In The Law of War and Peace Grotius needs many more pages for the theological arguments in the debate on war and peace than for the arguments derived from natural law and international law. Apparently the controversy within Christendom on the justifiability of warfare was one of the most important issues to be addressed in his magnum opus. The general discussion in his days was about the proper interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the authority of which was accepted by all (...) participants. This contribution focuses on the position of Hugo Grotius in this debate, confronting his ideas with the biblical arguments of those who completely rejected warfare, more in particular Erasmus and the Anabaptist branch of the Reformation. Grotius rejected the arguments in favour of Christian pacifism, which was to a considerable degree defended by Erasmus and which formed a central tenet of the Anabaptists. The latter's apolitical stand was not shared by Grotius or by Erasmus who were both albeit to different degrees involved in the political debate and practice in the field of war and peace. (shrink)

RésuméAprès avoir rappeléľorigine et le sens de la notion de compleAmentarité introduite par Bohr en Physique quantique et avoir fait allusion aux diverses extensions qui en ont déjàété proposées, ľauteur cherche à appliquer ľidée de complémentarité aux relations qui existent entre les constituants ?un système et le système entier. La perte ?individualité subie par les constituants ?un système et traduîte en Mécanique classique par la notion ?énergie potentielle s'accentue au fur et à mesure que la liaison des constituants dans le (...) système devient plus étroite. Ľétude de la mécanique ondulatoire des systèmes confirme ľidée qu'il existe une sorte de complémentarité entre ľidée de constituant autonome et celle de système. L. de B. (shrink)

This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses, lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and aspectual properties. This type of cases is usually treated at the semantic level as ‘mismatches’ and resolved compositionally through logical operations of ‘aspectual coercion’. We suggest on the contrary that no such effect of ‘mismatch resolution’ or ‘coercion’ is at work: these utterances are worked out inferentially according (...) to the various pieces of evidence they provide for their relevance, in line of Deirdre Wilson’s and Dan Sperber’s (1995) relevance theory. Such utterances give rise to cognitive effects that are hardly attainable by apparently more literal formulations, while being cost-effective. Our analysis follows the work ofEscandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2011)about the rigidity and thus prevalence of computational linguistic expressions, called ‘procedural expressions’ byBlakemore (1987)withinSperber and Wilson’s (1995[1986])framework, relevance theory. (shrink)

Les troubles de mémoire sont un motif fréquent de consultation dans les services de gériatrie, psychiatrie ou neurologie. Ils sont pour beaucoup synonymes d’un mot terrible : Alzheimer. Dès l’apparition de troubles mnésiques, chacun s’interroge : « Est-ce l’âge, ou bien la maladie? Puis-je panser ma mémoire, ou vais-je dériver avec elle? » Les docteurs Emmanuelle Candas et Bruno Le Dastumer, gériatres, spécialistes des troubles de la mémoire, font un état des lieux de la maladie d’Alzheimer et répondent à ces (...) interrogations : comment faire la différence entre le vieillissement naturel du cerveau et les troubles mnésiques pathologiques? Existe-t-il un traitement pour soigner la maladie d’Alzheimer? Et surtout, comment accompagner le malade, dès le diagnostic établi? (shrink)

BĪRŪNĪ, ABŪ RAYḤĀN MOḤAMMAD b. Aḥmad (362/973- after 442/1050), scholar and polymath of the period of the late Samanids and early Ghaznavids and one of the two greatest intellectual figures of his time in the eastern lands of the Muslim world, the other being Ebn Sīnā.

Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws is an enduring classic of social and political theory deserving a fresh reading every generation. The modern reader, however, is likely to find a work that ran to over a thousand pages in its two-volume first edition a bit overwhelming. Presented here, therefore, is the first English-language compendium of The Spirit of Laws, together with the first English translation of the posthumously published treatise containing the physiological theory underlying Montesquieu's theory of climate.

Linguists and philosophers examine the representation of temporal reference; the interaction of the temporal information from tense, aspect, modality, and context; and the representation of the temporal relations between facts, events, states, propositions, and utterances. They link this to current research in psychology and anthropology.

For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most profound of (...) his age'. (shrink)

The main point developed in this paper is the demonstration of the attitudes characterizing the major Belgian political parties. This is achieved through a factorial analysis applied to a set of data resulting from the answers given by the major parties leaders to various specific questions regarding bath the prevailing economie as well as institutional issues at the eve of the election of December 17th, 1978. From that point it has been possible to compare those results with the one obtained (...) from the data concerning the 1974 programmes.The results of the statistical analysis show that white in 1974 the strongest positive associations between parties corresponded to tht traditional ethical and socioeconomic cleavages, four years later the linguistic dimension was predominant with a stronger homogeneity characterizing the Dutchspeaking group than what could be observed for the Frenchspeaking one.The factorial analysis allows for a graphical representation of the respective positioning of the parties along the statistically significant factorial axes. Applied to two sets of data, the first one on purely institutional matters, the second one on both institutional and economic policies, the analysis reveals clearly through the various graphs presented the linguistic cleavage as well as the divergences about the extent of regional competences and minorities protection, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the degrees of regional economic autonomy and of public intervention in the business life. (shrink)

Ce texte a pour but de mettre en confrontation la conception ruyérienne de la philosophie avec la conception wittgensteinienne. L’opposition majeure consiste dans l’idée défendue par Ruyer selon laquelle on ne saurait concevoir ce qu’est l’esprit sans définir un domaine, intérieur au sujet, qu’on peut identifier avec sa subjectivité. Une telle idée est comprise par Ryle comme un mythe, celui de l’intériorité. Il y a en revanche une volonté commune à Ruyer et Wittgenstein de s’émanciper de la science. Deux thèmes (...) permettent alors de comparer les objectifs de Ruyer et ceux des philosophes wittgensteiniens : le thème des mythes en philosophie et celui de la traduction. (shrink)

La révolution cartésienne, suivant son interprète le plus récent, aurait consisté à rompre avec le réalisme méthodique d’Aristote et de l’École, allant de l’être à la pensée, pour conclure de la pensée à l’être, si bien que Descartes serait le père de l’idealisme moderne. En réalité Descartes, idéaliste en théorie, est réaliste en pratique : l'acte de connaître consiste dans la saisie des essences, des matières simples, c’est-à-dire dans l'appréhension d’une гéаlité distincte de l’esprit.La révolution philosophique des temps modernes a (...) bien plutôt consisté ä substituer à la théorie de la verité-copie ou de la verité-norme, celle de la verité- cohérence ou de la vérité-réussite suivant qu’il s’agit de sciences formelles ou réelles. Partant de ce donné, négligé et déclassé par les Rationalistes, qu’est le continu sensible et le flux de conscience, la connaissance consiste à en procurer une représentation symbolique cohérente, en vue de le maîtriser. Elle consiste à établir entre les symboles et les ехрéпепсев vécues des règles de correspondance univoque et entre les symboles des relations telles qu’on puisse le plus probablement prévoir les ехрériепсеs à vivre en partant des ехрéпепсеs vécues. Le problème philosophique par excellence devient celui de la signification des symboles et de l’exclusion de leurs combinaisons vides de sens. (shrink)

In its first section, dedicated to the topic science and relativism, the article argues against those who hold that science is absolutist while ethics is relativist. The point made is that the two disciplines are not all that different. There is an element of objectivity and an element of relativity in both. The article insists that there are two plausible ways in which these elements may be appreciated in both disciplines. The first way involves an analysis of precedents; the second (...) way an analysis of secondary precepts. Then, in its second section, dedicated to science and utilitarianism, the article focuses on the problem of abstraction. The author argues that the crucial issue is the way both scientists and utilitarian philosophers choose the relevant parameters for their theorising. When the choice of parameters is not correct, deformation results. Like economics, utilitarianism tends to present itself as an exact science that guarantees a complete explanation. However, the article shows how and why this attitude can be deeply problematic. (shrink)