Following the unsuccessful attempt to get a woman appointed as UN secretary-general in 2016 and the drop in women in senior posts in 2015, it appeared that gender equality at the UN was as distant as ever. Yet, gender equality within the Secretariat and UN system has been on the organization's agenda since 1970, with goals and target dates set for the level of women's participation and achievement. These have been met in some issue areas and organizations, but not others. (...) As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay traces the evolution of efforts to increase the representation of women in the UN system and takes stock of their current representation therein, analyzing the data on the Secretariat and appointments to senior posts as well as in various operations and programs. (shrink)

La question des productions agricoles à Délos a fait l'objet d'un intérêt renouvelé ces dernières années : les vestiges d'aménagements agricoles, les fermes et les inscriptions ont été réétudiés. Une des questions en suspens concernait la destination des pressoirs situés dans la ville : produisaient-ils du vin ou de l'huile? En 1997, la fouille d'une installation de pressurage située dans le Quartier du théâtre a permis de démontrer qu'il s'agissait d'une huilerie. Aménagée au début du Ier s. av. J.-G, elle (...) comportait deux pressoirs à levier, trois récipients de décantation et six pithoi de stockage. Elle était installée dans une maison dont les origines remontaient au Ve s. av. J.-C. et qui, depuis lors, avait connu plusieurs remaniements. Outre des données nouvelles sur l'histoire du quartier, cette fouille apporte des éclaircissements sur la végétation des îles proches, sur les variétés d'olives cultivées et sur l'économie de la fin de la période hellénistique. Ces realia rééquilibrent la documentation tirée des inscriptions en faisant une certaine place à l'oléiculture au moins aux IIe et Ier s. av. J.-C. (shrink)

In the previous issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought, we presented contributions by prominent exponents of liberalism, whom writers of the New Left have criticized for ignoring the plight of the poor.

The monumental altar on the esplanade of the Delos theatre belongs to the series of pi-shaped table altars, well represented in the Cyclades since the Archaic period. It had a foundation with a frieze, of which nothing remains, but which is mentioned in an inscription. The inscription makes it possible to identify the altar as that of Dionysus and to date its construction to 179-178 B.C.

Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our ...

An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics—some (...) of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science. (shrink)

This piece explores the background to writing Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities and explains the theoretical tools used in the book before examining some of the issues raised by Bergoffen and Flynn in their critical review-articles and responding to these. It provides a more fully fledged account of Sartre's relationship with psychoanalysis and states how the book combines psychology and biography through a masculinity-aware lens. Both commentators stimulate interesting insights into my own essay, and open up new avenues which I sketch (...) out. The piece ends with a defence of the controversial question of Sartre changing towards the end of his life. (shrink)

There are other options than the opposition set by Mele between his own account and the strict interpersonal model. The notion of collective self-deception or “social hypocrisy” is discussed and shown to be nonparadoxical. When an individual consciousness lies to itself, there is often a form of “negative collaboration” with another.

In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these...

Par son enseignement et par ses traductions de Kant, Jean-Pierre Fussler a influencé plusieurs générations d'étudiants. Croisant les approches, ce recueil de travaux en son honneur fait dialoguer perspectives kantiennes, lectures et relectures des œuvres de Kant, commentaires de son œuvre et études de sa réception contemporaine, mais aussi, plus généralement, questions éthiques, essais phénoménologiques et diverses études philosophiques qui s'accordent toutes sur la nécessité de la méthode, la diversité du rationalisme et les impératifs de la pensée critique."--Page 4 of (...) cover. (shrink)

Only rarely does Descartes deal with specifically political questions, and then when he does so, it is only by denial, to justify his refusal to “become involved” in politics. All the texts show that this attitude of rejecting politics is not dictated primarily by prudence, the rule in this century of intolerance, but by a concern for philosophical consistency. This denial, as we will be attempting to establish, seems conditioned by fundamental options of Cartesian philosophy. For the moment we will (...) only examine the theoretical effects of this refusal to write about politics other than by denial; such effects seem to us to consist in the exclusion of politics outside the realm of knowledge and its problematic inclusion into that of morality. And although it has been possible to speak of a “political Descartes”, it is completely against his stated intentions. This Descartes would be political in spite of himself. In fact, such an approach can only consist in a political interpretation of this denial, in a political reading of the texts that reject, or more often pass over in silence, politics as such. Although a reading of this kind can be at best a hazardous one, we will not attempt to challenge its legitimacy, for it is certainly possible to affirm that the work of Descartes is ridden and wrought by the question of politics (just as all philosophical thought, in one way or another, must of necessity confront political reality), but it is not without importance to begin by noting that it is never touched upon other than indirectly, obliquely, through the use of theoretical devices whose finality is not political. (shrink)

Appartient-il au philosophe de fixer strictement la compréhension de notre concept d'art, ou doit-il limiter sa tâche à celle d'une clarification de ses usages? À cette question, les textes de Jean-Pierre Cometti réunis dans ce volume répondent en choisissant la voie d'une esthétique « minimale », qui renonce aux vertiges de l'ontologie et aux ambitions définitionnelle de la philosophie analytique de l'art, tout en prenant acte du caractère caduc des grands récits spéculatifs hérités de l'esthétique idéaliste ou des mirages de (...) la déconstruction. (shrink)

L’héritage dont on a coutume de créditer Marcel Duchamp nous place face à des ambiguïtés que son seul nom ne suffit pas à dissiper. L’artiste le plus cérébral de son temps est aussi celui qui se prête le moins aux « théories » ou aux semblants de définition qu’il a inspirés. La question que pose Duchamp est moins celle de la marque qu’il a durablement imprimée à notre art, que celle de savoir par quelle ironie et à la faveur de (...) quel malentendu on a pu voir en lui l’artisan décisif d’une révolution dont nous serions les héritiers. Duchamp ne parlait pas « au nom de l’art ». On ne peut rien inférer de son « indifférence », sinon les réserves que le mot « art » devrait nous inspirer. (shrink)

La mécanique quantique est l'un des domaines de la physique les plus surprenants et controversés. Depuis le début, elle a suscité les plus vifs débats quant à sa signification et à son lien avec le réel. L'atomisme, la lumière ou les théories relativistes ont aussi défrayé la chronique, mais rien ne semble devoir arrêter les polémiques qui entourent l'interprétation des phénomènes quantiques. De Heisenberg à Schrödinger en passant par la fameuse controverse entre Einstein et Niels Bohr, Jean-Pierre Pharabod et Gérard (...) Klein n'omettent aucune péripétie de cette saga de la physique quantique qui mène aujourd'hui à l'affirmation pour le moins surprenante de la "non-localité" de la nature. C'est un nouveau défi à nos modes de pensée ordinaires. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece that takesus far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon, and reveals a culture ofslavery, of blood sacrifice, of perpetual and ritualized warfare, of ceremonial hunting andecstasies.In his provocative discussions of various institutions and practices including war,marriage, and the city state, Vernant unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection ofthe religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. He concludes with a genealogy ofthe study of myth (...) from antiquity to the present, and offers a critique of structuralism.Jean-PierreVernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France inParis. (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us defenseless against (...) a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith. (shrink)

The development of a scientific theory of mind was thus significantly delayed."--BOOK JACKET.

Au XVIIème siècle, c’est la découverte du principe d’inertie, un concept purement physique, qui permit de débloquer la théorisation du mouvement, en panne depuis Aristote. La plupart des philosophes et historiens des sciences caractérisent le tournant de la « science moderne » par sa mathématisation, arguant, comme Koyré, que le principe d’inertie découlerait de cette dernière, ou bien, comme Duhem, qu’il était déjà contenu dans l’impetus médiéval, ou encore, comme, Husserl et Kojève, en s’abstenant d’en parler. Et pourtant, la mathématisation (...) de la physique était en marche depuis l’époque hellénistique. L’originalité de Galilée est d’avoir mathématisé non pas la nature, mais, via le principe d’inertie, le temps. (shrink)

S’inscrivant dans une série d’études récentes sur le personnage de Dieu dans la Bible hébraïque, l’ouvrage de Françoise Mirguet – La Représentation du divin dans les récits du Pentateuque – met en relief la centralité du style direct dans la manifestation biblique du divin et l’effacement correspondant de la «narration». Si la présente recension met en question le recours proposé à un modèle non communicationnel du récit, elle entend saluer la finesse des analyses proposées.

La logique narrative de la Bible est-elle uniquement liée aux épisodes, ou s’observe-t-elle également dans la séquence de ces épisodes? Il y a bel et bien, manifestent ces pages, un «drame au long cours» dans le corpus biblique. Après une présentation de la culture du récit qui habite les Écritures , l’enquête manifeste les voies et moyens de la macro-narrativité biblique. S’avancer dans le récit de la Bible, d’épisode en épisode, c’est progresser dans une séquence temporelle sous-tendue par une causalité (...) irréductible à celle des hommes, mais en constante interaction avec celle-ci. (shrink)

Dans un contexte de désenchantement à l'égard de la physique de Newton dont la puissance avait sidéré les savants de son temps et qui paraîtra, au fil du XVIIIe siècle, de plus en plus défectueuse, I' Essai de Bayes structure une idée de la cause minimaliste: des événements repérables, que l'on puisse traiter comme semblables, en rapport de subséquence, et de telle sorte que l'on puisse évaluer les chances d'avoir raison quand on avance une thèse qui prend l'initiative d'organiser ces (...) associations d'événements, sans s'inquiéter de savoir si leur liaison est nécessaire ou pas. li semble que se met en place dans le principe une façon probabiliste d'envisager la science qui sera celle de Laplace, même s'il se trompe sur le sens de la règle de Bayes, et encore celle de Stuart Mill dans son Système de logique. Loin d'être seulement négative et critique, la conception bayesienne des probabilités a pu trouver une positivité à travers la théorie des jeux. (shrink)

In this paper the descriptions of the relation semi-algebra generated by an equivalence element and the relation algebra generated by an equivalence element are unified by functorial constructions. Here the developed techniques and ideas lead to a more manageable conceptual construction of universal objects for the functors of squares and special congruences.

This text is a set of reflections about a book that had been translated in French, published of late and that collected an article and a book of ethics written by J. Harsanyi. Harsanyi’s aim was to understand and make understood the ethical considerations implied or supposed by game theory; whether its authors were aware of that or not. He does it by the means of a bundle of theses, the ones included in Kant’s works -provided they were criticized enough-, (...) the others in Smith’s works and others again in Bayes, whose way of practicing mathematics is clearly perceived by Harsanyi as linked to an explicitly utilitarian philosophy, but the affinity of which we have recognized as having acquaintance with some considerations of Montaigne in his _ Essays _. So, our own aim was to place Harsinyi’s work in a longer tradition than the Kantian and English-speaking ones as Harsanyi probably believed and suggested to have believed it sufficient with regard to the exclusivity of his references. This c... (shrink)

The five narratives identified by the DEEPEN-project are interpreted in terms of the ancient story of desire, evil, and the sacred, and the modern narratives of alienation and exploitation. The first three narratives of lay ethics do not take stock of what has radically changed in the modern world under the triple and joint evolution of science, religion, and philosophy. The modern narratives, in turn, are in serious need of a post-modern deconstruction. Both critiques express the limits of humanism. They (...) do not imply, however, that these narratives should not be taken seriously. In particular, the enduring presence of three ancient narratives in laypeople’s symbolic thought is highly significant in terms of the role that the logic of the sacred keeps playing in the workings of modern societies. Lay people’s implicit understanding of how modern technology tends towards catastrophe and apocalypse provides the strongest argument for taking these narratives seriously. (shrink)

Les grands paradigmes des sciences humaines ont été constitués, au fil de l’histoire, par l’éviction progressive de la dimension affective des objets et méthodes scientifiques. Après un long désintérêt, pour partie dû à la préoccupation de l’objectivation des phénomènes retenus par l’analyse sociologique, mais aussi à l’hypostase du social, qui a trouvé notamment chez Durkheim un accomplissement encore plus accentué que dans la plupart des conceptions holistes, la question des émotions est l’...