The contrast between third- and first-personal accounts of the experiences of autistic persons has much to teach us about epistemic injustice and epistemic agency. This paper argues that bringing about greater epistemic justice for autistic people requires developing a relational account of epistemic agency. We begin by systematically identifying the many types of epistemic injustice autistic people face, specifically with regard to general assumptions regarding autistic people’s sociability or lack thereof, and by locating the source of these epistemic injustices in (...) neuronormativity and neurotypical ignorance. We then argue that this systematic identification pushes us to construe epistemic agency as resulting from a fundamentally relational and dynamic process between an individual, others around them, and their social, cultural, or institutional environment, rather than as a fixed and inherent property of individuals. Finally, we show how our relational account of epistemic agency allows us to introduce the novel concepts of epistemic disablement and epistemic enablement. We argue that these two concepts allow us to more accurately track the mechanisms that undermine or facilitate epistemic agency, and thereby to better understand how epistemic injustice arises and to design more effective interventions to foster greater epistemic justice for autistic people. (shrink)

This collection of writings by Jean-Luc Nancy, the renowned French critic and poet, delves into the history of philosophy to locate a fundamentally poetic modus operandi there. The book represents a daring mixture of Nancy’s philosophical essays, writings about artworks, and artwork of his own. With theoretical rigor, Nancy elaborates on the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “making,” and outlines the tensions inherent in the faire, the “making” that characterizes the very process of production and thereby the (...) structure of poetry in all its forms. Nancy shows that this multiplication that belongs to the notion of art makes every single work communicate with every other, all material in the artwork appeal to some other material, and art the singular plural of a praxis of the finite imparting of an infinity which is actually there in every utterance. In the collection, Nancy engages with the work of, among others, François Martin, Maurice Blanchot, and On Kawara. (shrink)

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features suggest principles that (...) tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

Moral purism is a commonly held view on moral worthiness and how to identify it in concrete cases. Moral purists long for a moral world in which (business) people—at least sometimes—act morally worthy, but in concrete cases they systematically discount good deeds as grounded in self-interest. Moral purism evokes moral cynicism. Moral cynicism is a problem, both in society at large and the business world. Moral cynicism can be fought by refuting moral purism. This article takes issue with moral purism. (...) The common strategy to tackle moral purism is to reject the exclusion thesis which states that self-interest and the ‘pure’ moral motive (and thus moral worthiness) exclude each other. We develop a different strategy. We argue that moral purists are mistaken in the way they judge moral worthiness in concrete cases. They employ the wrongprocedureand the wrongcriteria.We develop a proper procedure and proper criteria. We build on Kant, who we argue is unfairly regarded as the champion of moral purism. In order to see how Kant can develop a consistent (non-purist) philosophy, the exclusion thesis must be embedded in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Properly embedded, Kant turns out to be both anti-purist and anti-cynical. (shrink)

L’ itinerarium mentis entrepris par Dante, vers le bonheur et à travers Béatrice, entretient un rapport vital avec l’expérience philosophique, comme le montre le lien entre la Vita nova et le Convivio. L’essai de Jean-Luc Marion s’attache à cette continuité, en se concentrant sur le fait que « la voie unique de l’amour » ne se limite pas à indiquer la présence d’une intention unique informant de soi différents amours, mais implique la transformation radicale de l’idée de philosophie, transformation fondée (...) sur l’amitié étroite entre l’amour et la sagesse. Cette union donne vie à un nouveau dynamisme, à un habitus amoureux, ou plutôt à une posture amoureuse dans laquelle la pratique s’impose à la théorie et dans laquelle le sujet se découvre attendu par ce qui formait son but. (shrink)

Le syndrome de Kierkegaard est un essai libre de Jean- Luc Berlet, consacré à l'un de ses penseurs de prédilection, le Danois Seren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Ce syndrome dont il est question, tel que défini par l'auteur, pourrait être conçu comme la tension qui résulte de l'impossible choix entre l'amour de la femme et l'amour de Dieu. Kierkegaard renonça en effet à l'amour charnel de la femme au profit d'une vie ascétique consacrée à I écriture et à la réflexion sur l'Amour. (...) A plus grande échelle ce syndrome pourrait être compris comme l'abandon du temporel au profit d'un idéal spirituel Et les regrets qui en découlent. En effet, comme nombre de contemporains opérant ce type de choix, Kierkegaard connut bien des tourments. Ces affres permirent néanmoins à Kierkegaard de développer une conception de l'Amour et du Divin d'une grande originalité qu'il est bon de redécouvrir dans notre époque marquée par le consumérisme sentimental. Tout au long des quatorze chapitres qui jalonnent cet ouvrage, Jean-Luc Berlet retrace le parcours littéraire de ce philosophe danois considéré par beaucoup comme le père de l'existentialisme, brossant ici un tableau complet de son énigmatique personnalité. En outre, chaque chapitre est accompagné d'un code QR, donnant chacun actes à une vidéo en ligne où Jean - Luc Berlet approfondit son développement et fournit des clefs de lecture pour une meilleure compréhension de l'oeuvre de Kierkegaard. (shrink)

A travers une analyse des concepts d’affirmation originaire, d’attestation et de reconnaissance, cet article tente de reconstituer le sens et les motivations du cheminement réflexif qui conduit Ricœur de L’Homme faillible à Soi-même comme un autre et à Parcours de la reconnaissance . Pour ce faire, il s’efforce d’abord de montrer ce qui fait la continuité profonde, de problématique et de méthode, du projet anthropologique ricœurien; afin de dégager ensuite les difficultés centrales liées à l’idée d’une constitution poétique du soi, (...) qui conduisent Ricœur à réélaborer les concepts directeurs de son herméneutique du soi. A la lumière du dialogue constant de Ricœur avec la philosophie de Nabert, il tente enfin de montrer comment les concepts d’attestation et de reconnaissance trouvent, pour l’essentiel, leur genèse dans un approfondissement de la notion d’affirmation originaire, lui-même prolongé par une réflexion sur le témoignage.  . (shrink)

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

'Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is conceptualized in many ways. We argue that one cannot be indifferent about the issue of its conceptualization. In terms of methodology, our position is that any conceptual discussion must embed CSR in political theory. With regard to substance, we link up with the discussion on whether CSR must be defined on the basis of a tripartite or a quadripartite division of business responsibilities. We share A. B. Carroll's intuition that a quadripartite division is called for (...) as a basis to define CSR. However, defending the quadripartite division of business responsibilities requires that the distinctions between economic, legal, ethical and discretionary business responsibilities be made intelligible. Carroll's account is defective in this respect. We argue that contemporary Neo-Kantian political ethics is able to make sense of these distinctions, because of its specific interpretation of liberalism. Interestingly, from a conventional liberal perspective this interpretation of liberalism is atypical, as it extends public morality beyond the domain of the law. (shrink)

RESUME L’hypothèse que tente d’esquisser cet article est que l’idée ricœurienne d’une médiatisation dynamique des contradictions de l’imaginaire social présuppose une corrélation originaire de l’idéologie et de l’utopie qui ne peut elle-même être comprise qu’à partir de l’événement de l’institution d’un imaginaire social constituant. Dans un premier temps, l’article s’efforce de cerner ce qui fait la spécificité de la théorie ricœurienne de l’idéologie et de l’utopie comme « pratiques imaginatives », en soulignant à ce titre l’influence déterminante des thèses de (...) Jacques Ellul sur l’idéologie. Puis, dans un second temps, il s’engage dans une analyse régressive qui conduit de la réappropriation ricœurienne de la conception dialectique de l’idéologie et de l’utopie exposée par Mannheim à l’idée d’un fondement événementiel de ces deux formes opposées de l’imaginaire social. Mots-Clés : Evénement, idéologie, utopie, Ellul, Mannheim. ABSTRACT This paper attempts to sketch out the hypothesis that the Ricœurian conception of a dynamic mediatization of the contradictions of the social imaginary presupposes an original correlation between ideology and utopia, which can itself be understood only from the event that institutes a constitutive social imaginary. The first part of the paper marks out the specificity of the Ricœurian theory of ideology and utopia in terms of “imaginative practices”, underlining the determining influence of Jacques Ellul’s theses on ideology. The second part tries to develop a regressive argument, starting from the Ricœurian re-appropriation of Mannheim’s dialectical conception of ideology and utopia, and leading back to the idea of an event foundation for these two opposed forms of the social imaginary. Keywords : Event, Ideology, Utopia, Ellul, Mannheim. (shrink)

Starting from a genesis of the concept of narrative identity, this article attemps to interpret the constitution process of our narrative identities through a systematic and synthetic review of the main contributions of the Ricœurian theory of imagination, from Freedom and Nature to Oneself as Another. In its complex imaginative constitution, narrative identity can then be characterized as a poetico-practical mix that mediates and puts in a dialectical relation two distinct functions of the imagination: a poetic and a practical one, (...) which are themselves enlivened by a dialectic and an internal duplication. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s Philosophy of the Will is reexamined here both as a source of motivation for his project of dialoguing with the analytic theory of action and as an explanation for the lack of response on the part of his Anglo-American interlocutors. Keywords: Actions, Language, Body, Idealism. Résumé La Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur est revisitée ici comme source de motivation de son entreprise de dialogue avec la théorie analytique de l’action et comme explication du défaut de réponse de ses (...) interlocuteurs anglo-américains. Mots-clés: Actions, Langage, Corps, Idéalisme. (shrink)

Suppose that we acquire various items of information from various sources and that our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is sufficiently high to believe the information. Now a new item of information is being presented by a new information source. Are we justified to add this new item of information to what we already believe? Consider the following parable: “I go to a lecture about wildlife in Greenland which was supposed to be delivered by an (...) expert in the field. When I arrive I notice that the expert has excused himself and that the biology department has sent a newcomer to fill in for him. I have no beliefs about wildlife in Greenland, but I do have some beliefs about Greenland’s climate and about the kinds of climate conditions that various types of wildlife favor. Suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of elk roam in a particular valley on the southern tip of Greenland. Then I would certainly be willing to accept this item of information. But suppose that he proclaims that large colonies of armadillos roam in the same valley. Then I would not be willing to accept this item of information. Why do I accept the former but not the latter item of information? Let us suppose that neither item of information is logically inconsistent with what I already believe. Clearly, the former item of information is not inconsistent. But also the latter item is not: after all, there may be small pockets of Greenland with special climatological conditions and some Texan sailors may have set loose a pair of armadillos as a practical joke. But whereas the former item of information is quite plausible given my previous beliefs, the latter item of information is not. And this is what makes for the difference. Now suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of wild boars roam this valley in Greenland. I am not that sure anymore. Given everything I believe, I find wild boars in Greenland more plausible than armadillos in Greenland, but certainly less plausible than elk in Greenland. Had our expert presented the lecture and provided precisely the 2 same information, then I would have been willing to adopt the belief that there are wild boars in Greenland, but, with our newcomer delivering the lecture, I am not willing to do so. It is not that I would believe anything out of the expert’s mouth: also he could not have convinced me that there are armadillos in Greenland. But when it comes to wild boars, the difference between the expert’s and the newcomer’s credentials simply makes for the difference.” What we learn from this story is that the question of belief expansion has something to do with the reliability of the information source as well as with the plausibility of the new information, given what I already believe. The more reliable the information source is, the less plausible the new information needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to our belief set. The more plausible the new information is given what I already believe, the less reliable the information source needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to my belief set. The challenge is: can a precise account of this relationship be provided? (shrink)

What influences people’s appreciation of works of art? In this paper, we provide a new cognitive approach to this big question, and the first empirical results in support of it. As a work of art typically does not activate intuitive cognition for functional artefacts, it is represented as an instance of non-verbal symbolic communication. By application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory of communication, we hypothesize that understanding the artist’s intention plays a crucial role in intuitive art appreciation judgements. About (...) 60 works of fine art, representing a wide range of periods, genres and styles, were selected in the permanent exhibitions at Tate Britain in London, and rated by more than 500 visitors for goodness and understanding of the artist’s intention. Results suggest that works of art whose artist’s intention is easy to understand tend to be preferred over those with more obscure intentions, even when controlling for familiarity effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 3-8 [Access article in PDF] The Two Secrets of the Fetish Jean-Luc Nancy "Commodity fetishism": Marx's formula has been imprinted on the largest and most resistant of cultural memories. It has become almost anonymous, or rather synonymous with Marx's very name, as is the case with certain coined terms(cogito, categorical imperative...). This privilege could only be due to a very particular virtue. Such a virtue is (...) that which not only consists in characterizing, in the strict sense of the word (to typify a property or an essence), but even in characterizing in such a way that the character (the stamp, the seal) is somehow inscribed on the thing itself and can no longer be detached from it, or at least without some loss in the substance of the thing.In Kantian terms: the intuition presented under the word "fetishism" is printed or traced indelibly onto the concept of "commodity," giving rise to a schema "commodity," from which a new image, and thus a new idea, ensues. Not just the commodity as the fetish—as if this were one of its traits or one approach among others—but rather the essence of the commodity revealed as fetish, so that the fetish character would remain once the approach was shifted or the "secret" of its "mystical character" was revealed. (As we know, these are all Marx's own terms.)As is also known, the secret consists in that the commodity value (or exchange value) of the object (or product), which seems to be its intrinsic or immanent property (parallel in this way to its use value, which is extrinsic and completely relative to its utilization in a given sociotechnical context) only covers, masks or represses the origin of its pure or absolute value—this last value being nothing other than the living human labor of the producer, which the act of production incorporates into the product. But the commodity value deflects this incorporated creative life toward equivalence within an exchange, where the producer (the worker) finds himself surreptitiously stripped of the part of the value that the mercantile calculation does not exchange for the maintenance of its labor force, but rather sets to the account of capital. * * * Here we are not concerned with addressing the problems associated with the evaluation or the appreciation of living work as it is related to the intensification or the very creation of value ("the surplus-value"), nor with respect to the extortion suffered by the creator of value (the valuable and value-making man, the living man as maker, as giver of prices in an absolute fashion) to the benefit of the one who accumulates value in the form of general equivalence, creating mercantile prices through a common currency. Currency is the fetish, where fetishism is fixed: belief in the value of the market price itself. The critique of political economy—that is, the critique of the economy as politics—reveals the inanity of this belief, and if this critique cannot measure the hidden and mysticized or mystified value in monetary terms, the principle of this critique remains [End Page 3] no less, but even more so, the incommensurability of the value creator and the marketed product.Alienation is not measurable. It is at the same time the principle of the critique and its impasse from the moment that we would like to, and indeed that we should, oppose one measure to another: the critical measure of the fetish against the mercantile measure through the fetish.In contrast, what we would like to sketch out here would have the following hypothesis as a point of departure: does not the strength of Marx's formula derive from a power other than that of the only critique thus broached? Is there not another energy, and another enigma, slipped into the first, adding itself to the revelation of the secret, even exceeding this revelation and perhaps in this fashion displacing just a bit the secret itself (precisely because it is not measurable)?This other power would derive from "fetishism" itself. That is to say... (shrink)

Comment une formation politique répond-elle, au XXIème siècle, à son électorat? Comment faire face aux défis futurs autrement que par le biais d'un débat politique bipolarisé? Cela passe nécessairement par la mise en avant d'un discours résolument démocrate... et toujours écologiste! A chaque instant, la recherche du positionnement juste doit être notre fil conducteur. Sur l'équité, la solidarité et l'engagement en faveur d'une transformation réelle de notre société, nous avons tous notre mot à dire afin de préparer l'avenir! Tel est (...) l'enjeu! Aux niveaux européen, national, régional et local, nous sommes invités à réagir. Parfois pour saluer certaines avancées courageuses, souvent pour rappeler l'existence de certaines lignes rouges déjà allègrement franchies et dénoncer les égarements des responsables politiques en place. Doucement mais sûrement, une autre voie se dessine! Cet ouvrage se propose de mettre en lumière les thèmes sur lesquels les démocrates français et européens doivent désormais avancer de manière significative. Sans avoir la prétention d'apporter toutes les réponses, Jean-Luc Bennahmias contribue au débat à travers des textes, réflexions et entretiens récents faisant sens dans son parcours politique. Il rappelle un certain nombre de ses prises de position historiques sur des questions essentielles, telles que l'action à mener envers les jeunes, les libertés, les minorités ou bien encore l'Union européenne. Et il réaffirme la vigueur de son combat pour une écologie omniprésente dans nos politiques publiques. (shrink)

L’animal (les animaux, l’animalité) impose hors de nous et en nous une présence antérieure au rapport réflexif par lequel nous nous saisissons et approprions. Loin d’être un à-côté accidentel et avant toute figuration philosophique, il incarne cette énergie du donné dans un monde si humainement construit. Il n’est pas vrai que le sujet s’édifie et se vit dans un monde binaire d’objets ou de semblables. Toujours déjà peuplé, diffracté par autant de possibilités réalisées de perception, le monde fut et demeure (...) d’abord animal. Signifiant l’immédiateté à soi et au réel, impliquant et notre identité intime et notre altérité irréductible, troublant départages, oppositions et, de proche en proche, netteté de tous nos concepts, l’animal est cette question inclassable dont l’ubiquité engage à nouveaux frais la philosophie et l’interroge tout entière, tel ce négligé de son histoire l’habitant sourdement mais constamment. Penser l’animal nous contraint à penser autrement et à reconsidérer nos catégories, problèmes et valeurs : la connaissance, l’existence, l’éthique. (shrink)

Mathematics and the Divine seem to correspond to diametrically opposed tendencies of the human mind. Does the mathematician not seek what is precisely defined, and do the objects intended by the mystic and the theologian not lie beyond definition? Is mathematics not Man's search for a measure, and isn’t the Divine that which is immeasurable? The present book shows that the domains of mathematics and the Divine, which may seem so radically separated, have throughout history and across cultures, proved to (...) be intimately related. Religious activities such as the building of temples, the telling of ritual stories or the drawing of enigmatic figures all display distinct mathematical features. Major philosophical systems dealing with the Absolute and theological speculations focussing on our knowledge of the Ultimate have been based on or inspired by mathematics. A series of chapters by an international team of experts highlighting key figures, schools and trains of thought is presented here. Chinese number mysticism, the views of Pythagoras and Plato and their followers, Nicholas of Cusa's theological geometry, Spinozism and intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics are treated side by side among many other themes in an attempt at creating a global view on the relation of mathematics and Man’s quest for the Absolute in the course of history. (Elsevier). (shrink)

Les phénomènes apparaissent-ils toujours selon la calme adéquation en eux de l'intuition avec la signification, voire, plus souvent, avec un déficit d'intuition? Ou bien certains - les phénomènes saturés - n'apparaissent-ils pas plutôt grâce au surcroît irrépressible de l'intuition sur tous les concepts et toutes les significations que l'on voudrait leur assigner? Cette question avait surgi du principe " Autant de réduction, autant de donation " (dans Réduction et donation. Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie, 1989) et conduit à (...) dégager la donation, telle qu'elle déplie ce qui se donne et ce qui se montre (avec Etant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation, 1997). Reste, une fois ces acquis répétés, à étudier en eux-mêmes chacun des quatre types de phénomènes saturés : l'événement (saturé selon la quantité), l'idole ou tableau (saturé selon la qualité), la chair (saturée selon la relation) et enfin l'icône ou visage d'autrui (saturée selon la modalité). Il devient alors pensable d'étudier leur combinaison dans ce qu'on doit thématiser comme saturé à la puissance, un paradoxe des paradoxes - le phénomène de révélation. En l'occurrence, il s'agit de comprendre (contre une féconde critique de J. Derrida) les trois moments de la théologie mystique (affirmation, négation, hyperbole) non seulement comme l'accomplissement d'un phénomène saturé exemplaire, mais encore comme la répétition de toute phénoménalité de l'excès. De surcroît donc. Parce qu'il s'agit de l'excès du donné qui se montre. Parce qu'il s'agit aussi de l'exposer une nouvelle fois. J.-L.M. (shrink)

In a sequence of aphorisms, Jean-Luc Nancy interrogates the speculative suture between the sacred and truth. The sacred is indexed to an encounter or a point of intensity via which the subject approaches what cannot be grasped in itself, but solely in and as this unfinishable approach. The chance of this encounter is accorded to every subject and no longer confiscated by a religion or an exclusive regime of thought. In parallel, the sacred enters into a novel matrix with the (...) ordinary wherein neither supersedes the other. These aphorisms demonstrate that the ordinary supplies a point of access to the sacred because the sacred is itself one of the nomadic folds of the ordinary. (shrink)

L’importance de Ludwik Fleck pour l’épistémologie historique est maintenant reconnue. Mais nul ne semble encore avoir mis en évidence que ses conceptions, au-delà de leur champ d’origine, s’appliquent aussi très naturellement, et avec profit, à l’histoire des idées. C’est ce que l’on se propose de faire ici, en présentant leurs concepts fondamentaux, ceux de style de pensée et de collectif de pensée.

Créativité et mathématiques ne font pas bon ménage dans l'inconscient collectif. Pourtant à l'heure d'Internet, il existe bien une manière de revisiter la géométrie, l'algèbre ou même la logique. Il suffit de prendre un peu de distance par rapport aux calculs, de se donner quelques libertés par rapport à l'histoire, de changer de point de vue... En vagabondant à travers l'histoire et l'application des mathématiques, les auteurs se livrent ici à un jeu de vulgarisation d'une saveur et d'une subtilité inédites. (...) [4e de couv.]. (shrink)

The position of the Belgian prime minister is hardly mentioned in the Belgian Constitution. lt was only after almost 140 years, in 1970 he was mentioned for the first time. lts power is rather a matter of common law. Since 1831 through the years, the position and power of the PM changed strongly. This often happened together with changes concerning the power of the King: the weaker the King, the stronger the PM.The existence of coalition governments puts forward bis role (...) as coordinator and even as arbitrator, whereas the federalisation process since the seventies places him as a conciliator between Regions and Communities. The growing importance of the European Council of Head of States have made him the most important decision-maker among the national politicians in the European integration process. The PM's skills concerning timing and agendasetting are very important because it is one of his most important power instruments. Other key skills are bis profound knowledge in certain issues but mostly as a generalist, his insisting on good minister nominations by the party leaders, the way he can motivate his cabinet members, a good team spirit among the government members and the existence of a clear government contract. In order to avoid a strongdependency on or tutelage from the political parties of the majority it is important to have their top politicians in the government. (shrink)