Jules Vuillemin

Jules Vuillemin (born the February 15th 1920 with Pierrefontaine-the-Monitors in the Doubs, deceased the January 16th 2001) was a Philosophe French.

Biography

Jules Vuillemin is born the February 15th 1920 with Pierrefontaine-the-Monitors in the Doubs. Raise National university of 1939 with 1943, Jules Vuillemin teaches with the Victor-Hugo college of Besancon the year 1943 - 1944. He is researcher with CNRS of 1944 with 1950, then professor at the university of Clermont-Ferrand of 1950 with 1962, finally professor with the Collège de France until in 1990.

It is a friend of Pierre Bourdieu, his colleague at the Collège de France.

He is one of the first French to be interested in the analytical Philosophie and to adopt aspects stylistics of them and methodical philosophers, in particular logical formalization. Its work in particular influenced Jacques Bouveresse, which is claimed of sound Rationalisme.

Vuillemin and Foucault

In 1960, Vuillemin, director of the department of philosophy of the university of Clermont-Ferrand, propose with Michel Foucault a station of teaching of the Psychologie. The two men bind friendship, and discuss philosophy regularly, while Foucault works out what will become the Words and the things .

In 1969, Vuillemin, which teaches at the Collège de France since 1962, supports the candidature of Foucault. Sunday November 30th 1969, Vuillemin proposes the creation of a pulpit of “History of the systems of thought”; and the April 12th 1970, it proposes the name of Foucault to occupy this pulpit.

The two philosophers seem to be themselves slightly scrambled, according to Didier Eribon, in November 1975, around the election of Roland Barthes at the Collège de France. Vuillemin defends the creation of a pulpit of “Greek Épigraphie and antiquity”, Foucault that of “literary Semiology”. It is not less Vuillemin which makes the speech of homage obituary to Foucault, at the Collège de France, in 1984.

Work

Jules Vuillemin always claimed heritage of Martial Gueroult, philosopher and historian of the philosophy which insisted on the coherence and the need for the construction of the philosophical systems. A system is not the result of contingent thoughts which are followed in an arbitrary order, but a whole of rigorously articulated thoughts being followed in a rational order, “according to the order of the reasons”.

the Kantian Heritage

In the Kantian Heritage , Vuillemin examines in a systematic way the order and nature of the interpretations of Kant suggested by its successors. This book was one of the influences of the Mots and the things of Michel Foucault.

The displacement of the concepts at Kant

The starting point of these reinterpretations is, according to Vuillemin, the criticism addressed by the Phénoménologie of the spirit of Hegel to the Kantian system. In the study of the “moral vision of the world”, Hegel indeed notices a contradiction in the Kantianism: “the philosophy of Kant is not one, but two” (p. 12).

On a side, Kant indeed affirms the independence of nature and freedom. Nature obeys its own laws, to which freedom is not subjected; and freedom gives itself to itself its principles of action, to which nature is not subjected. The two concepts thus belong to two radically distinct fields. It is this independence which characterizes freedom as such, and guarantees its “purity” (p. 4). The concept of “good will” preserves this mutual independence of nature and freedom.

On another side, the “good will” cannot remain about it with the simple intention. “It cannot want not to want” (p. 3), but must on the contrary tend to be brought up to date; it cannot remain indifferent to its actualization in the world. The postulates of the practical reason (freedom, immortality of the heart, existence of God) are used for guaranteeing the synthesis between subject and object, intention and actualization, having and effectiveness (p. 5). Happiness, design of morality, show that nature must penetrate in the moral reflection (p. 5).

Thus, the two designs are antithetic one of the other: “The effectiveness of the duty contradicts its purity” (p. 4). And if this contradiction passed unperceived many readers, it is because Kant passes unceasingly from one aspect to the other, according to perpetual “displacements”.

Heritage of these displacements at Fichte, Cohen, Heidegger

These displacements will haunt “the thought of the heirs to the Kantianism” (p. 11). How to save philosophy transcendantale its contradictions? It is with this problem that they will endeavor to bring a solution; the history of these solutions is inseparable, on the one hand, of that of interpretations of Kant, other, systems of philosophy transcendantale. the Kantian Heritage undertakes the ordered and systematic account of this history, by showing how the problems necessarily appear, just as the types of solutions suggested with these problems.

The stake of the “heirs” to Kant is indeed to maintain the gesture transcendantal Kantian against its criticism hégélienne:

“One thus will seek to systematize Kant starting from a privileged element of the system, presumedly essential by interpretation, and one will leave side all that, not agreeing with him, risk to contradict it and cause a displacement. ” (p. 12)

Three designs are examined:

Fichte for the Kantianism;
Hermann Cohen for the Neo-Kantianism;
and Heidegger for the “Existentialisme”.

In this succession, Vuillemin observes that these three authors saw the core of philosophy transcendantale in different places:

Fichte in Dialectical the transcendantale;
Cohen in Analytical the transcendantale;
Heidegger in Esthetics.

Thus, the interpretation of the Kantianism traversed the Critique pure reason with wrong way, to move the accent of it: “The plan of the history and the knowledge which our work wants to take thus finds preceded at Kant itself” (p. 13).

At Fichte, in the First Moment of the doctrines of science (1794 - 1799),

“the displacement of ad infinitum finished will be avoided in the condition of reducing the affection of the thing in oneself to an act of I think implied in the principle even of the possibility of the self-awareness. The absolute idealism within Ego in general finished, such is the vision implied by this design of the idealism transcendantal. ” (p. 13)

Hermann Cohen, in Logical of pure knowledge , “share of the principles and either of the ideas, but like the absolute idealism of finitude it reduces the assigned role to Esthetics and the sensory intuition. ” (p. 13)

When with Heidegger, which carries out interpretation “existentialist”, he “does not see in very whole Logic transcendantale, Dialectique and Analytical, which the véreuse bark of the Kantianism. ” (p. 14)

Table of the displacement of the concepts

Vuillemin concludes the analyzes from Fichte, Cohen and Heidegger by a summary diagram. The tabular representation is a process which crosses all its work, playing the part of synthesis at the end of sometimes long and difficult developments.

The destiny of philosophy transcendantale

In this evolution, Vuillemin sees the destiny of philosophy transcendantale, led to turn more and more to finitude:

“each interpretation new is drawn up against the preceding one, which she shows to actually be turned over to a “metaphysics of infinite”, i.e. with a philosophical situation nonin conformity with the requirements of the Revolution copernician and authorizing consequently displacements of concepts. The history of interpretations and the descent towards the intuition are thus tested quite naturally like the progressive deepening of the concept of finitude. ” (p. 14)

More generally, this evolution is according to symptomatic Vuillemin of the modern philosophy, which seeks to break with theology, but does not cease wanting to take the place of it:

“At the time traditional philosophy was presented in the form of a complement of theology. Modern philosophy believes to remove the religion when, actually, she wants to be the substitute about it. Because if she discovers finitude, she reveals also the eternal gasoline of this finitude. ” (p. 302)

Vuillemin diagnoses the principle of this “imposing failure” (p. 299): it can be the “Cogito” itself, “remains of crowned which causes all displacements” (p. 306). Cogito indeed blocks the access to the history, which is the “great business of philosophy” (p. 306). If philosophy proceeds, not for a “Revolution copernician”, but for a “ptolémaïque Revolution”, it will be able to substitute “for the human Cogito in a universe of gods human work in the world of the men” (p. 306).

The conclusion of the work clarifies sights thus that one can guess as of the introduction. By developing the objection hegelienne - or at least by taking it with the serious one - against the Kantian system (p. 1-11), then by opposing the methods “transcendantale” and “dialectical” (p. 9), Vuillemin indeed takes the party of a systematic and external analysis, not of a reading engaging the subjectivity of the reader. He resolutely applies the dialectical method to philosophy transcendantale, and thus decentres the latter, tears off it with his traditional modes of interpretation. The final catch of party in favor of historical philosophy thus neither arbitrary nor is added again, but fits on the contrary in the entire project of the work.

Philosophical systems

One can consider that all the work of Vuillemin is an interrogation on the nature of the philosophical systems. Nevertheless, it is in its last works, Nécessité or contingency and What are philosophical systems? , that this interrogation arrives to its completion.

Need or contingency

In Required or contingency. The Aporia of Diodore and the systems philosophical , Jules Vuillemin leaves the analysis a logical paradox and the combinative one of the possible solutions, to work out the principles of a classification a priori of the philosophical systems. These two stages corresponding to two methods:

the “analytical method”, which proceeds of the consequences to the principles;
and the “synthetic method”, which goes down contrary to the principles to the consequences.

The paradox lies in the incompatibility of four theses commonly held for obvious:

“A. the past is irrevocable,

B. impossible with the possible one the consequence is not good,

C. There are the possible ones which will never be carried out,

NC. (principle of conditional need). What is cannot not be while it is. ” (Introduction, I, p. 7)

Vuillemin will show that to solve this conflict, it is necessary to give up one or the other of these principles; and how various philosophies are led to justify, each time, the abandonment of a principle however intuitive.

What is the philosophical systems?

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