Forensic psychiatry is a particular subspecialty within psychiatry, dedicated in applying psychiatric knowledge and psychiatric training for particular legal purposes. Given that within the scope of forensic psychiatry, a third party usually intervenes in the patient-doctor relationship, an amendment of the traditional ethical principles seems justified. Thus, 47 articles, two book chapters and the guidelines produced by the World Psychiatric Association, the American Association of Psychiatry and the Law, as well as by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of (...) psychiatrists, were analyzed. The review revealed that the ethics of correctional forensic psychiatry and those of legal forensic psychiatry do not markedly differ from each other, but they are incongruent in terms of implementation. In an effort to better understand which ethical principles apply to forensic psychiatry, a chronological review of the literature published from 1950 to 2015 was carried out. The ethics of correctional forensic psychiatry are primarily deontological. The principle of justice translates into the principle of health care equivalence, the principle of beneficence into providing the best possible care to patients, and the principle of respect of autonomy into ensuring confidentiality and informed consent. The ethics of legal forensic psychiatry are rather consequentialist. In this latter setting, the principle of justice is mainly characterized by professionalism, the principle of beneficence by objectivity and impartiality, and the principle of respect of autonomy by informed consent. However, these two distinct fields of forensic psychiatry share in common the principle of non maleficence, defined as the non collaboration of the psychiatrist in any activity leading to inhuman and degrading treatment or to the death penalty. (shrink)

Confidentiality is both a fundamental principle of medical ethics and a legal obligation.In exceptional situations not covered by legal provisions, doctors may want to waive confidentiality against the wishes of the patient. Swiss law calls for an authority to rule on such cases. In the Canton of Geneva this authority is the Commission for Professional Confidentiality. This paper concerns 41 cases managed by this commission. The study shows that the majority of these requests to the Commission concern the reporting of (...) patients who are not incompetent but need the protection of a legal guardianship. In rare cases, there is another interest higher than confidentiality: public order or functioning of justice. The Commission found that the measure requested was justified in the majority of cases brought before it. This study focuses on exceptional cases but it throws into relief the conflict between the principle of autonomy on the one hand and the need for patient protection and social justice on the other. (shrink)

On peut être surpris de découvrir dans la réflexion contemporaine un plaidoyer en faveur d’une théorie théologique avancée par certains Pères, qu’on aurait pu croire définitivement disqualifiée et réduite à un vestige archaïque, en raison de son relent mythologique, à savoir la rançon que Dieu aurait payée au démon en échange de notre libération. Cette théorie, déjà fortement contestée à l’époque patristique, vient de trouver un avocat avec René Girard pour qui « les Pères grecs avaient raison de dire que, (...) dans la Croix, Satan est le mystificateur pris au piège de sa mystification. » Le rôle des puissances sataniques avait déjà retenu l’attention de cet auteur dans Le Bouc émissaire, mais c’est dans Je vois Satan tomber comme l’éclair qu’il s’intéresse à ce thème patristique et tente de lui rendre une légitimité perdue. Derrière le besoin de compléter le point de vue des Pères, on devine un travail de réinterprétation où l’emprunt à la tradition ancienne risque de faire figure de pièce rapportée dans une version originale. Le rapport établi entre la croix avec la violence , tant par les Pères que par R. Girard, invite ainsi à un examen comparé, de manière à dégager la spécificité de deux systèmes de pensée, celui de Girard paraissant se situer à un tout autre niveau d’analyse que le souci simple et élémentaire qui habite les Pères lorsqu’ils recourent au mythe d’une tractation avec le démon afin de préserver Dieu du recours à la violence. It is surprising to find in contemporaneous reflection a plea in favor of a theological theory put forward by certain Fathers. One could have believed that it was definitively disqualified and reduced to an archaic vestige, and this by reason of its mythological bad odor, that is to say, the ransom that God would have paid the demon in exchange for our liberation. This theory, already strongly contested in the Patristic Age, came to find an advocate in René Girard for whom “the Greek Fathers were right to say that, in the cross, Satan is the mystifier caught in the trap of his mystification.” The role of Satanic powers already drew the attention of this author in Le Bouc émissaire [The Scapegoat], but it is in Je vois Satan tomber comme l’éclair [I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightening] that he takes up this patristic theme and tries to return a lost legitimacy to it. Behind the need to supplement the Church Father’s viewpoint, one suspects a work of reinterpretation, where barrowing from the ancient tradition risks giving the impression of a document retrieved from an original version. The relationship established between the cross and violence , as much by the Fathers as by R. Girard, thus invites us to a comparative examination, so as to clarify the specificity of two systems of thought. That of Girard seems to place itself on a completely different level of analysis than the simple and elementary concern that resides in the Fathers when they appeal to the myth where a deal is made with the devil so as to preserve God from resorting to violence. (shrink)

At the start of the 21st century, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) seems to have great potential for innovating business practices with a positive impact on People, Planet and Profit. In this article the differences between the management systems approach of the nineties, and Corporate Social Responsibility are analysed.An analysis is structured around three business principles that are relevant for CSR and management systems: (1) doing things right the first time, (2) doing the right things, and (3) continuous improvement and innovation. (...) Basically CSR is focussing on the second principle, and management systems focus on the first. However, CSR is very likely to build on the management systems as well.From a CSR point of view, the existing generation of management systems with their focus on rational control (= doing things right) can only be of limited use in the development of CSR. However, the preventive rationalities of management systems are important. Values and the principle doing the right things is extremely relevant for CSR. This goes far beyond the present generation of ISO type management systems; opportunities stem from building on TQM approaches like the EFQM Business Excellence model. Continuous improvement and innovation is a permanent challenge underlying the two other business principles, and requires both individual and organisational learning processes. In the present generation of management systems, continuous improvement mainly addresses rational prevention, barely the value aspects of business.For the further development and implementation of CSR, each of the three business management principles are vital. There is a need for a new generation of management systems that addresses the values at stake in strategic decision-making, both at company level and in the behaviour of individuals, while the rationalities of prevention and anticipation are still relevant. In both directions more emphasis for continuous learning and innovation will be needed.CSR is likely to trigger the development of management systems in the directions mentioned. This will support companies to be credible and transparent in improving the performance with respect to people, planet and profit. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for management scholars to address large-scale and complex societal problems and strive for greater practical and policy impact. A brief overview of the most-cited work on COVID-19 reveals that, compared with their counterparts in other disciplines, leading management journals and professional associations lagged in providing a platform for high-impact research on COVID-19. To help management research play a more active role in responding to similar global challenges in the future, we propose an integrative framework (...) that emphasizes a phenomenon’s impact, the conditions that the phenomenon creates at multiple levels, and the responses of actors to such conditions, as well as the dynamic relationships and interactions among these actors. By shifting attention to phenomena and their overall impact, this framework can help scholars better position their work to address large-scale and complex problems and also to assess research for its contribution to generate impact beyond academia. (shrink)

The main purpose of this second article devoted to T. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (the first was published in the previous issue of Actuel Marx) is to introduce our alternative reading of history. The tendencies manifest during the last decades of the 20th century and the early 21st century are not, it is argued, the replication of the tendencies which prevailed prior to World War I. The starting-point for our analysis is the beginning of the 20th century, a (...) moment characterized by the dynamics of a “managerial capitalism” built around the “tripolar” class pattern of capitalists, managers, and popular classes. The main quantitative manifestation of these trends was the steady rise in the share accounted for by wages (compared to capital income) in the income of upper classes (notably the top 1 percent). In place of Piketty’s impact of shocks, we focus on the chain of successive configurations of class domination and alliances, in a succession of “social orders” marking the historical advance of managerial capitalism : the first financial hegemony, in the years leading up to the Great Depression ; the postwar social-democratic compromise ; and its successor, neoliberalism, involving a new alliance to the right, between the managerial and popular classes. (shrink)

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This paper is intended to complement our previous works on the necessary existence of error-correcting codes endowing genomes with the ability of being regenerated, not merely copied. It sketchily recalls some fundamental definitions and results of information theory and error-correcting codes; provides an overview of our research; shows that the disjunction of replication and regeneration enlightens the divide between germinal and somatic cells; suggests that some phenomena referred to as epigenetic may possibly find an explanation within the framework of error-correcting (...) codes; points out some difficulties, especially those related to sexual reproduction; criticizes the template-replication paradigm, and prompts geneticists to become familiar with information theory. (shrink)

The first part of this book gives a full account of the textual tradition of Epictetus' Encheiridion and of its three Christian adaptations. The second part consists of critical editions of the four texts.

In Epictetus 3. 23. 33 the original reading of the codex unicus Bodleianus Auct. T. 4. 13, ἐκλεκτικός, is certainly corrupt. All the editions accept the reading ἐλεγκτικός, which is a correction by a later corrector of Bodleianus Auct. T. 4. 13. It is shown that this reading is to be rejected because ἐλεγκτικός is equivalent to the immediately preceding προτρεπτικός and because it leads to unsurmountable discrepancies with the closely related passage 3. 21. 19. As an alternative for ἐλεγκτικός, (...) the emendation ἐπιπληκτικός is proposed: with this reading all problems disappear. The new reading has important consequences for the evaluation of Epictetus’ educational system. (shrink)

Cet article constitue la réponse à une note critique publiée dans le n° 71 d’ Actuel Marx, dans laquelle Fabien Foureault discutait les travaux de G. Duménil et D. Lévy concernant l’actuelle transition entre le capitalisme et un nouveau mode de production, le managérialisme. Le premier argument est le fait que les hauts managers sont rétribués par la distribution de stock-options, considérés comme des revenus du capital par Foureault bien que ces options n’aient pas de rapport avec la détention antérieure (...) d’actions par les bénéficiaires. La forme de la rémunération l’emporte sur les pratiques qui la motivent. Foureault utilise, par ailleurs, les calculs réalisés au sein des Distributional National Accounts qui montrent que la part des revenus du capital au sein du revenu total du 1 % supérieur de la hiérarchie des revenus n’a pas décru. Ces nouvelles estimations sont, pour GD et DL, inutilisables hors des finalités comparatives pour lesquelles elles ont été conçues. Enfin, les auteurs considèrent que Foureault se méprend radicalement quant à la nature de leurs interprétations politiques. (shrink)

Dans cet entretien consacré à leur livre Managerial Capitalism : Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production (Pluto Press, 2018), G. Duménil et D. Lévy reviennent sur les implications de leur analyse du capitalisme managérial pour l’étude du capitalisme historique, de ses structures de classes fondamentales, et de ses alliances de pouvoirs variables. La thèse du marxisme traditionnel identifiant les managers à une fraction de classe capitaliste s’en trouve critiquée, de même que les présupposés véhiculés par le concept (...) de « capitalisme d’État ». Invités à revenir plus précisément sur leur distinction entre modes de production et « ordres sociaux », comme configurations variables de hiérarchies de pouvoirs et d’alliances de classe, les auteurs clarifient les raisons pour lesquelles ils introduisent une nouvelle catégorie de mode de production managérial qui impose de repenser le mode de production capitaliste lui-même suivant une logique de « l’hybridité ». Celle-ci permet de complexifier les tendances du capitalisme historique sur la longue durée, d’approfondir l’analyse de classe du capitalisme managérial, et d’y spécifier différentiellement, par rapport au « compromis » d’après-guerre (caractérisé par une alliance entre managers et classes populaires sous la direction des premiers), le dernier ordre social en date caractérisé par une alliance « au sommet » entre managers et capitalistes (au détriment des classes populaires) : le néolibéralisme. (shrink)