Contenu du sommaire : L'analyse du discours philosophique, sous la direction de Frédéric Cossutta

Strangely enough, philosophy -as opposed to other disciplines- has never been studied by discourse analysts. We may account for that if we consider that -as a self-instituting discourse- philosophy sets down its own functioning conditions and that relations between philosophy and language sciences are intricated and often ambiguous. This paper tries however to present the foundations on which an Analysis of philosophical discourse as such can be built, firstly in marking clear the epistemological conditions that would make it valid. In the second place, a close examination of the relationship between linguistic operations and discourse building activities (for instance with respect to textual analphors) makes it possible to replace this approach in a theoretical viewpoint that neglects neither the linguistic status of speech activities nor their connections with their institutional context. Lastly, a study of internal references in the text (examples here are taken from Spinoza's Ethics) brings to light-beneath the obvious density of the text -many reading possibilities which combine didactic necessities, expression and demonstration requirements into a doctrinal systematization.

This article studies the way philosophical discourse articulates text and context. Rejecting the traditional idea that context is a set of circumstances around the text, it develops an approach to discourse as « discursive institution » : operations with which discourse presents its doctrine and institutional organization must not be separated from each other. Discourse must be considered as an event and as a device that validates its own utterance ; it builds the representation of a world, but its utterance interferes in this world. This conception is exemplified from various points of view : the situation of philosophers in society, media, genre, « scenography », language.

We first present the main directions which, according to us, permit to characterise a theorisation of the question of meaning, that is to say to build a semiotics. We then try to show how the different properties of the empirical subject can be directly schematized from Kant's table of categories. Through the discussion of a text by Leibniz, we show that any empirical subject implies, not only its schematizable properties but also a certain type of rule of construction. We try to understand how the text by Descartes, in the succession of its statements in the first person (I doubt, I exist, I think) does in fact build such a rule. We therefore want to establish that, in some of its occurences, « I » does not refer to a person but to a rule, or that « I am » indicate a formal condition of sens.

Descartes' Metaphysical Meditations can be read as both a particularizing and generalizing discourse. The first person subject category is precisely the site in which the first person morpheme / and the philosophical concept of the ego are worked out. An analysis of the uses of the first person as a marker of discursive and ennunciative operations demonstrates that the stakes of the Metaphysical Meditations are less a question of constructing a universal subject position than the opening of a category of speakers retrospectively. This category can be constituted a posteriori through each one of their utterances which can be repeated by different speakers under the same truth conditions.

« The Linguistic and/or Philosophical Status of / : apropos of Being and Nothingness » A precise linguistic study of deictic morphemes in Being and Nothingness brings to light two modes of enunciation which structure the text : the first refers to the effective scene of enunciation, while the second constitutes a non-specified reference. The object of this study is the second mode, which is often that of the text's narrative sequences ; in it, there would seem to be both an identification with and a generalization of the /. However its status can only be defined by taking Sartre's philosophy into account : the / would in fact figure the scene of an ideal, reflexive consciousness, and therefore, the second mode of enunciation can only be explained from within the overall problematics of phenomenological writing's effort to render the real as pure perceptum.

Hegel is reputated to be an obscure philosopher. This paper tries to analyse -from a pragmatic point of view- the linguistic structures that are characteristic of this way of writting and thinking. A detailed study of phorical expressions may explain why reading Hegel's texts proves so difficult and how closely this is linked with to his very philosophy. The usual referential interpretation of third person pronouns is in fact to be changed into a conception which lays the emphasis on their anaphorical value. Thoses pronouns are amed at maintaining steady focalisations which orientate the reader's concentration. The hegelian text is indeed characterized by a real hyper-focalisation that is required by the buid-up of the philosophical material but that also proves an obstacle to an easy reading. To make up for that, one has to become immerged into the hegelian language and to become aware of his oral status, in the very way one does to learn a foreign language.