Is Nederland een fraudeland geworden? Na alle berichten over boekhoudschandalen en het bekend worden van illegale prijsafspraken is het terecht dat die vraag wordt gesteld. Het oplichten van aandeelhouders of van klanten gaat in tegen verschillende ethische noties. Het verstrekken van onjuiste informatie is niet alleen vanuit een utilistisch standpunt verwerpelijk vanwege de economische schade die ontstaat doordat een optimale marktwerking belemmerd wordt. Ook vanuit een deontologisch perspectief staan de ethische seinen op rood: het bedriegen van aandeelhouders of klanten getuigt (...) van weinig respect en is onrechtvaardig omdat dit zelfverrijking mogelijk maakt ten koste gaat van de stakeholders. Ook vanuit het perspectief van de deugdenethiek zijn deze praktijken verwerpelijk: het achterhouden van informatie getuigt van een gebrek aan integriteit en heeft een negatieve voorbeeldfunctie naar anderen. (shrink)

The rise of liberal market economies, propagated by neoliberal free market thought, has created a vacant responsibility for public interests in the market order of society. This development has been critiqued by Catholic social teaching (CST), forcefully arguing that governments and businesses should be directed to the common good. In this debate, no attention has yet been given to the Reformational tradition and its principle of sphere sovereignty, which provides guidelines on the responsibilities of governments and companies for the public (...) interest of society. This article analyzes the differences and similarities between CST and the Reformational philosophy in their critiques of the neoliberal free market perspective of Hayek. We apply the three perspectives to the case of orphan drugs in the pharmaceutical industry and show that CST and the Reformational philosophy offer valuable insights in correction to Hayek’s views on the responsibilities of governments and companies for public health interests. (shrink)

In this article, I reflect on the nature of innovation to lay the groundwork for a philosophy of innovation. First, I contrast the contemporary techno-economic paradigm of innovation with the work of Joseph Schumpeter. It becomes clear that Schumpeter’s work provides good reasons to question the techno-economic paradigm of innovation. Second, I contrast ‘innovation’ with ‘technology’ and identify five differences between the two concepts. Third, I reflect on the process-outcome dimension and the ontic-ontological dimension of innovation to develop four characteristics (...) of the phenomenon of innovation. These four characteristics move beyond the techno-economic paradigm of innovation and highlight, first, the importance of its process dimension understood as ontogenesis, second, the outcome of innovation, and third, the importance of the ontological dimension of innovation, which is considered adjacent to its fourth characteristic, i.e., the ontic level of the outcome of innovation. After drawing conclusions, a research agenda for future research is provided. (shrink)

In this article, we critically discuss the ideal of alignment, unity and harmony in cross-sector partnerships for wicked problems like sustainable development. We explore four characteristics of the concepts of identity, unity and difference which are presupposed in the partnership and collaboration literature, and point at their metaphysical origin. Based on our analysis of these four characteristics, we show the limitations of the metaphysical concepts of identity and difference in the case of CSPs for wicked problems like sustainable development.

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

In their introduction to Les Guerres d'antan, Mathilde Bernard, Laurence Campa and Ninon Grangé outline the conceptual framework that led to developing this study, which crowns several years of joint research by researchers in history, literature, philosophy and history of art on the sources and models of war. This preliminary work made it possible to establish just how powerful imagination of the wars of yesteryear is in shaping contemporary wars, an observation that led to preparing a symposium in May (...) 2022. The participants of this event, for which the proceedings published here, took this premise as their starting point to query how past conflicts could return to the fore in, whether this was explicit or not, hushed up, denied, on the other hand yet still asserted, acknowledged, used knowingly and for what purpose. Different disciplines were once again highlighted to emphasize and explain the way in which past wars inform present ones. The researchers who were involved in writing this study worked on a long period of time taking a philosophical approach that goes beyond chronological boundaries, and as historians and literary scholars reflecting on a perspective that builds bridges between eras. (shrink)

Voici un ouvrage imposant par sa taille et son ambition. C'est une somme qui arrive à point nommé. Elle propose en effet un ensemble de 38 articles rédigés par une équipe très internationale, à dominante historienne, qui aborde le problème du rapport des femmes au politique à travers le temps (du XVIe au XXe siècle) et l'espace (en Europe et en Amérique du Nord). Organisées de manière chronologique en trois rubriques, « Au seuil de la modernité, les femmes peuvent-elles gouverner (...) ? », .. (shrink)

Si la pensée de Georges Bataille, pensée limite, n'appartient exactement ni à la philosophie ni à la littérature, elle se tisse de l'une et de l'autre mobilisant en outre, suivant les époques, la sociologie, la psychanalyse, la mystique. Précaution ou jeu, face à la psychanalyse comme face à la philosophie, Bataille a toujours plaidé "coupable". Le sens de la faute, chez lui, est central: il détermine sa position à l'égard, de la pensée et des différentes disciplines qu'il mobilise. La faute (...) donne aussi le sens de ce qu'il a cherché au travers d'une communauté, dès ses premiers écrits (sur Sade notamment), et jusqu'aux ultimes (La Littérature et le mal). Au plus près des moments les plus noirs de son oeuvre et des questions théoriques les plus litigieuses qu'elle soulève, L'Art de la faute propose une lecture inédite de Georges Bataille, dans laquelle l'approche des écrits se veut autant biographique (autobiographique, même) que théorique. L'Art de la faute se tient où Bataille rencontre une lectrice singulière: le lieu du fantasme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Our contribution proposes a philosophical and empirical analysis of emerging therapeutic education practices in the field of Parkinson’s disease, managed by deep brain stimulation (DBS). To this end, we mobilise the work on chronic illnesses of sociologists Anselm Strauss and Isabelle Baszanger. Through this conceptual and theoretical approach, the aim is to examine an hypothesis: Can the emerging offer of therapeutic education for Parkinson’s patients, managed by DBS, meet the requirement of a “recomposition” with a chronic degenerative disease whose management (...) remains continuous and life-long? A positive response to this assumption, supported in a second stage, leads us, in a third stage, to raise a limit: How far can we “negotiate” and “recompose” in the context of a disease, managed by a care that tends to increase the life expectancy of the patients and make the symptomatology evolve? Finally, a fourth stage highlights some (non-exhaustive) implications of these findings in ethical and political terms. (shrink)

The semantic poverty of general nouns and their referential versatility could make them excellent means to achieve a co-referential anaphora. Many contexts, however, do not allow a general noun like chose (‘thing’), personne (‘person’) or individu (‘individual’) to reiterate a previously classified referent. The difficulties of such reiterations or the (often pejorative) discursive effects they produce are linked to the referent declassification they involve. In fact, general nouns are distinguished from other superordinate nouns by their weak classifying power. This feature, (...) instead, brings them closer to quality nouns (in Milner’s sense), which appear at the top of the generality continuum in some examples proposed by Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Ce billet a déjà été publié dans Rouge, études diachroniques. Regards croisés de l'art préhistorique à l'art contemporain le 24 juin 2018. Nous remercions Mathilde Buratti de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Kupka, artiste complet du XXe siècle notamment connu pour ses abstractions colorées, est à l'honneur au Grand Palais jusqu'au 30 juillet 2018. Cette rétrospective met en avant la conception originale du peintre. Tout au long de sa carrière, tant dans ses productions abstraites que - Arts (...) plastiques et autres – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Abstract In this chapter, we challenge the presupposed concept of innovation in the responsible innovation literature. As a first step, we raise several questions with regard to the possibility of ‘responsible’ innovation and point at several difficulties which undermine the supposedly responsible character of innovation processes, based on an analysis of the input, throughput and output of innovation processes. It becomes clear that the practical applicability of the concept of responsible innovation is highly problematic and that a more thorough inquiry (...) of the concept is required. As a second step, we analyze the concept of innovation which is self-evidently presupposed in current literature on responsible innovation. It becomes clear that innovation is self-evidently seen as (1) technological innovation, (2) is primarily perceived from an economic perspective, (3) is inherently good and (4) presupposes a symmetry between moral agents and moral addressees. By challenging this narrow and uncritical concept of innovation, we contribute to a second round of theorizing about the concept and provide a research agenda for future research in order to enhance a less naïve concept of responsible innovation. (shrink)

This book examines the work of Ernst Jünger and its effect on the development of Martin Heidegger’s influential philosophy of technology. Vincent Blok offers a unique treatment of Jünger’s philosophy and his conception of the age of technology, in which both world and man appear in terms of their functionality and efficiency. The primary objective of Jünger’s novels and essays is to make the transition from the totally mobilized world of the 20 th century toward a world in which (...) a new type of man represents the gestalt of the worker and is responsive to this new age. Blok proceeds to demonstrate Jünger’s influence on Heidegger’s analysis of the technological age in his later work, as well as Heidegger’s conceptions of will, work and gestalt at the beginning of the 1930s. At the same time, Blok evaluates Heidegger’s criticism of Jünger and provides a novel interpretation of the Jünger-Heidegger connection: that Jünger’s work in fact testifies to a transformation of our relationship to language and conceptualizes the future in terms of the Anthropocene. This book, which arrives alongside several new English-language translations of Jünger’s work, will interest scholars of 20 th -century continental philosophy, Heidegger, and the history of philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The logic RM and its basic fragments (always with implication) are considered here as entire consequence relations, rather than as sets of theorems. A new observation made here is that the disjunction of RM is definable in terms of its other positive propositional connectives, unlike that of R. The basic fragments of RM therefore fall naturally into two classes, according to whether disjunction is or is not definable. In the equivalent quasivariety semantics of these fragments, which consist of subreducts of (...) Sugihara algebras, this corresponds to a distinction between strong and weak congruence properties. The distinction is explored here. A result of Avron is used to provide a local deduction-detachment theorem for the fragments without disjunction. Together with results of Sobociski, Parks and Meyer (which concern theorems only), this leads to axiomatizations of these entire fragments — not merely their theorems. These axiomatizations then form the basis of a proof that all of the basic fragments of RM with implication are finitely axiomatized consequence relations. (shrink)

This article engages the French pragmatism of Laurent Thévenot, Luc Boltanski and Bruno Latour in debates on how to forge a moral-political sociology of ecological valuation, justification and critique. Picking up the debate initiated by Thévenot on the possible emergence of a novel ‘green’ order of worth, the article juxtaposes the sociology of critical capacity of Boltanski and Thévenot with the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour. In doing so, the article suggests that each of these three pragmatic sociologists succeeds, in (...) characteristically different ways, in theoretically articulating an important but partial socio-political grammar of ecological worth. This claim is substantiated by invoking three case studies into environmental critique and compromise, on transnational carbon markets, urban sustainability projects, and Japanese whaling, respectively. Against this backdrop, the article concludes that – when read together as grammarians of the ecological bond – pragmatic sociology provides important insights into the bounded multiplicity of nature’s worth in political modernity. (shrink)

In order to strengthen RI in the private sector, it is imperative to understand how companies organise this process, where it takes place, and what considerations and motivations are central in the innovation process. In this chapter, the questions of whether and where normative considerations play a role in the innovation process, and whether dimensions of RI are present in the innovation process, are addressed. In order answer these research questions, a theoretical framework is developed based on Jones’s theory of (...) ethical decision making and Cooper’s stagegate model of innovation management. In order to answer the research questions, a specific case of innovations that contribute to public health is explored, namely, that of food companies that participate in a Front-of-Pack logo for healthier food. As the use of healthy food logos does not necessarily have a positive impact on sales and profits, it is expected that in the decision-making process, as part of their innovation process, companies make several trade-offs between economic, technical and moral factors. As the social-ethical values at stake in corporate innovation processes have remained to a large extent unexplored in research on innovation management, the aim of this chapter is to identify the motivations and barriers for companies embracing and continuing a FoP logo for healthier food, and to assess whether ethical considerations play a role in this innovation process. From the findings in this research, it will become clear that although the studied companies participated in a programme for healthy food and thus are responsive to the needs of society, and although the companies feel responsible for public health, ethical considerations do not play a central role in the operational innovation process. Instead, technical and economic considerations seem to prevail in the operational innovation process. Furthermore, none of the procedural dimensions of RI seems to be present at this level in the innovation trajectory. It is argued that this may be an indication that the ethical decision-making process for RI is not located at the level of the operational innovation process itself, but is something that might be located on a higher strategic level in the company. It is at this level that the moral decision is taken to adopt the FoP logo and to engage in the RI process. The findings cast a new light on the discourse on RI in general, and in the private sector in particular. (shrink)

Juist in tijden van dreigende catastrofes wijzen romans ons de weg. Ze slaan ons uit onze groef en zetten ons aan tot denken en handelen. Zo helpen ze ons op weg naar een nieuwe zin van het leven. 00In dit essayistische boek bespreekt filosoof Vincent Blok meer dan tachtig moderne en hedendaagse romans. Hij recenseert ze niet, maar laat zien hoe ze ons aanzetten om ons wereldbeeld te kantelen. De romans tonen ons het einde van de wereld waarvan we (...) afscheid moeten nemen, en wijzen ons de weg naar nieuwe werelden.0. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré aux emplois dits « génériques » des pronoms de deuxième personne _tu_ et _vous_, emplois dans lesquels ils peuvent concurrencer certains emplois indéfinis du pronom _on. _Selon certaines analyses, en particulier celles qui font valoir une restructuration du système pronominal français, _tu_ et _vous_ apparaissent comme de simples équivalents de _on_. Selon d’autres analyses, au contraire, le choix de _tu_ ou _vous_ à la place de _on_ n’est pas arbitraire et _tu_ et _vous_ génériques conservent une (...) valeur d’interpellation de l’interlocuteur ou de l’interlocutrice. Nous tenterons de montrer que _tu_ et _vous_ génériques, bien qu’ils ne correspondent pas nécessairement au pronom d’adresse utilisé (notamment _tu_ générique, qui peut être utilisé en contexte de vouvoiement) et qu’ils puissent être indifférents au statut de l’interlocuteur ou de l’interlocutrice (genre ou nombre de celui-/celle-ci, ceux-/celles-ci), conservent bien une valeur d’adresse. (shrink)

Variations in language abilities, use, and production style are ubiquitous within any given population. While research on language evolution has traditionally overlooked the potential importance of such individual differences, these can have an important impact on the trajectory of language evolution and ongoing change. To address this gap, we use a group communication game for studying this mechanism in the lab, in which micro-societies of interacting participants develop and use artificial languages to successfully communicate with each other. Importantly, one participant (...) in the group is assigned a keyboard with a limited inventory of letters (simulating a speech impairment that individuals may encounter in real life), forcing them to communicate differently than the rest. We test how languages evolve in such heterogeneous groups and whether they adapt to accommodate the unique characteristics of individuals with language idiosyncrasies. Our results suggest that language evolves differently in groups where some individuals have distinct language abilities, eliciting more innovative elements at the cost of reduced communicative success and convergence. Furthermore, we observed strong partner-specific accommodation to the minority individual, which carried over to the group level. Importantly, the degree of group-wide adaptation was not uniform and depended on participants’ attachment to established language forms. Our findings provide compelling evidence that individual differences can permeate and accumulate within a linguistic community, ultimately driving changes in languages over time. They also underscore the importance of integrating individual differences into future research on language evolution. (shrink)

Ethical oaths for bankers, economists and managers are increasingly seen as successful instruments to ensure more responsible behaviour. In this article, we reflect on the nature of ethical oaths. Based on John Austin's speech act theory and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, we introduce a performative concept of ethical oaths that is characterised by (1) the existential self-performative of the one I want to be, which is (2) demanded by the public context. Because ethical oaths are (3) structurally threatened by (...) the possibility of infelicity or failure, we stress (4) the behavioural aspect of ethical oaths in economics and business. We conclude that a performative concept of ethical oaths can contribute to more ethical behaviour in economics and business, because the performative involves action and behaviour. At the same time, it becomes clear that a radical new perspective on the nature, function and limitation of oaths is needed. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

This essay explores the theoretical implications of Freud's notion of `the narcissism of minor differences' - the idea that it is precisely the minor differences between people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them. A comparative survey shows that minor differences underlie a wide range of conflicts: from relatively benign forms of campanilismo to bloody civil wars. Freud's tentative statements link up with the insights of Simmel, Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Elias, and (...) Girard. Especially helpful is what Bourdieu writes in Distinction: social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat. An outline of a general theory of power and violence should include consideration of the narcissism of minor differences, also because its counterpart - hierarchy and great differences - makes for relative stability and peace. (shrink)

At the close of the recent Boston Symposium, a panel discussion was held on the general theme of the conference. The following are the remarks of Professor J. N. Findlay of Yale, recorded and transcribed here with his permission.

Le livre reprend les six premiers chapitres de celui que Mariette Sineau avait publié en 2001. Il est enrichi d’un chapitre, « Parité An X », qui propose un bilan des changements quantitatifs et qualitatifs liés à la législation instituant la parité. Pour mémoire, la révision constitutionnelle de 1999 a introduit, à l’article 3 de la Constitution, le fait que « la loi favorise l’égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et fonctions électives ». En conséquence, la (...) loi du 6 ju... (shrink)

À quelles conditions la distribution d’un revenu universel pourrait-elle être émancipatrice pour les femmes? Les présentations du revenu universel par ses promoteurs en font un moyen de choix de ses activités, sans tenir compte des contraintes sociales auxquelles les femmes sont soumises. Ce n’est pas parce qu’une mesure est prise en théorie en faveur de tout le monde qu’elle touche tout le monde de la même manière. On manque encore de recherches sur ces questions. Comment éviter que le revenu universel (...) ne soit qu’un accompagnement vers l’ubérisation? (shrink)

Face à certaines expériences humaines, la morale se tient tranquille. Du moins le souhaiterait-on. Dans la guerre, la pensée est engagée, ou la pensée engage – c’est selon. Selon qu’on y participe – qu’on soit combattant – ou qu’on lutte contre l’occupation – qu’on soit résistant. Dire que la pensée s’engage tandis que la morale se tient tranquille pourrait paraître contradictoire : qu’est-ce qu’une pensée engagée, sinon une pensée qui relève aussi d’une morale ? Et en l’occurrence ici, une morale (...) de l’action ? Politique est la forme que doit prendre la pensée qui s’oriente vers l’action, et qui tente de porter les raisons collectives de l’engagement. Elle donne à la morale une réponse en forme d’évidence, parce qu’elle comporte un risque – celui de vouloir qu’une politique réponde encore, et plus que jamais, à la violence de l’aliénation, de l’oppression. Quelle serait inversement une expérience qui porterait la morale à haute intensité tandis qu’elle se refuserait à l’action ? Quelle (...). (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est un essai libre sur la vie et l'oeuvre d'Arne Naess, philosophe norvégien, écologiste engagé et alpiniste de renom. Dons les années 1970, Naess développe un "mouvement" écologique - plutôt qu'une philosophie - très personnel : une "écosophie", c'est-ô-dire un lien à l'écosphère et à la nature, cette entité dont nous faisons partie ou même titre que les autres espèces, et non une ressource inépuisable extérieure à nous. Il s'attache donc à adopter une attitude particulière vis-à-vis de l'environnement (...) et à vivre en harmonie avec Io nature. Au-delà de sa pensée philosophique, des ouvrages théoriques et des concepts qu'il développe, Naess invite chacun à découvrir son propre rapport à la nature, dans un processus d'identification - et donc d'empathie -, afin de fonder les bases nouvelles d'une écologie qu'il nomme "profonde". Jamais dogmatique ni extrémiste, l'oeuvre de Naess incite au contraire le lecteur à mettre en oeuvre sa propre "écosophie", créative et tolérante, à s'inventer une vie plus écologique sans bouleverser complètement ses habitudes, voire en améliorant sa qualité de vie. Une perspective écologiste qui pourrait sembler évidente, une nouvelle voie pour le développement personnel, sons école de pensée. (shrink)

The starting point of this article is the observation that the emergence of the Anthropocene rehabilitates the need for philosophical reflections on the ontology of technology. In particular, if technological innovations on an ontic level of beings in the world are created, but these innovations at the same time _create_ the Anthropocene World at an ontological level, this raises the question how World creation has to be understood. We first identify four problems with the traditional concept of creation: the anthropocentric, (...) ontic and outcome orientation of traditional concepts of creation, as well as its orientation of material fabrication. We subsequently develop a progressive concept of World creation with four characteristics that move beyond the traditional conceptuality: (1) a materialistic concept of creation that accounts for (2) the ontogenetic process and (3) the ontic and ontological nature of creation, and (4) is conceptualized as semantic creation of the World in which we live and act. (shrink)

what is the ontology of planets?Our access point to this question is the ontology of planet Earth. Although the presence of life marks planet Earth as special among other planets, Earth shares a basic commonality with them – namely, its material existence. We take this commonality as a point of departure for our reflections on the ontology of both planet Earth and other planets. In this chapter, we ask for the ontology of this materiality of planets. We consult the ontology (...) of planet Earth as I developed it in an earlier contribution (Blok, 2019), explore the ontology of planets as absolute boundary of the natural habitats on Earth, and reflect on the opportunities and limitations such ontology provides for future human colonies on other planets. (shrink)

In the thirties, Martin Heidegger was heavily involved with the work of Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). He says that he is indebted to Jünger for the ‘enduring stimulus’ provided by his descriptions. The question is: what exactly could this enduring stimulus be? Several interpreters have examined this question, but the recent publication of lectures and annotations of the thirties allow us to follow Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger more precisely. -/- According to Heidegger, the main theme of his philosophical thinking in the (...) thirties was the overcoming of the metaphysics of the will to power. But whereas he seems to be quite revolutionary in heralding ‘another beginning’ of philosophy in the beginning of the thirties, he later on realized that his own revolutionary vocabulary was itself influenced by the will to power. In his later work, one of the main issues is the releasement from the wilful way of philosophical thinking. My hypothesis is that Jünger has this importance for Heidegger in the thirties, because the confrontation with Jünger’s way of thinking showed him that the other beginning of philosophy presupposes the irrevocable releasement of willing and a gelassen or non-willing way of philosophical thinking. -/- In this article, we test this hypothesis in relation to the recently published lectures, annotations and unpublished notes from the thirties. After a brief explanation of Jünger’s diagnosis of modernity (§1), we consider Heidegger’s reception of the work of Jünger in the thirties (§2). He not only sees that Jünger belongs to Nietzsche’s metaphysics of the will to power, but also shows the modern-metaphysical character of Jünger’s way of thinking. In section three, we focus on Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger in relation to the consummation of modernity. According to Heidegger, Jünger is not only the end of modern metaphysics, but also the perishing (Verendung) of this end, the oblivion of this end in the will to power of representation. In section four, we focus on the real controversy between Jünger and Heidegger: the releasement of willing and the necessity of a radical other beginning of philosophical thinking. -/- . (shrink)

This paper is based on Lectures 1, 2 and 4 in the series of ten lectures titled “Algebraic Structures for Logic” that Professor Blok and I presented at the Twenty Third Holiday Mathematics Symposium held at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 8-12, 1999. These three lectures presented a new approach to the algebraization of deductive systems, and after the symposium we made plans to publish a joint paper, to be written by Blok, further (...) developing these ideas. That project was still incomplete when Blok died. In fact, there is no indication that he had prepared a draft of the paper, and we do not know what new material he intended to include. I am therefore not in a position to complete the project as he had envisioned it. So, I have settled for the more limited objective of presenting the material from the three lectures, leaving to others the task of adapting the techniques used there to more general situations. (shrink)

In this article, we reflect on the conditions under which new technologies emerge in the Anthropocene and raise the question of how to conceptualize sustainable technologies therein. To this end, we explore an eco-centric approach to technology development, called biomimicry. We discuss opposing views on biomimetic technologies, ranging from a still anthropocentric orientation focusing on human management and control of Earth’s life-support systems, to a real eco-centric concept of nature, found in the responsive conativity of nature. This concept provides the (...) ontological and the epistemological condition for an eco-centric concept of biomimetic technologies in the Anthropocene. We distinguish five principles for this concept that can guide future technological developments. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on the concept of nature that is presupposed in biomimetic approaches to technology and innovation. Because current practices of biomimicry presuppose a technological model of nature, it is questionable whether its claim of being a more ecosystem friendly approach to technology and innovation is justified. In order to maintain the potentiality of biomimicry as ecological innovation, we explore an alternative to this technological model of nature. To this end, we reflect on the materiality of natural (...) systems and explore a natural model of nature, which is found in the responsive conativity of matter. This natural model of nature enables us to conceptualize biomimicry as conative responsiveness to the conativity of the biosphere. (shrink)