" La formule cartésienne causa sive ratio scande l'histoire de la causalité, entre le privilège suarézien de la cause efficiente et l'invention leibnizienne du principe de raison suffisante. Elle traverse un siècle exactement, des Disputationes metaphysicae de Suarez (1597) aux 24 thèses métaphysiques de Leibniz (1697). La métaphysique s'y constitue en époque de la causalité. Qu'ils la soutiennent ou qu'ils la récusent, les philosophes du XVIIe siècle ont en commun de discuter la thèse qui confère l'intelligibilité à la relation causale (...) ; elle prend la forme exemplaire de l'équivalence cartésienne de la cause et de la raison. Mais la façon dont la relation causale gagne l'intelligibilité demeure à son tour inintelligible, puisqu'elle renvoie à la toute-puissance incompréhensible de celui qui l'exerce, y compris peut-être envers lui-même : sui causa. C'est là précisément la thèse que les post-cartésiens ne cesseront de lire comme un problème et de récuser : Spinoza, en posant que l'ordre et la connexion des idées sont les mêmes que l'ordre et la connexion des choses ; Malebranche, en faisant de la cause occasionnelle une raison inefficace et en concentrant en Dieu toute l'efficace ; Leibniz, en employant le principe de raison suffisante, qui rationalise l'existence en la soustrayant à l'emprise de l'efficience. Loin de la produire, la causalité se voit alors soumise, sous diverses modalités, à l'intelligibilité. Aussi le principe de raison suffisante signe-t-il ce que nous appelons la fin de la cause - par excellence la fin de l'efficience -, qui n'est pas la fin de la question du fondement, mais le déplacement de sa réponse vers plus fondateur que la cause : la raison. Ainsi se trouve accomplie l'essence du fondement à l'époque moderne de l'histoire de la métaphysique. " V. C. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Authority? The Forms and Limits of Authority The Paradoxes of Authority The Justification of Authority Authority and the Obligation to Obey the Law Legal Authority Conclusion References.

The emerging concern about software piracy and illegal or unauthorized use of information technology and software has been evident in the media and open literature for the last few years. In the course of conducting their academic assignments, the authors began to compare observations from classroom experiences related to ethics in the use of software and information technology and systems. Qualitatively and anecdotally, it appeared that many if not most, students had misconceptions about what represented ethical and unethical behaviors in (...) these realms. Clearly, one can argue that if college students are uncertain about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior then this uncertainty will be carried forward into their workplaces upon graduation. Furthermore, if their workplaces don't provide ethics training as a component of a new employee orientation program, one can project a potential for unintentional violations and infringements of copyrights and law in the field. This study was conducted among graduate and undergraduate students to gain insight into their attitudes, perceptions and understanding of some of the relevant ethics issues. A questionnaire of 11 statements was employed that described ubiquitous but most likely unethical (or surely dubious) behaviors in the prevailing business and academic environments. Each respondent was asked to evaluate each statement twice (once for “self” and once for “colleague”) on a five-option highly ethical (5) to neutral (3) to highly unethical (1) scale. The statements were worded such that lower instrument score was associated with higher ethical responses. The questionnaire's two-part structure was designed to solicit honest answers. The encouraging learning from this study was that the overall sample and its various sub-samples did not consider any of the eleven behaviors to be “ethical” or “highly ethical.” It was also encouraging to note that the overall sample and all sub-samples considered “highly unethical” those behaviors associated with personal privacy or property or outright theft. This indicated that moral judgment and probity prevail. The discouraging learning was that behaviors associated with the use of enterprise property were viewed as “neutral” i.e., neither “ethical” nor “unethical.” These findings suggested confusion and lack of clarity and definition around workplace deportment as it regards ethics in software and information technology use. The current study suggests that additional research needs to be conducted to define and clarify the issues, which in turn can form the basis for programs to rectify or at least ameliorate the situation. (shrink)

En faisant appel aux analyses heideggériennes de l’historialité, il s’agira de montrer que la conception wittgensteinienne de l’usage se met en place à partir d’une interprétation problématique du dualisme de la grammaire et de l’histoire.The main goal of this paper is to show the limits of Wittgenstein’s concept of use. The problematic nature of grammar/history dualism will get a particular attention.

Focuses on the development of justice‐based theory, predominantly after the publication of John Rawls Theory of Justice in 1971. After an overview of the concept of justice, it provides a critical discussion of desert and non‐desert theories, mutual advantage, impartiality, utilitarian, rational choice, and feminist and pluralist accounts of justice.

The paper is premised on the well-recorded fact that R.B. Haldane, throughout his working life, remained fascinated with German idealist philosophy. The paper unravels Haldane’s own perception of the relation between his philosophical interests and his diverse policy-orientated work at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many commentators have noted this relation but often pass over it as a curious detail of his biography. The most basic tool his philosophy gave him was a way of analysing problems. This philosophical stance (...) was not an ex post facto rationalisation but conversely was always his first thought on encountering a problem. To solve a policy problem one has to identify the leading ideas of that particular mode of human experience. Haldane believed that finding such rational principles underlying all forms of experience was the first duty of a politician, lawyer or civil servant. He contended that this painstaking ideational analysis would ultimately lead to the most effective policy solutions. The paper focuses first on Haldane’s initial encounter with German philosophical culture in both Edinburgh and Göttingen, second, it unpacks the key philosophical themes which characterize his approach, derived largely from his reading of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Thirdly, it turns - in the light of his philosophical beliefs - to his overt commitments to policy developments in the Edwardian new liberalism, military reform, administrative and civil service policy reorganisation, and finally his extensive work in education policy, particularly in the university sector. (shrink)

The present work explores interspecies intersubjectivity, including its content and limitations, through the paradigmatic instances of such relationships that are present among companion species. I aim to defend the claim that meaningful relationships are possible and do in fact occur between humans and nonhuman animals by appealing to both philosophical and empirical literature. I will also begin to delineate the content and limitations of these interspecies relationships.

For living beings, information is as fundamental as matter or energy. In this paper we show: a) inadequacies of quantitative theories of information, b) how a qualitative analysis leads to a classification of information systems and to a modelling of intercellular communication.From a quantitative point of view, the application in biology of information theories borrowed from communication techniques proved to be disappointing. These theories ignore deliberately the significance of messages, and do not give any definition of information. They refer to (...) quantities, based upon arbitrarily defined probabilistic events. Probability is subjective. The receiver of the message needs to have meta-knowledge of the events. The quantity of information depends on language, coding, and arbitrary definition of disorder. The suggested objectivity is fallacious. (shrink)

In this article, we utilize Merleau-Ponty’s notions of gesture, flesh and reversibility as philosophical tools to explicate the corporal reality of ritual, incarnation, sacramental presence and the church as the mystical body of Christ. The phenomenological investigation of bodily gesture provides a foundation to elucidate the meaning of symbolic presence from which we compare Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh with that of the patristic fathers, leading finally to its ecclesiological interpretation.

Montaigne est un philosophe et un philosophe difficile. Un philosophe ce n'est pas parce que les Essais ne suivent pas un ordre systématique, qu'ils ne relèvent pas de l'histoire de la philosophie. Un philosophe difficile. Pourquoi, en effet, les Essais ont-ils été souvent laissés dans les marges inexploitées de l'histoire de la philosophie? À cause d'une particularité, consciemment revendiquée, de leur auteur: pour comprendre Montaigne lui-même, sa propre situation philosophique nous impose de le comprendre immédiatement. Il était donc urgent de (...) s'appliquer à retrouver certains des contextes des Essais, en particulier l'arrière-fond scolastique, trop longtemps exclu des études montanistes. Mais aussi de leur appliquer un principe herméneutique, aussi simple qu'indiscutable en histoire de la philosophie : aller du plus clair au plus obscur, de ce qui est conceptuellement le mieux établi au plus problématique. En l'occurrence, aller du XVIIe siècle, singulièrement de Descartes, aux Essais : accéder au je de Montaigne à partir de l'ego cartésien et par différence avec lui ; plus encore, y accéder, avec et par-delà l'ego cartésien, à partir de l'ego transcendantal et de la réduction phénoménologique. Bref, lire conceptuellement et philosophiquement un philosophe. Le présent volume réunit donc des études d'approches différentes et complémentaires. Il vise d'abord à rapprocher Montaigne de ses lectures antiques - y compris celles dont on ne soupçonne pas ordinairement que Montaigne les a faites. Il entend ensuite confronter les Essais à la scolastique - le Dieu de Montaigne n'est peut-être pas si éloigné qu'on l'a cru du Dieu de certains Nominalistes, voire du Dieu cartésien, libre créateur des vérités éternelles. En résulte une détermination nouvelle du scepticisme de Montaigne, qui permet de mieux mesurer son irréductibilité à ses modèles antiques. Enfin, il s'interroge sur la pertinence actuelle de l'attitude philosophique de Montaigne, en le faisant dialoguer avec d'autres philosophes qui ne furent pas ses contemporains, mais qui sont les nôtres, et sans lesquels il n'est pas aujourd'hui de philosophie - singulièrement la phénoménologie. C'est en excédant les catégories dans lesquelles l'historiographie a voulu l'enfermer et les faux problèmes qu'elle ne cesse de lui poser, qu'un philosophe se révèle pleinement, Montaigne. (shrink)