In this paper we study collective identity functions that deal with formation of clubs. Usually the choice offered to individuals is to cast a vote in favor of qualification or not, and the final outcome is qualification or non-qualification. In this context we show that independent collective identity functions are naturally characterized by voting rules, and in particular, consent rules can be represented by one single collection of weighted majorities. In addition, we consider the extended model where voters are allowed (...) to abstain and we distinguish between disqualification and a neutral outcome. We show that this environment allows agents to act in different capacities that cannot be distinguished in the original formulation of the problem. (shrink)

This paper connects two notions: Hart and Mas-Colell’s ‘potential’, related to the value of coalitional games, and Coleman’s earlier notion of ‘power of a collectivity to act’, related to the easiness to make decisions by means of a voting rule.

Very few thinkers have traveled the heretical path that François Laruelle walks between philosophy and non-philosophy. For Laruelle, the future of philosophy is problematic, but a mutation of its functions is possible. Up until now, philosophy has merely been a utopia concerned with the past and only provided the services of its conservation. We must introduce a rigorous and nonimaginary practice of a utopia in action, a philo-fiction--a close relative to science fiction. From here we can see the (...) double meaning of the watchword, a tabula rasa of the future. This new destination is imposed by a specifically human messianism, an eschatology within the limits of the Man-in-person as antihumanist ultimatum addressed to the History of Philosophy. This book elucidates some of the fundamental problems of non-philosophy and takes on its detractors. (shrink)

Providing an introduction to Laruelle's novel theory of 'non-epistemology' or 'unified theory of thought', this volumes challenges the way we think about the traditional philosophical problems.

Si l’on possède peu de témoignages sur la manière dont les femmes du XIXe siècle ont vécu le vieillissement, les discours des médecins sur cette question abondent. La ménopause est décrite par eux comme une période particulièrement dangereuse qui, à l’instar de la puberté, bouleverse toute l’économie de la femme. Au nombre des maladies qui sont susceptibles de l’assaillir lorsque s’interrompt le mécanisme régulateur que représentait la menstruation s’ajoute la blessure narcissique que provoque la perte de sa féminité et l’entrée (...) dans l’âge de décrépitude. Plus encore, la femme perdant avec la faculté d’engendrer sa vocation sociale (la maternité), cette période, souvent qualifiée d’âge critique ou d’âge dangereux, s’annonce comme une véritable mort sociale. Privée de sa capacité de séduction, fragilisée par la révolution physiologique qui s’opère en elle, la femme, encouragée à se retirer d’un monde où elle ne peut plus briller, est plus que jamais assignée à la sphère privée. (shrink)

Each generation invents new practices and new writings of philosophy. Ours should have been able to introduce certain mutations that would at least be equivalent with those of cubism, abstract art, and twelve-tone serialism: it has only partially done so. But after all the deconstructions, after Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida, this demand takes on a different dimension: What do we do with philosophy itself? How do we globally change our relation to this thought, which keeps indicating that it is increasingly (...) conservative and repetitive? These two questions together have prompted what we call “non-philosophy.” Non-philosophy is not the negation of philosophy. It is the suspension of philosophy's claim to think the real, and it is the invention of new usages of thought and language that disrupt the rational narrative of the real, which is precisely what every philosophy is. Non-philosophy should rather be understood à la the “non-Euclidean,” namely, as a generalization of the philosophical beyond its traditional limitation by the unitary or “Heraclitean” postulate. From then on, an infinite number of philosophical decisions that are no longer mutually exclusive will correspond with any real phenomenon. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy is widely considered the first fully explicit elaboration of non-philosophy and one of its most important introductory texts. (shrink)

A brief synoptic parallel -- Taking the side of the 'modern' in philosophy -- Old and new relations between science and philosophy -- Matrices and principles -- Subtraction and superposition -- Philosophy and mathematics in the mirror -- Ontology and materiality -- Philo-fiction.

Sur le modèle du On Death IV (De morte) de Philodème, publié chez le même éditeur en 2009 par W. B. Henry, cet ouvrage propose, après une introduction de trente-quatre pages, une traduction – fondée sur l’édition donnée par Christian Jensen en 1906 pour Teubner – de cet écrit de Philodème tenu par lui comme un livre sur l’économie. Même si dans les « Acknowledgements » (p. vii) V. Tsouna rappelle qu’elle a participé à la traduction de L’Économie pour Les (...) Épicuriens co-édité par Daniel Delattr... (shrink)

Dans le prolongement de sa thèse sur les enfants abandonnés en Bretagne, soutenue en 2010 à l’université de Rennes, Isabelle Le Boulanger esquisse dans ce volume, en relisant ses notes d’archives, une étude des agressions sexuelles commises sur des enfants dans la Bretagne du xixe siècle. Son corpus est constitué d’un échantillon aléatoire d’archives judiciaires (dépouillement d’une année de dossiers de procédure par décennie), au demeurant inégalement conservées dans les cinq départements qu...

Directive 2002/73 enacted by the Council and Parliament of the European Union introduces substantial and procedural amendments to the European Community's `old' Equal Treatment Directive 76/207, providing, in particular, clarification of the definitions of concepts such as direct and indirect discrimination and (sexual) harassment. Yet, while the European Commission has praised the progressive nature of the new European legislation, a critical assessment of its provisions reveals some serious shortcomings and a host of missed opportunities. Although the new Directive generally reflects (...) the spirit of the case law of the E.C.J., it does so without any originality or pro-activism meaning that the European legislature has once again left the initiative of pursuing sex equality in the E.U. to the Court. (shrink)

A new theory that reconciles scientific and philosophical ideas of the self.

As football (soccer) clubs are facing different ethical challenges, many clubs are turning to ethical codes to counteract unethical behaviour. However, both in- and outside the sport field, uncertainty remains about the effectiveness of these ethical codes. For the first time, a longitudinal study design was adopted to evaluate code effectiveness. Specifically, a sample of non-professional football clubs formed the subject of our inquiry. Ethical code effectiveness was assessed by the measurement of the ethical climate. A repeated-measurements ANOVA revealed a (...) positive evolution of the ethical climate within the studied football clubs. This evolution could not be ascribed to the mere presence of an ethical code. However, several potential code effectiveness determining characteristics were also included in the research design. Some of these accounted partly for the evolution of the ethical climate of the football clubs. Results suggest that football clubs should incorporate their ethical code into a broader ethical programme, with attention for professionalization initiatives, stakeholder management, ethical leadership, and whistle-blowing protection. (shrink)

Longtemps, la philosophie et l'écologie se sont ignorées. Tandis que la philosophie poursuivait sa route, l'écologie se muait en science de l'environnement pour devenir science de la Terre et de la biosphère. Or depuis vingt ans environ, la philosophie et l'écologie semblent se contaminer l'une l'autre et souvent se faire la guerre, convoitant les mêmes territoires et défendant les mêmes valeurs : le salut de l'humanité, la survie de la planète, le bonheur pour tous. Pour en finir avec cette guerre (...) larvée, François Laruelle a décidé de changer d'échelle. Afin de redéfinir la place de l'homme dans la Nature, il plonge dans l'Univers et ne craint pas de sauter dans l'inconnu. En cessant de traiter l'écologie comme une simple politique de l'environnement, il fonde une véritable Science de l'écologie et opère un remaniement théorique d'envergure. S'appuyant sur la physique quantique, Laruelle opte pour l'univers plutôt que pour le monde. En excédant le mur cosmique, il fait tomber les murs de la philosophie et pose les bases d'une éthique pour tous les vivants. Ce superbe plaidoyer pour une écologie radicale dans un univers de science-fiction rend sa dignité au roseau pensant et défend la cause de l'Homme, le seul vivant capable d'échapper à la destruction, ce que François Laruelle appelle le "pire du pire" et que les écologistes nomment la catastrophe. (shrink)

In this important new book, the leading philosopher François Laruelle examines the role of intellectuals in our societies today, specifically with regards to criminal justice. He argues that, rather than concerning themselves with abstract philosophical notions like justice, truth and violence, intellectuals should focus on the human victims. Drawing on his influential theory of ‘non-philosophy’, he shows how we can submit the theorizing of intellectuals to the scrutiny of the everyday suffering of the victims of crime. In the course (...) of a wide-ranging discussion with Philippe Petit, Laruelle suspends the presumed authority of intellectuals by challenging the image of the ‘dominant intellectual’ exemplified by philosophers such as Sartre, Foucault, Lyotard and Debray. In place of domination, he puts forward instead a theory of ‘determination’: the determined intellectual is one whose character is conditioned by his relationship to the victim, rather than one who attempts to dominate the victim’s experience through a process of theorizing. While philosophy consistently takes the voice away from victims of suffering, non-philosophy is able to construct a theory of violence and crime that gives voice to the victim. This highly original book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary French philosophy and all those concerned with justice in the modern world. (shrink)

Dès ses premières réalisations, le mouvement de l’Éducation nouvelle a défendu une mixité coéducative, une « coéducation des sexes » caractéristique de son projet. L’évolution des mentalités, des moeurs et de la société d’entre-deux-guerres y est sans doute pour beaucoup. Cet article se propose d’expliciter pourquoi et comment cette coéducation est devenue un principe fédérateur pour l’Éducation nouvelle.

It is argued that multiscale approaches are necessary for an explanatory modeling of biological systems. A first step, besides common to the multiscale modeling of physical and living systems, is a bottom-up integration based on the notions of effective parameters and minimal models. Top-down effects can be accounted for in terms of effective constraints and inputs. Biological systems are essentially characterized by an entanglement of bottom-up and top-down influences following from their evolutionary history. A self-consistent multiscale scheme is proposed to (...) capture the ensuing circular causality. Its differences with standard mean-field self-consistent equations and slow-fast decompositions are discussed. As such, this scheme offers a way to unravel the multilevel architecture of living systems and their regulation. Two examples, genome functions and biofilms, are detailed. (shrink)

This book is a foundational text for our understanding of François Laruelle, one of France's leading thinkers, whose ideas have emerged as an important touchstone for contemporary theoretical discussions across multiple disciplines. One of Laruelle’s first systematic elaborations of his ethical and "non-philosophical" thought, this critical dialogue with some of the dominant voices of continental philosophy offers a rigorous science of individuals as minorities or as separated from the World, History, and Philosophy. Through novel theorizations of finitude and (...) determination in the last instance, Laruelle develops a thought "of the One" as a "minoritarian" paradigm that resists those paradigms that foreground difference as the conceptual matrix for understanding the status of the minority. The critique of the "unitary illusion" of philosophy developed here stands at the foundation of Laruelle’s approach to "uni-lateralizing" the power of philosophy and the universals with which it has always thought, and thereby acts as a basis for his subsequent investigations of victims, mysticism, and Gnosticism. This book will appeal to students and scholars of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, aesthetics, and cultural theory. (shrink)

A internationally renowned philosopher - Francois Laruelle - takes on the perennially important topic of what is means to be human and the place of humanity within ecological and post-humanism concerns.

Le grand penseur français internationalement connu conclut ici son oeuvre magistrale traduite dans une dizaine de langues, mettant en scène tous les philosophes qui l'ont précédés. Comment réinterpréter et donner sens à l'idée de Socrate que la philosophie est la plus belle des musiques? C'est ce que cherche François Laruelle en intégrant dans l'écriture philosophique l'idée de composition paramusicale, qui serait comme la " belle insonore ". Il donne corps au concept de Figura serpentinata, en construisant une longue montée, (...) en guise de " gamme ", de la caverne au monde, puis du monde à l'univers. Techniquement, Laruelle transforme la réminiscence de Platon en réminiscience, ajoutant à la montée philosophique les concepts de quantique (la philosophie ne peut plus être l'objet d'une automodélisation) et de générique (l'universel est " surbaissé ", aucune philosophie n'a de suprématie sur les autres). La superposition de ces concepts hétérogènes produit une " invention " au sens de Bach, une superposition de voix qui réorganise le matériau musical et conduit à un cogito philomusical, qui réinterprète le silence, et permet de faire entendre autrement le tissu musical. Dans un dernier temps, en une longue descente depuis l'univers, la musique insonore revient comme vécu des sujets humains. L'ensemble est une vaste réflexion sur le sens musical de la vie humaine. (shrink)

Les relations de la machine et de la pensée sont aussi anciennes qu'énigmatiques, toujours en attente d'une solution. C'est un mythe dont s'abreuve la philosophie. Il est ici repris en fonction de notre conjoncture, la science-fiction avec Matrix, la logique et l'ordinateur avec Turing, enfin l'élaboration théorique avec le cognitivisme et la non-philosophie. Ces essais ont été élaborés dans un même esprit au sein d'une équipe dont les jeunes philosophes partagent le désir commun de renouveler le style philosophique par une (...) discipline de philo-fiction. -/- The relationship between the machine and thought is as old as it is enigmatic, always awaiting a solution. It's a myth that philosophy feeds on. Here it is revisited in the context of our current situation: science fiction with Matrix, logic and the computer with Turing, and theoretical development with cognitivism and non-philosophy. These essays have been drawn up in the same spirit by a team of young philosophers who share a common desire to renew the philosophical style through a discipline of philo-fiction. (shrink)

The current gridlock around climate change and how to address our global sustainability issues can be understood as resulting from clashes in worldviews. This article summarizes some of the research on worldviews in the contemporary West, showing that these worldviews have different, and frequently complementary, potentials, as well as different pitfalls, with respect to addressing climate change. Simultaneously, the overview shows that, because of their innate reflexivity and their capacity to appreciate and synthesize multiple perspectives, individuals inhabiting integrative worldviews may (...) have particular potentials with respect to addressing climate change. In the conclusion I argue that the policy challenge is to develop strategies that inspire the different worldview groups to actualize their potentials while mitigating their pitfalls, as well as to unite and mobilize them around a single vision that speaks to them all. (shrink)

Une théorie des victimes n'existe pas encore comme telle dans la philosophie qui s'intéresse davantage à la force, à la puissance et à la domination. Elles sont devenues un objet privilégié des intellectuels qui assument leur défense, mais aussi des médias qui les actualisent et en témoignent. Une théorie un peu rigoureuse supposera que la Victime-en-personne est la condition symbolique qui détermine la victimologie toute pénétrée de philosophie. On dessine deux figures de l'intellectuel. L'intellectuel médiatique sous dominance philosophique ultime, engagé (...) ou embarqué (« embedded ») par le pouvoir, qui se contente de représenter les victimes, de les photographier par la parole, l'écrit ou l'image. Et l'intellectuel générique qui travaille sous la condition déterminante de la victime plutôt que de la philosophie. Nous examinons différents aspects de l'intellectuel, son malaise et sa trahison en fonction de la victime. Puis la victimisation comme processus de la double peine infligée à la victime, les notions de « force faible » et de « force forte », de « survivant » et de « ressuscité » le problème de la persécution et de l'extermination (pourquoi tue-t-on?). Il s'agit de fonder l'éthique sur la victime plutôt que sur la force philosophique. La compassion n'est pas la pitié philosophique des animaux participant à la vie universelle, c'est le dernier vécu, celui du vaincu qui longe la mort et lui donne encore son sens. Une autre idée de l'homme, nous l'appelons « générique ». (shrink)

Dans cet article nous proposons une analyse d’un aspect peu évoqué du parcours de Genette, son séminaire de l’EHESS-Paris. Genette n’a pas explicité sa méthode, mais il avait constaté dans les années 1960 que l’enseignement universitaire était considéré comme une pratique neutre, et même un tabou, qui demandait à être historicisée et comprise dans sa portée idéologique. À partir d’une description des rituels et des modalités de son enseignement, nous analyserons le caractère spécifique de sa méthode de formation à la (...) recherche, en soulignant sa relation avec la tradition de l’EHESS. (shrink)

Within a digital corpus of 20 Italian post-unification conduct books, UAM CorpusTool is used to perform a manual annotation of 13 emotive rhetorical figures as indices of “shown” emotion. The analysis consists in two text mining tasks: classification, which identifies emotive figures using the 13 categories, and clustering, which identifies groups, i.e. clusters where emotive figures co-occur. Emotive clusters mainly discuss diligence and parsimony—personal values linked to self-improvement for which reader agreement is not taken for granted. In this corpus they (...) function as “moving” values, that is, values acting recurrently as contexts for “argued” emotion. (shrink)

Sports organizations face various ethical challenges. To tackle these, ethical codes are becoming increasingly popular instruments. However, a lot of questions remain concerning their effectiveness. There is a particular lack of knowledge when it comes to their form and content, and on the influence of these features on the effectiveness of these codes of ethics. Therefore, we developed a framework to analyze ethical codes and used this to assess codes of ethics in sports clubs from six disciplines. The form and (...) content characteristics of the codes were tested for their impact on the ethical climate of sports clubs. Our results show that most codes focus on the themes of integrity, and on solidarity among the members of sports clubs. Deontological phrasing is dominant in ethical codes in sports clubs. The occurrence of comprehension aids, such as examples, and procedural content, such as the mentioning of sanctions, is low. When it comes to code effectiveness, i.e., the influence on the ethical climate, we see a positive significant effect of the use of consequentialist oriented statements, and of the combination of regulatory and inspirational phrasing. Also the presence of explicit guidelines for the members of the board had a positive significant affect. This shows that codes should be a source of inspiration and stimulate moral awareness, rather than merely guide behavior by simple rules. Other content elements do not influence code effectiveness, suggesting that ethical codes merely have a function of raising ethical awareness in sports clubs. These results help to shed light on what it takes for a code of ethics to become a useful and effective instrument to tackle unethical behavior in sports clubs. (shrink)

Avec le développement de la psychiatrie périnatale, les prises en charge précoces des familles se sont diversifiées. Au fil du temps, des équipes se sont efforcées de faciliter l'accès aux soins à des familles peu enclines à y adhérer d'elles-mêmes. Des institutions se sont organisées pour aider des familles à haut risque psychique, dans le but de lutter contre les processus inter-générationnels qui induisent maltraitance et placements. D'autres ont créé des lieux de parole et d'échange initiant des stratégies de rencontre (...) permettant aux familles de rompre peu à peu avec l'exclusion. (shrink)

Le devenir d’un groupe de jeunes qui ont vécu en moyenne huit ans en familles d’accueil et sont sortis du placement depuis plus de cinq ans a été analysé et mis en regard avec l’évolution de l’histoire de l’institution de placement. L’objectif était de mesurer les effets conjugués des carences, maltraitements et ruptures dans la vie des enfants et adolescents et ceux dus à la stabilité d’un milieu environnant sur l’insertion sociale et professionnelle à l’âge adulte. L’article présente aussi quelques-uns (...) des souvenirs de ces adultes âgés de 23 à 39 ans, témoignages de leur histoire d’enfants ayant vécu entre deux familles. (shrink)

The article traces the origin and development of the concept of social skills in first and foremost American academic discourse. As soon as the concept of social skills was coined, the concern for people lacking such skills started and has been on the increase ever since. After the analysis of the academic history of the concept follows an examination of the implementation of a range of assessment instruments and training programmes related to social skills in contemporary Danish welfare institutions. The (...) analysis forwarded in the article thus demonstrates how an intellectual idea may develop and travel - and on its journey connect to pre-existing cultural logics and societal concerns. The idea of social skills has through its development been made uncontroversial – everybody wants to be skilful. The concept does, however, convey an individualistic view on social life and imposes a reflexivity over own performance on the participants. Further, its normative character contributes to a problematization of those who are perceived to lack these skills. (shrink)

This paper, on the psychopathology and phenomenology of schizophrenia, presents a selective summary of the work of the French psychiatrist, Eugene Minkowski (1985-1972), one of the first psychiatrists of an explicitly phenomenological persuasion. Minkowki believed that the phenomenological essence of schizophrenia (what he called the "trouble générateur") consists in a loss of "vital contact with reality" (VCR) and manifests itself as autism. Loss of vital contact with reality signifies a morbid change in the temporo-spatial structure of experiencing, particularly in the (...) diminishment and modification of temporal-dynamic aspects and a corresponding predominance of spatial-static factors. The patient tries to compensate for this primary morbid process through a variety of affective-cognitive preoccupations (rich autism) or sterile intellectuoid attitudes (autisme pauvre). Autism signifies a morbidly modified existential pattern that affects the domains of experience and expression as well as action. Minkowski's psychopathological analyses are illustrated by brief clinical vignettes of his patients. (shrink)

‘Culturology’ is an integral, often compulsory, part of Russian university courses; the discipline has largely replaced chairs in Marxist-Leninism and dialectical materialism, and bookshops are full of texts on the subject. This article is based on analysis of more than ten university textbooks recommended to first-year students. Marlène Laruelle examines why culturology has become so important, the place claimed for it within the human sciences, and what it means for changing Russian ideas of identity and nation.

It is one of the peculiar features of the movement of translation of Western scientific treatises from Dutch into Japanese, known as Dutch learning , that if first originated in Nagasaki with a group of Japanese interpreters. This group differed from the scholarly community of the capital, Edo, by both training and social status. This article shows how this difference contributes to explaining some of the particularities of rangaku in its initial phase. A case in point is Shizuki Tadao's introduction (...) of Newtonian physics and astronomy. Yet, Sugita Genpaku, a major representative of the Edo scholarly community, gave an account of the beginning of Dutch learning that attempted to minimise, or even to erase, the contribution of the Nagasaki interpreters, who were dismissed as unscholarly. This attempt, too, is best understood in the light of the difference between the two communities. (shrink)

A collection of eight studies on Theophrastus' Metaphysics, presenting an overview of the first reception of Aristotle.

Fashion has a varied and explosive history. Our responsibility as educators preparing students and therefore careers for this context places us in a very difficult and complex position. Do we prepa...

Introductory collection of writings by a creative and subversive thinker, ranging from the origins of “non-philosophy” to its evolution into what Laruelle now calls “non-standard philosophy.” The question “What is non-philosophy?” must be replaced by the question about what it can and cannot do. To ask what it can do is already to acknowledge that its capacities are not unlimited. This question is partly Spinozist: no-one knows what a body can do. It is partly Kantian: circumscribe philosophy's illusory power, (...) the power of reason or the faculties, and do not extend its sufficiency in the shape of by way of another philosophy. It is also partly Marxist: how much of philosophy can be transformed through practice, how much of it can be withdrawn from its “ideological” use? And finally, it is also partly Wittgensteinian: how can one limit philosophical language through its proper use? This introductory collection of writings by creative and subversive thinker François Laruelle opens with an introduction based upon an in-depth interview that traces the abiding concerns of his prolific output. The eleven newly translated essays that follow, dating from 1985 to the present, range from the origins of “non-philosophy” to its evolution into what Laruelle now calls “non-standard philosophy.” Two appendices present a number of Laruelle's experimental texts, which have not previously appeared in English translation, and a transcript of an early intervention and discussion on his “transvaluation” of Kant's transcendental method. (shrink)