L’idéal de transparence semble s’imposer à tous les esprits comme une évidence. Toute opacité est suspecte de cacher des pratiques douteuses (népotisme, corruption, détournement, abus) en faisant obstacle à une indispensable soif de vérité. Prenant à contre-pied cette aspiration commune à tout rendre transparent, on s’efforce ici de souligner certains des coûts, des écueils et des victimes collatérales de l’impératif de transparence agité aujourd’hui de façon irréfléchie dans nos discours publics.

The originality of Glenberg's theoretical account lies in the claim that memory works in the service of physical interaction with the three-dimensional world. Little consideration is given, however, to the role of memory in action. We present and discuss data on spatial memory for action. These empirical data constitute the first step of reasoning about the link between memory and action, and allow several aspects of Glenberg's theory to be tested.

La modernité s'essouffle tant la considération de l'Homme indépendant, autonome, volontaire et décideur a montré ses excès de maîtrise et ses failles. Y aurait-il un autre commencement que la conscience et le savoir? Ne sommes-nous pas rencontres? Mais alors tout ne part plus de moi ; il y va de l'autre. La première partie tente d'élaborer une phénoménologie de la rencontre. Mais la rencontre se limite au face à face. Pourrait-elle nous emmener au-delà jusqu'à une reconsidération de la justice, de (...) la politique, de la société? La seconde partie du livre présente une articulation entre ces dimensions de notre réalité commune. La rencontre serait alors ce qui permet de penser une société qui n'absorbe rien de nos singularités, et d'envisager la dimension politique à l'endroit d'une vulnérabilité partagée. (shrink)

What Emmanuel Falque seems to achieve in this book is to make the "out of phenomenon" synonymous with the "tragic". Certainly, we see the heuristic interest in creating and cultivating the concept of "out of phenomenon". In Aeschylus' Agamemnon (a reference that runs throughout this book), the atrocious rubs shoulders with the filthy and can only test us, traumatize us, and, therefore, can only "modify" us in some way. If it is also true that the tragic, according to Kierkegaard (...) in particular, can lead to despair, another attitude seems to be dodged and no less sketched by Falque, namely, under the influence of Nietzsche this time, the amor fati: "Learned in the War School of life: what does not kill me strengthens me." Falque does not refer to it explicitly, while the approach that consists in looking the trauma in the face, in having no fear of fixing it, of penetrating it, of inhabiting it, appears to stem from this love of fatum, of destiny "that falls on us", enough in any case for us to be modified in a sense as unexpected as irreparable. But isn't it also the definition and very role of tragic and/or catastrophic feelings? (shrink)

Un - combat amoureux - (Heidegger) ou une - lutte entre les penseurs - (Husserl) determine le destin de l'histoire de la philosophie. Au coeur du debat avec la phenomenologie francaise, cet ouvrage engage une veritable disputatio philosophique ancree sur ledit -tournant theologique de la phenomenologie francaise-. Assure que l'heure n'est plus au simple choc frontal, mais a un veritable dialogue et confrontation entre les disciplines, ce livre tente de montrer en quoi une -phenomenologie de la limite- peut aussi servir (...) de contrepoint a la -phenomenologie de la revelation-, et la tourner davantage vers une pensee de l'-i ncarnation- ou de l'-e xperience-. Jacques Derrida, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chretien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Claude Romano et Jean Greisch, marquent les differents etapes de cette -traversee- point par point articulee, et en quete d'un respondeo a meme d'autrement decider.". (shrink)

Claire Katz & Lara Trout, Emmanuel Levinas. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers ; Thomas Bedorf, Andreas Cremonini, Verfehlte Begegnung. Levinas und Sartre als philosophische Zeitgenossen ; Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics ; Pascal Delhom & Alfred Hirsch, Im Angesicht der Anderen. Levinas’ Philosophie des Politischen ; Sharon Todd, Learning from the other: Levinas, psychoanalysis and ethical possibilities in education ; Michel Henry, Le bonheur de Spinoza, suivi de: Etude sur le spinozisme (...) de Michel Henry, par Jean-Michel Longneaux ; Jean-François Lavigne, Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie. Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: la genèse de l’idéalisme transcendantal phénoménologique ; Denis Seron, Objet et signification ; Dan Zahavi, Sara Heinämaa and Hans Ruin, Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation. Phenomenology in The Nordic Countries ; Dimitri Ginev, Entre anthropologie et herméneutique ; Magdalena Mărculescu-Cojocea, Critica metafizicii la Kant şi Heidegger. Problema subiectivităţii: raţiunea între autonomie şi deconstrucţie. (shrink)

Dans l’introduction de cet ouvrage collectif publié en mars 2003, Emmanuel Renault et Yves Sintomer exposent leur volonté de « rendre compte de l’actualité d’un projet [celui de la théorie critique] tout en mettant en perspective les débats ouverts par les œuvres d’Habermas et de Honneth » (p. 10). On peut dire qu’ils ont pleinement réalisé leur ambition : l’ouvrage qu’ils proposent ici est une synthèse très riche et très stimulante des derniers travaux en cours sur la théorie (...) critique et l’É.. (shrink)

Philosophe et penseur du politique, intellectuel marxiste et militant communiste, enseignant, directeur de collection... : à travers le rayonnement de son oeuvre et de sa personne, Louis Althusser a renouvelé la théorie politique et la philosophie de l'histoire, de Machiavel à Marx. Parmi ses contemporains, Michel Foucault exhorte : " Ouvrez les livres d'Althusser! ", Jacques Derrida évoque " la force rayonnante et provocante de sa pensée ", Gilles Deleuze salue l'" Althusser's Band ", et pour Roland Barthes, " le (...) seul modèle acceptable de la science est celui mis au jour par les études d'Althusser sur Marx ". Aliocha Wald Lasowski converse avec vingt écrivains et philosophes qui ont lu, rencontré, parfois travaillé avec Althusser, quand ils n'ont pas fait partie de ses proches. Où l'on mesure à quel point la pensée d'Althusser demeure d'une actualité brûlante. (shrink)

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the use of disease language and medical processes to foster and support the claim that undesirable features are pathological conditions requiring medical or surgical intervention. Primarily situated in cosmetic surgery, the practice appeals to the concept of “aesthetic pathology”, which is a medical designation for features that deviate from some designated aesthetic norms. This article offers a two-pronged conceptual analysis of aesthetic pathology. First, I argue that three sets of claims, derived from normativist and naturalistic accounts (...) of disease, inform the framing of ugliness as a disease. These claims concern: (1) aesthetic harms, (2) aesthetic dysfunction, and (3) aesthetic deviation. Second, I introduce the notion of a hybridization loop in medicine, which merges the naturalist and normative understanding of the disease that potentially enables pathologizing practices. In the context of cosmetic surgery, the loop simultaneously promotes the framing of beauty ideals as normal biological attributes and the framing of normal appearance as an aesthetic ideal to legitimize the need for cosmetic interventions. The article thus offers an original discussion of the conceptual problems arising from a specific practice in cosmetic surgery that depicts ugliness as the disease. (shrink)

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the framing of unattractive features as a type of disease or deformity. By framing ugliness as pathology, cosmetic procedures are reframed as therapy rather than enhancement, thereby potentially avoiding ethical critiques regularly levelled against cosmetic surgery. As such, the practice of pathologizing ugliness and the ensuing therapeuticalization of cosmetic procedures require an ethical analysis that goes beyond that offered by current enhancement critiques. In this article, I propose using a thick description of the goals of medicine (...) as an ethical framework for evaluating problematic medical practices. I first describe the goals of medicine based on Daniel Callahan's account. I then propose that the goals work best in conjunction with ancillary ethical concepts, namely medical knowledge and skills, standards of practice and medical duties and virtues. Next, I apply the thick description of the goals of medicine in critiquing the practice of framing ugliness as disease. Here, I demonstrate ethical conflicts between aesthetic judgments that underpin the practice of pathologizing ugliness and medical judgments that inform ethical medical practices. In particular, the thick description of the goals of medicine helps reveal ethical conflicts in at least three key domains common to clinical practices, which include (a) disease determination, (b) diagnostic evaluation and (c) establishing clinical indications. My analysis offers a novel way of critiquing the practice of pathologizing ugliness in cosmetic surgery, which tends to be neglected by enhancement critiques. (shrink)

« L'expression la plus adéquate que j'ai trouvée pour désigner les trois expériences hors du commun qu'il m'a été donné de vivre est celle utilisée par Romain Rolland dans sa correspondance avec Freud : le sentiment océanique. Romain Rolland aurait emprunté le magnifique et mystérieux terme « océanique » à la mystique indienne, notamment à Ramakrishna. Ce dernier parlait de son extase comme d'un « océan de joie ineffable ». Alors, qu'est-ce donc que ce sentiment océanique? Ce serait l'expérience rare, (...) fulgurante et généralement brève d'être Un avec le Tout. Comme si les frontières entre le Moi et le monde s'évanouissaient au profit d'un sentiment d'unité, de compréhension et de conscience élargie. » (Yves Vaillancourt) Rassemblant les morceaux épars de la littérature, de la psychanalyse et de la musique, l'auteur retrouve les pierres d'un chemin à la fois singulier et universel. (shrink)

Ce ne sont pas les poètes qui deviennent fous Ce sont les joueurs d’échecs Chesterton Quelle est la quête symbolisée par le jeu d’échecs? Quels liens pouvons-nous établir entre Beth Harmon de la récente série télévisée The Queen’s Gambit et des personnages littéraires comme Loujine ou Monsieur B., de Nabokov ou Stefan Zweig? Les joueurs d’échecs sont-ils des fous de Dieu, des mystiques de l’absolu? Veulent-ils s’affranchir des limites imparties à la condition humaine et s’élever à un niveau de calcul (...) surhumain, comme s’ils étaient dotés de l’omniscience? Dans cet essai, l’auteur se propose de revisiter un certain nombre d’œuvres littéraires et artistiques qui mettent en scène le jeu d’échecs. Il part de l’hypothèse chère à Borgès selon laquelle les échecs sont un petit théâtre reproduisant le drame cosmique, où l’être humain, même surdoué, se brûle les ailes dans son désir de perfection. (shrink)

Scheinerman (2023) proposes that at the Human Genome Editing Initiative international summit (held in March 2023) there should have been a parallel, separate Citizens’ Jury, and that the Human Geno...

This review aims to identify (1) sources of knowledge and (2) important themes of the ethical debate related to surgical alteration of facial features in East Asians. This article integrates narrative and systematic review methods. In March 2014, we searched databases including PubMed, Philosopher’s Index, Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Communication Abstracts using key terms “cosmetic surgery,” “ethnic*,” “ethics,” “Asia*,” and “Western*.” The study included all types of papers written in English that discuss the debate on rhinoplasty and blepharoplasty (...) in East Asians. No limit was put on date of publication. Combining both narrative and systematic review methods, a total of 31 articles were critically appraised on their contribution to ethical reflection founded on the debates regarding the surgical alteration of Asian features. Sources of knowledge were drawn from four main disciplines, including the humanities, medicine or surgery, communications, and economics. Focusing on cosmetic surgery perceived as a westernising practice, the key debate themes included authenticity of identity, interpersonal relationships and socio-economic utility in the context of Asian culture. The study shows how cosmetic surgery of ethnic features plays an important role in understanding female identity in the Asian context. Based on the debate themes authenticity of identity, interpersonal relationships, and socio-economic utility, this article argues that identity should be understood as less individualistic and more as relational and transformational in the Asian context. In addition, this article also proposes to consider cosmetic surgery of Asian features as an interplay of cultural imperialism and cultural nationalism, which can both be a source of social pressure to modify one’s appearance. (shrink)

The popularity of surgical modifications of race-typical features among Asian women has generated debates on the ethical implications of the practice. Focusing on blepharoplasty as a representative racial surgery, this article frames the ethical discussion by viewing Asian cosmetic surgery as an example of medicalization, which can be interpreted in two forms: treatment versus enhancement. In the treatment form, medicalization occurs by considering cosmetic surgery as remedy for pathologized Asian features; the pathologization usually occurs in reference to western features as (...) the norm. In the enhancement form, medicalization occurs by using medical means to improve physical features to achieve a certain type of beauty or physical appearance. Each type of medicalization raises slightly different ethical concerns. The problem with treatment medicalization lies in the pathologization of Asian features, which is oppressive as it continues to reinforce racial norms of appearance and negative stereotypes. Enhancement medicalization is ethically problematic because cosmetic surgery tends to conflate beauty and health as medical goals of surgery, overemphasizing the value of appearance that can further displace women’s control over their own bodies. I conclude that in both forms of medicalization, cosmetic surgery seems to narrowly frame a complex psychosocial issue involving physical appearance as a matter that can be simply solved through surgical means. (shrink)

This chapter presents the different purposes of observation and experiment in physics using examples that allow us to grasp the historical transformations linked to the development of instrumentation. We cover both the observational and experimental aspects of this discipline, which range from astronomy and astrophysics to nuclear and particle physics, including optics and solid-state physics.

Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology (...) of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated. (shrink)

This article provides a critical comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts articulated in guidelines for allocating scarce resources in the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified 21 local and national guidelines written in English, Spanish, German and French; applicable to specific and identifiable jurisdictions; and providing guidance to clinicians for decision making when allocating critical care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. US guidelines were not included, as these had recently been reviewed elsewhere. Information was extracted from each (...) guideline on: 1) the development process; 2) the presence and nature of ethical, medical and social criteria for allocating critical care resources; and 3) the membership of and decision-making procedure of any triage committees. Results of our analysis show the majority appealed primarily to consequentialist reasoning in making allocation decisions, tempered by a largely pluralistic approach to other substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts. Medical and social criteria included medical need, co-morbidities, prognosis, age, disability and other factors, with a focus on seemingly objective medical criteria. There was little or no guidance on how to reconcile competing criteria, and little attention to internal contradictions within individual guidelines. Our analysis reveals the challenges in developing sound ethical guidance for allocating scarce medical resources, highlighting problems in operationalising ethical concepts and principles, divergence between guidelines, unresolved contradictions within the same guideline, and use of naïve objectivism in employing widely used medical criteria for allocating ICU resources. (shrink)

a classification of educational theories with authors.

The focus of this study was to assess the mediating effect of green innovation, in the relationship between green human resources management (GHRM) and organizational competitiveness of manufacturing multinational enterprises (MNEs). The study further looked at the moderating effect of organizational learning in the relationship between GHRM on organizational competitiveness of manufacturing MNEs. The population comprises manufacturing MNEs in Ghana. Through purposive and simple random sampling techniques, 231 manufacturing MNEs were selected for the study. Data was analyzed using frequencies, percentages, (...) mean scores, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), using SPSS and SMART‐PLS (Partial Least Square) software. The study concludes that green innovation partially mediates the relationship between GHRM and organizational competitiveness. It was further concluded that organizational learning positively moderates the positive relationship between GHRM and organizational competitiveness. The study recommends that manufacturing MNEs should invest and improve the level of their organizational learning as it not only strengthens the effects of GHRM on organizational competitiveness, but it also directly improves competitiveness. Further, particular attention should also pay to green innovation, as it intervenes the relationship between GHRM and organizational competitiveness. (shrink)

Depuis les années 1960, Gilbert Durand a fondé et développé une méthodologie et une épistémologie novatrices de l'étude des imaginaires individuels et culturels qui ont inspiré une Ecole de Grenoble, qui n'a cessé d'essaimer à travers un grand nombre de centres de recherches en France et dans le monde. Sa pensée, connue à travers la mythocritique et la mythanalyse, enrichie par une vaste culture historique et pluriculturelle, a été appliquée dans les domaines les plus divers des sciences humaines et sociales. (...) Loin d'être un système clos, son oeuvre a inspiré une épistémologie ouverte qui a permis, sur la base des acquis fondamentaux, de se préciser, de s'adapter à des champs nouveaux, de recevoir les apports d'autres écoles, courants ou traditions culturelles. Les contributions ici rassemblées permettront de mieux situer l'émergence de la problématique de l'imaginaire dans différentes disciplines ou champs d'études, de présenter les innovations théoriques apportées par l'anthropologie de l'imaginaire de G Durand, d'illustrer les innovations qu'elles auront permises, d'amorcer des éléments de prospective pour les chantiers actuellement en cours d'exploration. (shrink)

Les hommes ont toujours agi sur eux-mêmes, et pris en charge leur propre évolution. Avec aujourd'hui deux traits absolument nouveaux. D'une part, les capacités d'action de l'espèce humaine sur elle-même sont incomparablement plus puissantes que par le passé, notamment dans le domaine des technologies de la vie. D'autre part, nous contrôlons si bien notre milieu et l'avons si parfaitement aménagé pour notre survie que nous avons mis en danger notre environnement. Le philosophe Peter Sloterdijk conduit une réflexion peu conventionnelle sur (...) ce double déséquilibre, déséquilibre de la domestication de l'homme par lui-même, déséquilibre de l'environnement par la mobilisation infinie des ressources. En prolongeant ses réflexions, il s'agit ici de réfléchir à cette situation. Faut-il poursuivre et même accélérer sur la voie de la mutation, en inventant le nouvel homme, c'est-à-dire le surhomme? Ou faut-il à nouveau penser la nature humaine dans sa finitude et, contre la mobilisation infinie, en appeler à la dé-mobilisation et à la voie du Tao, mais au risque de l'étouffement dans la mesure, la sagesse et l'ennui? (shrink)

The current study sought to assess the mediating role of green market orientation dimensions in the relationship between social risk and new product performance among European Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs). We also assessed the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation in the relationship between green market orientation and new product performance. The study was based on primary data gathered from 317 EMNEs in Ghana. After various validity and reliability checks, ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis was performed to estimate the various relationships hypothesized (...) in the study. The study finds that social risk has a negative effect on the success of EMNEs' new products. This negative effect is however nullified by the positive mediating effects of strategic green market orientation, tactical green market orientation and internal green market orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation also played a significant moderating effect in the relationship between green market orientation dimensions and EMNEs' new product performance. Based on this, theoretical and managerial contributions were made. (shrink)

L'objectif est ici de déterminer la mesure dans laquelle nous serions aujourd'hui sortis des catégories conceptuelles sur lesquelles la pensée politique moderne s'est construite.

Résumé Ce texte est la transposition d’un exposé de l’auteur à l’IRCAM dans le cadre du séminaire MaMuPhi où dialoguent mathématiciens, musiciens (compositeurs, interprètes, théoriciens) et philosophes. Ni glose sur les théories du style en mathématique, ni prolégomènes à une stylistique future, encore moins galerie de portraits d’auteurs, il s’agit d’un essai plutôt que d’une étude : un court essai, catalysé en partie par les caustiques « décalogues » de Gian-Carlo Rota, où l’on évalue la place de l’auteur et essaie (...) de dégager les enjeux, essentiels plutôt que décoratifs, des questions d’écriture et de style dans la mathématique d’aujourd’hui. (shrink)

In his Florentine Histories, Machiavelli offers an ambivalent portrayal of the revolt of the textile workers in late fourteenth-century Florence, known as the tumult of the Ciompi. On the face of it, Machiavelli's depiction of the insurgent workers is not exactly flattering. Yet this picture is undermined by a firebrand speech, which Machiavelli invents and attributes to an unnamed leader of the plebeian revolt. I interpret this speech as a radical and egalitarian vector of thought opened up by Machiavelli's text. (...) The revolutionary address reveals an untimely and not entirely self-conscious political radicalism, a plebeian politics that repudiates the logic of oligarchic privilege and is simultaneously not available for subsumption under the mantle of civic republicanism. (shrink)

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the use of disease language and medical processes to foster and support the claim that undesirable features are pathological conditions requiring medical or surgical intervention. Primarily situated in cosmetic surgery, the practice appeals to the concept of "aesthetic pathology", which is a medical designation for features that deviate from some designated aesthetic norms. This article offers a two-pronged conceptual analysis of aesthetic pathology. First, I argue that three sets of claims, derived from normativist and naturalistic accounts (...) of disease, inform the framing of ugliness as a disease. These claims concern: (1) aesthetic harms, (2) aesthetic dysfunction, and (3) aesthetic deviation. Second, I introduce the notion of a hybridization loop in medicine, which merges the naturalist and normative understanding of the disease that potentially enables pathologizing practices. In the context of cosmetic surgery, the loop simultaneously promotes the framing of beauty ideals as normal biological attributes and the framing of normal appearance as an aesthetic ideal to legitimize the need for cosmetic interventions. The article thus offers an original discussion of the conceptual problems arising from a specific practice in cosmetic surgery that depicts ugliness as the disease. (shrink)

Les violations des droits de la personne sont de plus en plus fréquentes et de plus en plus graves dans les sociétés occidentales. C’est la conséquence de « l’entreprisation » de notre monde. Devenue l’organisation domi­nante dans nos sociétés, l’entreprise constitue dans son principe même une menace pour la dignité de la personne, dans la mesure où elle est fondée sur l’ins­trumentalisation des êtres humains. Quiconque veut protéger l’homme de l’ex­ploi­tation et de l’aliénation ne peut donc que souhaiter l’abolition de (...) l’entreprise. Mais, dans ce cas, il faut supprimer les conditions qui la rendent possible. Or, paradoxalement, certains droits fondamentaux font partie de ces conditions. D’où la nécessité de les repenser. (shrink)

The concept of general equilibrium, one of the central components of economic theory, explains the behavior of supply, demand, and prices by showing that supply and demand exist in balance through pricing mechanisms. The mathematical tools and properties for this theory have developed over time to accommodate and incorporate developments in economic theory, from multiple markets and economic agents to theories of production.Yves Balasko offers an extensive, up-to-date look at the standard theory of general equilibrium, to which he has (...) been a major contributor. This book explains how the equilibrium manifold approach can be usefully applied to the general equilibrium model, from basic consumer theory and exchange economies to models with private ownership of production. Balasko examines properties of the standard general equilibrium model that are beyond traditional existence and optimality. He applies the theory of smooth manifolds and mappings to the multiplicity of equilibrium solutions and related discontinuities of market prices. The economic concepts and differential topology methods presented in this book are accessible, clear, and relevant, and no prior knowledge of economic theory is necessary.General Equilibrium Theory of Value offers a comprehensive foundation for the most current models of economic theory and is ideally suited for graduate economics students, advanced undergraduates in mathematics, and researchers in the field. (shrink)

As Emmanuel Levinas states in the preface to Existence and Existents, "this study is a preparatory one. It examines . . . the problem of the Good, time, and the relationship with the other [person] as a movement toward the Good." First published in 1947, and written mostly during Levinas's imprisonment during World War II, this work provides the first sketch of his mature thought later developed fully in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. This (...) new edition marks the first time this important work has been made available in an inexpensive paperback edition. Levinas's project in Existence and Existents is to move from anonymous existence to the emergence of subjectivity; to subjectivity's practice, theory and morality; to its encounter with the alterity of the other person. He is concerned here primarily with the time of the solitary subject; time is the inner structure of subjectivity, of the movement of existing. "Levinas's work," says Alphonso Lingis, "contains not only wholly new analyses of the forms of time of the present, the past, the future but also a new conception of the work of time." Beginning with Existence and Existents, then, it is possible to begin tracing the progressive "alterization" of time as it unfolds across the development of Levinas's entire philosophy. As a "preparatory" study, Existence and Existents introduces the major themes and concerns that occupied Levinas throughout his career. This is essential reading for understanding both Levinas's own philosophy and the developments in philosophical thought in the twentieth century. (shrink)

La question de Dieu dans la pensée de Husserl fut très tôt un objet d'attention pour la recherche phénoménologique, mais la diversité des textes est telle qu'il était nécessaire d'établir le dossier historique relatif à cette question. Bien évidemment, la mise en lumière de l'unité et de la continuité des analyses de Husserl sur Dieu est animée par une interrogation proprement spéculative : quelle place pour Dieu dans une philosophie descriptive qui se veut méthodologiquement athée? A partir du "je" transcendantal, (...) quel est l'accès possible à la pure phénoménalité de Dieu? Si Husserl décrit la transcendance de Dieu comme celle d'une Idée théorique, éthique et téléologique, il ne s'agit pas pour lui de s'en tenir aux reconstructions abstraites de la métaphysique, niais de revenir à l'expérience originaire de Dieu. La réduction phénoménologique ne demande pas de cesser de croire, mais elle rend possible une purification éthique de l'expérience religieuse qui permet d'élucider son sens. En cela, tout le projet contemporain d'un concept non ontologique de Dieu est redevable à Husserl d'avoir fait le premier pas décisif en affranchissant de tout en soi " et en montrant que la transcendance de Dieu ne peut être séparée de la vie intentionnelle dans laquelle elle s'annonce. Husserl ne confond pas pour autant philosophie et théologie, et la compréhension de Dieu comme évidence d'une Idée pratique infinie laisse ouverte la possibilité de la Révélation sans vouloir parler pour elle. (shrink)

Suszko’s problem is the problem of finding the minimal number of truth values needed to semantically characterize a syntactic consequence relation. Suszko proved that every Tarskian consequence relation can be characterized using only two truth values. Malinowski showed that this number can equal three if some of Tarski’s structural constraints are relaxed. By so doing, Malinowski introduced a case of so-called mixed consequence, allowing the notion of a designated value to vary between the premises and the conclusions of an argument. (...) In this article we give a more systematic perspective on Suszko’s problem and on mixed consequence. First, we prove general representation theorems relating structural properties of a consequence relation to their semantic interpretation, uncovering the semantic counterpart of substitution-invariance, and establishing that mixed consequence is fundamentally the semantic counterpart of the structural property of monotonicity. We use those theorems to derive maximum-rank results proved recently in a different setting by French and Ripley, as well as by Blasio, Marcos, and Wansing, for logics with various structural properties. We strengthen these results into exact rank results for nonpermeable logics. We discuss the underlying notion of rank, and the associated reduction proposed independently by Scott and Suszko. As emphasized by Suszko, that reduction fails to preserve compositionality in general, meaning that the resulting semantics is no longer truth-functional. We propose a modification of that notion of reduction, allowing us to prove that over compact logics with what we call regular connectives, rank results are maintained even if we request the preservation of truth-functionality and additional semantic properties. (shrink)

The presupposition triggered by an expression E is generally satisfied by information that comes before rather than after E in the sentence or discourse. In Heim’s classic theory (1983), this left-right asymmetry is encoded in the lexical semantics of dynamic connectives and operators. But several recent analyses offer a more nuanced approach, in which presupposition satisfaction has two separate components: a general principle (which varies from theory to theory) specifies under what conditions a presupposition triggered by an expression E is (...) satisfied; and an ‘incremental’ component specifies that the principle must be checked on the basis of information that comes before E. Several researchers take this incremental component to be a processing bias, which can be overcome at some cost. If so, it should be possible, though costly, to satisfy presuppositions ‘symmetrically’, i.e. by taking into account linguistic material that comes both before and after the presupposition trigger. We test this claim with experimental means. Using inferential (and to some extent acceptability) tasks involving the anaphoric trigger aussi (‘too’) in French, we argue that symmetric readings are indeed possible (albeit degraded) in environments involving the connectives if, or, and unless. (shrink)