Nagel ist es nicht geglückt, die Möglichkeit des Verzichts auf teleologische Formulierungen und Erklärungen plausibel zu begründen. Bei seinem Versuch, die Äquivalenz teleologischer und nichtteleologischer Erklärungen nachzuweisen und den Bedeutungsüberschuß teleologischer Sprache hinwegzuformulieren, ist er immer schon an die Voraussetzung dieses Bedeutungsüberschusses gebunden, dessen er sich nicht, wie seine Beschreibung zielgerichteter Systeme beweist, entledigen kann. Unser Ergebnis dispensiert jedoch nicht von der Frage, ob der Anspruch 'der in teleologischen Wendungen geltend gemacht wird, auch zu Recht besteht. Denn die semantische Unmöglichkeit (...) der Reduktion von Relevanzrelationen auf Bedingungsrelationen verbürgt ja noch nicht, daß die teleologische Sprache den Gegenstandsbereich der Biologie auch adäquat trifft. Eine über unsere Studie hinausgehende Untersuchung müßte daher die hier aufgeworfene Frage in den größeren Zusammenhang der als klassisch geltenden Stellungnahmen einbetten und unter Einbeziehung der Resultate der kybernetischen Wissenschaften dem Problem nachgehen, ob Teleologie nur heuristischer Leitfaden der Reflexion ist, der aus forschungsstrategischen Gründen der Organisation des Gegenstandes an diesen von außen herangetragen wird, oder darüberhinaus eine Struktureigenschaft von Objekten selbst bezeichnet. Ist Teleologie also nur eine "Sache der Formulierung" oder eine "Formulierung der Sache"? (shrink)

The author takes a collection of essays on concepts and approaches in evolutionary epistemology as the occasion for a critical discussion of the limits and achievements of evolutionary epistemology as well as of certain philosophical objections to the very project itself. She comes to the conclusion that evolutionary epistemology, even if it cannot explain cognition itself, can nevertheless shed light on the complex phenomenon of cognition by demonstrating the presence of traces of our evolutionary past in cognition. Modern research into (...) the structure and functioning of the brain supports this conclusion. The author argues that the questions which evolutionary epistemology can legitimately pose and answer are such that it is not in competition with traditional epistemology. For this reason she suggests that this research program be renamed "evolutionäre Informationstheorie", in the hope that its aims will become clearer to proponents as well as opponents. In the final section the author discusses the possibility that an evolutionary approach might explain the fact that human beings are less and less capable of dealing with the complexity of the world they have created. (shrink)

The author discusses the question, if sociobiology can be relevant for the conceptual foundations of ethics. She comes to the conclusion that sociobiology cannot reduce the meaning of moral terms to that of sociobiological discourse, but that sociobiology might nevertheless be able to shed light on the complex phenomenon of morality by demonstrating the presence of traces of our evolutionary past in our behavior. Thereby sociobiology might be relevant for elucidating the relation between »can« and »ought«, that is, for the (...) question of practicability of moral norms. (shrink)

The author takes the interdisciplinary seminar on Evolutionary Epistemology at the 7th International Wittgenstein Symposium as the occasion to discuss the question of the status, achievements and limits of Evolutionary Epistemology. She comes to the conclusion that neither its critique of the quid juris question in traditional epistemology nor its own philosophical pretensions can be justified. But it is a new science which is relevant and a challenge to traditional epistemology and philosophy of science in that it opens up a (...) horizon of new questions which they will have to take seriously. (shrink)

Somos testemunhas e participantes de transformações profundas da ciência, técnica e Lebenswelt, que as gerações futuras possivelmente considerarão uma revolução. Como surgiu essa evolução? Em que se fundamenta esta necessidade de uma elucidação da pergunta pela essência do homem e dos demais seres vivos? Este artigo tenta dar uma resposta provisória a tais questões, recorrendo a posições clássicas da antropologia filosófica e a acontecimentos relevantes na teoria das ciências e na história das ciências. Em seguida, a autora apresenta sua concepção (...) de bioética, tirando, então, algumas consequências concernentes à antropologia, à filosofia da natureza e à ética. (shrink)

This essay is a discussion of Eve-Marie Engels' view on Evolutionary Epistemology (EE). In the first part two of the main doctrines of EE are criticized: (1.) that validity of human knowledge is to be explained as the result of evolutionary adaptation; yet (2.), that human cognitive capacities had been adequate to our ancestors life conditions but fail in relevant situations of modern world. In the second part the concept of reality underlying EE's adaptational view is discussed and (...) compared with Jean Piaget's concept of reality. Finally, it is held that some of the questions recently raised by proponents of EE, far from being new, have been dealt with already in historical epistemology. (shrink)

Our paper examines the contribution of the self-confrontation interview (SC) as a self-assessment tool for students in oral presentation situations, including the emotional dimension of oral presentation, and as a formative assessment tool for teachers. To answer this question, we conducted an individual SC interview (simple SC) with eight students, based on the video of their class presentation. The content analysis applied to their words showed that when students revisit and talk about the emotions they felt during their presentation, they (...) make links with their strategies for preparation and success, the facilitators and obstacles they encountered, and what they plan to put in place next time. This is invaluable information for teachers wishing to support their students appropriately. (shrink)

This paper takes up Peter Sloterdijk’s proposition for a new thinking of the world as global foam. After quickly reminding the reader of the main characteristics of “bubbles” as “immune spheres of existence”, I retrace the three phases of the history globalization as they have been developed by Sloterdijk in the Spheres trilogy. I then focus on the third phase, also called Global Age, and try to bring together the two seemingly opposed concepts Sloterdijk has used to discuss the age (...) of globality: “worldly interior” and “foams” by arguing that the former represents our world in its globality while the latter represents it in its irreducible plurality. The result is a system of co-fragility and co-isolation: a compact proximity between fragile entities and the necessary closure of each cell unto itself. If this is the case, the question we need to ask concerns the space left opened in the worldly interior for a ‘world-forming’ praxis. In the end politics can only consist in “managing” the worldly interior, stabilizing it and regulating its exchange with an outside. Without overview, without initiative, it is not clear in what ways politics can still be a trans-forming praxis and is not a mere function of the system. (shrink)

- Brings a new dimension to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstruction - Challenges speculative realism’s critique of contemporary Continental philosophy as correlationism - Uses Merleau-Ponty and Nancy to develop an ontology that respects the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reinstating the mind–world divide - Shows how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy overcome the Cartesian presupposition at work in current realist appeal to step out of our own thoughts to reach the ‘great outdoors’ (...) - Provides an alternative to the phenomenological reduction of being to sense - Defends anthropomorphism as a way of overcoming the Cartesian–Sartrian ontology of the object -/- Marie-Eve Morin proposes a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy from the perspective of realist and object-oriented tendencies in contemporary philosophy. The realist critique of subject-centred anthropocentric thinking indicates the danger, inherent in the phenomenological approach, of reducing being to sense. Morin demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy avoid this pitfall through the development of ontologies that respect the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reaffirming the Cartesian divide between mind and world. (shrink)

In Western countries today, a growing number of women delay motherhood until their late 30s and even 40s, as they invest time in pursuing education and career goals before starting a family. This social trend results from greater gender equality and expanded opportunities for women and is influenced by the availability of contraception and assisted reproductive technologies. However, advanced maternal age is associated with increased health risks, including infertility. While individual medical solutions such as ART and elective egg freezing can (...) promote reproductive autonomy, they entail significant risks and limitations. We thus argue that women should be better informed regarding the risks of advanced maternal age and ART, and that these individual solutions need to be supplemented by a public health approach, including policy measures that provide women with the opportunity to start a family earlier in life without sacrificing personal career goals. (shrink)

S’inscrivant dans un courant qui reconsidère aujourd’hui la place des femmes dans l’histoire, Mélanie Fabre publie une édifiante biographie de Dick May, une intellectuelle largement oubliée de la Belle Époque, fondatrice notamment du Collège libre des sciences sociales en 1895, de la première École supérieure de journalisme française en 1899 et de l’École libre des hautes études sociales en 1900. Elle a été aussi active dans la fondation du Musée social en 1894, dans la formation de l’univers...

In Briefings on Existence, Alain Badiou calls for a radical atheism that would refuse the Heideggerian pathos of a “last god” and deny the affliction of finitude. I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of monotheism, as well as his thinking of the world, remains resolutely atheistic, or better atheological, precisely because of Nancy’s insistence on finitude and his appeal to the Heideggerian motif of the last god. At the same time, I want to underline the danger of Nancy’s maintenance (...) of the word “god” to name the infinite opening of the world right at [à même] the world, by considering it as a Derridean paleonymy. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack's dual systems framework provides a new avenue toward the scientific investigation of temporal cognition. However, some shortcomings of the model should be considered. These issues include their reliance on a somewhat vague consideration of “systems” rather than specific computational processes. Moreover, the model does not consider the subjective nature of temporal experience or the role of consciousness in temporal cognition.

L’intégration des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) à l’apprentissage représente une avenue explorée à la fois par les milieux scientifique, institutionnel et scolaire afin de développer des environnements éducatifs stimulants pour les apprenants. Au Québec, L’École en réseau, un projet d’innovation technologique rassemblant 23 commissions scolaires et près d’une centaine d’écoles majoritairement de l’ordre primaire (6 à 12 ans), a mis entre autres en place le forum de coélaboration de connaissances (FCC) pour répondre à certains besoins émergents (...) de professionnels de l’éducation en matière d’avancées technopédagogiques ainsi qu’à ceux des apprenants baignant aujourd’hui dans la culture du numérique. Cette plateforme propose entre autres un espace de collaboration sous forme de discours écrit asynchrone dans lequel chaque élève collabore et construit sa compréhension d’un phénomène, d’un problème à résoudre ou d’un texte dans le cadre de multiples activités liées à différentes matières scolaires. Les participants – élèves, enseignants et conseillère pédagogique – sont amenés à écrire des textes, de longueur et de type divers, à les annoter, à les améliorer et à les enrichir à l’intérieur d’une base de connaissances qui conserve les traces de leurs échanges sous forme de toile interactive. Cet article traite du potentiel de documentation du FCC qui permet aux utilisateurs, soit les élèves, les enseignants, les conseillers pédagogiques, voire les chercheurs, de visualiser les activités, les progrès et les habitudes d’utilisation de chacun sous différents angles grâce à ses diverses fonctionnalités. Les traces laissées par la communication asynchrone facilitent en effet, selon Gikand, Morrow et Davis (2011), l’auto-évaluation de la compréhension qu’ont les élèves du contenu en plus de leur permettre le partage de questionnements ainsi qu’une réflexion sur leur contribution aux discussions sur le forum. Le potentiel relié à l’archivage de différentes données d’un forum, tel que défini par Heinrich, Milne et Moore (2009), permet l’analyse statistique et le profilage d’élèves afin de mieux répondre à leurs besoins en tant qu’apprenants. Aussi, l’analyse des interactions (posting behaviours) et suivis de fréquentation sur la plateforme (non-posting behaviours) peut amener les enseignants et les élèves à réfléchir sur leurs pratiques et diriger leurs interventions pédagogiques (Xie, 2013). Par ailleurs, la notion de transparence comme la définissent Lafuente Martínez et al. (2015), appliquée au FCC, est également présentée ici. Celle-ci comprend les échanges entre les élèves durant la réalisation de l’activité d’apprentissage et d’évaluation : les versions antérieures du travail tout au long de la réalisation de la tâche d’écriture et tout élément témoignant de leur processus réflexif (plans, notes, schémas, etc.). Cette mise en disponibilité du brouillon des textes des élèves représente une opportunité de documenter la progression des apprentissages de l’apprenant et d’exploiter le potentiel d’autorégulation de l’évaluation formative (Pachler, Daly, Mor, Mellar, 2010). Enfin, la possibilité de suivre l’évolution de la pensée critique de l’apprenant, à savoir si celui-ci, par ses interventions sur les textes des autres, propose des commentaires qui favorisent le dialogue et qui amènent des éléments de réflexion pour faire progresser les discussions (Olofsson, Lindberg, Stödberg, 2011) est mise en relief à l’aide des interventions des élèves, recueillies à même la plateforme. (shrink)

« La vie des femmes ». La presse féminine aux XIXe et XXe siècles renouvelle la perception de la presse féminine très – trop – souvent interprétée comme un espace univoquement conservateur. Cet ouvrage collectif dirigé par Claire Blandin et Hélène Eck propose d’étudier la presse féminine à la fois comme un support publicitaire, comme un guide de savoir-faire et de savoir-vivre et comme une pratique culturelle propre au « genre féminin ». La presse féminine est donc envisagée comme un (...) lieu com... (shrink)

A new realist movement in continental philosophy has emerged to challenge philosophical approaches and traditions ranging from transcendental and speculative idealism to phenomenology and deconstruction for failing to do justice to the real world as it is ‘in itself’, that is, as independent of the structures of human consciousness, experience, and language. This volume presents a collection of essays that take up the challenge of realism from a variety of historical and contemporary philosophical perspectives. This volume includes essays that engage (...) the fundamental presuppositions and conclusions of this new realism by turning to the writings of seminal figures in the history of philosophy, including Kant, Schelling, and others. Also included are essays that challenge anti-realist readings of Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Nancy. Finally, several essays in this volume propose alternative ways of understanding realism through careful readings of key figures in German idealism, pessimism, phenomenology, existentialism, feminism, and deconstruction. (shrink)

The purpose of this text is to tell the story of the implementation of the _Act Respecting End-of-Life Care,_ referred to hereafter as _Law 2_ (Gouvernement du Québec, 2014) with an emphasis on the ambiguous role of ethics in the Interdisciplinary Support Groups (ISGs), created by Quebec's _Ministère de la santé et des services sociaux_ (MSSS). As established, ISGs provide “clinical, administrative and ethical support to health care professionals responding to a request for Medical aid in dying (MAiD)” (Gouvernement du (...) Québec, 2015). It is suggested that their composition includes the participation of a person with an expertise in ethics. These ISGs represent an important innovation for stakeholders involved in MAiD. To date, no scientific research has specifically addressed ISGs and little research has been conducted in other jurisdictions on the roles, operations and practices of MAiD support structures, especially the implication of ethics. Several ISGs have certainly developed promising practices that could benefit all stakeholders in the wider field of ethics and end of life. We will explore the development of ISGs in Quebec as a support structure for MAiD by highlighting the role that ethics has played (and should play) in these morally and humanly challenging situations. (shrink)

This article attempts to sort out the misunderstandings between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy surrounding the question of the animal as they come to the fore in the conversations published in For Strasbourg. While Derrida finds the lack of animals in Nancy’s world puzzling, Nancy criticises Derrida’s blurring of the border between the human and the animal for inadvertently reinstating a scale or a difference, if not between humans and animals, at least between the living and the non-living. Though this (...) criticism appears misguided at first, I argue that Nancy’s recasting of finitude in terms of the limit as the place of exposure undoes the phenomenological, or more precisely Heideggerian, understanding of sense and world, which Derrida still attributes to Nancy. Ultimately, what we have in both thinkers is a radically different account of plurality. Whereas Derrida emphasises the abyss between singularities and places faith, engagement, and responsibility at the origin of the world, for Nancy the edges between singularities always already hold any inside in contact with an outside, any one in contact with the other. (shrink)

Against a certain contemporary style of thinking that wishes to go beyond finitude entirely, I propose a finite praxis modeled after Jean-Luc Nancy’s finite thinking. I argue that the desire to imm...

Jean-Luc Nancy is one of the leading contemporary thinkers in France today. Through an inventive reappropriation of the major figures in the continental tradition, Nancy has developed an original ontology that impacts the way we think about religion, politics, community, embodiment, and art. Drawing from a wide range of his writing, Marie-Eve Morin provides the first comprehensive and systematic account of Nancy’s thinking, all the way up to his most recent work on the deconstruction of Christianity. Without losing sight (...) of the heterogeneity of Nancy’s work, Morin presents a concise articulation of the organizing concepts, which structure Nancy’s body of work. The guiding thread is that of an essential rift at the heart of any “self” by which this self is exposed and relates to itself and other selves. Nancy’s ontology undercuts dichotomies between individual and community, interior and exterior, matter and spirit, thing and thought, not in the name of mere deconstruction, but in seeking to open a thinking of the “limit” or the “edge” as the locus of sense. While Nancy’s work has often been presented in relation to Heidegger or Derrida, Morin demonstrates the originality of Nancy’s work and argues that, despite the variety of its preoccupations and topics, it possesses its own rigorous internal logic. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy and related fields who seek a systematic and critical understanding of one of the most original contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

Background: Nurses’ collegiality is topical because patient care is complicated, requiring shared knowledge and working methods. Nurses’ collaboration has been supported by a number of different working models, but there has been less focus on ethics. Aim: This study aimed to develop nurses’ collegiality guidelines using the Delphi method. Method: Two online panels of Finnish experts, with 35 and 40 members, used the four-step Delphi method in December 2013 and January 2014. They reformulated the items of nurses’ collegiality identified by (...) the literature and rated based on validity and importance. Content analysis and descriptive statistical methods were used to analyze the data, and the nurses’ collegiality guidelines were formulated. Ethical considerations: Organizational approval was received, and an informed consent was obtained from all participants. Information about the voluntary nature of participation was provided. Results: During the first Delphi panel round, a number of items were reformulated and added, resulting in 32 reformulated items. As a result of the second round, 8 of the 32 items scored an agreement rate of more than 75%, with the most rated item being collegiality means that professionals respect each other. The item with second highest rating was collegiality has a common objective: what is best for patients, followed by the third highest which was professional ethics is the basis of collegiality. Conclusion: Nurses’ collegiality and its content are well recognized in clinical practice but seldom studied. Collegiality can be supported by guidelines, and nurses working in clinical practice, together with teachers and managers, have shared responsibilities to support and develop it. More research in different nursing environments is needed to improve understanding of the content and practice of nursing collegiality. (shrink)

In this chapter, I delineate the central trajectories of Sloterdijk’s creative reappropriation of certain Heideggerian motives. Essentially, Sloterdijk wagers that the Heideggerian climate that weighs on our contemporary thinking is not adequate for grasping the globalised, technological world. In order to show how Sloterdijk is lead to abandon or overcome the understanding of globalisation influenced by Heidegger, I first present what could be called Sloterdijk’s onto-anthropology, that is, his story of the pro-duction or the coming-to-the-world, of the human animal. There, (...) Sloterdijk shows how the “radical openness” of the human is predicated upon an act of insulation, the building of protective spaces, called greenhouses, incubators or spheres. Understanding this interplay between distance and nearness is crucial to understanding Sloterdijk’s onto-kinetics or his description of the ontological movement of existence. While Heidegger thinks existence according to the vertical movements of falling and gathering, Sloterdijk emphasises lateral movement, an expansion on the same plane [Ausbreitung in der Ebene]. Sloterdijk’s insight into the lateral spatiality of human existence sheds light onto his interpretation of the history of humankind as history of globalisation. Here, I concentrate on the transition between the second and third of these phases of globalisation because it is this third phase which, according to Sloterdijk, is no longer explicable in terms of Heideggerian enframing and the will to will. This inevitably leads us to ask whether the globalised world requires a response different from a Heideggerian meditative thinking and poetic dwelling and what form(s) our inhabitation of the globalised world might take. (shrink)

We tend to think of violence as something that happens within the world, as something done by a thing, a being or an existent, to another thing, being or existent. Dhat would it mean to speak of the violence done to the world or, inversely, of the violence done by the world? Are there ways in which an existent, a being, can do violence, not to another existent, but to the world within which all such existents come to presence? Reciprocally, (...) is there a sense in which the world itself presents itself as sort of primordial or originary violence? -/- In this article, I rely on Jean-Luc Nancy's elaboration of the concepts of existence, world and sense to develop the double question of the violence of the world (violence done by and to the world). Ultimately, I show that contrary to the impression given by the use of terms such as generosity and spaciousness, there is at the bottom of Nancy’s ontology a certain originary violence. (shrink)

Au Québec, le régime d’examen des plaintes dans le réseau de la santé et des services sociaux contribue à l’amélioration continue des soins en permettant aux usagers de partager leur insatisfaction auprès d’une instance indépendante pouvant émettre des recommandations aux établissements. Le régime permet ainsi de renforcer la participation active de l’usager et donc de démocratiser les soins et services. En plus de sa parenté évidente avec cet objectif d’autonomisation, la bioéthique est omniprésente dans le travail des instances responsables de (...) l’application du régime, soit les commissariats aux plaintes. Cet article met en lumière l’usage implicite de concepts issus de la bioéthique dans le travail quotidien des commissariats aux plaintes. Nous y abordons l’autonomie, sous l’angle de l’autodétermination et de la confidentialité dans l’analyse de la recevabilité des plaintes. Nous y abordons également la justice, sous l’angle de l’équité dans l’allocation des ressources et de la justice épistémique dans le traitement des plaintes. Ensuite, nous abordons les similitudes entre les méthodologies de la bioéthique et du régime d’examen des plaintes, nommément les grilles d’analyse en éthique clinique et la narrativité. Finalement, nous abordons l’importance de l’impartialité, de l’indépendance et de la transparence dans le travail des commissariats aux plaintes. Nous concluons en offrant des pistes de réflexion en vue d’une mise à jour des connaissances empiriques concernant la concrétisation des objectifs de renforcement de la participation de l’usager dans ses soins et de démocratisation des soins et services. (shrink)

This paper compares Sartre's and Nancy's experience of the plurality of beings. After briefly discussing why Heidegger cannot provide such an experience, it analyzes the relation between the in-itself and for-itself in Sartre and between bodies and sense in Nancy in order to ask how this experience can be nauseating for Sartre, but meaningful for Nancy. First, it shows that the articulation of Being into beings is only a coat of veneer for Sartre while for Nancy Being is necessarily plural. (...) Then, it contrasts Nausea as an experience without language with Nancy's thinking of the excription of sense in the thing. (shrink)

In this essay, I focus on the community of thinking between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The relationship between those two thinkers is far from unambiguous: if they can be said to be thinking together, it certainly does not simply mean that they think the same thing or that they think it in the same way. I show that, because of its insistence on separation, Derrida's thinking is still a thinking of the one and the other and retains a Levinasian (...) flavour that is absent from Nancy's. Nancy's thinking insists on plurality, on the 'explosion of presence in the manifold of its partition'. It insists, in other words, on the world. If Nancy prefers the fabric of the world to the Other, it is because it only allows one to think a plurality that doesn't sacrifice the gift that each singularity is. (shrink)

In this article, I put Nancy’s thinking in conversation with contemporary demands for a flat ontology. I show that Nancy does in fact propose an ontology that is flat and in that way undoes the priority of human experience as the producer of sense. At the same time, I show that Nancy avoids two pitfalls other flat ontologies often fall into: a formalism that forgets materiality and falls prey to general equivalence and a depoliticization that removes any agential role for (...) human beings in the creation and destruction of the world. (shrink)

Background: In psychiatry, the issue of providing palliative and end-of-life care for what would be a “terminal psychiatric condition” or considering a palliative approach to severe and persistent mental health problems is still a taboo. Methodology: This question is addressed through an analysis of a case arising during a clinical ethics consultation, using Hubert Doucet’s scenario method. It is about Mrs. Sanchez, a patient over 90 years of age with a psychiatric profile, expressing the desire to die by suicidal gestures, (...) refusing the proposed treatments, and refusing as well to drink and eat. Her clinical history is told through the filter of reflexive support offered in clinical ethics to the various stakeholders. Results: The case analysis, far from responding to the challenges posed by the concept of palliative and end-of-life care in a psychiatric context, nevertheless presents an opportunity to name its main ethical issues: psychic suffering, refusal to eat and drinking as well as refusal of treatment, palliative sedation and medical assistance in dying, wishes and advanced medical directives and clinical-organizational challenges for geriatric psychiatry clients. Conclusion: There are still many challenges for professionals and decision-makers to meet the needs of older mental health clients. We call for further development of knowledge on this specific topic. (shrink)

The first dictionary dedicated to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.Jean-Luc Nancy is a key figure in the contemporary intellectual landscape. This dictionary will, for the first time, consider the full scope of his writing and will provide insights into the philosophical and theoretical background to his focus on community and aesthetics.Drawing on an internationally recognised expertise of a multidisciplinary team of contributors, the 70 entries explain all of his main concepts, contextualising these within his work as a whole and relating (...) him to his contemporaries. It will appeal to students and scholars alike.Key Features:* comprehensive definitions which are contextualised* fully cross-referenced throughout* extensive list of secondary readingKeywords: politics, democracy, freedom, morality, aesthetics. (shrink)

While many experts and organizations have recognized infertility as a public health issue, most governments have not yet adopted a public health approach to infertility. This article argues in favor of such an approach by discussing the various implications of infertility for public health. We use a conceptual framework that focuses on the dual meaning of the term ‘public’ in this context: the health of the public, as opposed to that of individuals, and the public/collective nature of the required interventions. (...) This analysis highlights the need for a comprehensive public health approach toward infertility, points to some initiatives that are already in place and demonstrates that prevention is currently a neglected—yet much needed——element. We move on to discuss the sensitive nature of prevention initiatives as a probable explanation for their scarcity. We illustrate the complexity of prevention through an analysis of an infertility prevention campaign previously conducted in the United States, which provoked significant controversy. We use a public health communication ethics framework to expose the strengths and the shortcomings of this campaign, and conclude that prevention initiatives targeting infertility can indeed be conducted in a sensible way that promotes autonomy while improving public health. (shrink)

This article seeks to situate Jean-Luc Nancy’s theory of embodiment in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s description of the lived body, especially as it is found in The Phenomenology of Perception. It shows that while both Nancy and Merleau-Ponty develop their view of the body through an engagement with Descartes, Nancy’s reappropriation of the Cartesian partes extra partes leads him to blur the distinction between corpus meum and alia corpora. By contrasting the radical fragmentation of Nancy’s body with the kind of unity (...) Merleau-Ponty attributes to the lived body, I show that Nancy’s body should not be equated with the lived body or the body proper of phenomenology. This does not mean that the body is merely an object for Nancy. Bodies make sense, but this sense is inorganic rather than intentional. (shrink)