Ces entretiens réalisés par le journaliste P. Nassif permettent de mieux connaître et comprendre la démarche du romancier, acteur et philosophe M. Belhaj Kacem. Ils donnent également une analyse personnelle du monde contemporain et de l'état d'esprit des jeunes de moins de trente ans, de leur éthique, de leurs projets.

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem et Tristan Garcia ont en commun d'être deux figures majeures de la scène philosophique française et de poursuivre, chacun à leur manière, l'écriture d'une oeuvre littéraire. «Algèbre de la Tragédie», le dernier chapitre de L'Esprit du nihilisme, est le point de départ choisi par Tristan Garcia pour son intervention lors du colloque organisé, en 2013, autour de l'oeuvre de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, à l'ENS-Ulm. Dans sa postface, Critique et rémission, il propose (...) la lecture suivante de sa démarche : «L'oeuvre de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem correspond à l'idéal que je me fais d'une pensée critique, au terme du XXe siècle et d'une modernité qui ne veut pas finir. En repartant du début d'Algèbre de la Tragédie, je voudrais éprouver par des concepts mon sentiment de lecteur : qu'est-ce qui m'amène à interpréter le travail de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem comme celui du critique par excellence - de l'homme de la crise?». (shrink)

Michaël Crevoisier : Le thème du jeu traverse ton œuvre et revient dans ta philosophie la plus récente. Quelle place lui accordes-tu, quelle est sa fonction dans ton système? Mehdi Belhaj Kacem : Oui c’est vrai que ça reste intact. Et je peux récapituler aujourd’hui la manière dont cela fonctionne systématiquement. Tout d’abord, ce que j’appelle l’archi-transgression est le transcendantal de l’être humain, le fait pour l’être humain de s’être approprié les lois de la nature et de (...) continuer... (shrink)

Là où Françoise Sagan a pu dire que l'humour était la politesse du désespoir, on peut avancer que l'ironie est quant à elle l'élégance du nihilisme. II s'agit d'interroger le nouage étonnamment synchronisé du surgissement d'une démocratisation de la forme ironique avec l'instauration du nihilisme de masse de la marchandise de divertissement. Nous croyons montrer que nous ne sommes pas dupes, mais c'est sans doute là que réside le noyau même de la duperie : nous consommons, en montrant sans cesse (...) n'être pas dupes, d'horribles émissions télévisées, des marchandises ineptes, des informations débiles, une presse régressive, etc. : nous passons notre temps à ça, en feignant n'en être pas dupes, ce qui est la plus sûre manière de l'être totalement. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que Dieu? Question d'apparence ingénue, voire enfantine. Mais, après deux siècles d'avis de décès de toute sorte, le retour massif de son invocation, résultat de l'échec à trouver quelque alternative que ce soit au déploiement aveugle du Capital (et du suicide écologique à la clé), elle doit aujourd'hui se poser publiquement, et sous cette forme-là. Le présent opuscule tente de lui apporter quelques éléments inédits de réponse. Il n'y a de Dieu que pour l'homme, et seul l'homme est destiné (...) à Dieu. Parce que l'unicité de l'événement anthropologique dans l'Univers, c'est celle de l'apparition d'une mémoire telle qu'il n'en a semble-t-il jamais existé auparavant sur terre. Dieu, depuis toujours, est le concept d'une mémoire absoluti-sée. Or ce concept est en train de se réaliser sous nos yeux : il n'est autre que la toute-puissance atteinte par la techno-science elle-même. Omniprésence, omnipotence, omniscience littéralement, et peut-être, demain, éternité et immortalité : tels sont les attributs, jusqu'ici étrangement inaperçus, de la techno-science, c'est-à-dire ceux-là mêmes qu'on prête à Dieu... (shrink)

L’œuvre de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem est à la fois conséquente et protéiforme. Mais parce que sa chronologie nous aura parue importante quant à son sens, nous avons voulu présenter cette bibliographie selon un schéma particulier : les pages de gauche proposent de répertorier les documents de l’auteur lui-même, ou auxquels celui-ci a contribués ; les pages de droite indiquent, de manière inévitablement lacunaire, la teneur et le contenu du propos, essayant par là d’en donner un aperçu dans (...) la continu... (shrink)

Georges Bataille, Lascaux ou la naissance de l’art. « Tous les hommes des profondeurs mettent leur bonheur à ressembler une fois aux poissons volants et à se jouer sur les crêtes extrêmes des vagues ; ils estiment que ce que les choses ont de meilleur, c’est leur surface : ce qu’il y a à fleur de peau ». Friedrich Nietzsche, Le gai savoir, § 256. L’œuvre de Mehdi Belhaj Kacem s’est construite et s’articule principalement en deux concepts (...) : le Mal et le jeu. Mais encore faut-il savoir dans que... (shrink)

I. Introduction : sortir du badiousisme Mehdi Belhaj Kacem a publié une longue lettre ouverte à Tristan Garcia où il décrit une “nouvelle conjecture” qui est en train d’émerger avec la génération montante des jeunes philosophes, qui commencent à se libérer de l’espace conceptuel défini par l’hégémonie intellectuelle exercée par Alain Badiou, pendant la dernière décennie, comme Maître Penseur incontesté. Selon MBK une nouvelle configuration conceptuelle est en train de se former, et sa “lettre...

C’est sur une initiative étudiante que Catherine Malabou a été invitée à une journée d’étude dont nous publions ici les interventions. Nous poursuivons ainsi un travail de publication entrepris autour des débats théoriques ouverts dans la contemporanéité. Après Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, et l’ouverture sur « l’après Badiou », c’est le déplacement opéré par Catherine Malabou qui est ici abordé. Celui-ci part de l’état des discussions qui animent la philosophie dite continentale, notamment autour de l...

Nous ambitionnons de rendre compte d’une grande partie de l’œuvre de Belhaj Kacem ; notre première partie thématisera cette époque qui se complaît dans son soi-disant « nihilisme » ; ensuite, il sera question de la singulière oblitération d’une tradition philosophique qui osait placer le mal au centre de son dispositif ; enfin, nous tâcherons d’éprouver le jeu comme horizon émancipateur. Notre propos ne consistera en aucun cas à multiplier les comparaisons avec ses possibles prédécesseurs ; n...

Outlines the ten ways to achieve happiness, discusses the relationship between health and happinesss, and examines the importance of cultivating human values.

L'islam des Lumières a-t-il un avenir? Peut-on parier sur un autre islam structuré par une pensée libérale, rationnelle et critique? Cet ouvrage s'interroge sur les ressources et les limites de la pensée éclairée en islam, aussi bien en Occident que dans le monde majoritairement musulman. Malgré des difficultés majeures au niveau de la pensée religieuse et de l'action, l'islam des Lumières pose des défis sérieux à l'islam traditionniste et politique dominant dans les sociétés musulmanes aujourd'hui.

To support the trustworthiness of AI systems, it is essential to have precise methods to determine what or who is to account for the behaviour, or the outcome, of AI systems. The assignment of responsibility to an AI system is closely related to the identification of individuals or elements that have caused the outcome of the AI system. In this work, we present an overview of approaches that aim at modelling responsibility of AI systems, discuss their advantages and shortcomings to (...) deal with various aspects of the notion of responsibility, and present research gaps and ways forward. (shrink)

To date, the genre of al-Ashʿarī’s Adab al-jadal as a document of Islamic argumentation theory remains unclear. Modern scholars paid little attention to this important document preserved in Ibn Fūrak ’s Mujarrad maqālāt al-Ashʿarī. Scholars disagree on whether the main constituent elements of al-Ashʿarī’s Adab al-jadal are they theological or philosophical. Based on the terminology, the procedure and the purpose of dialectical questions and answers in al-Ashʿarī’s Adab al-jadal, I argue that this document borrows its method to juridical dialectics.

Nombre d'évidences circulent dans la pensée musulmane contemporaine au sujet de la violence, de la paix, de la loi, etc. Cet ouvrage étudie ces évidences par la contextualisation historique et l’analyse philologique de ces notions à la croisée de l’épistémologie, de l’histoire des idées et de l’islamologie. Vingt notions principales de la pensée musulmane, largement mobilisées dans les débats de la pensée musulmane et de l’islam en Europe sont analysées, allant de la dignité humaine et de la liberté à l’éthique (...) et à la spiritualité. L’ouvrage pourrait être utile aussi bien aux musulmans animés par la réflexion sur la grande crise du monde musulman qu’aux chercheurs sur l’islam, aux personnes engagées dans la compréhension ou le dialogue avec l’islam, et aux journalistes confrontés aux réalités musulmanes. (shrink)

The majority of studies on compliment response have investigated CR patterns and norms among different cultural groups and communities. The present study investigated the shifting of CR patterns across generations within the same speech community. To this end, 272 Persian speakers were chosen from among high school students and teachers. A discourse completion task with four complimenting situations was administered. The findings revealed that the new generation of Persian speakers, regardless of their gender, had shifted their CR patterns and overwhelmingly (...) accepted compliments. This change is attributed to the changing interpretations and conceptions of politeness and to the influx of English culture, through exposure to English media, internet, TV series, films, etc., among the new generation of Persian speakers. (shrink)

RésuméEst-il possible d'inventer une science qui définit les règles d'un débat éthique, logique et efficace? Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, un logicien et juriste Ḥanafite, a jugé une telle entreprise possible. Il a assumé la tâche de développer une théorie générale de la discussion scientifique qui a eu un énorme succès dans les cercles d’études dans le monde musulman. Il a appelé la nouvelle discipline Ādāb al-baḥth wa-al-munāẓara, un ensemble de principes éthiques et logiques, empruntés à la logique aristotélicienne et à la (...) dialectique juridique musulmane. Son traité majeur, Risālat Ādāb al-baḥth, a initié une nouvelle discipline dans laquelle des douzaines de traités et de commentaires ont été rédigés. Dans cet article, il s'agit de mettre en lumière cette science négligée, de décrire sa structure, d'exposer ses fonctions et de souligner son importance pour le développement des débats et des dialogues intellectuels dans l'Islam médiéval tardif. (shrink)

Introduction By Charles Randall Paul Thank you very much. Thank you very much Reverend Kowalski. I will now introduce our panel. I'll make my own remarks I ...

In recent years, identity theft has been growing in the academic world. Cybercriminals create fake profiles for prominent scientists in attempts to manipulate the review and publishing process. Without permission, some fraudulent journals use the names of standout researchers on their editorial boards in the effort to look legitimate. This opinion piece, highlights some of the usual types of identity theft and their role in spreading junk science. Some general guidelines that editors and researchers can use against such attacks are (...) presented. (shrink)

Nowadays, web-based applications extend to all businesses due to their advantages and easy usability. The most important issue in web-based applications is security. Due to their advantages, most academic journals are now using these applications, with papers being submitted and published through their websites. As these websites are resources for knowledge, information security is primary for maintaining their integrity. In this opinion piece, we point out vulnerabilities in certain websites and introduce the potential for future threats. We intend to present (...) how some journals are vulnerable and what will happen if a journal can be infected by attackers. This opinion is not a technical manual in information security, it is a short inspection that we did to improve the security of academic journals. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the factors determining the representation of women on boards of directors by considering three main questions. The first question deals with the relationship between characteristics of ownership and governance on one side, and female directorship on the other. The second major question concerns the demographic attributes of women directors, such as nationality, foreign experience, educational level, business expertise, and connections to external sources. The third important question refers to women in senior positions on French boards (...) (e.g., as independent members or board subcommittee members) in relation to firm characteristics and women’s demographic attributes. Our study focuses on French large- and mid-capitalized companies belonging to the SBF120 stock market index during a 5-year period running from 2000 to 2004. First, our results give evidence that the appointment of women directors is strongly related to family ownership and board or firm size. Second, the appointment of women directors is related to their professional services, valuable skills, and network links. Furthermore, we show that women face a double glass-ceiling problem, and note that French firms rely more on the demographic attributes of their women directors when they are appointed to senior board positions. Our study sheds light on issues concerning the law that comes into force in 2016, which imposes quotas of women members on boards of directors in French companies. (shrink)

In the chapter in his Muqaddima1 that Ibn Khaldūn devoted to the refutation of astrology, there are numerous arguments that reveal not only his position vis-à-vis this discipline but also his general intellectual orientation. In the present essay, I shall study these arguments and show the presuppositions and the theoretical basis on which they rest. In doing so, I shall compare Ibn Khaldūn's criticism with what was written by other authors who also undertook to refute astrology and show its incoherence. (...) Indeed, debunking astrology was not a rare matter in Islamic culture, especially in the late period of classicism. Al-Fārābī2 and Ibn Sīnā3 were among the most famous philosophers to denounce the vanity of this... (shrink)

Why can’t we keep as many items as we want in working memory? It has long been debated whether this resource limitation is a bug or instead a feature. We propose that the resource limitation is a consequence of a useful feature. Specifically, we propose that flexible cognition requires time-based binding, and time-based binding necessarily limits the number of memoranda that can be stored simultaneously. Time-based binding is most naturally instantiated via neural oscillations, for which there exists ample experimental evidence. (...) We report simulations that illustrate this theory and that relate it to empirical data. We also compare the theory to several other resource theories. (shrink)

Since current water governance patterns mandate cooperation and partnership within and between the actors in the hydrosystems, supplementary models are necessary to distinguish the roles and the rules of indoor actions which is why we extend a theory in the frameworks of philosophy of technology. This analysis is empirically grounded on the problematic hydrosystems of a river in central Iran, Zayandehrud. Following a modernist-holistic-based analysis, it illustrates how values in the water apportionment mechanisms are being reshaped. The article by using (...) the theory of normative practice has scrutinised the tasks and the rules of the old and new water-management systems, Mirab. Subsequently according to such philosophical theory, it has argued that the conflicts over the cases are due to interference of structural and directional norms within them. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to argue that Derrida’s deconstructionist ethics can be construed as an embodiment of immanent ethics. To achieve this goal, it commences with Friedrich Nietzsche’s articulation of immanent ethics, drawing a contrast with formalist and conformist accounts of morality, exemplified in Kant. Following that, the paper explores the ethical thoughts of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze to establish a connection between immanent ethics and the problem of life. In this context, we observe how immanent ethics redirects ethical concerns (...) from human consciousness to the domain of life, modes of existence, the unconscious desire and its exteriority. Within this framework, the paper characterizes Derrida’s ethics of deconstruction as a convergence of the immanence of deconstruction and deconstruction as a creative mode of life. As a result, Derrida’s formulation of ethical challenges within the context of aporias, impossibility, and responsibility can be understood as a call for resistance against conformity to established forms of life. This imbues deconstruction with an intrinsic ethical-political character. (shrink)

Peer review is the most important aspect of reputable journals. Without it, we would be unsure about whether the material published was as valid and reliable as is possible. However, with the advent of the Internet, scientific literature has now become subject to a relatively new phenomenon: fake peer reviews. Some dishonest researchers have been manipulating the peer review process to publish what are often inferior papers. There are even papers that explain how to do it. This paper discusses one (...) of those methods and how editors can defeat it by using a special review ID. This method is easy to understand and can be added to current peer review systems easily. (shrink)

We evaluate the relationship between the appointment of women to CEO or Chair positions and firm performance, and shed light on the differences between family and nonfamily firms. By using a propensity score matching approach on a sample of 394 French firms over the period 2001–2010, we find major discordances between women’s leadership style and family business expectations relative to firm performance, as measured by return on assets and Tobin’s q. Notably, our results support the conjecture that family firms, which (...) are more conducive to transformational leadership, offer women a more appropriate climate for exercising the function of Chair than that of CEO. In contrast, women CEOs perform better in nonfamily firms. Our findings move away from the predominant focus on barriers and stereotypes images about the female leadership and support the contingency theory of leadership, which states that the effectiveness of a leadership style depends on the organization and culture in which leaders operate, and on task-related positions. (shrink)

In this paper we track the ‘body positivity’ movement from its origins, promoting radical acceptance of marginalized bodies, to its co-optation as a push for self-love for all bodies, including those bodies belonging to socially dominant groups. We argue that the new focus on the ‘body positivity’ movement involves a single-minded emphasis on beauty and aesthetic adornment, and that this undermines the original focus of social and political equality, pandering instead to capitalism and failing to rectify unjust institutions and policies. (...) As such, we argue that the ‘body positivity’ movement ultimately marginalises further the bodies for which it initially sought justice and acceptance. (shrink)

Partnerships in education developed in schools in the 1990s to bring answers to new socio-educational problems. Nevertheless, for the teachers of the sandwich training, they establish for a long time the indispensable condition of a really professional co-op education program. By using the sociology of the actor-network and to the concept of social relationships, we would like to qualify this speech. From the analysis of two university co-op programs, we highlight that an almost fusional partnership with an occupational environment does (...) not guarantee necessarily a harmonious professional development, and that the absence of partnership is not still the synonym for an absence of professionalization. (shrink)

The study aimed to examine the impact of parental influence and media richness on gender stereotypes and career decisions among students at the secondary level in Pakistan. The sample size was 200 students, selected through a simple random sampling technique from government and private schools. Four questionnaires were used to gather data. The data was analyzed quantitatively using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Regression analyses were used to investigate the impact of parental influence on gender stereotypes and media (...) richness influence on gender stereotype beliefs. Furthermore, parental, media, and gender stereotype behavior all have a significant impact on students’ career choices. On the scale of the parental influence and media richness, no significant gender differences were found. It is concluded that parental influence has a greater effect on students’ gender stereotyping behavior and career choices. (shrink)

In “Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition”, Quentin Meillassoux accuses Deleuze of forming a subjectalist philosophical system, that is to say, despite his critiques of subjectivism and representationalism, Deleuze absolutizes the correlation between thought and being, while failing to grasp absolute exteriority. Meillassoux’s main argument in support of this claim is his interpretation of Deleuze’s ideas of “intensity” and “intensive difference” as a “difference of degree” instead of a “difference in nature”. In this paper, I argue against Meillassoux’s reading, and claim that, in (...) his early works, Deleuze constructs a transcendental philosophy very different from Kantian transcendentalism, in which exteriority is graspable through the evental aspects of our experience. Meillassoux accuses Deleuze of being a philosopher of continuity and homogeneity, and believes that the only way to evade subjectalism is by establishing a Cartesian dualism of subjective and objective realms. I claim, however, that Deleuze is the true philosopher of heterogeneity, and that continuity in Deleuze’s thought is simply a means of inducing heterogeneity everywhere. In order to reach the absolute, we do not need to establish a sharp dualism; what we need is a Deleuzian version of transcendental realism, which induces transcendental/empirical distinction everywhere, into both the inorganic and organic realms. (shrink)

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group‐living species to achieve collective tasks that are far beyond single individuals' capabilities. In particular, a key benefit lies in the integration of partial knowledge of the environment at the collective level. In this contribution, we discuss various self‐organization phenomena in animal swarms and human crowds from the point of view of information (...) exchange among individuals. In particular, we provide a general description of collective dynamics across species and introduce a classification of these dynamics not only with respect to the way information is transferred among individuals but also with regard to the knowledge processing at the collective level. Finally, we highlight the fact that the individual’s ability to learn from past experiences can have a feedback effect on the collective dynamics, as experienced with the development of behavioral conventions in pedestrian crowds. (shrink)

This is a reading of Gilles Deleuze’s masterpiece Logic of Sense. It provides a thorough and systematic reading of Deleuze’s book by focusing on the aspects that are neglected in the existing literature. Specifically, the claim that Deleuze’s Logic of Sense provides a convincing answer for the most important question of the history of philosophy regarding the relation between thought and existence as well as the relation between logic and ontology is defended. The answer is that if thought is related (...) to existence, logic is supposed to be, not the logic of essence, but rather the logic of sense. This analysis s pursued respectively through Deleuze’s readings of Frege, the ancient Stoics, Lewis Carroll, Kant, Lautman, Leibniz, and Melanie Klein. (shrink)

Religiosity has been linked with prosocial behavior and a preference for religious ingroups over outgroups. Yet, there are important differences in religious people’s beliefs, values, and practices. Fundamental and quest orientation toward religion may differentially predict intergroup bias in prosociality. Also, individualizing and binding moral foundations may have diverse effects on ingroup and outgroup bias in helping, as moral foundations theory suggests that individualizing and binding foundations differ in how much they focus on ingroup and outgroup moral considerations. In this (...) study, we examined the relationship between religious dimensions, moral foundations, prosocial behavior, and intergroup bias in helping. We found evidence for the effect of individualizing foundations, religious fundamentalism, and quest religion above and beyond demographics and other religious dimensions on intergroup bias in helping. Furthermore, there were independent positive effects of individualizing foundations, religious activity, and age, and independent negative effects of female gender and religious fundamentalism on prosocial behavior. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the relations between religion, prosociality, and moral intuitions in a Muslim context. (shrink)

Our study examines whether gender-diverse engagement partners constrain unethical earnings management behavior in a French mandatory joint audit setting. The investigation of the joint audit setting, by raising concerns about audit team organization and management, provides new insights into how gender-diverse audit partners contribute to the effectiveness of audit decision-making, resulting in reduced earnings management. The need for effective collaboration and communication between joint auditors may foster a transformational leadership style on the part of audit engagement partners. In this regard, (...) we argue that better interaction between male and female lead audit partners confers a comparative advantage on gender-diverse audit partners compared to all-male audit partners. In line with our expectation, our empirical results show that gender-diverse audit partners are negatively associated with discretionary accruals of client firms. Gender-diverse audit partners are also found to constrain earnings management irrespective of whether clients hire one or two brand-name audit firms. Finally, we find that the pervasiveness of earnings management declines when client firms switch from all-male audit partners to gender-diverse audit partners. Our findings underline the importance of considering audit partner gender by policy makers in contexts where joint audits are required or in countries that are considering introducing joint audits. (shrink)