Etienne Balibar se réfère à l’idée arendtienne de la citoyenneté pour montrer que la démocratie se construit nécessairement au travers d’une aporie. D’une part, la démocratie évoque l’idéal isonomique de l’égalité pour fonder la communauté ; d’autre part, elle inscrit la différence dans l’éventualité d’une contestation permanente des principes unificateurs. Ce que je propose, c’est de contribuer à développer le dialogue entre E. Balibar et Hannah Arendt en m’interrogeant sur la possibilité d’aller au-delà de l’horizon de la violence. Le (...) concept d’agon qu’Arendt utilise pour qualifier le vivre ensemble isonomique n’est pas la concurrence entre artisans, ni le conflit entre ennemis, mais renvoie plutôt à l’institution d’un monde commun grâce aux différences. L’agir agonistique comprend le risque de se distinguer, d’être en désaccord, de se différer, non seulement par rapport aux autres mais aussi par rapport a soi-même. Il faudrait alors définir la violence comme une force qui agit sur l’agon, c’est-à-dire, sur la capacité de « devenir-autre ». C’est justement ceci qu’aussi bien la loi que la notion moderne de droits oblitère. (shrink)

This paper builds on previous work that investigated anticancer drugs as ‘informed materials’, i.e., substances that undergo an informational enrichment that situates them in a dense relational web of qualifications and measurements generated by clinical experiments and clinical trials. The paper analyzes the recent transformation of anticancer drugs from ‘informed’ to ‘informing material’. Briefly put: in the post-genomic era, anti-cancer drugs have become instruments for the production of new biological, pathological, and therapeutic insights into the underlying etiology and evolution of (...) cancer. Genomic platforms characterize individual patients’ tumors based on their mutational landscapes. As part of this new approach, drugs targeting specific mutations transcend informational enrichment to become tools for informing their targets, while also problematizing the very notion of a ‘target’. In other words, they have become tools for the exploration of cancer pathways and mechanisms. While several studies in the philosophy and history of biomedicine have called attention to the heuristic relevance and experimental use of drugs, few have investigated concrete instances of this role of drugs in clinical research. (shrink)

Principles of legislation.--Principles of the civil code.--Principles of the penal code.

The book proposes a critique of Nietzsche's works 'from within'. In doing so, it answers the continuing question asked by any reader of Nietzsche: Why did he decide not to write the major work he said he would write?

During the afternoon of December 21, 1989, in Bucharest, a mass of demonstrators gather in a public square at the request of Nicolae Ceausescu, then president of Romania. In the previous days, students had shaken the country by taking to the streets in protest in the city of Timisoara. These mass protests had been preceded that year by a wave of other social movements that took place in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Now in a broadcast from the (...) balcony of the square, Ceausescu tries to reassure the population while making distressed appeals to preserve the unity of the political regime in the country. In the front row of the assembled crowd... (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. Three entries are incorrect in the reference list. The corrected references are given below.

The present study tested the assumption that self-ratings, such as those used for measuring state anxiety, do not measure a one-dimensional transcendent entity but involve decisions based on a multi-dimensional judgment. Two groups of subjects were presented with a balanced nine-item state anxiety questionnaire. Each group received a different set of instructions (a standard set and an altered instruction set suggesting unidimensionality of the questions in the questionnaire). It was hypothesized that this change in instructions would impact the structure of (...) the data. The impact of the instructions was detectable at the level of the observed correlation between the negative and positive composites, Cohen's (1988) q=-0.27$. A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed that positive and negative wording factors correlated more strongly when unidimensionality was suggested than when standard instructions were used, q=-0.54. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In the organelles of plants and mammals, recent evidence suggests that genomic instability stems in large part from template switching events taking place during DNA replication. Although more than one mechanism may be responsible for this, some similarities exist between the different proposed models. These can be separated into two main categories, depending on whether they involve a single‐strand‐switching or a reciprocal‐strand‐switching event. Single‐strand‐switching events lead to intermediates containing Y junctions, whereas reciprocal‐strand‐switching creates Holliday junctions. Common features in all the (...) described models include replication stress, fork stalling and the presence of inverted repeats, but no single element appears to be required in all cases. We review the field, and examine the ideas that several mechanisms may take place in any given genome, and that the presence of palindromes or inverted repeats in certain regions may favor specific rearrangements. (shrink)

Vous menez depuis plusieurs années des enquêtes sur le personnel politique en France, avec l’ambition de reconsidérer la notion de « professionnel » de la politique et par extension les ressorts d’une « professionnalisation » de la vie politique en France. Un point de départ, semble-t-il, de votre réflexion porte sur le fait que ces termes servent souvent (à l’instar du vocable péjoratif de « politicien » auquel ils se substituent souvent) à dévaloriser le personnel politique. Ils avaient pourtant été (...) conçus par les sciences sociales pour mettre à distance tout jugement de valeur à propos des élus. On pense bien sûr à Max Weber, mais aussi aux travaux fondateurs de Daniel Gaxie ou Jacques Lagroye, notamment. Comment vos propres travaux se situent-ils par rapport à la dimension normative inévitablement attachée à cet objet qu’est le « métier » de député? Il est vrai que je mène une critique des « professionnels de la politique », mais pas tout à fait dans le sens de celle qui domine... (shrink)

Etienne Balibar, one of the foremost living French philosophers, builds on his landmark work 'Spinoza and Politics' with this exploration of Spinoza's ontology. Balibar situates Spinoza in relation to the major figures of Marx and Freud as a precursor to the more recent French thinker Gilbert Simondon's concept of the transindividual. Presenting a crucial development in his thought, Balibar takes the concept of transindividuality beyond Spinoza to show it at work at both the individual and the collective level.

A collection of Essays over the last 20 years, exploring different dimensions of the philosophical debate on "subjecthood" and "subjectivity" in Modernity, as it was framed by the "Controversy on the subject" from the 1960's, and showing how it is now continued in a "controversy on the Universal.".

Dans sa these de 1913, La liberte chez Descartes et la theologie, Etienne Gilson inaugure le geste qu'il prolongera dans l'Index scolastico-cartesien et les Etudes sur le role de la pensee medievale dans la formation du systeme cartesien: situer l'oeuvre de Descartes dans le contexte intellectuel de son epoque. S'il est certain qu'avec Descartes la philosophie tout entiere semble prendre un nouveau depart, il n'en est pas moins sur que cette pensee s'est formee sous l'influence de la theologie scolastique (...) a laquelle Descartes fut initie lors de ses etudes chez les Jesuites. Etienne Gilson se propose ainsi d'eclairer de cette influence les definitions cartesiennes de la liberte. Notion cardinale de sa philosophie, la liberte fut en effet, avant Descartes, l'objet de nombreuses reflexions theologiques: elle se presente donc comme le point de rencontre privilegie de ces deux systemes de pensee. Par cette entree dans l'oeuvre de Descartes, Etienne Gilson nous invite a la lire d'un oeil neuf: c'est ainsi qu'il nous permet, par exemple, de deplacer le coeur de l'apport cartesien de la definition de la liberte humaine (pour laquelle il emprunte beaucoup aux grands penseurs scolastiques) a celle de la liberte divine. Des lors, Descartes se revele plus fidele a la tradition scolastique qu'il ne l'affirme: n'en transformant les cadres que lorsqu'il s'y trouve contraint par les exigences de sa physique, il s'efforce de minimiser autant que possible les modifications qu'il y applique. (shrink)

Western European liberal democracies have recently enacted laws that prohibit the diffusion of fake news on social media. Yet, many consider that such laws are incompatible with freedom of expression. In this paper, I argue that democratic governments have strong pro tanto reasons to prohibit fake news, and that doing so is compatible with free speech. First, I show that fake news disrupts a mutually beneficial form of epistemic dependence in which members of the public are engaged with journalists. Second, (...) I contend that laws against fake news enhance rather than thwart personal autonomy. If these suggestions are plausible, then the same considerations about truth and autonomy that underpin the value of free speech give us reasons to prohibit fake news. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

étienne Balibar has been one of Europe's most important philosophical and political thinkers since the 1960s. His work has been vastly influential on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the humanities and the social sciences. In We, the People of Europe?, he expands on themes raised in his previous works to offer a trenchant and eloquently written analysis of "transnational citizenship" from the perspective of contemporary Europe. Balibar moves deftly from state theory, national sovereignty, and debates on multiculturalism and European (...) racism, toward imagining a more democratic and less state-centered European citizenship. Although European unification has progressively divorced the concepts of citizenship and nationhood, this process has met with formidable obstacles. While Balibar seeks a deep understanding of this critical conjuncture, he goes beyond theoretical issues. For example, he examines the emergence, alongside the formal aspects of European citizenship, of a "European apartheid," or the reduplication of external borders in the form of "internal borders" nurtured by dubious notions of national and racial identity. He argues for the democratization of how immigrants and minorities in general are treated by the modern democratic state, and the need to reinvent what it means to be a citizen in an increasingly multicultural, diversified world. A major new work by a renowned theorist, We, the People of Europe? offers a far-reaching alternative to the usual framing of multicultural debates in the United States while also engaging with these debates. (shrink)

Attempts to influence people’s beliefs through misinformation have a long history. In the age of social media, however, there is a growing fear that the circulation of false or misleading claims will be more impactful than ever now that sophisticated technological means are available to those who desire to spread them. Should democratic societies worry about misinformation? If so, is it possible and desirable for them to control its spread by regulating it? This chapter offers an answer to these questions. (...) First, I propose a definition of misinformation and explain how it proliferates in online contexts. Second, I consider four reasons to worry about misinformation by discussing its likely impact on people’s political opinions, emotions, physical safety and personal autonomy. Third, I assess three strategies for regulating misinformation—individual self-regulation, platform-based innovations and governmental action—and suggest that the most effective ones are those that spare human agents from having to successively review individual pieces of content. (shrink)

First published in French in 2010, _Equaliberty_ brings together essays by Étienne Balibar, one of the preeminent political theorists of our time. The book is organized around _equaliberty_, a term coined by Balibar to connote the tension between the two ideals of modern democracy: equality and liberty. He finds the tension between these different kinds of rights to be ingrained in the constitution of the modern nation-state and the contemporary welfare state. At the same time, he seeks to keep rights (...) discourse open, eschewing natural entitlements in favor of a deterritorialized citizenship that could be expanded and invented anew in the age of globalization. Deeply engaged with other thinkers, including Arendt, Rancière, and Laclau, he posits a theory of the polity based on social relations. In _Equaliberty_ Balibar brings both the continental and analytic philosophical traditions to bear on the conflicted relations between humanity and citizenship. (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)

Lors de la commemoration du septieme centenaire de l'anniversaire de la naissance de Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Etienne Gilson qui avait publie dans les annees quarante un ouvrage rapidement devenu un classique sur la pensee de Dante (Dante et la philosophie), a repris la plume pour rendre hommage au grand poete et penseur italien. Dans ce volume sont publies les neuf articles qui abordent certains des themes fondamentaux de la reflexion de Dante comme la nature du ciel Empyree, le rapport (...) entre poesie et theologie ou encore la signification de la vision merveilleuse. Le volume s'ouvre avec une belle introduction a la pensee de Dante et se termine par une meditation sur Dante et Eugene Delacroix. (shrink)

This paper concerns periodic solutions of a class of equations that model gene regulatory networks. Unlike the vast majority of previous studies, it is not assumed that all decay rates are identical. To handle this more general situation, we rely on monotonicity properties of these systems. Under an alternative assumption, it is shown that a classical fixed point theorem for monotone, concave operators can be applied to these systems. The required assumption is expressed in geometrical terms as an alignment condition (...) on so-called focal points . As an application, we show the existence and uniqueness of a stable periodic orbit for negative feedback loop systems in dimension 3 or more, and of a unique stable equilibrium point in dimension 2. This extends a theorem of Snoussi, which showed the existence of these orbits only. (shrink)

This article covers the voting behaviow- of the three major belgian parties: CVP, BSP and PVV during three legislatures in which all three partieswere twice in government and once in the opposition.The cohesion between the government parties bas been very high. This is also the case within each party. Deviations from the so-called «partyline» are minimal, especially within the socialist party.Looking at the final votes, two voting patterns dominate : government versus opposition and unanimity.All amendments, except those introduced by the (...) government, were rejected. The major conclusion is that the role of the public session of the House is reduced to a mere registration function. (shrink)

ArgumentIn recent decades, through the work of Jane Goodall and other ethologists, the practice of giving personal names to nonhuman animals who are the subjects of scientific research has become associated with claims about animal personhood and scientific objectivity. While critics argue that such naming practices predispose the researcher toward anthropomorphism, supporters suggest that it sensitizes the researcher to individual differences and social relations. Both critics and supporters agree that naming tends to be associated with the recognition of individual animal (...) rights. The history of the naming of research animals since the late nineteenth century shows, however, that the practice has served a variety of purposes, most of which have raised few ethical or epistemological concerns. Names have been used to identify research animals who play dual roles as pets, workers, or patients, to enhance their market value, and to facilitate their identification in the field. The multifaceted history of naming suggests both that the use of personal names by Goodall and others is less of a radical break with previous practices than it might first appear to be and that the use of personal names to recognize the individuality, sentience, or rights of nonhuman animals faces inherent limits and contradictions. (shrink)

Qu'appelons-nous " modernité "? Cette question est travaillée selon une triple orientation philologique, épistémologique et historique, en prenant pour fils conducteurs l'auto-énonciation du sujet, la constitution du " nous " communautaire, l'aporie de l'institution judiciaire. L'interprétation défendue pose que les processus opposés du devenir-citoyen du sujet et du devenir-sujet du citoyen en viennent à se recouvrir. C'est aussi le moment où le rapport du commun à l'universel devient un écart politique au sein de l'universel lui-même. Le " jugement des autres (...) " doit être rapporté à un " jugement de soi-même " attestant pour chacun sa propre normalité. Dès lors, l'humain ne peut coïncider avec l'institution du politique qu'à la condition de se retrancher de soi-même, dans la forme des " différences anthropologiques ". Le citoyen-sujet ne peut se comprendre indépendamment de son envers, qui le conteste et le défie. (shrink)