When abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano published their essays on slavery in the late eighteenth century, they became key participants in one of the most important human rights campaigns in history. British abolitionism sought to expose the realities of transatlantic slavery in addition to asking politicians to help dehumanized Africans in the New World, and this edition brings together two major essays of the 1780s that were influential in the spread of the early abolitionist movement: Clarkson’s _An Essay on (...) the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species_ and Cugoano’s _Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species_. A critical introduction and extensive historical appendices on British and American slavery and abolitionism, featuring contemporary arguments for and against slavery, are also included. (shrink)

Research into intuitive problem solving has shown that objective closeness of participants’ hypotheses were closer to the accurate solution than their subjective ratings of closeness. After separating conceptually intuitive problem solving from the solutions of rational incremental tasks and of sudden insight tasks, we replicated this finding by using more precise measures in a conceptual problem-solving task. In a second study, we distinguished performance level, processing style, implicit knowledge and subjective feeling of closeness to the solution within the problem-solving task (...) and examined the relationships of these different components with measures of intelligence and personality. Verbal intelligence correlated with performance level in problem solving, but not with processing style and implicit knowledge. Faith in intuition, openness to experience, and conscientiousness correlated with processing style, but not with implicit knowledge. These findings suggest that one needs to decompose processing style and intuitive components in problem solving to make predictions on effects of intelligence and personality measures. (shrink)

Recent buzzes around big data, data science and artificial intelligence portray a data-driven future for healthcare. As a response, Europe's key players have stimulated the use of big data technologies to make healthcare more efficient and effective. Critical Data Studies and Science and Technology Studies have developed many concepts to reflect on such overly positive narratives and conduct critical policy evaluations. In this study, we argue that there is also much to be learned from studying how professionals in the healthcare (...) field affectively engage with this strong European narrative in concrete big data projects. We followed twelve hospital-based big data pilots in eight European countries and interviewed 145 professionals between 2018 and 2020. In this study, we introduce the metaphor of dreams to describe how professionals link the big data promises to their own frustrations, ideas, values and experiences with healthcare. Our research answers the question: how do professionals in concrete data-driven initiatives affectively engage with European Union's data hopes in their ‘dreams’ – and with what consequences? We describe the dreams of being seen, of timeliness, of connectedness and of being in control. Each of these dreams emphasizes certain aspects of the grand narrative of big data in Europe, makes particular assumptions and has different consequences. We argue that including attention to these dreams in our work could help shine an additional critical light on the big data developments and stimulate the development of responsible data-driven healthcare. (shrink)

Il faut saluer la réédition aux Éditions Turquoise de la traduction de Die Waffen nieder!, l’ouvrage antimilitariste de la pacifiste autrichienne Bertha von Suttner, qui, dès sa parution en 1889, devint le best-seller incontesté de la fin du siècle, immédiatement traduit en une vingtaine de langues et en français en 1899. C’est du reste cette traduction, la seule existant à ce jour en langue française, qui est rééditée ici avec la préface d’époque signée par Gaston Moch, dreyfusard de la prem...

Much of the developing world, including Kenya, is rapidly urbanizing. Rising food and fuel prices in recent years have put the food security of the urban poor in a precarious position. In cities worldwide, urban agriculture helps some poor people gain access to food, but urban agriculture is less common in densely populated slums that lack space. In the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, households have recently begun a new form of urban agriculture called sack gardening in which vegetables such (...) as kale and Swiss chard are planted into large sacks filled with topsoil. This paper examines relationships among sack gardening, social capital, and food security in Kibera. We used a mixed methods approach, combining qualitative interviews with a household survey, as well as focus group discussions with both farmers and non-farmers. We present evidence that sack gardening increases social capital, especially for those households that undertake sack gardening in groups. We also find that sack gardening in the Kibera slums has a positive impact on household food security by improving household dietary diversity and by reducing the need to resort to painful coping mechanisms that are used during food shortages. (shrink)

Tiré d’un mémoire de maîtrise soutenue à l’Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, sous la direction de Jean-Clément Martin, ici préfacier, Marie-Antoinette et ses biographes. Histoire d’une écriture de la Révolution française, possède les qualités et les défauts de ce type d’exercice. Le titre en est ainsi trompeur, puisqu’il laisse envisager une enquête reposant sur l’ensemble des travaux portant sur la figure historique de Marie-Antoinette. En fait, cinq biographes ont été convoqués et fo...

This paper examines Stanley Cavell's theories from the perspective of a 'politics of cinema' and engages in a critical reading of Sofia Coppola's 2006 film, Marie Antoinette.

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi (...) d’une biographie de Marie G... (shrink)

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi (...) d’une biographie de Marie G... (shrink)

On comprend aisément pourquoi Slava Liszek, qui fut l’une des rédactrices d’Antoinette - le journal féminin de la CGT - a été touchée par Marie Guillot, au point de lui consacrer plusieurs années de recherche et, finalement, une biographie. À l’évidence, il s’agit d’un hommage rendu à une militante lucide et « incorruptible ». Le style trahit une profonde sympathie pour « Marie », qui pourra, selon les goûts, charmer, ou agacer. De toutes façons, le redoutable défi (...) d’une biographie de Marie G... (shrink)

This essay sketches the musical art of Frances Pelton-Jones, an American harpsichordist active at the beginning of the twentieth century. Almost entirely unknown today, she was widely acclaimed in her day for performing elaborate costume recitals dressed as Marie Antoinette. More than just a recitalist in costume, Pelton-Jones staged elaborate tableaux vivants with environmental decor to elicit fantasies of the past. Bridging the worlds of fashion, environmental design, and music, her performances offer a compelling case study to investigate (...) the aesthetic applications of Jane Bennett’s ecological theory of assemblages. Exploring how different human and nonhuman actants collaborated in Pelton-Jones’ art to evoke whole historical atmospheres for her audiences, I elaborate Bennett’s argument about the synthetic potential of combining certain materials to conjure an affect, highlighting how the delicacy of the assemblage as a whole often is contingent upon the frailty of the individual materials involved. Ultimately, Bennett’s theory affirms the aesthetic sensibilities of Pelton-Jones whose musical productions delighted audiences by harnessing the synthetic potential of well-coordinated vital materials. (shrink)

Ce dictionnaire propose de réunir des portraits de brutes et de mégères dans le but de s'interroger sur les causes et les raisons de cette perception négative. Pourquoi certaines figures évoquent-elles la méchanceté? Que peut nous dire cette méchanceté dénoncée de nous-mêmes et de l'époque qui l'a engendrée? Il s'agira de retracer les portraits de ceux et celles ayant marqué l'Histoire et la fiction par leur cruauté, leur perfidie, leur machiavélisme, leur art de la dissimulation ou de la manipulation. S'attarder (...) sur la méchanceté et ses possibles, décliner les façons de la penser et de la vivre, de la subir ou de l'exercer, c'est s'intéresser à une facette peu valorisée de la sensibilité d'autant plus importante que chaque individu, de près ou de loin, est amené, un jour, à se montrer méchant. La méchanceté et ses manifestations, qu'elles soient conceptuelles ou biographiques, nous invitent donc à une introspection globale, à une immersion dans les affres de la noirceur des âmes dont la bouche n'est autre que celle de la méchanceté Le champ de cette entreprise est vaste et recouvre notamment : La Malice, le Machiavélisme, Orangina Rouge, Barbe Bleue, le cinéma d'Alfred Hitchcock, Marie-Antoinette, la Mauvaise conscience, Gilles de Rais, Harry Powell (La nuit du chasseur) Salomé-Hérodiade, Dracula, Tatie Danielle, Marie Tudor, la Perversité, la Mégère Grecque, Dark Vador, Mildred Ratched (Vol au-dessus d'un nid de coucou)... (shrink)

This paper reads The Monk by M. G. Lewis in the context of the literary and visual responses to the French Revolution, suggesting that its digestion of the horrors across the Channel is exhibited especially in its depictions of women. Lewis plays with public and domestic representations of femininity, steeped in social expectation and a rich cultural and religious imaginary. The novel’s ambivalence in the representation of femininity draws on the one hand on Catholic symbolism, especially its depictions of the (...) Madonna and the virgin saints, and on the other, on the way the revolutionaries used the body of the queen, Marie Antoinette, to portray the corruption of the royal family. The Monk fictionalizes the ways in which the female body was exposed, both by the Church and by the Revolution, and appropriated to become a highly politicized entity, a tool in ideological argumentation. (shrink)

In the foreword to the Mercure de France edition of de Staël., Chantal Thomas, French historian and writer, writes that this apology in favor of Marie-Antoinette did not help the queen nor the author herself; on the contrary it only made the latter more unpopular. So why did Germaine de Staël write it? Mme de Staël and Marie-Antoinette did not share many interests; however, at the moment of The Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789, the (...) situation had changed. It was at this moment, when Mme de Staël witnessed people’s hatred for the Queen, that she for the first time felt that she was on her side. She had the feeling that the Queen would be a victim to a public opinion that had been “manipulated” in a systematic way, and to which she herself had been a victim. Pursuing some ideas formulated by Reddy and in their work on emotion and empathy in history and philosophy respectively, I hope to offer some suggestions, with the aid of cultural semiotics. More specifically I hope to be able to provide some answers to the question whether Mme de Staël’s apology might be regarded as an act of compassion. (shrink)

This title is playful, of course. It is designed merely to attract curiosity and attention … It dates back to a childhood game of which I have forgotten both rules and stakes. An imaginary sovereign was roused from his indifference and responded with an approximate repetition of Marie-Antoinette's suggestion that if the people were hungry, food should be thrown to them. I took such caricatures of kings as anti-models, replacing bread with symbols. Now we are all too disturbed, (...) individually and collectively, by the economic discomfort which is a generalized hunger and, in too many parts of the world and - not only in the third world - by actual famines, not to be aware, on a daily basis, of the responsibility it is to cultivate and transmit to others substance which is purely symbolic. Certain statistics, which now form part of our daily life, are capable of discrediting definitively the ivory tower which our universities are accused of representing, or of having represented in the past. In my own country, Canada, one child in five lives in poverty. The economic worth of the poorest forty-eight countries in the world is equal to the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals. There were twenty million refugees in 1997. One billion two hundred million human beings are short of fresh water this year, etc. This type of figure is, sadly, all too familiar. And it is a case of preaching to the converted to assert the extent to which culture, education and all their constituent disciplines are nourishment of a different order to physical food, because intellectual work is genuine work, providing a living for those who work at it professionally, and above all also those who benefit from its immediate and continuing fruits - i.e. ideally, the whole of society, and in all countries. In this respect - and this is implicit, but through depending habitually on what is implicit nothing is ever sufficiently explicit - it is generally acknowledged (thanks to UNESCO in particular) to what extent the development of economic resources is linked with the advancement and communication of knowledge, on a scale which is regional as well as national, within cities, rural communities, families. (shrink)

Thomas Carlyle, renowned nineteenth-century essayist and social critic, came to be thought of as a secular prophet by many of his readers and as the "undoubted head of English letters" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. _Historical Essays _brings together Carlyle's essays on history and historical subjects in a fully annotated modern edition for the first time. These essays, which were originally collected in _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, _span Carlyle's career from 1830 to 1875 and represent a major facet of his writings. (...) This edition uses all the extant authoritative versions of the essays to create an accurate critical text and includes a mine of lucidly presented information to enhance readers' understanding of Carlyle's densely allusive prose. The collection includes essays on the French Revolution, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, and medieval Scandinavia. It also includes such essential pieces as "On History," "On History Again," "Count Cagliostro," and "The Diamond Necklace." Together the essays show Carlyle positioning himself in relation to the new Romantic historiography but not yet ready to adopt the strictures of modern scientific history. They also exhibit his talent for analyzing the historical significance of seemingly minor events. He describes a plot to steal a diamond necklace in which Marie Antoinette became implicated, a visit of Whig sympathizers to the National Assembly during the French Revolution, and the kidnapping of two fifteenth-century German princes, one of whose descendents was Carlyle’s contemporary Prince Albert. This volume, the third of the eight-volume Strouse Edition of Carlyle’s works, includes a historical introduction and illustrations along with complete textual apparatus. (shrink)

En ces temps où, dans la production éditoriale comme au cinéma, Marie-Antoinette est à la mode, il faut absolument s’arrêter sur cet ouvrage. Le titre exact de ce court pamphlet (30 p.), publié anonymement en août 1793 après le renvoi de Marie-Antoinette devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire, est Réflexions sur le procès de la reine par une femme. Et c’est aux femmes que l’auteure s’adresse en premier, aux « femmes de tous les pays, de toutes les classes (...) de la société » : sensibles, elles ne peu... (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into (...) how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

The positive psychology landscape is changing, and its initial identity is being challenged. Moving beyond the “third wave of PP,” two roads for future research and practice in well-being studies are discerned: The first is the state of the art PP trajectory that will continue as a scientific discipline in/next to psychology. The second trajectory links to pointers described as part of the so-called third wave of PP, which will be argued as actually being the beginning of a new domain (...) of inter- or transdisciplinary well-being studies in its own right. It has a broader scope than the state of the art in PP, but is more delineated than in planetary well-being studies. It is in particular suitable to understand the complex nature of bio-psycho-social-ecological well-being, and to promote health and wellness in times of enormous challenges and changes. A unique cohering focus for this post-disciplinary well-being research domain is proposed. In both trajectories, future research will have to increase cognizance of metatheoretical assumptions, develop more encompassing theories to bridge the conceptual fragmentation in the field, and implement methodological reforms, while keeping context and the interwovenness of the various levels of the scientific text in mind. Opportunities are indicated to contribute to the discourse on the identity and development of scientific knowledge in mainstream positive psychology and the evolving post-disciplinary domain of well-being studies. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. (...) Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy is one of the leading contemporary thinkers in France today. Through an inventive reappropriation of the major figures in the continental tradition, Nancy has developed an original ontology that impacts the way we think about religion, politics, community, embodiment, and art. Drawing from a wide range of his writing, Marie-Eve Morin provides the first comprehensive and systematic account of Nancy’s thinking, all the way up to his most recent work on the deconstruction of Christianity. Without losing sight (...) of the heterogeneity of Nancy’s work, Morin presents a concise articulation of the organizing concepts, which structure Nancy’s body of work. The guiding thread is that of an essential rift at the heart of any “self” by which this self is exposed and relates to itself and other selves. Nancy’s ontology undercuts dichotomies between individual and community, interior and exterior, matter and spirit, thing and thought, not in the name of mere deconstruction, but in seeking to open a thinking of the “limit” or the “edge” as the locus of sense. While Nancy’s work has often been presented in relation to Heidegger or Derrida, Morin demonstrates the originality of Nancy’s work and argues that, despite the variety of its preoccupations and topics, it possesses its own rigorous internal logic. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy and related fields who seek a systematic and critical understanding of one of the most original contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

This paper looks at statements I am in a position to make ‘straight off’: observational judgements, perceptual and memory statements, statements about my posture, my intentions, and so on. These kinds of statement pose a problem: what is the nature of my entitlement to them? I focus on observational judgements and on two contrasting approaches to them. The first, which I reject, provides an account of my warrant for them; the second, which I defend, disconnects my entitlement from possession of (...) a justification. I consider what light the second approach sheds on the other kinds of statements I am in a position to make straight off. (shrink)

Descartes claims that the passions of the soul are “all in their nature good” even though they exaggerate the value of their objects, have the potential to deceive us, and often mislead us. What, then, can he mean by this? In this paper, I argue that these effects of the passions are only problematic when we incorrectly take their goodness to consist in their informing us of harms and benefits to the mind-body composite. Instead, the passions are good in their (...) motivational function, which they carry out by representing objects and situations as having various properties and thereby appearing to be “reasons of goodness.” Further, I argue that the main way in which the passions are problematic is merely an occasional physiological byproduct of a well- functioning system. I show, therefore, that the passions’ motivational function, representationality, and accompanying physiology are all significant and interrelated aspects of their goodness. (shrink)