La question de ce petit livre est simple : peut-on aller au-delà du constat de crise et d'impuissance dont le philosophe se fait le prophète depuis plus d'un siècle? Peut-on parler de la science sans complexe d'infériorité, de Dieu sans obscurantisme, d'existence sans tomber dans la banalité du café du commerce, de politique sans consacrer le cynisme, de morale sans faire dans le sermon? Bref, la philosophie peut-elle aider à faire comprendre et à dépasser les apories du temps présent qu'elle (...) a fait siennes, comme un malade ressasse sa propre maladie pour se donner le sentiment qu'ainsi il peut la mettre à distance à défaut de la vaincre? Toutes ces questions sont aujourd'hui les nôtres, et il ne faut pas avoir peur de parler des grands problèmes qui agitent les hommes depuis l'aube des temps, car si la philosophie a un sens, c'est bien en ce qu'elle envisage les questions ultimes dans une plus ou moins grande systématicité selon les époques. (shrink)

Y a-t-il une seule et unique morale dont on puisse se prévaloir aujourd'hui? Les réflexions philosophiques sur la morale se sont toujours combattues, remplacées, démenties au fil du temps, tout en étant chacune valable. Le stoïcisme, la morale de la vertu, le recours à la loi morale, l'utilitarisme sont autant de courants qui irriguent encore notre façon de penser. Mais laquelle de ces "visions" choisir? Et pourquoi choisir celle-là plutôt qu'une autre? Michel Meyer opère ici un retournement de (...) la pensée traditionnelle sur l'éthique. C'est parce que l'homme est un problème pour l'homme qu'il y a des réponses qu'on appelle la morale. Michel Meyer ne part plus des sujets éthiques (Moi, l'Autre) comme référents moraux, mais de la distance, plus ou moins grande, entre les individus. C'est la variation de cette distance qui influence nos choix quant au bien et au mal, à ce que l'on recherche ou à ce que l'on veut fuir ou éviter, et qui fera qu'on sera tantôt stoïcien, tantôt utilitariste ou kantien. Le positionnement des sujets les uns par rapport aux autres conduit à agir de telle ou telle manière, donc à adopter tel ou tel type de conduite morale et à juger ce qui est bien ou mal de façon différente. Le problème moral, c'est l'Autre comme problème, auquel il convient de répondre selon la distance qui nous sépare, nous divise ou nous rapproche, et auquel on répond toujours d'ailleurs, parce qu'il constitue une menace, un appel à l'aide, ou encore la nécessité de coopérer. Sans chercher à édicter de nouvelles règles ou de nouveaux préceptes, Michel Meyer replace les grandes théories morales, comme celles d'Aristote, de Kant, de Mill ou encore de Hume, dans un espace philosophique virtuel qui est leur espace de validité. Avec le concept de distance entre les êtres, il nous offre ainsi une approche nouvelle et synthétique de la morale. (shrink)

L'Histoire s'accélère aujourd'hui à un rythme inégalé. Jamais les réponses d'hier, ou même d'aujourd'hui, n'ont semblé à ce point problématiques à ceux qui les vivent, et parfois en souffrent. Mais à quelle logique répond cette historicité qui est notre lot quotidien? Si l'Histoire ne répond à aucune finalité ultime qu'on puisse dégager, contrairement à ce que pensaient Hegel et Marx, est-ce à dire que rien ne peut expliquer les variations historiques? L'Europe connaît actuellement une grande crise, voire un déclin, provoqué (...) par les deux guerres mondiales. La démographie, l'inventivité, la mort des élites, la compétitivité, la création, tout semble faire question. Connaîtrons-nous le même destin que celui de la Grèce, après les guerres fratricides décrites par Thucydide? Ou celui de l'Europe centrale après la guerre de Trente Ans? Tout cela pose la seule vraie question : qu'est-ce que l'Histoire? Le livre de Michel Meyer permet, grâce à la philosophie du questionnement qui lui est associée (la problématologie), de fonder une nouvelle approche de l'Histoire et d'analyser les gouffres auxquels elle livre ceux qui ont à la vivre de plus en plus violemment. (shrink)

Perelman a remis à l'honneur la rhétorique en 1958 et l'a appliquée à la philosophie morale, politique et juridique aussitôt, montrant ainsi la fécondité de son approche. Reprenant l'œuvre d'Aristote et la poursuivant, il a fait de la rhétorique et de l'argumentation la nouvelle matrice des sciences humaines après la mort du structuralisme. A l'occasion du centenaire de sa naissance, les auteurs réunis ici lui rendent hommage, mais aussi poursuivent, par leurs propres recherches, l'idée que la rhétorique comme l'argumentation sont (...) centrales. (shrink)

Bioethicists frequently call for empirical researchers to engage participants and community members in their research, but don't themselves typically engage community members in their normative research. In this article, we describe an effort to include members of the public in normative discussions about the risks, potential benefits, and ethical responsibilities of social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research. We reflect on what might—and might not— be gained from engaging the public in normative scholarship and on lessons learned about public perspectives on (...) the risks and potential benefits of SBG research and the responsible conduct and communication of such research. We also provide procedural lessons for others in bioethics who are interested in engaging members of the public in their research. (shrink)

Derrida's work testifies to the problematic state of contemporary thought. Questioning Derrida offers new explorations into Derrida's contribution to philosophy. Presenting contributions from prominent philosophers worldwide, this book explores many aspects of Derrida's philosophical perspective. With contributors commenting on a particular topic or defending alternative viewpoints, this book examines the work of Plato, Hegel, Aristotle, Heidegger and also the philosophy of science. Focusing on 'problematology' - a conception of philosophy as questioning - the contributors explore this new way of 'doing' (...) philosophy. Including a concluding chapter from Derrida himself, this book presents Derrida in question and Derrida and his answers and opens new debate for readers across the fields of philosophy and literature, particularly those exploring the work of Derrida, issues in continental philosophy, and the theory of questioning. (shrink)

Since 2011, the research community had waited with bated breath as regulators contemplated for the first time bringing secondary research with nonidentifiable biospecimens under the Common Rule and dramatically tightening the criteria for waiving consent to biospecimen research. After considerable pushback from both researchers and patients and amid rumors of intractable disagreement among Common Rule agencies, the Final Rule published on the last day of President Obama's administration left out these troubling changes, and there was a collective sigh of relief. (...) Relief is appropriate, but celebration premature: researchers have little reason to avail themselves of the new broad consent option offered in the Final Rule, and the question of whether biospecimens ought to be treated as inherently identifiable has merely been postponed. (shrink)

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

Michel Meyer offers a new beginning for philosophy rooted in a theory of questioning that he calls "problematology." Meyer argues that a new beginning is necessary in order to resituate philosophy, science, and linguistic analysis, and he proposes a global view of rationality by returning to the nature of questioning itself. For Meyer, philosophy does not solve problems or give answers but instead shows how propositions are related to a whole field of questions that give them (...) meaning. Reason is identified not with answers but with the question-answer process. Meyer pursues this new theory of reason and meaning in a critique of Western philosophy from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Foucault. He provides a detailed analysis of Descartes' notion of radical doubt and demonstrates its implications for the subsequent philosophical tradition that ignored the questioning process while pursuing an unshakable foundation for knowledge. Meyer argues that recent work in rhetoric points toward a theory of radical questioning and claims that the methods of rhetoric and argumentation must be turned back on philosophy itself in order to recover the original significance of metaphysics as the science of ultimate questions. (shrink)

by the question in its being an answer, if only in a circumstantial (i. e. inessential) manner. One indeed must question oneself in order to remember, says Plato, but the dialectic, which would be scientific, must be something else even if it remains a play of question and answer. This contradiction did not escape Aristotle: he split the scientific from the dialectic and logic from argumentation whose respective theories he was led to conceive in order to clearly define their boundaries (...) and specificities. As for Plato, he found in the famous theory of Ideas what he sought in order to justify knowledge as that which is supposed to hold its truth only from itself. What do Ideas mean within the framework of our approach? In what consists the passage from rhetoric to ontology which leads to the denaturation of argumentation? When Socrates asked, for example, "What is virtue?", he thought one could not answer such a question because the answer refers to a single proposition, a single truth, whereas the formulation of the question itself does not indicate this unicity. For any answer, another can be given and thus continuously, if necessary, until eventually one will come across an incompatibility. Now, to a question as to what X, Y, or Z is, one can answer in many ways and nothing in the question itself prohibits multiplicity. Virtue is courage, is justice, and so on. (shrink)

According to the traditional view, meaning presents itself under the form of some kind of identity.

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding (...) principle. What the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around. Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known. (shrink)

Using mobile health research as an extended example, this article provides an overview of when the Common Rule “applies” to a variety of activities, what might be meant when one says that the Common Rule does or does not “apply,” the extent to which these different meanings of “apply” matter, and, when the Common Rule does apply, how it applies.

Contemporary or postmodern thought is based on the lack of foundation. The impossibility of having a principle for philosophy has become a position of principle. As a result, rhetoric has taken over. Content has given way to the priority of form. Michel Meyer's book aims at showing that philosophy as foundational is possible and necessary, and that rhetoric can flourish alongside, but the conception of reason must be changed. Questioning rather than answering must be considered as the guiding (...) principle. What the author calls "problematology" is not only the study of questioning but also the analysis of the reasons why it has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy. Since Socrates, philosophers and scientists have reasoned by asking questions and by trying to solve them. Questioning has been the unthematized foundation of philosophy and thought at large. Philosophers, however, have preferred another norm, granting privilege to the answers and thereby repressing the questions into the realm of the preliminary and unessential. They have not considered their discursive practice as being based upon some question-answer complex, but exclusively on the results they call propositions. Meyer argues that propositions ensue from corresponding questions, and not the other way around. Anthropology, ontology, reasoning, and language thus receive a new interpretation in the problematological conception of philosophy, a conception in which questions and problems are thematized afresh. The theory of language in everyday use, in argumentation, or in literary analysis receives a full and decisive treatment here, making Meyer's question-view one of the leading theories in contemporary thought, alongside his rhetoric for which he is already well known. (shrink)

For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.In this book, noted European philosopher Michel Meyer offers a wide-ranging exegesis, the first of its kind, that ...

L'ONTOLOGIE comme question de l'Etre aura dominé le XXe siècle, avec L'Etre et le Temps de Heidegger et l'Etre et le Néant de Sartre. Mais que dire sur l'Etre sans le présupposer, sans dire qu'il est ceci ou cela alors que c'est ce dire même qui fait problème? L'Etre se présente ainsi comme la problématicité de la philosophie, et c'est du même coup cette problématicité qui pose question avant tel ou tel objet, aussi éminent soit-il. En se voulant interrogation sur (...) l'Etre, la philosophie néglige de prendre en compte l'être de sa propre interrogation, et de s'interroger non seulement sur son questionnement, mais sur le questionnement en général, qu'elle met cependant en œuvre comme une évidence. Le but de cet ouvrage est d'analyser, de Platon à Heidegger, en passant par Kant, Sartre, Bergson et Wittgenstein, les apories de l'ontologie et leur dépassement par la thématisation du questionnement, la problématologie. Car qu'est-ce que la philosophie sinon un questionnement radical, à questionner enfin comme tel, et non plus au travers de l'Etre ou du sujet? MICHEL MEYER. (shrink)

The Nature of Problematic Knowledge by MICHEL MEYER An interdisciplinary reader on questions and questioning, such as this one, is based on the evidence ...

Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca founded the Brussels school of argumentation in 1958, when they published their famous Traité de l'argumentation. Even if, in Brussels, Eugène Dupréel had already set out to rehabilitate the Sophists, the intellectual atmosphere in the French-speaking world was not very propitious for rhetoric. Most French intellectuals were plunged into ideological debates linked to the intellectual monopoly of the French communist party on societal issues. Free discussion was certainly not very topical. It was only after the (...) fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, five years after Perelman's death, that rhetoric began to draw increasing attention. His ideas then gained momentum in France, as .. (shrink)

Many feel the Common Rule treats an unwieldy range of activities identically under the monolithic label "human subjects research." Past objections centering on the conflation of biomedical and behavioral research have gained new currency with the increase in biobanking and Internet-based research. A more nuanced approach to research is overdue. Regulation will no doubt remain a major component of any new approach. But in some research contexts, investigators and subjects should be permitted to reach voluntary, informed agreements about certain aspects (...) of their relationship.Consider the National Institutes of Health's new "Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research."1 The guidelines owe their existence to the NIH's .. (shrink)

La réalité est au centre du débat en science comme en philosophie. De l'infiniment petit à l'infiniment grand, de la mécanique quantique à la relativité, les conceptions s'affrontent, et parfois se complètent. Que peut nous dire le philosophe sur ces questions? Pour y répondre, Michel Meyer a développé une approche nouvelle, la problématologie ou théorie du questionnement. Le savant interroge le réel, se livre à des expériences qui sont des mises à l'épreuve d'alternatives, tout comme l'homme de la (...) rue affronte le réel, qui n'est jamais donné, en l'interrogeant également. Mais en quoi consiste une pensée qui ne se mesure plus à l'aune du jugement, mais au questionnement dont il est issu? Michel Meyer élabore ici une systématisation de l'interrogativité, qui oblige à repenser les catégories aussi bien que les principes de l'esprit humain qui servent à concevoir la réalité scientifique mais aussi quotidienne. La réalité n'est pas tant un contenu, toujours variable d'époque à époque, qu'une fonction, celle qui permet de maintenir la différence entre nos questions, voire nos souhaits, et les réponses qui s'en détachent, pour valoir comme telles. (shrink)

English summary: Theater allows people to examine important problems with sufficient distance in order to judge fairly without feeling directly implicated. Michel Meyer offers a much needed history of theater, from its earliest Greek beginnings, through the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, to the absurd works of Beckett or Sartre, while remembering the context of other supporting arts. French description: Le theatre est, avec l'epopee, la plus ancienne forme de litterature en Occident. Son but est de creer de la distance (...) avec des situations problematiques, liees au pouvoir, au divin, aux dilemmes moraux, afin de permettre au spectateur de faire le bon jugement sans se sentir directement implique. Michel Meyer envisage toutes les theories du theatre, a commencer par celle d'Aristote, qui se sont succede jusqu'a aujourd'hui et les confronte a l'histoire meme du theatre. Eschyle, Sophocle, Euripide, Aristophane, Marlowe, Machiavel, Shakespeare, Racine et le theatre classique francais, le theatre baroque espagnol, le romantisme, le realisme, d'Ibsen a Tchekhov et a Pirandello, comme le theatre de l'absurde, avec Ionesco, Beckett ou Sartre, tout est etudie, articule, et remis en perspective. La rationalite dans l'histoire du theatre est clairement mise en evidence, sans jamais negliger ce que le theatre doit ou apporte aux autres arts les plus proches, comme l'opera. Michel Meyer offre ici une synthese spectaculaire et une erudition sans precedent sur le phenomene theatre en un ouvrage court et percutant, plein d'idees nouvelles. (shrink)

The rejection of rhetoric has been a constant theme in Western thought since Plato. The presupposition of such a debasement lies at the foundation of a certain view of Reason that I have called propositionalism, and which is analyzed in this article. The basic tenets of propositionalism are that truth is exclusive, i.e. it does not allow for any alternative, and that there is always only one proposition which must be true, the opposite one being false. Necessity and uniqueness are (...) the ideals of propositionalism. But the question of the necessity of such a necessity is bound to arise. Foundationalism and propositionalism are intrinsically related. Since necessity excludes alternatives, rhetoric, which is based on the possibility of opposite standpoints, is unavoidably devalued as the crippled child of Reason, identical to sophistry or eristic. But propositionalism cannot justify itself and provide a justification for its own foundation without circle or contraditction. Since it responds to the problem of eradicating problems and alternatives through propositional entities, propositionalism is ultimately based on questioning to which it replies in the mode of denial. The unavowed foundation of Reason is therefore the question of questioning, even though this very question is suppressed as propositionalism. The trace of such a question is not only historical, but can also be seen, for instance, in the role played by the principle of contradiction in the constitution of propositional Reason (Artitotle): opposite “propositions” are not the expression of a problematic situation, they are either possible or successively unique propositions.We want to replace propositionalism by problematology which allows for the conceptualization of alternatives, thereby rendering a true rhetoric possible. Argumentation cannot then be equated with eristic any more, as propositionalism maintained.Rationality must be seen as having questioning as its true starting-point. Reason must be rhetorical if it is to survive the death of propositionalism which took place after the radical criticisms of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Even if it is still hard ffor philosophers and rhetoricians to think within another framework and even though they prefer endlessly to deconstauct the old one instead of changing it, problematology is bound to impose itself as the new voice for rationality, because Reason has always endeavored to solve problems. Propositionalism has been only one way of conceiving problems, based on the view that solutions could be but the suppression of questioning. (shrink)