La présente étude cherche à montrer le croisement de deux manisfestations phénomélogiques dans le processus de l´inculturation de l´Evangile, celle de la réligiosité populaire et du sincrérisme. Primièrement, nous présentons la vision sociologique e historique de ces manifestations en appuiant sur des études cientifiques de certains théologiens e du Magistère de l´Eglise. Ensuite, nous cherchons à montrer que l´activité missionaire dans le contexte atuel ne peut pas les ignorer si elle veut véritablement être fidèle à la Tradition millénaire de l´Eglise. (...) En fin, nous faisons un essai de réflexion contextuelle levant en considération la réalité haitienne où nous registrons un parfait croisement entre la réligiosité populaire e le sincretismo dans la convivence entre la religion Vodu e le Cristianismo. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

Résumé Un paradoxe domine aujourd’hui l’utopie. La place de l’ « esprit jeune » dans notre société, au-delà des classes d’âge traditionnelles, devrait correspondre à une forte émergence de projets utopiques, pour autant que la jeunesse est l’âge de la remise en cause du monde tel qu’il est, et de la reconstruction idéaliste du futur. Et cependant, il y a une paralysie de l’imagination optimiste du futur. C’est l’imprévisibilité de l’avenir, dans un monde qui fait de la création du nouveau (...) dans tous les domaines son moteur même qui rend si périlleuse et incertaine toute imagination d’une société future. L’exigence de diversité et la dimension esthétique sont cependant deux traits qui pourraient caractériser la visée contemporaine, par opposition aux vieilles utopies rigoristes qui ont fait faillite. (shrink)

If the logic of the Oedipus myth were subjected to rigorous and thoroughgoing analysis with the tools of anthropology, comparative mythology, and narratology, might it invalidate the approach to the 'Oedipus complex' that Freud derived from his psychoanalytic experience? This book answers 'yes', arguing that instead of the Oedipus complex explaining the myth, the Oedipus myth explains the complex. The author argues that the Oedipus myth is an historical anomaly, a myth of failed royal investiture or of avoided masculine initiation. (...) Does this mean that we must return to the wisdom of tradition and strike out twenty-five centuries of Oedipal history? The author knows very well that such a solution would be fantasy, and he concludes by speculating on how his analysis might contribute to a vision that has eluded Freudian psychoanalysis: how to surpass the Oedipus complex, with all the ethical consequences this would entail. (shrink)

Due to domestication, dogs differ from wolves in the way they respond to their environment, including to humans. Selection for tameness and the associated changes to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation have been proposed as the primary mechanisms of domestication. To test this idea, we compared two low-arousal states in equally raised and kept wolves and dogs: resting, a state close to being asleep, and inactive wakefulness, which together take up an important part in the time budgets of wolves (...) and dogs. We measured arousal via cardiac output in three conditions: alone, with a familiar human partner, or with pack members (i.e., conspecifics). Specifically, we compared heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) of six wolves and seven dogs. As patterns of resting can vary adaptively, even between closely related species, we predicted that dogs would be generally more aroused than wolves, because living with humans may come with less predictable contexts than living with conspecifics; hence, dogs would need to be responsive at all times. Furthermore, we predicted that due to the effects of domestication, emotional social support by familiar people would reduce arousal more in dogs than in equally human-socialized wolves, leading to more relaxed dogs than wolves when away from the pack. Overall, we found a clear effect of the interactions between species (i.e., wolf versus dog), arousal state (i.e., resting or awake inactive) and test conditions, on both HR and HRV. Wolves and dogs were more aroused when alone (i.e., higher HR and lower HRV) than when in the presence of conspecifics or a familiar human partner. Dogs were more relaxed than wolves when at rest and close to a familiar human but this difference disappeared when awake. In conclusion, instead of the expected distinct overall differences between wolves and dogs in ANS regulation, we rather found subtle context-specific responses, suggesting that such details are important in understanding the domestication process. (shrink)

Some time before deconstruction theoretically destabilized the founding oppositions of Western metaphysics, Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon noted their everyday, practical unravelling in the Bourse Stock Exchange in nineteenth‐century Paris. In his Broker's Handbook, Proudhon considered the profound implications of the speculative model of value introduced by the stock market and recommended that modern reformers and revolutionaries seek their instruction there. The mobilization of value exemplified in the operations of the Bourse propelled capitalism through the twentieth century towards its present global dominance, (...) bringing in its train all the features of supermodernity that currently confound the thinking of cultural values today. For it is not just economic questions that are posed from within the logic of the financial security of the mobile values of share prices, but also questions of ethics, aesthetics, semantics and metaphysics. This essay historicizes and interrogates the new paradigm of value emanating from ‘the temple of speculation’ and attempts to think through its global, cultural and economic effects beyond the mystifications that it engenders. (shrink)

Cet ensemble ne cherche pas à gommer par des ponts et des raccords le disparate des préoccupations, l'aléatoire des sollicitations. Il forme toutefois un ouvrage qui a ses obsessions, ses retours, ses insistances. Le cours de l'Histoire et les philosophies qui ont cherché à le comprendre, la place dominante prise aujourd'hui par le discours économique, les quêtes extrêmes de sens, aux limites de la raison, la fidélité à des causes qui ont pu passer pour utopiques, voilà quelques tracés qui se (...) rendent visibles. Quoi de commun entre l'espoir fou d'Antonin Artaud de "guérir la vie" en transgressant les frontières de la rationalité occidentale, et la tentative d'Emmanuel Lévinas de fonder l'éthique sur le visage de l'autre pour subvertir la tyrannie de l'universel et de l'impersonnel? Quoi de commun entre la temporalité anhistorique de l'Islam et l'espoir militant d'une libération des femmes qui ouvre une autre Histoire? Dans le choc des réflexions aux prises avec l'inattendu, dans l'irruption des conjonctures inquiétantes, ces effets de brisures, ces fractures du temps, ne contredisent pourtant pas un souffle d'irréversible, qui confirme ce que les pensées de l'Histoire et leur foi dans l'avenir ont pressenti. J.J.G. (shrink)

Looking closely at the work of such major figures as Lacan, Derrida, and Nietzsche, Goux extends the implications of Marxism and Freudianism to an interdisciplinary semiotics of value and proposes a radical concept of exchange.

This volume of twelve essays focuses on two interrelated issues. First it addresses the historical and cultural determinants that have given rise to what frequently has been described as 'the French exception': the unusually conflictual French political process inherited from the revolutionary past in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its accompanying avant-gardism in artistic, literary and philosophical practice, both of which distinguish France from other European countries. Second, the contributors assess the exhaustion of this tradition in recent years - (...) noted prominently on the occasion of the celebration of the bicentennial of the Revolution in 1989 - in a progressive 'normalization' of French society that has been the final outcome of the liquidation of the colonial empire, the collapse of Marxism as a social force. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 31-38, November 2011.

Joseph Ben-David (1920-1986) fut un des sociologues des sciences les plus innovateurs et les plus en vue des années soixante et soixante-dix. Travaillant dans le cadre des théories sociologiques de Max Weber, Talcott Parsons et Robert Kmerton, il élabora dans ses ouvrages et nombreux articles une théorie sociologique originale du développement scientifique. Par sa démarche diachronique, il se démarque des sociologues des sciences de l'école fonctionnaliste ; par sa perspective sociologique, il définit des nouvelles problématiques qui viennent s'ajouter à (...) celles des historiens des sciences travaillant dans une optique " internaliste ". Dans le présent ouvrage ont été réunis et traduits les articles les plus importants de Ben-David, qui, ensemble, dessinent les contours d'une sociologie historique des sciences. Par son pouvoir explicatif, cette théorie est à même d'enrichir la pratique de l'historien des sciences, tandis que, par sa réaffirmation des vertus éthiques des rôles sociaux du savant et de l'Université, elle est d'une grande actualité pour les débats sur l'enseignement supérieur en France. (shrink)

What does it mean to give a "gift"? In this timely collection, distinguished anthropologists--Maurice Godelier, George Marcus, Stephen Tyler--and philosophers--Mark C. Taylor, John D. Caputo, Jean-Joseph Goux and Adriaan Peperzak, explore an enigma that has disturbed contemporary philosophers from Marcel Mauss to Jacques Derrida.The essays included in the volume: Some Things You Give, Some Things You Sell, But Some Things You Must Keep for Yourselves: What Mauss Did Not Say about Sacred Objects by Maurice Godelie.The Gift and Globalization: (...) A Prolegomenon to the Anthropological Study of Contemporary Finance Capital and Its Mentalities by George MarcusCapitalizing (on) Gifting by Mark C. Taylor"Even Steven" or "No Strings Attached" by Stephen TylerMothering, Co-muni-cation and the Gifts of Language by Genevieve VaughanThe Time of Giving, the Time of Forgiving by John D. CaputoSeneca against Derrida: Gift and Alterity by Jean-Joseph Goux Giving by Adriaan Peperzak. (shrink)

Nowadays there is a paradox ruling utopia. The place for the ‘spirit of youth’ in our society, apart from the traditional age groups, ought to mean a strong upswell of utopian projects, since youth is the age for questioning the world as it is, and idealistically rebuilding the future. And yet there is a paralysis of optimistic imagination as to the future. It is the unpredictability of the future, in a world that makes creating the new in every field its (...) very driver, that makes any imaginings about a future society so perilous and uncertain. However, the demand for diversity and the aesthetic dimension are two factors that could characterize the contemporary vision, in contrast to the old austere utopias that are now bankrupt. (shrink)

The increasing availability of brain data within and outside the biomedical field, combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to brain data analysis, poses a challenge for ethics and governance. We identify distinctive ethical implications of brain data acquisition and processing, and outline a multi-level governance framework. This framework is aimed at maximizing the benefits of facilitated brain data collection and further processing for science and medicine whilst minimizing risks and preventing harmful use. The framework consists of four primary (...) areas of regulatory intervention: binding regulation, ethics and soft law, responsible innovation, and human rights. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page W1-W2, January 2012.

Absent within Jean-Luc Marion’s theory of selfhood is an account of psychosis that displaces standard phenomenological and psychoanalytic models. Working primarily with Book V of Being Given, my paper sketches the formal possibilities exhibited in a self who cannot manage the superabundance of the given and, swept away by an uncontrollable flood of givenness, thereby falls into a hysteria of self-experience and loses its ipseity. Then, contrasting psychosis with positive figures of the self, I explore the dynamic relationship between (...) givenness and the gifted highlighted by the phenomenological diremption and effacement of selfhood displayed in both. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion proposes what he calls the “phenomenology of givenness” (phénoménologie de la donation) as the true “first philosophy.” In this paper I consider his critique of previous first philosophies and his argument for the phenomenology of givenness as their replacement. I note several problems with the phenomenology of givenness and conclude that it does not seem ready yet to assume the title of “first philosophy.”.