The French philosopher Renaud Barbaras remarked that late in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s career, “The phenomenology of perception fulfills itself as a philosophy of expression.” In _Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty: Aesthetics, Philosophy of Biology, and Ontology, _Véronique M. Fóti_ _addresses the guiding yet neglected theme of expression in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. She traces Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about how individuals express creative or artistic impulses through his three essays on aesthetics, his engagement with animality and the “new biology” in the second of his lecture courses (...) on nature of 1957–58, and in his late ontology, articulated in 1964 in the fragmentary text of _Le visible et l’invisible _. With the exception of a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s 1945 essay “Cezanne’s Doubt,” Fóti engages with Merleau-Ponty’s late and final thought, with close attention to both his scientific and philosophical interlocutors, especially the continental rationalists. Expression shows itself, in Merleau-Ponty’s thought, to be primordial, and this innate and fundamental nature of expression has implications for his understanding of artistic creation, science, and philosophy. (shrink)

Clinical ethics has developed significantly in Europe over the past 15 years and remains an evolving process. While sharing our experiences in different European settings, we were surprised to discover marked differences in our practice, especially regarding the position and role of patients. In this paper, we describe these differences, such as patient access to and participation or representation in ethics consults. We propose reasons to explain these differences, hypothesizing that they relate to the historic and sociocultural context of implementation (...) of clinical ethics consultation services (Cecs), as well as the initial aims for which each structure was established. Then, we analyse those differences with common ethical arguments arising in patient involvement. We conclude that there is no unique model of best practice for patient involvement in clinical ethics, as far as Cecs reflect on how to deal with the challenging ethical issues raised by patient role and position. (shrink)

Is the principal concern of political philosophy the source of political authority? And, if so, can this source be located in individual consent? In this article I draw on Rousseau to answer the second question negatively; and in rejecting that answer, why we might answer the first question in the negative as well. We should be concerned with questions of legitimacy rather than with the source of authority and political obligation. Our principal concern, that is, should be with the question (...) how well political institutions meet the needs of individuals. I pursue these issues in the context of interpreting Rousseau's distinctive contribution to political thought. I start out by asking the question ‘What problem is the General Will designed to solve?’ I argue that Rousseau's challenge to Hobbes represents a crucial step in the move from the source of authority and political obligation to a focus on legitimacy. (shrink)

Geometry defines entities that can be physically realized in space, and our knowledge of abstract geometry may therefore stem from our representations of the physical world. Here, we focus on Euclidean geometry, the geometry historically regarded as “natural”. We examine whether humans possess representations describing visual forms in the same way as Euclidean geometry – i.e., in terms of their shape and size. One hundred and twelve participants from the U.S. (age 3–34 years), and 25 participants from the Amazon (age (...) 5–67 years) were asked to locate geometric deviants in panels of 6 forms of variable orientation. Participants of all ages and from both cultures detected deviant forms defined in terms of shape or size, while only U.S. adults drew distinctions between mirror images (i.e. forms differing in “sense”). Moreover, irrelevant variations of sense did not disrupt the detection of a shape or size deviant, while irrelevant variations of shape or size did. At all ages and in both cultures, participants thus retained the same properties as Euclidean geometry in their analysis of visual forms, even in the absence of formal instruction in geometry. These findings show that representations of planar visual forms provide core intuitions on which humans’ knowledge in Euclidean geometry could possibly be grounded. (shrink)

Are there distinctively political values? Certain egalitarians seem to think that equality is one such value. Scheffler 's contribution to the symposium seeks to articulate a division of moral labour between norms of personal morality and the principles of justice that regulate social institutions, and using this suggests that the egalitarian critique of Rawls can be deflected. In this paper, instead, I question the status of equality as an intrinsic value. I argue that an egalitarianism which focuses on the status (...) of equality as valuable in itself embraces a theory of value with the worst elements of utilitarianism while leaving behind any of the intuitive appeal that utilitarianism has. In its place I press that we need a political conception of egalitarianism which stresses the role of equality as a political ideal without presupposing any values with which we engage beyond those found in the norms of personal morality. (shrink)

When describing motion along both the horizontal and vertical axes, languages from different families express the elements encoding verticality before those coding for horizontality (e.g., going up right instead of right up). In light of the motor grounding of language, the present study investigated whether the prevalence of verticality in Path expression also governs the trajectory of arm biological movements. Using a 3D virtual-reality setting, we tracked the kinematics of hand pointing movements in five spatial directions, two of which implied (...) the vertical and horizontal vectors equally (i.e., up right +45° and bottom right −45°). Movement onset could be prompted by visual or auditory verbal cues, the latter being canonical in French (“en haut à droite”/up right) or not (“à droite en haut”/right up). In two experiments, analyses of the index finger kinematics revealed a significant effect of gravity, with earlier acceleration, velocity, and deceleration peaks for upward (+45°) than downward (−45°) movements, irrespective of the instructions. Remarkably, confirming the linguistic observations, we found that vertical kinematic parameters occurred earlier than horizontal ones for upward movements, both for visual and congruent verbal cues. Non-canonical verbal instructions significantly affected this temporal dynamic: for upward movements, the horizontal and vertical components temporally aligned, while they reversed for downward movements where the kinematics of the vertical axis was delayed with respect to that of the horizontal one. This temporal dynamic is so deeply anchored that non-canonical verbal instructions allowed for horizontality to precede verticality only for movements that do not fight against gravity. Altogether, our findings provide new insights into the embodiment of language by revealing that linguistic path may reflect the organization of biological movements, giving priority to the vertical axis. (shrink)

Relate to Heidegger On the Essence of Truth Relate to Merleau-Ponty The Visible and the Invisible.

Compromises are arrived at when, in spite of the efforts of those participating to mediate and defend their position in a rationally acceptable manner, each remains with his judgment while, at the same time, a decision must be made without further delay. What this means is that the parties agree to an option about which they are not, in their heart of hearts, entirely convinced. This article examines the notion of moral compromise, concentrating thereby on the case of political praxis. (...) It asks whether, in view of the complexity and multiplicity of morally relevant decisions encountered in a pluralist society, it is at all realistic to expect much else from political institutions than what Rawls dismissively refers to as a modus vivendi and whether a conception of justice that is true or reasonable only given the reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines is still a conception of justice, and not simply a compromise between the contending doctrines. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In recent years, the medical establishment has been speaking in favor of women's autonomy in childbirth by advocating cesarean delivery on maternal request (CDMR). This paper offers to look at the ethical dimension of CDMR through a feminist critique of the medicalization of childbirth and its influence on present‐day medical ethics. I claim that the medicalization of childbirth reflects a sexist bias with regard to conceptions of the body and needs to be used with caution when applied to women's (...) reproductive health. I then use this perspective to critically analyze the position of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) on the ethics of decision‐making in patient‐choice surgery. I claim that informed consent cannot be meaningfully exercised unless women are made aware of the sexist underpinnings of the medical model of childbirth and its influence on the ethical reasoning of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. I also express concern about the effects of normalizing patient‐choice cesarean sections on the choices available to pregnant women using as examples the institutional rules on mandatory cesarean sections for women with a previous cesarean delivery or breech presentation. I conclude with a call for more research into the real cost of convenience in CDMR, particularly as our increasingly strained publicly funded healthcare system would greatly benefit from the de‐medicalization of normal body functions rather than an increased dependence on costly surgical technology. (shrink)

Humans possess two nonverbal systems capable of representing numbers, both limited in their representational power: the first one represents numbers in an approximate fashion, and the second one conveys information about small numbers only. Conception of exact large numbers has therefore been thought to arise from the manipulation of exact numerical symbols. Here, we focus on two fundamental properties of the exact numbers as prerequisites to the concept of EXACT NUMBERS : the fact that all numbers can be generated by (...) a successor function and the fact that equality between numbers can be defined in an exact fashion. We discuss some recent findings assessing how speakers of Munduruc (an Amazonian language), and young Western children (3-4 years old) understand these fundamental properties of numbers. (shrink)

En septembre 2021 s’est tenu à Fribourg, en Suisse, le XVIe colloque du CIERGA, plusieurs fois reporté en raison de la pandémie. Comme toujours, c’est l’équipe locale prenant en charge l’organisation qui a donné l’impulsion de la thématique choisie. Or, depuis plusieurs années désormais, l’université de Fribourg accueille le projet européen Locus Ludi. The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, sous la direction de Véronique Dasen. Ce projet ambitieux envisage toutes les di...

Human adults are thought to possess two dissociable systems to represent numbers: an approximate quantity system akin to a mental number line, and a verbal system capable of representing numbers exactly. Here, we study the interface between these two systems using an estimation task. Observers were asked to estimate the approximate numerosity of dot arrays. We show that, in the absence of calibration, estimates are largely inaccurate: responses increase monotonically with numerosity, but underestimate the actual numerosity. However, insertion of a (...) few inducer trials, in which participants are explicitly (and sometimes misleadingly) told that a given display contains 30 dots, is sufficient to calibrate their estimates on the whole range of stimuli. Based on these empirical results, we develop a model of the mapping between the numerical symbols and the representations of numerosity on the number line. (shrink)

Le dégagement de cinq fosses dépotoirs au comblement homogène sur le site de l’Archipiskopi à Nicosie fouillé par F. Hadjichristofi (Département des Antiquités de Chypre) de 2009 à 2011 a livré un bel échantillonnage de productions chypriotes déjà connues et d’importations byzantines et proche-orientales. Cependant, l’intérêt majeur de ces assemblages réside dans la mise en évidence d’une production locale de poterie à pâte calcaire, glaçurée ou non. Cette activité potière à Nicosie a débuté à la fin du xiie‑xiiie siècle et (...) s’est poursuivie presque inchangée au xive siècle. Les productions de la capitale des Lusignan sont diversifiées et, pour une partie d’entre elles, témoignent d’apports proche-orientaux – émail, bases à disque, cruche à filtre. L’artisanat de la terre dans l’île ainsi que les liens entretenus avec les territoires croisé et musulman du Proche‑Orient sont donc réexaminés au regard de ces nouvelles données. (shrink)

As a tribute to Marie-Agnès Cathiard, this opening text which aims to recount the story of a journey and researcher’s commitment places her work around the major themes that structured it. “From the body of speech to imagined bodies”, its contributions and experimental investigations, attentive to the innovations of neuroscience, have influenced the center’s policy in terms of anthropological research, breaking down innovative avenues, particulary on the imagination of the brain and the amputated body. Her contributions have enabled the conjunction (...) between cognitive sciences and research on the imagination, between biology and culture. Her work has rethought mental images in the light of neurology. They considered the connectomes of the imagination associated with certain image complexes (levitation, alien presence). They compared the contributions of neuroscience to the most ancient mythological phenomenologies, developing a transalpine neurocognitive anthropology. Marie-Agnès’research has opened the way to a neural status of the imagination, a real epistemological upheaval. This reconstruction enterprise, more narrative than conceptual, nevertheless allows us to underline the importance of her pioneering work in cortical mapping. Being part of the lineage of Gilbert Durand whose hypotheses she corroborates (primacy of images in cognitive operations, biological rooting of images), she has made it possible to take a new look at this heritage and to breathe new life into it. (shrink)

In 1994, the European Parliament published a resolution on the right of humanitarian intervention. Interestingly, the declaration maintains that such intervention is not in contradiction with international law, although it formulates the concept of right in a way that is translatable into the vocabulary of individual rights. I analyze some implications of the resolution for the mutual duties of states. I thereby focus my attention on two possible applications: by way of Rawls's duty of assistance and by way of the (...) cosmopolitan theory of global distributive justice. I conclude that the latter theory promises better results for protecting individuals' basic rights, but I also show that it is at the cost of a strongly interventionist structure requiring a powerful supranational institution. Finally, I envision the conditions under which such an increase of interventionism in favor of human rights can be acceptable. (shrink)

Les céramiques présentées ici proviennent de quatre dépôts scellés sous une maison de Nicosie et vidés en 1948. Ces fosses, au remplissage homogène, contenaient des cruches, des marmites, des poêlons et de la vaisselle de service produits à Chypre, de rares importations anatoliennes ou balkaniques et une belle collection de vaisselle de table de Ligurie, de Toscane, de Vénétie et d’Émilie-Romagne. Cette dernière, bien datée, permet d’attribuer le contenu des dépotoirs au dernier quart du xvie‑première moitié du xviie s. Une (...) ébauche de chronotypologie peut donc être établie pour les céramiques des ateliers de Lapithos, de Nicosie et du Troodos, très mal connues pour cette période. La confrontation des sources écrites, faisant état de la prise de la ville par les Ottomans en 1570 et des années qui suivirent, avec cette exceptionnelle source archéologique montre que la vie quotidienne avait sans doute repris un cours normal dès le début du xviie s. (shrink)

La philosophe étudie le concept d'amour du monde de H. Arendt. Il permet de dévoiler toute la complexité du rapport d'Arendt au christianisme, livrant un nouvel éclairage sur son oeuvre. Du souci du politique, qui s'mpose en 1933, à l'amour du monde, choisi librement en 1955, la pensée d'Arendt ne cesse de s'élargir, dans un dialogue serré avec le christianisme.

En varios escritos de ciencias políticas, filosofía política, historia y antropología política, la cuestión de la visibilidad ha adquirido un lugar central dentro de los debates relativos a la ciudadanía multicultural. En estas páginas, trataré de esclarecer los procesos de construcción cultural que están en juego en el Caribe colombiano de hoy, a través del caso de Santa Marta, tomando prestado el modelo evolutivo de la ciudadanía propuesto por T.H. Marshall. En este modelo, la fase cultural resulta ser la última (...) de una cadena de reivindicaciones hacia un reconocimiento por parte del Estado-nación. Sin embargo, este marco sigue reproduciendo y obscureciendo una primacía fenomenológica inherente a la concepción derivada de la modernidad política, en donde el sentido de la vista – y el término resultante de “visibilidad”– se ha vuelto el único modo de categorización. En este artículo, se pretende demostrar cómo el caso de la producción de una forma de ciudadanía cultural por medio de “lo afro” en la ciudad de Santa Marta, interrumpe actualmente esta cadena fenomenológico-política, y nos faculta para imaginar otras modalidades sensoriales que lleguen a ser parte integrante de una práctica ciudadana “multicultural”. (shrink)

L’idéologie sous-jacente à la théorie de l’État de Raymond Carré de Malberg et de Hans Kelsen est marquée par la délicate articulation entre le pouvoir, l’ordre et la liberté. Si la place accordée à la démocratie et aux libertés est résiduelle chez Carré de Malberg, elle ressort bien plus clairement chez Kelsen. Les deux auteurs restent néanmoins fortement imprégnés, dans la logique positiviste, par l’idée d’ordre (articulant unité et puissance) qui structure encore, en filigrane, nos systèmes juridiques contemporains.

Cooking and earthenware pots in Byzantium. This study presents in a synoptic manner the utensiles for culinary use, the pots for preserves, the jars for storage, and other small kitchen equipment utilized at the hearth and in the storeroom in an urban and rural framework during the Macedonian, Comnenian, and Paleologian periods. The joint examination of ceramics discovered at sites in Greece, in Thrace, and in Anatolia, and various written sources in which pots and jars are mentioned, allows, on the (...) one hand, establishing an inventory of the diverse types of utensiles employed in the Byzantine empire, and, one the other, replacing the objects in their functional context. (shrink)

We agree with Nuñez that the Mundurucu do not master the formal propreties of number lines and logarithms, but as the term "intuition" implies, they spontaneously experience a logarithmic mapping of number to space as natural and "feeling right.".

Face à la sidération provoquée par la pandémie, devant l’incertitude des lendemains et un avenir anxiogène, il est nécessaire plus que jamais de mettre en valeur l’importance de nos affects, de nos émotions, et de retrouver du lien. Les ateliers d’écriture à l’hôpital et en Ehpad sont emblématiques de la place cruciale l’artiste, de l’écrivain, dans les lieux où résident les populations vulnérables. Il ne s’agit pas de saupoudrer une activité vaguement socio culturelle, afin de légitimer la place de l’art (...) dans la cité grâce à des intervenants bienveillants… mais d’inventer de véritables situations à l’intérieur desquelles prendra forme une communauté de dialogue. Le quatuor formé par le soignant, le patient, le parent (en pédiatrie), et l’auteure, instaure une dimension sensible qui viendra adoucir, transformer la médecine traditionnelle fondée sur le diagnostic et les traitements. (shrink)

When individual rights, especially constitutional rights, compete with other rights or with a public good, judges and politicians involved in the legislative process or jurisdictional process are expected to balance their decision in such a way that the gain from achieving the goal mitigates the costs of the resulting loss for the parties. Jurists speak of the doctrine of proportionality in connection with this process of balancing. In the proportionality calculus, judges have to evaluate whether the impact on individual rights (...) outweighs the public purpose pursued through a state’s legal activity. I will argue that the procedure of proportionality is similar to the procedure of reaching a compromise. More precisely, I will defend that compromise is a special case of the principle of proportionality, for it applies when claims cannot be balanced or in the absence of an overarching principle on which all the parties agree. With this, I aim to show the connection between the principle of proportionality and compromises without conflating these two concepts, and to offer new perspectives on the discussion of proportionality as it is used in the legal context. (shrink)

After the ‘empirical turn’ in bioethics, few specific approaches have been developed for doing clinical ethics research in close connection with clinical decision-making on a daily basis. In this paper we describe the ‘committed researcher’ approach to research in clinical ethics that we have developed over the years. After comparing it to two similar research methodological approaches, the ‘embedded researcher’ and ‘deliberative engagement’, we highlight its main features: it is patient-oriented, it is implemented by collegial and multidisciplinary teams, it uses (...) an ethical grid to build the interview guide, and it is geared towards bringing the results to bear on the public debate surrounding the issue at stake. Finally, we position our methodological approach with respect to the ‘is vs. ought’ distinction. We argue that our ‘commitment researcher’ approach to clinical ethics research takes concerned people’s life-building values as the main data, and compares them to the larger normative framework underlying the medical practice at stake. (shrink)

L’exploration archéologique du site de l’Arkipiskopi dans la vieille ville de Nicosie, conduite par Fryni Hadjichristofi et son équipe (Département des Antiquités de Chypre) de 2009 à 2011 puis en 2016, a mis au jour les vestiges d’un puits à roue élévatrice appelé à Chypre αλακάτιν/alakatin et plus habituellement connu dans le monde méditerranéen sous le nom de sakieh. S’il en existe des exemplaires plus anciens dans l’île, c’est la première machine hydraulique à traction animale permettant de puiser l’eau dans (...) un puits profond fouillée à Nicosie pour les époques latine, ottomane et anglaise. Cette étude entend d’abord examiner et interpréter les vestiges de ces structures au regard des informations livrées par des documents d’archives et des récits de voyageurs, des dessins de la fin du xvie et du début du xviiie siècle, un plan de 1882 et le cadastre de 1948, afin d’en mieux saisir les contextes de fonctionnement sur une longue durée. Elle présente aussi les godets de terre fixés sur la roue pour le puisage de l’eau et qui, à de rares exceptions, ont complètement échappé aux études céramologiques conduites dans l’île. (shrink)

Veronique Foti delves into the full range of Heideggerian texts to elaborate the problematics of historicity, language, and the structure of disclosure or "manifestation" in connection with the Herman poets whom Heidegger invoked along his path of thinking. Foti's reading of these ports is a probing inquiry into the aesthetic, ethical, and political implications of Heidegger's thought. She knows how technicity and poetizing are opposed yet brought together in Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology, how they are both politicized and linked with ethical (...) praxis, and how technicity, poetizing, and praxis cannot be dissevered from Heidegger's essential thinking. (shrink)

An error that medicine has long shared is to attribute to a desire or an effect of the mother’s imagination during gestation, the deformities, growths or spots that a child bears at birth. The imagination would be capable of imprinting external modifications on a matter and would have an impact on the perceptions and sensory development of the fetus. Returning briefly to the genealogy and posterity of the topos, this article focuses on the successes and refutations of the Malebranchist paradigm (...) in the 18th century, through a corpus of medical popularization texts where the debates oppose the supporters of the imagination for whom emotion alters the organs of the fetus and the detractors of this thesis who only see it as prejudice. Mechanistic systems had in common that they avoided the soul to explain life. Although each era has its hermeneutic system of representations, and that medicine—closely dependent on the philosophical and moral conceptions of its time—is also a cultural production, it is nevertheless not uninteresting to question on the fortune of a motive and the scientific topicality of the question. What does the baby perceive in utero? Does he feel his mother’s pain? If so, what is the biological impact? To what extent can the maternal imagination and experience mark the child’s body? Informed by functional imaging technologies, recent research returns to the symbiotic link of mother-fetus interactions. Convergences appear between this 18th century and our 21st century. In no case did we want to contrast today’s scientists who are firmly in touch with reality and their predecessors who are prey to imagination. Science, whatever the era, always feeds on imagination. (shrink)

Examines the construction of vision in the works of Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Nancy, and Derrida.

A pilot center for clinical ethics in France opened with the establishment of the “Centre d'éthique clinique” at Cochin Hospital in Paris, September 2002. Unlike the longer history in the United States of providing ethics consultation for ethical issues deriving from physician–patient interactions, this center marks a new development in bringing clinical ethics to Europe.

This piece is a response to Jean-Pierre Reed’s review of Bringing Back the Social into the Sociology of Religion published in Critical Research on Religion. Aside from his appreciation for the contributions of this volume, Jean-Pierre Reed’s critique concentrates on three fundamental issues in relation to the agenda for a critical sociology of religion we advance: scientificism, interdisciplinarity, and politics. This response focuses on scientificism and politics in particular, since they are intimately related and at the core of this book’s (...) evaluation of the subfield. (shrink)

Depuis la parution de son premier fascicule en 1877, le Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique joue son rôle de passeur du savoir en faisant connaître à une vaste communauté de chercheurs les résultats des explorations archéologiques qui, dans le monde grec, dans les Balkans, à Chypre, renouvellent les connaissances par l’apport de documents inédits ou réinterprétés. Enraciné dans l’institution qui le publie, l’École française d’Athènes, il n’a cessé d’évoluer avec elle pour être toujours mieu...