Dans cet article, j'envisagerai quelques voies par lesquelles des sociétés dites primitives surent éviter et la soumission à l'État et la guerre généralisée.On comprend que pour opposer un front commun à leurs ennemis, des hommes soient amenés à s'allier et, pour ce faire, échangent de bons precédés, des biens et des femmes. Ainsi, les nécessités de la guerre entraîneraient la formation d'alliances.

Cet article tentera de dèfinir le fascisme. Une premiére partie rendra comptedu dernier livre deZeev Sternhell, Ni gauche ni droite. Ce livre èclaire le fascisme français d'une façon qui fut trés contestèe mais qui demeure originale. Une deuxiéme partie insistera sur l'ambiguïtè du discours fasciste et critiquera cer-taines théses de Sternhell. Une troisiéme partie s'efforcera de cerner le fascisme europèen de l'entre-deux-guerres et montrera la complèmen-taritè de diverses grilles d'analyse. Dans une quatrième partie, on trai-tera des raisons psychologiques et des (...) conditions sociales de son succés populaire. Car ce succés est une de ses caractèristiques les plus trou-blantes. Enfin, dans une cinquiéme partie, on verra que des règimes politiques trés diffèrents sont accusès de fascisme, parce que chacun, par un trait ou par un autre, ressemble au fascisme de Mussolini ou de Hitler. Mais cela ne justifie pas qu'on les rassemble sous un même vocable. On suggèrera done de restreindre l'usage de la notion de fascisme. (shrink)

Habituellement, les hommes politiques justifient ce qu'ils font en se référant à des idéaux reconnus. Il arrive que les idéaux invoqués correspondent à des intentions ou à des objectifs réels. Mais les invoquer, c'est aussi un moyen de propagande, un moyen de gagner du pouvoir. Dans cet article, il est question des ambiguïtés et des limites du discours éthique dans la pratique politique. Il s'agit non seulement de comprendre que ce discours peut être plus ou moins rusé ou mystificateur. Il (...) s'agit aussi de dénoncer des idéaux unilatéraux ou démesurés. Il en est de grandiloquents, qui mobilisent et enthousiasment jusqu'au fanatisme des partisans, qui mettent en danger la liberté de tous et la paix de la cité.Political figures usually justify their actions by referring to established ideals. Sometimes these ideals do coincide with actual aims and intentions. But reference to such ideals is also a form of propaganda, a way of gaining power. This article discusses the limitations and ambiguities of ethical reference in politics. It goes beyond the demonstration that such reference can be guileful or manipulating to denounce ideals which are unilateral or immoderate. Some of these are grandiloquent and they mobilize and enthuse their adherents to the point of fanaticism thus endangering the liberty of all and the peace of the city. (shrink)

Des contraintes qui relèvent du conformisme moral et idéologique s'imposent là où il n'y a pas de pouvoir étatique. La survie de l'humanité et la culture ne requièrent pas nécessairement l'Etat, contrairement à ce que pensait Hobbes, mais elles ne vont pas sans normes contraignantes. Celles-ci s'imposent d'autant mieux qu'elles paraissent liees à l'ordre du monde. Dans cet article, j'envisagerai d'abord comment les sociétés sans Etat conservent scrupuleusement les coutumes qui les régissent. C'est le conservatisme des traditions qui permet à (...) ces sociétés de se passer d'un pouvoir séparé d'elles-mêmes. C'est leur refus de reconnaître un tel pouvoir qui les oblige au conservatisme. Je verrai ensuite comment Rousseau qui voulait établir un contrat social sans Léviathan, en arrive également à refuser l'évolution historique et à vouloir instituer ou maintenir une organisation sociale et morale capable d'auto-régulation. (shrink)

My paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to categorize the different strands in the criticism of development. In the second part, I discuss the values which could give a sound direction to development.I distinguish five different kinds of criticism.- First, the Marxist inspired approach. Development is seen as the result of imperialism, the satellization of a periphery around and for the benefit of a center or a class in a center.- Second, the criticism of (...) the extreme left. According to it, development no longer has either subjects or ends. The anonymous industrial system feeds on itself.- Third, the Greens' criticism. Ecological considerations are becoming more and more intractable limits to development.- A fourth kind of criticism is the culturalist one : development tends to suppress the originalities of the world's different cultures.- Fifth, some critics reject the technical mastery of the universe and seek a more convivial and more receptive attitude. The two last criticisms are still more radical. But we cannot turn the clock back, our only choice is to limit and repair the damage development has already done. We must redirect it, not refuse it. In the second part of my paper, I indicate the direction develop- ment should take : an utilitarian direction, that is to say, a maximization of collective utilities within a plan. But I stress three shortcomings of such an approach which need to be corrected by entrenched funda- mental rights.- First, utilitarianism aims at collective benefit but can be blind to the distribution of costs and to the rights of persons and minorities.- Second, planning inevitably ignores those ends whose beneficial consequences cannot be factored in. For example, the health of the elderly is a dead end whereas the health of the labour force of the future is desirable for the stream of benefits it promises.- Third, our values change, so planning has to be a process of constant revision. A democratic process, founded on and protected by fundamental rights can counter these three shortcomings.- First, defending each person's rights is a way to limit sacrifices imposed on individuals in the name of a collective good or development.- Second, rights of association and political expression for the poorest ensure that they have a say in choosing social policies.- Third, the respect of each person's fundamental rights is an ultimate end and gives a sense of direction to all social policies. (shrink)

Ce petit livre est concis. Il l’est peut-être trop, mais il demeure clair et stimulant. Il est axé sur des questions de justice sociale que se posent des sociaux-démocrates perplexes. Il se divise en trois parties traitant chacune d’un problème différent. Ce compte rendu les traitera l’un après l’autre, mais ils sont liés dans la pratique. Philippe Van Parijs utilise les notions de maximin, de contrat social passé derrière un voile d’ignorance et de solidarité nationale, et il fonde une partie (...) de son argumentation sur ces notions. Il discute des mérites d’une solidarité élargie à la nation, mais non d’une solidarité qui irait au-delà, bien qu’il tienne compte, à plusieurs moments, du fait que la nation soit de plus en plus tributaire d’une économie mondiale. En introduction, il rend hommage à John Rawls et André Gorz, des maîtres «avec et contre» qui il a écrit ce livre. Il dit aussi vouloir établir des principes cohérents, provisoires sans doute, mais auxquels on puisse adhérer. Il réussit certainement à les tirer au clair et à favoriser leur problématisation. (shrink)

Ce livre reprend une série de conférences prononcées en 1994 par James Tully à Cambridge. Il a été publié en anglais dès 1995 sous le titre Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Il se nourrit des discussions constitutionnelles qui se déroulent au Canada, mais sa visée est plus large: il tente «de répondre à la question suivante: une constitution moderne peut-elle reconnaître la diversité culturelle et lui faire une place?». Plus précisément, il critique la prétention des cultures dominantes (...) qui s’imposent comme nationales ou même comme universelles, et refusent de tenir compte des cultures minoritaires. (shrink)

The seventh edition of this pragmatic guide to determining right and wrong in the workplace is updated with new case studies and ancillary materials to combine stakeholder perspectives with a deep dive on workplace ethics issues. Using a unique stakeholder-based approach, this book takes business ethics out of the theory realm and provides practical ways to analyze any business decision. Including dozens of cases, Joseph Weiss looks beyond the impacts of ethical lapses on share price and profit to focus (...) on relationships between stakeholders, including individuals, groups, corporations, and governments. The new seventh edition includes seven new cases and ten new Point/Counterpoint exercises, which challenge students to argue both sides of a contemporary issue. It incorporates the latest research as well as updated cases dealing with recent scandals at organizations such as Boeing, Facebook, and Uber. Professors will have access to online support, including teaching notes, PowerPoint slides, and sample tests. The book is equipped with a step-by-step guide to implementing stakeholder analysis, tips to help students apply ethical principles in their personal and professional lives, and comprehensive coverage of employee workplace issues. Addressing relevant topics such as risk management, preferential hiring, and sexual harassment in conjunction with the digital divide, bribery, the environment, and more, Business Ethics, seventh edition explores ethical implications in today's increasingly interconnected global business environment. (shrink)

(2013). Life, the Unhistorical, the Suprahistorical: Nietzsche on History. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 64-91. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.744532.

Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and (...) disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role. (shrink)

The book combines philosophical exposition and legal analysis, and pays special attention to issues of tort law.

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...) by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency. (shrink)

[1] Biographie, Philosophie, Praxis -- [2] Het spel van het naamloze / naar een concept van Joseph Kosuth.

While engaging in rich discussion, Conspiracy Theories analyzes current arguments and evidence while providing real-world examples so students can contextualize and visualize the debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that practices of caring are partly constituted by a caregiver's commitment to a cared-for. However, discussions of caring often contain no explicit discussion of such commitments, and do not attempt to draw any philosophical conclusions from the nature of caring relations as committed. A discussion of caring practices that emphasizes the importance of commitment therefore has the potential to generate important new insights for our understanding of caring. This essay begins that project by arguing that (...) a commitment-centric conception of caring entails the truth of moral partialism. Although many care-ethicists are sympathetic to partialism, the arguments in its defense remain controversial. As I show in this article, however, partialism is necessarily true given the committed nature of caring. This is because the concept of commitment is itself a necessarily partial one: to say that we are equally committed to everyone or everything is equivalent to saying that we are not committed to anything. Thus, when viewed as a species of commitment, it is part of the concept of caring that it requires us to put the needs of those we care for before the needs of those unknown to us. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to fill a certain gap in the assessment of relativism by drawing on Joseph Ratzinger’s (1927–2022) criticism of the normative transformation since Kant. During the Enlightenment, Natural Law was doubted as a cultural feature of Christianity that had no bearing on pluralist society. Consequently, this jurisprudential tradition underwent de-Hellenization and branched out in radical directions, the most decisive of which was Kant’s post-metaphysical system of natural values. Positivism and German Idealism attempted to restore (...) the unity of philosophy that Kant’s philosophy had disrupted. Yet even more influentially, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was Marxism that relativized the doxological aspect of normativity by emphasizing the importance of praxis. Since philosophy became neither an exact science as Kant had conceived it to be, nor a practical programme for social justice as Marxism had promised, the Existentialists, and particularly Sartre, advocated a more radical philosophy of freedom. Ratzinger argues that despite the nuances of post-Kantian philosophy, Positivism, Existentialism, and Marxism failed to comprehend the human condition and that the positivist method resulted in an overwhelming relativism that has reduced normativity to a matter of correct procedures rather than regarding it as the foundation of the inviolable dignity of the human being. (shrink)

According to agent-based approaches to virtue ethics, the rightness of an action is a function of the motives which prompted that action. If those motives were morally praiseworthy, then the action was right; if they were morally blameworthy, the action was wrong. Many critics find this approach problematically insensitive to an act’s consequences, and claim that agent-basing fails to preserve the intuitive distinction between agent- and act-evaluation. In this article I show how an agent-based account of right action can be (...) made sensitive to an act’s consequences. According to the approach which I defend, an action is right just in case it realizes an agent’s morally praiseworthy motive. Conversely, an action is wrong just in case it realizes a morally blameworthy motive. Specifying act-evaluation in terms of the realization, rather than the expression, of an agent’s motives allows an agent-based approach to distinguish between agent- and act-evaluation. This is because an agent may act from a morally praiseworthy motive, but fail to realize that motive. Her action will therefore not have been the right one, despite its being the expression of morally praiseworthy motives. (shrink)

The brain–computer interface (BCI) has made remarkable progress in the bridging the divide between the brain and the external environment to assist persons with severe disabilities caused by brain impairments. There is also continuing philosophical interest in BCIs which emerges from thoughtful reflection on computers, machines, and artificial intelligence. This article seeks to apply BCI perspectives to examine, challenge, and work towards a possible resolution to a persistent problem in the mind–body relationship, namely dualism. The original humanitarian goals of BCIs (...) and the technological inventiveness result in BCIs being surprisingly useful. We begin from the neurologically impaired person, the problems encountered, and some pioneering responses from computers and machines. Secondly, the interface of mind and brain is explored via two points of clarification: direct and indirect BCIs, and the nature of thoughts. Thirdly, dualism is beset by mind–body interaction difficulties and is further questioned by the phenomena of intentions, interactions, and technology. Fourthly, animal minds and robots are explored in BCI settings again with relevance for dualism. After a brief look at other BCIs, we conclude by outlining a future BCI philosophy of brain and mind, which might appear ominous and could be possible. (shrink)

In eighteenth century England, there were thinkers who said they were Christian deists and claimed pure, original Christianity was deism. Most scholars do not believe these thinkers were sincere about their religious beliefs, but there are many good reasons to believe they were. Three English deists have the best claim to be considered Christian deists because they alone called themselves Christian deists or called their ideas those of a Christian deist. These three thinkers, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and Thomas Amory, (...) developed a theology in which Christianity was deism and natural religion. The important point, though, was that their version of natural religion included supernatural elements as well as true religious piety. When read closely, these three thinkers believed in miracles, revelation, prayer, and continuing direct divine inspiration. The Christian deists were neither conventional deists nor traditional Christians. Nevertheless, it is not legitimate to exclude them from either category as some scholars do. They cannot be excluded from the category of ‘Christian’ on the basis their contemporaries all saw them as non-Christian. They also cannot be excluded from the category of ‘deists’ because they were pious and believed in an active God. (shrink)

Moral distress has been the subject of extensive research and debate in the nursing ethics literature since the mid-1980s, but the concept has received comparatively little attention from those working outside of applied ethics. In this article, I defend a care ethical account of moral distress, according to which the phenomenon is the product of an agent’s inability to live up to one of her caring commitments. This account has a number of attractions. First, it places a greater emphasis on (...) the importance of the relationship between the caregiver and her cared-for than that found in previous accounts. Second, it does not make problematic assumptions about the correctness of a caregiver’s moral judgments, as has been claimed in relation to previous accounts of moral distress. Finally, my account allows for a clear conceptual distinction to be drawn between moral distress and other forms of negative moral emotion such as guilt and regret. Earlier accounts draw this distinction by appealing to the causal aetiology of moral distress, but as I show here, such appeals are ultimately unsuccessful unless they are made from an explicitly care ethical starting point. One of the implications of my account is that moral distress has the potential to occur in the context of any caregiving relationship. This claim is explored in the final section of the paper, in relation to student-teacher and parent-child caregiving. (shrink)