According to the dominant position among philosophers of language today, we can legitimately ascribe determinate contents to natural language sentences, independently of what the speaker actually means. This view contrasts with that held by ordinary language philosophers fifty years ago: according to them, speech acts, not sentences, are the primary bearers of content. François Recanati argues for the relevance of this controversy to the current debate about semantics and pragmatics. Is 'what is said' determined by linguistic conventions, or is it (...) an aspect of 'speaker's meaning'? Do we need pragmatics to fix truth-conditions? What is 'literal meaning'? To what extent is semantic composition a creative process? How pervasive is context-sensitivity? Recanati provides an original and insightful defence of 'contextualism', and offers an informed survey of the spectrum of positions held by linguists and philosophers working at the semantics/pragmatics interface. (shrink)

This article will be concerned with the phenomenon of vitality, which emerged as one of the main findings in a larger grounded theory study about life and death decisions in hospitals' neonatal units. Definite signs showing the new-born infant's energy and vigour contributed to the clinician's judgements about life expectancy and the continuation or termination of medical treatment. In this paper we will discuss the normative importance of vitality as a diagnostic cue and will argue that vitality, as a sign (...) perceived by doctors and nurses, has moral significance and represents a legitimate contribution to clinical decision-making in difficult cases where the child's life is at stake. We will argue that these clinical intuitions can be justified on a moral basis but only with certain qualifications that accounts for a certain objectivity and intersubjective reliability in the therapeutic judgements. (shrink)

Bei der Regelung von Rechtsfragen in der modernen Medizin und der Biotechnologie kann kaum auf rechtliche oder ethische Standards zuruckgegriffen werden. Rechtsentscheidungen beruhren haufig das gesellschaftliche Selbstverstandnis.

Joseph Raz's famous theory of authority is grounded in three claims about the nature and justification of authority. According to the Preemption Thesis, authoritative directives purport to replace the subject's judgments about what she should do. According to the Dependence Thesis, authoritative directives should be based on reasons that actually apply to the subjects of the directive. According to the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT), authority is justified to the extent that subjects are more likely to comply with right reason by (...) following the authority's directives than by following their own judgments about what right reason requires.1In this article, I consider a number of ways in which NJT might be construed as a justification for authority. First, I evaluate NJT construed as a principle that would provide a practical justification for an individual to accept or recognize a particular person or persons as a preemptive authority. Second, I evaluate NJT construed as a principle that describes the conditions under which a state or legal system is morally legitimate. I argue that NJT is true under none of these interpretations.2. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Einleitung: Thema, Methode und Prozedere: Thema: Demokratisches Recht - Methode: Ethisch-juristische Legitimation - Prozedere: Interdisziplinare Feldarbeit - I. JUristische Methodik: Strukturierende Rechtslehre: Lassen sich Gesetze applizieren? - Lasst sich Recht juristisch legitimieren? - Ist Ethik ausgeschlossen? - Zusammenfassung - II. MOralphilosophie: Diskursethik: Was heiSSt Moral? - Wie lasst sich Moral begrunden? - Lasst sich Moral applizieren? - Zusammenfassung - III. JUrisprudenz und Ethik: Zwischenuberlegungen zu einer interdisziplinaren Theorie demokratischen Rechts: Wie konnte eine ethisch-juristische Theorie aussehen? - Wie (...) sollte Interdisziplinaritat praktiziert werden? - Programm einer ethisch-juristischen Legitimationstheorie - IV. POlitische Philosophie: Deliberative Demokratie: Demokratie-Konzepte - Kleine Soziologie moderner Demokratien - Deliberative Demokratie - Moralischer Diskurs im Kontext - Zusammenfassung - V. VErfassungstheorie: Demokratischer Rechtsstaat: Verfassungstheoretische Grundlagen - Kleine Soziologie der Public Governance - Demokratischer Rechtsstaat - Demokratischer Rechtsstaat im Kontext - Zusammenfassung - VI. URteilstheorie: Demokratische Judikation: Urteilstheoretische Grundlagen - Kleine Soziologie der Public Judication - Demokratische Judikation - Juristische Methodik im Kontext - Zusammenfassung - VII. URteilsphilosophie: Deliberative Judikation: Judikationskonzepte - Kleine Soziologie der Judikation - Deliberative Judikation - Demokratisches Recht im Kontext - Zusammenfassung - Exkurs: Interdisziplinare Rechtslegitimation und integrative Wirtschaftsethik - Schluss: Resumee und Ausblick - Literatur- und Sachverzeichnis. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on representations of irregular migration in a Scandinavian context and how irregular migrants are constructed as a target group. A common feature in many European states is the difficult attempt to navigate between an urge for control and respecting, upholding and promoting humanitarian aspects of migration management. Legitimizing policies therefore become extremely important as governments have to appease national voters to remain in power and have to respect European regulations and international conventions. Doing (...) so raises questions of social, political and economic rights, of moral obligations, of sovereignty, and of equity, as well as of how to define target groups and legal and categorical statuses into the debates. Having a backdrop in the theoretical framework of Carol Bacchi, Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram and Giorgio Agamben, this article looks at how policy problematizations and constructions of target populations guide and legitimize particular policy approaches and may end up marginalizing and excluding groups in society and ultimately become a challenge for democracy.Dansk abstract: Legitimering af politik: Hvordan politiske tilgange til irregulære indvandrere formuleres og legitimeres i SkandinavienFokus i denne artikel er på repræsentationer af irregulær migration i en skandinavisk kontekst og hvordan illegale indvandrere er konstrueret som målgruppe. Et fælles træk i mange vesteuropæiske nationalstater er det svære forsøg på at navigere mellem kontrol og samtidig respektere, forsvare og fremme humanitære aspekter af migrationsstyringen. At legitimere den givne politik er derfor blevet særdeles vigtigt fordi regeringerne er nødt til at formilde de nationale indvandringsskeptiske vælgere for at forblive ved magten og er nødsaget til at respektere europæiske regler og internationale konventioner. Dette italesætter en diskussion om sociale, politiske og økonomiske rettigheder, af moralske forpligtelser, af suverænitet, af at definere målgrupper og juridiske statuskategorier i debatterne. Artiklen har baggrund i en teoretisk ramme som er udstukket af Carol Bacchi, Anne Schneider, Helen Ingram og Giorgio Agamben. Artiklen ser på, hvordan politiske problematiseringer og konstruktioner af målgrupper vejleder og legitimerer bestemte politiske strategier og kan ende med at marginalisere og udelukke grupper i samfundet og i sidste ende blive en udfordring for demokratiske principper som sådan. (shrink)

After the fall of Communism, the Romanian Orthodox Church was forced to face its recent past, scarred by its collaboration – harshly criticized in the early 1990s – with the Ceauşescu regime. The Church’s turn to its memory of the interwar period in order to legitimize the (re)casting of Orthodoxy as a public religion was also problematic. Based mainly, but not solely on the analysis of public discourses originating with the Orthodox Church hierarchy and clergy, this paper will address the (...) discursive strategies the Orthodox Church adopted in order to tame the memory of its recent past. We propose to investigate the main issues at stake, and the consequences of the choices the Church makes in re-weaving the memory of its recent past(s). It will be shown that the memorial reconstitution of the two periods remains unbalanced. On the one hand, the Church has used to its advantage some parts of the memory of each period. Yet in both cases, efforts to obscure potentially problematic facets of memory, such as the choice of collaboration/accommodation with the communist regime or the close connexion between prominent Church personages and the Legionary movement remain eminently counter-productive. However, such proceeds fail to exorcise the remaining skeletons in the closet and bar the path to the ‘appeasement’ of memory. (shrink)

Some of the early‐modern changes in the social framing of science, while often believed to be essential, are shown to be contingent. They contribute to the flawed public narrative around science today, and especially to the misconceptions around science and religion. Four are examined in detail, each of which contributes to the demise of the contemplative stance that science both requires and offers. They are: (1) a turn from an immersed subject to the pretense of a pure objectivity, (2) a (...) turn from imagination as a legitimate pathway to knowledge, (3) a turn from shared and participative science to a restricted professionalism, and (4) an overprosaic reading of the metaphor of the “Book of Nature.” All four, but especially the imperative to consider reading nature as poetry, and a deeper examination of the entanglements between poetry and theoretical science, draw unavoidably on theological ideas, and contribute to a developing “theology of science.”. (shrink)

This paper addresses the always online behavior of the data owner in proxy re- encryption schemes for re-encryption keys issuing. We extend and adapt multi-authority ciphertext policy attribute based encryption techniques to type-based proxy re-encryption to build our solution. As a result, user authentication and user authorization are moved to the cloud server which does not require further interaction with the data owner, data owner and data users identities are hidden from the cloud server, and re-encryption keys are only issued (...) to legitimate users. An in depth analysis shows that our scheme is secure, flexible and efficient for mobile cloud computing. (shrink)

This article considers the four eyewitness threshold for zinā’ in Islamic criminal law. In some Muslim-majority countries where zinā’ remains an offence, judiciaries have by-passed the threshold by accepting singular confessions from male fornicators or, otherwise, inferring fornication from pregnancy outside of marriage. As a result, a disproportionate number of women have been prosecuted, convicted, and even punished for zinā’. I assert that the four-eyewitness threshold allows for an alternative way to view zinā’ that can result in a different set (...) of consequences. If the threshold is taken seriously such that it becomes the only evidentiary basis upon which a zinā’ conviction can be entered, it will create an effective or de facto exemption where alleged perpetrators can never be convicted, except in the rarest cases where four independent eyewitnesses can be corralled. If adopted, this approach would provide a principled basis to reject opportunistic confessions that deflect punishment to accused female fornicators. And as an ‘internal’ solution that arises within the framework of the sharī’a, a de facto exemption approach is more likely to be perceived as legitimate when compared with proposed solutions that find their basis in international human rights legal instruments. (shrink)

The Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament is one of the key actors within the European Union institutional framework for gender equality policies. In the context of this Committee, women’s interests are continuously being defined by discursive and deliberative processes. Civil society actors are being included into these processes of policy-making through institutional funding and public hearings. Through the inclusion of particular organizations and the selection of experts for hearings, existing meanings are being reproduced and/or (...) challenged. The article argues that battlegrounds have been opened in recent years as dominant discourses are questioned by the inclusion and legitimation of new civil society actors. Both the FEMM Committee, as a feminist stronghold, and the established women’s organizations at the EU level are being challenged. It becomes contested who the gender experts are, and diverse understandings of gender equality and women’s interests are being articulated. (shrink)

There is a kind of power no one should have over anyone else, even if they don’t do anything with this power, or even if they only use this power for good. The republican tradition of political philosophy calls this kind of power domination. Here, I develop a theory of domination, and use this theory to advance our understanding of political legitimacy and justification. My account of domination refines recent neo-republican attempts to identify dominating social power with the capacity to (...) interfere arbitrarily with the choices of others. I argue that this capacity is not sufficient for domination. Instead, domination requires that one agent possess “impositional” power over someone else: power enough to make their refusal to cooperate more costly than cooperation across a wide range of forms that cooperation might take. But not all impositional power is domination; impositional power is domination to the extent that those wielding it do so in “deliberative isolation”—in accord only with their own sense of what’s best. The nature of domination, what it takes to minimize it, and its connection to deficits in political values like freedom and equality, are the subject of Chapter 2. The remainder of the dissertation uses the results of that chapter to construct a non-voluntarist alternative to the standard liberal account of how to reconcile political power with freedom and equality. Chapters 3 and 4 show how consent—actual or hypothetical—is not necessary to legitimize political power. What is necessary is that such power enable us to fulfil our duties against dominating others, while remaining accountable to us so that the state does not itself become a source of domination. How duties against domination can legitimize states is the primary subject of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 turns to the question of what we owe our fellow citizens as we cooperate together in the task of holding the state accountable. The answer to this question amounts to a repurposing and reformulation of public reason liberalism. Adviser: Joseph Mendola. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique :"Dans une société inflationniste en droit, libérale à cause de la logique capitaliste et où la laïcité conditionne les valeurs démocratiques, il est légitime que l'homme ressente une sorte de dépaysement ou de désenchantement, puisqu'il semble ne plus être au centre des réflexions philosophiques et scientifiques qui faisaient de lui une valeur absolue. Cet ouvrage est un ensemble de textes abordant, à partir des thématiques multilatérales, une question centrale portant sur la re-centration de l'homme. Il (...) s'est agi, pour chacun des auteurs, suivant sa sensibilité philosophique, de savoir si l'homme n'est plus le centre ou au centre du monde. En fait, avec l'économie libérale, une rationalité (bio)-technologiquement conditionnée et enfin une sécularisation de l'humain, l'homme est dans l'obligation de penser les conditions d'une redéfinition de son exceptionnalité.". (shrink)

ABSTRACTI defend a non-reductionist view of music, according to which music should be understood in terms of musical beauty. I suggest that general theories of music are legitimate, and I discuss sublimity and argue that it is a species of beauty. Musical experience is the experience of aesthetic properties of that are realized in sounds. Sometimes, when we are fortunate, this experience generates pleasure in musical beauty. As Hanslick rightly insisted, there is no way to begin to understand what music (...) is, or to understand its value and why we value it, without putting musical beauty in the foreground and celebrating our experience of it. This positive position has negative consequences. Musical appreciation does not require pathologies of emotion, spurious political narratives, intimations of religious profundity and so on. The value is in the sounds. It is an immanent value, not a transcendent one. It is a this-worldly value, not an other-worldly delusion, or something self-indulgently in us. Musical beauty is there in the sounds, in “tones and their artistic combination,” as Hanslick maintained. (shrink)

States are believed to be the paradigmatic instances of legitimate political authority. But is their prominence justified? The classic concept of state sovereignty predicts the danger of a fatal deadlock among conflicting authorities unless there is an ultimate authority within a given jurisdiction. This scenario is misguided because the notion of an ultimate authority is conceptually unclear. The exercise of authority is multidimensional and multiattributive, and to understand the relations among authorities we need to analyse this complexity into its different (...) aspects. Instead of ultimate authorities we can have actors endowed with superior authority over others in one regard, but not necessarily in another. And this limited superiority is sufficient for resolving conflicts. There is no need for ultimate authorities. Having discarded the notion of sovereignty we can embrace a different conception of legitimate authority, one that is not interested in the pedigree of actors, but in their capacity to serve its subjects. If states wish to retain their central role in the domain of political authority, they will have to earn it. (shrink)

Claims to sisterhood are premised on women’s experiences with gender oppression, and many have argued that such claims ignore differences among women. Many have therefore dismissed sisterhood as a legitimate claim to solidarity, failing to examine the ways that sisterhood continues to be utilized by feminist activists. This article examines qualitative data from a study of a white, middle-class, feminist, antiracist organization that uses the language of sisterhood in its work on behalf of incarcerated women, who are predominantly of color (...) and poor. The author finds not only that sisterhood is simultaneously rooted in women’s experiences with oppression and pride and pleasure but that such language serves complex functions in feminist organizations that seek to work across difference. Beyond its use in creating and sustaining solidarity, sisterhood is utilized to bridge differences in race, class, and life experiences between women and to generate feelings of legitimacy amongst white, middle-class activists. (shrink)

Google Search is arguably one of the primary epistemic tools in use today, with the lion’s share of the search-engine market globally. Scholarship on countering the current scourge of misinformation often recommends “digital lit- eracy” where internet users, especially those who get their information from so- cial media, are encouraged to fact-check such information using reputable sources. Given our current internet-based epistemic landscape, and Google’s dominance of the internet, it is very likely that such acts of epistemic hygiene will take (...) place via Google Search. The question arises whether Google Search is fit for purpose, given the apparent misalignment the general epistemic goal of promoting true beliefs and the greater online commercial ecosystem in which it is embedded. I argue that Google Search is epistemically problematic as it stands, mainly due to the opacity related to the parameters it uses for personalising search results. I further argue that in as far as an ordinary internet user is legitimately ignorant of Google’s workings, uses it in an “ordinary manner”, and is generally unable to avoid using it in the current information environment, they are not ep- istemically blameworthy for any false beliefs that they acquire via it. I conclude that too much emphasis is currently placed on individual epistemic practices and not enough on our information environment and epistemic tools when it comes to countering misinformation. (shrink)

Perhaps no term in the geological lexicon excites more passions than uniformitarianism, whose motto is “the present is the key to the past.” The term is controversial in part because it contains several meanings, which have been implicated in creating a situation of “semantic chaos” in the geological literature. Yet I argue that debates about uniformitarianism do not arise from a simple chaos of meanings. Instead, they arise from legitimate disagreements about substantive questions. This paper examines these questions and relates (...) them to several “forms of understanding” pursued by researchers in geohistory. (shrink)

Nous avons tous retenu la leçon de la phénoménologie l'homme n'est pas le prisonnier de ses représentations subjectives, il est directement un "être-dans-le-monde". Toutefois, tout un chacun a, à chaque instant, à choisir le mende, c'est-à-dire à se choisir et à se fonder dans le monde comme une personne unique et singulière au sein de celui-ci. Cette idée implique l'élaboration d'une discipline complémentaire à la phénoménologie, capable de cerner l'homme dans la réalité et la singularité absolues de son projet dans (...) le monde. Méthode que Sartre nomme, en modifiant la pensée de Freud, psychanalyse existentielle. Que la singularité de notre épreuve personnelle du monde soit tout à la fois ce qui nous est le plus accessible, et ce qui, pourtant, échappe constamment à notre connaissance, constitue un paradoxe, un "mystère en pleine lumière", légitimant la formation d'une psychanalyse, non moins paradoxale, de la conscience. Psychanalyse d'un genre nouveau dont Sartre esquisse dans de nombreux textes théoriques la méthode, qu'il mettra lui-même en application dans ses essais biographiques sur Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet et Flaubert. Percer l'identité du monde singulier d'un écrivain afin d'enrichir la compréhension de son oeuvre par celle de son élan unique dans le monde, tels sont les résultats auxquels la méthode psychanalytique sartrienne, permet d'aboutir, par-delà la seule méthode héritée de la phénoménologie. C'est à en dégager le sens et à en comprendre la fécondité aussi bien philosophique que clinique et littéraire que se consacre le présent essai. (shrink)

States of emergency are declared frequently in all parts of the world. Their declaration routinely implies a suspension of basic constitutional rights. In the last half century, it has become the norm for constitutions to contain an explicit ‘emergency constitution’, i.e., the constitutionally safeguarded rules of operation for a state of emergency. In this paper, I ask whether inclusion of an emergency constitution can be legitimized by drawing on social contract theory. I argue that there are important arguments, both against (...) and in favor of constitutionalized emergency provisions, and that social contract theory—as applied by economists—can be of some help when deciding whether to have, or not to have an emergency constitution. This paper introduces a novel argument for justifying emergency constitutions. It argues that they can serve as a commitment mechanism protecting both citizens and politicians from overreacting to rare but significant threats. (shrink)

It is commonly understood that in its focus on rights and obligations law is centrally concerned with organising responsibility. In defining how obligations are created, in contract or property law, say, or imposed, as in tort, public, or criminal law, law and legal institutions are usually seen as society’s key mode of asserting and defining the content and scope of responsibilities. This book takes the converse view: legal institutions are centrally involved in organising irresponsibility. Particularly with respect to the production (...) of large-scale harms – including extensive human rights violations, forms of colonialism, or environmental or nuclear devastation – and in opposition to conventional understandings of responsibility in law, morality and politics, the book provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which legal institutions – their practices, concepts, and categories – themselves operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as they do to acknowledge them. Drawing on a series of case studies from local, national, and global concerns the book analyses how law facilitates dispersals and disavowals of responsibility, and it shows how it does so in consistent and patterned ways. In assessing how this ‘organised irresponsibility’ operates, and what its consequences are for both legal analysis and society generally, a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of law’s methods, operation, and consequences is required. At stake is nothing less than a fundamental re-assessment of the role of modern law in the production and legitimation of human suffering. This innovative and interdisciplinary book provides a sustained challenge to conventional thinking about law and legal institutions. It will be of major interest to those working in law, political and legal theory, sociology and moral philosophy. (shrink)

La production théorique marxiste de RDA sous ses différentes formes n’a pas véritablement bénéficié jusqu’ici du regain d’intérêt pour ce « pays disparu » que l’on a pu constater ces dernières années, tant dans le débat public que dans l’historiographie. En dépit de la fonction de légitimation qui était la sienne, le marxisme de RDA était pourtant un champ traversé par des contradictions et ne se réduisait pas à une idéologie ossifiée. Les outils bibliographiques dont nous disposons aujourd’hui concernant les (...) acteurs et les institutions qui ont contribué à faire exister le marxisme de RDA nous permettent d’adopter une démarche plus nuancée. Il est notamment possible d'identifier, pardelà des approches indéniablement dogmatiques, un certain nombre d'innovations, dont l'un des exemples les plus notables est le courant de la Weltgeschichte. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the view that not only does Fear and Trembling espouse the teleological suspension of the ethical as a radical suspension and even possible violation of otherwise ethical duties, but also that Kierkegaard himself espouses it and carries the belief through his entire authorship. A brief analysis of Religiousness A suggests that Climacus made a dialectical error in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This error is corrected by Anti-Climacus and Kierkegaard's own journals, and the correction makes possible a (...) full-blooded affirmation of the teleological suspension where Climacus failed. This reaffirmation can explain the shift from Climacus to Anti-Climacus on the topic of hidden inwardness as well as the shift from Climacus to Kierkegaard on the topic of religious suffering. It can also provide a legitimate Kierkegaardian alterative to positing a stage Merold Westphal (and not Kierkegaard) has termed Religiousness C. What we are left with is an uncompromisingly radical religious dialectic that gives every appearance of being exactly what Kierkegaard intended. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson’s famous proposal; whereby a state’s constitution should be re-enacted every 19 years by a majority vote; purports to solve the intergenerational problem caused by perpetual constitutions: namely that laws which were enacted by people who are already dead bind living citizens without their consent. I argue that the model fails to fulfil its own normative consent-based aspirations. This is because it produces two groups of people who will end up living under laws to which they did not give (...) their consent: citizens who reach the voting age after the re-enactment process; citizens who did not assent to being obliged by the majority vote’s results. I reject possible responses to my argument by showing that they result in making the model either impractical or redundant. The remainder of the paper discusses whether implementing the model would enhance the consent-based legitimacy of the modern state. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explain the transition from implicit CSR to explicit CSR that has taken place in Scandinavia over the last two decades. Matten and Moon’s distinction between implicit and explicit CSR is the point of departure for the analysis, which is based on case studies of two Norwegian companies: HÅG and Hydro. On the basis of these case studies, we identify two forces that are pushing the transition from implicit to explicit CSR in Scandinavia: Organizational (...) expressiveness and Re-legitimizing. Both of these measures are adjustments to the globalization of the economy, altering the competitive situation even in highly institutionalized, Scandinavian economies. HÅG, a midsized Norwegian manufacturer of office chairs, made CSR and environmental values an integral part of their expressive strategy in the early 1990s. Hydro, a big Norwegian aluminium producer, made CSR an explicit issue around the turn of the millennium, in an attempt to re-legitimize their business operations in a new market situation where plants in local communities in Norway were shut down and relocated to less regulated regimes in low-cost regions abroad. (shrink)

The conjoined themes of mission, migration, and nationalism are central issues in the Gospel of Luke. These essential motifs were amalgamated in a rhetorical composition to persuade implied readers to be mission-focused but accommodate the views of transiting communities or consular decisions and national pride. Luke 9:51–56 has been variedly interpreted on discipleship, media communication, Christological, and Elijah’s spirit tenets. Emphasising individual themes in the interpretation of Luke 9:51–56 is legitimate, but it leaves out a holistic understanding of the text (...) as the opening narrative of Luke’s travel narratives, which concerns multiple issues. This study engages the socio-rhetorical criticism propounded by Vernon K. Robbins to reinterpret Luke 9:51–56. The objective is to respond to the questions: (1) what is the relationship between mission, migration, and nationalism in Luke 9:51–56? and (2) what is the relevance of mission, migration, and nationalism in Luke 9:51–56 for African migrants in the diaspora? Contribution: There is a proximity between mission, migration, and nationalism in Luke 9:51–56. It prioritises mission over migration and nationalism. Mission is the key determinant for migration and nationalism. Migrant Africans emphasise migration for economic fortunes over mission and nationalism. This may be due to personal aspirations. (shrink)

Le modèle républicain en France appartient-il au passé? La réponse à cette question ne semble plus faire de doute aujourd'hui. Pour les libéraux, le modèle jacobin fantasme l'égalité abstraite de tous les citoyens mais il ne réussit, au nom de cet idéal, qu'à étouffer la société civile sous le poids de la bureaucratie et à paralyser les initiatives et la liberté des individus. Les partisans déclarés de la république tiennent, pour leur part, que le projet d'autogouvernement est une arme de (...) résistance à la marchandisation et à la transformation de la société politique en servante de la production et des échanges. Si les libéraux ne veulent voir que l'économie, ils ne veulent voir que le politique, et demeurent convaincus qu'une société d'individus sans projet politique commun est vouée à la dévitalisation. Or le républicanisme français a toujours été autre. Etudié dans son moment le plus aigu, lors de l'affaire Dreyfus, quand ses grands philosophes le définirent face à ses adversaires, il révèle une philosophie politique originale. Profondément individualiste, elle pose que l'aspiration centrale de l'homme moderne - le bien être - est un objectif créateur de lien social pour autant qu'il est poursuivi dans des conditions d'égalité des chances. Cette égalité, qui légitime aux yeux de tous la quête individuelle du bien être, seule la présence de la puissance publique dans le jeu social la rend possible. Les sociétés modernes sont cimentées par la représentation de l'égalité de leurs membres. Or cette égalité trouve sa réalité non pas dans l'activité abstraite des citoyens débattant les uns avec les autres de ce qu'ils veulent faire ensemble, mais dans la construction d'un mode de répartition qui assure à chacun la même chance de vouloir et de faire par lui-même. Le fondement de l'être ensemble n'est pas l'action commune mais la justice de son objet. Inactuel, le républicanisme? (shrink)

Contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is defined by its relativist trend. Its programme often calls for the support of philosophers, such as Duhem, Quine, and Wittgenstein. A critical re-reading of key texts shows that the main principles of relativism are only derivable with difficulty. The thesis of the underdetermination of theory doesn't forbid that Duhem, in many places, validates a correspondence-consistency theory of truth. He never said that social beliefs and interests fill the lack of underdetermination. Quine's idea of (...) a selective revision of hypotheses, as well as the neat incompatibility between holism and conventionalism, openly challenges the principles of relativism. Wittgenstein's work, which is not presented in book-form but rather as a tree, forces us to avoid aphoristic choices that credit any text-excising. This remark allows us to tackle the passages that sociological relativism is based on.Mathematical conventions are not anthropological objects. When Wittgenstein examines the "language-games," he only speaks of the functioning of natural language, not to be confused with scientific formal languages. We then should render the formula "language-game" by "well-defined, explicit and compulsory rules of communication", which is a much less attractive formula for relativism. Consequently, there does not exist a real continuity between the epistemologies of Duhem, Quine and Wittgenstein, and the recent works of the SSK. (shrink)

La situation desastreuse que vit le continent africain sur plusieurs plans est, en grande partie, la consequence de l'instabilite et de l'incoherence de son referent paradigmatique, contenu dans le binome justice-solidarite. A quels facteurs cette situation tient-elle, et a quels obstacles l'Afrique est-elle confrontee dans son aspiration a devenir un espace de plus de droit, de plus de justice sociale et de solidarite? Par ailleurs, de quels modeles peut-elle s'inspirer pour realiser ce projet et defier toute velleite d'afro-pessimisme?<BR> Ces questions (...) evoquent non seulement un probleme de vision de la societe, mais aussi de l'homme tel que le soulignent John Rawls et Philippe Van Parijs. Cet ouvrage s'efforce de degager cette double vision et d'en legitimer la pertinence pour la nouvelle societe africaine a construire moyennant un dispositif contractuel.". (shrink)

Our analysis indicates that it is correct to interpret non-participation and a vote for the Extreme Right as at least partly due to a legitimation crisis which seems to be the expression of a new alignment of values. This alignment describes a deep cultural cleavage that divides the higher from the less educated. People who hold pronounced positions on this alignment are more likely than others to turn away from the established, "traditional" parties. People with the values and attitudes typical (...) of the "progressive" or "new left'' side of the cleavage, vote disproportionately for the Greens. People with the values and attitudes typical of the "conservative" or "new right" side of the cleavage, opt disproportionately for non-participation and for the Extreme Right. In the recent political debate in Flanders, both non-participation and the Extreme Right have been regarded as symptoms of a legitimation crisis, and ofpolitical protest. The difference between the two expressions of cultural opposition or political protest can be understood as a choice for either an "exit" or a "voice" option. People select the "exit" option when they feel especially politically powerless. The "voice"-option is chosen by people for which the value conflict over the position of"migrants" is the most salient issue.The long term causes of the symptoms of a legitimation crisis seem to be the growing economic and cultural gap between the higher and less educated, and the ensuing growth of a conflict in which cultural and social-economic differences are strongly linked. (shrink)

The life and work of Hermann Günther Graßmann (1809–1877) attract not only ever again the attention of mathematicians, mathematical historians and those interested in the history of mathematics, they constitute also a challenge for the methodology of historiographical research. This challenge persists since Friedrich Engel’s biography of 1911; there, two sources were presented and interpreted in a not legitimate manner which even mislead since then various scholars. This paper faces the intricate task to unravel not only the methodological shortcomings of (...) Engel’s biography, but also to re-assess the misinterpretations – particularly of alleged influences on Graßmann’s approaches – induced by Engel’s misleading claims. Based upon broader historically contextualised analyses of Graßmann’s innovative elements in his theory of extension and upon new primary sources for his student times at the Gymnasium and Berlin University, the paper presents a novel assessment of Graßmann’s approaches. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Give a D* * * about Doping? From Acceptable Vigor to Absolute Vice To Head‐Butt or Not to Head‐Butt? Helping Hands are Strangling the Sport! How Far Should We Go? New Ways Forward Cycling's Constant Battle Notes.

The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the (...) UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone. (shrink)

Le " libre arbitre ", cette capacité à choisir librement ou encore à déterminer notre propre volonté, semble menacé par les avancées de la psychologie et des neurosciences contemporaines. Or, certaines interrogations philosophiques doivent être résolues avant de tirer les conséquences de ces résultats empiriques : le déterminisme causal, qui est au fondement de toute démarche scientifique, est-il compatible avec la notion de libre arbitre? Quel type de relation entretiennent l'esprit et le cerveau? L'examen de ces problèmes fondamentaux constitue le (...) préalable à l'interprétation des données issues des neurosciences, en particulier des expériences de Benjamin Libet qui ont semblé remettre en question l'efficacité causale de nos décisions conscientes. Par ailleurs, il est légitime de se demander si les limites de la conscience et le rapport qu'elle entretient avec les processus inconscients, qu'ils relèvent de l'Inconscient freudien ou de l' " inconscient cognitif " mis en lumière par les neurosciences, constituent un frein à l'exercice de notre liberté. Cet ouvrage esquisse une solution nouvelle à ces questions. Il montre comment la psychologie et les neurosciences, bien que menaçant la conception traditionnelle du libre arbitre, permettraient de concevoir en leur sein même une redéfinition de cette notion, envisagée comme une capacité relative et non plus absolue, nécessitant un apprentissage. (shrink)

Comment concilier l’exigence de neutralité, que la laïcité impose à l’État, et le besoin légitime qu’éprouvent les croyants d’exprimer leurs convictions religieuses, y compris dans l’espace public? La religion peut-elle rester circonscrite au for intérieur,comme le veut une tradition républicaine française défensive, voire méfiante, à l’égard de l’expression religieuse? Une conception plus souple de la laïcité ne risque-t-elle pas de faire le lit des passions religieuses, de plus en plus souvent instrumentalisées à des fins politiques? Face à ces questions sensibles (...) entre toutes, Jean Picq va puiser chez les philosophes politiques – de Spinoza à Claude Lefort, de Paul Ricœur à Marcel Gauchet –pour défendre une laïcité plurielle et ouverte. Il montre qu’elle est fondamentalement un art de vivre ensemble. Encore et toujours à construire…Auteur d’un rapport remarqué sur l’État, Jean Picq est magistrat à la Cour des comptes. Il est également professeur à Sciences Po-Paris, où il enseigne l’histoire de l’État et des rapports entre politique et religion. Face à ces questions sensibles entre toutes, Jean Picq va puiser chez les philosophes politiques – de Spinoza à Claude Lefort, de Paul Ricœur à Marcel Gauchet –pour défendre une laïcité plurielle et ouverte. Il montre qu’elle est fondamentalement un art de vivre ensemble. Encore et toujours à construire…Auteur d’un rapport remarqué sur l’État, Jean Picq est magistrat à la Cour des comptes. Il est également professeur à Sciences Po-Paris, où il enseigne l’histoire de l’État et des rapports entre politique et religion. (shrink)

La réalisation libre de soi présuppose chez Ricoeur une juste articulation des notions d'autonomie et de dépendance dans les registres multiples d'une existence fragile, vulnérable et mortelle. Pour fonder en raison cette affirmation, je me suis au préalable employé à reconstruire la compréhension particulière de l'être du soi qui préside à la réflexion éthique de Ricoeur. Au cœur même de l'analyse phénoménologico-herméneutique de la conscience, le sujet humain est compris comme un être en devenir libre. La liberté est une création (...) dont l'initiative revient à deux instances : l'altérité de la conscience et l'ipséité, créditée de la capacité de s'approprier l'initiative de l'altérité de la conscience. Seul un être capable, dans son intériorité, du libre jeu de cette double initiative, est aussi capable d'une éthique qui, au plan historique, requiert d'articuler la médiation de l'altérité d'autrui et des institutions justes avec la capacité de reprise du soi. A partir de cette thèse de Ricoeur, cette étude rend compte du remembrement qu'il opère entre l'ontologie de l'acte, l'éthique interpersonnelle et l'éthique de la légitimation du lien social. Autant l'ontologie du soi agissant et souffrant conduit à l'éthique de la vie bonne avec et pour autrui dans des institutions justes, autant une telle éthique présuppose une telle ontologie au niveau basique et l'accomplit au plan historique. (shrink)

Es geht nicht darum, die Religion wieder auferstehen zu lassen [...]. Sondern es geht darum, die blosse Vernunft auf die Unbegrenztheit hin zu offnen, die ihre Wahrheit ausmacht. Im vielbehaupteten Trend einer Ruckkehr zur Religion erweist sich Jean-Luc Nancys Philosophie als widerstandig: Einerseits steht die Frage nach der Bedeutung von Religion und insbesondere des Christentums im Mittelpunkt seiner Uberlegungen, andererseits stellt er sich nicht in die Tradition einer neuen (De-)Legitimation von Religion. In Auseinandersetzung mit Jean-Luc Nancy, insbesondere mit seinem Projekt (...) einer Dekonstruktion des Christentums, widmen sich die Beitrage dieses Bandes der allgemeinen Verortung des Phanomens der Religion in pluralistischen Gemeinschaften aus theologischer und philosophischer Sicht. (shrink)

In the present article, I will examine various conceptualizing-metaphors of cognitivist psychology that distance individuals from their world of experience. First, I will review the basic tenets of a person-world dichotomy in relation to the cognitivist assumptions of a rational, or computational, mind. Second, because language is the paradigmatic study of the mind in cognitivist psychology, I will evaluate how language is conceptualized within the cognitivist framework. Finally, I will examine the consequences of cognitivist psychology's subscription to a particular conceptualizing-metaphor (...) of scientism that denies psychology its fundamental topics of study. That is, modern cognitivist psychology, though it may be a legitimate academic pursuit, is not psychology insofar as it distances itself from the basic experiences to be studied by a human psychology in the first place. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Moods are usually taken to be pre-intentional affective states that tune our experience and cognition. Moreover, moods are sometimes considered to not only accompany cognitive acts, but to be understanding phenomena themselves. The following paper examines the assumption that moods represent a specific interpretative skill. Based upon that view, the semantic content of moods seems to be self-determining and to elude conceptual articulation. By contrast, I defend the thesis that the alleged inarticulable intelligibility of affective experiences is possible only due (...) to its belonging to a comprehensive theoretical horizon. For that purpose, I first analyze Heidegger’s influential account on moods in Being and Time, in order to clarify his claim that moods have their own understanding. Although Heidegger asserts that attuned understanding becomes itself when it is interpreted, he nevertheless rejects conceptual unfolding as a legitimate disclosure of the intelligible content of moods. I amend Heidegger’s account by engaging Hegel’s approach to this topic in his Philosophy of Mind. In this text, Hegel argues that feelings cannot give an account of their purport by feeling alone. Affective states not only manifest the need and urge to express themselves, but they reach their full extent when their meaning is disclosed within the entirety of the mind. It may be the case that affective states cannot always be fully clarified, but, even within a non-cognitivist account of moods, their intelligibility requires our acquaintance with articulated understanding. (shrink)

This is a response to Macleod 2012's argument that the history of unjust property acquisitions requires rich libertarians to give away everything in excess of equality. At first, problematic questions are raised. How much property is usually inherited or illegitimate? Why should legitimate inheritance be affected? What of the burden of proof and court cases? A counterfactual problem is addressed. Three important cases are considered: great earned wealth; American slavery; land usurpation. All are argued to be problematic for Macleod 2012's (...) thesis. Various problems are explained concerning using the Nozickian argument to decide the alleged excess that rich libertarians own. The essay's main error is the presupposition that free markets do not help the worst-off. The majority of unjust holdings today are not the result of historical injustices but arise through continuing transfers enabled by taxation and state-regulation. More study of libertarian contributions to the social sciences and philosophy would appear to be desirable "personal behavior" among socialists. (shrink)

Edward Urwick’s original work draws upon Plato’s best known work, the Republic, to provide a new interpretation of Plato’s teaching based upon Indian religious thought. Most scholars have sought to interpret the Republic from the standpoint of politics, ethics, and metaphysics and indeed the accepted title of the dialogue – Concerning a Polity or Republic – would seem to legitimate this. Even the alternative title for the work – Concerning Justice – seems to justify such an approach. Yet the original (...) Greek work, Dikaiosune, had a fuller meaning: righteousness. The author believes this gives a truer clue to the meaning of the dialogue. It is a discussion of righteousness in all its forms, from the just dealing of the law-abiding citizen to the spirit of holiness in the saint. (shrink)

Since 1984, the idea of health equity has proliferated throughout public health discourse with little mainstream critique for its variability and distance from its original articulation signifying social transformation and a commitment to social justice. In the years since health equity’s emergence and proliferation, it has taken on a seemingly endless range of invocations and deployments, but it most often translates into proactive and apolitical discourse and practice. In Margaret Whitehead’s influential characterization, achieving health equity requires determining what is inequitable (...) by examining and judging the causes of inequalities in the context of what is going on in the rest of society. However, it also remains unclear how or if public health actors examine and judge the causes of health inequality. In this article, we take the concept of health equity itself as an object of study and consider the ways in which its widespread deployment has entailed a considerable emptying of its semantic and political content. We point toward equity’s own discursive productivity as well as the quantifying imperative embedded within evidentiary norms that govern knowledge making, and performance management regimes that govern public health practices. Under current conditions of knowledge making and performance evaluation, a range of legitimate action and inaction is produced at the same time that more socially transformative action is legitimately curtailed—not merely by politics, but by the rules of the field in which public health actors work. Ultimately, meaningful progress on a normative ethical idea like health equity will require both substantial philosophical content and an analysis of what is going on in the rest of society. (shrink)

What this paper proposes is a reflexion on the role religious institutions play in nowadays societies come out from religion. A society that maintains a place for religion where churches are dismissed aside onto the civil society. What we verify is that the social forces conserve a certain vocation to allow for the credo to make it through modern times and to coexist with an exit from religion. The paper is divided in five different parts. The first one sets about (...) conceiving the correlation between the public and the private, distinguishing the stance of religion in these two spheres. The second part displays the permanence of religious institutions as the result of some paradoxal re-legitimation which emerges as a religion of the individual. Part three discusses the liberal idea of a republican religiosity in which the democratic liberty takes the form of a spiritual historic of metaphysical outreach. Part four deals with historic identity and its transmission, as well as with the de-traditionalization of churches and of their role amidst the loss of their very sense. The fifth and last part shows the role that religious institutions can still exert face to a contemporary background, witness to an insidious process of dehumanisation. (shrink)

The historiography of race is usually framed by two discontinuities: the invention of race by European naturalists and anthropologists, marked by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae and the demise of racial typologies after World War II in favor of population-based studies of human diversity. This framing serves a similar function as the quotation marks that almost invariably surround the term. “Race” is placed outside of rational discourse as a residue of outdated essentialist and hierarchical thinking. I will throw doubt on this (...) underlying assumption, not in order to re-legitimate race but in order to understand better why race has been, and continues to be, such a politically powerful and explosive concept. (shrink)

The paper problematizes the work and evolution of a Bulgarian artist from the point of view of the biographical approach, his artistic interventions and his re-legitimization as a contemporary artist. It discusses various aspects of contemporary art from the point of view of the artist, his interventions, market demands, the underlying contradictions, as well as the transformative tendencies in the small graphics. The paper argues that it is necessary to expand the understanding of contemporary art with certain actions of artists.

Given the known hazards of nuclear energy in seismically active Japan after the Fukushima meltdowns as well as the presence of viable conservation and renewable energy options, the question of Japan’s stalled energy transition warrants critical interrogation. To better understand why, after Fukushima, Japan’s energy policy trajectory maintained the nuclear status quo and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, this article employs network and historical analyses to examine the confluence of post-Fukushima political forces connected to Japan’s nuclear energy sector. Our (...) novel network dataset combines with historical analysis to identify a dense network of overlapping executives and officials in Japan that forge long-term ties between the nuclear energy industry, the state, and the leading business federation in Japan. Following the 3.11 disaster and the meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility, a long-standing nuclear safety myth and a tightly networked nuclear energy industrial complex provided an ideological and structural context to re-legitimize nuclear energy in spite of widespread public concern. Instead of a bold, ecologically rational policy to quickly phase out nuclear power and phase in renewable energy, well-worn class and state networks aligned to recommit Japan to a nuclear-reliant energy path. These findings support a theoretical synthesis around our concept of an energy industrial complex with applications in environmental and political sociology. (shrink)

The re-emergence of a diffuse need for community in the context of the global age compels us to rethink the concept of "community" in the light of the changes and transformations that are unfolding today. The community cannot be considered as a residual phenomenon of resistance to the processes of modernization, but must be recognized as a new phenomenon which accompanies the processes of globalization. The following contribution investigates the fundamental sources of the need for community in the world today, (...) and identifies principally two: 1) community as a response to the pathologies of individualism (insecurity, loss of meaning, atomism, loss of solidarity); 2) community as a response to the dynamics of exclusion that affect societies that are ever more multicultural in character. Also if community largely tends today to assume pathological forms that harbour the potential for conflict and violence, the need for community is legitimate insofar as it expresses a need for belonging and solidarity, a need for the affirmation of identities and a demand for recognition. In my view, the global era offers the bases for sharing in this sense insofar as it gives rise to the idea of the community of the human kind, a community united by interdependence of processes and events, brought together by its shared vulnerability in the face of the new risks and challenges that are produced by globalization. (shrink)

The topic of this article is religious materiality in a Finnish, Lutheran setting. Reflecting on the altar cross of the Luther Church Helsinki – and more specifically the elevated role the cross played in the re-opening of the church in 2016 – the article supports the argument of recent scholars that Protestant engagement with materiality is not unambiguously negative but rather ambivalent. Using James Bielo’s concept of “legitimizing frames” – i.e. boundaries or landmarks within which Protestants feel safe enough (...) to deal with things and objects – the article suggests a so-called heritagization frame. Objects or things used within such a frame induce in people a sense of past events and experiences – preferably events in which God has made himself known in this world. This, in turn, enables people’s engagement with the objects. (shrink)

There are legitimate worries about gaps between scientific evidence of brain states and function (for example, as evidenced by fMRI data) and legal criteria for determining criminal culpability. In this paper I argue that behavioral evidence of capacity, motive and intent appears easier for judges and juries to use for purposes of determining criminal liability because such evidence triggers the application of commonsense psychological (CSP) concepts that guide and structure criminal responsibility. In contrast, scientific evidence of neurological processes and function (...) – such as evidence that the defendant has a large brain tumor – will not generally lead a judge or jury to directly infer anything that is relevant to the legal determination of criminal culpability . (Vincent 2008) In these cases, an expert witness will be required to indicate to the fact-finder what this evidence means with regard to mental capacity; and then another inference will have to be made from this possible lack of capacity to the legal criteria for guilt, cast in CSP terms.<br><br>To reliably link evidence of brain function and structure and assessment of criminal responsibility, we need to re-conceptualize the mental capacities necessary for responsibility, particularly those that are recognized as missing or compromised by the doctrines of “legal capacity” (Hart 1968) and “diminished capacity.” I argue that formulating these capacities as executive functions within the brain can provide this link. I further claim that it would be extremely useful to consider evidence of executive function as related to the diminished capacity doctrine at sentencing. This is because it is primarily at this stage in criminal proceedings where the use of the diminished capacity doctrine is most prevalent, as evidenced by the recent Supreme Court cases of Atkins v. Virginia (536 U.S. 304 (2002)) and Roper v. Simmons (543 U.S. 551 (2005)).<br>. (shrink)

In this article the author studies the place and the role of social philosophy in the architecture of the social sciences and humanities. The article focuses on the relationship between social philosophy, theory of society, theoretical sociology and social ethics. Based upon the application of the concept of paradigm in philosophy, the author shows key trends of the development of social sciences and humanities: the turn from the philosophy of conscience to the communication philosophy and the “rehabilitation of the practical (...) philosophy”. In line with these trends, practical discourse philosophy is now playing the central role in the structure of the social sciences and humanities, the author says. By making a distinction between normative and descriptive dimensions of the social sciences and humanities, the author emphasizes the issue of their normative foundation and their moral and ethical re-orientation. The article analyzes discourse as an argumentative practice of founding social norms and values and as a meta-institution legitimizing social institutions. According to this approach, the social philosophy is considered as a meta-theory of social sciences, which include general social theory and theories of social systems. In this context, practical dis- course philosophy is playing a fundamental role for legitimizing specific social institutions. Social ethics also plays an important role, as it complements individual ethics, creating a system of institutional ethics, i.e. of political ethics, economic ethics, ethics of science and technology, environmental ethics. In this architectonics, social responsibility gets a new meaning, incorporating individual responsibility. Social responsibility is not an anonymous responsibility that neglects the individual responsibility, but a common responsibility implemented according to certain rules and procedures and creating the possibility to solve current problems of the globalized humanity. (shrink)