Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

oise Baylis, 1234 Le Marchant Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3P7. Tel.: (902)-494–2873; Fax: (902)-494-2924; Email: francoise.baylis{at}dal.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract Recently, there has been a growing interest in public health and public health ethics. Much of this interest has been tied to efforts to draw up national and international plans to deal with a global pandemic. It is common for these plans to state the importance of drawing upon a well-developed (...) ethics framework and we argue that this framework should reflect the values and insights of feminist relational theory. More specifically, we argue that pandemic planning must be squarely situated in the larger realm of public health and that an ethics framework for public health will be one that recognizes the need to pay particular attention to the vulnerability of subpopulations lacking in social and economic power. We propose an ethics framework for public health that builds on the notions of relational personhood (including relational autonomy and social justice) and relational solidarity. In this way, we aim for a public health ethics that, as appropriate, promotes the public interest and the common good. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

: Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a (paradoxically) non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

In this article, I argue that there is no compelling therapeutic ‘need’ for human nuclear genome transfer to prevent mitochondrial diseases caused by mtDNA mutations. At most there is a strong interest in this technology on the part of some women and couples at risk of having children with mitochondrial disease, and perhaps also a ‘want’ on the part of some researchers who see the technology as a useful precedent – one that provides them with ‘a quiet way station’ in (...) which to refine the micromanipulations techniques essential for other human germline interventions and human cloning. In advance of this argument, I review basic information about mitochondrial disease and novel genetic strategies to prevent the transmission of mutated mitochondria. Next, I address common features of contemporary debates and discussions about so-called mitochondrial replacement. First, I contest the cliché that science-and-technology is fast outpacing ethics. Second, I dispute the accuracy of the term ‘mitochondrial replacement’. Third, I provide a sustained critique of the purported ‘need’ for genetically-related children. In closing, I call into question the mainly liberal defense of human nuclear genome transfer. I suggest an alternative frame of reference that pays particular attention to issues of social justice. I conclude that our limited resources should be carefully expended in pursuit of the common good, which does not include pandering to acquired desires. (shrink)

La question que Martin Heidegger a posée à l'ensemble de la tradition occidentale est celle du sens de son concept fondamental, celui de l'être. En révélant que c'est à partir du temps que nous comprenons l'être, il a montré que la philosophie trouve son origine dans l'existence d'un être qui ne peut plus être compris, comme le veut la philosophie moderne depuis Descartes, comme un sujet centré sur lui-même. La question du temps n'est donc pas pour lui une question philosophique (...) parmi d'autres, mais celle qui seule peut donner accès à ce qui constitue l'humanité comme telle. Ce que Martin Heidegger accomplit en posant la question du rapport de l'être et du temps, c'est cette " révolution du mode de penser " que requiert la prise en vue de l'essentielle finitude de l'homme et de l'être. La mise en évidence de l'historialité foncière de la pensée philosophique implique que celle-ci ne puisse plus se définir comme une pure théorie et qu'elle exige un engagement existentiel qui ne la met pas à l'abri de l'erreur. C'est uniquement à partir d'une telle conception de la pensée que l'on peut comprendre l'engagement politique de Martin Heidegger, ce qui ne signifie nullement l'excuser. SOMMAIRE : - PRESENTATION- LA TEMPORALITE DE L'ETRE EN TANT QUE QUESTION FONDAMENTALE- LA TEMPORALITE DU "DASEIN" ET LA FINITIUDE DU TEMPS- L'INACHEVEMENT DE "ETRE ET TEMPS" ET LA PENSEE DE L'"EREIGNIS"- REMARQUES SUR LA TRADUCTIONS DE CERTAINS TERMES. (shrink)

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's (...) book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures. (shrink)

This work was supported, in part, by a Stem Cell Network grant to Françoise Baylis and Jason Scott Robert and a CIHR grant to Françoise Baylis. We sincerely thank Alan Fine, Rich Campbell, Cynthia Cohen, and Tim Krahn for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks are also owed to Tim Krahn for his research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Department of Bioethics and the Novel Tech Ethics research team. (...) We thank the participants at each of these meetings for their helpful comments. (shrink)

Le jeu de l'Etre a une règle et un sens à tous commun, ceux de la créativité universelle depuis son origine. Faute de respecter leur radicale exigence, notre espèce mondialise les déséquilibres naturels et culturels causés par sa croissance au détriment des autres espèces comme de ses propres congénères, quitte à disparaître avant ravagé sa planète. Dans un univers en constante évolution, l'incessant rééquilibrage des déséquilibres est crucial. Tant qu'a tout moment, elle n'équilibrera pas l'un par l'autre, l'égoïste liberté et (...) l'amour altruiste, notre espèce, quels que soient ses progrès techniques, ne pourra affirmer par son verbe qu'elle préfère la vie à la mort et démontrer le contraire par ses actes, du fait que leur croissante incohérence est à la fois plus facile et plus rentable. (shrink)

In January 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority issued two 1-year licenses for cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research. This article situates the HFEA's decision in its wider scientific and political context in which, until quite recently, the debate about human embryonic stem cell research has focused narrowly on the moral status of the developing human embryo. Next, ethical arguments against crossing species boundaries with humans are canvassed. Finally, a new argument about the risks of harm to women egg providers resulting (...) from research involving the creation of humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos is elaborated. Taken together these ethical concerns about the moral status of the human embryo, about the ethics of crossing species boundaries with humans, and about the potential harms to women, provide good reason to eschew humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research in favor of less ethically controversial means to the laudable end of successful regenerative medicine. (shrink)

In February 1999, I received a call from a lawyer at Hill Abra Dewar stating that she had instructions to retain my services as an expert witness in the case of Sawatzky v. Riverview Health Centre. She was representing the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities which had intervenor status.In Canada the admission of expert testimony depends upon the application of four criteria outlined in R. v. Mohan by Justice Sopinka. These criteria are: relevance; necessity in assisting the trier of (...) fact, the absence of any exclusionary rule; and a properly qualified expert. The lawyer believed that I could provide the court with relevant, reliable ethics testimony about surrogate decision-making and about medical futility-information that likely would be outside the experience and knowledge of the trier of fact. (shrink)

A letter to the editor from Françoise Baylis and Chris Kaposy concerning the recent commentary by Toby Schonfeld and colleagues , which was written in response to Baylis and Kaposy’s article.

Verges' manifesto argues that feminists should no longer be accomplices of capitalism, racism, colonialism and imperialism: it is time to fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women's bodies. The author grapples with the central issues in feminist debates today: from Eurocentrism and whiteness, to power, inclusion and exclusion. Delving into feminist and anti-racist histories, Verges also assesses contemporary activism, movements and struggles, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike. Centering anticolonialism and anti-racism within an intersectional (...) Marxist feminism, the book puts forward an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us. --From publisher description. (shrink)

The primary objective of The Health Care Ethics Con sultant is to focus attention on an immediate practical problem: the role and responsibilities, the education and training, and the certification and accreditation of health care ethics consultants. The principal questions addressed in this book include: Who should be considered health care ethics consultants? Whom should they advise? What should be their responsi bilities and what kind of training should they have? Should there be some kind of accreditation or certification program (...) to ensure that those who call themselves ethics consultants are in fact qualified to advise, consult, research, and write in health care ethics? The distinguished authors ofthese articles are persons with diverse backgrounds, interests, presumptions, and val ues. Not surprisingly, therefore, diverse responses have emerged to the questions posed. Though the book's chapters are individually authored, they are informed by the group discussions that went on during active workshop sessions, and by knowledge of the contributions of others. All of the chapters meaningfully represent their consensus. This is not to say that there were no disagreements regarding specific details, but rather that there were no fundamental objections on the book's basic content among a panel of authors who share basic premises regarding the role, responsibilities, education, and certifica tion of health care ethics consultants. (shrink)

We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...) technologies. (shrink)

Beverly Beckham writes in the Boston Globe in praise of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice: “You have to get this book. … I couldn’t put it down. …” After I read Still Alice, a book of fiction about an accomplished Harvard professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, I too wanted to tell everyone to get this book, but not because “I couldn’t put it down.” The first time I read it, I put it down several times to cry. It was too painful (...) to read in one stretch. Years back, my mother, Gloria Baylis,1 had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, and recently there had been findings suggestive of an atypical presentation of Alzheimer’s disease. The story of Alice Howland, the Alice of Still Alice, was both too... (shrink)

Une semaine, a l'ecart, a Cerisy: il ne fallait pas moins d'un tel retrait, dans ce lieu prestigieux de la reflexion, pour pouvoir, en suivant l'itineraire de Francois Jullien, examiner comment rouvrir des possibles de la pensee. Pour deranger la pensee, en effet, les textes reunis ici croisent les points de vue les plus divers. Repartant de l'investissement initial du travail de Francois Jullien, ils s'interrogent sur l'ecart des langues et des pensees de la Chine et de l'Europe et ce (...) que celui-ci apporte pour envisager a nouveaux frais des questions telles que celles de la morale et de la strategie. Mais ils font egalement voyager d'un pole a l'autre, comme entre les pensees de l'universel et de l'intime; ou entre la pensee de l'immanence et son expression poetique; et d'abord entre les ressources premieres de la pensee: les langues et leur traduction. Du fait que Francois Jullien ne prend pas seulement la Chine comme un objet d'erudition, mais fait jouer a cette reference le role d'un operateur theorique, le champ balaye est logiquement des plus larges. Il peut aller de la pensee du commencement et du changement en physique a ce qui se redessine des enjeux politiques contemporains. Autant d'approches de prime abord dispersees mais qui font apparaitre que c'est, non du semblable, mais de l'ecart et de la tension qu'il organise, que peut se produire du commun. (shrink)

This surprising selection of photographs by Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Carleton Watkins, and others, focuses on the tree as subject matter.

Le texte décrit l’intérêt et les limites de la thérapie familiale psychanalytique dans la mise au travail de liens de couple souffrants et particulièrement infectés par des éléments de la transmission transgénérationnelle. Le cadre de la thérapie familiale permet la restauration d’une sécurité de base autorisant la régression, dont la présence réelle des enfants est un puissant activateur. L’auteur, thérapeute familiale psychanalytique, illustre différentes problématiques de couple, à travers des vignettes cliniques, en pointant les limites du travail possible dans ce (...) dispositif : vigilance dans les interventions qui doivent rester groupales-familiales et protection des enfants contre des débordements à caractère exhibitionniste, sexuel ou pervers. À ces conditions, le couple parental, suffisamment dégagé des scories d’un transgénérationnel encombrant, peut éventuellement s’engager en parallèle ou ultérieurement dans un authentique travail de couple. (shrink)

Françoise Proust explains that where Foucault established a cartography of power, she is interested in elaborating an “analytic of resistance.” This, she elaborates, would be “the transcendental of every resistance, whatever kind it be: resistance to power, to the state of things, to history; resistance to destruction, to death, to war; resistance to stupidity, to peace, to bare life.”.

Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

We study the model theory of fields k carrying a henselian valuation with real closed residue field. We give a criteria for elementary equivalence and elementary inclusion of such fields involving the value group of a not necessarily definable valuation. This allows us to translate theories of such fields to theories of ordered abelian groups, and we study the properties of this translation. We also characterize the first-order definable convex subgroups of a given ordered abelian group and prove that the (...) definable real valuation rings of k are in correspondence with the definable convex subgroups of the value group of a certain real valuation of k. (shrink)

In book: Infini des mathématiciens, infini des philosophes, Edition: 1992, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2008, 2011 ebook, Chapter: Introduction, Publisher: Belin, Paris, Editors: F. Monnoyeur, pp.9-16.

We need to distinguish two sorts of natural kinds, scientific and common NKs, because the notion of NK, which has to satisfy demands at three different levels—ontological, semantic and epistemological—, is subject to two incompatible sets of constraints. In order to prove this, I focus on the much-discussed case of jade. In the first part of the paper, I show that the current accounts are unsatisfactory because they are inconsistent. In the process, I explain why LaPorte’s analysis of “jade” as (...) a vernacular NK-term with an open-texture meaning does not offer a way out. Using a reductio ad absurdum argument, I conclude that according to the main tenets of NK-term theories, today’s “jade” has to be an NK-term, and jade thereby an NK. In the second part of the paper, I argue for this conclusion in a positive manner. First, I present a series of thought experiments demonstrating that today’s “jade” has the specific features of an NK-term. Then, I show that the kind that we presently call “jade” exhibits the typical ontological and epistemological features of an NK. More generally, I expound on why common NKs are more than mere classes, and why categories such as “jade” are useful in many inferences and explanations. (shrink)

Shaftesbury développe, au début du XVIII e siècle, une philosophie de « l'humeur » qui s'inscrit dans l'élaboration très britannique de la notion d'humour. Entre satire et humour, il propose une théorie de la « bonne humeur », opposée à l'humeur noire, atrabilaire ou mélancolique, inspirée à la fois du théâtre élisabéthain et de la mise en discussion des origines littéraires et philosophiques de la satire. At the beginning of the XVIIIth Century, Shaftesbury develops a philosophy of « humour » (...) which is in keeping with the very British inquiry on the notion of humour . Between satire and humour, he propounds a theory of « good humour » opposed to ill, atrabilious or melancholic humour, both coming from the Elizabethan Drama and the discussion of the philosophical and literary origins of satire. (shrink)

Separated and immediate extensions of valued fields. The notion of separated extension of valued fields was introduced by Baur. He showed that extensions of maximal fields are separated. We prove that, when (K, v) is Henselian with residual characteristic 0, then $(K, v) \subset (L, w)$ is separated iff L is linearly disjoint over K from each immediate extension of K.