Why read the chapter of Rousseau’s Social Contract devoted to the Roman assemblies? Because that text relies on the best available historical sources at the time, especially Carlo Sigonio’s work, to examine a key issue in Rousseau’s political philosophy: the implementation of common interest. In other words, the chapter on the comitia raises the following question: how can the people take part in public life? How can popular action maintain a republican government instead of threatening it? To understand this question, (...) and why Roman history plays a crucial part in the argument of The Social Contract, it helps to remember that for Rousseau a Republic is a government that does not act on behalf of private interests. Res publica, the recent book by renowned historian Claudia Moatti, further highlights Rousseau’s representation of the Roman Republic. The article examines in particular the meaning of the expression “public thing”, a literal translation of res publica, which appears twice in Rousseau’s text, demonstrating an understanding of Roman history that seems quite close to Claudia Moatti’s. Like her, Rousseau seems to identify two distinct visions of the Republic: one based on citizens’ rights, the other focused on the defence of the state. Today, as these two definitions of the Republic both appear in public debate, Rousseau’s vision of Rome is all the more striking and topical. (shrink)

« Je me croyais grec ou romain » écrit Rousseau de son enfance genevoise, durant laquelle le patriotisme de son père, son statut privilégié de citoyen et ses lectures de Plutarque se confondent en une même exaltation pour la vertu antique. La pensée politique de Rousseau semble ainsi pétrie de références à une Antiquité exemplaire et fantasmée – à Sparte, tout particulièrement. Elle s’est à ce titre régulièrement vu reprocher son anachronisme. Benjamin Constant, de façon célèbre, accuse Rouss...

Flora Champy shows how Rousseau developed his political philosophy by reference to ancient examples, intertexts, and interlocutors. Her literary methodology involves close readings of published tex...

Background: Multi-collaborator research is increasingly becoming the norm in the field of biomedicine. With this trend comes the imperative to award recognition to all those who contribute to a study; however, there is a gap in the current “gold standard” in authorship guidelines with regards to the efforts of those who provide high quality biosamples and data, yet do not play a role in the intellectual development of the final publication. -/- Methods and findings: We carried out interviews with 36 (...) individuals working in, or with links to, biobanks in Switzerland, in order to understand how they interpret, apply and value authorship criteria in studies involving biosamples. The majority of respondents feel that authorship is an important motivating factor in working and publishing collaboratively. However, our findings suggest that in some cases, authorship guidelines are being ignored in favor of departmental standards which recognize “scientific work” as meriting authorship. -/- Conclusions: Our results support the current calls in the literature for an alternative method of crediting biomaterial contributions, in order to ensure appropriate authorship inclusion and promote collaborative research involving biobanks. (shrink)

O artigo tenta compreender como o software livre tornou-se vetor de um movimento social militante para criação e difusão de bens comuns. Como, para além de suas características de “meio” esses softwares foram transformados em questões de política, economia, sociedade, cultura e ética? São emergência, os modos de organização e as ideologias desse movimento que o artigo se propõe a analisar.

A l'approche de l'oeuvre philosophique d'Emmanuel Levinas, le lecteur peut remarquer que deux descriptions du sujet se dégagent : dans certains passages, le moi paraît irrémédiablement tourné vers lui-même et seulement préoccupé par son propre bien-être ; tandis que d'autres textes présentent un moi complètement tendu vers autrui, et prêt à se sacrifier pour lui. Levinas retrace l'entrée du sujet dans l'éthique comme le passage de l'un à l'autre de ces états. Pourtant ces deux attitudes semblent si radicalement opposées qu'il (...) est légitime de s'interroger : l'éthique lévinassienne est-elle vraiment possible? Flora Bastiani propose donc de lire Levinas à partir de l'étrangeté de ce saut qualitatif du moi en direction de l'autre, ce que Levinas nomme l'éthique. Cette question engagera à expliquer les concepts majeurs tels que l'altérité, le visage, la responsabilité, la substitution, la passivité ou encore la fécondité. (shrink)

Flora Levin explores how and why music was so important to the ancient Greeks. She examines the distinctions that they drew between the theory of music as an art ruled by number and the theory wherein number is held to be ruled by the art of music. These perspectives generated more expansive theories, particularly the idea that the cosmos is a mirror-image of music's structural elements and, conversely, that music by virtue of its cosmic elements - time, motion, and (...) the continuum - is itself a mirror-image of the cosmos. These opposing perspectives gave rise to two opposing schools of thought, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Levin argues that the clash between these two schools could never be reconciled. Her book shows how the Greeks' appreciation of the profundity of music's interconnections with philosophy, mathematics, and logic led to groundbreaking intellectual achievements that no civilisation has ever matched. (shrink)

British equality law protections for sex and gender reassignment have grown fraught as activists tussle over legal and social categories of gender, gender transitioning, and sex. This article considers the future of gender-related equality protections in relation to ‘decertification’—an imagined reform that would detach sex and gender from legal personhood. One criticism of decertification is that de-formalising gender membership would undermine equality law protections. This article explores how gender-based equality law could operate in conditions of decertification, drawing on legal thoughtways (...) developed for two other protected characteristics in equality law—religion and belief, and disability—to explore the legal responses and imaginaries that these two grounds make available. Religious equality law focuses on beliefs, communities, and practices, deemed to be stable, multivarious, and subject to deep personal commitment. Disability equality law focuses on embodied disadvantage, approached as social, relational, and fluctuating. While these two equality frameworks have considerable limitations, they offer legal thoughtways for gender oriented to both its hierarchies and its expression, including as disavowal. (shrink)

This article considers what the implications of decertification would be for single-sex services such as domestic and sexual violence support. Some reform options attached to decertification could (re)allocate authority away from the state to organisations or individuals to determine gender criteria. What would the consequences of such re-allocation be in determining eligibility to receive or access services or excluding people on the basis of a characteristic protected under equality law? Engaging with this in the context of domestic and sexual violence (...) support service provision raises a number of questions. Firstly, does the existence of gender-based violence and/or of the effects it produces require a stable category in order to address them? What benefits may emerge from providing single-sex spaces that could not be replicated in other settings? And finally, what criteria of exclusion and inclusion are currently used to determine access to spaces beyond legal gender status? (shrink)

Les enfants atteints d’une aplasie d’oreille congénitale peuvent, en préadolescence, recourir à une chirurgie plastique reconstructrice, organisée en deux temps opératoires (technique de Nagata). Si l’aplasie est constitutive de l’image du visage dans le miroir, le self de l’enfant peut en être affecté, voire altéré. L’article souligne ainsi l’intérêt que constitue l’entretien clinique en amont d’une éventuelle chirurgie. La perspective de l’intervention en elle-même ne garantit pas la satisfaction du désir de réparation ; il semble nécessaire qu’un travail de conflictualisation (...) se mette en place du côté du préadolescent comme de ses parents. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta o conceito de virtude de Alasdair MacIntyre em Depois da Virtude (1981), através de uma análise crítica dos três estágios conceituais do desenvolvimento lógico das virtudes propostos pelo autor (práticas, unidade narrativa da vida humana e tradição), assim como pondera acerca da acusação de relativismo direcionada à sua teoria.

This study aims to describe social network and social participation and to assess associations with depressive symptoms in older persons with increased risk for dementia in Germany. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study in primary care patients (aged 60-77) as part of a multicenter cluster-randomized controlled trial (AgeWell.de). We present descriptive and multivariate analyses for social networks (Lubben Social Network Scale and subscales) and social participation (item list of social activities) and analyze associations of these variables with depressive symptoms (Geriatric (...) Depression Scale). Of 1030 included patients, 17.2% were at risk for social isolation (Lubben Social Network Scale < 12). Looking at the subscales, a reduced non-family network was found almost twice as often as a reduced family network. Patients with depressive symptoms had significantly smaller social networks than patients without depression (p < 0.001). They rather engaged in social activities of low involvement level or no weekly social activity at all (p < 0.001). The study shows associations of depressive symptoms with a decreased social network and less social participation in elderly participants. Sufficient non-family contacts and weekly social activities seem to play an important role in mental health and should be encouraged in elderly primary care patients. (shrink)

The embodied human subject is dynamically connected to his or her historico-sociocultural context, the soil from which a person’s psyche is nourished as multiplex meanings are absorbed and enable personal development. In each culture certain towering artistic works embody this perspective. The Dream of the Red Chamber introduces Jia Bao-yu—a scion of the prestigious Jia family—and his relationships with a large cast of characters. Bao-yu is controversial but, at the time of the family’s tragic collapse, he can be seen as (...) embodying a spiritual struggle in which his instinct, nature, sensitivity, and creativity are grounded in his transcendent relationship with a fragment of the world stone, an eternal source of energy and creativity. We are invited to draw on a metaphysical level of thought to consider his struggles with man-made hierarchies and a situated historico-sociocultural order in such a way as to live out his spiritual being. As such, the novel is closely relevant to questions of spirituality in bioethics. Through personal experiences, passions, creativity, and relationships with others, the body is inscribed, forming the soul, which may be misconstrued (for instance, through a medical or Cartesian reformulation of events) but which can be seen as the site of ethical and spiritual thought. (shrink)

1. That schools are not merely passive actors in the perpetuation of social inequality, but play a substantial role, has rarely been disputed since the studies by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977/1990)....

I offer a novel interpretation of Aristotle's psychology and notion of rationality, which draws the line between animal and specifically human cognition. Aristotle distinguishes belief (doxa), a form of rational cognition, from imagining (phantasia), which is shared with non-rational animals. We are, he says, “immediately affected” by beliefs, but respond to imagining “as if we were looking at a picture.” Aristotle's argument has been misunderstood; my interpretation explains and motivates it. Rationality includes a filter that interrupts the pathways between cognition (...) and behavior. This prevents the subject from responding to certain representations. Stress and damage compromise the filter, making the subject respond indiscriminately, as non-rational animals do. Beliefs are representations that have made it past the filter, which is why they can “affect [us] immediately.” Aristotle's claims express ceteris paribus generalizations, subject to exceptions. No list of provisos could turn them into non-vacuous universal claims, but this does not rob them of their explanatory power. Aristotle's cognitive science resolves a tension we grapple with today: it accounts for the specialness of human action and thinking within a strictly naturalistic framework. The theory is striking in its insight and explanatory power, instructive in its methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

A farming systems approach to development has meant many things over the past 15 years, depending on its institutional and ecological setting, its target populations, and the goals motivating its implementation. Despite the diversity of approaches, and the sometimes rancorous discussion over which was best and why, the approach is now recognized in many places as the only one that can identify and respond to the needs of limited resource farm families, especially those in marginal ecosystems. Involving an iterative process (...) of diagnosis, design, testing and extension, the farming system approach to date has done more to change research objectives at national and international institutions than to change actual farmer practices. By legitimizing what limited resource farmers do and why they do it, a farming systems approach lends itself to policy analysis as well. Recent research in farming systems suggests greater attention should be payed to exogenous variables, including policy and infrastructure, as well as to development of technology that really responds to the felt needs of limited resource farmers in improving their level of living. (shrink)

Two critical theories—both contemporaneous and complementary—in Western philosophy of education spanning the 1960s to the 1980s will first be explicated, and then their significant intellectual values will be discussed on the basis of such a comparative account. These two critical models are the practical theory of education in the Anglophone world and the critical theory of education in the Continental Germany. I will introduce them—namely, analytic practical educational theory and German critical pädagogik—one after another, by focusing on their complementary differences, (...) involving characteristic rationalities, typical forms of criticism, corresponding ways of exercising criticalities, and frames of reference regarding the sources of their criticalities. Based on such distinctions and contrasts, I will in the final section argue for their inherent value of coexistence, their practical value in illustrating the unique construction of academic educational studies which has respectively developed in the Anglo-American world and in the Continental world. As an additional point about their epistemic value to understand educational knowledge and scholarship accumulated in the West, I will further argue that these two philosophical–critical theories of education in parallel constitute peak academic experiences. This is mainly because they are compelling evidence, demonstrating how differently yet legitimately the two camps of Western educational scholarships deal with the same issue of criticality in contrasting yet complementary ways. (shrink)

This article considers a postcolonial approach to comparative philosophy of education as comprising four key features: ethnography, translation, hybridity, and critique. This conception of comparative philosophy of education is first located in the postcolonial context that demands sensitivity to the ongoing dangers of orientalism. Each of these four identified aspects of comparative philosophy of education is illustrated with reference to the comparative work of a prominent contemporary Chinese philosopher, Zehou Li (李泽厚). It concludes with some observations about the challenges that (...) face a postcolonial comparative philosophy of education. (shrink)

Recent work supports the role of reasoning in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions. The dynamics of the underlying cognitive processes supporting moral judgment is however poorly understood. In two preregistered experiments, we addressed this issue using a two-response paradigm. Participants were presented with moral scenarios twice: they had to provide their first judgment about an agent under both time pressure and interfering load, and were then asked to respond a second time at their own pace. In Experiment 1, participants (...) were harsher toward a malevolent agent at the second response, assigning more moral wrongness and punishment to an agent who either attempted to harm or harmed intentionally. Experiment 2 replicated the effect of intention on response change in a paradigm contrasting accidental to intentional harm scenarios. Participants were not only harsher toward intentional transgressors at the second response, but they were also less harsh toward accidental transgressors at the second response. We discuss the possibility that decoding overall intent and assigning moral judgment based on the presence or absence of a malevolent intent may be a relatively costly process. (shrink)

Traditionally, research on affordances and emotions follows two separate routes. For the first time, this article explicitly links the two phenomena by investigating whether, in a discrimination task, the motivational states induced by emotional images can modulate affordances-related motor response elicited by dangerous and neutral graspable objects. The results show faster RTs: for both neutral and dangerous objects with neutral images; for dangerous objects with pleasant images; for neutral objects with unpleasant images. Overall, these data support a significant effect of (...) emotions on affordances. The article also proposes a brain neural network underlying emotions and affordance interplay. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetivou relacionar dois teóricos que, conquanto pertencessem a momentos históricos distintos, suas ideias guardam relação e compõem a trajetória do pensamento jurídico e político da Modernidade; um, figurando como um precursor; o outro, como representante do ápice do positivismo jurídico moderno. A partir da análise dos pontos de encontro entre tais teorias, é possível refletir, de forma mais ampla, sobre a autoridade e coação do Estado exercidas pela sanção diante das tendências do pensamento jurídico atual, denominadas pós (...) positivistas. (shrink)

Henri Bergson, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Emmanuel Levinas ont en commun d'avoir marqué la philosophie européenne du XXe siècle. En plus de leurs oeuvres respectives, ils ont tous les trois entretenu des liens manifestes à la fois dans leurs textes et dans leurs biographies. De ce trio, on ne peut pas dire que Bergson, philosophe pourtant déjà installé dans le paysage intellectuel français, prenne la place privilégiée du maître. Ni Jankélévitch, ni Levinas n'ont été, à proprement parler, ses élèves, cependant une relation (...) étroite s'est instaurée entre eux, marquée non pas par une posture de déférence, mais par des préoccupations conceptuelles partagées ainsi qu'un travail engagé sur des questions communes. Les pensées de Jankélévitch et Levinas sont liées par un même franc retrait vis-à-vis de la majorité des courants philosophiques dominants à leur époque, notamment la vogue existentialiste. N'adhérant pas à cette tendance, Jankélévitch et Levinas se tournent vers Bergson pour saisir l'inactualité des questions posées par sa pensée ; plutôt que la restitution de ses thèses, leurs interactions reposent sur un véritable dialogue dans lequel chacun apporte une variation nouvelle. Ces trois philosophes seront finalement réunis par le partage de questions fondamentales, qui résistent à la compréhension et qui s'ouvrent au souci de l'expérience proprement humaine : métaphysique, morale, temps. Bergson, Jankélévitch et Levinas, trois philosophes français marqués par une même inquiétude face à la dégradation de l'humain ; trois moments qui forment une ligne de pensée discrète mais irradiant la philosophie contemporaine, révélée après-coup par les suites qu'elle a autorisées. Le présent ouvrage tend à mettre en évidence cette situation, à la fois décalée en son temps et marquante par sa postérité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

For several decades, business has operated according to the tenets of neoclassical economic theory, where the primary obligation of corporations is to maximize profit for shareholders. However, the larger social mandate for business has changed, represented by the rise of language such as "sustainable development", "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) and "stakeholder groups." Nevertheless, the theoretical shift implied by the use of such language has not occurred. Issues of sustainable development and CSR continue to be justified in the terms of neoclassical (...) economic theory through the rationalization of "doing well by doing good".Within this economic paradigm, CSR cannot move beyond enlightened self-interest (acting in socially responsible ways in order to further one''s own ends) because all behavior must be justified economically. This implies that corporate socially responsible behavior will simply cease when it becomes uneconomic, regardless of the impact on interrelated systems which in turn will re-impact the business realm. (shrink)

I argue that Plato, in theTimaeus, draws deep theoretical distinctions between sensation and affect, which comprises pleasure, pain, desire and emotion. Sensation (but not affect) is both ‘fine-grained’ (having orderly causal connections with its fundamental explanatory items) and ‘immediate’ (being provoked absent any mediating psychological state). Emotions, by contrast, are mediated and coarse-grained. Pleasure and pain are coarse-grained but, in a range of important cases, immediate. TheTheaetetusassimilates affect to sensation in a way theTimaeusdoes not. Smell frustrates Timaeus because it is (...) coarse-grained, although unlike pleasure and pain it is so by accident of physiology. (shrink)

Schanbacer, William D: The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9267-1 Authors Cornelia Butler Flora, Iowa State University 317 East Hall Ames IA 50011-1070 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

While defending the principle of non-contradiction in Metaphysics 4, Aristotle argues that the Measure Doctrine of Protagoras is equivalent to the claim that all contradictions are true; given all appearances are true (as the Protagorean maintains), anytime people disagree we get a true contradiction. This argument seems clearly invalid: nothing guarantees that actual disagreement occurs over every matter of fact. The argument in fact works perfectly, I propose, because the Protagorean view falls prey to a version of Fitch's “paradox” of (...) knowability. The proposed reading shows how Aristotle treats the Protagorean view at issue as an epistemic theory of truth distinct from the mere claim that all appearances are true (which other opponents put forward on different grounds) and reveals Aristotle's underlying concern with the modal collapse of possibility into actuality. The revised Protagorean view Aristotle confronts in a subsequent chapter is furthermore best understood as an attempt to avoid this Fitch-style result. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a apresentação do tema da pleonexia por Trasímaco, personagem da República de Platão. Ele explota a sua descrição do funcionamento do kratos (predomínio) tal como ele o observa em cidades reais e a conclusão normativa que ele parece tirar deste diagnóstico: ter mais (pleon ekhein) é o caminho para a prosperidade. Do ponto de vista da caracterização do seu personagem, notaremos também as atitudes competitivas que Trasímaco demonstra no diálogo com Sócrates, fazendo parecer que a persuasão seria (...) uma disputa em que persuadir equivale a ganhar, enquanto ser persuadido equivaleria a perder; mas aprender por cooperação mútua não parece uma opção. O artigo se desenvolve em três partes: I) o tratamento erístico que Trasímaco dá à persuasão, II) a apresentação do tema do motivo psico-político através do emprego da palavra kratos e derivadas, III) a tematização que Trasímaco, Glauco e Sócrates fazem da pleonexia. (shrink)

In Switzerland, research with identifiable human tissue samples, and/or its accompanying data, must be approved by a research ethics committee before it can be allowed to take place. However, as the demand for such tissue has rapidly increased in recent years, and biobanks have been created to meet these needs, committees have had to deal with a growing number of such demands. Detailed instructions for evaluating every kind of tissue request are scarce. Committees charged with evaluating research protocols therefore sometimes (...) face uncertainty in their decision-making. We examine how a pool of Swiss REC members deal with a number of cases involving human tissue, in order to determine the standards they adhere to, and their understanding and implementation of existing laws and guidelines. There is considerable divergence in the approaches and decisions of Swiss REC members regarding human tissue sample requests, particularly concerning the issue of informed consent. Despite recent trends towards less strict consent requirements for biosample research, many of our respondents continue to employ demanding standards for researchers. The question of informed consent, and the circumstances in which it is required, continues to result in differences of opinion. While room for local and cultural interpretation is essential to the workings of an REC, misunderstanding of existing guidelines, or an absence of regulation in sensitive areas, will only lead to suboptimal functioning of the REC itself. Our data suggests that there is uncertainty and disagreement on the question of consent for human tissue sample, which existing laws and guidelines may not fully clarify. Methods to address these uncertainties should be implemented in order to ensure efficient and harmonious review of research protocols. (shrink)

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les relations entre les mères ayant des enfants en situation de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales et les professionnelles au sein de crèches collectives dites inclusives. Dans le cadre d’une étude plus vaste, réalisée en France, portant sur le soutien des familles de jeunes enfants porteurs de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales, un entretien semi-directif a été réalisé auprès de neuf mères et de dix professionnelles pour analyser leurs relations. L’analyse qualitative de (...) données est réalisée selon l’approche de Braun et Clarke (2006). Les principaux résultats mettent en évidence, pour les mères, l’importance du partage d’informations, le soutien apporté par les professionnelles ainsi que leurs compétences. Les professionnelles, quant à elles, soulignent l’échange d’informations et leur rôle d’accompagnement dans l’acceptation du handicap de l’enfant ou dans le processus de parentalité. Les résultats sont discutés et des pistes d’intervention sont proposées. (shrink)

L’ouvrage propose une nouvelle traduction italienne du traité 31 (V, 8) de Plotin « Sur la beauté intelligible », assortie de nombreux éléments de commentaire. Le tout est précédé d’une longue introduction issue d’un cours donné par l’auteur, dont les quatre parties offrent une perspective historico-philosophique sur le texte, par là resitué dans le cadre du développement de la pensée antique en général et de l’œuvre plotinienne en particulier. Réalisée à partir de l’editio maior de Henry et...

By considering the death of the disability activist Engracia Figueroa as the consequence of her wheelchair being damaged by an airline, this article asks whether law could accommodate a definition of legal personhood that encompasses the possibility of bodies augmented by prosthetics, technology, and mobility aids. The use of mobility aids by disabled people and the role of prosthetic penises in so-called ‘gender fraud’ cases offer two useful provocations to consider the ways in which legal personhood, if defined as largely (...) mapping on to an ideal, normative body, is becoming an increasingly inadequate legal concept in the modern age. Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway and the figure of the cyborg, this article argues that a more protean, flexible, and fluctuating understanding of legal personhood would offer both a more accurate and utopian conception of the body in law than the current essentialist approach found in a number of legal areas and particularly in English criminal law. (shrink)