In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner (...) all further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to French phenomenology in the post 1945 period. Whilst many of phenomenology's greatest thinkers - Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty - wrote before this period, Steven DeLay introduces and assesses the creative and important turn phenomenology took after these figures. He presents a clear and rigorous introduction to the work of relatively unfamiliar and underexplored philosophers, including Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion and others. -/- After an introduction setting out the crucial Husserlian (...) and Heideggerian background to French phenomenology, DeLay explores Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics as first philosophy, Henry’s material phenomenology, Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, Lacoste’s phenomenology of liturgical man, Chrétien’s phenomenology of the call, Claude Romano’s evential hermeneutics, and Emmanuel Falque’s phenomenology of the borderlands. Starting with the reception of Husserl and Heidegger in France, DeLay explains how this phenomenological thought challenges boundaries between philosophy and theology. Taking stock of its promise in light of the legacy it has transformed, DeLay concludes with a summary of the field’s relevance to theology and analytic philosophy, and indicates what the future holds for phenomenology. -/- Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of phenomenology and continental philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as theology, literature and French studies. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In 2016, France passed a major law that is unique in giving terminally ill and suffering patients the right to the controversial procedure of continuous deep sedation until death (CDS). In so doing, the law identifies CDS as a sui generis clinical practice, distinct from other forms of palliative sedation therapy, as well as from euthanasia. As such, it reconfigures the ethical debate over CDS in interesting ways. This paper addresses one aspect of this reconfiguration and its implications for the (...) intentions at work in this complex time at the end of life. The concept of intention is often considered central to the ethics of end-of-life care, but its role is recognized to be problematic, with charges of elusiveness and ambiguity. I aim to show that consideration of the French law affords a new understanding of the intentionality of CDS, and that in addition to the obvious importance of this for clarifying the ethics of the practice, it may suggest new ways of addressing the wider problem of ambiguous clinical intentions at end of life. (shrink)

Several studies on ethical and social food attributes have shown that consumers, especially in developed countries, are willing to pay a price premium for fair trade foods products. However, there is a scant literature on how consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for fair trade products are affected by the presence of other ethical food attributes. To fill this gap, a choice experiment was conducted in Scotland, the Netherlands and France to assess consumers’ preferences and WTP for ethical attributes, i.e., (...) fairtrade, organic, and lower carbon footprint, of bananas and to find out whether this ethical food attributes are competing in real markets. The results showed that in the three countries consumers are willing to pay a price premium for the three ethical food attributes. The results showed that in the current market situation these ethical foods are not generally competing against each other. Nonetheless, they are likely to become competing for consumer’s money at least when: the price of organic foods is decreased significantly, the price for fairtrade food products is set higher than consumers’ WTP, and bananas labeled as having lower carbon footprint are made available in retail stores and sold at a price lower than consumers’ WTP. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism comprises fifty specially written chapters on Rene Descartes and Cartesianism, the dominant paradigm for philosophy and science in the seventeenth century, written by an international group of leading scholars of early modern philosophy. The first part focuses on the various aspects of Descartes's biography and philosophy, with chapters on his epistemology, method, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, moral philosophy, political thought, medical thought, and aesthetics. The chapters of the second part are devoted to the defense, (...) development and modification of Descartes's ideas by later generations of Cartesian philosophers in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere. The third and final part considers the opposition to Cartesian philosophy by other philosophers, as well as by civil, ecclesiastic, and academic authorities. This handbook provides an extensive overview of Cartesianism - its doctrines, its legacies and its fortunes - in the period based on the latest research. (shrink)

Thirty years after the publication of Dominique Janicaud’s criticism of what he termed the “theological turn” of phenomenology in France, what is the state of the debate? This paper addresses that question, by examining the phenomenology of revelation in Marion, Lacoste, and others, in turn replying to various arguments that have been advanced against the theological turn and on behalf of methodological atheism. Not only is revelation a viable topic of phenomenological analysis, the attempts to formulate a methodologically atheist phenomenology (...) fail. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to French phenomenology in the post-1945 period. While many of phenomenology's greatest thinkers--Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty--wrote before this period, Steven DeLay introduces and assesses the creative and important turn phenomenology took after these figures. He presents a clear and rigorous introduction to the work of relatively unfamiliar and underexplored philosophers, including Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion and others. After an introduction setting out the crucial Husserlian and Heideggerian background to French phenomenology, (...) DeLay explores Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as first philosophy, Henry's material phenomenology, Marion's phenomenology of givenness, Lacoste's phenomenology of liturgical man, Chrétien's phenomenology of the call, Claude Romano's evential hermeneutics, and Emmanuel Falque's phenomenology of the borderlands. Starting with the reception of Husserl and Heidegger in France, DeLay explains how this phenomenological thought challenges boundaries between philosophy and theology. Taking stock of its promise in light of the legacy it has transformed, DeLay concludes with a summary of the field's relevance to theology and analytic philosophy, and indicates what the future holds for phenomenology. Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of phenomenology and continental philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as theology, literature, and French studies. (shrink)

The institutionalization of natural knowledge in the form of a scientific society may be interpreted in several ways. If we wish to view science as something apart, unchanging in its intellectual nature, we may regard the scientific enterprise as presenting to the sustaining social system a number of absolute and necessary organizational demands: for example, scientific activity requires acceptance as an important social activity valued for its own sake, that is, it requires autonomy; it is separate from other forms of (...) enquiry and requires distinct institutional modes; it is public knowledge and requires a public, universalistic forum; it is productive of constant change and requires of the sustaining social system a flexibility in adapting to change. Support for such an interpretation may be found in the rise of modern science in seventeenth-century England, France, and Italy and in the accompanying rise of specifically scientific societies. Thus, the founding of the Royal Society of London may be interpreted as the organizational embodiment of immanent demands arising from scientific activity—the cashing of a blank cheque payable to science written on society's current account. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can serve (...) to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

This paper brings to light the significance of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking for contemporary physics. The point of departure is his 1956–57 Collège de France lectures on Nature, coupled with his reflections on the crisis in modern physics appearing in THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE. Developments in theoretical physics after his death are then explored and a deepening of the crisis is disclosed. The upshot is that physics’ intractable problems of uncertainty and subject-object interaction can only be addressed by shifting its philosophical (...) base from objectivism to phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty suggested. Merleau-Ponty’s allusion to “topological space” in THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE provides a clue for bridging the gap between “hard science” and “soft philosophy.” This lead is pursued in the present paper by employing the paradoxical topology of the Klein bottle. The hope is that, by “softening” physics and “hardening” phenomenology, the “two cultures” (cf. C. P. Snow) can be wed and a new kind of science be born. (shrink)

Examines Sartre's reception and legacy, both within France and beyond.

This is a sweeping and provocative work of aesthetic theory: a trenchant critique of the philosophy of art as it developed from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, combined with a carefully reasoned plea for a new and more flexible approach to art.Jean-Marie Schaeffer, one of France's leading aestheticians, explores the writings of Kant, Schlegel, Novalis, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger to show that these diverse thinkers shared a common approach to art, which he calls the "speculative theory." (...) According to this theory, art offers a special kind of intuitive, quasi-mystical knowledge, radically different from the rational knowledge acquired by science. This view encouraged theorists to consider artistic geniuses the high-priests of humanity, creators of works that reveal the invisible essence of the world. Philosophers came to regard inexpressibility as the aim of art, refused to consider second-tier creations genuine art, and helped to create conditions in which the genius was expected to shock, puzzle, and mystify the public. Schaeffer shows that this speculative theory helped give birth to romanticism, modernism, and the avant-garde, and paved the way for an unfortunate divorce between art and enjoyment, between "high art" and popular art, and between artists and their public.Rejecting the speculative approach, Schaeffer concludes by defending a more tolerant theory of art that gives pleasure its due, includes popular art, tolerates less successful works, and accounts for personal tastes."[A] remarkable work.... [Schaeffer's] writing is governed by... the ideals of clarity and consequence, the ideas of logic, truth, and evidence.... Schaeffer is so precise and unrelenting a philosophical critic that one wonders how some of the philosophies he anatomizes here can possibly survive the operation."--From the foreword by Arthur C. Danto. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. MorrowSteven C. SmithModern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. Morrow (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 312 pp.Almost anyone who has suffered through a course in biblical studies at a secular (or, increasingly so, Christian) university, read a book, or heard a lecture from (...) one of its scholarly progenies is acquainted with the litany of hermeneutical absolutes. Among the factum historicum are the following certainties: the Enlightenment rescued the Bible from the Dark Ages; the Old Testament was shaped out of the mythical clay of Hellenism; Israel's priesthood was a lamentable development that hijacked an earlier, socially oriented love-of-neighbor religion, replacing it with its bloodthirsty, sacrificial cult; the Documentary Hypothesis is not merely a theory, but the scientific truth of how the Pentateuch emerged; one must separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith; Peter and Paul clashed over their dueling Christianities; and above all, historical criticism is the only reliable lens by which the Bible is to be studied.In Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900), Hahn and Morrow expose such positivisms as the outflow of Europe's secularized universities over these centuries. Not only did politically motivated institutions seek to diminish the theological truths of Scripture (and sadly, were often successful at it), but they eventually repurposed the Bible as "a work of historical fiction," such that the Sacred Page was "to be studied like other ancient myths and fairy tales; it is one fairy tale among many" (24). The authors present a thoroughly researched and meticulously detailed study of the period, and throughout the book amply demonstrate that the aforementioned tropes (and numerous others), no matter how often or how confidently recited, are merely one slant on "the story of biblical criticism" in the modern age.Taking their lead from the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, Hahn and Morrow provide a much-needed critique of historical biblical exegesis and its "appearance of quasi-scientific certainty."1 These salient words of the biblical-theologian Pope, articulated in a variety of contexts (e.g., Verbum Domini), provide the jumping-off point for this robust three-hundred-page voyage. And it is a journey through a divided and secularized Europe, with notable stops in England, France, and above all, Germany. This "divided" Europe, the authors explain, was not a result of the Protestant [End Page 985] Reformation, nor of the so-called "war of religions" that sprang from it—no. The divisions run much deeper still. Drawing upon Andrew Jones's important Before Church and State, Hahn and Morrow rightly lament the societal competition that developed within late medieval Christendom between church and state.2Building upon Jones's work, the authors rightly stress that there indeed existed "a unified medieval worldview wherein what we might think of as temporal authorities and spiritual authorities were united in a single purpose—the extension of the kingdom of God—and this was the background that unified Christendom" (3). As Jones point out, this earlier period of European history "was a world not of the religious and the secular, but of the New Testament and the Old, of virtue and vice, grace and law.... It was an integral vision which included all of societal reality."3 Sadly, the reality of "sacramental kingdoms," in which there lived a reciprocal respect and vision of unity between throne and alter, was torn asunder long before the 1700s, the time at which the present volume commences. Over time, this formerly unified European world gave way to the very complicated, deeply skeptical, and highly politicized world of nation-states. And biblical criticism (along with many other worthy and creative endeavors), became deeply mired in "statecraft."Here, it is worth mentioning that the book should be approached as the rightful heir to an earlier volume (which involved one of its authors, Hahn), Politicizing the Bible.4 While Modern Biblical Criticism may be intelligently read upon its own merits, the reader would do well to pick up the earlier... (shrink)

If nationalism is the assertion of legitimacy for a nation and its effectiveness as a political entity, why do many nations emphasize images of their own defeat in understanding their history? Using Israel, Serbia, France, Greece and Ghana as examples, the author argues that this phenomenon exposes the ambivalence that lurks behind the passions nationalism evokes. Symbols of defeat glorify a nation's ancient past, while reenacting the destruction of that past as a necessary step in constructing a functioning modern society. (...) As a result, these symbols often assume a foundational role in national mythology. Threats to such symbols are perceived as threats to the nation itself and consequently are met with desperation difficult for outsiders to understand. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard’s writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard’s thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard’s contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, (...) literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines. -/- Contents: Envy, Janne Kylliäinen; Epic, Nassim Bravo Jordán; Epigram, David R. Law; Ethics, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez; Evil, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez and William McDonald; Exception/Universal, Geoffrey Dargan; Existence/Existential, Min-Ho Lee; Experience, Jakub Marek; Fairytale, Nathaniel Kramer; Faith, William McDonald; Finitude/Infinity, Erik M. Hanson; Forgiveness, John Lippitt; Freedom, Diego Giordano; Genius, Steven M. Emmanuel; God, Paul Martens and Daniel Marrs; Good, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez; Governance/Providence, Jack Mulder, Jr.; Grace, Derek R. Nelson; Gratitude, Corey Benjamin Tutewiler; Guilt, Erik M. Hanson; Happiness, Benjamin Miguel Olivares Bøgeskov; Hero, Sean Anthony Turchin; History, Sean Anthony Turchin; Holy Spirit, Leo Stan; Hope, William McDonald; Humility, Robert B. Puchniak; Humor, Alejandro González; Hypocrisy, Thomas Martin Fauth Hansen; Identity/Difference, Claudine Davidshofer; Imagination, Frances Maughan-Brown; Imitation, Leo Stan; Immanence/Transcendence, Leo Stan; Immediacy/Reflection, Zizhen Liu; Immortality, Lee C. Barrett; Incognito, Martijn Boven. (shrink)

remarkable as it may seem, we are still, nearly 350 years after Spinoza's death, uncovering new information about the philosopher's life. Previously unknown, or at least unnoticed, documents bearing facts about his years before the 1656 herem and about his parents and other relatives continue to emerge from the archives, especially concerning their communal, business, and religious activities in Portugal, France, and the Netherlands.In this article, we present two such documents, one from the Portuguese-Jewish Archives of Amsterdam concerning Spinoza himself, (...) and one from the archives of the Lisbon Inquisition concerning his father, Miguel Espinoza. The former document was, in fact, hiding in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à LeibnizSteven NadlerVincent Carraud. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. Pp. 573. € 42,00.Over the last two decades, there has been a good deal of outstanding work on the problem of causation in early modern philosophy. Some of it has been devoted to first-order questions: for (...) example, on whether this or that thinker allows for real causal activity among finite substances (and which ones). Other studies, by contrast, have focused on second-order questions, especially the proper formulation of the causal principle itself. Vincent Carraud's book is primarily concerned with second-order questions, although it does have something to say with respect to first-order questions as well. But the depth and breadth of this study makes it much more than just another entry in the ongoing discussion over who thought what about causality among the early moderns. Carraud has a large and complex story to tell: the development of the principle of sufficient reason in the seventeenth century. In particular, he wants to know which philosophers can truly be said to have adopted that principle in its most rigorous formulation. It is both a philosophical and a historical story, and it appears in what is surely one of the most important and interesting books in early modern philosophy in recent years.Carraud directs our attention to a particular phrase that originates with Descartes but then seems to reappear (in various forms) throughout the period: causa sive ratio, "cause or reason." Every term in the phrase is subject to interpretation, of course—'cause,' 'reason' and especially 'or'—and the thesis it embodies (and a philosopher's attitude toward it) is a function of how those terms are to be understood. Carraud's interest is in what this phrase can tell us about how a select group of philosophers (primarily Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz) regard the relationship between causality and intelligibility.The story begins with Suarez, the late sixteenth-century Scholastic. Suarez's contribution to the rise of the principle of sufficient reason is modest but crucial. He privileges efficient causation over all of the other Aristotelian varieties. While he still grants some explanatory role for formal, material and final causes, they have lost their status as "true" causes for Suarez; in fact, they qualify as causes only by analogy with efficient causation. As Carraud reads Suarez, the ratio causae belongs properly only to the efficient cause, since it alone can provide the reason for the existence and being of a thing.It is Descartes, however, who occupies the central role—both historically and philosophically—in Carraud's story. For it is he who truly effects the ultimate reduction (or, as Carraud puts it, unicité) of causality. In the Cartesian scheme, all but efficient causes are banished. Moreover, the efficient cause of an effect is now defined as the sufficient cause, one that explains why the effect is as it is. "La primauté et l'absoluité de la cause lui viennent de ce qu'elle rend raison de l'effet... Les causes sont d'abord les raisons (suffisantes) des effets, en quoi elles les expliquent" (199-200). Moreover, with Descartes we find a universal application of the principle of causality to all things, even to those that previously either were not regarded as sufficiently real to need a cause (the objective reality of ideas) or were regarded as standing outside the domain of causality altogether (God). It is not that God is a caused being for Descartes. Rather, the important thing is that God is, like all existing things, subject to the causal question. That is, it is legitimate to ask why God does not need a cause. And, in Carraud's account, this is where ratio comes in to its own. God is not a caused being, but there is a reason (in God's immense power) why God does not require a cause. Moreover, the only analogy we have for thinking of the way in which God's immensity forestalls God needing a cause is in terms of efficient causality itself... (shrink)

This article examines Constant's analysis of character during the French Revolution. During the late-1790s, Constant declared himself a “democrat”, but he worried that the Revolution was reinforcing character traits in France that would undermine stable liberal politics. He was especially concerned that the “revolutionary torrent” [his phrase] had unleashed violent passions that led to fanaticism, rebelliousness, and the search for vengeance. And, he was disturbed to see that, at the other extreme, the chaos of revolutionary violence had led others to (...) resignation, isolation, and a focus on narrow self-interest. In his search for a path between vengeance and fatigue, he encouraged sentiments like self-respect, compassion, and enthusiasm. (shrink)

Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871–1885 by Julia Nicholls is an ambitious book about the thought of the revolutionary Left in France during the fifteen years after the defeat of th...

This essay attempts to elaborate a first thorough comparative analysis of August Cieszkowski and Nikolaj Berdjaev. Although the latter is well known as one of the most important Russian philosophers, the former is hardly known beyond the Polish borders. This general lack of recognition contrasts with the fact that Cieszkowski played a significant role in nineteenth century philosophy in Germany, France, Poland and Russia. A comparative analysis of Cieszkowski and Berdjaev will undergird the idea that Cieszkowski was not merely a (...) ‘marginal’ figure in the history of philosophy. This essay has sought the reasons why Berdjaev considered himself to a large extent as a disciple of Cieszkowski. The stress is put on the central aspects of both philosophers’ thinking: freedom, praxis and the way they relate to morality in general. (shrink)

Raymond Aron is best known for his intellectual sparring with Jean-Paul Sartre and for his stature as the pre-eminent Cold War liberal in France. He is credited with establishing an aut...

Mill n’a pas pensé la sécularisation comme un simple affaiblissement des religions traditionnelles, mais s’est préoccupé de leur remplacement comme fondement de la stabilité sociale. La Religion de l’Humanité doit réorienter sur le progrès humain les aspirations religieuses. Liée à la neutralisation de la portée morale des religions théistes et surnaturelles sur le plan métaphysique, en cohérence avec l’engagement pour une éducation nationale séculière, la dimension religieuse de l’utilitarisme éloigne aussi Mill de Bentham. La comparaison avec la version comtienne de (...) la religion de l’humanité permet d’aborder quelques difficultés soulevées par ce projet. (shrink)