Le concept de civilisation possède deux significations distinctes. Il désigne un ensemble de groupes culturels ayant entre eux un air de famille. C'est l'un des sens que Lucien Febvre reconnaît à la notion : Civilisation signifie simplement pour nous l’ensemble des caractères que présente aux regards d’un observateur la vie collective d’un groupement humain : vie ma­té­rielle ; vie intellectuelle, vie morale, vie politique et - par quoi remplacer cette ex­pression vicieuse? – vie sociale. C...

Le concept de civilisation possède deux significations distinctes. Il désigne un ensemble de groupes culturels ayant entre eux un air de famille. C'est l'un des sens que Lucien Febvre reconnaît à la notion : Civilisation signifie simplement pour nous l’ensemble des caractères que présente aux regards d’un observateur la vie collective d’un groupement humain : vie ma­té­rielle ; vie intellectuelle, vie morale, vie politique et - par quoi remplacer cette ex­pression vicieuse? – vie sociale. C...

Industrial wind turbines have been operating in many parts of the globe. Anecdotal reports of perceived adverse health effects relating to industrial wind turbines have been published in the media and on the Internet. Based on these reports, indications were that some residents perceived they were experiencing adverse health effects. The purpose of the WindVOiCe health survey was to provide vigilance monitoring for those wishing to report their perceived adverse health effects. This article discusses the results of a self reporting (...) health survey regarding perceived adverse health effects associated with industrial wind turbines. (shrink)

This study conducts a moral analysis of leverage buyouts (LBOs) and relies on the holistic framework of the Triple Font Theory. It shows that the claims made by standard agency theory have not been successful both for the purchased firms and for the investors. In addition, the reductionism of the theories justifying LBOs may have favored some of the excesses observed in practice and contributed toward lessening the moral responsibility of market participants. The study suggests some possible reforms and explains (...) what improvements virtue ethics and Catholic Social Teaching can bring. It formulates a set of recommendations that can be implemented by the regulators or market participants. (shrink)

Baumard suggests that the advent, through phenotypic plasticity mechanisms, of future-oriented preferences and creative mindsets in eighteenth-century Great Britain explains the wave of innovations that drove the British Industrial Revolution. We argue that, although this approach is promising, Baumard's model would benefit from being supplemented by demographic, economic, and sociological explanations independent of Life History Theory.

Presenting Descartes as a thinker who sought to reconcile his philosophical principles and Christianity, this work grasps this harmonization in terms of Eucharistic explanations, so as to identify the terms of articulation between his philosophy and the field of theology.

Despite its title, Jean-François Courtine’s Archéo-Logique. Husserl, Heidegger,Patočka (henceforth AL), is mostly—if not exclusively—a book devoted to Heidegger. This is readily apparent in the table of contents: seven (chapters II-VIII) of the nine studies gathered in this volume deal entirely with Heidegger; one (chapter I) works through Heidegger’s notion of “Destruktion” with reference to Natorp’s “Rekonstruktion”; and only the concluding essay (chapter IX) focuses on Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology and its criticism of Husserl. As for the “Introduction”, the only name mentioned (...) is, again, Heidegger’s. And when it comes to the historical context covered in the book, the author summarizes: “From the Natorp–Bericht to the Gespräch von der Sprache, these are the two extreme boundaries within which the following studies are included” (p. 9).Yet such an explicit restriction to Heidegger does not do full justice to the actual scope of this book. In fact, one of the most important co. (shrink)

Le français est, par définition, le vecteur d’une des plus grandes aires culturelles du monde contemporain, celui de la francophonie, mais il est inséparable de sa coexistence avec les 2 000 langues de l’espace francophone. C’est dire à quel point une vision purement hexagonale de la francophonie est en totale contradiction avec les données du monde d’aujourd’hui. On pourrait en dire autant des autres espaces linguistiques : le cloisonnement des langues et des cultures est incompatible avec les développements actuels de (...) la mondialisation. Autrefois essentiellement instruments de pouvoir et de domination, les aires culturelles et linguistiques se transforment en instruments de cohabitation et de diversité, ce qui place la question du plurilinguisme et de la traduction aux centre des enjeux majeurs du monde contemporain.The French language, by definition, is the vehicle for the Francophone world, one of the largest cultural areas in the world of today. But French cannot be considered in isolation from the 2 000 languages with which it coexists in the Francophone sphere. This underlines how completely the Francophone concept, when seen from the perspective of France alone, contradicts the realities of today’s world. The same could also be said of other linguistic areas : dividing up the world in terms of languages and cultures is fundamentally incompatible with current trends in globalisation. While cultural and linguistic spheres were, in the past, essentially instruments of power and domination, they are now becoming instruments of cohabitation and diversity, and this brings the issues of multilingualism and translation to the very heart of the major global issues of today. (shrink)

This paper explores the conditions favouring or inhibiting the implementation of strategic corporate social responsibility policies in the context of global value chains. Using transaction cost theory, we specify the economic and behavioural issues raised by strategic CSR policies. We show that the existence of market rewards for such policies does not constitute a solution per se, but tends to increase the difficulties that value chain members face. Bringing TCT into the analysis of the diffusion of strategic CSR policies in (...) GVCs helps us to make different contributions. We first theoretically identify some limiting conditions of strategic CSR policies in GVCs. We also contribute to developing a more robust theoretical perspective for CSR in GVC research, which remains underdeveloped and mostly driven by empirical case studies. Finally, we shed light on new research questions and topics that could guide major theoretical and empirical investigations in the capacity of GVCs members to bypass the numerous difficulties involved in the implementation of strategic CSR policies. (shrink)

Though the rise of social media has provided countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, recent years have also seen some more detrimental aspects of these technologies come to light. In particular, the widespread social media culture surrounding fitness – ‘fitspiration’ – warrants attention for the way it encourages self-sexualization and -objectification, thereby epitomizing a wider issue with photo-based social media in general. Though the negative impact of fitspiration has been well documented, what is less (...) understood are the ways it potentially impacts and molds moral psychology, and how these same aspects may come to influence digital sports subcultures more broadly. In this theoretical paper, I rely on the insights of Friedrich Nietzsche to analyze the moral significance of a culture like fitspiration becoming normalized and influential in structuring and informing self-understanding, notions of value, and how to flourish in life. Using two doctrines central to Nietzsche’s philosophy—The Last Man and his conception of the ’higher self’ – I argue that fitspiration involves a form of hedonism that is potentially harmful to the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing. Through fitspiration, desire is elevated to a central moral principle, underlying the way users both consume and produce its content, catering simultaneously to their desires for external validation and instant gratification. It thereby creates conditions which foster a culture in adherence to the ethos of The Last Man. In doing so, I argue it impedes the cultivation of the virtues and higher values which define the higher individual, regarded by Nietzsche as essential for human flourishing. However, drawing on the ethical framework of the higher individual provides the philosophical and psychological resources with which resisting and overcoming the more harmful temptations of these trends may be possible. (shrink)

The paradigmatic examples of what we call nowadays ‘mere Cambridge changes’ are relational properties. If someone is on the left of a table at t − 1 and on the right of this table at t, the table does not undergo a physical change, but it has nonetheless new relational properties. What kind of relation lies behind this kind of change? Should we abandon the definition of identity as a set of permanent properties through time? This concern with identity and (...) change was already present in Aristotle's Physics 5 and 7 and medieval commentators tackled the problem with some important refinements due to their metaphysical discussions about the nature of relations. John of Jandun's discussion of this topic, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, is particularly interesting. First, he defines self-identity as a relation of reason, which means for him that it is not a real relation. Second, he distinguishes two kinds of relational changes: those involving real relations and the acquisition a qualitative propert... (shrink)

While corporate social responsibility is recognized as taking on various national meanings and practices, research has not sufficiently investigated how multinational companies simultaneously achieve global CSR integration and local CSR adaptation. Building on a qualitative case study carried out at ASICS, an MNC headquartered in Japan, we show how this organizational dilemma may be solved through hybridization work, a form of institutional work performed by CSR managers in subsidiaries to combine and adapt different institutional approaches to CSR. By developing the (...) notion of hybridization work, we contribute by revealing a set of practices that contribute to institutional change within organizations and enriching the study of CSR organizational change and international business by showing how hybridization Work leads to a greater organizational integration between core and periphery, and by identifying the triggering factors for subsidiary initiative in CSR. (shrink)

This study conducts a moral analysis of leverage buyouts (LBOs) and relies on the holistic framework of the Triple Font Theory. It shows that the claims made by standard agency theory have not been successful both for the purchased firms and for the investors. In addition, the reductionism of the theories justifying LBOs may have favored some of the excesses observed in practice and contributed toward lessening the moral responsibility of market participants. The study suggests some possible reforms and explains (...) what improvements virtue ethics and Catholic Social Teaching can bring. It formulates a set of recommendations that can be implemented by the regulators or market participants. (shrink)

Although the concept of corporate social responsibility is fundamentally multidimensional, most studies use composite scores to assess corporate social performance. How relevant are such composite scores? How the CSR dimensions are weighted? Should the weighting scheme be the same across sectors? This article proposes an original weighting scheme of CSR strengths and concerns, at the sector level, which is proportional to media and nongovernmental organizations scrutiny. The authors show that previous CSP assessments underweight environmental and corporate governance concerns. Moreover, findings (...) suggest that firms that are exposed to the closest scrutiny are usually criticized on one single dimension: for instance, banks for bad corporate governance, and basic-resource firms for environmental damage. Composite scores based on equal weights hence misrepresent CSP and the difference in CSR between sectors. (shrink)

Aurélien Djian | : L’ambition de cet article est double. Il s’agit d’abord de fixer le contexte philosophique qui sous-tend le débat entre Derrida et Marion en 1999, à l’Université de Villanova, et de réviser la perspective qui y est formulée selon laquelle le destin de la phénoménologie est intimement lié à une décision à prendre à l’égard du concept d’horizon : « il n’y a pas de phénoménologie sans horizon », affirme Derrida à Marion, il faut donc la (...) dépasser ; « la dernière étape en vue d’une véritable phénoménologie serait d’abandonner le concept d’horizon », rétorque Marion à Derrida. Cette révision de perspective nous conduira alors, dans un second temps, à restituer, en se servant de l’histoire du concept d’horizon comme fil directeur heuristique, le sens de ce que nous appellerons l’histoire française de l’herméneutique phénoménologique, dont l’unité, par-delà la multiplicité des étiquettes, réside dans le partage d’une même définition de l’activité philosophique, comme tentative de laisser se montrer soi-même à partir de soi-même le phénomène par excellence, et, avec et contre le second Heidegger, d’une même exigence de dépassement de l’horizon, solidaire de la métaphysique moderne de la subjectivité. Le principe d’une telle reconstruction permettra enfin d’envisager la possibilité d’une histoire différenciée des concepts alternatifs de phénoménologie et d’horizon, qui reste à écrire. | : The task of this article is twofold. First, it is meant to sketch out the philosophical context within which the Derrida/Marion debate that happened in 1999 at the university of Villanova took place, and to overhaul the perspective that it puts forward, that the destiny of phenomenology itself is linked at the abandon of the concept of horizon : “Without horizon there is no phenomenology”, argues Derrida against Marion ; “the last step for a real phenomenology would be to give up the concept of horizon”, answers Marion to Derrida. This overhaul will then leads us to use the history of the concept of horizon as a heuristical guiding thread to flesh out what makes the unity of what we can call the French history of hermeneutical phenomenology, that is to say, firstly, the sharing of the same definition of philosophy, as the attempt to let the distinctive phenomenon be seen as it shows itself by itself. And, secondly, with and against the second Heidegger, of the same requirement of overcoming the horizon, as it is committed to the modern metaphysics of subjectivity. The principle on which such a reconstruction is based will finally allow us to consider the idea of a differentiated history of the alternative concepts of phenomenology and horizon. History which is yet to come. (shrink)

L’enjeu de cet article est de justifier l’idée d’une fondation phénoménologique, d’inspiration husserlienne, d’une science de la littérature. Cette fondation implique la description de la corrélation eidétiquement distincte dans laquelle le sens de l’œuvre littéraire vient à se constituer, à savoir celle de la quasi-lecture, que nous esquissons dans un premier temps. Le principe d’une science de l’œuvre littéraire est ensuite garanti sur la base d’une analyse de son caractère de phantasia mise en forme et sur la structure spécifique d’horizon (...) du « monde » imaginaire qu’elle projette. Nous esquissons enfin dans la conclusion certaines pistes à venir d’une phénoménologie husserlienne de la littérature. (shrink)

Alors que la conception habituelle de l’espace et du temps insiste sur la différence insurmontable de leur nature, sur leur incommensurabilité malgré leur coexistence (la réalité se donnant simultanément dans l’espace et le temps), la conception philosophique à laquelle nous voudrions faire droit ici revendique leur articulation. Envisagée phénoménologiquement, cette question de l’articulation ne contrevient pas seulement à l’idée courante selon laquelle l’espace n’a rien à voir avec le temps...

One way in which business ethics educators can introduce business ethics to their students is through the so-called “Friedman vs. Freeman debate”. However, a growing body of literature challenges the juxtaposition of the views of Friedman and Freeman—two authors commonly seen as archetypal proponents of the “shareholder model” and the “stakeholder model” of the firm, respectively. This article argues that it can still be valuable to introduce students to the doctrines of Friedman and Freeman—provided that it is done in a (...) way that neither overemphasizes the differences between these doctrines nor suggests that they exhaust the variety of viewpoints that exist on business ethics. We offer a pedagogical tool, in the form of a two-dimensional matrix, that can help educators do this, and discuss how the matrix can be used in the classroom to make students aware of the diversity of existing positions in business ethics. (shrink)

Dino del Garbo, médecin actif dans les premières décennies du xiv e siècle, est surtout connu pour son commentaire au poème de Guido Cavalcanti Donna me prega. La présente étude propose l’édition d’une question quodlibétique sur la capacité de l’imagination à altérer le corps, disputée à Bologne ou Sienne dans les années 1320. Nous examinons le contexte médical et philosophique dans lequel s’inscrit cette question, en montrant notamment comment le débat s’est progressivement cristallisé autour de l’opposition entre un modèle avicennien (...) et un modèle aristotélicien des rapports entre l’âme et le corps. L’analyse de ce débat permet d’éclairer d’un jour nouveau la glose de Dino del Garbo à Donna me prega et aussi, de manière incidente, le poème lui-même. (shrink)

La querelle sugli universali si presenta come un dibattito prevalentemente ontologico che rimette in gioco l'idea stessa di sostanza ed è un realismo ontologico che non mette per forza in discussione ogni cosa, ma contempla tutta la realtà delle specie e dei generi naturali della sostanza. Gli uomini sono legati tra di loro per convenientia e questo come una semplice similitudine essenziale tra di loro e le loro essenze individuali, secondo la linea espressa da Giovanni di Pietro Olivi , Riccardo (...) di Mediavilla , Vitale di Four , o come parte di una realtà comune, come espresso dall'altra linea rappresentata da Matteo d'Acquasparta . Anche se la loro posizione può essere definita concettualista, la loro teoria della conoscenza è ontologicamente neutra, dal momento che la ragione non consente di stabilire precisamente la natura dell'universale. (shrink)

In 2014, the European Court of Justice recognized, for the first time, that severe obesity could be considered as a disability at work. This recognition, not yet applied in France, emerges in a context where obesity as a disease to treat seems to be consensus. The development of obesity surgery and its medical results are reinforcing this perspective. The lack of public debate in France on this potential handicap recognition of obesity, and simultaneously the frequent use of the term disability (...) or “de-disability” by people operated to discuss the effects of this surgery are two findings at the origin of the article. In an ethnographic approach, it is proposed to give an account of the way in which people, experimenting this corporal transformation, participate in redefining obesity, bariatric surgery and disability, before the debates and political decisions that could trigger this recognition of disability. Starting from the emic neologism “de-disability,” the thread of the article, it is questioned the idea of exit from disability and entry into normality, showing that these situations confront the people operated with new social injunctions and examine the relationship between disability and normality in an original way. (shrink)

Cette étude examine la thèse soutenant la présence d’une structure syntaxique au sein de l’expérience antéprédicative, développée par Husserl dans Expérience et jugement, relativement au projet de la grammaire pure logique élaborée dans la IV e Recherche logique. L’idée défendue est que le dernier Husserl réhabilite ou réévalue certaines thèses de cette IV e Recherche dans le cadre de la théorie de l’expérience antéprédicative dont il est fait état dans la I ère section d’Expérience et jugement. Il s’agit alors pour (...) Husserl de réussir à penser la façon dont les principes syntaxiques régissant le jugement constituent la réplique de la structure propre à l’expérience antéprédicative. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to stress the constancy of the Husserlian conception of sensible contents. I argue that Husserl, despite some significant changes in his philosophical views between 1901 and 1913, always maintained that sensations have a founding role to play in perceptual experience. The proposed interpretation is build against the idea of a scission in Husserl’s work as regards the status of sensations—an idea which became widespread due to the so-called Fregean readings of phenomenology. Even if the (...) notion of sense gains in importance in the Ideas, I argue that this does not discredit the sensuous stuff when it comes to the constitution of perceptual objects. (shrink)

Activism undertaken by CEOs has been on the rise in recent years. Research on this practice has been primarily concerned with determining the conditions under which a CEO’s public statements on sociopolitical issues are beneficial or detrimental to her firm’s business performance. We complement this instrumental perspective on CEO activism with an ethical investigation of the implications of CEO activism for the democratic process. Drawing on political philosophy, we show that the answer to the question of whether CEO activism is (...) conducive to the democratic process depends on the view of democracy that is adopted. From the perspective of liberalism, the sole requirement that an instance of CEO activism must fulfill is that it is lawful, provided that the applicable law sufficiently protects people’s essential rights. However, from the viewpoint of republicanism, this is not a sufficient condition. Besides being law-abiding, CEOs should be “civic-minded” when intervening in public debates, i.e., concerned with the quality and fairness with which those debates are conducted. Based on the literature on republicanism, we suggest four possible criteria that civic-minded CEOs can apply to gauge the democratic conduciveness of a possible public intervention: added insight, timeliness, constructiveness, and transparency. Our article complements the predominantly instrumentally oriented literature on CEO activism and contributes, more broadly, to the literature that explores the normative dimensions of corporate political involvement, as well as to a growing strand of research that draws on philosophical theory to inform business leaders’ ethical decision-making. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show how the phenomenology of the body developed in his late writings by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka can be seen as the final stage of the archaeology of the Lebenswelt developed by Edmund Husserl and reshaped by Martin Heidegger. According to this exegetical and philosophical hypothesis, only a phenomenology of the body can be a serious attempt to resolve the conflict between the so-called “manifest” and “scientific” images of the world, in which (...) the concept of Lebenswelt is rooted. The peculiarity of Jan Patočka’s phenomenology of the body is to stress the strong connection between the notion of sense, the affective dimension of human experience and the necessity of taking into consideration a “bodily” point of view on the experience. (shrink)

We review several no-go theorems attributed to Gisin and Hardy, Conway and Kochen purporting the impossibility of Lorentz-invariant deterministic hidden-variable model for explaining quantum nonlocality. Those theorems claim that the only known solution to escape the conclusions is either to accept a preferred reference frame or to abandon the hidden-variable program altogether. Here we present a different alternative based on a foliation dependent framework adapted to deterministic hidden variables. We analyse the impact of such an approach on Bohmian mechanics and (...) show that retrocausation necessarily comes out without time-loop paradox. (shrink)

abstract The moral value of distributive equality constitutes one of the most contentious debates in political philosophy. Following Frankfurt, many philosophers have claimed that the intuitive appeal of equality is illusory and that egalitarian intuitions are fundamentally intuitions about the importance of satisfying basic needs. According to this argument, our intuitions tell us that inequality ceases to matter once a certain threshold has been reached. Despite the widespread appeal to intuitions regarding this issue, few empirical studies have tried to assess (...) whether Frankfurt and his followers are right in claiming the lack of intuitiveness of equality per se. In a series of three experiments, we show that experimental evidence does not allow us to settle the intuitiveness of each theory: laypeople are divided in the consideration of the respective importance of needs and equality. While our results do show that laypeople attach special importance to needs‐fulfilment, it also seems that they are divided when it comes to the importance they grant to equality once needs are fulfilled. No theory is unanimously backed by participants, and it seems that, fundamentally, divisions among philosophers reflect deep divisions among people. (shrink)

While psychologists and political scientists have long investigated issues of interest to philosophers, the development of political experimental philosophy has remained limited. This slow progress is surprising, given that political philosophers commonly acknowledge the relevance of empirical data for normative theorizing. In this chapter, we illustrate the importance of empirical data by outlining recent developments in three domains related to theories of justice, where empirical results reinforce or endanger popular philosophical theories. Our first showcase concerns the boundaries of the concept (...) of fairness. While both libertarian thinkers and social egalitarians have united in rejecting the concept of natural injustice, we show that people do consider that unpreventable natural inequalities can be described as unfair. Second, we take the example of impartiality devices, such as the veil of ignorance or the idea of an impartial spectator, to show that such devices are efficient at shifting people’s intuitions in a more impartial manner. Third, we review empirical data on fairness intuitions to show that people conform to a pluralist theory of justice, valuing desert, needs-satisfaction, and equality at the same time. However, distribution according to desert enjoys a privileged position: people mostly care for the satisfaction of basic needs of deserving recipients, and people are willing to tolerate large inequalities in meritocratic contexts. The centrality of desert leads to dilemmas for mainstream egalitarian theorists, as theories that do not recognize the value of desert could fail to find support or legitimacy within the population. (shrink)

Comment une connaissance objective est-elle possible pour une subjectivité? Telle pourrait être la question à l’origine de la tentative husserlienne visant à fournir une fondation objective de la connaissance. Telle semble être également la question qui anime, de façon sous-jacente, toute philosophie de la connaissance. La phénoménologie de Husserl a pris tout d’abord la forme d’une Erkenntnistheorie. Autour du sens et de la portée de ce geste, primitif et fondateur, le livre de Laurent Joum...

L'ouvrage prend pour objet d'étude la morale cartésienne, sur un double plan corrélatif. D'une part, on soutient la possibilité de reconstituer une morale cartésienne définitive : la correspondance avec Élisabeth de Bohême et les Passions de l'âme sont perçues comme fournissant le socle de ce qu'on nomme une "morale du contentement", gravitant autour de deux axes que sont le souverain bien en cette vie, et les passions. D'autre part, il est montré de quelle façon le rapport qu'entretient la philosophie cartésienne (...) avec le christianisme se trouve éclairé par les principales composantes de la morale du contentement, à travers notamment les thématiques de la providence et de l'image de Dieu, ainsi que la question des rapports à soi-même et au prochain au cœur de la passion-vertu de générosité. In fine, ce sont le contentement, la générosité, et le christianisme que notre propos dégage comme les points nodaux de la réflexion cartésienne sur la conduite de la vie."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

When contemporary philosophers look at the medieval debate on intentionality, they usually have in mind what we call “Brentano’s thesis”. Indeed, Brentano ascribes to some medieval philosophers the thesis according to which objects of thought have a special kind of being that explains how can our thoughts be about this or that kind of things. Here, we decided to focus on the debates among the so-called “Latin Averroists”, because they clearly show that the medieval question on intentionality cannot be reduced (...) to the well-known theory of intentional beings. More precisely, we endeavored to understand an apparently strange question that appeared in the faculties of arts in France and in Italy in the 14th century: to which category do intentions in the mind belong to? In Aristotelian terms: are they substances or accidents? The problem is the following: if they are accidents, how can they represent something else that an accident? If they are substances, what does it mean to affirm that we have substances in the mind, even intentional substances? After a detailed analysis of the responses one can find in Siger of Brabant, Angelo of Arezzo, Matthew of Gubbio, John of Göttingen, Anthony of Parma, Bartholomew of Bruges and John of Jandun, we try to show that only a very few philosophers adopted the formal identity thesis , according to which the object in the mind is formally identical with the object known outside the mind. This shows that a lot of medieval philosophers didn’t limit intentionality to intentional being or formal identity, but also considered other explanations of how the human mind can think about objects for which no representation can be found in the mind. (shrink)

Female empowerment has long been a prominent social concern in Western culture. With the rise of social media, the quest for female empowerment has become embodied in self-presentational practices, occurring conspicuously throughout the Instagram fitness subculture: ‘fitspiration’. Here, female empowerment is merged with the body-centrality inherent to fitness, and the self-sexualization that has become characteristic of both photo-based social media in general, and fitspiration in particular. Meanwhile, an extensive body of research highlights numerous detrimental effects of self-sexualization on women. Evidently, (...) something seems awry with the implied proposition ‘sexualization as empowerment’. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of power and its relationship to human flourishing, this article aims to critically examine the conception of female empowerment expressed in fitspiration and to conceptualize a philosophically compelling reformulation of universal human empowerment. I argue that what is commonly conceived of as female empowerment in trends like fitspiration—delineated in its explicit relationship to sexualization—may be seriously flawed. Rejecting this understanding in favor of a Nietzschean universal alternative may prove beneficial to individuals both within and without the contemporary fitness culture. (shrink)

Contrary to what is generally said about the reception of Epicurus in the Middle Ages, many medieval authors agreed on his great wisdom, even if he made some philosophical and theological errors. From the 12th century to the 14th century on can find several "Lives of Epicurus" in which the best sayings of Epicurus are gathered from ancient sources (Seneca, Cicero, Lactantius, etc.). In this paper, we follow these quite unknown sources about Epicureanism in the Middle Ages. We try to (...) show that if Epicurus was considered as a wise man in the MIddle Ages, Epicureans are condemned because after the Revelation of God's word, Christians can only accept Epicurus's ascetic ethics, not his errors about the eternity of the world, the mortality of the soul et the subordination of happiness to pleasure. (shrink)

In 1927 Louis de Broglie proposed an alternative approach to standard quantum mechanics known as the double solution program (DSP) where particles are represented as bunched fields or solitons guided by a base (weaker) wave. DSP evolved as the famous de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave interpretation (PWI) also known as Bohmian mechanics but the general idea to use solitons guided by a base wave to reproduce the dynamics of the PWI was abandoned. Here we propose a nonlinear scalar field theory able (...) to reproduce the PWI for the Schrödinger and Klein–Gordon guiding waves. Our model relies on a relativistic ‘phase harmony’ condition locking the phases of the solitonic particle and the guiding wave. We also discuss an extension of the theory for the N particles cases in presence of entanglement and external (classical) electromagnectic fields. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the main claim of Umberto Eco’s Open Work, according to which any work of art is an inherently ambiguous message, i.e. is inexhaustible, or in principle likely to be the object of an infinite number of interpretations. It does so, first, by restricting itself to the specific topic of the literary work of art, and, secondly, by making a detour, that Eco himself suggests, though he does not really explore it, via Sartre’s ontological phenomenology. This detour (...) will eventually lead the reader from Being and Nothingness to What is Literature?; from Sartre’s “theory of the phenomenon” to his description of the poetic and prosaic attitude; and from a theory of literature qua ambiguity-inexhaustibility to that of openness qua esthetic phenomenon. Finally, it is the capacity of Sartre’s phenomenology to ultimately clarify, or provide a foundation to, Eco’s own theory, as well as the latter’s originality with regard to the former, that will be studied and accounted for. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that John Wyclif’s theory of space is at once an interpretation of the Platonic theory of place and a Neopythagorean conception of magnitudes and numbers. The result is an original form of mathematical atomism in which atoms are point-like entities with a particular situation in space. If the core of this view comes from Boethius’ De arithmetica, John Wyclif is also influenced by Robert Grosseteste’s metaphysics, which includes the Boethian number theory within (...) the Christian tale of the creation of the world ex nihilo. John Wyclif, however, adds some novelty to this theory concerning the epistemological status of this hypothetical description of the creation of the world out of atoms. First, according to Wyclif, whereas geometry is concerned with sensible and imaginable beings, arithmetic, which is purely intellectual, has access to the deep mathematical structure of the universe. He then suggests a subordination of geometry under arithmetic, which he considers the most solid basis for his metaphysics. As a result, with the attribution of numbers and units to every level of reality, it becomes possible to reform our natural imagination, so that it can imagine the atomic structure of matter and space. (shrink)

This paper tries to understand how three medieval philosophers (Roger Bacon, Albert the Great and John Buridan) developed the idea of a special logic for ethics, taking into account Aristotle's thesis according to which ethics does not need theoretical syllogisms and uses a special kind of scientific reasoning. If rhetoric is a good candidate, we find three different readings of this approach and then three different theories of ethical reasoning.

Ce numéro est le premier d’une nouvelle série, dont l’ambition est la recension régulière de la littérature francophone, anglophone et germa­nophone dans le domaine de la phénoméno­logie.

This contribution aims at describing the experiences of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) as discussed on Internet forums. Since the 2000s, increasing attention has been paid to health practices associated with the use of the Internet, whether by medical professionals, public authorities or researchers in the social sciences. We know that Internet is used by patients with Parkinson’s disease, in order to discuss about their lived experiences. This contribution will present how these Internet users address the specific theme of DBS. We (...) will examine how their use and the information sharing associated to it participate in the “shaping” of the lived experience of deep cerebral stimulation. This contribution will be introduced by an analysis of the state-of-the-art in sociological and anthropological international research on the topic of “Internet health”. On the basis of this analysis, it will propose a framework to describe and understand the various uses of the web that are made to give an account of the experience of stimulation. The existence of collective mobilizations in Parkinson’s disease, an old Internet experience and media oppositions concerning certain antiparkinsonian drugs, are conditions which push us to question these themes concerning DBS. This paper is a description, for the first time, of roles played by the users of these Internet forums and the different online activities produced about DBS subject. In an ethnographic perspective, we had to imagine that we were an Internet user seeking patient experiences with this surgical procedure to understand these interactions about DBS. The main goal of this contribution is to describe the attention paid by users for medical information about DBS in the identity and self-help process. The interest of such an approach is to open an anthropological reflection on the place and the role of the medical representations in the testimonies of experience of the disease or the treatments. (shrink)