Esiste un’etica democratica o, piuttosto, come da molte parti si sostiene, la democrazia è soltanto questione procedurale, partecipativa o deliberativa? In questo libro non si argomenta a favore dei presupposti etici della democrazia ma si assume che almeno tre approcci etici contribuiscano a costituire la condizione del cittadino della democrazia: l’etica delle virtù, l’etica dei diritti e l’etica dell’utilità. La prima è importante non per il suo antico lignaggio ma perché, nonostante il fatto che sia meno riconosciuta dai contemporanei, continua (...) comunque ad influenzare le scelte di valore dei cittadini delle società democratiche. Non occorre dire, invece, che l’etica dei diritti e l’etica dell’utilità rappresentano le dimensioni di valore e di giudizio più diffuse nell’Occidente contemporaneo. Virtù, diritti e utilità costituiscono le dimensioni del valore più rilevanti sia nel ragionamento pratico sia in quello giuridico. In questo libro si sostiene la tesi che non si possa dare netta cesura tra etica e diritto e che le dimensioni del valore ora ricordate si riscontrino in parallelo sia nel ragionamento pratico sia in quello giuridico. Tuttavia l’etica normativa non è soltanto questione di speculazioni astratte ma tocca il cuore delle persone, laddove assume le sembianze delle etiche applicate: etica ambientale, etica degli affari, bioetica ed etica territorio. È in questi ambiti che ragionamento pratico giuridico sono messi alla prova e devono fare affidamento su virtù, diritti e utilità. (shrink)

The ‘reasonable person standard’ is often called on in difficult legal cases as the last resource to be appealed to when other solutions run out. Its complexity derives from the controversial tasks that people place on it. Two dialectics require some clarification: the objective/subjective interpretation of the standard and the ideal/ordinary person controversy. I shall move through these dialectics from the standpoint of an EV approach, assuming that on this interpretation the RPS can perform most persuasively its tasks. The all-round (...) model of phronetic agent that I present not only works better than competing models—such as the utilitarian–economic and the Rawlsian—in the law of tort but shows its best potentialities in other kinds of cases. In criminal law and matrimonial law cases the recourse to the EV approach offers through the virtues rich and substantial resources to evaluate conflictual cases. This approach makes the threshold of evaluation much closer to real life than competitors. (shrink)

Abstract:The environmental crisis besieges the lives of people in affluent and in underdeveloped countries. Both massive phenomena such as climate change and local problems such as waste disposal locations show the human unbalance with nature. I claim in this paper that anthropocentric responses such as techno-optimism, sustainable development, and future generations are unable to tackle the deep roots of the crisis. We need an approach that looks inside human character and promotes an ethics in balance with the environment that overcomes (...) the limits of moral and political theories. EVE (environmental virtue ethics) is on good track in proposing virtues that focus the human character on nature. However, single virtues are not enough. We need a coherent and all-round account of human character founded on ‘reasonableness’ as the contemporary heir of Aristotelian phronesis. I claim that reasonableness, once it endorses a biocentric outlook, can guide human choices toward a re-balancing with nature. (shrink)

The debate between liberals and communitarians has still left liberalism without a plausible ethics. The ethics of character wants to offer a solid connection between political theory and personal identity, stressing the ethical role of the invariables of character against modern subjectivist competitors, such as authenticity. At a political level the ethics of character leads us beyond resourcist conceptions of justice. Key Words: ethics of character • personal identity • virtues • well-being.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 937-955, September 2022. Reasonableness is a complex notion recently developed by legal and political theorists. John Rawls’s famous proposal of ‘reasonableness as reciprocity’ requires careful testing in the light of several criteria arising from legal doctrine and adjudication. I enquire into this variety of concepts in search of a common thread that makes sense of the use of the same concept in diverse contexts. I assume the normative thrust of reasonableness as (...) an institutional and an individual virtue the basic core of which derives from Aristotelian phronesis. However, this double aspect of reasonableness betrays its major complexity that I try to shape through the help of two categories: subjective agency and objective context. The upshot of my enquiry will be that of showing that we can use another model, alternative to Rawls’s and better able to make sense of the variety of legal and ethical uses: Von Wright’s reasonableness as ‘the right way of living’. (shrink)

The rise of the phenomenon of virtue ethics in recent years has increased at a rapid pace. Such an explosion carries with it a number of great possibilities, as well as risks. This volume has been written to contribute a multi-faceted perspective to the current conversation about virtue. Among many other thought-provoking questions, the collection addresses the following: What are the virtues, and how are they enumerated? What are the internal problems among ethicists, and what are the objections and replies (...) to contemporary virtue ethics? Additionally, the practical implications following from the answers to these questions are discussed in new and fascinating research. Fundamental concepts such as teleology and eudaimonism are addressed from both a historical and dialectical approach. This tome will contribute not only to providing further clarity to the current horizons in virtue ethics, but also to the practical conclusion following from the study: to challenge the reader toward a greater pursuit of the virtuous life. (shrink)

Philosophical suspicions about the place of shame in the psychology of the mature moral agent are in tension with the commonplace assumption that to call a person shameless purports to mark a fault, arguably a moral fault. I shift philosophical suspicions away from shame and toward its absence in the shameless by focusing attention on phenomena of shamelessness. In redirecting our attention, I clarify the nature of the failing to which ascriptions of shamelessness might refer and defend the thought that, (...) as an evasion of moral self-censure, shamelessness can be morally pernicious. Far from foregoing shame, I conclude, we should be mindful of its moral importance and unapologetic in its defense. (shrink)

There is a tendency to take mounted dinosaur skeletons at face value, as the raw data on which the science of paleontology is founded. But the truth is that mounted dinosaur skeletons are substantially intention-dependent—they are artifacts. More importantly, I argue, they are also substantially imagination-dependent: their production is substantially causally reliant on preparators’ creative imaginations, and their proper reception is predicated on audiences’ recreative imaginations. My main goal here is to show that dinosaur skeletal mounts are plausible candidates for (...) art-status. But, what is more, I think they are artworks—specifically, sculptures. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the history of the notion of essence in 20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on views held by influential analytic philosophers who discussed, or relied on essence or cognate notions in their works. It in particular covers Russell and Moore’s different approaches to essence before and after breaking with British idealism, the (pre- and post-)logical positivists’ critique of metaphysics and rejection of essence (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Schlick, Stebbing), the tendency to loosen the notion of logical necessity (...) to accommodate certain metaphysical truths in Wittgenstein and others, Quine’s logical rehabilitation of metaphysics and criticism of de re modality, the modal view of essence promoted by the development of quantified modal logic (C. I. Lewis, Barcan Marcus, Kripke) and direct reference theory (Barcan Marcus, Kripke, Putnam), and the emergence of the notion of metaphysical necessity (Kneale, Kripke), and finally Fine’s re-establishment of a Neo-Aristotelian, hyperintensional notion of essence in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Ce livre de Michel Freitag interpelle "tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la place qu'ils tiennent ou le rôle qu'ils jouent dans l'aventure de l'Université contemporaine." (Georges Leroux, Spirale) Une des constantes des écrits contenus dans ce livre "réside dans la comparaison systématique que Michel Freitag établit entre les caractéristiques de la modernité et celles de la postmodernité et les conséquences de celle-ci sur le traitement des enjeux et des problèmes actuels." (Louis Guay, Anthropologie et société) "Dans une société réduite au (...) bavardage, à l'insignifiance, à la poursuite de petits bonheurs mesquins, le tout sous contrôle bureaucratique de plus en plus envahissant, une telle réflexion est devenue essentielle. Voici un livre de bonne foi qui n'attend que ses lecteurs, qu'on souhaite nombreux." (Robert Major, Voix et images). (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about what the folk concept of pain is. This paper criticises existing theories of the folk concept of pain, i.e. the mental view, the bodily view, and the recently proposed polyeidic view. It puts forward an alternative proposal – the polysemy view – according to which pain terms like “sore,” “ache” and “hurt” are polysemous, where one sense refers to a mental state and another a bodily state, and the type of polysemy at issue reflects two distinct but (...) related concepts of pain. Implications with respect to issues in philosophy of pain are also drawn. (shrink)

« Qu’est-ce que la philosophie et quel est son rôle aujourd’hui? Entre juillet et octobre 1966, quelques mois après la parution des Mots et les Choses, Michel Foucault, dans un manuscrit très soigneusement rédigé mais qu’il ne publiera pas, apporte sa réponse à cette question tant débattue.À la différence de ceux qui, à l’époque, s’attachent à dévoiler l’essence de la philosophie ou à en prononcer la mort, Foucault l’appréhende, dans sa matérialité, comme un discours dont il convient de dégager l’économie (...) eu égard aux autres discours (scientifique, fictif, ordinaire, religieux) qui circulent dans un contexte donné.Le Discours philosophique propose ainsi une nouvelle manière de faire l’histoire de la philosophie, qui la décentre du commentaire des grands philosophes. Nietzsche y occupe toutefois une place particulière car il inaugure une conjoncture où la philosophie devient une entreprise de diagnostic du présent. Il revient en effet désormais à la philosophie de dire, à partir de l’« archive intégrale » d’une culture, ce qui en fait l’actualité.Si L’Archéologie du savoir, consacré aux enjeux méthodologiques d’un tel projet, s’y annonce, nulle part autant que dans Le Discours philosophique Michel Foucault n’aura explicité les ambitions de son programme intellectuel.»--. (shrink)

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault that (...) appeared in the journal Actuel. Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power. Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists. (shrink)

The first collection of twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Henry's work in English, this book provides an excellent introduction to his thought.

This chapter contains section titled: From “Truth and Power”.

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

Si l’on connaît aujourd’hui le dialogue fructueux que Paul Ricœur a noué avec les penseurs structuralistes, on ignore largement son positionnement face à la mouvance poststructuraliste. Faut-il opposer la philosophie de Ricœur au poststructuralisme à la française ou au contraire doit-on montrer qu’elle en est une variante singulière? C’est la seconde option qui est ici défendue. Certes, le poststructuralisme ne doit pas être considéré comme une école de pensée mais comme une reconstruction qui relève de l’histoire de la philosophie. Dans (...) la mesure où les horizons de dépassement du structuralisme ont été posés de manière chaque fois particulière, il est préférable de parler de poststructuralismes au pluriel. C’est la raison pour laquelle J. Michel propose des confrontations dyadiques entre Ricœur et certains de ses contemporains que l’on regroupe habituellement dans cette mouvance. (shrink)

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

Les entretiens ici réunis portent sur les conséquences de cette révolution méthodologique qui permet la compréhension des grands aspects de l'existence, thème de nombreux essais de Michel Henry à partir des années 80 : action, ...

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

Ce livre est une critique dialectique du systématisme foucaldien en particulier et du structuralisme en général ; il constitue un plaidoyer pour l'équilibre des paramètres en matière de compréhension et d'explication des phénomènes historiques et culturels. A l'encontre de la raison structuraliste qui tend à réifier le sujet humain, il revendique pour ce dernier une place inexpugnable dans les domaines de la pensée et de l'action, au milieu, en dépit, ou peut-être même à cause des structures dont il prend volontiers (...) acte de l'existence et du potentiel de détermination. A cet égard, l'ouvrage fournit une riche introduction, recommandée à celui qui veut s'informer de l'univers philosophique dans lequel s'est investi Michel Foucault, ainsi que des difficultés réelles et imaginables qui se dégagent de la théorie et de la pratique de l'entreprise structuraliste. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is in crisis because of repeated failures to discover new drugs for mental disorders. Lack of measurement validity could partly account for these failures. If researchers do not actually measure the effects of drugs on the disorders they aim to investigate, one should expect suboptimal treatment outcomes. I argue that this is the case, focusing on depression, and fear & anxiety disorders. In doing so, I show how psychiatric research illustrates a more general phenomenon that I call “validity (...) drift.” A validity drift occurs when, in the course of developing new measurement procedures, researchers end up studying something different from what they originally aimed to study. I analyze the different ways in which scientists attempt to validate procedures for measuring mental disorders for the purpose of testing drugs in animal models. I show how those validation efforts might fail, thereby leading to validity drifts. Overall, this analysis highlights the complex interplay between the development of new measurement procedures, their calibration, and scientific theories of the target phenomena. (shrink)

Negative subjective reports such as “I didn’t see the stimulus” can be interpreted as indicating either that the subject didn’t see the stimulus, or as indicating that, while the subject did see the stimulus, the strength of sensory signals associated with the stimulus fell below a conservative criterion for answering “seen”. Determining which of these two interpretations is correct is the criterion problem. I present two ways in which researchers can solve this problem. But there’s more. What I call the (...) “new criterion problem” consists in determining whether criteria effects reflect perceptual changes, or changes in response strategy. Through case studies, I argue that this new version of the problem can be solved as well, although there is currently no systematic way to solve it. I conclude that criterion problems do not constitute good reasons for skepticism about the scientific study of consciousness. (shrink)

A recent paper by Bullock (2018) raises a dilemma for proponents of epistemic paternalism. If epistemic paternalists contend that epistemic improvements contribute to one’s wellbeing, then their view conflates with general paternalism. Instead, if they appeal to the notion of a distinctive epistemic value, their view is unjustified, in that concerns about epistemic value fail to outweigh concerns about personal sovereignty. In this chapter, I address Bullock’s challenge in a way that safeguards the legitimacy of epistemic paternalism, albeit restricting its (...) scope to a limited range of cognitive projects. After shedding light on a problem with how Bullock singles out cases to which the dilemma applies, I argue that there is at least one reasonable way of interpreting the notion of ‘personal autonomy’ which legitimates and justifies undertaking epistemically paternalistic interferences for one’s epistemic good. (shrink)

On a pu croire ou espérer, un temps, que les monstruosités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale étaient derrière nous. Définitivement. Or partout, à nouveau, on massacre, on torture, on extermine. Comment comprendre cette facilité des hommes entrer dans le mal? La réponse à cette question devient chaque jour plus urgente. Michel Terestchenko rouvre ici le débat. D'abord, en complétant la démonstration de Hannah Arendt : de même que ce ne sont pas seulement des monstres qui basculent dans l'horreur mais des (...) hommes ordinaires, trop ordinaires, de même, montre-t-il, il n'est pas besoin d'être un saint pour accomplir le juste et secourir des victimes au risque de sa vie. Héros ou salaud? C'est toujours une petite décision initiale, à peine perceptible, qui décide du côté dans lequel, une fois engagé, on se retrouvera in fine. Mais qu'est-ce qui explique cette décision? C'est là où l'enquête de M. Terestchenko prend toute son ampleur. En procédant à une reconstitution critique du débat central de la philosophie morale depuis le XVIIe siècle, aujourd'hui relayé par la majorité des sociologues et des économistes, elle montre combien est stérile l'opposition entre tenants de la thèse de l'égoïsme psychologique et défenseurs de l'hypothèse d'un altruisme sacrificiel. Ce n'est pas par " intérêt " qu'on tue ou qu'on torture. Ni par pur altruisme qu'on se refuse à l'abjection. Les travaux qui analysent les phénomènes de soumission à l'autorité, de conformisme de groupe ou de passivité face à des situations de détresse, invitent à comprendre tout autrement les conduites de destructivité. Tirant les conclusions philosophiques de recherches récentes entreprises en psychologie sociale et s'appuyant sur certains exemples historiques particulièrement éclairants - tel le cas de Franz Stangl, le commandant de Treblinka, ou, à l'opposé, les actions héroïques du pasteur André Trocmé et de sa femme Magda au Chambon-sur-Lignon -, l'auteur propose de penser les conduites humaines face au mal selon un nouveau paradigme celui de l'absence ou de la présence à soi. (shrink)

This chapter examines Chomsky's influence on the modeling of linguistic variation, focusing specifically on the notion of parameter. It begins by examining the different conceptualizations of “parameter” in Chomsky's work, from the Government and Binding era, through early Minimalism to more recent approaches which locate variation in phonological form. The idea that grammatical variation should be modeled by abstract parameters is arguably one of Chomsky's most important contributions to linguistic theory, and one which has had significant influence. Two domains of (...) variation (word order and argument expression) are used as case studies to illustrate how Chomsky's ideas have given rise to different kinds of parametric models. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the potential objections to the concept of parameters before concluding. (shrink)