Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Most philosophers adopt an etiological conception of functions, but not one that uniformly explains the functions attributed to material entities irrespective of whether they are natural or man-made. Here, I investigate the widespread idea that a combination of the two current etiological theories, SEL and INT, can offer a satisfactory account of the proper functions of both organisms and artifacts.. Making explicit what a realist theory of function supposes, I first show that SEL offers a realist theory of biological functions (...) in which these are objective properties of a peculiar sort. I argue next that an artifact function demonstrates the same objective nature as a biological function when it is accounted for by SEL, but not when it is accounted for by INT. I explain why a dual theory of artifact functions admitting both INT and SEL functions is to be dismissed. I establish that neither INT nor SEL alone can account for all artifact functions. Drawing the conclusion that we need a new etiological theory of function, I show how one can overcome the apparent inevitability of INT for some artifact functions. Finally, I outline a new etiological theory of functions that applies equally to biological entities and to artifacts. (shrink)

Beverly Beckham writes in the Boston Globe in praise of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice: “You have to get this book. … I couldn’t put it down. …” After I read Still Alice, a book of fiction about an accomplished Harvard professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, I too wanted to tell everyone to get this book, but not because “I couldn’t put it down.” The first time I read it, I put it down several times to cry. It was too painful (...) to read in one stretch. Years back, my mother, Gloria Baylis,1 had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, and recently there had been findings suggestive of an atypical presentation of Alzheimer’s disease. The story of Alice Howland, the Alice of Still Alice, was both too... (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is no compelling therapeutic ‘need’ for human nuclear genome transfer to prevent mitochondrial diseases caused by mtDNA mutations. At most there is a strong interest in this technology on the part of some women and couples at risk of having children with mitochondrial disease, and perhaps also a ‘want’ on the part of some researchers who see the technology as a useful precedent – one that provides them with ‘a quiet way station’ in (...) which to refine the micromanipulations techniques essential for other human germline interventions and human cloning. In advance of this argument, I review basic information about mitochondrial disease and novel genetic strategies to prevent the transmission of mutated mitochondria. Next, I address common features of contemporary debates and discussions about so-called mitochondrial replacement. First, I contest the cliché that science-and-technology is fast outpacing ethics. Second, I dispute the accuracy of the term ‘mitochondrial replacement’. Third, I provide a sustained critique of the purported ‘need’ for genetically-related children. In closing, I call into question the mainly liberal defense of human nuclear genome transfer. I suggest an alternative frame of reference that pays particular attention to issues of social justice. I conclude that our limited resources should be carefully expended in pursuit of the common good, which does not include pandering to acquired desires. (shrink)

Suddenly, COVID-19 has changed the world and the way people work. Companies had to accelerate something they knew was imminent in the future, but not immediate and extremely humongous. This situation poses a huge challenge for companies to survive and thrive in this complex business environment and for employees, who must adapt to this new way of working. An effective e-leadership, which promotes companies’ adaptability, is needed. This study investigates the existing knowledge on teleworking and e-leadership; and analyzes the supposed (...) challenges. The literature review shows that companies with effective e-leadership can view teleworking as an opportunity. It is advantageous for not only companies’ productivity but also the environment and people who work remotely. However, a traditional or no leadership can result in some risks. Thriving in remote work environments implies that managers must adjust the companies’ structure, making them less hierarchical, and developing new abilities to establish a strong and trustworthy relationship with their employees to maintain their competitiveness, while retaining a genuine concern for their employees’ well-being. Similarly, successful e-leadership must be able to consolidate and lead effective virtual teams to accomplish organizational goals. This study contributes to the literature and leaders during the pandemic. (shrink)

Le jeune Heidegger, dont la lecture principale demeura pendant de longues années les Recherches logiques de Husserl, a consacré ses premiers travaux aux problèmes logiques. Sa Dissertation de 1914 analyse les théories du jugement de cinq logiciens contemporains, Wundt, Maier, Brentano, Marty et Lipps qui ont en commun de demeurer à l'intérieur du psychologisme, c'est-à-dire de considérer le jugement comme un acte psychique au lieu de le situer, comme le fait Husserl, dans la sphère logique du sens. C'est sur cette (...) notion de sens que le jeune Heidegger fait porter ses questions et c'est l'analyse de sa structure relationnelle qui lui permet, en s'appuyant sur la théorie de la validité de Lotze et à la suite de Lask et de sa Théorie du jugement de 1912, d'éclairer décisivement la nature proprement logique du jugement. The young Heidegger, whose main reading remained during many years Husserl's Logical Investigations, dedicated his first works to logical problems. His Dissertation analyses the theories of judgement of five contemporary logicians, Wundt, Maier, Brentano, Marty, and Lipps, who share the same psychologist attitude, which means that they consider judgment as a psychological act instead of situating it in the logical sphere of sense, as does Husserl. The young Heidegger concentrates his questions on this notion of sense and through the analysis of its relational structure, with the help of Lotze's theory of validity and in following the indications given by Lask in his book of 1912 on The Theory of Judgment, he undertakes a decisive elucidation of the properly logical nature of judgment. (shrink)

À la fin du XIXe siècle, la psychologie se trouve confrontée à un intérêt croissant, des savants comme du grand public, pour la question de la survivance de l’esprit. Pendant quelques années, les psychologues vont collaborer avec ceux, spiritualistes et spirites, qui affirment le pouvoir de l’esprit sur la matière. Convaincus qu’elles devraient permettre de résoudre cette question alors incontestablement scientifique, ils s’adonnent à quelques expériences (tables tournantes, production d’ectoplasmes, télépathie) qui vont finalement apporter plus de scandale que de progrès (...) positif. Pour sauvegarder la scientificité positiviste de leur discipline, ils vont, en quelques années et à l’occasion principalement des congrès internationaux, instaurer une frontière officielle entre la psychologie et le spiritisme, quitte à ce que certains d’entre eux s’autorisent à la franchir clandestinement. (shrink)

We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...) technologies. (shrink)

In September 2007, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in the United Kingdom concluded that "there is no fundamental reason to prevent cytoplasmic hybrid research . . . this area of research can, with caution and careful scrutiny, be permitted." Later, in January 2008, HFEA issued two research licenses to create humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos from which stem cells could be derived. This article critically examines the public consultation process that preceded these decisions, concluding that the process was flawed (...) and demonstrating how the HFEA documents summarizing the findings of the public consultation process misrepresent the public's contributions to this policymaking initiative. (shrink)

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's (...) book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures. (shrink)

Given a model-complete theory of topological fields, we considered its generic differential expansions and under a certain hypothesis of largeness, we axiomatised the class of existentially closed ones. Here we show that a density result for definable types over definably closed subsets in such differential topological fields. Then we show two transfer results, one on the VC-density and the other one, on the combinatorial property NTP2.

This work was supported, in part, by a Stem Cell Network grant to Françoise Baylis and Jason Scott Robert and a CIHR grant to Françoise Baylis. We sincerely thank Alan Fine, Rich Campbell, Cynthia Cohen, and Tim Krahn for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also owed to Tim Krahn for his research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Department of Bioethics and the Novel Tech Ethics research team. (...) We thank the participants at each of these meetings for their helpful comments. (shrink)

La lutte contre la Covid a donné à l’Europe un premier élan fédéral. Le second est provoqué par le bruit des bottes russes en Ukraine. L’Union réagit par des sanctions sans précédent contre la Russie, en particulier en diminuant drastiquement ses approvisionnements en gaz. L’Allemagne en est la première perdante. La combinaison d’intérêts économiques divergents et la tradition allemande de l’Ostpolitik approfondissent les divergences entre la France et l’Allemagne. La France affirme la souveraineté stratégique européenne ; l’Allemagne considère l’alliance avec (...) les États-Unis incontournable. Elle décide de porter le projet de « bouclier antimissile européen » avec la plupart des pays de l’Est, au moyen de technologies américaines et israéliennes, ce qui crispe la France. La question de l’envoi possible de troupes en Ukraine achève de détériorer le tandem franco-allemand. L’Europe est entrée dans une nouvelle ère : son centre de gravité se déplace vers l’est. L’élargissement qui se profile appelle à un saut fédéral. (shrink)

The primary objective of The Health Care Ethics Con sultant is to focus attention on an immediate practical problem: the role and responsibilities, the education and training, and the certification and accreditation of health care ethics consultants. The principal questions addressed in this book include: Who should be considered health care ethics consultants? Whom should they advise? What should be their responsi bilities and what kind of training should they have? Should there be some kind of accreditation or certification program (...) to ensure that those who call themselves ethics consultants are in fact qualified to advise, consult, research, and write in health care ethics? The distinguished authors ofthese articles are persons with diverse backgrounds, interests, presumptions, and val ues. Not surprisingly, therefore, diverse responses have emerged to the questions posed. Though the book's chapters are individually authored, they are informed by the group discussions that went on during active workshop sessions, and by knowledge of the contributions of others. All of the chapters meaningfully represent their consensus. This is not to say that there were no disagreements regarding specific details, but rather that there were no fundamental objections on the book's basic content among a panel of authors who share basic premises regarding the role, responsibilities, education, and certifica tion of health care ethics consultants. (shrink)

The Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation, recently issued by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), include a number of substantive revisions. Significant changes include: (1) the bifurcation of ‘Category 3 Prohibited research activities’ in the 2016 Guidelines into ‘Category 3A Research activities currently not permitted’ and ‘Category 3B Prohibited research activities’ in the 2021 guidelines and (2) the move of heritable human genome editing research out of the ‘prohibited’ category and into the ‘currently not permitted’ (...) category. These changes are noteworthy because of the absence of a clear demarcation line between the two categories insofar as, by definition, that which is ‘prohibited’ is ‘currently not permitted’, and vice versa. Permanence is not part of the definition of ‘prohibition’. In principle, a prohibition can be rescinded at any time. This begs the question ‘Why make a policy change that has no apparent practical effect?’ One hypothesis is that the recategorisation of specific ‘prohibited’ research activities as ‘currently not permitted’ is meant to seed intuitions about which prohibited research activities should ‘soon’ be permitted subject to specialised scientific and ethics review and approval. (shrink)

In January 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority issued two 1-year licenses for cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research. This article situates the HFEA's decision in its wider scientific and political context in which, until quite recently, the debate about human embryonic stem cell research has focused narrowly on the moral status of the developing human embryo. Next, ethical arguments against crossing species boundaries with humans are canvassed. Finally, a new argument about the risks of harm to women egg providers resulting (...) from research involving the creation of humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos is elaborated. Taken together these ethical concerns about the moral status of the human embryo, about the ethics of crossing species boundaries with humans, and about the potential harms to women, provide good reason to eschew humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research in favor of less ethically controversial means to the laudable end of successful regenerative medicine. (shrink)

The article begins with Heidegger’s familiar question, Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? Yet the piece takes far more seriously than Heidegger does the enigmatic choice that Nietzsche makes for his own principal spokesperson, his own mask. Why, for the philosopher who wills the revaluation of all values, the ancient Persian prophet? Why, for the anti moralist, the ancient founder of a moral worldview?

The theory of immediate pairs of Henselian valued fields, with a given residual theory (of characteristic zero) and a given theory of valuation group (nonzero), is undecidable and has 2ℵ0 completions.

Ce livre raconte l’engagement dans l’éducation ouvrière de Fannia Mary Cohn (1885-1962), émigrée russe à New York, elle-même ouvrière dans l’industrie du textile puis leader syndicale. Ce n’est pas une biographie à proprement parler, car toutes les périodes de sa vie ne sont pas abordées, en revanche certains fragments de sa vie sont étudiés en profondeur. Centré principalement sur les années 1920 aux États-Unis, l’ouvrage dresse un panorama de l’histoire de l’éducation ouvrière, à la fois éd...

Appuyé sur un document, cet article esquisse l’histoire d’une organisation mal connue et éphémère : « le Bureau de liaison issu de la rencontre internationale des femmes 1960 », rencontre dont l’initiative revient à la Fédération démocratique internationale des femmes. Il explicite également le rôle qu’y a joué la militante française Marguerite Thibert, animé de l’espoir de dépasser la guerre froide. Mais la neutralité et l’équilibre politiques souhaités pour parler au nom de toutes les femmes se heurtent aux tensions internationales (...) qui alimentent, d’un côté, l’anticommunisme et, de l’autre, des stratégies d’instrumentalisation des solidarités. (shrink)

How, asks Françoise Dastur, can philosophy account for the sudden happening and the factuality of the event? Dastur asks how phenomenology, in particular the work of Heidegger, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, may be interpreted as offering such an account. She argues that the “paradoxical capacity of expecting surprise is always in question in phenomenology,” and for this reason, she concludes, “We should not oppose phenomenology and the thinking of the event. We should connect them; openness to phenomena must be identified (...) with openness to unpredictability.” The article offers reflections in these terms on a phenomenology of birth. (shrink)

Telling Time takes up Heidegger's ideas of a "phenomenological chronology" in an attempt to pose the question of the possibility of a phenomenological language that would be given over to the "temporality of being" and the finitude of existence. The book combines a discussion of approaches to language in the philosophical tradition with readings of Husserl on temporality and the early and late texts of Heidegger's on logic, truth and the nature of language. As well as Heidegger's "deconstruction" of logic (...) and metaphysics Dastur's work is informed by Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence and Nietzschean genealogy. Appealing as much to Humboldt's philosophy of language as to Hölderlin's poetic thought, the book illuminates the eminently dialectical structure of speech and its essential connection with mortality. (shrink)

Aucune discussion d'ensemble des ecrits de Lyotard sur l'art n'avait ete entreprise. Or sa reflexion sur les arts - musique, cinema, peinture surtout - est une part essentielle de son oeuvre, comme en temoignent les analyses proposees dans Discours, figure, Que peindre?, Moralites postmodernes, L'Inhumain et Les Ecrits sur l'art contemporain et les artistes. Moins remarque pourtant est le fait que Lyotard a collabore avec des peintres (Monory, Guiffrey, Adami, Sam Francis, Appel, Buren, etc). Il a ete commissaire d'une exposition (...) en 1985 qui a fait date, " Les Immateriaux ", au Centre Georges-Pompidou. Plusieurs textes du volume ainsi qu'un entretien inedit avec Bernard Blistene sont consacres a cette manifestation. Pour ce livre Francoise Coblence et Michel Enaudeau ont sollicite non seulement des lecteurs avertis de Lyotard (Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jean-Michel Rey, Jean-Loup Thebaud, Herman Parret, Anne Cauquelin, Gerald Sfez, Jean-Claude Rolland, Claudine Eizykman et Guy Fihman, Jean-Francois Nordmann, Jean-Patrice Courtois), mais aussi de plus jeunes chercheurs (Gaelle Bernard, Frederic Fruteau de Laclos, Claire Pages, Jerome Glicenstein, Maud Pouradier, Evelyne Toussaint) qui decouvrent pour leur propre compte le travail de Lyotard sur les arts. Les contributions rassemblees analysent les concepts forges par Lyotard, tels que " figural ", "libidinal ", " sublime ", " immateriau ", " matiere ", " impresentable " " affect ", " ecriture ". A travers eux, cette pensee de l'art veut rompre avec l'esthetique au sens academique du terme pour voir ou entendre dans les oeuvres l'evenement de la couleur ou du son. C'est donc bien d'un enjeu " ontologique " qu'il y va : l'art est seul a nous presenter la frappe sensible de l'etre. (shrink)

Fragments of painted plaster found in the destruction layer of three first floor rooms in the House of Seals and of one first floor room of the House of the Sword had broken from the ceiling. They allow the restoration of the schema in the room of the House of the Sword and of two of the rooms in the House of Seals, the latter in colour. Composed of bands surrounding a quadrangular field, these décorations, evoking carpets stretched on the (...) ceiling, are richer (costly pigments, gold leaf) and more complex (some fifteen motifs) than those in tombs of the same period, which adopted the same « carpet » composition and which borrowed from the same repertoire, often confirmed by the textiles. Since we know of no other ceiling decoration in habitation rooms, it is unwise to contrast the exuberance of these ceilings with the tomb ceilings. The room that could not be restored had moreover a much more perfunctory decoration. (shrink)

I would like to show how with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, we have to do with three different ways of understanding the experience of the other. For Sartre it is a visual experience, the experience of being looked at by the other, so that the experience of the other is understood as a confrontation; for Merleau-Ponty, the experience of the other necessarily implies coexistence and what he calls intercorporeality, so that for him the other is never to be found in (...) front, but instead beside me, in reciprocity with me; for Levinas, the experience of the other is the experience of a non-reciprocity, of an assymetrical relation, because the experience of the other is for him an ethical and not an ontological experience, and because this experience of the face of the other is the experience of a speaking and not in the first place corporeal presence. There are consequently three different ways of finding an access to the other : the look for Sartre, intercorporeality for Merleau-Ponty and the face for Levinas. (shrink)

The object of the paper is the attempt at retracing Heidegger’s conception of the relation of time and being from his major work “Being and Time” to the lecture he gave in 1962 on “Time and Being.” In order to explain the transformation of Heidegger’s thinking between 1927 and 1962, the emphasis is put on the new understanding of the oblivion of Being as belonging to the essence of Being itself, as well as on the analysis of the double meaning, (...) temporal and ontological of presence and on Ereignis, the “event of appropriation,” which is the new name given of the relation between man and Being. (shrink)