Les professeurs d'espérance n'ont qu'un seul argument : lorsque le danger ou la douleur atteignent un certain degré, la conscience se réveille et l'être humain s'adapte, c'est-à-dire qu'il opte pour des comportements favorables à sa survie. La conscience : un guide sûr! Un argument en apparence très fragile. Il suffit habituellement d'un sourire pour qu'il s'écroule dans le scepticisme ou l'indifférence du jour. Pour avancer sur un tel chemin, il faut croire en la conscience, en la pensée et en la (...) vie, trois formes de lumière qui ont perdu toute recevabilité dans notre monde soi-disant postmoderne. Pourtant, l'auteur soutient ici que le mouvement de la société civile en faveur de l'écologie n'est pas une mode, mais la manifestation d'une conscience en marche, elle-même constitutive de la vie. Solidement enraciné dans la physique contemporaine et l'histoire de la pensée, cet essai propose un fondement métaphysique à l'espérance, un changement de mentalité nécessaire à notre avenir, et une pratique courageuse de la participation à la vie. On trouvera ici un étonnant traité sur la conscience dans son sens le plus large et le plus engageant. (shrink)

We conduct an experiment with 459 nonprofessional investors to examine whether they evaluate companies differently based on management’s stated purpose for undertaking corporate social responsibility activities in the presence versus absence of a company-specific negative event. Specifically, we vary whether or not management intends to achieve financial returns from CSR activities in addition to promoting social good. We address investors’ decision processes by investigating whether their judgments are mediated by perceptions of future cash flows and/or the underlying ethical culture of (...) the company. Results show that absent a negative event, investment judgments are stronger when CSR activities are intended to achieve financial returns, through expectations of higher future cash flows. However, when a negative event occurs, we find a moderating effect of independent assurance of CSR disclosures. When disclosures are not assured, investors prefer CSR undertaken only for societal benefit, mediated by perceptions of a stronger ethical culture. However, when disclosures are assured, ethical culture is viewed similarly regardless of management’s intention to achieve financial returns from CSR activities. This suggests that management’s willingness to obtain independent assurance on disclosures is viewed as a positive ethical signal. Thus, assurance complements disclosure of CSR activities by contributing to protection against the impact of negative events. (shrink)

The integration of ethical analysis in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has proven difficult to implement even though it is explicitly recognized as an important component of such assessments in HTA literature. When compared to the standardized scientific method for systematic reviews in HTA, the diversity of ethical analysis has been characterized as a fundamental barrier to the integration of ethics. The present paper aims to identify the theoretical and practical differences between the approaches underpinning ethical analysis in HTA and clarify (...) the reasons for such diversity. Our systematic review of HTA literature pertaining to the barriers to the integration of ethics in HTA identified nine ethical approaches: Principlism, Casuistry, Coherence Analysis, Wide Reflective Equilibrium, Axiology, the Socratic approach, the Triangular model, Constructive Technology Assessment and Social Shaping of Technology. Citations pertaining to each approach were extracted and categorized according to three constitutive components of ethical argumentation established in a previous research evaluating nanotechnologies: i) the disciplinary foundation that grounds the validity of the ethical evaluation, ii) the characteristics of such evaluation, iii) the operational process involved in applying it to a particular case (i.e., its practical reasoning). This comparison shows that, 1) the difference between these approaches rests primarily on their disciplinary foundation (rooted in philosophy, philosophy/theology, or sociology), 2) their complexity can be observed in the distinct characteristics of ethical evaluation deriving from their differing disciplinary foundation, and 3) although four different types of operationalization procedure were identified, little information was available in regards to the practical reasoning associated with these approaches. (shrink)

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has shed more light on the difficulty of making health care decisions integrating scientific knowledge and values associated to life and death issues, human suffering, quality of life, economic losses, liberty of movement, etc. But the difficulties related to health care decisions and the use of innovative drugs or technologies are not new, and many countries have created agencies that have the mandate to evaluate new technologies in health care. Health Technological Assessment (HTA) reports’ aim is (...) to guide the decision makers in these difficult matters. There are two ethical components in HTA. The first is the report’s presentation of an ethical evaluation of the technology. The second is the value-ladenness of the HTA decision-making process itself. When implicit value judgments are not elicited, the justification of the final decision cannot be transparent. The present paper aims to identify and elicit the implicit value-judgments related to each step of the HTA process. This research is grounded on an applied ethics decision-making paradigm based on the role of value judgments in the decision-making process. The first part discusses two different approaches to values and value judgments in HTA. In the second part, citations mentioning value judgments extracted from a systematic review on the integration of ethics into HTA were categorized to elicit the value judgments and their criteria for each different HTA decision-making steps. The results show that there are 18 decision-making steps in the HTA process where 23 implicit value-judgments can be recognized. The range of these value judgments encompasses the whole HTA process: from the initial request, the presenting of the principal issues, to the final report’s dissemination. Since stakeholders need to understand which value judgments the conclusion of a report relies on, eliciting the implicit value judgments in the HTA decision-making process should yield more transparency. (shrink)

Nous voulons mieux comprendre les lois circonscrivant le rôle social de l’Évaluation des technologies en santé (ETS) et les raisons empêchant l’inclusion de l’éthique en ETS. Nous avons ciblé un débat qui est au coeur du rôle perçu du droit réglementaire dans le développement de technologies en santé : l’opposition entre les enjeux environnementaux, sécuritaires et sanitaires (EHSI) et les enjeux éthiques, légaux et sociaux (ELSI), issus de la gouvernance technologique. La collecte de données est basée sur une revue de (...) la littérature issue de travaux antérieurs, et sur une analyse de cas où trois agences d’ETS ont été sélectionnées en utilisant différentes catégories d’obligation légale selon leur degré de force contraignante. La revue de littérature a révélé cinq thèmes relatifs au rôle social de l’ETS et une distinction entre le rôle/utilisation du droit dur et du droit souple dans le droit réglementaire, permettant ainsi de comprendre comment les agences ont utilisé le droit pour intégrer (ou non) l’éthique en ETS. Les deux approches ont démontré que le débat, EHSI/ELSI observé initialement dans la gouvernance et l’évaluation de technologies est reproduit en ETS. La principale tendance confirmée par ces analyses est la présence d’un pacte entre la science et le droit réglementaire. La demande sociale d’intégrer les ELSI, particulièrement l’évaluation éthique en ETS, n’est pas prise en compte par le droit réglementaire traditionnel régissant l’ETS et doit plutôt être considérée par le droit souple. Les difficultés d’intégration de l’éthique en ETS démontrent la nécessité de repenser la gouvernance juridique de l’ETS. (shrink)

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea. The Transcendence of the Egois the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many subsequent writings, Sartre embraces (...) Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Egooffers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context.t of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

Papers... "selected from a larger number of contributions most of them based on talks presented at the First World Congress on the Square of Opposition organized in Montreux in June 2007"--Preface, p. 12.

Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus--an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own (...) history of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Suarez) and his successors (Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel) clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions. (shrink)

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: (...) “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. (shrink)

Tests for hereditary predispositions to breast and ovarian cancer have figured among the first medical applications of the new knowledge gleaned from the Human Genome Project. These applications have set off heated debates on general issues such as intellectual property rights. The genetic diagnosis of breast cancer risks, and the management of women “at risk” has nevertheless developed following highly localized paths. There are major differences in the organization of testing, uses of genetic tests, and the follow up of patients. (...) This article studies testing practices and ways of managing breast cancer risk in France and compares them with those in the United States and United Kingdom. It shows how the complex interaction between global and local factors shapes the multiple meanings assumed by the phrase cancer risk. (shrink)

In seven essays that draw from metaphysics, phenomenology, literature, Christological theology, and Biblical exegesis,Marion sketches several prolegomena to a future fuller thinking and saying of love’s paradoxical reasons, exploring evil, freedom, bedazzlement, and the loving gaze; crisis, absence, and knowing.

A lost childhood -- The stranger -- Confidence in the unknown -- Violence and grace -- A little bridge thrown across the abyss -- Raïssa's guests -- God or Jean Cocteau? -- The sound of hidden springs -- Return from Rome -- The darkest part of ourselves -- The fullness of the day -- Poor means -- A Catholic in the resistance -- The archipelago on the sea -- The memory of the angels.

In this collection of previously unpublished essays Jean-Jacques Nattiez applies his theoretical foundations of musical semiotics to theorists such as Levi-Strauss, Hanslick, and Brailoiu; novelists such as Proust; and poets such as Baudelaire. The author treats problems which musicologists and music lovers alike need to address: the artistic product in music of oral tradition, the nature of musical facts, and questions of fidelity and authenticity in performance practice. Nattiez tackles these perennial issues with an originality born out of his (...) focus on the status of time in the works considered. This approach allows him to take sides, sometimes in a provocative manner, in the ongoing debates which pit adherents of modernity against apologists of postmodernism. (shrink)

The phenomenological origins of the concept of givenness -- Remarks on the origins of Gegebenheit in Heidegger's thought -- Substitution and solicitude: how Levinas re-reads Heidegger -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of sacrifice.

Jean Baudrillard is generally recognized as one of the most important and provocative contemporary social theorists. But in the English speaking world, his reputation is largely based on books published after the 1960s, as he moved towards becoming the premier commentator on postmodernism. This wide ranging and expertly edited book examines the work of the young Baudrillard, it deepens our understanding of his seminal work on consumer culture by presenting his early essays on McLuhan, Lefebvre and Marcuse. The influence (...) of German traditions of thought are clearly revealed, and Baudrillard's neglected and out of print writing on aesthetics is rediscovered and reprinted. Extracts from his political diaries and commentaries on European terrorism and the rise of the new Right, provide crucial insights into his later claims regarding the implosion of the masses and the rise of gesturial politics. Baudrillard emerges as a more nuanced and penetrating figure. His aesthetic and political interests are shown to be more deep-rooted and reflexive. In general, the book supplies the missing link for English speaking readers interested in understanding this prismatic and essential thinker. (shrink)

Alors qu’il était précepteur en Suisse, le jeune Hegel traduisit minutieusement un libelle révolutionnaire dénonçant l’oppression que les autorités bernoises exerçaient sur le Pays de Vaud. Il publia ces Lettres de Jean-Jacques Cart à son retour en Allemagne, en 1798, sous le couvert d’un anonymat qu’il ne leva jamais. Derrière le caractère anecdotique de cette première publication, on peut déceler des enjeux qui conduisirent à l’instauration de l’idéalisme spéculatif. Le motif de la lutte pour la reconnaissance, en particulier, semble (...) y trouver sa première apparition. Plus fondamentalement cette première publication éclaire le travail d’élaboration stylistique conduisant progressivement au système, avec, à l’horizon, la question de la portée pratique de la philosophie. (shrink)

" "The straightforward, well-organized presentation makes the book itself a microcosm of what Varenne singles out as a dominant feature of classical Hindu ...

Is “philosophy after automation” a theme or a question? One might hesitate about this, because we may wonder whether or not it implies that philosophy could disappear after automation, or at least be subject to serious revision. Philosophy could be read as a historical movement towards self-determination [autodétermination] as well as the exposition of the limit of such a program of archi-autonomy. The Cartesian event is essentially ambivalent, and man alone in the world is undoubtedly also the one who can (...) but alter, in the long run, the sufficiency of the auto. This is what we can now begin to understand. (shrink)

Wenn man behauptet, Wolff sei Rationalist, will man im allgemeinen zum Ausdruck bringen, daß er nur auf die apriorische Deduktion baut. Freilich räumt er der Vernunft einen Vorrang in der Konstitution des Wissens ein. Aber er betont, daß die Vernunft nur tätig werden könne, wenn sie sich auf die Daten der Erfahrung stütze, und er fügt hinzu, die Erfahrungsdaten bildeten sowohl den Ausgangspunkt für die rationale Erklärung als auch das Mittel für die Bestätigung der Folgerung. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt ist folglich (...) Wolffs Rationalismus ein eingeschränkter. Wenn man jedoch in Betracht zieht, daß Wolff die Vernunft beim Erwerb der intellektuellen Erkenntnis fast ausschließlich eine Rolle spielen läßt, kann man im Gegensatz zum Vorhergehenden die These vertreten, er sei sehr rationalistisch eingestellt. Denn der Gegenstand dieser Erkenntnis wird fast vollständig konstituiert durch Gattungsund Artbegriffe, zu welchen man nur mit Hilfe des Denkens gelangen kann. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill famously maintained that “animal pleasures” – like enjoying good smells and tastes – are lower quality than the pleasures tied to higher cognition, like the pleasure of enjoying an opera or understanding a mathematical proof. This downgrading is particularly common in the ethical literature about eating animals. Peter Singer, James Rachels, Gary Francione, Alastair Norcross and dozens of other ethicists make quick work of defending vegetarianism by presuming that “gustatory pleasure” is trivial. But is it?

À partir de l’analyse d’un argument présenté dans la correspondance avec More, cette étude examine la conception cartésienne du rapport de l’étendue à l’impénétrabilité à travers le prisme de l’imagination. Je montre que l’argument en question est une expérience de pensée qui s’appuie sur le caractère inimaginable d’une étendue pénétrable. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la conception proprement cartésienne de l’imagination implique que le contenu et les limites de nos actes d’imagination dépendent des propriétés des images cérébrales. J’en déduis que (...) cette conception particulière de l’imagination explique pourquoi l’argument des lettres à More est concluant du point de vue de Descartes. (shrink)

Due to domestication, dogs differ from wolves in the way they respond to their environment, including to humans. Selection for tameness and the associated changes to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation have been proposed as the primary mechanisms of domestication. To test this idea, we compared two low-arousal states in equally raised and kept wolves and dogs: resting, a state close to being asleep, and inactive wakefulness, which together take up an important part in the time budgets of wolves (...) and dogs. We measured arousal via cardiac output in three conditions: alone, with a familiar human partner, or with pack members (i.e., conspecifics). Specifically, we compared heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) of six wolves and seven dogs. As patterns of resting can vary adaptively, even between closely related species, we predicted that dogs would be generally more aroused than wolves, because living with humans may come with less predictable contexts than living with conspecifics; hence, dogs would need to be responsive at all times. Furthermore, we predicted that due to the effects of domestication, emotional social support by familiar people would reduce arousal more in dogs than in equally human-socialized wolves, leading to more relaxed dogs than wolves when away from the pack. Overall, we found a clear effect of the interactions between species (i.e., wolf versus dog), arousal state (i.e., resting or awake inactive) and test conditions, on both HR and HRV. Wolves and dogs were more aroused when alone (i.e., higher HR and lower HRV) than when in the presence of conspecifics or a familiar human partner. Dogs were more relaxed than wolves when at rest and close to a familiar human but this difference disappeared when awake. In conclusion, instead of the expected distinct overall differences between wolves and dogs in ANS regulation, we rather found subtle context-specific responses, suggesting that such details are important in understanding the domestication process. (shrink)

In the works of José Carlos Mariátegui, the analyses focus on the categories of praxis and class struggle. Mariátegui is then to be counted among the ranks of those Marxists who claim to belong to a historicist tradition. This article first provides an overview of the issues relating to this movement, and then examines Mariátegui’s reception of the term historicism. Lastly, it sets out to re-examine his revolutionary strategic proposition in the light of the use of the categories of tradition, (...) myth and history. (shrink)

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities (...) with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elective affinities. The latter evaluation includes exploring the connection between Saint Paul and what it means to be a Sandinista revolutionary. (shrink)

Para a maior parte dos filósofos o Ego é um “habitante” da consciência. Alguns afirmam sua presença formal no interior dos “Erlebnisse” como um princípio de unificação vazio. Outros – psicólogos na sua maior parte – pensam descobrir sua presença material, como centro de desejos e de atos, a cada momento de nossa vida psíquica. Pretendemos mostrar aqui que o Ego não está nem formalmente nem materialmente na consciência: ele está lá fora, no mundo, é um ser do mundo, como (...) o Ego do outro. (shrink)

O presente trabalho pretende investigar as veredas da estética da crueldade construídas no romance Venenos de Deus, remédios do Diabo, de Mia Couto, a partir da hibridização, desterriorização e dos percursos das identidades diaspóricas criadas e fragmentadas nos discursos existentes na Vila Cacimba, cenário que documenta a história de Bartolomeu Sozinho, sua esposa Dona Munda, o médico Sidónio Rosa e a mulher que este ama e busca reencontrar em Vila Cacimba, Deolinda. Nesse cenário é que os textos acerca da língua (...) enquanto colonização, da suposta epidemia enquanto multietnicidade, da diáspora, das miscigenações vistas com muita resistência, e certas inversões de significados tidos como maniqueísmos e tabus, como sugere o próprio título Venenos de Deus, remédios do Diabo, desvelam estéticas da crueldade nos cruzamentos de fronteiras e nas fronteiras que se cruzam em discursos identitários. (shrink)

1. L'Être et le néant. Critique de la raison dialectique.