Addison and Steele’s legacy on polite manners has been widely acknowledged as a hallmark of the Scottish Enlightenment’s tradition. On the other hand the place of courtly, ‘French’ politeness within the Scottish Enlightenment is much less debated. Conceiving the European Enlightenment as a status quo built on ‘French manners and English liberty’, as Pocock perfectly synthesizes1, points out to the restrictions imposed on religious fanaticism and warfare by the ‘jus gentium’ and European civility. In my paper I aim to shift (...) the attention to the seemingly obvious fact that manners, the backbone of European civility, originate in court, and Versailles was the court par excellence. In this context I explore Adam Smith’s struggle to strip politeness and civility of its aristocratic components. In the heart of the matter lies the strange idea of courtoisie without a court, of propriety that should overcome formal politeness i.e. imitation of aristocratic manners. (shrink)

Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de Condorcet, réinterprète la doctrine de la sympathie propre à la tradition moraliste écossaise dans le sens d’une réévaluation de ses origines physiologiques, ce qui affecte profondément ses dimensions morales et sociales. Dans le cadre d’un rousseauisme compassionnel, elle transforme Adam Smith en un républicain sentimentaliste modéré, précurseur des Idéologues. Elle s’emploie pour cela à montrer que la déférence envers le pouvoir établi, surtout la royauté, érigée par Adam Smith en servilité quasi fétichiste envers les puissants (...) et les rois, doit être réexaminée dans le cadre d’une économie affective post-révolutionnaire. Malgré le risque d’un mimétisme affectif enflammé par une rhétorique démagogique, Sophie de Grouchy mise sur la moralisation de l’identification avec la souffrance humaine, et sur sa régulation par des lois et institutions réformées pour tenir compte d’une nature humaine profondément sympathique. L’institutionnalisation de la sympathie morale est censée porter remède aux tragédies dues à la ségrégation sociale. En revanche, Adam Smith souligne à la fois la corruption morale due à l’adulation des puissants, et l’illusion socialement utile d’un imaginaire collectif cultivé par la tragédie classique et peuplé d’idéalisations du statut social. Adam Smith explore en outre d’une façon originale une dimension quasi psychanalytique de l’idéal social du moi qui anticipe la problématisation du culte du chef, là où la marquise se contente de critiquer le meneur de foule. (shrink)

Adam Smith not only champions commerce, he also criticizes it. In this criticism Smith draws critically upon a long-standing concern in enlightenment’s culture about the proper basis of political and moral life. For the purposes of this chapter, we can identify two interrelated dimensions in Smith’s analysis of the relation between corruption and commerce. He focuses on atavistic remainders of pre-modern, feudal, or aristocratic aspects of behaviour within the heart of commercial society and considers obsequiousness as emblematic of dependent socio-economic (...) relationships while, simultaneously, he raises the issue of distinct socio-economic, moral and political forms of commercial corruption, endemic to the core of commercial polity. (shrink)

In his famous Der Nomos der Erde, while discussing the foundational role of Francisco de Vitoria’s work for the emergence of international law, especially with regard to the legal and political justifications of the territorial conquest of a new world, Carl Schmitt—quite well-known as an enemy of modern and contemporary humanism—offers the following reflection.

RNA localization is a powerful strategy used by cells to localize proteins to subcellular domains and to control protein synthesis regionally. In germ cells, RNA targeting has profound implications for development, setting up polarities in genetic information that drive cell fate during embryogenesis. The frog oocyte offers a useful system for studying the mechanism of RNA localization. Here, we discuss critically the process of RNA localization during frog oogenesis. Three major pathways have been identified that are temporally and spatially separated (...) in oogenesis. Each pathway uses a different mechanism to effect RNA localization. In some cases, localization elements within the 3' untranslated region have been identified and have provided unique insights into the localization process. This important field is still in its infancy, however, and much remains to be learned. BioEssays 21:546–557, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Activating Transcription Factor-2 is a sequence-specific DNA-binding protein that belongs to the bZIP family of proteins and plays diverse roles in the mammalian cells. In response to stress stimuli, it activates a variety of gene targets including cyclin A, cyclin D and c-jun, which are involved in oncogenesis in various tissue types. ATF-2 expression has been correlated with maintenance of a cancer cell phenotype. However, other studies demonstrate an antiproliferative or apoptotic role for ATF-2. In this review, we summarize the (...) signaling pathways that activate ATF-2, as well as its downstream targets. We examine the role of ATF-2 in carcinogenesis with respect to other bZIP proteins, using data from studies in human cancer cell lines, human tumours and mouse models, and we propose a potential model for its function in carcinogenesis, as well as a theoretical basis for its utility in anticancer drug design. (shrink)

In this article I consider the normative and axiological dimension of Simmel’s thought. Building on previous interpretations, I argue that although Simmel cannot be interpreted as a systematic normative theorist, the issue of values and the normative standpoint can nevertheless be traced in various aspects of his multifarious work. This interpretive turn attempts to link Simmel’s obscure theory of value with his epistemological relationism. Relationism may offer a counterweight to Simmel’s value-pluralism, since it points to normative elements (e.g. internal teleology, (...) justice) that can contribute to the reconciliation between incommensurablity of forms and totality. Axiological and normative concerns (of a Hegelian source) survive also in his metaphysics of life, pointing beyond a merely Bergsonian and conservative Lebensphilosophie. I conclude with some thoughts on how this normative rethinking of Simmel’s thought can contribute towards more adequate appreciations of Simmel’s overall theory. (shrink)

ExcerptVassilios Paipais, ed. Theology and World Politics: Metaphysics, Genealogies, Political Theologies. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Pp. xiv + 349. Political theology represents one of the most fundamental subfields of contemporary political theory and international political theory. Since the 1920s, when Carl Schmitt introduced the respective terminology in the broader field of social and political sciences, political theology has developed in a dynamic way, composing, one way or another, a broader interdisciplinary field in which philosophy, theology, and politics are fruitfully interconnected.

Based on A. P. D. Mourelatos's "Events, Processes, and States", an overview of the literature on „verb types‟ is provided in this paper;the basic conceptual, logical and grammatical tests for the identification of different verb types are also briefly reviewed.Such tests, it is argued, reveal variations in a verb’s grammatical and/or lexical aspect; accordingly, verb types should be viewed as regularities governing aspectual variation within and across sentences. Verb types are not associated with particular verbs, predicates or sentences; rather, a (...) verb type is the sum of ways in which a verb‟s aspect may vary. In other words, verb types describe the possibilities for a verb to appear in one or another of a series of interrelated constructions. Verb types are verbal possibilities or, to use B. L. Whorf‟s apt term, fashions of speaking which cut across typical grammatical classifications. It is further argued that verb types, as “mere” fashions of speaking, cannot provide a firm basis for any metaphysics of „situation types‟; i.e., the metaphysics of verb types cannot be founded on their linguistics. (shrink)

Nel 1589 Hercole Filogenio scrisse un discorso che intitolò _Dell’eccellenza della donna_, con l’intento di allinearsi “all’opinione di coloro che si sforzano scoprire l’errore di molti, quali tanto si affannano in avilire il feminil sesso” e dedicò il suo scritto a Flavia Peretti Orsina, donna distinta e dallo spirito inquieto, che con i suoi interessi contribuì allo sviluppo della società dell’epoca. Nel suo tentativo di preservare le donne dal biasimo manifestato dal maschilismo egemone e, allo stesso tempo, elogiare le loro (...) virtù, Filogenio propone due conclusioni, l’analisi e l’approfondimento delle quali, per mezzo di un’argomentazione valida, costituiscono il nucleo testuale della sua opera. L’articolo presenta e analizza i ragionamenti che Filogenio sviluppa nella seconda parte del suo discorso sui quali intende imperniare la dimostrazione della seconda conclusione: che la Donna non è superiore né inferiore all’Uomo, ma simile e uguale per nobiltà, eccellenza e perfezione. (shrink)

A misconception regarding the ultrastructural basis of myocardial failure has been observed in laboratory studies involving medical students and practicing physicians, in medical textbooks, and in clinical instruction of students. This misconception attributes heart failure to overextension of individual cardiac muscle fibres and their sarcomeres, resulting in a mechanically based decline in contractile force production. The basis of the misconception is a set of component misconceptions which interact in reciprocally supportive ways. The interlocking nature of the component misunderstandings strengthens the (...) overall misconception, making it difficult to undermine. A contributor to many aspects of the faulty account of heart failure is a tendency toward oversimplification of complex phenomena in learning, instruction, and scientific research. Implications for medical education are considered. Keywords: mental models, knowledge representation, reductionism, myocardium, heart failure, physiology CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper argues that the republican ideal of non-domination, central in Bergès’s paper, rests on affective conditions that often go unnoticed. In this context, I introduce the notion of affective independence to shed light on the affects akin to the spirit of socio-economic and political independence in between aristocratic pretentiousness and vanity on the one hand and servility towards superiors on the other. In the Letters on Sympathy, Sophie de Grouchy dismisses Adam Smith’s key notion of propriety and thoroughly rejects (...) deferential manners. Her critical gaze cuts even deeper. Anticipating critiques of democratic demagoguery, she reclaims the early modern notion of enthusiasm, linked to religious fanaticism, to account for uncritical admiration towards populist leaders. (shrink)

Within the purview of the sociology of knowledge Durkheim and Scheler appear among its important inaugurators theorizing the social foundations of knowledge, seemingly from mutually exclusive perspectives. Scheler’s phenomenology of values and community is often juxtaposed with Durkheim’s attempt to integrate values in reality, represented by the social configuration of organic solidarity. This essay argues that the affinity between Scheler and Durkheim deserves reexamination. Means employed for pursuing this aim include a reconsideration of how values mediate reality, but, above all, (...) an attempt to show that both thinkers converge on their principal normative goal. This is no other than a global community of solidarity which both Scheler and Durkheim, albeit through different trails, visualize as the culmination of value-ethics. While Durkheim pursues this goal through a systematic exposition of the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity, late Scheler’s view of ‘the age of adjustment’ discloses a normative approach on modernity at odds with the then prevalent Kulturkritik . This ideal helps to rehabilitate Scheler and to approach the notions of sociality, the sociology of knowledge and the configuration of the ‘encompassing person’ through Durkheimian lenses. The essay concludes with a brief appraisal of theoretical gains drawn from this newly lit affinity. (shrink)

Ryu Susato's book is a comprehensive assessment of Hume's thought that defies usual labels and categorizations while operating in an unprecedented interdisciplinary spirit. It is slightly iconoclastic on two levels: from a Hume-studies point of view, Susato contextualizes Hume's oeuvre as a dynamic and ultimately unclassifiable whole within its 18th century context. In this sense, this book is an idiosyncratic follow up on the recent, path-breaking intellectual biography of Hume given by James Harris. In the same vein, 21st century labels (...) prove to be equally inadequate to cover Hume's multiform intellectual production. Intellectual history, history of ideas, philosophy, political theory and history of... (shrink)

In his essay, ‘Aimances de Rousseau: Sur La Nouvelle Héloise comme traité des passions,’ Etienne Balibar analyses the structure of transition from love to friendship which are more than passions or sentiments; they are affective structures, interconnected within an affective network the political relevance of which transcends the dichotomy between the domestic and political sphere. Belonging to the genre of sentimental novel, Rousseaus Nouvelle Héloise transgresses the canonical structure of the genre in the eighteenth century. His innovative literary strategy, according (...) to Balibar, consists in creating couples and triangles of egalitarian and hierarchical status that cannot be considered independently but exclusively through their relational nature. This critical review focuses on the ‘figures of authority’ involved in La Nouvelle Héloise that parallel the figure of the legislator in the Social Contract. I argue that Rousseau struggles with the riddle of deference to auctoritas that does not undermine the basic principles of republican citizenship. I suggest that in Rousseau’s guiding thread, rites and ceremonies amount to founding cultural myths that are indispensable for any individual and collective relational identity. Reclaiming a psychoanalytic interpretation of the charismatic leader, Freudian figures of authority attract Balibar’s attention regarding the perilous, unquestioned forms of mass identification they trigger. In this vein, I claim that identification with the prestigious authority of an allegoric ‘legislator’ as depicted in the Social Contract also amounts to a conceptual ‘line of flight’ in Rousseau, indispensable to conceive plainly the unsettling potential of transindividuality. (shrink)