Interview with Renaud Barbaras, conducted on May 18, 2011.

This paper delves into the work of Clive L. Spash, a British radical ecological economist well-known in his field who currently holds a professorship at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. We start with an examination of the principles of his “social ecological economics.” We then critically evaluate his attack on economic growth and his perspective on the standard economic models of climate change. Lastly, we explore his approach to science as a theoretical pursuit and his policy recommendations. The (...) first version of this paper was given as a keynote lecture at the 7th Austrian Economics Meeting Europe, May 12-13, 2023, Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers, France, and a second version at the Summer University in Political Economy, July 20-22, 2023, Aix-Marseille University, France. I wish to thank the organizers of these conferences, and also the anonymous referees whose remarks have been taken into account to improve the paper. (shrink)

In this article, I ask whether the state, as opposed to its individual members, can intelligibly and legitimately be criminalized, with a focus on the possibility of its domestic criminalization. I proceed by identifying what I take to be the core objections to such criminalization, and then investigate ways in which they can be challenged. First, I address the claim that the state is not a kind of entity that can intelligibly perpetrate domestic criminal wrongs. I argue against it by (...) building upon an account of the modern state as a moral agent proper, capable of both culpable moral and legal wrongdoing. I then consider objections to the intelligibility and legitimacy of subjecting states to domestic criminal processes, which primarily find their source in the assumption that such subjection would necessarily involve the state prosecuting, judging, and punishing itself. I argue that whether this (questionable) assumption is sound or not, it does not create the kinds of unsolvable quandaries its exponents think it does. I then move on to reject the distinct, yet related, objection that, at least in aspiring liberal jurisdictions, treating the state as a criminal objectionably involves extending to it various substantive and procedural guarantees that, given its nature and raison d’être, it should not have. Finally, I discuss three central objections to punishing the state. First, that organizations like states do not have the phenomenal consciousness required to suffer punishment. Second, that the constant possibility of dispersion of state punishment amongst individual members stands in the way of its justification. Lastly, that whatever justification there may be for making things harder for the state in response to its culpable wrongdoing, such treatment need not be understood as punishment. While partially conceding the strength of these objections, I strive to loosen their grip in ways that show that justified punishment of the state, meaningfully understood as such, remains a distinct possibility. I conclude by contrasting supposed alternatives to the criminalization of states, and by contending that my analysis leaves us with enough to keep the possibility of state criminalization on the table as a justifiable response to state wrongdoing. (shrink)

The Being of the Phenomenon opens European post-structuralism to further study and is certain to inspire new thinking about the origins of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.

The present note first discusses the concept of s-convex pain functions in decision theory. Then, the economic behavior of an agent with such a pain function is represented through the comparison of some recursive lotteries.

The existing literature on savings, insurance, and portfolio choices under risk has revealed that quite often comparative statics results depend, among other things, upon the values of the coefficients of relative risk aversion and relative prudence. More specifically the benchmark values for these coefficients are, respectively, one and two. Recently, several papers investigated constraints on the higher degree extensions of the coefficients of relative risk aversion and of relative prudence. The present work provides a unified approach to this question based (...) on the concept of elementary correlation increasing transformations, allowing for a better understanding of changes in risk in the multiplicative case. (shrink)

Fishburn and Vickson showed that, when applied to random alternatives with an equal mean, 3rd-degree and decreasing absolute risk aversion stochastic dominances represent equivalent rules. The present paper generalizes this result to higher degrees. Specifically, higher-degree stochastic dominance rules and common preference by all decision makers with decreasing higher-order absolute risk aversion are shown to coincide under appropriate constraints on the respective moments of the random variables to be compared.

L'oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty est tout entiere commandee par le souci de mettre rigoureusement en oeuvre le mot d'ordre husserlien de retour aux choses memes, ce qui exige, conformement au geste amorce par Husserl dans la Krisis, de reconnaitre l'oeuvre de l'idealisation -c'est-a-dire de l'objectivation- la meme ou elle se fait oublier, afin de la neutraliser. A l'instar de Bergson, pour qui la tache de la philosophie etait d'aller chercher l'experience au-dessus du tournant ou, s'inflechissant dans le sens de l'utilite, elle (...) devient proprement l'experience humaine, pour Merleau-Ponty, la tache de la pensee est de se situer a ce tournant ou l'experience s'accomplit et se voile a la fois dans des productions ou elle se fait proprement humaine, de definir un sens de l'Etre anterieur a la bifurcation du preobjectif et de l'oeuvre idealisante. Le but des recherches est de tenter de clarifier la nature exacte du tournant de l'experience ainsi que le projet phenomenologique merleau-pontien. (shrink)

In Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life, renowned French philosopher Renaud Barbaras aims to construct the basis for a phenomenology of life. Called an introduction because it has to deal with philosophical limits and presuppositions, it is much more, as Barbaras investigates life in its phenomenological senses, approached through the duality of its intransitive and transitive senses. Originally published in French (Introduction à une phénoménologie de la vie) Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life first defines the problem of life (...) phenomenologically, then studies the failures of the phenomenological movement to adequately think about life, and finally elaborates a new, original, and productive approach to the problem. He engages "object-oriented" philosophies with this approach and concludes that they are far more phenomenological than previously believed. Combining original interpretations and expert readings of philosophers such as Kant and Husserl and contemporary thinkers such as Bergson, Badiou, and Deleuze, Barbaras offers here a powerful and important contribution to phenomenology and continental thought. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the composition of an optimal portfolio made of two dependent risky assets. The investor is first assumed to be a risk-averse expected utility maximizer, and we recover the existing conditions under which all these investors hold at least some percentage of their portfolio in one of the assets. Then, we assume that the decision maker is not only risk-averse, but also prudent and we obtain new minimum demand conditions as well as intuitively appealing interpretations for (...) them. Finally, we consider the general case of investor’s preferences exhibiting risk apportionment of any order and we derive the corresponding minimum demand conditions. As a byproduct, we obtain conditions such that an investor holds either a positive quantity of one of the assets or a proportion greater than 50 %. (shrink)

In the last two decades, the philosophy of criminal law has undergone a vibrant revival in Canada. The adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has given the Supreme Court of Canada unprecedented latitude to engage with principles of legal, moral, and political philosophy when elaborating its criminal law jurisprudence. Canadian scholars have followed suit by paying increased attention to the philosophical foundations of domestic criminal law. Because of Canada's leadership in international criminal law, both at the level of (...) the International Criminal Court and of specific war crimes tribunals, they have also begun to turn their attention to international criminal law per se. This collection seeks to bring all these Canadian voices together for the first time, and evidence the fact that criminal law theory is no longer to be associated exclusively with the older British, German and American traditions. The topics covered include questions of philosophical methodology, the legitimate scope of domestic and international criminalization, rationales for criminal law defences in both domestic and international law, the philosophical underpinnings of specific crimes and forms of joint responsibility, as well as the theorization of criminal procedure and evidence law. ENDORSEMENTS "In continental Europe, academic commentary on the criminal law has long manifested large philosophical ambitions. Less so in common-law countries, where the dominance of jury trial and the piecemeal development of case-law, together with the famously robust attitudes of common lawyers, have militated against detailed philosophical engagement with doctrine. Over the last 20 years or so, however, new generations of philosophically-literate lawyers and legally-informed philosophers have overcome the historic resistance. Nowhere more so, it seems, than in Canada, where the common law and civilian traditions meet. In 'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory', François Tanguay-Renaud and James Stribopoulos have joined with 14 talented Canadian colleagues to showcase the tremendous breadth and depth of their contemporary national contribution to the subject. Ranging across topics as diverse as emergency, obscenity, and insanity, these essays - without exception insightful and penetrating -set a high standard for the rest of us to aspire to.'' John Gardner, University of Oxford "'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory' is an excellent collection of essays demonstrating the vigour, creativity and range of Canadian criminal justice scholarship. It covers a wide range of problems and issues both in the domestic and the international context. Core questions are examined in depth and new questions are brought to the fore. I recommend it very highly to criminal lawyers and philosophers of the criminal law." Professor Victor Tadros, University of Warwick "'Rethinking Criminal Law Theory 'is packed with outstanding contributions from criminal law theorists who are among the best not only in Canada, but in the whole English-speaking world. Broad and deep in its coverage, the collection offers fresh approaches to a wide range of cutting-edge issues in the field. It provides a resource readers will come back to repeatedly." Stuart Green, Professor of Law and Justice Nathan L Jacobs Scholar, Rutgers University. (shrink)

This paper weakens the expectation dependence concept due to Wright and its higher-order extensions proposed by Li to conform with the preferences generating the almost stochastic dominance rules introduced in Leshno and Levy. A new dependence concept, called excess dependence is introduced and studied in addition to expectation dependence. This new concept coincides with expectation dependence at first-degree but provides distinct higher-order extensions. Three applications, to portfolio diversification, to the determination of the sign of the equity premium in the consumption-based (...) CAPM, and to optimal investment in the presence of a background risk, illustrate the usefulness of the approach proposed in the present paper. (shrink)

Cette introduction explique la perception, reconnue par Husserl sous le titre de "donation par esquisses". Il s'agit d'opérer une réduction radicale qui va de la critique du néant au monde comme a priori de tout apparaître. A ce monde correspond un sujet dont le sens d'être fait problème puisqu'il est à la fois un moment du monde et en rapport avec la totalité comme telle.

Husserl is the first philosopher who has managed to account for the specificity of perception, characterized as givenness by sketches (Abschattungen); but neither Husserl nor Merleau-Ponty have given a satisfying definition of the subject of perception. This article tries to show that the subject of perception must be conceived as living being and that, therefore, the phenomenology of perception must lead to a phenomenology of life. Here, life is approached from an existential point of view, that is to say, as (...) a specific relationship to the world. However, life cannot be characterized from human existence in a privative way, as in Heidegger's philosophy: on the contrary, human existence, and particularly perception itself, must be understood from vital existence, and accordingly, an "additive" anthropology must replace the privative zoology. The hypothesis of this article is that it is by characterizing life as desire, we are able to account for perception as givenness by sketches. (shrink)

The commentary of Plato’s Gorgias by Olympiodorus of Alexandria (ca. 505-after 565) is the only ancient commentary of the dialogue that has survived. This little-known and neglected commentary is truly of historical and hermeneutical interest. Beyond its value for our understanding of late Neoplatonism, Olympiodorus’ interpretation can renew in some respects our reading of the Platonic text and can contribute to current methodological debates, as presuppositions traditionally dominant in Plato scholarship (about chronology, dialogue form, dialectic, etc.) are being increasingly questioned. (...) This study concentrates on two fundamental theses of the commentary: (1) the unity of dramatic form and doctrinal content in the Gorgias as read in the light of the Phaedrus and the Republic, and (2) the basis of dialectical agreement (in refutation and maieutics alike), namely the « common notions (koinai ennoiai) ». The last section of this study identifies some strengths and weaknesses of Olympiodorus’ use of the Phaedrus and the Republic, and of the « common notions ». (shrink)

Peu à peu, tandis que Virgile achève la description ethnographique de la ruche, un glissement s’opère dans son propos : il célèbre d’abord la chasteté des abeilles, et le renouvellement de l’espèce par une miraculeuse génération spontanée ; il explique ensuite leur admirable organisation sociale par un lien privilégié avec la divinité, puisque les abeilles posséderaient une « parcelle d’intelligence divine » ; après ce bref aperçu d’une mystique panthéiste, i...

O artigo homenageia a obra de Bento Prado Jr, enfatizando a originalidade e o aspecto crítico de sua postura filosófica. Neste sentido, ele analisa a força do conceito de “Presença” – eixo central da tese de doutoramento do autor, publicada sob o título Presença e campo transcendental –, capaz de desenhar de maneira inédita um ponto de convergência entre as filosofias de Bergson, Sartre e Merleau-Ponty.

Un texte inédit de Jan Patocka (1907-1977) intitulé " Sur les problèmes des traductions philosophiques " (1968) dans une traduction française originale d'Erika Abrams ouvre ce volume collectif qui cherche à penser l'existence humaine et le monde commun grâce à l'oeuvre aussi capitale que protéiforme de ce philosophe tchèque. Des spécialistes en phénoménologie, en philosophie sociale et politique, en anthropologie et en esthétique déploient ici sa richesse et sa fécondité à travers quatre problématiques : le Monde commun, le Mouvement critique (...) de la liberté, la Phénoménologie et la théorie du mouvement de l'existence, le Temps et l'Histoire. (shrink)

Historically, all societies have used comparison to analyze cultural difference through the interaction of religion, power, and translation. When comparison is a self-reflective practice, it can be seen as a form of comparatism. Many scholars are concerned in one way or another with the practice and methods of comparison, and the need for a cognitively robust relativism is an integral part of a mature historical self-placement. This volume looks at how different theories and practices of writing and interpretation have developed (...) at different times in different cultures and reconsiders the specificities of modern comparative approaches within a variety of comparative moments. The idea is to reconsider the specificities, the obstacles, and the possibilities of modern comparative approaches in history and anthropology through a variety of earlier and parallel comparative horizons. Particular attention is given to the exceptional role of Athens and Jerusalem in shaping the Western understanding of cultural difference. (shrink)

La liberté a été assez largement réduite, dans la modernité occidentale, à une occurrence individualiste. C’est la liberté de l’individu « face au monde » et eu égard aux autres dont il s’agit surtout. Notre propos consistera en une critique de cette idée, au profit d’une compréhension relationnelle de la liberté. Il apparaîtra que nous avons besoin de soutien mutuel pour être et rester libre et que, à l’heure de l’Anthropocène, c’est la Terre qui nous soutient qui a elle aussi (...) besoin de toute notre attention, sans quoi les conditions de la liberté pourraient être très compromises. (shrink)

L'échec des printemps arabes et l'instauration d'un nouveau Califat de la terreur en Syrie et en Irak nous contraignent à repenser la place du religieux dans le monde contemporain. Rivés sur les questions sécuritaires, nous manquons encore néanmoins d'outils philosophiques pour comprendre la montée d'un nouveau totalitarisme millénariste et apocalyptique. Le présent ouvrage s'appuie sur les travaux d'Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), un philosophe américain d'origine allemande encore trop peu connu en France et dont toute l'oeuvre vise à mettre en lumière les (...) racines religieuses des totalitarismes qui ont ensanglanté le 20e siècle. Voegelin et l'Orient propose une relecture iconoclaste de ses écrits, souvent à rebours de la réception néoconservatrice dont ils ont fait l'objet outre-Atlantique. Renaud Fabbri nous fournit ainsi des clefs pour mieux comprendre les origines idéologiques de l'islamisme radical mais aussi du nationalisme hindou. Il montre aussi qu'une redécouverte des grandes traditions de la philosophie mystique peut nous aider à conjurer le spectre des "religions politiques" qui menacent aujourd'hui aussi bien les non-croyants que les croyants de toutes les confessions. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article propose de dégager les techniques d’embaumement littéraire à l’œuvre dans la pratique du portrait chez Violette Leduc, c’est-à-dire les stratégies d’écriture servant à garder vivant le souvenir des personnes aimées. La métaphore de l’embaumement vient de Simone de Beauvoir, dans sa préface de La Bâtarde. L’analyse montre que la mémoire chez Leduc est décrite comme aussi tangible que la vision. L’inexorable mouvement du temps est caricaturalement grossi comme sous l’effet d’une loupe, ce qui permet de le saisir (...) et de le contrôler pour inverser son cours. (shrink)

Desire and Distance constitutes an important new departure in contemporary phenomenological thought, a rethinking and critique of basic philosophical positions concerning the concept of perception presented by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, though it departs in significant and original ways from their work. Barbaras’s overall goal is to develop a philosophy of what “life” is—one that would do justice to the question of embodiment and its role in perception and the formation of the human subject. Barbaras posits that desire and distance inform (...) the concept of “life.” Levinas identified a similar structure in Descartes’s notion of the infinite. For Barbaras, desire and distance are anchored not in meaning, but in a rethinking of the philosophy of biology and, in consequence, cosmology. Barbaras elaborates and extends the formal structure of desire and distance by drawing on motifs as yet unexplored in the French phenomenological tradition, especially the notions of “life” and the “life-world,” which are prominent in the later Husserl but also appear in non-phenomenological thinkers such as Bergson. Barbaras then filters these notions (especially “life”) through Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

The same subjectivity that makes the world appear belongs, as an integral part, to that which it makes appear, so that there is no alternative between the phenomenological involvement of the world by subjectivity and the ontological involvement of subjectivity by the world. These are the two faces, already abstract, of a fundamental and original situation, in other words, a primitive fact or an archifact. We have thus transported the correlation to the terrain of the world in the form of (...) a double position of the subject, which I have further formulated metaphorically through the distinction between being before and being within. So, what does it mean to belong to the world, or rather, what are the senses of belonging implied by the fundamental situation we have just described? (shrink)

This paper investigates how and when pairs of terms such as “local–global” and “im Kleinen–im Grossen” began to be used by mathematicians as explicit reflexive categories. A first phase of automatic search led to the delineation of the relevant corpus, and to the identification of the period from 1898 to 1918 as that of emergence. The emergence appears to have been, from the very start, both transdisciplinary (function theory, calculus of variations, differential geometry) and international, although the AMS-Göttingen connection played (...) a specific part. First used as an expository and didactic tool (e.g. by Osgood), it soon played a crucial part in the creation of new mathematical concepts (e.g. in Hahn’s work), in the shaping of research agendas (e.g. Blaschke’s global differential geometry), and in Weyl’s axiomatic foundation of the manifold concept. We finally turn to France, where in the 1910s, in the wake of Poincaré’s work, Hadamard began to promote a research agenda in terms of “passage du local au general.”. (shrink)

Dans la foulée des publications récentes sur Cicéron philosophe, cette excel­lente étude explore à nouveaux frais son projet « encyclopédique » (sous la dicta­ture de César, 46-44) par le biais d’un examen des prologues. Yelena Baraz (désormais Y.B.) justifie dans son introduction cette approche méthodologique. Cicéron possédait un cahier de prologues (volumen prohoemiorum) et écrivait des prologues indépendamment de l’ouvrage (ad Att. XVI, 6, 4). Cela signifie, explique-t-elle, qu’il conceva...

Pt. 1. La séparation -- Les deux sens de la finitude -- La scission -- L'archi-événement -- La métaphysique -- Le langage -- Biologie privative -- L'exode -- L'exil -- Le langage -- Pt. 2. Le sentiment -- Le poétique -- Le sentiment -- Ipséité et ouverture -- Michel Henry -- Merleau-Ponty -- Heidegger -- Henri Maldiney.

Constructing Moral Concepts of God in a Global Age sets aside arguments about God's existence and focuses on what people say and think about God. It offers a theological method, or step-by-step approach to exploring and, if warranted, reframing personal convictions about God and the worldviews shaped by those convictions. Since a moral God is more likely to foster a moral life, this method integrates an ethical check to ensure that conceptions of God and their associated worldviews are validly moral. (...) The proposed method builds on the work of 20th Century theologian Gordon Kaufman during the Kantian phase of his work. It anticipates a person-like God who hears prayers, loves without end, and comforts in times of hardship. To accommodate today's pluralistic and globalized world, the moral check integrated in the method is a widely-collaborative and vetted global ethic, the Parliament of the World's Religions "Declaration Towards a Global Ethic." This volume of constructive philosophical theology is written for seminary students, educators, clergy, study groups, and anyone interested in delving more deeply and systematically into understandings of God, whether their own or other understandings. (shrink)

What are emergencies and why do they matter? In this chapter (in its penultimate version), I seek to outline the morally significant features of the concept of emergency, and demonstrate how these features generate corresponding first- and second-order challenges and responsibilities for those in a position to do something about them. In section A, I contend that emergencies are situations in which there is a risk of serious harm and a need to react urgently if that harm is to be (...) averted or minimized. These conceptual features matter morally, since it is precisely to them that those who invoke emergencies to justify otherwise impermissible actions tend to appeal. The basic first-order challenge facing emergency responders is two-fold. It is, first, to identify how these features shape circumstances of action in ways that affect (or do not affect) which reasons for action and which corresponding courses of conduct are justifiably available to them. In situations when emergency responders are compelled to make authoritative determinations due to significant contestability and indeterminacies in the contours or materialization of the said features, their challenge is then also to make these determinations legitimately. In section B, I argue that second-order challenges having to do with the foreseeability of emergencies, the value(s) of exposure to them, and their preventability further compound the predicament of emergency responders. I conclude, in section C, by saying a few words about one last morally salient feature shared by many, though not all, emergencies considered in the chapter — namely, their public dimension. (shrink)