Monique Demarle-Casadebaig Le questionnement de la philosophie s’est traduit par des lieux communs de problèmes et d’arguments dont l’intelligence ne dépend pas de leur expression dans une langue particulière. On veut faire reconnaître par cet article un tel locus communis philosophiae dans l’argument de Gongsun Long de 公孫龍, d’après lequel « cheval blanc n’est pas cheval ». Gongsun Long, déjà assimilé à un « disputeur » en Chine, a été exilé du champ de la philosophie en Europe (...) en tant que « sophiste ». On montre pourtant que son argument concerne un problème analogue à celui qui a conduit Aristote à faire la distinction entre prédication essentielle et accidentelle ou celui qui a conduit Husserl à parler de ce que vise l’« intuition catégoriale ». Mais la leçon proprement chinoise de son propos tient peut-être alors en son indifférence au choix entre le primat de l’être sur la conscience, selon Aristote, ou de la conscience sur l’être, selon Husserl. (shrink)

This symposium on Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements includes commentaries by Sally Matthews, Renante D. Pilapil, Violetta Igneski, and Wouter Peeters, with a reply from Deveaux. The book makes the case that normative thinking about poverty should engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of poor-led organizations and social movements. Challenging conventional framings of poverty by moral philosophers, Deveaux argues that chronic poverty is centrally about the subordination and dispossession of the poor – not mere (...) needs scarcity. To exclude people living in poverty from shaping antipoverty solutions is therefore to perpetuate their social-political domination and epistemic oppression. Deveaux’s book explains what a political reframing of poverty looks like from the vantage point of several poor-led organizations and social movements, using concrete examples from across the globe, and argues for political responsibility for solidarity with those movements. (shrink)

Quand l’historienne autrichienne Brigitte Hamann publie en 1986 Bertha von Suttner. Ein Leben für den Frieden, elle met fin à la longue traversée du désert que subissait depuis sa mort en juin 1914 la pacifiste autrichienne Bertha von Suttner, Prix Nobel de la paix en 1905 et auteure de Die Waffen nieder!, roman antimilitariste signé de son nom et titre, paru en 1889 et devenu le best-seller de la fin du xixe siècle. Alors qu’elle avait été une des grandes figures (...) publiques du tournant du siè... (shrink)

Partant du constat que l’épistolaire est depuis toujours un écrit ordinaire « permis » aux femmes, on s’interroge sur les raisons qui font que, au cours xixe siècle et en particulier dans sa première moitié, ce genre d’écrit voué à rester dans le cercle restreint de l’intimité et de la sphère domestique, s’élargit en réseau, permettant aux femmes de redéfinir leur espace de vie et d’expression. Par quelles ruses, ces épistolières, essentiellement allemandes, vont-elles réussir à se créer à l’échelle européenne (...) l’espace à soi qui leur avait été si longtemps refusé? Et comment vont-elles, dans quelques cas rares mais emblématiques, devenir par la voie et la grâce d’un écrit ordinaire féminin dûment revisité des individues actrices à part entière de la vie publique? (shrink)

Christine Planté nous a habitués à des généalogies inattendues et à des regroupements familiaux insolites, sa « petite sœur de Balzac », dans la lignée de la sœur de Shakespeare chère à Virginia Woolf, en est un exemple bien connu. Avec George Sand fils de Jean-Jacques, elle nous entraîne dans une histoire de filiation qui, cette fois, n’est pas de son invention mais s’inscrit dans l’histoire littéraire du xixe siècle et dans l’histoire personnelle de George Sand. Celle-ci s’est elle-même qua...

Tracing the historical roots of modern conservation thought & practice, this book explores current perspectives from evolutionary & community ecology, conservation biology, anthropology, political ecology, economics, and policy.

Monique Lanoix | : Over three decades ago, Carol Gilligan’s seminal book In a Different Voice provided feminist theorists with a powerful new approach to address the shortcomings of traditional moral theories. With a focus on concrete situations, an ethics of care can attend to the specifics of moral dilemmas that might otherwise be glossed over. As feminist reflection on moral and political philosophizing has progressed, another challenge has emerged. Recent feminist scholarship proposes non-ideal theories as preferable action-guiding theories. (...) In this paper, I examine Kittay’s call for a version of care ethics as a naturalized ethics that comes from lived experience, in order to draw out the salient characteristics of the caring agent. This allows me to show how Kittay’s key assertion that “we are all some mother’s child” resonates with Ricoeur’s framing of self-esteem, which is, in turn, anchored on a notion of solicitude. Secondly, I make the case that care ethics can benefit from Ricoeur’s little ethics as it helps buttress the goal of good caring practices. Finally, care ethics, with its emphasis on the universality of care needs, helps to strengthen the central role of solicitude for the political sphere. | : Il y a plus de trente ans, le livre fondateur de Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, fournissait aux théoriciennes féministes une nouvelle approche permettant d’affiner la critique des théories morales traditionnelles, particulièrement en ce qui concerne leur universalisme. Focalisant sur les situations concrètes, l’éthique du care chez Gilligan permet de recentrer l’attention sur les spécificités d’un dilemme moral qui, autrement, risquent de rester dans l’ombre. La réflexion féministe en philosophie morale et politique a progressé depuis, s’attelant à de nouveaux défis. La recherche récente suggère qu’une théorie morale non idéale est préférable aux théories dites idéalistes. Dans cet article, j’examine l’éthique du care selon Eva Feder Kittay, soit à titre d’éthique naturalisée, afin de mettre en relief les caractéristiques saillantes de l’agent.e caring. Cela me permettra ensuite de montrer comment l’affirmation clé de Kittay selon laquelle « nous sommes tou.te.s l’enfant d’une mère » fait écho à la pensée ricoeurienne de l’estime de soi qui est, en retour, ancrée dans la notion de sollicitude. Deuxièmement, je soutiens que la « petite éthique » ricoeurienne peut enrichir les éthiques du care, précisément en ce qui a trait au telos du care. Ce faisant, les éthiques du care, qui placent l’accent sur l’universalité des besoins en cette matière, pourront mieux ancrer la sollicitude dans la sphère politique. (shrink)

Increasing privacy concerns are arising from expanding use of aggregated personal information in health practices. Conversely, in light of the promising benefits of data driven healthcare, privacy...

Et si l'on osait reparler d'espoir? Et pas seulement en parler, mais le vivre à nouveau. Dorénavant, l'avenir fait peur au lieu de faire envie. Chacun nourrit toujours des espoirs intimes, mais les grands espoirs collectifs sont en panne. Comment redonner un avenir à l'espoir? Voilà ce que nous cherchons. En explorant d'abord ses sources grecques, juives et chrétiennes. En suivant ses tribulations occidentales, du mythe de Pandore au siècle des révolutions, qui le révèlent tour à tour ambigu, religieux, politique, (...) continûment orienté par un désir de futur. Pourtant, dans notre monde obsédé par l'immédiat et le seul présent, l'espoir en vient à manquer d'horizon, de temps, d'action, de pensée vivifiante. Nous proposons de reprendre l'espoir au sérieux, de lui redonner sa place et ses chances, d'en refaire l'apprentissage. Contre tous les philosophes qui s'en sont méfiés ou l'ont rejeté, nous jugeons vitale cette singulière émotion pensante. Sans un espoir lucide et bien tempéré, l'humanité perdrait sa dignité. (shrink)

Il faut saluer la réédition aux Éditions Turquoise de la traduction de Die Waffen nieder!, l’ouvrage antimilitariste de la pacifiste autrichienne Bertha von Suttner, qui, dès sa parution en 1889, devint le best-seller incontesté de la fin du siècle, immédiatement traduit en une vingtaine de langues et en français en 1899. C’est du reste cette traduction, la seule existant à ce jour en langue française, qui est rééditée ici avec la préface d’époque signée par Gaston Moch, dreyfusard de la prem...

Quiconque, au cours de ses recherches, s’est aventuré dans le domaine des correspondances, sait que, quel qu’en soit l’auteur et quel qu’en soit le moment, il aborde là un continent aux limites inconnues. Aussi, sonder en quelque 150 pages ̶ comme le fait Jürgen Siess dans son ouvrage Vers un nouveau mode de relations entre les sexes ̶ les correspondances de six épistolières qui ont compté parmi les plus prolixes et les plus célèbres de leur temps, semble relever du défi. (...) L’auteur s’en exp... (shrink)

Née à Nuremberg dans une famille juive, d’un père allemand et d’une mère suisse, Rita Thalmann fuit avec les siens le régime nazi, dès 1933, se réfugiant d’abord en Suisse puis en France. Ayant perdu son père (arrêté sur dénonciation et déporté à Auschwitz) puis sa mère (internée et morte de carence alimentaire à Dijon), elle survit grâce au réseau de solidarité organisé par la directrice du lycée de jeunes filles de Dijon, Marcelle Pardé, résistante et déportée à Ravensbrück. En (...) 1945, Rita T... (shrink)

The analogy between biological and cultural evolution is not perfect. Yet, as Mesoudi et al. show, many of the vaunted differences between cultural and genetic evolution (for example, an absence of discrete particles of cultural inheritance, and the blurred distinction between cultural replicators and cultural phenotypes) are, on closer inspection, either illusory or peripheral to the validity of the analogy. But what about horizontal transmission? We strongly agree with the authors that the potential for horizontal transmission of cultural traits does (...) not invalidate an evolutionary approach to culture. We suggest, however, that it does require a different evolutionary treatment. (Published Online November 9 2006). (shrink)

L’histoire politique du Bangladesh, complexe et contradictoire, démonte tous les fantasmes entretenus aujourd’hui sur l’islam, érigé en ennemi global prenant la suite du défunt communisme. Le pays est devenu indépendant en 1971 après une guerre de libération meurtrière qui a vu sa population musulmane s’affronter au Pakistan, créé par l’ex-colonisateur anglais de l’Inde comme nation musulmane. Son gouvernement s’affirme d’abord laïc avant de décréter l’islam religion d’État et d’entamer une profonde réislamisation de la société. Aujourd’hui cette dictature militaire islamique avec (...) à sa tête la Ligue Awami, l’ancien parti indépendantiste, a liquidé régulièrement toutes ses oppositions politiques au nom de la lutte anti-terroriste mondiale. (shrink)

This book, now open-access from OUP, develops a normative theory of political responsibility for solidarity with poor populations by engaging closely with empirical studies of poor-led social movements in the Global South. Monique Deveaux rejects familiar ethical framings of problems of poverty and inequality by arguing that normative thinking about antipoverty remedies needs to engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of “pro-poor,” poor-led social movements. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, nonpoor outsiders—individuals, institutions, and (...) states—can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda only by supporting the efforts of these movements. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be non-instrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, “What, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?” In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some (...) kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them. (shrink)

Morally responsible agency and agentive authority are familiar themes in the philosophical literature on ethics and agency. Morally responsible agents are those who are apt candidates for the blaming attitudes and actions by which we hold one another accountable for moral violations. Those who lack morally responsible agency—e.g., non-human animals, very young children, and (some) individuals with severe cognitive impairments—are typically considered exempt from moral responsibility. Agentive authority is a normative position that grounds powers, claims, and rights to which one (...) is entitled in virtue of being a particular kind of agent. As an autonomous agent, you have a claim-right against me (and I, a corresponding obligation to you) not to interfere with certain of your self-regarding decisions. In this paper, I consider whether and how exemption from moral responsibility might imply diminished agentive authority. Using (one type of) psychopathic agency as a test case, I argue that, contra some theoretical frameworks, one can retain agentive authority even if exempt from moral responsibility. (shrink)

Concepts for sustainable bioeconomy systems are gradually replacing the ones on linear product chains. The reason is that continuously expanding linear chain activities are considered to contribute to climate change, reduced biodiversity, over-exploitation of resources, food insecurity, and the double burden of disease. Are sustainable bioeconomy systems a guarantee for a healthy planet? If yes, why, when, and how? In literature, different sustainability indicators have been presented to shed light on this complicated question. Due to high degrees of complexity and (...) interactions of actors in bioeconomy systems, trade-offs and non-linear outcomes became apparent. This fueled the debates about the normative dimensions of the bioeconomy. In particular, the behavior of actors and the utilization of products do not seem to be harmonized according to the environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Potential conflicts require a new conceptual framework that is here introduced. It consists of a ‘sustainability’ cylinder captured between an inner-cylinder, representing order, and an outer-cylinder for chaos, based on the laws of physics and complex adaptive systems. Such a framework permits (bioeconomy) systems to propagate in the sustainability zone only if they follow helical pathways serving as the new norms. Helices are a combination of two sinusoidal patterns. The first represents here the sustainable behavior of interacting actors and the second the balanced usage of resources and products. The latter counteracts current growth discourses. The applicability of the conceptual cylinder framework is positively verified via 9 cases in Europe, which encompass social-organizational and product-technological innovations. –. (shrink)

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency (...) and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage, Monique Lauret retrace l'histoire du mouvement psychanalytique en Chine qui ne cesse de croître depuis les années 1980, analyse l'influence de la pensée chinoise sur la théorisation de Lacan, et établit des passerelles entre pensée chinoise et psychanalyse. Il existe un passage inattendu entre pensée chinoise et psychanalyse autour de la question de l'humanisation et du rêve. Lacan s'intéressa en particulier à trois notions de la philosophie chinoise: la nature, le désir et la sagesse (discernement). Il (...) reprit les concepts clés de Mencius, fils spirituel de Confucius: le Xing (nature ou sexuel) et le Ming (décret du Ciel ou destin) à partir desquels il conçut la nature de l'être parlant soumis aux lois du Ciel, c'est-à-dire celles de son désir et de sa jouissance. Il porta aussi un regard neuf sur la langue et l'écriture idéographique chinoises: il y découvrit un système de signifiance révélant le mécanisme subtil de l'inconscient structuré comme écriture, ce qui lui permit d'approfondir les concepts de jouissance, d'identification et de Trait unaire. Enfin, il dénonça l'effondrement de la ' sagesse ' de l'humanité à l'origine de nos maux contemporains: une précipitation dans la haine et l'archaïque, la haine étant le plus puissant vecteur de la pulsion de mort. Par ce dialogue entre deux pensées civilisationnelles qui défendent l'idée que l'homme ne peut être humain que dans sa relation à l'autre, cet ouvrage propose une position de discernement face à l'essor de la révolution techno-numérique et au malaise dans la civilisation. (shrink)

Baselines are commonly used to enable harm identification. The temporal, the counterfactual and the duty-based normative baselines are the most prominent. Each of these captures an aspect of common conceptions of what it is to harm and be harmed. However, each baseline also fails to deliver workable identifications of harm when presented with certain types of case. Problematic cases are found readily in childhood, a venue in which harm identification is often called for. Without a reliable means of identifying harm (...) in childhood, harm cannot properly play a central role in normative assessments of parental practices and state intervention. This paper presents childhood cases in which the prominent baselines fail and offers an alternative: the interest-based normative baseline. Should the interest-based normative baseline replace its rivals and reign supreme? I argue not, presenting a case for maintaining a suite of baselines for use in varying contexts. (shrink)

This book offers a persuasive new argument for reconciling the tensions that arise when liberal democratic states try to protect two important kinds of equality: sexual equality and cultural equality.

Data from the Kipsigis of Kenya are used to test two models for how parents invest in offspring, the Trivers-Willard and local resource competition/enhancement hypotheses. Investment is measured as age-specific survival, educational success, marital arrangements, and some components of property inheritance, permitting an evaluation of how biases persist or alter over the period of dependence. Changes through time in such biases are also examined. Despite stronger effects of wealth on the reproductive success of men than women, the survival of sons (...) and daughters is not related to parental wealth. However, a Trivers-Willard effect characterizes educational investment: poor families show a greater concern for daughters’ (vis-à-vis sons’) schooling than do rich families, a trend that has increased over time. In regard to models of local resource competition and enhancement, men’s reproductive success decreases with number of brothers and increases with number of sisters; this pattern of competition with same-sex sibs and cooperation with opposite-sex sibs is not found among women. As predicted from these observations, parents show reduced investment in sons with a large number of brothers, and increased investment in sons with a large number of sisters. By contrast, investment in daughters is entirely unaffected by number of sisters and is influenced only in subtle ways by number of brothers. Levels of investment in relation to sibship size (irrespective of siblings’ sex) are highest for younger children of large sib sets.Discussion of the results in relation to those from other studies leads to three conclusions. First, predictive models for how investment biases vary across societies must consider a broad range of socioecological factors constraining parental options and payoffs. Second, the timing of investment biases within societies will be affected by the value of children and the costs of parental investment. Third, measures of investment appropriate for between-sex and between-class comparisons need careful attention. Each of these issues is brought to bear on the question of why, in contrast to so many other parts of the world, sex preferences are so muted in Africa. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation is defined as “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs.” Xenotransplantation has been viewed by desperate patients and their surgeons as a solution to the problem of the paucity of human organs available for transplantation. Foes of xenotransplantation argue that (...) the use of animal organs degrades the human race and should be avoided.In this paper, we briefly review the cultural context of xenotransplantation and explore the infectious disease risk of xenotransplantation. The United States Code of Federal Regulations requires life-long surveillance of a xenotransplantation recipient due to the largely unknown risk of novel infectious disease transmitted across species, known as xenogeneic infectious disease. We argue that despite being in the interest of protecting the public health, the imposition of lifelong surveillance requirements on xenotransplant recipients effectively abrogates the right to withdraw from a clinical trial after the transplantation has taken place. Moreover, we argue that a waiver of the right to withdraw should be made explicit in the interest of full disclosure, out of respect for the research subject’s right of self-determination. (shrink)

Monique Roelofs offers a pathbreaking systematic model of the field of address and puts it to work in the arts, critical theory, and social life. She shows how address props up finely hewn modalities of relationality, agency, and normativity. Address exceeds a one-on-one pairing of cultural productions with their audiences. As ardently energizing tiny slippages and snippets as fueling larger impulses in the society, it activates and reaestheticizes registers of race, gender, class, coloniality, and cosmopolitanism. In readings of writers (...) and artists ranging from Julio Cortázar to Jamaica Kincaid and from Martha Rosler to Pope.L, Roelofs demonstrates the centrality of address to freedom and a critical political aesthetics. Under the banner of a unified concept of address, Hume, Kant, and Foucault strike up conversations with Benjamin, Barthes, Althusser, Fanon, Anzaldúa, and Butler. Drawing on a wide array of artistic and theoretical sources and challenging disciplinary boundaries, the book illuminates address's significance to cultural existence and to our reflexive aesthetic engagement in it. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to take normative aspects of animal welfare in corporate practice from a blind spot into the spotlight, and thus connect the fields of business ethics and animal ethics. Using insights from business ethics and animal ethics, it argues that companies have a strong responsibility towards animals. Its rationale is that animals have a moral status, that moral actors have the moral obligation to take the interests of animals into account and thus, that as moral (...) actors, companies should take the interests of animals into account, more specifically their current and future welfare. Based on this corporate responsibility, categories of corporate impact on animals in terms of welfare and longevity are offered, including normative implications for each of them. The article concludes with managerial implications for several business sectors, including the most animal-consuming and animal-welfare-threatening industry: the food sector. Welfare issues are discussed, including the issue of killing for food production. (shrink)