This paper deals with the two notions of aition or aitia and prophasis in the Greek medical texts and asks the question of whether these words are synonymous or not. Therefore, it explores their different meanings in different contexts both in the Hippocratic and in the Galenic corpus. It also investigates how Galen understands these two notions when he reads them in the Hippocratic treatises and how he explains them in his commentaries to Hippocrates, and in particular, if he gives (...) the same meaning to these words in his own treatises or if he uses them in a different way. (shrink)

En partant des quatre uniques emplois d’ agèrasia recensés dans l’ensemble de la littérature grecque, et en s’attachant à clarifier les liens entretenus entre agèrasia et athanasia (immortalité), mais aussi entre agèrasia et eugèria (belle vieillesse), on s’efforcera de définir quelles représentations exactes de la vieillesse véhicule le recours à ce vocabulaire, à la fois chez un médecin comme Galien et chez des philosophes comme Aristote et Philon d’Alexandrie.

Comme l’annonce son titre, emprunté au Timée (22b4-5) qui reprend les propos d’un prêtre égyptien pour qui les Grecs demeurent à jamais des enfants, leur savoir n’étant pas ancré dans un passé lointain, l’ouvrage de Véronique Boudon-Millot (désormais l’A.) ne se veut pas un livre sur la vieillesse chez les Grecs. L’esprit antique n’a guère d’intérêt pour la vieillesse prise en elle-même, non parce qu’il vouerait à la maturité un culte démesuré, mais par conscience aiguë de la relativité de ce...

Véronique Adam : Les neurosciences ne s’intéressent que depuis très récemment à l’olfaction. Pourriez‑vous expliquer pourquoi ce sens est devenu un objet d’étude plus prégnant? Jean-Louis Millot : En fait, l’olfaction demeure encore peu étudiée comparée à d’autres modalités sensorielles. De manière générale, les neurosciences cognitives actuelles, comme d’autres investigations scientifiques chez l’homme par le passé, se focalisent davantage sur les compétences cognitives complexes, telles qu...

Dans le Peri alypias de Galien, qui vient d’être redécouvert et édité par V. Boudon-Millot, Galien mentionne « le Platon de Panétius ». Étant donné le contexte, il est presque certain qu’il s’agit d’une édition de Platon par le philosophe stoïcien Panétius, édition dont on ignorait jusqu’ici l’existence.

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)

L'économie, les sciences sociales et la philosophie, utilisent abondamment la notion de rationalité. Indispensable, elle semble insaisissable. Cet ouvrage vise à la clarifier. Mais il poursuit surtout un autre objectif. La difficulté qu'ont les sciences sociales à devenir des sciences à part entière provient de ce qu'elles utilisent généreusement des explications irrationnelles du comportement qui paraissent fragiles. Cela explique le succès croissant depuis une vingtaine d'années, aux États-Unis et en Europe, de la Théorie dite du Choix Rationnel (TCR). Faut-il y (...) voir, comme le prétendent ses promoteurs, une théorie capable de donner aux sciences sociales un fondement solide? Faut-il accepter sa conception utilitariste de la rationalité? L'examen critique de la TCR permet de donner une réponse précise à ces questions et d'identifier un modèle qui préserve ses avantages en éliminant ses inconvénients. Ce n'est donc pas un exposé sur les avatars de la notion de rationalité qui est proposé ici, mais bien une théorie de la rationalité. (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)

Distinguished French sociologist Raymond Boudon presents here a critical theory history of the concept of ideology. His highly original and lucidly argued study addresses the core question of any account of ideology. How do individuals come to adhere to false or apparently irrational beliefs, and how do such beliefs become collectively accepted as true? Boudon begins by providing an exhaustive and subtle critique of sociological explanations of ideology from early conceptions to its current usage in the works of Barthes, Foucault, (...) Habermas, Sartre, and others. He then offers his own interpretation of the origins and emergence of ideological beliefs. In opposition to those views which associate ideology with irrationalism, Boudon shows that ideologies are a natural ingredient of social life; he develops a rationalist theory that helps to explain why certain ideas are believed by individuals and thereby effective in the social world. Finally, he examines case studies of two modern-day ideologies--developmentalism and Third Worldism. Moving easily across disciplinary boundaries, Boudon's provocative contribution to a subject of growing significance will be of great interest to scholars in sociology and social theory, as well as philosophy, political science, and development studies. (shrink)

Values have always been a central topic in both philosophy and the social sciences. Statements about what is good or bad, fair or unfair, legitimate or illegitimate, express clear beliefs about human existence. The fact that values differ from culture to culture and century to century opens many questions. In "The Origin of Values," Raymond Boudon offers empirical, data-based analysis of existing theories about values, while developing his own perspective as to why people accept or reject value statements. Boudon classifies (...) the main theories of value, including those based on firm belief, social or biological factors, and rational or utilitarian attitudes. He discusses the popular and widely influential Rational Choice Model and critiques the postmodernist approach. Boudon investigates why relativism has become so powerful and contrasts it with the naturalism represented by the work of James Q. Wilson on moral sensibility. He follows with a constructive attempt to develop a new theory, beginning with Webers idea of non-instrumental rationality as the basis for a more complex idea of rationality. Applying Boudons own and existing theories of value to political issues and social ideas--the end of apartheid, the death penalty, multiculturalism, communitarianism--"The Origin of Values" is a significant work. Boudon fulfills a major task of social science: explanation of collective belief. His book will be of interest to sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, and political scientists. (shrink)

This text aims to provide a contribution to the analysis of beliefs and, through the elaboration of the notion of good reasons, to make a significant contribution to the theory of rationality. It examines the main theories that have been used in the social sciences and psychology for the explanation of beliefs. The author develops a particular model which enables him to show that people often have good reasons to believe in false ideas. The central idea of this model is (...) that people often draw controversial conclusions from valid arguments because they introduce implicit statements which they do not perceive, since they treat them - with good reasons - as self-evident. Hence they can hold doubtful, or even false, conclusions and regard them as solidly grounded. Boudon shows that this model can be used to reinterpret many findings from the sociology of religion and the sociology of knowledge, as well as from cognitive psychology. (shrink)

Le magicien qui croit à l'efficacité des rituels de pluie n'obéit pas à une autre logique que l'homme de science, explique Durkheim. Les croyances religieuses doivent s'analyser comme le produit de raisons, expliquent Tocqueville et Weber. Les percées scientifiques les plus spectaculaires des sciences sociales sont celles qui ont réussi à déplacer les frontières du rationnel : à démontrer que la croyance ou le comportement qu'un regard superficiel juge spontanément irrationnel s'explique comme l'effet de raisons subjectivement fortes et objectivement fondées. (...) Ce déplacement de l'irrationnel au rationnel est indispensable si l'on veut expliquer les changements dans les croyances, les normes, les valeurs et les institutions qu'on observe dans les sociétés contemporaines. (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)

This paper announces the first critical edition of Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the Bhagavadgītā in its Kashmirian recension, based on one Kashmirian Devanāgarī and seven Śāradā manuscripts in addition to two existing non-critical editions. The volume will also include a new edition of the Kashmirian recension of the Bhagavadgītā and a full French translation. After a short presentation of Abhinavagupta’s commentary and a discussion of previous work on the subject, the manuscripts used are listed and briefly described. The question and importance (...) of the Kashmirian recension of the Bhagavadgītā and problems of its edition are discussed in detail, with several textual examples. In order to give a sample of the Gītārthasaṃgraha’s contents, some of Abhinavagupta’s remarkable interpretations are also highlighted, in particular tantric or esoteric ones. An Appendix deals with the closely related question of Bhāskara the Vedāntin, his date, his provenance and the Gītā recension he probably used for his commentary. (shrink)

La sociologie exerce sur la vie des idées dans les démocraties modernes une influence importante, mais ambiguë. Dans sa dimension scientifique, elle a réalisé une remarquable percée dans l’explication des phénomènes politiques, moraux et religieux. Elle a montré que la souveraineté du peuple dans une démocratie représentative n’a rien d’utopique, mais aussi que les démocraties représentatives sont menacées par une dérive oligarchique, et expliqué pourquoi la France l’est davantage que ses voisines. Elle a enrichi la réflexion philosophique sur le sens (...) moral et permis d’expliquer les changements tendanciels de la sensibilité morale. Elle a proposé une explication des croyances religieuses et une vision des relations entre religion et modernité qui contraste avec celle de la philosophie des Lumières. Malheureusement, ces percées de la sociologie scientifique restent trop peu visibles. (shrink)

Is moral evolution a mere illusion, as postmodern thinkers state or a more or less permanent feature of history though it can be thwarted by unfavorable conjunctures, as Weber or Durkheim thought? The question is tentatively answered by a reanalysis of data drawn from the World Values Survey conducted under the lead of the University of Michigan. The data on seven Western countries show, when comparing the answers of younger to older respondents and of more to less educated respondents, that (...) definite trends characterize the frequencies. On the questions regarding issues related notably to work, authority, morals, religion, politics and attitudes towards other people, the younger and the more educated appear as giving answers less inspired by tradition. On the whole, the data illustrate Weber’s notion of ratio­nalization. The same trends can be observed in countries outside the Western world as India, Russia and Turkey. Such trends may plausibly be reinforced by globalization. (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)

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)

The Parama¯rthasa¯ra, or 'Essence of Ultimate Reality', is a work of the Kashmirian polymath Abhinavagupta (tenth–eleventh centuries). It is a brief treatise in which the author outlines the doctrine of which he is a notable exponent, namely nondualistic S´aivism, which he designates in his works as the Trika, or 'Triad' of three principles: S´iva, S´akti and the embodied soul (nara). The main interest of the Parama¯rthasa¯ra is not only that it serves as an introduction to the established doctrine of a (...) tradition, but also advances the notion of jiv¯anmukti, 'liberation in this life', as its core theme. Further, it does not confine itself to an exposition of the doctrine as such but at times hints at a second sense lying beneath the evident sense, namely esoteric techniques and practices that are at the heart of the philosophical discourse. Its commentator, Yogara¯ja (eleventh century), excels in detecting and clarifying those various levels of meaning. An Introduction to Tantric Philosophy presents, along with a critically revised Sanskrit text, the first annotated English translation of both Abhinavagupta's Parama¯rthasa¯ra and Yogara¯ja's commentary. This book will be of interest to Indologists, as well as to specialists and students of Religion, Tantric studies and Philosophy. (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)

The goal of this paper is to reconsider some key concepts of nondualist Kashmirian Śaivism whose interpretation and translation have generally been the subject of some sort of silent consensus. Through the close examination of a particular text, the Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta and its commentary by Yogarāja, as well as of related texts of the system, I shall attempt to improve upon the understanding and translation of terms such as ghana (and the compounds derived therefrom), the roots sphar, sphur, pra]kāś (...) etc., and their derivatives, bhavanakartr̥tā, and the names of the three malas. Further, bhāvanā will be discussed in its Śaiva acceptation and a more suitable translation suggested. (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)

The structure of explanation for methodological individualism (MI) can be represented by the expression M = M [m(P)] where the global phenomenon M results from a set of stylized individual behaviors m resulting from motivations which are themselves affected by global data P. In this, MI differs from holistic methodology in that it takes into account the individual (generally ideal–typical) reasons underlying these collective phenomena, and refuses, in principle, to treat a group as an actor endowed with a conscience and (...) a will, or to describe the individual as the crossing point of collective forces. Boudon gives several examples showing that the individualist paradigm and the rationality hypothesis it includes (according to which the actors’ reasons are, in principle, comprehensible by the observer as a function of their situation) enables sociological explanation to progress and avoid the dreaded trap of sociocentrism. (shrink)

Mary Briody Mahowald, Bioethics and women across the life span, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, reviewed by Véronique Bergeron.

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)