Depuis une quinzaine d'années, on assiste à l'émergence en France d'un modèle de débat public relativement original. Son institutionnalisation progressive, par la création de la Commission nationale du débat public, correspond à la volonté d'intégrer des acteurs différents autour d'une discussion au plus près des instances d'exécution de la politique publique. Elle est révélatrice d'une tension entre deux modes de conception de la communication en politique, l'une délibérative et l'autre instrumentale. Ainsi, bien que la création de la CNDP corresponde incontestablement (...) à un élargissement de la palette des modalités d'expression démocratique et contribue à la diffusion d'une « culture du débat » en France, il reste que son ancrage dans le processus décisionnel reste problématique et encore contesté par de nombreux élus.Past fifteen years have seen the emergence in France of a model of public debate relatively original. Its progressive institutionalization by creating the National Commission for public debate is the desire to integrate different actors around a closer discussion of the enforcement of public policy. It reveals a tension between two modes of communication design in politics, one deliberative and the other instrumental. Thus, although the creation of the CNDP undoubtedly corresponds to a broadening of the range of conditions for democratic expression and contributes to the spread of a "culture of debate" in France, the fact remains that its anchoring in the decision-making process remains problematic and still contested by many elected officials. (shrink)

In vertebrates it is often found that if one considers a group of genes clustered on a certain chromosome, then the homologues of those genes often form another cluster on a different chromosome. There are four explanations, not necessarily mutually exclusive, to explain how such homologous clusters appeared. Homologous clusters are expected at a low probability even if genes are distributed at random. The duplication of a subset of the genome might create homologous clusters, as would a duplication of the (...) entire genome. Alternatively, it may be adaptive for certain combinations of genes to cluster, although clearly the genes must have duplicated prior to rearrangement into clusters. Molecular phylogenetics provides a means to examine the origins of homologous clusters, although it is difficult to discriminate between the different explanations using current data. However, with more extensive sequencing and mapping of vertebrate genomes, especially those of the early diverging chordates, it should soon become possible to resolve the origins of homologous clusters. BioEssays 21:697–703, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

The aim of this book is to provide a better foundation for the legal rights of children than what now exists. The first part of the book describes the current legal status of children and critically discusses the traditional arguments for denying certain legal rights to children while granting them others. The second part describes and defends a general theory of children's rights, based on the principles of utility and egalitarian justice. The third part shows how the theory justifies significant (...) change in the current legal system. (shrink)

Disjunctivism is the focus of a lively debate spanning the philosophy of perception, epistemology, and the philosophy of action. Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson present 17 specially written essays, which examine the different forms of disjunctivism and explore the connections between them.

Abstractabstract:This article examines Harold Ramis’s 2005 noir comedy The Ice Harvest as the critically dystopian counter-panel to his beloved 1993 film Groundhog Day, a film frequently discussed within the paradigm of utopia. While starkly different in genre, tone, and reception, the two films comprise a dialectical dyad that registers the historical transition from the utopian cultural effervescence of the early 1990s to the tragic foreclosure of imaginative horizons and the dystopian transformation of economic, political, and social landscapes in the new (...) millennium. In The Ice Harvest, the author argues, this is achieved through a strategic reactivation of film noir as a variant of the critical dystopia. (shrink)

Plato recognizes faction as a serious threat to any political community. The Republic’s proposed solution to faction relies on bringing citizens into a relation of ὁμόνοια. On the dominant line of interpretation, ὁμόνοια is understood along the lines of “explicit agreement” or “consensus.” Commentators have consequently thought that the καλλίπολις becomes resistant to faction when all or most of its members explicitly agree with one another about certain fundamentals of their political association—for example, they agree regarding who should govern in (...) the καλλίπολις.We argue that ὁμόνοια in Plato’s political philosophy has been under-analyzed and misunderstood. We show that, in Alcibiades I, rendering ὁμόνοια simply as agreement results in confusion about how expertise, political friendship, and civic unity are compossible in a well-ordered political community. In our view, Plato refines and adds philosophical depth to the concept of ὁμόνοια in the Republic. We claim that ὁμόνοια is a relation of psychological “like-mindedness” that obtains among members of different occupational classes in a political community. A community is rendered resistant to faction, then, when its members are, in some significant way, psychologically alike. Additionally, while Platonic ὁμόνοια can naturally be expected to result in substantive agreement among citizens, we argue that Platonic ὁμόνοια does not consist solely in agreement. (shrink)

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for "the good life." This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science, nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard (...) and promoted the idea of "the natural man living in the state of society," notably in _Emile_. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience—understood as the "love of order"—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined "civilized naturalness" to which all people can aspire. (shrink)

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for "the good life." This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science, nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard (...) and promoted the idea of "the natural man living in the state of society," notably in _Emile_. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience—understood as the "love of order"—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined "civilized naturalness" to which all people can aspire. (shrink)

Preface -- Introduction : after the cave -- Part I. The life of philosophy and the life of Rousseau; The reveries of the solitary walker : an introduction -- Part II. "What am I?" : first walk; "A faithful record" : second walk; Becoming a philosopher : third walk; Being a philosopher : fourth, fifth, and sixth walks; Becoming a more perfect philosopher : seventh, eighth, and ninth walks; Coda : the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love : (...) tenth walk. . (shrink)

" In this book, Laurence Cooper focuses his attention on three giants of the philosophic tradition for whom this inner force was a major preoccupation and something separate from and greater than the desire for self-preservation.

Human beings are restless souls, ever driven by an insistent inner force not only to _have_ more but to _be_ more—to be _infinitely_ more. Various philosophers have emphasized this type of ceaseless striving in their accounts of humanity, as in Spinoza’s notion of _conatus_ and Hobbes’s identification of “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power.” In this book, Laurence Cooper focuses his attention on three giants of the philosophic tradition for whom this inner force was a major (...) preoccupation and something separate from and greater than the desire for self-preservation. Cooper’s overarching purpose is to illuminate the nature of this source of existential longing and discontent and its implications for political life. He concentrates especially on what these thinkers share in their understanding of this psychic power and how they view it ambivalently as the root not only of ambition, vigorous virtue, patriotism, and philosophy, but also of tyranny, imperialism, and varieties of fanaticism. But he is not neglectful of the differences among their interpretations of the phenomenon, either, and especially highlights these in the concluding chapter. (shrink)

The human genome is not a uniform structure but, instead, is a mosaic of bands. Some of these bands can be seen by the eye. Stained with Giemsa and viewed under the microscope each human chromosome has a prototypical pattern of light and dark bands (G and R bands respectively). Other bands are not so easily viewed. The human genome is, for example, a mosaic of isochores, blocks of DNA within which the proportion of the bases G and C at (...) silent sites (introns, third positions in codons, intergene spacer) is fairly uniform. Recent work by Matassi and colleagues(1) has revealed what might be a new and unexpected banding pattern. They have found that the genes which are close together on the chromosome have similar rates of evolution. BioEssays 22:105–107, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Socrates is one of the most important yet enigmatic philosophers of all time; his fame has endured for centuries despite the fact that he never actually wrote anything. In 399 B.C.E., he was tried on the charge of impiety by the citizens of Athens, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to death (ordered to drink poison derived from hemlock). About these facts there is no disagreement. However, as the sources collected in this book and the scholarly essays that follow them (...) show, several of even the most basic facts about these events were controversial in antiquity, and the questions persist today: How and why was Socrates brought to trial? Why did the jurors, members of the world's first democracy, find him guilty? When he was given an opportunity to escape execution, why did he refuse to do so and instead accept the punishment that he and his friends agreed was unjustly assigned to him? How exactly did Socrates die? Differences of opinion on these and other issues continue to arouse our curiosity and to challenge new generations of students and scholars. The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies is the first work to collect in one place all of the major ancient sources on Socrates' death--those of both his critics and his defenders--as well as recent scholarly views. Part I includes new translations of Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and the death scene from Phaedo, as well as other ancient sources that shed light on Socrates' trial and execution. Part II features some of the most influential recent scholarship on this historically momentous event with work by M. F. Burnyeat, Robert Parker, Mark L. McPherran, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Richard Kraut, Christopher Gill, and Enid Bloch (whose essay is published here for the first time). Ideal for undergraduate surveys of ancient Greek philosophy and upper-level courses on Socrates and Socratic philosophy, this unique collection provides an unprecedented look into the many perplexing questions surrounding the trial and execution of this remarkable man. (shrink)

Xenophon’s Oeconomicus presents the boldest possible response to the city’s charge that Socrates corrupted the young: the city itself, not Socrates, is guilty of this charge. The city’s teaching about what constitutes a noble human being cannot be reconciled with the good of the human being as such; it actually opposes this good. While the would-be gentleman’s desire to be noble shapes his understanding of household management, it fails to bring him the god-like self sufficiency he seeks. Socrates’ critique of (...) the perfect gentleman’s education of his wife demonstrates why the sacrifices made for the household and the gods do not benefit those who seek to be noble. Over the course of the dialogue, images of the Socratic way of life emerge. By revealing the nature of philosophy and its relationship to the good and noble things which the city extols, this dialogue teaches its readers why the Socratic way of life benefits human beings. (shrink)

This book is the result of a retired judge's curiosity about the meaning of 'moral' and 'ethical,' two ambiguous terms that mean different things to different people. Following ten guidelines, the author concludes that the terms 'right' and 'wrong' provide a more practical standard of conduct.

A musical phrase, or, for that matter, a musical unit of any size or shape, becomes an image whenever we imagine it to be invested with a content whose origins lie outside music. Such a content, according to the theory developed here, constitutes the image's conventional significance; it accounts for whatever strikes us about the image as having a common and familiar ring. That being so, the origins in question must be coincident with the fundamental ideas--the archetypes--that have been traditionally (...) represented as underlying and unifying Western culture. As the theoretical constructs they are, arehctypes are never encountered directly. It is in the form of their local variants that we make contact with the archetypes, and it is at this local level that the present book sets its sights: style, the typical or shared element in the musical imagery of a time and place, is studies as a function of Zeitgeist, the complex of beliefs, values, and ideals of a community. The approach is both thematic and historical, in keeping with a key objective of archetypal criticism. Far from repudiating the popular notion that music expresses the human emotions, this study attempts to recast emotion theory by examining musical images for kinds of behavior from which we may infer not only emotion (pathos, effectus) but also personality (ethos). Ethical and affective distinctions are very sharply drawn, in an effort to clarify and widen the vocabulary of musical commentary, as well as to provide cultural and historical backing for contents long considered the cliches of musical expression. (shrink)

This author (1) offers an analysis of the familiar type of excuse that Aristotle categorized as "acts owing to ignorance." (2) exhibits the conditions under which ignorance of fact either fails or succeeds in absolving an agent of responsibility, and (3) shows how these considerations can be used to illuminate the nature of the mental element in responsibility.

This lively book reassesses a century of jurisprudential thought from a fresh perspective, and points to a malaise that currently afflicts not only legal theory ...

This paper is an analysis of the concept "Mistake in Performance," a phrase first coined by Miss Elizabeth Anscombe in her monograph On Intention. The author shows that examples of a mistake in performance are nothing but cases of ordinary mistakes of judgment. The only difference between the two is that in cases of mistake in performance the agent acts on the basis of an erroneous judgment, that is, he fails to do what he intended to do.

This is a review of Laurence Houlgate's "Family and State: the Philosophy of Family Law. It takes a look at the moral theory from which Houlgate begins and raises questions about is correctness and appropriateness, but it finds more to agree with with respect to his middle-level principles. It considers his definition of "family" in the context of contemporary political controversy over such definitions. It looks at his consequentialist justification for the family, agrees with it, and suggests additional supplementary (...) arguments, primarily from Brigitte and Peter Berger, to give additional support for Houlgate's argument. It looks at his justification for family law and agrees with his principle of optimum communal benefit. It seeks to place Houlgate's views within the context of contemporary political debate about being "pro-family" or "anti-family". It then goes on to look briefly at some of the specific issues of family law that Houlgate considers, taking time to raise a few questions about some of them, and concludes by dealing in a more extensive way with the question of what the extent and limits of state interference in the family should be, agreeing with Houlgate's basic position, but considering further its application to specific issues. (shrink)

A critical discussion of the "recipe" theory of causation, as proposed by Douglas Gasking. The author also proposes his own theory of the ordinary meaning of statements of the form "A causes B.".

The purpose of the paper is to discover a rationale for the practice of attaching excuses to criminal responsibility. I do this by criticizing the theory of h l a hart that we adopt this practice largely because it gives persons more power to predict and determine their liability to punishment than would a system of "strict" liability. I extract from my criticisms of hart the alternative theory that we adopt the institution of excuses because it insures that persons do (...) not assume burdens beyond what it is necessary to assume for the benefits of the legal system to accrue to all. (shrink)

The author contends that none of the rationales for not allowing ignorance of the law as an excuse in criminal law cases is persuasive. The paper begins by analyzing the condition under which "reasonable" ignorance of the law ought to be allowed as an excuse. Second, the author indicates in greater detail the sense in which 'justice' requires that we recognize these conditions. Third, the author critically examines the arguments used by legal theorists for disregarding the claims of justice to (...) the individual defendant in cases where reasonable ignorance of law is alleged. Finally, the author wants to show that philosophy matters. A philosophical reading of ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of the law does not excuse) can expose conceptual errors that are not seen in legal readings. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Norman Malcolm's claim that things that do not have the human form (e.g. trees, tables, computers) cannot' understand' or 'think' because they cannot point at, reach for, go to, look at, fetch or get something.

This book is a unique introduction to the philosophy of law that repairs an enormous gap in the philosophy of law -- a lack of philosophical attention to family law. (In fact, PhilPapers does not recognize the philosophy of family law as a category.) This book uses only cases drawn from family law to illustrate the traditional problems of legal philosophy. This is why I wrote this book as a textbook rather than as a monograph. My hope is that students (...) will learn more about the problems of legal philosophy by using cases with which they might be more familiar than from criminal law cases. Questions for thought and discussion follow each chapter. (shrink)

This book begins with an overview of the current legal status of children under U.S. federal and state law, It includes an analysis of relevant Supreme Court decisions and an extended critique of the philosophical arguments for treating children differently from adults under the law. Sections in the book include discussions of the need for a theory of juvenile rights, the moral arguments that prop up such theories, Professor Houlgate's proposal for a theory, and a final discussion of the applications (...) of his theory to the debates about status offenses, child neglect, and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. (shrink)

I. Although there has been considerable recent dispute as to what Socrates meant by saying that Virtue is Knowledge, if the claim is, as it is sometimes taken to be, that knowledge of the essential nature of virtue is sufficient for virtuous behavior, then it is only necessary to point out what seem to be quite obvious counter in stances. The fact of moral weakness, coupled with what large numbers of scientists and lawyers and plain men now believe about the (...) capacity of human beings for self-control, demonstrates that a man can surely know the good and yet fail to do the virtuous thing. What, then, is left of the view that Virtue is Knowledge? (shrink)

The object of this article is to clarify the relationship between morality and family law in a variety of legal situations. This will give the reader a better grasp of the kind of case to be included in the traditionalist claim that the idea of legal intervention in the family is a coherent notion. Once this is sorted, we will be in a position to discuss and clarify the radical thesis that "the personal is political.".

Socrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until publication of this book, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account that explains (...) why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer an alternative interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed. (shrink)

Socrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until publication of this book, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account that explains (...) why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer an alternative interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed. (shrink)