French post-Marxist theory and Gauchet's model of critique -- French post-Marxist theory and the political : Gauchet and religion -- Gauchet and the genesis of modern society -- The legacy of French sociology and anthropology : Gauchet and the question of the post-secular -- The crisis of European democracy : the neo-liberal ideology and political radicalization.

French political philosophy has experienced a renewal over the last twenty years. One of its leading projects is Marcel Gauchet’s reflection on democracy and religion. This project situates itself within the context of the French debate on modernity and autonomy launched by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Gauchet’s work makes a significant contribution to this debate by building on the pioneering work of Lefort on the political self-instituting capacity of modern societies and the associated shift from religion to ideology. It (...) thus explores the centrality of the notion of sovereignty in the advent of liberal democracy and conducts this reflection within an overall discussion of the role played by Christianity in the genesis of European modernity. It elaborates an anthropology of modernity which explores the relationship between individualism and democracy and redefines modernity as a project of sovereignty which aims at creating a radically new society, the society of individuals. (shrink)

This paper explores the specific contribution of a strand of contemporary French social theory founded by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort to the understanding of human power. It formulates a conception of power that transcends its definitions in terms of physical coercion or institutionalised violence to reveal the way power is creative and institutes the social. Its reflection on the cultural nature of political power and it role in society is shown to extend the pioneering reflection of Durkheim's sociology, especially (...) as regards the homology that exists between religion and politics. The social role performed by the state explored by Durkheim prefigures Gauchet's theory of the state, which builds on Lefort's work. Gauchet's theory can be said to elaborate a critical synthesis of the two stands of Durkheim's work: the sociology of religion and the sociology of the modern state. This synthesis raises questions on the role played by the European state in the development of individualism, in both its political and economic manifestations. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Starting with a discussion of the crisis of French national identity that became fully apparent in the 1980s, this article examines the historical paradigm that conditioned the birth of French universalism and ultimately spelt its demise. Identifying as the determining experience the reification/deification of power performed by monarchical absolutism, it examines the evolution of what can be termed after Marcel Gauchet the French `political-intellectual system', with its exclusive emphasis on the ideological legitimacy of power, and highlights the crucial role played (...) by intellectuals in its formation, be it on an oppositional mode. Looking back to the 17th century, it thus identifies in Montaigne's essays and their complex dialectic of order and revolt the fundamental paradox within which French intellectual culture evolved right up to post-structuralism, which, whilst it attempted a most radical critique of the French intellectual mystique, ultimately remained prisoner to its underlying statism. Post-structuralism is thus to be seen as the first manifestation of a profound crisis of French intellectual culture, triggered in the 1970s by the crisis of French republicanism, in the wake of the worldwide decline of national sovereignty. What characterized French political and intellectual culture from its inception was indeed the reductive absorption of the notion of society into that of state, and the concomitant belief in a rational vanguard. However, whilst post-structuralism belongs to a tradition of resistance to the republican legacy of the French Enlightenment, it remains deeply conditioned by the pessimism of its distant Augustinian and Jansenist origins: unable to conceive of any effective social action outside of the state, it condemns itself to the marginality of counter-culture. Rather than a total deconstruction of French universalism, post-structuralism must thus be identified as its last, contradictory manifestation. (shrink)

This paper is a book review of 'A Treatise of Master Hervaeus Natalis († 1323), The Doctor Perspicacissimus, On second Intentions' by John P. Doyle.

Psychedelic or ecodelic medicines (e.g., psilocybin, ayahuasca, iboga) for the care and treatment of addiction, post‐traumatic stress disorder, cancer, cluster headaches, anxiety, and depression have surged to the forefront of discussions about mental health in the US, leading to the emergence of well‐capitalized biotech companies offering multimillion‐dollar IPOs. Venture capital website Pitchbook reports “continuing investor interest and growing acceptance of what until recently was seen as a fringe area of medicine.” As scholars, activists, and practitioners who have been healed by (...) these medicines and applaud the recent wave of decriminalization after a long, strange trip of mass incarceration and widespread dangerous misinformation, we look forward to a culture that makes these medicines available in a safe and affordable way that respects the lineages of the knowledges that are essentially and not accidentally bundled with these plants—Indigenous and counterculture wisdoms for whom these medicines were never “fringe,” but always foundational. In place of corporadelia's pursuit of standardization, we emphasize the care and wisdom of the Indigenous and countercultural teachings—traditions that have made psychedelics available to the emerging corporate/research partnership in the first place. These knowledge traditions offer foils to the ongoing translation of university peer‐reviewed research into market copy, technical articles, and IPOs, and the concomitant emergence of psychedelic pundits. In particular, we examine instances where prominent researchers have overstated the findings of existing clinical trials in public‐facing representations of the field. We argue that these corporate priorities and tactics are being aided by a new wave of psychedelic “thought leaders” who seek to delegitimize non‐hierarchical approaches to knowledge production and community support within a psychedelic commons. While prominent psychedelic psychiatrists and behaviorists are focused on rooting out and transforming individual habits of mind, we argue that there is another, latent potential for psychedelics to draw attention to—and transform—the invisible, hegemonic infrastructures and ideologies that subtly naturalize and perpetuate deeply unequal societies. (shrink)

The author extends theory on the relationship between workplace spirituality and business ethics by integrating the "yamas" from yoga, a venerable Eastern spiritual tradition, with existing literature. The yamas are five practices for harmonizing and deepening social connections that can be applied in the workplace. A theoretical framework is developed and two sets of propositions are forwarded. One set emanates from the yamas and another one conjectures relationships between spirituality and business ethics surfaced by the application of these spiritual practices (...) from yoga. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we develop an institutional response to the (...) listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas. (shrink)

Despite increasing pressure to deal with climate change, firms have been slow to respond with effective action. This article presents a multi-level framework for a better understanding of why many firms are failing to reduce their absolute greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. The concepts of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance from research in psychology, sociology, and organization theory can explain the phenomenon of organizational inaction on climate change. Antecedents related to short-termism and uncertainty avoidance reinforce one another at (...) three levels—individual, organizational, and institutional—and result in organizational inaction on climate change. The article also discusses the implications of this multi-level framework for research on corporate sustainability. (shrink)

In epistemology and philosophy of science, there has been substantial debate about truth’s relation to understanding. “Non-factivists” hold that radical departures from the truth are not always barriers to understanding; “quasi-factivists” demur. The most discussed example concerns scientists’ use of idealizations in certain derivations of the ideal gas law from statistical mechanics. Yet, these discussions have suffered from confusions about the relevant science, as well as conceptual confusions. Addressing this example, we shall argue that the ideal gas law is best (...) interpreted as favoring non-factivism about understanding, but only after delving a bit deeper into the statistical mechanics that has informed these arguments and stating more precisely what non-factivism entails. Along the way, we indicate where earlier discussions have gone astray, and highlight how a naturalistic approach furnishes more nuanced normative theses about the interaction of rationality, understanding, and epistemic value. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of the philosophical and moral issues in relation to human enhancement and the various related medical developments that are now rapidly moving from the laboratory into the clinical realm. In the book, the author critically examines technologies such as genetic engineering, neural implants, pharmacologic enhancement, and cryonic suspension from transhumanist and bioconservative positions, focusing primarily on moral issues and what it means to be a human in a setting where technological interventions sometimes impact strongly (...) on our humanity. The author also introduces the notion that death is a process rather than an event, as well as identifies philosophical and clinical limitations in the contemporary determination of brain death as a precursor to organ procurement for transplantation. The discussion on what exactly it means to be dead is later applied to explore philosophical and clinical issues germane to the cryonics movement. Written by a physician/ scientist and heavily referenced to the peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature, the book is aimed at advanced students and academics but should be readable by any intelligent reader willing to carry out some side-reading. No prior knowledge of moral philosophy is assumed, as the various key approaches to moral philosophy are outlined early in the book. (shrink)

Barz (2018) contends that there is no specification of the phenomenon of first-person authority that avoids falsity or triviality. This paper offers one. When a subject self-ascribes a current conscious mental state in speech, there is a presumption that what she says is true. To defeat this presumption, one must be able to explain how she has been led astray.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) is delighted to pick up the mantel of the Ethics briefings. For readers less familiar with the NCOB’s work, we are a leading independent policy and research centre, and the foremost bioethics body in the UK. We identify, analyse and advise on ethical issues in biomedicine and health so that decisions in these areas benefit people and society.1 Established in 1991, the NCOB has tackled a wide range of bioethics and medical ethics issues over (...) its thirty-two years, including issues relating to the beginning and end of life, health and society, data and technology, and research ethics. Early reports in the 1990s included, for example, ‘Genetics screening: the ethical issues’ and ‘Animal-to-human transplants: the ethics of Xenotransplantation’. More recent projects include setting out an ethical framework in the report ‘The future of ageing: ethical considerations for research and innovation’2 and a current joint project with the Ada Lovelace Institute3 considering the potential ethical implications of the convergence of AI and genomics technologies.4 In recent years, NCOB has increasingly focused on horizon scanning. What current and future national and international developments are likely to raise ethical issues in the short, medium and long-term? Insights for 2023 will soon be available at www.nuffieldbioethics.org/what-we-do/horizon-scanning, with new developments likely to be included alongside ongoing areas of medical and scientific research that we are tracking progress in, for example, in vitro derived gametes, surrogacy, biosafety and novel neurotechnologies. Disagreements between parents and healthcare teams about …. (shrink)

At the center of much contemporary work on self-knowledge of our attitudes is a debate between Agentialists and Empiricists. Empiricists hold that first-person knowledge of one’s own attitudes possesses a broadly empirical basis, such as observation or inference. Agentialists insist that an account of self-knowledge must make sense of the intimate connection between knowing one’s attitudes and actively forming them in response to reasons. But it is plausible to suppose that a psychologically realistic account of self-knowledge will emphasize both active (...) and passive elements. Focusing on the idea that we form self-ascriptions of belief on the basis of active deliberation, this paper outlines such a middle ground position. (shrink)

Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débâcle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems (...) caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management. (shrink)

A unique and controversial study of Nietzsche's philosophy in relation to Kantian methodologies.

I argue that there is nothing wrong with perfect voyeurism , covert watching or listening that is neither discovered nor publicized. After a brief discussion of privacy I present attempts from Stanley Benn, Daniel Nathan, and James Moor to show that the act is wrong. I argue that these authors fail to make their case. However, I maintain that, if detected or publicized, voyeurism can do grave harm and to that extent should be severely punished. I conclude with some thoughts (...) on the stubborn intuition that perfect voyeurism is wrong despite the absence of harm. (shrink)

This paper begins with the thought that there is something out of place about offloading inquiry into one's own mind to AI. The paper's primary goal is to articulate the unease felt when considering cases of doing so. It draws a parallel between the use of algorithms in the criminal law: in both cases one feels entitled to be treated as an exception to a verdict made on the basis of a certain kind of evidence. Then it identifies an account (...) of first‐person authority that can make good on this: agentialism. Thus, the paper constitutes an argument in favor of an agentialist treatment of self‐knowledge and first‐person authority. (shrink)

This essay addresses the question how we know our conscious thinking. Conscious thinking typically takes the form of a series of discrete episodes that constitute a complex cognitive activity. We must distinguish the discrete episodes of thinking in which a particular content is represented in phenomenal consciousness and is present “before the mind’s eye” from the extended activities of which these episodes form a part. The extended activities are themselves contentful and we have first-person access to them. But because their (...) content is not represented in phenomenal consciousness, this access cannot be broadly observational. Instead, I argue, it is agential. Furthermore, that extended activities are intentional explains the possibility of a nonobservational form of introspective access to the discrete episodes in consciousness. (shrink)

This paper motivates a constraint on how to explain the “sense of agency” for conscious thinking. It argues that a prominent model fails to satisfy the constraint before sketching an alternative that does. On the alternative, punctate acts of conscious thinking, such as episodes of inner speech, are recognizable as our deeds because they are recognizable as parts of complex cognitive activities, which we know non-observationally in virtue of holding intentions to perform them.

This paper examines how Nietzsche’s view of the mind and its relationship to nature informs his account of human agency. In particular, it focuses on his approach to the causal efficacy of conscious mental states. By examining the Leibnizean and Kantian background to this approach, I contend that Nietzsche proposes a naturalist but non-eliminativist account of mind, central to which is his anti-Cartesian denial that consciousness is intrinsic to the mental. However, Nietzsche ultimately oscillates between two accounts: the first, which (...) I call the ‘enchantment thesis,’ sacrifices the extrinsicality of consciousness but secures the causal efficacy of conscious mental states, whilst the second avoids enchanting nature, securing the extrinsicality of consciousness but sacrificing its causal efficacy. I argue that it is possible to reconstruct his arguments to combine elements of the conflicting accounts and to successfully hold together his anti-Cartesian account of mind with the possibility of autonomous human action. (shrink)

This is an empirical phenomenological interview study into the experiences of professional actors as they create and perform roles for the stage. Prior research was inadequate for capturing actors’ changing life worlds over time. Analyzing the interviews using the descriptive phenomenological method yielded general structural descriptions and pointed to the relevance of Schütz’s description of multiple realities. Being cast in a role changes the pace and goals of actors’ everyday worlds and leads the actors intermittently and with intention to enter (...) other realities—fictional, theoretical, and/or pictorial. A province unique to acting is the drama world in which the actors live incarnate as their characters. The drama world is infused pre-reflectively with discoveries from other provinces of meaning, unfolds spontaneously, and, in performance, has the audience as horizon. The drama world and the experiences that give rise to it provide new material for comparative phenomenological analysis of various forms of imagining. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the boundaries of political sovereignty, one key aspect of global political justice and an important background condition to the issues of global economic justice treated in the other papers of this volume. I first present an interpretive summary of the traditional arguments against and for intervention, stressing, to a greater extent than is usual, the consequentialist character of the ethics of intervention. It makes a difference whether we think that an intervention will do more good than (...) harm, and some of the factors that determine the outcome are matters of strategy and institutional choice. I then explore the significance of a key factor that makes for much of what is new in the new interventionism: the role of multilateral and particularly U.N. authorization and implementation. I argue that the more salient role of the United Nations should lead us to a more expansive tolerance of international intervention and that global standards of justice, both political and economic, can therefore be more widely enforced against claims to national autonomy. (shrink)

This article is a critical response to Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche as Metaphysician. It contends that Remhof runs the question of whether Nietzsche is a metaphysician too closely with the related but separate question of what type of metaphysician he is. It is argued that Remhof is correct in claiming that Nietzsche is a metaphysician and that his metaphysics informs his wider philosophy. However, Remhof’s view that Nietzsche is a metaphysical constructivist is subject to criticism.

This article advances a critical analysis of John Rawls’s justification of liberal democratic nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era as found in The Law of Peoples. Rawls’s justification overlooked how nuclear-armed liberal democracies are ensnared in two intransigent ethical dilemmas: one in which the mandate to secure liberal constitutionalism requires both the preservation and violation of important constitutional provisions in domestic affairs, and the other in which this same mandate requires both the preservation and violation of the liberal commitment (...) to international legal arrangements and to the rule of law generally. On this view, the choice to violate constitutional provisions and international legal arrangements is evidence of nuclear despotism. Moreover, this choice does not imply that the ethical foreign policy dilemmas were resolved. Instead, it implies that the dilemmas force liberal democratic governments into implementing ethically paradoxical policy outcomes. (shrink)