Les auteurs visent à faire constater l'importance accordée à la pratique épistémologique dans la compréhension du monde politique et à nous interroger sur le rôle du savoir dans la construction d'un ordre social. [SDM].

Le transhumanisme contemporain est souvent rapproché de précédents dans l'entre-deux-guerres. En effet, dans l'espace européen, entre les deux conflits mondiaux, nombre de penseurs ont porté le voeu d'élever l'homme au-delà de sa condition 'naturelle' par différentes techniques, que celles-ci modifient les comportements, les corps, ou les aspirations humaines. Des intellectuels, des scientifiques, des industriels et politiques ont concouru à l'élaboration de discours qui configurent différemment les rapports entre politique et technologie. Ces discours ne se réduisent pas aisément aux catégories bien (...) identifiées de l''homme nouveau,' de l'eugénisme ou de projets d'ordre technocratique. L''Ultra-humain' de Teilhard de Chardin, le 'post-humain' de Julian Huxley, le 'super-homme' de Voronoff, le 'surhumain' de Jean Rostand, l'homme 'minotaure' d'Ortega y Gasset : autant de tentatives pour nommer une humanité qui a perdu de son évidence en face de la machine et qui, par le même et paradoxal mouvement, découvre sa part d'artificialité. En ces temps troublés, l'idée d'un homme augmenté est une idée commune en Europe.--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

„Krumme Touren“ in der Wirtschaft werden in der aktuellen Debatte oft bemängelt. Doch wer zieht die Grenzlinie zwischen legitimem und illegitimem Verhalten von Unternehmern und Firmen? Diese Fragestellung verfolgen die Autoren des Bandes anhand von europäischen Beispielen aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass unternehmerische Handlungsnormen weder konstant noch unumstritten waren. Die Beiträge richten den Blick auf öffentliche Kritik und Skandale, Gerichtsprozesse, unternehmerische Selbstregulierung und staatliche Maßnahmen. Dabei tritt ein Spannungsverhältnis zwischen dem Prinzip der Gewinnmaximierung einerseits und (...) Werten wie Gemeinwohl, Transparenz oder politischen Idealen andererseits zutage. (shrink)

Les professeurs d'espérance n'ont qu'un seul argument : lorsque le danger ou la douleur atteignent un certain degré, la conscience se réveille et l'être humain s'adapte, c'est-à-dire qu'il opte pour des comportements favorables à sa survie. La conscience : un guide sûr! Un argument en apparence très fragile. Il suffit habituellement d'un sourire pour qu'il s'écroule dans le scepticisme ou l'indifférence du jour. Pour avancer sur un tel chemin, il faut croire en la conscience, en la pensée et en la (...) vie, trois formes de lumière qui ont perdu toute recevabilité dans notre monde soi-disant postmoderne. Pourtant, l'auteur soutient ici que le mouvement de la société civile en faveur de l'écologie n'est pas une mode, mais la manifestation d'une conscience en marche, elle-même constitutive de la vie. Solidement enraciné dans la physique contemporaine et l'histoire de la pensée, cet essai propose un fondement métaphysique à l'espérance, un changement de mentalité nécessaire à notre avenir, et une pratique courageuse de la participation à la vie. On trouvera ici un étonnant traité sur la conscience dans son sens le plus large et le plus engageant. (shrink)

Poser ces questions, est-il soutenu dans ce recueil qui explore les référents culturels et les imaginaires paysagers issus de l'histoire, des pratiques d'aménagement et des politiques du paysage au Canada et en Europe, n'est-ce pas se ...

O poeta francês Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) foi também tradutor, ensaísta e crítico de arte. Em relação à produção poética, é considerado o precursor do simbolismo, a partir da sua obra LesFleursdu mal, de 1857; na figura do ensaísta, elaborou o conceito de modernidade, referência para a criação artística, os Estudos Literários e a Filosofia. O presente trabalho explora a influência da linguagem poética no seu trabalho de ensaísta e crítico, e vice-versa, buscando compreender a noção das "Correspondências" exposta no poema (...) homônimo do livro de 1857. Analisaremos, com ênfase nos textos sobre a obra do pintor EugèneDelacroix (1798-1863), de que maneira as correspondências e transposições entre pintura, poesia e música já estavam presentes no olhar do jovem crítico de arte.Palavras-chave: Poesia. Pintura. Correspondências. Sinestesia. (shrink)

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...) brutely and imperfectly similar determinates. Such brute similarities have been thought to clash with realism about universals. I argue that this worry stems from the mistaken assumption that perfect and imperfect similarities are relations of a same kind. If exact and inexact resemblances are distinct and heterogeneous explananda, the realist about universals might explain the first thanks to property-sharing, while happily leaving imperfect similarities between properties unexplained. (shrink)

This article explores the justice of the family. From the perspective of justice, the family causes serious concerns, for it causes severe inequalities between individuals. Several justice theorists remark that by its mere existence the family impedes the access to equality of life chances. The paper examines whether this means that justice requires the abolition of the family. It asks whether everyone, and, in particular, the worst off, would prefer the family to a generalized well-run orphanage. This thought-experiment is used (...) to inquire which value, if any, is such that (a) it would be menaced by the abolition of the family, and (b) in a just society, it would to prioritized over the principle of equality of life chances. (shrink)

The rise of blockchain as a techno-solution in the development sector underscores the critical imbalances of data power under ‘computational capitalism’. This article will consider the political economy of techno-solutionist and blockchain discourses in the developing world, using as its object of study blockchain projects in Pacific Island nations. Backed by US State Department soft power initiatives such as Tech Camp, these projects inculcate tech-driven notions of economic and political development, or ICT4D, while opening up new terrains for data accumulation (...) and platform control. Blockchain developers in search of proof of concept have found the development sector a fecund space for tech experimentation as they leverage a desire for tech-development and exploit regulatory weakness. The material implications of blockchain projects and discourse have been to create governance solutions which bypass the developing world state as a largely corrupting intermediary. In the Pacific, this has meant blockchain supply-chain management systems, proprietary financial innovation in humanitarian relief and an Asian Development Bank project to manage indigenous Fijian lands exclusively on the blockchain. In all these instances, discourses of solutionism, innovation and data empowerment have been deployed in aid of blockchain cartographies of control. (shrink)

Is the principal concern of political philosophy the source of political authority? And, if so, can this source be located in individual consent? In this article I draw on Rousseau to answer the second question negatively; and in rejecting that answer, why we might answer the first question in the negative as well. We should be concerned with questions of legitimacy rather than with the source of authority and political obligation. Our principal concern, that is, should be with the question (...) how well political institutions meet the needs of individuals. I pursue these issues in the context of interpreting Rousseau's distinctive contribution to political thought. I start out by asking the question ‘What problem is the General Will designed to solve?’ I argue that Rousseau's challenge to Hobbes represents a crucial step in the move from the source of authority and political obligation to a focus on legitimacy. (shrink)

Is the principal concern of political philosophy the source of political authority? And, if so, can this source be located in individual consent? In this article I draw on Rousseau to answer the second question negatively; and in rejecting that answer, why we might answer the first question in the negative as well. We should be concerned with questions of legitimacy rather than with the source of authority and political obligation. Our principal concern, that is, should be with the question (...) how well political institutions meet the needs of individuals. I pursue these issues in the context of interpreting Rousseau's distinctive contribution to political thought. I start out by asking the question ‘What problem is the General Will designed to solve?’ I argue that Rousseau's challenge to Hobbes represents a crucial step in the move from the source of authority and political obligation to a focus on legitimacy. (shrink)

In this paper, I concentrate on two themes: to what extent numbers bear on an agent's duties, and how numbers should relate to social policy. In the first half of the paper I consider the abstract case of a choice between saving two people and saving one, and my focus is on the contrast between a duty to act and a reason which merely makes an action intelligible. In the second half, I turn to the issue of social policy and (...) investigate how if at all numbers can have a bearing there, if there is no obvious duty on individuals to save the greater number. My proposal is that it is not the bare numbers themselves (or even the ratio of claimants on either side of the dilemma) which explain our intuitions in such cases, but rather considerations of the extent to which each of us can make a reasonable claim on others. In short, I argue: numbers don't count, people do. (shrink)

In this paper, I concentrate on two themes: to what extent numbers bear on an agent's duties, and how numbers should relate to social policy. In the first half of the paper I consider the abstract case of a choice between saving two people and saving one, and my focus is on the contrast between a duty to act and a reason which merely makes an action intelligible. In the second half, I turn to the issue of social policy and (...) investigate how if at all numbers can have a bearing there, if there is no obvious duty on individuals to save the greater number. My proposal is that it is not the bare numbers themselves which explain our intuitions in such cases, but rather considerations of the extent to which each of us can make a reasonable claim on others. In short, I argue: numbers don't count, people do. (shrink)

Tout au long des années 80, Derrida a exploré le thème de l’invention et étudié en particulier sa conception cartésienne. Derrida récuse avec force cette dernière pour montrer qu’elle dissimule une conception théologico-politique du sujet, accomplissant sur le plan politique la thèse métaphysique du logocentrisme. Mais, à partir de Psychè. Inventions de l’autre, cette vision est infléchie pour développer la signification positive de ce qu’il finit par appeler « l’invention du même » qui constitue l’un des courants majeurs de l’invention (...) techno-scientifique au sens moderne. Solidaire d’une certaine « politique de la recherche », Descartes voit l’une de ses inventions, la « langue universelle », être pour la première fois « contresignée » par Derrida. Cette reconnaissance ne doit pas toutefois cacher un désaccord où se révèle l’originalité de la pensée derridienne de l’invention : résolument anticartésienne, elle propose une inventio qui, en tant qu’elle confond avec le jeu même de la « différance », s’exclut de la cogitatio. Événement immanent à la res extensa qui, pour cette raison, ne saurait être entièrement rationalisé et qui, c’est significatif, en même temps qu’il s’ouvre à la chance, renvoie à une autre conception de l’être-ensemble. L’invention porte dans son excès, selon Derrida, l’annonce d’un temps nouveau. (shrink)

Nous partageons le problème de savoir comment faire face à autant d'humains si semblables et si différents. A autant d'êtres qui ne peuvent interpréter le fait d'exister sans se comparer les uns aux autres, sans se distinguer les uns des autres, et qui doivent néanmoins cohabiter. Et de savoir comment ces humains peuvent d'autant plus se distinguer qu'ils prennent la place successivement les uns les autres, qu'ils reprennent les mêmes traces et doivent les réinterpréter. La première formulation du problème est (...) plutôt celle de la problématologie, dans la mesure où elle place au centre de la condition humaine le langage ordinaire, l'incessante différence de la question et de la réponse. C'est par elle que les humains mesurent ce qui les éloigne ou les rapproche et qu'ils règlent leurs désaccords. La seconde formulation du problème est plutôt celle de l'herméneutique, dans la mesure où elle place au centre de la condition humaine la condition interprétative, où chaque génération doit réinterpréter le monde où elle se découvre, pour reprendre la conversation rompue par la mort. En exposant ces deux " gestes " élémentaires du questionnement, en construisant l'écart entre deux traditions philosophiques de styles aussi hétérogènes, sans chercher à les subordonner l'un à l'autre, il s'est agi de penser une éthique de l'interrogativité. Ce sens de l'interrogation peut seul orienter nos " éthiques de responsabilité " et nous remettre ensemble dans un monde où nous comparaissons d'autant plus heureux de nous distinguer que nous nous effaçons devant l'autre. Ces deux attitudes font notre civilité. (shrink)

Quatre siecles apres la naissance de Rene Descartes, le colloque Lire Descartes aujourd'hui se propose de faire etat de la lecture a laquelle sa philosophie se prete aujourd'hui. Cette tentative de bilan s'articule autour de quatre sections, respectivement consacrees a la tradition medievale dont on sait beaucoup mieux aujourd'hui ce que le philosophe lui devrait; au fondement proprement metaphysique - s'il en est un - de sa philosophie; au rapport qu'entretient cette metaphysique avec la science moderne; enfin et surtout, a (...) la reception phenomenologique du cartesianisme. (shrink)

Sur un sujet peu étudié, et si contemporain, à savoir la haine et les différentes passions qu'elle engendre et qui l'engendrent (indignation, colère, mépris, envie), une étude originale et pluridisciplinaire mobilisant approches philosophiques, politiques et historiques sur des événements passés et contemporains. Une analyse des haines du passé, de leurs effets individuels et collectifs pour mieux comprendre les haines actuelles, tel est l'enjeu de cet ouvrage. SOMMAIRE Préface -- Introduction Chap I -- De la haine 1 -- Définition 2 -- (...) Tempérance affective et connaissance adéquate 3 -- La haine ne peut jamais être bonne Chap II -- Exacerbation et généralisation de la haine 1 -- Imagination et vie affective 2 -- Illusion du libre arbitre et vie affective 3 -- Quelques mécanismes d'extension des affects Chap III -- De quelques passions réputées mineures 1 -- Brève histoire philosophique et politique de la colère : de l'"Ethique" à l'"Iliade" et retour 2 -- Critique de la raillerie, éloge du rire, éthique, religion et politique 3 -- Le mépris Chap IV -- " L'indignation est une haine..." 1 -- Mauvaise ou bonne indignation? 2 -- Indignation, tyrannie et terreur Chap V -- "L'envie est la haine..." 1 -- Des envies à l'Envie 2 -- De l'Envie 3 -- "Le sentiment démocratique de l'envie" A. de Tocqueville Index. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

Of all the things we do and say, most will never be repeated or reproduced. Once in a while, however, an idea or a practice generates a chain of transmission that covers more distance through space and time than any individual person ever could. What makes such transmission chains possible? For two centuries, the dominant view was that humans owe their cultural prosperity to their powers of imitation. In this view, modern cultures exist because the people who carry them are (...) gifted at remembering, storing and reproducing information. How Traditions Live and Die proposes an alternative to this standard view. What makes traditions live is not a general-purpose imitation capacity. Cultural transmission is partial, selective, often unfaithful. Some traditions live on in spite of this, because they tap into widespread and basic cognitive preferences. These attractive traditions spread, not by being better retained or more accurately transferred, but because they are transmitted over and over. This theory is used to shed light on various puzzles of cultural change and to explain the special relation that links the human species to its cultures. Morin combines recent work in cognitive anthropology with new advances in quantitative cultural history, to map and predict the diffusion of traditions. This book is both an introduction and an accessible alternative to contemporary theories of cultural evolution. (shrink)

How can certain cultural goods (for example, museums, ice rinks, opera, the study of humanities) make a claim on our joint resources when there are other urgent needs to be met? Most of us resist the claim that one should sacrifice such cultural goods in the face of urgent needs and their priority as a concern for social justice. At the same time, in refusing the consequence, we are not inclined to think cultural goods more important than the urgent needs (...) of other human beings. What, then, justifies our resistance? (shrink)

The first of its kind, this book is an in-depth history of hydrodynamics from its eighteenth-century foundations to its first major successes in twentieth-century hydraulics and aeronautics. It documents the foundational role of fluid mechanics in developing a new mathematical physics. It gives full and clear accounts of the conceptual breakthroughs of physicists and engineers who tried to meet challenges in the practical worlds of hydraulics, navigation, blood circulation, meteorology, and aeronautics, and it shows how hydrodynamics at last began to (...) fulfill its early promise to unify the different worlds of flow. Richly illustrated, technically thorough, and sensitive to cross-cultural effects, this history should attract a broad range of historians, scientists, engineers, and philosophers and be a standard reference for anyone interested in fluid mechanics. (shrink)

In this review essay, I fijirst analyze the main tenets of Larry Temkin’s Rethinking the Good and, in particular, his claim that the goodness of state of afffairs may not be transitive. I examine one of the key examples of the book, and how it is intended to underwrite this claim. Next I describe the diffference between the threat of non-transitivity and the idea of incommensurability. I also consider the plausibility of what Temkin calls the Essentially Comparative View, and explore (...) possible responses to examples of seeming non-transitivity. I also raise some doubts regarding Temkin’s interpretation of ‘the separateness of persons’ and Rawls’ complaints against utilitarians. Finally, I envisage whether Temkin’s theoretical perspective helps us understand practical dilemmas that organizations such as the World Health Organization face. (shrink)

This book is a long-term history of optics, from early Greek theories of vision to the nineteenth-century victory of the wave theory of light. It is a clear and richly illustrated synthesis of a large amount of literature, and a reliable and efficient guide for anyone who wishes to enter this domain.

This book recounts a few ingenious attempts to derive physical theories by reason only, beginning with Descartes' geometric construction of the world, and finishing with recent derivations of quantum mechanics from natural axioms.

This collection of essays offers different ways of seeing twentieth-century art via the medium of aesthetics. Each essay explores a different vision: Pablo Picasso's Mercure , Paul Klee's work from the thirties, Yves Klein's concept of the Void, Ed Ruscha's gunpowder drawings, and Cy Twombly's Bacchus paintings. Having curated exhibitions on the majority of these artists, Olivier Berggruen's acquaintance with their work is profound, and his approach both scholarly and highly intimate. Olivier Berggruen lives in New York and (...) has curated museum exhibitions devoted to Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Yves Klein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Ed Ruscha. (shrink)

The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...) of some emergence ascriptions that traditional accounts are unable to accommodate. (shrink)

This paper defends hedonic intentionalism, the view that all pleasures, including bodily pleasures, are directed towards objects distinct from themselves. Brentano is the leading proponent of this view. My goal here is to disentangle his significant proposals from the more disputable ones so as to arrive at a hopefully promising version of hedonic intentionalism. I mainly focus on bodily pleasures, which constitute the main troublemakers for hedonic intentionalism. Section 1 introduces the problem raised by bodily pleasures for hedonic intentionalism and (...) some of the main reactions to it. Sections 2 and 3 rebut two main approaches equating bodily pleasures with non- intentional episodes. More precisely, section 2 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be purely non-intentional self-conscious feelings, by relying on Brentano’s objection to Hamilton’s theory of pleasure. Section 3 argues that bodily pleasures cannot be non-intentional sensory qualities by relying on Brentano’s objections to Stumpf’s theory of pleasure. Section 4 develops a brentanian view of the intentionality of bodily pleasures by claiming bodily pleasures are directed at a sui generis class of sensory qualities. Section 5 presents an objection to Brentano’s later theory of pleasure according to which all sensory pleasures are directed at sensing acts. (shrink)

La mondialisation est un des traits dominants de la société internationale contemporaine. Mais alors que celle-ci se traduit par une interdépendance et une interpénétration à un niveau global de fonctions traditionnellement locales, la société internationale demeure encore principalement organisée autour des Etats souverains et de leurs prérogatives territorialement limitées, restreignant d'autant la portée de toutes actions et décisions collectives. Le concept de bien commun pourrait être un moyen de cristalliser les conditions de légitimité indispensable à toute action collective et à (...) toute décision globale. Mais comment transposer ce concept de bien commun dans le cadre des relations internationales? Quelle acception peut avoir un tel concept dans les différents domaines des relations internationales? Quelles initiatives institutionnelles récentes est-il possible d'observer en la matière? Autant de questions auxquelles cet ouvrage tente d'apporter un nouvel éclairage et d'offrir des pistes d'action concrète de réflexion. (shrink)

From the Tin Pan Alley 32-bar form, through the cyclical forms of modal jazz, to the more recent accumulation of digital layers, beats, and breaks in Electronic Dance Music, repetition as both an aesthetic disposition and a formal property has stimulated a diverse range of genres and techniques. From the angles of musicology, psychology, sociology, and science and technology, Over and Over reassesses the complexity connected to notions of repetition in a variety of musical genres. The first edited volume on (...) repetition in 20th- and 21st-century popular music, Over and Over explores the wide-ranging forms and use of repetition - from large repetitive structures to micro repetitions - in relation to both specific and large-scale issues and contexts. The book brings together a selection of original texts by leading authors in a field that is, as yet, little explored. Aimed at both specialists and neophytes, it sheds important new light on one of the fundamental phenomena of music of our times. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of the role that the idea of fraternity plays in John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Many commentators, G.A. Cohen for example, have taken as their target the role of fraternity in understanding the difference principle. The article highlights the neglected connection between Rawls’s principle of fraternity and the role of sentiments in A Theory of Justice. I focus, in particular, on the third part of A Theory of Justice, which has received less attention in (...) the secondary literature. The main idea put forward is that, contrary to what his egalitarian critics contend, the Rawlsian conception of fraternity constitutes the most plausible version of this political ideal: one which is properly egalitarian. (shrink)