perspective of the moral relativism he defends. Indeed, this relativism can be interpreted as a symptom of modernity. Moreover, it can be defined as a modern humanism. In the Kelsenian thought, what links the legal positivism, the moral relativism and the political conception of democracy is the concept of equality that underlies them implicitly. Under this perspective, the Kelsenian moral relativism reveals itself as an agnosticism that is a philosophy of perpetual questioning. This interpretation is what allows one to render explicit the systematic character of the Kelsenian work. Moreover, such a reading render also explicit the importance of this work. Kelsenian agnosticism expresses the essence of modern philosoph. Since it defines itself as a questioning, it becomes the condition of possibility of both an authentic recognition of the Other and of democracy itself. [less ▲]

La question du droit et de la morale : lecture croisée de Kant, Kelsen et Luhmann

in Grapotte, Sophie; Ruffing, Margit; Terra, Ricardo (Eds.) Kant. La raison pratique : Concepts et héritages (2015, September)

L’héritage kantien dans la fondation de la science du droit kelsénienne et la théorie des systèmes luhmanienne ne se limite pas uniquement à un héritage théorique : le geste opéré par le philosophe de ... [more ▼]

L’héritage kantien dans la fondation de la science du droit kelsénienne et la théorie des systèmes luhmanienne ne se limite pas uniquement à un héritage théorique : le geste opéré par le philosophe de Königsberg dans sa Métaphysique des moeurs, de séparer l’entreprise juridique de l’entreprise morale est repris par le juriste autrichien, puis radicalisé par Niklas Luhmann. Ainsi, si la norme juridique pour Kelsen est à différencier de la norme morale, c’est parce que seule la norme juridique peut être un objet de connaissance, la norme morale elle, étant condamnée à la relativité. Lehmann radicalise alors l’approche kelsénienne par l’affirmation d’une autonomie complète du système juridique, par rapport au système moral. La lecture juridique du geste kantien par Kelsen et par Luhmann se réalise donc au détriment de la question morale qui, soit est reléguée à une affaire d’opinions (Kelsen), soit complètement abandonnée (Luhmann). Un retour à la lecture de Kant semble donc nécessaire, à la fois pour comprendre le cheminement de Kelsen et de Luhmann, mais plus encore, pour saisir pleinement jusqu’à quel point ces lectures trahissent la lettre du philosophe allemand. [less ▲]

Le relativisme moral dans la pensée tardive de Hans Kelsen

Presentation (2015, May)

The question of Justice: Hans Kelsen & Leo Strauss

Scientific Conference (2014, June)

The aim of my presentation is to compare two authors: Hans Kelsen and Leo Strauss. Kelsen’s “What is justice?” – the farewell lecture given at Berkeley in 1952 – and Leo Strauss’ Natural Right and History ... [more ▼]

The aim of my presentation is to compare two authors: Hans Kelsen and Leo Strauss. Kelsen’s “What is justice?” – the farewell lecture given at Berkeley in 1952 – and Leo Strauss’ Natural Right and History – one of the main works on political philosophy published in 20th Century America – are two key texts dealing with the same subject: justice. Moreover, they were written at the same period, by two authors who both emigrated to the US but who seem to defend radically opposed points of views. The hypothesis of this comparison is that the same important idea can be found in both authors, despite and beyond their otherwise real differences. This important idea I would like to stress is the following: if one wants to think about political issues, then, one has to address the question of justice. Reading Kelsen and Strauss reminds us of the importance of this question. According to this hypothesis, this is a main lesson one should retain from a comparative reading of these two authors. [less ▲]

Qu’est-ce que la justice ?

in Le Portique (2013)

Démocratie et autocratie chez Kelsen

Presentation (2012, November)

Hans Kelsen : Unité et Humanisme

Book published by Peter Lang (n.d.)