Cet article s’intéresse à l’histoire et au contenu de la pensée corporatiste française pendant la période de l’Occupation. Dans ce cadre, son objet se limite cependant à l’étude de la contribution intellectuelle des seuls économistes français, et parmi eux uniquement aux universitaires. La référence à la pensée corporatiste concerne ici à la fois leurs analyses et leurs choix méthodologiques, ainsi que leurs réflexions en matière de politique économique. Notre article ne s’intéressera donc que très brièvement à l’origine strictement historique du (...) corporatisme à moins qu’elle ne recoupe certains des débats de fond qui ont eu lieu sous l’Occupation. La première partie de notre contribution porte sur le contexte de l’émergence de la pensée économique corporatiste pendant la période de l’Occupation allemande. La deuxième partie s’intéresse aux recherches universitaires qui ont tenté de mener un travail à dominante économique sur le corporatisme. Six auteurs voient leurs contributions mi... (shrink)

Cet article s’intéresse à l’histoire et au contenu de la pensée corporatiste française pendant la période de l’Occupation. Dans ce cadre, son objet se limite cependant à l’étude de la contribution intellectuelle des seuls économistes français, et parmi eux uniquement aux universitaires. La référence à la pensée corporatiste concerne ici à la fois leurs analyses et leurs choix méthodologiques, ainsi que leurs réflexions en matière de politique économique. Notre article ne s’intéressera donc que très brièvement à l’origine strictement historique du (...) corporatisme à moins qu’elle ne recoupe certains des débats de fond qui ont eu lieu sous l’Occupation. La première partie de notre contribution porte sur le contexte de l’émergence de la pensée économique corporatiste pendant la période de l’Occupation allemande. La deuxième partie s’intéresse aux recherches universitaires qui ont tenté de mener un travail à dominante économique sur le corporatisme. Six auteurs voient leurs contributions mises en avant : Maurice Bouvier-Ajam, Louis Salleron, Louis Baudin, Gaëtan Pirou, François Perroux et Henri Denis. La troisième partie de notre contribution présente enfin nos conclusions. (shrink)

This study analyzes the most important predictors of acceptance of social network sites in a sample of Chilean elder people. We employ a novelty procedure to explore this phenomenon. This procedure performs apriori segmentation based on gender and generation. It then applies the deep learning technique to identify the predictors by segments. The predictor variables were taken from the literature on the use of social network sites, and an empirical study was carried out by quota sampling with a sample size (...) of 395 older people. The results show different predictors of social network sites considering all the samples, baby boomer males and females, silent males and females. The high heterogeneity among older people is confirmed; this means that dealing with older adults as a uniform set of users of social network sites is a mistake. This study demonstrates that the four segments behave differently, and many diverse variables influence the acceptance of social network sites. (shrink)

Bioethics is best viewed as both a second-order discipline and also part of public discourse. Since their goals differ, some bioethical activities are more usefully viewed as advancing public discourse than academic disciplines. For example, the “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights” sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization seeks to promote ethical guidance on bioethical issues. From the vantage of philosophical ethics, it fails to rank or specify its stated principles, justify controversial principles, clarify key (...) terms, or say what is meant by calling potentially conflicting norms “foundational.” From the vantage of improving the public discourse about bioethical problems and seeking ethical solutions in the public arena, however, this document may have an important role. The goals and relations between bioethics as a second-order discipline and public discourse are explored. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard has posited a theory of ‘the precession of simulacra’, arguing that it is no longer possible to tell the difference between an image and the meaning it purports to represent because technology allows the image to precede its meaning. Christa Wolf, while researching Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (1984), traveled to Greece and discovered the ways in which language in the rational, Western model of civilization has been distorted. Both Baudrillard and Wolf are disturbed by the ways (...) in which sign systems can be manipulated and generated, and both demonstrate the effect this has in the political and cultural arenas. This analysis intends to show how Baudrillard’s theories play out in Wolf’s narrative, and how Wolf resolves the problems thus posed through the shock of the aesthetic experience, which forces communication while it defies representation. (shrink)

Over the past three or four decades, the concept of medical ethics has changed from a limited set of standards to a broad field of debate and research. We define medical ethics as an arena of moral issues in medicine, rather than a specific discipline. This paper examines how the disciplines of health care ethics and health care law have developed and operated within this arena. Our framework highlights the aspects of jurisdiction (Abbott) and the assignment of responsibilities (...) (Gusfield). This theoretical framework prompted us to study definitions and changing responsibilities in order to describe the development and interaction of health care ethics and health law. We have opted for the context of the Dutch debate about end-of-life decisions as a relevant case study. We argue that the specific Dutch definition of euthanasia as 'intentionally taking the life of another person by a physician, upon that person's request' can be seen as the result of the complex jurisdictional process. This illustrates the more general conclusion that the Dutch debate on end-of-life decisions and the development of the two disciplines must be understood in terms of mutual interaction. (shrink)

: Skepticism as doubts about religious knowledge played a significant role in the intellectual reflection of the fourth and fifth Islamic centuries, a period of considerable plurality within Islam on many levels. Such skepticism was directed at revealed knowledge that spelled out the customs and norms particular to the Islamic way of life. Doubts were pushed by theologians who, themselves caught within a web of "parity of evidence" between the various schools of Islam, saw little hope of verifying the superiority (...) of Muslim ways over those of other communities, and Muslim intellectuals who viewed the particular religio-moral practices of Islam as shamefully atavistic and primitive, seeking instead to table "visible" religion for an esoterically conceived one. Against such detractors, a significant scholar of the period, Abū l-Hasan al-'Āmirī, constructed a philosophical defense of exoteric Islam, arguing in Aristotelian terms for the superiority of religio-moral knowledge over philosophical knowledge in light of the greater benefit of the former to the welfare of society and the superiority of Islamic religio-moral knowledge, since, he claims, it squares with logic more than any other communal way of life. The argument, one of many seeking to come to terms with the intellectual vagaries of the day, demonstrates how skepticism pushed scholars to explore more profoundly the nature of religion. In al-'Āmirī's case, his argument, metaphysically based with mystical inclinations, set the stage for later articulations of Islamic religiosity that integrated the human mind into the arena of Islam's revealed way of life. (shrink)

This article explores the various uses or – according to some authors, such as the sociologist James Beckford – misuses of the term ‘postsecular’. The variations in its use are indeed so broad that the question is justified whether the terminology as such has much analytical value. The prominence of the ‘postsecular’ in present-day debates in my view primarily indicates the inability among scholars, intellectuals and religious interest groups to come to grips with what – for some at least – (...) is an unexpected presence and resurgence of religion in the public domains of presumably secular societies. The work of the cultural anthropologist Talal Asad shows that the secular does not preclude the religious. All kinds of religious arguments, organizations, and agents are very much present in modern ‘secular’ societies. From this perspective, the emergence of the ‘postsecular’ refers to very real phenomena, most importantly the intertwinement of the secular and the religious. For instance, religious actors do not accept the barriers of secular society and claim a role for religion in public and secular arenas. This insight could be one of the most important driving forces behind the popularity of the term ‘postsecular’ in recent years. (shrink)

How did bioethics manage to grow, flourish and ultimately do so well from a very unpromising birth in the 1970s? Many explanations have been advanced. Some ascribe the field9s growth to a puzzling, voluntary abnegation of moral authority by medicine to non-physicians. Some think bioethics survived by selling out to the biomedical establishment—public and private. This transaction involved bestowing moral approbation on all manner of biomedicine9s doings for a seat at a well-stocked funding table. Some see a sort of clever (...) intellectual bamboozlement at work wherein bioethicists pitched a moral elixir of objective expertise that the morally needy but unsophisticated in medicine and the biological sciences were eager to swallow. While each of these reasons has its defenders, I think the main reason that bioethics did well was that it did good. By using the media to move into the public arena, the field engaged the public imagination, provoked dialogue and debate, and contributed to policy changes that benefitted patients and healthcare providers. (shrink)

The Trump presidency has been remarkable in its attacks on many mainstream institutions. It has tapped populist sentiment that reflects little confidence in the key decision-making centers in American society. Higher education has not escaped this attack. Indeed, criticism of the academy has gone well beyond the debated policies of affirmative action and political correctness to the very status of expert knowledge itself, questioning what is legitimate knowledge. Claims of “false data” and “alternative facts” parade in the public arena (...) without the benefit of reasoned scholarship that might separate fact from fiction. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the attack on science, particularly scientific research focusing on environmental issues and climate change. Nonetheless, a small number of academicians—supposed arbiters of truth—advocate for Trump. How does one explain this apparent anomaly? Why would scholars support a president and populist movement that attack the very foundations of their professional life: knowledge and expertise? I have identified 103 such professors who offer their public support of Trump through blogs, essays, op-ed pieces, public lectures, tweets, YouTube videos, and even a couple of trade books. These are public intellectuals who intervene beyond the classroom and laboratory to promote a political agenda that is supportive of Trump. They are public advocates for Trump: academic Trumpists. Who are these individuals? Where do they teach? What do they teach? What kinds of connections external to the academy do they cultivate? How do they justify their support of Trump? This article offers some answers to these questions. It draws inspiration from Bourdieu’s field analysis of the politics of higher education and the sociology of conservative intellectuals. (shrink)

The greatest contemporary challenge in the arena of cognitive neuroscience concerns the relation between consciousness and the brain. Over recent years the focus of work in this area has switched from the analysis of diverse spatial regions of the brain to that of the timing of neural events. It appears that two conditions are necessary in order for neural events to become correlated with conscious experience. First, the firing of assemblies of neurones must achieve a degree of coherence, and, (...) second, reflexive (i.e. top-down, or reentrant) neural pathways must be activated. It does not, of course, follow that such neural activity causes consciousness; it may be, for example, that the neural activity formats the brain to interact with consciousness. The latter possibility is suggested by analysis of mystical texts suggesting that coherence and reflexivity constitute the conditions for the influx of “spirit.” Kabbalistic sources, for example, describe a hierarchy of “brains” in the human and divine realms through which the principles of coherence and reflexivity operate. Whilst the ontological assumptions of such a scheme place it beyond the realm of psychology, parallels with the picture deriving from the contemporary cognitive neuroscience of consciousness are striking. (shrink)

Assessing the vast arena that continues to grow in pursuit of accountability in American hospitals, this paper raises the following question: Is this enterprise geared toward making hospitals better or toward making them only look better? ‘Accountability’ has become an umbrella concept to signal the need to demonstrate — to others — that performance is being measured and perfected. The author asserts that there is an imperfect fit between health‐care and the industrial model being used to measure quality of (...) care due to four problematic issues: the nature of contemporary patient care, the overstating and overselling of accountability proposals, inflated expectations placed upon ‘rationalization’, and insufficient attention afforded accident and error. The paper concludes with a plea for reconsideration of the tilt toward a business approach to health‐care, asking if, in our zeal to hold hospitals accountable, we are measuring what is important or simply making important what we can measure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 233-235 [Access article in PDF] News and Views The 1999 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Edward L. ShirleySt. Edward's UniversityThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met in Boston on Friday and Saturday, November 19 and 20, 1999. This year's papers addressed the problems of consumerism from Buddhist and Christian perspectives.In the first session, Stephanie Kaza presented a paper in which (...) she analyzed consumerism in light of Buddhist teachings. In her introduction, she offered a brief analysis of consumerist patterns in the first, third, and "fifth" worlds, paying special attention to the ecological impacts of consumerism, the formation of an ideology of consumerism, and the various players in the globalization of consumerism.In the second part of her paper, Stephanie offered an analysis of American "mall mentality" in light of the twelve links of codependent origination found in Buddhist teachings. One can enter the wheel at any point, and malls, advertising, and the entirety of consumeristic culture are designed to stimulate the birth of each of these links: malls are designed to engender craving, clinging, ignorance, and so forth. Because each link in the chain leads to the next, there ensues a "vicious cycle" from which it is difficult to escape. As one can enter the cycle at any point, however, the chain can be broken at any point as well. It was at this point that Stephanie offered a framework for liberation, noting that in Buddhism there are spiritual practices which are designed to help break the cycle at any link, and thus lead to liberation.As there was no Christian respondent, the session went immediately to group discussion, where the worldwide proliferation of "mall mentality" was explored, with the observation that malls in Asian countries are often indistinguishable from those in the United States, even housing identical stores. A sense of helplessness and frustration was expressed by many, but it was noted that each Tradition has a set of tools and resources for dealing with both the frustration as well as the disease, including teachings regarding moderation, simplicity, and restraint.In the second session, Jay McDaniel addressed consumerism from a Christian perspective. Noting that we sometimes speak of dual practice as Buddhists and Christians, he spoke of the "dual practice" of being both a consumer and a Christian. Thus, he noted, he was speaking about consumerism from the inside. Sharing a parable of an old woman and a grasshopper, Jay spoke of various dimensions of [End Page 233] Christian life, such as seeing the Divine in others, hearing and discerning an inner voice, themes of death and Resurrection, and approaching God, not as an object, but as "open space."Jay then spoke of the "Bad News" of consumeristic society, which has produced an over-consuming and "consuming" lifestyle and values to support that lifestyle. It has become, Jay argued, an unofficial religion in which economic growth has become God, and whose priests are economists, politicians and CEOs. Evangelistic advertisers draw us into the church, that is, the mall, and offer us the salvation of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement. Creation is a collection of commodities and humans are skin-encapsulated egos.Jay then spoke of the need for Christians to respond on three levels: intellectual reflection, practical action, and spiritual discipline. For the first level, Jay emphasized a twofold approach: there is a need for historical and policy analysis as well as an explicit presentation of Christian alternative worldviews to the predominant consumerist myth. For the second level, Jay emphasized the need for social engagement to address the structural factors of consumerism. For the third level, he emphasized the need to develop a quality of heart that expresses itself in the intellectual and action arenas, particularly through a revitalization of the Christian contemplative tradition. Through daily practice of sacramental awareness (the presence of the Divine here and now), discernment, trust, and open space, through a daily practice of letting go and living the Paschal Mystery, Jay said Christians can begin to counter the lure... (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the first half of the 1970s, climate research gained a new significance and began to be perceived within political and academic circles as being worthy of public support. Conventional explanations for this increased status include a series of climate anomalies that generated awareness and heightened concern over the potentially devastating effects of climate change. Controversial climatologist Reid Bryson was one of the first to publicly promote what he saw as a definitive link between these climate anomalies and unidirectional climate (...) change in the fall of 1973, and rising food prices in the same year gave him a platform on which to air his views to receptive senior members of the US Congress. Bryson’s testimony before a US Senate subcommittee offers a unique glimpse into how he was able to successfully resonate his agenda with that of senior politicians in a time of crisis, as well as the immediate responses of those senior US politicians upon first hearing climate change arguments. Bryson was one of the most prominent US climatologists to break a taboo against making bold climatological predictions and de-facto policy recommendations in public. As a result, although Bryson was criticized by many in the climatological community, his actions instigated the involvement of other scientists in the public arena, leading to an important elevation in US public climate discourse. (shrink)

Neuroethology is a branch of biology that studies the neural basis of naturally occurring animal behavior. This science, particularly a recent program called computational neuroethology, has a similar structure to the interdisciplinary endeavor of cognitive science. I argue that it would be fruitful to conceive of cognitive science as the computational neuroethology of humans. However, there are important differences between the two sciences, including the fact that neuroethology is much more comparative in its perspective. Neuroethology is a biological science and (...) as such, evolution is a central notion. Its target organisms are studied in the context of their evolutionary history. The central goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science can and ought to be more comparative in its approach to cognitive phenomena in humans. I show how the domain of cognitive phenomena can be divided up into four different classes, individuated by the relative phylogenetic uniqueness of the behavior. I then describe how comparative evidence can enrich our understanding in each of these different arenas. (shrink)

The chorus of doubts concerning the continued viability of the Western liberal tradition itself, in both ideational and institutional aspects, has grown much louder over the past several years. Can this tradition be said to be in a time of twilight – that time that falls? It is this question that would be explored in this paper. While searching the confirmation of the position, indicated in the title of the paper, author turns to contemporary ideological sources of Western liberalism. Such (...) concepts as capitalism, socialism, justice, democracy are considered in this context based on the works of two thinkers, John Rawls and Fred Dallmayr. By stressing ideal justice and ignoring concrete injustice, Rawls’ ideas seem strange even apart from the present crisis. The subsequent evolution of his thoughts is estimated by the author as the transition from daylight to twilight. It has manifested in Rawls’ refusal to apply his principles of justice to the international arena, his condescending attitude toward underdeveloped countries. The atmosphere of The Law of Peoples is still redolent of the assumption of American hegemony. The author wishes to extract from Dallmayr’s book for present purposes is above all his commitment to a version of socialism. But what neither Dallmayr nor Rawls and other liberal thinkers will gainsay is that central to the twilight zone in which we are wandering is the heavy hand of global capitalism. The next problem is that the modern liberal democratic theory has always professed to make the assumption of equality, but it has never fully embraced it. The most important conceptual element in accounting for this failure is the notion of majority rule. The author mentions three difficulties with the idea of majority rule: the problem of time and the problem of the identity of the human units who compose the majority, and the problem of information. He analyzes the recent political evolutions of both the United Kingdom and the United States, and France as well, which have certainly given Western liberalism a badname in many quarters. (shrink)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a method capable of transiently modulating neural excitability. Depending on the stimulation parameters information processing in the brain can be either enhanced or disrupted. This way the contribution of different brain areas involved in mental processes can be studied, allowing a functional decomposition of cognitive behavior both in the temporal and spatial domain, hence providing a functional resolution of brain/mind processes. The aim of the present paper is to argue that TMS with its ability to (...) draw causal inferences on function and its neural representations is a valuable neurophysiological tool for investigating the causal basis of neuronal functions and can provide substantive insight into the modern interdisciplinary and (anti)reductionist neurophilosophical debates concerning the relationships between brain functions and mental abilities. Thus, TMS can serve as a heuristic method for resolving causal issues in an arena where only correlative tools have traditionally been available. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the Precautionary Principle (PP) in action. Precaution is a fairly new concept in environmental policy. It emerged back in the 1960s but did not consolidate until the 1980s, as it formed part of the major changes taking place in environmental policies at that time. The PP is examined in three contexts. Firstly, we look at the meaning of the concept and how it is disseminated through the media and public discourses to the political arenas of (...) Denmark. Then we examine how the idea is adopted to the political level. Thirdly, we look briefly at the first Danish translation of the principle into a practical context, which includes translations into concrete scientific practices. It is concluded that if the PP shall be more than a simple “idea” or a frequently used “term,” emphasis must be put on the transformation of the concept into concrete practices, like e.g., the alternative testing regimes that we show in the case of plant growth-retarding pesticides presented in this paper. (shrink)

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence came to be understood as a national emergency. In this paper, we ask how and why domestic violence was constructed as a crisis specific to the pandemic. Drawing from newspaper data, we show that the domestic violence victim came to embody the violation of gendered boundaries between “public” and “private” spheres. Representations of domestic violence centered on violence spilling over the boundaries of the home, infecting the home, or the home (...) imploding. While theorists of crisis have focused on the central role of temporality in crisis construction, and especially the performative invocation of “new time,” we argue that crisis rhetoric often relies on anxiety about the transgression of spatial boundaries. Our spatial approach to crisis has two components. First, we argue that crisis framings often invoke the idea that seemingly distinct arenas of social life are becoming disorganized or blurred. And second, because thresholds between social spaces are coded as sacred during crisis, this spatial reordering is rendered dangerous, resulting in calls to resecure boundaries. (shrink)

The hearers of the Apocalypse enter another universe, a temporary arena in which the norms and realities of everyday life are laid aside and a vision is opened of the final reign of God.

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place -based goal of wildness or biotic harmony. Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are (...) examples of this type of deliberation. (shrink)

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

Many new genetic tests are used in clinical practice, and the number of available tests is growing. Two important health policy questions arise as these genetic tests become available. The first question, whether a new test should be made available, has been the focus of much recent discussion. The second question concerns defining the appropriate standards surrounding the use of these tests, including patient selection, education, informed consent, test interpretation and counseling.Genetic tests currently move from the research arena, where (...) strategies are put in place to minimize risks,into the clinical context where the practice of medicine is more variable and the risks to patients less understood. In the research setting, risks can be minimized through safeguards including education, consent, and counseling. The frequency and magnitude of psychosocial and clinical risks canbe assessed. In the clinical setting, however, these safeguards may not be used consistently, creating unknown risksfor patients. (shrink)

Our paper explores how the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's The Coquette and Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple informed the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who attempted to kill the man who seduced her. Once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, and Norman was acquitted against the weight of the evidence. Sentimental novels (...) turn on the contrast between the passive victim status of the heroine and the active libidinal quest of the rake-villain. As Cathy Davidson points out, this fiction is "about silence, subservience, stasis (the accepted attributes of women as traditionally defined) in contradistinction to conflicting impulses toward independence, action, and self expression (the ideals of the new American nation)." The seduction plot diverts attention from this disparity by establishing an affective solidarity between heroine and reader and elevating the ruined woman to a tragic status. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgements on her behalf. Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. The common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wive's seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus "on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature" - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). Going further, we would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. Thus, we see no need to characterize - and indeed reject the depiction of - law as "a limited arena" in which ideas of morality have little place. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to "the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice." The extended story of Amelia Norman not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

This paper argues that judges assessing the scientific validity and the legal admissibility of forensic science techniques ought to privilege testing over explanation. Their evaluation of reliability should be more concerned with whether the technique has been adequately validated by appropriate empirical testing than with whether the expert can offer an adequate description of the methods she uses, or satisfactorily explain her methodology or the theory from which her claims derive. This paper explores these issues within two specific contexts: latent (...) fingerprint examination and the use of breath tests for the detection of alcohol. Especially in the forensic science arena, I suggest courts have often been seduced by superficially plausible explanations and descriptions of a technique or method, and permitted these to serve as a substitute for empirical testing. Thinking through these two examples illustrates both why evaluating the extent of testing should be the most important method by which courts assess reliability, and why, when other forms of explanatory evidence are readily available, we may nonetheless elect to make use of them. This paper suggests that these descriptions and explanations may at times usefully supplement evidence of testing, but should not generally be substituted for it. Finally, this paper embraces a kind of evidentiary pragmatism, in which the quantum of evidence required to establish legal reliability is determined not in the abstract, but in relation to the evidence that is, or ought to be, available as a result of reasonable research and investigation. (shrink)

Even the most casual observer of Chinese society is aware of the tremendous significance of Confucianism as a linchpin of both ancient and modern Chinese identity. Furthermore, the Confucian tradition has exercised enormous influence over the values and institutions of the other cultures of East Asia, an influence that continues to be important in the global Asian diaspora. If forecasters are correct in labeling the 21st century 'the Chinese century,' teachers and scholars of religious studies and theology will be called (...) upon to illuminate the history, character, and role of Confucianism as a religious tradition in Chinese and Chinese-influenced societies. The essays in this volume will address the specifically pedagogical challenges of introducing Confucian material to non-East Asian scholars and students. Informed by the latest scholarship as well as practical experience in the religious studies and theology classroom, the essays are attentive to the various settings within which religious material is taught and sensitive to the needs of both experts in Confucian studies and those with no background in Asian studies who are charged with teaching these traditions. The authors represent all the arenas of Confucian studies, from the ancient to the modern. Courses involving Confucius and Confucianism have proliferated across the disciplinary map of the modern university. This volume will be an invaluable resource for instructors not only in religious studies departments and theological schools, but also teachers of world philosophy, non-Western philosophy, Asian studies, and world history. (shrink)

Why do artists, poets, philosophers, writers, and others who are usually classified as intellectuals leave the ivory tower to "dirty their hands" in the political arena? In an effort to illuminate the intellectual's struggle to come to grips with the issues raised by political involvement, David Schalk examines the life and thought of five intellectuels engagés in France during the period between 1920 and 1945. From communist to fascist, these figures—Paul Nizan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Mounier, Julien Benda, and Robert (...) Brasillach—cover the full political spectrum, and Professor Schalk studies their diverse reactions to the social, political, and economic tensions of the interwar period. Broadly defining "engagement" as political involvement that is voluntary, conscious, and freely chosen, usually by intellectuals, the author poses the intellectual's dilemma in the following terms: "When we are engagé," he writes, "we fear that we are debasing our highest values; when we are not, we worry that we have become, in Paul Nizan's trenchant phrase, mere chiens de garde [watchdogs]." He then investigates the origins and the popularization of the concept of engagement in the early 1930s, the arguments used to denounce it and to defend it, its different manifestations, and finally its effects on the socio-political actuality of the world. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Are your students prepared? Are they ready to view the world through biblical lenses? Are they equipped to engage the world with scriptural discernment? Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption is a tool that helps teachers equip 11th or 12th grade students with a Christian understanding of all major academic disciplines and cultural arenas. Course goals: Define worldview and demonstrate how worldviews influence the way people think about all of life; Analyze a Biblical worldview in terms of Creation, Fall and Redemption; (...) Apply Creation, Fall and Redemption to real-life issues as well as to making positive contributions to life and culture. Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption Student Text was created to appeal to student interest and develop understanding. Application examples taken from history and recent events resonate with students, motivating them to apply Scripture to issues that are crucial to their spiritual growth. Apologetics is interwoven throughout the textbook, equipping students to defend the foundational teachings of the Bible against competing worldviews. At the same time, the framework of Creation, Fall, Redemption enables students to make distinctively Christian contributions to their culture. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a debate, centrally between James Turner Johnson and James F. Childress, on how to understand the just war tradition. The international arena has historically served as the context for demonstrating the normative and political utility of the just war tradition. Contemporary experience shows, however, that violence is not only a distant issue, but it is also a local, domestic problem. Investigation into contemporary police practice, a lacuna in Christian ethics, with regard to the (...) justifiable use of force can help clarify which understanding of the just war tradition is preferable. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing (...) the public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 321 metaphysical conclusions: " It was assumed by the medieval theists •.• that there is something inherently inferior about the temporal compared with the timeless. Being temporal was an infliction, a sort of body odor from which everything of this world reeked. For a complex set of reasons, some psychological having to do with the fear of death and decay, others socioeconomic concerning their disdain for the (...) inferior class of people who were forced to manipulate changing objects, they assumed that true being must he found in what is immutable..." (p. 54). Gale's hook is quite thorough in its review of the relevant literature of contemporary analytical philosophers on the existence of God and affords a rich feast for anyone looking for an almost boundless supply of carefully fashioned logical arguments questioning the conclusions of those who have used analytic philosopy to defend theistic tenets. For philosophers hungering for a truly insightful contemporary approach to the question of God's existence and nature, however, the hook provides hut meager fare. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California MICHAEL J. DODDS, 0.P. Die Gnade vollendeter Endlichkeit: Zur transzendentaltheologischen Auslegung der thomanischen Anthropologie. By RICHARD SCHENK, O.P. Freihurg: Herder, 1989. Pp. 638. 98 DM. The title of this hook, which could he rendered into English as, roughly, The Grace of Perfect Imperfection, could strike one as ironic, and yet it intrigues by promising a new way of looking at a fundamental anthropological problem. The hook delivers on this promise hut, in so doing, creates difficulties for the reviewer. For this new way of looking is so thoroughly grounded in the history of philosophy and theology, its scope is so broad, its implications so profound that it demands a greater arena than a hook review to do it justice. There· fore, I will content myself with introducing its structure and content as well as indicating to whom this hook may appeal. The work is the doctoral dissertation of Schenk, done at the University of Munich. It is an attempt to develop an historically grounded, yet transcendental interpretation of Thomistic anthropology which avoids the experiential supernaturalism of Karl Rahner's theology. Schenk demonstrates the possibility of an alternative reading by developing the differences between Heidegger and Rahner in their respec· 322 BOOK REVIEWS tive notions of transcendence. These three, Thomas, Heidegger and Rahner, are the chief discussion partners for Schenk, although the foot· notes and bibliography reveal a familiarity with the secondary literature that is breathtaking. The first chapter is Schenk's exploration of twelve antitheses. Its purpose seems more negative than positive in that it prevents the reader from simply categorizing Schenk's work and interpretation as either " history " or a " new interpretation," as either " perennial " or " contemporary ", to mention just two of the antitheses. The second chapter is the longest, most difficult and, from a systematic viewpoint, most important of the work. Schenk lays out the alternative views, stemming from Porphyry's and Proclus' schools of Neoplatonism respectively, of the theodicy problematics, which were available to Thomas in constructing his anthropology. Schenk's choice of the theodicy problem as a focus is particularly fruitful, since it allows him to show how all of the fundamental theological anthropological issues, such as nature and grace, death, epistemology and freedom are involved and affected. The fundamental question can he formullated thus: Is the perfection of the human being accomplished in his or her own subjectivity or in its being surmounted? It is also here that Schenk's work shows its power in areas beyond the merely speculative. His concentration on the theodicy problem brings an almost " pastoral " side to the work, in that it seeks to avoid easy answers to the difficult question of why God allows human suffering. This question is not put aside by the Gospel hut made more pointed. Thomas seeks to follow and enhance what went before him (and here we have moved into the third chapter) by not functionalizing suffering and yet maintaining the call of the individual to salvation. It is precisely in this place, in this antinomy between the pri· mordial hope for perfection and the equally primordial doubt of ever attaining it, that... (shrink)

Over the last 20+ years, globalization has made international trade and investment more efficient and productive. In the absence of coordinated global regulatory regimes, it has also made multinational corporations (MNCs) impervious to social concerns in the countries where they operate. There is considerable debate in the academic, political, and business arena as to the causes of the apparently inequitable distribution of benefits between labor and capital. Notwithstanding, the relative merits of this debate, and facing tremendous societal pressure, companies (...) have adopted voluntary codes of conduct to ensure that workers making products for them in poor and developing countries are protected from hazardous working conditions and receive wages that meet local laws and market conditions. These codes, however, suffer from a lack of credibility and proof of substantive compliance. A new type of nongovernmental organization (NGO) has emerged that monitors a company's compliance with prespecified standards and provides assurance to the external stakeholders that the company has fulfilled its voluntary obligations. From an historical perspective, this has been an innovative phenomenon where the monitoring organization purports to act as an honest broker to ensure all concerned that the company/industry has fulfilled its obligations. In this article, we undertake a thorough examination of two such organizations, that is, Fair Labor Association, and Social Accountability International, that have played a pioneering role in bridging the gap between societal expectations and corporate performance. We examine their governance structures, operating procedures, monitoring standards, and public disclosure of findings, and above all, their success in improving the level of corporate compliance with their self‐created codes or standards. Unfortunately, our findings and conclusions are disappointing. In our view, the two groups have mostly failed to meet their avowed goals. Rather than using their NGO status to help companies improve their code compliance, they have suffered from managerial capture and have been reduced to corporate apologists. (shrink)

This study compared the family characteristics, victimization histories, and number of perpetration offenses of juvenile offenders who admitted to having had sex with animals to juvenile offenders who did not. The study found that 96% of the juveniles who had engaged in sex with nonhuman animals also admitted to sex offenses against humans and reported more offenses against humans than other sex offenders their same age and race. Those juveniles who had engaged in sex with animals were similar to other (...) sex offenders in that they also came from families with less affirming and more incendiary communication, lower attachment, less adaptability, and less positive environments. Those juveniles who had engaged in sex with animals reported victimization histories with more emotional abuse and neglect and a higher number of victimization events than other offenders. This would seem to indicate that sex with animals may be an important indicator of potential or co-occurring sex offenses against humans and may be a sign of severe family dysfunction and abuse that should be addressed in the arenas of psychological intervention, juvenile justice programs, and public policy. (shrink)

A short time ago the idea of sustainable agriculture was accepted only at the extreme margins of the U. S. agricultural systems. Although sustainability has now become a major theme of many U. S. agricultural groups, there remains much under-explored terrain in the meaning of sustainable agriculture. A thorough examination of who and what we want to sustain and how we can sustain them is critical if sustainable agriculture is to be a practical improvement over conventional agriculture. In order to (...) begin this effort, this article analyzes contemporary sustainable agriculture discourse and suggests alternatives for reconceptualizing sustainable agriculture. In particular we look at three arenas of sustainable discourse-family farm/rural community preservation, food safety, and agricultural science-and address issues of class, race/ethnicity, and gender found in current sustainability positions. We find that while advocates of sustainability have succeeded in pushing agricultural researchers and policy makers to address environmental issues, we need to go much farther both in theory and practice in order to deal with equally important issues of social equity. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. (shrink)

L’entrée de l’ordinateur cristallise les relations latentes à la vie de couple et les contradictions qui la minent. Pour comprendre ces effets, encore faut-il connaître le devenir de la vie conjugale. En effet, un objet technique n’a de sens que dans la mesure où il s’inscrit dans un corps social traversé par ses propres dynamiques. L’ordinateur accentue donc, plutôt qu’il ne crée, certains traits d’évolution de la famille et des rapports homme/femme. Il intervient dans un univers déjà investi par un (...) ensemble d’objets techniques socialement marqués et inégalement répartis entre les sexes.The introduction of the computer uncovers the dormant relations in a couple’s life and its undermining contradictions. To apprehend this phenomenon, a thorough knowledge of today’s domestic life is essential. Indeed, a technical object only makes sense insofar as it integrates into a society with its own underlying dynamics. The computer, as a consequence, does not produce, but rather emphasizes some trends of the evolution of both family and current gender relations. It enters into an arena already surrounded with technical objects that are socially marked and unevenly distributed among the sexes. (shrink)

Trois mouvements sociaux caractérisent la société iranienne d’aujourd’hui. Le premier est le mouvement des étudiants, qui combine des revendications culturelles pour une société plus ouverte avec des demandes politiques pour une société plus libre, dans laquelle la participation active des citoyens à la scène politique devrait être reconnue. Le second mouvement est celui des femmes, par lequel des femmes d’âge moyen ainsi que la nouvelle génération expriment leur demande pour une société moins discriminatoire vis-à-vis des femmes. Le troisième mouvement est (...) celui des intellectuels, par lequel de nouvelles interprétations de l’islam mettent en question la nature théocratique du régime politique en vigueur. Contrairement aux mouvements des années 1970, qui débouchèrent sur la révolution islamique de 1979, les nouveaux mouvements sociaux en Iran ont une forte dimension démocratique. Ils sont « protodémocratiques » dans le sens où ils revendiquent l’ouverture du système politique au nom d’une nouvelle version de l’islam, moins holistique, plus individualiste, séparant le registre de la spiritualité religieuse de celui du politique.Three social movements characterize today’s Iranian society. The first is the students’ movement which combines cultural demands for a more open society with a political one, for a freer society in which the citizens’ participation to the political system should be recognized. The second is the womens’ movement, through which middle-aged women and the younger generation express their claim for a less gender-discriminating society. The third movement is the intellectuals’ movement, in which new interpretations of Islam put into question the theocratic nature of the political regime. Contrary to the movements of the 1970s that ended up in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the new social movements in Iran have a strong democratic dimension. They are « protodemocratic » in the sense that they ask for the opening of the political system in the name of a new version of Islam, less holistic, more individualistic, separating the realm of religious spirituality from the arena of the politics. (shrink)

Marc Pelchat | Résumé : La présente contribution s’intéresse aux défis auxquels se mesure le théologien qui assume la charge d’animer et de diriger une institution de formation théologique, afin de la situer dans l’Église et dans l’Université dans le contexte d’une société en changement. Voilà une forme de la pratique théologique ou une autre modalité du service de la théologie que le professeur et doyen émérite René-Michel Roberge a accepté de remplir pendant une période importante de sa vie, à (...) la suite d’une carrière d’enseignant et de chercheur. En relisant cet itinéraire d’un professeur devenu administrateur de son institution de formation sans cesser d’être aussi un théologien, on trouve de bons indicateurs pour comprendre l’évolution du projet théologique dans une société en changement et pour être en mesure d’inscrire la parole théologienne dans l’espace public aujourd’hui. |: The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges faced by one theologian who, as dean of a faculty of theology, steered a course designed to redefine the place that institution occupies within the Church, the university, and the changing society in which both were evolving. René-Michel Roberge, emeritus professor and dean, devoted a considerable part of his life to that form of practical theology required of anyone who would assume the leadership of a faculty of theology in a university setting ; and he took up this form of theological service on the heels of an already rich career as teacher and researcher. Revisiting the itinerary of this professor-cum-administrator of an institution of higher education, one finds indicators useful for situating the theological project and theological discourse in the public arena today. (shrink)

Le concept d’intégration mérite-t-il toujours la place centrale que lui confère la sociologie classique, en particulier d’inspiration durkheimienne ou fonctionnaliste? Trois raisons d’en douter sont proposées ici : la montée en puissance des approches centrées sur le Sujet ; la crise des modèles dits d’ « intégration », anglais comme français ; la poussée d’identités collectives circulant dans d’autres espaces que celui d’État-nation.Does the concept of integration still deserve the forefront place classical sociology – particularly drawn from Durkheim or functionalism (...) – bestowed on it? The question opens up three avenues of investigation : an ever-increasing number of approaches focusing on the Subject ; the crisis of both English and French « integration » models ; the upsurge of collective identities in arenas outside the Nation-State. (shrink)

Le différend commercial sur les OGM dans le cadre de l’OMC a mobilisé une expertise scientifique de façon quelque peu inédite. Dès le départ, le Groupe spécial a situé le différend dans le cadre de l’Accord sur l’application des mesures sanitaires et phytosanitaires de l’OMC grâce à une nouvelle ontologie juridique. Ce groupe a mis en scène l’expertise scientifique en suivant des approches spécifiques définissant de quelle manière les experts seraient interrogés, les réponses qu’ils donneraient, leur rôle spécifique dans le (...) domaine juridique et la façon dont leurs déclarations viendraient compléter ses conclusions. De plus, le Groupe spécial a procédé à un tournant procédural en présentant ses conclusions sous forme d’un jugement purement juridico-administratif tout en gardant implicites ses propres jugements sur les questions de fond liées aux risques.The high-profile WTO trade dispute on GMOs brought in scientific expertise in somewhat novel ways. From the outset, the Panel placed the dispute under the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement by drawing on a new legal ontology. The Panel brought scientific expertise into play in specific ways that defined how experts were questioned, the answers they would give, their specific role in the legal arena, and the way their statements would complement the Panel’s findings. Furthermore, the Panel created a procedural turning point in WTO jurisprudence by representing its findings as a purely legal and administrative assessment of whether the EC’s regulatory procedures violated the SPS Agreement, with its own assessments on substantive risk issues remaining implicit. (shrink)

Siden 2007 har HOD og KS satset store ressurser på prosjektet «Samarbeid om etisk kompetanseheving» i kommunale helse- og omsorgstjenester. Hensikten med prosjektet har vært å heve de ansattes etiske kompetanse, og ett av de iverksatte tiltakene har vært å etablere refleksjonsgrupper i etikk. Denne artikkelen er basert på en evaluering av arbeidet i refleksjonsgruppene med fokus på hvordan etikkveilederen, også kalt fasilitator, beskriver arbeidet i gruppene. Hensikten med studien var å utvikle kunnskap om hvordan arbeidet med etikk-refleksjon foregår, samt (...) å diskutere om måten det arbeides på kan forventes å bidra til etisk kompetanseheving blant gruppemedlemmene. Vinteren 2012 gjennomførte vi fokusgruppeintervju i åtte kommuner med ansatte fra ulike deler av den kommunale helse- og omsorgstjenesten, ett intervju i hver kommune, til sammen 33 personer. Data ble analysert og fortolket i tråd med hermeneutisk metode. Resultatene viser at de i refleksjonsgruppene diskuterer alt fra verdier, begreper, fiktive case, dilemmaer til vanskelig situasjoner fra egen praksis. Refleksjonsmetodene varierer i spennet fra fri diskusjon til en strukturert samtale. Fasiltatorenes helsefaglige grunnutdanning og kunnskap om etikk og refleksjon ser ut til å være avgjørende faktorer for om refleksjonsgrupper i etikk mest fungerer som et pusterom, eller blir en læringsarena for etisk kompetanseheving. Resultatene diskuteres i lys av lærings- og refleksjonsteori.Nøkkelord: Etikk, evaluering, fasilitatorer, kommunehelsetjenesten, læring, refleksjonsgrupper English Summary: Ethics reflection groups: Just a “time out” or a learning arena?Since 2007, there has been a nationally prioritised programme aiming to enhance ethics competence in Norwegian community health care. One of many measures has been to establish ethics reflection groups. The purpose of this study was to obtain knowledge about how ethics reflection is carried out and if the reflection strengthens the participants´ competence in ethics. In this article, we focus on how the role of the facilitator, and the objective is to describe and discuss how the facilitator work and facilitate in the groups. We conducted focus group interviews with facilitators from various clinical settings in eight different municipalities. Data were analysed and interpreted according to hermeneutic methodology. The findings show that the discussions in the reflection groups varied from values, concepts and fictional cases to dilemmas and ethically difficult situations from the participants own practice. The methods used varied from free conversation to structured reflection. Competence in ethics and methods of reflection are essential skills facilitators must employ/have to run the groups. We discuss the findings using learning- and reflection theory.Article first published online: 22 MARCH 2016. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK R]]JVIEWS room for different theories and new developments. He does not try to tie up every loose end. Furthermore, he avoids the rut of the specialist by willingly and capably addressing questions of biblical exegesis, philosophy, psychology, science, and popular culture with even-handed competence. Space does not permit me to discuss his fascinating analysis of the psychology of near-death experiences or specific rejoinders to important objections (e.g., the (...) Bible depicts the dead as bodily beings, not immaterial spirits; dualism is a result of the Fall; dualism implies that the whole person does not die; at death we pass out of time, and, hence, there is no intermediate state). But I can assure you that his account is cogent and illuminating. Lenoir-Rhyne College Hickory, North Carolina PHILIP BLOSSER: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective. Edited by KENNETH L DEUTSCH AND WALTER SOFFER. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Pp. ix+ 304. $54.50 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). For Leo Strauss, the superiority of classical political philosophy over modern social science (and political theory based on social science) lies in at least four principles. First, it treats political matters as they actually appear to man qua philosopher and, in a qualified way, to the good citizen. Because Strauss claims that social science (and much post-classical political philosophy) abstracts from his canon of intelligibility, he thinks that it cannot lead to a humane, rational politics. (See "What is Political Philosophy?", in What is Political Philosophy? [Westport: Greenwood], pp. 27-28, and "Distinction between Facts and Values" in Natural Right and History [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953], pp. 78-80.) Second, Plato and Aristotle believed that only the good man properly judges politics. This belief attracts Strauss, because it identifies virtue as the best claimant to political rule. ("What is Political Philosophy? ", pp. 36-38.) A third principle is derived immediately from this second: politics ought to be organized hierarchically. In the hierarchy, either the truly virtuous or gentlemen should rule, and those having a passive, obediential form of virtue should be the ruled. Fourth, this arrangement is rational and humane. For although the virtues of the ruler and the ruled are complementary in justice and necessary to it, still they are different and, in fact, require the stratification just mentioned. ("Classic Natural Right" in Natural Right and History, pp. 130-44.) BOOK REVIEWS 527 Because of the controversial nature of these principles and Strauss's eminence in political philosophy, one welcomes the present collection of essays by his disciples. They believe that in liberal democracies people confuse liberty with the uses to which liberty can and ought to be put. Doing so, people undermine that regime's foundations. Strauss and his disciples believe that modern natural right makes the clash between liberty and natural right inevitable, because its principal founders, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, conceived man as non-political. They conceived individuals as gaining certain advantages from governments hut as gaining no good in the exercise of politics itself. Classic natural right, by contrast, bases itself on the assumption that man is radically political. Moreover, it conceives politics as an arena for liberating, ennobling activities. Hobbes and Locke viewed the individual as independent of politics, which they placed at the low end of the range of human activity, along with everyday concerns and popular morality, rather than at the high end, as Strauss would. Thus for Strauss, liberal democracy is founded on modern principles, which are either apolitical and liberal (Locke) or apolitical and illiberal (Hobbes). Consequently, it cannot withstand the individualist and collectivist onslaughts that we have seen in this century. What, then, have Strauss's disciples to say about liberal democracy and the prospect of classic natural right in a Western world which is more or less permanently Hobbesian-Lockean? This can be answered by describing first the hook's divisions and then its diagnoses and prescriptions. In part one the contributors appraise the work of Strauss itself; in part two they define issues in liberalism ; and in part three they discuss liberalism in American political life. In the first part, Michael Platt outlines how Strauss's thought... (shrink)

Malgré une démocratisation réussie, une économie florissante et un libre accès à Internet, Taïwan reste largement absent de l'espace public international. Cette absence résulte de la politique subtile menée par la Chine. La stratégie de Pékin consiste à concentrer l'attention des acteurs internationaux et dans le même temps à effacer toute trace de Taïwan dans l'espace public en tant que pays indépendant . L'article suggère que Taïwan ne renforcera sa position que par l'intensification des négociations directes avec la Chine continentale. (...) L'exemple taïwanais éclaire un peu plus les stratégies régulatrices des États en réponse aux efforts déployés par les groupes politiques dominés dans leur combat pour se faire entendre à l'heure d'Internet.Despite a successful democratization, a thriving economy and a free internet access, Taiwan remains largely absent from the international public arena. This absence results from the subtle policy led by China. Beijing's strategy is to focus the attention of international actors and at the same time to erase any trace of Taiwan in the public space as an independent country . The article suggests that Taiwan strengthen its position as the intensification of direct negotiations with mainland China. The Taiwanese example illuminates a little more States regulatory strategies in response to efforts by the political groups dominated in their struggle to be heard in today's Internet. (shrink)

Some concepts that are now part and parcel of mathematics used to be, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century, a central preoccupation of mathematicians and philosophers. The concept of continuity, or the continuous, is one of them. Nowadays, many philosophers of mathematics take it for granted that mathematicians of the last quarter of the nineteenth century found an adequate conceptual analysis of the continuous in terms of limits and that serious philosophical thinking is no longer required, except (...) perhaps when the question of the continuum is transferred to the arena of set theory where it takes the form of the infamous continuum hypothesis. As Philip Ehrlich has recently shown, this conviction goes back to the early writings of Russell who, in 1903 and then again in later writings, forcefully and eloquently pushed the view that mathematicians had given the final answer to immemorial conundrums arising from the continuous and infinitesimals . This proclamation of victory came with what was announced as the necessary defeat of the notion of the infinitesimal, despite the fact that mathematicians like Thomae, Du Bois-Reymond, Stolz, Bettazi, Veronese, Levi-Civita, and Hahn were investigating mathematical structures containing infinitesimals in a mathematically rigorous and logically consistent manner. In this respect Russell was merely walking in the footsteps of Cantor, and many of Russell's contemporaries were only too keen to keep infinitesimals out of Cantor's paradise. However, although Cantor certainly wanted to send the notion of infinitesimal to Hell, the notion kept a low profile in the mathematical purgatory, making its way in the study of non-Archimedean ordered algebraic systems. Of course, nowadays everyone has heard of Robinson's attempt at resurrecting infinitesimals in analysis in the form of non-standard analysis, but Robinson's work, despite the fact that it had, in …. (shrink)

This commentary responds to the following article previously published on the Journal and Business Ethics: ‘Baudoin, L., Arenas, D. “Everyone Has a Truth”: Forms of Ecological Embeddedness in an Interorganizational Context. _J Bus Ethics_ _185_, 263–280 (2023)’. Our commentary offers a rejoinder to Baudoin’s and Arenas’ conclusion that environmental engagement within organizations is a plural field within which many different sub-positions may be discerned. In rejoining their conclusion, our commentary searches for greater nuance in the portrayal of engagement for social (...) and ecological transition in the workplace. This is done in two steps: first, by ‘softening’ categories that conceal as much as they reveal: like Olin Wright’s tripartition of rupture, interstice and reform as _distinct_ forms such engagement might take. Second, by undertaking a close reading of the experience of an activist undertaking training on environmental issues, who has previously left a job with a French car manufacturer. In so doing, we discern the following strategies co-existing simultaneously in this person’s story: an existential quest to frame his choices, the decision to become a broker of scientific information concerning human-made climate change to other professionals, and a state of ‘suspension’ in moving from individual consciousness raising to the initiation of joint action with others. (shrink)

Clemente de Alejandría fundó la filosofía cristiana demostrando que fe y filosofía son verdaderamente complementarias. Nacido a mediados del siglo II, inauguró la convergencia y alianza entre el cristianismo y la cultura griega. Sus obras poseen un valor inestimable dentro de la literatura eclesiástica y de la filosofía cristiana de los primeros siglos de la Iglesia. El presente estudio aborda desde la antropología filosófica el pensamiento de Clemente de Alejandría sobre el matrimonio cristiano. Es cierto que el matrimonio no constituye (...) uno de los temas centrales en las obras del autor cristiano, no obstante, dedicó gran parte del tercer libro de los Stromata a refutar doctrinas heréticas surgidas en torno al matrimonio. Este trabajo presenta una reflexión de tipo filosófico sobre los textos que se encuentran en las obras de Clemente de Alejandría en las que fundamenta su visión sobre el matrimonio. La finalidad, características, dignidad del matrimonio así como las segundas nupcias son algunas de las cuestiones que se tratan en este estudio desde la antropología filosófica. (shrink)