The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has shed more light on the difficulty of making health care decisions integrating scientific knowledge and values associated to life and death issues, human suffering, quality of life, economic losses, liberty of movement, etc. But the difficulties related to health care decisions and the use of innovative drugs or technologies are not new, and many countries have created agencies that have the mandate to evaluate new technologies in health care. Health Technological Assessment (HTA) reports’ aim is (...) to guide the decision makers in these difficult matters. There are two ethical components in HTA. The first is the report’s presentation of an ethical evaluation of the technology. The second is the value-ladenness of the HTA decision-making process itself. When implicit value judgments are not elicited, the justification of the final decision cannot be transparent. The present paper aims to identify and elicit the implicit value-judgments related to each step of the HTA process. This research is grounded on an applied ethics decision-making paradigm based on the role of value judgments in the decision-making process. The first part discusses two different approaches to values and value judgments in HTA. In the second part, citations mentioning value judgments extracted from a systematic review on the integration of ethics into HTA were categorized to elicit the value judgments and their criteria for each different HTA decision-making steps. The results show that there are 18 decision-making steps in the HTA process where 23 implicit value-judgments can be recognized. The range of these value judgments encompasses the whole HTA process: from the initial request, the presenting of the principal issues, to the final report’s dissemination. Since stakeholders need to understand which value judgments the conclusion of a report relies on, eliciting the implicit value judgments in the HTA decision-making process should yield more transparency. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a means of advocating a re-engineering of conditions that surround human existence at both ends. The problem set before us in this chapter is to inquire into what determined its appearance, in particular in the humanism it seeks to overcome. We look at the spirit of overcoming itself, and the impatience with the Self, in order to try to understand why it seeks a saving power in technology. We then consider how the evolutionary account of the production of (...) organisms does not set them against a perfect standard, but rather injects in them a contingency that seems to be near to the heart of the problem. We then try to assess the objective basis for improvements and manipulation of nature, and although we do not find it forbidden on all occasions, it seems that the criteria for such alterations are impossible to detach from a form of eugenics. We finally open a window toward a theological account of the problem, and find that the desire of autonomy and independence is inevitably going to be challenged by the Christian dogma of creation. (shrink)

In this shorter piece, at the instigation of a former philosophy student, I accepted to contribute alongside two other writers to the "Expert Help" rubric, and attempted to explain the genesis in Nietzsche's mind of the conception of the eternal recurrence. I lay stress on both the internal contradiction that the solitary of Sils-Maria was trying to resolve and the secret desire that this cherished and embraced rather than demonstrated theory be true in the face of conflicting evidence, and I (...) furthermore challenge the received view that makes this vision incompatible with a Christian ontology. (shrink)

In this public debate with Philippe Deterre (research director in immunology at the CNRS) – held at l'Enclos Rey in Paris' 15th district during the biennial Conference of the Réseau Blaise Pascal in March 2017 –, I defended the usefulness of natural theology. I first clarify theology's nature and understanding, then I speak about a tradition that upheld the public and exterior knowledge of God, and make an effort to show the presence of a theme reminiscent of natural theology behind (...) attempts at the good life. I then ask whether natural theology would only exist for the Christian. In the reply to my opponent's own reaction, I insist on the incongruity of separating our knowledge of God from our knowledge of science's wonderful discoveries, I ask whether nature could be said to be crafty and "ingenious," and I conclude by building a case for the return of God in public conversation, as part of an effort that our world needs in terms of finding back its compass, and restoring an ideal of living rationally. (shrink)

Transhumanism first offers itself as a means to save oneself from an embodiment that is judged as being far from perfect. One needs to ask in its wake what comes of desires to escape limitations that come from the body, as they are means of an overcoming of the self. The AI project seems to be governed by norms for what the mind is, that could easily be judged inconsistent. Religious and theological traditions have looked at what the meaning of (...) an ineliminable image of God could mean. We try to map the meaning of extending this further into God’s resemblance. We then try to map this on a relationship of image and resemblance that would not have God come into competition with the doings of man. (shrink)

The history of the relationship between Christian theology and the natural sciences has been conditioned by the initial decision of the masters of the "first scientific revolution" to disregard any necessary explanatory premiss to account for the constituting organization and the framing of naturally occurring entities. Not paying any attention to hierarchical control, they ended-up disseminating a vision and understanding in which it was no longer possible for a theology of nature to send questions in the direction of the experimental (...) sciences, as was done in the past between theology and many philosophically-based thought-systems. Presenting the history of some hinge-periods in the development of the Western-world sciences, this book first sets out to consider the conceptual revolution which has, in the 20th Century, related consciousness, physical laws and levels of organization, in order to show that a new chance existed then for theology. This discourse was invited to revise its language to open it up to the quest for meaning which we find on the periphery of the project of the experimental sciences. The Century-old reflection on the foundations of probability had prepared the ground for the introduction of the concept of information, at first linked to an effort aimed at maximizing the efficiency of electromagnetic communications. Taking the full measure of the questions that information theory poses to the biological sciences, this work attempts to identify the areas of convergence setting the stage for general systems theory, while it also tries to identify the insufficiencies of this recent vision and to highlight the questions left unanswered. Re-reading some of the traditional proofs of God's existence from the order of the world, relying on some pioneering insights of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Norbert Wiener, the author brings those proofs and insights in contact with the fascinating initial project of cybernetics and the elements of a "mythical" nature which, from its inception, it could never entirely eliminate. This book ends with the confrontation between the conceptually most extended regulation factors in the history of Western thought. It articulates the poetic utopia concerned with an immediate grasp of the world in its "deictic" character with the concurrent one aimed at the domination over matter and energy expressed by technology's driving rational utopia. (shrink)

This book proposes to set out conquering the unknown lands of the spiritual life by revisiting some of the great insights of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). We are lead to consider these problems by taking distance from the pitfalls usually associated with the interpretation of the engaging work of the French paleontologist and priest. In the panoply of Christian spiritualities, that of Teilhard occupies a place of its own. In it, the greatest prayer becomes abandonment in the palms of (...) the "great hands that form and create." Animated by a passion without limits for the world and the extraordinary deployment of all the riches it contains, without falling into some simplistic optimism, Teilhard de Chardin offers us one of the most beautiful expressions of Christian hope ever. (shrink)

Taking as a starting point for his quest the teaching received from the Hebrew prophets and transmitted by the people of Israel, Claude Tresmontant identifies in it the specific moment where an entirely new and creative thought is introduced in the history of mankind. Trained in philosophy of science and conscious of the discipline involved in a rigorous experimental method as a key to valid and true knowledge, Claude Tresmontant boldly recreated bridges, long destroyed, between science and philosophy of nature, (...) as well as metaphysics and theology. Following an immense effort, he has found back, stringently and often on his own, a unifying concept capable of integrating the experience and the questions of today's man: "...the central question is that of integrating the teaching of creation and that of revelation in the unity of an intelligible vision of the world, desirable, and verifiable..." as he said himself in the preface to L'histoire de l'univers et le sens de la Création. This immense, powerful and thought-provoking work is here presented by a young philosopher, long time correspondent of Claude Tresmontant, who benefited from decisive moments of encounter with him. (shrink)

Teilhard de Chardin is a fascinating character! Born in 1881 and deceased in 1955, he remains strikingly contemporary. In response to a world shattered by the atrocities of World War I, he progressively elaborates the vision of a world entirely unified through a Center beyond itself. This perception is inserted at the heart of an intellectual endeavor wherein faith and scientific pursuit call onto each other, intertwined in a dialogue of a rare fruitfulness. Books such as The Phenomenon of Man, (...) The Divine Milieu, the Writings in time of War, or The Heart of the Matter witness to his underlying insight: "true" mysticism and the thrust of science which spiritualizes the earth coincide and are in fact one. Besides introducing to the life and thought of Teilhard de Chardin, this book is an anthology of his greatest texts where he discloses for us his mystical insights. (shrink)

Résumé Avec la cosmologie de la philosophie de l’organisme, Whitehead poursuit son enquête sur les principes de la connaissance naturelle, dans l’idée de faire se correspondre les données phénoménologiques directes et la physique de son temps. En prenant pour modèle le corps percevant, cette métaphysique fait des individus durables les centres d’où s’élabore la connaissance objective. Nous y gagnons sécurité et cohérence dans un monde en perpétuel devenir où les lois de la nature sont elles-mêmes contingentes. Mais le parcours génératif (...) du sens qu’étudie la partie III de Process and Reality interroge : en amont de toute ontologie, l’espace tensif dans lequel la théorie des préhensions inscrit la discussion ne relève-t-il pas plutôt de l’existence sémiotique? (shrink)

COVID-19 confronted many people with an abrupt shift from their usual working environment to telework. This study explores which job characteristics are perceived as most crucial in this exceptional situation and how they differ from people’s previous working conditions. Additionally, we focus on job crafting as a response to this situation and how it is related to employees’ well-being. We conducted an online survey with N = 599 participants, of which 321 reported that they were telework newcomers. First, we asked (...) participants to indicate the three most important advantages and disadvantages they see in telework. The subsequent questionnaire contained a comprehensive measure of working conditions before and during the pandemic, job crafting behaviors, and indicators of well-being. Based on the qualitative answers, we identified three major advantages and disadvantages. Quantitative results indicate perceived changes in all job characteristics for telework newcomers. Concerning working conditions and well-being, job crafting activities that aim to increase structural and social resources are important mediators. The findings underline the need to design appropriate telework conditions and encourage job crafting activities to foster occupational well-being. (shrink)

Facial expressions of pain may be best conceptualized as an example of an evolved propensity to communicate distress, rather than as a distinct category of facial expression. The operant model goes beyond the evolutionary account, as it can explain how the (facial) expression of pain can become maladaptive as a result of its capability to elicit attention and caring behavior in the observer.

In Belgium, a service voucher scheme – known as Titres Services – was launched in 2004 in order to create employment and regularize the labor conditions of domestic workers. The extent to which this scheme has represented an improvement in domestic workers’ labor conditions, however, is still a matter of debate. This article explores the workers’ experience of the changes introduced by this scheme. It focuses on Latin American migrants that are currently working under this scheme in Brussels, situating them (...) in relation to their previous experiences and the experience of other migrants who currently work in the informal market. The authors distinguish two tropes in their informants’ discourse, which describe their ambivalence regarding these changes. Using the Titres Services scheme’s rhetoric, the first one seeks to increase the social status of this occupation by presenting it as a ‘profession’. Contrarily, the second trope highlights the limits to professionalization. (shrink)

For decades, Christiane Northrup has been helping women navigate their lives with grace and joy. This elegant, compact volume offers her trademark wisdom in a fresh form, filled with pointed reminders "to help you develop a deeper respect for, and connection to, your own body and its exquisite guidance system [to] create a vibrantly healthy body, mind, and spirit." Each beautifully designed black-and-white page carries a quote that touches on a topic of deep significance: everything from heart-listening to epigenetics (...) to the importance of knowing that your decisions about medical treatment are not irreversible. Examples include:You are an ever-renewing, ever-changing, ever-growing being, born with an inner guidance that helps you create and maintain vibrant health and happiness. / When faced with a dilemma, take a moment to sit with the issue. Don't rush to decide what to do. Intend to let Divine inspiration flow to you, and it will be so! The next time you get an ache or a pain, soften the area around it with compassion. Ask your body what it needs. Listen deeply for the answer. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die enge Widerspruchslösung in Österreich erlaubt eine postmortale Organspende bei fehlendem Widerspruch zu Lebzeiten, da von einer mutmaßlichen Zustimmung ausgegangen wird. Liegt kein Eintrag im Widerspruchsregister vor, wird die Familie zum mutmaßlichen Willen der verstorbenen Person befragt. Um die praktische Umsetzung der Widerspruchslösung in Österreich zu beschreiben, sollen relevante Aspekte der Angehörigengespräche und die Rolle der Familie im Entscheidungsprozess zur postmortalen Organspende identifiziert werden. Es wurden insgesamt zehn leitfadengestützte Expert:inneninterviews mit Ärzt:innen und Pflegepersonen an einer österreichischen Krankenanstalt durchgeführt, die (...) mithilfe der qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse nach Mayring unter Anwendung von MAXQDA ausgewertet wurden. Herausforderungen beim Ermitteln des mutmaßlichen Patient:innenwillens im Angehörigengespräch können aufgrund von unterschiedlichen Kulturen/Religionen, Uneinigkeit und Entscheidungsunfähigkeit in der Familie aufgrund von Trauer und der Schwierigkeit der Angehörigen, das Hirntodkonzept zu begreifen, entstehen. Daher ist eine gute Vorbereitung, ausreichend Zeit, interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit, das Schaffen von Vertrauen und professionelle Gesprächsführung sowie das Eingehen auf Fragen und Bedürfnisse von Angehörigen durch Ärzt:innen und Pflegepersonen in einem geeigneten Setting notwendig. Die Kommunikation mit Angehörigen bezüglich einer postmortalen Organspende ist sowohl für das Gesundheitspersonal als auch die Familie belastend. Anhand der Ergebnisse wird die Anwendung des Kommunikationsleitfadens der Gesundheit Österreich mit Erweiterung um die Information zur Gesetzeslage sowie regelmäßige Kommunikationsschulungen des Gesundheitspersonals empfohlen. Zudem wird eine flächendeckende Information der Bevölkerung zur Förderung der intrafamiliären Diskussion gefordert. (shrink)

This passage has been used—and abused—for the study of Athenian female initiations, or, more cautiously, of the practice of the arkteia at Brauron. As it is, it poses more problems that it solves. Most of all, it complicates the question of the age of the arktoi. In fact the scholium seems prima facie to contradict the text, when on v. 645 it says that the ‘bears’ were not more than ten years and not less than five years old, while the (...) accepted text of Aristophanes decisively implies an age greater than ten years. The situation is even more obscured by another indication pointing towards an association of the arkteia with the age of ten, the equation of the verb dekateusai with arkteusai. (shrink)

In this article I explore the relation between God's absolute governance of the world and ecclesial dominion over other communities in a shared political forum that seeks the greatest good of all. On this question I compare the positions of Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, and Edward Schillebeeckx as representatives of three distinct political theologies. Whereas Gunton's reservation regarding the participation of the church's politics in divine governance shows excessive deference to human sinfulness, Jenson on the contrary tends to absorb God's (...) Rule into ecclesial politics. Drawing upon Schillebeeckx's Christology, I argue that God's absolute Rule is compatible with ecclesial sovereignty; however, this does not allow for unilateral ecclesial dominion over others, inasmuch as God's Rule is disclosed as forgiveness. (shrink)

Two essential periods may be identified in the early stages of the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets. The first was the period during which a very well known deficiency disease, rickets, acquired a scientific status: this required the development of unifying principles to confer upon the newly developing science of pathology a doctrine without which it would have been condemned to remain a collection of unrelated facts with very little practical application. One first such unifying principle was provided by the (...) notion of hygiene; while the blanket explanations provided by this notion alone were much too general to enable rickets to achieve scientific status, it did point out the need to look for specific external causes for the disease and to examine the life-style and dietary habits of the patients. The second phase of the conceptualization of the disease was the assumption of a specific cause — that is, using concepts developed in the area of infectious diseases. This was made possible by fundamental similarities between deficiency and infectious diseases, in spite of their apparent differences. Both types of illness have some of the characteristics of what Georges Canguilhem calls the ontological representation of disease as opposed to dysharmonic representations, which primarily concern the endocrine diseases. It is precisely this shift from one to the other manner of perceiving ill health that enabled the identification of the vitamin D-resistant rickets. Conceptualization of the notion of vitamin D resistancy required that the conditions causing the disease be looked for within the organism rather than outside it; this was thus the first time that endocrine concepts were applied to studying the physiology of vitamin D.The history of resistant rickets therefore represents an interesting model for understanding the growth of biomedical knowledge. It allows the development of a number of more general ideas on the question of the relationship between biology and medicine and on the thorny problem of specificity in medical thinking. As far as this topic is concerned it can be seen that there was an ongoing exchange between medical and biological thinking during the initial period up until 1937, and that one could deny any such specificity in medical thinking during this same period. Albright, for example, used human diseases as spontaneously produced models for experimental biology. It was also more feasible for an experimental biologist to administer toxic doses than for a clinician to do so.What, then, if any, is the place of the specificity of medical thinking in this history? The fact that medicine is characterized not only by it ccognitive content78 but also by its final aim, which is to restore health, makes it necessary to take factors other than objective knowledge into consideration. This is particularly evident in two aspects of medicine, therapeutics and nosology, and in approaching the notion of pathological individuality.Therapeutic activity has a largely empirical approach. Many drugs, such as cod-liver oil, were discovered empirically. Treatment often in the past, and still now, has proceeded by trial and error, upon no established theoretical basis. At this level the relationship between biology and medicine is roughly comparable to that between science and technology79 \3- that is, it is impossible to reduce either therapeutics or technical activities to the simple application of basic science. In this sense, the application of vitamin D to vitamin-resistant rickets is quite typical. Further-more, in the case studied here, the therapeutic activity heralds a definite breaking away from the medicatrix naturae of conventional medicine dating back to ancient times, and it embodies a new concept of the organism and of disease: no longer can the diseased organism be thought of as merely having a perturbed equilibrium requiring restoration by means of a natural style of medicine. On the contrary, vitamin D resistance is an obstacle that indicates profound biological dysfunction, to be rectified only by means of an extremely aggressive and therefore dangerous therapy. The therapy thus serves to reveal the severity of the dysfunction, thereby leading inevitably to conceptual innovation. This sheds light on the theoretical innovations of which the therapeutic activity is capable.Therapeutic activity is also influenced by notions of health and illness, normal and pathological states, none of which may be determined entirely objectively. For example, the term healing as used by Albright in the case of resistant rickets that he described may be discussed in this light.Nosology, or the classification of diseases, depends largely on the description of clinical syndromes, which are themselves mainly based on subjective elements (discomfort, disability, or the extent of a patient's suffering). The advent of pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century disrupted classification by introducing the concept of localized anatomical lesions81-and, hence, an element of material objectivity \3- into nosology. Radiological examination further complicated matters by enabling the equivalent of an autopsy on living matter. Lastly, biological examination complicated nosology by showing that biological anomalies may exist in human beings without necessarily leading to a pathological condition. Medical thinking can choose to combine all these elements to describe a disease, but can also separate them and retain only a few, or a single one, according to requirements - as did Albright.The notion of biological and pathological individuality is fundamental to the development of medical thinking. Whatever its theoretical origin, medical thinking has since ancient times incorporated the idea that each individual reacts differently to the same treatment and his own specific pathological tendencies. I mentioned earlier that in the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets the notion of rachitic tendency reflected this type of thinking. After 1937, this history progressed by successively separating new individual entities, affecting smaller and smaller groups of individuals in each case. In other words, the need to understand and to define individual illness more closely required the development of new concepts and the construction of new individual categories of disease linking these concepts to older clinical, radiological, and biochemical elements. (shrink)

Le mot grec oı̈kos suppose d’abord qu’il y ait du commun concrètement institué entre les hommes, un espace collectif à gérer, quelque chose qui puisse faire l’objet d’une entreprise commune. Et ce que les hommes ont en commun relève moins d’une supposée bienfaisance de la nature, que d’un effet de culture, s’il est vrai comme l’affirme Aristote que ce qui définit la nature en l’homme est précisément ce qui le constitue comme être social. Qu’il s’agisse d’éco-nomie ou d’éco-logie, la loi (...) d’un côté et la rationalité de l’autre ne se rapportent qu’à une possibilité d’agir, et d’être au monde comme sujet d’une décision, non comme objet d’un devenir. L’oı̈kos ne renvoie donc nullement à la présence édénique d’un corps dans la nature, ou à l’immédiateté d’une relation originelle. Bien au contraire, il se réfère à l’intervention permanente d’un sujet dans un monde non seulement construit, mais dont la construction même produit ses propres processus de subjectivation, et détermine son devenir plus radicalement que ne pourra jamais le faire son conditionnement biologique. Habiter le monde n’est donc pas habiter la nature, mais habiter les relations complexes que l’homme établit avec elle et contre elle, en la maîtrisant pour y aménager son espace. Et cette maîtrise ne conditionne pas seulement son devenir physique, mais les modalités mêmes de son devenir subjectif. (shrink)

Alors que les phénoménologues prétendent avoir dépassé le solipsisme, la plupart n’ont en fait que repousser les frontières de l’intersubjectivité des individus humains aux individus des autres espèces. Pourtant, Husserl reconnaît l’existence d’une intersubjectivité interspécifique, c’est-à-dire d’une intersubjectivité dépassant les limites de l’espèce. Il va même jusqu’à affirmer qu’on comprend parfois mieux un animal familier qu’un humain étranger. Toutefois, même s’il admet que plusieurs animaux sont capables d’une vie de conscience subjective et qu’ils vivent dans un monde de sens partagé, (...) il ne les considère pas comme des « personnes » selon sa conception exigeante de la « personne » associée à la rationalité, à la maturité, la normalité et l’historicité. Reste qu’être une « personne », en son sens le plus primordial – et plus décisif puisque c’est celui sur lequel s’édifient des conceptions politiques,juridiques et éthiques – signifie simplement être le sujet d’un monde environnant, d’un monde commun et d’une existence biographique. Distinguer deux sens du concept de personne permet de reconnaître que les animaux ont part à la transcendantalité, qu’ils ne sont pas simplement en vie mais ont une vie à la fois biographique et communautaire, même s’ils ne sont pas en mesure de réfléchir à cette vie de conscience qui est la leur pour considérer leur place dans l’enchaînement des générations et pour adopter ce que Husserl appelle une « vocation ». La phénoménologie husserlienne des anomalies permet ainsi de reconnaître que les animaux ressortissent bien de la figure d’autrui, qu’ils sont des alter ego sujets d’une vie de conscience, et qu’à ce titre ils participent pleinement, comme les enfants, les fous et les étrangers, à la co-constitution du monde de l’esprit. (shrink)

This passage has been used—and abused—for the study of Athenian female initiations, or, more cautiously, of the practice of the arkteia at Brauron. As it is, it poses more problems that it solves. Most of all, it complicates the question of the age of the arktoi. In fact the scholium seems prima facie to contradict the text, when on v. 645 it says that the ‘bears’ were not more than ten years and not less than five years old, while the (...) accepted text of Aristophanes decisively implies an age greater than ten years. The situation is even more obscured by another indication pointing towards an association of the arkteia with the age of ten, the equation of the verb dekateusai with arkteusai. (shrink)

Military physicians are often perceived to be in a position of ‘dual loyalty’ because they have responsibilities towards their patients but also towards their employer, the military institution. Further, they have to ascribe to and are bound by two distinct codes of ethics, each with its own set of values and duties, that could at first glance be considered to be very different or even incompatible. How, then, can military physicians reconcile these two codes of ethics and their distinct professional/institutional (...) values, and assume their responsibilities towards both their patients and the military institution? To clarify this situation, and to show how such a reconciliation might be possible, we compared the history and content of two national professional codes of ethics: the Defence Ethics of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. Interestingly, even if the medical code is more focused on duties and responsibility while the military code is more focused on core values and is supported by a comprehensive ethical training program, they also have many elements in common. Further, both are based on the same core values of loyalty and integrity, and they are broad in scope but are relatively flexible in application. While there are still important sources of tension between and limits within these two codes of ethics, there are fewer differences than may appear at first glance because the core values and principles of military and medical ethics are not so different. (shrink)

While the distinction between civilians and combatants is fundamental to international law, it is contested and complicated in practice. How do North Atlantic Treaty Organization officers see civilians in Afghanistan? Focusing on 2009 air strike in Kunduz, this article argues that the professional vision of NATO officers relies not only on recent military technologies that allow for aerial surveillance, thermal imaging, and precise targeting but also on the assumptions, vocabularies, modes of attention, and hierarchies of knowledges that the officers bring (...) to the interpretation of aerial surveillance images. Professional vision is socially situated and frequently contested with communities of practice. In the case of the Kunduz air strike, the aerial vantage point and the military visual technologies cannot fully determine what would be seen. Instead, the officers’ assumptions about Afghanistan, threats, and the gender of the civilian inform the vocabulary they use for coding people and places as civilian or noncivilian. Civilians are not simply “found,” they are produced through specific forms of professional vision. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 212 Seiten: 129-153.

The political significance of masses is more obvious than ever. The aim of this article is to develop a conceptualization capable of capturing the dangerous as well as promising aspects of masses. It argues that, intricately, the dangers and fruitful potentials of masses are born out of the same fundamental structural features. We may differentiate analytically between different kinds of masses, but all masses contain elements of ambiguity. The mass conceptualization developed builds on a critical, deconstructing interpretation of selected Bataille (...) texts centering on ontological features of individuality and collectivity. Especially, Bataille’s concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘sacrifice’ are accentuated and critically transformed. Contemporary examples of masses – right-wing anti-establishment movements, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter – are presented and reflected through the prism of sacrifice, with the aim of highlighting the multifaceted and complex nature of the dynamics of masses. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Wissenschaft ist geprägt durch Ausdifferenzierungs- und Pluralisierungsprozesse, wodurch konkrete Forschung in Ansatz und Reichweite immer fokussierter und partikularer wird. Eine solche Spezialisierung ist einerseits sehr wünschenswert, birgt aber gerade für den in Disziplinen agierenden Diskurs bzw. das System Wissenschaft gewisse Schwierigkeiten in sich. Mit dem Ruf nach mehr Interdisziplinarität versucht Wissenschaft und die auf sie angewiesene Gesellschaft zu reagieren. Interdisziplinarität braucht aber klare Disziplinarität. Vor diesem Hintergrund will dieser Beitrag ein Angebot machen, Disziplinen nicht über bestimmte Gegenstände, Methoden oder (...) Perspektiven zu definieren, sondern diskursstrukturell zu denken – als über ihre Fragestellung auf der Meta-Ebene identifizierbare Diskurse. (shrink)

Ovid’s poetic descriptions of Rome are not as vivid, as pictorial as one tends to suppose. In the poems from exile the lack of detail and the flat imagery seem to be programmatic. Thus, the reader’s attention is directed to the metapoetic message conveyed, by bringing into focus the role of enargeia/evidentia and the rivalry between literature and the visual arts. Evidence for this hypothesis is furnished by passages from the “Metamorphoses”, the “Tristia” and the “Epistulae ex Ponto” as well (...) as by statements concerning the ancient theory of evidentia. (shrink)

The story of the votum made by the inhabitants of Locri Epizephyrii in 477/6 is well known: they vowed to prostitute their virgin daughters at the festival of Aphrodite, if they were granted victory over the tyrant Leophron of Rhegion who was directing an attack against their city. The threat, which was very serious, was overcome thanks to Hieron of Syracuse, but the Locrians did not fulfil the votum; they were reminded of it more than a century later, but that (...) is another story. (shrink)

Purpose: We investigated the role of gender in abusive leadership practices, along with the effects of abusive leadership on employee health. We tested two hypotheses regarding the relationship between abusive leadership practices and subordinates’ health outcomes. Design: At two points of measurement, 663 participants in Germany rated their 158 direct team leaders on abusive supervision and stated their own levels of emotional exhaustion and somatic stress. To test our hypotheses, we used a mixed model approach. Findings: The results show no (...) gender differences between the ratings for female and male leaders regarding abusive supervision, but do confirm that the leaders’ gender did play a role in employees’ perceptions of abuse; perceived abusive supervision is more strongly related to increased emotional exhaustion and somatic stress when the leader is male. Limitations: The generalizability of the study is limited due to a majority of females in the sample. Practical implications: Organisations should review their policies and procedures to first identify abusive supervision, then to offer adequate support programs for both leaders and subordinates. Originality/value: The study integrates gender into research on leadership and health, shifting the focus from previous studies that investigated constructive to destructive leadership. A further strength of the study is the application of a multilevel design and two separate points of measurement. (shrink)

Diese kurzen Beispiele geben einen Eindruck davon, wie vielfältig die Verfahren sind, mit denen der epitomierende Autor seiner Aufgabe der Verkürzung einer literarischen Vorlage gerecht zu werden sucht. Die Raffungen und Verknappungen finden auf allen Ebenen des Ausdrucks statt, sprachlich, syntaktisch, inhaltlich durch Zusammenfügung von Szenen. Auf der anderen Seite wird große Sorgfalt darauf verwandt, den Leser in diesen Prozess mit einzubeziehen. Dies geschieht auf zunächst scheinbar divergierenden Wegen. Einerseits erhält der Leser implizite und explizite Hinweise auf das verkürzende Vorgehen. (...) Andererseits gibt es auch Passagen, insbesondere die Anfangsverse, in denen dem Leser suggeriert wird, mit einer wörtlichen Wiedergabe des griechischen Originals in lateinischer Sprache konfrontiert zu sein, deren Tempo dann aber bald rapide beschleunigt wird. Die Technik des ‚vertere‘ steht also dem Verkürzen als verwandt, aber doch verschieden, im selben Werk gegenüber. Es lässt sich also an diesem häufig als Schulübung abqualifizierten Stück aus neronischer Zeit Grundsätzliches beobachten, sowohl für die epische Technik und deren Beurteilung durch die antiken poetischen Epitomatoren selbst, als auch für den geistigen Vorgang des Zusammenfassens und Resümierens. Deshalb möchte ich Scaffais Behauptung, die „Ilias Latina“ sei nicht eigentlich eine systematische Epitome, sondern eine freie Überarbeitung des homerischen Gedichts, nicht zustimmen, sondern bin zuversichtlich, dass Wirkungsabsicht und Wirkung einer solchen ‚poetischen Kurzfassung‘ sich gerade am Beispiel dieses Textes einleuchtend demonstrieren lassen. (shrink)

La psychanalyse de famille et de couple prend en compte le corporel pulsionnel, les ressentis, le sensoriel, les comportements, dans le champ transféro-contretransférentiel et intertransférentiel. Dans la rencontre intersubjective, patients et thérapeutes sont dans la co-émotionalité. La médiation, fréquemment utilisée en séance familiale ou de couple, vise à mobiliser dans l’ici et maintenant des affects, des sensations, pour aller vers l’émotion partagée. Elle permet de passer de l’indicible, innommable, impensable, à la figuration, l’imaginaire, puis à l’ordre symbolique grâce au récit.