Qu'y a-t-il de commun entre un manuscrit medieval, Les Menines de Velazquez, le Cameraman de Buster Keaton et On connait la chanson d'Alain Resnais? Reponse : la presence d'images inattendues, " enchassees ", telles une porte ouverte au fond de la piece dans le tableau du maitre espagnol, la queue d'un faisan pris au piege debordant largement du cadre d'une enluminure du XIVe siecle, la presence incongrue d'un navire de guerre dans les rues de New York chez Buster Keaton, des (...) meduses mobiles en surimpression a la fin du film de Resnais. Dispositifs et procedes aujourd'hui banalises au cinema et en video, les " images dans l'image " susceptibles, depuis des siecles, aussi bien d'intriguer que de passer presque inapercues aupres du spectateur, sont loin d'etre innocentes. Sous l'oeil attentif de Vincent Amiel, ces " images-secondes " inserees dans une image-englobante, injustement delaissees parfois par les estheticiens du cinema, acquierent un veritable statut theorique qui n'est pas celui d'une simple mise en abyme figee. Les images enchassees demandent a etre vues et pensees au moment ou elles deviennent images, dans l'instant de leur naissance, comme des figures cachees mais dynamiques qui, comme le souligne Amiel, " s'affirment comme monde et comme representation ". (shrink)

Pour les révolutionnaires américains, Montesquieu est d’abord une figure d’autorité dont on révère les « axiomes ». Mais durant le débat très virulent auquel donne lieu la Constitution fédérale, ce sont les « antifédéralistes » qui invoquent le plus souvent son autorité, pour refuser la possibilité d’une république étendue, revendiquer une stricte « séparation » des pouvoirs, déplorer l’effacement de la vertu, etc. Ils contraignent donc les fédéralistes à une réponse paradoxale. Il s’agit de lire Montesquieu plus finement et d’en (...) assimiler les leçons tout en récusant de plus en plus fermement son autorité, au nom de l’exorcisme de l’héritage historique (tout particulièrement anglais) et de la rumination de l’expérience propre. Montesquieu est d’autant plus présent qu’il est rejeté, ce qui engage un tout nouveau rapport à l’histoire et à la tradition. (shrink)

This volume considers forms of information manipulation and restriction in contemporary society. It explores whether and when manipulation of the conditions of inquiry without the consent of those manipulated is morally or epistemically justified. The contributors provide a wealth of examples of manipulation, and debate whether epistemic paternalism is distinct from other forms of paternalism debated in political theory. Special attention is given to medical practice, for science communication, and for research in science, technology, and society. Some of the contributors (...) argue that unconsenting interference with people’s ability of inquire is consistent with, and others that it is inconsistent with, efforts to democratize knowledge and decision-making. -/- These differences invite theoretical reflection regarding which goods are fundamental, whether there is a clear or only a moving boundary between informing and instructing, and whether manipulation of people’s epistemic conditions amounts to a type of intellectual injustice. The collection pays special attention to contemporary paternalistic practices in big data and scientific research, as the way in which the flow of information or knowledge might be curtailed by the manipulations of a small body of experts or algorithms. (shrink)

What is inequality? In the late 1990s there was an explosion of interest in the subject that yielded a substantial body of formal tools and results for income-distribution analysis. Nearly all of this is founded on a small set of core assumptions - such as the Principle of Transfers, scale independence, the population principle∑ - that are used to give meaning to specific concepts of inequality measurement, inequality ranking and, indeed, to inequality itself. But does the standard axiomatic structure coincide (...) with public perceptions of inequality? Or is the economist's concept of inequality a thing apart, perpetuated through serial brainwashing in the way the subject is studied and taught? In this 1999 book, Amiel and Cowell examine the evidence from a large international questionnaire experiment using student respondents. Along with basic 'cake-sharing' issues, related questions involving social-welfare rankings, the relationship between inequality and overall income growth and the meaning of poverty comparisons are considered. (shrink)

In Book 19, chapter 9 of the Nodes Atticae Gellius describes the birthday party of a young Greek of equestrian rank at which a group of professional singers entertained the guests by performing poems by Anacreon, Sappho, ‘et poetarum quoque recentium λεγεα quaedam erotica’ . After the singing, Gellius goes on, some of the Greek συμπόται present challenged Roman achievements in erotic poetry, excepting only Catullus and Calvus, and criticized in particular Laevius, Hortensius, Cinna, and Memmius. Rising to meet this (...) charge, Gellius’ teacher of rhetoric, Antonius Julianus, admits the superiority of the Greeks in what he calls ‘cantilenarum mollitiae’ in general , but to show that the Romans too have some good erotic poets, he recites four early Latin love epigrams, by Valerius Aedituus , Porcius Licinus , and Lutatius Catulus . The same three poets are listed in the same order in Apuleius’ Apology in a list of amatory poets which he provides in order to establish precedents and thus invalidate his prosecutors’ referral to his erotic poems in their accusation . Catulus is also enumerated in Pliny's list of Roman dignitaries who composed ‘uersiculos seueros parum’ like his own , and an amatory epigram of his is cited by Cicero in De Natura Deorum 1.79 . We possess no further evidence connecting the other two with the composition of either erotic or, more generally, ‘light’ verse, but a poem by Porcius Licinus on Roman literary history is attested by several sources including Varro, Suetonius, and Gellius himself. (shrink)

Comparison of literary passages is a critical procedure much favoured by Gellius, and is the main theme in several chapters of his Noctes Atticae: ch. 2.23 is dedicated to a comparison of Menander's and Caecilius′ versions of the Plocium; 2.27 to a confrontation of passages from Demosthenes and Sallust; in 9.9 Vergilian verses are compared with their originals in Theocritus and Homer; parts of speeches by the elder Cato, C. Gracchus and Cicero are contrasted in 10.3; two of Vergil's verses (...) are again compared with their supposed models in ch. 11.4; a segment of Ennius′ Hecuba is contrasted with its Euripidean original in 13.27; Cato's and Musonius′ formulations of a similar sententia are confronted in 16.1; in 17.10 Vergil's description of Etna is compared to Pindar's; the value of Latin erotic poetry is weighed against the Greek in ch. 19.9, in which an Anacreontean poem and four Latin epigrams are cited; and finally in 19.11 a ‘Platonic' distich is set side by side with its Latin adaptation, composed by an anonymous friend of Gellius, though in this case no comparison of the poems is attempted. (shrink)

In the preface to his Nodes Atticae, Gellius explains his choice of title: quoniam longinquis per hiemem noctibus in agro, sicuti dixi, terrae Atticae commentationes hasce ludere ac facere exorsi sumus, idcirco eas inscripsimus Noctium esse Atticarum He then proceeds to enumerate other titles used for miscellaneous works similar to his own, both Greek and Latin, which, he claims, are far more refined and witty than his title . Attractive as Gellius' explanation may be, it raises some serious difficulties2 and (...) should not be taken at face value, especially since it seems to establish a novel type of relation between title and work. None of the titles in Gellius' list seems to have been based on the circumstances of the inception of the work, nor indeed does any other extant title prior to the publication of the Nodes Atticae. There is no reason to deny Gellius the credit for inventing a novel principle of titling, yet titles based on the circumstances of composition rather than on the content of the work fail to perform a primary function of titles, namely an initial direction of the expectations of prospective readers. (shrink)

This volume considers forms of information manipulation and restriction in contemporary society. It explores whether and when manipulation of the conditions of inquiry without the consent of those manipulated is morally or epistemically justified. The contributors provide a wealth of examples of manipulation, and debate whether epistemic paternalism is distinct from other forms of paternalism debated in political theory. Special attention is given to medical practice, science communication, and research in science, technology, and society. Some of the contributors argue that (...) unconsenting interference with or "conceptual engineering" of people’s beliefs and ability of inquire is consistent with, and others that it is inconsistent with, efforts to democratize knowledge and decision-making. (shrink)

We examine individuals’ distributional orderings in a number of contexts. This is done by using a questionnaire-experiment that is presented to respondents in any one of seven “flavors” or interpretations of the basic distributional problem. The flavors include inequality, risk, social welfare and justice.

Aujourd'hui, des malades atteints de pathologies graves pour lesquelles les alternatives therapeutiques sont limitees ou inexistantes reclament, non plus tant une protection contre les essais cliniques, qu'un droit d'y participer. Cette nouvelle revendication est le point de depart de la presente enquete, a la fois historique, juridique et sociologique, qui montre comment s'est formee, dans les normes et dans les pratiques, du XVIIIe au XXe siecle, la distinction entre l'animal de laboratoire et le sujet humain. Entre les cobayes et les (...) hommes. La premiere partie de l'ouvrage decrit la formation, de part et d'autre du proces des medecins de Nuremberg, d'un consensus normatif international en reponse aux crises sanitaires, accidents et scandales qui emaillent l'histoire des essais medicaux sur l'etre humain. La seconde partie detaille la situation en France, l'emergence d'une legislation sur les recherches biomedicales, les paradoxes qui persistent dans la loi et les realites nouvelles, sociologiques et scientifiques, qu'elle doit affronter. L'ouvrage montre l'urgence d'un nouveau contrat social en matiere de recherche biomedicale, articulant respect de l'autonomie, equite d'acces et protection des personnes. Et il propose des solutions. (shrink)

Refus des philosophies de l'histoire, des " sciences sociales ", de la philosophie politique... c'est à partir d'un événement - " 1933 " - que Hannah Arendt construit, patiemment, rigoureusement, une réflexion sur la politique. Tous ses textes contribuent à cette entreprise cohérente depuis Les origines du totalitarisme. Et cette entreprise même, qui conteste la tradition, s'appuie sur un effort pour la relire à nouveaux frais, depuis les leçons de la démocratie grecque jusqu'à Kant et aux Révolutions américaine et française. (...) Ainsi, s'élabore une pensée de la cité, du mal, du conflit et de la responsabilité. (shrink)

Deux préjugés ont grevé la réception de l'œuvre d'Arendt, en particulier en France. L'un : que l'étude des " origines du totalitarisme " et de sa nature (comme modèle politique portant bien au-delà du prototype nazi) ne définirait pas seulement le point de départ de ses questions, mais en bornerait les enjeux. L'autre : qu'à travers les étapes et les détours d'une pensée de la politique et de l'histoire contemporaines, elle n'aurait tendu qu'à rejoindre la tradition philosophique (la méditation sur (...) " la vie de l'esprit "). Convoquant tour à tour l'analyse des révolutions, la critique du travail et du mouvement ouvrier, le questionnement sur la publicité, la société du spectacle et la capacité de juger, le présent ouvrage entend restituer ce qui fait l'originalité de la réflexion d'Arendt sur l'histoire et la politique. Il la replace dans la lignée de Machiavel, de Montesquieu et de Tocqueville, dans la confrontation déterminante avec Marx, dans l'opposition constante à la philosophie politique. Justifiant la posture non-philosophique qu'elle n'a cessé de revendiquer. Démontrant par là même quel bénéfice réel la philosophie peut tirer d'une provocation qui l'expose à la puissance sauvage de l'événement, et à l'étonnement qu'il doit susciter. (shrink)

Kants Musikästhetik wird weithin unterschätzt. Dabei bietet sie die entscheidenden Ansätze zur Befreiung der Musik aus den Fängen der Nachahmungsästhetik, wie sie vor allem E.T.A.Hoffman kongenial umgesetzt hat.

Les disciplines historiques, littéraires et philosophiques font un emploi abondant des catégories historiographiques. Parmi celles-ci, les termes en ismes sont très fréquents pour référer à une doctrine, un courant artistique, une idéologie ou des événements spécifiques. On fait cependant remarquer que ces désignations posent de nombreux problèmes d’interprétation. En particulier, que l’origine exacte d’une catégorie est souvent méconnue et que sa signification est plus équivoque qu’on ne le croit habituellement. La formation d’un terme en isme s’explique souvent dans un contexte (...) polémique et sert à condamner ou critiquer plutôt qu’à comprendre une pensée, un mouvement ou des faits historiques. Les catégories d’athéisme, de classicisme ou de féminisme en sont de bons exemples. Le présent volume vise à contribuer à l’étude critique des catégories historiographiques et des notions en isme en s’attardant à l’époque moderne (XVI e XVIII e siècles). Il s’agit d’un moment clef de l’histoire européenne pendant laquelle nombre de ces notions apparaissent ou pour laquelle l’historiographie en a fait un emploi abondant. Les chapitres en examinent la valeur théorique par rapport à une origine ou des usages, et déterminent de quelles manières elles contribuent à l’interprétation de l’histoire, de la littérature ou de la philosophie, de la Renaissance jusqu’à la Révolution française. (shrink)

Suppose you perform two actions. The first imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but the second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? This question is theoretically interesting, because the answer is apparently: sometimes Yes, sometimes No. It is also practically important, because it bears on the moral (...) status of practices such as offsetting personal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this article we propose a criterion for distinguishing between cases where pairing risk-increasing and risk-reducing actions makes each action permissible, and those where it does not: the Principle of Aggregate Risk-Imposition. We work towards this by considering a range of examples that illustrate various illegitimate ways of pairing risk-increasing actions with risk-reducing ones, and asking what goes wrong in each case. We then use this criterion to evaluate GHG offsetting. Is offsetting a legitimate way of removing the risk-imposition associated with GHG emissions, or not? Controversially, we argue that this turns out to depend on the form that the offsetting takes. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread belief, this book establishes that ontological and epistemological reductionism stand or fall together.

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing to explore the limits (...) of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing _per se_ does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts. (shrink)

Christian Georg Martin offers an argumentative reconstruction of the whole work, reading it as a critical ontology, namely as the attempt to abstract from all presuppositions and to immanently unfold conceptual determinations characterizing ...

Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary-pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays. Our aim in this article is to examine their critiques. We conclude (...) that, while they have made important points, the principle remains worthy of further development and exploration. Our purpose in engaging with these critiques is constructive — we aim to formulate beneficiary pays in ways that would give it a plausible role in allocating the cost of addressing human-induced climate change, while acknowledging that some understandings of the principle would make it unsuitable for this purpose. (shrink)

This book examines the epistemic function of perception and the relation between language and conceptual thought, and provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist defense of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness: namely, that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence.

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the quantity, (...) quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

The first impacts of climate change have become evident and are expected to increase dramatically over the next decades. Thus, it becomes more and more pressing to decide who has to compensate those people who suffer from negative impacts of climate change but have neither contributed to the problem nor possess the resources to cope with the consequences. Since the frequently invoked Polluter Pays Principle cannot account for all climate-related harm, I will take a closer look at the much more (...) controversial Beneficiary Pays Principle. It is argued that, appropriately qualified, the Beneficiary Pays Principle can help to identify additional duty-bearers. Based on these results, I briefly comment on three different policy options to generate funds for compensation. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary-pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays. Our aim in this article is to examine their critiques. We conclude (...) that, while they have made important points, the principle remains worthy of further development and exploration. Our purpose in engaging with these critiques is constructive — we aim to formulate beneficiary pays in ways that would give it a plausible role in allocating the cost of addressing human-induced climate change, while acknowledging that some understandings of the principle would make it unsuitable for this purpose. (shrink)

Rev. version of the author's Habilitationsschrift, Martin-Luther-Universitèat.

When are we responsible for addressing the acute deprivations of others beyond state borders? One widely held view is that we are responsible for addressing or preventing acute deprivations insofar as we have contributed to them or are contributing to bringing them about. But how should agents who endorse this “contribution principle” of allocating responsibility yet are uncertain whether or how much they have contributed to some problem conceive of their responsibilities with respect to it? Legal systems adopt formal norms (...) that set the burden of proof, the standard of proof, and the constraints on admissible evidence, which help courts to apply liability rules in cases where there are significant evidential uncertainties. Applying principles for determining ethical responsibilities, too, require such norms. Their content, however, should be much different from that found in criminal and even civil legal settings, where the moral costs of falsely holding those responsible for bringing about some harm are more worrisome. Instead of demanding that an agent be shown to have contributed to some deprivation “beyond a reasonable doubt,” we should express a willingness to err in favor of the acutely deprived subjects, demanding that even those agents who merely suspect that they may have substantially contributed to these deprivations undertake efforts to address them. (shrink)

Although actions of individuals do contribute to climate change, the question whether or not they, too, are morally obligated to reduce the GHG emissions in their responsibility has not yet been addressed sufficiently. First, I discuss prominent objections to such a duty. I argue that whether individuals ought to reduce their emissions depends on whether or not they exceed their fair share of emission rights. In a next step I discuss several proposals for establishing fair shares and also take practical (...) considerations into account. I conclude that individuals should not always be obliged to reduce their emissions to what is their fair share for they may depend on carbon-intensive structures. Instead, they have a Kantian imperfect duty to reduce their emissions ‘as far as can reasonably be demanded of them’. In addition, they should press governments to introduce proper regulation. At the end, I further specify both duties. (shrink)

In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce their emissions are often objected to by arguing that an individual’s emissions do not make a morally relevant difference. We challenge this argument from inconsequentialism in two ways. We first show why the argument also seems to undermine (...) the case for duties to promote institutions that the arguments’ proponents endorse. Second, we argue that individuals ought to cut emissions if they exceed their fair share of emissions entitlements and, by emitting, contribute to climate-related harm. In response to inconsequentialism, we specify the notion of ‘contribution’ via the so-called NESS theory, according to which an act is causally relevant for and contributes to an outcome if it is a Necessary Element of a Set of conditions that is Sufficient for the outcome. After refuting two objections to our approach, we conclude by discussing how to deal with possible conflicts between duties to promote institutions and to reduce one’s emissions. (shrink)

Many assert that affluent countries have contributed in the past to poverty in developing countries through wars of aggression and conquest, colonialism and its legacies, the imposition of puppet leaders, and support for brutal dictators and venal elites. Thomas Pogge has recently argued that there is an additional and, arguably, even more consequential way in which the affluent continue to contribute to poverty in the developing world. He argues that when people cooperate in instituting and upholding institutional arrangements that foreseeably (...) result in more severe or more widespread poverty or human rights deficits than would foreseeably result under feasible alternative arrangements, they are contributors to these harms. Because of this, he argues, they have stringent, contribution-based (or negative) duties to address this poverty. We will call this the ‘Feasible Alternatives Thesis' (FAT), and our aim in this article is to examine it critically. (shrink)

In this paper we explore what sacrifices you are morally required to make to save a child who is about to die in front of you. It has been argued that you would have very demanding duties to save such a child (or any adult who is in similar circumstance through no fault of their own, for that matter), and some examples have been presented to make this claim seem intuitively correct. Against this, we argue that you do not in (...) general have a moral requirement to bear more than moderate cost to save even a child who is just in front of you. Moreover, we explain why you have a much more demanding moral requirement in certain cases by appealing to the notions of undue risk and cost sharing. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the (...) vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)