This is a review of Alexandre Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. This slim book is a translation of Kojève’s essay “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev,” which was first published in two installments in the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses in 1934. The French text was itself based on Kojève’s doctoral dissertation, Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews, defended in Heidelberg under the direction of Karl (...) Jaspers in 1926. The translation is accompanied by an introduction from the translators discussing translation issues. In this review, I summarize Kojève’s essay and editorialize on the issue of the principal influences on Solovyov’s metaphysics. Kojève claims that most of Solovyov’s metaphysics was in fact borrowed from Schelling and perhaps also to some extent from Jakob Böhme. If that is the case, then what is usually considered the prototypical Russian metaphysics is... not Russian. (shrink)

One hundred years after Luigi Russolo's "The Art of Noises," this book exposes a cross-section of the current motivations, activities, thoughts, and reflections of composers, performers, and artists who work with noise in all of its many forms. The book's focus is the practice of noise and its relationship to music, and in particular the role of noise as musical material--as form, as sound, as notation or interface, as a medium for listening, as provocation, as data. Its contributors are first (...) and foremost practitioners, which inevitably turns attention toward how and why noise is made and its potential role in listening and perceiving. Contributors include Peter Ablinger, Sebastian Berweck, Aaron Cassidy, Marko Ciciliani, Nick Collins, Aaron Einbond, Matthias Haenisch, Alec Hall, Martin Iddon, Bryan Jacobs, Phil Julian, Michael Maierhof, Joan Arnau Pàmies, and James Whitehead (JLIAT). The book also features a collection of short responses to a two-question "interview"--"what is noise (music) to you?" and "why do you make it?"--by some of the leading musicians working with noise today. Their work spans a wide range of artistic practice, including instrumental, vocal, and electronic music; improvisation; notated composition; theater; sound installation; DIY; and software development. Interview subjects include Eryck Abecassis, Franck Bedrossian, Antoine Chessex, Ryan Jordan, Alice Kemp (Germseed), George Lewis, Lasse Marhaug, Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Diemo Schwarz, Ben Thigpen, Kasper Toeplitz, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay."--Page 4 of covers. (shrink)

This paper argues that Epictetus’ ethics involves three features which are also present in Aristotle’s discussion of akrasia in the Nicomachean Ethics: 1) A major problem for agents is when they fail to render a universal premise effective at motivating a particular action in accordance with that premise. 2) There are two reasons this occurs: Precipitancy and Weakness. 3) Precipitancy and Weakness can be prevented by gaining a fuller understanding of our beliefs and commitments. This comparison should make clear that (...) akrasia is certainly not absent from Epictetus. Rather a very Aristotelian understanding of why we fail to act in accordance with what we take to be in our own best interests remains at the center of his ethics. (shrink)

The Stoic Epictetus famously criticizeshis students for studying Stoicism as ‘mere theory’ and encouraged them to add training to their educational program. This is made all the more interesting by the fact that Epictetus, as a Stoic, was committed to notion that wisdom is sufficient to be virtuous, so theory should be all that’s required to achieve virtue. How are we then to make sense of Epictetus criticism of an overreliance on theory, and his insistence on adding training? This paper (...) argues that this tension can be resolved through an appeal to the metaphor of ‘digesting theory’. Epictetus discusses the digestion of theory in three parts of his existent work. While the use of digestion as a metaphor for moral progress in Epictetus has been noted, an explanation as to exactly what this process consists of has yet to be provided. This paper attempts to provide such an account. I argue that digestion consists of assimilating what we have learnt conceptually, at the level of general principles, into specific beliefs concerning existent objects. I argue further that this process of digestion can only be achieved through what Epictetus calls training (askesis). (shrink)

Nikolai Lossky is key to the history of the Husserl-Rezeption in Russia. He was the first to publish a review of the Russian translation of Husserl’s first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen that appeared in 1909. He also published a presentation and criticism of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in 1939. An English translation of both of Lossky’s publications is offered in this volume for the first time. The present paper, which is intended as an introduction to these documents, situates Lossky within (...) the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Husserl in Russia and explains why he is central to it. It also explains what Lossky principally found in Husserl: he saw in the latter’s critique of psychologism support for his own ontology, epistemology, and axiology. Lossky characterizes his ontology as an ideal-realism. According to ideal-realism, both the realm of ideal beings and the realm of real beings are mind-independent. Per his epistemology, which he calls “intuitivism,” real beings are intuited by sensual intuition and ideal beings by intellectual intuition. The realm of ideal beings includes the subrealm of values, which is intuited by axiological intuition. This thoroughly realist conception contrasted sharply with the subjectivist tendencies of the time. So, when Lossky took cognizance of Husserl’s critique of psychologism, he thereupon found an ally in his battle against the various subjectivisms. But, when Husserl took the transcendental idealist turn, Lossky was at the forefront of the backlash against the new direction Husserl wanted to give to phenomenology. (shrink)

One of the trademarks of Nicolai Hartmann’s ontology is his theory of levels of reality. Hartmann drew from many sources to develop his version of the theory. His essay “Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie” testifies of the fact that he drew from Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. But this text was written relatively late in Hartmann’s career, which suggests that his interest in the theories of levels of the ancients may have been retrospective. In “Nicolai Hartmann und seine (...) Zeitgenossen,” Martin Morgenstern puts the emphasis on contemporaries of Hartmann: Émile Boutroux, Max Scheler, Heinrich Rickert, Karl Jaspers, and Arnold Gehlen. But there is another plausible source for Hartmann’s conception of levels that has so far remained overlooked in the literature. Hartmann studied with and was influenced by Nikolai Lossky. Lossky has a theory of levels that he adopted from Vladimir Solovyov. Solovyov presents his theory of levels, among other places, in Oпpaвдaнie дoбpa, where he says that the five principal stages of the cosmogonic process of ascension toward universal perfection, which are given in experience, are the mineral or inorganic realm, the vegetal realm, the animal realm, the realm of natural humanity, and the realm of spiritual or divine humanity. This theory appears to bear significant similarities with the theory of levels of reality that Hartmann will develop a few decades later. Solovyov was widely read in Russia and it would be unlikely that Hartmann was not at least minimally acquainted with his work. Chances are that Hartmann came into contact with it in some details. An intellectual lineage could thus likely be traced from Hartmann back to Solovyov. In this paper, I document and discuss this possible lineage. (shrink)

This paper aims to deflate the idea that democracy would be in essence a privileged locus of civic trust. Three claims are defended: (1) there is nothing specific to democracy regarding the affirmation that trust is required for social cooperation; (2) democracy, when conceived discursively, depends on guarded epistemic trust and; (3) popular control may require, in some contexts, institutions that express and foster distrust towards a specific section of the population. The conclusion to be drawn is that the appropriateness (...) of trust for the achievement of popular control over government depends on a contextual and realist assessment. (shrink)

Yann Allard-Tremblay ,Aude Bandini | : Les théories épistémiques et délibératives de la démocratie soulignent l’importance du processus de la délibération quand l’objectif poursuivi est de parvenir à de bonnes décisions. Dans cet article, nous nous intéresserons aux différents mécanismes grâce auxquels une délibération publique à la fois ouverte, libre et inclusive, peut parvenir à de bonnes décisions, avant d’envisager ce que la délibération peut apporter en cas de désaccord. Nous nous concentrerons plus particulièrement ici sur la fonction constructive (...) de la démocratie, c’est-à-dire sur cette capacité qu’a la démocratie délibérative d’identifier et de formuler, de manière épistémiquement instructive, les problèmes de justice auxquels doit faire face le corps politique. Il faudra donc d’abord expliquer comment la démocratie permet de colliger l’information et de la mettre à disposition de chacun, afin d’expliquer ensuite comment la délibération peut permettre l’émergence d’accords entre les individus. Nous verrons alors que la délibération a des limites, et pourquoi elle se révèle incapable de surmonter certains désaccords. Nous tâcherons enfin d’expliquer le rôle qu’elle joue dans la formulation des désaccords politiques. Sur ce point, nous montrerons que la délibération permet d’éviter que ne surgissent des désaccords politiques insoutenables, qui mettraient en péril l’intégrité du corps politique. | : Deliberative epistemic theories of democracy highlight the importance of deliberation for the achievement of correct decisions. The aims of this paper are to discuss the mechanisms which allow an open, free and inclusive forum of deliberation to achieve correct decisions and to discuss the impact of deliberation on disagreement. I concentrate on the constructive function of democracy which designates the capacity of deliberative democracy to identify and frame the problems of justice faced by a polity in epistemically positive ways. I first explain how democracy can pool information. This is then used to explain how deliberation can enable agreement to emerge. This is followed by a discussion of the limits of deliberation and how it is unable to resolve some disagreements. The final element of my discussion is an explanation of the role of deliberation in framing political disagreements. I argue that deliberation helps in avoiding unsustainable political disagreements which could bring about political decay. (shrink)

The politics of reconciliation, in Canada, finds its origin in judgements of the Supreme Court affirming the objective of reconciling the sui generis authority and continued distinct existence of I...

Advances in artificial intelligence, as well as its increased presence in everyday life, have brought the emergence of many new phenomena, including an intriguing appearance of what seems to be a variant of body dysmorphic disorder, coined “Snapchat dysmorphia”. Body dysmorphic disorder is a DSM-5 psychiatric disorder defined as a preoccupation with one or more perceived defects or flaws in physical appearance that are not observable or appear slight to others. Snapchat dysmorphia is fueled by automated selfie filters that reflect (...) unrealistic sociocultural standard. In this paper, we discuss how body dysmorphic disorder and related body image distortions could arise, using the conceptual resources provided by the active inference framework. We suggest that these disorders involve dysfunctional self-modelling which entails maladaptive internalization of sociocultural preferences during adolescent identity formation. Identity formation is hereby described as cycles of interpersonal active inference that arbitrate between identity exploration and commitment. We propose that impaired self-modelling is unable to reduce interpersonal uncertainty during identity exploration, which, over time, degenerates into uncontrollable epistemic habits that isolate the body image from corrective sensory evidence. In light of these insights, we subsequently explore some of the consequences of image-centered social media platforms on the identity formation process. We conclude that heightened interpersonal uncertainty in this novel context could precipitate the onset of body dysmorphic disorder and related body image distortions, particularly when selfie filters are involved. (shrink)

Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Yet, they all appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism. In contrast to the latter, Russian philosophy typically displays a tendency towards ontologism, which is generally defined as the view that there is such a thing as being in itself, (...) i.e., being independent of cognition, and that this being is to some extent knowable. We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed movements, an underlying ontologism that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. (shrink)

The twentieth century Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky was one of the earliest and most important proponents—but also critics—of Bergson’s philosophy in Russia at a time when many Russian philosophers were preoccupied with the same complex of philosophical questions and answers that Bergson was addressing. Thus, if only from the standpoint of intellectual history, Lossky is central to the study of the reception of Bergson in Russia. In this article, I present the principal historical links, points of agreement between Bergson and (...) Lossky, such as their respective anti-Kantianism, intuitivism, ontological realism, vitalism, organicism, Neo-Platonism, as well as their points of disagreement, including some of Lossky’s key criticisms of Bergson, with special emphasis on the issues of intuition, ideal being, substance and change, time, and sensible qualities. This paper is meant as an introduction to the translations of Lossky’s “Heдocтaтки гнoceoлoгiи Бepгcoнa и влiянie иxъ нa eгo мeтaфизикy” (The Defects of Bergson’s Epistemology and Their Consequences on His Metaphysics) (1913) and his review of Bergson’s, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932), which are published in the present issue of Studies in East European Thought. (shrink)

The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles By Dr Rodrigue Tremblay Prometheus Books -/- The world faces a crisis of civilization, which is in reality a moral crisis. The modern moral worldview that has evolved since the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment seems to be weathering. There is a recrudescence of the old moral formulas that encourage conflicts and wars. Humanity is in need of a new moral revival, free of sectarian references, in order to pursue its long (...) march for survival in a climate of progress and liberty. -/- The Code for Global Ethics proposes an imperative and more explicitly universal code of rights and obligations for all individuals, whether they be ordinary citizens or leaders of countries, of corporations, or religious organizations. It outlines the principles of rational humanism to be applied within the global context of a shrinking and a politically and economically interdependent world. Such a universal and global code of conduct is then compared to alternative moral codes—codes usually based on sectarian religious systems—with a demonstration of why such narrow or ethnically centered moral systems have failed humanity in the past. In our view, humanism is about idealism, compassion, and mutual tolerance, in a true spirit of humanity. It is a truly universal vision of humankind. http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Global-Ethics-Principles/dp/1616141727/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3 -/- . (shrink)

The prominent Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky and his ex-student Nicolai Hartmann shared many metaphysical and epistemological views, and Lossky is likely to have influenced Hartmann in adopting several of them. But, in the case of axiological issues, it appears that Lossky also borrowed from the axiologies of Hartmann and the latter's Cologne colleague, Max Scheler. The links between the theories of values of Scheler and Hartmann have been studied abundantly, but never in relation to Lossky. In this paper, I examine (...) the manifold relationships – similarities, differences, borrowings, criticisms, and possible influences – between Lossky's axiology and those of Scheler and Hartmann on four key interweaving issues: (1) their ontological realism with regards to the objectivity of values, (2) their epistemological theories of the intuition of values, (3) their ontological definitions of "value", i.e., whether values are relations, qualities, essences, powers, meanings, etc., and (4) their theories of the stratification of values. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky adhered to an evolutionary metaphysics of reincarnation according to which the world is constituted of immortal souls or monads, which he calls ‘substantival agents.’ These substantival agents can evolve or devolve depending on the goodness or badness of their behavior. Such evolution requires the possibility for monads to reincarnate into the bodies of creatures of a higher or of a lower level on the scala perfectionis. According to this theory, a substantival agent can evolve (...) by being gradually reincarnated multiple times through a sort of process of metamorphosis from the level of the most elementary particles all the way up to the level of human beings or even higher. In ‘Ученiе Лейбница о перевоплощенiи какъ метаморфозѣ’, Lossky argues that the works of Leibniz contain scattered elements of such a systematic evolutionary doctrine of reincarnation as metamorphosis and he attempts to reconstitute this doctrine. The present article is intended as an historical introduction to the translation of Lossky’s ‘Leibniz’s Doctrine of Reincarnation as Metamorphosis.’. (shrink)

This paper assesses James M. Buchanan's claim of following a positive approach in stark contrast to the normative approach to public finance of Richard A. Musgrave. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the foundations of modern American public finance by analysing one aspect of the methodology of its two most prominent fathers. I show (1) that it is difficult to distinguish Musgrave's and Buchanan's theories of public goods along the positive/normative dividing line and (2) that Buchanan's (...) theory can also be considered normative. In the first three parts, I follow the Weberian methodological tradition in looking for value judgements in the theories, and by reflecting on the nature of ideal types. In the last part, I propose a broader interpretation of Buchanan's methodological stance within the academic context of the 1960s. (shrink)

Leibniz’s philosophy enjoyed a Russian fandom that endured from the eighteenth century to the death of the last exiled Russian philosophers in the twentieth century. There was, to begin with, Leibniz’s direct impact on Peter the Great and on the scientific development of Saint Petersburg. Then there was, still in the eighteenth century, Mikhail Lomonosov, who was sent to study with Christian Wolff in Marburg, and who came back to Saint Petersburg with a watered-down Leibnizian worldview, which he applied to (...) the study of chemistry and physics. Another eighteenth century philosopher, Alexander Radishchev, who studied in Leipzig, displayed acquiescence with a number of key elements from Leibniz’s philosophy. Russian Lebnizianism as a continuous philosophical movement was considerably reinvigorated in the 1870s when the Leibnizian German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller took a position at the University of Dorpat (nowadays Tartu, Estonia), which was then located within the Russian Empire. Teichmüller influenced a number of Russian philosophers into adopting a “Teichmüllerian” version of Leibnizianism. Among these philosophers were Evgeny Bobrov and Alexei Kozlov. In Saint Petersburg, Kozlov influenced his own son, Askoldov, and the latter’s friend — Nikolai Lossky. In the meanwhile, in Moscow Lev Lopatin, Nikolai Bugaev, and Petr Astafiev developed their own Leibnizianism in seemingly relative independence from Teichmüller’s influence and presumably, in some cases, under the partial influence of Vladimir Solovyov. Despite this relative independence, however, the fact remains that there was in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia a network of more or less loosely interconnected Leibnizian philosophers who read each other and wrote about each other, who exchanged ideas, and who constituted a movement that we might characterize as “Russian Leibnizianism” or “Russian Neo-Leibnizianism.” In this chapter, I tell the story of the intellectual lineage of Russian Leibnizianism. (shrink)

Researchers studying health systems in low-income countries face a myriad of ethical challenges throughout the entire research process. In this article, we discuss one of the greatest ethical challenges that we encountered during our fieldwork in West Africa: the difficulty of protecting the confidentiality of participants while locally disseminating results of health systems research to stakeholders. This reflection is based on experiences of authors involved in conducting evaluative research of interventions aimed at improving health systems in West Africa. Our observation (...) and collaboration with the research projects’ stakeholders informed our analysis. Examples from two research projects illustrate the issues raised. We found that in some cases there is a risk that local stakeholders may be able to identify research participants, or at least groups of participants, during the dissemination of results, even if they are anonymized. Four factors can interact and influence this challenge: 1) hierarchical structure, 2) small milieu, 3) immersion in a few sites, and 4) vested interests of decision-makers. For example, local stakeholders can sometimes find out when and where the data were collected. Moreover, health systems, especially rural healthcare centres, in West African countries can be small settings, so people often know each other. Some types of participants have unique characteristics or positions in the health system that may make them more easily identifiable by local stakeholders familiar with the environment. We identified a number of potential strategies that can help researchers minimize this difficulty and improve ethical research practices. These strategies pertain to the development of the study design, the process of obtaining informed consent, the dissemination of results, and the researchers’ reflexivity. Researchers must develop and adopt strategies that enable them to respect their promise of confidentiality while effectively disseminating sometimes sensitive results. Reflections surrounding ethical issues in global health research should be deepened to better address how to manage competing ethical responsibilities while promoting valuable research uptake. (shrink)

When developing phylogenetic systematics, the entomologist Willi Hennig adopted elements from Nicolai Hartmann’s ontology. In this historical essay I take on the task of documenting this adoption. I argue that in order to build a metaphysical foundation for phylogenetic systematics, Hennig adopted from Hartmann four main metaphysical theses. These are (1) that what is real is what is temporal; (2) that the criterion of individuality is to have duration; (3) that species are supra-individuals; and (4) that there are levels of (...) reality, each of which may be subject to different kinds of law. Reliance on Hartmann’s metaphysics allowed Hennig to ground some of the main theoretical principles of phylogenetic systematics, namely that the biological categories—from the semaphoront to the highest rank—have reality and individuality despite not being universals, and that they form a hierarchy of levels, each of which may require different kinds of explanation. Hartmann’s metaphysics thereby provided a philosophical justification for Hennig’s phylogenetic systematics, both as a theory and as a method of classification. (shrink)

In his article “The Megarian and Aristotelian Concept of Possibility”, Nicolai Hartmann attempts to revive an interpretation of the conception of possibility of the Megarians that stood in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of possibility and thus in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of modality in general. In this introduction, I undertake to situate Hartmann’s article in its historical context. Did Hartmann come to adopt this thesis through his study of ancient Greek philosophy? Or did he already have a predilection (...) for the Megarian conception of possibility prior to this? If so, how did this predilection come about? Was there an influence from his friend Vasily Sesemann, who published an article discussing the Megarians the previous year? Or were both Hartmann and Sesemann influenced early on by their mutual Russian teacher Nikolai Lossky, or even by a general tendency pervading Russian thought—itself grounded in the fatalism typical of the Russian collective unconscious—as we find it expressed in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, Lev Tolstoy, and other Russian thinkers? (shrink)

This paper presents a conception of corruption informed by epistemic democratic theory. I first explain the view of corruption as a disease of the political body. Following this view, we have to consider the type of actions that debase a political entity of its constitutive principal in order to assess corruption. Accordingly, we need to consider what the constitutive principle of democracy is. This is the task I undertake in the second section where I explicate democratic legitimacy. I present democracy (...) as a procedure of social inquiry about what ought to be done that includes epistemic and practical considerations. In the third section, I argue that the problem of corruption for a procedural conception of democracy is that the epistemic value of the procedure is diminished by corrupted agents’ lack of concern for truth. Corruption, according to this view, consists in two deformities of truth: lying and bullshit. These deformities corrupt since they conceal private interests under the guise of a concern for truth. In the fourth section, I discuss the difficulties a procedural account may face in formulating solutions to the problem of corruption. (shrink)

This essay takes, as its starting point, Andreas Malm’s effort, in How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, to legitimize and normalize property destruction in the context of the climate movement. The sabotage of energy infrastructures, I counter, cannot make sense, for it poses a threat to coherence, removing without replacing the material and discursive conditions that grant the climate movement its meaning and purpose within late capitalism and late liberalism. Recent protests entailing (...) the defacement of paintings share with ecocriticism an investment in an essentially liberal, pedagogical and moral covenant, one that urges witnesses to undergo an individual process of reflection in order to acquire or affirm values and priorities friendlier to the environment. Sabotage, by contrast, violates this covenant; blowing up a pipeline may be said to have met its goals by reducing and slowing the supply of oil, regardless of what the public learned from sabotage’s mediatization. Drawing on psychoanalytic accounts of aesthetic education, I argue that sabotage introduces absurdity into a category—action—that the climate movement otherwise insists is self-identical. Sabotage does this by subtracting the world wherein putatively future-bound actions, including having and raising a child, mean what they do. I test out this claim in a reading of Nell Zink’s novel The Wallcreeper and Benedikt Erlingsson’s film Woman at War (Kona fer í stríð), two absurdist comedies that formally amplify the semiotic crisis induced by sabotage and, in so doing, enable us to confront the necessary dislocation of politics from sense. (shrink)

The following text is a translation of Semyon Frank’s “L’intuition fondamentale de Bergson” published in Henri Bergson: Essais et témoignages inédits, edited by Albert Béguin and Pierre Thévenaz, Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1941. In this article, Frank addresses Bergson’s notion of intuition, his anti-intellectualism, his mysticism, his closeness to Lebensphilosophie, the notion of lived experience, the distinction between intuition as pure contemplation and intuition as living knowledge, the distinction between cognition of the atemporal essence of reality and cognition of (...) the world of becoming, pragmatism, the disinterested and open intuitive spiritual attitude vs the utilitarian attitude of social groups closed in on themselves, the transrational vs the irrational, spiritual life, psychic life, the Absolute, and the temporal flux. The article contains criticisms of Bergson on the issues of time and intuition: the durée, the intuitive time, is incomprehensible without an atemporal foundation. Therefore, according to Frank, Plato was correct—contra Bergson—to define time as the moving image of eternity. And, if there is such an atemporal foundation, then, contrary to what Bergson seems to think, intuition as living knowledge cannot be the sole mode of intuition. Moreover, unlike what Bergson appears to think, an intuition of the Absolute would be an intuition of the transrational rather than of the irrational. The translation is preceded by an introduction tracing the genesis of the article, which was commissioned by the Swiss philosopher Pierre Thévenaz. (shrink)

Before the Darwinian revolution species were thought to be universals. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to propose new definitions. The twentieth-century German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann defined 'species' as an individual system of processes and a process of life of a higher-order. To provide a clear understanding of Hartmann's conception of species, I first present his method of definition. Then I look at Hartmann's Philosophie der Natur (1950) to present his concepts of "organism" and "species." And I end the (...) paper by pointing out two possible systematic inconsistencies. (shrink)

Writing for a wide audience, Harvey here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. He constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for more socially just alternatives.

"Exhalation," a 2008 science fiction short story by Ted Chiang, virtuoso of the genre and the form, begins with a truism, refuted: "It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by which life will one day end" (37). The narrator's promise is so (...) alluring—knowledge of life's origin, knowledge of its expiration, and knowledge of the relation between the two—that we may be forgiven for overlooking the parenthetical. Argon amounts to less than one percent of the air breathed within Earth's atmosphere. The narrator specifies that "others call... Read More. (shrink)

En 1937, le philosophe russe Simon Frank (1877-1950) publia la Connaissance et l’être, une traduction française abrégée de Predmet znanija, auprès de la maison d’édition parisienne Fernand Aubier. Grâce à cette traduction, il attira l’attention de philosophes francophones, parmi lesquels se trouvait le suisse Pierre Thévenaz (1913-1955), qui donna une présentation s’intitulant « Connaissance et être d’après Simon Frank » à une rencontre de la Société romande de philosophie à Lausanne le 7 décembre 1940. Ce qui suit est une transcription (...) du texte manuscrit de cette présentation. Dans ce texte, Thévenaz s’appuie principalement sur la Connaissance et l’être afin d’exposer la pensée de Frank. Cependant, son objectif n’est pas seulement de résumer la pensée de ce dernier, mais aussi d’en dégager quelques problèmes philosophiques. Le texte est précédé d’une introduction qui présente Thévenaz et qui décrit le contexte de sa réception de la philosophie de Frank. (shrink)

This paper examines Epictetus’ use of athletic imagery as a pedagogical tool and what this tells us about his views on what philosophers can learn from athletes. This paper argues that this imagery...

Résumé Dans son livre Étude sur le bien (1911), Nishida s’inspira de William James, de Gustav Theodor Fechner et d’Ernst Mach pour développer son concept d’expérience pure. Or, il s’avère que ces trois scientifiques professaient ouvertement le panpsychisme, théorie selon laquelle les minéraux, les plantes et les animaux sont vivants et possèdent une nature psychique analogue à celle de l’être humain. Cet article s’attarde surtout aux relations entre Fechner et Nishida, de même qu’à leurs conséquences possibles sur le développement d’un (...) panpsychisme explicite dans l’Étude sur le bien. Dans ses écrits subséquents, Nishida cessa d’accorder l’esprit aux minéraux et aux plantes. Par contraste, il maintint le panpsychisme dans le cas des animaux car, disait-il, l’esprit est la chose la plus répandue dans le règne du vivant. Nishida passa ainsi d’une conception panpsychiste du monde à une conception quasi-panpsychiste. (shrink)

How should a political society be structured so as to legitimately distribute political power? One principle advanced to answer this question is the principle of subsidiarity. According to this principle, the default locus of political power is with the lowest competent political unit. This article argues that subsidiarity is a structural principle of a conception of political legitimacy informed by epistemic considerations. Broadly, the argument is that political societies organised according to the principle of subsidiarity can more effectively achieve political (...) decisions that can justifiably appear to be correct from the point of view of those subject to them. The article presents two considerations in order to establish a pro tanto case for acting separately before presenting five additional epistemic considerations that establish a prima facie case for acting separately. The article then shows that political legitimacy and the epistemic aim of decision-making can sometimes be served more effectively and efficiently by allowing higher-level political units to assist lower-level political units. (shrink)

The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the legitimacy of constitutional laws and bills of rights within the framework of procedural epistemic democracy. The thesis is divided into three sections. In the first section, I discuss the relevance of an epistemic argument for democracy under the circumstances of politics: I provide an account of reasonable disagreement and explain how usual approaches to the authority of decision-making procedures fail to take it seriously. In the second part of the thesis, (...) I provide an account of the epistemic features of democracy and of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. I develop a revised pragmatist argument for democracy which relies on three presumptive aims of decision-making: justice, sustainability and concord. In the third and last section, I first argue for the desirability of constitutionalism. I then explain why constitutionalism, as it is usually understood, is incompatible with my procedural epistemic account of democratic legitimacy. In the last chapter, I offer a two-pronged solution to the apparent incompatibility of constitutionalism and epistemic democracy. I first argue for the appropriateness of political constitutionalism, as opposed to legal constitutionalism, in understanding the relationship between rights and democracy. I then provide an account of rights protection and judicial review compatible with epistemic democratic legitimacy. Finally, I use the notion of pragmatic encroachment to explain how constitutional laws can achieve normative supremacy through the increased epistemic credentials of the procedure. (shrink)

This paper offers a revised political conception of human rights informed by legal pluralism and epistemic considerations. In the first part, I present the political conception of human rights. I then argue for four desiderata that such a conception should meet to be functionally applicable. In the rest of the first section and in the second section, I explain how abstract human rights norms and the practice of specification prevent the political conception from meeting these four desiderata. In the last (...) part of the paper, I argue that full-fledged tolerance in the international order – that is tolerance-as-non-intervention and tolerance-as-respect – should be attached to (1) compliance with jus cogens norms and to; (2a) a political community recognizably organized as a community of inquiry that is; (2b) committed to the specification and incorporation or expression of the idea of human rights within its local legal system. (shrink)

This article provides an exploration of the relationships between a procedural account of epistemic democracy, illegitimate laws and judicial review. I first explain how there can be illegitimate laws within a procedural account of democracy. I argue that even if democratic legitimacy is conceived procedurally, it does not imply that democracy could legitimately undermine itself or adopt grossly unjust laws. I then turn to the legitimacy of judicial review with regard to these illegitimate laws. I maintain that courts do not (...) have a moral privilege on the overthrow of illegitimate laws; in this respect the refusal of royal assent has the same status. I also explain how the rule of the clear mistake fails to restrict the action of courts to only illegitimate laws. Finally, I argue for the positive epistemic inputs of weak judicial review. (shrink)

I aim to explain why majority voting can be assumed to have an epistemic edge over lottery voting. This would provide support for majority voting as the appropriate decision mechanism for deliberative epistemic accounts of democracy. To argue my point, I first recall the usual arguments for majority voting: maximal decisiveness, fairness as anonymity, and minimal decisiveness. I then show how these arguments are over inclusive as they also support lottery voting. I then present a framework to measure accuracy so (...) as to compare the two decision mechanisms. I go over four arguments for lottery voting and three arguments for majority voting that support their respective accuracy. Lottery voting is then shown to have, compared to majority voting, a decreased probability of discrimination. That is, I argue that with lottery voting it is less probable under conditions of normal politics that if the procedure selects X, X is reasonable. I then provide two case scenarios for each voting mechanism that illustrate my point. (shrink)

During his long and continuing scholarly career, Patrick Suppes contributed significantly both to the sciences and to their philosophies. The volume consists of papers by an international group of Suppes colleagues, collaborators, and students in many of the areas of his expertise, building on or adding to his insights. Michael Friedman offers an overview of Suppes accomplishments and of his unique perspective on the relation between science and philosophy. Paul Humphreys, Stephen Hartmann, and Tom Ryckman present essays in the philosophy (...) of physics. Jens-Erik Fenstad, Harvey Friedman, and Jaako Hintikka consider problems in the foundations of mathematics, while the late Duncan Luce, Jean-Claude Falmagne, Brian Skyrms, and Hannes Leitgeb have contributed essays in theory of measurement, decision theory and probability. Foundations of economics and political theory are addressed by Adolfo Garcia de la Sienra, Russell Hardin, and Kenneth Arrow. Psychology, language, and philosophy of language are addressed by Elizabeth Loftus, Anne Fagot-Largeault, Willem Levelt, Dagfinn Follesdal, and Marcos Perreau-Guimares and some of Suppes most recent research in neurobiology is addressed in essays by Colleen Crangle, Acadio de Barros and Claudio Carvalhes. Finally Nancy Cartwright and Alexandre Marcelles consider the alignment (or misalignment) of method and policy. Each of the essays is accompanied by a response from Suppes.". (shrink)

On doit à l’économiste américain d’origine allemande, Richard A. Musgrave, la formulation des critères d’Équité Horizontale (ÉH) et d’Équité Verticale (ÉV). Étant donnée une base fiscale, l’ÉH veut que les égaux soient traités également, alors que l’ÉV exige que les inégaux soient traités inégalement (par exemple que les plus riches payent proportionnellement plus d’impôts). Musgrave opère en 1959 une redescription créative de considérations d’équité qui ont une longue histoire de Hobbes à Buchanan, en passant notamment par la fameuse maxime de (...) Adam Smith. La reconstruction généalogique montre que l’ÉV et l’ÉH relèvent de la justice distributive au sens aristotélicien du terme. Un critère purement formel, l’équité en matière d’impôt signifie l’égalité proportionnelle dans la répartition des charges communes à tous les individus membres d’une communauté politique. À défaut d’un consensus théorique sur la manière de conceptualiser les contribuables, l’ÉH conserve tout de même une valeur de principe régulateur dans le cadre non idéal de débats de réforme fiscale.Codes JEL : H20, B11, B12, B20, B40, D63. (shrink)

Ce texte s'adresse au problème de l'analyse sémiotique de la question de l'idéologie. Il montre la faiblesse des principaux développements traditionnels sur ce point. Dans la première partie, nous avons rejeté les théories des sémioticiens saussuriens , en raison de leur conception du langage et de la connotation. Dans cette seconde partie, nous analysons les théories sociosémiotiques de Kristeva, Morris et Eco. En conclusion, nous montrons la pertinence d'une approche peircienne de cette problématique.This paper deals with the problem of analysing (...) the question of ideology as a semiotic one. It shows the weakness of the main traditionnal developments on this issue. In the first part, I rejected the theories of saussurian semioticians , because of their conception of language and connotation. In this second part, I analyse the sociosemiotic theories of Kristeva, Morris and Eco. In conclusion, I show the relevance of a peircean approach of this problematic. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of analysing the question of ideology as a semiotic one. It shows the weakness of the main traditionnal developments on this issue. In the first part, I rejected the theories of saussurian semioticians (Hjelmslev, Barthes and Greimas), because of their conception of language and connotation. In this second part, I analyse the sociosemiotic theories of Kristeva, Morris and Eco. In conclusion, I show the relevance of a peircean approach of this problematic.

Le mot anagogia, « anagogie » serait une mauvaise traduction latine du grec a. L'équivalent latin serait, selon les philologues, sursumductio. D'abord conçue comme un voyage, l'anagogie prendra le sens d'ascension, de montée. Le mot anagogie est plus fréquemment employé pour désigner le quatrième sens de l'Écriture, le terme s'inscrit dans l'histoire de l'exégèse sacrée et plus généralement de l'herméneutique.Les études qui composent cet ouvrage (sur l'obscénité, Alfred Jarry, Georges Bataille, René Daumal, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Guyotat, Jean-Noël Vuarnet (...) ou Platon) traitent, de près ou de loin, de cette ascension, souvent entendue ici comme transgression : l'esprit sursoit aux limites de la matière, dont il ne s'émancipe jamais totalement, dans un mouvement vers le sommet (mort, rire divin, « communication », révélation, soleil). (shrink)

In the present context of aging populations, the question of how to support older workers who want to stay in employment longer is of particular importance, especially from a social justice perspective with regards to income. The challenges faced by organizations and governments are unprecedented. Interesting conclusions can be drawn from our research with regard to these challenges. First of all, the perception of retirement appears more or less unchanged over the years and remains very positive. Consequently, one of the (...) barriers to the employment of older workers may be the image of retirement itself, since it is still perceived as a gift or a right. Secondly, our results confirm that forcing people to stay longer in the labour market is a largely unpopular measure. Consequently, if public retirement plans offer limited income, governments and organizations should adopt a more voluntary approach to encourage older workers to stay in employment longer for a better income. Our results highlight the importance of the sector and type of job in the measures or incentives that could encourage older workers to stay in employment longer. Consequently, governments and organizations will probably have to adopt a contingent approach; i.e., all incentives do not necessarily fit all jobs or all sectors and social justice would require this be taken into account. We identified three sets of measures that could encourage older workers to stay in employment longer, and thus have access to better economic security: the reduction of working time, the flexibility of working time, and the individualization of retirement options and working time. The progressive reduction of their working time appears most interesting to our respondents. These measures appear to favour social justice in terms of income and right to employment at the end of active careers. (shrink)

Le premier tractatus du commentaire d'Albert le Grand à l'Isagoge de Porphyre consiste en une manière de proème ou d'introduction à l'ensemble de la logique. Comme la plupart des textes d'Albert le Grand, ce traité est d'une très grande richesse, qu'atténuent toutefois son manque d'ordre et son obscurité d'expression. Étant donné que les aspects fondamentaux de la logique y sont touchés—son statut scientifique et philosophique, son utilité, son sujet, sa division, sa relation aux sciences du langage, etc.—, ce petit ouvrage (...) est du plus haut intérêt pour quiconque cherche à mieux comprendre la logique et la philosophie de la logique du XIIIe siècle. L'auteur présente ici une traduction annotée et expliquée de ce texte difficile, faite d'après la version provisoire de la nouvelle édition de Cologne. Le relevé des sources principales de l'ouvrage révèle, sur un fond aristotélicien permanent, une forte influence des traités logiques arabes nouvellement arrivés en Occident. Pour des exemples de ces auteurs contemporains, voir Lafleur ( 1988, p. 182, l.37–44, p. 321, l.284–294). The first tractatus of Albert the Great's commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge consists of a kind of proem or introduction to the whole of logic. As most of Albert the Great's texts, this tract is of great richness, though it lacks order and is sometimes obscure. Since the fundamental themes of logic are addressed therein—its scientific and philosophical status, its utility, its subject, its division, its relation to the linguistic arts, etc.—, this small work is of high interest for anyone trying to better understand thirteenth-century logic and philosophy of logic. The author presents a translation of this difficult text, made after a preliminary version of the new critical edition and enriched with an introduction and explanatory notes. The survey of the main sources of the tract reveals, apart from a permanent artistotelian background, the strong influence of the Arabic logical treatises which were then coming in the Western world. (shrink)