Mr. Galanas, an eighty‐six‐year‐old man, intentionally shot himself in the chest and abdomen. Surprisingly, the bullet damaged only his distal pancreas and part of his colon, requiring a diverting colostomy to prevent leakage of bowel fluids into his abdomen. After being admitted, he lies intubated in the intensive care unit awaiting surgery to repair his colon. He is responsive but does not demonstrate clear decision‐making capacity. He grudgingly accepts pain medications but refuses antibiotics and antidepressants. He has a living will (...) that gives his wife durable power of attorney and also explicitly states a desire to refuse all medical interventions if he is permanently unconscious or in an end‐stage condition. Mrs. Galanas reports frequent conversations in which her husband said he would not want to be sustained on life support. She also says that he often mentioned he would not want an ostomy bag—a likely, albeit temporary, outcome of the proposed surgery. His physicians are nervous about withholding medical interventions when Mr. Galanas's injury is the result of a suicide attempt and his prognosis is good. Should the care team surgically repair his injured colon, regardless of the patient's capacity, his advance directive, and his wife's statement that he would not want surgery or other life‐sustaining treatment? (shrink)

Biologists frequently draw on ideas and terminology from engineering. Evolutionary systems biology—with its circuits, switches, and signal processing—is no exception. In parallel with the frequent links drawn between biology and engineering, there is ongoing criticism against this cross-fertilization, using the argument that over-simplistic metaphors from engineering are likely to mislead us as engineering is fundamentally different from biology. In this article, we clarify and reconfigure the link between biology and engineering, presenting it in a more favorable light. We do so (...) by, first, arguing that critics operate with a narrow and incorrect notion of how engineering actually works, and of what the reliance on ideas from engineering entails. Second, we diagnose and diffuse one significant source of concern about appeals to engineering, namely that they are inherently and problematically metaphorical. We suggest that there is plenty of fertile ground left for a continued, healthy relationship between engineering and biology. (shrink)

Knowing the factors that executives deem critical to governance change can improve our understanding of how such changes come about and can help us evaluate those changes. Interviews with business and finance executives at 11 colleges reveal the importance to governance change of chief executive and board member leadership and interactions, as well as executive communication style. Costs are clear constraints to action, particularly since benefits are not quantified and are difficult to describe. Efforts to discuss governance with internal stakeholders (...) require persistence to overcome narrow, individualized concerns. Communication about governance to external stakeholders is rare and represents a missed opportunity for stakeholder feedback and the development of trust. Executives appear willing to adopt governance forms without considering the idiosyncrasies of their institutional field, limiting the working definition of governance and its potential. For corporations and not‐for‐profit enterprises these findings hold implications for the context in which leadership is exercised and the shape of governance structures. They also pose a fundamental ethical dilemma for leaders to address. (shrink)

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that Interactive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to Constructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of Active or Passive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after (...) completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement. (shrink)

Although the literature on social innovation has focused primarily on social enterprises, social innovation has long occurred within mainstream corporations. Drawing upon recent scholarship on social movements and institutional complexity, we analyze how movements foster corporate social innovation (CSI). Our context is the adoption of green information systems (“green IS”), which are information systems employed to transform organizations and society into more sustainable entities. We trace the historical emergence of green IS as a corporate response to increasing demands for sustainability (...) reporting, a key social innovation that environmental activists helped to create. Drawing upon extensive survey data from more than 400 U.S. firms, we then examine how managers perceived environmental activism in relation to broader field pressures for change and how their perceptions of both were related to green IS adoption. The results reveal that activists were more effective at influencing adoption indirectly by transforming organizational fields than by directly influencing corporate managers. Combined with the historical analysis, these findings suggest that CSI emerged out of ongoing interactions between activists, corporate managers, and other influential actors within a broader social innovation system. Activists helped to create conditions for social innovation, but corporations took the lead in developing new practices. (shrink)

In this commentary, we set out the specifics of how Glowacki's game theoretical framework for the evolution of peace could be incorporated within broader cultural evolutionary approaches. We outline a formal proposal for prisoner's dilemma games investigating raid-based conflict. We also centre an ethnographic lens to understand the norms surrounding war and peace in intergroup interactions in small-scale communities.

Rare copy number variants have a prominent role in the aetiology of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Substantial risk for schizophrenia is conferred by large CNVs at several loci, including microdeletions at 1q21.1, 3q29, 15q13.3 and 22q11.2 and microduplication at 16p11.2. However, these CNVs collectively account for a small fraction of cases, and the relevant genes and neurobiological mechanisms are not well understood. Here we performed a large two-stage genome-wide scan of rare CNVs and report the significant association of copy (...) number gains at chromosome 7q36.3 with schizophrenia. Microduplications with variable breakpoints occurred within a 362-kilobase region and were detected in 29 of 8,290 patients versus 2 of 7,431 controls in the combined sample. All duplications overlapped or were located within 89 kilobases upstream of the vasoactive intestinal peptide receptor gene VIPR2. VIPR2 transcription and cyclic-AMP signalling were significantly increased in cultured lymphocytes from patients with microduplications of 7q36.3. These findings implicate altered vasoactive intestinal peptide signalling in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and indicate the VPAC2 receptor as a potential target for the development of new antipsychotic drugs. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Although there has been some growing recognition of the role of private actors in international environmental regimes, little attention has been paid to the role of the private sector at the science–policy interface. Because the automobile industry plays a crucial role in mitigation of greenhouse gases, successful policy requires not just the assent but the active cooperation of this sector. Such cooperation, however, requires some institutional acceptance that climate change is indeed a significant risk. In this article, the authors look (...) at the early stages of the automobile industry’s engagement with the discourse on climate change. The authors focus, in particular, on the role of corporate scientists in two U.S. automobile companies in translating this discourse. Acting as boundary spanners and institutional entrepreneurs, these individuals influenced both corporate perceptions of and responses to climate change science. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N (...) = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

Atlas, S. On the relation between subject and object.--Bamberger, B. Religion and the arts.--Bemporad, J. Man, God, and history.--Braude, W. C. The two lives of Hillel's sandwich.--Chapman, C. B. The health guilds, the public interest and the malpractice dilemma.--Feuer, L. Influence of Abba Hillel Silver on the evolution of Reform Judaism.--Hackerman, N. Ignorance, the motivation for understanding.--Hartshorne, C. Whitehead's metaphysical system.--Ogden, S. M. Prolegomena to a Christian theology of nature.--Sandmel, S. The rationalist denial of Jewish tradition in Philo.--Shakow, D. Educating (...) the mental health researcher for potential development in man.--Turner, D. An Ashendene dozen from the Levi A. Olan collection of fine books.--Olan, L. A. A preliminary summing up. (shrink)

Patients with psychiatric illness feel the brunt of the intersection of many of our society's and our health care system's disparities, and the vulnerability of this population during the Covid‐19 pandemic cannot be overstated. Patients with psychiatric illness often suffer from the stigma of mental illness and receive poor medical care. Many patients with severe and persistent mental illness face additional barriers, including poverty, marginal housing, and food insecurity. Patients who require psychiatric hospitalization now face the risk of transmission of (...) Covid‐19 due to the inherent difficulties of social distancing within a psychiatric hospital. Patients whose freedom and self‐determination have been temporarily overruled as they receive involuntary psychiatric treatment deserve a setting that maintains their health and safety. While tele‐mental health has been rapidly expanded to provide new ways to access psychiatric treatment, some patients may have limitations in technological literacy or access to devices. The social isolation, economic fallout, and potential traumatization related to the current pandemic will disproportionately affect this vulnerable population, and society's duties to them must be considered. (shrink)

Dans ce beau livre, superbement édité, sont reproduites pour la première fois depuis leur récente restauration (1996-1999) les peintures de l'église du monastère de Saint-Antoine, décor du XIIIe siècle qui est non seulement le plus complet et le mieux conservé d'Égypte, mais qui est aussi l'un des rares à être précisément daté. Il ne s'agit pas d'une monographie traditionnelle, mais d'un ouvrage collectif réunissant autour d'Elizabeth Bolman, maître d'œuvre de l'entreprise, une série d'auteurs venus d'horizons divers, dont les regards croisés (...) et complémentaires contribuent à la richesse et à l'intérêt du volume. (shrink)

Après sa remarquable étude des peintures de Mar Musa al-Habashi, en Syrie, E. CRUIKSHANK DODD (C. D.) nous livre enfin le résultat de longues années d'exploration et de recherches sur les peintures médiévales du Liban, ouvrage depuis longtemps annoncé et impatiemment attendu. S'il s'inscrit dans la continuité des travaux menés par l'A., cet ouvrage témoigne aussi, avec d'autres, du renouveau de l'étude du patrimoine archéologique libanais, antique et médiéval, après la longue interruption de la recherche scientifique consécutive aux événements douloureux (...) de la seconde moitié du XXe s. L'ouvrage récent et magnifiquement illustré de L. NORDIGUIAN et J.-C. VOISIN, Châteaux et Églises du Moyen Âge au Liban (Éditions Terre du Liban/ Éditions Trans-Orient 1999), nous avait déjà familiarisés avec les ensembles picturaux présentés par C. D., mais ceux-ci n'avaient pas fait l'objet d'une étude d'ensemble approfondie, qui les replace à la fois dans l'histoire du Liban médiéval, et, plus généralement, dans celle des régions de la Méditerranée orientale à l'époque des croisades. En effet, bien que la tradition picturale au Liban soit évidemment antérieure à l'arrivée des Francs, les peintures conservées, qui se trouvent principalement dans des zones montagneuses et reculées, au nord du pays – dans l'ancien Comté de Tripoli – remontent, pour la majorité d'entre elles, à la période prospère de l'occupation croisée (XIIe–XIIIe s.), une seule inscription étant précisément datée (Mar Saba d'Eddé, 1261/2). Les ensembles antérieurs, attestés par les source textuelles, ont disparu, tandis que d'autres, encore conservés au siècle dernier, ont fait les frais de restaurations intempestives ou de la guerre du Liban. (shrink)

JEFFREY ANDREW BARASH. — Ce qui m’a beaucoup intéressé dans vos écrits récents et notamment dans votre livre Le siècle de Sartre, c’est la manière dont vous abordez le phénomène du totalitarisme, phénomène central pour comprendre le XXe siècle. Or, s’agissant du phénomène totalitaire, nous avons assisté à l’émergence d’un nouveau...

La dimension spatiale du monde social commence à être mieux explorée dans sa double dimension : les spatialités comme agir et les espaces comme environnements. On découvre à quel point le spatial résonne avec le politique. D’abord parce que la géographie du politique s’est fait une place majeure dans le paysage du débat public. Ensuite parce que les enjeux de justice sont le plus souvent des enjeux géographiques et que ceux-ci nous aident à comprendre la dynamique générale de l’idée de (...) justice. Enfin et surtout parce qu’habiter, c’est toujours aussi co-habiter. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to analyze how the reflection on the origins of the civilization was developed in Rome, at the end of the Republic, in a city where during centuries, nobody tried to go beyond this point of absolute origin that was the foundation of the Vrbs. In order to explore not only Cicéro’s philosophic reflection, but also his rhetorical texts, especially the De inuentione, which contains at the beginning of its first book a very interesting explanatory (...) myth both on the birth civilization, and on the evolution of human institutions. Before Cicero, the satiric poet Lucilius had tried to give a Roman adaptation of the Stoic social naturalism, by depriving it of its universalist ambition and Lucretius had an extremely deep reflection of the evolution of the selfish instinct which characterizes the human beings as all the living beings, towards forms more and more sophisticated of sociability. We evoke also a Roman peculiarity in the expression of the social oikeiôsis. All this shows the density and the variety of the Roman thought on society at the end of the Republic. (shrink)

Until the end of the 14th century, the sources of Hebrew mathematical writings were almost exclusively in Arabic. This was particularly true of texts that contained elements of algebra or algebraic developments. The testimonies we present and analyze here are due to Jewish authors living in Italy, primarily in the 15th century, who made use of the most varied sources, in addition to Arabic: in Castilian, in Italian, and perhaps in Latin. These testimonies constitute both an indication, and a product, (...) of the circulation of Arab algebraic traditions in Renaissance Italy. Simon Mo&tdotu;o&tdotu;’s book on The Calculation of Algebra stems from the Italian tradition of ‘‘treatises on the abacus’’. Mordekhay Finzi of Mantua is the author of a Hebrew version of the great work on algebra by Abū Kāmil, as well as of a version, distinct from the preceding, of the Arabic scholar’s introductory exposition. Beginning in 1473, Finzi also translated from Italian to Hebrew the important treatise on algebra by Maestro Dardi of Pisa. We also indicate some 16th century continuations of Hebrew mathematical production, which contain algebraic developments. (shrink)

« L’esprit de plaisir », qui s’est épanoui au Japon lors de la période Edo (1603-1868), est devenu une matrice culturelle en constant renouvellement au cours de l’histoire moderne et contemporaine de ce pays, malgré une éclipse due à la répression de la période Meiji (1868-1912), marquée par une politique volontariste de modernisation et d’occidentalisation. Telle est la thèse centrale de cet ouvrage : la liberté sexuelle, bien plus grande avant l’influence occidentale, s’est vue corsetée pou...

En 1587, le jeune Galilée est invité à donner Due lezioni all’Accademia Fiorentina circa la figura, sito e grandezza dell’Inferno di Dante (ci-après Leçons sur l’Enfer) [Galilei 1587] afin d’éclairer une vive controverse sur l’interprétation de la géographie de l’Enfer dantesque. Ce travail d’exégèse littéraire permet à Galilée de faire reconnaître ses talents mathématiques comme ses qualités pédagogiques. Mais la portée de ces leçons va bien au-delà, car on peut y voir apparaître plusieurs thèmes majeurs de l’œuvre ultérieure de Galilée (...) : au plan mathématique, l’importance de la géométrie d’inspiration archimédienne, au plan physique, l’étude des questions de similitude que pose la résistance des matériaux – sans oublier l’intérêt constant du scientifique pour la langue et pour la culture littéraire. (shrink)

Cet article s�attèle à montrer comment les notions principales de 1'herméneutique de Ric�ur (monde du texte/monde du lecteur, distanciation - appropriation, compréhension de soi, trois mimèsis) ont permis de penser de façon systématique la question du statut du texte biblique et de sa traduction dans un mémoire de licence de la Faculté de théologie de Neuchâtel, réalisé en 2006. Après une présentation du mémoire et de son contexte, les apports de la pensée de Ric�ur sont énumérés en quatrepoints: la théorie (...) de la traduction, la notion de lecture non utilisatrice, la notion de canon et celle de «texte inspiré». (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Politics to Philosophy and Theology:Some Remarks about Foucault's Interpretation of Parrêsia in Two Recently Published SeminarsCarlos LévyAt the beginning of his seminar entitled Le courage de la vérité, Foucault gives a first definition of parrêsia (2009, 10–12), which I take as my point of departure.Parrêsia is a fundamental political concept; it denotes outspokenness, and Foucault distinguishes between two versions of it, one negative, the other positive. The first (...) meaning implies the articulation of everything, "n'importe quoi" (whatever), an expression that in French is indeed derogatory. For Foucault this meaning finds an illustration in a passage from Plato's Republic in which the philosopher describes the appalling state of the democratic city, where everyone tries to impose their own desires on others.1 The positive meaning implies that truth will be stated "without dissimulation, reservation, set clause, or rhetorical ornament that could encode or hide it" (2009, 11). But Foucault says that to effectuate this positive meaning it is not enough to merely state everything and state it truthfully. It is also necessary for the speaker of parrêsia, the parrêsiastês, to personally involve himself in what he says and to take a risk. As Foucault says himself, this is to speak "truth while taking the risk of violence" (2009, 12). [End Page 313] This risk is nonetheless attenuated by what Foucault calls "the parrêsiastic play," that is, the capacity of the interlocutor (assembly, tyrant) to tolerate outspokenness.Even though Foucault never sets the problem out in these terms, one may construe parrêsia as both a passion, since it entails an emotional investment, and a virtue, insofar as it is still linked to courage. It is common to say that somebody has "a passion for the truth" or that he has "the courage of his convictions." However, Foucault uses the term "passion" very sparingly. An analysis of word frequency in his seminars for the period 1982 to 1984 reveals that the term "virtue" occurs often, while "passion" is almost entirely absent, except about tragedy (2008, 105–35). By refraining from speaking of the "passion of truth," Foucault rejects the possibility of analyzing the concept of parrêsia in a more unitary way. For him, there is a good and a bad parrêsia, a situation that emphasizes the difficulties usually inherent in dualism: how can two opposite realities coexist, especially within the same concept? These difficulties are carefully analyzed in the seminars, but there is also a methodological difficulty: do historical sources force us to accept the dualistic interpretation or, better, the reconstruction proposed by Foucault in such a persuasive way? Or do they prompt us to introduce the notion of passion, somehow or other, as being present even in the "good" parrêsia?In my view, one does not compromise Foucault's position by saying that, for him, the dualism inherent in political parrêsia has a functional nature. It is linked to what he calls the right functioning and the worsening functioning of democracy, as they are articulated in his seminar of 2 February 1983 (2008, 157–69). In his exposé some postulates are expounded using the metaphor of the rectangle: the existence of parrêsia requires democracy, and thus democracy forms the first vertex of this rectangle. But one of the most interesting elements in Foucault's subsequent seminars is his effort to demonstrate that parrêsia can nevertheless exist under tyranny without its most essential features being undermined.Democracy, in Foucault's opinion, can't be lively and dynamic without the second vertex, which he calls "le pôle de l'ascendant"—the pole of ascending leadership; that is, in his own words, "the problem of those who, speaking before others and above them, are heard by them, persuade them, lead them, and have control over them" (2008, 157). Foucault's use of the term "problem" is itself somewhat... problematic. It is not clear why the existence of this ascendancy is a problem to the extent that it can be seen as the condition of a democratic and parrêsiastic functioning. In Foucault's [End Page 314] own words, the... (shrink)

BARNOY S, OFRA L and BAR‐TAL Y. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 128–133 [Epub ahead of print]What makes patients perceive their health care worker as an epistemic authority?Health care workers’ (HCW) perceived epistemic authority (EA) may have an effect on patient decision‐making and compliance. The present study investigated the hypotheses that higher EA is attributed to staff perceived to be experts; to physicians rather than nurses; to HCWs who recommend taking a test more than to the ones who make no recommendation. (...) The study was based on a factorial 2 × 2 × 2 within‐between subjects design. The questionnaire presented four scenarios, each illustrating a HCW presenting information on a devastating genetic disease. The three variables manipulated were: HCW expertise, HCW role, and making a recommendation or not. After each scenario participants were asked questions about the EA they attributed to the HCW in the scenario. The results show main effects for perceived expertise and recommendation/no recommendation on the level of EA attributed. Expert nurses were judged to have the same high EA as expert physicians. But expert physicians who recommended taking a test were judged as having significantly higher EA than expert physicians who made no recommendation. Among nurses who made no recommendation, expert nurses were evaluated as having significantly higher EA than novices. Since expert nurses were perceived to have equal expertise as expert physicians, it follows that information given by both nurses and physicians can reduce patient uncertainty. (shrink)

De quelqu'un qui supporte la douleur avec courage, on dit qu'il fait preuve de stoïcisme. Un bon vivant est souvent qualifié d'épicurien, et notre époque se voit parfois reprocher son scepticisme. Le langage courant conserve ainsi comme un écho lointain et déformé des doctrines philosophiques hellénistiques, celles apparues après qu'Alexandre eut imposé son pouvoir à une grande partie du monde. Longtemps ces systèmes, dont l'influence sur la pensée philosophique et religieuse de l'Occident fut en réalité immense, ont été considérés comme (...) le parent pauvre de la philosophie ancienne, parce que l'injustice de la transmission des œuvres du passé a fait que nous ne possédons que des témoignages lacunaires ou tardifs. Mais dans ces dernières décennies le scepticisme, l'épicurisme et le stoïcisme ont suscité un vif intérêt, qui s'est traduit par la publication d'un grand nombre d'éditions et de recherches. Il n'est pas excessif de dire que l'image de la philosophie hellénistique en a été ainsi considérablement renouvelée. Cet ouvrage a pour finalité de présenter le plus clairement possible des doctrines que l'on aurait pu croire réservées à quelques spécialistes et qui, au fur et à mesure que nous les connaissons mieux, apparaissent de plus en plus proches des inquiétudes et des espoirs des hommes de notre temps. (shrink)

Le livre de B. Pérez-Jean reprend, avec de substantielles modifications, une thèse soutenue en 1993 à l’Université de Lille III, sous la direction d’André Laks. Les hasards de l’édition font qu’il paraît à peu près au même moment que l’ouvrage de R. Polito, The Sceptical Road : Aenesidemus’ Appropriation of Heraclitus, Leiden, 2004, qui aborde les mêmes thèmes dans une perspective différente. La parution de ces deux ouvrages s’inscrit dans l’essor actuel des recherches sur le scepticisme, et...

Cet article propose une interprétation de la philosophie de la Nouvelle Académie différente de celle qui a été défendue par J. Annas. Il nous semble que la prise en compte de l'ensemble des témoignages concernant cette école suggère une réalité plus complexe que celle que recouvre le concept de scepticisme, au moins dans sa version néopyrrhonienne. Nous croyons qu'Arcésilas et Carnéade n'ont pas délimité un Platon sceptique, mais qu'ils ont accepté à leur manière l'ensemble de l'héritage platonicien. La force de (...) la tradition apparaît donc plus forte dans l'histoire de l'Académie que ne l'admettent généralement les interprètes. The purpose of this article is to give an interpretation of the New Academy's philosophy quite different from the one defended by J. Annas. In our opinion the reading of the whole testimonies relating to this school suggests a greater complexity than what is embraced by the concept of skepticism, at least in its neopyrrhonian version. We believe that Arcesilas and Carneades, instead of confining Plato whithin the limits of skepticism, have accepted - in their own way - the whole Platonician legacy. Thus the burden of tradition seems more important in the history of the Academy than it is generally admitted. (shrink)

La floraison d’études sur le scepticisme antique de ces dernières décennies a fait au moins une victime, à savoir Philon d’Alexandrie, auquel elles ont accordé une part de plus en plus restreinte, alors même que Philon est incontestablement celle de nos sources la plus proche d’Énésidème qui refonda le pyrrhonisme au ier siècle avant J.-C. Il importe donc d’établir quelle confiance on peut accorder à ce que Philon nous dit, en plusieurs endroits de son œuvre, du courant sceptique. On propose (...) donc un bref status quaestionis, avant d’analyser la question des tropes. On soulève enfin le problème plus général de la technicisation croissante de la philosophie ancienne et de la place quasi hégémonique qu’occupe ac­tuellement la méthode analytique. Un auteur comme Philon est difficile à décomposer en propositions, dont on chercherait à définir les relations, et il n’a pas écrit – si l’on excepte le De aeternitate mundi, dont l’authenticité est discutée, le Probus, le De prouidentia et l’Alexander – une œuvre qui se présente comme explicitement philosophique. Il incarne donc un problème qui le dépasse : que peut faire la recherche lorsqu’elle est confrontée à tous ces textes dans lesquels la philosophie se trouve mêlée à ce qui n’est pas elle-même, qu’il s’agisse de littérature ou de religion? (shrink)

JEFFREY ANDREW BARASH. — Ce qui m’a beaucoup intéressé dans vos écrits récents et notamment dans votre livre Le siècle de Sartre, c’est la manière dont vous abordez le phénomène du totalitarisme, phénomène central pour comprendre le XXe siècle. Or, s’agissant du phénomène totalitaire, nous avons assisté à l’émergence d’un nouveau..

Dans cet entretien consacré à leur livre Managerial Capitalism : Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production (Pluto Press, 2018), G. Duménil et D. Lévy reviennent sur les implications de leur analyse du capitalisme managérial pour l’étude du capitalisme historique, de ses structures de classes fondamentales, et de ses alliances de pouvoirs variables. La thèse du marxisme traditionnel identifiant les managers à une fraction de classe capitaliste s’en trouve critiquée, de même que les présupposés véhiculés par le concept (...) de « capitalisme d’État ». Invités à revenir plus précisément sur leur distinction entre modes de production et « ordres sociaux », comme configurations variables de hiérarchies de pouvoirs et d’alliances de classe, les auteurs clarifient les raisons pour lesquelles ils introduisent une nouvelle catégorie de mode de production managérial qui impose de repenser le mode de production capitaliste lui-même suivant une logique de « l’hybridité ». Celle-ci permet de complexifier les tendances du capitalisme historique sur la longue durée, d’approfondir l’analyse de classe du capitalisme managérial, et d’y spécifier différentiellement, par rapport au « compromis » d’après-guerre (caractérisé par une alliance entre managers et classes populaires sous la direction des premiers), le dernier ordre social en date caractérisé par une alliance « au sommet » entre managers et capitalistes (au détriment des classes populaires) : le néolibéralisme. (shrink)

Le sens commun vise-t-il la connaissance? Le sens commun et la quantité.--Hegel, Hamilton, Hamelin et le concept de cause.--Philosophie de la nature et philosophie de l'intellect.--De l'analyse des produits de la pensée.--Les mathématiques et le divers.--Le savoir et l'univers de la perception immédiate.--La notion de l'identique.--Jean Rey et la loi de la conservation de la matière.--Théodore Turquet de Mayerne et la découverte de l'hydrogène.--La coupellation chez les anciens Juifs.--Y a-t-il un rhythme dans le progrès intellectuel?

At the age of eighty, one of the most influential yet reclusive intellectuals of the twentieth century consented to his first interviews in nearly thirty years. Hailed by Le Figaro as "an event," the resulting conversations between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (a correspondent for Le Nouvel Observateur) reveal the great anthropologist speaking of his life and work with ease and humor. Now available in English, the conversations are rich in Lévi-Strauss's candid appraisals of some of the best-known figures of (...) the Parisian intelligentsia: surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, with whom Lévi-Strauss shared a bohemian life in 1940s Manhattan; de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus, the stars of existentialism; Leiris, Foucault, Dumézil, Jacob, Lacan, and others. His long friendships with Jakobson and Merleau-Ponty are recalled, as well as his encounters with prominent figures in American anthropology: Lowie, Boas (who suddenly died in his chair beside Lévi-Strauss at a banquet at Columbia University), Benedict, Linton, Mead, and Kroeber. Lévi-Strauss speaks frankly about how circumstances and his own inclinations, after his early fieldwork in Brazil, led him to embrace theoretical work. His straightforward answers to Eribon's penetrating questions—What is a myth? What is structuralism? Are you a philosopher?—clarify his intellectual motives and the development of his research; his influential role as an administrator, including the founding of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and of the journal L'Homme; the course of his writings, from Elementary Structures of Kinship to The Jealous Potter; and his thoughts on the conduct of anthropology today. Never before has Lévi-Strauss spoken so freely on so many aspects of his life: his initial failure to be elected to the Collège de France; his reaction to the events of May 1968; his regrets at not being a great investigative reporter or playwright; his deep identification with Wagner, Proust, and Rousseau. This is a rare opportunity to become acquainted with a great thinker in all his dimensions. (shrink)

In this Article, I will argue that a person may be deserving of criminal punishment even in certain situations where she is not necessarily morally responsible for her criminal act. What these situations share in common are two things: the psychological factors that motivate the individual’s behavior are environmentally determined and her crime is serious, making her less eligible for sympathy and therefore less likely to be acquitted. -/- To get to this conclusion, I will proceed in four steps. In (...) Part II, I will offer the first two of these steps. First, I will argue that our foundational assumption that moral responsibility is necessary for just blame and punishment is not self-evident and is actually rather difficult to explain and justify. Second, I will offer an explanation and justification that appeals to our moral psychology. Specifically, I will argue that we subscribe to this assumption ultimately because we sympathize with agents who lack responsibility for their actions. -/- Third, in Part IV, I aim to show that even if moral responsibility is not conceptually — only “emotionally” — necessary for just blame and punishment, the traditionally recognized criminal excuses are not at risk because, contrary to popular wisdom, they do not really rely on this assumption to begin with. Instead, they stand less for the metaphysical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing the non-responsible and more for the normative/ethical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing those whom we cannot reasonably expect to have acted better. I will further argue that the latter proposition does not necessarily reduce to the former. -/- Fourth, once I have defended my account of the excuses, I will question in Parts V and VI the increasingly popular notion that we should add certain conditions or circumstances to the list of recognized excuses. I will focus on one in particular — the psychological theory of “situationism” — and will argue that, despite its initial plausibility, it should be kept off the list. While situationism arguably does negate moral responsibility, it does not negate criminal responsibility. -/- Of course, this is a controversial point. Criminal responsibility is almost universally thought to require moral responsibility. But in a previous article, "Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention," 48 San Diego L. Rev. 1299, I used personality psychology to drive a wedge between the two. In this article, I will use the opposite end of the psychological spectrum — social psychology — to drive the same important wedge. (shrink)

The article examines the emergence in the 1990s of the issue of “Comfort women” and the conditions that led to the holding of The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery. It argues that it was a response both to victims’ needs and to the prevailing revisionism concerning the violence committed during the Asian-Pacific war by the Japanese army, which had been the subject of the Tokyo war crimes trials of 1946-1948. The women’s tribunal (...) represents a significant moment in the recognition and condemnation of the specific violence perpetrated against women in wartime and during armed conflicts: it is both the result of of new paradigms in women’s history and oral history, and the starting point for active support for women victims of violence. L’article examine les conditions qui ont permis la tenue du Tribunal international des femmes de Tokyo pour juger du système de l’esclavage sexuel institué par l’armée impériale japonaise pendant la guerre d’Asie-Pacifique (1937-1945). Il considère qu’il a été à la fois une réponse aux besoins des victimes et au révisionnisme ambiant sur les questions des violences commises pendant la guerre d’Asie-Pacifique et jugées lors du procès militaire de Tokyo en 1946-1948. Moment important pour la reconnaissance et la condamnation des violences exercées à l’encontre des femmes en temps de guerre et lors des conflits armés, il est à la fois l’aboutissement de nouveaux paradigmes en histoire des femmes et histoire orale, et le point de départ pour un soutien actif aux femmes victimes de violence. (shrink)

Most accounts of recent French intellectual history are organized around a fundamental rupture, which divides thought and thinkers into two eras: ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. But the attempts to identify the features which characterise these eras seem, at best, inconclusive. In this paper, I examine this rupture, by way of a comparison of two thinkers representative of the divide. Sartre seems as uncontroversially modern (and therefore out of date) as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s work is often taken to be (...) definitive of postmodern thought. In addition, the two engaged in a brief polemic which concerned, precisely, each other’s relevance to our times. Each attacks the other’s work as untimely, as out of step with today. In the end, however, it is precisely this very aspect of their work - the fact thatit is untimely - which constitutes its strongest claim to being postmodern. If this is the case, however, then the attempt to locate a point of rupture in intellectual history, before which thinkers are irrelevant and after which they speak to us, must fail.L’histoire du mouvement intellectuel français des dernières années est organisée autour d’une rupture qui sépare la pensée et les penseurs en deux categories: ‘moderne’ et ‘postmoderne’. Or les tentatives d’identification des traits qui caractérisent ces catégories demeurent peu concluantes. Dans cet article, j’examine cette rupture en comparant deux penseurs représentatifs de cette ligne de partage. Sartre semble aussi moderne (et donc obsolète) quefaire se peut, alors qu’on rapproehe communément I’oeuvre de Foucault à la pensée postmoderne. Par ailleurs, les deux se sont engagés dans un débat qui portait précisément sur leur pertinence respective pour notre temps. Chacun accuse I’autre d’être intempestif, c’est-à-dire de ne pas être actue!. Cependant, il ressortira à la fin que c’est précisément cet aspect de leur pensée qui justifie de la façon la plus décisive leur prétention à la postmodernité. Si tel est le cas, par contre, la tentative de localiser un point de rupture dans I’histoire intellectuelle à partir duquel un penseur devient pertinent doit échouer. (shrink)

Most accounts of recent French intellectual history are organized around a fundamental rupture, which divides thought and thinkers into two eras: ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. But the attempts to identify the features which characterise these eras seem, at best, inconclusive. In this paper, I examine this rupture, by way of a comparison of two thinkers representative of the divide. Sartre seems as uncontroversially modern as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s work is often taken to be definitive of postmodern thought. In (...) addition, the two engaged in a brief polemic which concerned, precisely, each other’s relevance to our times. Each attacks the other’s work as untimely, as out of step with today. In the end, however, it is precisely this very aspect of their work - the fact thatit is untimely - which constitutes its strongest claim to being postmodern. If this is the case, however, then the attempt to locate a point of rupture in intellectual history, before which thinkers are irrelevant and after which they speak to us, must fail.L’histoire du mouvement intellectuel français des dernières années est organisée autour d’une rupture qui sépare la pensée et les penseurs en deux categories: ‘moderne’ et ‘postmoderne’. Or les tentatives d’identification des traits qui caractérisent ces catégories demeurent peu concluantes. Dans cet article, j’examine cette rupture en comparant deux penseurs représentatifs de cette ligne de partage. Sartre semble aussi moderne quefaire se peut, alors qu’on rapproehe communément I’oeuvre de Foucault à la pensée postmoderne. Par ailleurs, les deux se sont engagés dans un débat qui portait précisément sur leur pertinence respective pour notre temps. Chacun accuse I’autre d’être intempestif, c’est-à-dire de ne pas être actue!. Cependant, il ressortira à la fin que c’est précisément cet aspect de leur pensée qui justifie de la façon la plus décisive leur prétention à la postmodernité. Si tel est le cas, par contre, la tentative de localiser un point de rupture dans I’histoire intellectuelle à partir duquel un penseur devient pertinent doit échouer. (shrink)

This essay concerns Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” and the irreconcilable tensions that haunt it. I study these tensions—between the desire to blame and punish and the inability to provide moral justification for these practices—and locate their source in Beauvoir's conception of ethics in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. According to my reading, her ethics implies that violence violates freedom, the grounding principle of ethical life. Retaliatory and retributive judgments and the punishment they (...) uphold, regardless of whether they are exerted by individuals or by official state powers, are forms of violence and are therefore unjustifiable. The aporias of blame and punishment in “Œil pour œil” suggest that Beauvoir's ideal of ethics necessitates an abolitionist position regarding punishment. The essay ends with a reflection on the affinity between the position constructed from Beauvoir's work and feminist abolitionist theories that seek to undermine the legal, social, and political institutions that perpetuate, rather than resolve, economic, racial, gender, sex, and class inequality. (shrink)

This book investigates various aspects of the controversial relations between Spinoza's philosophy and his Jewish background. It examines some important trends of medieval Jewish philosophy on the shaping of Spinoza's thought - particularly the impact of Maimonides. The book elucidates the differences between Spinoza and his predecessors in regard to Bible criticism, and dwells extensively on the concepts of Substance and Pantheism. It also discusses Spinoza's views of Judaism and the Jewish people, the relationship between state and religion, and some (...) problems of his -Hebrew Grammar-.". (shrink)

Este artigo prolonga a análise do argumento apresentado por Descartes em favor da primeira certeza no início da Segunda Meditação, iniciada em um artigo anterior. É examinada a passagem subsequente ao referido argumento com vistas a estabelecer que sua compreensão aponta para um debate velado entre Descartes e seus leitores versa- dos na doutrina escolástica, mais particularmente nas concepções da definição como estruturada pela composição do gênero e da diferença e de específica e de conceito universal abstrato. Procuro mostrar que (...) as razões que Des- cartes dispõe para recusar essas concepções podem ser extraídas de certa interpretação do argumento em favor da certeza da proposição eu existo e que essa recusa é imprescindível para a compreensão adequada do penso, logo existo e, portanto, de seu argumento em favor do dualismo. -/- RESUMÉE: Cet article prolonge l´analyse, publiée dans un article précédent, sur l'argumentation cartésienne qui le conduit à la première certitude au début de la Seconde Méditation. Je propose une interprétation du passage, qui vient juste après cet argument, où Descartes décline la réponse « animal rational » à la question sur sa nature. Ce passage, comme j'essaierai de le montrer, cache un dialogue masqué entre l'auteur et ses lecteurs ayant une formation scolastique. Plus particulièrement, il s'agit de montrer que la critique de Descartes vise de façon plus générale la conception de la définition par genre et différence spécifique, ainsi que la notion de concept en tant qu’universal abstrait. Les raisons qui peuvent justifier cette critique et la rendre plus qu’un simple préjugé de la part de Descartes sont ici puisées dans l'interprétation de l'argumentation cartésienne en faveur de la première certitude, proposée auparavant. On verra alors que la compréhension correcte de ce qui est en question dans ce texte révèle une condition capitale et pour l' acceptation du je pense, donc j'existe et donc pour son raisonnement en faveur du dualisme. (shrink)

Ce texte propose une justification de la critique que Spinoza adresse à Descartes, par l’intermédiaire de Louis Meyer, dans la Préface des Principes de la Philosophie de Descartes ; plus particulièrement, il s’agit de reconstruire ses raisons pour affirmer qu’il n’a pas été prouvé, dans la Seconde Méditation, que la chose qui est désignée par le terme ‘je’ puisse être une substance. L’argument qui doit soutenir cette affirma- tion peut être schématisé de la façon suivante : Descartes ne peut introduire (...) un indice temporel dans la certitude de la proposition Je suis, j’existe que s’il accepte que la compréhension de cette proposition enveloppe la possibilité de l’existence d’autres choses pensantes finies, ce qui contredit l’unes des conditions de la conception d’une chose comme substance, telles que lui-même les a définies dans l’article 60 de la première partie des Principes de la Philosophie. (shrink)

This is an Italian translation of the chapter O conceito cartesiano de atributo principal. In: ROCHA, E and LEVY, L. (org). Estudos de Filosofia Moderna. Porto Alegre: Linus Editora, 2011. p. 69-80. -/- In 1995, the publication of Marleen Rozemond’s paper, Descartes’s Case for Dualism, triggered the revival of the discussion on his argument in favor of the real distinction between body and soul among the Anglo-Saxon scholars. In particular, the discussion then resumed on the necessity of introducing a (...) hidden premise (the so-called attribute premise) in order to regain its probatory character. This debate has reflected on the Cartesian studies in Brazil, and my objective in this text is to bring to the debate two texts still unexplored in relation to this interpretative problem. My hypothesis is that the attempts to justify the thesis that the substance has exactly one principal attribute have not yet succeeded because they underestimated the contribution brought about by the transformation of the notion of nature entailed by the introduction of the concept of principal attribute. Understanding the Cartesian proof of substantial dualism, and more particularly the "attribute premise", would involve, I suggest, the thesis according to which the concept of principal attribute, insofar as it expresses the essence of the substance, is not, and cannot be, according to Descartes, an abstract universal, but rather one of a particular nature. -/- . (shrink)

The article draws a conceptual distinction the (French) structuralism of the 50’s–60’s and the post-structuralism of the 70’s, which are discussed as overlapping in their intellectual paths; their mutual dynamics is defined as a reaction of the intelligence to the pressure of depersonalized unified schemes within the logic of structuralism against free improvisation and loose interpretation instead of total explanations in the post-structuralism interpretation. The article establishes a conceptual identity of the paradoxical nature between post-structuralism (and deconstructionism, which is homogeneous (...) and identical thereto in a number of aspects), on the one hand, and constructionism with its specific process of language dismantling – social/ideological languages, social group dialects, on the other hand, which naturally leads the authors to the analysis of the paradoxicality principles, defined by post-structuralism (five principles of paradoxicality of Gilles Deleuze – paradox of regress, paradox of sterile reiteration, paradox of neutrality, paradox of absurd, paradox of Levi-Strauss); poststructuralists’ paralogisms are examined through paradoxical denotation; the late Roland Barthes’ phenomenon of paradoxicality, becoming a plot-forming principle of narration, is analyzed. Poststructuralism is conceptualized in the article as the first decisive step of post-modernism; the affinity of post-structuralist and postmodernist commitment to parody, game and irony is stated; the theory of language games in post-modern interpretation is explored; one of those games – a game of carnival – is explored within the diachronic retrospective; the affinity of parody and carnival tradition of post-structuralism and post-modernism to the romantic irony of the XIXth century and its inconsistency with the popular culture of laugh is established. The genesis of poststructuralism and post-modernism is connected with the ideological restart of the Western society before the “very end” of the Resistance ideas and the disappointment of the left European intellectuals in the “great legends” and illusions of Marxism. The blurred concepts of relativism are connected with the mutual disproportion of different layers of historical experience. (shrink)

Les Objections et les Réponses ne sont pas les protocoles d'un débat qui se serait déroulé après publication des Méditations et comme à l'extérieur d'elles. Dès le début, l'oeuvre maîtresse de la métaphysique moderne s'est voulue tripartite. « Copyright Electre ».