Cet article s’intéresse à la présence machiavélienne dans l’œuvre de Merleau-Ponty, tant dans la « Note sur Machiavel » de 1949 que dans les écrits politiques comme Humanisme et terreur ou Les aventures de la dialectique . Mais c’est à un Machiavel non « machiavélique » que nous renvoie Merleau-Ponty, et même à un Machiavel penseur de l’inquiétude éthique en politique. Ce parcours est effectué dans un dialogue entre sciences sociales et philosophie, en partant d’une formation et de ressources sociologiques.

Critical theory with emancipatory aims today to find a source of regeneration in ordinary cultures, and in particular, in TV series. Certain series can play a role in reinventing critical theories, drawing on the tradition of the Frankfurt School but shifting some of that School’s formulations through contact with current forms of interpretive sociology and pragmatic sociology. This requires a cross-border dialogue between the “language game” of TV series and the “knowledge game” of political theory, to use concepts inspired by (...) Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this article, I will focus on four series: seasons 1 of American Crime and The Sinner ; Sharp Objects ; and Unorthodox. The resources provided by these cultural works can help us formulate a critical decoding of important aspects of the current ideological context, in particular, the intersecting identitarian and ultra-conservative tendencies we find in France, Europe, the United States, and Brazil. These critical resources bear affinities to a political philosophy of the opening of being inspired by the ethical reflections of Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

Aujourd’hui, la sociologie se pratique d’abord dans le mouvement d’une enquête indissociablement théorique et empirique, quand les concepts se déplacent au contact de l’observation empirique. Mais, à côté des sociologies savantes et de leur mise à l’épreuve systématique d’hypothèses théoriques sur le terrain de données quantitatives et/ou qualitatives, il existe quelque chose..

Il saggio, nato da una conferenza sul tema della democrazia organizzata da "Attac", č una trattazione della questione dei processi di individualizzazione e disindividualizzazione in relazione all'impegno politico che ripercorre la produzione sociologica recente e attraversa le analisi di autori come Norbert Elias, Jacques Derrida e Michel Foucault. Particolare attenzione č rivolta al problema dei presupposti impliciti operanti nell'analisi sociologica e a quanto da essi deriva sul piano valutativo. L'autore, che propone un recupero critico della nozione di individualitÀ, mette in (...) guardia da un lato rispetto a una considerazione atemporale delle categorie sociologiche e politiche, dall'altro rispetto alle riduzioni semplificanti dell'individualismo di cui sottolinea invece l'irriducibile complessitÀ. (shrink)

Political Parties and Social Movements : From the illusions of « current affairs » to a sociological perspective Two competing stereotypes can currently be identified in the debates within the radical left and insocial movements. One of these stereotypes postulates the death of political parties and prophesiesa political renewal animated by social movements. The other stereotype projects a resurrection ofthe party-structure and considers the role of social movements to be merely subaltern. The presentarticle adopts a position which is sociologically antithetical (...) regarding this issue : it begins by examining the numerous similarities between political parties and social movements and, more particularly, their shared vulnerability to the traits of professionalisation and the monopolisation of power.Contemporary social movements are not immune to such trends, despite repeated protestations oftheir commitment to horizontality. The article goes on to examine the process of differentiationwhich caused social movements to establish a specific space, separate from the political sphere. Inthe wake of this process, the political and the social appear to constitute two distinct universes,traversed by their own specific logics, while at the same time retaining relations which are both closeand fluctuating. (shrink)

Exigence de justice sociale et aspirations de l'individualité sont-elles compatibles? C'est cette question de philosophie politique que développent ici trois sociologues, loin des propos catastrophistes concernant l'individualisme contemporain. Mais chacun le fait avec des orientations propres. Jacques Ion se centre sur les engagements militants. François de Singly dessine un " socialisme individualiste " plus réformiste. Et Philippe Corcuff une " social-démocratie libertaire " plus radicale. Ces synthèses font apparaître les avancées émancipatrices comme les difficultés générées par l'individualisme contemporain. De (...) la consolidation de l'autonomie individuelle et de la place de l'intimité au mal-être identitaire. Ils en tirent alors des conséquences pour la réinvention, contre le néolibéralisme économique, d'une politique émancipatrice pour le XXIè siècle. (shrink)

Les Prolegomenes a la Philosophie de Platon sont un manuel d'ecole neoplatonicien. Il s'inspire d'un modele dont Proclus a du etre l'auteur, mais l'origine de ce texte est presque surement alexandrine et doit dater de la premiere moitie du Vle siecle. Cette oeuvre est essentielle pour comprendre comment etait diffuse l'enseignement platonicien, et pour mieux saisir le mouvement des idees de l'Antiquite finissante. Dans une importante introduction, L. O. Westerink a retrace l'histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie et celle du genre litteraire (...) de ces introductions a Platon et a Aristote. (shrink)

The passage of a spin-1/2neutral particle through a region of uniform magnetic field and the corresponding precession mechanism is analyzed from the viewpoint of scattering theory, with particular consideration of the role of the field boundaries.

Technology and Ethics. A European Quest for Responsible Engineering, edited by B. Heriard Dubreuil and his team (University Lille) is in many regards an innovative publication. It is the first fully European contribution to the field of engineering ethics and the result of an intensive cooperation between ethicists and engineers from all the member countries of the European Union. The basic structure of the book is both the distinction and interaction between three levels of analysis: personal responsibility of engineers, the (...) institutional level (business organisations) and the impact of technology on society and culture. On the personal level, the book deals with problems such as the role of professional codes and the fact that engineers must cope with flexibility, shorter lines of decision and erosion of the boundaries between private and professional life. On the meso level, the book deals with different aspects of decision making in the context of business organizations, such as quality management, technology assessment procedures, business ethics committees etc... On the macro level, the authors focus on the power of technology. Together with the influences from other social, economic and political actors, the decisions of engineers change the world in a way which is of moral significance. (shrink)

We investigate two formalizations of Optimality Theory, a successful paradigm in linguistics.We first give an order-theoretic counterpart for the data and processinvolved in candidate evaluation.Basically, we represent each constraint as a function that assigns every candidate a degree of violation.As for the second formalization, we define (after Samek-Lodovici and Prince) constraints as operations that select the best candidates out of a set of candidates.We prove that these two formalizations are equivalent (accordingly, there is no loss of generality with using violation (...) marks and dispensing with them is only apparent).Importantly, we show that the second formalization is equivalent with a class of operations over sets of formulas in a given logical language.As a result, we prove that Optimality Theory can be characterized by certain cumulative logics.So, applying Optimality Theory is shown to be reasoning by the rules of cumulative logics. (shrink)

Standard quantum theory is inadequate to explain the mechanisms by which potential becomes actual. It is inadequate and therefore unable to describe generation of events. Niels Bohr emphasized long ago that the classical part of the world is necessary. John Bell stressed the same point: that “measurement≓ cannot even be defined within the standard quantum theory, and he sought a solution within hidden variable theories and his concept of “beables.≓Today it is customary to try to explain emergence of the classical (...) world through a decoherence mechanism due to “environment.≓ But, we believe, as it was with the concept of measurement, “environment≓ itself cannot be defined within the standard quantum theory.We have proposed a semiphenomenological solution to this problem by introducing explicitly, from the very beginning, classical degrees of freedom, and by coupling these degrees of freedom, through a Lindblad type coupling, to the quantum world. The resulting theory, we call “event-enhanced quantum theory.≓ EEQT allows us to describe an event-generating mechanism for individual quantum systems under continuous observation. The objections of John Bell are met and precise definitions of an “experiment≓ and of a “measurement≓ have been given within EEQT. However EEQT is, essentially, a nonrelativistic theory.In the present paper we extend the ideas of L. P. Horwitz and C. Piron and we propose a relativistic version of EEQT, with an event-generating algorithm for spin one-half particle detectors. The algorithm is based on proper time formulation of the relalivistic quantum theory. Although we use indefinite metric, all the probabilities controlling the random process of the detector clicks are nonnegative. (shrink)

Dogmatic Metaphysics and Tschirnhaus's M ethodology MARTIN SCHONFELD ACCORDING TO STANDARD COMMENTARIES, Tschirnhaus's main work, Medicina mentis, ~ supposedly furnished the methodological basis for the Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysics. ~ Christian Wolff and his disciples, at any rate, preferred to think so. Wolff taught classes on Tschirnhaus and claimed that he had developed his own tenets on the basis of Tschirnhaus's ideas; Johann Christoph Gottsched praised the Medicina mentis as the basic methodology of the Wolffian enlightenment.3 Mirroring these views, W. Wundt and (...) H. J. de Vleeschauwer saw in Tschirnhaus the inventor of the "geometric method" adopted by the School Philosophers.4 According to M. ' Medicina Mentis, sive Tentamen genuinae Logicae, in qua disseritur de Methodo detegendi incoKaitas veritates, Amsterdam, 1687. Second and revised edition, Medicina Mentis, sive Artis inveniendi Praecepta generalia, Leipzig, 1695. ~For example, cf. Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophie, 3~o-33 and 356; Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, III: ~95-97, 3 x~ 34o-43; A. Robert Caponigri, A History of Western Philosophy (Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame.. (shrink)

(1968). L'ENCYCLIQUE HUMANAE VITAE ET L'ENSEIGNEMENT DE VATICAN II SUR LE MARIAGE ET LA FAMILLE (GAUDIUM ET SPES) Bijdragen: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 351-368.

Le propos de cette étude est d’explorer l’interface entre religion traditionnelle africaine et christianisme à l’aide d’une catégorie particulière de sources: les témoignages oraux d’un groupe de femmes chrétiennes de Sobantu, un township sud-africain. Peut-on adhérer à la religion chrétienne sans trahir son identité africaine? Souvent, mais pas toujours, en référence à la position de leur Église respective, chacune de ces femmes se forme une opinion sur cette question difficile.

Trees architectural study shows gradients in the meristematic activity. This activity is described by the number of internodes per growth unit, which is considered as the output of a dynamic random process. Several species were observed, which led us to propose and then estimate some mathematical models. Computing the functioning of a tree in a given environment therefore involves finding the probability function of the meristems and following the evolution of the parameters of this law along the botanical gradients (order, (...) trend, acrotony) within its architecture. (shrink)