In this overview, I begin by situating De-Moralizing Gay Rights within the field of queer studies/queer theory. I then delineate the book’s principal arguments. The book critically interrogates three sets of distortions in 21st century public discourse on LGBT+ rights in the United States. The first relates to the critique of pinkwashing, often advanced by scholars who claim to be proponents of a radical politics. I suggest that this critique sometimes suffers from analytical overreach. The second concerns a recent US (...) Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), a judgment that established marriage equality across the 50 states. I argue that this judgment mobilizes the Court’s endorsement of two elements of homonormativity: amatonormativity and repronormativity. Instead of endorsing homonormativity, the Court should have employed an approach based on decisional minimalism. The third distortion occurs in Kenji Yoshino’s theorization of the concept of gay covering. Yoshino’s calls to dismantle cultural demands for gay covering turn out, I argue, to constitute an oppressive command to ‘gay-flaunt.’. (shrink)

Cette étude tente de répondre à la question de la possibilité ou plutôt du caractère intelligible de l'attribution à Dieu de la prescience de nos actes libres. Il s'agir d'un problème bien connu des historiens de la pensée, d'Aristote à Leibniz. La question "Dieu a-t-il la science des futurs actes futurs libres (plus généralement des futurs contingents)" doit être précédée par la question "la notion de Dieu comme d'un être qui a la science des actes futurs libres est-elle intelligible?" L'auteur (...) commence par étudier les raisons et enjeux d'attribuer ou de refuser à Dieu la prescience. Puis il s'attache à la conception de la liberté qui semble incompatible avec la prescience, avant de préciser l'idée d'incompatibilité de la prescience et de la liberté puis d'étudier les diverses tentatives proposées pour éviter une telle incompatibilité. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has (...) a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based. (shrink)

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

I argue that one can be responsible for a certain state of affairs, one has brought about, or one has let happen, only if one could have avoided it, by omitting or by performing a certain action. I limit my argument to the consequences of actions and omissions, and to the conditional ability of avoiding the consequences by an alternative behaviour. Even within those limits, the argument challenges the Causal Conception of Moral Responsibility and the strategy mounted by Frankfurt against (...) the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. It is a step in favor of the idea that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage presente les elements du debat contemporain sur la possibilite et la realite du libre arbitre. Le debat traditionnel sur l'existence du libre arbitre, menacee par diverses formes de necessite, est repousse apres le debat qu'ont inspire les philosophes qui ont defendu la compatibilite du libre arbitre et de la necessite. La partie principale du livre envisage le rapport du libre arbitre et du determinisme causal, et soutient la these de leur incompatibilite, puis celle de l'existence du libre arbitre, (...) ce qui definit une position libertarienne. Les deux commentaires, de textes de Neslon Pike et Peter van Inwagen, sont l'occasion d'evoquer le debat sur le fatalisme logique, dans sa version theologique qui fait peser une menace sur le libre arbitre a partir de la prescience, et le debat sur la possibilite et l'intelligibilite de l'action libre dans l'hypothese de l'indeterminisme. (shrink)

(1982). ’What is the Good?’: a comparison of young people's responses to two unfinished sentences about values. Educational Studies: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 113-121.

This text expounds and relates the ethical and religious views of a philosopher that are usually discussed in terms of language. (Philosophy).

Cyril Smith shows that Marx developed a far richer and liberatory vision of humanity and the alternative to capital than that which has characterized his followers, and he makes a powerful argument that it is essential to return to Marx's original body of thought in order to reconstitute a viable critique of existing capitalist society.

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance affects a firm's capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in (...) foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature - the relationship between R&D investment and a firm's multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Was ist Intuition? Gibt es intuitive Erkenntnis? Intuition beschäftigt Philosophie, Psychologie und Alltagsdenken. Einschätzungen reichen dabei von "höchste Erkenntnisart" bis "höchst unzuverlässig." Cyrill Mamin zeichnet zentrale Bestimmungen der Intuition in Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Wesentliche Fragen sind dabei: Wie ist es, eine Intuition zu haben? Wie kommt eine Intuition zustande? Auf dieser Grundlage bestimmt Mamin Intuition als massgeblich nicht-propositionale Erkenntnisart, welche unsere intuitiven Überzeugungen rechtfertigen kann. Im Zentrum steht ein neuartiges Modell der intuitiven Rechtfertigung, das psychologische mit erkenntnistheoretischen Elementen verbindet. (...) Dadurch lässt sich Intuition im Verhältnis zu anderen mentalen Akten (u.a. Wahrnehmung, Imagination, Delusion) näher bestimmen sowie ein kritischer Blick auf die philosophische Intuitionsdebatte werfen. (shrink)

A series of conflicts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union culminated in the war in Ukraine waged by Russia in 2014. The international community was taken by surprise, and its reactions to the Russian aggression were often confused and inadequate. Even more confused and inadequate were the responses from global Christianity. Russian propaganda often renders the aggression against Ukraine as a quasi-religious conflict: a “holy war” against the “godless” or “heterodox” West. It would be natural, therefore, for the (...) Christian churches worldwide to loudly condemn both propaganda and aggression. However, in most cases, their response was silence. Such reactions came from most local Orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic church, and international ecumenical organizations such as the World Council of Churches. An exception was the reaction from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which decided to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The article argues that the Tomos for autocephaly was, among other reasons, a reaction to the war in Ukraine. The responses of other local Orthodox churches to the Tomos also indicate their attitude to the war in Ukraine. These reactions have demonstrated a profound crisis in inter-Orthodox solidarity and social ethics. (shrink)

Chez Eisenstein on découvre comment dans le cinéma de prise de vues réelles, il est déjà possible de détourner un élément du représenté pour en faire le moyen d’une représentation qui le dépasse au point de lui être étranger, dans la mesure où il sert un propos tout autre que celui de son contexte d’origine. Dans le stop motion la mise en mouvement fondée sur un type de « montage » image par image permet non seulement de réanimer le monde, (...) mais aussi de transfigurer les objets et leur matérialité même. L’adhésion au contenu profilmique ne concerne donc plus uniquement les contenus généraux et narratifs de la représentation (comme le lieu ou la temporalité), mais aussi la matérialité même des objets. (shrink)

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders--the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human--which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the (...) one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture. (shrink)

This article first outlines the importance of Brentano’s doctrine of inner perception both to his understanding of the science of psychology in general in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and to his new science of descriptive psychology in particular which he later advances in his lecture courses on ‘Descriptive Psychology’ at the University of Vienna in the 1880s and early 1890s. It then examines Husserl’s critique of that doctrine in an ‘Appendix: Inner and Outer Perception: Physical and Psychical Phenomena’, (...) which Husserl added to the 1913 re-issue of his Logical Investigations. This article argues that, though Husserl promotes a very different method in phenomenology to the method of ‘inner perception’ which Brentano designs for descriptive psychology, one cannot fully understand the significance of the method that Husserl advocates in phenomenology, both in the Logical Investigations and in Ideas I, without distinguishing four different meanings for ‘inner perception’ in Brentano’s thought and addressing the problematic issue of the particular kind of scientific method for his new science of descriptive psychology which Brentano bequeaths to Husserl. (shrink)

Nous pensons avoir souvent le choix entre plusieurs options et considérons que les personnes humaines qui exercent normalement ce pouvoir peuvent être tenues pour responsables de leurs actes. Ces croyances, en la liberté, en la responsabilité et en leur relation nécessaire, ont pu être entendues de manières différentes, voire niées. L'idée que les actions humaines sont déterminées par des facteurs qui ne dépendent pas des agents humains, comme le sont tous ou la plupart des événements de ce monde, est une (...) croyance ancienne (destin, prédestination) et moderne (déterminisme des lois de la nature). Et la pensée qu'une indétermination des actions humaines ne serait pas plus favorable à la liberté et à la responsabilité peut conduire à la conclusion que ces dernières sont impossibles. Pour affronter ce problème, il faut élucider les concepts, et évaluer les analyses ainsi que les arguments proposés de part et d'autre. En s'appuyant sur l'état contemporain de la discussion, ce livre défend la possibilité et la plausibilité de la conception "libertarienne" de la liberté. Elle serait incompatible avec le déterminisme et compatible avec l'indéterminisme, qui est la condition de la responsabilité morale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Résumé Prenant pour exemple la figure littéraire de l’employé de bureau, notre étude se propose de saisir les particularités synchroniques et le cheminement diachronique d’une esthétique de l’impotence qui aurait émergé avec la tentation flaubertienne du « livre sur rien », pour se développer ensuite dans une large part du roman français de la première moitié du xx e siècle et trouver, enfin, son aboutissement dans l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett.

"Yin-Yang" est le nom donné en chinois au fonctionnement de tout le vivant. Cette unité changeante, ce mouvement incessant, cette danse de tout l'univers se dit en un seul mot. Or, en français comme dans toutes les langues occidentales, "Yin" et "Yang" sont deux mots. Voilà où commence le quiproquo. Avec le talent narratif et pédagogique qui a fait le succès de ses nombreux livres, Cyrille Javary nous introduit dans l'esprit chinois à travers cette clé essentielle : "Yin" n'est (...) pas plus une entité que "Yang", ils n'ont pas d'existence propre. Car l'hiver n'est pas "l'hiver", mais ce qui deviendra l'été, avant de redevenir hiver... Chacun est le futur et le passé de l'autre, sans qu'on puisse leur attribuer une substance, une quelconque fixité. S'il heurte toutes nos habitudes de pensée, ce genre d'énoncés peut nous conduire à une compréhension plus subtile du monde, et nous aider à mieux aborder les problèmes que nous rencontrons. Ainsi que l'écrit Danielle Elisseeff dans sa postface, " cet ouvrage opère une petite révolution. Tout se passe comme s'il parvenait à déplacer le curseur de nos perceptions et de nos émotions. ".. A travers mille exemples concrets, l'auteur nous entraîne dans un passionnant voyage dans le temps, jusqu'à l'aube du néolithique... (shrink)

Social scientists who conduct qualitative research frequently use emotional engagement to gather information about participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in relation to a particularly research question. When the subject under investigation is related to trauma, listening to, or being exposed to personal accounts of participants’ traumatic experiences can carry a significant emotional cost for researchers. This may place them at risk of secondary trauma. In this article, I examine these issues from the context of my doctoral field research in South (...) Africa, which focused on intergenerational trauma amongst descendants of victims of apartheid-era gross human rights violations. I reflect on my positionality as both an insider and outsider and feelings of guilt that emanated from my sense of being privileged and an imposter. I also reflect on the emotional turmoil brought about by my engagement with the trauma of participants and their families. I conclude by sharing the lessons I have learnt, and that have enabled me to sustain my scholarly engagement with intergenerational trauma. Ultimately, this article gives insight into, and raises awareness about, the emotional consequences of conducting trauma research. It offers practical suggestions to help researchers navigate the emotional minefield involved in conducting trauma research. (shrink)

L’ouvrage dirigé par Philippe Régnier regroupe une série de 12 études sur le saint-simonisme, auxquelles sont adjoints deux documents inédits, des photographies de Charles Lambert Bey, Louis Jourdan, Maxime DuCamp et Prosper Enfantin et un brouillon de Dominique Tajan-Rogé, portant un regard critique sur son expérience saint-simonienne. Une bibliographie du saint-simonisme de 1984 à 2001 réalisée par Philippe Régnier prolonge celle qu’il avait établie de 1965 à 1984 dans le dernier travail co..

This paper explores the extent to which behavioral public policies can be both efficient and democratic by reflecting on the conditions under which individuals could rationally consent to them. Consent refers to a moral requirement that a behavioral public policy should respect what I call a person’s value autonomy and conception of the good. Behavioral public policies can take many forms. Based on a social choice framework, I argue that fully paternalistic and prudential behavioral public policies are unlikely to trigger (...) a hypothetical form of rational consent. Non-fully paternalistic behavioral public policies with partially non-prudential motivations are less problematic in this perspective. In any case, a public deliberative stage preceding the implementation of policies seems to be the best democratic way to justify them. (shrink)