While the philosopher Rosi Braidotti sees her own, new materialist work as opposed to the analysis of biopolitics from Heidegger to Agamben, the present contribution establishes a dialogue between these two lineages. Starting with Aristotle’s distinction between zōē and bíos politikos, it puts the analyses of biopolitics in immunitarian modernity in conversation with new materialism conceptualizations of affirmative difference and relationality. Replacing the negative logic of identity/alterity, life/death, dualism or dialectics and desire-as-lack of the Western philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions with (...) human and more-than-human post-individualistic subjectivity as part of a rhizomatic web, NM proposes a groundbreaking shift to post-anthropocentrism. The biopolitical fear of viral contamination cedes to viral contamination as the generative vanishing of borderlines between self and other. In this vital geocentrism marking a new kind of politics, the sym-poetic life force of zōē generates complex allegiances between heterogeneous entities in a shared world. (shrink)

Based upon a colloquium held in October 2006, this book comprises fourteen essays concerning Nietzsche’s concept, evaluation, and practice of philology. Jean-François Balaudé and Patrick Wotling’s introduction gives an idea of the complicated relation between philology and philosophy in Nietzsche’s oeuvre. They point out that, although philology and philosophy might be seen as two distinct professions, connected also to different phases in Nietzsche’s life, the two are intimately related from the beginning and remain that way. The ultimate concern of the (...) book, though, is Nietzsche’s notion of philosophy: can his understanding and practice of it be understood in terms of philology, namely, as the continuation... (shrink)

_The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance_ Edited by John Orr and Elzbieta Ostrowska Foreword by Andrzej Wajda London: Wallflower Press, 2003 ISBN 1-903364-89-2 227 pages.

So far, animals in fables have almost exclusively been studied as symbolic representatives of human behaviour. New perspectives are opened up by Human-Animal Studies which focus on the animals themselves and human-animal relationships. Inspired by this approach, this article examines five fables of Graeco-Roman antiquity which are connected by the motif of the vicious dog. On the basis of philological interpretation it is shown to what extent and with which intention the dogs are anthropomorphised and at the same time represented (...) as real animals. Interestingly, the human protagonists usually don´t blame the dogs and draw a clear borderline between animals and humans. It seems that successful communication is possible only within the same species. (shrink)

Aims : The Modified Reasons for Smoking Scale (MRSS) is a widely accepted scale that measures psychological functions of smoking. The scale has been translated in Dutch and has been validated, in order to be used in clinical smoking cessation practice in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. This study examined the factorial structure, reliability and validity of the scale in a sample of smokers, who are characterized by a high level of dependence and an explicit motivation to stop smoking. Method (...) : The participants were 383 smokers, who volunteered at the stop-smoking clinic of a Belgian university hospital, and completed the translated scale. They were administered the translated MRSS, the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND). Through a clinical interview, smoking behaviour and smoking history was assessed (daily smoking consumption, years smoking, number of quit attempts, weeks stopped, alcohol and coffee consumption, CO level). Exploratory factor analysis was performed. Internal consistency was studied in order to examine the reliability. The concurrent validity was assessed by means of manova, anova and correlation analysis. Results : Factor analysis identified four factors, named stimulation, pleasure of smoking, social smoking and automatism of smoking. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.65 (automatism) to 0.72 (stimulation). manova indicated the influence of the variables age, sex, daily consumption and the FTND (the latter two variables showed a dose-dependent association with each subscale). Regression analysis revealed a relationship with dependence indicators, namely: the daily consumption, the number and duration of previous quit attempts, FTND, CO level and daily coffee intake. Conclusions : The Dutch translation of the MRSS identified four factors and revealed acceptable validity and reliability. The adapted version of the translated scale as a component of the psychological assessment procedure in a smoking cessation treatment in Dutch-speaking areas should be implemented. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

Cet article se demande pourquoi Kant évoque une preuve ontologique de l’existence de Dieu dans l’ Opus postumum après l’avoir abandonnée dans la Critique de la raison pure. Il met d’abord en lumière l’importance des critiques des Schwärmer pour qui la religion n’est pas une affaire de la raison. Puis il montre comment Kant y répond en posant un lien analytique entre Dieu et la loi morale dans la Critique de la raison pratique et en érigeant la théologie en « (...) principe suprême » de la philosophie transcendantale dans l’ Opus postumum. Il conclut que Dieu existe dans la reconnaissance du sujet dans le monde. (shrink)

Previous conversation analytic studies of institutional interaction included analyses of empathy in interaction. These studies revealed that professionals may use empathy displays not only to validate the client’s worry, but also to perform actions oriented to other institutional goals and tasks such as closing off a troubles-telling sequence. In this article, we present an analysis of empathically designed responses in Dutch telephone counseling. The data consist of 36 calls from the Alcohol and Drugs Info Line. In some of the calls, (...) clients’ troubles-telling includes ‘emotion discourse’, that is, descriptions of their feelings/emotions. Counselors may respond to these descriptions using conventional empathy displays like ‘I can imagine that’ and ‘I understand that’ in a range of verbal and prosodic variations. The analysis reveals that these responses open up advice sequences that vary in the extent to which they treat the client’s articulated feelings as valid. Most are affiliating, treating the client’s feelings as the basis for advice, while some are less affiliative, putting the client’s feelings into perspective or implicitly questioning their legitimacy. Hence, empathically designed responses are pivots to advice-giving. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur Frontex, l’Agence européenne pour la gestion de la coopération opérationnelle aux frontières extérieures des États membres de l’Union européenne et de l’espace Schengen, et plus précisément sur les nouveaux procédés utilisés afin de protéger les frontières extérieures de l’Union européenne. Ces procédés régis par de nouveaux médias technologiques amènent une dématérialisation des frontières extérieures et de nouveaux mécanismes d’exclusion.The subject of this article is Frontex, the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External (...) Borders of the Member States of the European Union and the Schengen area, and more specifically the new procedures applied to protect the European Union’s external borders. These procedures are managed through new technological media, which dematerialise external borders and bring in new mechanisms of exclusion. (shrink)

Pour les théoriciens de la reconnaissance, Kant reste une référence obligée, bien qu’ambiguë et au fond secondaire. Même s’il est considéré comme un des pères de « la politique de dignité égalitaire [...] fondée sur l’idée que tous les êtres humains sont également dignes de respect », sa conception de la dignité lui interdit de faire, comme Hegel, du besoin ou de l’exigence de la reconnaissance une...

This is the first translation into English of early phenomenologist Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Metaphysical Conversations, originally published in 1921. Conrad-Martius was one of Husserl’s first students, an important part of the Göttingen Phenomenology Circle and mentor to Edith Stein, Jean Héring, and other early phenomenologists. The present volume provides the full German and English texts of the conversations, a phenomenological discussion of the nature of the human, examining the nature of body, soul, and spirit, and drawing distinctions between plants, animals, (...) humans, and various other beings. The volume also includes two important essays on phenomenology, in which Conrad-Martius distinguishes between the phenomenological approaches of Husserl, Heidegger, and the more ontological approach of the Göttingen school of phenomenology. She is critical of Husserl’s "transcendental" and Heidegger’s "existential" approach. The conversations illustrate her use of the phenomenological method for fundamental investigations into the nature (or Wesen) of things. (shrink)

This article explores the discursive uses of a self-quotation in adolescent talk. The self-quotation uses the quotative marker be + like to convey or project bold statements as part of a larger narrative. We will demonstrate how the preface leading up to the self-quotation is designed as hard to counter, and instructs the hearer how to understand what comes next. The self-quotation, on the other hand, constitutes the assessment as a `mere characterization' that provides the speaker with a number of (...) opportunities for testing the proposed view. Speakers are thus able to bolster potentially controversial views against refutation while also giving them a preliminary status. These features make for an interesting conversational resource that enables speakers and recipients to engage in a collaborative process of putting potentially bold statements to the test. (shrink)

Im Ausgang vom historischen Scholastikbild Brentanos wird nach den Quellen und Interpretationshinsichten gefragt, die für Brentanos frühe und späte Fassung des Intentionalen leitend waren. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Voraussetzung der Intentionalität in der aristotelischen Sachproblematik der Wahrnehmung liegt (De an. 424 al7), die Brentano mit dem scholastischen Begriff obiective interpretiert, einem Terminus, den Brentano von der Neuscholastik, aber auch von Descartes und dem spätmittelalterlichen Konzeptualismus her kannte. Es ist nun entscheidend, daß in dieser Terminologie nur ein sehr eingeschränkter Aspekt (...) der scholastischen Intentionalität thematisch ist, der in seiner internen Problematik den Ansatzpunkt für alle späteren Reinterpretationen abgibt. (shrink)