Vivant jusqu’à la mortCompte-rendu de A. Cavazzini, A. Gualandi (édité par), Logiche del vivente.Evoluzione, sviluppo, cognizione nell’epistemologia francese contemporanea,“Discipline filosofiche” XIX, I, Quodlibet, Macerata 2009Le nouveau recueil d’essais consacrés à une épistémologie pour la discipline philosophique, sous la direction de A. Cavazzini et A. Gualandi, se structure autourd’une idée forte de Bergson, celle d’ « attention à la vie ». Cette idée est utilisée comme instrument herméneutique pour désigner un aspect de la culture philosophique française du XIXè siècle et de l’époque contemporaine en particulier, qui voit dans l’épistémologie de la biologie un lieu de rencontre entre des perspectives hétérogènes, ainsi qu’un moyen de vérifier l’état actuel des sciences de la vie et d’étudier la possibilité d’une philosophie de la biologie prenant en compte et mettant profit les impulsions des avancées scientifiques. Le recueil cherche à rendre compte de la nouveauté du paradigme biologique contemporain, qui vise un degré extrême de synthèse entre les savoirs et les disciplines liées au « champ biologique ». Logiche del vivente parvient donc à rendre compte de la nouvelle approche synthétique du biologique, ouvrant à ce syncrétisme de positions qui contribue à sa définition contemporaine : évolution, développement et cognition, réunis dans une même perspective, sont les instruments d’une réécriture du vocabulaire et des catégories de la réflexion biologique, indépendamment de l’alternative paralysante entre le « mauvais » vitalisme et le mécanisme.Vivant jusqu’à la mortReview of A. Cavazzini, A. Gualandi (edited by), Logiche del vivente.Evoluzione, sviluppo, cognizione nell’epistemologia francese contemporanea,“Discipline filosofiche” XIX, I, Quodlibet, Macerata 2009Edited by A. Cavazzini and A. Gualandi, this new collection of essays devoted to an epistemology for the philosophical discipline is structured around one of Bergson’s powerful ideas, that of “attention to life.” This idea is used as a hermeneutic structure in order to outline an aspect of the French philosophical culture of the 19th century and of the contemporary epoch in particular. What one sees is that the epistemology of biology is a place of encounter between heterogeneous perspective. As well, it is a means to verify the current state of the life sciences and to study the possibility of a philosophy of biology which would take account of the novelty of the contemporary biological paradigm, a paradigm that aims at an extreme degree of synthesis between the sciences and the disciplines connected to the “biological field.” Logiche del vivente therefore manages to take account of the new synthetic approach of biology, opening itself up to a syncretism of positions which contributes to its contemporary definition: evolution, development and cognition, united in one perspective, are instruments of are-writing of the vocabulary and the categories of biological reflection, independently of the paralyzing alternative be “bad” vitalism and mechanism.

The book Identité et primauté d’autrui presents a study of intersubjectivity in Merleau-Ponty. Subjectivity emerges against a background of a world shared with the other, a human world, and is preceded by its relationship to the other. The assumption of the primary character of this relationship takes on the shape of hospitality. Such a politics of hospitality is opposed to state politics aiming for cultural security and the defense of values, taking their origins in neoconservatism and notably deployed against immigration and mixity. This original study of hospitality, departing from Merleau-Ponty in an original manner while remaining anchored in the Phenomenology of Perception, offers a response to the need to protect an unavoidable ontological pluralism.

In Opacidad y relativismo. La situacionalidad del conocimiento en tensión entre Merleau-Ponty y Foucault, Claudio Cormick introduces Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s and Michel Foucault’s philosophies as attempts to face two possible obstacles for human knowledge : on the one hand, the opacity of consciousness with regard to the foundations of its own positions; on the other, the relative, non-absolute character of our claims to truth, inasmuch as they are formulated within concrete social and historical conditions.

The two series of correspondence between Simone de Beauvoir with both Élisabeth Lacoin (Zaza) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty – published in the volume Lettres d’amitié (Gallimard, 2022) – represent an essential contribution for several reasons. First, these letters offer the possibility of considering the friendship between Beauvoir and Lacoin; then, they also allow us to understand the essential role of Zaza in the development of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary project. Finally, these letters also let us know Beauvoir’s attitude during a particular moment in her life that is to say the period when, while she was taking philosophy courses at the Sorbonne, she began to feel the need to write literature, which she discusses with Merleau-Ponty.