Background The often poor prognosis associated with cancer necessitates empowering patients to express their care preferences. Yet, the prevalence of Advance Directives (AD) among oncology patients remains low. This study investigated oncologists' perspectives on the interests and challenges associated with implementing AD. Methods A French national online survey targeting hospital-based oncologists explored five areas: AD information, writing support, AD usage, personal perceptions of AD's importance, and respondent's profile. The primary outcome was to assess how frequently oncologists provide patients with information (...) about AD in daily clinical practice. Additionally, we examined factors related to delivering information on AD. Results Of the 410 oncologists (50%) who responded to the survey, 75% (n = 308) deemed AD relevant. While 36% (n = 149) regularly inform patients about AD, 25% (n = 102) remain skeptical about AD. Among the respondents who do not consistently discuss AD, the most common reason given is the belief that AD may induce anxiety (n = 211/353; 60%). Of all respondents, 90% (n = 367) believe patients require specific information to draft relevant AD. Physicians with experience in palliative care were more likely to discuss AD (43% vs 32.3%, p = 0.027). Previous experience in critical care was associated with higher levels of distrust towards AD (31.5% vs 18.8%, p = 0.003), and 68.5% (n = 281) of the respondents expressed that designating a “person of trust” would be more appropriate than utilizing AD. Conclusion Despite the perceived relevance of AD, only a third of oncologists regularly apprise their patients about them. Significant uncertainty persists about the safety and relevance of AD. (shrink)

Prenant pour point de départ les références que Theodor W. Adorno fait à l’Origine du drame baroque allemand (1928) de Walter Benjamin dans ses deux conférences programmatiques, « L’Actualité de la philosophie » (1931) et « L’Idée d’histoire de la nature » (1932), l’article se concentre sur la portée de la théorie novatrice de l’allégorie qui, à côté de la philosophie du langage et de la théorie de la connaissance exposées dans la « Préface épistémo-critique » du livre de Benjamin, (...) fournit l’armature de l’argumentation d’Adorno. Pour quelles raisons et dans quelle mesure peut-on faire de l’allégorie l’une des sources majeures du programme philosophique qui prendra, quelques années plus tard, le nom de « théorie critique » ? (shrink)

Stereo-electroencephalography is a method that uses stereotactically implanted depth electrodes for extra-operative mapping of epileptogenic and functional networks. sEEG derived functional mapping is achieved using electrical cortical stimulations that are currently the gold standard for delineating eloquent cortex. As this stands true especially for primary cortices, ECS applied to higher order brain areas determine more subtle behavioral responses. While anterior and posterior language areas in the dorsal language stream seem to share characteristics with primary cortices, basal temporal language area in (...) the ventral temporal cortex behaves as a highly associative cortex. After a short introduction and considerations about methodological aspects of ECS using sEEG, we review the sEEG language mapping literature in this perspective. We first establish the validity of this technique to map indispensable language cortices in the dorsal language stream. Second, we highlight the contrast between the growing empirical ECS experience and the lack of understanding regarding the fundamental mechanisms underlying ECS behavioral effects, especially concerning the dispensable language cortex in the VTC. Evidences for considering network architecture as determinant for ECS behavioral response complexities are discussed. Further, we address the importance of designing new research in network organization of language as this could enhance ECS ability to map interindividual variability, pathology driven reorganization, and ultimately identify network resilience markers in order to better predict post-operative language deficit. Finally, based on a whole body of available studies, we believe there is strong evidence to consider sEEG as a valid, safe and reliable method for defining eloquent language cortices although there have been no proper comparisons between surgical resections with or without extra-operative or intra-operative language mapping. (shrink)

Esquisses, plans, documents et photographies présentent l'exposition en cours de construction. Un texte explicatif donne les principales clés de lecture du poème de Rimbaud "Après le déluge", extrait des "Illuminations", et de la scénographie adoptée pour le mettre en scène.

Two paradoxes seem to characterise the method of the critique of ideology. The first has to do with the fact that ideologies are “both true and false” (Adorno). The second has to do with the fact that the critique of ideology seems to carry both a normative and a descriptive dimension. The article argues that these two paradoxes disappear when the critique of ideology is addressed by way of a Hegelian mode of immanent critique. Such an approach highlights both the (...) specific normative claim of the critique of ideology and the specific problematic which it exemplifies. (shrink)

A l'aune de la philosophie marginalisant le goût et la cuisine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau parait occuper une place à part et novatrice. Tout en condamnant l'hybris des facéties gastronomiques, il valorise le goût par son lien étroit avec les besoins, avec l'amour de soi, sens utile à juguler les faux désirs et déjouer l'amour-propre. Toutefois, dans l'Emile, ce sens tend à souffrir de la préséance de l'appétit, notion essentielle car utile en société à reconditionner la faim, réorganiser les besoins jusqu'aux (...) moyens de les satisfaire, afin de récréer, par le truchement de la dépense physique, la mesure du plaisir faisant défaut à l'homme civil. En outre, jusqu'à quel point ce schéma de subjectivation par l'appétit est-il compatible avec le dessein politique? (shrink)

Tout au long des années 80, Derrida a exploré le thème de l’invention et étudié en particulier sa conception cartésienne. Derrida récuse avec force cette dernière pour montrer qu’elle dissimule une conception théologico-politique du sujet, accomplissant sur le plan politique la thèse métaphysique du logocentrisme. Mais, à partir de Psychè. Inventions de l’autre, cette vision est infléchie pour développer la signification positive de ce qu’il finit par appeler « l’invention du même » qui constitue l’un des courants majeurs de l’invention (...) techno-scientifique au sens moderne. Solidaire d’une certaine « politique de la recherche », Descartes voit l’une de ses inventions, la « langue universelle », être pour la première fois « contresignée » par Derrida. Cette reconnaissance ne doit pas toutefois cacher un désaccord où se révèle l’originalité de la pensée derridienne de l’invention : résolument anticartésienne, elle propose une inventio qui, en tant qu’elle confond avec le jeu même de la « différance », s’exclut de la cogitatio. Événement immanent à la res extensa qui, pour cette raison, ne saurait être entièrement rationalisé et qui, c’est significatif, en même temps qu’il s’ouvre à la chance, renvoie à une autre conception de l’être-ensemble. L’invention porte dans son excès, selon Derrida, l’annonce d’un temps nouveau. (shrink)

Educational authority is an issue in contemporary democracies. Surprisingly, little attention has been given to the problem of authority in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile and his work has not been addressed in the contemporary debate on the issue of authority in democratic education. Olivier Michaud's goals are, first, to address both of these oversights by offering an original reading of the problem of authority in Emile and then to rehabilitate the notion of “educational authority” for democratic educators today. Contrary (...) to progressive readings of Emile, he argues, Rousseau's position on this issue is not reducible to “education against authority.” What appears at first glance to be an education against authority is, in a deeper sense, an education toward and even within authority. Michaud contends that we have to embrace these complexities and contradictions that inform Rousseau's work in order to gain insights into the place and role of authority in democratic education. Michaud sheds light on Rousseau's stance on authority through a close study of specific topics addressed in Emile, including negative education, opinion, one's relation to God, friendship and loving relationships, and, finally, the relation Rousseau established with his reader. (shrink)

Après l'âge d'or de l'Antiquité, où il constitua un enjeu éminemment politique et philosophique, le motif de l'amitié a perdu de son éclat. Au lendemain de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, des philosophes s'en emparent à nouveau et le replacent au coeur de l'activité de pensée. Maurice Blanchot le premier, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes ensuite; ensemble, ils ont contribué à rendre à l'amitié sa dignité philosophique en faisant de celle-ci non plus une catégorie affective mais conceptuelle, (...) sinon impersonnelle. L'amitié telle que ceux-ci la conçoivent, la représentent et la vivent s'affirme sous le signe d'un refus absolu. Refus d'une identification aux dogmes, aux lois, aux normes, aux présupposés, à la nécessité, et jusqu'à la volonté. Comme si l'amitié n'avait plus aucun contenu positif qu'elle ne coïncidait jamais avec elle-même, qu'elle ne se définissait que contre, dans le rejet de la transcendance, du visage même. Figure de l'Intraitable, le nom d'amitié incarne pour cette génération le pur espace d'affirmation d'une pensée révoltée. (shrink)

"Monteverdi et Wagner : hiatus, mariage impossible, défiance à l’entendement. Le mélomane proteste. Mais le parallèle n’est pas inédit. Car mettre en relation Monteverdi et Wagner, qu’a priori tout oppose, permet de lever le voile sur l’essentiel. À deux siècles d’intervalle, les changements de paradigme opérés par les deux artistes ont un terreau commun. Au-delà des analogies formelles, les attaques portées aux deux compositeurs et leurs répliques sous forme d’écrits théoriques mettent en évidence un monde d’idées. Nietzsche commença sa carrière (...) philosophique en le soulignant. À travers Ficin et Politien pour Monteverdi – Hölderlin, Schelling et Novalis pour Wagner –, les racines néoplatoniciennes communes aux deux créateurs constituent une autre correspondance révélatrice. On les retrouve au seuil du baroque comme du symbolisme. Venise, Pétrarque et Le Tasse ne laissent pas de réunir Monteverdi et Wagner, tandis qu’Orphée et Tristan offrent au chercheur une série d’analogies frappantes. Alors pourquoi ce rapprochement a-t-il été si peu approfondi? Certes, la dénonciation des frontières interdisciplinaires propres au système académique n’est pas nouvelle. Mais faut-il rester muet devant leur persistance? Il existe aujourd’hui toute une philosophie de la musique, ou précisément de la musique instrumentale. Mais où est la philosophie de l’opéra? Après avoir évoqué les apports lumineux de Romain Rolland et de Jean-Jacques Nattiez à la musicologie, Olivier Lexa établit un bref historique de la philosophie de l’opéra, de Rousseau à Nietzsche en passant par Hegel, Novalis, Schopenhauer et Kierkegaard. Par la suite, l’auteur aborde la portée exemplaire de l’histoire de l’art, de l’histoire culturelle et de l’esthétique analytique, avant de se pencher sur les relations que plusieurs grands penseurs récents et contemporains ont entretenues avec l’art lyrique : Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Deleuze, Foucault, Bourdieu, Badiou, Lacoue-Labarthe et Žižek. Sera-t-on surpris de retrouver les noms de Monteverdi et Wagner parmi les récurrences dominantes?" -- Site internet de l'éditeur. (shrink)

The thought of the psychoanalytical thinker, Jacques Lacan, is examined in this paper with a view to ascertaining the place and function of the so-called imaginary in it, the symbolic as well as the 'real'. The extent to which the imaginary or realm of images is construed by Lacan as being the order of identification and a (spurious) sense of unity of the ego or self, is contrasted with the symbolic (or linguistic) order as that of the subject and (...) of desire, in fact, of the subject of desire. The place and meaning of the enigmatic third register in Lacan's thought, namely the 'real', is also addressed in relation to the question of desire. Furthermore, the question is raised, where philosophy in its traditional sense belongs – to the Lacanian register of the imaginary or to that of the symbolic. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.23(1) 2004: 1–19. (shrink)

The eighteenth century, having inherited a pessimism from classical anthropology that its own ideology of progress had to absorb, seemed to have invented le mal de vivre. Clues to this condition are suggested by the etymology of the term vacuus: vacuousness of existence (“Everywhere I find a terrifying emptiness,” asserted the hero of a novel around 1769), and “a vague disquiet which permeates everything and finds nothing to calm it,” according to the definition of Jacques the Fatalist. Le mal (...) de vivre was indeed an invention because, despite a terminology that was inspired by the theory of humors (“hysterical vapors” among women; “hypochondriac melancholy” for men), the philosophers and doctors of the Enlightenment already had envisaged the fatality of an anatomical “limit” for the etiology of “afflictions of the soul.” In this way, according to the Eléments de Physiologie (Elements of Physiology) of Diderot, the agitation of the imagination actually represented the degree of irritability, or of erethism, of the nervous system: “the dreams of young people in a state of innocence come from the extremities of the fibres (meaning the nervous fibres) which are the original carriers of obscure desires, vague disquiet, a melancholy whose cause they do not understand.” If we believe the article on “delight” (jouissance) in the Encyclopaedia, a “vague and melancholy disquiet,” which is linked in particular with the physiological changes occurring at puberty, constitutes a general and “normal” state of sensation, all “delight” implying by this definition the absence of disquiet in comparison with its external object. Reduced to its vibratile intensities, the “perceiving body” that is deprived of its totalizing metaphor becomes pulverized and fragmented into so many “desiring monads.” Like Condillac's statue, it destabilizes itself through the fields of force of the phenomenal world, completely obedient to the energy economy of other bodies that define its external frontier, left to the contradictory universal laws of attraction and repulsion that govern them: “Here below, each part, through a higher impulse, combines toward the central harmony of a whole. We collide with one another and are thrown backward and forward by the force maintaining a general equilibrium and order, in which we participate mechanically.”. (shrink)

The present paper is a reading of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s recent film, A Very Long Engagement, mainly through the lenses of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory of the human subject—particularly his notion of the subject’s desire, which constitutes every human subject as a singular being. Moreover, for Lacan the subject faces the task of taking up his or her desire as a prerequisite for truly ethical action. The character of Mathilde in Jeunet’s film, it is argued, may be seen as being (...) paradigmatic in this respect, insofar as she acts in accordance with her desire. This is demonstrated with reference to the narrative structure of Jeunet’s film. (shrink)

Is there a significant difference between Plato's texts and what is known as 'Platonism', that is, the philosophical tradition that claims Plato as its progenitor? Focusing on the Symposium, an attempt is made here to show that, far from merely fitting neatly into the categories of Platonism—with its neat distinction between the super-sensible and the sensible—Plato's own text is a complex, tension-filled terrain of countervailing forces. In the Symposium this tension obtains between the perceptive insights, on the one hand, into (...) the nature of love and beauty, as well as the bond between them, and the metaphysical leap, on the other hand, from the experiential world to a supposedly accessible, but by definition super-sensible, experience-transcending realm. It is argued that, instead of being content with the philosophical illumination of the ambivalent human condition—something consummately achieved by mytho-poetic and quasi-phenomenohgical means—Plato turns to a putatively attainable, transcendent source of metaphysical reassurance which, moreover, displays all the trappings of an ideological construct. This is demonstrated by mapping Plato's lover's vision of 'absolute beauty' on to what Jacques Lacan has characterized as the unconscious structural quasi-condition of all religious and ideological illusion. (shrink)

François Jacob’s The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity has shown an enduring relevance for the history and philosophy of biology. In this article, resisting the received view that regards this book merely as an application of Foucault’s archaeological method, I reconstruct a silent debate between François Jacob and Jacques Monod. More precisely, I argue that Jacob’s history of biology offers a riposte to Monod’s claims in Chance and Necessity. First, I show that the distinction between a “history (...) of ideas” and a “history of objects” captures two ways of looking at the history of science that characterize Monod’s and Jacob’s own approaches. Next, I present Monod’s search for a “theory of the natural selection of ideas.” Then I argue that the concept of “integron,” introduced by Jacob in his conclusion, covertly undermines Monod’s argument for the use of evolutionary models of cultural and scientific change. These contrasting perspectives shed new light on why the Nobel colaureates and former colleagues expressed little interest in each other’s books. More generally, the Monod-Jacob divide illustrates the use and rejection of biological models in writing the history of science and the importance of situating Jacob within his own milieu. (shrink)

The architectural study of four multi-purpose rooms in the Quartier du Théâtre at Delos This article comprises the architectural study of four rooms of commercial purpose in the Quartier du Théâtre at Delos. These rooms are characteristic examples of a large category of commercial establishments, and their good state of conservation permits examining part of their fittings. It is in particular a question of the mezzanine and of the shop-front, which often includes a large bay and a second door accessing (...) a staircase leading to the upper storey. These elements are found in other rooms of this type at Delos, constituting one of the criteria for their identification, and enable a better understanding of their function. (shrink)

In this polyphonic dialogue, Gilles Châtenay, Eric Laurent, and Jacques-Alain Miller, responding to questions by Yann Moulier Boutang and Olivier Surel, ponder the consequences of the newest waves of digital processing of data related to the personal life, and of their increasing interconnection. In this “numerical tsunami” and in the political rhetoric that supports it by promoting maximal security and risk management, they identify a resurgence of utilitarianism, and, due to the technological power thus unleashed, a considerable danger (...) for privacy. Against this trend of rationalized totalization of data related to identities, they call for citizens’ resistance and for a sustained public debate on the issue. (shrink)

Philosophe et penseur du politique, intellectuel marxiste et militant communiste, enseignant, directeur de collection... : à travers le rayonnement de son oeuvre et de sa personne, Louis Althusser a renouvelé la théorie politique et la philosophie de l'histoire, de Machiavel à Marx. Parmi ses contemporains, Michel Foucault exhorte : " Ouvrez les livres d'Althusser! ", Jacques Derrida évoque " la force rayonnante et provocante de sa pensée ", Gilles Deleuze salue l'" Althusser's Band ", et pour Roland Barthes, " (...) le seul modèle acceptable de la science est celui mis au jour par les études d'Althusser sur Marx ". Aliocha Wald Lasowski converse avec vingt écrivains et philosophes qui ont lu, rencontré, parfois travaillé avec Althusser, quand ils n'ont pas fait partie de ses proches. Où l'on mesure à quel point la pensée d'Althusser demeure d'une actualité brûlante. (shrink)

The proper sensible criterion of sensory individuation holds that senses are individuated by the special kind of sensibles on which they exclusively bear about (colors for sight, sounds for hearing, etc.). H. P. Grice objected to the proper sensibles criterion that it cannot account for the phenomenal difference between feeling and seeing shapes or other common sensibles. That paper advances a novel answer to Grice's objection. Admittedly, the upholder of the proper sensible criterion must bind the proper sensibles –i.e. colors– (...) to the common sensibles –i.e. shapes– so as to account for the visual phenomenal character of shapes. But, as Grice rightly objected, neither association, nor ontological dependence will do –I spend some time isolating why dependence is a bad answer here, basically because the dependence of shape on colors is generic, and that genericity is arguably not part of the phenomenal content of perception. -/- Grice is wrong, however, to think that once association and dependence have been rebutted, there is no other way to attach color to extension. The right way to connect proper and common sensibles is rather trivial, although it seems to have been widely neglected: proper sensibles FILL common ones. To see a shape, by contrast to feeling it, is to perceived as filled by some color. To feel a shape, is to perceive it as, say, filled by pressure. Filling in is the phenomenal connection between proper and common sensibles. -/- One important corollary of that proposal is that proper sensibles –color, pressure, noise, taste...– have to belong to the category of stuffs, in the sense of uncountable entities. Against the widespread view that colors are properties, which have countable instances, the last part of the paper argues that colors are phenomenal stuffs, which fill some visual area. One commits a category mistake in asking: "How many tropes/instances of this determinate redness is there on that ladybird". One should rather ask "How much of this determinate redness is there on that ladybird". (shrink)

Over the years, Skolem’s Paradox has generated a fairly steady stream of philosophical discussion; nonetheless, the overwhelming consensus among philosophers and logicians is that the paradox doesn’t constitute a mathematical problem (i.e., it doesn’t constitute a real contradiction). Further, there’s general agreement as to why the paradox doesn’t constitute a mathematical problem. By looking at the way firstorder structures interpret quantifiers—and, in particular, by looking at how this interpretation changes as we move from structure to structure—we can give a technically (...) adequate “solution” to Skolem’s Paradox. So, whatever the philosophical upshot of Skolem’s Paradox may be, the mathematical side of Skolem’s Paradox seems to be relatively straightforward. (shrink)

Formalisms such as description logics (DL) are sometimes expected to help terminologies ensure compliance with sound ontological principles. The objective of this paper is to study the degree to which one DL-based biomedical terminology (SNOMED CT) complies with such principles. We defined seven ontological principles (for example: each class must have at least one parent, each class must differ from its parent) and examined the properties of SNOMED CT classes with respect to these principles. Our major results are: 31% of (...) the classes have a single child; 27% have multiple parents; 51% do not exhibit any differentiae between the description of the parent and that of the child. The applications of this study to quality assurance for ontologies are discussed and suggestions are made for dealing with multiple inheritance. (shrink)

Entre les postes et le mouvement analytique, le principe de plaisir et l'histoire des télécommunications, la carte postale et la lettre volée, bref le transfert de Socrate à Freud, et au-delà. Cette satire de la littérature épistolaire devait être farcie - d'adresses, de codes postaux, de missives cryptées, de lettres anonymes, le tout confié à tant de modes, de genres et de tons.

In this second volume of the unparalleled exposition of Rousseau's life and works, Cranston completes and corrects the story told in Rousseau's Confessions, and offers a vivid, entirely new history of his most eventful and productive years. "Luckily for us, Maurice Cranston's The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754-1762 has managed to craft a highly detailed account of eight key years of Rousseau's life in such a way that we can both understand and even, on occasion, sympathize."—Olivier Bernier, Wall (...) Street Journal Maurice Cranston (1920-1993), a distinguished scholar and recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of John Locke, was professor of political science at the London School of Economics. His numerous books include The Romantic Movement and Philosophers and Pamphleteers, and translations of Rousseau's The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of twenty-three interviews given over the last two decades. It illustrates the extraordinary breadth of Derrida's concerns, touching upon such subjects as the teaching of philosophy, sexual difference and feminine identity, the media, AIDS, language and translation, nationalism, politics, and Derrida's early life and the history of his writings. Often, as in the interviews on Heidegger, on drugs, or on the nature of poetry, these interviews offer something available nowhere else in his work. The informality (...) of the interview process frequently leads to the most succinct and lucid explications of many of the most important and influential aspects of Derrida's thought. Sixteen of the interviews appear in English for the first time, including an interview conducted especially for this volume, concerning the recent exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books. (shrink)

An edition of three essays by the leading French philosopher and theorist Jacques Derrida on the ethical, political and linguistic issues posed by the act of 'naming'. Passions: An Oblique Offering is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding - which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, (...) raised inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organised around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius. The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word 'khora' in Plato's Timaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, 'khora' opens, dislocates and displaces all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. (shrink)

Lately in the past couple of years, there are an increasing in the normal rate of playing computer games or video games compared to the E-learning content that are introduced for the safety of our children, and the impact of the video game addictiveness that ranges from (Musculoskeletal issues, Vision problems and Obesity). Furthermore, this paper introduce an intelligent tutoring system for both parent and their children for enhancement the experience of gaming and tell us about the health problems and (...) how we can solve them, with an easy user interface that way can our children be happy and excited about the information and their health. (shrink)

Some generic generalizations have both a descriptive and a normative reading. The generic sentence “Philosophers care about the truth”, for instance, can be read as describing what philosophers in fact care about, but can also be read as prescribing philosophers to care about the truth. On Leslie’s account, this generic sentence has two readings due to the polysemy of the kind term “philosopher”. In this paper, I first argue against this polysemy account of descriptive/normative generics. In response, a contextualist semantic (...) theory for generic sentences is introduced. Based on this theory, I argue that descriptive/normative generics are contextually underspecified. (shrink)