L'Aufklärung allemande s'est réapproprié polémiquement le concept rousseauiste de perfectibilité, souvent avec d'importants déplacements. Théologie, philosophie, histoire naturelle, pédagogie, anthropologie concourent à un débat critique par lequel cette anthologie montre la pluralité des Lumières. --.

A masterful series of interviews with Levinas, conducted by French philosopher Philippe Nemo, which provides a succinct presentation of Levinas's philosophy.

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model.Empirical studies show (...) that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences.Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians’ behaviors. (shrink)

The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical (...) logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today. (shrink)

A simplistic image of twentieth century French philosophy sees Merleau-Ponty’s death in 1961 as the line that divides two irreconcilable moments in its history: existentialism and phenomenology, on the one hand, and structuralism on the other. The structuralist generation claimed to recapture the dimension of objectivity and impersonality, which the previous generation was supposedly incapable of. As a matter of fact, in 1962, Derrida’s edition of Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry was taken to be a turning point that announced the (...) structuralist revolution by introducing a reflection on the historicity and the materiality of impersonal idealities. And yet, the 1998 publication of Merleau-Ponty’s notes from his Collège de France lecture course on the same topic make manifest that he was already taking phenomenology in another direction. His 1959 reading of The Origin of Geometry shows how unexpectedly close the early Derrida is to the late Merleau-Ponty. By identifying the tension between archaeology and teleology as the basic problem of Husserlian phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida each disclose the fundamental importance of history and of writing. Comparing the two readings in their specific context not only brings about a more complex picture of the intellectual debates of the time, but also shows how, with Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of The Origin of Geometry, Derrida’s “différance” predates itself and receives another genealogy. (shrink)

La philosophie de la nature de l'Encyclopedie des sciences philosophiques fut, jusqu'a une date recente, presque ignoree par les etudes hegeliennes. Hegel s'y serait rendu coupable d'une pretention a concurrencer les sciences positives sur leur propre terrain et a rivaliser avec elles, en revelant a la fois son incomprehension de la scientificite la mieux etablie et la faible rationalite de son propre projet. Une lecture attentive permet de rectifier ces prejuges, en montrant non seulement que Hegel s'y trouve attentif et (...) respectueux du savoir positif de son temps, mais encore qu'il tente d'y definir les modalites d'une collaboration methodologiquement reglee entre philosophie et sciences. En quoi consiste le projet d'une science speculative? En quoi consiste chez Hegel la deduction speculative de la verite? En quoi consiste la comprehension hegelienne du statut et des formes du discours des sciences de la nature? Quelle attitude la speculation doit-elle adopter face aux controverses scientifiques? C'est a ces questions que s'efforce de repondre cet ouvrage. (shrink)

The grammatical paradigm used to be a model for entire areas of cognitive science. Its primary tenet was that theories are axiomatic-like systems. A secondary tenet was that their predictions should be tested quickly and in great detail with introspective judgments. While the grammatical paradigm now often seems passé, we argue that in fact it continues to be as efficient as ever. Formal models are essential because they are explicit, highly predictive, and typically modular. They make numerous critical predictions, which (...) must be tested efficiently; introspective judgments do just this. We further argue that the grammatical paradigm continues to be fruitful. Within linguistics, implicature theory is a recent example, with a combination of formal explicitness, modularity, and interaction with experimental work. Beyond traditional linguistics, the grammatical paradigm has proven fruitful in the study of gestures and emojis; literature (“Free Indirect Discourse”); picture semantics and comics; music and dance cognition; and even reasoning and concepts. We argue, however, that the grammatical paradigm must be adapted to contemporary cognitive science. Computational methods are essential to derive quantitative predictions from formal models (Bayesian pragmatics is an example). And data collection techniques offer an ever richer continuum of options, from introspective judgments to large-scale experiments, which makes it possible to optimize the cost/benefit ratio of the empirical methods that are chosen to test theories. (shrink)

It is all the rage today to speak about the “power" of images. Yet while it seems hardly disputable that images generate fascination or repulsion and that they provoke laughter, tears or delight, it is by no means clear what it entails to grant them an agency of their own. The article sets out to chart the current literature on the topic, and to indicate why it is not the same to ask what it means for images to do things (...) to us and what it means do things with images. While the former question often leads, under a disguise of object-oriented thinking, to reintroduce mentalism, the latter gets caught up in inextricable problems that Austin’s speech act theory already had to struggle with. In the last section, at alternative account is proposed: the performance of image is not an event of causation, it is a process of visualization that lets appear what can only appear in images. (shrink)

This article examines the controversy that has arisen in the last decade about Michel Foucault’s supposed “fascination” with neoliberalism, especially around the contributions of Daniel Zamora and Michael C. Behrent. Their theses are contrasted with Foucauldian writings and reconsidered from a different approach to the historical, political and intellectual context of the French 1970s, which, in our opinion, shows a lack of complexity in the studies of those authors. Thus, this paper tries to establish that the limitations of Michel Foucault’s (...) approach to neoliberalism do not respond to any sort of neoliberal “sympathies”, but to another kind of problems-mainly analytical-. (shrink)

This article aims to reconstruct the intellectual, political and biographical connection between Michel Foucault and the group known as the "new philosophers". By focusing not only on their philosophical project, but also on the way in which they try to situate themselves in the new French intellectual field of the second half of the 1970s - deeply influenced by the decline of the political cycle of 1968 - we attempt to describe the boundaries of two ways of conceiving theoretical work (...) and of understanding the present that are radically different but, nevertheless, in some respects coincident. This analysis of the relationship between Foucault and the new philosophers - mainly developed around the figures of Bernard Henri-Lévy and André Glucksmann - aims, thus, to decipher not only some aspects of their philosophical proposal, but also of a particularly turbulent time crucial to understand the following decades. (shrink)

The “private” dimension of social life is problematic, posing conceptual, political, and ecological challenges. Some of these problems arise from the very nature of private property as it is enshrined in social life, which demands special privileges be granted to “private” matters on the grounds that these are private, because the predominant representation of the involved rights is that they reflect claims of the holders, rather than legitimate claims of society as a whole in allocating responsibilities, benefits, and duties. The (...) claim to the rationality of allocations of property rights, this article argues, must be questioned in light of the kind of commonality that is revealed in a striking manner by environmental issues (although it is not restricted to environmental matters). This questioning makes sense in relation to an analysis of social interactions, beyond the problematic opposition between the private sphere and public life. (shrink)

This paper focuses on smallholder agriculture and livelihoods in north-central Tanzania. It traces changes in agricultural production and asset ownership in one community over a 28 year period. Over this period, national development policies and agriculture programs have moved from socialism to neo-liberal approaches. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we explore how farmers have responded to these shifts in the wider political-economic context and how these responses have shaped their livelihoods and ideas about farming and wealth. This (...) case study clearly debunks the idea that rural farmers are slow to respond to “modern” farming methods or that smallholder farming is stagnant and cannot reduce poverty. While changes overall are very positive in this rural community, challenges remain as land sizes are small and markets often unreliable. This research cautions against a shift in emphasis to large-scale farming as a strategy for national development. It suggests instead that increased investment in supporting smallholder farming is critical for addressing poverty and rural well-being. (shrink)

La théorie deweyenne de la nature humaine permet de clarifier le sens du naturalisme deweyen ainsi que ses implications politiques. La première partie de l’article analyse la manière dont Dewey défend une conception processuelle, interactionnelle et intégrative de la nature humaine. La deuxième partie analyse la fonction classificatoire du concept de nature humaine et la troisième la manière dont Dewey attribue une fonction explicative à ce concept en discutant les références politiques conservatrices ou progressistes, voire révolutionnaires, à la nature humaine.

I argue that a general feature of human psychology provides strong reason to modify or reject anti-reductionism about the epistemology of testimony. Because of the work of what I call “the background” (which is a collection of all of an individual's synthetizations, summarizations, memories of experiences, beliefs, etc.) we cannot help but form testimonial beliefs on the basis of a testifier's say so along with additional evidence, concepts, beliefs, and so on. Given that we arrive at testimonial beliefs through the (...) work of the background, to be justified in holding a testimonial belief, we must not only have a rational speaker's say so, but we must also form such beliefs in a right way. If this is right, then, contrary to typical anti-reductionism, justified testimonial beliefs require more than just a trustworthy testifier's say so – another requirement is that they are formed in a right way. (shrink)

The article provides an outline of the basic principles and conditions of criminalisation of interferences with others’ property rights in the context of a specific context: a liberal, social democratic state, the legitimacy of which depends primarily on its impartiality between moral doctrines and the fair distribution of liberties and resources. I begin by giving a brief outline of the conditions of political legitimacy, the place of property and the conditions of criminalisation in such a state. With that framework in (...) place, I argue that interferences with others’ property rights should be viewed as violations of political duties stemming from institutions of distribution. I then discuss three implications of this view: the bearing of social injustice on the criminal law treatment of acts of distributive injustice; the expansion of criminalisation over the violation of distribution-related duties, which are considered criminally irrelevant under moral conceptions of criminalisation; and, finally, the normative significance of the modus operandi. (shrink)

Résumé Le principe de précaution engage les rapports entre la connaissance, les risques et l’action ; appréhendé d’un point de vue simultanément éthique et politique, il pose également un défi aux institutions et au public pour ce qui est de sa mobilisation dans le débat et de sa mise en œuvre dans l’action, en tant que principe possédant une portée générale. L’article propose une description des problèmes spécifiques que comporte, à cet égard, le choix des interprétations. Cette description conduit à (...) une appréciation positive du nouveau rôle dévolu aux démarches participatives dans la discussion des enjeux éthiques et des risques acceptables. (shrink)

In 1978, treatment and vaccination programs were recommended to control bovine trypanosomiasis and brucellosis in Ivory Coast. A single trypanocidal treatment of young calves dramatically reduced their mortality rate. A preliminary demonstration project was carried out in a limited area by the government agency SODEPRA, followed by demonstrations on nearly all the farms. The costs were covered by SODEPRA as one of their development projects. Over a period of time the farmers took charge of the treatments, both financially and physically. (...) In 1992, the trypanocidal treatments were still widely used. The reasons for this success could be its dramatic efficacy, the simple technology employed, the low cost that was progressively charged to the farmers, and the fact that this was a long term extension project with continuous farmer training. The brucellosis control program started with an initial vaccination of 1 to 10 year old females followed by an annual vaccination of 1 to 2 year old heifers. One year later, a 37% reduction in the abortion rate was observed. The vaccination were paid for and carried out by SODEPRA. The control program then stopped but, because of growing problems with brucellosis, vaccinations started again in 1992. There is still a question of how vaccinations will be accepted when the farmers are required to share the cost for the control of a largely inconspicuous disease. (shrink)

Recent debates about aesthetics are characterized by a partly intentional, but also partly involuntary, vagueness. Whether it be aestheticisation or anesthetisation, articisation or desartification: what is upheld or deplored under one and the same label in fact designates rather different things. The paper makes a suggestion as to how the field could be reorganized. Taking heed of what political theory discusses as the “political difference” between “politics” and “the political”, the aim is to examine what would be gained by working (...) with an “aesthetic difference” that does not straightforwardly equate “the aesthetic” with “art”, and “the aesthetic” with the totality of sensuous-aisthetic processes. An aesthetic thinking would then amount to a thinking that does justice to these inner polarities and remains faithful to the ambiguity of its objects. (shrink)

Gareth Evans was first to express the idea that our perceptual experience is more detailed than what our concepts possess and this brings in the idea of nonconceptualism. The nonconceptualist claims that creatures without conceptual ability can be in a content-bearing state since they do not possess concept, memory or linguistic ability. Concepts are the constituents of those intentional contents that are the complete truth-evaluable contents of judgment and belief. This paper examines the possibility of nonconceptual content in human perception (...) and considers the complementarism of conceptualism and nonconceptualism as a more viable basis for explaining human perception. This synthesis, the paper suggests, overcomes the epistemological deficiencies inherent in any unilateral approach to understanding the nature, character, and process of cognition thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of the human cognitive process. (shrink)

Several factors have been put forward to explain the variability of moral judgments for superficially analogous moral dilemmas, in particular in the paradigm of trolley cases. In this paper we elaborate on Mikhail's view that (i) causal analysis is at the core of moral judgments and that (ii) causal judgments can be quantified by linguistic methods. According to this model, our moral judgments depend both on utilitarian considerations (whether positive effects outweigh negative effects) and on a representation of the causal (...) structure of the action (whether the negative effects are essentially side-effects rather than main goals). However, the exact contribution of each factor, as well as the precise way in which causal considerations interact with utilitarian considerations, has yet to be quantified and investigated. We present several variations on trolley dilemmas in which subjects had to assess the morality of the action and to evaluate their preference between two competing descriptions of the scene (.. (shrink)

“To see is to imagine. And to imagine, is to see.”Perception and Imaginary in Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty accords such a phenomenological and ontological priority to perception that this privilege might lead him to minimize the importance of theimaginary in our relationship with the world. In fact, in the work published during his life, the theme of the imaginary does not occupy a large place, and its conceptual elaboration remains little visible. A reading of his posthumous publications and of his unpublished papers leads (...) to a more subtle landscape, inwhich the philosopher destabilizes our common oppositions between real and imaginary, as well as those between the imaginary and truth. From themanuscripts from the end of the 1940s on, Merleau-Ponty expands his inquiry into perception in two complementary directions: the intuition of a form of coextensivity between perceptive life and imaginary life, but also between perception and expression. These intuitions, never disavowed, would continueto deepen up through the late unpublished ontological works. They find a guiding thread in the contestation of Sartre’s separation between the real andthe imaginary, and they open out onto the outline of a complex link between truth, imagination, and expression. Merleau-Ponty pretended to approve of thework of The Imaginary all that which is actually moving beyond it, in the direction most opposite to this essay’s own aims: “To see is to imagine. And toimagine is to see.” This split with Sartre finds one of its pivots in the phenomenological characterization of vision as a surpassing of the observable, a surpassing that would touch on an essential dimension of being and of truth.“Vedere è immaginare. E immaginare, è vedere”.Percezione e immaginario in Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty accorda alla percezione una tale priorità, fenomenologica e ontologica, che questo privilegio potrebbe condurre a minimizzare l’importanzadell’immaginario nel nostro rapporto al mondo. Di fatto, nell’opera pubblicata in vita, il tema dell’immaginario non occupa un grande spazio, e la suaelaborazione concettuale resta poco visibile. La lettura delle pubblicazioni postume e degli inediti conduce a un disegno più sottile, che vede il filosofo destabilizzare le nostre comuni opposizioni fra reale e immaginario così come quelle fra immaginario e verità. A partire dai manoscritti della fine degli anniQuaranta, Merleau-Ponty allarga la sua indagine sulla percezione in due direzioni complementari: verso l’intuizione di una forma di co-estensività fravita percettiva e vita immaginaria, ma altresì fra percezione e espressione. Mai smentite, queste intuizioni vanno approfondendosi fino ai tardi inediti“ontologici”. Esse trovano un filo conduttore nella messa in causa della separazione operata da Sartre fra reale e immaginario, e sfociano nell’abbozzodi un legame complesso fra verità, immaginario e espressione. Merleau-Ponty finge di “ratificare” il lavoro de L’Immaginario, in realtà sorpassandolo nelladirezione il più possibile opposta allo sforzo compiuto da questo stesso saggio: «edere è immaginare. E immaginare è vedere». Questo distanziarsi da Sartretrova uno dei suoi “cardini” nella caratterizzazione fenomenologica della visione come superamento dell’osservabile, un superamento che riguarderebbeuna dimensione essenziale dell’essere come della verità. (shrink)

The paper takes heed of the fact that, when evaluating normative issues through the semantics of visibility and invisibility, a transfer takes place from optical to political semantics which is not without consequences. The paper attempts a typology of the extremely diverse functions (in)visibility takes in current discourses, moving from the characterization of situations of discrimination to that of the resistance to it. In a first step, it analyses the affirmative uses of the notion of political visibilisation, whether of individuals, (...) groups or concerns, that fashion themselves as targeted answers to discrimination. In a second step, it looks at the politics of invisibilisation, stealth, and opaqueness, claiming emancipatory and critical potential in resisting the limelight of public space. Specifically, it assesses whether the traditional connect of politicization and public visibility still holds true in all cases. In a third part, the paper suggests a possible reorganization of the polarity of visibility and invisibility as one that runs along the continuum between determinacy and indeterminacy, indicating its effects for patterns of discrimination as well as for practices of resistance. (shrink)

Kwasi Wiredu has proposed a democracy by consensus as an alternative to the majoritarian model of democracy many African countries inherited from their colonial masters. As part of his proposal, Wiredu made a number of claims about traditional African consensus democracy that appear to be personal conjectures rather than information obtained from proper empirical investigation. These apparent conjectures have led to confusion and disagreements regarding what actually happened in these traditional societies. In this article, I outline the dangers of such (...) an approach to scholarship. I show that Bernard Matolino’s attempt to defend this methodological laxity is not successful. I argue that inaccurate claims can lead to inaccurate values, and to the designing of mistaken social and political systems. (shrink)

Esta contribución plantea una sola pregunta: ¿quién es el Anticristo de Nietzsche? A partir de la figura del Nuevo Testamento en el Evangelio de Juan y las indicaciones apocalípticas en la Segunda Epístola de Pablo a los Tesalonicenses, estudia al Anticristo en el libro de 1888 como una inversión del anatema de Lutero contra Roma y el papado en 1520, ahora vuelto contra el cristianismo mismo. Una lucha tan despiadada tiene el significado de Reino y redención como apuesta única.

Strongly grounded in scientific knowledge, the instrument known as occupational exposure limits or threshold limit values has changed government modalities of exposure to hazardous chemicals in workplaces, transforming both the substance of the problem at hand and the power dynamics between the actors involved. Some of the characteristics of this instrument favor the interests of industries at the expense of employees, their representatives, and the authorities in charge of regulating these risks. First, this instrument can be analyzed as a boundary (...) object that has very different uses in space and time. In particular, it is increasingly masking its industrial origins to appear as an instrument that is almost exclusively based on scientific rationale. In the case of asbestos and its substitutes, the use of an instrument relying on scientific expertise generates a specific temporality of implementation that allows manufacturers to take advantage of periods during which regulations are either nonexistent or very loose. Finally, the choice of a technoscientific definition of the issues contributes to shifting the negotiations to a field where companies are in a position of strength and their opponents are weakened. (shrink)

- L'articolo ricostruisce la tradizione della teoria critica nella quale il concetto di individualitÀ ricopre un ruolo centrale. Questo concetto č cruciale giÀ in Marx, sia per la sua antropologia, sia per la sua teoria sociale e il suo retroterra normativo. La posizione centrale dell'individualitÀ diviene piů esplicita in Adorno, che ne intreccia aspetti critici e utopici. Infine, č indubbia l'appartenenza di Honneth a questa tradizione, che egli si propone di attualizzare in prospettiva socio-psicologica, tenendo nel debito conto le trasformazioni (...) del capitalismo contemporaneo. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo visa a esclarecer o uso concreto que Nietzsche faz do vocabulário biológico em sua obra. Em vez de conceber a biologia como a soma indiferenciada das ciências da vida, o que é um anacronismo em vista da situação fragmentada dessas ciências na segunda metade do século XIX, levo em consideração o trabalho de Lynn Nyhart sobre a ascensão da perspectiva biológica na Alemanha, para evidenciar o sentido mais estreito no qual Nietzsche fala de “biologia”. A primeira parte (...) do artigo identifica os interlocutores que Nietzsche caracteriza explicitamente como “biólogos”. Depois, tento determinar o tipo de biologia evolucionária que está em jogo, para poder, num último momento, explorar as ramificações epistemológicas e estéticas do discurso biológico nietzschiano.: This paper aims at clarifying the concrete use Nietzsche makes of the biological vocabulary in his work. Instead of conceiving biology as the undifferentiated sum of the life sciences, which is an anachronism in view of the fragmented situation of these sciences in the second half of the 19th century, I take into consideration Lynn Nyhart’s work on the rise of the biological perspective in Germany, to highlight the narrower sense in which Nietzsche speaks of “biology”. The first part of the paper identifies the interlocutors Nietzsche explicitly characterizes as “biologists”. I then try to ascertain the type of evolutionary biology that is at stake, to be able, in a last moment, to explore the epistemological and aesthetic ramifications of the Nietzschean biological discourse. (shrink)

Distancing itself from most of the works devoted to training engineering, which identify its beginnings in the 1980s, this article proposes a different interpretation, which situates the appearance of practices, methods, tools, and actors dedicated to this field in the industries of the interwar period. Training engineering is then at the service of the rationalization of production in order to train and stabilize qualified personnel. Since the 2000s, it has had to adjust to the new situation represented by the individualization (...) of the wage relationship, which makes training and employees’ career paths a condition of their employability, thus raising the question of its transformation into an engineering designed to support individuals who are required to be autonomous and responsible. (shrink)

ISSN:1909-9711 Misión La Revista Acta Colombiana de Psicología publica hallazgos originales de las investigaciones en Psicología y de esta disciplina en diálogo con otras, con el propósito de divulgarlas a la comunidad universitaria y a todas las personas interesadas en conocer sus nuevos avances y aplicaciones a distintos campos y necesidades de la sociedad contemporánea.