Considered an institution mainly devoted to astrology and medicine by Simon de Phares and by some historians who believe that he was reliable, the college founded in 1371 by Charles V’s first physician, Gervais Chrétien, was in fact primarily dedicated to theological students. It was not before 1377 that there were created there two bursaries for scholares regis, specialising in ‘licit mathematical sciences’, and two medical fellowships. Yet the influence of the activity of these fellows seems to have been rather (...) moderate and—as far as we can learn from the material still extant, notably from manuscripts that belonged to Maître Gervais’ College and to some of its members—this institution was devoted much more to theological studies than to medicine and the quadrivium. (shrink)

Patrice Bergeron,Fabrice Blée,Marc Dumas,Raymond Lemieux,Jean Richard,Gérard Siegwalt.

Recognition memory performance reflects two distinct memory processes: a conscious process of recollection, which allows remembering specific details of a previous event, and familiarity, which emerges in the absence of any conscious information about the context in which the event occurred. Slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep are differentially involved in the consolidation of different types of memory. The study assessed the effects of SWS and REM sleep on recollection, by means of the “remember”/”know” paradigm. Subjects studied three (...) blocks of 12 words before a 3-h retention interval filled with SWS, REM sleep or wakefulness, placed between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Afterwards, recognition and recollection were tested. Recollection was higher after a retention interval rich in SWS than after a retention interval rich in REM sleep or filled with wakefulness. The results suggest that SWS facilitates the process of recollection in recognition memory. (shrink)

In this paper, Knetsch's exchange paradigm is analyzed from the perspective of pragmatics and social norms. In this paradigm the participant, at the beginning of the experiment, receives an object from the experimenter and at the end, the same experimenter offers to exchange the received object for an equivalent object. The observed refusal to exchange is called the endowment effect. We argue that this effect comes from an implicature made by the participant about the experimenter's own expectations. The participant perceives (...) the received item as a gift, or as a present, from the experimenter that cannot be exchanged as stipulated by the social norms of western politeness common to both the experimenter and the participant. This implicature, however, should not be produced by participants from Kanak culture for whom the perceived gift of a good will be interpreted as a first act of exchange based on gift and counter-gift. This exchange is a natural, frequent, balanced, and indispensable act for all Kanak social bonds whether private or public. Kanak people also know the French social norms that they apply in their interactions with French people living in New Caledonia. In our experiment, we show that when the exchange paradigm takes place in a French context, with a French experimenter and in French, the Kanak participant is subject to the endowment effect in the same way as a French participant. On the other hand, when the paradigm is carried out in a Kanak context, with a Kanak experimenter and in the vernacular language, or in a Kanak context that approaches the ceremonial of the custom, the endowment effect is no longer observed. The same number of Kanak participants accept or refuse to exchange the endowed item. These results, in addition to providing a new explanation for the endowment effect, highlight the great flexibility of decisions according to social-cultural context. (shrink)

On savait que c’était l’entité la plus complexe de l’univers connu. Mais le feu d’artifice de découvertes récentes dépasse l’entendement et fait exploser tous les schémas. Votre cerveau est (beaucoup) plus fabuleux que vous le croyez. Il est : totalement élastique, même âgé, handicapé, voire amputé de plusieurs lobes, le système nerveux central peut se reconstituer et repartir à l’assaut des connaissances et de l’action sur le monde ; totalement social, un cerveau n’existe jamais seul, mais toujours en résonance avec (...) d’autres. Mieux : nous sommes neuronalement constitués pour entrer en empathie avec autrui et aller à son secours. Ce livre aborde ces questions passionnantes avec cinq spécialistes. (shrink)

Torture, abus sexuels, traite des personnes, esclavage, crimes de guerre, génocides : les figures de l'intolérable se sont multipliées depuis deux siècles, jusqu'à saturer l'espace public contemporain de faits socialement réprouvés et juridiquement sanctionnés. Ce que l'on affirme ainsi injustifiable est vu généralement comme un mal radical, voire absolu, comme le franchissement d'une limite. Pourtant, le regard vers un passé encore proche nous apprend qu'il s'agit toujours d'une limite historiquement constituée, donc frappée de relativité temporelle, et toutes ces transgressions n'ont (...) pas la même valeur ou la même gravité, suggérant ainsi une hiérarchie morale. À l'encontre d'une vision essentialiste des droits de l'homme, les études présentées dans ce livre rendent compte de la façon dont se sont formées les frontières de l'espace moral contemporain. Après avoir tracé les fondements anthropologiques de ce qui constitue l'intolérable des sociétés humaines, l'ouvrage s'attache à cette période de basculement que représente la Révolution française. Puis les auteurs analysent quelques-unes des figures les plus significatives de notre modernité morale : le travail des enfants et la maltraitance infantile, la gestion des corps morts et l'empreinte psychique de la violence, le traitement différentiel des épidémies à l'échelle planétaire. Ainsi se dessine une généalogie des intolérables de notre monde, mais aussi, en contrepoint, notre remarquable tolérance à l'égard des inégalités et des injustices les plus profondes, à commencer par celles qui différencient la valeur des vies humaines. (shrink)

s political theory apparently leads us to choose between patriotism and cosmopolitism. The two major works published in 1762, On the Social Contract and Emile , would represent the two sides of the alternative. However, the opposition between patriotism and cosmopolitism is the ultimate development of an internal tension between two aspects of Rousseau’s political concept of people: the intersubjectivity that permits the formation of the general will; and the individual’s devotion to the state. On the one hand, the political (...) community appears as a distributive totality. On the other hand, it is viewed as a collective totality. When generalized, intersubjectivity leads to the formation of both the social concept of people and the moral concept of humanity, while patriotism requires the individual’s loyalty to the nation. In order to maintain the coherence of the very political concept of people and to solve the main political problem - which is to reconcile security and liberty - it is necessary to overcome the dichotomy between cosmopolitism and patriotism. Emile and Rousseau’s original plan for On the Social Contract are consistent on that point. Key Words: cosmopolitism • general will • intersubjectivity • nation • patriotism • people. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relationships between ethics and the environment in Rousseau’s thought. The concept of environment is understood in its various dimensions. What is at stake is the natural, as well as the social and political, environment of human beings. The notion of ethics is also understood in a broad sense. We do not set ethics, understood as the search for happiness (or for the good life) against morality, understood as the fulfillment of duty. However, we take up (...) two main questions. The first question concerns the influence of the environment, both natural and social, upon the ethical development of human beings. The second question concerns the responsibility of human beings towards nature. We examine what Rousseau teaches us regarding these two questions. Finally, we envisage liberty from the point of view of the relationships between nature and the political order. Human liberty is a matter of rights. It depends upon the republican nature of the state. However, liberty is also a sentiment that is intimately related to the living experience of nature. In order to understand what Rousseau means by liberty, we must grasp this intimate relationship between nature and politics. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by atypical perception, including processing that is biased toward local details rather than global configurations. This bias may impact on memory. The present study examined the effect of this perception on both implicit and explicit memory in conditions that promote either local or global processing. The first experiment consisted of an object identification priming task using two distinct encoding conditions: one favoring local processing and the other favoring global processing of drawings. The second experiment focused (...) on episodic memory with two different cartoon recognition tasks that favored either local or a global processing. In addition, all the participants underwent a general clinical cognitive assessment aimed at documenting their cognitive profile and enabling correlational analyses with experimental memory tasks. Seventeen participants with ASD and 17 typically developing controls aged from 10 to 16 years participated to the first experiment and 13 ASD matched with 13 TD participants were included for the second experiment. Experiment 1 confirmed the preservation of priming effects in ASD but, unlike the Comparison group, the ASD group did not increase his performance as controls after a globally oriented processing. Experiment 2 revealed that local processing led to difficulties in discriminating lures from targets in a recognition task when both lures and targets shared common details. The correlation analysis revealed that these difficulties were associated with processing speed and inhibition. These preliminary results suggest that natural perceptual processes oriented toward local information in ASD may impact upon their implicit memory by preventing globally oriented processing in time-limited conditions and induce confusion between explicit memories that share common details. (shrink)

La période est à la transgression. Transgresser est en effet la nécessité même de l'ordre. Tel est le principe de base de tout pouvoir dès lors qu'il se proclame souverain. Autrement dit, il n'est de pouvoir que transgresseur. Telle est aussi l'énigme de la puissance attribuée à l'État depuis son élaboration principielle par Jean Bodin jusqu'aux énoncés de Carl Schmitt dont la formule "est souverain celui qui décide de la situation exceptionnelle", a permis au XXe siècle de donner un (...) autre contenu, dictatorial, à la question de la souveraineté. L'évolution récente de cette notion prise au piège de la fondation des grands ensembles plurinationaux telle l'Union européenne, réactualise la question de l'adéquation de la souveraineté avec la nation. C'est dans cette logique qu'une archéologie de cette notion paraît indispensable pour évaluer sa double évolution dont la première, transcendante et de type vertical, la fait descendre de la toute-puissance divine jusqu'à son incarnation populaire à travers ses séquences ecclésiales (le souverain pontife), royales, nationales et populaires. Une seconde évolution à partir de la Révolution française, que l'on peut qualifier d'horizontale, l'instaure sur le versant de son incarnation imaginée au sein de la nation, souveraineté nationale, ou au plan de l'universalité des citoyens, souveraineté populaire. Qu'elle soit fondée sur une représentation imaginée collective de soi, la nation, ou sur une identité citoyenne étendue à tous, le peuple, la question de la souverainetén'est soluble que dans cette double identité, nationale et populaire à travers la question de la démocratie qui apparaît ici fondamentale pour restituer au souverain-peuple la légitimité des choix qu'il opère au travers de la délégation de ses compétences aux représentants qu'il se donne. En fin de compte, la souveraineté est avant tout toute-puissante, et ainsi, il n'y a de puissance politique que découlant d'elle. (shrink)

¿Qué es un héroe de la emancipación? Rousseau comparaba el héroe antiguo, un guerrero triunfante que vence a los enemigos de su país, con el verdadero héroe, aquel que es capaz de posponer su singularidad en vistas a promover la acción común del pueblo soberano. De acuerdo con Miguel Abensour, la Revolución francesa redefine el heroísmo político como la capacidad de iniciar algo cuyo resultado es aún imprevisible, estableciendo así una nueva sociedad en la cual las figuras del héroe y (...) del legislador coinciden, anudando una enigmática relación entre esclavitud y libertad, y estableciendo un orden que sobrepasa las divisiones generadas por los intereses injustos. Pero si "el héroe es el verdadero sujeto de la modernidad" , ¿no es la posibilidad del heroísmo en la prosaica sociedad moderna y postrevolucionaria la llave de salida del siglo XIX? ¿Qué pensar de una figura heroica como la de Simón Bolívar, el usurpador del título de Libertador, según Benjamin Constant; el Napoleón de las retiradas, según Marx? ¿El partero de la emancipación, según escriben Pierre Leroux y Jean Reynaud en la Nueva Enciclopedia? ¿La luminaria de la emancipación del pueblo americano caído en la esclavitud, como dirá Juan Montalvo? Who is a hero of emancipation? Rousseau contrasted the ancient hero, a triumphant worrier who defeats the enemies of his country, with the true hero, the one who is able to surrender his singularity in order better to promote the collective agency of a sovereign people. The French revolution, according to Miguel Abensour, redefines political heroism as the ability to initiate something in the unpredictability of the result, establishing therefore a new society in which the figures of the hero and the legislator coincide, broaching an enigmatic relationship between bondage and freedom, and establishing an order that supersedes the divisions generated by unjust desires. But if "the hero is the true subject of modernity" is not the possibility of heroism in a prosaic modern post-revolutionary society the key issue of the nineteenth century? What to think of a heroic figure like Simon Bolivar, - the usurper of the title Libertador ? The Napoleon of the retreats ? The accoucheur of the emancipation, ? The emancipating luminary of the American people fallen in bondage ? (shrink)

In the early 1990s, Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking was criticized for harboring a latent ethnocentrism. Ruddick responded to these critiques in the 1995 edition of her book, but her response has not yet been addressed in the feminist philosophical literature. This essay addresses this lacuna in the scholarship on Ruddick. In the last installment of this critique, Alison Bailey and Patrice DiQuinzio suggested that the only way for Ruddick to avoid the ethnocentrism charge would require her near-universalistic claims about (...) mothering to be rejected in favor of “particularized, localized accounts of mothering.” In this essay I'll show that this claim goes too far. After reviewing Lugones's and Bailey's critiques of Ruddick, along with Ruddick's response, I propose a “modified universalism” that addresses the concerns raised by Ruddick's critics while preserving key elements of her theory. (shrink)

Aucune discussion d'ensemble des ecrits de Lyotard sur l'art n'avait ete entreprise. Or sa reflexion sur les arts - musique, cinema, peinture surtout - est une part essentielle de son oeuvre, comme en temoignent les analyses proposees dans Discours, figure, Que peindre?, Moralites postmodernes, L'Inhumain et Les Ecrits sur l'art contemporain et les artistes. Moins remarque pourtant est le fait que Lyotard a collabore avec des peintres (Monory, Guiffrey, Adami, Sam Francis, Appel, Buren, etc). Il a ete commissaire d'une exposition (...) en 1985 qui a fait date, " Les Immateriaux ", au Centre Georges-Pompidou. Plusieurs textes du volume ainsi qu'un entretien inedit avec Bernard Blistene sont consacres a cette manifestation. Pour ce livre Francoise Coblence et Michel Enaudeau ont sollicite non seulement des lecteurs avertis de Lyotard (Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jean-Michel Rey, Jean-Loup Thebaud, Herman Parret, Anne Cauquelin, Gerald Sfez, Jean-Claude Rolland, Claudine Eizykman et Guy Fihman, Jean-Francois Nordmann, Jean-Patrice Courtois), mais aussi de plus jeunes chercheurs (Gaelle Bernard, Frederic Fruteau de Laclos, Claire Pages, Jerome Glicenstein, Maud Pouradier, Evelyne Toussaint) qui decouvrent pour leur propre compte le travail de Lyotard sur les arts. Les contributions rassemblees analysent les concepts forges par Lyotard, tels que " figural ", "libidinal ", " sublime ", " immateriau ", " matiere ", " impresentable " " affect ", " ecriture ". A travers eux, cette pensee de l'art veut rompre avec l'esthetique au sens academique du terme pour voir ou entendre dans les oeuvres l'evenement de la couleur ou du son. C'est donc bien d'un enjeu " ontologique " qu'il y va : l'art est seul a nous presenter la frappe sensible de l'etre. (shrink)

Devant un film de Jean Cocteau ou de Pasolini, devant un scénario de Jacques Prévert ; devant les photos de Georges Azenstarck, celles des prêtres-ouvriers par Joël Peyroux, celles des albums de familles en banlieue ; devant les toiles de Patrice Giorda ou d'Ernest Pignon-Ernest mais aussi devant une page des Cantos d'Ezra Pound ou d'un texte d'Antonin Artaud, qui ne s'est posé la question : qu'est-ce qu'on y voit? Et plus interrogateur encore : qu'est-ce qu'on y lit? (...) Les sources d'inspiration, d'enthousiasmes ou de fureur de Gérard Mordillat sont nombreuses. Et c'est bien l'oeil qui toujours a nourri sa littérature. Ce recueil prend les ouvres à bras-le-corps, les dissèque, les malmène, pour en livrer toute la profondeur. Homme de lettres et homme d'images, Gérard Mordillat nous livre ici son regard de critique, au sens le plus noble du terme, avec la force et la fougue que l'on trouve dans ses romans. Au regard de textes écrits séparément mais tous gouvernés par cette même question : le mot et l'image seraient-ils frères de sang de l'écriture? Gérard Mordillat interroge les ouvres picturales, photographiques, littéraires ou cinématographiques qui, depuis toujours, sous-tendent et ses films et ses livres. (shrink)

Structuralism is often associated with a program, in keeping with the Durkheimian tradition, of reducing social norms to a kind of causality. On this reading, Émile Durkheim's collective representations became, in Claude Lévi-Strauss' work, cognitive or logical constraints. If so, then structuralism falls under Wittgenstein's objections to treating rules as causes. What this article shows, however, is that this reading of structuralism is misguided. The necessity and justification of introducing structural methods, first in linguistics and then in anthropology, as well (...) as the general concept of the sign, were rooted in the perception of a problem too often overlooked: that of the characterization of the data in the social and cultural sciences. Just as Saussure showed that the real problem of linguistics is not, what does it mean? but what are the units of language?, so Lévi-Strauss showed that social sciences should not be concerned with the causes of human behaviors but instead with the categorization of actions. In both cases, it appears that an individual action is the actualization of a common practice, habit, or custom that, itself, cannot be reduced to a set of observable features but must be defined by its differential position in a system. Structural anthropology thus leads to a truly ontological problem, which resonates interestingly today, in the context of the “ontological turn.”. (shrink)

In The Order of Things (OT), Foucault recounts the birth and imminent death of Man as an object of study for science and philosophy. Foucault's point is that this very notion of “Man” is dependent on a particular transformation in the history of Being. The mere formulation of this hypothesis opens up a whole series of questions. First, is it true that Man has only become an object of concern in the late eighteenth century. Secondly, if Man has indeed only (...) recently become an object of theoretical interest, is Foucault's description and explanation of this process correct. Thirdly, why should we overcome the concept of “ Man”. Fourthly, in what sense was structuralism deemed to help us overcoming the limitations of this paradigm. In conclusion, if OT has to be overcome, it seems that it should be on grounds slightly different from those usually advanced. (shrink)

Alain Badiou, Thomas Benatouil, Elie During, Patrice Maniglier, David Rabouin, and Jean-Pierre Zarader _Matrix, machine philosophique_ Paris: Ellipses, 2003 ISBN 2-7298-1841-3 191 pp.

Webber's perceptive new introduction helps to decipher this challenging, seminal work, placing it in the context of the author's work and the history of ...

This major study of Hobbes' political philosophy draws on recent developments in game and decision theory to explore whether the thrust of the argument in Leviathan, that it is in the interests of the people to create a ruler with absolute power, can be shown to be cogent. Professor Hampton has written a book of vital importance to political philosophers, political and social scientists, and intellectual historians.

Taking as its theoretical frame of reference Jean-Luc Nancy's distinction between globalization and mondialisation, this article explores the relationship between contemporary Africa, the ‘world’ and the ‘literary’. The discussion centres on a number of present-day African novelists, and looks in particular at a controversial recent text by the Cameroonian writer and critic, Patrice Nganang, who is inspired by the work of the well-known theorist of postcolonial Africa, Achille Mbembe. For both writers ‘Africa’, as a generic point of reference, (...) is seen in terms of a certain genealogy of Africanist thinking, from colonial times through to the contemporary postcolonial era, and the article reflects on what a radical challenge to this genealogy might entail. Using a more phenomenologically oriented reading of monde and immonde, this rupture could be conceived in terms of the kind of ‘epistemological break’ that thinkers like Althusser and Foucault introduced into common usage and theoretical currency in contemporary French thought back in the 1960s. (shrink)

"In a wide-ranging discussion the author examines the philosophy of Kant, Heidegger, Adorno and Derrida and looks at the works of modernist and postmodernist artists such as Cezanne, Debussy and Boulez. Lyotard addresses issues such as time and memory, the sublime and the avant-garde, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Throughout his discussion he considers the close but problematic links between modernity, progress and humanity, and the transition to postmodernity. Lyotard claims that it is the task of literature, philosophy (...) and the arts to bear witness to and explain this difficult transition." "This important contribution to aesthetic and philosophical debates will be of great interest to students in philosophy, literary and cultural theory and politics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l’Analyse. Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l’Analyse (1966–69), the most ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure specific configurations of discourse, from (...) the psychological and ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary transformation. The first volume comprises English translations of some of the most important theoretical texts published in the journal, written by thinkers who would soon be counted among the most inventive and influential of their generation. The second volume collects newly commissioned essays on the journal, together with recent interviews with people who were either members of its editorial board or associated with its broader theoretical project. Contributors include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Edward Baring, Jacques Bouveresse, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Peter Hallward, Adrian Johnston, Serge Leclaire, Patrice Maniglier, Tracy McNulty, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Knox Peden, Jacques Rancière, François Regnault, and Slavoj Žižek. (shrink)

Comme l’indique l’auteur lui‑même, ce livre vient conclure une série de quatre publications à caractère monographique, illustrant chacune son programme de « psychanalyse sociohistorique ». Il s’agit des Stigmates de l’hystérique et la peau de son évêque. Laurentine Billoquet (1862-1936), Paris, Anthropos, 1993 ; Une inconnue célèbre. Madeleine Lebouc / Pauline Lair Lamotte (1853‑1918), même éditeur, 1993 ; L’Autobiographie d’un paranoïaque. L’abbé Berry (1878‑1947) et le roman de Billy « Intr...