Cet article décrit le processus de création des archives publiques locales en France et surtout en Angleterre où il a fallu attendre la seconde moitié du xxe siècle pour qu'un réseau cohérent de dépôts se mette en place dans les comtés. Il suggère ensuite que la manière dont les collections ont été constituées a influencé directement la fabrique de l'histoire sociale et qu'elle explique, en particulier, les fortes divergences entre les historiographies anglaise et française dans les années 1960 et 1970. (...) Il avance enfin que l'intérêt actuel pour une histoire des individus, auxquelles se prêtent mieux les sources anglaises et françaises, permet un rapprochement inattendu des historiographies. (shrink)

Applied general equilibrium models have received considerable attention and scrutiny in the public debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement. This collection brings together the leading AGE models that have been constructed to analyse NAFTA. A variety of approaches to modelling trade liberalization are taken in these studies, including multi-country and multi-sectoral models, models that focus on institutional features of particular sectors affecting multinational firms and rules of origin, and models with some inter-temporal structure. Further, by constructing stylized models, (...) theoretical linkages have been identified that drive numerical results in the larger AGE models. The volume also assesses what can be learned about the likely economic effects of NAFTA from the collection of studies taken as a whole. Areas in need of further study have been highlighted. (shrink)

In the early modern period, the European concept of “nobility” was rarely used to describe the upper classes of the societies born in the British or in the French Americas. The presence of French nobles in New France or in the French West Indies and the emergence of the native gentry in parts of the British Empire have been much studied. But the social impact of elites has not been fully recognized by Atlantic historians—due, perhaps, to a bias towards “authentically” (...) New World systems of social recognition based upon wealth, emphasizing supposedly greater possibilities of social mobility. This paper takes a comparative perspective to the social meanings of being a noble or being a gentleman in both empires. It concludes that there were few substantive differences between French nobles living in the metropolis and in the colonies because legal definitions of the French noblesse were strictly determined by the Crown. The essence of the French nobility was, in theory, the same in Versailles, in a remote rural parish of France or in Quebec. The story was very different for British colonial gentlemen who encountered countless difficulties to be socially accepted by their metropolitan counterparts. The paper explores the consequences of the chasm between British metropolitan and colonial upper classes and assesses solutions taken by colonial gentlemen to be fully integrated in the gentry of Great Britain. (shrink)

Main Response Topics ? Introduction ? Open display and public evaluation ? Publicity versus patient privacy ? Facial tissue donation ? Validity of Louisville Instrument for Risk Acceptance ? Patients' understanding of risk ? Face versus hand transplantation ? Rejection rates/risks ? Patient compliance ? Exit strategy ? Functional recovery ? Societietal implications ? Psychological implications ? Conclusion: Uncertainty likely to persist.

In this volume, Simona Goi and Frederick M. Dolan gather stimulating arguments for the indispensability of fiction_including poetry, drama, and film_as irreplaceable sites for wrestling with nature, meaning, shortcomings, and the future of modern politics.

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

The involvement of developing countries in international clinical trials is necessary for the development of appropriate medicines for local populations. However, the absence of appropriate structures for ethical review represents a barrier for certain countries. Currently there is very little information available on existing structures dedicated to ethics in western and central Africa. This article briefly describes historical milestones in the development of networks dedicated to capacity building in ethical review in these regions and outlines the major conclusions of two (...) workshops on this issue, which were held in September and October 2002 in Libreville, Gabon, and Paris, France. The workshops were the culmination of collaboration between the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) and the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN). They produced an update on ethics organizations with regard to mission, function, activities, members, and contact people, in eight countries within the regions discussed. As a result of the commitment of mandated delegates, a further prominent outcome followed these workshops: the creation of national structures, where none existed before, dedicated to the ethical review of clinical trials. (shrink)

The involvement of developing countries in international clinical trials is necessary for the development of appropriate medicines fo.

According to François Laruelle, French thought has been unduly influenced by corpuscular or atomist thinking, yet Laruelle has himself employed key atomist terms—in particular, that of the clinamen or swerve—in framing his own style of thought. This essay looks at this tension between atomism and anti-atomism in Laruelle’s thought, taking the measure of his contribution to a larger stream of postwar French thinking about the relevance and stakes of ancient atomism. Its contention is that Laruelle subtly but really outlines (...) a quantum theoretical resumption of ancient atomist philosophy—one that deserves closer attention and comparative study in the larger context of French philosophical interest in the atomists. A first section of the paper briefly describes Laruelle’s general project, along with his claim that he differs from his contemporaries because he uniquely escapes the dangers of what he calls corpuscular thought. A second section addresses the apparent tension between Laruelle’s claim to produce a non-corpuscular thinking and his consistent recent use of the atomist image of the clinamen, ultimately arguing that Laruelle sides with the clinamen against two forms of corpuscularity supposedly avoided by the clinamen itself but nonetheless usefully embodied in atomist thought. The final section of the paper draws up in preliminary terms a comparison between Laruelle’s understanding of his relationship to atomism and that of his contemporaries, focusing in particular on Alain Badiou. (shrink)

Nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive sciences (NBIC) have gradually gained traction in the United States of America (USA), subsequently expanding to Europe, and are now proliferating worldwide. Scientists are trying with more success to remove the causes of death by “repairing” humans, or even by “increasing” their physical and cognitive capacities. NBICs not only can help researchers promote “one health” by improving environmental conditions, human and animal health, but also, they can lead humanity towards transhumanism through eugenics. Thanks to (...) the principle of totality, the intentional modification of the human body for therapeutic purposes through surgery has always been seen as a source of medical progress. But how far can the living human body be modified at will? Gilbert Hottois and Jean-François Mattei have deciphered transhumanism to question its alleged “humanism” and study its impact on our humanity. Today, science has gone further thanks to the possibilities offered by converging NBIC technologies and especially with the advent of human genome editing! The objective of this article is to highlight the hopes and fears of Homo sapiens following the applications of NBICs, and to propose ethical reflections on the invading transhumanist and posthumanist doctrines that tend to become spiritual movements, even religions. A summary study, based on a scientific bibliography, linked to NBICs and including ethical aspects, will present the ethical issues of the convergence of nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive sciences, which could become a springboard for transhumanism and posthumanism. (shrink)

The writings of François Jullien are an indispensable starting point for those hoping to eschew the provincialism hampering many forms of art theory today. In the first instance, his writings help identify the limitations of aesthetic theory fashioned according to the European model. These "limitations" refer to both the practical limits that prevent such theory from taking account of the different forms of artistic production in our world more generally, as well as to the constitutive limits that define European (...) thought in its specificity. Jullien allows us to approach our own thought as we might another culture, namely as a group of historically contexualized ideas deprived of their sense of self-evidence. In... (shrink)

In October 1854, around 150 years ago therefore, François Cantagrel, a disciple of the well-known utopian visionary Charles Fourier, set sail for the New World. He was leader of the first group of French Fourierist settlers emigrating to North America, where they planned to emulate their American co-disciples in establishing new ‘phalansteries’ there and hence to lay the foundations for the ‘phalanx of harmony’ to come. The instigator of the expedition was Victor Considérant, a great propagandist for Fourier's doctrine, (...) under whose mandate Cantagrel was sent out. The region chosen for the founding of the utopian colony was Texas, at that time in the midst of a great surge of settlement. Cantagrel bought a block of land in Houston, then a mere straggling frontier town on the edge of a bayou infested with alligators and mosquitoes, to serve as a staging post. Of more significance was land purchased close to Dallas, then but a village of 400 souls, for it was here in the next few years that a Fourier colony, ‘La Réunion’, was established. It came to number more settlers than the village of Dallas itself. But it resulted in a total disaster. (shrink)

Dans la mesure où chaque siècle est en conséquence ou effet direct de celui qui le précède, peut s'imposer ici, pour " comprendre " une part importante de la conscience " dogmatique " du XXe siècle, l'expression du polémiste catholique laïc que fut Joseph de Maistre : " L'Eglise n'est point argumentatrice de sa nature : elle croit sans disputer… " Si apparaît ici le rôle de l'Eglise dans la " définition ", au sens théologique, du dogme, apparaît également (...) que, pour Maistre, le dogme précède la définition, qui ne fait que le formuler, le " caractériser ". On est loin ici de la définition " technique " du dogme qui sera celle du concile Vatican I et qui s'imposera alors : vérité révélée et proposée comme telle par l'Eglise, de façon infaillible. Il s'avère ainsi, au cours du XIXe siècle, que, si une certaine vision de l'autorité de l'Eglise dans l'élaboration du dogme est inséparable d'une importance accrue attachée à l'infaillibilité du Pontife romain, c'est aussi la théologie de la primauté qui est en cause. En raison du poids de l'époque immédiatement antérieure au XXe siècle, J.-F. Chiron propose, dans cet article, une relecture ecclésiologique de l'élaboration et de la compréhension du dogme au XIXe siècle.Insofar as each century is the result or direct effect of the one that preceded it, the expression of the lay, Catholic polemist, Joseph de Maistre: "The Church is not argumentative by nature; it believes without arguing…" may be vital to our "understanding" of much of the "dogmatic" consciousness of the 20th century. If the role of the Church appears to be to "define" dogma in the theological sense, it also appears that, for Maistre, dogma precedes its definition, which merely formulates it and "characterizes" it. Here we are far from the "technical" definition of dogma, which would be adopted by the first Vatican Council and became established at the time, as revealed truth, which is infallibly proposed as such by the Church. It thus turns out that, during the 19th century, while a certain vision of the Church's authority in developing dogma was inseparable from the increased importance attached to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, the theology of primacy was also in question. Because of the weight of the period immediately preceding the 20th century, J.-F. Chiron proposes in this article an ecclesiological rereading of the development and comprehension of dogma in the 19th century. (shrink)

This article reports on a historical investigation carried out on the conical object MIN000-3519 preserved in the mineralogy collections of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle at Paris (France). The mineralogist René-Just Haüy (1743-1822) included this object, cut in a single pyrite (FeS2) crystal, in his working collection with the references ‘Sulphured iron, mirror of the Incas, of Peru, M. de Jussieu’. All of the research lines followed lead the author to Joseph de Jussieu (1704-1779) and his shipments of botanical (...) specimens and various other samples from South America. As a member of the Godin-La Condamine-Bouguer geodesic expedition on the equator (1735-1743), he returned to France only after 36 years (1771), ill, exhausted and dispossessed of the scientific product of his Andean collections. This pyrite mirror is important because, in addition to appearing to be the only archaeological object that can be linked to Joseph's peregrinations in America, it resembles other specimens found at sites of the Cañaris culture (500-1500 AD) in Ecuador. Preserved within the de Jussieu family, this object would presumably have been given to Haüy by Joseph's heirs, his nephews Antoine-Laurent (1748-1836) or Laurent-Pierre (1792-1866), with whom he had close ties. (shrink)

The articles assembled here demonstrate the impact of Lacan's thought on epistemology, anthropology, feminist studies, and literature. The focus of Leupin's introduction and of the first chapters by Jean-Claude Milner and Francois Regnault is Lacan's linking of the social sciences and science. Leupin writes that while Freud drew upon "medicine and biology to ensure... scientific consistency", in Lacan these are replaced by mathematics and topology. Lacan argued that the social or human sciences should be renamed the "conjectural sciences"--that they are (...) susceptible of an exact calculation in terms of probability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and AestheticsJoseph GrangeIn Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics. By François Jullien. Translated by Paul M. Varsano. New York: Zone Books, 2004. Pp. 1,969.A book praising "blandness"—which is the translator's English word for the French fadeur, which is the author's translation of the Chinese dan!—and a book that is at once fascinating and "repellent" (to use (...) the translator's description of his tortuous search for an equivalent of fadeur and dan), In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics by François Jullien is a "globalizing" philosophical essay bent on stopping readers in their tracks at every twist and turn of the text. Is it worth the trouble? I shall venture a response in this review.More than once while reading this book, I was reminded of Plato's Sophist, where the difficulty in locating the sophist is described in such intricate detail. First he is here, but then he is over there; on the other hand, he could be hiding near by— but wait, maybe he has disappeared. So it is also with blandness. And perhaps it should be so, because once you have located the bland, it ceases to be bland and turns into something else. To take a fix on blandness Jullien throws it against a number of traits, qualities, experiences, and events: strength, music, sounds, signs, landscapes, painting, tastes, literature, ideology, margins and centers, and, finally, the fact that "transcendence is natural." At the same time, the author weaves these contrasts and comparisons through the history of Chinese culture, especially in the evolution of its painting and poetry. [End Page 484]Foremost among the qualities associated with blandness is inner detachment. What come immediately to mind are Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and aspects of Confucian teaching. Jullien has already given us a splendid treatise in his The Propensities of Things, and in some ways this volume rings many changes on that study of Chinese culture. But there is more to blandness than causal efficacy. It also suggests openness and a mood of friendliness toward the other, the different, and all things strange. Further, blandness is similar to harmony in the sense that it does not insist on its own presence. Rather, it constantly blends together opposites through its own power.It is power and its expression that is at the heart of the author's project. He attempts over and over again to show how the seemingly weak is actually the strong, that the far away is really close to hand, that emptiness is charged with spontaneous creative energy. Thus, what lingers is not yet finished expressing itself. And the translator tells us that a gustatory sense is the primary base of fadeur, dan, and blandness. The body is the region within which the bland can have its most powerful effect. Think of Chinese medicine, where "the web that has no weaver" (the title of Ted Kaptchuk's brilliant book) is the object of the physician's art. Or consider the power of water to yield and then conquer all. Or remember the Mahāyāna Buddhist's invocation of śūnyatā as the source of healing and renewal. Or recall the many times that Confucius advises silence rather than words. All these moments are akin to what Jullien calls "blandness."One way to grasp the insight into Chinese culture that Jullien is struggling with is to express it by way of Neoplatonism and Spinoza. What is often forgotten in expositions of these formidable philosophies is the way in which they use a novel doctrine of causality to bind together different realms of beings. For Plotinus and Spinoza the cause never really leaves the effect but remains there, hidden but effective. It is through this lingering presence that transcendence and immanence, body and soul, and God and the World remain conjoined. The image of the ladder so frequently found in these texts must be understood to run in both directions—up and down. So also, blandness is a dao that opens up experience to further depths and heights.Jullien's major concern is aesthetics... (shrink)

The articles assembled here demonstrate the impact of Lacan's thought on epistemology, anthropology, feminist studies, and literature. The focus of Leupin's introduction and of the first chapters by Jean-Claude Milner and Francois Regnault is Lacan's linking of the social sciences and science. Leupin writes that while Freud drew upon "medicine and biology to ensure... scientific consistency", in Lacan these are replaced by mathematics and topology. Lacan argued that the social or human sciences should be renamed the "conjectural sciences"--that they are (...) susceptible of an exact calculation in terms of probability. (shrink)

This is the first translation into English of an important early work of the German idealist philosopher F.W.J. Schelling. Philosophy and Religion (1804) is considered a precursor to his major work on freedom, his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809). In Philosophy and Religion, Schelling raises the question of how philosophy can come to terms with the failure of approaching the highest principle of being, the Absolute (or God), rationally. He argues that the only possibility of recognizing (...) the Absolute lies in intellectual intuition, which goes beyond presentiment or religious intuition. For Schelling, it is the task of philosophy to lead the soul towards the intuition of the Infinite: "All philosophy begins . . . with an animated idea of the Absolute." In recent years, Schelling's philosophical ideas have been adopted by contemporary thinkers such as the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek and the French theorist of "Non- Philosophy," François Laruelle. (shrink)

Solidarity is a complex theoretical and historical investigation of one of the most dynamic social movements in post-World War II Europe. For some time now, Touraine has attempted to develop a comprehensive theory of social movements. In Solidarity, he and fellow researchers François Dubet, Michel Wieviorka, and Jan Strezelecki, apply the theories of action, movement and sociological intervention elaborated in The Voice and The Eye to the situation in Poland 1980-1. Solidarity is one of many attempts by Touraine to (...) combine a comprehensive theory of social change and action with the history of a contemporary social movement. Here Touraine et al. attempt to explain “the nature, internal workings and the evolution of Solidarity.”. (shrink)

Le but de ce volume, véritable prisme de questionnements et d’études de cas, est d’essayer de tracer, à travers les écritures de soi, les conditions d’émergence d’un moi, d’un ego, de la notion même d’individu. Nécessairement, ceux qui l’ont conçu ont dû ratisser large. Les différentes contributions analysent des cas dispersés sur plusieurs siècles, en tenant compte de plusieurs genres de récits de soi : livres de raison, journaux plus ou moins intimes, chroniques… Les présupposés sous-jacent...

This essay situates the French Jesuit missionary Joseph-François Lafitau's (1681–1746) ‘discovery’ of Canadian ginseng within its social, commercial and religious contexts, and illustrates how the missionary's upbringing and education in France shaped the way he perceived nature in the New World. It elucidates the manner in which Lafitau ‘Galenized’ Canadian flora, fauna and peoples. It explores the role of Lafitau's dual enculturation in both a mercantile household and later the Society of Jesus in his application of Galenic categories (...) to Canadian nature. The essay then examines the tensions between localism and universalism in Galenic medicine in the eighteenth century. It links these dichotomies to Lafitau's Galenization of Canadian ginseng. Finally, it suggests that since the Jesuits were prohibited from trading goods they had purchased, they sold medicinal plants they had cultivated themselves, which played a central role in financing the Society's missions in a manner they believed to be morally acceptable. (shrink)

The seventh edition of this pragmatic guide to determining right and wrong in the workplace is updated with new case studies and ancillary materials to combine stakeholder perspectives with a deep dive on workplace ethics issues. Using a unique stakeholder-based approach, this book takes business ethics out of the theory realm and provides practical ways to analyze any business decision. Including dozens of cases, Joseph Weiss looks beyond the impacts of ethical lapses on share price and profit to focus (...) on relationships between stakeholders, including individuals, groups, corporations, and governments. The new seventh edition includes seven new cases and ten new Point/Counterpoint exercises, which challenge students to argue both sides of a contemporary issue. It incorporates the latest research as well as updated cases dealing with recent scandals at organizations such as Boeing, Facebook, and Uber. Professors will have access to online support, including teaching notes, PowerPoint slides, and sample tests. The book is equipped with a step-by-step guide to implementing stakeholder analysis, tips to help students apply ethical principles in their personal and professional lives, and comprehensive coverage of employee workplace issues. Addressing relevant topics such as risk management, preferential hiring, and sexual harassment in conjunction with the digital divide, bribery, the environment, and more, Business Ethics, seventh edition explores ethical implications in today's increasingly interconnected global business environment. (shrink)

(2013). Life, the Unhistorical, the Suprahistorical: Nietzsche on History. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 64-91. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.744532.

Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and (...) disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role. (shrink)

Ce volume fait le point sur plusieurs années de recherches méthodologiques et archivistiques et complète les publications récentes des membres du GDR sur le sujet, dont les dernières : Entre mémoire et histoire. Écriture ordinaire et émergence de l’individu, éd. S. Mouysset et N. Lemaitre, Paris, CTHS ; Car c’est moy que je peins. Écritures de soi, individu et liens sociaux (Europe, xve-xxe siècle), dir. S. Mouysset, Jean-Pierre Bardet et François-Joseph Ruggiu, Toulouse, Framespa, coll. « Mé...

The book combines philosophical exposition and legal analysis, and pays special attention to issues of tort law.

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...) by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency. (shrink)