L'éthique bachelardienne est une éthique simple, mais pas du tout simpliste : l'homme du théorème est complété par l'homme du poème. Mais si l'éthique est une direction de la pensée qui doit maîtriser notre avenir, la poétique est la source ontologique de cette pensée. C'est-à-dire, la liberté de rêver doit être à l'origine de la liberté créatrice de la pensée ou de l'homme des théorèmes. En fait, il ne s'agit pas d'une éthique fermée dans les modèles artificiels d'une pensée techniciste, (...) mais toujours d'une éthique soutenue, à l'origine, par une poétique de la pensée ouverte. (shrink)

La Alianza de Dios con los hombres constituye lo esencial de la Revelación. El primer texto que menciona la Alianza es el relato de la Creación, y el segundo aparece en los Evangelios, cuando Jesús anuncia la Nueva Alianza en su sangre. Pero no son dos Alianzas, la Antigua y la Nueva, sino una y la misma.God´s Covenant with men contitutes the essence of Revelation. The first text to give account of a Covenant is the narration of Creation ant the (...) last one appears in the Gospels, when Jesus announces the New Covenant through his blood. Nevertheless, there are not two covenants, an Old one and a New one. In the Bible, the different narrations of covenants are a renewal of the unique Covenant. It´s man who is summoned to change his attitude in order to answer, always in a more profound way, to God´s call. (shrink)

This study examines how and when nonprofit board performance is impacted by board diversity. Specifically, we investigate board diversity policies and practices as well as board inclusion behaviors as mediating mechanisms for the influence of age, gender, and racial/ethnic diversity of the board on effective board governance practices. The empirical analysis, using a sample of 1,456 nonprofit board chief executive officers, finds that board governance practices are directly influenced by the gender and racial diversity of the board and that board (...) inclusion behaviors together with diversity policies and practices mediate the influence of the board’s gender and racial diversity on internal and external governance practices. Additionally, we found an interaction effect that indicates when boards have greater gender diversity, the negative impact of racial diversity on governance practices is mitigated. The findings suggest that board governance can be improved with more diverse membership, but only if the board behaves inclusively and there are policies and practices in place to allow the diverse members to have an impact. (shrink)

Both gender and the law are significant determinants of health and well-being. Here, we put forward evidence to unpack the relationship between gender and outcomes in health and well-being, and explore how legal determinants interact and intersect with gender norms to amplify or reduce health inequities across populations. The paper explores the similarities between legal and health systems in their response to gender—both systems portray gender neutrality but would be better described as gender-blind. We conclude with a set of recommendations (...) to address both law and gender in implementing the work of the Lancet Commission on the legal determinants of health to improve health outcomes for all, irrespective of gender. (shrink)

The research on stem cell-based therapies has greatly expanded in recent years. Our text attempts to seek those religious and ethical challenges that stem cell therapy and research bring into debate. Our thesis is that bioethics can defend its principle without a religious background. We will develop our argumentation on three major points: firstly, a comparison between secular ethics and religious views will clarify why stem cell therapy and research are important from a scientific point of view, addressing the very (...) center of the human being; in our view, being based on secular society, bioethics can answer the challenges of stem cell therapy and research; secondly, following Hans Jonas' perspective on experimenting on humans, we seek to understand the philosophical guidance that sciences dealing with stem cell need; thirdly, we will map the ethical guidelines for clinical translational research that have been adopted by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. . (shrink)

This article explores the place of the animal and animals in Lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing that the standard accounts of Lacan on the animal, including the influential intervention by Derrida, depend almost exclusively on the Écrits and Lacan’s early seminars, overlooking late Lacanian texts and seminars. It starts by examining perplexing instances in Lacan’s seminar of “silliness” or “stupidity” – what he himself calls bêtises. The bêtise, which Lacan says plays a critical role in clinical practice, is then treated as the (...) way into a discussion of the place of the animal in Lacan’s seminar, and how it changes between early and late seminars. Écrits and the early seminars consistently locate animals in the imaginary while denying them access to the symbolic, a realm exclusive to the human animal at this stage of Lacan’s thinking. The article then shows how this earlier work rests heavily on ethology, especially key figures such as Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, who disappear entirely from the late Lacan, along with the assumption that animals are caught up purely in the imaginary. If the bees and rats of Seminar XX: Encore do not act as a language-less foil to the desiring human subject, the article asks, what function do they play in the later Lacan? Part of this reading is dedicated to a reassessment of Derrida’s account of the animal in Lacan, an account which is often taken to be the final word on the subject. (shrink)

In the last decades, there has been a far-reaching debate about whether reason is a natural power of the human animal or a socio-historical achievement. This paper brings out and criticizes two paradigmatic views of reason entangled in that dilemma: the substantive view which construes reason as a primitive power possessing the basic forms of intelligibility; and the derivative view which traces back reason to non-rational, natural-historic processes. I approach the issue by discussing how Aristotle addresses the underlying predicament in (...) Metaphysics Theta. The predicament persuades us to overdetermine or underdetermine our natural potentiality for reason because it ignores what I call Aristotle's main insight: the understanding from which rational capacities are exercised is acquired by undertaking appropriate activities. The measure of rational capacities is neither merely naturally determined nor merely socio-historically inherited but relies on the engagement with the things falling under the purview of the pertaining activities. We must recover this Aristotelian insight, I argue, to avoid succumbing to either the substantive or the derivative view of reason. (shrink)

Wittgenstein accepts the linguistic hypothesis about science according which science is the corpus of significant propositions. The epistemological problem can be divided into the problem of demarcation and the problem of justification. The answer to the demarcation problem consists in a criterion for significant propositions. Wittgenstein proposes a syntactical criterion. A proposition has sense if it is composed of elementary propositions and logical operators. The domains that contain senseless propo- sitions must be excluded from the scientific field. Wittgenstein’s solution to (...) the justification problem consists in the hypothesis of identity between tautology and necessary truth. In this way, the logical decision methods may be extended to the epistemo- logical decision. Wittgenstein’s epistemological conclu- sion is that only mathematics and logic (but not physics) are justified, because their propositions are tautologies. (shrink)

Any religion has an ethical component. Thus, the examination of ethical problems is very important for religious studies. Consequentialism is an ethical doctrine according to which a fact is good only if it has good consequences. In order to avoid infinite regression, there is the need for a moral foundation in conformity with the criterion of goodness. The consequentialists proposed various criteria for goodness, such as pleasure, happiness or utility. Any fact will be judged as good only if its consequences (...) belong to the moral basis. The correctness of ethical judgments depends on the analysis of consequence relations. This study takes into account material and strict implication as representations of consequence. Both of them generate ethical paradoxes. If consequence is represented by material implication, according to the Manichean ethics, a fact is either good or bad; there are no neutral ethical facts. If consequence is analyzed by strict implication, the necessary facts will not have a moral value. The present study is to suggest an original solution to these paradoxes. (shrink)

In his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel treats human sensibility differently in the sections on anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. With the recent revival of Hegel’s work, there has been a lively debate about how to understand the progression from more primitive to more sophisticated human capacities. This paper differentiates three influential readings to that effect – the animals-first, the emancipatory, and the rational-first reading – and argues that they risk misconstruing mental development as a transition from one category of capacities to (...) the other. The transition is rendered in terms of either accumulation, emancipation, or maturation. But this basic picture confuses the capacities characterizing us as a kind of animal, a kind of consciousness, and a conceptually self-conscious being. This paper explains how anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology articulate complementary, but irreducible categories of human capacities. The apparently more basic capacities are abstractable aspects of those that come later in the order of presentation. The distinct kinds of capacities do not stand separately on a three-step ladder of mental development but are aspects of one singular and synchronous development of the human mind. Their particular development is mutually dependent on each other but can be properly accounted for only in distinctive categorial terms. (shrink)

In this article, we use an entry to an international architectural student competition on future care to explore how social norms about older bodies may be challenged by designs that are sensitive to the spatial contexts within which we age. The power of the My Home design by Witham and Wilkins derives from its hand-drawn aesthetic and thus we consider the architects’ insistence on drawing as a challenge to the clear and unambiguous image-making typically associated with digitally aided architectural designs. (...) The hand-drawn images of My Home prompt a focus on care as enacted through the relations between material environments and things, and the atmospheric qualities these relations evoke. Throughout our analysis, we argue for greater attention to the ways in which embodied practices, everyday affects and materialities can be represented within architectural design, and the role of hand drawing as a creative methodology in this process. (shrink)

This is an account of the psychotherapeutic treatment of a sign-maker. The treatment posed a special challenge owing to the patient's idiosyncratic blend of sexual, artistic, and spiritual interests, all of which informed his own notion of the sign/way-finding relationship. Way-finding came to connote more than its usual pedestrian meaning; it came to represent a spiritual quest and a personal exploration of the sacred. Conceptualizing this treatment, first for myself, then the patient, and now for you the reader, led me (...) through a way-finding process of my own. This entailed a reconsideration of the function and meaning of signs before finally locating the pertinent theoretical context for my... (shrink)

Considering the dialectical structure of tragic thought in classical philosophy, one can read Nietzsche’s conception of the tragic in a dialectical way. Reading Nietzsche\'s The Birth of Tragedy in this way is justified, as long as the Apollonian and Dionysian are understood as contrasting impulses who work together in their “reciprocal necessity”. Beginning of the fifth chapter of this book, however, there is a second design of the tragic experience; here Nietzsche emphasizes that Dionysian is the affirmative dimension of the (...) tragic. This non dialectical conception of tragic, as Nietzsche builds it along his work, stresses the non necessity to justify life, the affirmation of life as it is, without deploring and rebuilding it, and without giving it an alien meaning. This conception cancels the negativity which founds the dialectical conception of the tragic, in so far as suffering, vain, and finiteness are no longer seen as opposed to life and in need of an appoint justification: they belong to it. The philosophical task is to ask: of what does the tragic of an absolute affirmation of life consist of, if the dialectic contradiction is repealed. (shrink)

Moods are usually taken to be pre-intentional affective states that tune our experience and cognition. Moreover, moods are sometimes considered to not only accompany cognitive acts, but to be understanding phenomena themselves. The following paper examines the assumption that moods represent a specific interpretative skill. Based upon that view, the semantic content of moods seems to be self-determining and to elude conceptual articulation. By contrast, I defend the thesis that the alleged inarticulable intelligibility of affective experiences is possible only due (...) to its belonging to a comprehensive theoretical horizon. For that purpose, I first analyze Heidegger’s influential account on moods in Being and Time, in order to clarify his claim that moods have their own understanding. Although Heidegger asserts that attuned understanding becomes itself when it is interpreted, he nevertheless rejects conceptual unfolding as a legitimate disclosure of the intelligible content of moods. I amend Heidegger’s account by engaging Hegel’s approach to this topic in his Philosophy of Mind. In this text, Hegel argues that feelings cannot give an account of their purport by feeling alone. Affective states not only manifest the need and urge to express themselves, but they reach their full extent when their meaning is disclosed within the entirety of the mind. It may be the case that affective states cannot always be fully clarified, but, even within a non-cognitivist account of moods, their intelligibility requires our acquaintance with articulated understanding. (shrink)

This paper discusses Hegel's conception of self-consciousness in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. It argues that Hegel articulates self-consciousness as a living being's capacity to conceive of itself in light of the life-form it instantiates. I start by critically reassessing the prevalent readings of the Self-Consciousness chapter, each of which focuses on one of three constitutive aspects of self-consciousness: sociality, corporeality or practicality. Second, I reconstruct how the opening of the chapter aims to reveal that the initial (...) rift between the sensory and the conceptual capacities of consciousness is resolved by the unity of consciousness as a life-form. Third, I discuss the specification of this life-form as Geist and argue that, by introducing the notion of Geist, Hegel indicates that the generic capacity of the human being to conceive of itself in light of its life-form always particularizes itself in a conception of human life that determines a historic and social form of life. Fourth, I outline how the master-slave dialectic illustrates the interdependency between sensory and conceptual capacities. Hegel's tale undermines the assumption of a self-contained capacity for reason by displaying how conceptual capacities, actualized by a living being, rely from the outset on objective constraints. I conclude by contending that the Self-Consciousness chapter paves the way for the central role that the idea of life plays in the Logic in exemplifying the objectivity of the concept. (shrink)

Hegel und Heidegger teilen die Ansicht, dass das, was den Bedeutungsgehalt von Begriffen konstituiert, in ihrer unmittelbaren Verständlichkeit verborgen liegt. Dieser Gedanke bildet den Kern einer Konzeption der Negativität im Sinne einer Auffassung der Art und Weise, in der Sinn von Latenz geprägt ist. Hegel und Heidegger verstehen aber die Natur jener Latenz und das Verhältnis von Sinn und Begriff verschieden. Denn mit einer solchen Konzeption der Negativität ist die Frage verbunden, ob die Konstitution von Sinn begrifflich artikulierbar ist und (...) ob Sinn überhaupt begrifflich verfasst ist. Dieser Frage geht das Buch nach, indem es Hegel und Heidegger in ein Gespräch bringt, um den Stellenwert des begrifflichen Vermögens in der Konstitution und Artikulation von Sinn zu klären. Dabei wird eine Kritik an der Auffassung formuliert, dass die Quelle von Sinn nichtbegrifflich und unbegreiflich ist, und argumentiert, dass nur die begriffliche Artikulation von Bedeutungen die semantische Fülle der Welt verbürgt. (shrink)

If we want to define today's society in one word, trying to capture its meaning, it would be polarization. The interdependence between all social segments, articulated by globalization, has a double function: unpacking the identitary elements that enter in the structure of society and framing them in a relational dynamic. In this situation are Theology and Science, which, of course, maintain a number of components under their general names. Can we talk about a congruence between these two dimensions of human (...) knowledge? Or they are developing completely separately and antagonistic in social progress? According to Ian G. Barbour there are four types of relation between Science and Religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, integration. This article intends to highlight the congruence between Theology and Science in the paradigm of neo-patristic synthesis, which explores in a phenomenological, theological and philosophical way the relationship between these two. Neo-patristic synthesis is a theological movement from the 20th century, generated by the initiative of the orthodox theologian G. Florovsky. (shrink)

God's Covenant with men contitutes the essence of Revelation. The first text to give account of a Covenant is the narration of Creation and the last one appears in the Gospels, when Jesus announces the New Covenant through his blood. Nevertheless, there are not two covenants, an Old one and a New one. In the Bible, the different narrations of covenants are a renewal of the unique Covenant. It's man who is summoned to change his attitude in order to answer, (...) always in a more profound way, to God's call. (shrink)

Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans. While such (...) innovation is to be encouraged, we argue that a more comprehensive engagement with the ethics of these emerging fields of inquiry will add value in terms of the significance and impact of associated interventions. In this contribution, we highlight how the concept of spatial and temporal scale can be usefully deployed to shed light on a variety of ethical issues common to emerging environmental health perspectives, and that the potential of scalar analysis implicit to van Potter’s conceptualization of bioethics has yet to be fully appreciated. Specifically, we identify how scale interacts with key ethical issues that require consideration and clarification by one health, ecohealth, and planetary health researchers and practitioners to enhance the effectiveness of research and practice, including justice and governance. (shrink)