« Le moment topologique » désigne la référence commune à la topologie faite par de nombreux auteurs dans les années soixante (Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida). Dans le paradigme phénoménologique, il conditionna deux réponses antonymes : d’un côté, chez Merleau-Ponty, il ouvrit la voie vers une nouvelle réduction, d’un autre côté, chez Derrida, il permit une rupture d’avec le cadre méthodologique de la phénoménologie. C’est pourtant le dépassement de cette opposition qui est ici proposé.

« Le moment topologique » désigne la référence commune à la topologie faite par de nombreux auteurs dans les années soixante . Dans le paradigme phénoménologique, il conditionna deux réponses antonymes : d’un côté, chez Merleau-Ponty, il ouvrit la voie vers une nouvelle réduction, d’un autre côté, chez Derrida, il permit une rupture d’avec le cadre méthodologique de la phénoménologie. C’est pourtant le dépassement de cette opposition qui est ici proposé.« The topological moment » denotes the common reference to topology (...) developed by numerous authors during the 1960’s . In the phenomenological paradigm, it created two antonymous responses : on one side, Merleau-Ponty paved the way for a new reduction, on the other side, Derrida facilitated a break from the methodical framework of phenomenology. However, this article proposes to move beyond this opposition. (shrink)

A partir du double constat d’une carence de statut et d’une crise de sens de la topologie lacanienne du nœud borroméen, nous tenterons d’expliciter le sens phénoménologique de ce nœud. Réduit à son essence, le nœud borroméen est composé de points et de trous. Or ces trous sont le résultat de mouvements expérimentables sur un mode affectif et charnel. La pul- sion, le désir, l’amour, constituent en effet la matière phénoménale du nœud borroméen. Avec Husserl, Merleau-Ponty et Patočka, nous montrerons (...) que la Terre originaire et immobile cons- titue l’ancrage de tous ces mouvements. Les mouvements-nœuds de la vie affective reçoivent alors une signification ontologique. Ils sont autant de variantes du mouvement primordial vers l’être. (shrink)

L’intérêt et l’originalité de l’humanisme merleau-pontien consiste à mes yeux dans sa mise en lumière du dévoilement de l’origine refoulée de l’homme dans le registre de l’art et de l’expression du corps en général. Merleau-Ponty a su percevoir exemplairement ce mouvement de récursion vers l’inhumain dans l’oeuvre de Cézanne. « Je vous dois la vérité en peinture disait Cézanne ». Cézanne nous donne en effet la vérité de l’hominisation en peinture. Nul mieux que Merleau-Ponty nous permet d’entendre encore aujourd’hui la (...) voix de Cézanne. Il nous permet de fonder sur l’écho de cette voix un nouvel humanisme, un humanisme qui garde en mémoire l’inhumain, qui lève le refoulement mais sans le supprimer, tout comme l’artiste présente l’invisible du visible et tout comme le philosophe décrit la profondeur de l’être. Cet humanisme de la surrection est celui de l’apparition de l’homme à lui-même dans la constellation hasardeuse des signes et dans l’adversité du non-sens, à égale distance de l’humanisme sans vergogne des aînés de Merleau-Ponty et de l’antihumanisme postmoderne de ses cadets.The interest and originality of Merleau-Ponty’s humanism lie, in my view, in the unveiling of the repressed origin of humanity in the domain of art and the expression of the body more generally. Merleau-Ponty was able to perceive an example of this recursive movement toward the inhuman in Cézanne’s works. “I owe you the truth in painting,” said Cézanne. In effect, Cézanne gives us the truth of humanization in painting. None better than Merleau-Ponty allows us to hear Cézanne’s voice today. Through the echo of this voice, he allows us to found a new humanism, a humanism that bears the memory of the inhuman, that lifts up the repressed but without effacing it, all while presenting us with the invisible in the visible and exposing the profundity of the human being. This humanism of upheaval is that of the appearance of humanity to itself in a hazardous constellation of signs and in the adversity of non-sense set in equal distance from the shameless humanism of Merleau-Ponty’s predecessors and the postmodern antihumanism of those who came after him.L’interesse e l’originalità dell’umanismo merleau-pontyano consiste ai nostri occhi nella sua capacità di disvelare l’origine rimossa dell’uomo nella dimensione dell’arte e dell’espressione corporea in generale. Merleau-Ponty ha saputo percepire esemplarmente questo movimento di ritorno e di ricorso all’inumano nell’opera di Cézanne. “Je vous dois la vérité en peinture”, affermava Cézanne. Egli ci restituisce, in pittura, la verità dell’ominazione. Ancor oggi nessuno meglio di Merleau-Ponty ci consente di intendere la voce di Cézanne. Merleau-Ponty ci consente di fondare sull’eco di quella voce un nuovo umanismo, un umanismo che conserva memoria dell’inumano, che innalza il rimosso senza sopprimerlo, proprio come l’artista presenta l’invisibile del visibile, e il filosofo descrive la profondità dell’essere. Quest’umanismo della “surrezione” è l’umanismo dell’apparizione dell’uomo a se stesso nella costellazione aleatoria dei segni e nell’avversità del non-senso come rimosso, un umanismo che si pone a uguale distanza dall’umanismo senza vergogna dei predecessori di Merleau-Ponty e dell’anti-umanismo postmoderno dei suoi successori. (shrink)

Il s’agit dans ces lignes de montrer comment, à partir de ses propres prémisses, la psychanalyse lacanienne est confrontée au problème de l’ineffabilité de la structure du langage. Cette question est loin d’être mineure, car elle engage la compréhension du « jeu de langage » de la psychanalyse, ainsi que l’élucidation ultime de son rapport à la philosophie.

In his latest work, Force-Pulsion-Désir, Rudolf Bernet seeks to clarify one of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, that of “drive.” He engages such authorsas Aristotle, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Freud, Husserl, Nietzsche and Lacan to better elucidate philosophically the sense of the concept of drive. The work’s argument thushighlights a kind of destiny of drive: the first moment concerns the dynamic aspect of the drive, that of force; the second is that of drive taken in its essence and truth;the third is that (...) of desire which prolongs and sublimates the drive. The path followed in this book thus goes from the non-human to the human or, if one prefers, fromnature to subject, and interrogates their interpenetration. In contrast to naturalism and historicism, Rudolf Bernet chooses to read Freud in a resolutely philosophical way, in a way that at the same time challenges our perception of the relation between philosophy and psychoanalysis. The epistemic stakes are high. Without claiming to address every implication, we briefly retrace here the overall trajectory. (shrink)

Mon corps est-il un objet parmi d'autres dans l'espace ou bien crée-t-il l'étendue qu'il perçoit jusqu'à l'écho des étoiles? À quelle spatialité suis-je assujetti pour être relié de l'intérieur au monde et aux autres corps qui m'entourent? Les dimensions de l'espace sont-elles des coordonnées de la matière morte ou sont-elles des variations modales de mon esprit? C'est à la découverte de la spatialité du corps vivant que nous invite Guy-Félix Duportail dans son Analytique de la chair. il nous (...) apprend, entre autres, que la phénoménologie et la psychanalyse se rencontrent en ces lieux de la chair suivant des principes topologiques communs. Guy-Félix Duportail dessine le schéma intérieur de la subjectivité comme se donnant à l'extérieur, dans le monde. La subjectivité incarnée se retourne comme un gant et se retrouve ainsi exposée au-dehors, dans son sinthome, comme disait Lacan, dans son implexe, comme disait Merleau-Ponty. Dans tous les cas, elle se réalise dans une création réparatrice de son mal-être. L'immanence est donc dans la transcendance, et l'espace-temps se réfléchit dans la chair, dans les tourbillons de sa jouissance. La présente Analytique de la chair révèle qu'un corps sans organes (Deleuze et Guattari) est certes moins qu'un noeud, mais demeure plus qu'un emmêlement, et qu'une chair sublime mais sans corps (Levinas, Henry) ne fait du visage qu'un masque, et de la Vie glorieuse du Moi qu'un éloge de la pulsion de mort. (shrink)

Luck threatens in similar ways our conceptions of both moral and epistemic evaluation. This essay examines the problem of luck as a metaphilosophical problem spanning the division between subfields in philosophy. I first explore the analogies between ethical and epistemic luck by comparing influential attempts to expunge luck from our conceptions of agency in these two subfields. I then focus upon Duncan Pritchard's challenge to the motivations underlying virtue epistemology, based specifically on its handling of the problem of epistemic luck. (...) I argue that (1) consideration of the multifold nature of the problem of epistemic luck to an adequate account of human knowledge drives us to a mixed externalist epistemology; and (2) the virtue-theoretical approach presents a particularly advantageous way of framing and developing a mixed externalist epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Metaphilosophy is the property of Blackwell Publishing Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts). (shrink)

Der Band nimmt gewisse, mit dem Begriff Theurgie assoziierte Wandlungen innerhalb des spätantiken Neuplatonismus in den Blick. Theurgie wird vor allem als Suche nach immanenten Medien zur Verkörperung göttlicher Kräfte verstanden. Entgegen dem häufig kolportierten Bild vom weltflüchtigen Platonismus zielt die von Iamblichos und seinen Nachfolgern verfochtene Philosophie, so die Grundthese, auf Integration der körperlich-materiellen Wirklichkeitsebenen ab und das Endziel der Philosophie wird stärker unter dem Gesichtspunkt einer positiven Teilhabe am demiurgisch-kosmogonischen Werk begriffen. Diese Aufwertung von Körperlichkeit wird anhand verschiedener (...) Aspekte – z. B. dem Symbolbegriff, der „göttlichen Materie", aber auch des feinstofflichen Ochema-Pneuma-Konzepts – in ihrer Relevanz für das spirituelle Gesamtprofil der theurgischen Neuplatoniker erstmals umfassender untersucht. Abgerundet wird die Studie durch einen Vergleich mit ähnlichen Tendenzen im nicht-dualistischen Śivaismus von Kaschmir. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 676-695, May 2022.

Analyzes the relationship of power, bureaucracy, and change in modern society.

This chapter is divided into three parts. First I outline what makes something an objective list theory of well-being. I then go on to look at the motivations for holding such a view before turning to objections to these theories of well-being.

This chapter focuses on the responses that proponents of virtue epistemology (VE) make to radical skepticism and particularly to two related forms of it, Pyrrhonian skepticism and the “underdetermination-based” argument, both of which have been receiving widening attention in recent debate. Section 1 of the chapter briefly articulates these two skeptical arguments and their interrelationship, while section 2 explains the close connection between a virtue-theoretic and a neo-Moorean response to them. In sections 3 and 4 I advance arguments for improving (...) the prospects of virtue-theoretic responses, sketching a particular version of VE that by recasting somewhat how we understand the “externalist turn in epistemology” also suggests ways of improving the adequacy of philosophical diagnoses and responses to skepticism. (shrink)

Claims about needs are a ubiquitous feature of everyday practical discourse. It is therefore unsurprising that needs have long been a topic of interest in moral philosophy, applied ethics, and political philosophy. Philosophers have devoted much time and energy to developing theories of the nature of human needs and the like. -/- Philosophers working on needs are typically committed to the idea that there are different kinds of needs and that within the different kinds of needs is a privileged class (...) of needs that is especially normatively significant. -/- Some philosophers go further and make rather grand claims about needs. They claim that needs are central or fundamental to moral thinking and that we must have a needs-centred moral theory or a general reorientation of moral philosophy around needs. -/- In this paper I aim to do two things. First, to show how applying recent work on modal terms can help us to understand thought and talk about needs. This is the positive part. I then use these ideas to cast doubt on the more ambitious claims about needs. Put briefly, a proper understanding of claims about needs undermines the idea that the concept of needs is fundamental in moral thought or in moral philosophy. Ambitious needs theory fails. (shrink)

So-called theories of well-being (prudential value, welfare) are under-represented in discussions of well-being. I do four things in this article to redress this. First, I develop a new taxonomy of theories of well-being, one that divides theories in a more subtle and illuminating way. Second, I use this taxonomy to undermine some misconceptions that have made people reluctant to hold objective-list theories. Third, I provide a new objective-list theory and show that it captures a powerful motivation for the main competitor (...) theory of well-being (the desire-fulfilment theory). Fourth, I try to defuse the worry that objective-list theories are problematically arbitrary and show how the theory can and should be developed. (shrink)

Evidentialism as Earl Conee and Richard Feldman present it is a philosophy with distinct aspects or sides: Evidentialism as a conceptual analysis of epistemic justification, and as a prescriptive ethics of belief. I argue that Conee and Feldman's ethics of belief has 'weak roots and sour fruits.' It has "weak roots" because it is premised on their account of epistemic justification qua synchronic rationality, and this is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Also, Conee and Feldman's thesis O2 (An agent (...) ought to always have just exactly that attitude towards a proposition supported by his / her evidence at that particular moment) is not support by in their “Ethics of Belief” article by V3 (Being synchronically rational at every moment is uniformly what it is to constitute epistemic success and to maximize epistemic value). That austere ethics of belief has "sour fruits" because the austere evidentialist ethic of belief is unable to support reasonable disagreement, and conflates psychographic contrareity epistemic fault or irrationality. The "hard line" and universal agnostic suspension it takes as the only rational stances of disagreement are really caricatures of different extreme responses to contrareity found among dogmatists and skeptics, respectively. I contrast this with John Rawls' understanding of "reasonable pluralism" and of the many sources of faultless disagreement over what Rawls termed comprehensive conceptions of the good. (shrink)

The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention to plagiarize and (...) plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

Well-being occupies a central role in ethics and political philosophy, including in major theories such as utilitarianism. It also extends far beyond philosophy: recent studies into the science and psychology of well-being have propelled the topic to centre stage, and governments spend millions on promoting it. We are encouraged to adopt modes of thinking and behaviour that support individual well-being or 'wellness'. What is well-being? Which theories of well-being are most plausible? In this rigorous and comprehensive introduction to the topic, (...) Guy Fletcher unpacks and assesses these questions and many more, including: Are pleasure and pain the only things that affect well-being? Is desire-fulfilment the only thing that makes our lives go well? Can something be good for someone who does not desire it? Is well-being fundamentally connected to a distinctive human nature? Is happiness all that makes our lives go well? Is death necessarily bad for us? How is the well-being of a whole life related to well-being at particular times? Also included is a glossary of key terms, and annotated further reading and study and comprehension questions follow each chapter, making _The Philosophy of Well-Being_ essential reading for students in ethics and political philosophy, and also suitable for those in related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology. (shrink)

This paper pursues Ernan McMullin‘s claim ("Virtues of a Good Theory" and related papers on theory-choice) that talk of theory virtues exposes a fault-line in philosophy of science separating "very different visions" of scientific theorizing. It argues that connections between theory virtues and virtue epistemology are substantive rather than ornamental, since both address underdetermination problems in science, helping us to understand the objectivity of theory choice and more specifically what I term the ampliative adequacy of scientific theories. The paper argues (...) therefore that virtue epistemologies can make substantial contributions to the epistemology and methodology of the sciences, helping to bridge the gulf between realists and anti-realists, and to re-enforce moderation over claims about the implications of underdetermination problems for scientific inquiry. It finally makes and develops the suggestion that virtue epistemologies, at least of the kind developed here, offer support to the position that philosophers of science know as normative naturalism. (shrink)

Many philosophers, following Williamson (The Philosophical Review 105(4): 489–523, 1996), Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits, Oxford, Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2000), subscribe to the constitutive rule account of assertion (CRAA). They hold that the activity of asserting is constituted by a single constitutive rule of assertion. However, in recent work, Maitra (in: Brown & Cappelen (ed). Assertion: new philosophical essays, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), Johnson (Acta Analytica 33(1): 51–67, 2018), and Kelp and Simion (Synthese 197(1): 125–137, 2020a), Kelp and (...) Simion (in: Goldberg (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020b) aim to show that, for all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion proposed in the literature, asserting is not an activity constituted by a single constitutive rule and that therefore CRAA is very likely false. To reach this conclusion, they all present a version of what can be dubbed the engagement condition objection. That is, they each propose a necessary condition on engaging in rule-constituted activities. Then they argue that, for all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion proposed in the literature, one can make assertions without satisfying this condition. In response, I present a counterexample that shows that the proposed engagement conditions lead to coun- terintuitive results, and I propose an alternative that better captures our intuitions. Then I argue that this alternative engagement condition is compatible with all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion. (shrink)

This article traces a growing interest among epistemologists in the intellectuals of epistemic virtues. These are cognitive dispositions exercised in the formation of beliefs. Attempts to give intellectual virtues a central normative and/or explanatory role in epistemology occur together with renewed interest in the ethics/epistemology analogy, and in the role of intellectual virtue in Aristotle's epistemology. The central distinction drawn here is between two opposed forms of virtue epistemology, virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. The article develops the shared and distinctive (...) claims made by contemporary proponents of each form, in their respective treatments of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

Chapter 3 surveys objectivity in the natural sciences. Thomas Kuhn problematized the logicist understanding of the objectivity or rationality of scientific change, providing a very different picture than that of the cumulative or step-wise progress of theoretical science. Theories often compete, and when consensus builds around one competitor it may be for a variety of reasons other than just the direct logical implications of experimental successes and failures. Kuhn pitted the study of the actual history of science against what Hans (...) Reichenbach referred to as the “logical substitutes” logicists used to reconstruct the rationality of theory change. Such substitutes were promoted to show that theory confirmation is a purely epistemic affair, where purely epistemic implies purely inferential. But where the positivists saw logical compulsion as the reason for theory change, Kuhn saw psychology in values as relevant to how theories are actually confirmed or accepted by the scientific community. (shrink)

This book discusses Process Pragmatism, the view that whatever is, derives from interactions. The contributors examine and defend its merits by focusing on major topics, including truth, the existence of unobservables, the origin of knowledge, scientific activity, mathematical functions, laws of nature, and moral agency.

The challenges of higher education can be stressful, anxiety-producing, and sometimes depressing for students. Such negative emotions may influence students’ attitudes toward assessment, such as whether it is perceived as acceptable to engage in plagiarism. However, it is not known whether any impact of negative emotions on attitudes toward plagiarism translate into actual plagiarism behaviours. In two studies conducted at two universities, we examined whether negative emotionality influenced plagiarism behaviour via attitudes, norms, and intentions as predicted by the theory of (...) planned behaviour. In both studies, negative affect predicted plagiarism intentions mediated by perceived norms, and intentions predicted plagiarism behaviour. These findings suggest that students’ negative emotionality is a risk for plagiarism engagement and that higher education institutions should support students’ emotional well-being, especially regarding assessment practices. (shrink)

The concept of well-being is one of the oldest and most important topics in philosophy and ethics, going back to ancient Greek philosophy and Aristotle. Following the boom in happiness studies in the last few years it has moved to centre stage, grabbing media headlines and the attention of scientists, psychologists and economists. Yet little is actually known about well-being and it is an idea often poorly articulated. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being provides a comprehensive, outstanding guide and (...) reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising over forty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into six parts: well-being in the history of philosophy current theories of well-being, including hedonism, and perfectionism examples of well-being and its opposites, including friendship and virtue and pain and death theoretical issues such as well-being and value, harm, identity and well-being and children well-being in moral and political philosophy well-being and related subjects including law, economics, and medicine. Essential reading for students and researchers in ethics and political philosophy, it will also be an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology. (shrink)

How does one arrive at a life in politics and policy? What happens to one's ideals when confronted with the reality that the only way to get things done in Washington is compromise? Who are the men and women who help shape our national agenda, and what drives their work? Dispatches From the Eastern Front provides fascinating, intensely personal, yet universal answers to these central questions. Recounting four decades inside Washington politics, Gerald Felix Warburg brings remarkable candor to a most (...) unusual memoir. An idealistic California baby boomer transported to the intimidating world of Capitol Hill policymaking at a young age, Warburg finds himself working to reform nuclear energy, strategic arms control, and foreign policy. As his access and power grow, greater challenges loom: how to maintain principles while cutting deals, and how to balance public purpose with private interests. An eclectic career reveals the slow and often painful development of emotional intelligence for work at the highest reaches of the public arena. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that reliance upon moral testimony is problematic in a way not common to reliance upon non-moral testimony. This chapter provides a new explanation of what the problem consists in—one that enjoys advantages over the most widely accepted explanation in the extant literature. The main theses of the chapter are as follows: that many forms of normative deference beyond the moral are problematic, that there is a common explanation of the problem with all of these forms of (...) deference—an explanation that is based on the connection between the relevant judgments and desire-like attitudes, and that this explanation is compatible with moral realism. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency (...) among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Philosophers have long theorized about what makes people's lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. However, we have spent little time on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse—thought and talk about what is good and bad for us; what contributes to well-being; and what we have prudential reason, or prudentially ought, to do. This situation is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and cries out for (...) further investigation of what it is like and whether it has problematic commitments. It also marks a stark contrast from moral discourse, about which there has been extensive theorizing, in meta-ethics. -/- Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse has three broad aims. Firstly, Guy Fletcher explores the nature of prudential discourse. Secondly, he argues that prudential discourse is normative and authoritative, like moral discourse. Thirdly, Fletcher aims to show that prudential discourse is worthy of further, explicit, attention both due to its intrinsic interest but also for the light it sheds on the meta-normative more broadly. (shrink)

Psychiatry presents a unique array of difficult ethical questions. However, a major challenge is to approach psychiatry in a way that does justice to the real ethical issues. Recently there has been a growing body of research in empirical psychiatric ethics, and an increased interest in how empirical and philosophical methods can be combined. Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry demonstrates how ethics can engage more closely with the reality of psychiatric practice and shows how empirical methodologies from the social sciences can (...) help foster this link. -/- The book is divided into two sections. In the first section there are discussions of the possibility of empirical ethics from a theoretical standpoint and an overview of the history of empirical medical ethics in general. The second, larger section is made up of chapters, discussing specific research projects in empirical psychiatric ethics. The contributors reflect on their choice of method: how and why they combine empirical and philosophical work, and how the two approaches relate to each other. The chapters in the second part thus have two purposes. The first is to present examples of empirical ethics in psychiatry; the second is to reflect on the way in which empirical research can support ethical analysis. -/- Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry is a unique contribution to bioethics and will be fascinating reading for all those working within the field, as well as mental health care professionals. (shrink)

Le premier numéro de Pierre d'angle s'ouvrait par un éditorial qui en proposait l'esprit et les orientations. Il nous a paru opportun, à l'occasion de cettetroisième livraison, d'approfondir sous forme d'une méditation à trois voix, et selon une thématisation plus explicite - à la fois philosophique, historienne et théologique -, les motif et les enjeux de ce dialogue de la foi avec la culture contemporaine, si difficile qu'il soit de saisir celle-ci dans son unité. Nous avons choisi de vous présenter (...) notre démarche sous la forme d'un paradoxe.. (shrink)

This book traces the emergence of a modern culture of exploration, as reflected in the role of institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society and the ...