« La tradition a longtemps considéré l’homme comme une exception au sein de la nature, lui concédant le pouvoir de la dominer et le droit de l’exploiter à son avantage. Aujourd’hui, à l’inverse, l’homme n’occupe plus tant le sommet de l’ordre de la création que l’épicentre d’une catastrophe en cours. Une nouvelle innocence semble requise pour habiter plus harmonieusement la nature. Seulement, nous rencontrons ici un paradoxe, car c’est aussi l’ingénuité technique qui est chargée de surmonter la crise écologique. Dans (...) le présent texte, nous tenterons de dénouer ce paradoxe par le biais des Deux leçons sur l’animal et l’homme de Gilbert Simondon, en revenant sur deux motifs qui s’opposent seulement en apparence : d’un côté, la vision démiurgique de l’homme comme grand artisan, ancrée dans le mythe platonicien du Timée, et de l’autre, la vision axiologique et éthique de l’homme, rendue emblématique par le sermon aux oiseaux de Saint François d’Assise. L’importance de la légende de Saint François d’Assise pour le canon apocalyptique du xiii ème siècle nous permettra de relier cette vision éthique au mythe platonicien, nous amenant, au final, à suggérer une alternative aux visions apocalyptiques de l’Anthropocène, appuyée sur l’originalité de la conception de la nature dans la pensée simondonienne. ». (shrink)

Few notions are more central than noise to the transformation of modern life. Noise has become synonymous with the complexity of our world and its global digitised information networks, for as the...

1. La philosophie politique contemporaine : en français et en anglais François Boucher (FB) : Votre travail semble habité par une volonté d'établir des ponts entre la pensée politique française et anglo-américaine. Cette volonté est déjà visible dans votre ouvrage de 2000, Pluralist Thought and the State in Britain and France (1900-1925), qui compare les penseurs pluralistes du début XXe en France et en Angleterre. Elle est également au cœur de Critical Republicanism, The Hijab Controversy an...

L’article se propose d’explorer ce qui est dit du mariage et de l’amour dans la correspondance d’une famille bourgeoise qui couvre plusieurs générations sur un large xixe siècle. Trois épisodes ont été retenus qui permettent d’observer bien des tensions entre mariage arrangé et mariage d’inclination. D’abord, au début du siècle, la correspondance d’un jeune homme à l’aube d’une brillante carrière scientifique explicite les « raisons » sociales et économiques qui déterminent son choix matrimonial. Puis, dans les années 1840-1843, l’échange entre (...) fiancés montre comment se construit le sentiment amoureux dans le respect de l’autorité parentale et des conventions en vigueur. Enfin, en 1858, autre moment stratégique dans le processus d’ascension sociale, la correspondance résonne des tractations menées par la famille pour conclure une union d’intérêt. À toutes ces étapes, il apparaît que les femmes assument leur destin social, qui est vécu et écrit comme une responsabilité face au cheminement des hommes de la famille. (shrink)

The literature on reparative justice focuses for the most part on the grounds and limits of wrongdoers' duties to their victims. An interesting but relatively neglected question is that of what - if anything - victims owe to wrongdoers. In this paper, I argue that victims are under a duty to accept wrongdoers' apologies. To accept an apology is to form the belief that the wrongdoer's apologetic utterance or gesture has the requisite verdictive, commissive and expressive dimensions; to communicate as (...) much to him; and to recognise that his apology changes one's normative status in relation to him, and to comport oneself accordingly. I then offer a Kantian argument for the duty to accept and qualify that argument in the light of some hard cases. I end the paper by addressing the objection that victims do not owe it to wrongdoers to engage in any form of reparative encounter. (shrink)

Suppose that state A attacks state D without warrant. The ensuing military conflict threatens international peace and security. State D (I assume) has a justification for defending itself by means of military force. But do third parties have a justification for intervening in that conflict by such means? To international public lawyers, the well-rehearsed and obvious answer is ‘yes’: threats to international peace and security provide one of two exceptions to the legal and moral prohibition (as set out in article (...) 2(4) of the UN Charter) on using force as a means for resolving interstate disputes. Just war theorists are not as verdictive. Compared to the ethics of humanitarian intervention and the ethics of national self-defense, the ethics of third-party military involvement in interstate conflicts remains strikingly under-developed in contemporary just war theory. This paper makes a start at filling the gap. It argues that to defend such interventions is tantamount to defending preventive military force, deterrent military force, and the resort to force in more cases than standardly thought. It then provides an account and limited defence of the deterrence argument. It shows that deterrence is morally justified in relatively few cases, and examines two problems with the argument: the problems raised by deterrence failures, and the problems raised by the level of uncertainty under which leaders who use deterrent force operate. It ends by concluding that we should take seriously the possibility that non-intervention, construed as the rejection of the direct use of military force, is the morally correct response to the most serious threats to international peace and security. (shrink)

La prééminence que le libéralisme accorde aux libertés individuelles apparaît parfois comme un obstacle à la mise en œuvre de politiques environnementales contraignantes. Chez Rawls, cette prééminence s’incarne dans le principe de priorité de la liberté : on ne peut restreindre une des libertés de base qu’au nom de la liberté – et donc pas, semble-t-il, pour protéger l’environnement. Il est ici montré que ce principe, retouché à la suite d’une critique de Herbert L. A. Hart, autorise et même exige (...) plus de politiques écologiques qu’il n’y paraît. En outre, deux modestes aménagements internes de la théorie permettent d’en autoriser et exiger plus encore : considérer un environnement de qualité comme un bien premier, et un droit à un environnement de qualité comme une liberté de base. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the need to promote a people-centred corporate social responsibility framework in a context where many human needs and rights remain unsatisfied and where businesses may have both a positive and a negative impact on the quality of life of human beings today and tomorrow and may even lead to irreversible damage. Our normative definition of CSR is consistent with the criteria established by the EU Commission in 2011. We conceive CSR as a responsibility (...) towards human development in two complementary ways: a holistic responsibility shared by companies together with other actors to safeguard humanity and a direct liability of each company for its impact on stakeholders' capabilities. We apply Nussbaum's list of central capabilities and concept of thresholds to specify the nature and extent of corporate responsibilities towards employees, subcontractors, investors, customers, and humanity as a whole. In addition, we leverage fieldwork in developing and developed countries to analyse the effect of business activities on human capabilities. We demonstrate that by quantifying the impact of businesses' activities on various dimensions of stakeholders' lives, and especially on the most vulnerable ones, these businesses can be held accountable for the negative externalities they produce. (shrink)

Liberal societies conventionally treat religion as unique under the law, requiring both special protection and special containment. But recently this idea that religion requires a legal exception has come under fire from those who argue that religion is no different from any other conception of the good, and the state should treat all such conceptions according to principles of neutrality and equal liberty. Cécile Laborde agrees with much of this liberal egalitarian critique, but she argues that a simple analogy between (...) the good and religion misrepresents the complex relationships among religion, law, and the state. Religion serves as more than a statement of belief about what is true, or a code of moral and ethical conduct. It also refers to comprehensive ways of life, political theories of justice, modes of voluntary association, and vulnerable collective identities. Disaggregating religion into its various dimensions, as Laborde does, has two clear advantages. First, it shows greater respect for ethical and social pluralism by ensuring that whatever treatment religion receives from the law, it receives because of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Second, it dispenses with the Western, Christian-inflected conception of religion that liberal political theory relies on, especially in dealing with the issue of separation between religion and state. As a result, Liberalism's Religion offers a novel answer to the question: Can Western theories of secularism and religion be applied more universally in non-Western societies?--. (shrink)

« Dans la première préface à la Critique de la raison pure Kant se réfère aux Métamorphoses d’Ovide pour comparer une métaphysique hors bornes à la reine Hécube. Or, ce qui semble être tu dans cette métaphore, c’est qu’Ovide fait culminer la douleur d’Hécube dans sa métamorphose en chienne enragée. Le cliché de la reine des sciences est ainsi poussée à son paroxysme : la métaphysique sauvage serait une chienne enragée! Cet article revient, par le biais de l’œuvre sonore de (...) l’artiste power noise Rosaceae (Leyla Yenirce), à une Hécube qui hante la philosophie. Hécube pose, selon l’argument exposé ici, le problème d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure, qui hanterait la notion de raison pure comme son complément logique mais refoulé. Refoulé car, si l’idée d’une raison pure semble parfaitement innocente, celle d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure évoque à l’inverse un scandale pour la pensée philosophique, puisque l’idée d’un objet à penser en est exclue, et puisque son spectre renvoie à tout ce qui terrorise les philosophes : la fantaisie et la folie, le désir et la culpabilité, l’enthousiasme et l’irrationalité. ». (shrink)

This article explores the possible convergence between the capabilities approach and utilitarianism to specify CSR. It defends the idea that this key issue is related to the anthropological perspective that underpins both theories and demonstrates that a relational conception of individual freedoms and rights present in both traditions gives adequate criteria for CSR toward the company's stakeholders. I therefore defend "relational capability" as a means of providing a common paradigm, a shared vision of a core component of human development. This (...) could further lead to a set of indicators aimed at assessing corporate social performance as the maximization of the relational capability of people impacted by the activities of companies. In particular, I suggest a way of evaluating the contribution of extractive companies to the communities close to their industrial sites in extremely poor areas, not from the viewpoint of material resources and growth, but from the viewpoint of the quality of the social environment and empowerment. (shrink)

L’un des principaux arguments évoqués contre l’art contemporain au début des années 1990 en France (lors du débat autour de ce qui fut appelé la « crise de l’art contemporain ») consista en l’affirmation que puisqu’aujourd’hui n’importe quoi peut être de l’art, alors l’art d’aujourd’hui c’est n’importe quoi. Ce texte entend montrer que ce raisonnement en deux parties relève d’une confusion qui, une fois clarifiée, permettra de cerner la spécificité de l’art contemporain et des jugements qui peuvent être émis à (...) son égard. (shrink)

In this article, I compare the ways in which Baudrillard and Heidegger seek to bring attention to the importance of death for our personal existential situation which has now become repressed in conceptions of existence and society. Heidegger critiques public conceptions of death that serve to cover up its importance. Less well known is that, somewhat in parallel fashion, Baudrillard charts a ‘genealogy’ of the ‘extradition’ of the dead from the centre of the social and he claims that we live (...) currently in a death denying society. This reduces the meaning of our own impending deaths. However, unlike Heidegger, Baudrillard’s ‘genealogical’ critique of the exclusion of death in modern society is not a one-way dismissal because he proposes an alternative social role for death in the form of ‘primitive symbolic exchange’. (shrink)

During the second half of the 20th century several American multidisciplinary social science „disaster research groups“ conducted numerous field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and “racial riots”, both inside and outside of the United States. Their aim was to investigate the reactions and behavior of individuals, organizations and communities to disasters. All of these groups were either promoted or at least partly founded by different branches of the US military. This article will analyze the groups’ studies and findings on the (...) question of disasters’ psychological effects. The main focus will be on the stance the scientists took on the diagnosis of psychological trauma—especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—and the post disaster therapeutic interventions that became widespread in the 1970s and early 1980s. The disaster researchers questioned the need for, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of “disaster mental health”. At the same time they advocated early ideas of resilience, which later became one of the most important concepts in disaster management and beyond. (shrink)

A vision of future daily life is explored in Ambient Intelligence . It contains the assumption that intelligent technology should disappear into our environment to bring humans an easy and entertaining life. The mental, physical, methodical invisibility of AmI will have an effect on the relation between design and use activities of both users and designers. Especially the ethics discussions of AmI, privacy, identity and security are moved into the foreground. However in the process of using AmI, it will go (...) beyond these themes. The infiltration of AmI will cause the construction of new meanings of privacy, identity and security because the "visible" acting of people will be preceded, accompanied and followed by the invisible and visible acting of the AmI technology and their producers.A question in this paper is: How is it possible to create critical transformative rooms in which doubting will be possible under the circumstances that autonomous 'intelligent agents' surround humans? Are humans in danger to become just objects of artificial intelligent conversations? Probably the relation between mental, physical, methodical invisibility and visibility of AmI could give answers. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la Revue européenne des sciences sociales – European Journal of Social Science, XLVII-143, 2009, p. 65-85. I. Introduction : Avec la publication en 1862 de l'ouvrage de Clément Juglar, Des crises commerciales et de leur retour périodique, la France devint l'un des lieux de naissance du concept de cycle d'affaires. L'Académie des sciences morales et politiques avait en effet organisé l'année précédente un concours destiné à « rechercher les causes et signaler les effets des (...) - Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

2011 Reprint of 1943 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "St. Thomas Aquinas" is enriched by the author's unique ability to see the world through the saint's eyes, a fresh and animated view that shows us Aquinas as no other biography has. Acclaimed as the best book ever written on Aquinas by such outstanding Thomists as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Anton Pegis, this brilliant biography will completely capture the reader and leave him (...) desirous of reading Aquinas' own monumental work. (shrink)

This paper argues that the self, as both the centre of our identity and the focus of our spiritual life, has not been given enough consideration with regard to the ethics of managers and leaders. Informed by models of self-realisation and the Jungian process of individuation, our discussion suggests that the way we perceive and interpret our self affects our moral behaviour. In particular, integrity of the self fully participates in enhancing servant leadership and consistent ethical practice. We illustrate the (...) argument with comments from various managers on the statement: ‘Being true to your self’. (shrink)

This paper argues that the self, as both the centre of our identity and the focus of our spiritual life, has not been given enough consideration with regard to the ethics of managers and leaders. Informed by models of self-realisation and the Jungian process of individuation, our discussion suggests that the way we perceive and interpret our self affects our moral behaviour. In particular, integrity of the self fully participates in enhancing servant leadership and consistent ethical practice. We illustrate the (...) argument with comments from various managers on the statement: ‘Being true to your self’. (shrink)

Ethics review committees have become a common institution in English-speaking research communities, and are now increasingly being adopted in a variety of research environments. In light of existing debates on the aptness of ethics review boards for assessing research work in the social sciences, this article investigates the ways in which researchers navigate issues of research ethics in the absence of a formal review procedure or of an ethics review board. Through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, the article (...) questions the overall utility of ethics review boards. Highlighting the importance of space for sharing, the authors argue for the development of a new type of structure that takes into account researchers’ ‘ethos of responsibility’ as an adequate ethical compass for research in the social sciences. (shrink)

Aucun historien sérieux ne pourrait prétendre le contraire, une histoire sans les femmes n'est plus possible. Et pourtant la question, certes provocatrice, ne semblait pas incongrue en 1997, lorsqu'elle fut retenue pour intituler le colloque qui s'est tenu à Rouen, ainsi que l'ouvrage paru l'année suivante. Très tôt, l'histoire des femmes a dû s'exercer à dresser des bilans. Portée par l'engagement et la quête identitaire, il lui fallut périodiquement tenir un discours de justificatio...

Les historiens se donnent trop rarement le loisir et les moyens de réfléchir à leurs pratiques et de passer en revue leurs propres outils. Il faut donc saluer l'initiative prise par CLIO HSF et remercier les organisatrices de cette journée. Dans l'esprit de conquête qui habite le champ de l'histoire des femmes depuis trois décennies, le besoin de jalonner le parcours devenait presque une habitude. De Saint-Maximin à Rouen en passant par Jussieu, des lieux ont marqué et scandé la réflexion (...) sur... (shrink)

Rares sont les chercheurs qui pratiquent eux-mêmes l’art qu’ils professent. C’est le cas de Sarah Nancy, agrégée de lettres modernes, qui consacre son enseignement et ses recherches à la voix parlée et chantée tout en nourrissant son travail de la pratique du chant lyrique. L’ouvrage qu’elle vient de publier est la version remaniée de la thèse de doctorat préparée sous la direction d’Hélène Merlin-Kajman (2007) sur la naissance de l’opéra en France au tournant des xviie et xviiie siècles. Gen...

Do we have the right to deny others access to our body? What if this would harm those who need personal services or body parts from us? Ccile Fabre examines the impact that arguments for distributive justice have on the rights we have over ourselves, and on such contentious issues as organ sales, prostitution, and surrogate motherhood.