Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

How, asks Françoise Dastur, can philosophy account for the sudden happening and the factuality of the event? Dastur asks how phenomenology, in particular the work of Heidegger, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, may be interpreted as offering such an account. She argues that the “paradoxical capacity of expecting surprise is always in question in phenomenology,” and for this reason, she concludes, “We should not oppose phenomenology and the thinking of the event. We should connect them; openness to phenomena must be identified with (...) openness to unpredictability.” The article offers reflections in these terms on a phenomenology of birth. (shrink)

Suddenly, COVID-19 has changed the world and the way people work. Companies had to accelerate something they knew was imminent in the future, but not immediate and extremely humongous. This situation poses a huge challenge for companies to survive and thrive in this complex business environment and for employees, who must adapt to this new way of working. An effective e-leadership, which promotes companies’ adaptability, is needed. This study investigates the existing knowledge on teleworking and e-leadership; and analyzes the supposed (...) challenges. The literature review shows that companies with effective e-leadership can view teleworking as an opportunity. It is advantageous for not only companies’ productivity but also the environment and people who work remotely. However, a traditional or no leadership can result in some risks. Thriving in remote work environments implies that managers must adjust the companies’ structure, making them less hierarchical, and developing new abilities to establish a strong and trustworthy relationship with their employees to maintain their competitiveness, while retaining a genuine concern for their employees’ well-being. Similarly, successful e-leadership must be able to consolidate and lead effective virtual teams to accomplish organizational goals. This study contributes to the literature and leaders during the pandemic. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is no compelling therapeutic ‘need’ for human nuclear genome transfer to prevent mitochondrial diseases caused by mtDNA mutations. At most there is a strong interest in this technology on the part of some women and couples at risk of having children with mitochondrial disease, and perhaps also a ‘want’ on the part of some researchers who see the technology as a useful precedent – one that provides them with ‘a quiet way station’ in (...) which to refine the micromanipulations techniques essential for other human germline interventions and human cloning. In advance of this argument, I review basic information about mitochondrial disease and novel genetic strategies to prevent the transmission of mutated mitochondria. Next, I address common features of contemporary debates and discussions about so-called mitochondrial replacement. First, I contest the cliché that science-and-technology is fast outpacing ethics. Second, I dispute the accuracy of the term ‘mitochondrial replacement’. Third, I provide a sustained critique of the purported ‘need’ for genetically-related children. In closing, I call into question the mainly liberal defense of human nuclear genome transfer. I suggest an alternative frame of reference that pays particular attention to issues of social justice. I conclude that our limited resources should be carefully expended in pursuit of the common good, which does not include pandering to acquired desires. (shrink)

Telling Time takes up Heidegger's ideas of a "phenomenological chronology" in an attempt to pose the question of the possibility of a phenomenological language that would be given over to the "temporality of being" and the finitude of existence. The book combines a discussion of approaches to language in the philosophical tradition with readings of Husserl on temporality and the early and late texts of Heidegger's on logic, truth and the nature of language. As well as Heidegger's "deconstruction" of logic (...) and metaphysics Dastur's work is informed by Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence and Nietzschean genealogy. Appealing as much to Humboldt's philosophy of language as to Hölderlin's poetic thought, the book illuminates the eminently dialectical structure of speech and its essential connection with mortality. (shrink)

We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...) technologies. (shrink)

We need to distinguish two sorts of natural kinds, scientific and common NKs, because the notion of NK, which has to satisfy demands at three different levels—ontological, semantic and epistemological—, is subject to two incompatible sets of constraints. In order to prove this, I focus on the much-discussed case of jade. In the first part of the paper, I show that the current accounts are unsatisfactory because they are inconsistent. In the process, I explain why LaPorte’s analysis of “jade” as (...) a vernacular NK-term with an open-texture meaning does not offer a way out. Using a reductio ad absurdum argument, I conclude that according to the main tenets of NK-term theories, today’s “jade” has to be an NK-term, and jade thereby an NK. In the second part of the paper, I argue for this conclusion in a positive manner. First, I present a series of thought experiments demonstrating that today’s “jade” has the specific features of an NK-term. Then, I show that the kind that we presently call “jade” exhibits the typical ontological and epistemological features of an NK. More generally, I expound on why common NKs are more than mere classes, and why categories such as “jade” are useful in many inferences and explanations. (shrink)

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Given a model-complete theory of topological fields, we considered its generic differential expansions and under a certain hypothesis of largeness, we axiomatised the class of existentially closed ones. Here we show that a density result for definable types over definably closed subsets in such differential topological fields. Then we show two transfer results, one on the VC-density and the other one, on the combinatorial property NTP2.

Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

This work was supported, in part, by a Stem Cell Network grant to Françoise Baylis and Jason Scott Robert and a CIHR grant to Françoise Baylis. We sincerely thank Alan Fine, Rich Campbell, Cynthia Cohen, and Tim Krahn for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also owed to Tim Krahn for his research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Department of Bioethics and the Novel Tech Ethics research team. We thank (...) the participants at each of these meetings for their helpful comments. (shrink)

Aucune discussion d'ensemble des ecrits de Lyotard sur l'art n'avait ete entreprise. Or sa reflexion sur les arts - musique, cinema, peinture surtout - est une part essentielle de son oeuvre, comme en temoignent les analyses proposees dans Discours, figure, Que peindre?, Moralites postmodernes, L'Inhumain et Les Ecrits sur l'art contemporain et les artistes. Moins remarque pourtant est le fait que Lyotard a collabore avec des peintres (Monory, Guiffrey, Adami, Sam Francis, Appel, Buren, etc). Il a ete commissaire d'une exposition (...) en 1985 qui a fait date, " Les Immateriaux ", au Centre Georges-Pompidou. Plusieurs textes du volume ainsi qu'un entretien inedit avec Bernard Blistene sont consacres a cette manifestation. Pour ce livre Francoise Coblence et Michel Enaudeau ont sollicite non seulement des lecteurs avertis de Lyotard (Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jean-Michel Rey, Jean-Loup Thebaud, Herman Parret, Anne Cauquelin, Gerald Sfez, Jean-Claude Rolland, Claudine Eizykman et Guy Fihman, Jean-Francois Nordmann, Jean-Patrice Courtois), mais aussi de plus jeunes chercheurs (Gaelle Bernard, Frederic Fruteau de Laclos, Claire Pages, Jerome Glicenstein, Maud Pouradier, Evelyne Toussaint) qui decouvrent pour leur propre compte le travail de Lyotard sur les arts. Les contributions rassemblees analysent les concepts forges par Lyotard, tels que " figural ", "libidinal ", " sublime ", " immateriau ", " matiere ", " impresentable " " affect ", " ecriture ". A travers eux, cette pensee de l'art veut rompre avec l'esthetique au sens academique du terme pour voir ou entendre dans les oeuvres l'evenement de la couleur ou du son. C'est donc bien d'un enjeu " ontologique " qu'il y va : l'art est seul a nous presenter la frappe sensible de l'etre. (shrink)

On se propose ici de tenter de rapprocher la critique wittgensteinienne des propositions métaphysiques du projet heideggérien de « destruction phénoménologique de l’histoire de l’ontologie ». Il s’agit donc d’abord de rappeler que dans le Tractatus Wittgenstein établit une différence « transcendantale » entre ce qui peut se dire et ce qui ne fait que « se montrer » et qu’il faut plutôt taire. Mais chez Wittgenstein la mise en évidence de cette différence conduit au refus du métalangage, et à (...) l’interdiction d’une interrogation sur sa propre démarche de philosophe, c’est-à-dire à ce que l’on pourrait nommer un « transcendantalisme paradoxal ». Chez Heidegger en revanche la mise en évidence de la différence ontologique, laquelle ne permet ni de faire de l’être un prédicat réel ni d’énoncer l’être sous la forme de propositions prédicatives conduit à interroger le fondement antéprédicatif du langage énonciatif, qui n’est autre que la transcendance du Dasein. Il répond ainsi à la paradoxie du Tractatus en montrant qu’il n’y a d’apophansis que sur la base d’une hermeneia plus originaire. Une mise en parallèle de l’« herméneutique de la facticité » heideggérienne et de l’analyse wittgensteinienne des jeux de langage en tant que formes de vie peut alors être tentée, dans la mesure où la dimension herméneutique du comprendre n’est pas entièrement absente chez le second Wittgenstein, en dépit de sa conception instrumentale du langage.The object of this paper is to try a comparison between Wittgenstein’s critique of metaphysical statements and Heidegger’s project of a « phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology ». It is at first necessary to recall that in Tractatus Wittgenstein establishes a transcendental difference between what can be said and what can only show itself and has to be passed over in silence. But this leads Wittgenstein to refuse metalanguage and to prohibit all questioning of his own position as a philosopher, that is to say to what could be named a « paradoxical transcendentalism ». On the contrary, Heidegger, in bringing to light the ontological difference, which does not allow to define Being as a real predicate or to enunciate Being in the form of predicative statements, is led to question the antepredicative foundation of the propositional language or logos apophantikos, which is nothing else than the transcendence of Dasein. He thus gives an answer to Wittgenstein’s parodoxy by showing that there is apophansis only on the basis of a more originary hermeneia. A comparison between Heidegger’s « hermeneutics of facticity » and Wittgenstein’s analysis of language games as life forms can then be performed, in so far as the hermeneutic dimension of understanding is not completely absent in Wittgenstein’s Investigations, in spite of his instrumental conception of language. (shrink)

Translated by David Farrell Krell. This essay continues the project, also found in "Qui est le Zarathoustra de Nietzsche?" published in first issue of this journal, of discerning the importance of Asian sources for emergent modern European thought. It explores Novalis's relation to the now mostly neglected Sanskrit myth (and play by Kālidāsa) of Shakuntala, clarifying its importance for Novalis's view of the interpenetration of the visible and the invisible and the need for a visual symbol, such as the ring, (...) as pointer and reminder of the invisible's fullness and pervasiveness, in this world, as Love. (shrink)

Cet article expose les premiers contacts d’Alexandre Nequam (1157-1217) avec la traduction latine du Liber de causis dans sa proposition 2, et le recours à son ami le théologien Alain de Lille ( c. 1120-1202) qu’il jugea nécessaire. Celui-ci répondit par ses quatre premières Regulae theologicae.

In January 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority issued two 1-year licenses for cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research. This article situates the HFEA's decision in its wider scientific and political context in which, until quite recently, the debate about human embryonic stem cell research has focused narrowly on the moral status of the developing human embryo. Next, ethical arguments against crossing species boundaries with humans are canvassed. Finally, a new argument about the risks of harm to women egg providers resulting (...) from research involving the creation of humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos is elaborated. Taken together these ethical concerns about the moral status of the human embryo, about the ethics of crossing species boundaries with humans, and about the potential harms to women, provide good reason to eschew humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research in favor of less ethically controversial means to the laudable end of successful regenerative medicine. (shrink)

Dastur is well respected in France and Europe for her mastery of phenomenology as a movement and her clear and cogent explications of phenomenology in movement. These qualities are on display in this remarkable set of essays. The book is organized into four areas of inquiry: Language and Logic, Ego and Other, Temporality and History,and Finitude and Mortality. In each, Dastur guides the reader through a series of phenomenological questions that also serve to call phenomenology itself into question, testing its (...) limits and pushing it in newdirections. Taking a cue from Merleau-Ponty, Dastur sees phenomenology not as a doctrine, a catalogue of concepts and catchphrases authored by a single thinker, but rather as a movement in which several thinkers participate, each one contributing to and inflecting the development of the movement in unique ways. She thus draws inspiration from Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Fink, and Patocka, moving with ease from one thinker's conceptual vocabulary and outlook to the next's, feeling at home in each, and communicating their central ideas with clarity.Through her critical and productive dialogue with multiple phenomenological thinkers, Dastur concisely shows one thinker's debts to and departures from another and reveals the limits of one's approach while highlighting the innovation of another's. She does this judiciously, without choosing sides, because for her, phenomenology is above all a way of thinking through a problem and practicing a method. The fecundity of the movement is appreciated only by participating in it--it has always thought of itself as philosophical research undertaken by and through a community of thinkers who share certain fundamental questions and ways of approaching those questions, even if their responses to these questions often differ. In this regard, Dastur is both one of the clearest guides to phenomenology and one of France's most able practitioners of phenomenology. (shrink)

The current debate on the ethics of cloning humans is both uninspired and uninspiring. In large measure this is because of mistakes that permeate the discourse, including the mistake of thinking that cloning technology is strictly a reproductive technology when it is used to create whole beings. As a result, the challenge this technology represents regarding our understanding of ourselves and the species to which we belong typically is inappropriately downplayed or exaggerated. This has meant that important (albeit disquieting) societal (...) issues and species-type concerns have not been fully explored. This paper, intended as a corrective, suggests that we take an alternate view of human cloning as both an enhancement and a reproductive technology. This proposed shift in the framework for analysis counters the current narrow framing of the issues and introduces new questions about the prospect of modifying the species. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of the dislocated self following deep brain stimulation (DBS) and concludes that when personal identity is understood in dynamic, narrative, and relational terms, the claim that DBS is a threat to personal identity is deeply problematic. While DBS may result in profound changes in behaviour, mood and cognition (characteristics closely linked to personality), it is not helpful to characterize DBS as threatening to personal identity insofar as this claim is either false, misdirected or trivially true. (...) The claim is false insofar as it misunderstands the dynamic nature of identity formation. The claim is misdirected at DBS insofar as the real threat to personal identity is the discriminatory attitudes of others towards persons with motor and other disabilities. The claim is trivially true insofar as any dramatic event or experience integrated into one’s identity-constituting narrative could then potentially be described as threatening. From the perspective of relational personal identity, when DBS dramatically disrupts the narrative flow, this disruption is best examined through the lens of agency. For illustrative purposes, the focus is on DBS for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. (shrink)

Proust interrogates Gilles Deleuze's notion of resistance in relation to death as that which is “turned against death.” She questions a concept of resistance which is “no more than impassivity and indifference.” How, she asks, can we know if the force of resistance is on the side of death or life? Characterizing life as movement, she speaks for a concept of resistance as on the side of life.

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's book (...) will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures. (shrink)

Consider k((G)) in the language of valued fields enriched with a unary predicate for the set of constants and another one for the cross-section. For perfect k, this structure is undecidable if it does not satisfy Kaplansky's conditions.