Ouvrage inédit de Bernard Charbonneau, qui pourtant l'affectionnait beaucoup, ce petit livre est l'ultime réflexion qu'il porta sur le concept de liberté, qui chez lui a toujours été central. Il y offre à son lecteur une méditation de tout premier ordre mais accessible et concise sur la liberté, prise en tant que concept et recherche incarnés dans un temps, dans un lieu, dans un individu. Plus importante encore que la réflexion philosophique est la volonté de Charbonneau de (...) tenter de communiquer au lecteur qui lui fait l'amitié de le lire son expérience de la liberté, en se basant sur des figures irréfutables comme Rousseau (à travers le Contrat social), Montaigne (à travers les Essais), Berdiaev (à travers De l'Esclavage et de la liberté de l'homme) et Dostoïevski (à travers la parabole du Grand Inquisiteur), utilisées comme autant de perspectives différentes et de témoins édifiants." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

"Aujourd'hui, toute doctrine qui se refuse à envisager les conséquences du progrès, soit qu'elle proclame ce genre de problèmes secondaires (idéologie de droite), soit qu'elle le divinise (idéal de gauche), est contre-révolutionnaire". Visionnaires, Charbonneau et Ellul rejetèrent dos à dos les voies libérales, soviétique et fascistes. Dès les années 1930, ils ouvrirent une critique du "Progrès" et du déferlement de la technique et de la puissance au détriment de la liberté. La solution : une révolution contre le nouvel absolutisme (...) du triptyque Science-Etat-Industrie ; une insurrection des consciences ; un projet de civilisation ancré dans un nouveau rapport à la nature. Ce recueil rassemble quatre textes sources de l'écologie politique, inédits pour trois d'entre eux. Contemporains de la Grande Dépression, d'Auschwitz et d'Hiroshima, ces textes incisifs offrent une clé de lecture très actuelle, humaniste et libertaire, de nos sociétés contemporaines, productivistes, consuméristes et techniciennes. (shrink)

French personalism is a political philosophy generally associated with the review “Esprit” founded by Emmanuel Mounier in 1932, although another branch is also known, that of the review “L’Ordre Nouveau” (1933-1938). This article identifies a third version, fostered in Southwestern France by Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul in the local groups of the two Paris-based reviews. Working within the framework of the “Amis d’Esprit,” they broke away from it after having failed to turn it into a non-conformist revolutionary (...) movement, closer in many ways to “L’Ordre Nouveau.” Yet this Gascon group differed from both “O.N.” and “Esprit” by being based on a radical critique of technology and industrial society grounded in “feeling for Nature as a revolutionary force,” to quote the title of a 1937 manifesto by Charbonneau, one of many texts where with Ellul he formulated — probably for the first time — a new revolutionary political orientation beyond Right and Left, the outlines of what would decades later come to be known as political ecology, of which this Bordeaux School of personalism can be seen as an early and influential component that was long unacknowleged as such. This enables a comparison of three schools of French personalism as an alternative political movement (as opposed to purely philosophical or politically mainstream version such as Jacques Maritain's Neo-Thomist one). The personal creativity that Ordre Nouveau's societal federalists sought to liberate by disentangling it from impersonal though indispensable processes should probably be thought of in wider terms than those they stressed, if it is not to play into the hands of technocracy. It should include as well, not only the personal scale low-tech and manual activities dear to the Bordeaux School, but also the relational skills of community building that were central to Esprit’s Christian project of a personalist city. The latter in turn runs the risk of functioning as an ideological placebo to hastily justify collectivistic aspects of modernization in the name of nation- or world-wide “community”, if it fails to pay close enough attention to issues of human scale and to the role of Technique, as federalists and ecologists well saw. For I have found that all three schools of French personalism have important contributions to make to contemporary debates such as that of the changing role of leisure, work and labor in post-industrial society, provided they are read in an ecumenical spirit that allows their contrasting insights to come together, so as to throw into sharp relief all possible angles (from the value and perils of collective belonging and elemental sharing to self-realization versus individual alienation) of that inexhaustible personal reality on which they all focus. (shrink)

Bernard Charbonneau’s The Green Light is a classic text of French environmentalism, first published in 1980 but unavailable in English until now. Philosophically, I found the book to be underwhelming, but Charbonneau makes no apologies for this:The author’s viewpoint is...not that of a specialist,...of a bona fide philosopher or poet, but that of a man who needs air to breathe, water to drink and dive in, time and space to play, silence to sleep or reflect...who has felt (...) in his bones and his eye each of the blows the land has endured.Charbonneau’s motivations for writing are personal, but not private; the introduction which chronicles his own background, struggles, and heartbreak might be the most compelling part... (shrink)

Les cinq penseurs présentés ici par Patrick Chastenet partagent le même amour de la liberté et de la nature. Trois se réclament de l'anarchisme, deux en sont proches, tous ont profondément enrichi le terreau libertaire de l'écologie politique. L'auteur s'est lié d'amitié avec Jacques Ellul, dont il est un spécialiste reconnu. Il a sympathisé avec Ivan Illich et Bernard Charbonneau avant de découvrir les oeuvres d'Élisée Reclus et de Murray Bookchin. Son livre, rigoureux et vivant, nous introduit aux (...) pensées de ces précurseurs encore trop méconnues mais dont l'actualité n'a pas fini de nous étonner"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the Thirties, European personalism was an inspirational philosophical movement, with its birthplace in France, but with proponents and sympathizers in many other countries as well. Following the Second World War, Christian-Democratic politicians translated personalistic ideas into a political doctrine. Sometimes they still refer to personalism, but most often this reference is little more than a nostalgic salute. In the mainstream of Anglo-Saxon political philosophy, there are practically no references to personalistic philosophers. Is personalism exhausted as a philosophy or political (...) ideology? Yes and no. Paul Ricoeur, writing in Esprit , summed up the situation like this: “personalism is dead”, but he was careful to mention a “return of the person”. Indeed, no tradition or movement can simply perpetuate itself. It must, in order to continue making history, always abolish itself as a `system' so as to make room for the unsaid and the unthought in its tradition, an idea that Mounier also fervently believed in.To better situate the current discussion of personalism, however, it is necessary to look back to the original characteristics of personalism in the Thirties. As a response to the crisis provoked by the economic depression, failing democracy and existential uncertainty, there arose in France a number of `non-conformist movements' who labelled themselves personalistic. They did not constitute a unified movement with a commonly shared theory. It was rather a collection of `personalisms'. The article by the historian Christian Roy about the ecological personalism of Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul sheds interesting light on the multiple origins of French personalism, which is all too easily identified with the work of Maritain and Mounier alone. The work of Jacques Maritain, and the network of writers and artists surrounding him, undoubtedly remains a significant historical reference point when speaking of personalism.Another group was formed around Alexandre Marc who, along with Raymond Aron, Arnaud Dandieu, Daniel-Rops and Denis de Rougemont, kept the journal Ordre Nouveau alive for five years . They elaborated the idea of federalism as a way out of liberalism and totalitarianism. The most important and durable group, however, was formed by the movement and journal Esprit, founded in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier and George Izard. In order to stress the historical importance of Esprit, we are including here a testimony from 1982, written by Paulette Mounier, the founder's wife, in which she looks back on 50 years of Esprit. After the war, some new and related groups formed, such as Economy and Humanism around Louis-Joseph Lebret. An historical survey of the dissemination of personalistic centres and movements, not only in France but over all of Europe, would be material for a stimulating historical research project. In this issue, there will also be mention of, among others, the Prague personalism of Jan Patocka and Vaclav Havel, the Leuven personalism of Louis Janssens, and the Polish personalism of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and others. But this list is far from exhaustive.What unites these various branches of the personalistic tree? It is a certain conception — or better perhaps: a certain attitude to the human person. Personalists were not seeking in the first instance a new academic theory about the person, but rather a practical philosophy of engagement. In the Thirties, quite a few personalists finished their university studies and chose not for an academic career but for non-conformist, demanding and vulnerable commitments with limited financial means. What motivated them? Primarily a strong sense that the time in which they were living was a turning point, one which was being ignored by the academic world. They interpreted the diverse economic, political and cultural crisis phenomena as symptoms of a more global crisis of civilization which demanded a response through radical change.Hence a certain rhetoric of a `new order', `spiritual revolution', `radical reform' and `rebirth'. But the rhetoric was supported by innovative ideas regarding political federalism, the third way economy and human alienation. The motivation for all this derived from a strong commitment to defend the concrete human person against the arrogance of systems, bureaucracies and ideologies, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of individualism — the reason why some personalists always qualified personalism as `communitarian'.In fact, much of what presents itself as communitarian philosophy today is a retrieval of personalistic themes from the Thirties applied to the current situation, a situation which is also interpreted by communitarians as a global cultural crisis. One should not forget, however, that alongside and sometimes opposed to the communitarian theme with its call to bring people back to their communitarian roots, personalists underscored the priority of metaphysics over politics, a theme that can likewise be found in the writings of personalistic dissidents in Eastern Europe. In the words of Mounier in Qu'est-ce que le personnalisme : “personalism combines faith in a certain human absolute with a progressive historical experience”.To what extent is personalistic thinking still relevant today? Its current relevance will be examined in three ways. In the first section, a number of articles are presented which illustrate the active presence of personalistic thought in the domains of politics and applied ethics. Vaclav Havel sent one of his recent addresses in which he links the theme of human rights with that of a world spirituality. His article is preceded by an introduction by Guido Van Heeswijck, situating Prague personalism.The need for an orientational philosophy of the person is not only manifest today in the political arena. Developments in economics, ecology, health care, the media, technology and in the world of the professions have had an extraordinarily large impact on the human person's lifeworld. The whole area of applied ethics requires a dynamic and orientational concept of the person. The contributions by Paul Schotsmans and Luk Bouckaert are seeking a personalistic point of departure for applied ethics. The more historical article by Christian Roy on ecological personalism has been included in the first section because it can be inspiring for an environmental ethics.The second section is more philosophical. To what extent does the `personalistic' conception of the person put forward in the Thirties still have any relevance today, following the waves of structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism? Paul Ricoeur's article, Approaching the Human Person — originally published in Esprit in 1990 and now translated for the first time — can be seen as a reference text. Ricoeur shows in what sense the concept of the person must be broadened in order to continue functioning. The person as `narrative identity' can only write history through the medium of language and institutions. Starting from very different assumptions, the articles by Louis Janssens & Joseph Selling and the analysis of Roland Breeur also explore the idea that a person is what he is only when his identity is opened up, touched by an exteriority or conceived as a focal point . It is this radical openness and vulnerability that gives the person its historical and transcendent dynamic, and prevents us from encapsulating it in existing systems, theories and power relations. The connection with Emmanuel Levinas and his hermeneutic of the idea of the infinite is an obvious one to draw.The third section contains a historical survey in which a number of active `personalistic' centres and journals are presented.Various European centres that appeal explicitly to some form of personalistic thinking were posed the following questions: What is the main historical reference to personalism at your centre? and How do you implement, today, a personalist credo in your work? John Dick organized the responses to these questions under a number of headings. This survey aims to provide not so much an exhaustive but a representative picture of the ways in which European personalism lives on as a mosaic of centres engaged in everyday history. (shrink)

This book presents the thought of the Kyoto School in comparison with continental philosophers better known in the West and addresses the affiliation of some of its members with the militarism of the 1930s and 1940s.

A survey of democratic institutions and republics reveals the aristocratic origins of democracy.

This essay asks why Aristotle, certainly no friend to unlimited democracy, seems so much more comfortable with unconstrained rhetoric in political deliberation than current defenders of deliberative democracy. It answers this question by reconstructing and defending a distinctly Aristotelian understanding of political deliberation, one that can be pieced together out of a series of separate arguments made in the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics.

This book is the result of over 30 years of collaboration among its authors. It uses the systematic account of our common morality developed by one of its authors to provide a useful foundation for dealing with the moral problems and disputes that occur in the practice of medicine. The analyses of impartiality, rationality, and of morality as a public system not only explain why some bioethical questions, such as the moral acceptability of abortion, cannot be resolved, but also provide (...) a method for determining the correct answer for those occasions when a bioethical question has a unique correct answer. This new edition includes an entire chapter that has been added to address the controversial issue of abortion within the authors' distinct framework. This book presents the latest revisions of the authors' orignial analyses of the concepts of death and disease, analyses that have had a significant impact on the field of bioethics. It also includes an added chapter on mental disorders, where the authors' definition influenced what psychiatry classifies as a mental disorder, and so has had an impact that reveals beyond the field of bioethics. In this edition, the authors also offer a new, more developed perspective on the concept of valid or informed consent by considering what information physicians should be required to know before proposing screening, diagnostic testing, prescribing medications, or performing surgery. The book also integrates some of the important insights of the field of clinical epidemiology into its discussion of valid consent. Its account of paternalism and its justification, perhaps the most ubiquitous moral problem in medical ethics, has had considerable influence. Its discussion of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide challenges the standard views that have been put forward by both proponents and opponents of physician assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia. (shrink)

This volume is a revised, enlarged, and broadened version of Gert's classic 1970 book, The Moral Rules. Advocating an approach he terms "morality as impartial rationality," Gert here presents a full discussion of his moral theory, adding a wealth of new illuminating detail to his analysis of the concepts--rationality/irrationality, good/evil, and impartiality--by which he defines morality. He constructs a "moral system" that includes rules prohibiting the kinds of actions that cause evil, procedures for determining when violation of the rules is (...) permitted, and ideals which encourage actions that prevent or relieve suffering. To be valid, Gert argues, any such system must be "a public system that applies to all rational persons." The book concludes with a discussion of medical ethics, demonstrating the link between moral theory and its application to real moral problems. (shrink)

Later reprinted by Deborah Charles Publications (and not available from Amazon), this book expounds and comments on the application of Greimasian semiotics to a legal text, as found in the article by Greimas and Landowski in Greimas, Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales (1976), compares this with the semiotic presuppositions of Hart, Dworkin, MacCormick and Kelsen, and offers my own analysis of the implications of such semiotic analysis for legal theory, including some more recent radical non-positivist accounts.

This volume tackles the burden of judgment and the challenges of ethical disagreements, organizes the cohabitation of scientific and ethical argumentations in such a way they find their appropriate place in the political decision. It imagines several forms of agreements and open ways of conflicts resolution very different compared with ones of the majority of political philosophers and political scientists that are macro-social and general. It offers an original contribution to a scrutinized interpretation of the precautionary principle, as structuring the (...) decision in interdisciplinary contexts, to make sure to arrive this time to the "Best of the Worlds". (shrink)

This essay asks why Aristotle, certainly no friend to unlimited democracy, seems so much more comfortable with unconstrained rhetoric in political deliberation than current defenders of deliberative democracy. It answers this question by reconstructing and defending a distinctly Aristotelian understanding of political deliberation, one that can be pieced together out of a series of separate arguments made in the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics.

This book reviews the classical schools of jurisprudence with particular reference to their linguistic presuppositions, and summarises an alternative account based on Paris school semiotics. Detailed ToC available from linked web page. NOT available from Amazon.

Face au règne hégémonique d un capitalisme financier globalisé particulièrement brutal, la quête manifeste d une autre économie sociale, solidaire, alternative se développe aujourd hui. Quelles sont les limites de l exploitation tolérable et les contestations possibles? La légitimité de l accumulation et les conditions morales de la redistribution sont ici interrogées à travers différentes époques et en différents lieux.

La crise écologique induit une mutation profonde du rapport à la nature dans notre culture. Cette mutation est interrogée ici en cinq controverses philosophiques : depuis les analyses historique et épistémologique, en passant par l'éthique, l'anthropologie et la philosophie politique. Cet ouvrage propose des repères importants pour la mise en œuvre d'une culture et d'un fonctionnement sociétal qui répondent à un problème majeur de notre époque.

I outline some of my work and results on my matter-gravity entanglement hypothesis, according to which the entropy of a closed quantum gravitational system is equal to the system’s matter-gravity entanglement entropy. The main arguments presented are: that this hypothesis is capable of resolving what I call the second-law puzzle, i.e. the puzzle as to how the entropy increase of a closed system can be reconciled with the asssumption of unitary time-evolution; that the black hole information loss puzzle may be (...) regarded as a special case of this second law puzzle and that therefore the same resolution applies to it; that the black hole thermal atmosphere puzzle can be resolved by adopting a radically different-from-usual description of quantum black hole equilibrium states, according to which they are total pure states, entangled between matter and gravity in such a way that the partial states of matter and gravity are each approximately thermal equilibrium states ; that the Susskind–Horowitz–Polchinski string-theoretic understanding of black hole entropy as the logarithm of the degeneracy of a long string cannot be quite correct but should be replaced by a modified understanding according to which it is the entanglement entropy between a long string and its stringy atmosphere, when in a total pure equilibrium state in a suitable box, which ) goes over, at strong-coupling, to a black hole in equilibrium with its thermal atmosphere. The modified understanding in is based on a general result, which I also describe, which concerns the likely state of a quantum system when it is weakly coupled to an energy-bath and the total state is a random pure state with a given energy. This result generalizes Goldstein et al.’s ‘canonical typicality’ result to systems which are not necessarily small. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes was the first great English political philosopher. His work excited intense controversy among his contemporaries and continues to do so in our own time. In this masterly introduction to his work, Bernard Gert provides the first account of Hobbes’s political and moral philosophy that makes it clear why he is regarded as one of the best philosophers of all time in both of these fields. In a succinct and engaging analysis the book illustrates that the commonly accepted (...) view of Hobbes as holding psychological egoism is not only incompatible with his account of human nature but is also incompatible with the moral and political theories that he puts forward. It also explains why Hobbes’s contemporaries did not accept his explicit claim to be providing a natural law account of morality. Gert shows that for Hobbes, civil society is established by a free-gift of their right of nature by the citizens; it does not involve a mutual contract between citizens and sovereign. As injustice involves breaking a contract, the sovereign cannot be unjust; however, the sovereign can be guilty of ingratitude, which is immoral. This distinction between injustice and immorality is part of a sophisticated and nuanced political theory that is in stark contrast to the reading often incorrectly attributed to Hobbes that “might makes right”. It illustrates how Hobbes’s goal of avoiding civil war provides the key to understanding his moral and political philosophy. _Hobbes: Prince of Peace_ is likely to become the classic introduction to the work of Thomas Hobbes and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the importance and relevance of his work today. (shrink)

This critical notice of Stephen Neale's "Descriptions", (MIT Press, 1990) summarizes the content of the book and presents several objections to its arguments, as well as praising Neale for showing just how close the linguistic notion of L F is to the analytic philosopher's notion of "logical form". It is claimed that Neale's use of generalized quantifiers to represent definite descriptions from Russell's account by which descriptions are "incomplete symbols". I also argue that his assessment of the Quine/Smullyan exchange about (...) "Necessarily the number of the planets is greater than seven" is incorrect. (shrink)

Financial relationships between physicians and industry are widespread. Highly publicized financial relationships between physicians and industry raised disturbing questions about the trustworthiness of clinical research, practice guidelines, and clinical care decisions. Recent incidents spurred calls for stricter conflict of interest policies and led to new federal laws and NIH regulations. These stricter policies have evoked praise, concerns, and objections. Because these new federal requirements need to be interpreted and implemented, spirited discussions of conflicts of interest in medicine will continue.

1. L'immense régression -- 2. La lec̨on de Greta Thunberg.

Written by a non-Jewish analytic philosopher, this book addresses the issue of whether, and to what extent, current opposition to Israel on the liberal-left embodies anti-Semitic stances. It argues that the dominant climate of liberal opinion disseminates, however inadvertently, a range of anti-Semitic assertions and motifs of the most traditional kind. It advocates a return to an unrestricted anti-racism which would allow liberals to defend Palestinian interests without demonizing Jews.

This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss’s failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of communications research in connection with the Centre d’Études des Communications de Masse (CECMAS). Although semioticians and poststructuralists used cybernetic discourse (...) critically and ironically, I argue that their embrace of a ‘textocratic’ perspective – that is, a theory of power and epistemology as tied to technical inscription – sustained elements of the technocratic reasoning dating back to these 1920s efforts to reform French universities. (shrink)

Web 2.0 innovations may enhance informed patient decision-making, but also raise ethical concerns about inaccurate or misleading information, damage to the doctor-patient relationship, privacy and confidentiality, and health disparities. To increase the benefits and decrease the risks of these innovations, we recommend steps to help patients assess the quality of health information on the Internet; promote constructive doctor-patient communication about new information technologies; and set standards for privacy and data security in patient-controlled health records and for point-of-service advertising.

In "Global Spencerism" the authors analyse the communication and appropriation of Herbert Spencer s ideas around the globe. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Spencer s distinctive theory of evolution, based on Lamarckianism, was almost as influential as Darwin s.".

In this article, I would like to show that, concerning this era of ubiquitous technology and its teleologics, the stakes concern the constitution of a new milieu of psychic and collective individuation, which is at least as radically new as the writing of language was in its time; second, I attempt to show that what is at stake relates to the way technology changes the télos, that is, the rule of ends which shape the social organization of collective desire as (...) a system of care and remedies; and, third, I argue that this era requires a new libidinal economy, if we admit that there can be no télos without desire. I will argue that new ubiquitous digital networks operating as new technical associated milieus have fundamental effects for symbolic and psychical associated milieus, and thus for new ways of being. (shrink)