Like many interested in the gift, I have to confess to having always experienced a certain attraction for methodological individualism. Through its way of approaching social actors, methodological individualism introduces the actor's concern: what are the sound principles which account for the behaviour of the actors that are observed? This is the question which individualism compels us constantly to ask. Admittedly, its response is almost always the same: self-interest. As R.H. Frank wrote: Most [economists’] texts mention at the outset that (...) our rational choice model takes peoples’ tastes as given. They may be altruists, sadists, masochists; or they may be concerned solely with advancing their own material interests. But having said that, most texts then proceed to ignore all motives other than material self-interest.(Frank, 1994, p. xxiii). (shrink)

This article describes the conceptual framework within which knowledge about Africa was legitimized in eighteenth-century French philosophy. The article traces a shift or rupture in this conceptual framework which, at the end of the eighteenth century, led to the emergence of new conditions for knowledge legitimation that altered Europe's perception of Africa. The article examines these two conceptual frameworks within the context of a discussion of the social theory of the time, which categorized Africans first as savages, and then, with (...) the advent of our modern "style of reasoning," as primitives. The argument used to demonstrate this change in categorizations is historical. The greater part of the article analyzes in detail the principal social theory of Enlightenment philosophy, the stadial theory of society, with the aim of demonstrating how it determined what could be affirmed about Africa. The shift in the perception of Africans from savages to primitives involved an epistemological change in how societies were grasped. The article provides a greater understanding of the constitution of Africa as a cognitive construct, which is not only of theoretical concern; this construct shaped Europe's intervention in Africa, and continues to influence what we believe Africa is and should become. (shrink)

The anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in his famous exploration of the gift in "primitive" and archaic societies, showed that the essential aspect of the exchange of presents involved the establishment of a social tie that bound the parties together above and beyond any material value of the objects exchanged. He argued that these intangible mutual "debts" constituted the social fabric. Godbout and Caillé show that, contrary to the modern assumption that societies function on the basis of market exchange and the (...) pursuit of self-interest, the gift still constitutes the foundation of our social fabric. The authors describe the gift not as an object but as a social connection, perhaps the most important social connection because it creates a sense of obligation to respond in kind. They examine the gift in a broad range of cases such as blood and organ donation; volunteer work; the bonds between friends, couples, and family; Santa Claus; the interaction between performers and their audience; and the relation of the artist to society. Written in an engaging manner, The World of the Gift will appeal to anyone who is interested in how the world really operates. (shrink)

The author rereads Mauss’ “Essay on the Gift” to focus on the essential differences between the archaic gift and the modern gift, the first of which is the separation between people and things. In fact, if in so-called primitive societies the gift is a “total welfare” (religious, economic, social, political), in modern societies the circulation of things becomes autonomous and we find the gift in the sphere of primary ties and, only partially, in those of the market and the state. (...) The paradox of the gift, which Mauss emphasises, is its being a mélange of obligation and freedom: why do we in turn give when we receive something as a gift? This aspect – reciprocating the thing received – in Māori society is referred to as “hau” and contains the identity of the giver: the gift encloses, in a way, the self of the giver. For Mauss, even in modern society, presenting something to someone implies presenting something of the Self. Even when it comes to the gift between strangers, such as the gift of blood or the gift of organs, it expresses the social identity of the giver and the recipient, since it can be perceived as society’s recognition of a general gift or of the recipient’s belonging to this society. (shrink)

It is evident to anyone who is at all familiar with the documents and witnesses of the times that Aztec society at the time of the discovery of Mexico appears to be intensely religious, that all public and private life was invaded, so to speak, by rites and dominated by beliefs. But what exactly was the place of religion and its ministrants in the hierarchy of powers? To what degree was the priestly function interwoven with that of government and the (...) administration of the city? Can the regime of ancient Mexico be described as a theocracy? To answer these questions, it is of no small use, first, to go back to the period preceding the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Studies on transposable elements of the Ac family have led to different models for excision gap repair in either plants or Drosophila. Excision products generated by the plant transposable elements Ac and Tam3 imply a more or less straightforward ligation of broken ends; excision products of the Drosophila P element indicate the involvement of ‘double‐strand break’ (DSB) repair. Recent findings that excision products of Ac and Tam3 can also contain traces of the element ends indicate, however, that DSB repair might (...) be an alternative repair mechanism in plants. A functional DSB repair mechanism in plants can also be deduced from the observed rapid increases of Ac copy number during plant development and from the involvement of Ac in the generation of internal Ac deletions. On the other hand, alternative repair mechanisms may also be functional in Drosophila, because some of the ‘footprints’ generated upon P excision can be explained by a mechanism that has been postulated for excision gap repair in plants. It is concluded that plants and Drosophila can use similar repair mechanisms, but that the predominance of a certain repair mechanism is determined by the host. (shrink)

When I decided to explore the question of Witz, or wit, with you this year, I undertook a small enquiry. It will come as no surprise at all that I began by questioning a poet. This is a poet who introduces the dimension of an especially playful wit that runs through his work, as much in his prose as in more poetic forms, and which he brings into play even when he happens to be talking about mathematics, for he is (...) also a mathematician. I am referring to Raymond Queneau. While we were exchanging our first remarks on the matter he told me a joke. It’s a joke about exams, about the university entrance exams, if you like. We have a candidate and we have an examiner. – “Tell me”, says the examiner, “about the battle of Marengo.” The candidate pauses for a moment, with a dreamy air. “The battle of Marengo...? Bodies everywhere! It’s terrible... Wounded everywhere! It’s horrible...” “But”, says the examiner, “Can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?” The candidate thinks for a moment, then replies, “A horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.” The examiner, surprised, seeks to test him a little further and says, “In that case, can you tell me about the battle of Fontenoy?” “Oh!” says the candidate, “a horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.” The examiner, strategically, asked the candidate to talk about the battle of Trafalgar. The candidate replies, “Dead everywhere! A blood bath.... Wounded everywhere! Hundreds of them....” “But my good man, can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?” “A horse...” “Excuse me, I would have you note that the battle of Trafalgar is a naval battle.” “Whoah! Whoah!” says the candidate. “Back up, Neddy!” The value of this joke is, to my mind, that it enables us to decompose, I believe, what is at stake in a witticism. (Extract from Chapter VI). (shrink)

Résumé Cette question pointe vers des domaines encore mal définis du contexte des théologies contemporaines. Ce contexte est à peine esquissé : l’essai se concentre sur l’état classique de la théologie telle qu’elle est entendue communément, depuis son héritage patristique mâle et clérical. L’interrogation sonde ce corpus à l’aide des propositions faites par Henri Meschonnic et par Jacques Derrida.The title of this paper directs our attention towards as-yet uncharted domains in contemporary theology. However, this aspect of the paper is (...) only sketched out, as it is primarily concerned with theology as it is commonly understood, that is, the legacy of the male, clerical Fathers. This corpus is examined using propositions put forth by Henri Meschonnic and by Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

t. 1. Les années françaises, 1927-1940 -- t. 2. Les années américaines, 1941-1961.

Y a-t-il un art communiste? was given as a talk at the Grand Palais in Paris on 10 April 2019 on the occasion of a special exhibition, Red: Art and Utopia in the Land of the Soviets (Rouge: Art et utopie au pays des Soviets). The exhibition ran from 20 March 2019 to 1 July 2019. Red displayed works produced in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917 to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. This covers early experiments (...) by avant-garde artists such as Vladimir Mayokovsky and Kazimir Malevich, the grand-scale construction of public monuments, and the mass-produced art of Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Like many of Jacques Rancière’s recent publications on art, this article closely engages the material of its source exhibit, and, in it, he addresses the full range of art staged by the Grand Palais, offering a direct and provocative confrontation with the question of whether there can be a communist art. (shrink)

This text proposes an evaluation of what remains of cinema in the age of the digital, and of an ever increased circulation between movie theatres and museums. Much has changed in the social and aesthetic status of cinema, at least since the appearance of video art; but cinema, in general, has not disappeared, quite to the contrary, and remains a very important social practice. Two important factors, however, have undergone deep changes: 1°, film no longer has the exclusivity of the (...) moving image, which it has to share with television and contemporary art; 2°, the recent hegemony of the digital image has driven film toward a massive return to the “Méliès path” of film art, that of a direct intervention on the film image. The contention here is that, though the art of film is obviously not what it was, it has kept a number of qualities which still make it the positive reference for any thinking of the moving image in general. The article puts forward three kinds of reasons to support this argument: 1°, cinema has invented a specific way to see moving images, resting on what is termed here the production of a gaze; 2°, time is essential to the film form itself; 3°, film is the only art which has developed an aesthetic of the encounter (with the real) – and the co-presence of these three ranges of value remain absolutely specific. (shrink)

The animal that therefore I am (more to follow) -- But as for me, who am I (following)? -- And say the animal responded -- I don't know why we are doing this.

Cet article est une lecture critique de l'ouvrage de Catherine Malabou L'avenir de Hegel. Plasticité. Temporalité. Dialectique (Vrin, 1996) selon lequel le concept hégélien de temps excède la signification qu'en a proposée Heidegger. Il y a en fait plusieurs temps dans la pensée spéculative et cette richesse du temps peut être nommée sa plasticité (Plaztizitàt) : formation de l'événement, explosion de l'inattendu, avenir ou « voir venir » . Tout en saluant la pertinence et la nouveauté de cette interprétation, Derrida (...) se demande si l'on peut jamais voir venir ce qui vient. L'avenir véritable n'est-il pas un adieu non dialectisable, partant non plastique, à tout processus de formation, d'anticipation, de deuil? Cet adieu ne demeure-t-il pas l'impensé de la philosophie hégélienne ? This paper is a critical reading of Catherine Malabou's book on the future of Hegel. (Vrin, 1996) according to which the Hegelian notion of time goes much further beyond the meaning that had been suggested by Heidegger. There are in fact several times within the spéculative thought and such a wealth oftime may be termed plasticity (Plaztizitàt) : the surge of an event, the explosion of the unexpected, the future, or the idea of what is bound to corne. Whilst at the same time acknowledging the relevance and the newness of such an interprétation, Derrida questions whether one is ever able to perceive what is bound to corne. Isn't the true future an undialectizable and non plastic farewell to any kind of conception, anticipation and mourning process ? Doesn't such a farewell remain what is left unthought in Hegelian philosophy ? (shrink)

Thus Spain has two frontiers: one bordering on the region of the Infidels, the other with the Ocean.Ibn Hauqal, Kitab Surat al-Ard (t. l, p. 108)A crusading spirit colors the vision that most European historians, especially the Spanish, have of the Iberian peninsula's past. The classical conception of the Reconquest of the territory invaded by the Moors and redeemed for Christianity at the end of a secular war (in which the legendary figure of El Cid and Ferdinand the Catholic found (...) glory) has been greatly qualified without ever having been abandoned entirely. Leaving aside the modern controversies, we shall try to throw some light upon the origins of the ideology of the “Reconquest”; for it is just that: an ideology whose aim was to justify a certain political action. We can better understand its meaning if we compare it to the two other ideologies then competing for the Iberian peninsula, the Islamic holy war (djihad), and the Judaic eschatological hope linked to the diaspora of the Sephardim. (shrink)

Depuis plusieurs générations, des chrétiens, anticipant quelquefois les ouvertures pratiquées par Vatican II, ont entrepris d'explorer le patrimoine de l'hindouisme. Parallèlement, depuis bientôt deux siècles, des hindous parfois célèbres ont dit comment ils percevaient la figure du Christ ou comprenaient le christianisme. La curiosité suscitée par les premiers contacts s'est-elle émoussée? La séduction du Jésus des évangiles opère-t-elle moins? Quoi qu'il en soit, il peut être salutaire de prendre la mesure d'une certaine indifférence: beaucoup d'hindous ne se montrent guère curieux (...) du christianisme . Bien plus, depuis une trentaine d'années, quelques-uns des porte-parole d'une «hindouité» plus militante diffusent largement des opinions de nature à décevoir ou à blesser le lecteur chrétien. Excessives et injustes, souvent biaisées dans leur base documentaire, ces diatribes n'en reflètent pas moins une perception du christianisme, de son étrangeté au regard hindou.For several generations, Christians, sometimes anticipating the opening created by Vatican II, have been endeavouring to explore the heritage of Hinduism. In parallel and now for nearly two centuries, at times famous Hindus have noted how they perceived the figure of Christ or understood Christianity. Has that curiosity awoken by first contacts been dulled? Has the Jesus of the Gospels become less attractive? Whatever may be the response, it may be fruitful to take the measure of a certain indifference: many Hindus are hardly curious about Christianity . Furthermore, for the last thirty years, some of those speaking for a more militant brand of “Hinduity” have widely expressed opinions that can disappoint or hurt a Christian reader. Although excessive and unjust as well as often biased in their use of documents, these diatribes nonetheless reflect at least a partial perception of Christianity and of its strangeness for a Hindu beholder. (shrink)

Pourquoi les oiseaux chantent-ils, le paon se pavane-t-il? Pourquoi le lion ou le tigre ont-ils une livrée aussi somptueuse? Mais aussi : pourquoi édifie-t-on des monuments sur les places publiques de nos villes? Pourquoi les hommes ressentaient-ils jadis le besoin de s'exhiber en uniformes rutilants sur les champs de bataille? Pourquoi les objets d'usage courant ont-ils le plus souvent été ornementés? Bref, pourquoi cet étalage de formes? A ces questions, on répond le plus souvent par diverses explications utilitaires et fonctionnelles (...) : la vie animale comme la vie humaine seraient régies en dernière instance par l'exigence de la survie et de la conservation. Or un examen sans préjugés montre que le principe d'utilité n'a qu'une validité limitée. Pour des fins purement utilitaires, des moyens réduits auraient largement suffi. Il est donc nécessaire, par fidélité au réel, d'élaborer un horizon élargi où ces laissés-pour-compte éclatants puissent devenir intelligibles sans cesser d'être partiellement énigmatiques. Et s'il y avait, chez l'homme comme dans la vie animale et végétale, une tendance à manifester ce que l'on est, à paraître au lieu de simplement être? La réflexion sur l'apparaître menée dans cet ouvrage a une analogie profonde avec celle qui s'interroge sur le cycle du donner-recevoir-rendre. Car l'une comme l'autre montrent que les formes sociales comme les formes naturelles, comportent une dimension de gratuité et de contingence qui excède tout principe de nécessité et d'utilité. Même si l'on peut s'apercevoir ensuite qu'il existe quelque chose comme une utilité de l'inutile. (shrink)

Si Deleuze suscite la curiosité, voire l'enthousiasme, plus d'un lecteur se trouve désarmé devant la complexité de sa philosophie. Pour appréhender l'oeuvre, cet ouvrage propose deux parcours pas à pas, l'un centré sur la philosophie des années soixante, l'autre prenant le chemin de celle qui par la suite s'écrit avec Félix Guattari. Ainsi s'agira-t-il de guider le lecteur dans une philosophie originale qui propose un dialogue avec l'histoire de la philosophie, mais également avec les sciences humaines, l'art et la science (...) de son temps. Deux chemins, deux visées : arriver à penser sans a priori, vivre de façon moins étriquée. Croire au monde. (shrink)

" De quoi demain sera-t-il fait? " interroge Victor Hugo. Un philosophe, une historienne répondent au long d'un dialogue serré, exigeant. Pourquoi ont-ils choisi de faire ce livre ensemble? En raison d'une longue amitié, au nom d'une histoire commune, en vertu de la qualité d'un débat qui n'a jamais cessé entre eux depuis qu'à la fin des années soixante la jeune étudiante découvrit l'importance de ce penseur de quinze ans son aîné qui, avec d'autres, réveillait l'esprit critique de toute une (...) génération. Si les points de vue sont différents, l'héritage intellectuel est commun. Et c'est cet héritage qu'ils s'attachent à inventorier avant de circonscrire des enjeux majeurs de notre temps : comment penser la différence dans l'universel? La famille a-t-elle encore un avenir? La liberté se réduira-t-elle demain pour l'homme à l'intelligibilité des contraintes qui pèsent sur lui, ou le désir et l'imprévisible auront-ils encore leur place? Que nous dit la souffrance des animaux que nous massacrons? La page de la révolution est-elle définitivement tournée après l'échec du communisme? Est-il envisageable d'en finir une fois pour toutes avec la peine de mort? Quelles seront demain les formes nouvelles de l'antisémitisme et comment les combattre? L'échange s'achève sur un éloge de la psychanalyse, référence commune tout au long du dialogue. (shrink)

A la fin du XIXe siècle, le progrès des sciences et des techniques parut ouvrir une ère de bonheur où l'homme, délivré des tâches serviles et de toutes les superstitions, serait enfin le maître de la nature et de son propre destin. Mais le XXe siècle ne tint pas ces promesses. Certes, le progrès des sciences a fait reculer la mortalité infantile et allonger l'espérance de vie. Les nouveaux moyens de communication ont permis la circulation rapide d'informations autour du globe. (...) Mais notre environnement est menacé par toutes sortes de déchets. La biologie a ouvert des voies effrayantes. l'automatisation a bouleversé le monde du travail. La nécessité de former des scientifiques pour créer et maîtriser ces nouveaux outils a fait reculer la culture classique. De tels changements ont obscurci les repères traditionnels, les esprits sont déroutés, le sens est en crise. A l'entrée du troisième millénaire, l'Académie d'Education et d'Etudes sociales ne pouvait laisser ces questions dans l'ombre : elles sont trop souvent l'objet de débats plus passionnés que fondés et raisonnés. La science menace-t-elle l'homme et son environnement? Pèse-t-elle sur la cohésion sociale et la démocratie? Quelle est sa place dans la culture, à côté de la philosophie? Comment le chrétien se situe-t-il dans ce monde scientifique et technique? Par une étude raisonnée de ces questions, l'AES souhaite délivrer un message d'espoir et de confiance, et contribuer à mettre le développement scientifique et technique au service de l'homme, suivant la parole de l'Ecclésiastique : " Le Très-Haut a donné à l'homme le savoir pour être glorifié dans ses merveilles " (17,8). (shrink)

al-Faylāsūf fī al-mujtamaʻ -- al-Ḥaqīqah wa-al-rifqah al-insānīyah -- Allāh wa-al-ʻilm.

The bulk of Bastiat’s scientific work is contained in Economic Harmonies, a work generally overlooked or underestimated. Thsi paper would contribute to its comprehensive rehabilitation by re-examining and reappraising Bastiat’s theory of value.Bastiat defined value as “the relationship existing between two services that have been exchanged.” He respected the principle of objective or intrinsic value, of materiality or durability, utility, scarcity. “Products” have no value if not traded, and the exchange is not between two products but two services mutually produced, (...) traded and subjectively compared by two persons. The origin of the value is the “effort”, which transforms the gifts of nature, and consists in providing services to others in return for services desired.Bastiat’s criticism of Smith and Say anticipated recent developments in contemporary economics. By stressing the importance of services rather that of products, he laid the groundwork for a new approach to consumer theory. By abandoning the reference to production and concentrating on exchange, he has been joined by some Austrian Economists.However, Bastiat in his eagerness to blunt the socialist criticism of private property, was on a wrong fast in making the prediction that the area of property and value will decrease with the progress in civilization, since the efforts will be smaller and smaller, and the action of Nature will play a larger and larger role. Errare humanum Le talent scientifique de Bastiat s’exprime et s’apprécie dans Les Harmonjes Economiques, oeuvre posthume et injustement méconnue.En 1850, sa théorie de la valeur est d’avant garde. Bastiat réfute les conceptions courantes à l’époque qui rattachent la valeur aux caractéristiques d’un produit, qu’elles soient le travail requis, ou l’utilité ou la rareté. Pour lui la valeur naît de la comparaison subjective entre services échangés par deux individus. “Les services s’échangent contre des services”. L’échange est luimême le résultat d’un “effort”, c’est-àdire d’une action humaine tendant à rapprocher besoins à satisfaire et moyens de les satisfaire. Ainsi Bastiat annonce-t-il à la fois les nouvelles approches de la rationalité du consommateur et la théorie de la création entrepreneuriale et de la subjectivité des Autrichiens.Bastiat a été moins heureux dans sa prospective : pour répondre aux socialistes révoltés par la propriété privée, il diagnostique que le progrès de la civilisation, grâce au génie de l’homme, nous conduira vers moins d’efforts et d’échanges, donc moins de propriété, et plus de dons gratuits offerts par la nature, plus de communauté. Il se jugeait lui-même : Errare humanum... (shrink)

Limit cycles, because they are constituted of a periodic succession of states (discrete or continuous) constitute a good manner to store information. From any points of the state space reached after a perturbation or stimulation of the cognitive system storing this information, one can aim to join through a more or less long return trajectory a precise neighbourhood of the asymptotic trajectory at a specific moment (or a specific place) on the limit cycle, i.e. where the information of interest stands. (...) We propose that the isochronal fibration, initially imagined and described by A. T. Winfree may be an excellent way to connect directly those two locations. Each isochron is indeed the set of points in temporal phase with one single point of the attractor. The characterisation of the isochronal fibration of various dynamical systems is not easy and until now has principally only been done numerically but not analytically. By integrating the homogeneous solutions of the dynamical system we can solve this fibration in the case of the well known anharmonic pendulum. Other isochronal fibration on classical examples such as the van der Pol system and the non-symmetrical PFK limit cycle are obtained numerically and we also provide the first numerical study on 3-dimentional systems like the anharmonic pendulum with a linear relaxation on its third variable and the Lorenz attractor. The empirical approach seems us useful for dealing with the isochronal fibration which could constitute a powerful tool for understanding and controlling the dynamics of biological or biological-inspired systems. (shrink)

With a clear presentation, Ethics: Theory and Practice educates readers about ethical theory and has them apply what they learn to specific classic and contemporary moral problems (lying, cheating, establishing ethical business practices, honoring ethical obligations in medicine, etc.). Jacques P. Thiroux first wrote this text 1977 in order to educate readers about ethical theory and its applications in a way that beginning students could understand. The result was an accessible text that isn't too technical and doesn't plunge into (...) complex readings without sufficient background. The text is fully updated with global issues and non-Western ethical views. Keith W. Krasemann now continues Thiroux's efforts of making Ethical Ideas accesible to students. Besides updating the foundations of the text, Krasemann incoporates new and relevant material, most of which is often unique only to this text. (shrink)