This book examines the historic trend to individualism and shows why it is both irreversible and unthreatening to our sense of community. As people become free to choose the multiple components of their identity---religion, nationality, profession, sexuality-they take advantage of their new freedom, and the communications revolution, to form a freely chosen affiliations. While these may no longer be based primarily on geography and genetics, they nevertheless generate powerful new imagined communities that will affect the way we live, work, and (...) love. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Ce livre propose une lecture phénoménologique du discours romanesque, en particulier du roman existentialiste et du Nouveau Roman dont les mutations rhétoriques sont profondément influencées par ce courant philosophique. L'impulsion de la phénoménologie, interrogation sur les rapports entre réalité phénoménale, conscience individuelle et corps, permet aux romanciers de résoudre une série d'impasses propres au réalisme du XIXe, ce qui renforce le rôle dominant du genre romanesque dans la littérature et plus généralement dans la culture. (...) Mettant au centre de ses réflexions l'appréhension du monde par des corps situés, orientés au sein d'une chair indivise indissociable de ce qui la constitue comme signe, la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty propose des catégories et une série d'outils herméneutiques pour l'analyse critique de ces oeuvres, et en particulier du rôle qu'y joue la corporéité. La fécondité des catégories phénoménologiques merleau-pontiennes mises à l'épreuve de romans de Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Simon, Sarraute et Robbe-Grillet permet d'envisager un enrichissement méthodologique de l'analyse du discours littéraire.". (shrink)

Across a broad range of subjects, there is now wide agreement that the principle of proportionality governs the extent to which a provocation may lawfully be countered by what might otherwise be an unlawful response. That is the central role assigned to proportionality in international law and it is deeply rooted in the cultural history of societies. However, if the core institutions of a legal system are too weak to be relied upon to take remedial action against wrongdoers, then they (...) must at least be authorized to license appropriate action by the wronged party and to insure that its response remains within prescribed parameters. The practice described in this essay demonstrates that a high degree of accord is emerging across a broad range of issues to the appropriate standards by which the proportionality of countermeasures can be assessed. The practice of various institutions authorized to render second opinions as to the compliance with those standards is gradually narrowing the range of indeterminacy inherent in the term proportionality. Some of this case law has been disappointingly episodic. The well-crafted second opinion, through its precision, its invocation of precedent, and its careful weighing of the probity of the facts presented to it, deepens and narrows the jurisprudential stream while strengthening its embankments. If applied in practice through second opinions rendered by legitimate institutions, proportionality is an example of an indeterminate principle becoming gradually empowered to provide persuasive answers to difficult questions and, thereby, case by case, building the objective determinacy of the principle. (shrink)

Appeals to nationalism based on a common sociocultural, geographic, and linguistic heritage are reactions against expansions of trade, information, and power - and anomie and xenophobia can be countered by giving substatal ethnicities, minorities and political parties a voice and a vote.