Les auteurs posent la question des retentissements du deuil d’une figure parentale dans l’enfance sur les remaniements liés à la construction psychique de la paternité. Elles formulent cette problématique théorique en s’étayant sur l’analyse du cas de Marc, futur primipère ayant vécu le deuil de son propre père dans son enfance. Les auteurs soulignent que devenir père nécessite, pour le sujet, de parvenir à s’identifier à ses imagos parentales et de s’étayer sur ses représentations de la fonction parentale, et discutent (...) du destin de l’objet interne lorsque le parent réel est décédé. En particulier, la nouvelle paternité implique le renoncement aux objets parentaux idéalisés, question à mettre en lien avec l’idéalisation du défunt qui intervient toujours dans le deuil, au moins dans les premiers temps. En outre, l’accession à la paternité réactive des angoisses de mort et de castration, processus entrant en synergie avec le réveil de ces mêmes angoisses dans le deuil. Cette étude clinique ouvre aux questions de la parentification du garçon orphelin et de l’impact de cette dernière sur la construction ultérieure de la paternité. (shrink)

In May 2013 a new Assisted Dying Bill was tabled in the House of Lords and is currently scheduled for a second reading in May 2014. The Bill was informed by the report of the Commission on Assisted Dying which itself was informed by evidence presented by invited experts.

ABSTRACTNew Zealanders were presented with the opportunity to change the national flag and opted to retain the current New Zealand flag, despite arguments that it was unable to reflect national identity adequately. This article unpacks the particular version of national identity constructed in discourse in the infographic, Our Nation. Your Choice. which was released prior to the final referendum that determined the outcome of the Flag Consideration Project. We used Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to examine the discursive construction of national (...) identity by the Flag Consideration Panel that oversaw the process. The authoritative assertion of national identity on behalf of New Zealanders emphasised inclusiveness and unity by acknowledging cultural diversity. Biculturalism was confined to an old understanding of New Zealand identity while the ideology of multiculturalism, not yet officially implemented, was positioned as common-sense. There was a focus on situating New Zealand in a global context to distance New Zealand from colonisation and connection to Britain. The positive, cohesive conceptualisation of New Zealand suggested that the Flag Consideration Project was, in fact, an exercise in re-positioning New Zealand in the global context, in which the national flag would represent the national brand rather than contribute to national identity. (shrink)

This paper discusses the creation and use of the new Macquarie Laws of War Corpus. The corpus consists of the 110 documents of international war law stored in the International Committee of the Red Cross treaties database, starting with the 1856 Declaration Respecting Maritime Law and ending with the most recent amendment to the Rome Statute. The new MQLWC is hosted at the Sydney Corpus Lab, via its CQWeb interface, which allows for searching of frequencies, concordance lines, and collocations. The (...) corpus can also be downloaded for offline processing in other popular concordance programs, such as #Lancsbox and AntConc. This paper introduces the corpus, describes the process of assembling the data, and explains its limitations. The paper then demonstrates some of the ways the data can be explored using the concept of 'military necessity'. The MQLWC contributes to the growing use of corpus linguistics in legal studies, and will be of particular relevance to scholars in the field of international war law. (shrink)

Objective The objective of this article is to provide an ethical analysis of a high-risk, advanced treatment case where the patient received transcatheter aortic valve insertion (TAVI), for aortic valve stenosis. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the significance of evidence and the implications for priority setting. Method One paradigmatic case involving a TAVI patient from a large university hospital in Norway is described and analysed. The method used was ethical case analysis modified after Kymlicka by Miljeteig et al. Perioperative (...) mortality risk was estimated using the Euroscore risk-logarithm and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons’ risk model, STS. These predict the risk of operative mortality and morbidity associated with adult cardiac surgery. GRADE, the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, was used to evaluate the evidence. Results In the case analysis, we found that it would be ethically justifiable not to recommend TAVI treatment for this patient. Although the patient had a severe condition in need of treatment, the expected improvement was marginal, the quality of evidence was low and the opportunity costs for other patients and society were higher than usually deemed appropriate. Conclusions Decision-making in the absence of high quality evidence from randomized trials is a complex process involving difficult ethical judgments. Novel high-risk devices often enter the European market with limited clinical evidence. Transparency and improved clinical evaluation are required so patient safety is not jeopardized. We argue that implementation of high risk, high cost interventions should be better regulated at a national level. Background All clinical decisions imply priority setting and therefore indirectly affect other patients and other patient groups. The use of expensive, innovative health technologies has an affect on individual patients as well as on other patient groups competing for the same resources. (shrink)

En français, le mot 'langue' indique à la fois l'organe logé au creux de la bouche et la faculté de parole. On fait le pari que le rapport de l'un à l'autre n'a rien d'accidentel : tout comme la langue est le seul organe qui puisse sortir du corps, la langue que nous parlons est à la fois dedans et dehors. Une philosophie de l'expression se déduit de cette interrogation, ainsi qu'une poétique. Elles ne sont pas sans relation aveu ; (...) ce qui permet la liberté d'expression. Ces grandes questions sont affrontées sans jamais quitter la langue des yeux. Dans cette quête, on croise Aristote, des philosophes, des linguistes, des romanciers et de poètes, mais aussi un beat-boxer, quelques embrasseurs et Philomèle dont la langue coupée dit la résistance multiple et opiniâtre. Avec elle, on va au bout de la langue."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Dynamic, interactive sports require athletes to identify, pick-up and process relevant information in a very limited time, in order to then make an appropriate response. Perceptual-cognitive skills are, therefore, a key determinant of elite sporting performance. Recently, sport scientists have investigated ways to assess and train perceptual-cognitive skills, with one such method involving the use of blurred stimuli. Here, we describe the two main methods used to generate blur and then review the current findings in a sports context. Overall, it (...) has been shown the use of blur can enhance performance and learning of sporting tasks in novice participants, especially when the blur is applied to peripheral stimuli. However, while intermediate and expert level participants are relatively impervious to the presence of blur, it remains to be determined if they are positive effects on learning. In a final section, we describe some of the methodological issues that limit the application of blur and then discuss the potential use of virtual reality to extend the current research base in sporting contexts. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relationships that Derrida establishes between three analytic discussions and three autoimmunities. The analytic discussions are (1) the antinomy of hospitality, related to what happens when the subject faces demands from strangers; (2) the antinomy of the death penalty, related to the meeting between the right to life and the right to end the life of another; (3) the antinomy of animality related to laws and what lies beyond them. The autoimmunities are (1) the autoimmunity of (...) inclusion: democracy is open only to its sovereign citizens while it claims to welcome all who are excluded; (2) the autoimmunity of rights and liberties: in liberal democracy, rights and liberties are meant to challenge sovereignty’s absolutism, but any attack on sovereignty is an attack on rights and liberties; (3) the autoimmunity of globalization: for democracy to work it requires protection provided by a supersovereignty, which limits the sovereignty of states, and hence, democracy. The paper follows Derrida’s connections between the questions of hospitality, the death penalty, and animality on the one hand, and the autoimmune aspects of democratic politics on the other, to argue that his deconstruction of democracy is an ethicization of democracy activated by the concept of sovereignty, and a deconstruction of sovereignty via ethics. (shrink)

This is a book about the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. Annabel Brett takes a fresh approach by looking at this political entity from the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them. She begins with a classic debate from the Spanish sixteenth century over the political treatment of mendicants, showing how cosmopolitan ideals of porous boundaries could simultaneously justify the freedoms of itinerant beggars (...) and the activities of European colonists in the Indies. She goes on to examine the boundaries of the state in multiple senses, including the fundamental barrier between human beings and animals and the limits of the state in the face of the natural lives of its subjects, as well as territorial frontiers. Drawing on a wide range of authors, Brett reveals how early modern political space was constructed from a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, she shows that early modern debates about political boundaries displayed unheralded creativity and virtuosity but were nevertheless vulnerable to innumerable paradoxes, contradictions, and loose ends.Changes of State is a major work of intellectual history that resonates with modern debates about globalization and the transformation of the nation-state. (shrink)

Among the processes of canon-formation is the habit of coupling writers; and among the most powerful of couples in the traditional English literary canon is Spenser-and-Milton. Much of my own professional life has probably been determined by my first teaching assignment of 1963, which included “Spenser-and-Milton,” in those days at Toronto a famous cornerstone course carrying the tamp of the stamp of the formidable Renaissance scholar A. S. P. Woodhouse, known affectionately if disrespectfully to his students as Professor Nature-and-Grace. For (...) several years I labored mightily, though neither naturally nor, I suspect, gracefully, on Spenser-and-Milton, sensing all the time that the connections I made, the doctrines I was conveying, lacked persuasion; and no doubt the seed of this essay was sown in those days, although its angle of sight was not then available, obscured on all sides by institutional pillars.When we couple writers we usually imply a criterion of fit or at least explicable mating. While there is nothing to prohibit a merely comparativist curiosity, or coupling in the service of some other agenda, we presumably give greater authority to relationships that imply causality, even, or especially, if causality is defined as the influence of the one writer on the other. Most of such relationships are unidirectional, from the earlier to the later dead, and a plausible coupling requires either the successor’s own testimony that the influence-relation existed, or other evidence that the influence-relation was strong enough to be formative; or, preferably, both. Annabel Patterson, professor of literature and English at Duke University, is the author of Hermogenes and the Renaissance , Marvell and the Civic Crown , Censorship and Interpretation , Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry , and Shakespeare and the Popular Voice. (shrink)

Résumé Nous posons dans cet article que l’humour dans le discours publicitaire est un mécanisme privilégié de la communication multicanale et plurisémiotique pour transformer le discours marchand en pratique communicationnelle agissante. Dans son rapport à une normativité donnée comme potentiellement divergente, il est mobilisé dans le double objectif de construire un ethos décalé, identifiable et mémorisable pour le locuteur-annonceur, et de produire du plaisir intellectuel pour susciter la connivence du récepteur, qui devient ainsi co-énonciateur. Est alors interrogée la sémiosis de (...) ce discours publicitaire dont chaque élément est porteur de signification aux yeux du récepteur lors de l’acte d’énonciation. Par la lecture connivente que le processus induit, l’acte humoristique comme acte de parole du côté de la production vise ensuite à s’actualiser en acte d’achat proprement dit du côté de la réception. (shrink)

The ethical conduct of research rests largely on researchers, and as such, an understanding of how they perceive and enact their role in research is paramount. However, the literature around ethics and research mostly focuses on researchers’ perception of Research Ethics Boards roles and functions. To fill that gap, we analyzed the perceptions of researchers, REB members, and influential parties about researchers’ role in the ethical conduct of research through discourse analysis. Three discourses emerged: researchers as reflective practitioners, protectors of (...) participants, and technicians. Understanding the commonalities and differences among the discourses may foster a shared and compelling institutional research culture. (shrink)

CETTE THESE INTERROGE DE MANIERE CRITIQUE LES RAPPORTS ENTRE UNE MANIERE TRADITIONNELLE DE PRATIQUER LA PHILOSOPHIE POLITIQUE, D'UNE PART, ET D'AUTRE PART LA PRATIQUE DE LA POLITIQUE QUI A ABOUTI AU VINGTIEME SIECLE AU PHENOMENE TOTALITAIRE. SON PROJET EST DE MONTRER L'URGENCE D'EMANCIPER LA PENSEE DU POLITIQUE DE CETTE TRADITION QUI SANS POUVOIR ETRE RENDUE RESPONSABLE DU TOTALITARISME EST TOUT AU MOINS CO-RESPONSABLE PAR SON IMPUISSANCE -PAR SA RESISTANCE- A PENSER LES CONDITIONS DU TOTALITARISME. LE TRAVAIL EST CONSTITUE PAR QUATRE (...) ETUDES CONSACREES RESPECTIVEMENT A H. ARENDT, M. STIRNER, F. ROSENZWEIG ET E. LEVINAS, QUI ONT SU CHACUN A SA MANIERE S'EMANCIPER DE LA MANIERE TRADITIONNELLE DE PHILOSOPHER, LES UNS EN OPPOSANT A LA TRADITION PHILOSOPHIQUE UNE RESISTANCE RADICALE, LES AUTRES EN OUVRANT CETTE TRADITION A DES HORIZONS DE PENSEE TOUT DIFFERENTS QUI LUI OFFRENT DES POINTS DE VUE AUTRES SUR ELLE-MEME ET SUR LA POLITIQUE. UN THEME TRANSVERSAL, CELUI DE L'ENTRE-DEUX, PERMET LA COMMUNICATION ENTRE CES PENSEES FORT DIFFERENTES LES UNES DES AUTRES, ET TOUT A LA FOIS DESSINE UNE DES PERSPECTIVES DANS LAQUELLE IL S'AGIRAIT DE REPENSER L'ESPACE DE LA POLITIQUE. (shrink)

Selon Rousseau le langage n’est pas né pour dire le monde, mais pour dire l’amour. Au 18ème siècle, cette thèse originale déplace les lignes car elle met l’expression des affects au coeur de la communication : ce n’est pas pour assurer la référence que nous parlons mais pour instituer le monde de nos passions. C’est à suivre ce fil rouge qu’est consacrée cette étude. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de montrer qu’un tel fil permet de lire ensemble l’Essai sur l’origine (...) des langues et le reste de l’oeuvre, ou qu’il traverse et unit les écrits du philosophe et ceux de l’écrivain. Il y a plus et plus important - là où Rousseau noue anthropologie des passions et doctrine de l’expression, un mystère quotidien nous attend. C’est celui par lequel ce que nous disons de ce que nous sentons ne se distingue plus en droit de ce que nous sentons. Un amour est comme un feu : s’il se déclare, il existe autrement. Il est plus vif, plus intense. Plus dangereux aussi. (shrink)

Le 15 septembre 2016, Carlo Ginzburg était invité par le Groupe Genevois de Philosophie à tenir une conférence dans le cadre d’un colloque consacré à « La philosophie et son histoire : un débat actuel ». En étudiant les deux cas de Garcilaso de la Vega et de John David Rhys, Ginzburg apportait une contribution de poids à l’ethnophilologie – si la philologie est la discipline académique qui permet d’établir la lettre des textes, l’ethnophilologie devient sous sa plume l’entreprise qui (...) invite à employer la rigueur des méthodes philologiques pour faire entendre la vérité des voix soumises. La leçon pour la traductologie contemporaine est importante – la traduction n’est pas une simple opération pacifique. Elle implique des relations de force. (shrink)

Carol Pateman has said that the public/private distinction is what feminism is all about. I tend to be sceptical about categorical pronouncements of this sort, but this book is a work of feminist political philosophy and the public/private distinction is what it is all about. It is motivated by the belief that we lack a philosophical conception of privacy suitable for a democracy; that feminism has exposed this lack; and that by combining feminist analysis with recent developments in political philosophy, (...) we can meet the philosophical and political need for a distinctively democratic conception of privacy. This book then, is an effort to sketch and defend such a conception of privacy. It aims to show that while some conceptions of privacy are inconsistent with democracy, others are not. Indeed, the book asserts, the belief that privacy can be valuable and that it can justify basic legal rights, is implicit in a democratic conception of persons as free and equal beings, and a democratic conception of politics as the self-governing, or regulating, activity of such individuals. Just as we can and should reject undemocratic conceptions of the suffrage in favour of democratic ones, so the book maintains, we can and must reject undemocratic conceptions of privacy in favour of ones that reflect the moral equality of men and women, and a commitment to democratic forms of government. Democracy is often described as government by and for the people. On such a view, democracy is a political regime which can be contrasted with monarchies or aristocracies on the one hand, or with theocracies and despotisms on the other. By contrast with the former, it is a form of government that views individuals as citizens and as equal members of the agency which authorizes the use of political power. By contrast with the latter, it is a form of government whose purposes and aims are established by the common interests of individuals, conceived as free and equal citizens. It is my contention that there is a plausible and attractive conception of privacy implicit in this view of democracy. Hence, I show that individuals have fundamental interests in privacy because privacy enables them to participate in politics freely and as the equal of others and, beyond that, to lead lives that they can each affirm to be reasonable, valuable and right. As I think that the ideal of democratic government is properly associated with this latter and broader goal, as well as with the former one, I call my account of privacy a democratic conception of privacy to signal its connection to a particular ideal of politics, and to the conception of persons that makes this ideal a convincing and inspiring one. As this is a work of political philosophy, however, no effort is made to address the legal merits of competing accounts of the right to privacy, or to resolve legal dispute about the content and justification of particular constitutional rights in the United States. Thus, while I use Supreme Court decisions and works of legal theory to illustrate and support my arguments, my use of these materials is governed by philosophical concerns and my conclusions, therefore, are strictly of a philosophical, not a legal, nature. The book is divided into four chapters, moving from feminist criticisms of privacy to an engagement with the philosophical literature on privacy and an account of the right to privacy in a democratic society. It proceeds as follows. In Chapter 1, I examine feminist concerns about privacy, through a close reading of the work of Catherine MacKinnon. I argue that MacKinnon persuasively shows that protection for privacy has frequently licensed the coercion and subjection of women, and that her arguments are supported both by feminist scholarship, key Supreme Court decisions, and by familiar conceptions of privacy and equality. However, I argue, these criticisms do not imply that privacy, like slavery, can never be democratic, because wholly inconsistent with the equality of individuals. Rather, feminist criticisms of privacy suggest that privacy, like the suffrage, can be necessary to the equality of women and can have a legitimate and important place in a democratic society. In Chapter 2, I examine the philosophical literature on privacy in light of the need to distinguish democratic from undemocratic accounts of its nature and value. This literature, I show, can help us to provide an account of privacy that is sensitive both to its inegalitarian aspects and to its importance for a democratic commitment to the freedom and equality of women. However, I argue, we cannot embrace current philosophical accounts of privacy uncritically, because to a striking extent they are, themselves, indifferent to the ways that privacy has licensed sexual inequality. Thus, in Chapter 2, I set about interpreting privacy as a moral and political value, in light of the strengths and weaknesses of the philosophical literature on privacy. Their strength is that they show that there are many reasons for caring about privacy, or many ways in which we might define it as a democratic value. Their weakness is that they tend to assume that we must choose amongst these different conceptions of privacy, in order to provide a philosophically cogent account of privacy. This, I show, is a mistake and one that can be remedied by remembering that a commitment to the equality of individuals requires us to acknowledge the reasonable differences in value and interest that may characterize their relations in a democracy. When we do so, I show, it is possible to define privacy in terms of its protection for self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality, without having to choose between the three of them. For individuals may legitimately disagree about the differences between privacy and other values, even while holding that privacy is a distinctive and important democratic good; and they may also disagree about the importance of privacy compared to other goods, such as equality, without denying that self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality can be morally and politically desirable in a democracy. In Chapter 2, therefore, I show that we can provide a philosophically adequate account of what privacy is and why it is valuable without supposing that privacy is always sexually egalitarian, or denying that it has a distinctive place in a democratic conception of value. Chapter 3 then extends this account of privacy, by considering the justification for a legal right to privacy. Just as we cannot provide a democratic conception of privacy without attending to the different, though equally valid, concerns that individuals may have so, I show, we cannot provide a democratic account of privacy rights if we forget that individuals can, quite reasonably, differ in the importance that they attach to privacy. The result, I argue, is that we can distinguish two main reasons for protecting privacy by right in a democracy, the one personal and the other political. Whereas the former emphasizes the importance of self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality to the personal freedom and equality of individuals, the latter emphasizes their importance to their prospects for voluntary and equal participation in the processes of collective choice and deliberation that define a democratic government. These two justifications of privacy rights reflect the fact that in a democracy the personal can be political, as feminists have insisted, but need not be in order to merit protection by right. Indeed, I argue, we can distinguish democratic from undemocratic accounts of the right to privacy in this way: for whilst the former acknowledge the variety of individuals’ interests in personal and collective choice, the latter either collapse the political into the personal, or assume that the legitimate claims of individuals are merely a function of collective needs, interests and values. Neither of these is consistent with familiar assumptions about the nature and justification of democratic institutions and rights, nor can they be reconciled with a commitment to sexual equality. Thus, I conclude, though the fact that there are different justifications for privacy rights in a democracy means that individuals may legitimately disagree over the content and justification of basic rights, it is wrong to confuse democratic debate with moral or conceptual confusion and so, arbitrarily, to truncate our accounts of privacy, equality and democracy. Finally, in Chapter 4, I test and develop these claims by examining the justification for abortion rights in a democracy. I argue that women have legitimate interests in abortion, as well as in bearing children, because they have fundamental, and legitimate, interests in privacy and equality. Although safe and legal abortion is necessary to sexual equality, as feminists claim, I show that we can provide a convincing and democratic account of women’s claims to abortion only if we recognize women’s interests in self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality. This is because women have both personal and political interests in abortion and we will be unable adequately to identify these if we overlook their interests in privacy. Indeed, I show, the difference between democratic and undemocratic solutions to conflict over abortion lies precisely in this: that whereas the former acknowledge the importance of privacy to the personal and political equality of women, the latter overlook or deny this. As a result, the latter license both mandated abortions, although women have legitimate interests in bearing and raising children, and prohibitions on abortion that cannot be reconciled with the freedom and equality of women. That is not to say that abortion is not a politically significant matter, or that we can resolve moral conflict over abortion simply by giving women a legal right to abortion. Neither is the case. However, the chapter shows, in a democracy individuals are entitled to make morally and politically controversial decisions for themselves not simply because this is expedient or useful, but because this is right. To overlook this feature of democracy, I argue, is to make moral and political conflict utterly intractable by democratic means. Thus, while controversy over abortion has been held to show that privacy is an incoherent and undemocratic right, this chapter argues that it shows the reverse: for controversy over abortion makes clear that privacy is essential to democracy, and why this should be so. This overview of the book, I hope, makes clear that its concerns are methodological as well as substantive, and moral as well as political. Thus, its central methodological claim is that we cannot reconcile privacy with the equality of individuals unless we make a deliberate effort to do so. Its central moral and political claims are that privacy is compatible with the equality of individuals, and sufficiently important to the latter that, in a democracy, the privacy of individuals merits legal protection by right. However, this summary of the book also exposes its limitations. Chief amongst these, I fear, is that it provides no sustained discussion of the place of property on a democratic conception of privacy, and that the latter, itself, is rather a broad preliminary sketch than a polished and detailed portrait. I regard these limits on the scope and arguments of the book as limitations, albeit ones that I hope to be able to remedy before too long.However, limited though the book clearly is, I believe that it lays out the essential components of a democratic conception of privacy and that, by analysing and synthesizing several diverse bodies of literature, it may help those who are interested in the relations between privacy, equality and democracy. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the ethical challenges facing voters in democratic elections. It starts by examining the assumptions that underpin contemporary claims about the moral and epistemic advantages of lotteries as compared to elections and shows their similarities to arguments for ‘unveiling the vote’, as Brennan and Pettit put it. (G. Brennan & Pettit, 1990) It looks at the empirical and normative difficulties of these claims and highlights the risk of confusing morally misguided voting with injustice, and of (...) supposing that it must be politically consequential. Finally, the paper casts doubt on the claim that democracy implies that voters should be publicly accountable to each other for their vote and that the secret ballot is, therefore, a regrettable, if necessary, concession of principle to sad reality. It concludes by drawing out the implications of its analysis for the ethics of voting in ideal, non-ideal and highly non-ideal situations. (shrink)

What role should rights play in feminist politics and the quest for equality? This article examines Wendy Brown's response to that question in her 'suffering rights as paradoxes' and shows that for all its merits, it draws our attention away from the central question of how to describe women's interests, given the many differences amongst women.

The Defender of the Peace of Marsilius of Padua is a massively influential text in the history of western political thought. Marsilius offers a detailed analysis and explanation of human political communities, before going on to attack what he sees as the obstacles to peaceful human coexistence - principally the contemporary papacy. Annabel Brett's authoritative rendition of the Defensor Pacis was the first new translation in English for fifty years, and a major contribution to the series of Cambridge Texts: all (...) of the usual series features are provided, included chronology, notes for further reading, and up-to-date annotation aimed at the student reader encountering this classic of medieval thought for the first time. This edition of The Defender of the Peace is a scholarly and a pedagogic event of great importance, of interest to historians, political theorists, theologians and philosophers at all levels from second-year undergraduate upwards. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology entails the absolute thesis that there could not be a world without a subject. My intention in this paper is to show that the consistent development of a phenomenological approach can establish that such a transcendental subject must be defined as a fundamental open intersubjectivity and more radically as interanimality. I intend to demonstrate that anthropomorphism cannot be a serious threat and that Einfühlung [empathy] is a valid method for studying animality. In this regard, I will contrast a (...) Husserlian-inspired and a Merleau-Pontian approach with Heidegger’s reflections on animals. This method will allow me to study the intertwinement between humans and other animals. On the one hand I will show that we necessarily find animality within us, in the latent multiplicity of a body which is built through introjections and projections. On the other hand I will wonder if it is possible to decenter ourselves into other living beings so as to sense what they think and to build a world with them. It will then appear, through a reflection on Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible as well as on recent ethological studies, that openness to the other and to indeterminacy is an essential characteristic of animals in general. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarians such as Rawls and Dworkin, insist that a just society must try to make sure that socio-economic inequalities do not undercut the value of the vote, and of other political liberties. They insist on this not just for instrumental reasons, but because they assume that democratic forms of political participation can be desirable ends in themselves. However, compulsory voting laws seem to conflict with respect for reasonable differences of belief and value, essential to liberal egalitarians. Nor is it (...) clear that such laws would actually achieve their intended purpose. Consequently, it is doubtful that there is a ‘liberal defence of compulsory voting’, as Lacroix, among others, maintains. (shrink)

This essay examines and challenges some of the theoretical arguments of the neoliberal attack on the concept of popular sovereignty. I argue that in order to resist both the neoliberal reaction against popular power and the subsequent resurgence of populist rhetoric, we need to rework the concept of popular sovereignty. I focus on three groups of texts written in the early years of the neoliberal shift—namely, from the mid-1970s to early 1980s—which deal with the question of sovereignty: Hayek’s Law, Legislation (...) and Liberty; Foucault’s works of the late 1970s; and Lefort’s reflections on the symbolic dimension of power. While Hayek and Foucault defend similar views on sovereignty and argue that it is or should be replaced by technics of management, Lefort proposes a de-essentialized conception of democracy based on redefining sovereignty as the possibility of continually refiguring the space of power. (shrink)

This article argues that Camus’s thinking, as expressed in his works of fiction and non-fiction, is based upon a contradiction between his determination to reconcile politics and ethics and his belief that they irrefutably contradict each other. Throughout his career, Camus’s concerns never diverged from his aporetic attempt to reach an ‘agreement’ between two concepts he regarded as incompatible: justice and freedom. This article demonstrates how this basic aporia led Camus to an original - albeit rather hopeless - view of (...) the human condition. It illustrates how Camus’s aporia led him to define the role of thinkers in terms of public criticism and argues that in today’s sociopolitical reality Camus’s aporia can neither be dismissed, nor overcome. (shrink)

In what sense is The Right to Sex philosophical? On the one hand, Amia Srinivasan’s philosophical credentials are beyond question; she holds a named professorship in social and political theory at...

La théorie démocratique contemporaine entretient une relation ambivalente avec les élections. Alors que les points de vue agrégatifs et minimalistes les considèrent comme une institution centrale de la démocratie représentative , les conceptions plus riches de la démocratie n’ont pas nécessairement de penchant pour elles. Les théories délibératives ont tendance à négliger les élections pour se concentrer sur la délibération publique, c’est-à-dire sur le processus continu de formation de l’opinion et d’échange de raisons qui se produit entre les élections . (...) Les théories participatives ont également tendance à les écarter en faveur d’une vision moins agonistique et plus coopérative de l’action politique . Par conséquent, peu d’attention normative a été accordée dans la littérature récente à ce moment très distinctif de la vie démocratique, à quelques notables exceptions près . Une conséquence naturelle est que la plupart des théoriciens font appel à des expériences délibératives telles que les jurys de citoyens et les mini-publics comme réponse efficace aux préoccupations démocratiques actuelles . Le tirage au sort peut ainsi être présenté comme une alternative préférable à l’élection, car il garantit une représentation descriptive, évite la capture de l’État par des élites puissantes et promet des résultats substantiellement meilleurs. Alors que de nombreux théoriciens s’intéressent aux moyens de compléter les institutions électorales par des organes délibératifs non électoraux , certains chercheurs se débarrasseraient volontiers des élections . Le moment est-il venu de les abandonner ? Cet article se concentre sur une affirmation spécifique que beaucoup de partisans du tirage au sort ont avancée, à savoir que celui-ci serait plus égalitaire que les élections, et vise à la rejeter. D’autres chercheurs ont déjà critiqué le tirage au sort pour diverses raisons. Landa et Pevnick , ainsi qu’Umbers objectent qu’il ne permet pas d’obtenir les améliorations instrumentales du gouvernement promises par ses promoteurs ; Ceva et Ottonelli , ainsi que Lafont nient que les critiques lotocratiques des élections reflètent une compréhension adéquate de l’autorité démocratique en tant que forme d’autonomie collective ; et Umbers soutient également que la lotocratie est en contradiction avec les principes de justice distributive et d’égalité sociale . En complément à ces critiques récentes, nous soutenons que la vision de l’égalité politique qui sous-tend le tirage au sort est problématique et peu convaincante. (shrink)

From climate change forecasts and pandemic maps to Lego sets and Ancestry algorithms, models encompass our world and our lives. In her thought-provoking new book, Annabel Wharton begins with a definition drawn from the quantitative sciences and the philosophy of science but holds that history and critical cultural theory are essential to a fuller understanding of modeling. Considering changes in the medical body model and the architectural model, from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Wharton demonstrates the ways in (...) which all models are historical and political.0Examining how cadavers have been described, exhibited, and visually rendered, she highlights the historical dimension of the modified body and its depictions. Analyzing the varied reworkings of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem-including by monumental commanderies of the Knights Templar, Alberti's Rucellai Tomb in Florence, Franciscans' olive wood replicas, and video game renderings-she foregrounds the political force of architectural representations. And considering black boxes-instruments whose inputs we control and whose outputs we interpret, but whose inner workings are beyond our comprehension-she surveys the threats posed by such opaque computational models, warning of the dangers that models pose when humans lose control of the means by which they are generated and understood. Engaging and wide-ranging, 'Models and World Making' conjures new ways of seeing and critically evaluating how we make and remake the world in which we live. (shrink)

What can philosophy tell us about ethics and public policy? What can the ethics of public policy tell us about philosophy? Those are the questions that Jonathan Wolff addresses in his wonderful little book. At one level, of course, the answer is straightforward – ethics is a branch of philosophy, so philosophy can tell us about the ethics of public policy, understood as a matter of deciding ‘what we should do’ in a manner that is institutionalised and collectively binding. But (...) at another level, as Wolff shows, there is something deeply puzzling about the idea that philosophy can tell us anything very useful about public policy and about the ethical dilemmas that it raises. Those dilemmas arise as a result of political constraints, struggles and resources which generally have little to do with philosophy and, for the most part, rather little to do with ethics. So what, exactly, should philosophers expect from an engagement with public policy? (shrink)