In recent decades, the general public has become increasingly receptive toward a legislation that allows active voluntary euthanasia. The purpose of this study was to survey the current attitude towards AVE within the Austrian population and to identify explanatory factors in the areas of socio-demographics, personal experiences with care, and ideological orientation. A further objective was to examine differences depending on the type of problem formulation for the purpose of measuring attitude.

For the first English edition of his distinguished study, Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philoloas und Platon, Mr. Burkert has extensively ...

Nel presente contributo proponiamo un’intervista a Nathalie Simondon, responsabile dell’edizione dell’opera di Gilbert Simondon, al fine di fare luce sui temi di ecologia, enciclopedismo, transdisciplinarità e umanismo nella produzione filosofica di Gilbert Simondon.

It is important to understand the drivers of green consumption, because of growing concern for the health of the planet. In this paper, the assumption that a virtue-green product relationship exists is tested. The objective is to understand how product morality can influence the valuation of green products. Relying on virtue theory and positive spillover as conceptual bases, the research implicitly and explicitly tests and confirms green product virtue. The results demonstrate that perceived green product virtue leads to positive emotions, (...) which explain heightened purchase intentions. In line with the conceptualization, I show that the effect is moderated by the importance consumers place on their own morality. Importantly, explicitly framing green products as virtuous activates positive spillover by consumers; when green products are branded with a virtue cue, they encourage consumers to be more virtuous. Beyond being perceived as better people, when consumers interact with green products they effectively engage in more moral acts, such as making donations. The results confirm the perception of green products as moral agents and provide marketers with insights into the marketing value of virtue cues in green product consumption. (shrink)

Evolutionary biologists, evolutionary epistemologists, and biosemioticians have demonstrated that organisms not merely adapt to an external world, but that they actively construct their environmental, sociocultural, and cognitive niches. Denis Noble demonstrates that such is no different for those organisms that engage in science, and he lays bare several crucial assumptions that define the scientific dogmas and practices of evolutionary biology.

By presenting ‘an Arab view’ on the much-discussed ‘footprint-scene’, Aeschylus, ch. 205ff., L. A. Tregenza was able to prove that, judging by Bedouin customs, this strange method of recognition is not so impossible and childish as some ancient and modern critics have believed. In addition, a specifically Greek aspect of the problem may be pointed out.

Universal Darwinism provides a methodology to study the evolution of anatomical form and sociocultural behavior that centers on defining the units and levels of selection, and it identifies the conditions whereby natural selection operates. In previous work, I have examined how this selection-focused evolutionary epistemology may be universalized to include theories that associate with an extended synthesis. Applied evolutionary epistemology is a metatheoretical framework that understands any and all kinds of evolution as phenomena where units evolve by mechanisms at levels (...) of an ontological hierarchy; and it provides three heuristics to search for these units, levels and mechanisms. The heuristics are applicable to language and sociocultural evolution, and here, we give an in-depth analysis of how the unit-heuristic can be implemented into language origin and evolution studies. The importance of developing hierarchy theories is also more fully explained. (shrink)

Philosophy up to now is bound to a chain of tradition that starts with Greek texts about 2,400 years ago: the works of Plato and Aristotle have been studied continuously since then; they were transmitted to Persians and Arabs and back to Europe and are still found in every philosophical library. Plato, in turn, was not an absolute beginning; he read and criticized Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Protagoras, and other sophists; Aristotle read and criticized Plato and everything else he could (...) find, up to Anaximander. Even if philosophy is anything but certain about its own identity, the definition of philosophy is inseparably bound to the Greek fundaments. Nobody has been able to reinvent philosophy because it has always been there. (shrink)

Translation: How did life originate? What were the first life forms? How did the cells of our body evolve? Is natural selection the only mechanism whereby evolution occurs? What did Darwin mean with the term natural selection and do we still use that definition today? Does evolution occur slow or fast? Are we determined by our genes? We all ask ourselves these questions from time to time. Scientists however often get too technical and philosophers too speculative in their answers. This (...) book aims to form a bridge between the life and human sciences. Questions on the origin and evolution of life are analyzed critically from within different disciplines. The result is a state of the art, accessible for philosophers and scientists as well as non-academics. Many of the answered proposed can thereby be understood as complements, deviations and alternatives to the standard paradigm of biology, the Modern Synthesis. These deviating statements are bundles into 15 theses. The question then becomes in how far the Modern Synthesis should become the subject of revision based upon these theses. Original: Hoe is leven ontstaan? Welke vorm nam het eerste leven aan? Hoe ontstonden de cellen waaruit ons lichaam is opgebouwd? Is natuurlijke selectie het enige mechanisme waarlangs evolutie zich voordoet? Wat bedoelde Darwin met natuurlijke selectie en gebruiken we deze definitie vandaag nog? Voltrekt evolutie zich traag of snel? Worden we gedetermineerd door onze genen? We stellen ons allemaal deze vragen wel eens. Wetenschappers worden echter algauw te technisch en filosofen te speculatief bij het beantwoorden ervan. Dit boek wil een brug slaan tussen de natuurwetenschappen en de menswetenschappen en de vragen omtrent de oorsprong en evolutie van leven, kritisch en nuchter, vanuit verschillende disciplines analyseren. Het resultaat is een huidige stand van zaken, leesbaar, zowel voor filosofen als wetenschappers en ook voor de leek. Vele van de voorgestelde antwoorden kunnen daarbij begrepen worden als aanvullingen, afwijkingen of alternatieven van het standaardparadigma in de biologie: de Moderne Synthese. Deze afwijkende stellingen werden gebundeld in 15 thesen. De vraag is in hoeverre de Moderne Synthese, in relatie met deze thesen, onderwerp voor herziening moet zijn. (shrink)

History of religion, in its beginnings, had to struggle to emancipate itself from classical mythology as well as from theology and philosophy; when ritual was finally found to be the basic fact in religious tradition, the result was a divorce between classicists, treating mythology as a literary device, on the one hand, and specialists in festivals and rituals and their obscure affiliations and origins on the other.

Melancholia Africana argues that in the African and Afro-diasporic context, melancholy is rooted in collective experiences such as slavery, colonization, and the post-colony.

Comment l’art vient-il aux personnes, aux objets, aux activités? Comment passe-t-on d’une activité quelconque à un art, d’un simple artefact à une oœuvre et d’un praticien à un artiste? C’est cette opération qu’explore ce livre, sous le nom d’« artification » : un déplacement durable et collectivement assumé de la frontière entre art et non-art. Conditions pratiques, techniques, sémantiques, juridiques, institutionnelles, organisationnelles... Les enquêtes réunies ici explorent ces différentes dimensions avec les outils de la sociologie pragmatique, attentive à la matérialité (...) des actions observées en situation. Le lecteur circulera ainsi de la danse hip-hop à la photographie, du graf aux métiers d’art, de l’art naïf à l’art brut, des arts primitifs au théâtre, du cirque à la magie, de la typographie au cinéma, de la mode aux objets de culte et de la bande dessinée au patrimoine. Et c’est au terme de ce petit voyage en artification qu’il aura enfin réponse, précisément, à la question : quand y a-t-il art? (shrink)

Hence, argumentation will have an increasing importance in education, both because it is a critical competence that has to be learned, and because argumentation ...

Jean-Paul Sartre, philosophe, écrivain, dramaturge et grande figure de l'intellectuel politique, aura profondément marqué le XX siècle. Penseur de la liberté et de son envers, l'aliénation, de l'engagement et de la responsabilité, du pour-soi et de l'en-soi, de la conscience et du monde, du sujet et d'autrui, de la morale et de la mauvaise foi, du groupe en fusion et de la série, de la totalité et de l'Histoire, il est une voix originale de la Phénoménologie. Pour Sartre, l'homme est (...) tout entier libre et responsable de ses actes, sans excuse, et tout entier aliéné, parce qu'il est conscience de monde, position de soi dans une certaine situation - qui n'a de sens que pour une conscience libre. On se propose ici de parcourir son œuvre difficile et dense, de la Transcendance de l'Ego à L'idiot de la famille en passant par l'Être et le néant et Morale et Histoire, notamment. D'abord, la vie politique de Sartre pour dégager la cohérence de ses engagements. Ensuite, sa philosophie de la liberté, la découverte des philosophies de Husserl et de Heidegger, puis l'invention proprement sartrienne, la voie transphénoménale, qui permet de repenser le rapport de l'homme au monde avec le concept de cogito préréflexif, au croisement de la problématique de la liberté et de l'aliénation. Puis on restitue sa compréhension de la genèse d'une société, de l'Histoire et de ses conditions de possibilité, la force des conditionnements mais aussi la marge d'action de toute liberté. Vient après l'histoire d'une liberté en particulier, celle de Gustave Flaubert. A la suite, on traite de la morale et du sens qu'elle peut avoir pour une philosophie de la situation. On s'intéresse enfin au Sartre théoricien de la littérature, du théâtre et des arts. (shrink)

This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the East - a particular strand of Tibetan Buddhism - the other to the West - the Orthodox tradition of the heart prayer - in order to try to show the similarities and differences in their approach to the body and attempt (...) to compare them in the light of their respective ‘phenomenology’. In this sense phenomenology, as a western philosophical discipline, plays a pivotal role in this comparison and hopefully helps to bring new light to bear on this investigation. The early Eastern church evokes the concrete experience of the body as a holy body and sees it as an exemplary route to deification via the mystical practice of the ‘heart prayer’ (hesychasm). As regards Tibetan Buddhism, it advocates the gradual experience of the body as a rainbow body, defined as a path towards illumination, by means of ‘sitting meditation’ which brings liberation in bardo. In order to carry out this analysis, I shall refer to two recent books that are authorities in both these fields, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps by O. Clément and Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion by Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché. (shrink)

Toegang tot het recht in de rechtsstaat This paper considers access to the rule of law as a requirement for the well-functioning of the rule of law in society. In most rule of law debates, access to the rule of law is not a topic of discussion because these scholars focus themselves solely on the legalistic dimension of the rule of law. Barber was the first to mention the social dimension explicitly but without a theoretical framework. Based on the three (...) capitals of Bourdieu, this paper offers a framework to determine the elements of the social dimension. With these capitals, barriers to the access to the rule of law for individuals can be identified, and solutions can be offered. (shrink)

Résumé Après la première exposition « du vide » d’Yves Klein, nombreux sont les artistes à avoir proposé des expositions en apparence vide. Dans les années 2000, elles sont l’objet d’un intérêt nouveau de la part de commissaires. Leur auto-réflexivité interroge sur le geste curatorial et sa dimension iconoclaste. La disparition de l’œuvre concourt à une mise en valeur du lieu institutionnel, voire à son image de marque. En offrant une nouvelle visibilité, ces expositions posent la question de la disparition (...) de l’œuvre comme corollaire de l’invention d’un véritable dispositif socio-symbolique. (shrink)

Résumé Dans les pratiques actuelles de l’art, il n’est pas rare de visiter des expositions littéralement vides qui présentent des œuvres se détournant du visuel et du visible. Face à ces invisibilités constitutives, il est parfois difficile de distinguer l’œuvre invisible de son exposition. Alors que certains artistes prévoient les conditions de la réception, l’institution n’hésite pas à jouer de la transparence de l’œuvre dans sa stratégie de représentation et de communication.

Este texto explora a antropologia subjacente ao Princípio Responsabilidade. Jonas, ali, propõe um humanismo não antropocêntrico que leva em conta a posição deiscente do homem na natureza e sublinha a mútua dependência essencial entre eles. A crítica às utopias e essa posição deiscente do humano completam a réplica de Jonas ao dualismo acósmico de tipo gnóstico, isto é, do homem e da natureza, com um argumento ontológico e ético. Com efeito,se a essência da natureza e a do homem são mutuamente (...) dependentes, as consequências do agir (tecnológico) humano importam em última instância para a humanidade também. Ora, desde que o homem é homem, ele é o que deve ser e não é preciso tentar melhorar seuser enquanto tal. Por conseguinte, nenhum humano pode ser sacrificado em nome de um futuro melhor (cf. crítica de Bloch). Por outro lado, seguindo a lógica metabólica do vivente, o humano é caracterizado por um fiat constante, um agir pelo qual ele ganha ou perde sua dignidade moral no seio de cada ato singular, o que contrasta com a lógica da acumulação tecnológica. Em razão do que denominamos uma antropologia dos incomensuráveis, em que o agir moral não é jamais assegurado, Jonas recusa toda concepção utópica que implicaria um sacrifício de alguém (tanto dos contemporâneos pelos homens futuros, quanto dos homens futuros pelos contemporâneos), mas ele propõe uma ética da renúncia. Renunciar àpresunção que nos faria ocupar uma posição que não é a nossa e negligenciar as condições de possibilidade de nosso agir no mundo. (shrink)

Language research is currently in a state of flux. The phenomenon of language is not merely the topic of investigation in linguistics, it is examined by a multitude of scholars with different scientific backgrounds. In order to examine how these various disciplines approach language, a think-tank was founded in 2002, called DITO, Dynamisch Inter(-en trans)disciplinair onderzoek, or Dynamic Inter- (and trans)disciplinary Research. The think-tank is located at the Belgian Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels). This book provides short introductory (...) articles to the language research conducted by some of the think-tank’s most important members, from within the point of view of the following 5 disciplines: philosophy of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, sign language research and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

In 2010, two years after the global financial collapse that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the best-selling publication in France was not that year’s Prix Goncourt,1 Michel Houellebecq’s La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory), a novel published by Flammarion, one of Paris’s leading publishing houses. That honor went to Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage!), a 32-page pamphlet authored by 93-year-old Stéphane Hessel, a former hero of the French Resistance, a concentration (...) camp survivor and career diplomat. Hessel’s booklet, issued by Indigène Editions, a small provincial publisher, has since sold over 2 million copies, reaching an estimated 10 million .. (shrink)

Ce texte a été publié dans Carnets, n° 6, janvier 2016 – Exotopies de Barthes, p. 130-142. Résumé : L'idiorrythmie, terme que Barthes emprunte au vocabulaire religieux des monastères et qui répond à son « fantasme d'une solitude collective », d'un compromis entre retrait et engagement, est, selon nous, en germe depuis les premiers travaux et sous-tend toute son écriture. Car, parmi le foisonnement de métaphores littéraires ou philosophiques mobilisées pour mener à bien son combat d'écrivain contre le - Poétique (...) et Études littéraires – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

We examine how insights made in socio-anthropological and evolutionary schools of thought necessitate us to reevaluate the classic philosophical distinction between epistemology and ontology. We adopt an applied evolutionary epistemological stance and demonstrate that both epistemology and ontology evolve. Epistemology is broadened to include all knowledge and information that all life forms evolve, and ontology encompasses all biologically informed realities that life builds. Through processes such as symbiosis and niche construction, organisms acquire and extend information and knowledge into their offspring, (...) onto unrelated organisms, and onto their niches. Life builds biorealities that change over time. Consequently, knowledge and reality are mutable and truth is spatiotemporally bounded. We conclude that the classic distinction between epistemology and ontology has become superfluous and instead, we argue that the evolving knowledge that comes in the form of organisms and their extended niches equals ontological realities. (shrink)