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.

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)

Depuis 2006, le Québec débat âprement des règles gouvernant la laïcité de ses institutions et se trouve confronté à deux modèles apparemment irréconciliables : le républicanisme « jacobin » et le libéralisme individualiste, issus respectivement de la France et du Canada. En s’inspirant de la pensée du philosophe politique John Rawls, les auteurs proposent ici d’explorer une voie médiane mieux adap­tée à l’expérience québécoise. Dans ses travaux tardifs, Rawls met en avant une forme de libéralisme républicain affranchi de l’indi­vidualisme normatif (...) de Kant et de Mill et récuse le paternalisme qui vise à imposer aux citoyens une certaine éthique de vie. Tout en étant neutre à l’égard des conceptions individualiste et com­munautarienne de la personne, il cherche à équilibrer les droits collectifs des peuples avec les droits individuels des personnes. -/- C’est donc une conception strictement institutionnelle de la laïcité que présentent les auteurs, qui redéfinissent au passage l’interculturalisme, la liberté rationnelle et le consentement, ainsi que l’expérience religieuse, qui devient hybride, à la fois subjective et objective. En se servant de Rawls, ils expliquent clairement pourquoi l’expression de la religion fait partie de la liberté reli­gieuse, mais aussi pourquoi il faut faire la distinction entre les objets qui relèvent des libertés fondamentales et ceux qui sont sujets à des accommodements. Ils tracent ainsi une authentique troisième voie, qui pourrait bien faire sortir de l’impasse le débat québécois sur la laïcité. (shrink)

Élie HALÉVY (1870-1937), philosophe et historien des idées, fut professeur à l'École libre des sciences politiques, l'ancêtre de l'actuel Sciences Po. Comme son autre grand ouvrage, l'Histoire du peuple anglais au XIXe siècle, paru en six tomes de 1913 à 1932, les trois tomes de La formation du radicalisme philosophique, parus en 1901 pour les deux premiers et en 1904 pour le troisième, reflètent pour partie ses enseignements de l'Ecole libre consacrés à l'histoire britannique. Le premier tome, La jeunesse de (...) Bentham 1776-1789, étudie la doctrine utilitariste non seulement chez celui qu'on regarde comme son fondateur principal, Jeremy Bentham, mais aussi chez les nombreux auteurs qui, en Grande-Bretagne et sur le continent, en dessinèrent avant lui les contours. Le deuxième tome, L’évolution de la doctrine utilitaire de 1789 à 1815, montre comment l'utilitarisme revêtit la forme non seulement d'une école de pensée, mais aussi d'un mouvement pour la réforme économique, sociale et politique. Le rôle coordonnateur nouveau de James Mill, ainsi qu'une convergence de vues avec les économistes, qui poussaient dans le sens des réformes, marquèrent notamment cette évolution. Le troisième tome, Le radicalisme philosophique, continue d'étudier la transformation de l'école en mouvement après la fin des guerres napoléoniennes, lorsque celle-ci commence à engranger ses premiers grands succès réformistes. Bentham, James Mill et les autres penseurs utilitaires sont alors réunis sous l'appellation de philosophic radicals. Le terme temporel de l'ouvrage est le Reform Act de 1932, première étape vers la modernisation du système électoral, que la propagande de ce groupe ne contribua pas peu à faire aboutir. Quoique l'ouvrage d'Halévy vaille en premier lieu par l'immense savoir qu'il déploie, et le nombre et l'excellence des citations qu'il propose, il comporte aussi des thèses historiques et philosophiques originales. On peut citer parmi les premières la thèse, qui relie les trois tomes, voulant que l'utilitarisme britannique trouve sa forme achevée dans l'intervention sur la société, lorsqu'il se mue en radicalisme philosophique, et parmi les secondes, la thèse, énoncée au début du premier tome, voulant qu'il existe trois modèles dominants de jonction des intérêts individuels (la fusion sympathique, l'identification naturelle et l'identification artificielle). Une autre grande thèse, à la fois historique et philosophique, affirme en substance que l'économie politique classique serait un département spécialisé de la pensée utilitaire. La question de savoir jusqu'à quel point Smith, Ricardo et Malthus ont pu adhérer au "principe d'utilité" de Bentham est toujours débattue. En même temps que les élucidations apportées à ce principe, elle contribue à expliquer l'intérêt que les historiens de la pensée économique continuent de porter à l'ouvrage. La réédition de La formation du radicalisme philosophique par les Presses Universitaires de France (P.U.F.) a impliqué un effort collectif. Monique Canto-Sperber en a conçu l'idée et assumé la direction, et l'ouvrage a paru en 1995 dans la collection Philosophie morale dont elle avait alors la responsabilité aux P.U.F. Chacun des trois tomes s'accompagne d'une postface, confiée au philosophe Jean-Pierre Dupuy pour le premier, au politologue Pierre Bouretz pour le second, et à l'économiste Philippe Mongin pour le troisième. Un travail de grande ampleur a été requis, d'une part, pour localiser les références de Halévy dans des sources plus récentes que celles dont il disposait, en particulier, s'agissant de Bentham, dans l'édition toujours en cours de ses œuvres, et d'autre part, pour traduire les très nombreux passages que Halévy citait en langue anglaise. Sophie Jallais et Mary Sokol se sont chargées de la première tâche et Jean-Pierre Cléro de la seconde. Prise après quelques années de circulation de l'ouvrage, la décision des P.U.F. d'en pilonner les exemplaires que ses responsables ne rachèteraient pas a semblé compromettre ce vaste travail. Mais grâce aux efforts du site québécois Les classiques des sciences sociales, et de son directeur Jean-Marie Tremblay, il est devenu possible d'accéder aux trois tomes électroniquement. Les adresses en sont : http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t1/radicalisme_philo_t1.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t2/radicalisme_philo_t2.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t3/radicalisme_philo_t3.html Avant la réédition de 1995, l'ouvrage de Halévy n'était facilement accessible que grâce à la traduction anglaise plusieurs fois rééditée de Mary Morris, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, New York, Macmillan, 1928. (shrink)

In the Quebec city area, 400 women owner-managers of business in the three industrial sectors answered a detailed questionnaire, and 75 of these subsequently underwent in-depth interviews. The main dimensions explored were the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their firms, the experience of starting a business, the success criteria used, and their vision for the future of their firms. The results suggest the importance, to these women, of a model of small and stable business. This is not a transitory phase (...) for their firm: most choose and value such a scale of business, and they seek recognition for what they do. This model seems to represent an innovative adaptation to their professional, social, family and personal demands and challenges our definitions of entrepreneurship and of serious business. (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...

“Agent-centered” approaches to global poverty insist that effective arguments for poverty reduction must specify the concrete duties of particular duty-bearers. This article takes up a recent, influential, version of this view, Thomas Pogge’s human rights-based argument for global economic reforms to reduce chronic deprivation. While signaling a welcome shift from the diffuse allocation of responsibilities common to much philosophical writing on poverty, I argue that Pogge’s approach too readily assigns to powerful institutions in the global North the role of devising (...) and directing anti-poverty initiatives. In so doing, he overlooks the agency—actual and potential—of the poor themselves, as evidenced by poor-led political movements and poor-centered, participatory models of poverty reduction in development theory and practice. While agent-oriented approaches are right to focus our attention on structures that cause poverty, they ought not to assume that the powerful agents responsible for these are the only—or most appropriate—agents to lead the way to poverty reduction. Just as development organizations working in the global South have come to recognize that the participation of poor communities is critical to the success of development strategies, so should normative theorists writing about global injustice acknowledge the importance of the poor as active agents in poverty reduction efforts. (shrink)

Ce livre s'adresse à un large public et peut être lu comme une introduction à la philosophie platonicienne.

The predominant narratives of addiction—Disease and Choice narratives—frame addiction as a personal problem to be addressed by controlling an individual’s behavior. By analyzing the epistemic function of narratives of addiction, this paper shows that these narratives construct a story about the nature of addiction by assuming simplistic views about human agency, leading to drug policies that narrowly focus on individual behavior. Assumptions embedded within narratives must be made transparent so that the partial, perspectival, and situated nature of the knowledge that (...) narratives convey is made evident and can be evaluated. As a result of their over-simplistic assumptions about human agency, Disease and Choice narratives neglect a significant factor in addiction: the social context which informs and sets limits on the reasons and values that enter into decision-making. This paper argues for the adoption of Social Constraint narratives, which would require policy agendas to focus on the social contexts that make drug use so appealing. As a result, agencies dealing with drug policy would need to collaborate with other agencies focusing on relevant social issues in order to create structural change, thus affecting the social environment and not merely the individual. (shrink)

A new high‐resolution structure of a pain‐sensing ion channel, TRPA1, provides a molecular scaffold to understand channel function. Unexpected structural features include a TRP‐domain helix similar to TRPV1, a novel ligand‐binding site, and an unusual C‐terminal coiled coil stabilized by inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6). TRP‐domain helices, which structurally act as a nexus for communication between the channel gates and its other domains, may thus be a feature conserved across the entire TRP family and, possibly, other allosterically‐gated channels. Similarly, the TRPA1 antagonist‐binding (...) site could also represent a druggable location in other ion channels. Combined with known TRPA1 functional properties, the structural role for IP6 leads us to propose that polyphosphate unbinding could act as a molecular kill switch for TRPA1 inactivation. Finally, although packing of the TRPA1 membrane‐proximal region hints at a mechanism for electrophile sensing, the details of how TRPA1 responds to noxious reactive electrophiles and temperature await future studies.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Traduação do texto L’expérience de la méthode, de Caroline Blanvillain.

This paper evaluates three recent attacks on what Harry Frankfurt has called the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), i.e., the principle that if a person could not have done otherwise he is not morally responsible for what he has done. One critic of PAP argues that, if a person was drawn irresistibly to a drug yet was “altogether delighted with his condition”, he might well be morally responsible even though he could not have done otherwise. A second critic describes circumstances (...) in which, if the agent had failed to perform a certain action, physical forces would have taken effect and caused him to perform that action. Such a person, he argues, may be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. I argue that both of the preceding counterexamples fail. The third argument against PAP shows, I maintain, that PAP is not acceptable as it stands; appropriately supplemented, however, it will continue to serve its traditional role in the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate. (shrink)

Au Laos, pays majoritairement bouddhiste, toujours dirigé par un État-parti communiste rigide et répressif, les cultes aux génies continuent à se développer et se transforment, en réponse aux contraintes vécues par la population et à ses désirs d’y échapper. La dimension de refuge des cultes et en même temps, d’échappement imaginaire par le haut à des oppressions de toutes sortes, en est un trait récurrent, manifeste en particulier dans les années quatre-vingt-dix dans l’exaltation des figures royales, opposées aux cadres politiques (...) rendus impuissants de l’État-parti communiste. Aujourd’hui les homosexuels masculins trouvent désormais dans les cultes aux génies, en perpétuel remaniement tant au plan des pratiques que des élaborations des personnages mythiques, une atmosphère accueillante, très séduisante en regard des barrières auxquels ils se heurtent dans la vie quotidienne. Les cérémonies se présentent alors, en résonance avec les images en provenance de Thaïlande, comme des dépassements possibles en phase avec un contexte de globalisation idéologique où les plateaux LGBT rayonnent de leurs potentialités libératoires. (shrink)

Aesthetic desire and distaste prime everyday life in surprising ways. The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic casts much-needed light on the complex mix of meanings our aesthetic activities weave into cultural existence. Anchoring aesthetic experience in our relationships with persons, places, and things, Monique Roelofs explores aesthetic life as a multimodal, socially embedded, corporeal endeavor. Highlighting notions of relationality, address, and promising, this compelling study shows these concepts at work in visions of beauty, ugliness, detail, nation, ignorance, and cultural (...) boundary. Unexpected aesthetic pleasures and pains crop up in sites where passion, perception, rationality, and imagination go together but also are in conflict. Bonds between aesthetics and politics are forged and reforged. Cross-disciplinary in outlook, and engaging the work of theorists and artists ranging from David Hume to Theodor W. Adorno, Frantz Fanon, Clarice Lispector, and Barbara Johnson, The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic lays open the interpretive web that gives aesthetic agency its vast reach. (shrink)

Rien n'est plus précieux dans notre littérature "que la lucidité implacable de ce regard, plus que la sincérité courageuse de cette voix qui ne s'est rien caché par timidité et qui n'a rien dissimulé par prudence des tares de la société", écrivait Marcel Jouhandeau préfaçant Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce siècle de La Bruyère. Cette appréciation est tout à fait transposable au livre de Monique Charles qui, pour ce qui est du style, serait quelque chose ou quelqu'un (...) entre La Bruyère et Céline, donc littérairement inclassable (Freud et Lacan sont passés par là!), mais terriblement efficace. C'est vivant, buissonnier, digresseur (mais on ne regrette pas les détours imprévus qui, changeant le décor, font rebondir la réflexion). De l'expérience, de la faconde, du souffle. Des réflexions intéressantes sur le deuil, l'amour, les rapports entre les sexes, le couple, le mariage, le problème du Mal, la douleur, le désir, les passions, la psychologie du Tueur... Et pour clore ce parcours du combattant à cloche-pied sur tant de faits, d'idées, de drames, arrêtons-nous à celui-ci : Non la femme n'est pas celle qui tire l'homme vers le bas, "l'éteignoir de l'homme". Monique Charles les réveillerait plutôt! Elle a enseigné avec passion. Maintenant il faut la lire. (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)

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 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)

Theorists often conceive of forgiveness as “wiping the slate clean” or something of the sort with respect to the offender’s moral infraction. This raises a puzzle concerning how (or whether) the relevant wrongdoing can continue to play a role in the forgiver’s deliberations, attitudes, and practical orientation toward the offender once forgiveness has taken place. For example, consider an agent who forgives her offender for an act of wrongdoing only to later blame her again for that very same act. Is (...) the relevant agent morally criticizable for breaching a commitment internal to her earlier forgiveness? When, if ever, is “un- forgiving,” justified? In brief, I argue that sometimes, we can genuinely forgive a wrongdoer for a particular transgression and at some later time, justifiably un-forgive her for it. Though the act of un-forgiving is underexplored, I argue that attending to this phenomenon will not only illuminate an important, often overlooked aspect of moral life, but it will also help to inform extant accounts of the nature and ethics of forgiveness. (shrink)

I analyze the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector's novella, The Hour of the Star, in terms of the entwinements of beauty with economic mobility and abandonment, . . . with constructions of cultural citizenship and liminality.

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)

C. A. Campbell has for many years defended vigorously, and often persuasively, the following libertarian claims: that the libertarian concept of freedom of choice is meaningful; that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is necessary for moral responsibility; and that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is a reality. This paper will be concerned with Campbell's effort of will argument for the last claim.

In the preceding article John Hunter attempts to show that my criticisms of his position on freedom and responsibility are defective. Hunter believes that my first criticism is directed against his explanation of why so many people have come to believe in the freedom principle. But at no point in my paper do I even consider the merit of that explanation. What Hunter calls my first criticism is in fact merely a preliminary point I make before attacking his arguments against (...) the freedom principle itself. The preliminary point is that in evaluating Hunter's arguments one must bear the following in mind: in some of the examples of unfreedom he provides it is doubtful that the actions are unfree at all; they are at best borderline cases of unfree acts. (shrink)

Critical accounts of race have drastically changed the landscapes of the social, the political, and the intimate. Philosophical perspectives on racial identity and difference hold out transformative possibilities for aesthetics. Revealing the entanglement of analytical concepts and day-to-day life with racial meaning, such approaches challenge the field of aesthetics to encounter its methodologies with a fresh look. How can aesthetics rethink itself by rethinking race and empire? What shape do aesthetic themes take in light of the historical, spatial, imaginative, affective, (...) sensory, and sexual registers of racial subjectivity and the pervasiveness of racist and neocolonial constellations? How do art and the aesthetic reflect, or critically engage, racialization? What forms and idioms enable us to articulate the racial ethics and politics that shape our various conscious and unconscious aesthetic projects? (shrink)