This paper leads to apply some recent developments in the economic literature dealing with the concept of innovation systems to the problem of economic cohesion in Europe. Starting from a definition of innovation systems, it allows to consider firms and sets of intstitutions as two main but different types of innovation systems. This distinction is the source of a discussion about the nature of the coordination problems which appear when considering the European diversity of innovation systems. The different combinations between (...) innovation systems developed in the paper are a useful means of discussing European policy intervention and its ability to favour (or not) economic cohesion. (shrink)

No estudo dedicado às relações entre teologia e filosofia, très modelos de compreensão são submetidos a exame; estes modelos apoiam-se respecti-vamente sobre Hegel, Husserl e Heidegger. Mas ao mesmo tempo aparece a limitaçâo interna de cada um des tes modelos: a relaçâo representaçâo--pensamento, a análise transcendental da consciência religiosa e o estudo da diferença do ser e do ente nâo podem fornecer do problema de Deus uma apresentaçâo que satisfaça quer o filôsofo quer o crente. É por isso que a (...) anâlise deve ser retomada com outras bases - o conceito de pessoa e o de desimplicaçâo - tendo em conta o resultado destes modelos. /// Dans l'étude consacrée aux relations entre théologie et philosophie, trois modèles de compréhension sont soumis à l'examen; ces modèles s'appuient respectivement en Hegel, Husserl et Heidegger. Mais en même temps appa-rait la limitation interne de chacun de ces modèles: le rapport représentation--pensée, l'analyse transcendantale de la conscience religieuse et l'étude de la différence de l'être et de l'étant ne peuvent donner du problème de Dieu une présentation qui satisfasse ni le philosophe ni le croyant. C'est pourquoi l'analyse doit être reprise sur de nouvelles bases - le concept de personne et celui de désimplication - en tenant compte du résultat de ces modèles. /// In this study dedicated to the relationship between theology and philosophy, three models of understanding are considered; these models are those of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. But there is an internal limitation within each one of these models: the relation between representation and thought, the transcendental analysis of religious consciousness, and the difference between Being and being cannot provide the problem of God with a satisfactory presentation for neider philosophers nor believers. For this reason the analysis has to be reconsidered from a new perspective - that of the concept of Person and that of "desimplication" - after studying the results of those models. (shrink)

Este artigo quer ressalvar como a postura ética é fundamental num contexto de pluralismo religioso – na perspectiva de diálogo interreligioso. Focalizando o encontro entre o cristianismo e as religiôes de matrizes africanas no Brasil, a teologia negra desenvolvida no Brasil fala em junção. O problema caracterizado quer trazer alguma marca das experiências de inculturação (experiência do sagrado). Este tema da inculturação na América Latina revela que é importante analisar no vai-e-vem da missão junto aos Negros, a articulação dos aspectos (...) seguintes: identidades, poderes e diálogos. Por isso, abordo a questão ética a partir da definição identitária, e o processo de inculturação no encontro do cristianismo com as religiões de matrizes africanas, para indicar possíveis rumos do diálogo neste contexto. (shrink)

Lors des fouilles du Prytanée de Délos en 1987, un puits d’époque classique fut mis au jour. Ce puits avait été entièrement comblé, vraisemblablement en une seule fois, à la fin du iii eou au début du iv e s. apr. J.-C., avec des matériaux divers pris sur place et une grande quantité de céramiques. Cet ensemble clos, contenant un minimum de 215 individus, est presque exclusivement constitué de fragments de céramiques communes très diverses, de céramiques culinaires et d’amphores de (...) 24 types différents. Un tel matériel permet d’enrichir considérablement notre connaissance sur la céramique cycladique d’époque impériale romaine, qui reste à ce jour encore très mal documentée. Il apporte également un nouvel éclairage sur tout un pan — jusqu’à présent souvent resté dans l’ombre — de l’histoire économique, commerciale et artisanale de Délos en ces siècles « tardifs ». (shrink)

Existen múltiples maneras de aproximarse al transhumanismo e intentar comprenderlo, una de ellas es desde sus raíces filosóficas. La filósofa francesa Chantal Delsol, en su estudio sobre la sociedad contemporánea, presenta al prometeísmo –entendido como el intento de dominio del hombre sobre la naturaleza a través de la técnica– como una nota característica de nuestro tiempo. Dentro de su análisis, Delsol explica que el prometeísmo moderno, fruto de la Ilustración, se encontraría ahora en una forma pervertida en la actual modernidad (...) tardía –es decir, desde mediados del siglo XX en adelante– y eso estaría manifiesto tanto en el totalitarismo del siglo pasado como en el transhumanismo del siglo XXI. Este prometeísmo pervertido estaría expresado de manera clara en la idea de que “todo es posible” para el ser humano a través de la técnica, especialmente la creación del hombre nuevo. De esta manera, la filósofa francesa nos presenta una raíz filosófica común entre el totalitarismo y el transhumanismo como manifestaciones del período tardío-moderno. Desde este análisis conceptual, revisamos el carácter prometeíco tanto del totalitarismo como del transhumanismo y, a la vez, exploramos la necesidad de pensar sobre los límites antropológicos respecto de la transformación de la naturaleza a través de la tecnología. (shrink)

Natural languages come in two different modalities. The impact of modality on the grammatical structure and linguistic theory has been discussed at great length in the last 20 years. By contrast, the impact of modality on linguistic data elicitation and collection, corpus studies and experimental (psycholinguistic) studies is still underinvestigated (van Herreweghe/Vermeerbergen 2012; Orfanidou et al. 2015). In this paper, we address specific challenges that arise in judgement data elicitation and experimental studies of sign languages. These challenges are related to (...) the socio-linguistic status of the Deaf community and the larger variability across signers within the same community, to the social status of sign languages, to properties of ;he visual-gestural modality and its interface with gesture, to methodological aspects of handling sign language data, and to specific linguistic features of sign languages. While some of these challenges also pertain to (some varieties of) spoken languages, other challenges are more modality-specific. In addition, the special combination of the challenges discussed in this paper seems to be a specific facet empirical research on sign languages is faced with. In addition, we discuss the complementarity of theoretical approaches and experimental studies and show how the interaction of both approaches contributes to a better understanding of sign languages in particular and linguistic structures in general. (shrink)

Philosophical suspicions about the place of shame in the psychology of the mature moral agent are in tension with the commonplace assumption that to call a person shameless purports to mark a fault, arguably a moral fault. I shift philosophical suspicions away from shame and toward its absence in the shameless by focusing attention on phenomena of shamelessness. In redirecting our attention, I clarify the nature of the failing to which ascriptions of shamelessness might refer and defend the thought that, (...) as an evasion of moral self-censure, shamelessness can be morally pernicious. Far from foregoing shame, I conclude, we should be mindful of its moral importance and unapologetic in its defense. (shrink)

There is a tendency to take mounted dinosaur skeletons at face value, as the raw data on which the science of paleontology is founded. But the truth is that mounted dinosaur skeletons are substantially intention-dependent—they are artifacts. More importantly, I argue, they are also substantially imagination-dependent: their production is substantially causally reliant on preparators’ creative imaginations, and their proper reception is predicated on audiences’ recreative imaginations. My main goal here is to show that dinosaur skeletal mounts are plausible candidates for (...) art-status. But, what is more, I think they are artworks—specifically, sculptures. (shrink)

Fear, which has always been one of the most powerful of human passions, has grown in importance during modernity. First with Machiavelli and later especially with Hobbes, fear has become one of the foundational ideas of modern political philosophy. If fear, especially fear of death, does indeed occupy a central place in the foundation of modern politics, then it is necessary to study carefully the implications and consequences of the transhumanist attempt to overcome death. Among the main aspirations of transhumanism (...) is the search for almost infinite longevity and, eventually, the total abolition of aging. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the specific role that fear of death has played in modern political philosophy to understand the possible effects that an eventual overcoming of death would have, albeit partial, as wanted by transhumanists. While the possibility of achieving immortality seems unlikely, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t study what’s behind this transhumanist aspiration. In this way, transhumanism seems the final consequence of modern development, since it’s in continuity with the modern attempt to respond to the fear of death, but it does so by trying an ultimate solution to it through the elimination of death, at least by sickness and old age. In this paper, we will review the role of fear of death in the founding of modern political philosophy by Machiavelli and Hobbes, and then we will analyse the transhumanist attempt to overcome death as a consequence of this fear and its possible political effects. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the history of the notion of essence in 20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on views held by influential analytic philosophers who discussed, or relied on essence or cognate notions in their works. It in particular covers Russell and Moore’s different approaches to essence before and after breaking with British idealism, the (pre- and post-)logical positivists’ critique of metaphysics and rejection of essence (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Schlick, Stebbing), the tendency to loosen the notion of logical necessity (...) to accommodate certain metaphysical truths in Wittgenstein and others, Quine’s logical rehabilitation of metaphysics and criticism of de re modality, the modal view of essence promoted by the development of quantified modal logic (C. I. Lewis, Barcan Marcus, Kripke) and direct reference theory (Barcan Marcus, Kripke, Putnam), and the emergence of the notion of metaphysical necessity (Kneale, Kripke), and finally Fine’s re-establishment of a Neo-Aristotelian, hyperintensional notion of essence in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Ce livre de Michel Freitag interpelle "tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la place qu'ils tiennent ou le rôle qu'ils jouent dans l'aventure de l'Université contemporaine." (Georges Leroux, Spirale) Une des constantes des écrits contenus dans ce livre "réside dans la comparaison systématique que Michel Freitag établit entre les caractéristiques de la modernité et celles de la postmodernité et les conséquences de celle-ci sur le traitement des enjeux et des problèmes actuels." (Louis Guay, Anthropologie et société) "Dans une société (...) réduite au bavardage, à l'insignifiance, à la poursuite de petits bonheurs mesquins, le tout sous contrôle bureaucratique de plus en plus envahissant, une telle réflexion est devenue essentielle. Voici un livre de bonne foi qui n'attend que ses lecteurs, qu'on souhaite nombreux." (Robert Major, Voix et images). (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about what the folk concept of pain is. This paper criticises existing theories of the folk concept of pain, i.e. the mental view, the bodily view, and the recently proposed polyeidic view. It puts forward an alternative proposal – the polysemy view – according to which pain terms like “sore,” “ache” and “hurt” are polysemous, where one sense refers to a mental state and another a bodily state, and the type of polysemy at issue reflects two distinct but (...) related concepts of pain. Implications with respect to issues in philosophy of pain are also drawn. (shrink)

Research focusing on the relationship between measures of Corporate Social Responsibility and company financial performance has led to mixed results in the North American context. In addition, the ethical attitudes and approaches toward CSR investments of both companies and rating agencies are not necessarily the same in Europe and the United States. In this study, we use CSR ratings issued by a major European CSR ratings agency to examine in a bi-directional manner the relationships between CSR ratings and financial performance (...) in the European context. By bi-directional, we mean an examination of the relationship between prior CSR ratings and subsequent accounting and financial performance and reciprocally, the impact of accounting and financial performance of year N − 1 on CSR ratings of year N. Our principal findings are: the greater the market capitalization of a company, the higher the Vigeo rating, the higher the risk of the company, the lower the Vigeo rating, and the greater the stock market return of a company, the lower the Vigeo rating. Based on these findings, we propose a concept of “political visibility” pursuant to which enterprises of a greater size are exposed to greater pressure to conform to norms of socially acceptable behavior, a concept of “priorities” in which enterprises that have resolved their most urgent financial needs have a greater ability to invest in CSR, a concept of “rating downgrading” which reveals the sanctioning role of the rating agency from an ethical standpoint. (shrink)

This paper is an essay about Harold Garfinkel's heritage. It outlines a response to Eric Livingston's proposal to say goodbye to ethnomethodology as pertaining to the sociological tradition; and it rejects part of Melvin Pollner's diagnosis about the changes occurred in ethnomethodological working. If it agrees with Pollner about the idea that something of the initial ethnomethodology's program has been left aside after the "work studies" turn, it asserts that such a turn has nonetheless made possible authentic discoveries. So the (...) paper speaks for a better integration of the two versions of ethnomethodology separated by Pollner. (shrink)

Cet article présente et discute la philosophie de la religion de John Dewey, en la rapportant aux débats actuels sur le « post-séculier ». La perspective de Dewey est complètement séculariste tout en plaidant pour le développement de l’attitude religieuse dans l’expérience. Il s’agit d’une attitude religieuse libérée du surnaturalisme et du dogmatisme des religions instituées. Ce sécularisme religieux paradoxal est fondé sur une conception naturaliste de l’expérience humaine et de la vie sociale. Après avoir reconstitué les arguments de Dewey, (...) l’article examine deux objections qui leur ont été adressées. (shrink)

« Qu’est-ce que la philosophie et quel est son rôle aujourd’hui? Entre juillet et octobre 1966, quelques mois après la parution des Mots et les Choses, Michel Foucault, dans un manuscrit très soigneusement rédigé mais qu’il ne publiera pas, apporte sa réponse à cette question tant débattue.À la différence de ceux qui, à l’époque, s’attachent à dévoiler l’essence de la philosophie ou à en prononcer la mort, Foucault l’appréhende, dans sa matérialité, comme un discours dont il convient de dégager (...) l’économie eu égard aux autres discours (scientifique, fictif, ordinaire, religieux) qui circulent dans un contexte donné.Le Discours philosophique propose ainsi une nouvelle manière de faire l’histoire de la philosophie, qui la décentre du commentaire des grands philosophes. Nietzsche y occupe toutefois une place particulière car il inaugure une conjoncture où la philosophie devient une entreprise de diagnostic du présent. Il revient en effet désormais à la philosophie de dire, à partir de l’« archive intégrale » d’une culture, ce qui en fait l’actualité.Si L’Archéologie du savoir, consacré aux enjeux méthodologiques d’un tel projet, s’y annonce, nulle part autant que dans Le Discours philosophique Michel Foucault n’aura explicité les ambitions de son programme intellectuel.»--. (shrink)

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault (...) that appeared in the journal Actuel. Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power. Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists. (shrink)

The first collection of twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Henry's work in English, this book provides an excellent introduction to his thought.

Written by four recognized experts with senior experience in research and government, this text is the first comprehensive survival kit for students and practitioners of economic policy. It is set to become an indispensable resource for everyone involved or interested in modern economic policy. Academic scholars willing to engage in policy discussions and students at graduate or advanced undergraduate levels will find it an essential bridge to the policy world. What makes the book unique is that it combines like no (...) other, facts-based analysis, state-of-the art theories and models, and insights from first-hand policy experience at national and international levels. The book has grown out of ten years of experience teaching economic policy at the graduate level. It provides an intellectually coherent framework to understand the potentialities and limits of economic policy. It addresses positive dimensions, normative dimensions and political-economy constraints. It fills an important gap by reconciling in each major policy area stylized facts of recent economic history, key questions faced by contemporary policymakers, and essential lessons from theory which are captured and explained in a clear, concise, and self-contained way. All major areas of domestic and international policymaking are covered: fiscal policy, monetary policy, international finance and exchange-rate policy, tax policy, and long-term growth policies. The book concludes with a special chapter on the lessons of the financial crisis. The authors are intellectually non-partisan and they draw examples from various countries and experiences; from emerging markets to developing economies, shedding light when necessary on local specificities such as European Union rules and instruments. Economic Policy: Theory and Practice is the essential guide to economic policy in the new post-crisis context. (shrink)

This paper outlines an adverbial approach of value, which it proposes as an alternative to a “nominalistic” one. It starts from a review of a recent book of a French economist, André Orléan, who develops, from the instance of money, a theory of value which he thinks valid for all social values. The paper criticizes the main presuppositions of Orléan’s model of value and tries to elaborate a more praxeological and a more social one.

This chapter contains section titled: From “Truth and Power”.

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

Si l’on connaît aujourd’hui le dialogue fructueux que Paul Ricœur a noué avec les penseurs structuralistes, on ignore largement son positionnement face à la mouvance poststructuraliste. Faut-il opposer la philosophie de Ricœur au poststructuralisme à la française ou au contraire doit-on montrer qu’elle en est une variante singulière? C’est la seconde option qui est ici défendue. Certes, le poststructuralisme ne doit pas être considéré comme une école de pensée mais comme une reconstruction qui relève de l’histoire de la philosophie. Dans (...) la mesure où les horizons de dépassement du structuralisme ont été posés de manière chaque fois particulière, il est préférable de parler de poststructuralismes au pluriel. C’est la raison pour laquelle J. Michel propose des confrontations dyadiques entre Ricœur et certains de ses contemporains que l’on regroupe habituellement dans cette mouvance. (shrink)

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

En este artículo se propone, como clave de lectura para entender la filosofía política de Maquiavelo, una síntesis, por una parte, entre la primacía del miedo identificada por Leo Strauss y, por otra parte, siguiendo a Claude Lefort, la prioridad del conflicto político causada por los humores. Se discuten las dificultades y el alcance del intento de articular las interpretaciones de Strauss y Lefort sobre Maquiavelo. Una vez mostrada la manera en que la primacía del miedo permite articular las tensiones (...) internas de la teoría de los humores, se aplica la combinación de ambas en el paradigmático discurso de Istorie fiorentine III 13, sobre la revuelta de los ciompi. (shrink)

1. Introduction Ce livre offre une plongée saisissante dans le bouillonnement intellectuel qui a généré le mouvement pragmatiste à la fin du xixe siècle. Mathias Girel considère que “le continent pragmatiste reste encore en grande partie à explorer” (2021: 16). Parfaitement documenté, son ouvrage est une contribution importante à cette exploration. C’est sans doute le meilleur ouvrage en langue française sur les controverses à travers lesquelles ce courant philosophique inédit a pris forme....

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on (...) national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics. (shrink)

Pour George Herbert Mead, penser c’est entretenir « une conversation de gestes intériorisée». Cette conception ne paraît pas à première vue d’une originalité absolue. Ce qui la rend vraiment originale est l’approche « sociale-behavioriste » dont elle fait partie, et notamment la double idée que la conversation dont il s’agit est une conversation de gestes ou d’attitudes, et que la pensée ainsi quel ‘intelligence réflexive naissent de l’internalisation d’un processus d’organisation de la conduite étayé sur le mécanisme social de la (...) communication. Encore faut-il saisir en quoi cette conception diffère de celle du fondateur de la psychologie behavioriste, John B. Watson, pour qui penser n’est rien d’autre que se tenir un discours interne. (shrink)

Les entretiens ici réunis portent sur les conséquences de cette révolution méthodologique qui permet la compréhension des grands aspects de l'existence, thème de nombreux essais de Michel Henry à partir des années 80 : action, ...

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

Ce livre est une critique dialectique du systématisme foucaldien en particulier et du structuralisme en général ; il constitue un plaidoyer pour l'équilibre des paramètres en matière de compréhension et d'explication des phénomènes historiques et culturels. A l'encontre de la raison structuraliste qui tend à réifier le sujet humain, il revendique pour ce dernier une place inexpugnable dans les domaines de la pensée et de l'action, au milieu, en dépit, ou peut-être même à cause des structures dont il prend volontiers (...) acte de l'existence et du potentiel de détermination. A cet égard, l'ouvrage fournit une riche introduction, recommandée à celui qui veut s'informer de l'univers philosophique dans lequel s'est investi Michel Foucault, ainsi que des difficultés réelles et imaginables qui se dégagent de la théorie et de la pratique de l'entreprise structuraliste. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is in crisis because of repeated failures to discover new drugs for mental disorders. Lack of measurement validity could partly account for these failures. If researchers do not actually measure the effects of drugs on the disorders they aim to investigate, one should expect suboptimal treatment outcomes. I argue that this is the case, focusing on depression, and fear & anxiety disorders. In doing so, I show how psychiatric research illustrates a more general phenomenon that I call “validity (...) drift.” A validity drift occurs when, in the course of developing new measurement procedures, researchers end up studying something different from what they originally aimed to study. I analyze the different ways in which scientists attempt to validate procedures for measuring mental disorders for the purpose of testing drugs in animal models. I show how those validation efforts might fail, thereby leading to validity drifts. Overall, this analysis highlights the complex interplay between the development of new measurement procedures, their calibration, and scientific theories of the target phenomena. (shrink)

Negative subjective reports such as “I didn’t see the stimulus” can be interpreted as indicating either that the subject didn’t see the stimulus, or as indicating that, while the subject did see the stimulus, the strength of sensory signals associated with the stimulus fell below a conservative criterion for answering “seen”. Determining which of these two interpretations is correct is the criterion problem. I present two ways in which researchers can solve this problem. But there’s more. What I call the (...) “new criterion problem” consists in determining whether criteria effects reflect perceptual changes, or changes in response strategy. Through case studies, I argue that this new version of the problem can be solved as well, although there is currently no systematic way to solve it. I conclude that criterion problems do not constitute good reasons for skepticism about the scientific study of consciousness. (shrink)

A recent paper by Bullock (2018) raises a dilemma for proponents of epistemic paternalism. If epistemic paternalists contend that epistemic improvements contribute to one’s wellbeing, then their view conflates with general paternalism. Instead, if they appeal to the notion of a distinctive epistemic value, their view is unjustified, in that concerns about epistemic value fail to outweigh concerns about personal sovereignty. In this chapter, I address Bullock’s challenge in a way that safeguards the legitimacy of epistemic paternalism, albeit restricting its (...) scope to a limited range of cognitive projects. After shedding light on a problem with how Bullock singles out cases to which the dilemma applies, I argue that there is at least one reasonable way of interpreting the notion of ‘personal autonomy’ which legitimates and justifies undertaking epistemically paternalistic interferences for one’s epistemic good. (shrink)

On a pu croire ou espérer, un temps, que les monstruosités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale étaient derrière nous. Définitivement. Or partout, à nouveau, on massacre, on torture, on extermine. Comment comprendre cette facilité des hommes entrer dans le mal? La réponse à cette question devient chaque jour plus urgente. Michel Terestchenko rouvre ici le débat. D'abord, en complétant la démonstration de Hannah Arendt : de même que ce ne sont pas seulement des monstres qui basculent dans l'horreur mais (...) des hommes ordinaires, trop ordinaires, de même, montre-t-il, il n'est pas besoin d'être un saint pour accomplir le juste et secourir des victimes au risque de sa vie. Héros ou salaud? C'est toujours une petite décision initiale, à peine perceptible, qui décide du côté dans lequel, une fois engagé, on se retrouvera in fine. Mais qu'est-ce qui explique cette décision? C'est là où l'enquête de M. Terestchenko prend toute son ampleur. En procédant à une reconstitution critique du débat central de la philosophie morale depuis le XVIIe siècle, aujourd'hui relayé par la majorité des sociologues et des économistes, elle montre combien est stérile l'opposition entre tenants de la thèse de l'égoïsme psychologique et défenseurs de l'hypothèse d'un altruisme sacrificiel. Ce n'est pas par " intérêt " qu'on tue ou qu'on torture. Ni par pur altruisme qu'on se refuse à l'abjection. Les travaux qui analysent les phénomènes de soumission à l'autorité, de conformisme de groupe ou de passivité face à des situations de détresse, invitent à comprendre tout autrement les conduites de destructivité. Tirant les conclusions philosophiques de recherches récentes entreprises en psychologie sociale et s'appuyant sur certains exemples historiques particulièrement éclairants - tel le cas de Franz Stangl, le commandant de Treblinka, ou, à l'opposé, les actions héroïques du pasteur André Trocmé et de sa femme Magda au Chambon-sur-Lignon -, l'auteur propose de penser les conduites humaines face au mal selon un nouveau paradigme celui de l'absence ou de la présence à soi. (shrink)