The degree of autonomy present in the choices made by individuals with an addiction, notably in the context of research, is unclear and debated. Some have argued that addiction, as it is commonly understood, prevents people from having sufficient decision-making capacity or self-control to engage in choices involving substances to which they have an addiction. Others have criticized this position for being too radical and have counter-argued in favour of the full autonomy of people with an addiction. Aligning ourselves with (...) middle-ground positions between these two extremes, we flesh out an account of voluntary action that makes room for finer-grained analyses than the proposed all-or-nothing stances, which rely on a rather static metaphysical understanding of the nature of the voluntariness of action. In contrast, a dynamic concept of voluntary action better accounts for varying levels of voluntariness of the person with an addiction which takes into consideration internal and external determinants of choice. Accordingly, like other components of autonomous choices such as level of information, voluntariness can fluctuate. Therefore, there are important implications for research and clinical ethics in matters of consent, recruitment, and therapeutic approaches. Overall, our proposal is inspired by a pragmatist understanding of voluntary action, notably with respect to how voluntariness is both informed by actions and experiences that shape one's view of the world. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital (...) aspect of his thinking. In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential. (shrink)

Published in 1973, "L'Etourdit" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship," which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality. In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, thinking "with" Lacan about his propositions and what (...) kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought. (shrink)

Based on evidence from press articles covering 39 corporate fraud cases that went public during the period 1992-2005, the objective of this article is to examine the role of managers' behavior in the commitment of the fraud. This study integrates the fraud triangle (FT) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to gain a better understanding of fraud cases. The results of the analysis suggest that personality traits appear to be a major fraud-risk factor. The analysis was further validated through (...) a quantitative analysis of keywords which confirmed that keywords associated with the attitudes/rationalizations component of the integrated theory were predominately found in fraud firms as opposed to a sample of control firms. The results of the study suggest that auditors should evaluate the ethics of management through the components of the TPB: the assessment of attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and moral obligation. Therefore, it is potentially important that the professional standards that are related to fraud detection strengthen the emphasis on managers' behavior that may be associated with unethical behavior. (shrink)

(2013). Evolutionary modules and Bayesian facilitation: The role of general cognitive resources. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 27-53. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.713177.

Martin Heidegger was an ordinary Nazi and a loyal member of the provincial petty bourgeoisie. He was also a seminal thinker of the Continental tradition and one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. How are we to make sense of this dual life? Should we factor Heidegger's domestic and political associations into our understanding of his thought, or should we treat his intellectual work independently of his abhorrent politics? How does any thinker reconcile the mundane with the ideal or (...) the pursuit of philosophical inquiry with the demands of civic engagement? In Heidegger, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin immerse themselves in the philosopher's correspondence with his wife Elfride to answer these questions as they relate to Heidegger and all thinkers vulnerable to the politics of their times. They focus on Heidegger's tormented relationship with his wife, with Hannah Arendt, and with numerous other women, bringing an unusual level of intimacy to his personal and intellectual worlds. (shrink)

L'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau, multiple et dense, se deploie sur les quarante dernieres annees en abordant de nombreux domaines de l'histoire du Moyen Age et du christianisme latin. Elle suit les peregrinations personnelles et professionnelles d'un chercheur a travers un monde peuple de silhouettes incertaines : figures de l'hagiographie, faux-semblants de l'Etat moderne, anges, demons, cadavres et somnambules, vagues individus scolastiques qui eux-memes parlent de creatures etranges. Autant de fantomes d'un passe persistant qu'il a suivis avec tenacite tout au long (...) de sa carriere, et qui nous embarquent a leur tour a travers l'histoire. Ce volume entend garder la trace vivante des deux journees qui furent organisees a Paris en mai 2015 autour de l'oeuvre d'Alain Boureau. Ce Liber amicorum d'un genre un peu particulier, production scolastique en quelque sorte, donne a voir les membres d'un studium, ce qu'etait le seminaire d'Alain Boureau : les amis, les collegues, les proches, celles et ceux qui l'ont accompagne au cours de ses annees passees a l'EHESS. Les textes rassembles rendent compte de trajectoires et de realisations, ils en montrent les apports scientifiques et les enjeux intellectuels. Ils racontent, aussi. Ainsi se manifeste la richesse d'une oeuvre singuliere, construite aux croisements de differentes pratiques des sciences sociales dans une demarche souvent collective, toujours originale et novatrice. (shrink)

Rethinking the terms we use to define a people.

This paper explores the practices of auditors in a non-Western cultural environment. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics framework and narrative interviews with twenty Tunisian auditors, we investigate how auditors reconcile their duty to independence with the expectations of a kinship economy. Additionally, we explore how institutions—such as professional oversight bodies—play into this reconciliation. We find that, although auditors may pursue a telos at odds with international auditing standards, the purpose that these auditors serve is congruent with their moral tradition. (...) That is, rather than positioning themselves as objective arbiters of financial reporting, these auditors position themselves as guardians of their auditees. While this revised position engenders conduct that may appear to violate their independence, our auditors’ practices are congruent with the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty, as they conceive of them in the context of a Tunisian moral tradition. This study makes two main contributions to the literature. First, we provide empirical evidence into the ways in which auditors redefine independence in the context of a kinship economy. Second, we demonstrate that, when auditing local firms, auditors apply a version of professionalism that emphasizes community-oriented care over objectivity. (shrink)

The sociology of knowledge is faced with a problem of historical temporality that it has carefully avoided up until now. The subject has been avoided or ignored because a discussion of it in depth would run the risk of questioning all modern scientific thought. The problem is that of the concept of absolute time as it is used in evolutionist theory. In this category of theory I include not only social evolutionism, abused for a long time and recently reanimated by (...) the “socio-biologists,” but also biological, paleontological, geological and other types of evolutionism, that is, those qualified as “scientific.”. (shrink)

A leading historian opens up a new terrain for understanding the past: the history of ignorance.

Quels enseignements tirer de la crise pandémique mondiale de 2020? La violence extrême du risque sanitaire nous a évidemment rappelé que nous étions mortels - quels que soient nos systèmes de santé. Mais au-delà, ce sont nos équilibres sociaux, éthiques, économiques ou politiques qui ont été remis en cause. Comment justifier éthiquement le tri des patients? Quelles décisions politiques prendre au moment où la protection de la santé est mise en rivalité avec la nécessité de soutenir une activité économique également (...) vitale? La mondialisation est-elle responsable de nos vulnérabilités? Autant de questions épineuses abordées dans cet essai, qui revendique la pertinence d'une approche philosophique de terrain, loin d'une réflexion abstraite sur la fragilité écologique ou d'une critique convenue de nos systèmes mondialisés. Si le risque incite au repli sur soi, l'enjeu est ici de comprendre que la résilience ne passera que par une plus grande solidarité internationale et une redéfinition de la souveraineté."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Two eminent French philosophers discuss German philosophy—including the legacy of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Marx, and Heidegger—from a French perspective. In this book, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, the two most important living philosophers in France, discuss German philosophy from a French perspective. Written in the form of a dialogue, and revised and expanded from a 2016 conversation between the two philosophers at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the book offers not only Badiou's and Nancy's reinterpretations of German (...) philosophers and philosophical concepts, but also an accessible introduction to the greatest thinkers of German philosophy. Badiou and Nancy discuss and debate such topics as the legacies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, as well as Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Schelling, and the unavoidable problem of Heidegger and Nazism. The dialogue is contentious, friendly, and often quotable, with strong—at times passionate—positions taken by both Badiou and Nancy, who find themselves disagreeing over Kant, for example, and in unexpected agreement on Marx, for another. What does it mean, then, to conduct a dialogue on German philosophy from a French perspective? As volume editor Jan Völker observes, “German philosophy” and “French philosophy” describe complex constellations that, despite the reference to nation-states and languages, above all encompass shared concepts and problems—although these take a range of forms. Perhaps they can reveal their essential import only in translation. (shrink)

Prior research has documented the continued existence of an expectation gap, defined as the divergence between the public’s and the profession’s conceptions of auditor’s duties, despite the auditing profession’s attempt to adopt standards and practices to close this gap. In this paper, we consider one potential explanation for the persistence of the expectation gap: the role of media bias in shaping public opinion and views. We analyze press articles covering 40 U.S. corporate fraud cases discovered between 1992 and 2011. We (...) compare the auditor’s duties, described by the auditing standards, with the description of the fraud cases as found in the press articles. We draw upon prior research to identify three sources of the expectation gap: deficient performance, deficient standards, and unreasonable expectations. The results of our analysis provide evidence that the performance gap can be reduced by strengthening auditor’s willingness and ability to apply existing auditing standards concerning fraud detection; the standards gap can be narrowed by improving existing auditing standards; and unreasonable expectations, however, involve elements beyond the profession’s sphere of control. As a result, the expectation gap is unlikely to disappear given the media’s tendency to bias, with an overemphasis of unreasonable expectations in their coverage of frauds and press articles tending to reinforce the view that the auditor should take more responsibility for detecting fraud, irrespective of whether this is feasible at a reasonable cost. In addition to the primary role of the press in perpetuating the expectation gap, a second reason for continuation of the expectation gap is that the rational auditor will have difficulty in assessing subjective components of fraudulent behavior. (shrink)

"French philosopher Alain Badiou (b. 1937) introduces the concept of democratic materialism to refer to the belief that there are only bodies and languages, then employs a fair amount of science in what he calls a somewhat fastidious examine of it. He covers formal theory on the subject (meta-physics); the greater logics: the transcendental, the object, and relation; the four forms of change; the theory of points; what a body is; and what it is to live."--Provided by publisher.

'Dire ou se dire : Il faut que je me repose, c'est formuler un désir, un sentiment que l'on considère, sans y réfléchir, comme l'expression d'un besoin élémentaire. Or, rien n'est plus faux. Le loisir a remplacé le repos. Il en occupe le temps. Il en envahit l'espace. On ne parle plus guère de repos mais de moment de détente ; ce qui revient à remplacer la fatigue par une tension, un mal-être, par exemple le 'burn-out'.' Alain Corbin tisse (...) la trame d'une histoire oubliée. Chercher la solitude, pour les uns, prier ou non pour les autres, se recueillir, se poser ou marcher... tant de façons de restaurer son être ont été imaginées et testées. Cette histoire est une invitation à vivre différemment notre rapport au travail, à la fatigue, au temps."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Discusses Locke's life and views and their impact on American philosophy, as well as his role in the Harlem Renaissance.

For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiouʹs account of cinema. He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement (...) of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people -- a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras. -- Publisher description. (shrink)

Alain Badiou est platonicien (plutôt platonicien), Barbara Cassin est sophiste (plutôt sophiste). Cela a-t-il quelque chose à voir avec le fait qu'il soit un homme et qu'elle soit une femme? Telle est la question que nous nous posons depuis longtemps. Depuis que nous nous connaissons en somme, et que nous avons commencé à travailler ensemble comme directeurs de collection. A un moment donné, nous avons pris cette question à bras-le-corps.0C'est venu, peut-être, d'une remarque à notre propos disant que, un (...) platonicien avec un(e) sophiste, cet attelage qui ne laissait rien échapper devenait pour de bon dangereux. Nous avons ri, et réfléchi. D'abord, nous avons échangé des lettres, jouant avec le plaisir d'une correspondance sporadique, parfois rauque, pendant trois ans. Au beau milieu de quoi nous avons décidé de faire un séminaire commun ailleurs, loin de nos bases : à Johns Hopkins.0On nous a obligés à répondre sans arrière-monde, Alain Badiou en mathématicien-platonicien, Barbara Cassin en philologue-sophiste. A bras-le-corps donc, mais encore latéralement comme on voit. Nous avons alors ressenti la nécessité d'exhiber les éléments clefs à quoi tiennent nos positions, ce qui philosophiquement nous tient. Puis nous avons déroulé les conséquences strictes de ces solidités quant à l'idée que nous nous faisons du rapport homme femme.0Au moment de conclure, nous nous sommes demandé ensemble pourquoi nous choisissions la Grèce. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s 1983–1984 lecture series on “the One” is the earliest of his seminars that he has chosen to publish. It focuses on the philosophical concept of oneness in the works of Descartes, Plato, and Kant—a crucial foil for his signature metaphysical concept, the multiple. Badiou declares that there is no “One”: there is no fundamental unit of being; being is inherently multiple. What is novel in Badiou’s view of multiplicity is his reliance on mathematics, and set theory in (...) particular. A set is a collection of things—yet, as he observes, it often is taken to “count as one” operationally for the purposes of mathematical transformations. In this seminar, distinguishing between “the One” and “counting as one” emerges as essential to Badiou’s ontological project. His analysis of reflections on oneness in Descartes, Plato, and Kant prefigures core arguments of his defining work, Being and Event. Showcasing the seeds of Badiou’s key ideas and later thought, The One features singular readings, breathtaking theorizations, and frequently astonishing offhand remarks. (shrink)

Pour Alain Cugno, la philosophie est à la fois une science de la vie et un art de la pensée. Dans ce témoignage d'une vie de philosophe et d'enseignant, l'auteur partage aussi bien les souvenirs d'enfance que le cheminement intellectuel d'un chercheur. Sur cet itinéraire, on croise évidemment Platon, Kant et saint Augustin mais aussi Proust ou Rantanplan. Les anecdotes vécues avec les étudiants ou encore les leçons reçues de la littérature donnent à Alain Cugno l'occasion d'un récit (...) enthousiaste et joyeux sur ce que la philosophie peut susciter dans l'existence. (shrink)

Philosophy and history (with Jean Hyppolite) -- Philosophy and science (with Georges Canguilhem) -- Philosophy and sociology (with Raymond Aron) -- Philosophy and psychology (with Michel Foucault) -- Philosophy and language (with Paul Ricœur) -- Philosophy and truth (with Jean Hyppolite, Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Aron, Michel Foucault, Paul Ricœur, Alain Badiou and Dina Dreyfus) -- Philosophy and ethics (with Michel Henry) -- Model and structure (with Michel Serres) -- Teaching philosophy through television (with excerpts from Jean Hyppolite, Georges Canguilhem, (...) Raymond Aron, Michel Foucault and Paul Ricœur. Alain Badiou by telephone and Dina Dreyfus in the studio). (shrink)