Life, movement, and desire

Research in Phenomenology

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 3-17

  Barbaras, Renaud ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 1 PANTHÉON SORBONNE   (France)

Author keywords

Desire; Hans Jonas; Life; Movement; Phenomenology of life

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149568946     PISSN: 00855553     EISSN: 15691640     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156916408X258924     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Translator's Note: This essay is the text of a lecture delivered at L'Ecole Normale Supérieure on March 9, 2005, in the context of a seminar focused on the theme of life, which was organized by Paul-Antoine Miquel and Michel Morange. The French text will soon appear under the title "Phénoménologie de la vie" in Noesis, volume 13. French words associated with life (la vie) have been translated as follows: vivre: to live; le vivre: living (noun); l'être-en-vie: being alive; vivant: living (adjective); le vivant, living being; vécu: lived; le vécu: lived experience; l'être vivant living being; se maintenir en vie: to stay alive. All other philosophically significant words in the essay are followed by the original French term or phrase, which appears in brackets. Lastly, in the footnotes the English translation for each reference, if it is available, has been given.
2. Georges Canguilhem, La connaissance de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 1975), 13.
3. This work has not yet been translated into English in its entirety, although excerpts appear in A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings from Georges Cangilhem, ed. François Delaporte, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Zone Books, 1994).
4. Cf. also Hans Jonas, Le phénomène de la vie: Vers une biologie philosophique, translated from English by Danielle Lories (Wesmael: De Boeck Université, 2000), 99;
5. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Eyanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 91 : "life can be known only by life."
6. Canguilhem,La connaissance de la vie, 32.
7. Michel Henry, Incarnation: Une philosophie de la chair (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 74.
8. Jonas, Le phénomène de la vie, 13;
9. The Phenomenon of Life, 1.
10. Jonas, "Les fondements biologiques de l'individualité," in Vie et liberté: Phénoménologie, nature et éthique chez Hans Jonas, ed. Danielle Lories and Olivier Depré (Paris: Vrin, 2003), 193.
11. Hans Jonas, Evolution et liberté, translated from German by Sabinne Cornille and Philippe Ivernel (Paris: Rivages, 2000), 30-31.
12. Jonas refers this fundamental position to Heidegger, for whom the being-final [l'être-final] of being-there [l'être-là: Dasein] answers to its being-threatened [être-mendcé].
13. Cf. Hans Jonas, Pour une éthique du futur, translated from German by Sabine Cornille and Philippe Ivernel (Paris: Rivages, 1998), 35.
14. Kurt Goldstein, La structure de l'organisme, rranslared from German by E. Burckardt and J. Kuntz (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 170;
15. translated as The Organism (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 162 (modified).
16. Jan Patočka, Papiers phénoménologiques, translated from Czech by Erika Abrams (Grenoble: Millon, 1995), 108.
17. Jan Patočka, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l'existence humaine, translated from Czech by Erika Abrarns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989), 103.
18. Cf. Erwin Straus, Du sens des sens. Contribution de l'étude des fondements de la psychologie, translated from German by G. Thines and J.P. Legrand (Grenoble: Millon, 1989), 49;
19. translated by Jacob Needleman as The Primary World of Senses: A Vindication of Sensory Experience (London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 19: "If sensing is neither knowledge, nor a mechanical event but a mode of being alive, it must be understood as a category of becoming."
20. Patočka, Papiers phénoménolgiques, 60, 66, 72.
21. An opposition chat Heidegger claims to overcome, without success in my opinion, through Besorgen ["concern" or "taking care"].
22. Straus, Du sens des sens, 428;
23. The Primary World of Senses, 270 (modified).