Dans la perspective du second conflit mondial, la Suisse s’est engagée dans la production massive d’armements militaires. Épargnée par la guerre, elle procède à partir de 1948 à la réduction de ses stocks en privilégiant le rejet des munitions dans ses lacs plutôt que de les faire exploser à ciel ouvert ou de les recycler. Malgré le retour sur la scène publique des munitions immergées, aucune controverse n’a éclaté dans un pays pourtant sensible aux questions environnementales. À partir du cas (...) des munitions immergées dans les lacs, le présent article s’interroge sur les manières dont les stratégies du secret conjuguées avec d’autres facteurs, tels que l’oubli ou d’autres priorités politiques, ont retardé toute réflexion sur ce dossier et ont participé au contingentement de tout débat public. À quelles conditions préalables le dépôt des munitions dans les lacs suisses pourrait-il entrer dans le débat public et engager les pouvoirs publics à agir au-delà même d’un risque potentiel non avéré? Pour y parvenir, il s’agira de s’interroger sur le rôle et la fonction même de la controverse écologique comme moyen de mobilisation de la société civile et des acteurs institutionnels. (shrink)

A philosophical investigation of the concept of interiority, presenting readers with its unmined aspects and senses.

This paper explores Biesta’s recent revisiting of his iconic and at times contested notion of education as subjectification. First, I look at how Biesta presents his notion by attending to his answers to the criticisms it has faced concerning elusiveness, oversimplification, and self-centredness. Then, going beyond the declarative level, I explore a concrete example of education as subjectification from Biesta’s 2022 book, World-Centred Education. Analysing the example of Homer Lane and Jason, I examine the ambivalence between Biesta’s explicit statements on (...) subjectification as a form of spontaneous and non-coercive teaching aimed at cultivating freedom and the more complex picture that emerges from a close reading of the original story. From this analysis, I find important conceptual limitations to education as subjectification: it could conceal part of the institutional context of education and the teacher’s active role, and also reduce freedom to an individualistic concept. I thus conclude by suggesting that the language of subjectification should always be engaged with critically—but never in isolation—and with a stereoscopic optic in mind. (shrink)

Mindfulness—the awareness of the present moment and experiences in daily life—contributes to genuine intrinsic and social-oriented values and curbs materialistic and hedonistic values. In the context of materialism, money is power. Avaricious individuals take risks and are likely to engage in dishonesty. Very little research has investigated the effects of mindfulness in reducing the avaricious monetary attitudes and enhancing ethical consumer beliefs. In this study, we theorize that mindfulness improves consumer ethics directly and indirectly by lowering avaricious monetary attitudes. To (...) test our theory, we collected data from 523 individuals with the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training and 307 individuals without MBSR. The results of our whole sample support our theory. Three multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses reveal intriguing discoveries. First, with MBSR training, mindfulness excites consumer ethical beliefs directly and indirectly. Without training, trait mindfulness fails to reduce monetary attitudes—mindfulness training matters. Second, the power of MBSR training holds for participants completing the training within 1 year, but wears off after 1 year—the duration after training matters. Finally, after 1 year, the training retains its strength for those who practice mindfulness, but weakens its power for those who do not—practice matters. We shed light on mindfulness, monetary wisdom, and consumer ethics, in particular, and business ethics, in general. (shrink)

Adolescents have increasing discretionary income, expenditures, and purchasing power. Inventory shrinkage costs $123.4 billion globally to retail outlets. Adolescents are disproportionately responsible for theft and shoplifting. Both parents and peers significantly influence adolescents’ monetary values, materialism, and dishonesty as consumers. In this study, we develop a theoretical model involving teenagers’ social attachment and their consumer ethics, treat adolescents’ money attitude in the context of youth materialism as a mediator, and simultaneously examine the direct and indirect paths. Results of 1018 adolescents (...) illustrate that social attachment discourages unethical beliefs directly, but encourages it indirectly through monetary values. Our multi-group analyses demonstrate a novel paradox: The correlation between parental and peer attachments is smaller in France than in China, but similar across gender. Parents contribute more than peers to social attachment in France, but both carry equal weight in China. There is a negative direct path for the Chinese sample and for girls. Indirectly, parental attachment prevents French teenagers’ unethical beliefs, whereas peer attachment promotes boys’ unethical intention, supporting the notion—bad company corrupts good morals. Across both culture and gender, monetary attitude excites dishonesty consistently for all adolescents. A negative direct path exists for Chinese boys only. Overall, social attachment reduces unethical beliefs. Parental and peer supports shape teenagers’ monetary intelligence and ethical or unethical decision making, differently, across culture and gender. We provide theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to ethical parenting, peer attachment, monetary values, and business ethics. (shrink)

Engaging in unethical consumption behaviors is an acute societal problem that can have severe consequences for adolescents, and businesses in particular have been accused of making such consumption particularly appealing and accessible. However, the causes of unethical behaviors are not well understood and research on the causes has been mixed. In this research, we investigate the effects of coping strategies for loneliness on adolescents’ adoption of unethical behaviors, a topic that business ethics research has not explored. In a large-scale study (...) of adolescents, we show that whether loneliness leads to the adoption of unethical behaviors depends on the strategies adolescents use to cope with their loneliness: active coping strategies are associated with fewer unethical behaviors, whereas passive coping strategies are associated with more unethical behaviors. In addition, we show that active and passive coping strategies can be executed through consumption practices. We show that the relation between active coping and fewer unethical behaviors is mediated by sharing of possessions, whereas the relation between passive coping strategies and more unethical behaviors is mediated by product acquisition. Finally, we also show that these mediated relations differ as a function of age cohort. The indirect effect of active coping on fewer unethical behaviors via sharing holds only for middle school adolescents, whereas the indirect effect of passive coping on more unethical behaviors via product acquisition holds only for high school adolescents. We shed new light on both the bright and dark sides of materialism and unethical behaviors and provide practical implications for research on loneliness, business ethics, and unethical behaviors. (shrink)

Contested commodities range from labour to votes, to human organs, to parks and emissions. But in the context of a market economy, what defines them as contestable commodities? This volume draws together interdisciplinary research on the legitimate scope of markets and the goods that should be exempt therefrom.

In this paper I investigate whether "depression" is a vague concept in psychiatry and the consequence of this for philosophers who would like to contribute to the elaboration of an objective definition of it. Assuming that this concept aims at referring to a mental disorder, I show that the current definition of "depression" is controverted: we lack a unified scientific model of it, so a consensual objective definition of it. Actually there is its clinical definition in the nosology but this (...) definition consisting in a list of criteria is accused of being unsufficient to draw a sharp limit between normal and pathological cases. Hence vague boundaries of the extension of the concept as referring to a mental disorder. Moreover its clinical criteria, as descriptive and non distinctive, need to be interpreted by clinicians in a way that remains implicit and contextually variable, and they can apply to completely different clinical pictures. I interpret this as a variability of the descriptive definition of "depression", so that its conditions of use depend on the context: it may apply to two cases that have nothing in common except similarities. Applying the famous wittgensteinien characterization of the concept of "game" to "depression", I argue that this vagueness can be interpreted as showing that "depression" works as cluster of concepts whose instances only share "family resemblances". From this philosophical interpretation I draw the conclusion that the "vagueness problem" of depression at a theoretical level does not make the use of this concept problematic, since this in practice use is always related to a context conferring a specific meaning to the concept. I conclude that philosophers should not look in the clinical sciences for an objective definition of depression as a list of necessary and sufficient conditions pointing at its essence: they should rather either describe the family resemblances between the different versions of this concept, or try to stipulate a definition providing it sharp boundaries. A stipulative definition would be motivated by a pragmatic purpose while not delegitimizing other uses that could be made of the concept. Such a purpose could be to target only medically relevant conditions; actually such conditions do not necessarily have to be conceived of as conditions where there is a disease understood as pathological process that we could objectively define, but they can be seen as conditions that we have medical means to take care of with more benefits than disadvantages. (shrink)

This collection renews contemporary debates in phenomenology, ethics, social ontology, aesthetics, and metaphysics and broadens the scope of twentieth-century French philosophy by analyzing the works and key concepts of authors who left their marks on its genesis.

"L'usage substantivé du mot 'soi' est intriguant. Le pronom tonique 'soi' ne pose pas de problème particulier dans les expressions comme 'prendre soin de soi', 'compter sur soi' ou 'être hors de soi'. Mais parler d'un 'soi', c'est aller au-delà de la réalité grammaticale et supposer une identité personnelle à travers la diversité des expériences. Or, l'idée de soi et la croyance en l'identité personnelle ont été mises en question par David Hume, dont les arguments résonnent toujours dans la philosophie (...) contemporaine. Le but de ce livre est double : montrer, en historiens de la philosophie, de quelle façon le philosophe britannique a répondu à ces problèmes, et évaluer la fécondité de ces résultats pour les sciences de l'esprit."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

L’exposome réfère à un domaine émergent de recherche qui a pour visée de développer une science intégrée de l’ensemble des expositions auxquelles est soumis un individu tout au long de sa vie et qui influencent sa santé. Deux principales orientations se font jour. L’une se concentre sur l’étude de l’exposome interne qui permettrait d’identifier l’essentiel des expositions impactant la santé en mesurant avec précision les effets au niveau de l’environnement biochimique du corps. L’autre entend intégrer les expositions sociales, écologiques et (...) les expositions biologiques et internes, ou autrement dit, faire davantage de place à l’étude de l’exposome externe et ainsi développer un modèle holiste de la santé environnementale. À partir de l’examen de la littérature scientifique, de l’analyse de la première génération d’études exposomiques (2010-2020) et d’entretiens menés auprès d’épidémiologistes engagés dans ces recherches, cet article propose un état des lieux des promesses et réalisations de ce domaine émergent quant à l’intégration des expositions, tout en ayant l’ambition d’apporter un regard critique sur ces dernières. Après avoir présenté l’exposome et ses diverses interprétations, nous examinerons quel type d’intégration est en jeu dans chacune de ces deux orientations et nous en questionnerons l’intérêt et la pertinence. Notre analyse se concentre plus particulièrement sur la seconde orientation : quels gages cette tendance la plus holiste donne-t-elle en vue d’un renouvellement de nos manières d’intégrer les facteurs environnementaux et génétiques, sociaux et biologiques, dans notre approche des expositions et de l’explication des maladies? (shrink)

This article re-analyses in detail the meaning of the expression ludi Graeci which appears in two of Cicero’s letters (Ad Fam. 7,1 and Ad Att. 15,5). A careful examination of the first instance reveals that ludi Graeci indeed referred to theatrical performances in Greek language and not merely to Latin plays that followed Greek models. A brief survey of contemporary epigraphical sources shows that no occurrence excludes this interpretation. The question of the apparent contradiction between Cicero’s philhellenism and his criticism (...) of the ludi Graeci in the two letters is also addressed, in order to demonstrate that the two attitudes are not mutually exclusive. (shrink)

Le concept de « civilisation écologique » a initialement été développé par des intellectuels chinois, à la fin des années 1980, comme une critique de la modernité industrielle et du système capitaliste face à la catastrophe écologique planétaire en cours. À partir du milieu des années 2000, et suite à l’accentuation des contestations environnementales dans les grandes villes du pays, le Parti Communiste Chinois (PCC) a décidé de faire de cette notion un de ses slogans politiques phares, mais au prix (...) de vider ce concept de sa dimension critique pour l’instrumentaliser au service de la propagande d’État, de la croissance verte et du contrôle numérique des écosystèmes. La Chine serait-elle en train d’inventer de nouvelles normes de gouvernance? (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage-hommage à Michèle Riot-Sarcey, les travaux et la pensée de l’historienne sont mis en perspective au travers de dix-huit articles organisés autour des thèmes « Genre », « Utopies et discontinuités », « Révolution, république et démocratie », et « Se situer dans son propre présent ». L’ensemble de l’ouvrage constitue une invitation à lire ou relire les œuvres de l’auteure et à prendre avec elle le parti de se confronter en toute conscience aux enjeux de l’écriture de (...) l’histoire... (shrink)

Timothy Verhoeven, de l’université de Monash en Australie, est spécialiste de l’histoire contemporaine de la France et des États-Unis. Son ouvrage Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-Siècle France: the Flamidien affair se situe à la croisée de deux thématiques qu’il avait déjà étudiées auparavant, l’anticléricalisme et les relations entre Église et États d’un côté, et l’histoire des masculinités à partir des sexualités cléricales de l’autre. À partir d’un fait divers propice à me...

The philosophical analysis of trauma has grown over the last ten years due to our need to elucidate the lived experience endured by an increasing number of human beings undergoing forced migration, abuses, war crimes, and traumatizing situations. The irreducibility of trauma renders the task of care ethics more and more difficult. Yet, this paper argues that a phenomenological analysis of the care relation with traumatized patients can help elucidate the inter-affective dynamics at stake in such encounters. First, I will (...) analyze the phenomenon of compassion fatigue and show how it differs from “emotional contagion” and how it relates to empathy. Relying on phenomenological approaches to empathy, I will assess the kind of “affective sharing” entailed by compassion fatigue. In the second section, I will reframe this conception of empathy by uncovering the existential feeling of vulnerability and the pre-reflective bodily resonance that frames our encounter with others. In the final section, I will argue that vicarious traumatization could be overcome thanks to a “creative kind” of compassion which links the sense of self to the sense of agency, the act of caring with the quest for justice, in a constant effort to restore balance through affective sharing and mutual recognition. (shrink)

What causes adolescents to develop consumer’ ethical beliefs? Prior research has largely focused on the negative influence of peers and negative patterns of parent–child interactions to explain risky and unethical consumer behaviors. We take a different perspective by focusing on the positive support of parents and peers in adolescent social development. An integrative model is developed that links parental and peer support with adolescents’ self-worth motives, their materialistic tendencies, and their consumer ethical beliefs. In a study of 984 adolescents, we (...) demonstrate support for a sequential mediation model in which peer and parental support is positively related to adolescents’ self-esteem and feelings of power, which are each associated with decreased materialism as a means of compensating for low self-worth. This reduced materialism is, in turn, associated with more ethical consumer beliefs. (shrink)

Marketing research on adolescents’ ethical predispositions and risky behaviors has focused primarily on individual difference variables. The present study, in contrast, examines the social network positions that an adolescent occupies within a group. A survey of 984 adolescents demonstrates that EP and RB stem from a balance between assimilation and individuation. In particular, we show that adolescents with close first-degree relationships within a specific peer group and/or high need for uniqueness have lower EP and engage in more RB, while adolescents (...) that are more central to the entire network have higher EP. The theoretic and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Christopher Boorse’s bio-statistical theory of health and disease argues that the central discipline on which theoretical medicine relies is physiology. His theory has been much discussed but little has been said about its focus on physiology or, conversely, about the role that other biomedical disciplines may play in establishing a theoretical concept of health. Since at least the 1950s, epidemiology has gained in strength and legitimacy as an independent medical science that contributes to our knowledge of health and disease. Indeed, (...) it not only provides important information about disease distribution and aetiology, but the risk-factor approach it employs seems to challenge BST’s binary conception of health and disease. The objective of the article is to show, firstly, how important information deriving from descriptive and analytical epidemiology forms part of our contemporary medical concepts of health and disease, and secondly, that these elements are not taken into account by BST in a satisfactory way. The article’s central contention, therefore, is that if the project of defining the theoretical concept of health is to be maintained, more importance should be accorded to the contribution made by epidemiology—alongside physiology—in defining health. (shrink)

A well-known common wisdom asserts that strong social bonds undermine delinquency. However, there is little empirical evidence to substantiate this assertion regarding adolescence academic cheating across cultures. In this study, we adopt social bonding theory and develop a theoretical model involving four social bonds and adolescence self-reported academic cheating behavior and cheating perception. Based on 913 adolescents in France and China, we show that parental attachment, academic commitment, and moral values curb academic cheating; counterintuitively, peer involvement contributes to cheating. We (...) test our theoretical model across culture and gender, separately, using multi-group analyses. For French teens, peer involvement encourages and moral values undermine cheating; for Chinese adolescents, all four social bonds contribute to cheating, similar to the whole sample. For girls, parental attachment deters, but peer involvement enhances cheating. For boys, parental attachment is the only social bond that does not affect cheating. We treat social integration as a mediator of the relationship between peer involvement and social bonds that construct, in turn, is related to cheating and ask: Considering popularity, who are likely to cheat? Our answers provide an interesting paradox: Popularity matters, yet popular French girls and unpopular Chinese boys are likely to cheat. Social sharing is a positive pro-social behavior in consumer behavior. However, academic cheating and rule breaking, reflecting self-serving altruism and the red sneakers effect, at a very young age may have the potential to grow into the Enron Effect later in their lives as executives in organizations. We shed new lights on both the bright and dark sides of social bonds on cheating, demonstrate bad company corrupts good morals, differently, across culture and gender, and provide practical implications to social bonding, business ethics, and cheating. (shrink)

"Dans cette thèse, je démontre que la tradition phénoménologique développe une redéfinition ontologique de l'individuation du sujet fondée sur la notion d'intentionnalité opérante. J'explique comment cette redéfinition offre une nouvelle approche de la vision du monde et des relations intersubjectives qui ne serait ni réflexive ni représentative. Néanmoins, cette configuration montre le développement parallèle de l'individuation du sujet et de ses expressions, grâce à une ontologie relationnelle, aux implications épistémologiques et éthiques. Analysant la phénoménologie de Husserl, je mets au jour (...) le rapport entre individuation et intentionnalité en montrant que cette relation permet de repenser les problèmes de l'ipséité et de la différence (1). A la lumière de l'analyse heideggérienne du Dasein et de la description merleau-pontienne du corps propre, je montre alors que l'individuation doit être conçue comme un processus permanent de différenciation qui ne repose plus sur le schéma hylémorphique ou sur la représentation cartésienne du sujet (2). Je décris le type de mouvement ontologique qui caractérise l'individuation, en m'appuyant sur Patočka et Simondon, afin de montrer la corrélation de la manifestation du monde et de l'individuation du sujet (3). Celle-ci suppose la nécessité paradoxale de la contingence afin de pouvoir penser l'individuation comme ouverture radicale, modelée par une certaine forme d'altérité. En m'appuyant sur l'ontologie tardive de Merleau-Ponty, la psychanalyse et l'herméneutique, je cherche ensuite à dévoiler la structure analogique - mais non représentationaliste - du sensible et à repenser la corrélation à la lumière du processus d'individuation éprouvé par le sujet (4). Rendant compte de la généralité et de la générativité du mouvement charnel, je démontre pour finir que cette structure analogique permet d'élaborer des conceptions de l'individuation et de la réflexivité requérant moins la mort du sujet, comme dans l'optique poststructuraliste, que sa métamorphose et son advenue. Cette thèse conclut en ouvrant des perspectives utiles à la compréhension de la vie, dans les recherches épistémologiques contemporaines (5), et à l'examen éthique de nos visions du monde et de la responsabilité qui incombe au sujet, dans l'épreuve contingente de ses désirs (6). " --. (shrink)

The paper argues that the dynamics of personal and collective individuation could be interrelated and bear ethical significance thanks to an analysis of the Lifeworld and intersubjectivity that link together the genetic and the generative perspectives of phenomenology. The first section of the paper recalls the epistemological and ontological implications of Husserl's and Stein's analysis of personal individuation in relation to what Husserl would call, later, the “Lifeworld” and the intersubjective constitution of communities. The second section of the paper turns (...) to a phenomenology of the Lifeworld through an analysis of refugees' care and the intersubjective dynamics involved in the clinic of exile. Such an example will bring to light the importance of embodiment and intercorporeity to grasp the process through which the genetic constitution of the Lifeworld constitutes itself as a collective process of individuation trying to heal the scars of historicity. Consequently, individuation will appear as a personal and collective task, rather than a static and ego-centered achievement that would be forgetful of our fundamental interdependency. Finally, the last section argues that “healing the Lifeworld” does not amount to conceive of its “horizon” as being itself a predetermined “telos” of transcendental subjectivity, as if this open structure could be itself constituted. Rather, the varieties of the Lifeworld and its paradoxical movement of appropriation and differentiation point to a relational ontology that considers the becoming of a common and meaningful world as a _limit-problem_ of phenomenology and, perhaps, its ethical and critical promise. (shrink)

Canguilhem criticized the concept of “public health”: health and disease are concepts that only apply to individuals, taken as organic totalities. Their extension to a different level of organization is purely metaphorical. The importance assumed by epidemiology in the construction of our knowledge of the normal and the pathological does, however, call for reflection on the role and the status of the population level of organization in our approach to health phenomena. The entanglement of the biological and the social in (...) human life and in contemporary societies justifies this level of analysis for better understanding the complexity and the interaction of health determinants both at the level of individuals and their interactions and at that of the population. But is this population level just a useful level of analysis that makes it possible to bring to light the social determinants of health at the individual level, or does it rest instead on characteristics of the population that are irreducible to individual characteristics, but which are nevertheless important for understanding and taking action with respect to both population and individual health? Defending this second alternative, I show how the epidemiological point of view, and in particular that of social epidemiology, leads us to rethink the possibility of a concept of “population health” that is not reducible to the sum of individual instances of health. (shrink)

In Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, Merleau-Ponty draws on Malraux’s theory, developed in Le Musée Imaginaire and Les Voix du Silence, according to which modern art is the achievement of subjectivity’s creative powers in its ability to achieve the metamorphosis of the world through her works. This essay aims to show that the idea of “coherent deformation” illustrates Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to rethink subjectivity’s individuation as a creative yet ontological pattern that recasts the dynamics of operative intentionality and its (...) expressions. I show that in response to Malraux, Merleau-Ponty works out a diacritical sense of individuation as style that conveys existential possibilities. This conception proposes a “phenomenology from within” that relies on literary, psychoanalytic and artistic works to exhibit the metamorphosis of the subject in and through her world. (shrink)

Being mainly concerned with the origins and development of formal logic, current “histories of logic” often devote scarce, if any, space to logic in the early modern period. In standard narratives, emphasis is put, on one side, on Aristotle’s Organon and on the Stoics’ logic of propositions, and on the other side, on the development of mathematical logic from Boole and Frege on. The picture often emerging from such reconstructions represents early modern philosophers—net of their criticisms of Aristotelian syllogism— as (...) largely estranged from the discipline. It is true that, the medieval period’s concern with semantic and inference issues has been accounted... (shrink)

Au xviie siècle, si à l’instar de Descartes, des penseurs de la science mécaniste moderne ne l’adossent pas à une théorie du syllogisme scientifique, et si plusieurs d’entre eux vont même jusqu’à prendre position contre la logique, la question logique des formes valides d’un raisonnement et celle des sources et des modalités de l’invention ne restent pas moins un objet d’enseignement et de recherche. Si l’on en croit les ouvrages retraçant l’histoire de la logique, « la mise en sommeil » (...) de c... (shrink)

Cette étude se focalise sur différentes méthodes utilisées pour l’analyse phonologique de la parole aphasique. Nous comparons des tâches expérimentales de répétition et de dénomination d’image, des tâches d’élicitation semi-structurées et de la parole naturelle. Nous montrons que le type de mots rencontrés, le type de consonnes ou encore le nombre de productions diffèrent selon la tâche. Si les protocoles expérimentaux permettent d’obtenir toutes les cibles voulues, les tâches d’élicitation semi-structurée permettent d’avoir un plus grand nombre d’occurrences de sons et (...) de mots et des productions subissant des transformations différentes. (shrink)

Afin d’accompagner les frères et sœurs d’enfants handicapés, des dispositifs groupaux se développent depuis quelques années dans les services médico-sociaux. L’auteure, psychologue clinicienne, présente ici le fonctionnement d’un groupe fratrie destiné à des enfants de 4 à 10 ans, et plus particulièrement l’utilisation du dessin dans ce cadre. Par le croisement d’éléments théoriques et l’apport de situations cliniques, une réflexion est menée sur l’intérêt du dessin et du récit de celui-ci dans la relance des processus narratifs chez les enfants. Ces (...) capacités de liaison ainsi soutenues permettent, le plus souvent, de contrer les effets traumatiques de la survenue du handicap dans la famille. Ceci permet d’appréhender l’un des facteurs de l’effet thérapeutique de ce dispositif. (shrink)

English summary: Based on the famous essay by Georges Canguilhem on what is normal and pathological (originally published in 1943), extensive philosophical literature (mainly Anglo-Saxon) has attempted to define these concepts and analyze their status. The main discussion focuses on the following question: can you describe health and illness as natural phenomena or are they states that are determined by values? French text. French description: Depuis le celebre essai de Georges Canguilhem sur le normal et le pathologique publie initialement en (...) 1943 et dont l'un des objectifs etait la clarification des concepts de sante et de maladie, une litterature philosophique abondante, principalement anglo-saxonne, s'est attachee a definir ces concepts et a analyser leur statut. Le principal debat de ce domaine emergent de la philosophie de la medecine porte sur la question: peut-on decrire la sante et la maladie comme des phenomenes naturels ou s'agit-il d'etats qui sont determines par des valeurs? Tous les textes presentes dans ce volume ont participe de cette controverse. Ceux de la premiere section accordent une part importante a la composante biologique. Ceux de la seconde donnent le primat a la notion d'action. Ceux de la derniere section mettent en question l'utilite ou la possibilite meme de definir les deux concepts. (shrink)

Athletes’ identity development upon retirement from elite sport was examined through a model of self-reformation that integrates and builds on the theoretical underpinnings of identity development and liminality, while advancing seven propositions and supporting conceptual conjectures using findings from research on athletes’ transition out of sport. As some elite athletes lose a salient athletic identity upon retiring from sport, they experience an identity crisis and enter the transition rites feeling in between their former athletic identity and future identity post-sport life, (...) during which a temporary identity moratorium status is needed for identity growth. Given the developmental challenges encountered in moratorium and psychosocial processes necessary to establish a new, fulfilling identity for life after elite sport, we identified key conditions, triggers, and processes that advance how a journey of identity growth paradox experienced during liminality serves as a catalyst toward identity achievement. Elite athletes must be encouraged to persevere in this challenging identity search and delay commitments for as long as it is necessary to achieve identity growth despite experiencing uncomfortable feelings of confusion, void, and ambiguity during the liminal phase. Reforming into an achieved identity for life after elite sport would corroborate the successful navigation of transition, as elite athletes evolved into a synthesized sense of self by cementing, through a negotiated adaptation pathway, constructed identity commitments that will provide new beginnings and meaningful directions to their life after elite sport. (shrink)

La possibilité d’une définition naturaliste de la santé et d’une distinction entre le normal et le pathologique qui ne repose pas sur des normes culturelles, sociales ou subjectives est au cœur des débats en philosophie de la médecine. Or le concept statistique de la normalité, fondamental pour une définition objective de la santé, soulève d’importantes difficultés. Christopher Boorse défend une « théorie bio-statistique » qui, en articulant ce concept à une notion non normative de fonction biologique, résoudrait ces difficultés. L’identification (...) de la santé et de la normalité au sens statistique demeure toutefois centrale dans sa définition. Après avoir précisé le rôle que joue la normalité statistique dans la BST, nous dégageons, à partir de l’épidémiologie contemporaine, un certain nombre de problèmes et questions que cette définition naturaliste soulève.The liability for a naturalist definition of health and for a value-free distinction between the normal and the pathological is at the core of discussions on health and disease in philosophy of medicine. But the statistical concept of normality, a central one for any objective definition of health, raises numerous problems. Christopher Boorse argues for a « biostatistical theory » which aims at solving these difficulties by articulating a statistical concept of normality and a non-normative concept of biological function. However the BST is still based on identifying normality and health with the most frequent. After analyzing in details the true role of statistical normality in BST, I will show how results and data from modern epidemiology can be mobilized to reveal several limits and difficulties with respect to this naturalist definition of health and disease. (shrink)

Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Personalized Medicine (PM) share a common goal: reducing the gap between the results of biomedical research and their clinical application. PM is, however, often presented as a “new paradigm” for medicine, just as EBM was in the 1990s. It covers a wide variety of projects but the core idea that generally unites them is the ambition of better taking account of individual specificities than did EBM with its statistical and population-centred approach. In this article, I concentrate (...) on PM in cancerology, the essence of which is to target treatments based on the molecular profile of the patient. This targeting is made possible by gaining better knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of cancers. The classification of patients as a function of their molecular profile entails the creation of patient sub-groups. This creates a problem for the traditional evaluation of therapeutic treatment promoted by EBM, in particular the use of randomized trials using sizeable cohorts. But a better understanding of the mechanisms and the greater precision of treatments could reduce the need for these trials. Does PM thus represent the revenge of a physio-pathological and mechanistic culture in clinical research against the statistical and empirical one of EBM? My objective is to show how current practices of PM leads to epistemological changes in our estimation of what count as relevant types of information and proof in medicine, in particular in the field of therapeutic evaluation. I defend the idea that PM, far from obviating the need for statistical approaches and the search for correlations, ultimately poses new challenges for EBM. PM drives EBM to strengthen the articulation and the integration of statistical and mechanistic data with a view to providing a better service for each patient. (shrink)

The vulnerability of the human world is an edited book that collects papers reflecting on the problem of well-being, health, and vulnerability in our current society. The ‘human world’ to which we refer points to the anthropological, environmental, and ecological issues in relation to health and well-being that we propose to discuss. It addresses the need for a critical anthropological concept that overcomes the biases of modern anthropocentrism while addressing the specific responsibility of humans in contemporary world crisis. We do (...) not try to give a final definition for what vulnerability is, but we problematize the notion of well-being as a standard of non-vulnerability that is often imposed on human beings; often well-being becomes a measure within which human beings should fit to not be vulnerable. Consequently, well-being has been implicitly defined as the opposite of vulnerability – especially when vulnerability is conceived as a risk or a threat to oneself or the community, rather than a potential source of growth and transformation. For this reason, we believe that well-being is more the title of a problem rather than its solution. This paradigm initiates, indeed, a “positive” conception of health that aims to push the boundaries of human finitude such as suffering, illness and the recognition of mortality. Usually, we assume that well-being is the final goal of our choices and the gist of a decent life, but we spend more time striving for well-being than asking ourselves what being well means for us, as individuals and societies. This paradox may generate emotional frustration which often worsens our condition rather than helps it reach its optimum. Moreover, it may generate and increase inequalities between people and countries who may suffer from the discrepancies in their access to healthcare or vaccination. Therefore, it also raises questions about collective justice and interdependence. Indeed, the concept of well-being seems to block a critical and epistemological appraisal of the concept of “health,” conflating thereby the impression of being “well,” which is normed by sociological, cultural and moral standards with the lived reality of what it means to be healthy – which itself needs to be questioned in light of the scientific paradigms that built human biology and environmental approaches over the past decades. (shrink)