The 1970 amended Belgian Constitution is at the cross-roads of two currents of history, on one hand, once more the traditional values of the Occidental society ; on the other hand a double communal pressure contests an unitary state : from underneath affirmation of three Belgiannational communities, from above, apparition of a «supra-national party».The authors make a critical examination of the cropping up of bonding institutions in a «pré-fédéral» state, then they clearly state the principles of a really federal Constitution (...) based upon the acknowledgement of the 2 large communities and the 3 regions and the principles of a democratic organization of an economic politic. (shrink)

The genetically manipulated organism crisis demonstrated that technological development based solely on the law of the marketplace and State protection against serious risks to health and safety is no longer a warrant of ethical acceptability. In the first part of our paper, we critique the implicitly individualist social-acceptance model for State regulation of technology and recommend an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive analysis of the impacts and ethical acceptability of technologies. In the second part, we present a framework for the analysis (...) of impacts and acceptability, devised—with the goal of supporting the development of specific nanotechnological applications—by a team of researchers from various disciplines. At the conceptual level, this analytic framework is intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk. On a practical level, we present a reflective tool that makes it possible to take into account all the dimensions involved and understand the reasons invoked in determining impacts, assessing them, and arriving at a judgement about acceptability. (shrink)

The integration of ethical analysis in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) has proven difficult to implement even though it is explicitly recognized as an important component of such assessments in HTA literature. When compared to the standardized scientific method for systematic reviews in HTA, the diversity of ethical analysis has been characterized as a fundamental barrier to the integration of ethics. The present paper aims to identify the theoretical and practical differences between the approaches underpinning ethical analysis in HTA and clarify (...) the reasons for such diversity. Our systematic review of HTA literature pertaining to the barriers to the integration of ethics in HTA identified nine ethical approaches: Principlism, Casuistry, Coherence Analysis, Wide Reflective Equilibrium, Axiology, the Socratic approach, the Triangular model, Constructive Technology Assessment and Social Shaping of Technology. Citations pertaining to each approach were extracted and categorized according to three constitutive components of ethical argumentation established in a previous research evaluating nanotechnologies: i) the disciplinary foundation that grounds the validity of the ethical evaluation, ii) the characteristics of such evaluation, iii) the operational process involved in applying it to a particular case (i.e., its practical reasoning). This comparison shows that, 1) the difference between these approaches rests primarily on their disciplinary foundation (rooted in philosophy, philosophy/theology, or sociology), 2) their complexity can be observed in the distinct characteristics of ethical evaluation deriving from their differing disciplinary foundation, and 3) although four different types of operationalization procedure were identified, little information was available in regards to the practical reasoning associated with these approaches. (shrink)

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has shed more light on the difficulty of making health care decisions integrating scientific knowledge and values associated to life and death issues, human suffering, quality of life, economic losses, liberty of movement, etc. But the difficulties related to health care decisions and the use of innovative drugs or technologies are not new, and many countries have created agencies that have the mandate to evaluate new technologies in health care. Health Technological Assessment (HTA) reports’ aim is (...) to guide the decision makers in these difficult matters. There are two ethical components in HTA. The first is the report’s presentation of an ethical evaluation of the technology. The second is the value-ladenness of the HTA decision-making process itself. When implicit value judgments are not elicited, the justification of the final decision cannot be transparent. The present paper aims to identify and elicit the implicit value-judgments related to each step of the HTA process. This research is grounded on an applied ethics decision-making paradigm based on the role of value judgments in the decision-making process. The first part discusses two different approaches to values and value judgments in HTA. In the second part, citations mentioning value judgments extracted from a systematic review on the integration of ethics into HTA were categorized to elicit the value judgments and their criteria for each different HTA decision-making steps. The results show that there are 18 decision-making steps in the HTA process where 23 implicit value-judgments can be recognized. The range of these value judgments encompasses the whole HTA process: from the initial request, the presenting of the principal issues, to the final report’s dissemination. Since stakeholders need to understand which value judgments the conclusion of a report relies on, eliciting the implicit value judgments in the HTA decision-making process should yield more transparency. (shrink)

Nous voulons mieux comprendre les lois circonscrivant le rôle social de l’Évaluation des technologies en santé (ETS) et les raisons empêchant l’inclusion de l’éthique en ETS. Nous avons ciblé un débat qui est au coeur du rôle perçu du droit réglementaire dans le développement de technologies en santé : l’opposition entre les enjeux environnementaux, sécuritaires et sanitaires (EHSI) et les enjeux éthiques, légaux et sociaux (ELSI), issus de la gouvernance technologique. La collecte de données est basée sur une revue de (...) la littérature issue de travaux antérieurs, et sur une analyse de cas où trois agences d’ETS ont été sélectionnées en utilisant différentes catégories d’obligation légale selon leur degré de force contraignante. La revue de littérature a révélé cinq thèmes relatifs au rôle social de l’ETS et une distinction entre le rôle/utilisation du droit dur et du droit souple dans le droit réglementaire, permettant ainsi de comprendre comment les agences ont utilisé le droit pour intégrer (ou non) l’éthique en ETS. Les deux approches ont démontré que le débat, EHSI/ELSI observé initialement dans la gouvernance et l’évaluation de technologies est reproduit en ETS. La principale tendance confirmée par ces analyses est la présence d’un pacte entre la science et le droit réglementaire. La demande sociale d’intégrer les ELSI, particulièrement l’évaluation éthique en ETS, n’est pas prise en compte par le droit réglementaire traditionnel régissant l’ETS et doit plutôt être considérée par le droit souple. Les difficultés d’intégration de l’éthique en ETS démontrent la nécessité de repenser la gouvernance juridique de l’ETS. (shrink)

The natural based view of the firm using Hart (1995) is applied to firm responses in the Carbon Disclose Project (CDP) database. A large cross sectional sample(n=573) of North American and European firms is divided into 3 categories of proactivity to the climate change issue using 8 indicators of four resource domains. Results are presented along geographic and size dimensions.

The Writings of Charles De Koninck, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck's 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book "The Cosmos." (...) The short essay "Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?" is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck's distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck's son, Thomas. "Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume." --Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America "Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master." --Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College. (shrink)

In this interview, Balibar provides a number of reflections on the articulation of different Marxist traditions, including Italian Marxism and the Neue Marx Lektüre, to his own Althusserian position. Similarly, he comments on his relationship to the readings of French theory upon Marx’s oeuvre. He further develops an analysis of the contemporary challenges posed by capitalism – and its different crises – to critical theory, social sciences and social movements. Then, he argues that financialization and the Anthropocene are central issues. (...) He concludes with thoughts on internationalism and citizenship, which he believes to be indispensable political elements in order to conceptualize resistance in this crisis context. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the origins of Charles W. Morris’ semiotic anthropology through an analysis of his “symbolism,” a theory of mind wherein the latter is completely identified with the production and use of symbols. Developed in the late 1920s, this theory consists in transforming the behaviorist approach by means of a semantic or referential emphasis, i.e. by underlining the importance of the symbol’s object rather than studying only the responses that it elicits. Considering, however, that the experience (...) of reference is of a private or “self-inclusive” nature, Morris’ conception of the symbol entails a number of significant consequences, not only with respect to classical behaviorist views, but also to Mead’s. By founding his conception of the symbol on a self-inclusive basis, Morris questioned the linguistic and social criteria that governed the outlook of his mentor in Mind, Self, and Society. This critical reading thus implies a rehabilitation of animal symbolism, against a number of remarks by Mead indicating his refusal of the existence of symbolization, and so of mind, in the non-human world. Insofar as Morris’ line of thought was heavily influenced by contemporary research in comparative psychology, it is possible to consider that he anticipated recent discussions of Mead’s alleged “anthropocentrism,” and suggested an evolutionary and continuous view of mind through a generalized symbolism that refuses any difference of nature between human and animal mentalities. (shrink)

Pourquoi la démocratie qui, en son principe, est un régime de liberté peut-elle dériver vers la servitude? Cette question n'est pas nouvelle, elle figurait déjà en bonne place dans la pensée politique de Platon et d'Aristote, pour lesquels cette dérive était inscrite dans la nature du régime, lequel n'était donc pas viable. Elle se retrouve également chez les premiers penseurs de la démocratie réelle moderne, en particulier Alexis de Tocqueville, pour lequel la démocratie est perpétuellement confrontée à une redoutable alternative (...) : promouvoir le goût de la liberté ou, à l'inverse, se dégrader en servitude de mœurs et d'opinion. Or, que cette servitude démocratique, qui est une tendance interne par laquelle la démocratie se détruit elle-même, ne résulte pas d'un pouvoir de contrainte externe mais trouve ses ressorts dans la volonté des individus, nous savons le penser depuis longtemps avec le concept de servitude volontaire d'Etienne de La Boétie. Pourquoi donc parler de nouvelles servitudes? Parce qu'il n'y a pas lieu d'écrire aujourd'hui un " Contr'un ". La figure du maître a changé, ce n'est plus un maître personnel, un tyran, qui tiendrait sous son pouvoir une multitude effrayée, mais un maître anonyme, sans visage et sans nom propre qui, par de nouvelles voies, instaure une domination d'un nouveau genre et de nouvelles servitudes. Celles-ci sont analysées ici sur les plans de l'anthropologie, de l'éthique, de l'économie, ainsi que de l'analyse sociale et de la philosophie politique en vue de repenser une liberté civile à la mesure des problèmes de notre temps. Ce livre est une défense de la liberté issue de la convergence des vues, non d'un collectif, mais d'un certain nombre d'individus singuliers, auteurs libres et indépendants, disons intempestifs, qui entendent s'élever contre les formes larvées de servitudes qui se mettent en place dans les sociétés démocratiques. Il s'agit donc de retrouver l'esprit de liberté sans lequel la démocratie se dégrade et se meurt. (shrink)

In addition to being a great aesthetician who established the teaching and research of aesthetics in France, Étienne Souriau is an important philosopher, notably for his contribution to ontology. His aesthetics and his ontology are closely entangled. The purpose of this article is to study the relationship between these two rings, in this case inseparable, but distinct, of philosophy. We will use a comparison with the phenomenology of Charles Peirce, relevant insofar as, by different ways, art for the first (...) one, semiotics for the second one, the two philosophers participate in a theory of the representation. (shrink)

_The Writings of Charles De Koninck_, Volume 1, introduces a projected three-volume series that presents the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck. Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations. The first volume contains writings ranging from De Koninck’s 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book “The Cosmos.” (...) The short essay “Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?” is also included and demonstrates for the first time De Koninck’s distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. A comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlines the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy. The volume begins with a biographical essay by De Koninck’s son, Thomas. “Charles De Koninck, perhaps because of his untimely death, is not as well known to English-speaking readers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, but his work belongs to that same world-class scholarship as his notable contemporaries. It is almost an understatement to say that his contribution to the philosophy of science remains timely. Readers are fortunate that his former student, Ralph McInerny, has seen fit to collect and to translate, where necessary, some of De Koninck's most important work for this volume.” —_Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America_ “Ralph McInerny is doing us the incalculable good of making available to a general public the writings of Charles De Koninck. This volume, the first of many to come, begins a chronological presentation of the books, articles, essays, and addresses of one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers of the last century, who was at once an extraordinary philosopher and theologian, with the profound and simple faith of the proverbial peasant. May we continue now to learn from the great De Koninck, and include in our prayers the intentions of his gracious disciple, who is so felicitously discharging the office of piety to a revered and unforgettable master.” —_Ronald P. Mc Arthur, President Emeritus, Thomas Aquinas College_. (shrink)

Being questioned about the nature of Christian faith, Mark Twain famously declared it as 'believing what you know ain't so'. Indeed, the role of reason for faith is a matter of dispute. Jesus, some argue, was not a philosopher or a teacher of wisdom. Rather, he is the saviour because of his unassuming sacrificial death and resurrection. Not reason, but the leap of faith is the ultimate condition of salvation. The Enlightenment however epitomises a Copernican revolution in favour of reason. (...) According to Charles Taylor, the dissemination of Jesus' message into Hellenistic culture contains within itself the risk of a secularisation of the faith. At the same time, voices opposing the overemphasis of reason have also been raised throughout the ages. Paul's speech to the Athenians was one such occasion that deals with the ambiguous relationship between faith and reason. Relying purely on divine grace and the Bible alone, Martin Luther rejected any form of speculative theology. According to the Reformer, it is a type of theology that trusts more in human reason than in God's revelation. In Luther's opinion, it also reverses the moral order because theological speculation justifies evil as good while professing as good what is evil. To such a theology of human glory, Luther prefers a theology of the cross that 'calls the thing what it actually is'. For the former Augustinian monk only God's grace is good beyond reasonable doubt. Hence true theologians are lovers of the cross while theologians of glory misuse their reason for the worst. Luther's theology of the cross, Marco Barone claims, has its root in Augustine. Hence, Luther's Augustinism appears to have decidedly broken with Aristotelian scholasticism. In this context, Thomas Aquinas was criticised for his threefold failure. First, the Dominican friar's speculative theology lacks an experiential human dimension. Secondly, it gives too much credit to Aristotle. Thirdly, Thomas is reprimanded for his serious deficiency of a theology of justification. (shrink)

In 1826, the Pasha of Egypt offered to the King Charles X an unusual present: a living giraffe. While offering remarkable animals was a common practice among monarchs, the choice of a giraffe was somewhat extraordinary since it was the first representative of its kind to set foot in France. The Royal Menagerie of the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle was asked to oversee the transportation of this precious mammal and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, one of its professors, was sent (...) to Marseilles to fetch it on foot all the way back to the capital. The whereabouts of this exotic procession stirred passions throughout the country, generating a fashion craze "à la girafe." The so-called Pasha's giraffe, King's giraffe or French giraffe is also -- and perhaps more importantly -- Geoffroy's giraffe. The giraffe episode is representative of Geoffroy's larger scientific career. Because of its Egyptian flavor, its adventurous aspect, its political and diplomatic undertones, as well as the popular attention and educational opportunities it afforded, that mission was ideally suited for the flamboyant naturalist. So close were the animal's and the French zoologist's fates, that they passed away a couple months apart and both fell into relative oblivion. But even dead and dissected, Geoffroy's giraffe could not easily be dissociated from its companion. The afterlife of its "saintly" relics mirrors the popular and scholarly revival of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, portrayed by some as a forgotten "prophet.". (shrink)

Charles E. SCOTT, Susan M. SCHOENBOHM, Daniela VALLEGA-NEU, Alejandro VALLEGA, Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2001 ; Gernot BÖHME, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 2001 ; Dean KOMEL, Osnutja k Filozofski in Kulturni Hermenevtiki [Outlines to Philosophical and Cultural Hermeneutics], Nova revija, Ljubljana, 2001 ; Marc RICHIR, L’institution de l’idéalité. Des schématismes phénoménologiques, Association pour la promotion de la Phénoménologie, Paris, 2002 ; Fred EVANS & Leonard LAWLOR, (...) Chiasms. Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, State University of New York Press, 2000 ; Udo TIETZ, Ontologie und Dialektik. Heidegger und Adorno über das Sein, das Nichtidentische, die Synthesis und die Kopula, Passagen Verlag, Wien, 2003 ; Etienne FERON, Phénoménologie de la mort. Sur les traces de Levinas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1999. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories which aim to model the study of man (...) on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

The notion that Charles Darwin embraced the German Romantic tradition seems plausible, given the early influence of Alexander von Humboldt. But this view fails to do justice to other scientific traditions. Darwin was a protégé of the Englishman John Stevens Henslow and was a follower of the Scott Charles Lyell. He had important debts to French scientists, notably Henri Milne-Edwards, Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Alphonse de Candolle. Many Germans were quite supportive of Darwin, but not all (...) of these were encumbered by idealistic metaphysical baggage. Both Darwin and Anton Dohrn treated science as very much a cosmopolitan enterprise. (shrink)

Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. (...) Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. (shrink)

English summary: Condillacs 1746 Essai sur lorigine des connaissance humaines represents a pioneering approach to the philosophy of knowledge. Working through a semiotic method, Condillac is able to radically revisit the theory of ideas developed by predecessors such as Malebranche and Locke. This critical edition allows readers to better understand Condillacs essential contributions to Enlightenment philosophy. French description: L'Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines que Condillac publie en 1746 est un texte surprenant a plusieurs points de vue. Il l'est tout (...) d'abord du fait qu'on ne sait pas exactement dans quelles conditions il a ete compose, et que, faute de manuscrits, il reste impossible a ce jour d'en connaitre la redaction initiale. Dans ses ouvrages ulterieurs, Condillac en a par ailleurs critique plusieurs elements, mais rien ne nous permet de savoir s'il a touche a l'Essai quand il a entrepris de reviser ses ecrits en vue de leur publication dans ses oeuvres completes qu'il n'aura pas eu le temps de mener a bonne fin. Il l'est aussi dans son contenu qui s'efforce d'articuler une philosophie de la connaissance avec ce que nous considererions comme une semiotique generale. Dans cet effort, le genie de Condillac prend appui sur toute la culture de son temps pour ouvrir avec alacrite une voie de recherche dans laquelle il fait oeuvre de pionnier. Ayant en effet arrime l'idee au signe, il entreprend l'inventaire des modalites de fonctionnement de toutes les especes de signes d'institution. Il lui devient alors possible de bousculer de l'interieur la theorie des idees sous les formes qu'elle a prises chez ses predecesseurs, en particulier Malebranche et Locke, et de reconduire sans reste l'idee jusqu'a la sensation. Au cours de ce travail, il met en place non seulement les bases, mais jusqu'au projet, destine a alimenter pour longtemps les discussions, d'une theorie de l'esprit. (shrink)

Locke and Leibniz deny that there are any such beings as ‘monsters’ (anomalies, natural curiosities, wonders, and marvels), for two very different reasons. For Locke, monsters are not ‘natural kinds’: the word ‘monster’ does not individuate any specific class of beings ‘out there’ in the natural world. Monsters depend on our subjective viewpoint. For Leibniz, there are no monsters because we are all parts of the Great Chain of Being. Everything that happens, happens for a reason, including a monstrous birth. (...) But what about materialism? Well, beginning with the anatomical interest into ‘monstrous births’ in the French Académie des Sciences in the first three decades of the eighteenth century, there is a shift away from ‘imaginationist’ claims such as those of Malebranche, that if a woman gives birth to a monstrous child it is a consequence of something she imagined. Anatomists such as Lemery and Winslow try to formulate a strictly mechanical explanation for such events, rejecting moral and metaphysical explanations. Picking up on this work, materialist thinkers like Diderot are compelled to reject the very idea of monsters. We are all material beings produced according to the same mechanisms or laws, some of us are more ‘successful’ products than others, i.e. some live longer than others. In his late Eléments de physiologie he says “L’homme est un effet commun, le monstre un effet rare.” Ultimately he arrives at a materialist version of Leibniz’s position: there are no monsters, we are all monsters in each other’s eyes, at one time or another. This conclusion is a pregnant one in light of twentieth century interest in the problem of ‘the normal and the pathological’ (Canguilhem), and the broader question of how materialism relates to the biological world. (shrink)

This innovative study of French political culture re-examines the origins of modern republicanism through the writings and political practices of five key nineteenth-century intellectuals: Jules Barni, Charles Dupont-White, Emile Littr, Eugne Pelletan, and Etienne Vacherot.

In October 1984, Bruno Huisman stated with regards to Jean Cavaillès, ‘Let us be honest, or at least realistic: today, one can be a professor of philosophy without ever having read a single line of Cavaillès. Often invoked, sometimes quoted, the oeuvre of Cavaillès is little attended for itself’ (Huisman 1984). As for Albert Lautman, it would seem that the situation is even more extreme. In 1994, the publisher Hermann, under the impetus of Bruno Huisman and George Canguilhem, collected almost (...) the totality of the Jean Cavaillès papers in one volume (Oeuvres complètes de philosophie des sciences (Cavaillès 1994)). But, the Essai sur l’unité des mathématiques et divers écrits (Lautman 1977), published by the Union générale d’Éditions in 1977, had all but disappeared by the early 1980s and yet was never republished! This will remain one of the great indignities of French publishing, for as Jean Petitot rightly affirms: ‘Regarded as too speculative, in spite of his exceptional mathematical scholarship and his close connection with Hilbertian axiomatic structuralism, his mathematical philosophy has, until now, been devoid of any particular attention …. We would like to state clearly from the start, Albert Lautman represents, in our view, without exaggeration, one of the most inspired philosophers of this century’ (Petitot 1987, 79-80). (shrink)

In the 18th century, the pre-modern Judeo-Greco-Christian problem of freedom and determinism is transformed by Kant into the modern problem of the freedom of human agency in the natural and cultural worlds of deterministic structures; it is this version of the freedom and determinism issue which centres the Science and Humanism debates, and thus marks the history of the social sciences. Anthony Giddens is credited with providing the new vocabulary of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ in order to formulate the problem of (...) freedom and determinism in those terms, thus making this formulation fruitful. In this book, Charles R. Varela proposes that Kant originally formulated this problem, and makes a series of wide-ranging and groundbreaking observations based on Kant's metaphysics of realism which enables Varela to propose a solution to the structure/agency problem. Subjects revisited in this book include: · "Giddens’ Call" · The stalemate of the social and psychological sciences · The determinist tradition of modern science · Postmodernism This breadth of themes, drawn together by Varela with his work on Kant, fully realizes Giddens’ principle that human agency is a real causal force. It is Kant's conception of causal power that is the causal force Giddens' has called for. _Science For Humanism: The Recovery of Human Agency_ will be of particular interest to students of humanism and therefore realism, Kant and Giddens. (shrink)

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE! No collection of this sort has yet been conceived of, let alone accomplished, in this field. In part that may well be due to the extraordinarily nascent character of the field of comparative religious ethics, described as that. Yet the aim is not simply to gather together a number of pieces, but -- with the appropriate modesty and tentativeness -- to offer one picture of how the field ought to understand itself: its past, present, and perhaps its (...) future. A critical mass of scholars has now emerged in this area, and the institutional dynamics of religious studies departments, which are increasingly seeing the attractions of classes in "comparative ethics," are favorable as well. By gathering together both "classic" statements, exemplifying paradigmatic approaches in the field, and recent, ground-breaking and innovative works, the ambition is to make this collection the gold standard for anyone working on the field of comparative religious ethics in coming decades. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the development of empiricism as an interest in the body - as both the object of research and the subject of experience.