Bernard Matolino argues that the communal foundation of classical African communitarianism should be discarded if communitarian theories would be of any use to modern African political theory. He sets out to propose a theory of communitarianism that not only suits modern African realities but would also be useful to any people including non-Africans. I argue that what he ends up doing is proposing cosmopolitanism, calling into question the “Afro” designation of the title of his theory. I also argue that his (...) position on the relationship between the individual and the community is technically not communitarianism of any sort, calling into question the “communitarian” appellation in his theory. His attempt to divorce communitarianism from communalism is unsuccessful, making communitarianism as unsuitable as a theory of world relations as Matolino claims it is unsuitable for contemporary multiethnic African societies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While the first generation of the so-called Frankfurt School has promoted a strong interconnection between social critique and knowledge of the social world, contemporary critical theory seems to consider that epistemological issues don’t deserve anymore consideration. Is it really possible to elaborate a convincing theory of social critique without taking seriously the various links between social critique and knowledge? This article argues that the answer is no. In a first step, it recalls the ways in which the philosophical debate (...) about social critique is currently articulated and how it disconnects social critique and knowledge. One of the reasons for such a disconnection relates to a vision of politics as consisting mainly in a conflict between normative principles, notably between conceptions of social justice. This vision of politics is criticized in the second step of this paper. A second reason, examined in the third part of the paper, relates to the risk of epistemic violence. The shared but questionable assumption is that any sociological or philosophical attempt to produce knowledge would necessarily lead to epistemic violence rather than to epistemic empowerment. (shrink)

There is an actuality of medieval philosophy. The “phenomenological practice of medieval philosophy” put into practice by the author in his work “God, the flesh and the other” finds its full justification here. One does not demonstrate the fertility of a method by his theory, but by its application in practice. The crossing of authors as diverse as St. Augustine, John Scotus Erigena and Master Eckhart, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Bonaventura, and Origen, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scot, deploys for today the (...) actuality of medieval philosophy – not first understood as “up-to-date” but as implementation of their “potentialities”. (shrink)

Cet article met en perspective sociologique la croissance de l’utilisation des réseaux socionumériques et propose une approche néo-structurale pour l’analyse des profils des utilisateurs. Il insiste notamment sur les comparaisons sociales et les jeux de statut comme l’une des dimensions de la rationalisation contemporaine de la gestion des interdépendances dans ces réseaux socionumériques. Cette rationalisation est mise en relation avec la flexibilisation des marchés du travail et l’affaiblissement des solidarités universalistes. L’analyse sociologique des réseaux met en évidence le travail relationnel (...) et symbolique des acteurs qui cherchent à gérer ainsi leur capital relationnel, une rationalité sociale qui les guide, les rouages relationnels d’une discipline sociale complexe qui leur permet de se coordonner, qu’ils considèrent comme légitime et qui constitue aussi une composante du capital social du collectif. On suggère enfin que les avancées de la recherche sur les réseaux sociaux et organisationnels peuvent être mises à profit pour identifier les formes de discipline sociale qui émergent de ces nouvelles pratiques de construction d’une présence en ligne.This article brings a sociological perspective to bear on the increasing use of social networking sites and offers a neo-structural approach to analyses of user profiles. It lays particular emphasis on social comparison and the “status game” as one of the dimensions of contemporary rationalisation in the management of interdependencies in social networking sites. This rationalisation is added to increasing labour market flexibility and weakening universalist solidarity. Sociological analysis of these networks brings out the relational and symbolic work accomplished by those involved, as they seek to manage their relational capital. The social rationality that guides them enables them to cross-coordinate and the relational workings of a complex social discipline, which they see as legitimate and is also a component of the collective social capital. We suggest, finally, that advances in research on social and organisational networks could help to identify forms of social discipline that are emerging from the new practice of constructing on-line presence. (shrink)

This is a translation of ‘Socialité et argent’, a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of interhuman relations of exchange and the social relations – sociality – that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as ‘nonindifference to alterity’ it appears here as ‘proximity of the stranger’ and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the (...) other person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the ‘interestedness’ of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always ‘being with others’. Being is always ‘interbeing’. Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the ‘goodness of giving’, attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response. (shrink)

In their article ‘Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach’, Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen contend that, on several of the most prominent accounts of disease, pregnancy should be considered a disease. More specifically, of the five accounts they discuss, each renders pregnancy a disease or suffers serious conceptual problems otherwise. They take issue specifically with the dysfunction account of disease and argue that it suffers several theoretical difficulties. In this response, we focus on defending the dysfunction account against their (...) main objections and show why a version of the dysfunction account is viable on account of the indispensability of normativity in biology and medicine. After disarming their main objections to the dysfunction account, we briefly respond to their treatment of the normality of pregnancy and then draw a distinction between adverse symptoms and underlying causes to show why even though pregnancy may have ‘disease-like’ features, it is not a disease. (shrink)

This contribution studies the German translations for reality: Realität, Sachheit, Wirklichkeit, first in their own ambiguity, then at the end of the hegelian Objective Logic in The Science of Logi...

Strong emergentists face a quadruple dilemma: accept the physical closure principle and deny strong emergentism, deny the closure principle and court either substance or property dualism, accept substance dualism and kill emergentism by accepting vitalism or accept property dualism and get locked into the fallacy of reconciling upward emergence with downward causation without the help of any external agency. Strong emergentists would most likely choose, and I seek to show that it contains contradictions that kill emergentism nonetheless. This is because (...) emergentists would ultimately have to admit the role of external agency or environmental input regarding upward/downward interaction. But once this happens, there seems no need to discuss emergence, since we are no longer entirely sure that properties alleged as emergent actually emerged from the base properties from which we would say they emerged. (shrink)

Based largely on the so-called problem of “asymmetry in concept application”, philosopher Murat Aydede has argued for a non-perceptual view of pain. Aydede is of course not denying basic neurobiological facts about neurons, action potentials, and the like, but he nonetheless makes a strong philosophical case for pain not being the perception of something extramental. In the present paper, after having stated some of the presuppositions I hold as a physician and pain researcher, and after having shortly described Aydede’s critique (...) of perceptual theories of pain, I make a constructive proposal centred around the concept of pain as the perception of some-one, not some-thing. In doing so, I propose that there often is a problematic duality at work when we think about pain, namely the mental/extramental duality. This pre-reflective mindset creates difficulties when reflecting over pain. Instead, I propose the body/world duality as being more helpful. Two neologisms, cosmoception and egoception, are presented as an alternative to the twin concepts of exteroception and interoception. It is argued that the new concepts have the advantage of not pushing our thought into a mental/extra-mental dichotomy. Hence, when in pain, I get epistemic access to the body that is I, to how I fare in this world. From that perspective, pain is not the perception of something, but of someone–namely, the self. In the final part of the paper, this proposal is discussed in dialogue with a paper from phenomenological thinker Jennifer Bullington. (shrink)

« C’est une question de point de vue… » On associe aujourd’hui la perspective à l’individualisme, à l’affirmation d’une vérité privée et indépassable. C’est oublier la tradition de la perspectiva communis, celle qui fait de la perspective le vecteur d’un horizon commun. Au croisement de la science, de l’art et de la philosophie, le livre exhume une tradition que l’on se doit de redécouvrir : le point de vue, ce n’est pas seulement ce qui divise, c’est aussi ce qui se (...) partage. Au lieu d’incriminer le perspectivisme d’avoir fait le lit de la post-vérité, et de la perte d’une référence à un monde réel, il est temps de retrouver en quoi la perspective n’est pas qu’une affaire de relativisation, mais de réalisation. C’est à la perspective que nous devons notre perspicacité : « à travers » – voilà le mot-clé pour comprendre son opération. Une mise en regard d’enjeux anciens et contemporains, où s’entrecroisent les arts visuels, l’architecture, la phénoménologie et l’anthropologie sociale. Autant de manières de faire l’éloge d’une perspective qui se décline invariablement au pluriel. (shrink)

BackgroundThe safety of sleeping pills has increased dramatically during the last 100 years, from barbiturates to bensodiazepines to modern day so-called Z-drugs.MethodsThe circumstances of prescribing sleeping pills in the early 20th century are illustrated by summarizing the main storyline of a novel by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. This is followed by a thought experiment and a theoretical discussion.ResultsIn his 1937 novel Sömnlös (Swedish for sleepless) Vilhelm Moberg portrayed existential and relational distress in relation to insomnia. In a thought experiment, past (...) progresses in sleeping pills safety are projected into the future. Thereby, it is claimed that important issues in the area of philosophy of medicine come to the fore. This leads to a theoretical discussion about broader questions concerning the role of the physician, the goals of medicine (as described by Lennart Nordenfelt), the concept of pharmaceuticalisation (as described notably by sociologist of sleep Simon J. Williams and co-workers), and health enhancement (c.f. Carl Elliott and the alleged wish to be better than well).ConclusionInsomnia is a prism through which important philosophical and sociological questions related to the practice of medicine can be asked. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-awareness emerges in organisms whose brains have a sufficiently integrated, complex ability for associative learning and memory. Continual sensory input of information related to the organism leads to the formation of a set of associations that may be termed an organismal “self-image”. After providing the basic mechanistic basis for the emergence of an organismal self-image, this paper proceeds to go through a representative list of behaviors associated with self-awareness, and shows how associative memory and learning, combined (...) with an organismal self-image, leads to the emergence of these various behaviors. This paper also discusses various tautologies that invariably emerge when discussing self-awareness. We continue with various speculations on manipulating self-awareness, and discuss how concepts from set and logic theory may provide a useful set of tools for understanding the emergence of higher cognitive functions in complex organisms. (shrink)

In the first part of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action, Africa serves as the paradigmatic “mythical” world against which the author establishes the achievements of the modern “rational” worldview.1 In addition, the modern societies analyzed through concepts such as “internal colonization,” “the uncoupling of system and lifeworld,” “the welfare state,” etc., in the second volume of that work are capitalist nation-states whose economic and political growth presupposed, from the 17th century on, imperial dominions, slavery, colonization and accompanying ideologies of white (...) supremacy.2 Thus, in Habermas' thought, Africa is present only as a negative case.3When Talcott Parsons wrote that 'What…. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage part d'un constat : nul n'est au monde s'il naît au monde. Le dogme de la résurrection des corps restera en ce sens un mot vide tant qu'on ne le rapportera pas philosophiquement à un mode de l'expérience : la naissance. Nicodème, déjà, en avait interrogé le sens : " Comment un homme peut-il une seconde fois entrer dans le ventre de sa mère et naître? " Confrontée à la philosophie contemporaine, une phénoménologie de la naissance corporelle fera (...) donc office de paradigme à une théologie de la renaissance spirituelle et charnelle. Car la " Résurrection change tout " en christianisme - monde et temps bien sûr, mais aussi notre propre corps transformé dans la figure du Christ transfiguré. Puissions-nous alors en recevoir la forme pour en être " in-formé ", puisque de la manière dont aujourd'hui je vis mon corps dépend la façon dont demain je ressusciterai charnellement en Dieu. De " l'analytique christique de l'angoisse, de la souffrance et de la mort ", ce livre passe, comme en un second volet pouvant être lu indépendamment du premier, à " l'analytique de la résurrection comme mode d'être de la naissance ". Ce dont le Fils pâtit, il en opère ici le passage vers son Père qui, dans la force de l'Esprit, en accomplit pour nous la métamorphose. (shrink)

It might be surprising to find in a journal of contemporary philosophy a text that is mostly about Hugh of St. Victor. The hermeneutic question, however, did not begin only yesterday. While this question has its actual sources in Origen and Saint Augustine, it is in the Didascalicon or The Art of Reading by Hugh of St. Victor that it first finds its clearest formulation and its most methodical development. This “hidden source of hermeneutics” allows for a questioning of the (...) foundations of the hermeneutics of the text from its outset, and also for a return of hermeneutics, or better to turn it, to its primordial origin: a hermeneutics of the “world” or of “creation” [ liber mundi ], rather than of the “text” and of “Scripture” [ liber Scripturae ]. A “Catholic” hermeneutics of “the body and the voice” should, in my opinion, take the place of the “Protestant” hermeneutics of “the meaning of the text” and the “Jewish” hermeneutics of the “body of the letter”. This thesis, which is stated and developed in my book Crossing the Rubicon, has its roots and justification in this historical essay on Hugh of St. Victor. (shrink)

Provides the first comprehensive interpretation of Kierkegaard's view of Christian revelation and demonstrates the central importance of that concept for understanding the development of his religious philosophy.

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model.Empirical studies show (...) that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences.Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians’ behaviors. (shrink)

La réflexion sur le positivisme juridique est au cœur d'interrogations importantes concernant la portée des règles de droit, la nature de l'Etat et les relations entre droit et morale. L'examen des présupposés et des thèses philosophiques de la Théorie pure du droit de Hans Kelsen et du Concept de droit d'Herbert Hart permet de s'orienter dans ces débats. Les deux auteurs proposent des théories distinctes d'une même réalité : la mise en vigueur, dans des collectivités, de règles possédant une forme (...) d'objectivité. Leurs descriptions du fonctionnement des systèmes juridiques obligent à reconduire à ses fondements l'examen de la nature et de la connaissance des normes. De ce fait, la comparaison des doctrines doit permettre de mieux comprendre, en particulier, l'articulation entre le registre du devoir-être et la prise en compte de la réalité de la vie sociale organisée par le droit. (shrink)

Barriers to mental health interventions globally remain a health concern; however, these are more prominent in low- and middle-income countries. The barriers to accessibility include stigmatization, financial strain, acceptability, poor awareness, and sociocultural and religious influences. Exploring the barriers to the utilization of mental health services might contribute to mitigating them. Hence, this research aims to investigate these barriers to mental health service utilization in depth at the Kabutare District Hospital of the Southern Province of Rwanda. The qualitative approach was (...) adopted with a cross-sectional study design. The participants were patients with mental illnesses seeking mental health services at the hospital. Ten interviews were conducted in the local language, recorded, and transcribed verbatim and translated by the researchers. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data collected. The results revealed that the most common barriers are fear of stigmatization, lack of awareness of mental health services, sociocultural scarcity, scarcity of financial support, and lack of geographical accessibility, which limit the patients to utilize mental health services. Furthermore, it was revealed that rural gossip networks and social visibility within the communities compounded the stigma and social exclusion for patients with mental health conditions. Stigmatization should be reduced among the community members for increasing their empathy. Then, the awareness of mental disorders needs to be improved. Further research in Rwanda on the factors associated with low compliance to mental health services with greater focus on the community level is recommended. (shrink)

Beyond reasonable doubt, the influence of Western culture and civilizations has enervated traditional African family systems, and their functions as providers of social welfare. Hitherto, traditional African family and clan by extension served as the plausible medium by which Africans proffered solutions to those social, economic and other existential problems found within their communities. However, measuring and evaluating the successes of the various social welfare programs organized by the family and clan was a difficult task to achieve. It seems the (...) services rendered merely controlled the social problems but did not improve the standard of living of the victims. This paper seeks to critically analyse the traditional African family system and its role as a provider of social welfare and argues that it can complement the Western models towards holistic social integration. Thus this work adopts the theory of change as a tool for understanding how Western models of social welfare should be integrated with traditional African approaches to care for the ‘weak’ in the society. Advocating for a paradigm shift from the modern models of providing social welfare to the traditional African family and clan model is consequent upon the claim that the latter is more embracing in approach. (shrink)

La pensée d'Emmanuel Lévinas a d'emblée été connue des philosophes et des universitaires, dès son premier ouvrage, La théorie de l'intuition chez Husserl, en 1930. Avec " Totalité et Infini " (en l963), il fut reconnu comme un innovateur puissant et originel pour son développement de la phénoménologie. Pourtant, plus récemment, l'immense intérêt du public pour Lévinas s'est déplacé, plutôt, vers les conséquences ou les marges de son projet initial. Ce déplacement a sa légitimité, prouvant au moins la pertinence (...) politique et religieuse de la parole la plus conceptuelle. Mais il nous a semblé aussi légitime, voire urgent, de restituer l'enjeu original de l'initiative de Lévinas : poursuivre la phénoménologie de Husserl, non pas en la déployant vers la question de l'être (comme le fit Heidegger), mais en lui assignant l'éthique comme philosophie enfin première. Bref, Lévinas fut d'abord un phénoménologue et apparaît aujourd'hui de plus en plus comme tel. Cinq textes inédits ou difficiles d'accès de Lévinas et treize études de phénoménologues ou d'historiens de la philosophie moderne permettent, ici, d'évaluer quel apport intime unit Lévinas au nouveau commencement que Husserl entreprit de donner à la philosophie. J.- L. M. (shrink)

Hitherto, the African intellect had been decimated by notable European scholars such as David Hume, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Hegel, Lucien Levy-Bruhl to name a few. The common denominator among these male scholars is that the African intellect is not yet developed to the extent that it can accommodate logical reasoning. Whereas notable African scholars have responded to these charges as misleading whilst exploring ways of coming up with a logic system that can mediate the theory, thought and practice peculiar to (...) Africans yet applicable in other climes, the role of women in this journey has usually been downplayed. This research thereby seeks to fill this void by making a case for the contribution of the Australian Helen Verran who did not engage in armchair scholarship as most of her European male counterparts who deny the African the ability to reason logically, but journeyed to Nigeria to perform some experiments with the Yorùbá numerical system. She is persuaded that through the traditional Yorùbá numerical pattern, an underlying logic system is implied. Even when her conclusions are questionable on several fronts, this research concludes that her role in instilling confidence in the development of artificial logic in Africa must not go unmentioned. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that to understand Hegel’s theory of psychiatric treatment, we must frame the relation between the psychiatrist and her patient using Hegel’s concept of genius as developed in the Anthropology section of the Encyclopedia (§405). As I argue, this notion of genius is both complex and ambiguous, since Hegel presents examples both of good and evil geniuses. What is interesting is that the psychiatrist can potentially correspond to both figures, which reveals what is perhaps Hegel’s greatest (...) contribution to contemporary psychiatry as a practice: the imperative for the practitioner to reflect on its own motivation in the treatment, its own role of authority and, conversely, the condition of its patients. (shrink)

10 décembre 1948 : les Nations unies adoptent la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme, qui se veut une réponse claire aux projets génocidaires et au problème des apatrides généré par la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Hannah Arendt réagit en publiant l'année suivante un essai où elle développe pour la première fois l'une de ses thèses les plus célèbres : le droit d'avoir des droits. C'est ce texte inédit en français que nous publions, précédé de "Nous réfugiés" (1943), ici dans une (...) nouvelle traduction. (shrink)

Images are not neutral conveyors of messages shipped around the globe to achieve globalized spectatorship. They are powerful forces that elicit very diverse responses and can resist new visual hegemonies of our global world. Bringing together case studies from the field of media, art, politics, religion, anthropology and science, this volume breaks new ground by reflecting on the very power of images beyond their medial exploitation. The contributions by Hans Belting, Susan Buck-Morss, Georges Didi-Huberman, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Ticio Escobar among (...) others testify that globalization does not necessarily equal homogenization, and that images can open up alternative ways of picturing what is to come. (shrink)