The grand duchy of Luxembourg is a showcase example for the constructed nature of national identities. This book explores this construction process from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, focusing on representations of the past, space and language.

La présente étude rassemble les passages de l’Ab Vrbe condita de Tite-Live où un terme lié au rire est associé à un discours ou à une parole rapportée, afin de les confronter aux vues exprimées par Cicéron et Quintilien sur le rire en contexte rhétorique. Si tous les passages étudiés s’insèrent très bien dans la conception rhétorique du rire, l’historien latin s’appuie sur celle-ci pour offrir une répartition originale entre usages acceptables et formes abusives du rire qui participe à la (...) construction des portraits personnages et de l’œuvre. (shrink)

Considérée comme le seul pays « émergent » de son continent, l' Afrique du Sud est le produit d'une histoire tourmentée, sortie du système de l'apartheid pour devenir un État démocratique et multiracial au début des années 1990. Si la constitution prône une diversité culturelle et linguistique, reflet de sa population, l'Afrique du Sud s'intéresse plus à l'institution de la Francophonie, pour les avantages que son commerce et sa diplomatie en Afrique francophone peuvent en tirer, que pour l'usage de la (...) langue française surtout pratiquée par une communauté africaine francophone récemment implantée.South Africa is considered as the sole emerging country on its continent and has undergone a very difficult history. Following the end of the apartheid system, South Africa was transformed into a multiracial and democratic state in the nineties. The South African constitution now endorses linguistic and cultural diversity which mirrors its population. Francophony as an institution is of major interest for South Africa more to support its proactive trade and diplomacy in the Francophone area than to help develop the French language which is mainly spoken by a recently settled Francophone African community. (shrink)

We challenge Ruchkin et al.'s claim in reducing short-term memory (STM) to the active part of long-term memory (LTM), by showing that their data cannot rule out the possibility that activation of posterior brain regions could also reflect the contribution of a verbal STM buffer.

La réception de la théologie politique de Johann Baptist Metz est un fait d’interprétation. Cette contribution présente tout d’abord la périodisation, apparue dans les années 1980, de l’oeuvre de Metz en trois phases: la période de la théologie transcendantale; la première phase de la théologie politique ainsi que sa deuxième phase. Décrire deux phases de la théologie politique délimitées par la formulation de la thèse centrale de l’oeuvre de Metz, selon laquelle la foi est mémoire de la souffrance de l’humanité, (...) permet de mettre en lumière la signification et les enjeux de la théologie politique. La deuxième partie de l’article s’intéresse à un aspect encore sujet à discussions de la réception de l’oeuvre de Metz: en réponse au refus postmoderne des grands récits, Metz et ses disciples présentent la théologie politique comme une théologie négative. Cependant, une telle réponse peut-elle être séparée d’autres affirmations déterminantes pour la théologie politique, en particulier celle selon laquelle le temps a une fin? (shrink)

The current SARS-CoV-2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter to the prevailing approach of the previous two centuries that developed an international public health space. This article examines the measures adopted by European states (...) in order to contain 19th-century cholera pandemics, which took shape through the development of an international maritime quarantine system, based primarily on the implementation of national regulations and local decision-making. This regime was quickly viewed as ineffective and out of step with liberal ideas that urged a “laissez-faire” approach to public health matters. In its stead, a long-term trend developed towards easing quarantine measures. Nation states supported the internationalisation of the fight against pandemics, which chiefly consisted of externalising quarantine measures to the East in order to eliminate them in Europe. This process was based on a subtle dialectical relationship between the construction of an international public health space and the affirmation of state sovereignty, and continued into the 20th century with the progressive creation of international institutions responsible for advancing global health. (shrink)

The current SARS-CoV-2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter to the prevailing approach of the previous two centuries that developed an international public health space. This article examines the measures adopted by European states (...) in order to contain 19th-century cholera pandemics, which took shape through the development of an international maritime quarantine system, based primarily on the implementation of national regulations and local decision-making. This regime was quickly viewed as ineffective and out of step with liberal ideas that urged a “laissez-faire” approach to public health matters. In its stead, a long-term trend developed towards easing quarantine measures. Nation states supported the internationalisation of the fight against pandemics, which chiefly consisted of externalising quarantine measures to the East in order to eliminate them in Europe. This process was based on a subtle dialectical relationship between the construction of an international public health space and the affirmation of state sovereignty, and continued into the 20th century with the progressive creation of international institutions responsible for advancing global health. (shrink)

The reception of René Girard’s work in France deserves book-length treatment to fully describe the heated debates, conflicting expectations, and controversy that it inspired before its lasting importance was eventually recognized. We must keep in mind that, although he lived in the US and became a citizen in 1956, he always kept his sights on his native land. He watched the transformations of French thought from the other side of the ocean; he forged his own writing strategies in response to (...) French thought; and it was within the context of French debates that he chose to formulate, through the conjoined hypotheses concerning mimetic desire, the scapegoat, and Judeo-Christian writing, the founding event of his... (shrink)

Il n'y a plus d'évidence aujourd'hui dans le fait de vivre sur Terre. Effondrement général de la biodiversité, accélération du réchauffement climatique, catastrophes sanitaires et sociales, les faits sont innombrables et bien d'autres cataclysmes sont à venir. Il ne suffit - pas d'en avoir conscience. Il faut aussi savoir comment vivre si chacun de nos gestes compte et si nous n'avons presque plus de temps. L'Anthropocène réclame un souci infini de la terre et des vivants, qui risque à chaque instant (...) de se retourner en ressentiment contre la vie. L'écologie menace de nous rendre fous ou malades. C'est pourquoi, du fond de notre détresse, nous avons besoin qu'elle puisse devenir un "gai savoir". Peut-on concevoir ainsi une pensée écologique qui soit aussi une philosophie de la puissance, ne se résumant ni à sa célébration prométhéenne, ni à son déni ascétique? Si la vie est volonté de puissance, alors il s'agit de chercher à dégager les conditions auxquelles l'accroissement de la puissance peut aussi prendre la forme d'un retour vers la terre. En quête d'une telle philosophie, ce livre chemine en compagnie de Nietzsche. Car il est peut-être encore temps de répondre à ce mystérieux appel de Zarathoustra : "Que le surhumain soit le sens de la terre!""--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

La théologie de Karl Rahner mérite-t-elle le label de «classique»? Pour instruire le débat, l’article présente quatre dissertations doctorales récentes , ainsi qu’un ouvrage collectif, consacrés à l’oeuvre de Rahner. Nature et grâce, christologie et triadologie, théologie et anthropologie, athéisme et sciences naturelles, expérience et subjectivité, épistémologie et apologétique: les thèmes abordés par ces études témoignent de la diversité des questions traitées par le corpus rahnérien. De cet examen, trois lignes de force caractéristiques du style de cette théologie peuvent être (...) dégagées: modestie du langage théologique, rigueur des critères de validation, audace spéculative et systématique. En contrepoint critique, trois questions peuvent légitimement être avancées concernant l’universalité du langage employé et de l’expérience décrite, la fidélité au mystère et les points aveugles du système. Il y a fort à parier que l’avenir confirme le diagnostic qui s’impose à l’issue de cette étude, à savoir qu’il convient de considérer Rahner comme un classique de la discipline théologique pour avoir proposé, en un moment critique de son histoire, une voie de renouvellement tout à la fois grandiose et contestable. (shrink)

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, (...) political centralisation. (shrink)

The progressive dominance of historical-critical methods in the reading of ancient Chinese classics has led scholars to privilege micro levels of textual analysis. Consequently, the question as to whether laws of composition could be identified in this corpus has often been ignored, or considered irrelevant. Working on Chinese number symbolism as well as on rules governing “ring composition” in other cultural contexts, this article aims at fashioning anew the question of the possibility of an ancient Chinese “structural rhetoric” and at (...) envisioning the patterns that might have governed it. It specifically applies the approach it propounds to Huainanzi 淮南子, showing how numerology frames its structure and argument, the text being built after the image of the “roundness” of the Way and of the Ruler. It then endeavors to apply these results to the unearthing of “inter-structural” patterns that would help us to locate Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, the versions at hand of Zhuangzi 莊子, Lunyu 論語, or yet Laozi 老子 into a textual universe that shares correlated rhetorical features. (shrink)

The infinite pigeonhole principle for 2-partitions asserts the existence, for every set A, of an infinite subset of A or of its complement. In this paper, we study the infinite pigeonhole pr...

One of the first frameworks developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to the economy has been the linear model of innovation. The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. The precise source of the model remains nebulous, having never been documented. Several authors who have used, improved, or criticized the model in the past fifty years rarely acknowledged or cited any original source. The (...) model usually was taken for granted. According to others, however, it comes directly from V. Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier. This article traces the history of the linear model, suggesting that it developed in three steps corresponding to three scientific communities looking at science analytically. The article argues that statistics is a main reason the model is still alive despite criticisms, alternatives, and having been proclaimed dead. (shrink)

Dans une note de son ouvrage consacré à Henry, P. Audi affirme qu’« il n’y a pas de philosophie de l’histoire à proprement parler chez Henry ». Nous ambitionnons de rappeler ici que Henry a néanmoins donné un contenu au concept d’histoire et posé les conditions épistémologiques pour construire une phénoménologie radicale de l’histoire. Cette thématique, il est vrai, est généralement ignorée de la littérature secondaire. À son corps défendant, on est obligé de reconnaître que la question de l’...

resumo Minha intenção é a de mostrar como uma leitura cética dos diálogos socráticos de Platão permite explicar alguns impasses nos quais resulta a interpretação dogmática desses diálogo s. Enu mero aqui, de ma neira programática, os eleme ntos que permitirão sustentar que, nos diálogos de juvent ude, Platão desenvolveu uma lógica que conduz a uma posição forte sobre os limites do conhecimento e do intelectualismo. Essa int e r p retação se inspira em traços dominantes do ceticismo de Arcesilau. (...) Mostrarei como os diálogos de Platão podem ser lidos como a ins p i ração por trás da posição de Arcesilau quando este afirma que seria preciso suspender o julgamento e, na falta de certeza, seguir o que é razoável. De uma parte, o estudo do estatuto para doxal da ig no r â nc ia socrática e do papel do oráculo na Apologia permite discernir o func io na me nto de uma lógica pro p í c ia a gerar aporia s. De outra parte, a análise do problema da virtude- ciênc ia no Protágoras e no Laques permite exibir os mecanismos de uma arg u mentação cuja conc l u s ã o é a impossibilidade de defender hic e nunc uma ética estritamente intelectualista. palavras-chave Ceticismo; Sócrates; Platão; Virtude. (shrink)

Niedenthal et al. discuss the importance of eye gaze in embodied simulation and, more globally, in the processing of emotional visual stimulation (such as facial expression). In this commentary, we illustrate the relationship between oriented eye movements, consciousness, and emotion by using the case of severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma (i.e., vegetative and minimally conscious patients).

This article shows how, starting from Schelling and Henry, one can build a radical critique of objectification and subjectification within humanities. This critique opens the way for the construction of a point of view of immanence, which is characterized by the experimentation of a constitution of affects in a process from which proceeds the subjectivity. This point of view of immanence questions the accepted attitudes in the production of social relationships and the norms that govern them, so as to increase (...) the attention to the vulnerability of these processes and their power to transform the affects. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that the content and frequency of mind-wandering episodes—the occurrence of thoughts that are both stimulus-independent and task-unrelated—are closely related to an individual’s future-related concerns. Whether this relationship is shaped by the affective changes that are usually associated with future-related concerns still remains unclear, however. In this study, we induced the anticipation of a negatively valenced event and examined whether the ensuing affective changes were related to the occurrence and content of mind-wandering during an unrelated attentional task. (...) We found that the increase in negative affect following concern induction predicted the general frequency of mind-wandering episodes. Furthermore, mind-wandering episodes specifically directed at the induced concern were related to a lower decrease in negative affect during the attentional task. These results suggest that the negative emotional impact of future-related concerns is an important factor to be taken into consideration for the subsequent occurrence of mind-wandering episodes, which might in turn be involved in the maintenance of negative affect over time. (shrink)

The last sentence of Chapter 10 of the Analects describes a brief encounter between Confucius and a hen-pheasant, and it does so in puzzling terms, ridden with lexical difficulties. At the same time, intertextual references insert this fragment into the context of Confucius’ life mission as well as of Chinese mythological narratives. This contribution assesses the fragment’s meaning and significance: Confucius’ reaction to the hen-pheasant unveils his evolving understanding of the Heavenly Mandate bestowed upon him. The fragment thus forcefully concludes (...) the chapter in which it is inserted. Additionally, I put forward a hypothesis: the focus of this narrative, coupled with its positioning at the end of Chapter 10, induce us to postulate that it may have been purposefully located at the very center of the Analects, a proposition that reverberates on the way we look at the composition of the book. (shrink)

This article deals with the nature and the evolution of the relationships between the Belgian French-speaking Green party Ecolo and the new social movements in Wallonia and Brussels, from the larger identified sectors of these movements to various other movements. To start with, the status of these movements in the emergence of the Greenparty is scrutinised. Then, on the basis of a survey conducted amongst members of the party elite, different modalities of the party/movements links are analysed: joint activism, selective (...) communication channels between the elites, structural links. The bottom line is that, altogether, the links are tighter than one might expect, but that the Green party new social movements linkage remains ambiguous in many respects. (shrink)

Since the November 1991 elections, it has become a common statement to argue that Belgium has entered a -possibly unprecedented- period ofchange and instability. This article focuses on the evolution of the electoral system and electoral behaviour, in order to test this widely agreed-upon judgement. All things considered, one observes that the electoral system has not been radically modified since World War II. In spite of the transformation of the country into a federal state and several severe conflicts, political decision-makers (...) have opted for the 'fine-tuning" of the electoral system instead of radical reforms.As far as electoral behaviour is concerned, the picture is less clear. On one hand, relying on various indicators, one does observe that the early 1990s were characterised by change and transformation. On the other hand, one cannot conclude that the amplitude of change or instability in the early 1990s has been "exceptional" or "unprecedented" as compared with earlier periods.Building upon this ambiguous diagnosis, the author speculates on the probability of a major breakdown of the Belgian political system at the turn of the century. (shrink)

This contribution explores the reciprocal links between the organisational transformation of Western European Green parties and the access of some of these parties to national government participation. On the one hand, a series of hypotheses with regard to the possible link between prior organisational adaptation and eventual access to governmental participation are examined. On the other hand, the opposite question is addressed : that of the potential impact of governmental participation on further organisational adaptation. Following both a qualitative and Qualitative (...) Comparative Analysis, one does ultimately identify a link between prior organisational adaptation and eventual access to government, but a much more indirect and contrasted link between governmental participation and further organisational adaptation. (shrink)

The recent literature on social norms has stressed the centrality of emotions in explaining punishment and norm enforcement. This article discusses four negative emotions (righteous anger, indignation, contempt, and disgust) and examines their relationship to punitive behavior. I argue that righteous anger and indignation are both punitive emotions strictly speaking, but induce punishments of different intensity and have distinct elicitors. Contempt and disgust, for their part, cannot be straightforwardly considered punitive emotions, although they often blend with a colder form of (...) indignation to favor low-cost, indirect, and collective forms of punishment such as mockery, exclusion, and ostracism. (shrink)