Depuis plus de vingt ans, le développement de la vidéoprotection fait l'objet de nombreux débats, parfois passionnés, tant en ce qui concerne son utilité en vue de lutter contre la délinquance que pour ses éventuelles conséquences en matière d'atteintes aux libertés individuelles. En France, l'installation de systèmes de vidéoprotection sur la voie publique est encadrée par les dispositions de la loi du 21janvier 1995. La vidéoprotection n'est qu'un outil parmi d'autres au service de la prévention et de la lutte contre (...) la criminalité. Elle peut être efficace lorsque sa mise en oeuvre répond à des objectifs clairement définis. En revanche, certains problèmes demeurent lorsqu'elle est mal utilisée. L'usage des nouvelles technologies par l'État ne doit pas être systématiquement abordé sous l'angle symbolique ou du militantisme. La problématique n'est pas dans leur essor, car il est incontestable que les progrès technologiques contribuent à une meilleure sécurité des citoyens, tant à charge pour les criminels, qu'à décharge pour les personnes injustement poursuivies, mais dans les moyens et les procédures de contrôle de ces outils. Là est l'enjeu.The development of video-monitoring has been a subject of considerable and often heated debate for over twenty years, both as regards its effectiveness against crime and its potential for infringing civil liberties. In France, the installation of video-monitoring systems in public places is regulated by the Act of January 21st, 1995. Video-monitoring is one of a range of tools used in preventing and fighting crime. When implemented with clearly defined objectives, it can be effective. However, the misuse of video-monitoring raises a number of problems. The use of new technologies by the State should not be systematically viewed in symbolic terms or from the angle of political activism. The problem at issue is not the boom in video-monitoring in itself, as it cannot be denied that technological progress is contributing to better security for citizens, both against criminals and in the defence of persons unjustly charged, but rather the means and procedures for controlling its use. (shrink)

Explanation in biology has long been characterized as being very different from explanation in other scientific disciplines, very much so from explanation in physics. One of the reasons was the existence in biology of explanation types that were unheard of in the physical sciences: teleological explanations (e.g. Hull 1974), evolutionary explanations (e.g. Mayr 1988), or even functional explanations (e.g. Neander 1991). More recently, and owing much to the rise of molecular biology, biological explanations have been depicted as mechanisms (e.g; Machamer, (...) Darden and Craver 2000). The aim of this volume is to shed some new light on the diversity of explanation types in biology. What are the different types of explanation that occur in biology? Are these types of explanation specific to particular sub-disciplines of biology, or to particular types of problems across biology? How do they relate to each another? Do they compete with one another for answering the same questions? Or do they complement each other, providing insights to different questions? What are the reasons for such diversity? Can this diversity be overcome by a broader unifying model of explanation or is it more profound and irreducible? Why? This volume aims at making sense of this diversity of types of explanations that are found in biology, of their relationship with one another. After all, explanation in biology may prove not only different from explanation in the physical sciences, but also much more diverse than originally anticipated. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary relevance of Spinoza today.

Tribute to Jean-Yves Jaffray by the French Group of Decision Theory.

We argue, in the spirit of some of Jean-Yves Jaffray’s work, that explicitly incorporating the information, however imprecise, available to the decision maker is relevant, feasible, and fruitful. In particular, we show that it can lead us to know whether the decision maker has wrong beliefs and whether it matters or not, that it makes it possible to better model and analyze how the decision maker takes into account new information, even when this information is not an event and finally (...) that it is crucial when attempting to identify and measure the decision maker’s attitude toward imprecise information. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Difficult Atheism shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. Christopher Watkin argues that Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux each elaborate a distinctive approach to the post-theological, but that each approach still struggles to do justice to the death of God.

Self-portrait -- The early Washington, D.C. Baha'i community -- Conversion -- Race amity -- Pilgrimage -- Harlem Renaissance and Baha'i service -- Estrangement and rededication -- Baha'i essays -- Alain Locke's philosophy of democracy : America, race, and world peace.

Alain Testart was one of the major social anthropologists of his time. He left behind a considerable and original body of work dealing with social structures and their evolution which afforded keys to the reinterpretation of archaeological material. A one-time self-professed Marxist, he had abandoned this theoretical framework many years ago. Nevertheless, since they tackle questions that are crucial to those who want to understand the past in order to change the present, his writings are a precious source of (...) information and of thought-provoking reasoning. (shrink)

Contemporary French philosophy is laying fresh claim to the human. Through a series of independent, simultaneous initiatives, arising in the writing of diverse current French thinkers, the figured of the human is being transformed and reworked. -/- Christopher Watkin draws out both the promises and perils inherent in these attempts to rethink humanity’s relation to ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and even to our own brains. This (...) comparative assessment makes visible for the first time one of the most important trends in French thought today. (shrink)

We trace the genealogy and tensions of postmodern atheism through a series of encounters: Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche's “God is dead,” Foucault's critique of Sartre's humanism, Jean‐Luc Nancy's rejection of Alain Badiou's atheism, and the questions Derrida raises about Nancy's own position. We argue that there are plural postmodern atheisms, each of which defends its own claim to be following through on the consequences of the death of God more radically than the alternatives.

Much French philosophy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been marked by the positive valorization of alterity, an ethical position that has recently received a vigorous assault from Alain Badiou’s privilege of sameness. This article argues that Badiou shares a great deal in common with the philosophies of alterity from which he seeks to distance himself, and that Michel Serres’s little-known account of alterity offers a much more radical alternative to the ethics of difference. Drawing on (...) both translated and as yet untranslated works, I argue that the Serresian ontology of inclination, along with his conceptual personae of the hermaphrodite and the parasite, informs ethical and political positions that offer a distinctive ethics and politics that present fresh insights about the relation between the singular and the universal, the contingency of market exchange, and the nature of violence. (shrink)

Recent work on Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière has rightly identified equality both as a central theme in their own thinking and as the key notion in contemporary radical political thought more broadly, but a focus on the differences between their respective accounts of equality has failed to clarify a major problem that they share. The problem is that human equality is said to rest on a particular human capacity, leaving Badiou's axiomatic equality and Rancière's assumed equality vulnerable to (...) the charge of having a blind spot for some of society's most vulnerable. This article introduces an alternative understanding of equality drawn from the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy, an equality that does not rely on a human capacity to guarantee or verify it but rests on Nancy's notion of sense. The article explores the advantages of Nancy's account of equality in relation to sense over and against an alternative reading that focuses on Nancy's evocation of the suffering human body, before addressing, in conclusion, the problems with which Nancy's idea of equality will have to grapple, and why, despite these problems, it is still preferable to the Badiouian and Rancièrian approaches. (shrink)

In the Name of Friendship: Deguy, Derrida and "Salut"centres on the relationship between poet Michel Deguy and philosopher Jacques Derrida. Translations of two essays, "Of Contemporaneity" by Deguy and "How to Name" by Derrida, allow Christopher Elson and Garry Sherbert to develop the implications of this singular intellectual friendship. In these thinkers' efforts to reinvent secular forms of the sacred, such as the singularity of the name, and especially poetic naming, Deguy, by adopting a Derridean programme of the impossible, and (...) Derrida, by developing Deguy's ethics of naming through the word "salut," situate themselves at the forefront of contemporary debates over politics and religion alongside figures like Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Marion, John Caputo and Martin Hagglund. (shrink)

Ce livre se consacre à la création d’une nouvelle figure rhétorique dans les œuvres des auteurs « politiques » sous Charles VI et Charles VII : celle de « la France », imaginée allégoriquement comme une femme noble. D. Delogu explore le développement de cette figure d’Eustache Deschamps et Christine de Pisan à Alain Chartier et Jean Juvénal des Ursins. Elle présente des lectures très fines d’un corpus de textes souvent négligés. Dès le début, elle démonte l’avis fréquemment répété (...) selon leque... (shrink)

Alain Locke, an often neglected classical American Pragmatist, developed a pluralistic value theory as an antidote to the "value absolutism" he considered the root cause of social conflict. Values, for Locke, are not immutable features of a transcendent reality, but rather emerge from human functional attitudes, or what he calls "feeling-modes." However incommensurable the contextualized values of diverse cultures may appear, they can always be traced back to common modes of valuing. Recognizing the common character of our human faculty (...) of valuation allows us to see a basic functional equivalence among superficially conflicting values, thus undermining value absolutism. This paper suggests that one reason the debate over same-sex marriage in the United States has persisted is that the arguments have been advanced primarily in absolute value terms. Re-casting the debate in terms of a Lockean pluralistic value dialogue suggests a path out of the stalemate. (shrink)

In this essay I consider what is meant by the description ‘great’ philosophy and then offer some broadly applicable criteria by which to assess candidate thinkers or works. On the one hand are philosophers in whose case the epithet, even if contested, is not grossly misconceived or merely the product of doctrinal adherence on the part of those who apply it. On the other are those – however gifted, acute, or technically adroit – to whom its application is inappropriate because (...) their work cannot justifiably be held to rise to a level of creative-exploratory thought where the description would have any meaningful purchase. I develop this contrast with reference to Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between ‘revolutionary’ and ‘normal’ science, and also in light of J.L. Austin’s anecdotal remark – à propos Leibniz – that it was the mark of truly great thinkers to make great mistakes, or to risk falling into certain kinds of significant or consequential error. My essay goes on to put the case that great philosophy should be thought of as involving a constant readiness to venture and pursue speculative hypotheses beyond any limits typically imposed by a culture of ‘safe’, well-established, or academically sanctioned debate. At the same time – and just as crucially – it must be conceived as subject to the strictest, most demanding standards of formal assessment, i.e., with respect to basic requirements of logical rigour and conceptual precision. Focusing mainly on the work of Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou I suggest that these criteria are more often met by philosophers in the broadly ‘continental’ rather than the mainstream ‘analytic’ line of descent. However – as should be clear – the very possibility of meeting them, and of their being jointly met by any one thinker, is itself sufficient indication that this is a false and pernicious dichotomy. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is a highly original, indeed decidedly iconoclastic thinker whose work has ranged widely over areas of equal concern to philosophers in the ‘continental’ and mainstream analytic traditions. These areas include ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and – above all – philosophy of mathematics. It is unfortunate, and symptomatic of prevailing attitudes, that his work has so far receivedminimal attention from commentators in the analytic line of descent. Here I try to help the process of reception along by describing (...) Badiou’s remarkably ambitious approach to issues of mathematical (more specifically: of set-theoretical) ontology, and by explaining just where his project stands in relation to some major issues within current analytic debate. Chief among them are: the issue between realists and anti-realists – along with various avowed middle-ground or compromise solutions – and those oddly tenacious problems-from-Wittgenstein (e.g., concerning what it means to follow a rule) that have so preoccupied philosophers over the past decade. In particular I stress the unusual, indeed unique combination in his thought of high formal rigour and conceptual clarity allied to a speculative scope and inventiveness which tend to make those other discussions appear somewhat self-absorbed and parochial. Most importantly, Badiou engages these issues at a level of creative as well as of technical or analytic grasp, which puts his thinking closely in touch with the way that set theory has itself evolved through a constant process of – in Badiou’s phrase – ‘turning paradoxes into concepts.’ I also discuss his strong and principled rejection of the ‘linguistic turn’ in its manifold (analytic and continental) variants, and his idea of the ‘event’ as that which inherently eludes or surpasses the conceptual resources of any received ontology, whether in mathematics and the natural sciences or in the history of genuinely epochal changes in politics and ethics. All in all, I put the case for Badiou as a thinker of the first importance not only for the impressive range, depth and originality of his work, but also because it points to an escape-route from some of the more cramped or windowless quarters of present-day philosophic thought. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is a highly original, indeed decidedly iconoclastic thinker whose work has ranged widely over areas of equal concern to philosophers in the ‘continental’ and mainstream analytic traditions. These areas include ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and – above all – philosophy of mathematics. It is unfortunate, and symptomatic of prevailing attitudes, that his work has so far receivedminimal attention from commentators in the analytic line of descent. Here I try to help the process of reception along by describing (...) Badiou’s remarkably ambitious approach to issues of mathematical (more specifically: of set-theoretical) ontology, and by explaining just where his project stands in relation to some major issues within current analytic debate. Chief among them are: the issue between realists and anti-realists – along with various avowed middle-ground or compromise solutions – and those oddly tenacious problems-from-Wittgenstein (e.g., concerning what it means to follow a rule) that have so preoccupied philosophers over the past decade. In particular I stress the unusual, indeed unique combination in his thought of high formal rigour and conceptual clarity allied to a speculative scope and inventiveness which tend to make those other discussions appear somewhat self-absorbed and parochial. Most importantly, Badiou engages these issues at a level of creative as well as of technical or analytic grasp, which puts his thinking closely in touch with the way that set theory has itself evolved through a constant process of – in Badiou’s phrase – ‘turning paradoxes into concepts.’ I also discuss his strong and principled rejection of the ‘linguistic turn’ in its manifold (analytic and continental) variants, and his idea of the ‘event’ as that which inherently eludes or surpasses the conceptual resources of any received ontology, whether in mathematics and the natural sciences or in the history of genuinely epochal changes in politics and ethics. All in all, I put the case for Badiou as a thinker of the first importance not only for the impressive range, depth and originality of his work, but also because it points to an escape-route from some of the more cramped or windowless quarters of present-day philosophic thought. (shrink)

Das Konzept der Negation ist der zentrale Operator bei der Unterscheidung zwischen historischem Wandel und natürlicher Evolution, welche grundlegend für das moderne Denken ist. Die Krise dieser Abgrenzung ist somit auch eine »Krise der Negation« (AlainBadiou). Der vorliegende Text untersucht die Krise, indem er zuerst Hegels Konzept der »bestimmten Negation« und deren Auswirkungen auf das moderne Verständnis von Revolution beleuchtet und erörtert im Anschluss zwei mögliche Alternativen, wie Negation noch verstanden werden kann: als abstrakte Negation (Luhmann) und als endlose Negation (...) (Agamben). The concept of negation is the central operator in distinguishing between historical change and natural evolution, which is constitutive of modern thinking. The crisis of this distinction is therefore the »crisis of negation « (Alain Badiou). The text examines this crisis by first considering Hegel’s concept of »determinate negation« and its impact on the modern understanding of revolution and then discusses two possible alternative understandings of negation: abstract negation (Luhmann) and infinite negation (Agamben). (shrink)

The concept of negation is the central operator in distinguishing between historical change and natural evolution, which is constitutive of modern thinking. The crisis of this distinction is therefore the »crisis of negation « (Alain Badiou). The text examines this crisis by first considering Hegel’s concept of »determinate negation« and its impact on the modern understanding of revolution and then discusses two possible alternative understandings of negation: abstract negation (Luhmann) and infinite negation (Agamben).

Au-dela des idees convenues, comment penser les fondements d'une crise sociale inscrite dans le temps long? La guerre civile perpetuelle evalue dans plusieurs domaines les ravages politiques de la philosophie de la modernite. Cette etude examine d'abord sa capacite a detruire a la racine la possibilite du lien social naturel, pour tenter par la suite de le recreer au moyen de divers artifices. Loin de se limiter au simple constat d'echec, l'originalite et la force de cet ouvrage resident dans l'analyse (...) des causes d'un processus logique qui tend a imposer sa violence intrinseque au coeur de la relation sociale. Avec les contributions de: Miguel Ayuso Torres, Guillaume Bernard, Jacques Bonnet, Danilo Castellano, Bernard Dumont, Gilles Dumont, Jose Miguel Gambra, Carlo Gambescia, Isabelle Huten, Aude de Kerros, Teodoro Katte Klitsche de la Grange, Marc de Launay, Pierre de Lauzun, Alain Mescheriakoff, Dalmacio Negro Pavon, Monica Papazu, Claude Polin, Christophe Reveillard, Giovanni Turco. (shrink)

Ces deux livres présentent plusieurs points communs qui justifient de les réunir dans un seul compte rendu. Ils sont tous les deux centrés sur la division sexuée du travail et tentent d’en reconstituer le passé préhistorique en s’appuyant sur l’observation de sociétés contemporaines vivant de chasse ou de cueillette ou de petite agriculture. Face à l’objection de ceux qui pensent la méthode illégitime car ces sociétés sont elles aussi le produit d’une histoire, ils revendiquent l’intérêt de f...

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, Israel has become increasingly salient to imperial strategy and ever more aggressive in its policies toward the Palestinians. In this context, a key ideological weapon is the cynical accusation of "anti-Semitism." For historical reasons, this has been deployed most forcefully in France, and Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan caustically demolish the "anti-Semitism is everywhere" allegation, used to bludgeon opponents of the Israeli state and those who stand in solidarity with the banlieue (...) youth. Ivan Segre undertakes a meticulous deconstruction of a rampant "reactionary philo-Semitism" that identifies Jewish interests with the "democratic West.". (shrink)

In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with (...) the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of an alarming rise in authoritarianism and the crisis of liberal democracy, few would consider extoling the virtues of politics today. Yet in this lively dialogue with journalist Aude Lancelin, leading French thinker Alain Badiou argues that it is precisely through politics that humanity can still achieve its most ambitious aims. As power becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of the state and global corporations, the role of the citizen is reduced to little more than (...) ritual. But Badiou emphasizes that politics is concerned not just with power and the state, but also with justice. So the central question of politics is “What is a just power?”, and the debate over politics is fundamentally about the norms to which power is subject and its relationship to a community – a community that is able to take control of its own destiny and provide its own direction, based on a shared standard of justice. This engaging dialogue, in which Badiou articulates his view of politics with exceptional clarity, will be of great value to anyone interested in radical politics today. (shrink)

Alain Epp Weaver's analysis of the theological foundations of Augustine's proscription of all lies in all circumstances does more than improve our understanding of Augustine. In drawing a plausible and illuminating parallel between the theological logic of Augustine and the theological logic of John Howard Yoder, Weaver not only succeeds in defending the credibility of Christian pacifism but also provides support for interpreting Yoder as a biblical realist. Moreover, the divergence between Weaver and Christopher Kirwan in their critical assessments (...) of the cogency of Augustine's treatment of lying serves to throw into relief the differences between secular philosophical ethics and theological ethics, incidentally suggesting why it is often difficult for twentieth-century thinkers to understand and evaluate premodern texts. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want it to be the case that he intended, in some sense at least, to create THIS world. Moreover, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another; rather, he KNEW precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. In particular, of each person P, God knew that P was to exist. (...) Call this the "standard" conception. Most theists find the standard conception appealing. Unfortunately, the view seems to conflict with the equally appealing idea — call it "temporal actualism" — that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present moment. For, on this view, for any historical person P, prior to creation, there was no such person as P and hence nothing about P for God to know. Hence, in particular, God couldn't have known that P was to exist. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it are highly problematic. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, I will propose a solution that seems to preserve both temporal actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. (shrink)

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homonymy of many central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being common to a single general concept. His preoccupation with homonymy influences his approach to almost every subject that he considers, and it clearly structures the philosophical methodology that he employs both when criticizing others and when advancing his own positive theories. Where there is homonymy there is multiplicity: Aristotle aims to find the order within this multiplicity, (...) and believes that doing so is crucial to scientific inquiry and philosophical progress.Christopher Shields investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case-studies, Shields examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and oneness, life, goodness, and being. Shields's aim is not only to give a fuller understanding of Aristotle's methodology and to illuminate his specific doctrines in a variety of areas, but to show that this methodology remains fruitful today. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of studies of themes from the work of the great American philosopher and pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1913). These themes center on the question of how we are to investigate the world rationally. Hookway shows how Peirce's ideas about this continue to play an important role in contemporary philosophy.