Les États européens semblent vouloir s’unir. Les peuples européens le permettront-ils ? Le dilemme qui agite les nations européennes, que leurs États soient ou non membres de l’Union, prend des apparences différentes selon leur degré d’intégration à l’ensemble en gestation. Pour ceux qui frappent à la porte, l’espoir est grand, mais pour ceux à qui se pose déjà la question..

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French (...) sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world. In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation. On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences. (shrink)

Consider the following two seemingly unrelated questions. First, why does Rousseau (1993 [1762]) believe that the formation of factions or partial associations is not conducive to the general will in Du Contrat Social, II, 3? Second, why do federal assemblies typically strive for some form of degressive proportionality, i.e. a balance between equal and proportional representation, for the countries in the federation? We will show that there is a surprising connection between these questions. We turn to our first question. (...) It is often thought that Rousseau’s opposition to factions can be interpreted in reference to the Condorcet Jury Theorem. The Condorcet Jury Theorem states that if voters are more likely to be right on some issue than not and cast their votes independently, then the chance that the majority is correct converges to one as the number of voters goes to infinity. This interpretation is tempting, but it is inconsistent with some crucial textual evidence. We turn to our second question. Consider a federation of countries with a decision-making assembly in which each country casts a block vote. On equal representation, the vote of each country has the same weight. On proportional representation, the weights of the votes are proportional to the countries’ population sizes. In between these extremes, we can let the weights increase as a function of population sizes, but smaller countries receive greater weights and larger countries receive lesser weights than proportionality would warrant. Such weightings are called degressively proportional weightings. How can degressive proportionality be justified? And does this justification provide us any guidance as to how these weights should be set? A correct understanding of Rousseau’s misgivings about the formation of factions will hold the key to these questions. (shrink)

RESUMO:Longe de ser uma simples inversão de valores ou transbordamento pulsional, a festa, por sua natureza coletiva e sua relação com a política, é, antes de tudo, uma cerimônia. Porque as pessoas se entregam ao espetáculo, a festa é, para Rousseau, a oportunidade de expressar a legitimidade política profunda que se enraiza, ao lado da liberdade envolvida no contrato, na unidade da natureza humana e de toda a natureza como ordem do mundo. Assim, a ordem está presente na festa, (...) mesmo como ordem política e social. Mas não está lá para ser respeitada em si mesma, ela não é mais do que um símbolo ou um veículo da ordem do mundo, à qual todos podem, na festa, se conectar. Portanto, existe o contentamento, e contentamento comum, em transportar-se, cada um, para o autor do seu ser, por meio de e na evidência coletiva do amor de si plenamente satisfeito. ABSTRACT:Far from being simply an inversion of values or pure instinctual overflow, the public celebration, by its collective nature and its relation to politics, is first and foremost a ceremony. For Rousseau, the reason that people give themselves over to the spectacle, the celebration, is that it is the opportunity for manifesting the profound political legitimacy which, aside from being rooted in the freedom involved in the contract, in rooted the unity of human nature and the whole of nature as the order of the world. This order is thus present in the celebration, even as social and political order. But the order is not there to be respected in itself; it is just a symbol or vehicle of world’s order, to which everyone may relate through the celebration. There is therefore enjoyment, and collective enjoyment, in each one transporting himself to the author of his being in and by the collective evidence of his fully satisfied love of self. (shrink)

In this contribution the author explores some aspects of the relation between sovereignty, democracy and representation. After shortly focusing on the idea of sovereignty, he then questions Rousseau's refusal to take representation into account within a democratic framework, an idea that is however latent in his general approach.

La théorie de la volonté générale permet à Rousseau de redéfinir sur des bases nouvelles l’ancienne conception de la souveraineté, qui devient avec lui une souveraineté du peuple. Pour autant, le peuple souverain ne devient pas automatiquement un peuple gouvernable, et Rousseau est obligé de se confronter aux théories des arts de gouverner pour définir ce que pourrait être un gouvernement selon la volonté générale – à savoir, un gouvernement républicain. Plusieurs difficultés surgissent de la confrontration de la (...) souveraineté du peuple et du gouvernement pour le peuple, qui obligent à considérer en profondeur la façon dont Rousseau répond aux arguments et aux techniques des théoriciens de la raison d’État.The notion of a general will allows Rousseau to put on a new basis the previous, well known, conception of sovereignty, which he transforms into a sovereignty of the people. It doesn’t follow automatically from that stance that a people can be easily governed ; Rousseau must confront his position to the theories of reason of state in order to say what a government according to the general will – that is, a republican government – could be. Several difficulties stem from this confrontation. The paper aims at explaining how Rousseau deals with those predicaments by analysing his views and critiques of reason of state. (shrink)

Rousseau, dans le Discours sur l’économie politique, reprenant une image de Diderot dans son article « Droit naturel » de l’Encyclopédie, relève le paradoxe du sens social que les brigands observent dans leurs sociétés parallèles sur le mode d’un véritable rituel : « C’est ainsi que les hommes les..

Expectation is a major volume of Jean-Luc Nancy’s writings on literature, written across three decades but, for the most part, previously unavailable in English. More substantial than literary criticism, these essays collectively negotiate literature’s relation to philosophy. Nancy pursues such questions as literature’s claims to truth, the status of narrative, the relation of poetry and prose, and the unity of a book or of a text, and he addresses a number of major European writers, including Dante, Sterne, Rousseau, Hölderlin, (...) Proust, Joyce, and Blanchot. The final section offers a number of impressive pieces by Nancy that completely merge his concerns for philosophy and literature and philosophy-as-literature. These include a lengthy parody of Valéry’s “La Jeune Parque,” several original poems by Nancy, and a beautiful prose-poetic discourse on an installation by Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani that incorporates the Faust theme. Opening with a substantial Introduction by Jean-Michel Rabaté that elaborates Nancy’s importance as a literary thinker, this book constitutes the most substantial statement to date by one of today’s leading philosophers on a discipline that has been central to his work across his career. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy identifies Rousseau as the first to conceive community as a lost state of immediacy and transparency. Rousseau’s conception has allegedly shaped the western ideal of an immanent community. Nancy deconstructs that ideal, arguing that immanence would suppress community; its oneness would block the being-with which enables our ontological being-in-common. This article argues that Rousseau never posits a lost community but actually explores, like Nancy, the political closure of immanence. Man’s distinguishing trait of perfectibility, which renders (...) him finite, always open to change for better or worse, rejects the self-enclosure of immanence as does the constant willing of the general will which defines a community’s political life. If citizens could form an immanent whole, they would have nothing left to will, reaching an inhuman situation without liberty, reflection and responsibility. A community’s vitality, as Rousseau’s discussion of Poland suggests, does not come from closure to th.. (shrink)

The article examines the surprising role of Rousseau in the revival of liberal and humanist thought in contemporary French political thought. The choice of Rousseau as an inspiration and source of humanism is an illuminating indication of a shift in French thought. The authors concentrate on the natural- rights republicanism of Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut and the critical humanism of Tzvetan Todorov. While these thinkers all appeal to Rousseau's definition of humanity in terms of freedom, they (...) draw on different aspects of his thought and his relationship to the philosophic tradition. Their different receptions of Rousseau reveal tensions in the humanist revival and provoke reflection on the relationships among republicanism, liberalism and humanism in contemporary France. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

As the need for more diversity in business ethics is becoming more pressing in our global world, we provide an historical study of a Fair Trade (FT) movement, born in rural Mexico. We first focus on the basic assumptions of its founders, which include a worker–priest, Frans van der Hoff, a group of native Indians and local farmers who formed a cooperative, and an NGO, Max Havelaar. We then review both the originalities and challenges of the FT movement and its (...) potential contributions to the current theories and practices in business ethics. (shrink)

A coherent story is a story that fits together well. This notion plays a central role in the coherence theory of justification and has been proposed as a criterion for scientific theory choice. Many attempts have been made to give a probabilistic account of this notion. A proper account of coherence must not start from some partial intuitions, but should pay attention to the role that this notion is supposed to play within a particular context. Coherence is a property of (...) an information set that boosts our confidence that its content is true ceteris paribus when we receive information from independent and partially reliable sources. We construct a measure cr that relies on hypothetical sources with certain idealized characteristics. A maximally coherent information set, i.e. a set with equivalent propositions, affords a maximal confidence boost. cr is the ratio of the actual confidence boost over the confidence boost that we would have received, had the information been presented in the form of maximally coherent information, ceteris paribus. This measure is functionally dependent on the degree of reliability r of the sources. We use cr to construct a coherence quasi-ordering over information sets S and S’: S is no less coherent than S’ just in case c_r is not smaller than c_r for any value of the reliability parameter. We show that, on our account, the coherence of the story about the world gives us a reason to believe that the story is true and that the coherence of a scientific theory, construed as a set of models, is a proper criterion for theory choice. (shrink)

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on (...) a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well. (shrink)

Critical evaluations of the current movement of corporate social responsibility commodification have neglected an important question: How do CSR professionals manage the tensions resulting from the search for both profit and social responsibility? This article addresses this question by analyzing the discourse of CSR consultants with the aim of understanding how they deal with such tensions through identity work. Our findings suggest that people who claim, or who are ascribed, paradoxical professional identities may engage in ‘paradoxical identity mitigation’ – a (...) process whereby the concomitant and paradoxical use of linguistic strategies is aimed at simultaneously embracing and distancing oneself from contradictory identity demands. In uncovering how CSR professionals discursively manage the tensions engendered by CSR commodification, our results also advance current knowledge of CSR by shedding light on the underlying processes whereby new ‘hybrid’ identities are constituted and mobilized by actors to make sense of their professional activities. (shrink)

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is (...) better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred. (shrink)

In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...) is Nudge? How is it different from social advertisement? Does Nudge induce genuine preference change? Does Nudge build moral character? Is there a moral difference between the use of Nudge as opposed to subliminal images to reach policy objectives? And what are the moral constraints on Nudge? (shrink)

Hope obeys Aristotle's doctrine of the mean: one should neither hope too much, nor too little. But what determines what constitutes too much and what constitutes too little for a particular person at a particular time? The sceptic presents an argument to the effect that it is never rational to hope. An attempt to answer the sceptic leads us in different directions. Decision-theoretic and preference-theoretic arguments support the instrumental value of hope. An investigation into the nature of hope permits us (...) to assess the intrinsic value of hope. However, it must be granted to the sceptic that there is a tension between hope and epistemic rationality. I conclude with some reflections about the relationship between hope and character features that are constitutive of inner strength. (shrink)

The coherentist theory of justification provides a response to the sceptical challenge: even though the independent processes by which we gather information about the world may be of dubious quality, the internal coherence of the information provides the justification for our empirical beliefs. This central canon of the coherence theory of justification is tested within the framework of Bayesian networks, which is a theory of probabilistic reasoning in artificial intelligence. We interpret the independence of the information gathering processes (IGPs) in (...) terms of conditional independences, construct a minimal sufficient condition for a coherence ranking of information sets and assess whether the confidence boost that results from receiving information through independent IGPs is indeed a positive function of the coherence of the information set. There are multiple interpretations of what constitute IGPs of dubious quality. Do we know our IGPs to be no better than randomization processes? Or, do we know them to be better than randomization processes but not quite fully reliable, and if so, what is the nature of this lack of full reliability? Or, do we not know whether they are fully reliable or not? Within the latter interpretation, does learning something about the quality of some IGPs teach us anything about the quality of the other IGPs? The Bayesian-network models demonstrate that the success of the coherentist canon is contingent on what interpretation one endorses of the claim that our IGPs are of dubious quality. (shrink)

This is be our second course adoption anthology drawing from this solid foundation.

What happens when the meaning of life based on a divine revelation no longer makes sense? Does the quest for transcendence end in the pursuit of material success and self-absorption? Luc Ferry argues that modernity and the emergence of secular humanism in Europe since the eighteenth century have not killed the search for meaning and the sacred, or even the idea of God, but rather have transformed both through a dual process: the humanization of the divine and the divinization of (...) the human. Ferry sees evidence for the first of these in the Catholic Church's attempts to counter the growing rejection of dogmatism and to translate the religious tradition into contemporary language. The second he traces to the birth of modern love and humanitarianism, both of which demand a concern for others and even self-sacrifice in defense of values that transcend life itself. Ferry concludes with a powerful statement in favor of what he calls "transcendental humanism"--a concept that for the first time in human history gives us access to a genuine spirituality rooted in human beings instead of the divine. (shrink)

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is (...) better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred. (shrink)

Distant Suffering examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in (...) Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering. (shrink)

If we receive information from multiple independent and partially reliable information sources, then whether we are justified to believe these information items is affected by how reliable the sources are, by how well the information coheres with our background beliefs and by how internally coherent the information is. We consider the following question. Is coherence a separable determinant of our degree of belief, i.e. is it the case that the more coherent the new information is, the more justified we are (...) in believing the new information, ceteris paribus? We show that if we consider sets of information items of any size (Holism), and if we assume that there exists a coherence Ordering over such sets and that coherence is a function of the probability distribution over the propositions in such sets (Probabilism), then Separability fails to hold. (shrink)

Les etudes ici reunies rendent compte de ce que furent le contexte historique et litteraire de la redaction des dialogues platoniciens, puis de la maniere dont leur auteur a choisi de confronter sa philosophie a la mythologie, afin de mener une enquete sur le monde, l'ame et la cite. Ces lectures veulent prendre ainsi la mesure de ce qui nous eloigne aujourd'hui de Platon, mais suggerer encore qu'une histoire de la philosophie qui cherche a s'affranchir de l'anachronisme trace un chemin (...) vers la philosophie. (shrink)

L'oeuvre du philosophe anglais est au coeur du débat qui divise historiens et philosophes sur le thème de la sécularisation de la pensée politique moderne. Cet ouvrage ambitionne de contribuer nettement à ce débat, en montrant le rôle joué par la théologie de la toute-puissance dans la constitution de la philosophie morale et politique de Hobbes.

Luc Dardenne focuses on his work with his brother lean-Pierre, and in particular on their last film Le fils, and on the path which has led them to the mastery of new cinematographic practices. Dardenne touches on, in turn, the importance of the history and memory of struggles, changes in forms of engagement and of resistance, in the ethics of filming a body, the imbrication of technology in the search for the limits of their art.

L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, du côté de la France libre et de la Résistance, s’est réalisée la mobilisation des femmes, ce qui a conduit des milliers de Françaises à investir la sphère combattante. Même si ce phénomène est resté minoritaire, et a été perçu par beaucoup comme une transgression, il est significatif des brouillages du genre favorisés par les guerres totales, et témoigne d’une étape significative, pour la France, de (...) la construction de la citoyenneté féminine. (shrink)

We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on their relative merits under idealized conditions and show some surprising (...) repercussions on the variety-of-evidence thesis and the Duhem-Quine thesis. (shrink)

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is (...) better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred. (shrink)

This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is (...) better as a truth-tracker, assuming that there exists a true answer to be reached. On the basis of the Condorcet jury theorem, we show that the pbp is universally superior if the objective is to reach truth for the right reasons. If one instead is after truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which the cbp is more reliable, even though, for the most part, the pbp still is to be preferred. (shrink)

The Distribution View provides a model that integrates four distributional concerns in the evaluation of risky prospects. Starting from these concerns, we can generate an ordering over a set of risky prospects, or, starting from an ordering, we can extract a characterization of the underlying distributional concerns. Separability of States and/or Persons for multiple-person risky prospects, for single-person risky prospects and for multiple-person certain prospects are discussed within the model. The Distribution View sheds light on public health policies and provides (...) a framework for the discussion of Parfit's Priority View for risky prospects. (shrink)

This article proposes a number of models to examine through which mechanisms a population of autonomous agents could arrive at a repertoire of perceptually grounded categories that is sufficiently shared to allow successful communication. The models are inspired by the main approaches to human categorisation being discussed in the literature: nativism, empiricism, and culturalism. Colour is taken as a case study. Although we take no stance on which position is to be accepted as final truth with respect to human categorisation (...) and naming, we do point to theoretical constraints that make each position more or less likely and we make clear suggestions on what the best engineering solution would be. Specifically, we argue that the collective choice of a shared repertoire must integrate multiple constraints, including constraints coming from communication. Key Words: autonomous agents; colour categorisation; colour naming; connectionism; cultural evolution; genetic evolution; memes; origins of language; self-organisation; semiotic dynamics; symbol grounding. (shrink)

Why does an offender find it upsetting when the victim of their wrongdoing refuses to accept their apologies? Why do they find it upsetting when the victim is unwilling to grant them the forgiveness that they are asking for? I present an account of apologising and accepting apologies that can explain why this distress into an apt emotion.

Bayesian Coherence Theory of Justification or, for short, Bayesian Coherentism, is characterized by two theses, viz. (i) that our degree of confidence in the content of a set of propositions is positively affected by the coherence of the set, and (ii) that coherence can be characterized in probabilistic terms. There has been a longstanding question of how to construct a measure of coherence. We will show that Bayesian Coherentism cannot rest on a single measure of coherence, but requires a vector (...) whose components exhaustively characterize the coherence properties of the set. Our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is a function of the reliability of the sources and the components of the coherence vector. The components of this coherence vector are weakly but not strongly separable, which blocks the construction of a single coherence measure. (shrink)

The parable “Before the Law” is a pivotal text in the work of Franz Kafka. It tells of a man who looks for the law as the quintessence of his life. But his quest for meaning comes to a crisis because of a fundamental deception. Instead of interpreting the law as a personal mystery, he somehow objectifies it. His abstract view on life begets the obstacle-character that embodies all those who could bar him from finding the law. In this narrative, (...) the failure of finding the law results in a murder in which human life is reduced to bestial death. In this sense, Kafka’s narrative is a tale of anti-creation. In a close reading we analyze the text with attention for the ternary structure, i.e. the intertwined complex of the I-Thou relation and the I-It relation. The literary text is interpreted for its philosophical relevance. Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas but also Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida have an important role in this way of reading. (shrink)

Dialogo filosofijos mąstytojų Rosenzweig‘o ir Levino darbų esmė – mirties bedugnės ir asmens tapatumo santykis. Rosenzweig‘as niekį laiko galutiniu kantiškojo mąstymo tašku. Mirtis, kaip egzistencinis niekio patyrimas, buvo laikoma kiekvieno žmogaus realybe sudėtingu amžių sandūros laikotarpiu. Rosenzweig‘ui niekis buvo atspirties taškas, permąstant ir siekiant išsaugoti asmens tapatumą. Asmens tapatumas apsaugo nuo niekio, tačiau jis taip pat yra atviras pokyčiams. Savo ankstyvuosiuose tekstuose Levinas daro panašias prielaidas, laikydamas Buvimą asmens tapatumo pradžia. Levinas plėtojo dialektinę fenomenologiją pradėdamas nuo mirties. Asmens tapatumas traktuojamas (...) kaip hipostazė, tačiau Levino darbe „Totalité et Infini“ įvyksta svarbus lūžis – jame asmens tapatumo šaltiniu laikomas troškimas. Buvimas tampa dėmesio centru kaip antroji elementale pusė, o asmens tapatumas suvokiamas kaip atsiskyrimas. (shrink)

Belgium has recently extended its euthanasia legislation to minors, making it the first legislation in the world that does not specify any age limit. I consider two strands in the opposition to this legislation. First, I identify five arguments in the public debate to the effect that euthanasia for minors is somehow worse than euthanasia for adults—viz. arguments from weightiness, capability of discernment, pressure, sensitivity and sufficient palliative care—and show that these arguments are wanting. Second, there is another position in (...) the public debate that wishes to keep the current age restriction on the books and have ethics boards exercise discretion in euthanasia decisions for minors. I interpret this position on the background of Velleman’s “Against the Right to Die” and show that, although costs remain substantial, it actually can provide some qualified support against extending euthanasia legislation to minors. (shrink)