ANNIE HOURCADE SCIOU | : Cette étude entend montrer que la bientraitance correspond à une démarche volontaire d’assumer notre responsabilité vis-à-vis de la vulnérabilité de l’autre et en constitue la réponse la plus adaptée. La vulnérabilité, en effet, revêt une dimension essentiellement relationnelle et non substantielle. Comme en témoigne l’étymologie du terme, être vulnérable, c’est être susceptible d’être blessé, à la différence de la fragilité, qui, pour sa part, correspond à une faiblesse intrinsèque. La vulnérabilité, dans sa (...) dimension relationnelle, peut être rapprochée de la dépendance. En ce sens, plus que la bienfaisance qui s’inscrit dans une visée téléologique, celle qui consiste à produire le bien de l’autre, la bientraitance porte sur la manière d’agir sur l’autre en situation de vulnérabilité, sur la nature même de la relation dont nous sommes directement parties prenantes. | : This study aims to show that « bientraitance » constitutes a voluntary approach to undertake our responsibility for the other’s vulnerability and is the more appropriate response to it. Vulnerability takes on a relative and non substantial dimension, as shown by its etymology. As a matter of fact, being vulnerable means being exposed to the possibility of been harmed, unlike fragility which, as far as it is concerned, is an intrinsic deficiency. Vulnerability, in its relational dimension, may be compared to dependence. Unlike beneficence, which is part of a teleological perspective, which aims to produce the other’s good, « bientraitance » concerns how we act on the other in situation of vulnerability, on the very nature of the relationship in which we are directly implicated. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est la réédition de La morale d’Épicure de Jean-Marie Guyau, initialement publié en 1878. L’édition de 2002 reprend le texte de la troisième édition (1886) et propose, en outre, une traduction des textes grecs et latins cités en note dans le texte original et non traduits par Guyau. L’originalité de l’ouvrage de Guyau réside dans le choix d’aborder l’épicurisme en privilégiant la dimension morale de la doctrine. Elle réside également – et peut-être plus encore – dans la présentat...

Au livre XXV du Peri physeos, épicure met en œuvre une critique de Démocrite, l’accusant de s’ignorer lui-même et de soutenir une doctrine qui entre en contradiction avec ses actes. Pour Épicure, l’existence même de l’éloge et du blâme signifie que l’homme doit être considéré comme assumant, au moins partiellement, la responsabilité de son caractère acquis, de ses pensées et de ses actes. Le livre XXV du Peri physeos, pourtant, loin de prendre ses distances vis-à-vis de l’éthique de Démocrite, doit (...) être considéré comme un retour aux sources démocritéennes par Épicure et ce, par-delà les successeurs de Démocrite. L’étude des fragments et témoignages concernant Démocrite suggère en effet qu’il soutenait à la fois la thèse d’une constitution de l’âme exclusivement atomistique et la possibilité d’une transformation de l’âme par l’homme. On peut en conclure que ce n’est pas tant la perspective démocritéenne que rejette Épicure que la radicalisation déterministe effectuée par les démocritéens de la deuxième ou troisième génération. L’enjeu est donc pour Épicure, en restant fidèle à la physique et à l’éthique démocritéennes originelles, d’apporter des éléments qui permettent de justifier leur compatibilité au sein d’un même système, ce que Démocrite avait sans doute omis de faire. (shrink)

En choisissant de consacrer un ouvrage à Antiphon « l’Athé­nien », M. Gagarin opte, dans le cadre du débat sur l’identité d’Anti­phon, pour la thèse unitariste. Une des principales vocations de cet ouvrage est en effet de soutenir qu’Antiphon le sophiste, auteur du De la vérité et du De la concorde, Antiphon l’orateur et Antiphon l’auteur des Tétralogies, sont une seule et même personne. Les arguments clas­siques en faveur de la thèse unitariste sont présentés au chapitre 2, mais cet ouvrage,...

Le volume intitulé Philosophie der Lust. Studien zum Hedonismus, édité par M. Erler et W. Rother, s’inscrit dans le prolongement du congrès « Lust-Freude-Begierde. Der Hedonismus von den Anfängen bis zur Neuzeit » qui s’est tenu du 15 au 17 avril 2010 à Würzburg. L’ouvrage a pour finalité d’aborder les discours philosophiques sur le plaisir, de l’Antiquité à la période moderne. Le choix du titre du recueil, cependant, la volonté, en outre, de mettre en évidence l’existence, au cours des siècl...

David Annis is professor of philosophy at Ball State University. In this essay, Annis offers an alternative to the foundationalist-coherent controversy: "contextualism." This theory rejects both the idea of intrinsically basic beliefs in the foundational sense and the thesis that coherence is sufficient for justification. he argues that justification is relative to the varying norms of social practices.

Analysis of the pastoral visits effected in the Diocese of Cartagena during Modern Age. With the purpose of verifying that it was what actually arrived to the parishes of the Diocese of al1 the program to conciliate proposed in Trento in 1573, the pastoral visits are analized, which were considered an important mechanism of social control. In addition, it is studied the application of the "tridentinos" decrees in the bishopric, the instructions given for the accomplishment of the pastoral visits, and (...) the conferences done to the parishes of Murcia. It concludes that, within the trentinas arrangements, the pastoral sight was a clear manifestation of the power and control in the ecclesiastic hierarchy of the parochial life in al1 its aspects, including the protagonists: the clergy and the staunch. (shrink)

Annie Besant is primarily remembered as the international president of the Theosophical Society. One of the most important aspects of her career were the years that she was a professional atheist, which has given her a place in history as a pioneer feminist. _The Origins of Theosophy _contains thirteen of Besant’s pamphlets, originally published from 1883-1890. This book is ideal for students of theology.

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged (...) artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender – so long subordinated to the structural issue of ‘race’ under apartheid – can now be explored. Penny Siopis’ work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis’ work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her ‘own’ history. (shrink)

L'Aufklärung allemande s'est réapproprié polémiquement le concept rousseauiste de perfectibilité, souvent avec d'importants déplacements. Théologie, philosophie, histoire naturelle, pédagogie, anthropologie concourent à un débat critique par lequel cette anthologie montre la pluralité des Lumières. --.

Policies and position statements regarding decision-making for extremely premature babies exist in many countries and are often directive, focusing on parental choice and expected outcomes. These recommendations often state survival and handicap as reasons for optional intervention. The fact that such outcome statistics would not justify such approaches in other populations suggests that some other powerful factors are at work. The value of neonatal intensive care has been scrutinized far more than intensive care for older patients and suggests that neonatal (...) care is held to a higher standard of justification. The relative value placed on the life of newborns, in particular the preterm, is less than expected by any objective medical data or any prevailing moral frameworks about the value of individual lives. Why do we feel less obligated to treat the premature baby? Do we put newborns in a special and lesser moral category? We explore this question from a legal and ethical perspective and offer several hypotheses pertaining to personhood, reproductive choices, “precious children,” and probable evolutionary and anthropological factors. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the perception of actual and ideal ethical climate type among 95 nurses working in the internal medicine wards of one central hospital in the state of Israel. We also examined whether nurses’ demographic characteristics influence that perception and if a relationship between perceptions of an actual and an ideal ethical climate type influences nurses’ job satisfaction. A questionnaire composed of three subquestionnaires was administered and the responses analyzed using multiple linear regressions, analysis of variance and (...) Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that demographic characteristics (such as: gender, job tenure and level of education) partially influence the perception of an ideal ethical climate. Incongruence in perceptions of ‘caring’ and ‘independence’ climate types indicated a decline in nurses’ job satisfaction, while perception of actual ‘caring’ and ‘service’ climates positively influenced all aspects of job satisfaction. We recommend constructing training programs emphasizing the ethics of nursing practice and also to help lead nurses to clarify an ethical framework and guide nursing staff in dealing with ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Friendship was an important topic for classical philosophers; the analysis, Value, And duties of friendship all received considerable attention. But friendship has been a relatively dormant topic among more recent philosophers. This paper (a) presents an analysis of friendship and explains its core elements, (b) discusses several different models for explaining the value of friendship, And (c) argues that there are special duties of friendship and that these aren't based solely on utilitarian considerations.

Children acquiring languages with noun classes have ample statistical information available that characterizes the distribution of nouns into these classes, but their use of this information to classify novel nouns differs from the predictions made by an optimal Bayesian classifier. We use rational analysis to investigate the hypothesis that children are classifying nouns optimally with respect to a distribution that does not match the surface distribution of statistical features in their input. We propose three ways in which children's apparent statistical (...) insensitivity might arise, and find that all three provide ways to account for the difference between children's behavior and the optimal classifier. A fourth model combines two of these proposals and finds that children's insensitivity is best modeled as a bias to ignore certain features during classification, rather than an inability to encode those features during learning. These results provide insight into children's developing knowledge of noun classes and highlight the complex ways in which statistical information from the input interacts with children's learning processes. (shrink)

The extremely preterm infant, born before 28 weeks of gestational age, has been the focus of much ethical discussion. These infants have a significant risk of mortality and morbidity, and it is not...

Care as a concept has long been central to the nursing discipline, and care ethics have consequently found their place in nursing ethics discussions. This paper briefly revisits how care and care ethics have been theorized and applied in the discipline of nursing, with an emphasis on Tronto’s political view of care. Adding to the works of other nurse scholars, we consider that Tronto’s care ethics is useful to understand caring practices in a sociopolitical context. We also contend that this (...) vision can be used specifically to politicize nurses, by encouraging them to think critically about the context in which they work and how they can participate to change the status quo, notably by prompting the democratization of care in institutional settings. We illustrate this by demonstrating how moral distress that can occur with aggressive or futile treatments in the intensive care unit can be reduced if nurses are systematically included in the decision-making process. By showing some ways in which nursing political actions can begin to change the status quo as it pertains to futile treatments at the end of life, we can help empower nurses to strive to be included in political spaces and voice their concerns to have their professional needs met. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the process of entanglement at the 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference (IPNC) at University of California at Irvine held on August 18, 2022. Representing collective work from the US, Canada, UK and Germany, our panel entitled ‘What can critical posthuman philosophies do for nursing?’ examined critical posthumanism and its operations and potential in nursing. Critical posthumanism offers an antifascist, feminist, material, affective, and ecologically entangled approach to nursing and healthcare. Rather than focusing on (...) the arguments of each of the three distinct but interrelated panel presentation pieces, this paper instead focuses on process and performance (per/formance) and performativity as relational, connected and situated, with connections to nursing philosophy. Building upon critical feminist and new materialist philosophies, we describe intra‐activity and performativity as ways to dehierarchise knowledge making practices within traditional academic conference spaces. Creating critical cartographies of thinking and being are actions of possibility for building more just and equitable futures for nursing, nurses, and those they accompany—including all humans, nonhumans, and more than human matter. (shrink)

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

Twenty-first-century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of support for determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard ‘Mendelian approach’ university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their (...) determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon, replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future. (shrink)

Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signaling transformations in the world's food and fuels systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves prefer transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in industry's extractive (...) transformations of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty—people's right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible. (shrink)

Though we fully agree that unconscious processing produces explicit representations that form the conscious phenomenal experience of the subject, identifying phenomenal experience with stable patterns of activation in a PDP network seriously limits O'Brien & Opie's thesis. They fail to recognize the constructive role of consciousness during the learning episode itself, reducing consciousness to a resulting outcome of the learning episode. We illustrate how consciousness can guide and shape the formation of increasingly structured representations of the world by presenting a (...) brief outline of a model for speech segmentation. (shrink)

The monstrous power of the blind in Diderot’s 1949 Letter is not due to its ability to make people laugh or afraid, as its most common etymology would indicate: monstrum, monstrare, to point to an abnormal fact. The monstrous power of Diderot’s monster is that of one who shows: monere, monitor, in the manner of a guide or pathfinder. It shows us that everything that lives, and especially the human being, is a hybrid. It takes the idea of a possible (...) mixture of animals and humans into account, thus the boldness of an ‘anti-speciesism’ as presented in the fantastical bestiary of Alembert’s Dream. It brings the humanism of essence to an end and invites us to redefine a new social bond. (shrink)

There is growing interest in teaching computational thinking to preschool children given evidence that they are able to understand and use CT concepts. One of the concepts that is central in CT definitions, is the concept of control structures, but it is not clear which tools and activities are successful in teaching it to young learners. This work aims at providing a comprehensive overview of tools that enable preschool children to build programs that include control structures, and analyzing empirical evidence (...) of the usage of these tools to teach control structures to children between 3 and 6. It consists of three parts: systematic literature review to identify tools to teach CT to young children, analysis of tools characteristics and the possibilities that they offer to express control structures, and SLR to identify empirical evidence of successful teaching of control structures to young children using relevant tools. This work provides an understanding of the current state of the art and identifies areas that require future exploration. (shrink)

This study describes the implementation of a curricular tool designed for students to develop civic engagement through running a social business in one fifth-grade classroom. The One Hen unit focuses on teaching elementary students the concept of social entrepreneurship through a project where students run their own social business to address a community need. This study has the potential to contribute to our understanding of how elementary students learn economics to increase civic engagement as the One Hen unit could lead (...) to students’ becoming more aware of problems in their community and to gain experience planning for civic action. (shrink)

It is common practice for social studies in the elementary school day to be integrated into other subject areas, especially language arts. Also common in an elementary school day are unstructured spaces such as snack time or recess. In this paper, we present findings from a larger study on social studies integration within various subject areas to explore how two teachers (first and fifth grade) integrated social studies into unstructured spaces. These teachers integrated social studies concepts and experiences into morning (...) work, community building, snack time, and after-lunch reading to varying degrees. This study provides an inroad for conversation among researchers, teacher educators, and practicing teachers about the ideals and reality of elementary social studies with the hope of deepening students’ experiences. (shrink)

This paper presents a qualitative study of four Grade 1 and Grade 2 national mathematics curricula coming from francophone countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Canada (Québec), and France. A comparative analysis was performed to identify differences that potentially lead to inequities among the countries. We identified all the concepts present in the Grade 1 and Grade 2 mathematics curriculum using the mathematical literacy framework developed by the OECD through its PISA assessment: quantity, change and relationship, data and uncertainty, and space and (...) shape. Then we looked across countries to find the major differences among them. The findings show three categories of possible inequities among the different curricula: some mathematical concepts are not presented in culturally relevant ways to students, some concepts present in the mathematics curricula are not mathematical concepts, and some important mathematical concepts are not part of the mathematics curricula. Our results show that these inequities appear in all four national curricula analysed here. Those findings highlight the need to question the political inequities among mathematics curricula around the world in order to give a chance for all students to learn strong and meaningful mathematics. (shrink)

Catholic social teaching appeals to the universal dimension of the Church. Specific details and lived experience are sacrificed in an effort to address the universal Church. In striving to speak to the universal, particular voices are missing. American case law approaches the universal through the particular by grounding law in the cases of specific persons. Narrative is tied to the case, and as a result, embedded in the law. This paper asks how the study of Church teaching might be enriched (...) by being in conversation with American case law. In examining the benefits and liabilities of including narrative in an apostolic exhortation, this paper addresses ecclesiological questions and the relationship of law and religion. (shrink)