Nearly all the extracts presented here are new translations and most have never appeared in English before.

Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space and real space. In the course of his (...) exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures. (shrink)

In the past fifteen years, Henri Lefebvre's reputation has catapulted into the stratosphere, and he is now considered an equal to some of the greats of European social theory (Bourdieu, Deleuze, Harvey). In particular, his work has revitalized urban studies, geography and planning via concepts like; the social production of space, the right to the city, everyday life, and global urbanization. Lefebvre's massive body of work has generated two main schools of thought: one that is political economic, and (...) another that is more culturally oriented and poststructuralist in tone. Space, Difference, and Everyday Life merges these two schools of thought into a unified Lefebvrian approach to contemporary urban issues and the nature of our spatialized social structures. (shrink)

The ratio bias––according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers––has recently gained momentum, with researchers especially in health economics emphasizing the policy importance of the phenomenon. Although the bias has been replicated several times, some doubts remain about its economic significance. Our two experiments show that the bias disappears once order effects are excluded, and once salient and dominant incentives (...) are provided. This holds true for both choice and valuation tasks. Also, adding context to the decision problem does not change this outcome. No ratio bias could be found in between-subject tests either, which leads us to the conclusion that the policy relevance of the phenomenon is doubtful at best. (shrink)

This paper primarily reports the findings of content analyses of seventy-five codes of ethics ofFinancial Post 500 corporations. The contents of each code were comprehensively evaluated along sixty-one criteria according to four levels. It was found that the focus of these codes was the protection of the firm. While some of them refer to issues of social responsibility, they are principally concerned with conduct against the firm.

Cet entretien réalisé le 30 novembre 1999 à Paris présente l’évolution de la philosophie de Michel Henry, depuis L’essence de la manifestation jusqu’à l’Incarnation. Il s’agit de présenter le projet, la place et la centralité de L’essence de la manifestation dans l’œuvre de M. Henry, puisque c’est dans cet ouvrage qu’il a mis au jour les présuppositions de sa phénoménologie de la vie et de l’intériorité subjective, présuppositions qu’il fera travailler dans tous les ouvrages qui lui succéderont, ceci jusqu’à L’incarnation. (...) Elle s’oppose à une phénoménologie du monde, de l’extériorité et de l’objectivité. Son concept central, celui de chair, pense la matière affective du Soi, c’est-à-dire du corps subjectif. Il est inséparable d’une thèse : à savoir que la corporéité (rapport au corps) est antérieure à l’intentionnalité (rapport au monde). Une phénoménologie du corps subjectif est donc apte à saisir la vie dans son immanence. Elle conduit à une archéologie de la chair dans l’Incarnation, analyse de la matière constituante de la vie qui précède et habite toute intentionnalité. (shrink)

De la spontanéité révolutionnaire, je dénnerai une prèmiere définition, extrêmement sommaire, qu'il faudra affiner. La spontanédité, c'est un mouvement et un événement qui ont des causes, qui ont des conditions, qui ont des raisons et des motivations, mais qui tendent a les deborder et à les dépasser. La spontan´ité constitue une expérience politique.

Although there exists a strong uncertainty surrounding the evaluation of the decline of biodiversity, and a larger uncertainty still regarding projections of the decline to come, there is no controversy on the fact that the current rate of extinction is in a crisis. The fact that this decline is above all of anthropic origin is the object of a consensus within the scientific community. This text thus takes as a starting point the existence of a true crisis of biodiversity. This (...) crisis of biodiversity must conclude in the adoption of a principle of protection of the biodiversity, a normative principle which would constrain the relation of man with nature with regard to its diversity. I will show in this text that the principle of sustainable development is not sufficient to adequately define a principle of protection of the biodiversity. (shrink)

Sur un bloc, connu depuis longtemps en raison d’une inscription (FD III, 4, 189) et déposé sur la terrasse Sud, à l’angle Sud-Est du Temple d’Apollon, on voit deux séries de lignes et deux demi-cercles accolés à deux d’entre elles qui n’ont jamais été signalés à notre connaissance. Il s’agit d’un abaque. Après avoir indiqué rapidement comment les Grecs utilisaient cet instrument, on décrit la pierre et donne les raisons d’une telle identification avant de rappeler les questions que pose cet (...) abaque en particulier et les tables à calcul grecques en général. (shrink)

The ventricular pressure profile is characteristic of the cardiac contraction progress and is useful to evaluate the cardiac performance. In this contribution, a tissue-level electromechanical model of the left ventricle is proposed, to assist the interpretation of left ventricular pressure waveforms. The left ventricle has been modeled as an ellipsoid composed of twelve mechano-hydraulic sub-systems. The asynchronous contraction of these twelve myocardial segments has been represented in order to reproduce a realistic pressure profiles. To take into account the different energy (...) domains involved, the tissue-level scale and to facilitate the building of a modular model, multiple formalisms have been used: Bond Graph formalism for the mechano-hydraulic aspects and cellular automata for the electrical activation. An experimental protocol has been defined to acquire ventricular pressure signals from three pigs, with different afterload conditions. Evolutionary Algorithms have been used to identify the model parameters in order to minimize the error between experimental and simulated ventricular pressure signals. Simulation results show that the model is able to reproduce experimental ventricular pressure. In addition, electro-mechanical activation times have been determined in the identification process. For example, the maximum electrical activation time is reached, respectively, 96.5, 139.3 and 131.5 ms for the first, second, and third pigs. These preliminary results are encouraging for the application of the model on non-invasive data like ECG, arterial pressure or myocardial strain. (shrink)

This paper is based on a research conducted between 2004 and 2006 and dealing with the memories of women in a steel valley struck by depression since the seventies, in the North-Eastern part of France. The imagery of steel-producing Lorraine coalesced in a rather standardized way around the figure of the steelworker working at the blast furnace. This research and the exhibition which followed from it, highlighted the activities of women, in the working place as well as in the domestic (...) realm and in community or political movements. It thus contributes to a more complex imagining and less androcentric perspective on the ironworks past of the Lorraine region. (shrink)

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abélard, and Chrétien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a broader (...) theoretical reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction. (shrink)

The Image of Law is the first book to examine law through the work of Gilles Deleuze, activating his thought within problems of jurisprudence and developing a concept of judgment that acknowledges its inherently creative capacity.

The great French Marxist philosopher weighs up the contributions of the three major critics of modernity With the translation of Lefebvre's philosophical writings, his stature in the English-speaking world continues to grow. Though certainly within the Marxist tradition, he consistently saw Marx as an 'unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting point'. Unsurprisingly, Lefebvre always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. But the imposing Metaphilosophy also suggested the significance he ascribed to Nietzsche, in the 'realm of shadows' (...) through which philosophy seeks to think the world. Lefebvre proposes here that the modern world is at the same time Hegelian in terms of the state; Marxist in terms of the social and society; and Nietzschean in terms of civilization and its values. As early as 1939, Lefebvre pioneered a French reading of Nietzsche that rejected the philosopher's appropriation by fascism, bringing out the tragic implications of Nietzsche's proclamation that 'God is dead' long before this approach was followed by such later writers as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Forty years later, in the last of his philosophical writings, Lefebvre juxtaposes the contributions of the three great thinkers, in a text whose themes remain surprisingly relevant today. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage explore les critiques du donné dans le néokantisme et la phénoménologie allemands. Il révèle la portée considérable de ces critiques, qui impliquent en même temps une controverse avec le positivisme de la fin du XIXème siècle et un dialogue substantiel avec l’Esthétique transcendantale de Kant. En posant les questions de la sensation et de la perception, la présente monographie permet de ménager un accès privilégié aux enjeux fondamentaux de la philosophie austro-allemande au tournant du XXème siècle. Lorsqu’il est (...) question du donné ou des critiques du donné dans le discours philosophique contemporain, et cela arrive souvent dans les débats sur la perception en philosophie de l’esprit, c’est toujours à la controverse analytique autour du « mythe du donné » que l’on fait référence – controverse, qui a vu le jour en 1956, lorsque le philosophe américain Wilfrid Sellars publie Empirisme et philosophie de l’esprit. Or, il est intéressant d’observer que la critique sellarsienne du « mythe du donné » a été préfigurée, en un sens partiel mais important, par les objections que les néokantiens et les phénoménologues ont adressées à la notion de donné au tournant du XXesiècle. La présente monographie comble cette lacune béante de l’historiographie classique, qui a jusqu’ici accordé peu d’attention à la constance de cette critique dans toutes les philosophies marquées par l’héritage de Kant. (shrink)

VIRGINIE MARIS,ÉLISE HUCHARD | : Considérant l’ubiquité de la souffrance dans le monde sauvage, la question se pose de notre obligation d’intervenir. Du simple devoir d’assistance dans des situations ponctuelles à des projets de transformation des conditions de vie animale à grande échelle, la défense de l’interventionnisme entre en conflit avec la pensée conservationniste qui valorise la naturalité ou l’autonomie des systèmes écologiques. Dans cet article, nous tentons de mettre en dialogue les intuitions interventionnistes et la pensée conservationniste. Nous (...) exposons tout d’abord l’argument interventionniste et ses limites épistémiques. Nous mitigeons ensuite le constat selon lequel les conditions de vie des animaux sauvages justifient notre intervention en replaçant le problème de la souffrance dans un cadre évolutif et écologique plus large puis en insistant sur d’autres obligations vis-à-vis des animaux sauvages comme le respect de leur autonomie ou de leur souveraineté. Enfin, nous défendons une conception pluraliste de nos relations au monde naturel dans laquelle le souci pour les animaux s’équilibre avec d’autres valeurs écocentrées. Nous concluons en présentant les ressources encore peu explorées d’une conservation compassionnelle qui intègre le souci pour les individus et le souci pour les collectifs écologiques dans les normes de ses actions. | : The ubiquity of suffering in the wild raises the question of our obligation to intervene. From a simple duty of assistance in particular situations to large-scale projects aimed at transforming animal living conditions, the defense of interventionism often conflicts with conservationist values, which emphasize the naturalness or autonomy of ecological systems. In this article, we attempt to open a dialogue between interventionist intuitions and the conservationist school of thought. We first expose the interventionist argument and its epistemic limitations. We subsequently mitigate the statement according to which the living conditions of wild animals justify human intervention by replacing the problem of suffering in a broader ecological and evolutionary framework, as well as by insisting on other obligations that we may have towards wild animals, such as the respect of their autonomy and sovereignty. Finally, we defend a pluralistic conception of our relationships to the natural world, in which care for animals has to be balanced with other, eco-centered, values. We conclude by presenting the resources of a compassionate conservation approach, which remains largely unexplored and integrates care for individual animals as well as for ecological entities in its norm for action. (shrink)

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional cues (...) arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions). (shrink)

Based on Claudia Moatti’s Res publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique, we strive to draw the outlines of what would be a historical science of antiquity that would isolate, in order to protect itself, the political representations that link us to Rome? The aim here is to study the political concepts used in ancient Rome by placing, at the fore, language and anthropology of the practices that we are trying to identify, in the background. This feature therefore seeks to (...) extend Claudia Moatti’s work by resuming the study of Res publica to perceive how it has been received by posterity. (shrink)

Résumé Le silence de Lorna de Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne met en scène la grossesse fictive que Lorna s’invente suite à la disparition de Claudy. La perte de l’être aimé engendre une mélancolie qui s’appréhende dans une dépersonnalisation de la chair féminine. Est analysée la manière qu’ont les cinéastes de rendre présente la relation à l’absent, et de parler de leur création, soit d’une chair masculine qui crée, par l’intermédiaire de l’enfantement de Lorna, qui devient leur ego alter.

La parution de plus en plus fréquente d�ouvrages (souvent collectifs) consacrés aux figures et aux ailleurs de la pensée suggère la présente note de lecture. Pluralités indéterminées de régimes de �scientificité�, richesses épistémologiques d�une complexité et du paradoxe: entre attentes et ambiguïtés, autant de relations, voire de résurgences, circulant dans les espaces discursifs. Recherches d�expression ou recherches de pensée? Peut-on alors imaginer une actualité d�une parole entre philosophie et géographie?

On the background of the later opposition between realism and anti-realism, and with special attention to the overlapping of reality and logos, an examination of Aristotle’s way of answering to the...

BackgroundHigh frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has shown significant efficiency in the treatment of resistant depression. However in healthy subjects, the effects of rTMS remain unclear.ObjectiveOur aim was to determine the impact of 10 sessions of rTMS applied to the DLPFC on mood and emotion recognition in healthy subjects.DesignIn a randomised double-blind study, 20 subjects received 10 daily sessions of active or sham rTMS. The TMS coil was positioned on the left DLPFC through neuronavigation. (...) Several dimensions of mood and emotion processing were assessed at baseline and after rTMS with clinical scales, visual analogue scales, and the Ekman 60 faces test.ResultsThe 10 rTMS sessions targeting the DLPFC were well tolerated. No significant difference was found between the active group and the control group for clinical scales and the Ekman 60 faces test. Compared to the control group, the active rTM... (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct Husserl’s two-pronged approach of sensory givenness. On the one hand, the phenomenological focus on intentional consciousness implies a virulent criticismof the positivistic myth of the sensory given. On the other hand, there is also a positive appeal to sensory givenness in phenomenology, without which phenomenology would not be worthy of its name and would, ultimately, be nothing other than a form of neo-Kantianism. In the context of transcendental genetic phenomenology, Husserl manages to (...) rehabilitate sensory givenness in a reduced, viz. demythologized form. This reconstruction of Husserl’s ambivalent reference to the given can help phenomenology defend itself against some actual trends, which tend to reduce it to phenomenalismor to conceptualism. (shrink)

We present an age-structured model for erythropoiesis in which the mortality of mature cells is described empirically by a physiologically realistic probability distribution of survival times. Under some assumptions, the model can be transformed into a system of delay differential equations with both constant and distributed delays. The stability of the equilibrium of this system and possible Hopf bifurcations are described for a number of probability distributions. Physiological motivation and interpretation of our results are provided.