The 1970 amended Belgian Constitution is at the cross-roads of two currents of history, on one hand, once more the traditional values of the Occidental society ; on the other hand a double communal pressure contests an unitary state : from underneath affirmation of three Belgiannational communities, from above, apparition of a «supra-national party».The authors make a critical examination of the cropping up of bonding institutions in a «pré-fédéral» state, then they clearly state the principles of a really federal Constitution (...) based upon the acknowledgement of the 2 large communities and the 3 regions and the principles of a democratic organization of an economic politic. (shrink)

The genetically manipulated organism crisis demonstrated that technological development based solely on the law of the marketplace and State protection against serious risks to health and safety is no longer a warrant of ethical acceptability. In the first part of our paper, we critique the implicitly individualist social-acceptance model for State regulation of technology and recommend an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive analysis of the impacts and ethical acceptability of technologies. In the second part, we present a framework for the analysis (...) of impacts and acceptability, devised—with the goal of supporting the development of specific nanotechnological applications—by a team of researchers from various disciplines. At the conceptual level, this analytic framework is intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk. On a practical level, we present a reflective tool that makes it possible to take into account all the dimensions involved and understand the reasons invoked in determining impacts, assessing them, and arriving at a judgement about acceptability. (shrink)

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has shed more light on the difficulty of making health care decisions integrating scientific knowledge and values associated to life and death issues, human suffering, quality of life, economic losses, liberty of movement, etc. But the difficulties related to health care decisions and the use of innovative drugs or technologies are not new, and many countries have created agencies that have the mandate to evaluate new technologies in health care. Health Technological Assessment (HTA) reports’ aim is (...) to guide the decision makers in these difficult matters. There are two ethical components in HTA. The first is the report’s presentation of an ethical evaluation of the technology. The second is the value-ladenness of the HTA decision-making process itself. When implicit value judgments are not elicited, the justification of the final decision cannot be transparent. The present paper aims to identify and elicit the implicit value-judgments related to each step of the HTA process. This research is grounded on an applied ethics decision-making paradigm based on the role of value judgments in the decision-making process. The first part discusses two different approaches to values and value judgments in HTA. In the second part, citations mentioning value judgments extracted from a systematic review on the integration of ethics into HTA were categorized to elicit the value judgments and their criteria for each different HTA decision-making steps. The results show that there are 18 decision-making steps in the HTA process where 23 implicit value-judgments can be recognized. The range of these value judgments encompasses the whole HTA process: from the initial request, the presenting of the principal issues, to the final report’s dissemination. Since stakeholders need to understand which value judgments the conclusion of a report relies on, eliciting the implicit value judgments in the HTA decision-making process should yield more transparency. (shrink)

New materialists have challenged our thinking about matter in important and meaningful ways. Building a critique of the work of Diana Coole, Samantha Frost, and Jane Bennett, this article introduces a special section which challenges the direction of their work in a constructive manner. We provide a four-fold critical appraisal here: of the historical, posthumanist, technological and emancipatory facets of the new materialisms. Our central claim is that the new materialisms are plural and that they need to be understood in (...) a wider sense than is claimed in much of the literature. This article addresses the question: to what extent can a pluralism of new materialisms be compatible with the radical and emancipatory agenda of its founding theorists? Our answer is that it is not only possible to achieve such radical emancipation, but also necessary to address these concerns. (shrink)

The integration of ethical analysis in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has proven difficult to implement even though it is explicitly recognized as an important component of such assessments in HTA literature. When compared to the standardized scientific method for systematic reviews in HTA, the diversity of ethical analysis has been characterized as a fundamental barrier to the integration of ethics. The present paper aims to identify the theoretical and practical differences between the approaches underpinning ethical analysis in HTA and clarify (...) the reasons for such diversity. Our systematic review of HTA literature pertaining to the barriers to the integration of ethics in HTA identified nine ethical approaches: Principlism, Casuistry, Coherence Analysis, Wide Reflective Equilibrium, Axiology, the Socratic approach, the Triangular model, Constructive Technology Assessment and Social Shaping of Technology. Citations pertaining to each approach were extracted and categorized according to three constitutive components of ethical argumentation established in a previous research evaluating nanotechnologies: i) the disciplinary foundation that grounds the validity of the ethical evaluation, ii) the characteristics of such evaluation, iii) the operational process involved in applying it to a particular case (i.e., its practical reasoning). This comparison shows that, 1) the difference between these approaches rests primarily on their disciplinary foundation (rooted in philosophy, philosophy/theology, or sociology), 2) their complexity can be observed in the distinct characteristics of ethical evaluation deriving from their differing disciplinary foundation, and 3) although four different types of operationalization procedure were identified, little information was available in regards to the practical reasoning associated with these approaches. (shrink)

Nous voulons mieux comprendre les lois circonscrivant le rôle social de l’Évaluation des technologies en santé (ETS) et les raisons empêchant l’inclusion de l’éthique en ETS. Nous avons ciblé un débat qui est au coeur du rôle perçu du droit réglementaire dans le développement de technologies en santé : l’opposition entre les enjeux environnementaux, sécuritaires et sanitaires (EHSI) et les enjeux éthiques, légaux et sociaux (ELSI), issus de la gouvernance technologique. La collecte de données est basée sur une revue de (...) la littérature issue de travaux antérieurs, et sur une analyse de cas où trois agences d’ETS ont été sélectionnées en utilisant différentes catégories d’obligation légale selon leur degré de force contraignante. La revue de littérature a révélé cinq thèmes relatifs au rôle social de l’ETS et une distinction entre le rôle/utilisation du droit dur et du droit souple dans le droit réglementaire, permettant ainsi de comprendre comment les agences ont utilisé le droit pour intégrer (ou non) l’éthique en ETS. Les deux approches ont démontré que le débat, EHSI/ELSI observé initialement dans la gouvernance et l’évaluation de technologies est reproduit en ETS. La principale tendance confirmée par ces analyses est la présence d’un pacte entre la science et le droit réglementaire. La demande sociale d’intégrer les ELSI, particulièrement l’évaluation éthique en ETS, n’est pas prise en compte par le droit réglementaire traditionnel régissant l’ETS et doit plutôt être considérée par le droit souple. Les difficultés d’intégration de l’éthique en ETS démontrent la nécessité de repenser la gouvernance juridique de l’ETS. (shrink)

The natural based view of the firm using Hart (1995) is applied to firm responses in the Carbon Disclose Project (CDP) database. A large cross sectional sample(n=573) of North American and European firms is divided into 3 categories of proactivity to the climate change issue using 8 indicators of four resource domains. Results are presented along geographic and size dimensions.

In this interview, Balibar provides a number of reflections on the articulation of different Marxist traditions, including Italian Marxism and the Neue Marx Lektüre, to his own Althusserian position. Similarly, he comments on his relationship to the readings of French theory upon Marx’s oeuvre. He further develops an analysis of the contemporary challenges posed by capitalism – and its different crises – to critical theory, social sciences and social movements. Then, he argues that financialization and the Anthropocene are central issues. (...) He concludes with thoughts on internationalism and citizenship, which he believes to be indispensable political elements in order to conceptualize resistance in this crisis context. (shrink)

What role does non-genetic inheritance play in evolution? In recent work we have independently and collectively argued that the existence and scope of non-genetic inheritance systems, including epigenetic inheritance, niche construction/ecological inheritance, and cultural inheritance—alongside certain other theory revisions—necessitates an extension to the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS) in the form of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). However, this argument has been challenged on the grounds that non-genetic inheritance systems are exclusively proximate mechanisms that serve the ultimate function of calibrating organisms (...) to stochastic environments. In this paper we defend our claims, pointing out that critics of the EES (1) conflate non-genetic inheritance with early 20th-century notions of soft inheritance; (2) misunderstand the nature of the EES in relation to the MS; (3) confuse individual phenotypic plasticity with trans-generational non-genetic inheritance; (4) fail to address the extensive theoretical and empirical literature which shows that non-genetic inheritance can generate novel targets for selection, create new genetic equilibria that would not exist in the absence of non-genetic inheritance, and generate phenotypic variation that is independent of genetic variation; (5) artificially limit ultimate explanations for traits to gene-based selection, which is unsatisfactory for phenotypic traits that originate and spread via non-genetic inheritance systems; and (6) fail to provide an explanation for biological organization. We conclude by noting ways in which we feel that an overly gene-centric theory of evolution is hindering progress in biology and other sciences. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the origins of Charles W. Morris’ semiotic anthropology through an analysis of his “symbolism,” a theory of mind wherein the latter is completely identified with the production and use of symbols. Developed in the late 1920s, this theory consists in transforming the behaviorist approach by means of a semantic or referential emphasis, i.e. by underlining the importance of the symbol’s object rather than studying only the responses that it elicits. Considering, however, that the experience (...) of reference is of a private or “self-inclusive” nature, Morris’ conception of the symbol entails a number of significant consequences, not only with respect to classical behaviorist views, but also to Mead’s. By founding his conception of the symbol on a self-inclusive basis, Morris questioned the linguistic and social criteria that governed the outlook of his mentor in Mind, Self, and Society. This critical reading thus implies a rehabilitation of animal symbolism, against a number of remarks by Mead indicating his refusal of the existence of symbolization, and so of mind, in the non-human world. Insofar as Morris’ line of thought was heavily influenced by contemporary research in comparative psychology, it is possible to consider that he anticipated recent discussions of Mead’s alleged “anthropocentrism,” and suggested an evolutionary and continuous view of mind through a generalized symbolism that refuses any difference of nature between human and animal mentalities. (shrink)

Cet essai n’a pas d’autre prétention que de proposer une périodisation de l’histoire du catholicisme, en France surtout, mais aussi en Europe occidentale au cours du dernier demi-siècle. Sur fond de sécularisation et de laïcisation plus ou moins poussées, il a connu quatre phases bien différentes: au malaise suscité par le raidissement de la fin du pontificat de Pie XII a succédé une brève euphorie née du concile Vatican II. Mais celle-ci n’a pas duré, battue en brèche par la crise (...) de civilisation des «années 68» et les difficultés d’application des textes conciliaires. La double contestation traditionaliste et progressiste a nourri la «crise catholique» des années 1970. Dans des styles différents, Paul VI, Jean-Paul II et Benoît XVI se sont efforcés de la conjurer par la restauration d’une Église prudemment réformée et accueillante aux nouveaux courants spirituels. (shrink)

Instruments et ressources électroniques pour le français est le dernier numéro d’une longue série dirigée par Catherine Fuchs, sous le titre L’essentiel français, aux éditions Ophrys. C’est aussi le dernier d’une longue série d’ouvrages publiés par Benoît Habert. Bilan des ressources électroniques disponibles pour l’analyse du français, ce livre est lui-même une ressource : la plus complète, la plus objective, la plus précise, la plus claire. C’est aussi la plus pratique puisque les multiples...

The Writings of Charles De Koninck, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck's 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book "The Cosmos." (...) The short essay "Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?" is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck's distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck's son, Thomas. "Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume." --Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America "Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master." --Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper reassesses the importance of the Benedictine monasteries of St Benoît of Fleury and St Mesmin of Micy (both on the outskirts of Orléans), and the Cathedral of Chartres for the early diffusion of Arabic learning concerning the astrolabe, and it relates this diffusion to that of the judicial astrology of ‘Alchandreus philosophus’ and the astronomical tables of the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei. Evidence is given for the fact that already, by the turn of the millennium, the elements were in (...) place for a corpus of a new, mathematically based, practical science of the stars, consisting of works partly of Arabic and partly of Greek inspiration. This corpus was progressively revised and inspired, in turn, further translations from Arabic, until it reached its most mature form in the mid-twelfth century. Until recently, scholarship has tended to concentrate on the cathedral schools of North-east France and Lotharingia, and the monastic schools of South Germany, and to see Gerbert d'Aurillac, the Archbishop of Reims, as the pivotal figure. While these schools were undoubtedly important in the diffusion of the new science of the stars in the eleventh century, it is argued that a key role in the initial stages of the diffusion was played by the interrelated centres of Fleury, Micy and Chartres at the beginning of the century, and Gerbert may not have contributed as much as has been believed. Additional sections are devoted to the authorities in this corpus, ‘King Ptolemy’ and ‘Alchandreus’. A reworking of the Arabic material on the construction of the astrolabe by Ascelin of Augsburg was copied into this corpus. The text has previously been known from only one manuscript; a new edition, from five manuscripts, is provided here, together with a translation and commentary. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce holds some views about science and inquiry whose exact significance and ratio essendi are notoriously hard to grasp. One of these is particularly intriguing, namely, his frequently inferring from the intuitive ideas that science consists “in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake”, and that the greatest threat to science is to “block the way of inquiry”, the conclusions that “belief […] has no place in science” and that the “scientific man”, when inquiring, has only “provisional” (...) opinions. In this article, I examine the ground and validity of the infamous and, arguably, strongly counterintuitive thesis that “belief has... (shrink)

Pourquoi la démocratie qui, en son principe, est un régime de liberté peut-elle dériver vers la servitude? Cette question n'est pas nouvelle, elle figurait déjà en bonne place dans la pensée politique de Platon et d'Aristote, pour lesquels cette dérive était inscrite dans la nature du régime, lequel n'était donc pas viable. Elle se retrouve également chez les premiers penseurs de la démocratie réelle moderne, en particulier Alexis de Tocqueville, pour lequel la démocratie est perpétuellement confrontée à une redoutable alternative (...) : promouvoir le goût de la liberté ou, à l'inverse, se dégrader en servitude de mœurs et d'opinion. Or, que cette servitude démocratique, qui est une tendance interne par laquelle la démocratie se détruit elle-même, ne résulte pas d'un pouvoir de contrainte externe mais trouve ses ressorts dans la volonté des individus, nous savons le penser depuis longtemps avec le concept de servitude volontaire d'Etienne de La Boétie. Pourquoi donc parler de nouvelles servitudes? Parce qu'il n'y a pas lieu d'écrire aujourd'hui un " Contr'un ". La figure du maître a changé, ce n'est plus un maître personnel, un tyran, qui tiendrait sous son pouvoir une multitude effrayée, mais un maître anonyme, sans visage et sans nom propre qui, par de nouvelles voies, instaure une domination d'un nouveau genre et de nouvelles servitudes. Celles-ci sont analysées ici sur les plans de l'anthropologie, de l'éthique, de l'économie, ainsi que de l'analyse sociale et de la philosophie politique en vue de repenser une liberté civile à la mesure des problèmes de notre temps. Ce livre est une défense de la liberté issue de la convergence des vues, non d'un collectif, mais d'un certain nombre d'individus singuliers, auteurs libres et indépendants, disons intempestifs, qui entendent s'élever contre les formes larvées de servitudes qui se mettent en place dans les sociétés démocratiques. Il s'agit donc de retrouver l'esprit de liberté sans lequel la démocratie se dégrade et se meurt. (shrink)

When one tries to determine what the iconic dimension of thought consists in for Peirce and what its range is, one might have the impression that his remarks on this matter are inconsistent. For instance, on the one hand he writes the following: Remember it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far as they aid us to construct diagrams. The sectaries of the opinion I am combating seem, on the (...) contrary, to suppose that reasoning is performed with abstract "judgments," and that an icon is of use only as enabling me to frame abstract statements as premisses. In an apparently similar fashion, Peirce argues that the predicate of a... (shrink)

In addition to being a great aesthetician who established the teaching and research of aesthetics in France, Étienne Souriau is an important philosopher, notably for his contribution to ontology. His aesthetics and his ontology are closely entangled. The purpose of this article is to study the relationship between these two rings, in this case inseparable, but distinct, of philosophy. We will use a comparison with the phenomenology of Charles Peirce, relevant insofar as, by different ways, art for the first (...) one, semiotics for the second one, the two philosophers participate in a theory of the representation. (shrink)

_The Writings of Charles De Koninck_, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck’s 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book “The Cosmos.” (...) The short essay “Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?” is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck’s distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck’s son, Thomas. “Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume.” —_Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America_ “Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master.” —_Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College_. (shrink)

Being questioned about the nature of Christian faith, Mark Twain famously declared it as 'believing what you know ain't so'. Indeed, the role of reason for faith is a matter of dispute. Jesus, some argue, was not a philosopher or a teacher of wisdom. Rather, he is the saviour because of his unassuming sacrificial death and resurrection. Not reason, but the leap of faith is the ultimate condition of salvation. The Enlightenment however epitomises a Copernican revolution in favour of reason. (...) According to Charles Taylor, the dissemination of Jesus' message into Hellenistic culture contains within itself the risk of a secularisation of the faith. At the same time, voices opposing the overemphasis of reason have also been raised throughout the ages. Paul's speech to the Athenians was one such occasion that deals with the ambiguous relationship between faith and reason. Relying purely on divine grace and the Bible alone, Martin Luther rejected any form of speculative theology. According to the Reformer, it is a type of theology that trusts more in human reason than in God's revelation. In Luther's opinion, it also reverses the moral order because theological speculation justifies evil as good while professing as good what is evil. To such a theology of human glory, Luther prefers a theology of the cross that 'calls the thing what it actually is'. For the former Augustinian monk only God's grace is good beyond reasonable doubt. Hence true theologians are lovers of the cross while theologians of glory misuse their reason for the worst. Luther's theology of the cross, Marco Barone claims, has its root in Augustine. Hence, Luther's Augustinism appears to have decidedly broken with Aristotelian scholasticism. In this context, Thomas Aquinas was criticised for his threefold failure. First, the Dominican friar's speculative theology lacks an experiential human dimension. Secondly, it gives too much credit to Aristotle. Thirdly, Thomas is reprimanded for his serious deficiency of a theology of justification. (shrink)

In 1826, the Pasha of Egypt offered to the King Charles X an unusual present: a living giraffe. While offering remarkable animals was a common practice among monarchs, the choice of a giraffe was somewhat extraordinary since it was the first representative of its kind to set foot in France. The Royal Menagerie of the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle was asked to oversee the transportation of this precious mammal and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, one of its professors, was sent (...) to Marseilles to fetch it on foot all the way back to the capital. The whereabouts of this exotic procession stirred passions throughout the country, generating a fashion craze "à la girafe." The so-called Pasha's giraffe, King's giraffe or French giraffe is also -- and perhaps more importantly -- Geoffroy's giraffe. The giraffe episode is representative of Geoffroy's larger scientific career. Because of its Egyptian flavor, its adventurous aspect, its political and diplomatic undertones, as well as the popular attention and educational opportunities it afforded, that mission was ideally suited for the flamboyant naturalist. So close were the animal's and the French zoologist's fates, that they passed away a couple months apart and both fell into relative oblivion. But even dead and dissected, Geoffroy's giraffe could not easily be dissociated from its companion. The afterlife of its "saintly" relics mirrors the popular and scholarly revival of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, portrayed by some as a forgotten "prophet.". (shrink)

The notion that Charles Darwin embraced the German Romantic tradition seems plausible, given the early influence of Alexander von Humboldt. But this view fails to do justice to other scientific traditions. Darwin was a protégé of the Englishman John Stevens Henslow and was a follower of the Scott Charles Lyell. He had important debts to French scientists, notably Henri Milne-Edwards, Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Alphonse de Candolle. Many Germans were quite supportive of Darwin, but not all (...) of these were encumbered by idealistic metaphysical baggage. Both Darwin and Anton Dohrn treated science as very much a cosmopolitan enterprise. (shrink)

Charles E. SCOTT, Susan M. SCHOENBOHM, Daniela VALLEGA-NEU, Alejandro VALLEGA, Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2001 ; Gernot BÖHME, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 2001 ; Dean KOMEL, Osnutja k Filozofski in Kulturni Hermenevtiki [Outlines to Philosophical and Cultural Hermeneutics], Nova revija, Ljubljana, 2001 ; Marc RICHIR, L’institution de l’idéalité. Des schématismes phénoménologiques, Association pour la promotion de la Phénoménologie, Paris, 2002 ; Fred EVANS & Leonard LAWLOR, (...) Chiasms. Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, State University of New York Press, 2000 ; Udo TIETZ, Ontologie und Dialektik. Heidegger und Adorno über das Sein, das Nichtidentische, die Synthesis und die Kopula, Passagen Verlag, Wien, 2003 ; Etienne FERON, Phénoménologie de la mort. Sur les traces de Levinas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1999. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Love of God above SelfJordan OlverIS THERE ANY LOVE that is not ultimately a form of self-love? Anders Nygren famously maintained that for Thomas Aquinas there is not. Nygren was led to this conclusion in large part by Aquinas’s claims that love is an act of the will and that the ultimate end of the will is happiness: if every act of love is on account of happiness as (...) an ultimate end, it seems to follow that all love of others is motivated by, and reducible to, love of self.1 Others have drawn this conclusion for similar reasons. Scott MacDonald, for example, interprets Aquinas as proposing “egoistic rationalism”; he believes that this ethical position follows from Aquinas’s claim that human beings, like all creatures, seek their perfection.2Texts, however, can be produced to show that Aquinas himself believes that nonegoistic love is possible.3 If he is an [End Page 97] egoist, he is not so intentionally; he can only be so in the sense that his principles, despite his wishes, necessitate such a position. While Nygren interpreted Aquinas as an unwilling egoist of this sort,4 most modern scholars of Aquinas’s thought on love have held that his principles do not necessitate egoism, and they have endeavored to explain how nonegoistic love is possible on Thomistic grounds. Modern attempts to solve the “problem of love in Thomas Aquinas” normally look back to Pierre Rousselot’s 1908 work Pour l’histoire du problème de l’amour au moyen âge.5 Rousselot identified the “problem of love” as whether a love that is not egoistic is possible and, if it is, what the relation might be between this love and the love of self which appears to be the foundation of natural tendencies.6 Rousselot believed that in the Middle Ages this problem was primarily dealt with through the consideration of the more particular problem of whether it is possible to love God above self apart from grace. This approach, he thought, offered significant advantages: it was simultaneously concrete and profound, and the object of love was both the last end and the author of all natural appetites.7 If genuine love for another is possible, that possibility would be discoverable in this case and through analysis of love of God above self it would seem that one could [End Page 98] arrive at the principles needed to make sense of other nonegoistic loves.8 Accordingly, when Rousselot presented Aquinas’s solution to the problem of love, he did so exclusively through an explanation of Aquinas’s teaching on love of God above self.9 The most notable feature of this account was its appeal to the part-whole relation: Rousselot proposed that for Aquinas our love for God above self is due to the fact that we relate to God as a part to a whole.Rousselot’s work inspired a scholarly discussion that has persisted now for over a century. This discussion may be roughly divided into three stages: the early twentieth century, the mid-twentieth century, and the late-twentieth century to the present. General agreement with Rousselot characterizes early twentieth-century scholarship. Scholars of this period, such as Charles-Vincent Héris, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and H.-D. Simonin, may claim that Rousselot neglects or overemphasizes something, but they do not assert that he is substantially wrong.10 By contrast, rejection or neglect of the “part-whole” approach to love of God above self characterizes the scholarship of the mid-twentieth century. Étienne Gilson, in his 1932 work L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale, vigorously objects to Rousselot’s account, arguing that the part-whole relationship, as it functions in Aquinas’s arguments for love of God above self, should not be understood in “a distressingly literal way,” but simply as “a metaphor, the first moment in a manuductio.”11 [End Page 99] Louis-Bertrand Geiger also emphatically rejects Rousselot’s account, arguing that the real explanation of disinterested love is to be found in the will’s special, “objective” inclination to the “good in itself” as opposed to the “good for me”; we love God... (shrink)

This innovative study of French political culture re-examines the origins of modern republicanism through the writings and political practices of five key nineteenth-century intellectuals: Jules Barni, Charles Dupont-White, Emile Littr, Eugne Pelletan, and Etienne Vacherot.

One of the first frameworks developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to the economy has been the linear model of innovation. The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. The precise source of the model remains nebulous, having never been documented. Several authors who have used, improved, or criticized the model in the past fifty years rarely acknowledged or cited any original source. The (...) model usually was taken for granted. According to others, however, it comes directly from V. Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier. This article traces the history of the linear model, suggesting that it developed in three steps corresponding to three scientific communities looking at science analytically. The article argues that statistics is a main reason the model is still alive despite criticisms, alternatives, and having been proclaimed dead. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the elucidation of the nature of inquiry. I start with some common desiderata for any theory of inquiry. I then categorize inquiry as a structured process. By focusing on its essential components, I advance a new characterization of inquiry as a combination of questioning attitudes guiding actions. Finally, I turn to the recent objection that questioning attitudes are not necessary for inquiry. I argue that inquiry is a structured process essentially constituted by questioning attitudes (...) having two precise functional roles, initiating and guiding the deployment of cognitive capacities towards an epistemic goal. (shrink)

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, political (...) centralisation. (shrink)

Following a common assumption, when one inquires into a question, one has an inquisitive attitude towards it. More precisely, I shall assume that there is an inquisitive attitude towards Q that all of those who inquire into Q have in common and in virtue of which they can be said to be in an inquisitive state of mind towards Q. This paper is about the nature of this attitude. I elucidate it by examining whether it boils down to doubt, curiosity, (...) epistemic desire, or wondering. I shall do this by examining whether having these attitudes is necessary and sufficient for being in an inquisitive state of mind. The test will prove negative for the first three, but the case of wondering is more complex. (shrink)

English summary: Abdication may be the renouncement of power, but it is also an ultimate act of personal power, one that can only be made by an individual imposing his own choice to abandon the body politic. This collection of articles follows up on Jacques Le Bruns 2009 study of abdication, with analyses of abdications by Christine of Sweden, Celestine V, Charles de Gaulle, as well as abdication as treated in the films Habemus Papam and King Lear. French description: (...) Au debut de 2013, deux abdications souveraines se sont produites: celle de Beatrix, reine des Pays-Bas, annoncee le 28 janvier et celle du pape Benoit XVI, proclamee le 11 fevrier. L'actualite prenait en echarpe les huit siecles que nous parcourons ici. L'abdication, ce renoncement au pouvoir, constitue l'etat pur d'un acte de volonte dans la sphere politique ou religieuse. Une instance souveraine, qui ne depend de rien d'autre que de soi-meme, decide de s'abolir. L'abdication apparait alors non comme le simple abandon du pouvoir, mais comme un acte de pouvoir - celui de l'individu imposant son choix, se repliant sur son corps et abandonnant le corps politique - ou, du moins, comme une autre facon de le manipuler et de s'en saisir. Ce livre entend donner un echo et un prolongement au texte fondateur et magistral de Jacques Le Brun, Le Pouvoir d'abdiquer. Essai sur la decheance volontaire, paru en 2009. Notre entreprise a etendu ces variations aux cas mentionnes par Jacques Le Brun sans qu'il en traite, soit dans l'arc temporel premier, pour l'abdication de Christine de Suede, soit dans les temps anterieurs pour la renonciation du pape Celestin V, placee dans la perspective globale du XIIIe siecle, ou posterieurs, quant aux departs de De Gaulle. Pierre-Antoine Fabre, pour sa part, a ajoute au dossier le cas doctrinal de l'abdication du superieur jesuite en faveur de son collateral dans les Constitutions de l'ordre. Et Jacques Le Brun s'est attache a reperer les echos contemporains de l'abdication dans le film Habemus Papam de Nanni Moretti et dans Le Roi Lear. (shrink)

This book revisits the encounter between Chinese and Western philosophy while unfolding questions about the way "comparative philosophy" is conducted today. In the vulgate of intellectual history, "Western thought" has constructed a substantialist view of reality that puts "relations" and "processes" into a subordinate position. The same view explains for the primacy given to the autonomy of individual beings. In contrast, according to the same vulgate, Chinese thought has been mainly stressing the fluidity of all phenomena and forms of life (...) so as to best adapt to their overarching patterns. I label such vision the Disneyland of comparative philosophy. It deciphers texts, partly in function of concepts that it extracts from them, partly according to notions that are superimposed over these texts. The two first chapters are focused upon the Western version of the "Disneyland of comparative philosophy." The third chapter shifts to Chinese narratives about local, comparative and global philosophies. In contrast to these approaches, the fourth chapter offers a blueprint as to the way to engage different philosophical traditions into tasks they define and share together. A last chapter presents four cases of ongoing transcultural philosophical dialogues and the promises they bear. Once it develops outside pre-formatted narratives, the web shaped by our philosophies and wisdoms suggests the outlines of a world that we could inhabit together. (shrink)