Les zombies sont partout, au cinéma, à la télévision, dans nos rues, chez notre libraire. Grotesques et terrifiants, ils pourraient n’être qu’une tendance kitsch, un divertissement à la mode. Derrière sa démarche traînante et ridicule se cache pourtant une figure symptomatique de notre époque. Peur de l’épidémie ou fantasme de la catastrophe, aliénation moderne ou fascination pour la violence : le zombie et le monde apocalyptique qu’il crée nous parlent d’abord, intimement, de nous-mêmes. Par l’obscène exhibition de la mort, l’ultime (...) tabou de la société occidentale, il brise les limites de la condition humaine : celles de la conscience, de la vie, de la civilisation. Mais surtout, il trahit un fantasme émergeant dans notre culture, celui d’en finir. (shrink)

Although Maxwell theory is O(3,1)-covariant, electrodynamics only transforms invariantly between Lorentz frames for special forms of the field, and the generator of Lorentz transformations is not generally conserved. Bérard, Grandati, Lages, and Mohrbach have studied the O(3) subgroup, for which they found an extension of the rotation generator that satisfies the canonical angular momentum algebra in the presence of certain Maxwell fields, and is conserved by the classical motion. The extended generator depends on the field strength, but not the potential, (...) and so is manifestly gauge invariant. The conditions imposed on the Maxwell field by the algebra lead to a Dirac monopole solution.In this paper, we study the generalization of the Bérard, Grandati, Lages and Mohrbach construction to the full Lorentz group in N dimensions. The requirements can be maximally satisfied in a three-dimensional subspace of the full Minkowski space; this subspace can be chosen to describe either an O(3)-invariant space sector, or an O(2,1)-invariant restriction of spacetime. The field solution reduces to the Dirac monopole found in the nonrelativistic case when the O(3)-invariant subspace is selected. When an O(2,1)-invariant subspace is chosen, the field strength can be associated with a Coulomb-like potential of the type A μ(x) = n μ/ρ, where ρ = (x μ x μ)1/2, similar to that used by Horwitz and Arshansky to obtain a covariant generalization of the hydrogen-like bound state. In the presence of these fields, which are determined entirely by symmetry considerations, without reference to a source equation, the extended generator is conserved under classical relativistic system evolution. (shrink)

Research highlights several risk and resilience factors at multiple ecological levels that influence individuals’ mental health and wellbeing in their everyday lives and, more specifically, in disaster or outbreak situations. However, there is limited research on the role of these factors in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. The present study examined if and how potential risk factors and resilience factors are associated with mental health and well-being outcomes, and whether these resilience factors buffer the associations between risk factors (...) and said outcomes. One to two weeks after the government recommended preventative measures, 1,122 Canadian workers completed an online questionnaire, including multiple wellbeing outcome scales in addition to measures of potential risk and resilience factors. Structural equation models were tested, highlighting that overall, the considered risk factors were associated with poorer wellbeing outcomes, except social distancing which was associated with lower levels of stress. Each of the potential resilience factors was found to have a main effect on one or more of the wellbeing outcomes. Moderation analysis indicated that in general these resilience factors did not, however, buffer the risk factors. The findings confirm that the COVID-19 crisis encompasses several stressors related to the virus as well as to its impact on one’s social, occupational, and financial situation, which put people at risk for lower wellbeing as early as one to two weeks after the crisis began. While several resilience factors emerged as positively related to wellbeing, such factors may not be enough, or sufficiently activated at that time, to buffer the effects of the numerous life changes required by COVID-19. From an ecological perspective, while mental health professionals and public health decision-makers should offer/design services directly focused on mental health and wellbeing, it is important they go beyond celebrating individuals’ inner potential for resilience, and also support individuals in activating their environmental resources during a pandemic. (shrink)

Only a clear international convention can adequately tackle corruption in the international business arena, but individual companies do not need to wait for this to happen, especially when the main threat from corruption can be to the company itself. This description of how Lyonnaise des Eaux has taken steps to strengthen its inner workings against corruption shows how “business ethics, based on our values, is now our management’s top priority”. The author is Administrateur Directeur Général of the company, and he (...) first delivered this paper to the Ninth Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network which took place last year in Frankfurt. (shrink)

War often comes down to one thing: money. The role of economics in the study of both peace and war is arguably then the most important single factor when it comes to the study of defence. This excellent new book from Fanny Coulomb will be of interest not only to those involved in the burgeoning field of defence economics - it will also be of vital interest to students and academics from international relations, defence studies, philosophy and political science backgrounds.

Background: Informed consent for genetic tests is a well-established practice. It should be based on good quality information and in keeping with the patient’s values. Existing informed consent assessment tools assess knowledge and values. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on what specific elements need to be discussed or considered in the consent process for genetic tests.Methods: We performed a systematic review to identify all factors involved in the decision-making and consent process about genetic testing, from the perspective of patients. Through (...) public databases, we identified studies reporting factors that influence the decision to accept or decline genetic testing. Studies were included if they reported the perspective of patients or at-risk individuals. All articles were thematically coded.Results: 1989 articles were reviewed: 70 met inclusion criteria and 12 additional articles were identified through the references of included studies. Coding of the 82 articles led to the identification of 45 factors involved in decision-making and consent, which were initially divided into three domains: in favor of, against or with an undetermined influence on genetic testing. Each factor was also divided into three subdomains relating to the informed choice concept: knowledge, values or other. The factors in the “other” subdomain were all related to the context of testing (e.g. timing, cost, influence of family members, etc), and were present in all three domains.Conclusions: We describe the network of factors contributing to decision-making and consent process and identify the context of genetic testing as a third component to influence this process. Future studies should consider the evaluation of contextual factors as an important and relevant component of the consent and decision-making process about genetic tests. Based on these results, we plan to develop and test a more comprehensive tool to assess informed consent for genetic testing. (shrink)

During the Zimbabwean crisis, millions crossed through the apartheid-era border fence, searching for ways to make ends meet. Maxim Bolt explores the lives of Zimbabwean migrant labourers, of settled black farm workers and their dependants, and of white farmers and managers, as they intersect on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Focusing on one farm, this book investigates the role of a hub of wage labour in a place of crisis. A close ethnographic study, it addresses the complex, shifting (...) labour and life conditions in northern South Africa's agricultural borderlands. Underlying these challenges are the Zimbabwean political and economic crisis of the 2000s and the intensified pressures on commercial agriculture in South Africa following market liberalization and post-apartheid land reform. But, amidst uncertainty, farmers and farm workers strive for stability. The farms on South Africa's margins are centers of gravity, islands of residential labour in a sea of informal arrangements. (shrink)

The notions of perceptual normativity and optimality have generated much discussion in the last decade or so in the literature on Merleau-Ponty. Husserl’s position on the topic has been far less extensively investigated. Surprisingly, however, Husserl wrote a great deal about the question of perceptual optimality. Not only are there a considerable number of important passages scattered throughout the manuscripts, the archive also contains a few important full texts on precisely this issue. Given the role of fulfillment for Husserl’s concept (...) of intentionality, this should not really come as a surprise, since the teleological nature of the fulfillment structure terminates in an experience of the optimum. Hence, however marginal this topic might seem at first glance, reflecting on it rapidly leads us to the heart of Husserl’s project and sheds further light on his conception of intentional experience. (shrink)

In 19th century Germany, the number of publications in the history of philosophy increased dramatically. According to Ulrich Schneider’s calculations, from 1810 through 1899, 148 original textbooks by 114 authors were published in German. The aim of this article is to analyse how the documented in these publications canonic vision of 19th century German philosophy evolved. An analysis of 66 treatises published from 1802 through 1918 allows dividing 19th century philosophers into groups based on the frequency of their names across (...) the tables of contents, describing the changes in the leading group composition and in the share of attention received by a given philosopher over time. The paper presents thus a formal analysis of how historical reputations of philosophers were made, how they stabilised, or faded. The authors claim that the current understanding of the history of 19th century philosophy differs significantly from the one recorded in the German textbooks of the era. (shrink)

Throughout the history of philosophical thinking, ethics has almost never been associated with ontology because the moral approach is about the action while the ontological approach is about the being. The prospective approach confers to moral philosophy a genuine ontological direction, an ontology of the human, since it aims at identifying the problems of (human) existence, which no longer describes “what should be” but mostly “what can be”, thus anticipating the ways of human existence in a future world.The challenges raised (...) by disruptive innovations and the environmental issue require the critical eye of moral philosophy regarding the impact of technological progress is having in redefining the human condition of tomorrow’s society; all the more so as we are facing a regrettable backwardness of moral progress, which does not seem to keep pace with the spectacular changes in science and technology. The wisdom of ethical reflection refers to a feeling of concern for both present and future humanity as a whole,relating not only to immediate reality but, especially, anticipating what might happen. (shrink)

The recent publication of Geschlecht III allows us, for the first time, to synoptically embrace the Geschlecht project and to appreciate its overarching consistency. I choose to read the Geschlecht series as the scene of an inheritance whereby Derrida wrestles with Heidegger’s legacy. More specifically, I identify the linchpin of Derrida’s critique of gathering (Versammlung), which organizes his reading throughout the series. I then distinguish between two layers within this reading : the first, wherein he stages the refusal of an (...) inheritance deemed metaphysical or suspicious, and the less well-known second, which sets the stage for a shared heritage (gift, promise, economy). The value of gathering thus consecutively appears on one and the other side of these dividing lines, until the legacy’s pluralization turns out to be what’s at stake in the scene. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the symposium on Maxime Lepoutre, Democratic Speech in Divided Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). The symposium contains articles by Paul Billingham, Rachel Fraser, and Michael Hannon, and a response by the author.

In the proposed article by Maxim Isaenko "Ukrainian Christian tradition of state creation... "on the question of application A comparative methodological approach is presented in the analysis conceptual dispositions available in Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian types of state-building and organization of power institutions. Studying socio-legal models that are characteristic of three Slavic peoples, vectors of kinship and distance are outlined understanding of the phenomena of the state, power, law.

It will be argued that the virtual agent (VA) can be characterized using phenomenological descriptive tools and other conceptual means within related paradigms of the analysis of subjectivity. From such a point of view, the main features of VA are: •VA is constituted by its communicative valencies; •VA is intentionally active in perception, and it is the case also at the intersubjective level; •VA establishes and supports the truth of its statements, which come out as a creative boundary, an "unquestionable (...) point of contact" between virtual "I" and virtual reality; •communicative intersubjectivity in cyberspace is better describedthrough recursive ontologies. Peirce's conception of the Subject as a species of semiosis can be helpful to clarify these points. Unlike the traditional concept of subject where communication stands at a level resting on an underlying level of being, for Peirce communication is inherent in mind itself. Along these lines, I argue for the open multivalence of the signified as overdetermined by communicative acts. (shrink)

Most twentieth‐century European philosophers have attempted to think anew the Kantian question about the necessary conditions of experience. A rapid survey of last century's European philosophy would easily show that in spite of the various criticisms formulated against the very project of transcendental foundationalism, the vast majority of the philosophers in the so‐called Continental tradition have not abandoned the project of formulating transcendental arguments altogether. These transcendental inquiries into the conditions of possibility of all these phenomena are certainly more immediately (...) visible in the early works, especially those on Husserl, but a patient reading would show that they are still very much present in the later writings as well. The overcoming of classical transcendentalism at work in deconstruction is indeed the outcome of an ultra‐transcendental strategy. In Of Grammatology, Derrida exposes this ultra‐transcendental logic for the first time when he famously claims that a “pathway” through the transcendental is necessary. (shrink)

Maxime F. Giguère Cet article propose une nouvelle stratégie pour écarter la conclusion sceptique, mise de l’avant par Thomas Szasz, selon laquelle la psychiatrie est illégitime. La conclusion sceptique repose sur une démarcation radicale entre troubles mentaux et somatiques. Afin de minimiser cette démarcation, Jerome Wakefield emploie une analyse conceptuelle stipulant que les troubles mentaux et somatiques sont tous les deux des dysfonctions préjudiciables. De récentes critiques ont toutefois montré que son analyse bute sur la difficulté pratique de distinguer (...) les fonctions normales des dysfonctions. En raison de ce problème, l’analyse de Wakefield ne permet pas d’écarter la conclusion sceptique. Une nouvelle stratégie ne nécessitant pas de résoudre le problème reconnu par ces critiques s’annonce alors préférable pour écarter la conclusion sceptique. (shrink)

Um den phänomenologischen Anspruch der Dekonstruktion ans Licht zu bringen, hat sich der Autor der vorliegenden Studie vorgenommen, die Bedeutungsverschiebung des Begriffs,transzendental‘ in Jacques Derridas Werk zu verfolgen. Die Untersuchung legt nahe, dass die Dekonstruktion des Begriffs ‚transzendental’ nicht als eine bloße Zurückweisung des Erbe der Transzendentalphilosophie hinausläuft. Die durch Derridas ganzes Werk hinduch stets geübte Kritik dieser umfangreichen Tradition – in all ihren Formen: mittelalterliche Onto-Theo-Logie, Kritizismus oder Phänomenologie – geht seit den allerersten Werken Derridas mit einer immer wieder (...) betonten Notwendigkeit einher, transzendentale Fragen zu stellen, um überhaupt philosophieren zu können. Zwar gilt es, den Wert ‚transzendental’ zu dekonstruieren und die Geschichtlichkeit der transzendentalen Fragestellung kritisch zu untersuchen; es darf aber nicht vergessen werden, dass die Dekonstruktion ebenfalls nach den transzendentalen Bedingungen der Möglichkeit aller Art Phänomenen fragt. In diesem Zusammenhang bestand die Herausforderung dieser Studie darin, der doppeldeutigen Bewegung von Kritik und Aneignung der transzendentalphilosophischen Tradition am Leitfaden der in Derridas Werk erfahrenen Bedeutungsveränderung des Begriffs ‚transzendental’ in ‚ultra’ und ‚quasi transzendental’ die sorgfältigsten Analysen zu unterwerfen. (shrink)

Summary The author is of the opinion that as a result of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Syria, which had been a single administrative entity under the Achaemenids, it was divided into two satrapies – the northern and the southern one. He believes that Menon, son of Cerdimmas, was appointed as the first head of the northern satrapy, to be replaced by Arimmas, who, in his turn, was succeeded by Asclepiodorus, son of Eunicus. Besides, it seems that Andromachus became the (...) first head of the southern satrapy, and after he was killed, Menon, transferred from the north to the south, took his place. Already in Alexander’s lifetime, probably in 329/328, Syria was once again merged into one satrapy. It is unclear who was installed as satrap of the unified region. At any rate, it could not have been Menes, son of Dionysius: the hypothesis that in winter 331/330 he was made satrap of the new province including Syria and Cilicia does not stand scrutiny. In the author’s view, the main task Alexander assigned to Menes was to take control and then to keep open and organized the sea communications with the coast of Syria, Phoenicia and Cilicia, and in the matters concerning these activities Menes was fully independent of the local satraps. (shrink)

L’analyse du double emploi du verbe « valoir » dans l’évaluation et l’appréciation éclaircit quelques aspects de la valeur. Évaluer, c’est prendre conscience d’un être qui est valorisé ou valeureux, non d’un être qui a une valeur. La valeur appartient à l’être même d’un objet. Il n’est pas question de demander si celui-ci la possède ou non, de résoudre le problème et de prouver la solution. Toute évaluation est une épreuve : l’objet convainc l’évaluateur en lui révélant la valeur intrinsèque, (...) celle-ci n’est pourtant pas une propriété. (shrink)

A group of Qin documents inscribed on bamboo slips was acquired by the Yuelu Academy on the antique market in Hong Kong in 2007. Four of these manuscripts are criminal case records dated from the final decades before the unification of China by the state of Qin in 221 B.C. These texts shed light not only on the administration of justice on the eve of imperial unification but also on various aspects of social, economic, and cultural history and historical geography. (...) The present article reviews the recently published English translation of the Yuelu case records by Ulrich Lau and Thies Staack and discusses the value of these texts as historical source material. (shrink)

This study analyses the patenting activities of university science and engineering professors in Canada between 1920 and 1975. Unlike most studies on commercial activities in academia, which typically focus on the post-1980 period and on university practices, we focus on the pre-1980 period and on the individual decisions of professors to patent their inventions. Based on quantitative patent data, we show that patenting, and thus professors’ interest in the possible commercial value of their scientific discoveries made in university laboratories, was (...) relatively common on an individual and informal basis well before the 1980s and the advent of what is now called “academic capitalism”. This contradicts the belief that before that period, universities were a kind of ivory towers in which professors isolated themselves from external influences and engaged only in pure and disinterested research. (shrink)

En 1981, Deleuze publie son ouvrage Francis Bacon : Logique de la sen­sation. Ce livre traite de la peinture de Bacon mais au-delà il relève d’une vraie démarche philosophique, conceptuelle. C’est plus qu’un livre de philosophie sur la peinture. Ce titre : Logique de la sensation, fait écho à l’ouvrage de Deleuze paru en 1969 : Logique du sens. L’idée d’une logique du sens fait appel au rationnel, au langage, à quelque chose de résolument intelligible. S’agissant d’une logique de la (...) sensation... (shrink)