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p.40 Brunschvicg's idealism is based, first of all, on a thorough rejection of the thing-in-itself... "Knowledge is not an accident that is added on from outside a being" but rather "constitutes a world that is the world for us" ...A consistent idealism must see all beings as the objects of a thought that is itself a function or act of thinking, not an independently existing thing.
p.40 Whereas natural sciences are concerned with the objects of thought, philosophy is concerned with thought itself, the intellectual activity through which objects are presented to... us.
p.41 Brunschvicg is prepared to argue that thinking is identical with judging, the quintessential intellectual activity... "Intellectual activity becoming aware of itself... -that's what philosophy is" ...Brunschvicg tries to establish his central claim that thinking is judging by arguing that the other two traditional elements of thought, concepts and reasoning, are reducible to judgment... There is no need or possibility of reducing a concept to either the individuals that fall under it or the properties that describe those individuals. Rather, a concept is precisely linking of a certain set of properties to a certain set of individuals... Brunschvicg... maintains that deductive reasoning is not a matter of connecting two or more judgments but of making a single judgment.
p.42 Having established that to think is to judge, Brunschvicg turns to the question of what a judgment is. It is, first of all, an affirmation, an assertion that something is the case... Since Aristotle, philosophers have agreed that judgments vary depending on whether what they affirm is necessary existence, actual existence, or possible existence... Understanding the forms of judgment requires us to answer fundamental metaphysical and epistemological questions of being and truth.
Brunschvicg begins by noting that, in some cases, judgment seems to be a matter of our awareness of the internal connection between two ideas... In other cases, however, my judgment seems to have nothing to do with the internal connection of ideas but rather expresses the brute fact that something exists in reality, that, for example, this thing exists here and now. In such a case, "is" does not express a unity required by the mind's understanding but a "shock of reality" that the mind must simply accept without understanding
p.43 Brunschvicg emphasizes that pure interiority and pure exteriority are merely ideal forms, limiting cases of judgment, which in reality is always a mixture of the two... Truth and reality are rather expressed in "mixed judgments" through which what has been given so far in experience is interpreted through the best intellectual framework so far developed by the mind.
p.44 Brunschvicg rejects the idea that mathematics is a pure study of merely ideal relations and instead views it as essentially tied to our efforts to understand the world. His history shows how novel mathematical ideas emerge from the mind's creative efforts to make sense of our experience of the world
p.72 [Bergson] Philosophy is born from a fundamental cooperation between two complementary powers: "There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them"
p.74 Brunschvicg maintains that duration itself has no reality apart from its constitution by intelligence. He cites Lachelier's formulation: "There is time and, therefore, memory only for intelligence that does not exist in time." Consciousness itself, understood as the activity of judgment, "grasps in itself... the flux of universal life... in order to restore the freshness and energy of its immediate reality". In this way, "the impulse of consciousness [elan de conscience] is... an impulse of life [elan de vie] that traverses the universe". Indeed, it muse be more than an "impulse of life"; it must be an "impulse of intelligence [elan de'intelligence]".
p.86 Bachelard's picture of scientific development centers on his notion of epistemological break (coupure epistemologique). Science requires first of all, a break from our common-sense experiences and beliefs, since it places everyday objects under new concepts and shows them to possess properties not revealed by ordinary sense perception
p.88 Truth is not a matter of the mind's creating or constituting the world. It is, rather, the result of the mind's "revision" (rectification) by scientific concepts of a world that is already there. Bachelard says... that his rationalism is "applied"; that is, the mind never produces its objects ex nihilo but rather applies its concepts to pregiven objects. However, he also emphasizes that objects are not "pregiven" in any absolute sense but are the results of previous applications of concepts.
p.88 Bachelard's applied rationalism... introduces the crucial idea that scientific instrumentation has a central role in the constitution of the physical world. Instruments are, he says, "theories materialized", and a concept is truly scientific only to the extent that it receives concrete reality through a "technique of realization".
[JLJ - a diagnostic test executed by a player of a complex social game is materializing a theory of how to "go on". The fact that "this test" rather that "that test" is performed means that "this theory" is held to apply in determining how to "go on", rather than "that theory".]
p.92 At every stage, action is driven to seek further levels of meaning because of the gap between what our willing has achieved so far (what Blondel calls the "willed will"", volonte voulue) and what we most profoundly will (the "willing will", volonte voulante). No matter how successful our willing, no matter how extensive the realm of objects it attains, the will (volonte voulante) is never entirely satisfied. This is because, at the very least, our willing itself, the very root of our action, is not something we have willed:
Suppose that man does everything as he wills it, obtains what he covets, vivifies the universe according to his liking, organizes and produces as he wishes the total ordering of conditions on which he rests his life: it remains that this will itself has not been posited or determined as it is by him... he wills, but he did not will to will. (A, 326/303)
[JLJ - Perhaps Blondel is confusing will with intelligently guided practical action in a complex world, or the scheme. We live in a complex world, with consequences for unproductive actions. A clock is ticking on our lives, with certain time periods available for academic studies, sports, apprenticeship, family, marriage, etc., and we need to decide how to "go on". The execution of a scheme might fulfill our will, it might not. We have no crystal ball into the future. We will to carry out the scheme because it might lead to satisfying our desires. We really have no choice - the world is complex and uncertain. Most direct action to satisfying our desires is blocked for various reasons. Intelligently, we substitute the execution of the scheme for the will, modifying it where necessary, in the hopes that it will lead to indirect progress. Perhaps I am wrong.]
p.229 For Canguilhem... there is a crucial distinction between the interpretation of a phenomena (via concepts) and their theoretical explanation. According to him, a given set of concepts provides the preliminary descriptions of a phenomenon that allow the formulation of questions about how to explain it.
p.231 The pathological must... be understood... as a reduction in the range of circumstances in which an organism can function properly. Correspondingly, health is a state in which an organism is not only able to survive in its current circumstances but is capable of surviving in a significant range of varying circumstances.
p.268 it is obvious that there are many grammatically and logically acceptable statements that are never uttered in a given domain of discourse. We may be inclined to attribute this simply to the fact that no individuals happen to want to make those statements. But Foucault maintains that, in addition to the rules of grammar and logic, there are further underlying rules limiting the range of permissible statements... Foucault's archaeology, the archaeology of knowledge, is the historical method that uncovers such rules.
p.269 Foucault's characterizations of the epistemes of the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and the modern age are formulated in terms of, first, an episteme's fundamental manner of ordering the objects of thought and experience (its "order of things"); second, the consequences of this ordering for the nature of signs (especially linguistic signs); and third, the consequences of the episteme's view of order and of signs for its conception of knowledge.
p.269 The fundamental way in which things are related for Renaissance thought is resemblance.
p.284 In accord with his critique of the repressive hypothesis, Foucault maintains his view, already developed in Surveiller et punir, that power is not purely negative but is a positive, creative force in society, producing both new forms of knowledge and new social categories and structures (along with the constraints corresponding to these). A further point - also developed in Surveiller et punir - is that power cannot be understood in terms of the action of any single central point of control. A society contains numerous centers of power (a "microphysics of power') that interact in complex ways. Power is dispersed and does not flow from one (or just a few) centers that are the key to seizing it.
p.321 differend... in ordinary French, means simply "conflict"
p.324 This illustrates Lyotard's view that "it is necessary to link" (to respond to any phrase with another phrase), even though "the mode of linkage is never necessary"
p.330 Lyotard concludes that "everything is politics" in the sense that "politics is the possibility of the differend on the occasion of the slightest linkage"
p.374-375 Nancy argues that we must... think simply in terms of existence, with no reference at all to essence, even in a subordinate ontological role. Our reality is not a matter of our existence constructing an essence through its free choices; it is entirely encompassed by existence itself.
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