This is a translation of "Socialite et argent", a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of inter-human relations of exchange and the social relations - sociality - that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as "non-indifference to alterity" it appears here as "proximity of the stranger" and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the other (...) person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the "interestedness" of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always "being with others". Being is always "inter-being". Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the "goodness of giving", attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response. (shrink)

This is a translation of ‘Socialité et argent’, a text by Emmanuel Levinas originally published in 1987. Levinas describes the emergence of money out of interhuman relations of exchange and the social relations – sociality – that result. While elsewhere he has presented sociality as ‘nonindifference to alterity’ it appears here as ‘proximity of the stranger’ and points to the tension between an economic system based on money and the basic human disposition to respond to the face of the other (...) person. Money both encodes and effaces sociality, both designates and disguises social relations. It arises from the way that needs and interests are manifested in exchange relations, in what he calls the ‘interestedness’ of economic life. But interests are always already cut through by the fact that being is always ‘being with others’. Being is always ‘interbeing’. Interestedness is always confronted by disinterestedness, that is, by a sociality marked by the ‘goodness of giving’, attachment to and concern for the poverty of the other person. Levinas concludes with a discussion of sociality and justice, posing questions about the tension between the demand to respond to an Other immediately before me and at the same time to respond to the demands of an other Other (the third person) who also invites a response. (shrink)

The classic essay on the "karesansui" garden by French art historian Berthier has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of Zen rock gardens. 37 ...

It is commonly held that all truth-conditional effects of context result from a pragmatic process of value-assignment that is triggered (and made obligatory) by something in the sentence itself, namely a lexically context-sensitive expression (e.g. an indexical) or a free variable in logical form. Such a process has been dubbed ‘saturation'. It stands in contrast to so called ‘free' pragmatic processes, which are supposed to take place for purely pragmatic reasons — in order to make sense of what the speaker (...) is saying. For example, the pragmatic process through which an expression is given a nonliteral (e.g. a metaphorical or metonymical) interpretation is context-driven: we interpret an expression nonliterally in order to make sense of the speech act, not because this is dictated by the linguistic materials in virtue of the rules of the language. The dominant view, then, is that no free pragmatic process can affect truth-conditions — such processes can only affect what the speaker means (but not what she says). But there is a dissenting position, according to which free pragmatic processes can take place locally and interact with semantic composition, thereby affecting truth-conditions. Three such processes have been discussed in the literature : pragmatic enrichment, predicate transfer, and loosening/broadening. Sometimes ‘pragmatic enrichment' is used as a cover term for these modulation processes because, on a certain understanding, they all result from ‘enriching' the logical representation which is the output of the translational phase of semantic interpretation. The paper presents an overview of this research area. (shrink)

Le principe dogmatique se caractérise par un « c’est-à-dire » qui s’autojustifie tout simplement par la nécessité de dire, un dire qui est traduire, verbe qui unit dans la même action de l’esprit « traverser » et « conduire ». Ce dire suppose et convoque ou rassemble, d’un même souffle, l’élévation à l’universel du langage dans le site concret de la différence et de l’inédit. En même temps, cet universel relève de la communication, et se refuse donc à tout achèvement (...) ou clôture, tout en visant un maximum de cohérence, ne cessant de donner toujours plus à vivre et à penser. The dogmatic principle is characterised by a “that-is-to-say” which is self-justified quite simply by the necessity of saying, saying that is translating, the verb which unites in the same action of the mind “crossing” and “leading”. This saying supposes and convenes or brings together in one breath, a raising to the universal of language in the concrete locus of the different and the novel. At the same time, this universal pertains to communication and thus refuses any completion or closure, all the while aiming at a maximum of coherence, unceasingly providing ever more to experience and to reflect upon. (shrink)

Belgian sociologist Jean-Claude Paye has collected several of his recent essays about the suspension of the rule of law, the emergence of a permanent state of exception, abuses of authority, and the generalized condition of restriction of freedom in Western societies since 9/11 in a single volume, La fin de l'état de droit,1 now translated, updated, and published by Telos Press under the title Global War on Liberty. Paye's essays over the past five to six years have positioned him (...) as one of the leading critical voices of the post-9/11 era. His critique of the so-called democratic state—from the United…. (shrink)

Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance', a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. 'Degrowth' became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now (...) consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth's multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth's main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement's diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path. (shrink)

Fénelon may be the most neglected of all the major early modern philosophers. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet today even specialists rarely engage his work directly. This problem is particularly acute in the Anglophone world, for while Fénelon's works have been published in several excellent modern French editions, only the smallest fraction of his vast and influential corpus has appeared in modern English translation. This volume aims to help remedy this by (...) bringing to English-language audiences the first collection of his moral and political writings in translation. By so doing it hopes to make more widely available the riches of one of the leading voices of resistance to the absolutism of Louis XIV. Fénelon's political thought will thus be of particular interest to students and scholars of French history, as well as to those today engaged in questions of political resistance and reform. But Fénelon's reach also extends to fields well beyond politics and ethics. In the Enlightenment, Fénelon came to be celebrated not only as a humanitarian political reformer but also as a pioneering theorist of education, a prescient student of economics and international relations, and a key voice in contemporary philosophical debates-not to mention his fame as one of the seventeenth-century's most preeminent theologians and spiritualists and masters of French prose. As such, his work will be of interest to students and scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and political science to economics, education, literature, French history, and religion. (shrink)

Originally published in French as François Laruelle, "L’Appel et le Phénomène," Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 1996 (1): 27–41. English translation by Kris Pender.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 416-417 [Access article in PDF] Jean-Baptiste Rauzy. La Doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité. Aspects logiques et ontologiques. Paris: Vrin, 2001. Pp. vii + 353. Paper, FF 170,55.This important book provides a reappraisal of Leibniz's philosophy of logic and epistemology based on a close scrutiny of the recently edited manuscripts in the Akademie-Ausgabe, and a reconstitution of Leibniz's sequential investigations. The author (...) displays an exceptional knowledge of the Leibnizian corpus, the ancient and medieval sources for the various doctrines he analyzes, and the contemporary issues underpinning Leibniz's investigations. He aims at rectifying misconceptions that stemmed originally in Couturat's La Logique de Leibniz (1901) and have since affected several studies. Three methodological statements set the ground for Rauzy's analysis: (1) Leibniz's notion of truth concerns in unified fashion all the elements of discourse: terms, concepts, and propositions. (2) Leibniz did not restrict his doctrine of truth to consistency relations, but yielded a complex, well-articulated conception of truth as correspondence, as evidenced in New Essays on Human Understanding, IV, v, sect. 11; yet, at the same time, his doctrine focused on conceptual relations which specify an order of reasons deserving to be analyzed for their own sake: "Dans la doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité, l'adaequatio rei constitue encore le cadre général en dehors duquel le prédicat de vérité n'a pas de sens. Mais les concepts et les liaisons conceptuelles donnent désormais la raison pour laquelle telle phrase particulière est vraie..." (47). And (3) one should resist attributing to Leibniz a purely syntactic conception of truth since the semantic dimension of his logical analyses deserves to be reconstituted and due consideration should be given to the evolution of his thoughts on central philosophical issues, which occasioned significant variations in the elements and formulas of his calculus rationis.It is merely possible to render the rich contents of the book by mentioning some of its more striking features. In Chapter 1, the inesse principle (Praedicatum inestsubjecto) is shown to serve grammatical, logical, and conceptual functions. The doctrine of expression is finely analyzed: expression is shown to provide the major translation tool between characters and thoughts and to condition the combinatorial treatment of rational discourse. In Chapter 2, the distinction between concept and object is shown to involve some relativity, even if the understanding of complete notions is supposed to entail real knowledge of the corresponding realities. Leibniz is thus justified to represent the manifold of ontological relations, including the requisites of actual existence, in a tentatively unified logical way: "Que [End Page 416] l'existence soit une propriété relationnelle complexe, conçue tantôt par la relation de compatibilité, tantôt par une relation à l'esprit en général—et éventuellement [...] par un mixte des deux—n'interdit nullement de maintenir que la vérité de toutes les propositions dépend de relations conceptuelles" (124-5). In Chapter 3, the project of a calculus based on concepts is shown to entail a special relation, hardly dealt with in the literature, between intension and extension (cf. for instance New Essays, IV, xvii, sect. 8). Rauzy reassesses in particular Leibniz's critical revision of nominalism and of inductive procedures as these require universal propositions to ground rational presumptions. The extensional notion of class is considered an abstraction: a class presupposes therefore the extension of a concept in order to become an object of thought. The principle of conceptual inherence requires to be interpreted as stating the equipollence between the requisites of subject and predicate; if such an equipollence may be reached a priori in exceptional cases, most of the time it will require various kinds of additions and derivations to yield sufficient congruence between the related terms. Chapter 4 is devoted to substitutions, more precisely to the theory of definition and the context, at once logical and discursive, from which a potential Leibnizian theory of communication might be derived. Rauzy notes that substitutive equivalences... (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half (...) dead and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

On the basis of a historical reconstruction of the stages through which the Christian notion of sin took shape in Protestantism, the significance of this term for modern bioethics is derived from its opposition to a holiness of God and his creatures, which in turn translates into the secular moral concept of dignity. This dignity imposes obligations to respect and to relationships that are sustained by faithfulness and trust. In being based on the gratuitousness of God’s grace, such relationships preclude (...) attempts at instrumentalization, denial of singularity, and subjection to market forces. Accordingly, reproductive cloning as well as exposing medicine to economical considerations can be classified as sinful. The difference between sinful acts and humans’ sinful state furthermore permits to address the problems of evil and misfortune in the world, and to acknowledge humans’ responsibility for the threats to humanity entailed by those ills. While the Christian faith relies on God’s mercy, it also imposes the task of following Christ by fighting against evil and misfortune. (shrink)

Throughout his life Karl Marx commented on the French Revolution, but never was able to realize his project of a systematic work on this immense event. This book assembles for the first time all that Marx wrote on this subject. François Furet provides an extended discussion of Marx's thinking on the revolution, and Lucien Calvié situates each of the selections, drawn from existing translations as well as previously untranslated material, in its larger historical context. With his early critique of (...) Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic. The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought. (shrink)

Lyotard’s earliest major work, available in English for the first time. Jean-François Lyotard is recognized as one of the most significant French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although nearly all of his major writing has been translated into English, one important work has until now been unavailable. Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting (...) and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp. A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Delphica 1 The building accounts of Delphi again and the reconstruction of the temple of Apollon in the 4th century BC Years of concerted effort with the architect E. Hansen have led to a reexamination of the accounts of Delphi relative to the reconstruction of the temple of Apollon in the 4th century BC. Seeking to determine avec precision certain procedures, such as the awarding of the works, has led to modified textual restitutions, notably concerning prices, as well as translations, (...) such as of the word syggrophos (specifications more frequently than contract). Principal suggestions regarding architectural matters. The selides were slabs destined for the geison. The angle pieces of this geison were in place when, starting in 338, they were replaced by larger elements. On the contrary, those of the frize of the sekos, which were replaced at the same time, had not been mounted. Moreover, the walls, constructed after the peristyle, did not carry the woodwork before 335, acquisition date of the cypress wood destined for this purpose. (shrink)

Voltaire’s classic novel Candide relates the misadventures of a young optimist who leaves his sheltered childhood to find his way in a cruel and irrational world. Fast-paced and full of dark humor, the novel mocks the suggestion that “all is well” and challenges us to create a better world. This Broadview Edition follows the text of a 1759 English translation that was released concurrently with Voltaire's first French edition. Candide is supplemented by Voltaire's most important poetic and humanistic writings on (...) God and evil, the Poem upon the Destruction of Lisbon and We Must Take Sides. The editor's introduction situates the novel in its philosophical and intellectual setting; the appendices include other writings by Voltaire, as well as related writings by Bayle, Leibniz, Pope, Rousseau, and others that place the work in its poetic, philosophical, and humanistic contexts. (shrink)

Signe des temps, Cafebabel, est un webzine gratuit paneuropéen publiant quotidiennement en six langues . Il vise l’eurogénération, « la première génération qui vit l’Europe au quotidien ». S’appuyant sur un réseau de 31 rédactions locales dans 13 pays européens, coordonnées par une rédaction centrale à Paris, les articles partent de toutes ces rédactions, sont traduits par un réseau de traducteurs bénévoles, puis revus pour le travail final de secrétariat de rédaction par des journalistes professionnels, en fonction du lectorat de (...) l’aire linguistique à laquelle la traduction s’adresse sans nécessairement être juxtaposée sur l’original. La diversité des thèmes, la jeunesse du lectorat comme celle de la rédaction, l’amour des langues partagé par ses lecteurs, la diversité de son réseau et l’optique de proximité de Cafebabel en font un média européen original, différent de Courrier international, Euronews, Arte ou Presseurop.“Cafebabel” is a sign of the times, a free-access, pan-European webzine published every day in six languages . Its target audience is the “Eurogeneration”, “the first generation of people whose daily lives are European”. A network of 31 editorial committees in 13 European countries, coordinated by a central editorial board in Paris, sends out articles that are translated by a network of volunteer translators, before reaching the final copydesk stage where they are revised by professional journalists according to the linguistic area targeted by the translation, and not necessarily in juxtaposition with the original. The variety of topics, the youthfulness of both readership and writers and their shared love of languages, the diversity of its contributors and the “corner café” feel of “Cafebabel” have made it a highly distinctive Europe-wide media outlet, on a different register from “Courrier international”, “Euronews”, “Arte” or “Presseurop”. (shrink)

The characterisation of normal stem cells and cancer stem cells uses the same paradigm. These cells are isolated by a fluorescence‐activated cell sorting step and their stemness is assayed following implantation into animals. However, differences exist between these two kinds of stem cells. Therefore, the translation of the experimental procedures used for normal stem cell isolation into the research field of cancer stem cells is a potential source of artefacts. In addition, normal stem cell therapy has the objective of regenerating (...) a tissue, while cancer stem cell‐centred therapy seeks the destruction of the cancer tissue. Taking these differences into account is critical for anticipating problems that might arise in cancer stem cell‐centred therapy and for upgrading the cancer stem cell paradigm accordingly. (shrink)

Histone variants are specialized histones which replace their canonical counterparts in specific nucleosomes. Together with histone post‐translational modifications and DNA methylation, they contribute to the epigenome. Histone variants are incorporated at specific locations by the concerted action of histone chaperones and ATP‐dependent chromatin remodelers. Recent studies have shown that the histone chaperone FACT plays key roles in preventing pervasive incorporation of two histone variants: H2A.Z and CenH3/CENP‐A. In addition, Spt6, another histone chaperone, was also shown to be important for appropriate (...) H2A.Z localization. FACT and Spt6 are both associated with elongating RNA polymerase II. Based on these two examples, we propose that the establishment and maintenance of histone variant genomic distributions depend on a transcription‐coupled epigenome editing (or surveillance) function of histone chaperones. (shrink)

Plato and the City is a general introduction to Plato's political thought. It covers the main periods of Platonic thought, examining those dialogues that best show how Plato makes the city's unity the aim of politics and then makes the quest for that unity the aim of philosophy. From the psychological model to the physiological definition, the reader can traverse the whole of Plato's oeuvre, and understand it as a political philosophy. The book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook (...) but will also be of interest to scholars. It is the first English translation of Platon et la cité, published in French by Presses Universitaires de France in 1997 as part of the series Philosophies, and offers English-speaking readers access to a more unifying continental European reading of Plato than is common in UK or North American scholarship. (shrink)

_The Old Regime and the Revolution_ is Alexis de Tocqueville's great meditation on the origins and meanings of the French Revolution. One of the most profound and influential studies of this pivotal event, it remains a relevant and stimulating discussion of the problem of preserving individual and political freedom in the modern world. Alan Kahan's translation provides a faithful, readable rendering of Tocqueville's last masterpiece, and includes notes and variants which reveal Tocqueville's sources and include excerpts from his drafts and (...) revisions. The introduction by France's most eminent scholars of Tocqueville and the French Revolution, Françoise Mélonio and the late François Furet, provides a brilliant analysis of the work. (shrink)

Dominique Janicaud claimed that every French intellectual movement—from existentialism to psychoanalysis—was influenced by Martin Heidegger. This translation of Janicaud’s landmark work, Heidegger en France, details Heidegger’s reception in philosophy and other humanistic and social science disciplines. Interviews with key French thinkers such as Françoise Dastur, Jacques Derrida, Éliane Escoubas, Jean Greisch, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jean-Luc Nancy are included and provide further reflection on Heidegger’s relationship to French philosophy. An intellectual undertaking of authoritative scope, this work furnishes a thorough (...) history of the French reception of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

Porphyrius (234 - 305), Plotinus' disciple and editor of his Enneads, addresses his letter to Marcella, an aging woman, whom he married late in life. He explains to her the reasons for leaving her, after only ten months of marriage. He invites her to leave passions behind to lead a philosophical life along the lines of the major ethical principles inspired by Plato. Porphyrius takes a strong stand as an apologist of traditional philosophical teachings. The Letter to Marcella provides a (...) unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led. The Letter to Marcella survives as a single manuscript that dates from the 15th century. It is here introduced, edited, translated and annotated. (shrink)

In the context of a French school in crisis, the article defends a strong idea: the professional exercise, as degraded and dented as it may be, can only « hold » if there is a link between the teacher and his job that goes far beyond the contingencies of daily work. It is this link, which remains despite everything, that we will identify as the « happiness of the profession » of the primary school teacher. The problematization mobilizes the reflections (...) of Kant and Osty to circumscribe the object by positioning happiness on the side of the profession (and not on the side of the work done). It is extended by a theorization of the « happiness of the profession », which relies on Freire and Jullien to define it as a potentiality, an inaccessible promise. It is then operationalized by the research on similar notions in the case of teachers, which is translated into the methodological choice of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered by the networks and included a quantitative component (an assessment of the potential of 45 concrete situations for « job happiness ») and a qualitative component (an open and spontaneous definition written by the respondents). The results of the survey develop the 10 components of « job happiness » (quantitative approach) (quantitative approach) and the triptych of the definition of this happiness (qualitative approach). (shrink)

Bioethicists have long debated the content of sponsors and researchers' obligations of justice in international clinical research. However, there has been little empirical investigation as to whether and how obligations of responsiveness, ancillary care, post-trial benefits and research capacity strengthening are upheld in low- and middle-income country settings. In this paper, the authors argue that research ethics guidelines need to be more informed by international research practice. Practical guidance on how to fulfil these obligations is needed if research groups and (...) other actors are to successfully translate them into practice because doing so is often a complicated, context-specific process. Case study research methods offer one avenue for collecting data to develop this guidance. The authors describe how such methods have been used in relation to the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit's vivax malaria treatment (VHX) trial (NCT01074905). Relying on the VHX trial example, the paper shows how information can be gathered from not only international clinical researchers but also trial participants, community advisory board members and research funder representatives in order to: (1) measure evidence of responsiveness, provision of ancillary care, access to post-trial benefits and research capacity strengthening in international clinical research; and (2) identify the contextual factors and roles and responsibilities that were instrumental in the fulfilment of these ethical obligations. Such empirical work is necessary to inform the articulation of obligations of justice in international research and to develop guidance on how to fulfil them in order to facilitate better adherence to guidelines' requirements. (shrink)

This book presents the first English translation of the original French treatise “La Physique d’Einstein” written by the young Georges Lemaître in 1922, only six years after the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. It includes an historical introduction and a critical edition of the original treatise in French supplemented by the author’s own later additions and corrections. -/- Monsignor Georges Lemaître can be considered the founder of the “Big Bang Theory” and a visionary architect of modern Cosmology. (...) The scientific community is only beginning to grasp the full extent of the legacy of this towering figure of 20th century physics. Against the best advice of the greatest names of his time, the young Lemaître was convinced, solely through the study of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, that space and time must have had a beginning with a tremendous “Big Bang” from a “quantum primeval atom” resulting in an ever-expanding Universe with a positive cosmological constant. -/- But how did the young Lemaître, essentially on his own, come to grips with the physics of Einstein? A year before his ordination as a diocesan priest, he submitted the audacious treatise, published in this book, that was to earn him Fellowships to study at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, and launched him on a scientific path of ground-breaking discoveries. Almost a century after Lemaître’s seminal publications of 1927 and 1931, this highly pedagogical treatise is still of timely interest to young minds and remains of great value from a history of science perspective. (shrink)

Human adaptive behavior in sensorimotor control is aimed to increase the confidence in feedforward mechanisms when sensory afferents are uncertain. It is thought that these feedforward mechanisms rely on predictions from internal models. We investigate whether the brain uses an internal model of physical laws to help estimate body equilibrium when tactile inputs from the foot sole are depressed by carrying extra weight. As direct experimental evidence for such a model is limited, we used Judoka athletes thought to have built (...) up internal models of external loads as compared with Non-Athlete participants and Dancers. Using electroencephalography, we first tested the hypothesis that the influence of tactile inputs was amplified by descending cortical efferent signals. We compared the amplitude of P1N1 somatosensory cortical potential evoked by electrical stimulation of the foot sole in participants standing still with their eyes closed. We showed smaller P1N1 amplitudes in the Load compared to No Load conditions in both Non-Athletes and Dancers. This decrease neural response to tactile stimulation was associated with greater postural oscillations. By contrast in the Judoka’s group, the neural early response to tactile stimulation was unregulated in the Load condition. This suggests that the brain can selectively increase the functional gain of sensory inputs, during challenging equilibrium tasks when tactile inputs were mechanically depressed by wearing a weighted vest. In Judokas, the activation of regions such as the right posterior inferior parietal cortex as early as the P1N1 is likely the source of the neural responses being maintained similar in both Load and No Load conditions. An overweight internal model stored in the right PPC known to be involved in maintaining a coherent representation of one’s body in space can optimize predictive mechanisms in situations with high balance constraints. This hypothesis has been confirmed by showing that postural reaction evoked by a translation of the support surface on which participants were standing wearing extra-weight was improved in Judokas. (shrink)

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large-scale picture-naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost. In particular, we focused on the contributions of lexical frequency and phonological similarity across translations. The naming performance of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals speaking in their dominant and non-dominant language was compared (...) to that of Spanish monolinguals. Single trial naming latencies were analyzed by means of linear mixed models accounting for individual effects at the participant and item level. While decreasing lexical frequency was shown to increase naming latencies in all groups, this variable by itself did not account for the bilingual cost. In turn, our results showed that the bilingual cost disappeared when naming words with high phonological similarity across translations. In short, our results show that frequency of use can play a role in the emergence of the bilingual cost, but that phonological similarity across translations should be regarded as one of the most important variables that determine the bilingual cost in speech production. Low phonological similarity across translations yields worse performance in bilinguals and promotes the bilingual cost in naming performance. The implications of our results for the effect of phonological similarity across translations within the bilingual speech production system are discussed. (shrink)

Leopoldo Zea was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Though in English-language scholarship Zea is known primarily as a historian of ideas, his philosophical producti...

In the eleventh of his Antiquarian Letters, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing discusses a phrase from Lucian's description of the painting by Zeuxis called A Family of Centaurs: ‘at the top of the painting a centaur is leaning down as if from an observation point, smiling’. ‘This as if from an observation point, Lessing notes, obviously implies that Lucian himself was uncertain whether this figure was positioned further back, or was at the same time on higher ground. We need to recognize the (...) logic of ancient bas-reliefs where figures further to the back look over those at the front, not because they are actually positioned above them but because they are meant to appear as if standing behind.'1 · 1. The passage is in George Lessing, Briefe, antiquarischen Inhalts, p. 81. Panofsky's discussion does not note that the original text of Lucian makes clear that what is described is a copy of the original painting. This means that some of the issues of misunderstanding situated by Lessing and Panofsky in Lucian's court may in principle be attributable to the copyist. This makes no difference to the conceptual thrust of Panofsky's case.—Trans. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

In 1813 Isaak von Sinclair published a poem entitled “The New Acquaintance.” It recounts a meeting between himself, his friend Friedrich Hölderlin, and one other unidentified guest whom Sinclair awaited with keen anticipation. Because of Hölderlin’s well established friendship with Hegel it has been assumed in the past that the unknown acquaintance was in fact Hegel. However, at the time to which the poem refers, Hegel was a relatively obscure and unknown figure with no reputation. If we are therefore to (...) accept that the poem does indeed allude to Hegel then we must assume that Sinclair, as early as 1813, had recognized Hegel’s genius and wanted retrospectively to associate his name with the newly rising star of German philosophy. In that case we must ask why he refrained from mentioning Hegel by name or at least making the character of the unknown unambiguously clear? In translating this poem for the first time into English I offer for consideration another candidate as the “acquaintance,” namely, Wilhelm Heinse. (shrink)

The basic problem affecting humanitarian law today remains that of its implementation. As of now, requests made by individuals before national courts to assess the compatibility of certain acts with international humanitarian law failed. The present case study and commentaries focus on the decision of a German civil court sitting Bonn to deny the victims of a NATO air raid the right to sue Germany and claim compensation for alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

The book that the French reader holds in his hands is one of the century’s most fascinating and liberating. It does nothing less than instigate the psychoanalytic approach as a universal method of...

In European culture the sacred and the secular have existed in a dialectical relationship. Prodi sees the fifteenth-century crisis of Christianity as opening up three paths that eroded this dualism and tended towards modernity: civic-republican religion, sacred monarchy, and the territorial churches. Important counter-forces, which sought to maintain dualism, included the Roman-Tridentine Compromise, and those forms of Radical Christianity which rejected confessionalisation outright. During the Eighteenth Century, all these phenomena tended to contribute to one of two tendencies: towards civic religion, (...) or towards political religion. The former preserved a distinction between conscience and law; the latter comprised a state religion which sought to perfect all of human nature. It was civic religion which become embodied in the early USA, alienating God from worldly power, but leaving him as the guarantor of agreements between humans. Back in Europe, Prodi tracks the relationship between the Catholic Church and the new national states. He then turns to the political religions of the Twentieth Century. Prodi concludes by emphasising that this dualism of sacred and secular power lay at the centre of Western modernity, and expresses his fears about the collapse of civic religion into political religion, especially in the USA. (shrink)

Today’s question concerning technology involves asking about both the post-pandemic world and the post-data-economy world, in a situation where resentments and scapegoats are easily generated. We c...

The processes associated with globalization have reinforced and even increased prevailing conditions of inequality among human beings with respect to their political, economic, cultural, and social opportunities. Yet-or perhaps precisely because of this trend-there has been, within political philosophy, an observable tendency to question whether equality in fact should be treated a as central value within a theory of justice. In response, I examine a number of nonegalitarian positions to try to show that the concept of equality cannot be dispensed (...) with in any adequate consideration of justice. (shrink)