Cet article interroge les aspects sociaux et symboliques du dénudement des artistes féminines sur les scènes des cafés-concerts parisiens à la fin du xixe siècle. L’étude de ce geste scénique prend appui sur l’exemple du Coucher d’Yvette, un spectacle dont le succès renouvelé par de nombreuses imitations préfigure la postérité du genre de l’effeuillage dans la programmation des spectacles parisiens au xxe siècle. L’analyse des manuscrits de spectacle d’effeuillage conservés dans les archives de la censure dramatique, l’exploration de sources iconographiques, (...) ainsi que l’appui de plusieurs discours de réception sur la pratique féminine du déshabillage sur scène permettent de saisir l’engouement suscité par l’érotisation de ce geste et l’impact de cette réception sur l’histoire du corps et du genre à cette période. (shrink)

John Rawls is frequently perceived as being an advocate for purely redistributive policies designed to mitigate the consequences of a capitalist economy — an assumption I challenge in this article. My objective is to elucidate the biased nature of this view and provide a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the corporate landscape that a just society would entail within Rawls's framework. Through a meticulous examination of Rawls's delineation of economic regimes, I underscore the profound — and often unsuspected — (...) implications of liberal egalitarianism on corporate ownership and management. Rawls's proposition of a “property-owning democracy” posits that citizens should retain ownership of shares in companies throughout their lifetimes. Liberal socialism implies the nationalization of the means of production and the socialization of their management. (shrink)

L'intérêt des sciences humaines pour les rapports entre TIC, langues et savoirs n'est pas nouveau. Cependant l'intelligibilité d'une construction épistémologique des relations reste un domaine en friche dans le contexte de la mondialisation. Le présent article essaie de s'en prendre à ce vide épistémologique en interrogeant particulièrement les enjeux des langues africaines dans le travail de structuration et de dissémination du savoir global et des savoirs locaux. Ces savoirs, chacun à sa manière, tentent de se construire un statut nouveau en (...) s'insérant dans les divers marchés de la connaissance. Pour cela, ils tirent profit du renouvellement des thématiques occidentales vis-à-vis des consommateurs africains d'information scientifique. En conséquence, des politiques de productivité et de circularité des savoirs s'érigent dans des stratégies d'uniformisation épistémologique. Parallèlement, la mode de la «diversité linguistique et culturelle», censée protéger les langues et savoirs locaux, risque de les transformer en de simples objets ethnographiques.The interest of the humanities to the relationship between ICT and language knowledge is not new. However, the intelligibility of a construction epistemological relations remains a fallow field in the context of globalization. This article tries to take this empty epistemological questioning particularly the issues of African languages ​​in the work of structuring and dissemination of global knowledge and local knowledge. This knowledge, in their own way, trying to build a new status by inserting themselves into the various markets for knowledge. For this, they benefit from the renewal of western themed vis-à-vis African consumers of scientific information. As a result, productivity and political knowledge circularity themselves up in uniform epistemological strategies. Meanwhile, the fashion of the "linguistic and cultural diversity," intended to protect indigenous knowledge and languages, may turn them into mere ethnographic objects. (shrink)

The commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth. In the aftermath of the economic and financial crises, finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest. In this article, we analyze three types of complementary currency systems: community currencies, inter-enterprise currencies, and cryptocurrencies. We investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons. To address this question, we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate: the “new commons” (...) in organization studies and the “common good” in business ethics. Our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the “common good” framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities. Nevertheless, according to the “new commons” framework, only systems relying on collective action and self-management can be said to form commons. This allows us to suggest two new categories of commons: the “social commons,” which fit into both the “new commons” and the “common good” frameworks, and the “commercial commons,” which fit the “common good” but not the “new commons” framework. This research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of CCs. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...) minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism. (shrink)

La question de la religion - de son essence, de sa fonction, de son origine - a été centrale dans la sociologie et l'anthropologie classiques. Pour la tirer des impasses et de la stagnation où elle est reléguée de nos jours, Camille Tarot propose ici un bilan critique des œuvres des meilleurs comparatistes, à travers leurs théories si contradictoires de la religion. Huit auteurs principaux sont soumis à examen : Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Mircéa Eliade, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (...) René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Marcel Gauchet. L'important en la matière est d'abord d'esquiver les faux irénismes comme les querelles stériles ou haineuses, pour confronter les doctrines en profondeur et systématiquement. Ensuite, de déceler l'impensé et les refoulements que produit chaque cadre théorique, pour proposer le modèle ou l'idéal-type de la religion qui paraît le mieux fondé. Au fil de cet examen, il apparaît que l'essence du fait religieux est à rechercher à l'intersection du symbolique et du sacré, à comprendre à partir des fondations d'Emile Durkheim et de Marcel Mauss, complétées par les apports de René Girard. La possible fécondité du modèle qui se dégage ainsi s'atteste par sa capacité à relire les sources et à renouveler en profondeur les vieux problèmes des fonctions de la religion, qui n'avaient guère avancé depuis Emile Durkheim. (shrink)

How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), and others: the two views might agree in their claims about truth and objectivity, or even in their attributions of semantic content to normative sentences, but they disagree about how to explain normative meaning. Realists explain meaning by invoking normative facts and properties, or representational relations between normative language and the world, the thought (...) goes, while expressivists appeal instead to desire-like mental states in their explanations of meaning. However, I argue that, if we adopt a deflationary approach to representation and other related notions, there need be no such explanatory divide between expressivism and anything recognizable as a plausible notion of normative realism. Any alleged explanatory criterion for realism will either be incompatible with deflationism, or it will fail to capture some standard versions of normative realism. I conclude that, in a deflationary framework, expressivism is compatible with genuine realism. (shrink)

We all could have had better lives, yet often do not wish that our lives had gone differently, especially when we contemplate alternatives that vastly diverge from our actual life course. What, if anything, accounts for such conservative retrospective attitudes? I argue that the right answer involves the significance of our personal attachments and our biographical identity. I also examine other options, such as the absence of self-to-self connections across possible worlds and a general conservatism about value.

Suppose that there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about such facts are by-and-large true. How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. As has been recently noted, the challenge also applies to expressivist “quasi-realism”. I argue that expressivism is useful in the face of this challenge, in a way that has not been yet properly articulated. In dealing with epistemological issues, quasi-realists typically invoke the desire-like nature of normative judgments. However, this is (...) not enough to prevent the reliability challenge from arising, given that quasi-realists also hold that normative judgments are truth-apt beliefs. To defuse this challenge, we need to isolate a deeper sense in which normative thought is not representational. I propose that we rely on the negative functional thesis of expressivism: normative thought does not have the function of tracking normative facts, or any other kind of facts. This thesis supports an argument to the effect that it is misguided to expect an explanation of our access to normative facts akin to the explanations available in regions of thought that have a tracking function. We should be content with explanations of our reliability that take for granted certain connections between our psychology and the normative truths. (shrink)

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

It has been argued that there is something morally objectionable about moral realism: for instance, according to realism, we are justified in believing that genocide is wrong only if a certain moral fact obtains, but it is objectionable to hold our moral commitments hostage to metaphysics in this way. In this paper, I argue that no version of this moral argument against realism is likely to succeed. More precisely, minimal realism―the kind of realism on which realist theses are understood as (...) internal to moral discourse―is immune to this challenge, contrary to what some proponents of the moral argument have suggested, while robust non-naturalist realists might have good answers to all versions of the argument as well, at least if they adopt a certain stance on how to form metaphysical beliefs in the moral domain. (shrink)

Normative naturalism holds that normative properties are identical with, or reducible to, natural properties. Various challenges to naturalism focus on whether it can make good on the idea that normative concepts can be used in systematically different ways and yet have the same reference in all contexts of use. In response to such challenges, some naturalists have proposed that questions about the reference of normative terms should be understood, at least in part, as normative questions that can be settled through (...) normative inquiry. In this paper I have two goals. First, I argue that these naturalist proposals do not yet allow for radical disagreement on normative matters, or at least do not explain how such disagreement is possible. Secondly, I argue that, in order to account for radical disagreement, naturalists should not only treat normative reference as a normative issue but also adopt a non-representationalist account of normative concepts, on which such concepts are individuated through their practical role. I illustrate this point by showing how a view that combines naturalism and expressivism about normative discourse can vindicate the elasticity of normative concepts, their referential stability, and the objectivity of normative truths. (shrink)

Dancers and dance philosophers report on experiences of a certain form of sense making and bodily thinking through the dancing body. Yet, discussions on expertise and consciousness are often framed within canonical philosophical world-views that make it difficult to fully recognize, verbalize, and value the full variety of embodied and affective facets of subjectivity. Using qualitative interviews with five professional dancers and choreographers, I make an attempt to disclose the characteristics of what I consider to be a largely overseen state (...) of consciousness: embodied reflection. Dancers are familiar with this attentive bodily presence, which constitutes their work mode and heightens their abilities as experts. Detailed descriptions of their daily work at the theatre help us grasp the qualities and understand the enigmas of the absorbed state of bodily thinking. Husserl’s theories on reflection and Merleau-Ponty’s work on motoricity support our understanding of the structures behind embodied reflection. I believe it is a common human resource, and that whether we are experts or not, we all have the ability to reflect non-conceptually through bodily and/or affective activity. (shrink)

Over the last decade, personalized medicine has become a buzz word, which covers a broad spectrum of meanings and generates many different opinions. The purpose of this article is to achieve a better understanding of the reasons why personalized medicine gives rise to such conflicting opinions. We show that a major issue of personalized medicine is the gap existing between its claims and its reality. We then present and analyze different possible reasons for this gap. We propose an hypothesis inspired (...) by the Windelband’s distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methodology. We argue that the fuzzy situation of personalized medicine results from a mix between idiographic claims and nomothetic methodological procedures. Hence we suggest that the current quandary about personalized medicine cannot be solved without getting involved in a discussion about the complex epistemological and methodological status of medicine. To conclude, we show that the Gadamer’s view of medicine as a dialogical process can be fruitfully used and reveals that personalization is not a theoretical task, but a practical one, which takes place within the clinical encounter. (shrink)

In this paper, we explicitly point out the reasons why Special Relativity must be considered as the source of electron deep orbits, and dominates their behavior. We show that the cause is the quadratic form of the relativistic expression of energy, and this clearly appears when we explicitly develop the relativistic Schrödinger equation and compare it with the non-relativistic one.

Are human beings essentially good or evil? Immanuel Kant responds, “[H]e [man] is as much the one as the other, partly good, partly bad.” Given this, I’d like to explore the following: What does Kant mean by human nature and how is it possible to be both good and evil? What is “original sin” and does it place limits on free will? In what respect might Kant’s views be significant for non-believers? More specifically, is Kant saying that human beings need (...) God in order to be good or is morality possible without faith? (shrink)

Le mouvement laïque du Moyen Age nous est apparu, en gros, comme un phénomène chrétien, parce qu'inhérent à la structure même du christianisme médiéval. Georges de Lagarde le définit comme la revendication par les princes chrétiens d'attributions exercées par les autorités ecclésiastiques, tant dans l'ordre spirituel que dans l'ordre temporel. Il reflète un état social caractéristique du Moyen Age chrétien. D'une part, en effet, les nations chrétiennes appartiennent à une même et unique chrétienté où la distinction entre le citoyen et (...) le chrétien n'a de conséquences pratiques que pour d'infimes minorités juives ou hérétiques vivant en marge de la communauté. D'autre part, l'autorité civile se présente plus volontiers comme une participation à la plénitude de puissance du pape, au temporel comme spirituel, que comme une institution de droit naturel. (shrink)

How can we rationally make peace with our past moral failings, while committing to avoid similar mistakes in the future? Is it because we cannot do anything about the past, while the future is still open? Or is it that regret for our past mistakes is psychologically harmful, and we need to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on? Or is it because moral mistakes enable our moral growth? I argue that these and other answers do not (...) properly resolve the problem of temporal asymmetry in our attitudes toward moral imperfection, and I defend an alternative response, centered on our personal attachments and our biographical identity. (shrink)

A revival of the dialogue between phenomenology and psychiatry currently takes place in the best international journals of psychiatry. In this article, we analyse this revival and the role given to phenomenology in this context. Although this dialogue seems at first sight interesting, we show that it is problematic. It leads indeed to use phenomenology in a special way, transforming it into a discipline dealing with empirical facts, so that what is called “phenomenology” has finally nothing to do with phenomenology. (...) This so-called phenomenology tallies however with what we have always called semiology. We try to explain the reasons why phenomenology is misused in that way. In our view, this transformation of phenomenology into an empirical and objectifying discipline is explained by the role attributed to phenomenology by contemporary authors, which is to solve the problems raised by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (shrink)

Many abiotic and other signals are transduced in eukaryotic cells by changes in the level of free calcium via pumps, channels and stores. We suggest here that ion condensation should also be taken into account. Calcium, like other counterions, is condensed onto linear polymers at a critical value of the charge density. Such condensation resembles a phase transition and has a topological basis in that it is promoted by linear as opposed to spherical assemblies of charges. Condensed counterions are delocalised (...) and can diffuse in the so‐called near region along the polymers. It is generally admitted that cytoskeletal filaments, proteins colocalised with these filaments, protein filaments distinct from cytoskeletal filaments, and filamentous assemblies of other macromolecules, constitute an intracellular macromolecular network. Here we draw attention to the fact that this network has physicochemical characteristics that enable counterion condensation. We then propose a model in which the feedback relationships between the condensation/decondensation of calcium and the activation of calcium‐dependent kinases and phosphatases control the charge density of the filaments of the intracellular macromolecular network. We show how condensation might help mediate free levels of calcium both locally and globally. In this model, calcium condensation/decondensation on the macromolecular network creates coherent patterns of protein phosphorylation that integrate signals. This leads us to hypothesize that the process of ion condensation operates in signal transduction, that it can have an integrative role and that the macromolecular network serves as an integrative receptor. BioEssays 26:549–557, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The authors examine the nursing practice of disposing unaltered controlled substances into public water systems as an issue for nurses concerned with the environmental harm it can cause. A summary of the history of controlled substance management reveals inconsistencies in the interpretation of current regulations that have led to disposal policies that vary by institution, according to a benchmarking survey of regional hospitals. Much attention has been given to the phenomenon of conscientious objection in the context of patient care that (...) conflicts with a nurse’s moral integrity. Nurses who are compelled to dispose narcotics down drains may also face this struggle. The authors submit that this disposal method is based on a type of double effect logic where preventing diversion is viewed as a good effect of flushing unused controlled substances that outweighs any harm it may cause, though there is little evidence to support this conclusion. Consequently, the topic deserves further study so that nurse managers and administrators can support and offer alternatives to nurses who object to flushing drugs down the drain. (shrink)

The agroecological transition of agriculture not only requires changes in practices but also in ways of thinking and in their underlying values. Agroecology proposes broad scientific principles that need to be adapted to the singularities of each farm. This contextualization leads to the identification of agroecological practices that work locally and could serve as evidence-based practices to be transferred to local practitioners. This strategy was tested in a 4-year experiment conducted with dairy-sheep farmers in the South of France. The aim (...) was to collectively engage in the agroecological transition. Our work focused on the creation of a diagnostic tool that was used to analyze local farms and identify virtuous practices to be promoted locally as evidence-based practices. But this strategy came up against the complexity and singularity of the situations to be transformed: not only was no evidence found but the construction of the diagnostic tool itself led to controversy concerning the models of agriculture to be promoted. The experiment then took a pragmatic turn: on-farm workshops were organized to enable farmers to benefit from the professional judgment of peer farmers who were willing to help their colleagues accomplish their agroecological transition. The diagnostic tool, which was designed to be prescriptive, was then used to judge the social acceptability of solutions that made sense in each farmer’s own situation. Our experiment led us to conclude that managing the agro-ecological transition of farmers and their farming system is better conceived as a value-based process than as an evidence-based one. (shrink)

L’érotisme très particulier de la pin-up, celui de la « fille d’à côté », fait de cette figure une icône américaine des années 40 dans l’imaginaire collectif. L’engouement populaire qu’elle suscite, dans ces années là, est réel, notamment aux États-Unis. Pourtant autour de cette simple image de légèreté et d’insouciance, de nombreux enjeux politiques se nouent. Employée de manière massive durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour « remonter le moral des troupes » sur le front et à l’arrière, la pin-up, (...) multipliant ses fonctions, devient bel et bien un instrument de stratégie militaire. (shrink)

This book brings together an introduction to the social sciences of religions - intended for the general public, which generally ignores them - in a critical essay in order to update them in the face of a current situation that strongly challenges them and will continue to do so. Indeed, the news of globalization imposes the confusing spectacle of a world of religions caught between the two extremes of forms so exclusivist that they justify violence, even terrorism, and such irenic (...) forms that they seek a spirituality fit to go beyond all borders, even religious ones. The place given to Islam in this way is explained, among other things, because during the conflicts of Salafist jihadist and certain branches of Sufism, it illustrates this contradiction in a particularly strong, but by no means exclusive way. (shrink)

L’article de Mauss, « Une catégorie de l’esprit humain : la notion de personne, celle de “moi” » est justement célèbre pour son rôle pionnier et l’énorme influence qu’il a eue sur la recherche ethnographique dans ce domaine. Mais compte tenu de sa date, 1938, il appelle aussi une lecture contextuelle qui permet de saisir comment son auteur articule pensée scientifique et engagement politico-moral, depuis une tradition durkheimienne de réflexion sur l’individu et l’individualisme, souvent plus riche qu’on ne le dit, (...) mais aussi marquée d’un évolutionnisme que Mauss n’hésite pas à critiquer pour mieux réactualiser et enrichir ce qui reste valable dans l’héritage.The well-known pioneering article by Marcel Mauss, « A category of the human spirit : The notion of the person and ego », has enormously influenced research in ethnology. Given its date, a contextual reading is necessary to understand how Mauss articulated scientific thought with political and moral commitments drawn from a Durkheimian conception of individuals and individualism. The Durkheimian tradition, often richer than is recognized, bears the marks of an evolutionary approach that Mauss did not refrain from criticizing in an effort to update and enrich what is valid in this heritage. (shrink)

Baudrillard interpreta el «nuevo terrorismo» como un intercambio simbólico de regalo y contra-regalo: la muerte del terrorista es un contra-regalo irrefutable que rompe el círculo coercitivo de las relaciones sociales «impuestas» por el sistema global. A su vez, la concepción de Derrida tiene dos dimensiones, explicativa y normativa: en primer lugar, Derrida considera el 11-S como un síntoma multifacético de una crisis autoinmune que tiene aspectos políticos, religiosos y tecno-capitalistas. En segundo lugar, Derrida arguye que existe un «momento» de terror, (...) violencia y sacrificio que es constitutivo en las decisiones y en la responsabilidad éticas. De forma crítica, argumentaré que la concepción de Baudrillard se basa en una noción extremada y partidista de un sistema que se interpreta como un inmenso mandato de un gobernante totalitario. Por su parte, Derrida convierte de forma innecesaria la observación de que las acciones humanas pueden tener consecuencias perversas en una ley de la autoinmumidad inspirada en la biología. Al considerar el terror como algo constitutivo incluso en las relaciones éticas más comunes, Derrida corre también el riesgo de convertir un fenómeno extremado en un concepto que lo abarca todo, y de perder contacto con la práctica ética corriente. Concluiré que las concepciones de Baudrillard y de Derrida sobre el terror y el terrorismo comparten un «gusto por lo extremado» que las hace en última instancia poco convincentes. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas is widely regarded as one of the outstanding intellectuals. This title focuses on the theory of law which can be distilled from his vast compendium of work. It places this theory in the context of Habermas' overall contribution to the theory of society, political theory and social philosophy.

In this article, I combine political philosophy and film to examine the problematic of the ‘mystical’ foundation of authority and democracy as represented in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Ford’s filmic vision is interpretable as a parable of the passage from the state of nature to the modern republic and the deconstruction of American democratic progressivism. To analyse it, I proceed in two steps: first, I defend a middle-way critical Enlightenment perspective between the democratic-progressivist and the deconstructive approach to (...) the question of foundations. Second, in dialogue with this critical Enlightenment perspective, I argue that Ford’s cinematic vision of the foundation remains ambivalent, given that its deconstruction of the mythology of American democratic progressivism is premised on the nostalgic mythologizing of the pre-democratic age. Moreover, I take issue with Robert Pippin’s interpretation of the movie as a cautionary tale against Enlightenment rationalism, and which poses at its center the key psychological role of myths in politics (2011). In contrast, I argue that Ford’s cinematic vision cautions against decoupling the socio-political and personal life from the vital connection to truth and acting upon truth. From this standpoint, a “politics of truth” is, against Pippin’s interpretation of Ford’s vision, compatible with taking into account the constitutive role of narratives in building political legitimacy and authority. (shrink)

Gothic literature—a genre brimming with madness, supernaturalism, and psychological terror—offers innumerable case studies potentially representing how psychiatric patients perceive their treatment from healthcare professionals. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” offers a poignant example of this through its fictional narrator, a diarist many interpret to be suffering from postpartum depression. The fiction here does not stray far from reality: Gilman orchestrated her diarist’s experience to mirror her own, as both real author and fictional character suffocated from (...) a melancholy only made worse by their physicians’ insistence on following the “Rest Cure.” While this instruction to cease all work and activity was a prevalent depression treatment at the time, Gilman, through “The Yellow Wallpaper,” reveals how the intervention ultimately harmed more than helped because it overlooked her—and, by extension, her fictional diarist’s— unique needs and identities. Today, while the ineffective Rest Cure no longer exists, applying observations from “The Yellow Wallpaper” to clinical research calls attention to underrepresentation in treatment development, a costly problem that could be mitigated by mindful incorporation of intersectionality theory into study designs. (shrink)

BackgroundOver the past decade, the exponential growth of the literature devoted to personalized medicine has been paralleled by an ever louder chorus of epistemic and ethical criticisms. Their differences notwithstanding, both advocates and critics share an outdated philosophical understanding of the concept of personhood and hence tend to assume too simplistic an understanding of personalization in health care.MethodsIn this article, we question this philosophical understanding of personhood and personalization, as these concepts shape the field of personalized medicine. We establish a (...) dialogue with phenomenology and hermeneutics (especially with E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty and P. Ricoeur) in order to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning of these concepts We particularly focus on the relationship between personal subjectivity and objective data.ResultsWe first explore the gap between the ideal of personalized healthcare and the reality of today’s personalized medicine. We show that the nearly exclusive focus of personalized medicine on the objective part of personhood leads to a flawed ethical debate that needs to be reframed. Second, we seek to contribute to this reframing by drawing on the phenomenological-hermeneutical movement in philosophy. Third, we show that these admittedly theoretical analyses open up new conceptual possibilities to tackle the very practical ethical challenges that personalized medicine faces.ConclusionFinally, we propose a reversal: if personalization is a continuous process by which the person reappropriates all manner of objective data, giving them meaning and thereby shaping his or her own way of being human, then personalized medicine, rather than being personalized itself, can facilitate personalization of those it serves through the data it provides. (shrink)

The past 10 years have seen considerable developments in the use of narrative in medicine, primarily through the emergence of the so-called narrative medicine. In this article, I question narrative medicine’s self-understanding and contend that one of the most prominent issues is its lack of a clear epistemological framework. Drawing from Gadamer’s work on hermeneutics, I first show that narrative medicine is deeply linked with the hermeneutical field of knowledge. Then I try to identify which claims can be legitimately expected (...) from narrative medicine, and which ones cannot be. I scrutinize in particular whether narrative medicine can legitimately grasp the patient’s lived experience of his or her illness. In the last section of this article, I begin to explore the potential usefulness of this epistemological clarification. This analysis allows for a further understanding of what is really at stake with narrative medicine, and thus to identify when it may be convenient, and when it may not. Furthermore, this clarification opens up promising new possibilities of dialogue with critics of the field. I conclude that narrative medicine finds its proper place as a possible tool available to mediate dialogue, which is at the heart of the clinical encounter in medical practice. (shrink)