The vital status of patients who are a part of controlled donation after circulatory death (cDCD) is widely debated in bioethical literature. Opponents to currently applied cDCD protocols argue that they violate the dead donor rule, while proponents of the protocols advocate compatibility. In this article, we argue that both parties often misinterpret the moral implications of the dead donor rule. The rule as such does not require an assessment of a donor’s vital status, we contend, but rather an assessment (...) of whether procurement of organs in cDCD cause the death of the donor or not. We then argue that commonly practiced cDCD protocols do not violate the dead donor rule, since the donation does not trigger or cause the death of the donors. (shrink)

In this influential work, first published in English in 1963, Durkheim and Mauss claim that the individual mind is capable of classification and they seek the origin of the ‘classificatory function’ in society. On the basis of an intensive examination of forms and principles of symbolic classification reported from the Australian aborigines, the Zuñi and traditional China, they try to establish a formal correspondence between social and symbolic classification. From this they argue that the mode of classification is determined by (...) the form of society and that the notions of space, time, hierarchy, number, class and other such cognitive categories are products of society. Dr Needham’s introduction assesses the validity of Durkhiem and Mauss’s argument, traces its continued influence in various disciplines, and indicates its analytical value for future researches in social anthropology. (shrink)

The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life: Translated From The French By Joseph Ward Swain, M.A. This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, (...) high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING! (shrink)

This paper briefly summarizes Durkheim’s theory of the dual nature of man suggested earlier in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It is characteristic of human beings that two opposite principles confront each other within them: soul and body, concept and sensation, moral activity and sensory appetites. Although this inherent inconsistency of man has been long recognized by philosophical thought, no doctrine explanation to it has been provided to date. While empiricist monism has proved to be unable to explain how (...) concepts emerge from sensations and disinterestedness develops from self-interest, absolute idealism, on the contrary, cannot deduce sensations from concepts. Although theories suggested by Plato and Kant do not bypass the problem of dualism, they only rephrase it and make no progress in solving it. According to Durkheim, dualism of human nature stems from the fact that all religions are founded on dividing all things into the sacred and the profane. This division, in turn, is explained by coexistence of collective and individual origins in the human being. Sacred things arise out of the collective origin that enables individual consciousnesses to fuse into communion. Collective origin does not act with constant strength, but intensifies during the periods of effervescence, when it subdues the individual origin. Since the importance of the social aspect of man increases over time, there is no reason to believe that complete consent between individual and society is possible that would endow man with internal harmony. (shrink)

This article introduces a form of ‘conversation’ distinct from dialogue or dialectic to the context of educational theory, practice, and research. Through an engagement with the thought of Maurice Blanchot, this paper outlines the conditions he attributes to conversation in the form of plural speech, its relationship to research, how it can be educational, and speculatively concludes by considering how it can operate productively within and around educational institutions. As such, this paper provides an original intervention into educational philosophy and (...) theory, which relies on a close reading of key sections of Blanchot's The Infinite Conversation, and reflections on the distinctiveness of his argument in relation to contemporary theoretical approaches, as well as the significance of his thought and its application here to the broader questions of what non-prescriptive theory might have to offer educational research and practice. (shrink)

This paper does not present an advocacy of a passive education as opposed to an active education nor does it propose that passive education is in any way ‘better’ or more important than active education. Through readings of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and B.S. Johnson, and gentle critiques of Jacques Rancière and John Dewey, passive education is instead described and outlined as an education which occurs whether we attempt it or not. As such, the object of critique for this essay (...) are forms of educational thought which, through fate or design, exclude the passive dimension, either within or outside of formal educational settings. An underlying component of this argument is therefore also that education does occur outside of formal educational settings and that, contra Gert Biesta and his critique of ‘learnification’, we may gain rather than lose something by attending to it as education. (shrink)

Paru pour la premiere fois en 1908, l'essai d'Emile Meyerson Identite et realite demeure aujourd'hui un classique de la philosophie des sciences, dont A. Koyre a salue l'importance. Un premier aspect important de cet ouvrage concerne la conception et le statut meme de la science (physique, biologie, etc.). Meyerson developpe une critique profonde de la conception positiviste de la science formulee par Auguste Comte, en montrant l'impossibilite de penser des rapports phenomenaux sans leur presupposer des supports: la legalite ne peut (...) pas se resoudre dans la causalite. C'est la raison pour laquelle l'auteur s'efforce de definir un substantialisme renouvele, apte a echapper aux critiques positivistes. L'autre these essentielle de cet essai se rapporte bien entendu au celebre concept de causalite scientifique : le concept de legalite mis en jeu dans la conception positiviste de la science ne suffit pas, car la science cherche egalement a expliquer les phenomenes; et c'est precisement cette explication, qui consiste dans l'identification de l'antecedent au conequent, que l'auteur appelle la causalite scientifique, et qu'il distingue et oppose a la causalite theologique aussi bien qu'a la causalite efficiente. (shrink)

Emile Durkheim's "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale," written in 1899 during the Dreyfus Affair in France, is introduced. The introduction summarizes the principal contributions that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" makes to the sociology of anti-Semitism, relates those contributions to Durkheim's broader theoretical assumptions and concerns, situates his analysis of anti-Semitism in its social and historical context, contrasts it to other analyses of anti-Semitism (Marxist and Zionist) that were prominent in Durkheim's time, indicates some of the revisions and additions that a fuller (...) and more complete Durkheimian theory of anti-Semitism would entail, and highlights the significance of Durkheim's ideas for the contemporary study of ethnic and racial antagonism. While noting the limitations of Durkheim's analysis, the introduction concludes that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" has sadly regained its relevance in the light of a revival of anti-Semitism at the turn of the millennium. (shrink)

“Scalar implicatures” is a phrase used to refer to some inferences arising from the competition between alternatives: typically, “Mary read some of the books” ends up conveying that Mary did not read all books, because one could have said “Mary read all books”. The so-called grammatical theory argues that these inferences obtain from the application of a covert operator \, which not only has the capability to negate alternative sentences, but also the capability to be embedded within sentences under other (...) linguistic operators, i.e. \ has the potential to add to the meaning of expressions, the negation of their alternatives. This view typically seeks support from the existence of readings that could not be explained without the extra-capability of \ to occur in embedded positions. However, if some embedded positions seem to be accessible to \, not all conceivable positions that \ could occupy yield sensible results. In short: the \ approach is powerful, maybe too powerful. Various approaches based on logical strength and monotonicity have been proposed to justify on principled grounds the limited distribution of \; these approaches are mostly based on a comparison between possible parses, and considerations of monotonicity. We propose a new constraint based instead on “connectedness”, ruling out parses because of inherent problems their outcome may raise. Connectedness is a sister notion of monotonicity, which has been recruited to explain certain lexical restrictions on nouns, adjectives and more recently quantifiers; we propose here that connectedness could play a similar role at the level of propositional meanings. (shrink)

Selections from Durkheim's writings focus on the nature of his conception of society and its moral context.

D’une double formation de naturaliste et de philosophe, Émile Callot a consacré une partie de ses travaux à étudier les relations entre ces deux disciplines : à les définir d’abord, à les légitimer ensuite et, enfin, à les constater dans diverses œuvres de savants et de philosophes. Dans cet esprit, il commença par dresser un tableau de la Renaissance des sciences de la vie au XVIe siècle, où il fit apparaître le caractère novateur des premiers Naturalistes européens. Il s’attacha ensuite (...) à déterminer cet esprit et cet objet d’une façon théorique dans sa "Philosophie biologique", et d’une façon historique dans son "Histoire de la philosophie biologique par les textes". C’est également dans le contexte historique, qu’il décrivit la Philosophie de la vie au XVIIIe siècle, visant à dégager les idées biologiques chez des auteurs aussi différents que d’Holbach, Montesquieu et Linné. Dans cette voie, il mit en valeur Maupertuis, le savant et le philosophe, en donnant de cet auteur une étude où l’œuvre est analysée et illustrée par les extraits les plus significatifs. Enfin, il consacra à la Philosophie biologique de Cournot une monographie, où il souligna la part déterminante du vitalisme dans la pensée de cet auteur. C’est de la même façon que, dans sa Philosophie biologique de Gœthe, Émile Callot cherche, à partir des travaux scientifiques de Gœthe, à dégager les grandes lignes de sa méthode et les principes directeurs de sa conception du monde vivant. Mais ce monde prend place dans la Nature, dont le philosophe et l’artiste se sont fait également les interprètes. Il convenait donc, après l’analyse de ce domaine restreint, de montrer comment celui-ci se situe dans la vision globale et unificatrice de la pensée et de la sensibilité gœthéennes. Aussi, cet ouvrage apporte-t-il une contribution importante, non seulement à l’étude des idées biologiques qui eurent cours à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, mais encore à une compréhension mieux informée de cet esprit génial. (shrink)

Emile Meyerson's writings on the philosophy of science are a rich source of ideas and information concerning many philosophical and historical aspects of the development of modem science. Meyerson's works are not widely read or cited today by philosophers or even philosophers of science, in part because they have long been out of print and are often not available even in research libraries. There are additional chevaux de!rise for all but the hardiest scholars: Meyerson's books are written in French (and (...) do not all exist in English versions) and deal with the subject matter of science - ideas or concepts, laws or principles, theories - and epis temological questions rather than today's more fashionable topics of the social matrix and external influences on science with the concomitant neglect of the intellectual content of science. Born in Lublin, Poland, in 1859, Meyerson received most of his education in Germany, where he studied from the age of 12 to 23, preparing himself for a career in chemistry.! He moved to Paris in 1882, where he began a career as an industrial chemist. Changing his profession, he then worked for a time as the foreign news editor of the HAVAS News Agency in Paris. In 1898 he joined the agency established by Edmond Rothschild that had as its purpose the settling of Jews in Palestine and became the Director of the Jewish Colonization Association for Europe and Asia Minor. These activities represent Meyerson's formal career. (shrink)

Résumé – Les diverses définitions communément admises pour caractériser le raisonnement par analogic sont tout d'abord discutées et critiquées – ceci relativement aux sciences biologiques. Puis, à propos notamment de la taxomonie, de la cytologie et de la physiologie, l'importance relative de l'analogie est commentée à l'aide de quelques exemples. Il est ensuite fait état de l'analogie‐conclusion, de l'analogie‐hypothèse et de l'analogie‐invention – divers aspects du raisonnement analogique, qui ont joué un rôle essentiel dans les découvertes les plus marquantes de (...) la biologie descriptive et dans la biologie expérimentale de ces dernières années. (shrink)

This article proceeds from a consideration of what John Baldacchino calls ‘viable ignorance’, attempting to take leave from the critical and pedagogical obligations of certain elements of Barbara Johnson's ‘positive ignorance’. It considers Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard and the composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen's reflections on modes of experience, and the cultivation of complementary dispositions, where the knowing, egocentric subject is transformed into, or undermined as, what Nietzsche calls ‘a medium of overpowering forces’. The disposition itself is outlined through close readings of (...) key elements of Nietzsche's notebooks, Lyotard's final chapter of Libidinal Economy (1993), and Stockhausen's lecture, ‘Intuitive Music’ (1971) and developed through supplemental practice-as-research activity in sound. The intention of this paper is to explore the space of aesthetic ignorance as committedly as possible, without reverting constantly to positive ignorance. (shrink)

Through readings of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology and 'The Age of Hegel', attention is given to two of the problematic types of relationships that philosophy can have with education. These engagements, alongside a reading of 'The Antinomies of the Philosophical Discipline: Letter Preface', show how Derrida’s thought can prescribe no educational programme and instead troubles educational proclamations and certainties. Throughout his life, Derrida negotiated his relationships to the educational systems and institutions to which he was responsible, these negotiations, though, were (...) not indicative of a belief in any ontologically grounded educational truth. Quite to the contrary, as I will claim, Derrida’s thought is remarkable for its deflation of the myth, stretching at least as far back to Plato’s Republic, that philosophy can discover and prescribe the practical means for its own educational good. The argument presented in this article is that Derrida’s thought is particularly fertile when it comes to educational reflection precisely because it does not close down, presuppose, or prescribe, and that these characteristics also allow for generative contradictions in Derrida's educational and philosophical thought and practice. (shrink)

Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhausen (...) concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith—and the Christian faith—exist after the Holocaust? “An ‘epoch-making’ autobiography.”—Arnold Ages, _Jewish Tribune_. (shrink)