Spinoza, according to common opinion, could only have written lamentable platitudes on sexual love, narrowly inspired by the prejudices of his time and without serious philosophical foundation: that for which, in the past, he has been congratulated,1 he is now reproached; or, at best, excused. He would even have, some believe to be able to add, increased the pervading puritanism: sexuality, as such, would give rise in him to a deep repulsion and women would horrify him. The second of these (...) two assertions, if one sticks to the manifest content of the texts, actually rests on nothing; if one calls upon their latent content, it would require, to be established with a minimum of rigor, a study of which we will not dispute the theoretical possibility, but which, in fact, has not yet been undertaken. The first, on the other hand, has all the appearance of the obvious: that men love women for their beauty and do not support their attachment to someone else,2 that they desire them more the more admirers they have,3 that the jealousy of the male is exacerbated by the representation of the pudenda and of the excrementa of his rival,4 that sensual attachment is unstable and conflictual,5 that it often turns to obsession,6 that Adam loved Eve because of their similarity of nature,7 that he who remains insensitive to the generosity of a courtesan does not offend by ingratitude,8 that only free men and free women can marry one another and only if they want children,9 well, it seems, that isn’t anything sensational; now these eight passages, if the two definitions of the libido are added to them,10 are the only, if I’m not mistaken, that Spinoza expressly devoted to the question! He would therefore, apparently, only have drawn up a report of deficiency. (shrink)

Recent research has investigated how the sense of relational entitlement diminishes couple satisfaction, but little is known about how SRE affects the daily quality of close, romantic relationships. Moreover, the evidence on how SRE interacts with other features of a satisfying relationship is scarce. Using an electronic daily diary, we examined 99 couples for 7 days, with two daily measurements for each partner. We used a dyadic double intercept multilevel model, which simultaneously computes effects for men and women. We tested (...) a model where one partner's daily couple satisfaction was predicted by their overall levels of SRE and by their daily and overall levels of self-disclosure, perceived partner self-disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness. The model also included person-level interactions and cross-level interactions between the SRE types and variables of the interpersonal process model of relationships for each gender. The analysis indicated that person-level excessive SRE lowers couple satisfaction. Also, day and person-level perceived partner responsiveness and person-level self-disclosure are related to couple satisfaction, but the latter association is significant only for men. Finally, we found some significant person-level interactions that account for changes in couple satisfaction. For men, the links between couple satisfaction, excessive and restricted SRE were moderated by self-disclosure and perceived partner responsiveness, respectively, perceived partner self-disclosure and perceived partner responsiveness. For women, the associations between couple satisfaction, restricted and assertive SRE were moderated by self-disclosure, respectively, perceived partner self-disclosure. This study advances our understanding of the general implications of SRE in the dynamics of couple relationships. More specifically, it shows how SRE interacts with other couple-specific variables in shaping day-to-day couple satisfaction. The theoretical and clinical implications for couple therapy are discussed. (shrink)

Les lecons publiees par L. Robin dans le present ouvrage furent professees par O. Hamelin en 1904-1905 a l'Ecole normale superieure, et se presentent comme une synthese de ses travaux particuliers sur Aristote. Bien que ces etudes aient en vue la totalite du corpus - ainsi que l'indique le titre sous lequel elles sont regroupees - elles n'en traitent cependant pas toutes les parties avec une egale ampleur. C'est ainsi que la logique fait l'objet des recherches les plus approfondies: on (...) trouvera en effet dans ces pages une lecture detaillee de l'Organon suivant un parcours qui progresse depuis les categories et le concept jusqu'aux raisonnements et aux syllogisme modaux, en passant par la theorie du jugement, et qui fait egalement place a l'explicitation de concepts logiques fondamentaux comme la demonstration, la definition, l'induction, ou encore la dialectique et l'idee de science. Passant de la logique a la Physique, puis de l'etude de la nature (inerte ou vivante) et de ses concepts a celle de l'ame, l'ouvrage culmine avec la metaphysique dans l'etude de l'intellect, de l'acte libre et dans la theorie de l'etre. Si la triade Logique - Nature - Esprit qui semble gouverner la progression de ces cours ne permet pas d'aborder pour elles-memes la morale et la politique, il n'en reste pas moins que ces pages donnent l'acces a la doctrine aristotelicienne tout entiere, en eclairant les parties memes qu'elles ne parcourent pas explicitement. (shrink)

This article analyzes the conditions under which any change in a multiplicative background risk induces a more cautious behavior. We give necessary and sufficient conditions under which any change in the multiplicative background risk with respect to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance raises local risk aversion. Surprisingly, decreasing relative risk aversion of any order up to N in the sense of Pratt coupled with decreasing relative risk aversion in the sense of Ross are sufficient to guarantee an increase in local risk (...) aversion after any deterioration of the multiplicative background risk thanks to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance. We link our results concerning second-order stochastic dominance with the concept of multiplicative risk vulnerability. (shrink)

Les travaux d'Alexandre Matheron sur Spinoza et sur la philosophie de l'âge classique représentent un des points forts de l'école française d'histoire de la philosophie. Après Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza et Le Christ et le salut des ignorants, ces études complètent la vision du spinozisme et de son contexte, de ses racines et de sa signification historique. Elles traitent de tous les domaines du rationalisme classique : métaphysique, théorie de la connaissance, analyse des passions, éthique, politique et religion. (...) La méthode qui anime ces textes est celle d'une analyse structurale de la pensée philosophique : il s'agit de prendre au sérieux le caractère conceptuel des doctrines, leurs enchaînements argumentatifs, la rigueur et la cohérence de leurs catégories. Mais la considération de l'architecture d'un monument théorique ne se conçoit pas sans la biographie non de l'auteur mais de l'oeuvre : comment Spinoza est devenu Spinoza ; en d'autres termes, comment il a forgé sa pensée en traversant les arguments et les concepts de Machiavel, de Hobbes ou de Descartes pour arriver à des formulations de plus en plus spinozistes de son ontologie de la puissance. Le rationalisme absolu apparaît ainsi non seulement comme contenu des pensées étudiées mais aussi comme méthode d'histoire de la philosophie. Une démarche qui a donné des outils intellectuels à plusieurs générations de chercheurs et qui indique aujourd'hui le chemin pour pénétrer dans l'univers de la pensée classique. La seule façon rigoureuse de nous demander ce qui pour nous, de ces philosophies, est vrai. (shrink)

Precisely as he was repoliticizing his philosophy and criticizing his “theorist deviation”, Althusser wrote in 1967 that he did not know, after all, what was politics. In 1978, in Marx in his limits, he wrote that the classic Marxism “has never yet provided the beginning of an analysis answering the question : what can politics be about ?”. This article attempts to reconstruct the positivity of such remarks, on the basis of a sketch devoted in 1961 to the “Marxist conception (...) of politics”. In asking the question of what politics would look like in a communist regime, the “mature” Althusser undermines all Marxist conceptions of politics, starting with that of class struggles aiming at seizing State power - and even of class struggle per se. Moreover, he shakes Althusserianism even as it is barely taking shape. In his mention of “a zone which is not located in theoretical concepts, and which will be precisely the zone liberated by the end of classically conceived politics”, Althusser shows that politics can only take place when it is not located in any predetermined space. This non-situationability of politics takes its positive dimension when Althusser studies the “strange shaking of theory” operated in Machiavelli’s work. (shrink)

Today, Louis Althusser’s work knows a singular destiny. Relatively unknown until the 1992 publication of his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever, his work has since been enriched by several volumes of previously unpublished texts, and the re-edition of works that have long been unavailable. All the conditions therefore, as suggested by the numerous works, articles and conferences dedicated to Althusser, seem to be in place for a critical reexamination of his thought. For many reasons, however, this has not been the (...) result at all. Beyond the slightly sterile polemics concerning the respective status of the “legitimate work” and the posthumous work, beyond the particularly sensitive question of the relation between biography and theory, beyond the quarrels of inheritance and the resentment towards both the man and the master, beyond the detours of a psychiatric commentary as little indifferent to the reality of the texts as of the “case,” we must admit a well-established fact: today, the field of Althusserian studies has not yet been constituted. Within the field of French philosophy, one cannot find a single profound study on the place of Althusser in the history of Marxism, the history of philosophy or epistemology. This is because this type of study more or less implicitly supposes a certain global evaluation of the kind that the work of Althusser seems particularly designed to discourage. How do we evaluate works that have not ceased to destroy themselves? How do we evaluate works so heterogeneous, in which flashes of brilliance inhabit the same space as shocking theoretical indignities? How do we bring together texts as stimulating as the celebrated, “Ideology and the Ideological Apparatus of the State,” with the rather unsettling, “On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production,” of which it is in certain details but a fragment? If the form of academic commentary seems impossible from the start, perhaps one can say the same of the project of separating the wheat from the chaff, of distinguishing “what is living and what is dead” in the work of Louis Althusser. Difficult to inscribe within the continuity of history, Althusser’s work is, in fact, irremediably enigmatic. All that passes this way, behind such fiercely proclaimed revelations, has itself formed a profoundly aporetic structure marked by the general uncertainty of any attempt at reading. For Althusser progressively destroys the theories that he could have advanced. Already troubling by itself, this phenomenon hides another even more disturbing one: there is without a doubt not a single Althusserian concept that, in its foundation, is not immediately affected by its opposite. Here we seek to show, through several limited examples, that such is the fundamental gesture of Althusser, and that it is in principle indistinguishable from his grandeur and misery. (shrink)

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system. A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by (...) stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks. We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

A convincing argument can change a discussant’s commitment regarding the acceptability of a claim, but the same effect can be achieved by examining evidence. Observing objects or events that count as evidence for or against the acceptability of a statement can change one’s commitment regarding that statement. If we speak of fallacies in the realm of convincing through argumentation, can we speak of fallacies in the realm of convincing through evidence? In this paper, we defend an affirmative answer. We introduce (...) and discuss the conceptual implications of evidentiary fallacies as fallacies committed when evidence is fabricated or suppressed during an attempt to resolve disagreement using proof. We then apply the notion of evidentiary fallacy to two real-life examples of mis-executed evidentiary procedures. We conclude that the notion of evidentiary fallacy can contribute to a more comprehensive fallacy theory and can foster new and broadly applicable critical skills. (shrink)

This is a survey paper on the descriptive set theory of hereditary families of closed sets in Polish spaces. Most of the paper is devoted to ideals and σ-ideals of closed or compact sets.

A day in November 2005, it was a Saturday, I remember very well, my life changed, radically. I am not sure how to define this moment ; for convenience it could be called "the accident". This accident has many faces, but it is first and foremost a revolution, a return to the starting point of my relationship with language. Since it is still very difficult for me properly to conjugate verbs, I will write my story mostly in the present tense.

We prove several trichotomy results for ideals of compact sets. Typically, we show that a "sufficiently rich" universally Baire ideal is either $\Pi _{3}^{0}$-hard, or $\Sigma _{3}^{0}$-hard, or else a σ-ideal.

The Diggers, or yet the « true levellers », appropriation of the parochial terrain of the St George’s Hill close to London, might be considered, in the midst of the English revolution, as the proclamation of a constituer power in action. Theorist of this adventure, Gerard Winstanley has left behind him a singular oeuvre in the constellation of« biblical communisms ». Animated by harsh inner tensions, molded by an archaism indissociable from its modernity, it constitutes, at the same time, an (...) accomplishment, an absolute dead end, and, perhaps, a point of departure : it might end up in Spinoza as well as in « real communism ». (shrink)

With several never-before published writings, this volume gathers Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought----documenting his intense and ambivalent relationship with Lacan, and dramatizing his intellectual journey and troubled personal life.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a global threat that affects a large part of the population, but the risks associated with it are higher for some people compared with others. Previous studies show that lower socioeconomic status is associated with more chronic stress and less marital satisfaction. Thus, the uncertainty caused by the pandemic might greatly affect those who were already vulnerable. This longitudinal study explores the extent to which stress originated outside and inside the relationship is associated with marital satisfaction (...) during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether the associations are different based on the socioeconomic status of the participants. The study was conducted at two points in time with a sample of 144 married Romanian couples. We used the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model with Mediation and multi-group SEM analysis. Higher levels of external stress were associated with subsequent lower marital satisfaction for women with higher SES. For the couples with lower SES, men's level of internal stress during the first assessment mediated the relationship between their higher level of external stress at the first time point and their partner's lower marital satisfaction during the second assessment. Our results show that men and women respond differently during a crisis and that couples with lower SES are more prone to greater stress and lower levels of marital satisfaction. We finally suggest that the therapists, health professionals, policy makers, and researchers should take into account the existing vulnerabilities of a couple when offering psychological and health services during the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and defend a form of argumentative normativity that is not based on fundamental principles. I first argue that research agendas that aim to discover fundamental principles of ‘good’ argumentative discourse share one crucial weak spot, viz. circularity. I then argue that this weak spot can be avoided in a pancritical view of normativity.