Medical research data is sensitive personal data that needs to be protected from unauthorized access and unintentional disclosure. In a research setting, sharing of data within the scientific community is necessary in order to make progress and maximize scientific benefits derived from valuable and costly data. At the same time, convincingly protecting the privacy of people participating in medical research is a prerequisite for maintaining trust and willingness to share. In this commentary, we will address this issue and the pitfalls (...) involved in the context of the PEP project1 that provides the infrastructure for the Personalized Parkinson’s Project,2 a large cohort study on Parkinson’s disease from Radboud University Medical Center, in cooperation with Verily life Sciences, an Alphabet subsidiary. (shrink)

The chapter begins by establishing the absence of organizations in the organization of philosophy as a specialist academic discipline. The second section highlights the reasons why this gap is detrimental to philosophical inquiries. The third section seeks to clarify how philosophy, as a type of theoretical inquiry, can contribute to the study of organizations. Three basic features are proposed as underpinning the philosophical method. Hegel’s social theory is then put forward as an exemplary model of what a philosophical account of (...) organizations might achieve. The fourth and final section shifts the perspective to focus on the life of individuals in organizations. Following a recent book combining post-Hegelian critical theory and Christophe Dejours’ psychodynamic approach, the paper highlights important aspects of individual and collective work that lead to a cooperative conception of management. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the historical sources of philosophical hermeneutics as it has come to fruition in the work of Heidegger and Gadamer.

1 INSERM-CEA Unit 562, Cognitive Neuroimaging, Service Hospitalier Fre´de´ric Joliot, Orsay, France, 2 CNRS URA2182 Re´cepteurs and Cognition, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.

La conception malebranchiste de la liberté est originale. Malebranche ne croit pas en une liberté d’indifférence absolue, c'est-à-dire en une capacité d’opérer un choix indépendamment de toute motivation. Il ne croit pas non plus que nous puissions indifféremment choisir entre deux motivations de force inégale : au moment où on se détermine, le bien le plus grand (du moins selon l’apparence) l’emporte. La liberté réside seulement dans le fait que l’on n’est pas obligé de se déterminer : nous pouvons toujours (...) suspendre notre consentement. Cette conception est exposée à des objections que Pierre Bayle a formulées et qui tentent de la mettre en contradiction avec d’autres thèses de Malebranche : son occasionalisme, sa théorie de la création continuée, l’obscurité de l’âme à elle-même, sa théologie des voies de l’action divine. Nous discuterons ces objections et verrons si Malebranche est en mesure de leur résister. (shrink)

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) was born in Landshut, Bavaria, the son of Paul Johann Anselm, a renowned legal theorist who had been called from Jena by the king of Bavaria to modernize the kingdom’s penal code. Feuerbach’s brothers all became distinguished scholars in their fields and his nephew Anselm a renowned classicist painter. After enrolling in theological studies in Heidelberg, Feuerbach became enthralled in Hegel’s philosophy and moved to Berlin to study with him. He presented his dissertation in 1828 at the (...) university of Erlangen and began his career there as a young Privat Dozent. Posterity has associated Feuerbach’s name to his anthropological critique of religion, presented in the 1841 The Essence of Christianity. Yet his writings touched on many other areas of philosophy. His life-long interest in religion arose from his attempt to solve the classical, fundamental questions of philosophy, of the human being’s place in the world, the relationships between thinking and being, reason and nature, mind and body, and the epistemological implications entailed in answering these questions. (shrink)

Two key axes carry the parameters that define Rancière’s approach to poetry. The first axis is constituted by his well-known account of aesthetic modernity as a democratic “regime of the arts”, which breaks with the previous, “representative” one, by allowing all subjects and all genres to be appropriated in expressive gestures. These expressive gestures can no longer rely on the old representational rules and references and therefore require constantly reinvented creative forms. The second axis that emerges from the dismantlement of (...) the old regime of representation is therefore a new mode of expressive creativity inherent in individual and collective action. The combination of these two principles creates the structural conditions and the contradictions of the modern aesthetic field, within which individual poets define their tasks and encounter new limits and difficulties. Viewed as a series of individual, situated attempts at linguistic creation within a field in which the structures of perception and diction are inherently up for grabs, poetry becomes a particularly significant exercise. The great poets provide exemplary models of what saying and doing can mean in the conditions of modernity as a regime of equality; and from their individual exemplarity, profound theoretical implicit lessons can be drawn. Rancière’s writings on poetry as a result always seek to accomplish two aims: provide substantive hermeneutic reconstructions of writing practices, taken as exemplary forms of modern “poiesis”; and critique alternative theoretical uses of poetry and through these, alternative conceptions of modern practice and theory. To review these aspects of Rancière’s approach to poetry, I have adopted a genealogical approach, as it is the simplest way to give a sense of the richness of Rancière’s long engagement with the works of poets. (shrink)

The phenomenological origins of the concept of givenness -- Remarks on the origins of Gegebenheit in Heidegger's thought -- Substitution and solicitude: how Levinas re-reads Heidegger -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of sacrifice.

Noli me tangere - Ne me touche pas : c'est une scène singulière de l'évangile de Jean, et c'est une parole emblématique pour des situations de violence ou de désir. C'est aussi, et d'abord, le rappel lapidaire d'un tabou majeur de toutes les cultures : celui du toucher. Or Marie-Madeleine, à qui cette parole est adressée par Jésus, a connu dans l'hagiographie un destin bien particulier : amante tantôt physique et tantôt mystique du Christ, double féminin et sensuel de (...) l'incarnation que son Seigneur est censé représenter, pécheresse dont le repentir poursuit la volupté, son personnage est fait pour troubler aux deux sens du mot la légende religieuse. Comment donc interpréter la scène, et la " résurrection " qu'elle veut annoncer? Comment les peintres l'ont-ils interprétée? Que nous font-ils voir entre ces deux corps levés l'un vers l'autre, qui se frôlent et qui s'écartent? (shrink)

Wage-earners voluntarily accept to work under the control, and for the account of, firms run by entrepreneurs1; they do not decide what, how and how much, they must produce; wage-earners are not responsible for the consequences of their activities when they comply with entrepreneurs' orders12; inside the firm, wage-earners are subordinates. Outside the firm, wage-earners freely choose the way they spend their wages in the markets for commodities and services. Such is the 'stylised fact' which characterises the wage relationship in (...) our economies. Any theory of the wage relationship should account for this 'stylised fact' by deriving it from a consistent set of assumptions and propositions. Three main propositions are advocated in this paper: Mainstream economists conceive the 'wage' as being the price of a commodity ('labour power' or 'human labour') determined by a market – as for any other commodity and service. As a consequence, the wage relationship is thought of as an exchange relation ruled by equivalence; this view cannot be derived from the usual basic assumptions without violating the very logic of mainstream theory. Following this logic: either the wage relationship should be thought of as a relation between human beings having such different conditions that it cannot be interpreted as an exchange ruled by equivalence or 'human labour' is not to be found within the commodity space. In any case, the 'stylised fact' mentioned above is not accounted for by mainstream theory. 'Wage' is the name of the payment entrepreneurs give to other people with the view to making them participate in production under their control and for their account; wage payment is neither a purchase nor a sale – it just allows wage-earners to enter the market and spend in order to acquire the commodities they desire Wage-earners are, economically speaking, a means used by entrepreneurs for their own ends; exploitation (Fleurbaey's M-exploitation) is inherent in the wage relationship. Propositions 2 and 3 do not fit general equilibrium theory (inspired by Walras and rationalised by Arrow- Debreu); they do not fit modern mainstream theory either. They have no room in the theory of prices of production (inspired by Ricardo and rationalised by Sraffa). Moreover, they are not compatible with Marx's theory of labour power. An alternative approach is needed to satisfy them. Paving the way for that alternative theory requires us to show that 'human labour' cannot belong to the commodity space from the very point of view of mainstream theory; a sharp incompatibility between assumptions and conclusions would follow, and justify resorting to an alternative approach. This is our first step. A second step is to effectively resort to a monetary analysis – the alternative approach to real analysis, according to Schumpeter in his History of economic analysis. In a nutshell, we have to discard the commodity space postulate, and to think of economic relations as money mediation. Instead of a commodity space, we presuppose money to be a unit of account ($) combined with a means of payment. Instead of a permutation of goods and services exchanged amongst people, economic relations are payments. Individuals are no longer endowments and preferences, but accounts into which payments write down quantities of $. Conditions of people may differ according to the form of money circulation – this view allows us to deal with different types of economic relations; for what matters here, the wage relationship involves a specific form of circulation not reducible to that of exchange. The final step is to suggest that exploitation is inherent in the wage relationship; such exploitation has nothing to do with justice, since there is no norm whatsoever for the level of wage; it is also quite different from the exploitation Marx thought he had unveiled. This exploitation is simply due to the special situation of wage-earners vis-a-vis the market, which a specific form of circulation makes clear. 1 'Entrepreneur' here means, following Coase, 'the person or persons who, in a competitive system, take the place of the price mechanism in the direction of resources' (Coase, 1937, p. 388). 2 David Ellerman distinguishes between factual/de facto and legal or de jure responsibility. What I mean here is economic responsibility only. Another way at looking at it may use David Ellerman's propositions. The 'Invisible Judge' market gives the entrepreneur the property of raw material and labour – and also of the finished product sold in the market. The market gives nothing to the wage-earner inside the firm; outside the firm it gives her the property of consumption of goods she acquires out of her wage. Inside the firm, the wage-earner is not economically responsible. Arguing that if she kills someone, the wage- earner is responsible has nothing to do with the 'Invisible Judge'! (shrink)

The question of the given is central to philosophy; phenomenology uses the method of reduction to find the given. This lecture asks whether there is anything that resists reduction, whether there is something irreducible. The author concludes that the phenomenology of givenness addresses the gap between what gives itself and what shows itself, so that the self of the phenomenon emerges only by the exercise of a properly phenomenological hermeneutics.

Qui pourrait pretendre encore aujourd'hui qu'il n'existe pas de philosophie hors de l'Occident La philosophie chinoise prend son envol aux alentours des VIe-IVe siecles avant Jesus- Christ, au moment ou l'humanite se trouve engagee dans la periode anale au cours de laquelle les anciennes conceptions du monde seront profondement bouleversees. Alors que la tradition philosophique occidentale a elabore sa metaphysique sur les bases d'une onto-theologie renvoyant autant a la revelation biblique qu'a l'ontologie positive parmenidienne, la Chine a analyse le reel (...) en termes d'interactions, de relations reciproques et de transformations continues ou les concepts sont definis sous un angle cosmologique. (shrink)

L'epoque est troublee: les mutations anthropologiques sont si contraignantes qu'un nouveau concept juridique, la dignite humaine, a fait son apparition. Si le droit en fait un usage intensif, c'est dans la mesure ou face aux exces des Etats criminels comme aux avancees des biotechnologies, il a besoin de fixer les limites entre l'humain et ce qui ne le serait plus. Chacun pressent que la dignite n'est pas une notion objective. Son invention est nouee aux religions monotheistes et aux inflexions que (...) la philosophie d'abord, la psychanalyse ensuite, lui font subir. L'aspect psychanalytique de la dignite humaine sera ici privilegie. Comment la dignite serait-elle compatible avec la sauvagerie de la vie psychique? L'auteur met en tension les travaux de Freud, sur la religion et la culture, avec les ecrits d'Etty Hillesum qui, dans les trois annees precedant son extermination a Auschwitz, se livre a une reflexion, au bord de l'abime, sur la destructivite liee au destin de masse. Grace a la revolution psychique qu'elle effectue, il devient possible de resister en tant qu'individu singulier a l'emprise des masses sur l'esprit, de construire l'humain en chaque homme, rien n'etant acquis a cet egard par la seule appartenance a l'espece humaine. (shrink)

Dans la médecine occidentale, le patient fut longtemps conçu comme un enfant à sauver, incapable ne serait-ce que de recevoir, de manière raisonnable, le savoir du médecin. Après la seconde Guerre Mondiale, la découverte des expérimentations scientifiques intolérables menées sur l’homme, mais aussi le vent libéral et individualiste des années 60, le progrès des biotechnologies, la démocratisation des savoirs ont favorisé l’émergence d’un nouveau paradigme et d’une nouvelle discipline : la bioéthique. Aujourd’hui, le médecin ne peut plus imposer son traitement (...) au malade, il doit, par respect de son autonomie, chercher à obtenir son consentement libre et éclairé. Les normes médicales et sociales, autrefois coercitives, voire transcendantes, sont aujourd’hui discutées et interrogées au regard des préférences et des valeurs individuelles. Des comités d’éthique pluridisciplinaires sont chargés de prendre en compte les demandes des patients qui ne cessent de bousculer les normes établies. (shrink)

La catastrophe de Fukushima n’est pas considérée ici seulement comme le dernier désastre majeur qui oblige à repenser l’usage de l’énergie nucléaire. On envisage sa leçon de manière plus générale, en tant qu’elle manifeste l’interdépendance désormais inextricable des phénomènes dits « naturels » et des ensembles techniques, sociaux, politiques, économiques dont la connexion générale nous oppresse. Toutes les catastrophes ne sont certes pas équivalentes. Mais l’équivalence dont on veut parler ici est celle qui met en correspondance et qui fait circuler (...) dans la communication et dans la consommation générales tous les éléments de notre existence – les vies, les biens, les forces, les énergies. Le signe et le porteur de cette circulation n’est autre que la valeur en tant qu’argent, ou valeur du « march頻 : l’« équivalence générale » dont parlait Marx. C’est elle qui propage une catastrophe généralisée.Que veut dire « penser » dans cette condition qui est la nôtre? (shrink)

« Quelques semaines après la parution du Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, Charles Bonnet, savant genevois, publie dans le Mercure de France sous le pseudonyme de Philopolis, un article qui remet en cause l’usage que Rousseau fait du mot perfectibilité. Il comprend ce mot de telle sorte qu’il est conduit à dénoncer une inconséquence, voire une contradiction, dans la démarche de son concitoyen. Rousseau ne voit pas, selon Bonnet, que si l’homme est perfectible, alors (...) il est fait naturellement pour vivre en société et se perfectionner parmi et à l’aide de ses semblables. Toute la thèse du second Discours s’écroule! Piqué au vif, Rousseau profite de cette circonstance pour préciser le sens de ce mot et pour mettre en relief le rôle du temps dans la vie des hommes, de toutes choses en réalité. Mais une nouvelle difficulté surgit, le rapport d’opposition entre l’histoire et la nature devient problématique. C’est de ce noeud dans la pensée rousseauiste que nous avons voulu traiter, ou du moins approcher : le lien entre l’être et le temps. Nous avons pris la Lettre à M. Philopolis comme un jalon dans l’évolution d’une pensée dont la richesse continue à nous instruire. ». (shrink)

La médecine joue un rôle majeur dans les sociétés contemporaines. La volonté de prévenir les maladies, l'espoir de guérir et de prolonger la vie humaine répondent à des aspirations de plus en plus profondes. Un regard médical est porté sur tous les aspects de l'existence, de la naissance, avec la procréation médicalement assistée, à la fin de vie, avec l'euthanasie. Il semble bien que l'on confie sa vie à la médecine comme on la confiait naguère à Dieu. A l'heure du (...) déclin des religions séculières, la médecine apparaît comme une religion de substitution. Mais apporte-t-elle, pourtant, des réponses à nos interrogations existentielles? Il semble, au contraire, qu'elle ne soit qu'un pis-aller incapable de donner un sens à la vie et d'apprendre à mourir. Le revers scientiste de l'obsession de la mort. Une religion chétive, dont l'échec est souvent cruel. La médecine, aussi efficace soit-elle, doit veiller à rester à sa juste place. Elle ne peut soigner en confisquant le risque de vivre, elle qui ne soigne qu'en prenant le risque d'échouer. (shrink)

Theorists have consistently maintained that the most plausible forms of objective consequentialism must be probabilistic if and only if indeterminism is true.2 They claim: If indeterminism is true, then objective probabilities used to map such indeterminacies must be utilized by objective consequentialist moral theories; however, if determinism is true, probabilities play no role in objective consequentialist theorizing. I beg to differ. Assume determinism is true and I will show you that attractive forms of objective consequentialism must be probabilistic—and not for (...) reasons related to our epistemic limitations either. In this way, I hope to shed some light upon the nature of objective consequentialism. Here’s my case. Consequentialist normative theories can be classified into two groups: subjective and objective. Subjective consequentialist theories might be characterized as those in which an agent’s beliefs concerning the possible consequences of an alternative play a prominent role in determining that alternative’s normative. (shrink)

In this paper we address some central problems of combination of logics through the study of a very simple but highly informative case, the combination of the logics of disjunction and conjunction. At first it seems that it would be very easy to combine such logics, but the following problem arises: if we combine these logics in a straightforward way, distributivity holds. On the other hand, distributivity does not arise if we use the usual notion of extension between consequence relations. (...) A detailed discussion about this phenomenon, as well as some possible solutions for it, are given. (shrink)

Une lecture de l'oeuvre pascalienne à la lumière de notions créées par des philosophes contemporains, montrant comment la pensée de Pascal peut accompagner la réflexion audelà du contexte du XVIIe siècle.