Most current management systems of healthcare institutions correspond to a model of market ethics with its demands of competitiveness. This approach has been called managerialism and is couched in terms of much‐needed efficiencies and effective management of budgetary constraints. The aim of this study was to analyse the decision‐making of nurses through the impact of health institution management models on clinical practice. Based on Foucault's ethical theory, a qualitative study was conducted through a discourse analysis of the nursing records in (...) a hospital unit. The results revealed that the health institution standardises health care practice, which has an impact on professional and patient autonomy as it pertains to decision‐making. The results of this research indicate that resistance strategies in the internal structures of health organisations can replace the normalisation and instrumentalisation of professional practice aimed at promoting patient self‐determination. (shrink)

This paper makes two claims. Firstly, it shows that thinking the truth of any particular concept (such as politics) is founded upon an instrumental logic that betrays the truth of a situation. Truth cannot be thought ‘of something’, for this would fall back into a theory of correspondence. Instead, truth is a function of thought. In order to make this move to a functional concept of truth, I outline Dewey’s criticism, and two important repercussions, of dogmatically instrumental philosophy. I then (...) show how Badiou’s philosophy is indeed guilty of instrumentalisation, but emphasise that his prioritisation of truth is nevertheless important to maintain. The second claim this paper makes is that the criticism of Deleuze’s conception of truth as circular is misplaced, as it is founded on the assumption that Deleuze conceptualises the truth of objects. Instead, I show that, for Deleuze, truth is not a property of an object but of its production. To reach this conclusion, I develop what I call Dewey’s account of pragmatic instrumentalisation (as opposed to the dogmatic instrumentalisation he criticises) into Deleuze’s conceptualisation of truth as the process of making sense of our precarious world. I conclude by making some provisional remarks that Deleuze’s pragmatic account of truth paves the way for an ethics that is not founded on truths it cannot explain (i.e. God or mathematics), but as an ongoing, subversive practice. (shrink)

There is a resurgence of matters emotional in education. The concept of 'emotional intelligence' is an example. The effective school seems set to become the affective school. Alongside the discourse of instrumental rationality, which is associated with the effective schools movement, is emerging one which speaks of the emotions and creativity. Some possible explanations of this emerging affective tendency are considered. The argument is that a greater emphasis on both the emotions and on creativity can be regarded as functional for (...) the economy. That is, it facilitates production, in both the high-tech and in the high-touch modes of economic activity. And it 'produces' consumers (in that pupils are would-be consumers) who are emotionally aware and creative in their quests to construct an identity. In sum, the expressive seems set to be managed for instrumental purposes. (shrink)

Premier quotidien populaire de masse en France, Le Petit Journal, fondé en 1863 par Millaud, va s'approprier l'affaire Troppmann, un fait-divers criminel survenu en 1869. Au fil de l'enquête, le chroniqueur vedette du Petit Journal, Thomas Grimm, n'a de cesse d'opérer une spectacularisation du journal et de son lectorat. L'analyse de cette exaltation et instrumentalisation du populaire permet d'éclairer les rouages des discours mass-médiatiques réflexifs et autosatisfaits tout en se livrant à une archéologie de notre complexe médiatique contemporain. Car (...) en dépit de sa vétusté stylistique, la chronique de Grimm ici analysée fait de l'argument de l'audience son leitmotiv et jette les bases d'une rhétorique de l'émotion, deux pratiques éditoriales promises à un bel avenir.First mass newspaper in France, Le Petit Journal, founded in 1863 by Millaud, will take advantage of the Troppmann Affair, an assassination which has occurred in 1869, to increase its readership. During the coverage of the investigation, the main columnist of Petit Journal, Thomas Grimm, daily operate a "spectacularisation" of the newspaper and of its readership. The analysis of this exaltation and instrumentalisation of popular makes it possible to throw light on the particularities of the reflexive and selfsatisfied mass-media speeches, and to sketch out an archaeology of our contemporary media field. Indeed, in spite of its outdatedness stylistic, the Grimms column, analyzed here, makes argument of the audience its leitmotiv, and develops a rhetoric of the emotions, two editorial characteristics promised with a brilliant future in the media. (shrink)

This article addresses Augustine’s distinction between usus and fruitio—and O’Donovan’s critique of it—in order to consider the dangers of disordered love in the forms of idolatry and instrumentalisation in neighbourly relations on earth. Examining the christological heart of the pilgrimage image as articulated in De doctrina christiana addresses O’Donovan’s critique that the pilgrimage image instrumentalises one’s relationships to others in the progress of one’s own journey to God. In fact, this image presents a christological dialectic that establishes the continuity (...) of earthly and eschatological neighbour-love and thus protects the neighbour from being made either idol or instrument by securing their right place in the order of love. (shrink)

Cet article pointe vers les conséquences induites par l’usage d’artifices rhétoriques et l’abus du pouvoir du langage dans l’Église. Ce sont ceux-là même, les responsables d’institutions religieuses, qui censés défendre un service honnête de la Parole, qui souvent laissent se creuser un fossé entre paroles et actions. Une intention louable de servir de manière altruiste autrui est dans ce cas détourné vers des fins égoïstes : comme gagner davantage de notoriété et de moyens financiers ; assouvir un amour immodéré du (...) pouvoir. C’est moins à démasquer des « usurpasteurs » que nous invite l’auteur, mais bien à la relecture patiente des textes. Il n'y a rien de plus beau qu'une bible dont « les pages ont été cornées, marquées et dont la reliure fatiguée raconte l'assidue fréquentation de son propriétaire ». Chaque fois qu'une « bible se détruit par son utilisation, une femme, un homme se construit! ». (shrink)

En el presente artículo se analiza la forma en que las elites del régimen cívico-militar, en Declaración de Principios del Gobierno de Chile, generaron un dispositivo de poder discursivo para la producción e instrumentalización de miedo y angustia, en función de sus elementos trascendentes. Por medio del análisis historiográfico y crítico del discurso, y de teorías sobre el miedo y la angustia y sociología de las religiones, se vinculan sus componentes textuales con el contexto de poder en que se produjeron, (...) incluyendo las ideologías, percepciones teológicas y míticas existentes, para establecer cómo se activa discursivamente la “concepción cristiana” y el “nacionalismo” para determinar sociopolíticamente los ritmos del miedo y angustia. This article analyses how the civic-military regime’s elite, in the Declaration of Declaration of the Government of Chile, generated a mechanism of discursive power to create and instill fear and anguish. Through an analysis of historical writings and a critical analysis of discourse and theories of fear and anguish and the sociology of religions, we link quotes with the context of power of that historical moment, including the ideologies and existing theological perceptions, to establish how discourse activates “christian ideology” and “nationalism” to bring about, sociopolitically, fear and anguish. (shrink)

The use of philosophy in educational programmes and practices under such names as philosophy for children, philosophy with children, or the community of philosophical enquiry, has become well established in many countries around the world. The main attraction of the educational use of philosophy seems to lie in the claim that it can help children and young people to develop skills for thinking critically, reflectively and reasonably. By locating the acquisition of such skills within communities of enquiry, the further claim (...) is that engagement with philosophy can foster the development of moral reflection and sensitivity and of social and democratic skills more generally. Claims like these provide a set of arguments for the inclusion of philosophy in the school curriculum that goes well beyond philosophy as just another curricular subject or body of knowledge. The aim of this article is to raise some questions about the conception of education that appears to inform the discussion about the educational use of philosophy. My ambition is to suggest an additional rather than an alternative view about the educational use of philosophy in the hope that this may act as a reminder of a different way in which one can engage with philosophy in educational settings which, in turn, might also act as a reminder of how philosophy might engage with us. The philosophical distinction in which my argument is phrased is that between humanism and post-humanism and the guiding educational concept is that of exposure. (shrink)

During the first decades of the 20th century, many anthropologists who had previously adhered to a linear view of human evolution, from an ape via Pithecanthropus erectus and Neanderthal to modern humans, began to change their outlook. A shift towards a branching model of human evolution began to take hold. Among the scientific factors motivating this trend was the insight that mammalian evolution in general was best represented by a branching tree, rather than by a straight line, and that several (...) new fossil hominids were discovered that differed significantly in their morphology but seemed to date from about the same period. The ideological and practical implications of imperialism and WWI have also been identified as formative of the new evolutionary scenarios in which racial conflict played a crucial role. The paper will illustrate this general shift in anthropological theory for one particular scientist, William Sollas. Sollas achieved a synthesis of human morphological and cultural evolution in what I will refer to as an imperialist model. In this theoretical framework, migration, conflict, and replacement became the main mechanisms for progress spurred by 'nature's tyrant,' natural selection. (shrink)

The text offers an examination of socio-political bases, modes of functioning, and of the consequences of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on Serbian disunity. The first section of the paper deals with what is being expressed and what is being done socially when narratives on Serbian disunity are invoked in everyday discourses. The next section investigates what political actor sty, by publicly replicating them, or by basing their speeches on key words of those narratives. The narratives on Serbian disunity (...) are then related to their historical and social contexts, and to various forms of identity politics with which they share common traits. The nineteenth century wars over political and cultural identity, intensified by the struggle between contesting claims to political authority, further channeled by the development of party politics in Serbia and radicalized by conflicts of interest and ideology together provided the initial reasons for the apparition of modern discourses on Serbian disunity and disaccord. Next, addressed are the uninnally solidifying or misinterpreting really existing social problems, or because of intentionally exploiting popular perceptions of such problems, the constructive potential related to existing social conflicts and splits can be completely wasted. What results is a deep feeling of frustration, and the diminishing of popular trust in the political elites and the political process in general. The contemporary hyperproduction of narratives on disunity and disaccord in Serbia seems to be directly related to the incapacity of the party system, and of the political system in general, to responsibly address, and eventually resolve historical and contemporary clashes of interest and identity-splits. If this vicious circle in which the consequences of social realities are turned into their causes is to be prevented, conflicts of interest must be discursively disassociated from ideological conflicts, as well as from identity-based conflicts, and all of them have to be disentangled from popular narratives on splits and disunity. Most important of all, the practice of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on disunity and disaccord has to be gradually abandoned. U radu se istrazuju istorijske i drustvene osnove narodskih prica o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi, kao i posledice njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Paznja se prvo usmerava na ono sto se narodskim pricama o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi najcesce postize u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji. Narodskim pricama se, pre svega, ukazuje na pretpostavljeno nepromenljivo svojstvo srpskog identiteta. Njima se odredjuje i glavni uzrok poraza ili neuspeha, u kom slucaju one neretko prerastaju u jeremijade nad istorijskom sudbinom Srba. Najzad, nesloga se moze predstaviti i kao posledica jednog, ili citavog niza faktora, od mentaliteta ili kulture Srba, pa do tudjinske zavere. U sledecem segmentu rada, istrazuju se vidovi politickog instrumentalizovanja narodskih prica o neslozi i ne jedinstvu Srba, odnosno njihova upotreba kao ogleda, modela i velova. U prvom slucaju, politicki akter narodsko vidjenje stanja stvari koristi kao izgovor za svoje neuspehe, ili kako bi naglasio razlike izmedju sebe, svojih takmaca i pobornika. Narativi o neslozi omogucuju akteru i da usmerava publiku na zeljeni nacin, bilo da zeli da unese nove podele u grupu, zaostrava sukob vec postojecih frakcija i povezuje se sa nekom od njih, ili a uspostavlja izgubljeno jedinstvo grupe. Obe prethodne mogucnosti akter moze iskoristiti da bi obezbedio retoricki veo kojim ce prikriti svoje prave namere. Analiza se potom pomera ka ispitivanju istorijskih i drustvenih osnova prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu. Ratovi oko politickog identiteta iz sredine i druge polovine devetnaestog veka, pojacani trvenjima izmedju rivalskih pretenzija na politicki autoritet, dodatno usanceni razvojem stranackog sistema, i radikalizovani novim oblicima sukoba izmedju interesa, vrednosti i identiteta na pocetku dvadesetog veka, zajedno su uslovili razvoj narativa o srpskom ne jedinstvu i rascepima. Na takvu osnovu su se potom nadovezivali rascepi izazvani dinastickim, konfesionalnim ili nacionalnim razlikama, svi zajedno zacementirani iskustvima ratova i revolucija. Analiza se najzad pomera ka nenameravanim posledicama narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu i razlicitih oblika njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Zbog pogresnog predstavljanja ili objasnjavanja stvarnih problem a, karakteristicnog za narodske price, a pogotovu zbog politicke zloupotrebe narodskih prica o tim problemima, konstruktivni potencijal vezan za drustvene konflikte i njihovu narativizaciju biva ozbiljno ugrozen. Sledi duboki osecaj frustracije i opadanje poverenja u politicke elite i politicki proces uopste. U zakljucku se skrece paznja na cinjenicu da je savremeno umnozavanje narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu, kao i prakse njihove politicke instrumentalizacije, povezano sa nesposobnoscu srpskog partijskog sistema i politickog sistema uopste da se odgovorno suoci sa, a pogotovu da razresi splet istorijskih i savremenih sukoba interesa i identitetskih rascepa koji su izvoriste narodskih prica. (shrink)

Résumé L’« évaluer » appartient en longue durée au lexique des notions philosophiques. Le problème de l’évaluation – omniprésent, instrumentalisé à toutes fins dans les sociétés de la surmodernité – semble absent des sociétés étudiées par les anthropologues. Absent ou substitué. Mais la discipline, l’anthropologie en ses réalisations, révèle une évaluation originelle d’où découle celle des phénomènes étudiés. La « Grande Transformation » qui se poursuit dans l’univers de la surmodernité nourrit l’incertitude. Elle engendre des nouveaux nouveaux mondes qui s’étendent (...) d’une façon fulgurante, s’imbriquent avec ce qui reste du réel d’avant et exposent les contemporains à un « dépaysement » croissant. La confrontation à l’autrement et à des risques inédits contribue à une gestion erratique des pouvoirs, à la multiplication d’évaluations qui substituent les idéologies de naguère. (shrink)

Actually possible and conceivable future uses of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and germ-line genetic intervention in assisted reproduction seem to offer increasing possibilities of choosing the kind of persons that will be brought to existence. Many are troubled by the idea of these technologies being used for enhancement purposes. How can we make sense of this worry? Why are our thoughts about therapeutic genetic interventions and non-genetic enhancement (for instance education) not accompanied by the same intuitive uneasiness? I argue that (...) the concepts of autonomy and freedom of choice, typically invoked to delimit the morally acceptable uses of reproductive technologies, cannot fully answer these questions. Instead, I suggest that an alternative answer might begin with reflections on the notion of interfering with nature. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and Hans Jonas’s moral philosophy, I outline an argument that attempts to capture what might be particularly troubling about the idea of “designing” future persons. At the core of the argument is the suggestion that enhancing selections and modifications on embryos might be bound up with an instrumentalising, non-responsive perspective on the future persons into which they are intended to grow. (shrink)

Instrumentaliser les textes de la Bible pour défendre ou pourfendre des idées ou des pratiques se fait la plupart du temps au prix d'une lecture unilatérale et simpliste. Une lecture plus attentive montre que le texte recèle une finesse et une richesse de sens qui interdisent les idées simples ; elle requiert du lecteur une réflexion à la fois forte et nuancée, respectueuse du texte et de la réalité qu'il évoque. À partir d'une lecture narrative de la mort de Samson (...) , les auteurs de l'article montrent comment ce récit, loin de justifier l’attentat suicide, nourrit plutôt une réflexion en profondeur sur la violence et sur ce qu'elle met en jeu de l'homme et de Dieu. (shrink)

Instrumentaliser les textes de la Bible pour défendre ou pourfendre des idées ou des pratiques se fait la plupart du temps au prix d'une lecture unilatérale et simpliste. Une lecture plus attentive montre que le texte recèle une finesse et une richesse de sens qui interdisent les idées simples ; elle requiert du lecteur une réflexion à la fois forte et nuancée, respectueuse du texte et de la réalité qu'il évoque. À partir d'une lecture narrative de la mort de Samson (...) , les auteurs de l'article montrent comment ce récit, loin de justifier l’attentat suicide, nourrit plutôt une réflexion en profondeur sur la violence et sur ce qu'elle met en jeu de l'homme et de Dieu. (shrink)

L’Afrique a participé jusqu’a présent, souvent à titre de laboratoire, au développement de la science occidentale. Les défis rencontrés par la théorie critique aujourd’hui sont l’instrumentalisation de la théorie par les gouvernements, la prolifération de pratiques critiques diverses, notamment écologique, et surtout l’émergence d’un capitalisme de l’image et de l’affect. C’est en relation avec la Chine que l’Afrique peut apporter de nouvelles réponses et relever ces défis.

What are the fittingness conditions of gratitude? One assumption seems unquestioned in the literature: that whenever it’s fitting for you to be grateful to me, that’s because I’ve benefitted or tried to benefit you. In this paper, I argue that that’s false. You may sometimes fittingly be grateful precisely because I refrained from benefitting you. Or you may be grateful because I omitted to instrumentalise you, or treated you justly – where this isn’t reducible to benefits. Morality isn’t all about (...) benefits, so gratitude isn’t either. Instead, gratitude is the proper response to being shown more positive moral regard than you’re owed – where such regard might consist in beneficence, or respect, or in whatever kind of positive moral attitude. (shrink)

In this paper I want to analyse the meaning of education for democracy and thinking as this is generally understood by Philosophy for Children. Although we may be inclined to applaud Philosophy for Children's emphasis on children, critical thinking, autonomy and dialogue, there is reason for scepticism too. Since we are expected as a matter of course to subscribe to the basic assumptions of Philosophy for Children, we seem to become tied, as it were, to the whole package, without reservation. (...) Following ideas of Hannah Arendt, I draw attention to the instrumentalised nature of Philosophy for Children and the loss of originality that this instrumentalisation means. This does not mean that I wish to abandon Philosophy for Children. The point is rather that I want to examine whether or not another kind of philosophy for children is possible. (shrink)

Animal agriculture predominantly involves farming social animals. At the same time, the nature of agriculture requires severely disrupting, eliminating, and controlling the relationships that matter to those animals, resulting in harm and unhappiness for them. These disruptions harm animals, both physically and psychologically. Stressed animals are also bad for farmers because stressed animals are less safe to handle, produce less, get sick more, and produce poorer quality meat. As a result, considerable efforts have gone into developing stress-reduction methods. Many of (...) these attempt to replicate behaviours or physiological responses that develop or constitute bonding between animals. In other words, humans try to mitigate or ameliorate the damage done by preventing and undermining intraspecies relationships. In doing so, the wrong of relational harms is compounded by an instrumentalisation of trust and care. The techniques used are emblematic of the welfarist approach to animal ethics. Using the example of gentle touching in the farming of cows for beef and dairy, the paper highlights two types of wrong. First, a wrong done in the form of relational harms, and second, a wrong done by instrumentalising relationships of care and trust. Relational harms are done to nonhuman animals, whilst instrumentalisation of care and trust indicates an insensitivity to morally salient features of the situation and a potential character flaw in the agents that carry it out. (shrink)

Cet article parle de la nécessité de repenser la notion de la différence sexuelle après le mal appropriation de celle-ci par « la manif pour tous ». Chaque tentative de former une ontologie fondée sur cette différence risque une favorisation de l’hétéronormativité et de l’essentialisme. En me servant de la philosophie d’Elizabeth Grosz sur Darwin, j’essaie de reformuler la différence sexuelle en des termes positifs et de voir celle-ci comme une notion qui facilite (plutôt que limite) la diversité. Le texte (...) est divisé en deux parties : 1. L’instrumentalisation de la différence sexuelle pour promouvoir l’hétéronormativité, et 2. Repenser une ontologie fondée sur la différence sexuelle. (shrink)

This essay is intended to explore relations between work and subjectivity (that is, what concerns the individual subject: his or her suffering, pleasure, personal development, and so on). To this end, we shall draw on a body of theory and clinical practice that has been developing in France for some twenty years under the name of the `psychodynamics of work' and ask the three following questions. What is work? This question might seem trivial, but the clinical analysis of the relationship (...) between work and subjectivity shows that work is inseparable from suffering. Working inevitably means experiencing failure—in terms of one's know-how, technique and control of the work process. Is suffering simply an unfortunate consequence of work? We shall attempt to show that in fact it is also at the origin of intelligence and ingeniousness. Which subjectivity? Assuming that we recognise what work owes to subjectivity, we must also reverse the question and ask ourselves what subjectivity (individual development) owes to work. We shall attempt to show that work constitutes a decisive challenge for subjectivity, one that can enhance that subjectivity (self-fulfilment) or, conversely, destroy it (mental pathology). Here, we shall evoke the questions raised by mental pathologies generated by the new forms of work organisation. Subjectivity between work and action? Work is not simply an individual experience. We always work for someone. Working always means encountering others in social relations, or in other words, relations of domination and servitude. Under what conditions do men and women who work agree to cooperate with each other? What conditions allow us to ward off the violence threatening to emerge from the social relations of work? Work offers what is perhaps the most ordinary opportunity to learn about living together (in Aristotle's sense) and democracy. But it can also give rise to the worst—the instrumentalisation of human beings and barbarity. (shrink)

While contemplative practices have emerged from wisdom-traditions, the rhetoric surrounding their justification in contemporary public educational settings has been substantially undergirded by the scientific evidence-based approach. This article finds the practice and construct of ‘attention’ to be the bridge between this peculiar encounter of science and wisdom traditions, and a vantage point from which we can re-examine the scope and practice of ‘education’. The article develops an educational typology based on ‘attention’ as a curricular deliberation point. Every pedagogical act rides (...) over a meta-pedagogical injunction of where to attend to find that which society deems worthwhile. The deep curricular teachings thus begin in the question where knowledge of most worth exists and precede content. It is at this hidden level in which our spatial-temporal disposition towards life-meaning can be shaped. Following this typology, the article will suggest that beyond what may be critiqued as instrumental mindfulness-based curricular ‘interventions’ that cater to an economic educational narrative, lurks the trajectory of a contemplative educational turn that may be outwitting over-instrumentalisation through wisdom-traditions. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

Les violations des droits de la personne sont de plus en plus fréquentes et de plus en plus graves dans les sociétés occidentales. C’est la conséquence de « l’entreprisation » de notre monde. Devenue l’organisation domi­nante dans nos sociétés, l’entreprise constitue dans son principe même une menace pour la dignité de la personne, dans la mesure où elle est fondée sur l’ins­trumentalisation des êtres humains. Quiconque veut protéger l’homme de l’ex­ploi­tation et de l’aliénation ne peut donc que souhaiter l’abolition de (...) l’entreprise. Mais, dans ce cas, il faut supprimer les conditions qui la rendent possible. Or, paradoxalement, certains droits fondamentaux font partie de ces conditions. D’où la nécessité de les repenser. (shrink)

Qu’il soit placé à l’origine des revendications desHéraclides ou instrumentalisé dans le cadre de l’opposition séculaire entre Messéniens et Spartiates, l’épisode du combat d’Héraclès contre Hippocoon et ses fils occupe une place de choix dans le passé de Sparte tel que le transmet Pausanias. Aussi vénérables qu’ils paraissent, les éléments de cette tradition et les monuments spartiates qui lui sont liés s’intègrent néanmoins très concrètement dans l’horizon politique et religieux du iie siècle ap. J.-C. Le discours développé dans la Périégèse (...) semble d’ailleurs bien répondre à des préoccupations similaires à celles qui animent les grandes familles spartiates de cette époque.Heracles, Tyndareus, and Hippocoon in Pausanias’ Description of Sparta: mapping out a mythical tradition. Placed at the origin of the claims of the Heraclids or instrumented within the framework of the secular conflict between Messenians and Spartans, the episode of the fight of Heracles against Hippocoon and its sons occupies an important place in the Spartan past, just as Pausanias states. As ancient as they appear, the elements of this tradition and the Spartan monuments related to it integrate nevertheless very concretely into the political and religious context of the IInd c. AD. The purpose of the Periegesis seems moreover to meet needs quite similar to those preoccupying the great Spartan families at this time. (shrink)

L'époque moderne, qui s'est ouverte avec les révolutions industrielles et l'universalisation du salariat, a engendré de nouvelles formes de violence. Parallèlement aux formes classiques de l'affrontement, de la guerre, du massacre, sont apparues des violences structurelles liées à la réorganisation économique et politique de la vie des êtres humains. Un mouvement d'exterminisme généralisé se fait jour, qui instrumentalise et institutionnalise les catastrophes naturelles, et qui organise l'utilisation et la consommation intégrale des forces de travail, la mise à mort de populations (...) entières. Les exterminations des Arméniens, des Juifs, des Tsiganes, et la perspective d'une autodestruction de l'humanité (avec Hiroshima, le développement d'armes chimiques et les atteintes irréversibles portées à la biosphère) apparaissent ainsi comme des symptômes majeurs du XXe siècle, qu'aucune réflexion philosophique ne devrait négliger. Désormais, la violence ne s'intéresse plus seulement aux comportements des êtres ou à leurs représentations, mais à leur statut même de vivants, à leur simple présence. Il ne s'agit ainsi plus simplement de cynisme et d'absence de préoccupation de l'avenir de la part des pouvoirs : ces formes nouvelles de violence entraînent une chosification systématique des êtres. La violence moderne est une violence naturalisée, rendue irreprésentable, réduite à une simple "gestion". L'être humain n'est plus seulement superflu ou surnuméraire. Confronté pour la première fois dans l'histoire à la transposition dans le champ politique de l'irreprésentable du réel, à des formes de violences qui tentent de s'imposer comme l'expression d'une nature inéluctable, il est devenu "jetable". (shrink)

La bioéthique est animée par la volonté d’une reprise en main de la question des fins sur celle des moyens du soin. Ainsi, la bioéthique peut-elle se comprendre comme une tentative de juguler le discours de la rationalité instrumentale qui déferle dans le champ de la maîtrise du vivant et du monde vécu, en y altérant ou détruisant les fragiles liens de soins mutuels. À cet endroit arrivent les interrogations. La gravité de situations inouïes impose-t-elle une éthique inédite? N’encourage-t-elle pas (...) une idéologie bioéthique qui instrumentalise l’éthique, dérive allant d’une attention à l’action vers une science de l’action dans une approche procédurale de la décision? Si la bioéthique s’est bien souvent concentrée sur l’éthique médicale et ne l’a pas toujours articulée avec une réflexion plus générale sur la vie vulnérable considérant la vie en nous, entre et en dehors de nous, peut-elle nous dispenser d’une réflexion plus en amont sur la nature de la raison pratique déployée elle-même sur l’assise d’une anthropologie du soin et de la vulnérabilité? (shrink)

This study examines the strategies developed by Italian Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their attempt to prefigure alternatives to dominant capitalist agri-food systems. To do so we answer the following research questions: What type of strategies do these CSA initiatives employ to that end? What insights can be gained as regards the potential and barriers to fuller and more accomplished post-capitalist labour management within CSA initiatives? Data were collected through a participatory action research (...) project involving 16 Italian CSAs, participant observation in meetings of CSA initiatives and the Italian CSA Network, and official documents collection. Across the three crucial moments considered in this study, we observe substantial difficulties in realising post-capitalist labour management as the initiatives are constrained by external requirements (e.g., legislation) and also internally by members’ weakness in implementing the CSA model due to their remaining integrated in the capitalist system. These findings point to the importance for CSA initiatives of deepening the collective process of deliberate deconstruction of valuation logics and predefined roles, as well as legal frameworks to find ways to enable the realisation of post-capitalist labour management. In this regard, we also suggest that the Italian CSA Network could play a more active role in addressing some of the internal and external factors hindering the consolidation of CSA initiatives and the manifestation of their transformative role. (shrink)

Burnout among health professionals is at epidemic proportions. In response, many health institutions have emphasised the importance of self-care, relying particularly on the idea that doctors who are burned out provide worse care for their patients. Although not made explicit, this suggests that doctors might have a responsibility to their patients (and perhaps others) to practice self-care. This chapter explores the potential grounds for such an obligation. We suggest that while there is potential for a limited obligation of self-care, institutional (...) emphasis on this risks instrumentalising doctors' well-being, minimising institutional responsibilities and workers' rights, and being excessively demanding for individuals. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of AI scandals led private and public organisations to implement new ethics guidelines, introduce AI ethics boards, and list ethical principles. Nevertheless, some of these efforts remained a façade not backed by any substantive action. Such behaviour made the public question the legitimacy of the AI industry and prompted scholars to accuse the sector of ethicswashing, machinewashing, and ethics trivialisation—criticisms that spilt over to institutional AI ethics boards. To counter this widespread issue, contributions in the literature have (...) proposed fixes that do not consider its systemic character and are based on a top-down, expert-centric governance. To fill this gap, we propose to make use of qualified informed lotteries: a two-step model that transposes the documented benefits of the ancient practice of sortition into the selection of AI ethics boards’ members and combines them with the advantages of a stakeholder-driven, participative, and deliberative bottom-up process typical of Citizens’ Assemblies. The model permits increasing the public’s legitimacy and participation in the decision-making process and its deliverables, curbing the industry’s over-influence and lobbying, and diminishing the instrumentalisation of ethics boards. We suggest that this sortition-based approach may provide a sound base for both public and private organisations in smart societies for constructing a decentralised, bottom-up, participative digital democracy. (shrink)

In Giorgio Agamben’s eyes, Immanuel Kant’s work is the modern philosophical harbinger of the catastrophic ‘state of exception’. By focusing on the latter’s ‘author/subject corrective’ (whereby the individual is both author and subject in relation to law), I make the connection between Agamben and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason more apparent. In doing so, I show how Kant’s corrective instrumentalises autonomy in such a way that it compromises the validity it seeks to rationalise; it does so by separating the individual (...) from actuality, by ostracising law from political challenge, and by conflating individual and state interests. Taken together, these three undercurrents are defining features of Agamben’s ‘Homo Sacer’ series. (shrink)

Amidst the climate of crisis surrounding the rise in opioid-related overdose in the USA, early in 2019, Google and Deloitte launched ‘Opioid360’. Here came a platform combining browser histories, credit, insurance, social media, and traditional survey data to sell the service of risk calculation in population health. Opioid360's approach to automating risk calculation not only promised to identify persons ‘at risk’ of opioid dependence, but also paved the way for broader applications anticipating common chronic diseases and coordinating logistical operations involved (...) in pandemic response. Beginning with this experimental platform, this paper develops an analysis of the Big Data mode of risk calculation - an epistemological and political shift that involves technology companies, investors, insurers, governments, and public health institutions. The analysis focuses on the re-emergence of ‘social determinants of health’ in the rhetoric accompanying novel analytic platforms that estimate, calculate, and compute individual health risks. While the treatment of SDOH has always been a site of political contestation within the discipline of public health, powerful interests are crystallising around the concept and instrumentalising it in platforms that sell algorithmic prediction. Silicon Valley's breed of asset-oriented technoscience appears not only to be amplifying the behaviouralist elements of public health. Among the stakes of the Big Data mode is the paradoxical retreat from changing social conditions that contribute to the prevalence of health and illness in populations; and instead, the promotion of an apparatus for pricing and exchanging individual risk or excluding from services those who bear risk most acutely. (shrink)

This article explores political discourse in the context of an online-mediated 2021 rapprochement between Swedish ‘mainstream’ and far-right parties paving the way for their eventual 2022 electoral success and later joint government coalition. The article analyses specifically how the above political accord on the Swedish right – often seen as breaking the long-term cordon sanitaire around Sweden’s far right – would be legitimised via discourses that carried significant elaboration and deepening of the ‘criminality’ and ‘immigration’ connection later recontextualised into the (...) broader Swedish public discourse and public imagination. Using social media analytics and qualitative, critical discourse analysis, we explore in depth a ‘discursive shift’ wherein the focus on criminality would become a key ‘proxy discourse’, i.e., a public-wide implicature, which, while referring to and debating a potentially genuine social issue would be strategically instrumentalised to effectively pre-legitimise ‘moral panics’ around immigration and cultural diversity. The analysis highlights that the emergence as well as the later recontextualisation of the ‘proxy discourse’ in question – implicitly suggesting that criminality, immigration, and cultural diversity are ‘somehow’ inherently connected – not only supported the political mainstreaming of the Swedish far-right’s anti-immigration stance but also normalised the wider tenets of illiberal, nativist ‘politics of exclusion’. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of specialised agencies designed to reduce the prevalence of refugees worldwide, the number of individuals fleeing persecution is increasing year on year as endemic violence in countries such as Iraq, Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic continues. As a result, media broadcasts and political dialogues are saturated with discussions about these “persons of concern”. Fundamental questions nonetheless remain unanswered about what meaning these actors attribute to the label ‘refugee’ and what intent, other than paucity of knowledge, might (...) be driving the term’s use or manipulation. Though this is evidently important in the public arena, where incorrect conflations fuel mistrust and misunderstandings, the ramifications of these divergent understandings at the level of multi-lateral politics have yet to be critically explored. This article applies Barthes’ theory of the multiple orders of the sign to address this. Using the case study of the negotiations preceding the invocation of the Cessation Clause for Rwandan refugees, it illustrates how the word refugee is susceptible to numerous, simultaneous understandings, and discusses the implications of these manifold interpretations for how durable solutions are envisaged and negotiated in the refugee regime. In the case of Rwandan refugees in Uganda, this has meant that over a decade of stalemated discussions between the Governments of Uganda and Rwanda and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees over their future have been broken by a series of bilateral concessions that, whilst diminishing the political significance attached to this protracted caseload, have failed to address the continuing precarity of their situation. By conceptualising the word refugee as a sign according to the Saussurean model of semiotics, this paper therefore argues that despite the term’s established legal-normative definition, its inherent malleability makes it susceptible to processes of political instrumentalisation. This elevates the refugee as a rhetorical figure above the refugee as a physical-legal body entitled to certain forms of assistance. (shrink)

Les entreprises sociales connaissent un fort développement et font l'objet de nombreuses recherches qui analysent leurs spécificités. Les caractéristiques qui sont le plus souvent mises en avant ont trait à la nature de leurs activités, et à leurs poursuites d'objectifs à la fois économiques et sociaux. La mobilisation de multiples parties prenantes, à l'origine des espaces publics développés par ces initiatives, constitue aussi une dimension centrale. La question de leurs rapports aux politiques publiques, pour que la légitimation de ces initiatives (...) n'entraîne pas leur instrumentalisation et la perte de leur dimension d'espaces publics, est alors posée. La reconnaissance d'un droit social pour ces initiatives représenterait un moyen de respecter l'originalité de ces expériences, sans les soumettre au droit étatique.Social enterprises are developing greatly and are the subject of a lot of research that analyses their specific features. The characteristics often underlined are relative to the nature of their activities and their aims which are both economic and social. Another central dimension is the mobilization of multi-stakeholders determining their dimension of public spheres. Their link with public policies is an issue - to what extent does the legitimization of these initiatives lead to their instrumentalisation and the loss of their public sphere dimension? To answer this question, it can be argued that the recognition of a social law for these initiatives would represent a way to legitimate the innovative aspects of these experiments without submitting them to a tutelary relation with the State. (shrink)

Both Nietzsche and Lawrence have been identified as important fore- runners and progenitors in the development of an ecocentric, “posthumanist” worldview. Nietzsche suggested, and Lawrence developed, the notion of an anti-mechanistic “gay science”. Both writers rejected the Christian denigration of nature, the Romantic notion of a “return to nature” and the instrumentalisation of nature by industrial rationality in favour of a conception of the good life founded in the body and an almost utopian “ascent to nature”. However, since the (...) ascent to nature required an overcoming of existing humanity, both Nietzsche and Lawrence faced the task of articulating a conception of the Over-man – or post-human, as contemporary theory would put it – that is not merely a figure of authoritarian brutality. Deep ecologist Del Ivan Janik has claimed that Lawrence “saw man as part of an organic universe, living best by acknowledging its wonder and rejecting the temptation to force his will upon it. In this sense he stands at the beginning of the modern posthumanist tradition and of the literature of environmental consciousness.” 1 Accurate as this assessment is, however, the struggle with questions of power, gender, sexuality and religion that early posthu- manism involved has tended to be airbrushed out of the dark green reading of Lawrence. And Lawrence's personal spiritual and intellectual struggle was also a creative conflict with Nietzsche. A useful point of departure is Anna Bramwell's comment in Ecology in the Twentieth Century on the somewhat surprising ubiquity of Nietzsche in ecophilosophical works, as it might be applied with equal force to Lawrence: Nietzsche ... is frequently described as an important figure. Why should this be? In reality, he does not conform at all to the model ecologist ... Yet Nietzsche still hovers, worrying but relevant. I will get on to the worries in due course; for the moment, a few words on the relevance of Nietzsche might be in order. For one thing, Nietzsche was not much interested in nature per se; unlike Lawrence, he never concerned himself with either natural beauty or the threat posed to it by late 19th century industrialisation. This may be due in part to his actual environment, which was largely congenial, as Robert Solomon reminds us: From snatches of prose, one might well conclude that Nietzsche wants nothing more fervently than the life of Conan the Barbarian, a role for which he, in particular, was notoriously ill-suited. "Live dan- gerously" he tells us, from the posher resorts in Southern Europe. It seems reasonable to suggest that if Nietzsche was more fascinated by the Provencal art of the troubadours than by the resistable rise of the capi- talist machine economy, his convalescent exile by the Med, away from the industrial heartlands of Northern Europe, may be partly responsible. His chief concern is the overcoming of the Christian and moral misreading of nature – especially human nature – and the corresponding articulation of what HM Robinson calls a “somatic conception of the good life” to replace it. However, Nietzsche only calls for such a conception, rather than fully elaborating it – let alone living it – so he has “little to say about how human intelligence could be so immanent in our physical being as to make our articulation of our physical will to power something expressive of a properly human nature and not of brute strength.” 4 In short, the problem is how to distinguish the ideal, noble Overman from the mere thug. We should not expect to find the close and often reverent attention to the non-human world as such that is an attractive and central feature of Lawrence's writing; Nietzsche's interest is lively but essentially abstract. (shrink)

Since the cloned sheep Dolly was born, reproductive cloning of humans (i.e. the cloning of complete human individuals) has seemed to be – at least in principle – achievable. The technical possibility of reproductive cloning leaves the question unanswered of whether the actual production of a clone would be morally acceptable. Considering several arguments against reproductive cloning – which claim that the moral status of a cloned individual and its clone respectively renders it morally objectionable to carry out cloning – (...) we defend the thesis that these arguments are not apodictic (i.e. relative to all ends and means of cloning humans) but are only hypothetical (i.e. relative to some ends and means of cloning humans). Although at present we think it is difficult to find a plausible aim of cloning that is not an instrumentalisation of the cloned (and, therefore, morally objectionable), it could, nevertheless, be that in the future there might be ends and means that justify reproductive cloning. We conclude by criticising the apodictic ban on reproductive cloning declared by most international resolutions and much national legislation. (shrink)

Cette étude se place à la croisée de trois auteurs qui laissent entrevoir, à l'horizon du nucléaire, la persistance d'un même questionnement autour du concept inattendu de "déception". Le nucléaire, qui semble accompagné par une multiplication sans retour des discours sur la fin, emporte jusqu'à l'idée même de fondement, exposant la raison à l'effondrement de son "principe" et entraînant le "désappointement" du programme rationnel de la modernité. La raison semble alors incapable de se soustraire au règne du simulacre qui "instrumentalise (...) les idées mais ne les pense plus" (Levinas). Face à la recrudescence des discours catastrophistes, il s'agira alors de "démystifier l'apocalypse" et "l'alternative du tout ou rien qui transforme en un pouvoir quasi mystique l'arme de l'atome" (Blanchot). Derrida, Blanchot et Levinas, proposeront trois analyses qui semblent nous "dissuader" de penser le phénomène nucléaire selon le critère d'une vérité conventionnelle car il se présente sous les traits d'une "apocalypse sans apocalypse, sans révélation de sa propre vérité, sans savoir absolu" (Derrida). Trois apologies paradoxales qui élèvent le désastre nucléaire au rang de principe "d'époque", tout en suspendant ce geste dans l'insignifiance d'une absence de révélation et l'effondrement du sens, exposant la pensée à une "déception", un "dessaisissement", qui s'avèrent essentiels à son renouveau. Il semblait d'autant plus important, à l'heure de la post-vérité, d'analyser cette éthique de la déception qui reconduit la raison hégémonique à sa "fission" inhérente."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Quels sont les ressorts profonds de la grave crise économique, sociale et politique que nous traversons? Quelles lignes de fracture souterraines révèle-t-elle? Ces questions ont fait l'objet d'une journée de réflexion organisée à l'occasion du 60e anniversaire de la disparition du philosophe Emmanuel Mounier à l'âge de 45 ans, le 22 mars 1950. Vingt ans durant, le fondateur de la revue Esprit n'a cessé de passer au feu de la critique les politiques et idéologies aboutissant à la négation de la (...) personne, coeur vivant du personnalisme, sa doctrine. A l'origine de ces perversions : une erreur sur l'homme. Mounier l'identifie dès ses premiers textes consacrés à la crise des années 1930. Crise financière, crise économique, certes, mais plus en profondeur, " crise morale " et " spirituelle ". Elle se manifeste par le primat de l'argent déconnecté de l'économie réelle dans une délirante " autofécondité ", l'instrumentalisation du travail, la domination et les inégalités, la prolifération de besoins factices... 500 personnes dont 150 scolaires et étudiants ont participé à cette belle journée de débats qui s'est également interrogée sur l'influence internationale actuelle de la pensée de Mounier. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage procède à un examen critique de la sphère de l'art en général, des activités de création artistique et de jouissance esthétique en particulier, à une période où se pose avec une extrême acuité la question cruciale des rapports de l'art aux autres pans de l'existence humaine. L'approche, qui s'appuie sur l'histoire de l'esthétique, mais fait aussi appel à l'histoire de l'art et à la culture philosophique en général, permet de cerner les nombreux contours de cette réalité hybride et (...) pas toujours facile à saisir, qu'est aujourd'hui devenu l'art. Après l'examen des vertiges modernes et de l'engrenage postmoderne ayant marqué l'évolution de cette sphère, l'accent est mis sur l'art contemporain en général, tiraillé entre la logique marchande et l'instrumentalisation, puis sur l'art africain contemporain en particulier, qui se débat entre leurres et lueurs, entre ombre et lumière, entre espoir et désespoir. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so within this journal, there have been critical debates concerning the role of mindfulness within education, the influence of neoliberalism on education in general and well-being interventions specifically, and the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger for critiquing modernity including the nature and purpose afforded education. In this article, we propose that these debates are sufficiently interrelated to develop a more unified argument. We will show how a Heideggerian perspective is conceptually rich, in both (...) its heritage, as it draws upon both East-Asian wisdom and western thinking, and its engagement, as it confronts the implications of what Heidegger called a ‘technical-era’, for offering such a unified critique. The focus of this critique is on instrumental forms of mindfulness (mindfulness ‘in’ education), which when framed by neoliberalism has rather narrow goals concerning individual well-being and performance. In contrast, more critical and integral forms of mindfulness (mindfulness ‘as’ education) offer the potential for more holistic and authentic learning. Throughout the article, we discuss how Heideggerian philosophy offers a number of useful concepts (e.g., enframing, Dasein, authenticity, meditative thinking), which are able to both critique the instrumentalisation of approaches like mindfulness by neoliberalism and speak to more holistic education oriented toward more authentic being in the world. (shrink)

Since the first successful attempt to clone a dog in 2005, dogs have been cloned by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer for a variety of purposes. One of these is to clone dogs as companion animals. In this paper we discuss some of the ethical implications that cloning companion dogs through SCNT encompasses, specifically in relation to human–dog relationships, but also regarding animal welfare and animal integrity. We argue that insofar as we understand the relationship with our companion dogs as one (...) of friendship, the meaningfulness of cloning a companion dog is seriously questionable. Cloning may both disrupt the uniqueness of the relationship, as the shared history underlying the relationship can neither be repeated nor copied, and it may violate the meaning we attribute to friendship, as the notion of singularity inherent in our understanding of friendship is incompatible with the replaceability embedded in the practice of cloning. We further argue that the application of cloning technology to companion dogs can be interpreted as a violation of the integrity of dogs on at least two accounts: negative welfare implications associated with the cloning process, and the instrumentalisation of the dog inherent in cloning. (shrink)