‘Emotions are Janus-faced,’ writes de Sousa. ‘This suggests that we might speak of a truth, or perhaps two kinds of truth of emotions, one of which is about the self, and the other about conditions in the world’. Emotions, it is claimed, disclose facts about how the world is and about who we are. The articles in this volume all focus on one, the other, or both of these aspects of emotions – How do they contribute to provide reasons for (...) judgements and actions? How do these judgements and actions, individual or collective, serve as occasions for interrogation and evaluation of the self or of morality? (shrink)

This volume includes essays presented at the conference on Emotions and Rationality in Moral Philosophy held at the Universities of Neuchâtel and Bern in October 2005. The authors of this volume share the Humean insight that the ‘sentiments’ have a crucial role to play in elucidating the practice of morality. In a Humean fashion, they warn us against taking an intellectualist view of emotions and reject the rationalist account of morality.

ABSTRACT: Are there justified emotions? Can they justify evaluative judgements? We first explain the need for an account of justified emotions by emphasizing that emotions are states for which we have or lack reasons. We then observe that emotions are explained by their cognitive and motivational bases. Considering cognitive bases first, we argue that an emotion is justified if and only if the properties the subject is aware of constitute an instance of the relevant evaluative property. We then investigate the (...) roles of motivational bases. Finally, we argue that justified emotions are sufficient for justified evaluative judgements. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.From Justified Emotions to Justified Evaluative Judgements*Volume 51, Issue 1JULIEN A. DEONNA and FABRICE TERONI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000236Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. From Justified Emotions to Justified Evaluative Judgements*Volume 51, Issue 1JULIEN A. DEONNA and FABRICE TERONI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000236Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. From Justified Emotions to Justified Evaluative Judgements*Volume 51, Issue 1JULIEN A. DEONNA and FABRICE TERONI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000236Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Meno’s Thesis—the idea that knowing something is better than merely having a true belief about it—is incompatible with the joint claims that believing the truth is the sole source of the value of knowledge and true belief and knowledge are equally successful in believing the truth. Recent answers to that so-called “swamping” problem reject either or. This paper rejects Meno’s Thesis instead, as relying on a confusion between expected value and value proper. The proposed solution relies on an externalist (...) view of rationality, which is presented. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The Value and Expected Value of KnowledgeVolume 51, Issue 1Julien Dutant DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000285Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The Value and Expected Value of KnowledgeVolume 51, Issue 1Julien Dutant DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000285Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The Value and Expected Value of KnowledgeVolume 51, Issue 1Julien Dutant DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000285Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Is logic normative for belief? A standard approach to answering this question has been to investigate bridge principles relating claims of logical consequence to norms for belief. Although the question is naturally an epistemic one, bridge principles have typically been investigated in isolation from epistemic debates over the correct norms for belief. In this paper we tackle the question of whether logic is normative for belief by proposing a Kripkean model theory accounting for the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and (...) deontic notions and using this model theory to show which bridge principles are implied by epistemic norms that we have independent reason to accept, for example, the knowledge norm and the truth norm. We propose a preliminary theory of the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and deontic notions that has among its commitments bridge principles expressing how logic is normative for belief. We also show how our framework suggests that logic is exceptionally normative. (shrink)

While acoustic analysis methods have become a commodity in voice emotion research, experiments that attempt not only to describe but to computationally manipulate expressive cues in emotional voice...

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

Giving money to others feels good. In the past years, this claim has received strong empirical support from psychology and neuroscience. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving, and many explanations of apparently altruistic behavior appeal to these internal rewards. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? Why do people experience them? In order to further our understanding of the phenomenon, we ran two studies: a recall task (...) in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before reporting their affective states. In both studies, correlational and experimental evidence converge towards the conclusion that, if the nature of the warm glow is straightforward, its source is multifaceted. Regarding the nature of ‘warm glow’, the pleasure people took in giving was mainly predicted by one particular positive emotion (‘joyful feelings’) and was indeed described by participants as a ‘warm’ sensation. Regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms, ‘warm glow’ feelings were elicited both by positive appraisals regarding the donor’s moral character and positive appraisals regarding the actual impact of the donor’s donation on the welfare of others. We discuss the implications of these findings for the role of positive emotions in explaining why people give. (shrink)

The definition of ‘patient’ is commonly taken for granted and considered as obvious, but the term is rather underconceptualised in the literature. In this paper, it will be argued that the criterion of suffering can be considered a sufficient criterion for a parent to be considered a secondary patient when their seriously ill child is receiving medical care (i.e. not necessarily the parents themselves) – these parents are sufferers in virtue of the suffering of others. The nature of parental and (...) child health and well-being is clearly relational and bidirectional, thus also a bidirectional and relational integration of parental and paediatric patient care is necessary. A genuine expansion of the concept ‘patient’ to parents, both practically and theoretically, can help to bring awareness to the closely intertwining, interacting and interdependent vulnerabilities of both parties, the potential conflicts of interests involved, and also to demand support and reduce hurdles, for example, in reimbursement by health insurers. Treating parents as patients will (1) help the affected child (the primary patient), as unhealthy and/or mentally unstable parents are likely to negatively influence a child's treatment and (2) prevent the parents (the secondary patients) from becoming primary patients themselves due to their suffering because of their child's illness. (shrink)

Several authors have detected profound analogies between Kant and Wittgenstein. Their claims have been contradicted by scholars, such being the agreed penalty for attributions to authorities. Many of the alleged similarities have either been left unsubstantiated at a detailed exegetical level, or have been confined to highly general points. At the same time, the ‘scholarly’ backlash has tended to ignore the importance of some of these general points, or has focused on very specific issues or purely terminological matters. To advance (...) the debate, I distinguish four different topics: questions of actual influence; parallels at the methodological level; substantial similarities in philosophical logic; substantial similarities in the philosophy of mind. The article concentrates on the second and third topic. Section I argues that the critical conception of philosophy shared by Kant and Wittgenstein is itself due to the fact that they explain the a priori status of necessary propositions by reference to the way we experience or represent reality. Section II shows how the Tractatiis linguistically transforms this ‘reflective turn’, replacing Kant's preconditions of experience by preconditions of symbolic representation. Section III suggests that this explanation of the a priori involves the idea of an isomorphism between thought and reality, and that both Kant's transcendental idealism and Wittgenstein's early metaphysics of symbolism distort this isomorphism. Wittgenstein later rejected this metaphysics of symbolism, on the grounds that language is autonomous, and section IV detects parallels between that idea and Kant's ‘diallelus’ argument against the correspondence theory of truth. Finally, I claim that while Wittgenstein is right to insist that all a priori propositions are conceptual, Kant, in calling them synthetic a priori, is right to deny that they simply unpack the concepts involved in the propositions themselves. (shrink)

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us? (...) -/- The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: -/- the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. -/- Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

Les jeunes « radicalisés » sont confrontés à des mouvements de questionnements internes et externes, comme grand nombre d’adolescents, sur leur filiation, leur identité. Leur engagement dans cet horizon guerrier s’inscrit autour de menaces psychiques inexorables face à des impensés dans leur histoire individuelle et collective. Appuyé par une méthodologie complémentariste, l’article analyse la situation de deux jeunes hommes confrontés à des reviviscences traumatiques de non-dits familiaux et la réactivation de mouvements internes et externes non maîtrisables. Malgré la tentative de (...) maîtriser ces menaces, la radicalité semble renvoyer à une violence sociale et politique menaçante. (shrink)

Ne serait-ce que par son titre, dont l’oxymore est d’emblée assumée (p.11) et dont les protagonistes sont associés d’une manière qui ne laisse de surprendre, l’ouvrage de Julien Boudon publié dans la collection « Les sens du droit » des éditions Dalloz, mériterait de retenir l’attention.Dans ce court opus, l’auteur entend, à travers un examen qui puise tout à la fois aux sources de l’histoire, de la philosophie, du droit, de la science politique, et qui emprunte à la fois (...) au style de la monog.. (shrink)

Is shame social? Is it superficial? Is it a morally problematic emotion? Researchers in disciplines as different as psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have thought so. But what is the nature of shame and why are claims regarding its social nature and moral standing interesting and important? Do they tell us anything worthwhile about the value of shame and its potential legal and political applications? -/- In this book, Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni propose an original philosophical account (...) of shame aimed at answering these questions. The book begins with a detailed examination of the evidence and arguments that are taken to support what they call the two dogmas about shame: its alleged social nature and its morally dubious character. Their analysis is conducted against the backdrop of a novel account of shame and ultimately leads to the rejection of these two dogmas. On this account, shame involves a specific form of negative evaluation that the subject takes towards herself: a verdict of incapacity with regard to values to which she is attached. One central virtue of the account resides in the subtle manner it clarifies the ways in which the subject's identity is at stake in shame, thus shedding light on many aspects of this complex emotion and allowing for a sophisticated understanding of its moral significance. -/- This philosophical account of shame engages with all the current debates on shame as they are conducted within disciplines as varied as ethics, moral, experimental, developmental and evolutionary psychology, anthropology, legal studies, feminist studies, politics and public polic. (shrink)

Analyse de l'herméneutique du mouvement, ainsi que de son imprégnation dans la philosophie occidentale moderne, notamment en utilisant les figures centrales de Bachelard et de Merleau-Ponty. Les contributions tentent de mettre au jour les rapports qu'entretiennent imagination et mouvement, images dynamiques et schèmes moteurs.

Vers une stylistique des imaginaires langagiers Si la description du matériau langagier mis en jeu dans tel ou tel corpus se situe à la base de toute analyse stylistique, la visée ultime de l’opération est d’approcher un style, catégorie littéraire éminemment polysémique. L’analyse stylistique, en effet, peut avoir pour finalité de dégager les habitudes langagières de tel auteur ; elle peut aussi vouloir évaluer cette pratique en l’historicisant – ne serait-ce que parce que depuis le milieu du xixe siècle, la (...) langue littéraire présente des formes particulières, et que la conception du style, dès lors, s’en trouve modifiée. C’est là le postulat méthodologique dont on partira. Le corollaire d’une telle perspective est qu’une œuvre, quelle qu’elle soit, reflète un imaginaire langagier inscrit dans tel ou tel « moment » de l’histoire littéraire. La démarche ne peut être que comparative ; elle suppose donc la constitution d’un corpus pluriel dont la pertinence est définie par une proximité d’effets, qui reposent eux-mêmes sur la récurrence de « patrons » stylistiques. Mais afin de ne pas fausser le jeu, il faut nécessairement solliciter des corpus périphériques (et on se demandera comment les définir), permettant de mettre en évidence des ressemblances et des filiations aussi bien que des divergences : ce n’est qu’ainsi que l’on rendra compte de la complexité mais aussi de l’organisation du champ littéraire à un moment donné. C’est cette méthode d’analyse stylistique que l’on essaie de mettre en œuvre à partir des romans de Samuel Beckett, Robert Pinget et Claude Simon parus dans les années 1950. (shrink)

Infallibilism is the claim that knowledge requires that one satisfies some infallibility condition. I spell out three distinct such conditions: epistemic, evidential and modal infallibility. Epistemic infallibility turns out to be simply a consequence of epistemic closure, and is not infallibilist in any relevant sense. Evidential infallibilism i s unwarranted but it is not an satisfactory characterization of the infallibilist intuition. Modal infallibility, by contrast, captures the core infallibilist intuition, and I argue that it is required to solve the Gettier (...) problem and account for lottery cases. Finally, I discuss whether modal infallibilism has sceptical consequences and argue that it is an open question whose answer depends on one’s account of alethic possibility. (shrink)

Widespread preservation of fossilized biomolecules in many fossil animals has recently been reported in six studies, based on Raman microspectroscopy. Here, we show that the putative Raman signatures of organic compounds in these fossils are actually instrumental artefacts resulting from intense background luminescence. Raman spectroscopy is based on the detection of photons scattered inelastically by matter upon its interaction with a laser beam. For many natural materials, this interaction also generates a luminescence signal that is often orders of magnitude more (...) intense than the light produced by Raman scattering. Such luminescence, coupled with the transmission properties of the spectrometer, induced quasi‐periodic ripples in the measured spectra that have been incorrectly interpreted as Raman signatures of organic molecules. Although several analytical strategies have been developed to overcome this common issue, Raman microspectroscopy as used in the studies questioned here cannot be used to identify fossil biomolecules. (shrink)

In this paper, we contrast the different ways in which the representationalist and the attitudinalist in the theory of emotions account for the fact that emotions have evaluative correctness conditions. We argue that the attitudinalist has the resources to defend her view against recent attacks from the representationalist. To this end, we elaborate on the idea that emotional attitudes have a rich profile and explain how it supports the claim that these attitudes generate the wished-for evaluative correctness conditions. Our argument (...) rests on the idea that emotional attitudes manifest a sensitivity to evaluative evidence and that this sensitivity secures the kind of normativity we expect of the emotions. We bring our discussion to a close by assessing whether the psychological underpinnings of this sensitivity to evaluative evidence are such as to threaten the foundation of attitudinalism: the idea that emotions do not represent values. Given the available models of how we might access values prior to emotional experience, we conclude that the attitudinalist is still in the game. (shrink)

Argumentation has been an important topic in knowledge representation, reasoning and multi-agent systems during the last twenty years. In this paper, we propose a new abstract framework where arguments are associated with a strength, namely a quantitative information which is used to determine whether an attack between arguments succeeds or not. Our Strength-based Argumentation Framework combines ideas of Preference-based and Weighted Argumentation Frameworks in an original way, which permits to define acceptability semantics sensitive to the existence of accruals between arguments. (...) The question of accruals arises in situations where several arguments defending the same position against another argument are unable to individually defeat this argument, but could do it collectively if they combine their strengths. We investigate some of the theoretical and computational properties of our new framework and semantics, and present a reasoning algorithm that is based on a translation of the problem into pseudo-boolean constraint satisfaction. This paper proposes an intuitive framework which allows strength compensations in an argumentation context where attacks may not succeed, completed by an approach which detects accruals throughout the reasoning process without requiring the elicitation of all compensatory combinations of arguments as an input. (shrink)

One puzzle concerning highly idealized models is whether they explain. Some suggest they provide so-called ‘how-possibly explanations’. However, this raises an important question about the nature of how-possibly explanations, namely what distinguishes them from ‘normal’, or how-actually, explanations? I provide an account of how-possibly explanations that clarifies their nature in the context of solving the puzzle of model-based explanation. I argue that the modal notions of actuality and possibility provide the relevant dividing lines between how-possibly and how-actually explanations. Whereas how-possibly (...) explanations establish claims of possible explanations, how-actually explanations establish claims of actual ones. Models, in turn, simply provide evidence for these claims. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a statistical proposal due to James R. Beebe for how to solve the generality problem for process reliabilism. The proposal is highlighted by Alvin I. Goldman as an interesting candidate solution. However, Goldman raises the worry that the proposal may not always yield a determinate result. We address this worry by proving a dilemma: either the statistical approach does not yield a determinate result or it leads to trivialization, i.e. reliability collapses into truth (and anti-reliability (...) into falsehood). Various strategies for avoiding this predicament are considered, including revising the statistical rule or restricting its application to natural kinds. All amendments are seen to have serious problems of their own. We conclude that reliabilists need to look elsewhere for a convincing solution to the generality problem. (shrink)

Since Saul Kripke’s influential work in the 1970s, the revisionary approach to semantic paradox—the idea that semantic paradoxes must be solved by weakening classical logic—has been increasingly popular. In this paper, we present a new revenge argument to the effect that the main revisionary approaches breed new paradoxes that they are unable to block.

In this paper, my goal is to use an epistemic injustice framework to extend an existing normative analysis of over-medicalization to psychiatry and thus draw attention to overlooked injustices. Kaczmarek has developed a promising bioethical and pragmatic approach to over-medicalization, which consists of four guiding questions covering issues related to the harms and benefits of medicalization. In a nutshell, if we answer “yes” to all proposed questions, then it is a case of over-medicalization. Building on an epistemic injustice framework, I (...) will argue that Kaczmarek’s proposal lacks guidance concerning the procedures through which we are to answer the four questions, and I will import the conceptual resources of epistemic injustice to guide our thinking on these issues. This will lead me to defend more inclusive decision-making procedures regarding medicalization in the DSM. Kaczmarek’s account complemented with an epistemic injustice framework can help us achieve better forms of medicalization. I will then use a contested case of medicalization, the creation of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in the DSM-5 to illustrate how the epistemic injustice framework can help to shed light on these issues and to show its relevance to distinguish good and bad forms of medicalization. (shrink)

In this article, I provide a detailed characterization of being moved, which I claim is a distinct emotion. Being moved is the experience of being struck by the goodness of some specific positive value being exemplified. I start by expounding this account. Next, I discuss three issues that have emerged in the literature regarding it. These concern respectively the valence of being moved, the scope of the values that may constitute its particular objects, and the cognitive sophistication required for experiencing (...) it. My main contention is that when we understand that the presence of the specific positive value must be apprehended as finally, importantly, and impersonally good to trigger being moved, these issues do not arise. (shrink)

In this important addition to the stroke literature, highly experienced clinicians set out the patterns to be expected in patients with stroke, drawing on illustrative case histories where appropriate. The book is intended as a guide to patterns and syndromes for clinicians encountering an unfamiliar presentation in a stroke patient. It will enable them to differentiate between possible locations on the basis of symptoms and signs, recognise lesion patterns found in patients with infarcts and haemorrhages in various vascular territories, and (...) refer to the clinical features associated with rare but important causes of stroke. Drawing on the experience and clinical authority of distinguished international contributors, this is a practical, highly illustrated companion and reference for students, trainees and physicians who wish to improve their skills in the accurate diagnosis of stroke syndromes, and their understanding of its clinical consequences. (shrink)

Le corps est, avant tout, le siège physique de notre condition humaine. Plus largement, il incarne une institution sociale. Dans les deux cas, il n'est rien sans l'esprit. Corps et esprit manifestent l'être dans toute son identité. Le corps sans esprit relève de l'avoir : juridiquement, il est une chose. L'esprit sans corps est insaisissable: on peine scientifiquement à le qualifier. Réunis, corps et esprit sont la source et le sommet de la dignité humaine, concept né dans la philosophie morale (...) et de plus en plus présent en droit, en économie ou même en littérature. Or, l'homme est en quête de dignité. Cette quête passe par le questionnement sur le corps à l'aune du bien et du mal. Elle conduit à s'interroger sur l'approche moniste ou pluraliste des rapports de l'éthique au corps. C'est tout l'intérêt de cet ouvrage, de poser quelques jalons scientifiques qui porteront le lecteur à enrichir ses réflexions sur le corps dans la bioéthique, au travail, en économie, en littérature, dans le sport, dans la mode et surtout dans la souffrance, volontaire ou subie. Il en ressort que dans le corps humain comme dans le corps social, l'option éthique est toujours possible au juriste, à l'économiste ou à l'homme de lettres. Cet ouvrage reprend la quasi-intégralité des communications et échanges ayant eu lieu lors du 27e colloque d'éthique économique organisé en décembre 2021, à Aix-en-Provence, par le Centre d'éthique économique et des affaires de la faculté de droit et de science politique d'Aix-Marseille. Il restitue le dialogue pluridisciplinaire entre juristes, économistes et littéraires, autour d'un thème d'une particulière actualité."--Back cover. (shrink)

Utopianism is often rejected out of hand for one of two reasons: either it is thought to be politically dangerous, or it is thought to be a mere fantasy. It is nevertheless an important theme in contemporary political philosophy. This article reviews part of the political-philosophical career of ‘utopia’ as a concept by considering the different traditions that have been influential in shaping the way utopia and utopianism are perceived today. A brief reading of Thomas More’s Utopia is followed by (...) a consideration of the utopian socialist tradition and Karl Marx’s criticism of it. Their understanding of utopia continued into the twentieth century. Utopianism’s bad reputation is partly due to its association with the attempt to realize communism in the Soviet Union, but other factors include the Eastonian empirical turn in political theory and the onset of postmodern incredulity. It made a perhaps surprising comeback in the work of John Rawls, whose work was recently criticized by Amartya Sen for being overly ‘utopian’ – a criticism that is highly analogous to Marx’s onslaught against the utopian socialists. With the help of counterarguments devised by Pablo Gilabert, the article considers three ways in which utopianism can be useful to contemporary political thought. (shrink)

In the flow of information concerning Peer-to-Peer, it is difficult to get away from the apparently inexhaustible topic of music file sharing. This article invites us to refocus our attention towards the vast diversity of possible uses of the P2P technologies. After a survey of a few examples, the article denounces the ongoing confusion between an innovative and promising technology and the uses to which it can be subjected.

Simone Weil, philosophe reconnue, engagée, mystique, ne laisse personne indifférent. Son année d'enseignement à Bourges est une année charnière, un moment de répit dans une courte vie mouvementée. Elle y réfléchit et y médite. Professeur de philosophie, elle a laissé une forte impression sur ses jeunes élèves du lycée de jeunes filles de Bourges. Ce sont ses cours, retrouvés grâce à deux anciennes élèves, que vous lirez dans cet ouvrage.