In this article I reconstruct the philosophical conditions for the emergence of the notion of counter-conduct within the framework of Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality, and I explore the reasons for its disappearance after 1978. In particular, I argue that the concept of conduct becomes crucial for Foucault in order to redefine governmental power relations as specific ways to conduct the conduct of individuals: it is initially within this context that, in Security, Territory, Population, he rethinks the problem of resistance (...) in terms of counter-conduct. However, a few months later, in What is Critique?, Foucault replaces the notion of counter-conduct with that of critical attitude, defined as the particular form that counter-conduct takes in modern times. This notion allows him to highlight the role played by the will in resistance to governmental strategies. But since the notion of counter-conduct is conceptually wider than that of critical attitude, I suggest in conclusion that it could be worth reactivating it as a “historical category which, in various forms and with diverse objectives, runs through the whole of Western history.”. (shrink)

This article puts Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon into dialogue in order to explore the relationships between the constitution of subjects and the production of truth in modern Western societies as well as in colonial spaces. Firstly, it takes into account Foucault’s analysis of confessional practices and the effects of subjection, objectivation, and subjectivation generated by the injunction for the subject to tell the truth about him or herself. Secondly, it focuses on the question of interpellation that emerges in the (...) colonial context and on the colonized who, as Fanon illustrates, is always seen as a deceitful subject. Finally, it shows that, despite the difference in the relationships between the constitution of subjectivity and the production of true discourses described by Foucault and Fanon, the transformative dimension enacted by the processes of subjectivation and by the practices of resistance constitutes a shared conceptual and political ground between the two authors. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to make a contribution to the debate on rights-talk and duties-talk relationship and priority by addressing the problem from a peculiar angle: that of moral conflicts and dilemma. My working hypothesis is that it should be possible to identify some basic and relevant normative features of rights-talk and duties-talk by observing how they modify the description of moral conflicts. I will try to show that both rights and duties posses original and irreducible normative features, (...) and that these latter can be employed in a general assessment of their pro and con. I will first show the conceptual relationship between rights and duties, analyzing in the process a deflationary argument for rights. Second, I will define the general features of moral conflict and dilemma. I will then analyze the different readings that can be given, taking rights or duties as standpoints, of two kinds of moral conflicts: «asymmetric» and «symmetric» conflicts. (shrink)

Cohen′s critical remarks on natural-law theories argue that the identification between unwritten law and written Torah, which he suggests in his opus postumum, cannot mean that written Torah should be understood as a dogmatic code of natural law. This identification has to be understood on the basis of the constitutive relation of the written Torah to the oral one and has implications in view of a theory of reason: following the analogy of written Torah, the a priori of reason turns (...) out to be like a code, whose canonical authority is always presupposed although it is rewritten like a palimpsest at every new application. (shrink)

Quel rapport est-il possible de tracer entre l'ethique et la politique? Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot et Stanley Cavell, a partir de trois positions philosophiques tres differentes, ont elabore des strategies de reponse a cette question que le present ouvrage se propose de rendre explicites et d'explorer. Ainsi, l'esthetique de l'existence, les exercices spirituels et le perfectionnisme moral y sont combines afin de construire un arriere-plan conceptuel et pratique permettant de saisir a la fois les enjeux politiques d'une ethique de soi (...) et l'incontournable dimension ethique d'une politique de nous-memes. Cet ouvrage entend contribuer a l'elaboration d'une philosophie analytique de la politique dont le but est de rendre visibles l'existence et le fonctionnement concret du pouvoir dans ses ramifications quotidiennes; une telle entreprise se noue de facon etroite avec une analyse des techniques de l'ordinaire, c'est-a-dire de ces pratiques que les individus utilisent pour donner une forme a leur vie et pour transformer leur rapport a eux-memes, aux autres et au monde. (shrink)

In this paper, I set myself what many people would consider an unfeasible task: finding a Kantian way to an environmental moral theory. The paper is divided in four parts. In the first part I show why looking at Kant’s moral theory in order to build an environmental theory is like trying to get blood out of a stone. I then show how it should be, instead, possible to build an environmental theory by bridging Kant’s account of aesthetic value with (...) love of nature. In the last two parts of the paper I deal with some possible criticisms and sketch the contours of the environmental stance born from Kant’s aesthetic treatment of nature. (shrink)

Hohfeldian normative system are normative systems that can be described by means of the analytical framework expounded by Hohfeld in his two famous papers on the fundamental legal conceptions. In this article I analyze some features of this particular kind of normative systems. Hohfeld’s original idea was to design a universal tool capable of describing, at the most basic level, the web of normative relationships between persons created by a system of rules. My claim is, instead, that if we take (...) Hohfeld’s framework literally as it is, Hohfeldian normative systems are few. This happens because, amongst other peculiarities, standard Hohfeldian normative systems are necessarily complete and unclosed. In the final part of the article I will show how we can have instead incomplete and closed Hohfeldian normative systems, extending in this way the descriptive range of Hohfeld’s framework. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une lecture originale du projet foucaldien d'une histoire de la vérité qui vise à en mettre clairement en lumière les enjeux éthiques et politiques, grâce à l'établissement d'une confrontation entre les analyses de Foucault sur la parrêsia antique, les travaux de J.L. Austin sur l'énoncé performatif et l'étude de l'énoncé passionné par Stanley Cavell. Le problème qui est ainsi posé, en lien mais également en décalage avec les réflexions traditionnelles sur le pouvoir des mots, est celui de (...) la force du vrai : est-il possible ou légitime d'affirmer que la vérité est une force qui s'inscrit, de manière toujours " stratégique ", à l'intérieur d'un champ de bataille? En répondant par l'affirmative, cet ouvrage entreprend d'interroger sous un angle inédit les rapports entre vérité, critique et vie au sein d'une éthique et d'une politique du dire-vrai. (shrink)

In his article “Directed Duties and Inalienable Rights,” Hillel Steiner advances an argument to show that there cannot be inalienable rights. This “impossibility theorem,” as well as providing an interesting result by itself, could break the theoretical deadlock in the debate between proponents of interest theory, on the one hand, and proponents of will theory, on the other. In this article, I comment on Steiner’s argument, and I try to show why it does not work. I then expound a paradoxical (...) outcome of the Hohfeldian analytical framework and examine how it might be amended to avoid this outcome. (shrink)

The idea that «natural» environments should be protected is a relatively recent one. This new attitude is reflected in the activities of preservation and restoration of natural environments, ecosystems, flora and wildlife that, when scientifically based, can be defined as conservation. In this paper, we would like to examine the framework of values behind these activities. More specifically, we would like to show that there is no single specific reason that can justify conservation in each of its manifestations It is (...) therefore necessary to adopt a complex framework of values, which must be composed carefully, since many of the canonical arguments used to justify conservation provide, when combined together, an incoherent or, at least, incomplete set of reasons. One way to avoid these inconsistencies or incompleteness is, in our view, to adopt, in conjunction with the classic economic and ecological arguments for conservation, a set of arguments appealing to the importance of nature for human flourishing. (shrink)

This article tries to highlight the explicit political aim and the importance for our present of the thought of the «late» Michel Foucault. Through the analysis of the role that truth plays in the pagan and Christian techniques of the self, it opposes a truth that we have to discover in ourselves in order to refuse it (Christianity) or to adhere to it (ethics of authenticity) to a truth conceived as a force of transformation of logos into ethos , of (...) the discourse into a way of life. (shrink)

Although panpsychism has had a very long history, one that goes back to the very origin of western philosophy, its force has only recently been appreciated by analytic philosophers of mind. And even if many still reject the theory as utterly absurd, others have argued that it is the only genuine form of physicalism. This paper examines the case for panpsychism and argues that there are at least goodprima faciereasons for taking it seriously. In a second step, the paper discusses (...) the main difficulty the theory has to face, the ‘composition problem’. This is the problem of explaining how the primitive experiences that are supposed to exist at the ultimate level of reality could give rise to the unified experience of a human being. What assumptions as to the nature of experience generate the composition problem? Is mental composition impossible in principle or do we simply lack at present any understanding of phenomenal parts and wholes? (shrink)

Il presente volume risale alle origini dell'esperienza religiosa per rispondere alla domanda: come nasce il sacro?; in che modo ciò che è religioso arriva a determinare la vita dell'uomo fino a influenzarne le scelte più personali e rischiose, spesso oltre ciò che si è disposti ad ammettere nell'universo secolarizzato della postmodernità. Le considerazioni svolte riguardano l'incontro con la dimensione etica universale dell'essere umano nel momento in cui si imbatte in qualcosa che lo sconvolge, lo trasforma. Le differenze storiche e fenomenologiche (...) tra le diverse religioni (religione greca, cristianesimo, religione primitiva della natura), oltre ogni pretesa sincretistica, non sono definite in quanto descrizioni di modalità di vita e universi paralleli dal punto di vista storico e spirituale, ma come espressione di uno stesso radicamento in una Realtà, che è vissuta come più reale di ogni altra cosa. Il sensus realitatis offre alla religione, a ogni religione naturale o rivelata, l'orizzonte ultimo di senso intorno al quale comprendere il senso del proprio esistere. La Realtà come pienezza ontologica e compiutezza etica è quel sacro a cui le religioni in maniera diversa partecipano. Negare questa Realtà significa mettere in discussione la struttura stessa dell'esperienza religiosa; cosa che non è possibile se non cadendo in contraddizione. Questa scoperta è l'evento decisivo che ha cambiato nel Novecento il volto della riflessione filosofica sulla religione (R. Otto, Eliade, Kerényi, Dumézil, W.F. Otto, Ries), che in precedenza era rimasta ancora prigioniera di considerazioni metafisiche o teologiche. Oggi è aperta la possibilità di tornare a riferirsi di nuovo al fenomeno religioso, di là dagli interdetti del pensiero critico e secolarizzante, ma anche dalle pretese fondamentaliste delle religioni storiche. (shrink)

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault's history of truth. Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics (...) of truth-telling precisely in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today. (shrink)

Background While the theoretical benefits and harms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been widely discussed in academic literature, empirical evidence remains elusive regarding the practical ethical challenges of developing AI for healthcare. Bridging the gap between theory and practice is an essential step in understanding how to ethically align AI for healthcare. Therefore, this research examines the concerns and challenges perceived by experts in developing ethical AI that addresses the healthcare context and needs. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 41 (...) AI experts and analyzed the data using reflective thematic analysis. Results We developed three themes that expressed the considerations perceived by experts as essential for ensuring AI aligns with ethical practices within healthcare. The first theme explores the ethical significance of introducing AI with a clear and purposeful objective. The second theme focuses on how experts are concerned about the tension that exists between economic incentives and the importance of prioritizing the interests of doctors and patients. The third theme illustrates the need to develop context-sensitive AI for healthcare that is informed by its underlying theoretical foundations. Conclusions The three themes collectively emphasized that beyond being innovative, AI must genuinely benefit healthcare and its stakeholders, meaning AI also aligns with intricate and context-specific healthcare practices. Our findings signal that instead of narrow product-specific AI guidance, ethical AI development may need a systemic, proactive perspective that includes the ethical considerations (objectives, actors, and context) and focuses on healthcare applications. Ethically developing AI involves a complex interplay between AI, ethics, healthcare, and multiple stakeholders. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the vindicatory/unmasking distinction has so far prevented scholars from grasping a third dimension of genealogical inquiry, one I call possibilising. This dimension has passed unnoticed even though it constitutes a crucial aspect of Foucault’s genealogical project starting from 1978 on. By focusing attention on it, I hope to provide a definitive rebuttal of one of the main criticisms that has been raised against genealogy in general, and Foucauldian genealogy in particular, namely the idea that (...) Foucault’s genealogical project lacks normative grounding and is therefore ultimately incapable of telling us why we should resist and fight against the mechanisms of power it nevertheless reveals in an empirically insightful way. This conclusion, I argue, is mistaken because it conceives of Foucauldian genealogy exclusively as an unmasking or problematising method, whereas I claim that Foucault’s genealogical project possesses a possibilising dimension that provides his work with sui generis normative force. (shrink)

Originally applied on domestic and lab animals, assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) have also found application in conservation breeding programs, where they can make the genetic management of populations more efficient, and increase the number of individuals per generation. However, their application in wildlife conservation opens up new ethical scenarios that have not yet been fully explored. This study presents a frame for the ethical analysis of the application of ART procedures in conservation based on the Ethical Matrix (EM), and discusses (...) a specific case study—ovum pick-up (OPU) procedures performed in the current conservation efforts for the northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni)—providing a template for the assessment of ART procedures in projects involving other endangered species. (shrink)

In a recent blog post, Joshua Clover rightly notices the swift emergence of a new panoply of “genres of the quarantine.”1 It should not come as a surprise that one of them centers on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, asking whether or not it is still appropriate to describe the situation that we are currently experiencing. Neither should it come as a surprise that, in virtually all of the contributions that make use of the concept of biopolitics to address the (...) current coronavirus pandemic, the same bunch of rather vague ideas are mentioned over and over again, while other—no doubt more interesting—Foucauldian insights tend to be ignored. In what follows, I discuss two of these insights, and I conclude with some methodological remarks on the issue of what it may mean to “respond” to the current “crisis.”. (shrink)

In our everyday experience, life, environment, and nature are connected and we tend to confuse the value we assign to them. One way around this issue is to analyze our intuitions on the terraformation of other planets such as Mars. In this way, we are forced to consider whether the original abiotic nature has a value of some kind regardless of its capacity to support ecosystems and life, what kind of value this might be, and what weight it might have (...) when compared with other values. In this contribution, I will draw a map of the possible answers to these questions by analyzing the different perspectives brought forth by some of the main characters in K. S. Robinson's The Mars Trilogy. In this way, it will be possible to observe that, while on Earth instrumental and non-instrumental kinds of environmental value generally concur and support each other, in an abiotic landscape, such as that offered (we assume) by Mars, they may conflict. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the idea that Michel Foucault might be considered a theorist of epistemic injustice, and argue that his philosophical premises are incompatible with Miranda Fricker’s. Their main disagreement rests upon their divergent ways of conceiving the relationship between reason and power, giving rise to the contrasting forms of normativity that characterize their critical projects. This disagreement can be helpfully clarified by addressing the different use they make of the genealogical method. While Fricker’s genealogy of (...) Testimonial Justice aims to ground her claim that reason and power can be neatly pulled apart, thus avoiding the reductionist and relativist conclusions entailed by Foucault’s genealogies, I argue that Foucault’s mature, overlooked definition of genealogy is based on a sophisticated distinction between games and regimes of truth, and is thus not vulnerable to these criticisms. Consequently, Foucault’s genealogical inquiries prove helpful for understanding issues that normally fall under the umbrella of epistemic injustice in a new light, while also allowing us to avoid some of the main objections that threaten Fricker’s project. (shrink)

Résumé Dans sa discussion critique du matérialisme – qui traite le droit et l’État comme « des réalités simplement fictives », par opposition à la « société dans l’économie » – Cohen écrit dans le dernier chapitre de son Introduction avec supplément critique à l’ Histoire du matérialisme de F.A. Lange que le droit et l’État ne doivent en effet être valorisés que comme « un système d’équilibre en pensée », à savoir comme « fiction de l’équilibre ». Même s’il (...) ne doit pas s’agir là d’un équilibre « stable », seulement d’un équilibre « labile », la « nécessité de la fiction»s’avère être néanmoins la seule possibilité offerte à la raison de demeurer dans le champ de tensions de l’histoire, si elle ne veut pas (comme l’écrit Cohen dans l’ Éthique de la volonté pure ) « laisser les tâches éthiques […] éclairer l’obscurité qui régnait jusque-là dans l’histoire, telles des fulgurations de forces en quelque sorte post-historiques ». (shrink)

J.L. Austin’s insight that language should be treated as a domain of human action, rather than merely as a tool for the transmission of information, has been enormously influential. His analysis of speech acts continues to be widely utilised in a vast number of fields, from the philosophy of language to social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, gender and literary studies, as well as a variety of social sciences. Yet scholars have so far focused on performative utterances and (...) illocutionary acts, while the perlocutionary dimension of speech has generally been dismissed as unessential. This special issue, drawing inspiration from Stanley Cavell’s seminal work on passionate utterance, aims to shed new light on the philosophical, moral and political relevance of the perlocutionary. (shrink)

Touch pools are popular open-topped fish tanks often found in aquariums where visitors may interact with animals, by touching and sometimes even feeding them, for educational and recreational purposes. However, although animal interactions are becoming increasingly popular in recent years, the welfare impact on the animals and the educational effectiveness of such interactions is under debate. Awareness concerning the different, and sometimes controversial, aspects connected with such interactions has spread. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ethical issues (...) arising from the presence of touch pools in aquariums and facilities alike. In particular, possible sources of moral conflicts between five interested parties will be identified and discussed: biodiversity; aquariums; staff involved with touch pools; individual animals used in the touch pools; visitors interacting with animals in touch pools. In order to assess the framework of ethical demands from different parties, it will be used an analytical tool provided by a revised version of the Ethical Matrix. (shrink)

Richard Lewontin’s dialectical approach to biology emphasizes the relationship between the organism, its development,and the environment, providing an alternative view to the one provided by “mechanistic” and “reductionist” paradigms. This alternative view can be seen as the most lucid attempt made in recent times to apply to a particular science the dialectical tradition flowing from Engels’ Anti-Dühring and the unfinished Dialectics of Nature. By analysing Lewontin’s critique of mechanistic biology and his constructivism, a general assessment of the pretension of the (...) dialectical approach in science will be attempted. (shrink)

In this work I will evaluate the functions of rights within the moral discourse, and I will point out the benefits and the characteristics of a moral theory that takes rights seriously. In the first chapter I will sketch a definition of rights as a moral category that can be distinguished from categories such as the ones of juridical rights and natural rights. In the second chapter, I will propose a hohfeldian analysis of the normative syntax of rights, and I (...) will focus on the key problem of the relation between rights and duties. The issue I will deal with in the third chapter is the general function of specific rights. On this matter I will draw an hybrid solution between the orthodox proposals of the so-called interest and choice theories, and the more recent approaches provided by the past ten years literature. In the fourth and fifth chapters topics such as the conflict of rights, their violations and infringements will allow me to go deeper in the context and premises of the model of moral theory that I will take into account in the last section of this work. In the sixth chapter I will give an answer to the central questions of this research, and I will also provide a general model of abstract rights, by shading light on their original normative functions. I will use this model to investigate the possibility of justifying a moral theory on its ground, and I will compare this kind of theory with other theories structured upon different categories of normative objects – like duties and goals. (shrink)

One of the main reasons for justifying rights originates from the principle of the separateness of persons. However, it can been denied that persons are definite and “thick” entities, and, as such, that their supposed separateness expresses a fundamental normative principle. Should we then reconsider or abandon rights-talk? I will argue for the contrary, and claim that an extreme reductionist position towards persons is flawed. Moreover, I will claim that right-discourse can be anchored on grounds other than the principle of (...) separateness of persons, as principles of distributive justice and rights are still needed to build up what has been called “ morality in the narrow sense ”, which is, in turn, necessary for protecting “ morality in the broad sense” : that is, the individual pursuit of a good life. (shrink)

Conservation ethics is a specific area of applied ethics that deals with the ethical and normative issues arising from conservation biology – that is, a multidisciplinary branch of biology dealing with the conservation of living organisms and of the interactions between those organisms and the environment. Conservation biology is – overtly, unlike many other scientific disciplines – a «value-laden» discipline. The hard questions of conservation biology – such as what biodiversity is and why we ought to preserve it – are (...) normative ones. As such, they are questions of conservation ethics. This contribution is intended to map some of the major theoretical and practical issues concerning conservation ethics. Theoretical and practical issues are peculiar since conservation ethics is unique in the landscape of applied ethics as it stands at the crossroad among three different loci of value: environment, animals and human beings. Conservation ethics is in fact a triangu- lar affair among these three kinds of moral concerns. Keywords:. (shrink)