Esta coletânea é uma homenagem aos 70 anos do professor Emmanuel Carneiro Leão. Reúne artigos de seus alunos, amigos e admiradores que foram atraídos pela abrangência e rigor de seu pensamento. A diversidade de temáticas, abordagens e premissas destes ensaios refletem bem a generosidade do espírito de Emmanuel Carneiro.

No Brasil, tem-se a regulação e limitação da livre iniciativa em diversos campos. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho visa discutir a (des)necessidade de regulação econômica no setor de transporte privado, tendo por pano de fundo o caso específico da empresa UBER. Para tanto, a metodologia utilizada tem caráter bibliográfico e qualitativo, com o objetivo de investigar quais as justificativas que têm sido apresentadas pelos que entendem como necessária a existência de regulação no setor. Do estudo concluiu-se que a conquista da (...) iniciativa privada pela regulamentação de empresa de transporte ‘público’ individual, tradicionalmente representativa de um serviço de concessão do Estado, representou uma grande evolução para o país. (shrink)

In their article ’Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach’, Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen contend that, on several of the most prominent accounts of disease, pregnancy should be considered a disease. More specifically, of the five accounts they discuss, each renders pregnancy a disease or suffers serious conceptual problems otherwise. They take issue specifically with the dysfunction account of disease and argue that it suffers several theoretical difficulties. In this response, we focus on defending the dysfunction account against their (...) main objections and show why a version of the dysfunction account is viable on account of the indispensability of normativity in biology and medicine. After disarming their main objections to the dysfunction account, we briefly respond to their treatment of the normality of pregnancy and then draw a distinction between adverse symptoms and underlying causes to show why even though pregnancy may have ’disease-like’ features, it is not a disease. (shrink)

The philosophy of Hitler is simplistic [primaire]. But the primitive powers that burn within it burst open its wretched phraseology under the pressure of an elementary force. They awaken the secret nostalgia within the German soul. Hitlerism is more than a contagion or a madness; it is an awakening of elementary feelings.But from this point on, this frighteningly dangerous phenomenon becomes philosophically interesting. For these elementary feelings harbor a philosophy. They express a soul's principal attitude towards the whole of reality (...) and its own destiny. They predetermine or prefigure the meaning of the adventure that the soul will face in the world.The philosophy of Hitlerism therefore goes beyond the philosophy of Hitlerians. It questions the very principles of a civilization. The conflict is played out not only between liberalism and Hitlerism. Christianity itself is threatened in spite of the careful attentions or Concordats that the Christian churches took advantage of when Hitler's regime came to power.But it is not enough to follow certain journalists in distinguishing between Christian universalism and racist particularism: a logical contradiction cannot judge a concrete event. The meaning of a logical contradiction that opposes two forms of ideas only shows up fully if we go back to their source, to intuition, to the original decision that makes them possible. It is in this spirit that we are going to set forth the following reflections. Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure Israelite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, and The Levinas Reader. His essay "As If Consenting to Horror" appeared in the Winter 1989 issue of Critical Inquiry. Sean Hand is lecturer in French at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the editor of The Levinas Reader and the translator of Levinas's Difficult Freedom . He is currently completing a book on Michel Leiris. (shrink)

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that it is because (...) deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 691-698 [Access article in PDF] Hume, Race, and Human Nature Emmanuel C. Eze Introduction John Immerwahr recently wrote in the Journal of the History of Ideas, "While Hume is generally known as an enemy of prejudice and intolerance, he is also infamous as a proponent of philosophical racism." 1 I am intrigued by this suggestion that Hume's is a "philosophical (...) racism"; one wonders: how many brands of racisms are there? What does "philosophical" racism mean? Assuming that philosophical racism is something which we wish to take notice of, what part of Hume's philosophy sustains it? How much of Hume's philosophy may be affected by this, and how profound?On the surface it seems not to make sense to ask, for example, how profound Hume's "philosophical racism" is or how deeply racist his philosophical works may be. The question appears contrived because, currently, every reference in the literature seem to point to only a footnote: I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered [End Page 691] any symptoms of ingenuity; tho' low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly. 2This was added, between 1753 and 1754, to the essay "Of National Characters." It was also revised in the final edition of the Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, which Hume had prepared shortly before he died in 1777. 3 Meanwhile, the original version of "Of National Characters" was written in 1748.An equally reasonable point of view on the matter, however, is to show that, far from being philosophically unimportant or an after-thought, the footnote, both its addition several years after the original essay was written and its maintenance in the subsequent revisions by Hume, suggests that the ideas expressed therein were important to the author and, significantly, to the arguments of "Of National Characters." It is known that by 1770 James Beattie, in An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Skepticism, had extensively criticized "Of National Character," specifically the note under consideration. Hume was aware of this and other criticisms and responded or commented on them in letters to friends, among other places. In a letter to his friend and publisher, William Straham, later published in London Chronicle (12-14 June 1777), Hume discussed dismissively criticisms from Thomas Reid and James Beattie, referring to the latter as "a bigoted silly fellow." 4 The fact that it survived Hume's multiple revisions and remained part of the Essays and was publicly defended from criticisms invites one not to dismiss this lengthy addition as marginal to Hume's thought but rather to determine why he might have felt it needed to be added in the first place, revised, and critically defended in what is now its definitive version. Relevant specific questions would be: why, of all other possible places (I have in mind, for example, a comparable essay "Of the populousness of ancient nations"), was the footnote added here? How does the opinion in this note relate to... (shrink)

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social (...) phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory. (shrink)

This is a translation of "Socialite et argent", a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of inter-human relations of exchange and the social relations - sociality - that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as "non-indifference to alterity" it appears here as "proximity of the stranger" and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the (...) other person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the "interestedness" of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always "being with others". Being is always "inter-being". Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the "goodness of giving", attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response. (shrink)

This is a translation of ‘Socialité et argent’, a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of interhuman relations of exchange and the social relations – sociality – that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as ‘nonindifference to alterity’ it appears here as ‘proximity of the stranger’ and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the (...) other person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the ‘interestedness’ of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always ‘being with others’. Being is always ‘interbeing’. Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the ‘goodness of giving’, attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the Hegelianism of contemporary neo-pragmatism and the Hegelianism of classical pragmatism as it has been reassessed in contemporary Deweyan scholarship. Drawing on Dewey’s interpretation of Hegel, this paper argues that Hegel’s theory of the spirit is in many aspects more akin to Dewey’s pragmatism than Brandom’s. The first part compares Dewey’s pragmatism with Hegel’s conceptions of experience and the theory/practice relation. The second part compares Dewey’s naturalism with Hegel’s theory of the relation between nature and spirit.

In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability (...) to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation. (shrink)

I learned very early, perhaps even before 1933 and certainly after Hitler’s huge success at the time of his election to the Reichstag, of Heidegger’s sympathy toward National Socialism. It was the late Alexandre Koyré who mentioned it to me for the first time on his return from a trip to Germany. I could not doubt the news, but took it with stupor and disappointment, and also with the faint hope that it expressed only the temporary lapse of a great (...) speculative mind into practical banality. It cast a shadow over my firm confidence that an unbridgeable distance forever separated the delirious and criminal hatred voiced by Evil on the pages of Mein Kampf from the intellectual vigor and extreme analytical virtuosity displayed in Sein und Zeit, which had opened the field to a new type of philosophical inquiry.Could one question the incomparable impression produced by this book, in which it immediately became apparent that Heidegger was the interlocutor and equal of the greatest—those very few—founders of European philosophy? that here was someone, this seemed obvious, all modern thought would soon have to answer? Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure Israélite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Paula Wissing, a free-lance translator and editor, has recently translated Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (shrink)

The ethics of conducting research in epidemic situations have yet to account fully for differences in the proportion and acuteness of epidemics, among other factors. While epidemics most often arise from infectious diseases, not all infectious diseases are of epidemic proportions, and not all epidemics occur acutely. These and other variations constrain the generalization of ethical decision‐making and impose ethical demands on the individual researcher in a way not previously highlighted. This paper discusses a number of such constraints and impositions. (...) It applies the ethical principles enunciated by Emmanuel et al.1 to the controversial Pfizer study in Nigeria in order to highlight the particular ethical concerns of acute epidemic research, and suggest ways of meeting such challenges.The paper recommends that research during epidemics should be partly evaluated on its own merits in order to determine its ethical appropriateness to the specific situation. Snap decisions to conduct research during acute epidemics should be resisted. Community engagement, public notification and good information management are needed to promote the ethics of conducting research during acute epidemics. Individual consent is most at risk of being compromised, and every effort should be made to ensure that it is maintained and valid. Use of data safety management boards should be routine. Acute epidemics also present opportunities to enhance the social value of research and maximize its benefits to communities.Ethical research is possible in acute epidemics, if the potential challenges are thought of ahead of time and appropriate precautions taken. (shrink)

I. Levi has advocated a decision-theoretic account of belief revision. We argue that the game-theoretic framework of Interrogative Inquiry Games, proposed by J. Hintikka, can extend and clarify this account. We show that some strategic use of the game rules generate Expansions, Contractions and Revisions, and we give representation results. We then extend the framework to represent explicitly sources of answers, and apply it to discuss the Recovery Postulate. We conclude with some remarks about the potential extensions of interrogative games, (...) with respect to some issues in the theory of belief change. (shrink)

Preoccupation with multiparty aggregative democracy in Africa has produced superficial forms of political/electoral choice-making by subjects that deepen pre-existing ethnic and primordial cleavages. This is because the principles of the multiparty system presuppose that decision-making through voting should be the result of a mere aggregation of pre-existing, fixed preferences. To this kind of decision-making, I propose deliberative democracy as a supplementary approach. My reason is that deliberation, beyond mere voting, should be central to decisionmaking and that, for a decision to (...) be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation, not merely the aggregation of pre-existing fixed preferences. I agree with arguments that when adequate justifications are made for claims/demands/conclusions, deliberation has the potential to have a salutary effect on people’s opinions, transform/evolve preferences, better inform judgments/voting, lead to increasingly ‘common good’ decisions, have moral educative power, place more burden of account-giving on public officers, and furnish subjects/losers/outvoted with justifications for collectively binding decisions. I argue that a deliberative turn in politics in Africa will have a mitigating effect on tribal and money politics. (shrink)

Aunque fueron muchos los intentos en la modernidad de superar el dualismo cuerpo y mente, las teorías filosóficas del lenguaje en muchos casos lo reintrodujeron de manera sutil pero no menos eficaz. El artículo discute varios teoremas para pensar la materialidad del signo y muestra la preponderancia, desde Kierkegaard hasta el estructuralismo post-Saussuriano, de pensar la materialización como algo necesario, pero arbitrario en su modalidad. En esta concepción, el cuerpo del lenguaje no es solamente aquello que se puede sino aquello (...) que se debe poder modificar: la corporalidad de la expresión es lo que debe poder ser absolutamente sustituible para conservar la unidad del sentido. Sin embargo, en muchos casos, el sentido emerge precisamente de la singularidad insustituible, de la configuración de los signos en la poesía o de la gestualidad inimitable del actor. El articulo argumenta en favor de introducir, en esta discusión, la distinción fenomenológica entre Kó'rper y Leib, que - como Husserl sugirió - también puede pueden pensarse según la diferencia entre lo representable y lo irrepresentable, entre lo que no tiene papel constituyente y que desde luego puede ser sustituido, y lo que permite ser representado por otro porque es insustituible. Although in the modern age there were plenty of attempts to overcome the mind-body dualism, its philosophical theories of languages reintroduced it in a subtle but not less effective way. In this article several theorems to think on the materiality of the sign are discussed, and the preponderance, from Kierkegaard to the post-Saussurean structuralism, of thinking the materialization as something necessary but arbitrary in its modality, is shown. The body of language under this understanding is not only that which can be modified, but that which must be modifiable: the corporeality of the utterance must be substitutable in order to preserve the unit of meaning. Nevertheless, in many cases, the meaning comes precisely from the unsubstitutable singularity, from the configuration of the signs in poetry or from the inimitable actor's gestures. The article argues for introducing in this discussion the phenomenological distinction between Kórper and Leib, which - as Husserl suggested - may also be thought from the difference between the representable and the irrepresentable, between what does not have a constituent role and hence can be substituted, and what allows to be represented by another because it is unsubstitutable. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer a (...) hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

Dialectics, especially Engels’s dialectics of nature, is nowadays mostly held in low esteem, even by Marxist scholars because of its Stalinist dogmatisation over the past century. The aim of this comparative review is to show some stakes and prospects, in Marxism and for Marxism, of the debate: the two reviewed books show how the dialectics of nature could, and why it should be considered in a renewed materialist approach to the natural sciences, and provides the reader with complementary outline from (...) the cognitive sciences to physics, via mathematics. (shrink)

This article presents the process of creation and expansion of the Fundação Abrinq pelos Direitos da Criança et do Adolescente . Established in 1990 by a group of entrepreneurs from the Brazilian Toy Manufacturers' Association , the Fundação Abrinq has been successful at raising the issue of children in Brazilian society by bridging business and several other sectors of society. This article more particularly examines the societal challenges related to the situation of children in Brazil; the creation and development of (...) the Abrinq Foundation; and the achievements of this innovative bridging organization over 15 years. (shrink)

In contemporary political philosophy, the disqualification of the problematic of alienation has to a large extent rested on the conviction that the norms of democracy, justice, and the good life provide a sufficient framework within which to outline a social critique that is politically pertinent. The paradox is that, at the very moment when such a conviction was becoming widespread, its validity was being refuted by the historical reality. It would appear that the casting-off of the Fordist system has seen (...) the emergence of a different set of social pathologies which, if they are to be adequately thematised and criticised, require the activation of the notion of alienation. (shrink)

Albert Lautman,.philosophe, juif, fusillé par les Nazis pour faits de Résistance comme son ami et collègue Jean Cavaillès, a laissé inachevée une œuvre puissante et dont l'influence s'est fait sentir au-delà de son domaine. Lautman est une figure rare : un philosophe souverain, capable de mobiliser les grands noms de la tradition philosophique, de Platon à Heidegger, et suffisamment averti des mathématiques pour proposer une intelligence de leur développement acceptée des savants. Les membres du groupe Bourbaki ont reconnu en Lautman (...) un auteur exposant adéquatement les mathématiques auxquelles ils contribuaient ; Deleuze se réfère à lui de manière élogieuse ; Badiou, Petitot et Salanskis, notamment, lui font écho ou tentent de le prolonger. On examine ici cette œuvre dense, depuis Essai sur les notions de structure et d'existence en mathématiques et Essai sur l'unité des sciences mathématiques dans leur développement actuel aux textes posthumes, Symétrie et dissymétrie en mathématiques et en physique suivi du Problème du temps, après l'avoir située dans son contexte historique-scientifique. On espère ainsi montrer la profondeur et l'actualité d'une pensée singulière, celle d'un grand rationaliste qui était aussi un métaphysicien. (shrink)

This article presents the process of creation and expansion of the Fundação Abrinq pelos Direitos da Criança et do Adolescente (Abrinq Foundation for Rights of Children and Adolescents). Established in 1990 by a group of entrepreneurs from the Brazilian Toy Manufacturers’ Association (ABRINQ), the Fundação Abrinq has been successful at raising the issue of children in Brazilian society by bridging business and several other sectors of society. This article more particularly examines (1) the societal challenges related to the situation of (...) children in Brazil; (2) the creation and development of the Abrinq Foundation; and (3) the achievements of this innovative bridging organization over 15 years. (shrink)

The evidence today is practically uncontested: about thirty years ago we left Fordism behind and entered a new phase of capitalism. That the structures of the post-Fordist social order call for new modes of social critique is also a prevalent idea. The category of alienation continues, however, to be discredited. Nevertheless it is not clear that the categories of democracy (as apparatuses of non-domination), justice and the good life are capable of bringing about the political effects that may be expected (...) today from the concept of alienation. For these reasons, not only the historical diagnostic that appears to have authorized jettisoning the problematic of alienation but also the model of critique used to replace it demand critical scrutiny. (shrink)

This paper asks whether or not normative political philosophy can face the challenge of the critique of the political. This question is addressed to theories of justice in general, but this paper considers Habermas' position in particular. It advances the thesis that the main theoretical and political problem of theories of justice is that they have not really taken the abolitionist dimension of the concept of justice into account. As a consequence, they run the risk of reproducing in themselves the (...) political abstraction that they should criticise. (shrink)

If it seems fully legitimate to introduce Marx in the contemporary discussion about recognition, it is more disputable to attribute to Marx an unified conception of recognition. There is no doubt that Marx hasn’t provided any systematic account of recognition, but he has tackled the issue of recognition from various points of view. Could these various points of view be unified in a general conception of recognition? This article claims that this is not the case since three accounts of recognition (...) should be distinguished that are hardly compatible one with the other: one Feuerbachian account of recognition of the species being in the other, one account of recognition related to the dynamics of disrespect as social experience, and one account of recognition through social roles. (shrink)

As its title indicates, this book is a study of the trip Nietzsche made to Sorrento in 1876, after the Bayreuth festival and before the publication of Human, All Too Human. Paolo D’Iorio’s main thesis is that at Sorrento Nietzsche became a true philosopher, abandoning his metaphysics of art together with his commitment to the Wagnerian cause in order to develop his philosophy of the free spirit. D’Iorio collects all of the available documents about the Sorrento trip, from Nietzsche’s allusions (...) to his Italian experiences in his notebooks and subsequent works to letters to and from his traveling companions and memoirs of friends and acquaintances. The chief interest of the book lies in this philological work, which .. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to examine the logic of Christian revelation as it is presented in the works of Kierkegaard. I have selected for this study three primary works in which the Kierkegaardian conception of revelation is developed. Of these three works, two are pseudonymous productions: Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript , both attributed to Johannes Climacus. The third work bears the English title On Authority and Revelation, the first complete draft of which appears in Kierkegaard's private (...) papers from 1846-1847. In addition to these primary works, the vast material comprising the balance of the Kierkegaardian corpus is used eclectically. ;The concept of divine revelation, with which the validity and significance of Christian theology stands or falls, is one of the most difficult of theological concepts to explicate. Fortunately, it is not the aim of this study to present a fully developed theory of Christian revelation which can stand up to theological and philosophical scrutiny. My task is a more modest one, though not without its own peculiar difficulties. I am concerned to examine the concept of Christian revelation only as it appears in the works of Kierkegaard, and then only to the extent that it shapes the way Kierkegaard thinks about some of the central issues raised in the authorship. The single question which frames my inquiry is the following: If revelation has occurred or does occur, what does this imply about the relationship between faith and reason, the role of history in faith, the nature of religious truth, the appeal to religious authority, and the dialectic of the religious communication? (shrink)

The question of social medicine provides the opportunity to engage in a critical reading of Foucault's theory of biopower. The analyses dedicated by Foucault to `the birth of social medicine' represent one of the few examples of a thorough application of that theory. They allow Foucault to show the heuristic value of the biopolitical hypothesis at the level of the most concrete historical materiality, and not just at that of the general history of the forms of governmentality. These analyses, however, (...) also allow the historiographical and political limits of the biopolitical hypothesis to come to light. From the perspective of the history of sciences as well as from that of the analysis of the modalities of social critique in the first half of the nineteenth century, Foucault appears to provide an interpretation that is too continuist and tends to homogenise the historical phenomena. The disqualification of social medicine relies in part on simplifications that continue to bear great significance today in view of the current transformations in the social question. (shrink)

Current debates on neo-liberal governmentality and the medicalization-psychologization of the social constantly refer to Foucault’s theory of biopolitics. I critically examine Foucault’s notions of biopolitics and liberalism as conveyed in his articles on the emergence of social medicine in the 19th century. My thesis is that the movement of sanitary reform is irreducible to the mere development of liberal governmentality and that the idea of social medicine was associated in the period with a critique of the normative principles of liberalism (...) which remains relevant today. (shrink)

How does Marx refer to Work and to Domination ? The interpretation of Marx’s references to work and to domination is a vexed question. Can we say that Marx criticises capitalism in terms of its effects on work ? Or does he criticise capitalism from the standpoint of those subject to domination, and with whom his position is one of solidarity ? Or does he elaborate a description of the unprecedented transformations brought about in the relations of power, which the (...) category of domination is unable to apprehend effectively ? The article argues that these differences in interpretation are actually based on a series of false oppositions. Marx’s aim is in effect to articulate the question of the domination of work and the question of domination at work, insofar as he accords a position of political centrality to the connection between domination and work. (shrink)