Michael Wood

Emily Apter

Barbara Cassin

Jacques Lezra

A one-of-a-kind reference to the international vocabulary of the humanities This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages—English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities

A Philosophical Lexicon

Dictionary of Untranslatables

Odysseus, Aeneas, Arendt

Nostalji - Insan Ne Zaman Evindedir

Le bonheur, sa dent, douce à la mort 

Alain Badiou

Published in 1973, "L'Etourdit" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship," which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality. In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, thinking "with" Lacan about his propositions and what kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought.

Two Lessons on Lacan

There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

Sophistry, since Plato and Aristotle, has been philosophy’s negative alter ego, its bad other. Yet sophistry’s emphasis on words and performativity over the fetishization of truth makes it an essential part of our world’s cultural, political, and philosophical repertoire. In this dazzling book, Barbara Cassin, who has done more than anyone to reclaim a mode of thought that traditional philosophy disavows, shows how the sophistical tradition has survived in the work of psychoanalysis. In a highly original rereading of the writings and seminars of Jacques Lacan, together with works of Freud and others, Cassin shows how psychoanalysis, like the sophists, challenges the very foundations of scientific rationality. In taking seriously equivocations, jokes, and unfinishable projects of interpretation, the analyst, like the sophist, allows performance, signifier, and inconsistency to reshape truth. This witty, brilliant tour de force celebrates how psychoanalysts have become our culture’s key dissidents and register, in Lacan’s words, “the presence of the sophist in our time.”

Lacan, Logos, and Psychoanalysis

Jacques the Sophist

Dans le sillage du Vocabulaire européen des philosophies, Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, paradoxalement traduit ou en cours de traduction dans une dizaine de langues, Barbara Cassin propose sur la traduction un point de vue peu banal. Se méfiant de l’Un et de l’universel du Logos, elle se sert de l’outil sophistique pour faire l’éloge de ce que le logos appelle « barbarie », des intraduisibles, de l’homonymie. Pour combattre l’exclusion, cette pathologie de l’universel qui est toujours l’universel de quelqu’un, elle propose un relativisme conséquent — non pas le binaire du vrai/faux, mais le comparatif du « meilleur pour ». Elle montre que la traduction est un savoir-faire avec les différences, politique par excellence, à même de constituer le nouveau paradigme des sciences humaines. Parce qu’elles compliquent l’universel, dont le globish, langue mondiale de communication et d’évaluation, est un triste avatar, les humanités sont aujourd’hui passées de la réaction à la résistance.

Eloge de la traduction

Danièle Wozny

Le patrimoine se décline en objets, en monuments, en forêts, en traditions et récits, mais il se dit toujours en « mots ». C'est en mots que se définissent les critères (exceptionnel, universel, symbolique, immatériel, intégrité, authenticité, identité, nature, culture,...) qui conditionnent, en particulier, la reconnaissance internationale d'un bien patrimonial par l'Unesco. Comment s'opère donc le passage des langues « internationales » aux langues d'Afrique ? À travers la constellation des mots « musée » et « patrimoine » et leurs « équivalents » travaillés en sept langues - ici : en français, anglais, fulfulde et bamanakan, bientôt en swahili, sukuma et tsonga pour la seconde livraison - Les intraduisibles du patrimoine proposent quelques pistes pour alimenter la réflexion sur les enjeux, y compris politiques, du patrimoine dans un contexte mondialisé.

Les intraduisibles du patrimoine en Afrique subsaharienne

Qu'est-ce qui d'Aristote émerge face aux questions d'aujourd'hui ? Aristote est le paradigme du Phénoménologiquement Correct. Car correct non seulement dans l'aisance ontologique à dire le monde comme il est phénoménologie où les choses, les affections de l'âme et les sons de la voix coïncident naturellement. Mais correct aussi pratiquement, parce que les hommes qu'il nous dépeint vivent dans un monde commun, et, y compris poétiquement et politiquement, présentable, au sens cette fois de respectable. Le livre interroge cette belle image à partir des inconsistances et des hiatus qu'Aristote, trop honnête, ne cherche jamais à cacher. Dire le monde ? Mais on s'aperçoit qu'il y a un saut entre ce qu'on sent et ce qu'on dit, entre la logique de la sensation et celle de la phrase. Parler en homme ? Mais il y a des hommes, les sophistes, les esclaves, les femmes, pour qui cela ne va pas de soi. En prenant le logos comme fil conducteur, on voit Aristote travailler à la fois avec et contre les sauts et les passages qu'autorise la langue grecque, elle qu'on dit un peu vite toujours déjà phénoménologique. Aristote permet ainsi de s'en laisser moins conter par les contes de la phénoménologie ordinaire.

contes de la phénoménologie ordinaire

Aristote et le logos

Analyse du phénomène Google et de sa portée politique, économique et culturelle. Depuis sa cotation en bourse, le rapport de l'entreprise à l'information n'est plus impartial. Dans cet essai polémique, l'auteure, philosophe, analyse le projet Google de numériser tous les savoirs et aborde la question de la dimension culturelle de la démocratie à travers les rapports entre information et pouvoir.

la deuxième mission de l'Amérique

Google-moi

Jean-Louis Labarrière

Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey

L'un a les flancs bleutes, l'autre la poitrine gluante; une nageoire pousse ici sur un dos, surgit la une queue; tantot la tete manque, tantot le reste; la main de celui-ci ondule, et celui-la reclame en hurlant ses pieds qui s'evanouissent. Introduisant a la polymorphie de l'animal, le frontispice, ainsi commente par Philostrate, est deploye a travers ce receuil qui explore la difference entre homme, animal et plante. De la medecine a la religion, en passant par les modeles et contre-modeles politiques, les metaphores et les fables, l'imagerie et la logique, textes et images y sont analyses. Car l'animal (dit-on meme animal en grec?) est l'un des lieux de polemique majeurs pour determiner les ruptures au sein de l'Antiquite greco-latine et mieux fixer les coupures entre Antiquite et Modernite.

L'animal dans l'Antiquité

Martin Heidegger was an ordinary Nazi and a loyal member of the provincial petty bourgeoisie. He was also a seminal thinker of the Continental tradition and one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. How are we to make sense of this dual life? Should we factor Heidegger's domestic and political associations into our understanding of his thought, or should we treat his intellectual work independently of his abhorrent politics? How does any thinker reconcile the mundane with the ideal or the pursuit of philosophical inquiry with the demands of civic engagement? In Heidegger, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin immerse themselves in the philosopher's correspondence with his wife Elfride to answer these questions as they relate to Heidegger and all thinkers vulnerable to the politics of their times. They focus on Heidegger's tormented relationship with his wife, with Hannah Arendt, and with numerous other women, bringing an unusual level of intimacy to his personal and intellectual worlds.

His Life and His Philosophy

Heidegger

Winner, French Voices Grand Prize Nostalgia makes claims on us both as individuals and as members of a political community. In this short book, Barbara Cassin provides an eloquent and sophisticated treatment of exile and of desire for a homeland, while showing how it has been possible for many to reimagine home in terms of language rather than territory. Moving from Homer’s and Virgil’s foundational accounts of nostalgia to the exilic writings of Hannah Arendt, Cassin revisits the dangerous implications of nostalgia for land and homeland, thinking them anew through questions of exile and language. Ultimately, Cassin shows how contemporary philosophy opens up the political stakes of rootedness and uprootedness, belonging and foreignness, helping us to reimagine our relations to others in a global and plurilingual world.

When Are We Ever at Home?

Nostalgia

“Google is a champion of cultural democracy, but without culture and without democracy.” In this witty and polemical critique the philosopher Barbara Cassin takes aim at Google and our culture of big data. Enlisting her formidable knowledge of the rhetorical tradition, Cassin demolishes the Google myth of a “good” tech company and its “democracy of clicks,” laying bare the philosophical poverty and political naiveté that underwrites its founding slogans: “Organize the world’s information,” and “Don’t be evil.” For Cassin, this conjunction of globalizing knowledge and moral imperative is frighteningly similar to the way American demagogues justify their own universalizing mission before the world. While sensitive to the possibilities of technology and to Google’s playful appeal, Cassin shows what is lost when a narrow worship of information becomes dogma, such that research comes to mean data mining and other languages become provincial “flavors” folded into an impoverished Globish, or global English.

One-Click Democracy

Google Me

This textbook discusses ophthalmic sciences, neuroanatomy, and optics in detail, and includes full coverage of technical skills and pathology. The skills are explained in an easy-to-follow procedure format, with many illustrations. It includes numerous examples to better convey concepts, as well as an appendix and practice problems to demonstrate ophthalmic calculations.

Fundamentals for Ophthalmic Technical Personnel

"Through a subtle reading of the writings of Homer, Virgil, and Hannah Arendt, Barbara Cassin produces an in-depth analysis, at once scholarly and personal, of nostalgia. Where does nostalgia come from? Where do we truly feel at home? Cassin explores the notion that nostalgia has less to do with place and more to do with language"--

When are We Ever at Home?

Quand dire, c’est vraiment faire : comment fait-on des choses avec des mots, comment fait-on vraiment des choses rien qu’avec des mots ? Cet ouvrage produit un court-circuit entre l’une des inventions contemporaines les plus « révolutionnaires » en matière de langage à en croire Austin : le performatif, et la toute-puissance du logos grec. Le premier épisode isole une généalogie païenne du performatif. Quand Ulysse dit à Nausicaa : « Je te prends les genoux » parce qu’il a trop peur de lui prendre les genoux, à quelles conditions est-ce là « un discours qui gagne » ? Le second temps part de la sophistique. Dans l’Éloge d’Hélène, Gorgias théorise le pouvoir du logos qui « avec le plus petit et le plus inapparent des corps performe les actes les plus divins ». Quel est alors le statut de ce que la philosophie appelle rhétorique ? Le troisième moment est contemporain. Desmond Tutu, qui préside la Commission Vérité et Réconciliation en Afrique du Sud, inventée pour éviter un bain de sang prévisible post-apartheid, dit : « On croit d’ordinaire que le langage dit les choses. La Commission n’est pas de cet avis. Le langage, discours et rhétorique, fait les choses. Il construit la réalité. » Qu’apprenons-nous ainsi sur la performance-performativité de la parole en politique ? Que reste-t-il donc aujourd’hui, à l’ère des fake news, des deux fétiches dont Austin se joue : le fétiche vrai/faux et le fétiche valeur/fait ? A travers ces trois mises en scène – poétique, rhétorique et politique – de la performance langagière, Barbara Cassin, dans la suite de ses travaux sur l’évaluation, la psychanalyse ou la traduction, poursuit son exploration de ce que peuvent les mots. Barbara Cassin, directrice de recherche au CNRS, est philologue et philosophe, spécialiste de philosophie grecque. Elle a été élue en mai 2018 à l’Académie française.

Quand dire, c'est vraiment faire

Maurice Matieu

d'Homère à Lacan

Voir Hélène en toute femme

Characters in some languages, particularly Hebrew and Arabic, may not display properly due to device limitations. Transliterations of terms appear before the representations in foreign characters. This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities

Barbara Cassin

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