The past 10 years have seen considerable developments in the use of narrative in medicine, primarily through the emergence of the so-called narrative medicine. In this article, I question narrative medicine’s self-understanding and contend that one of the most prominent issues is its lack of a clear epistemological framework. Drawing from Gadamer’s work on hermeneutics, I first show that narrative medicine is deeply linked with the hermeneutical field of knowledge. Then I try to identify which claims can be legitimately expected (...) from narrative medicine, and which ones cannot be. I scrutinize in particular whether narrative medicine can legitimately grasp the patient’s lived experience of his or her illness. In the last section of this article, I begin to explore the potential usefulness of this epistemological clarification. This analysis allows for a further understanding of what is really at stake with narrative medicine, and thus to identify when it may be convenient, and when it may not. Furthermore, this clarification opens up promising new possibilities of dialogue with critics of the field. I conclude that narrative medicine finds its proper place as a possible tool available to mediate dialogue, which is at the heart of the clinical encounter in medical practice. (shrink)

Over the last decade, personalized medicine has become a buzz word, which covers a broad spectrum of meanings and generates many different opinions. The purpose of this article is to achieve a better understanding of the reasons why personalized medicine gives rise to such conflicting opinions. We show that a major issue of personalized medicine is the gap existing between its claims and its reality. We then present and analyze different possible reasons for this gap. We propose an hypothesis inspired (...) by the Windelband’s distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methodology. We argue that the fuzzy situation of personalized medicine results from a mix between idiographic claims and nomothetic methodological procedures. Hence we suggest that the current quandary about personalized medicine cannot be solved without getting involved in a discussion about the complex epistemological and methodological status of medicine. To conclude, we show that the Gadamer’s view of medicine as a dialogical process can be fruitfully used and reveals that personalization is not a theoretical task, but a practical one, which takes place within the clinical encounter. (shrink)

Cet article se donne pour objectif de réfléchir à ce que la crise mondiale du Covid-19 a révélé de nos manières d’habiter les lieux où nous vivons, et parmi celles-ci, la pratique de la danse. La démarche adoptée ici est celle d’un dialogue entre trois courants philosophiques spécifiques : la phénoménologie, le pragmatisme et l’écoféminisme, au sujet de leur conception de l’expérience somatique, à la fois vécue, complexe et ordinaire. Nous cherchons ici les lignes communes à ces trois mouvements philosophiques, (...) dans le but d’esquisser une compréhensions nouvelle du corps, et par extension, une nouvelle approche de la danse par temps de crise pandémique. (shrink)

The essential qualities of human nature, including faith, trust, repentance, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy, are discussed in this collection of writings by some of the world's great sages, both ancient and contemporary. The advice of prophets Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, the wisdom of Confucius and Buddha, and the prudence of saints, scholars, and even cyclists provide expert guidance for those looking to improve their spiritual well-being.

The commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth. In the aftermath of the economic and financial crises, finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest. In this article, we analyze three types of complementary currency systems: community currencies, inter-enterprise currencies, and cryptocurrencies. We investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons. To address this question, we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate: the “new commons” (...) in organization studies and the “common good” in business ethics. Our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the “common good” framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities. Nevertheless, according to the “new commons” framework, only systems relying on collective action and self-management can be said to form commons. This allows us to suggest two new categories of commons: the “social commons,” which fit into both the “new commons” and the “common good” frameworks, and the “commercial commons,” which fit the “common good” but not the “new commons” framework. This research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of CCs. (shrink)

La question de la religion - de son essence, de sa fonction, de son origine - a été centrale dans la sociologie et l'anthropologie classiques. Pour la tirer des impasses et de la stagnation où elle est reléguée de nos jours, Camille Tarot propose ici un bilan critique des œuvres des meilleurs comparatistes, à travers leurs théories si contradictoires de la religion. Huit auteurs principaux sont soumis à examen : Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Mircéa Eliade, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (...) René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Marcel Gauchet. L'important en la matière est d'abord d'esquiver les faux irénismes comme les querelles stériles ou haineuses, pour confronter les doctrines en profondeur et systématiquement. Ensuite, de déceler l'impensé et les refoulements que produit chaque cadre théorique, pour proposer le modèle ou l'idéal-type de la religion qui paraît le mieux fondé. Au fil de cet examen, il apparaît que l'essence du fait religieux est à rechercher à l'intersection du symbolique et du sacré, à comprendre à partir des fondations d'Emile Durkheim et de Marcel Mauss, complétées par les apports de René Girard. La possible fécondité du modèle qui se dégage ainsi s'atteste par sa capacité à relire les sources et à renouveler en profondeur les vieux problèmes des fonctions de la religion, qui n'avaient guère avancé depuis Emile Durkheim. (shrink)

BackgroundOver the past decade, the exponential growth of the literature devoted to personalized medicine has been paralleled by an ever louder chorus of epistemic and ethical criticisms. Their differences notwithstanding, both advocates and critics share an outdated philosophical understanding of the concept of personhood and hence tend to assume too simplistic an understanding of personalization in health care.MethodsIn this article, we question this philosophical understanding of personhood and personalization, as these concepts shape the field of personalized medicine. We establish a (...) dialogue with phenomenology and hermeneutics (especially with E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty and P. Ricoeur) in order to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning of these concepts We particularly focus on the relationship between personal subjectivity and objective data.ResultsWe first explore the gap between the ideal of personalized healthcare and the reality of today’s personalized medicine. We show that the nearly exclusive focus of personalized medicine on the objective part of personhood leads to a flawed ethical debate that needs to be reframed. Second, we seek to contribute to this reframing by drawing on the phenomenological-hermeneutical movement in philosophy. Third, we show that these admittedly theoretical analyses open up new conceptual possibilities to tackle the very practical ethical challenges that personalized medicine faces.ConclusionFinally, we propose a reversal: if personalization is a continuous process by which the person reappropriates all manner of objective data, giving them meaning and thereby shaping his or her own way of being human, then personalized medicine, rather than being personalized itself, can facilitate personalization of those it serves through the data it provides. (shrink)

Building on their important findings in The Source of the River, the authors now probe even more deeply into minority underachievement at the college level. Taming the River examines the academic and social dynamics of different ethnic groups during the first two years of college. Focusing on racial differences in academic performance, the book identifies the causes of students' divergent grades and levels of personal satisfaction with their institutions. Using survey data collected from twenty-eight selective colleges and universities, Taming the (...) River considers all facets of student life, including who students date, what fields they major in, which sports they play, and how they perceive their own social and economic backgrounds. The book explores how black and Latino students experience pressures stemming from campus racial climate and "stereotype threat"--when students underperform because of anxieties tied to existing negative stereotypes. Describing the relationship between grade performance and stereotype threat, the book shows how this link is reinforced by institutional practices of affirmative action. The authors also indicate that when certain variables are controlled, minority students earn the same grades, express the same college satisfaction, and remain in school at the same rates as white students. A powerful look at how educational policies unfold in America's universities, Taming the River sheds light on the social and racial factors influencing student success. (shrink)

De la vie sociale à la vie politique, de la psychiatrie à l'agriculture, la normalisation décide de la forme de la pomme, de la psyché et du monde à travers l'imposition de ses modèles et de ses normes. Ce faisant, elle dessine les contours de la marge et de l'anormalité, monde sublunaire et dégradé. Car si les normes, explicites ou tacites, forment et conforment les êtres, les choses et les mots, c'est toujours accompagnée de son contraire que la norme constitue (...) ses objets. La plupart du temps en effet, les normes s'ordonnent à la logique des oppositions binaires qui déclinent leurs valeurs antagonistes, à commencer par celles du normal et de l'anormal. Nous sommes ainsi constitués par des normes qui, infiltrant tout, commandent notre être au monde, c'est-à-dire comment vivre, travailler, penser ou aimer pour participer à la normalisation générale, être normé, normatif et normal. Vagabondant à la marge, l'anomalie a ainsi très mauvaise réputation. Or, si l'anomalie n'est synonyme d'anormalité, voire de monstruosité que du fait d'une erreur étymologique, ce détournement du sens est le symptôme d'une provenance métaphysique plus profonde, selon laquelle hors des normes, théologiques, ontologiques ou logiques, il n'y a rien qui vaille. Il n'empêche que pour Georges Canguilhem, les anomalies biologiques peuvent correspondre à des mutations réussies, lesquelles instaurent alors une nouvelle normativité, tandis que pour Thomas S. Kuhn, les anomalies scientifiques (apparentées aux changements d'aspects étudiés par Ludwig Wittgenstein) sont à l'origine de réformes ou de révolutions. Avec Michel Foucault enfin, ce sont les anomalies littéraires, actes transgressifs, solitaires et précurseurs, qui anticipent le passage d'une épistèmê à une autre. Pluridisciplinaire, indisciplinée, à l'écart des normes mais aussi entre le normal et l'anormal, la puissance de transformation qui caractérise l'anomalie est donc telle qu'il devenait nécessaire et urgent de forger le concept d'anomalie créatrice. S'il est évident qu'il existe des anomalies esthétiques créatrices, cet ouvrage a ici pris un autre point de départ, cherchant à mettre au jour mais aussi à libérer et activer un concept dont on puisse, tôt ou tard, faire également un usage éthique et politique. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. La politesse n'est-elle qu'un ensemble d'usages contingents ou bien a-t-elle une signification propre? En quoi se distingue-t-elle des autres formes de sociabilité, a-t-elle une signification directe? Cette étude reprise dans une perspective philosophique révèle la nature paradoxale (...) de la politesse, à la fois langage créateur de sens et langage formel. « Copyright Electre » Pages de début Avant-propos Introduction - Délimitation et analyse du champ de recherche Chapitre I - Mesures d'ordre préalables Chapitre II - Les antécédents de la politesse Chapitre III - Les principales figures de la politesse Conclusion - L'unité du domaine de référence et, par suite, la nature de la politesse font problème Première partie - Le conflit des interprétations Quatre sortes de motifs Chapitre I - L'interprétation psychologique Chapitre II - La référence sociale Chapitre III - Une motivation ambiguë : la recherche de la distinction Chapitre IV - La problématique morale et religieuse Bilan - L'échec de la réflexion traditionnelle sur les fondements de la politesse Deuxième partie - Théorie de la politesse Introduction. Originalité, possibilité et vraisemblance du formalisme Chapitre I - Une messe en latin Chapitre II - Le modus operandi des pratiques de politesse Chapitre III - Fonction principale et sens fondamental des conduites de politesse Conclusion - Un art spécifique de la communication Chapitre IV - La politesse est une création culturelle Présentation Chapitre I - Le divers et son unité Chapitre II - Les degrés du formalisme : maximum, minimum et optimum Chapitre III - Ultimes questions sur la systématicité de la politesse Troisième partie - L'avenir de la politesse Chapitre I - Les constantes de la politesse Chapitre II - L'avenir incertain de la politesse Index des auteurs Pages defin. (shrink)

L'ambition de ce livre est de fournir à la philosophie de Péguy l'"appareil" capable de manifester le plus fidèlement possible le "profond ordre intérieur" qui tient ensemble la multitude de textes qui a jailli génialement de sa plume. Loin de pointer les contradiction d'un homme, il s'agit alors de suivre la continuité et la cohérence d'un chemin, par-delà toutes les ruptures apparentes, qui se déroule selon un drame chrétien : L'état d'innocence, d'abord, la pureté de son combat socialiste et une (...) jeunesse saisie par l'événement de l'Affaire Dreyfus et tenue par la venue imminente de la cité harmonieuse ; la chute, ensuite, avec l'histoire de la décomposition du dreyfusisme et l'enfer du monde moderne ; le salut, enfin, avec le retour de la foi catholique et les nouvelles ressources que lui prodigue la vertu d'espérance. (shrink)

This book brings together an introduction to the social sciences of religions - intended for the general public, which generally ignores them - in a critical essay in order to update them in the face of a current situation that strongly challenges them and will continue to do so. Indeed, the news of globalization imposes the confusing spectacle of a world of religions caught between the two extremes of forms so exclusivist that they justify violence, even terrorism, and such irenic (...) forms that they seek a spirituality fit to go beyond all borders, even religious ones. The place given to Islam in this way is explained, among other things, because during the conflicts of Salafist jihadist and certain branches of Sufism, it illustrates this contradiction in a particularly strong, but by no means exclusive way. (shrink)

Résumé Pour le poète Daumal, le poème est le fruit d’un couple formé du poète et de son récepteur. Le slam est partage poétique, communion avec un public. Il est l’expression d’un lyrisme contemporain, lieu d’une mise en abyme du désir. Nous nous proposons de l’envisager comme mise à nu d’un langage éminemment créatif, avec de nombreuses « conversions » (néologies syntaxiques), « fusions » sous la forme de mots-valises (morphologiques) et métaphores (sémantiques). Ces différents procédés, susceptibles de se combiner, (...) traduisent la fusion des corps, s’agissant du corps même de la langue. (shrink)

How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), and others: the two views might agree in their claims about truth and objectivity, or even in their attributions of semantic content to normative sentences, but they disagree about how to explain normative meaning. Realists explain meaning by invoking normative facts and properties, or representational relations between normative language and the world, the thought (...) goes, while expressivists appeal instead to desire-like mental states in their explanations of meaning. However, I argue that, if we adopt a deflationary approach to representation and other related notions, there need be no such explanatory divide between expressivism and anything recognizable as a plausible notion of normative realism. Any alleged explanatory criterion for realism will either be incompatible with deflationism, or it will fail to capture some standard versions of normative realism. I conclude that, in a deflationary framework, expressivism is compatible with genuine realism. (shrink)

It has been argued that there is something morally objectionable about moral realism: for instance, according to realism, we are justified in believing that genocide is wrong only if a certain moral fact obtains, but it is objectionable to hold our moral commitments hostage to metaphysics in this way. In this paper, I argue that no version of this moral argument against realism is likely to succeed. More precisely, minimal realism―the kind of realism on which realist theses are understood as (...) internal to moral discourse―is immune to this challenge, contrary to what some proponents of the moral argument have suggested, while robust non-naturalist realists might have good answers to all versions of the argument as well, at least if they adopt a certain stance on how to form metaphysical beliefs in the moral domain. (shrink)

The authors examine the nursing practice of disposing unaltered controlled substances into public water systems as an issue for nurses concerned with the environmental harm it can cause. A summary of the history of controlled substance management reveals inconsistencies in the interpretation of current regulations that have led to disposal policies that vary by institution, according to a benchmarking survey of regional hospitals. Much attention has been given to the phenomenon of conscientious objection in the context of patient care that (...) conflicts with a nurse’s moral integrity. Nurses who are compelled to dispose narcotics down drains may also face this struggle. The authors submit that this disposal method is based on a type of double effect logic where preventing diversion is viewed as a good effect of flushing unused controlled substances that outweighs any harm it may cause, though there is little evidence to support this conclusion. Consequently, the topic deserves further study so that nurse managers and administrators can support and offer alternatives to nurses who object to flushing drugs down the drain. (shrink)

We all could have had better lives, yet often do not wish that our lives had gone differently, especially when we contemplate alternatives that vastly diverge from our actual life course. What, if anything, accounts for such conservative retrospective attitudes? I argue that the right answer involves the significance of our personal attachments and our biographical identity. I also examine other options, such as the absence of self-to-self connections across possible worlds and a general conservatism about value.

Suppose that there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about such facts are by-and-large true. How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. As has been recently noted, the challenge also applies to expressivist “quasi-realism”. I argue that expressivism is useful in the face of this challenge, in a way that has not been yet properly articulated. In dealing with epistemological issues, quasi-realists typically invoke the desire-like nature of normative judgments. However, this is (...) not enough to prevent the reliability challenge from arising, given that quasi-realists also hold that normative judgments are truth-apt beliefs. To defuse this challenge, we need to isolate a deeper sense in which normative thought is not representational. I propose that we rely on the negative functional thesis of expressivism: normative thought does not have the function of tracking normative facts, or any other kind of facts. This thesis supports an argument to the effect that it is misguided to expect an explanation of our access to normative facts akin to the explanations available in regions of thought that have a tracking function. We should be content with explanations of our reliability that take for granted certain connections between our psychology and the normative truths. (shrink)

The agroecological transition of agriculture not only requires changes in practices but also in ways of thinking and in their underlying values. Agroecology proposes broad scientific principles that need to be adapted to the singularities of each farm. This contextualization leads to the identification of agroecological practices that work locally and could serve as evidence-based practices to be transferred to local practitioners. This strategy was tested in a 4-year experiment conducted with dairy-sheep farmers in the South of France. The aim (...) was to collectively engage in the agroecological transition. Our work focused on the creation of a diagnostic tool that was used to analyze local farms and identify virtuous practices to be promoted locally as evidence-based practices. But this strategy came up against the complexity and singularity of the situations to be transformed: not only was no evidence found but the construction of the diagnostic tool itself led to controversy concerning the models of agriculture to be promoted. The experiment then took a pragmatic turn: on-farm workshops were organized to enable farmers to benefit from the professional judgment of peer farmers who were willing to help their colleagues accomplish their agroecological transition. The diagnostic tool, which was designed to be prescriptive, was then used to judge the social acceptability of solutions that made sense in each farmer’s own situation. Our experiment led us to conclude that managing the agro-ecological transition of farmers and their farming system is better conceived as a value-based process than as an evidence-based one. (shrink)

Female crested gibbons (genus Nomascus) perform conspicuous sequences of twitching movements involving the rump and extremities. However, these dances have attracted little scientific attention and their structure and meaning remain largely obscure. Here we analyse close-range video recordings of captive crested gibbons, extracting descriptions of dance in four species (N. annamensis, N. gabriellae, N. leucogenys and N. siki). In addition, we report results from a survey amongst relevant professionals clarifying behavioural contexts of dance in captive and wild crested gibbons. Our (...) results demonstrate that dances in Nomascus represent a common and intentional form of visual communication restricted to sexually mature females. Whilst primarily used as a proceptive signal to solicit copulation, dances occur in a wide range of contexts related to arousal and/or frustration in captivity. A linguistically informed view of this sequential behaviour demonstrates that movement within dances is organized in groups and follows an isochronous rhythm — patterns not described for visual displays in other non-human primates. We argue that applying the concept of dance to gibbons allows us to expand our understanding of communication in non-human primates and to develop hypotheses on the rules and regularities characterising it. We propose that crested gibbon dances likely evolved from less elaborate rhythmic proceptive signals, similar to those found in siamangs. Although dance displays in humans and crested gibbons share a number of key characteristics, they cannot be assumed to be homologous. Nevertheless, gibbon dances represent a striking model behaviour to investigate the use of complex gestural signals in hominoid primates. (shrink)

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

Psychiatric phenomenology emerged from the willingness to spread Husserl’s program of going back to the things themselves into the psychiatric field. However, what this initial will then became is not very clear. We show that if this will to go back to the things themselves really enabled to bring phenomenology and psychiatry together (especially by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Binswanger), the thing to whom we have to go back changed over time: first conceived as the experience lived by people with (...) a psychiatric disorder, it was then conceived as the psychiatric disorder itself. We show that both of these ideas are inadequate. Our thesis is that psychiatric phenomenology has to be considered as belonging to the hermeneutical field (as defined by Ricoeur and Gadamer). We show that this hypothesis leads to a more insightful understanding of what is psychiatric phenomenology and what status we should concede to it. (shrink)

Examines the philosophical and clinical history of scientific medicine, and critiques the movements in psychoneuroimmunology and holistic and environmental medicine.

L'intérêt des sciences humaines pour les rapports entre TIC, langues et savoirs n'est pas nouveau. Cependant l'intelligibilité d'une construction épistémologique des relations reste un domaine en friche dans le contexte de la mondialisation. Le présent article essaie de s'en prendre à ce vide épistémologique en interrogeant particulièrement les enjeux des langues africaines dans le travail de structuration et de dissémination du savoir global et des savoirs locaux. Ces savoirs, chacun à sa manière, tentent de se construire un statut nouveau en (...) s'insérant dans les divers marchés de la connaissance. Pour cela, ils tirent profit du renouvellement des thématiques occidentales vis-à-vis des consommateurs africains d'information scientifique. En conséquence, des politiques de productivité et de circularité des savoirs s'érigent dans des stratégies d'uniformisation épistémologique. Parallèlement, la mode de la «diversité linguistique et culturelle», censée protéger les langues et savoirs locaux, risque de les transformer en de simples objets ethnographiques.The interest of the humanities to the relationship between ICT and language knowledge is not new. However, the intelligibility of a construction epistemological relations remains a fallow field in the context of globalization. This article tries to take this empty epistemological questioning particularly the issues of African languages ​​in the work of structuring and dissemination of global knowledge and local knowledge. This knowledge, in their own way, trying to build a new status by inserting themselves into the various markets for knowledge. For this, they benefit from the renewal of western themed vis-à-vis African consumers of scientific information. As a result, productivity and political knowledge circularity themselves up in uniform epistemological strategies. Meanwhile, the fashion of the "linguistic and cultural diversity," intended to protect indigenous knowledge and languages, may turn them into mere ethnographic objects. (shrink)

Boyer & Lienard's (B&L's) explanation of ritualized behavior is plausible because it fits so well with elementary facts about evolution of plasticity in our behavioral repertoire. Its scope, however, may be broader than its authors explicitly admit. Science itself may be illuminated as ritual behavior. Science, like other rituals, can sustain both healthy and pathological forms. (Published Online February 8 2007).